As they do about this time every year, the faithful came together on Saturday to celebrate the H. L. Mencken Day at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. I attended because I was curious to see how many were still around. The answer: a full auditorium.
This is the amazing thing about Mencken. He lives on, while other one-time titans of journalism have been forgotten, including Walter Lippmann. The proof is a new edition of Mencken’s “Notes on Democracy,” which is hot off the presses just in time for the presidential election. It was written eight decades ago!
Susan Jacoby delivered the annual lecture at the Pratt. She is the author of “The Age of American Unreason” and talked about the anti-intellectualism that permeates this year’s presidential campaign. None of that would have been surprising to Mencken, who once famously said, “No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
Many contemporary readers are put off by Mencken’s bigotry. The best of his biographies, a magnificent opus by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, almost did not get reviewed in The Sun in 2005 because the book editor thought that Mencken was “a bad man.”
It is a fair bet that no mainstream newspaper would publish Mencken’s caustic attacks on Babbits, quacks and nitwits seeking public office, not to say anything about his comments on various ethnic groups, Baptists, Methodists and Realtors. Today’s newspapers strive not to offend, and perhaps that is a reason for their decline. Much of Menckenian style is relegated to blogs, where different rules apply.
That said, I was jolted Sunday by three outstanding columns in The New York Times. Thomas Friedman (“Making America Stupid”), Frank Rich (“The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket”) and Maureen Dowd (“Bering Straight Talk”) all wrote about the presidential election with an acerbic passion that would have made Mencken proud.
I once lived across Union Square from 1524 Hollins St., the rowhouse where Mencken died in 1956. I have an old photograph of him in his garden, standing with an ax next to a pile of split firewood. The backdoor carries a sign, “Warning. Tear Gas.” In addition to liking cigars and beer, he was a joker.
I am no Mencken faithful, but the man fascinates me for the following reason: He was able to be a national figure while continuing to live in Baltimore. He corresponded with an incredible number of important people, many of whom visited him on Hollins Street. No important national figure could operate from Baltimore these days, instead of New York or Washington. That says something about how America has changed.
As to bigotry, Mencken was guilty as charged. He distrusted most Jews and loathed blacks, just as he detested his Lithuanian neighbors. In brief, he was like many of Baltimoreans of his time and background. Yet Mencken was different. Some of his best friends were Jewish and he was a tireless promoter of Harlem Renaissance writers.
Which brings me back to 1524 Hollins St. Years of volunteer efforts to turn it into a museum have come to a naught. It’s a shame.
My feeling is that it should not be a mere museum. Instead, it should be like the Columbus, Ohio, residence of James Thurber, the humorist and cartoonist. It’s a center for writers, a place “where laughter, learning and literature meet,” according to the Web site.
The Mencken House should be a place where writers, quaffing beer and puffing cigars, gather to talk about whatever is relevant in these troubled times. That would be a more appropriate tribute to Mencken than merely looking at his library, writing desk and old typewriter.
Sage of Baltimore
‘It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.’ – H. L. Mencken
Antero Pietila is writing a book about how bigotry shaped Baltimore between 1910 and 1975. His e-mail address is [email protected].
