Menckeniana A Magazine About All Things H.L. Mencken Fall 2012 • No. 203

Happy Mencken Day! Richard Schrader The : How the Letter Kills H. George Hahn The Campus Trials of Mencken’s Satire The H.L. Mencken Room at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore

Menckeniana Table of Contents Mencken Day photos 1 A magazine Keynote Address • Richard J. Schrader “The Scopes Trial: How the Letter Kills” 2 about all things H.L. Mencken Address • H. George Hahn “The Campus Trials of Mencken’s Satire” 11 Fall 2012 Book Review • Frederick Betz “Bluebeard’s Goat Jacqueline Watts, editor and Other Stories by H.L. Mencken” 13 Bibliographic Checklist • Vince Fitzpatrick 14 Cover Photo Editorial board By Stacy Spaulding, member of the board of the Frederick Betz Friends of the H.L. Mencken House; homemade ornament Southern University based on an illustration by David Levine which first Vince Fitzpatrick appeared in the New York Review of Books June 11, 1981. Curator, H.L. Mencken Collection Menckeniana is published quarterly by the Enoch Pratt Fred Hobson Free Library, 400 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, Maryland University of North Carolina 21201. ©2012, all rights reserved. ISSN 0025-9233. Richard Schrader Submissions and books for review should be sent by e-mail Boston College to [email protected]. For those who missed it: Mencken Day at the Enoch Pratt Free Library

Top left: Pratt Library CEO Carla D. Hayden introduced Dr. Richard J. Schrader, the keynote speaker. Top right: Prof. Schrader delivered his talk on the Scopes Trial and manipulation of the news. Middle right: Bob Brugger, president of the Mencken Society, officiated the annual meeting of the society. Bottom right: Dr. H. George Hahn delivered his talk on Mencken and the nature of satire. Bottom left: Mencken Day guests looked over exhibits on Stanley L. Harrison and Charles A. Fecher, eminent Mencken scholars who died last year.

Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 1 Keynote Address The Scopes Trial: How the Letter Kills by Richard J. Schrader the Middle Ages, and so at the end I them heeded the dictum of St. Paul will try to clear the air with evidence that inspired readers of an earlier age: I want to express my gratitude to that some medievals may have had a “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth the Pratt Library for the many happy more sensible approach to the creation life” (2 Cor. 3:6, KJV). days I spent in the old Mencken story in Genesis than either William More than eighty-five years after Room and for inviting me to give Jennings Bryan or Henry Louis the events in , practically this talk, to Art Gutman for his Mencken. all that is popularly “known” about guidance and friendship during the In my harangue to the ‘gogues I the trial is what Mencken wanted last thirty years, to Vince Fitzpatrick stressed how Mencken scripted the known, just as some reference works None of them heeded the dictum “ of St. Paul that inspired readers of an earlier age: “the letter killeth, but “the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor. 3:6, KJV).

for numerous collaborations and trial during and after the event, and still claim, thanks to Mencken, that frequent scholarly advice, to David how his version was perpetuated Millard Fillmore brought the first Thaler, another collaborator and also by Inherit the Wind, both play bathtub into the White House. One publisher, to those prodigious scholars and movie, and by historians like might say that his version of the Marion Rodgers and S. T. Joshi for Richard Hofstadter, who reduced Scopes Trial was a hoax on the order letting me in on some of their work, the trial to a case of fundamentalist of that other bit of buncombe, with and to Frank Forman, Ray Stevens, intolerance versus science or progress Mencken imagining a more colorful Jack Sanders, and Chris Wilson for or cosmopolitanism (Larson 235- drama before the real one was held, helping me form the parts of this 6). Better assessments may be found then recording the trial as it happened talk that were tried out on my fellow in the more recent books by Garry in such a way that actual events ‘gogues during the MLA annual Wills, Edward Larson, and Karen and issues would be buried beneath convention in 2000. Since then I Armstrong, all of which I have the greatest satire of the century. have benefited from recent Mencken drawn upon. My colleagues back Mencken did to William Jennings Society talks and other material to be then needed a longer introduction to Bryan what Woodrow Wilson’s found in the journal Menckeniana, both Mencken and the Scopes trial propagandists did to Kaiser Wilhelm. and I hope I will do them justice. than is necessary for this audience. The trial was the high point of They were important because of the I will make that background a Mencken’s life-long crusade to lack of a university library in my preface to discussion of what resulted discredit religion, which he saw present rustic setting–I trust that I from the literal-minded way that as retrograde, a survival from an haven’t overlooked any blockbusters. fundamentalists approached the infantile stage in development. As a professor, my primary field was and their opponents approached 2 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 Darwin and Nietzsche. None of Continued on next page Keynote • Richard J. Schrader In other words, he viewed it (as he The image of Bryan created by did most things) through the lens of even though he probably did not Darrow and Mencken was given a nineteenth-century mindset, one break the law. (He told a reporter definitive form in Jerome Lawrence that takes the romantic evolutionary/ that he missed the class on . and Robert Lee’s play Inherit the developmental model for granted and That’s why did not Wind (1955). Everyone thus knows finds its gospel in Darwin, Nietzsche, put him on the stand.) The ACLU Bryan well for such lost causes as and the positivist Higher Criticism, intended to raise a constitutional Biblical literalism and prohibition, which “subjected the Bible to the same issue and was unhappy with Darrow’s but few are aware that for thirty years sort of literary analysis as any other presence on the defense team, though he was the most important figure religious text, interpreting its ‘truths’ Scopes wanted him. Darrow, in in American reform politics (Wills in light of its historical and cultural cahoots with Mencken and the 99-100; Larson 35, 38). Among context” (Larson 34), as opposed sympathetic media, aimed primarily other things, he was nominated to treating it as the inerrant word for President three times and was of God. Born in 1880, Mencken Wilson’s Secretary of State until he claimed to have made up his mind on resigned over the country’s being led practically everything very early in into the Great War, just as he had life (Fecher 4). Though rooted in the The anti-evolution opposed militarism and imperialism past, his biases regarding the Scopes after the Spanish-American War. Trial happened to correspond to those was He championed railroad regulation, of the leading media. Mencken’s broadly supported currency reform, state initiative and libertarianism (which is nineteenth- “ referendum, a Department of Labor, century liberalism) was not widely “when it passed in campaign finance disclosure, and condemned as reactionary until it 1925, but most opposition to the death penalty. He was directed at Franklin Roosevelt was a majoritarian and helped secure during the Depression. Paradoxically, Tennesseans did not ratification of four amendments was twenty care one way or the to the Constitution, all “designed years older than Mencken, and yet to promote a more democratic or he was truly progressive, in that other. righteous society”: they brought a great many of his political ideas about direct election of Senators, were enacted well into the twentieth a progressive federal income tax, century, and he would certainly have prohibition, and female suffrage supported the New Deal. to discredit fundamentalism, which (Larson 38). When Bryan died of Thanks to Mencken’s script, he did in the famous grilling of diabetes on July 26, shortly after the ’s plans went awry. The Bryan on the next to last day (after trial, libertarian Mencken claimed anti-evolution Butler Act was broadly Mencken had left because he thought to have killed him, and some liberal supported when it passed in 1925, that Bryan had won [Rodgers 289]). historians tried to do the same to his but most Tennesseans did not care However, that non-testimony was legacy. one way or the other. Bryan in fact never heard by the jury or entered As late as 1920 Bryan did not opposed it because of the penalty in the trial record. It is part of that want to forbid teaching evolution; attached, and the Governor who other, shadow trial that everyone he merely desired to have it treated signed it into law understood it to knows. The prosecution won the as one biological theory, an unproven be symbolic, not punitive (Wills 97- actual trial: Darrow in fact changed theory and not a fact (Wills 100-01). 100; Ginger passim; Larson 47-48, the plea to guilty on the final day. Though his position hardened, he did 55, 191). Darwin had appeared in He did it for two reasons: to avoid a not like the punitive aspect of the case textbooks for some time; the one counter-interrogation by Bryan on the and offered ahead of time to pay any that John Scopes supposedly taught merits of Darwin, which was Bryan’s fine levied on Scopes. He was not from, A Civic , by George W. condition for agreeing to testify as an arguing that be taught Hunter, had been used in Tennessee expert on the Bible, and also Darrow in the schools; he assumed that the since 1909. The ACLU advertised wanted to have the law tested more Biblical account could not be taught for someone to challenge the law, and quickly higher up–but, thanks to and wanted the evolutionary view of Dayton won out among contending the other trial, Bryan, the Great Continued on next page cities and their publicists because Commoner, has become Mencken’s Scopes was willing to come forward, and America’s classic dunce. Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 3 Keynote • Richard J. Schrader human origins banned for the sake of the existence of God, denounced neutrality (Larson 257). Generally, Mencken went further and in 1908 as the doctrine of the Bryan was not literal-minded in identified Nietzsche’s Superman degenerate, and democracy as the his approach to the Bible when it with Darwin’s fittest and summed refuge of the weakling; he overthrew didn’t have to do with the special up the result thus: “The strong must all standards of morality and creation of man. This is shown by his grow stronger, and that they may eulogized war as necessary to man’s admission to Darrow that the seven do so, they must waste no strength development” (quoted in Larson 40). days of creation in Genesis might be in the vain task of trying to lift up Both Darrow and Mencken ages, an admission that caused some the weak” (Philosophy 102-03). He found in Nietzsche justification for fundamentalists, including Jerry seems to ratify this view two years their unpopulist lack of faith in the Falwell and Pat Robertson, to turn later in Men Versus the Man (112; majority. Darrow did believe in on him post mortem. (Not Billy democracy, unlike Mencken, but felt Graham, however, who accepted the that agitators were the real source view that the Genesis account “was of progress (Ginger 61-62). Bryan, a pictorial depiction of progressive on the other hand, gave priority creationism spanning eons” [Larson to popular rule over liberty, as the 237, 261]). Moreover, Bryan was Above all, the thing poet noted in not anti-feminist, anti-semitic, to do was to lay all the American Mercury (391); it is or anti-Catholic like many of his a political philosophy exactly the fundamentalist followers, and, as a stress, not on Scopes, opposite of Mencken’s. And unlike Presbyterian moderate, he espoused “who was a nobody, Bryan, many “progressives” saw the “social gospel” condemned by the democracy as just one means to right wing of evangelism. (However, but on Bryan, who the end of control. Many also had it must be said that his record on was an international outright contempt for the masses, race was not good, and though especially the rural masses, as the trial he despised the Ku Klux Klan, he figure–to lure him on would prove. opposed an anti-Klan plank because the stand if possible, Mencken said: “The thing to do, I of his Midwest and Southern political argued, was to use the case to make base [Ashby 103, 181].) As for his to make him state Tennessee forever infamous, and to defense of Tennessee’s Butler Act, that end the sacrifice of Scopes would which made it unlawful “to teach any his barbaric credo in “ be a small matter. Above all, the theory that denies the story of the plain English, and thing to do was to lay all stress, not Divine Creation of man as taught in on Scopes, who was a nobody, but the Bible, and to teach instead that to make a monkey on Bryan, who was an international man has descended from a lower of him before the figure–to lure him on the stand order of ,” the prevailing view if possible, to make him state his of the establishment clause in the First world. barbaric credo in plain English, and Amendment, at the time, was that it —H.L. Mencken to make a monkey of him before the “simply forbad the government from world” (Thirty-five Years 137). The giving preference to any one church shadow trial was directed at the entire denomination” (Larson 75). From nation, not the Daytonians, whom that narrow perspective, the Butler cf. Rodgers 118-20). Bryan, on the Mencken ahead of time had styled Act passed muster. other hand, thought that progress “Homo Neandertalensis” (Mencken What came to obsess Bryan about came from supporting the weaker. on Religion 165). Not all the liberal evolution was social Darwinism, the So we have a clash of fundamentalist media approved. The New Republic, idea that the poor must be neglected titans. “Mencken,” says Wills, “was for one, objected to the hostile tone in the name of a progress which a literalist–in ways later scholars of the defense, acknowledging (as betters the race (Wills 101-02). have derided–in applying Darwin did Mencken [Mencken on Religion Whether or not that is a misreading to human ethics” (102). And Bryan 208]) that Tennessee had a right of Darwin, that is how both Mencken blamed German militarism on to pass the Butler Act. The article and Darrow understood him. Darwinism by way of Nietzsche, said that the law’s nullification by a who, he said, “carried Darwinism court would be an abuse of judicial 4 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 to its logical conclusion and denied power. Rather than creating villains Keynote • Richard J. Schrader and expecting a “happy ending” in Not surprisingly, Darrow’s stirring a higher court, it went on to say, the attack upon “the fires that have been defense should have planned its case lighted in America to kindle religious “in order to bring home to the citizens bigotry and hate” did not move Judge of Tennessee their responsibility for a More than eighty- Raulston to quash the indictment or deplorable abuse of an admitted and find the act unconstitutional, because desirable legal authority” (“Baiting” five years after the Scopes was free to teach evolution in 250). This is the populist way, events in July 1925, another forum (World’s 87, 102). As education followed by ballot, not Larson notes, “The court had adopted lawsuit, and it occurred in 2000 when practically all the prosecution’s position, which Kansas voters repudiated an anti- “ accorded with the prevailing currents that is popularly evolution state school board. Not of constitutional interpretation” (169). that the course of true learning ever “known” about Wills makes the point that what did run smooth, as we know from the the trial is what I have called the shadow trial, or recent textbook wars in Georgia and Mencken’s hoax, was taking place

Texas. Mencken wanted in the media (108-09; Ginger 103). Mencken admitted that the real This was among the earliest and zanies were from the hills, not the known, just as some greatest media events, with radio lines town (Mencken on Religion 172). reference works in the court room (it was the first The reporters enjoyed Dayton and trial ever broadcast) and hordes of admired the townfolk for their still claim, thanks photographers and reporters present. hospitality (Ginger 180). But again, to Mencken, that “ The grilling of Bryan, unheard by the satiric scripting was abetted by the jury, was given out of doors to both the Daytonians and the hillfolk, Millard Fillmore accommodate the crowds. One study who, together with motley strangers, brought the first of the media coverage concludes, turned the neighborhood into a While much of the reporting in commercial and evangelical carnival. bathtub into the the newspapers and magazines Since this is the image of the trial White House. was taken from verbatim Mencken wished to make permanent, accounts of court proceedings, he joined in by handing out to the press conferences, sermons, and yokels a fake flyer designed by Edgar interviews, it was the choice of Lee Masters, the author of Spoon River quotations selected by the media, Anthology and former law partner of experts” (Wills 107). He felt that the charged headlines of articles, Clarence Darrow in . And, you should be able to demand that the slant of editorials, and the in order to distract and evade the a teacher teach the facts you wanted, nature of cartoons that came to preacher T. T. Martin, Mencken just as you could demand that a house support and create the Monkey concocted another hoax. He and his painter follow your color scheme Trial myth. (Wood 152) colleague Henry Hyde told Martin (Ginger 36). On the narrow point of Darrow was there, against the that Cincinnati Bolsheviks were popular control of public education, wishes of the ACLU, because of reportedly en route to Dayton to even agreed Mencken, who consulted with him butcher William Jennings Bryan. with Bryan, and it would have been throughout the trial, and because Cops from Dayton and Chattanooga difficult to challenge him on it in the Scopes continued to hold on to him rushed to the train station and courts of those days or among the (Wills 112-13). The state supreme pounced on an innocent man public (Larson 104-05). court neatly responded to the blot (Schwartz 2-3). I mentioned at the The prosecutor tried to keep the on Tennessee’s honor created by outset that Mencken’s written version focus on what he considered the Mencken and Darrow’s circus both of the Scopes Trial was a hoax on the main point of the Butler Act, which by upholding the Butler Act and by order of his famous , was that the legislature had a right throwing out Scopes’s conviction for and pranks like these only seemed to to control state funds and to prevent violating it; they used a technicality lend credence to it. any subject from being taught regarding the sentence (the jury and “For Bryan, it was the superman (Larson 161-64, 168-69). Mencken not the judge should have decided on trial [not the monkey trial], a defense concurred that free speech was not of the populace against secular the issue (Thirty-five Years 139). Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 5 Keynote • Richard J. Schrader the fine [Larson 192]). The matter One can set aside minor instances went no further because, the chief but one in which Bryan is cast as a of poetic license, such as having the justice said, “We see nothing to be demon capable of any cruelty (110- Scopes figure jailed when the real gained by prolonging the life of 11), and the New Republic deplored Scopes was not arrested, arraigned, or this bizarre case” (Ginger 209). He what it called the Scopes attorneys’ imprisoned (Harrison 12), but not a suggested that the attorney-general “melodrama” (“Baiting” 249; cf. profound change such as having the drop the indictment rather than Wood 156). Bryan figure assail evolution solely on retry Scopes. This was done, thereby Mencken expanded this line of Biblical grounds, “never suggesting outflanking the ACLU. There was demonization in his obituary of the broad social concerns that largely no longer a case to take to the U. Bryan on July 27. He said, among motivated Bryan” (Larson 241). S. Supreme Court. Winning one other things, “Bryan was a vulgar and In Hunter’s A , trial meant losing the other, though common man, a cad undiluted. He the textbook from which Scopes paradoxically Darrow’s client got was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, supposedly tried to teach, the subject off as usual, but that was not what blatant and dishonest. His career of evolution occupies about five pages. he wanted. Moreover, he had brought him into contact with the The discussion concludes with a brief inadvertently created sympathy for first men of his time; he preferred list of the “five races or varieties of Bryan and his cause. The upshot was the company of rustic ignoramuses” man,” beginning with “the Ethiopian that the anti-evolution law stayed (Mencken on Religion 211). The piece or negro type, originating in Africa,” on the books for forty-two years. and ending with “the highest type of Tennessee repealed it just before the all, the Caucasians, represented by the

Supreme Court struck down a similar civilized white inhabitants of Europe Arkansas statute in the Epperson [Darrow] had and America” (196). I suspect that case (1968) (Larson 251, 255-56). no one involved in the trial, including

No one else in Tennessee had been inadvertently created Bryan, would have disagreed with tried under the Butler Act, but that the last sentence, but the question was largely because of self-censorship sympathy for Bryan remains whether Bryan ought to be by publishers across the nation, who and his cause. The “ demonized for not wanting to yoke removed Darwin from high school “ that and related ideas with Darwin. texts. The teaching of evolution upshot was that the Among those related ideas were declined in America until Sputnik anti-evolution law eugenics and its offshoot, forced prodded a long look at high school sterilization, which was the one science (Larson 230, 249). stayed on the books practical application of Darwinism That is one of the parts of the for forty-two years. (North ch. 7; Doyle 10-20; Kennedy story that you miss if you read only 114-22). Embracing the views of what Mencken scripted, which was many evolutionary biologists (Larson a triumph of art and propaganda. 27), Hunter’s Civic Biology has a John Scopes, ostensibly at the center chapter on “Heredity and Variation” of the affair, never saw things the was so vitriolic that the Baltimore in which the student is taught that way Mencken did. As late as a Sun thought it prudent to run an evolution can be directed by applying 1970 interview with Bynum Shaw unsigned “straight” obit beside it. “the laws of selection.” One has a in Esquire he was defending Bryan (It was written by Mencken’s friend duty to participate, it says in the and the townsfolk and expressing Gerald Johnson, the subject of Vince paragraph headed “Eugenics,” for skepticism over Mencken; small Fitzpatrick’s splendid biography. He such conditions as tuberculosis, wonder that he was treated as a agreed with Mencken’s defense of free epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness cipher from the beginning. At the speech, but not with all of his tactics “are handicaps which it is not only actual center was Bryan, thanks [75-76].) The authors of Inherit the unfair but criminal to hand down to to Darrow’s maneuver. The moral Wind, not finding justification for posterity” (261). Hunter argues that argument against social Darwinism Mencken’s portrayal of Bryan in the physical, mental, and moral defects that Bryan raised was actually evaded actual transcript of the trial, invented can be passed along through several by the attack on Genesis in Darrow’s a girlfriend of the Scopes figure for generations. Such families, he says, questioning. Wills sees Darrow’s own the Bryan figure to badger on the not only do harm to others by scripting of the trial as a morality play, stand, thereby making him conform 6 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 to the Bryan of the shadow trial. Continued on next page Keynote • Richard J. Schrader corrupting, stealing, or spreading the notion of superiority and their disease, but they are actually This textbook incorporated the overplaying heredity and downplaying protected and cared for by the state research of eugenist Charles B. the environment (“Eugenics”). For out of public money. Largely for Davenport, who was one of the six Bryan, eugenics was reason enough them the poorhouse and the asylum best-known potential witnesses for not to teach evolution, and he would exist. They take from society, but Scopes’ defense (Larson 115, 135, have argued this in his closing speech they give nothing in return. They 181). (It was while arguing against (World’s 333-36). are true parasites. these experts that Bryan got carried By the end of the 1920s, twenty- The Remedy.– If such people away and notoriously claimed eight states had compulsory were lower animals, we would that man was not a mammal.) In sterilization laws, and some 15,000 probably kill them off to prevent fact, Davenport and the other five of the eugenically unfit had been them from spreading. Humanity could not be allowed to testify, sterilized; that total would double in will not allow this, but we do because all of them favored coercive the next decade. Not coincidentally, have the remedy of separating the eugenic measures which Darrow between 1915 and 1930, thirty sexes in asylums or other places condemned as incompatible with states passed laws against interracial and in various ways preventing human rights. Darrow wrote an marriage. Virginia’s model intermarriage and the possibilities article on “The Eugenics Cult” for sterilization law was upheld by the of perpetuating such a low and The American Mercury a year later, Supreme Court 8-1 in Buck vs. degenerate race. (263, emphasis and the year after that Mencken Bell (1927); the majority included mine) criticized their vagueness about progressives William Howard Taft and Louis Brandeis. In Germany sterilization was illegal until Hitler changed the law in 1933; two million people were ordered sterilized by his Eugenics Courts thereafter. In America, to quote an AP story of a Virginia man who was sterilized when young because he repeatedly ran away and was deemed uncontrollable, “They treated us just like hogs, like we had no feelings” (Baskervill). The photo shows him holding his World War II Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and POW medals. The rationale for such programs was foreshadowed by Darwin’s book Descent of Man (1871), in a passage Continued on next page

This is the only known photo of H.L. Mencken at the Scopes Trial. Mencken did not see the trial through to its end—when Judge Raulston ruled that the defense could not call its scientific witnesses, Mencken, along with many other out-of-town reporters, went home. Those reporters missed Darrow’s epic cross-examination of Bryan on the courthouse lawn. Photo courtesy H.L. Mencken Estate, Enoch Pratt Free Library Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 7 Keynote • Richard J. Schrader lamenting the altruism that allows Bryan, by making concessions the weak in civilized societies to moral imperative of opposing science regarding the six days of creation, propagate their kind to the detriment to religious faith. Ironically, though tried to evade the trap for of the race (130-31), which Bryan liberals might cheer him in his battle fundamentalists set even farther quoted in both the book In His Image against religion, he actually had an back when Martin Luther and others (1921) and the address he was not attitude no more advanced than that rejected the medieval allegorical permitted to make to the jury in of the zealots he attacked. It was tradition, which held that Bible the Scopes Trial (World’s 335). In apparent in the trial and in his book passages may be read on multiple 1922 one may find Darwin’s thesis Treatise on the Gods five years later, levels simultaneously (Wills 127- fully fledged in Margaret Sanger’s which is further evidence of that life- 30). William Tyndale, the reformer, The Pivot of Civilization,especially long nineteenth-century lens I referred Bible translator, and martyr, whose its chapter on “The Cruelty of to at the beginning. (In his review, work heavily influenced the King Charity,” wherein she describes theologian Reinhold Niebuhr pointed James Version, wrote in 1527, “Thou philanthropy as “the surest sign that shalt understand, therefore, that the our civilization has bred, is breeding Scripture hath but one sense, which is and is perpetuating constantly the literal sense. And that literal sense increasing numbers of defectives, is the root and ground of all, and the delinquents and dependents” (108), ...the Scopes Trial anchor that never faileth, whereunto the “dead weight of human waste” if thou cleave, thou canst never err that may be found in institutions is one of the least or go out of the way” (622). But a (112). “Feeble-mindedness” and creditable episodes thousand years earlier, St. Augustine outright insanity are inherited traits, had deconstructed the literal level of she assumes. As stated in an appendix of [Mencken’s] life, the creation story more profoundly to the book (282), sterilization of “ than did Clarence Darrow. Between though he acted in such groups is among the aims of the the years 389 and 416 he tried

American Birth Control League, a all innocence, after three different times to explain the forerunner of Planned Parenthood. Hexaemeron, the six days of creation, Sanger believed that the unfit were years of studying in a literal sense, but each time fell multiplying at so frightening a rate religion, and with back on allegory. Augustine raised that, in regards to our democracy, the questions that many readers have: something would have to be done the conviction Did God consume the whole about the “pathological worship of that he was right “ day in creating the various works? mere number,” and she agreed with — How could there be days before those who were opposed to such about the moral there were heavenly luminaries? — Bryanesque, populist, majoritarian imperative of How could there be light before reforms as the primary, the direct the existence of the sun and the election of Senators, the initiative, the opposing science to stars? — This leads him to adopt recall, and the referendum (177-78). religious faith. simultaneous creation, to identify Mencken’s other fights on behalf the light of the first day with the of the First Amendment are entirely angels, and to explain the evening admirable: for example, his rounding and morning [the refrain at the up of American literati to defend end of each day’s work] by the Dreiser in 1916, his risking the out Mencken’s limitations and limitation and the beauty of the American Mercury in the 1926 dismissed the book with “It really tells various created objects. (Catholic “Hatrack” case, and his 1948 attack us little more than how one fanatic Encyclopedia) on Baltimore’s segregated tennis feels about other fanatics of a different In his final try, “He admits again a courts, the last article he published. stripe” [96].) But Bryan might have simultaneous formation of the world, But the Scopes Trial is one of the least found some consolation in the fact so that the six days indicate an order creditable episodes of his life, though that, if Mencken could not escape of dignity —angels, the firmament, he acted in all innocence, after years the lure of Darwin, Nietzsche, and the earth, etc.” Augustine found of studying religion, and with the the Higher Criticism of the Bible, at support for this figurative reading conviction that he was right about the least he rejected those other Victorian of the six days in the book of Sirach 8 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 humbugs Marx and Freud! Continued on next page Keynote • Richard J. Schrader (Ecclesiasticus) 18:1, which is in the his warnings about the junk science Vulgate but not in the Hebrew canon attempt to read the Bible as history behind social Darwinism have been or the King James Version: “creavit is a modern response, a scientific way justified by appalling evidence and omni simul” (he created all things at of trying to establish the Bible’s truth affirmed by better science, and they once). by modern standards, instead of the are soundly based on the letter and In the later Middle Ages, premodern way of understanding it the spirit of the Bible. commentators like Thomas Aquinas as mythos capable of many meanings Works Cited tended toward the literal in explaining Armstrong, Karen, The Battle for God (New extendable to the present (95-97). York: Knopf, 2000). the six days of creation, without This was a fatal concession, one Ashby, LeRoy, William Jennings Bryan: denying other levels beyond the that fundamentalists had thought Champion of Democracy (Boston: Twayne, 1987). factual. One of his general sources necessary in the wake of the Higher “The Baiting of Judge Raulston,” New was Moses Maimonides, author of the Criticism and the generally rational Republic 43.556 (29 July 1925): 249-50. famous The Guide for the Perplexed bias of the modern world. “Faith had Baskervill, Bill, “Va. Expresses Regret,” The Repository (Canton, O.) 16 Feb. 2001: (1190). Aquinas called him The to be rational,” writes Armstrong, D-5. Rabbi, as he called Aristotle The “mythos had to be logos. It was now Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www. Philosopher, and The Rabbi appears newadvent.org/cathen), s.v. “Creation, Six very difficult to see truth as anything Days of.” to argue for a kind of simultaneous other than factual or scientific” (144). Darrow, Clarence, “The Eugenics Cult,” creation, citing Isaiah 48:13: “when By mythos she means the timeless and American Mercury 8.30 (June 1926): 129-37. Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man and I call unto them [the heavens and constant, by logos the rational and Selection in Relation to Sex, revised edn. the earth], they stand up together” pragmatic. (1874; New York and London: Merrill and (KJV). “Consequently,” he says, It could be said that Clarence Baker, n.d.). Doyle, Laura, Bordering on the Body: The “all things were created together, Darrow won the battle of Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture but were separated from each other rationalisms: free speech and the (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994). successively.” For example, the lights Fecher, Charles A., Mencken: A Study of autonomy of scientific inquiry His Thought (New York: Knopf, 1978). mentioned on the fourth day (the sun eventually triumphed over the right Fitzpatrick, Vincent, Gerald W. Johnson: and the moon) “are the same that of ordinary persons to reject theories From Southern Liberal to National Conscience (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State were created on the first day [‘let there they found immoral. However, the UP, 20 02). be light’], but were only fixed in their two sides had much in common. Ginger, Ray, Six Days or Forever? places on the fourth day” (213). But Armstrong writes: Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (Boston: Beacon, 1958). that provides no help with the length Darrow and Mencken were [Harrison, S. L.,] “Scopes Mythologia,” of the days or the eons of creation. also wrong to assume that Menckeniana 156 (Winter 2000): 12-14. All this reminded me of another Hunter, George W., A Civic Biology (New fundamentalists belonged entirely York: American Book Co., 1914). eminent theologian, Linus Van Pelt to the old world.… They were as Kennedy, David M., Birth Control in from “Peanuts,” who said, “There’s addicted to scientific rationalism as America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1970). no problem so big that you can’t any other modernists.… Doctrines Larson, Edward J., Summer for the Gods: go around it.” From early times to were not theological speculations, The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing the present, one answer to the days but facts.… Fundamentalists were Debate Over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997). question has been to fall back on trying to create a new way of being Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee, miracle. Hence Bryan’s evasion in religious in an age that valued the Selected Plays, ed. Alan Woods, foreword his testimony: “DARROW: They had by Norman Cousins (Columbus: State logos of science above all else. (176- UP, 1995). evening and morning for four periods 79) Maimonides, Moses, The Guide for the without the sun, do you think? That’s how Mencken valued science, Perplexed, trans. M. Friedländer, 2nd edn. (1904; New York: Dover, 1956). BRYAN: I believe in creation as there but his writing on the Scopes Trial Marks, Jonathan, “Clarence Darrow Cross- told, and if I am not able to explain it, produced mythos, a timeless parable Examines William Jennings Bryan at the I will accept it” (Marks). against intolerance that, in order to Scopes Trial” (http://personal.uncc.edu/ jmarks/Darrow.html). In the matter of reading Genesis, be morally “true,” must be separated Masters, Edgar Lee, “The Christian Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for from the logos, the empirical truth, of Statesman,” American Mercury 3.12 (Dec. God, a study of fundamentalism in 1924): 385-98. the actual event. In that way, one can Mencken, H. L., “Eugenics,” in Prejudices the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim take as Gospel the spirit of Mencken’s Sixth Series (New York: Knopf, 1927), pp. religions, has made the Protestant satire, though not the letter of 233-39. Mencken, H. L. Mencken on Religion, ed. S. yokels of Tennessee more sympathetic. it. And one can also acknowledge T. Joshi (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, She reveals an additional irony in that, despite Bryan’s frequent literal- Continued on next page their theology, for the fundamentalist mindedness when it came to Genesis, Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 9 Keynote • Richard J. Schrader 2002). Mencken and Robert Rives La Monte, Men Versus the Man: A Correspondence (New York: Holt, 1910). Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Boston: Luce, 1908). Mencken, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work, ed. Fred Hobson, Vincent Fitzpatrick, and Bradford Jacobs (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994). Niebuhr, Reinhold, “[Review of Treatise on the Gods],” in Critical Essays on H. L. Mencken, ed. Douglas C. Stenerson (Boston: Hall, 1987), pp. 95-96. North, Gary, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler, Tex.: ICE, 1996). Rodgers, Marion E., Mencken: The American Iconoclast (New York: Oxford UP, 2005). Sanger, Margaret, The Pivot of Civilization (1922; Elmsford, N.Y.: Maxwell Reprint Co., 1969). Schwartz, Gerald, “Mencken and the Dayton Firebrand,” Menckeniana 162 (Summer 2002): 1-5. Shaw, Bynam, “Scopes Reviews the Monkey Trial,” Esquire 74 (Nov. 1970): 90, 94. Tyndale, William, The Obedience of a Christian Man, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th edn., gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: Norton, 2006), I: 621-22. Wills, Garry, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Wood, L. Maren, “The Monkey Trial Myth: Popular Culture Representations of the Scopes Trial,” Canadian Review of American Studies 32 (2002): 147-64. The World’s Most Famous Court Trial: Tennessee Evolution Case: A Word-for-Word Report (1925; Dayton, Tenn.: Bryan College, 1990). Richard J. Schrader, professor emeritus of Eng- lish at Boston College, earned a B.A. in English at The University of Notre Dame. He special- ized in medieval literature under Francis Lee Utley and also studied under the bibliographers Richard D. Altick and Matthew J. Bruccoli at Ohio State University, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. He taught at Princeton University and, from 1975 to 2009, at Boston College. His publications include The Reminiscences of Alexander Dyce (1972), God’s Handiwork: Images of Women in Early Germanic Literature (1983), Arator’s On the Acts of the Apostles (De Actibus Apostolorum) (1987), Old English Po- etry and the Genealogy of Events (1993), H. L. The courthouse in Dayton, Tenn., was the scene of Tennessee v Scopes. Mencken: A Descriptive Bibliography (1998), The courthouse lawn was the scene of Clarence Darrow’s merciless H. L. Mencken: A Documentary Volume interrogation of William Jennings Bryan. The town of Dayton hosts an (2000), and The Hoosier House: Bobbs-Merrill annual festival celebrating the Scopes Trial. (Photo by Carol Fitzpatrick) and Its Predecessors, 1850-1985 (2004). He was the John Witherspoon Bicentennial Precep- tor while at Princeton and has been awarded Mellon Grants, an NEH Summer Stipend, and the Lilly Library’s Helm Fellowship. 10 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 Address • H. George Hahn The Campus Trials of Mencken’s Satire

“I think that people like to read In short, satire is long as well as irony. A contextual irony is that when abuse,” said Mencken to Donald aggressive, far longer than the squibs he published the book in 1918, the Kirkley in a recorded interview of of Stewart, Rock, and gangsta rap. 19th Amendment granting women 1948. His charge prompts four trials Whatever the scale, a book or an the right to vote had not yet been about satire to a college-age class essay, true satire mounts an argument passed, and the controversy over today. in tactical terms. Think of Chaucer’s women’s intelligence still raged A first trialis definitional. Most studied assault on corrupt churchmen between suffragists and intractable students today would agree with in The Canterbury Tales. Or recall men. So Mencken’s irony wins a Mencken on the reception of satire, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, each of double-header. A difficult lesson for on enjoying verbal abuse. They delight its four successive parts an attack most students, distinguishing the in the one-liners of Jon Stewart and on pride in its political, physical, literal from the ironic, the ironic Chris Rock. They revel in rap. They intellectual, and moral garrisons, from the sarcastic, and the influence think satire to be a quick jab, a hit- and its narrator, gullible Gulliver, of context. Still, after all of this is and-run joke, ephemerally irreverent explained, whether students like to and ultimately harmless. But read abuse or not, their permanent Mencken wasn’t commenting about pleasure is learning to decode a satire’s cause, form, or quality. So his masterly satiric document, understand first trial is on a conceptual charge. The warrants a satiric tactic, and intellectually enjoy What is satire in its literary sense? a literary game well played. Satire is a distortion, a fun-house beneath most of As in his books, so in his essays, mirror that exaggerates things to Mencken’s satire are Mencken confirms conventional mock them. It’s a text that distorts thought for unconventional reasons, its contexts. Like all art, it’s an act strata of liberty and always with a straight-faced irony. “ “ of illusion, its artist’s conception of let Take “Chiropractic,” where he things. More a cartoon than a portrait individualism: argues that its practice should not and less a truth than a polemic, satire be free be banned by the government or the aims less to inquire than to persuade. American Medical Association. Why? Recalling Plato’s rant against rhetoric to do what they Because the only people who submit in the Gorgias, one may say that satire wish at their own to chiropractors are idiots, so if they starts with, rather than establishes a die, the national gene pool improves. supposed truth, and so it can never be expense. Likewise, in “Christian Science” philosophical in aim or fully ethical that faith’s proscription of medicine in act. It rests on analogy, but analogy should not be banned for the same has no purchase on truth, the less reason. The warrants beneath most of so if the analogy is false. So satire is personifies each one. Likewise, in In Mencken’s satire are strata of liberty ultimately an argument by ridicule. Defense of Women, Mencken charges and individualism: let Americans be It’s the most aggressive, the most with slash and salt through his smoke free to do what they wish at their own offensive of literary types. Think screen of irony to his target, quite expense. only of a few words that we use to unlike the obvious pop-gun shots And within his essays and books, talk about it: satire is a scourge, a of Comedy Central. Beyond the dust little gems of irony sparkle. They bludgeon, a whip, and a weapon; it jacket of the book, Mencken’s ironic always delight students. Consider: shoots at targets, it attacks, wounds, tactical syllogism is brilliant: Women The best teacher is little better than skewers, blasts, explodes, flays, damages, are despicable, but women are better a moron because “the business of destroys, and demolishes. Long satire than men. Therefore, men are very teaching demands a certain jejunity like Alexander Pope’s mock-epic The despicable. The underlying premise: of mind. “ Or “Every professor must Dunciad is a barrage of heavy artillery. Women are more intelligent than have a theory, as every dog must Short satire like Mencken’s essays are men because they can dominate have fleas.” (Why did I choose those literature’s light cavalry, skirmishing men. That’s how Mencken “defends” Continued on next page an enemy flank. women. And that’s only the textual Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 11 Address • H. George Hahn two?) A judge is “a law student who is judgmental. It’s how they’ve been marks his own examination papers.” But it’s quite another thing not indoctrinated through their schooling. A is “one who protects us to know who’s who in Mencken’s (Not that schools musn’t indoctrinate. against robbers by taking away the allusions to Woodrow Wilson, Plato said in The Republic that there temptation.” An historian is “an William Jennings Bryan, Coolidge, can be no vision of government unsuccessful novelist.” “Adultery FDR, Conrad, Bach, and even without a vision of education that is the application of democracy to Dempsey and John D. Rockefeller, “grows” the kinds of citizens that love.” And democracy is “the art and high-capital names once in the the government wants. So Germans science of running the circus from the history bank of every American. That indoctrinated students in Naziism, monkey cage.” Each is also a satiric the students are ignorant of such Soviets in communism, Islamists sabre against conventional American names is not from the overusing of in the Sharia, and U.S. schools thinking burnished by a trope and their iPhones. It’s from their schools’ now indoctrinate and “celebrate” pointed in a sharp and memorable undervaluing of content. That’s the popular pieties of tolerance and epigram. confirmed by many recent studies. diversity, each to cultivate the proper After understanding his tactics The National Center for Educational conduct and citizens—or subjects.) long and short, most students will Statistics, for example, concludes But tolerance, of course, is no cardinal exonerate and even appreciate that students lack a factual base. virtue to the satirist—or to any Mencken’ s satire as did those And not just the schools, but the thinking person. T. S. Eliot even students who read the green-covered colleges, many of which are now said that “Judgment is as natural as American Mercury as they walked running up the flag of “academic breathing. The only question is if it’s across American campuses so long rigor” that rallies for more reading in right or wrong.” And a Baltimorean ago. every discipline from anthropology by adoption, Ogden Nash, said as But tactics are methods. Where’s to zoology. UCLA, one campus much in a pointed epigram: “What the matter? Other trials lay ahead. on point, finding that students is more mine, tolerance or a rubber II. A second impediment to themselves think their courses too spine?” Today’s college contingent Mencken’s satire and indeed to most easy and that departments demand has been cultivated for twelve years satire read after its day is its short too little from their majors, now has to a bumper-crop harvest where shelf life. Even when a miniature instituted curricular reforms under judgment and courage are only weeds. masterpiece of satire, say Voltaire’s that flag, and the new Common But without judgment and courage Candide, is anthologized, it takes Core standards in elementary and there can be no satire, and with no ranks of marginal glosses and banks secondary schools of forty-three states tolerance for judgment there can be of rich footnotes to establish archaic have resurrected content as central. no appreciation of satire, for at base diction, people, places, and problems Why? For years the K-16 prejudice the satirist is a critic, the very word that were common knowledge when had been against learning facts and deriving from the Greek kritikos or it was written. And dropping an for developing “critical thinking.” judge. eye to those footnotes is a necessary Besides, if facts can be looked up Students will tolerate the one-liner distraction from the rush of the text, on the internet, who cares if that judgments of Stewart and Rock. its diction, rhythm, tone, and figures organic computer called memory Those judgments voice easy-to-grasp of speech. So the gain in knowledge will atrophy? Critical thinkers many popular thoughts well phrased. is a loss in the pleasure of savoring the students think themselves to be, but And said with a smile, they seem style. critical thinking without knowledge is kinder and gentler than Mencken’s Still, it’s one thing for a thoroughly a sculptor without a stone. own, more graffiti on their targets modern sophomore not to recognize So Mencken is found guilty of a than the carpet bombing of them. in Mencken names like Valentino, crime not his own by student juries Not only the devastation, but also Comstock, Ring Lardner, Carpentier, ignorant of facts: “He’s too hard.” what the comedians’ judgments Aimee Semple McPherson, Albert C. And his sentence: good old puritanical lack are the complex irony and basic Ritchie, and many contemporaneous shunning. Chiefly because of low seriousness that are basic elements in marquee names and cameo enrollment, the last time I taught the all Mencken’s satire. And they finally appearances in his journalism. annual course on Mencken was 1995. lack Mencken’s courage as a judge. Footnotes are the preservative as they III. The third charge against When is Mencken not a judge, embalm and keep the corpses’ coffins Mencken is writing with intent to right, wrong, or otherwise—and a open to view. judge. Arguably the only word that courageous judge at that? Answers 12 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 students think now to be a curse word Continued on next page Address • H. George Hahn come quickly and easily: Mencken’s about? inveighing against the U.S. entry into they lack the brains. Trying to IV. The final trialof Mencken World War I during the flag-waving teach them is as hopeless as trying opened in 1989 when his diaries teens, mocking both Democrats and to teach a dog with only one hind were published and used as self- Republicans at their conventions, leg.... Even in such twilight regions incriminating material evidence for laughing at Holy Rollers in the Bible of the intellect, the style remains the the doom of his reputation. He was Belt, going to jail for selling the man. What is in the head infallibly savaged for intellectual snobbery, for Mercury in Boston, attacking Jim oozes out of the nub of the pen. If it contempt of his colleagues, for sexism, Crow practices on Baltimore tennis is sparkling Burgundy the writing is for racism, and for misanthropy. But courts, causing an earthquake of full of life and charm. If it is mush the heaviest charges were against what reaction against his blasts against the writing is mush too. was called Mencken’s anti-Semitism, a lynching on Maryland’s Eastern Here, Mencken’s own prose a subset of racism. Celebrities, shore, skewering labor unions in style is on point: short sentences in pundits, and scholars excoriated him. negotiations with the Sunpapers, and standard English syntax, each a jab of Robert Ward, a Towson [then State] attacking the business interests of judgment. The simple-to-understand University alumnus and screen writer Baltimore as more industry moved sentences let sound echo sense in what for the popular TV police drama, in: “When the cow is brought into he judges a simple-minded target. Hill Street Blues, wrote in his New the parlor, the milk is no better, and Beyond simplicity, it’s no wonder that York Times book review of the diary the carpet is ruined.” Was there ever a students miss the train of Mencken’s that what is “offensive and shocking more equal-opportunity satirist? typically longer sentences: multiple is Mencken’s anti-Semitism.” And • nouns rolling like boxcars down in the same place Gwinn Owens, an Still, while students profess a the rails of parallel and antithetical Evening Sun editor, sniffed the same mild and distant admiration for his sentences that deliver the powerful in Mencken’s not mentioning “a single courage, often in the face of threats judgment. No less a writer than denunciation of Hitler.” The winner to his life, they claim not to like his Conrad agreed: “Mencken’s vigor of the 1985 Mencken writing prize judgmental attitude. (Isn’t their claim is astonishing. It is like an electric returned his award. Quacking in itself judgmental?) So they will judge current.... that gives you a sense of chorus were, among others, Jonathan Mencken by their own different enormous power.” And not only Yardley, Les Payne, and Andy contemporary standards: “He’s not power. Students miss the sparkle of Rooney. Even that gentleman, scholar, tolerant.” Do these students play Mencken’s similes and metaphors, the and saint, Charles Fecher, “clearly chess by the rules of checkers or boo sonic rhythms of adjacent syllables, and unequivocally,” conceded the a pitcher for not punting on third the spice of imported words, the Sage’s anti-Semitism. Perhaps more, down? flavor of disparate allusions, the slang but less-celebrated defenders, mainly A lesser but related charge, believe of the street, or the cool delight in letter-writers, variously noted that it or not, indicts Mencken’s prose discovering meaning that sleeps in Mencken’s comments were standard style, the expression of his judgment. etymological cellars. In class these lexical coinage in the nineteenth and In these days of bumper stickers, things are not fully a loss. They earlier twentieth centuries: Heinies, sound bites, and slogans, brevity is prompt the teacher to read samples Squareheads, Huns, Jerrys, Krauts, king. And students themselves, ever aloud, playing to the ear what’s dark Limeys, Micks, Paddies, Guineas, texting in fragments and acronyms, to the eye, perhaps even repeating the Wops, Frogs, Polacks, Greasers, Liths, might prompt what Mencken might common experience in Mencken’s Bohicks, Wetbacks, Shades, Spades, have them say: “Look! I’m prehensile!” own day of having his columns Spooks, Spicks, Redskins, Honkeys, Mencken did put the question in read aloud in barrooms and living Slants, Wogs, Chinks, Coons, and another—of course, judgmental— rooms and streetcars to someone Kikes. Still, that defense at best way when he wrote about the folly of else in delight or disgust. In this is only a plea for leniency, not for trying to teach students to write: way, students, with the teacher their exoneration. The great majority of high school sponsor, if only for a short time Then came a definitive defense pupils, when they attempt to put magically become naturalized citizens that to a sober jury would exonerate their thoughts upon paper, produce of another day in a very different Mencken. It was written by a Towson only a mass of confused and puerile country. And isn’t liberating ourselves [State] University junior—a Jewish nonsense.... They write badly from our own time and place to student as well—and published, because they cannot think clearly. understand different perspectives Continued on next page They cannot think clearly because what liberal education is finally all Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 13 Address • H. George Hahn generously and wisely by the editor, man who changed the course of Mr. Fecher, in the summer 1991 out into an anti-Semitic outrage.... American literature. Since the diary, number of Menckeniana. Under the I asked him why, if his sentiments the anti-Semitic brand is Mencken’s title, “In Defense of Mencken,” Karen ran that way, he had chosen a Jewish Jewish star. Polun refuted the main charges of publisher.” Implicit is that Mencken’s But there’s hope. A delicious the “prosecution.” Darrowlike, her own publisher was the Jewish Alfred irony of Karen Polun’s victory is its cross-examination seared the experts Knopf. In a 1937 entry Mencken implicit defense against Mencken’s one by one. (1) Charge: Twent y- wrote of a link between Huey Long’s own satire on students. They’re seven times Mencken refers to people “great anti-Semitic movement now not all intellectual groundlings. as Jews. Cross: That’s the fallacy of rolling up New York.” Then Karen Outnumbered but unbowed against begging the question: assuming the Polun brings a character witness to the the quacks, not only is she Mencken’s truth of something you’re trying stand. Lawrence Spivack, Mencken’s “enlightened citizen.” She also shows to prove. (2) Charge: Mencken Jewish assistant at The American that close reading, careful research, writes of the low opinion of Jews at Mercury and later founder of Meet logical thought, cogent argument, Johns Hopkins University. Cross: the Press, who testifies, “It is absolute ethical purpose, and clear courage in Mencken himself didn’t say that: he nonsense to accuse Mencken of anti- sailing away from the coast of herdlike was quoting the history professor, Semitism. He always talked with his bromides are not dead. Samuel Eliot Morison. (3) Charge: tongue in his cheek, but he always felt • Mencken writes about the Maryland comfortable with Jews.” Next for the Nor, thanks to this society, is the Club’s one Jewish member, “There is defense are Mencken’s other Jewish study of Mencken. no other Jew in Baltimore who seems friends and close associates: Blanche Now, because I’m in a profession suitable [for membership].” Cross: Knopf, over whose health he took a paid to talk in other people’s sleep, I’ll Interpreted by a non-tone-deaf reader, proprietary interest in finding doctors raise my voice in a shout to thank you the statement is ironic and so means and visiting her in the hospital. for inviting me to speak. quite the opposite of the literal words. George Jean Nathan, Mencken’s (4) Charge: There’s not a single Jewish co-editor at both The Smart H. George Hahn II (Ph.D., denunciation of Hitler. Cross: Neither Set and Mercury; they mutually Maryland), chair of the Towson is there mention of Pearl Harbor, later parted company not because of University English Department, teaches the rape of Nanking, Nagasaki, or any bigotry but because of editorial 18th-Century British Literature, Hiroshima, rich opportunities that differences: should the magazine lean Literary Research, Rhetoric, Satire, War Mencken missed for some fine anti- more to politics (Mencken) or the arts in Literature, and Writing Argument. Asianism. And so on rolls Karen’s (Nathan)? In succession come Louis After a semester-long observation, The cross examination. It rests on the Cheslock, Jewish professor of music at Baltimore Sun named him in a front warrant of Bernard Lewis’s definition the Peabody and charter member of page article of 2002 as one of three of anti-Semitism: “the hatred of Mencken’s Saturday Night Club, and “Extraordinary Maryland College Jews grounded in the belief that many Jewish doctors, , and Professors.” they are a malignant influence in the other professors who were Mencken’s His journalism includes more than 60 world and should be controlled or friends. Winning her case, Karen op-ed columns in metropolitan dailies eliminated.” Nowhere, Karen shows, wonders if the dead Mencken could for which he has won several prizes. are Mencken’s comments even fifth sue for libel. Hahn’s scholarly articles have cousins thrice removed from that Still, while she won the case, after appeared in publications such as definition. the 1989 Diary, the anti-Semitic Philological Quarterly, Anglia, Papers Her cross-examination completed, reputation of Mencken remains. on Language & Literature, Southern Karen turns to the defense phase of Reputation dies hard when myth Quarterly, War and Literature, and the trial. First, she puts Mencken masks truth. Towson University, in World Book Encyclopedia. He has himself on the witness stand: In 1980 a co-sponsor with the Maryland written and co-authored five books, a 1933 American Mercury article, Humanities Council for the Mencken among them The Country Myth: he wrote that “Hitler’s success was centennial, has since 1989 rejected Motifs in the British Novel of the certainly not creditable to the German naming a building or even a campus Eighteenth Century; The Eighteenth- people, nor indeed to the human race lane for him. Selections of Mencken’s Century British Novel and Its in general.” In a 1935 Diary entry, writing have disappeared or grown Background; and The Ocean Bards: Mencken wrote that “ Dreiser broke shorter in American literature British Poetry and the War at Sea, 14 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 anthologies, irony of ironies for the 1793-1815. Book Review • Frederick Betz Bluebeard’s Goat and Other Stories by H.L. Mencken Edited by S.T. Joshi Bluebeard’s Goat and Other Stories “The Crime of McSwane” (1902), set by H. L. Mencken. Edited by S. T. in Nigeria, both likely inspired by Joshi. Chester Springs, Pennsylvania: Kipling. Dufour Editions, Inc., 2012. 384 pp. The short stories of 1914-1919 $16.95. are also generally comic or satirical. Mencken displays his “sardonic It may surprise even Mencken skepticism of the institution of aficionados to learn that between marriage” (as he would also show 1900 and 1919 he published nearly ) in many of sixty short works of fiction. In fact, these stories, “the most pungent” of the apprentice journalist had literary which is perhaps “The Homeric Sex” aspirations, encouraged by his initial (1918) about a wife’s infidelity. More success in placing as many as twenty predictable, but also more amusingly short stories in a number of leading ironic is “Wives” (1919) about a periodicals of the day. By 1906, man who is critical of the wives his however, Mencken, as he recalls in (1919), and friends have married but “can’t see My Life as Author and Editor (1993), Prejudices: First Series (1919), not to that he himself has married just such “was beginning to realize that fiction mention such classic essays as “The a woman.” The most interesting of was hardly [his] trade” (9). Moreover, Sahara of the Bozart” (1917) and “A these stories, however, are “those that he had in the meantime become Neglected Anniversary” (1917). eschew facile humor and probe deeper interested in George Bernard Shaw It is all the more welcome, emotions,” such as “The Man of God” and published a critical introduction then, that the prolific Mencken (1918), which “sensitively portrays a to his plays (1905), and followed bibliographer and editor S. T. Joshi grocer who is fired with evangelical with books on Nietzsche (1908) and has rescued approximately half of zeal,” and “The Window of Horrors” Socialism (1910), establishing himself, Mencken’s early short stories from (1917), “a tale that does not require as he notes in Newspaper Days (1941), their neglect. Joshi’s collection the supernatural to chill [Mencken’s] as “a critic of ideas” (74). contains six stories from the years readers.” The two “most impressive Nevertheless, Mencken began 1900-1906 and seventeen stories stories” are Mencken’s longest, “The publishing short stories again in from 1914-1919, as well as eight Barbarous Bradley” (1914) and “The 1914, when George Jean Nathan comic vignettes from 1915-1918. Charmed Circle” (1917), both of and he became editors of the Smart Although some of the early stories which satirize class distinctions and Set, a literary magazine which, in are “unwontedly sentimental” (and domestic conflict. Joshi calls the latter spite of its title, appealed to the therefore not included here), most “a veritable novella that strikingly intellectual rather than the social elite. are worthy “comic narratives,” the anticipates, in its Long Island setting At first, however, they received few best of which is perhaps “The Bend and high society atmosphere, the manuscripts, and therefore they filled in the Tube” (1905), which Marion work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.” the gap with submissions of their Rodgers identified in Mencken: The Unmentioned by Joshi is the title own, covering themselves in part with American Iconoclast (2005) as a satire story, “Bluebeard’s Goat” (1917), pseudonyms. As book reviewer for on Mencken’s boss, Frank Peard (“the about a man named Richard Hoof the Smart Set since 1908, Mencken preposterous Peard”) at the Baltimore (!), a philanderer who finally professes had reviewed countless works of Herald (67-68). Noteworthy, too, his love for a woman who tells him fiction in the meantime, which no are “A Cook’s Victory” (1900) and that although she likes him so much, doubt contributed to his facility in “A Double Rebellion” (1902), both “there’s someone else,” and so he buys writing his own (short) fiction. His stories set in Jamaica (where Mencken a bunch of violets and hurries home short stories published between 1914 had gone in 1900 to recover from to his wife. By contrast, Bluebeard in and 1919 have been, understandably, overwork as a Herald reporter). Two of Charles Perrault’s Barbe Bleu (1697) overshadowed by such book Mencken’s best early works are rather first marries and then murders one publications as A Book of Prefaces grim war stories, “The Last Cavalry wife after another! (1917), In Defense of Women (1918/22), Charge” (1906), set in Europe, and Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 15 Vince Fitzpatrick Bibliographic Checklist Works by H.L. Mencken containing differing numbers of commentaries by Books and Pamphlets Mencken from a variety of sources: “Memories sound of their own voices.” H. L. MENCKEN ON AMERICAN of a Long Life” (15), “Author and Journalist” (12), • LITERATURE, edited by S. T. Joshi. Athens, “Thinker” (6), and “World Traveler” (9). Mr. Joshi Sections of Books devoted to H.L. Mencken Oh.: Ohio University Press, 2002, 284 p. offers as “Epilogue” the Sage’s “Henry Louis KASPER, ROB. Baltimore Beer: A Satisfying After his “Introduction” and “A Note on This Mencken (1936),” in Portraits and Self-Portraits, History of Charm City Brewing. Charleston and Edition,” Mr. Joshi divides this book into five edited Georges Schreiber (Boston: Houghton London: History Press, 2012, p. 39. sections with differing numbers of Mencken’s Mifflin, 1936). Mencken “railed against Carrie Nation and commentaries: “The Travails of a Book PREJUDICES (Volume 1, First, Second, and her temperance troops, calling prohibition ‘a Reviewer” (4), “Establishing the Canon” (12), Third Series), (Volume 2, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth horror.’ Mencken, like many thirsty residents “Some Worthy Second-Raters (7), “Trade Goods” Series), edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers. New of Baltimore, took to brewing his own beer in (8), and “Some Thoughts on Literary Criticism” York: Library of America, 2010), 610 p. and 612 p. his Union Square home. He usually brewed on (7). THE PASSING OF A PROFIT AND OTHER Sunday and bottled on Wednesday. . . . [M]any of H. L. MENCKEN ON RELIGION, edited by S. FORGOTTEN STORIES. Editor Douglas his beers became ‘bombs.’ T, Joshi. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, Olson. San Francisco: Forgotten Stories Press, “‘Last night I had three quart bottles in my side 2002, 330 p. 2012, 205 p. yard cooling in a bucket,’ he wrote to his friend After his “Introduction,” Mr. Joshi arranges In His “Foreword,” the editor writes that Harry Rickel. ‘Two went off at once, bringing my this book into nine sections with differing “although it is my belief that I have assembled neighbor out of his house with yells. He thought numbers of commentaries by Mencken: “I. Mencken’s complete output of magazine fiction the Soviets had seized the town.” The Beliefs of an Iconoclast” (5), “II. Some up to 1906, there is no way to be absolutely sure.” Mencken appreciated Baltimore’s “wet” Overviews” (13), “III. Protestants and Catholics” He includes seventeen stories: “The Defeat of environment and wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald: (5), “IV. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals” Alfonso,” The Cook’s Victory,” “The Woman “Baltimore is knee-deep in excellent beer. I begin (6), “V. Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Christian and the Girl,” “The Crime of McSwayne,” “Like to believe in prayer.” Science” (6), “VI. The Scopes Trial” (17) “VII. a Thief in the Night,” “The Flight of the Victor,” In April, 1933, when Prohibition for beer was Religion and Science” (6) “VIII. Religion and “The Point of the Story,” “A Double Rebellion,” repealed, Mencken visited the Rennert Hotel. Politics” (5), and “IX. Religion and Society” (7). Hurra Lal, Peacemaker,” “Firing and a Watering,” down Cathedral Street from Mencken and Mr. Joshi concluded with “Epilogue: Memorial “The Passing of a Profit,” The Heathen Rage,” Sara’s apartment at 704. He quaffed a beer and Service,” from the March, 1922 Smart Set, “The Fear of the Savage,” “The Bend in the Tube,” remarked, “Pretty good. Not bad at all.” reprinted in Prejudices: Third Series. “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The King and GATELY, IAIN. Drink: A Cultural History of MENCKEN’S AMERICA, edited by S. T. Joshi. Tommy Cripps,” and “The Last Cavalry Charge.” Alcohol. New York: Gotham Books, 2008, see Athens, Oh.: Ohio University Press, 2004, 244 p. THE COLLECTED DRAMA OF H. L. Index. After his “Introduction” and “A Note on MENCKEN: PLAYS AND CRITICISM. Mencken called the martini “the only This Edition,” Mr. Joshi offers as “Prologue” Edited by S. T. Joshi. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow American invention as perfect as a sonnet.” Mencken’s “On Living in the .” Mr. Press, 2012, 269 p. Writing prior to the presidential election of Joshi then divided the book into four sections with Part I, “The Plays,” offers the following: The 1928, Mencken weighed the consequences of differing numbers of commentaries by Mencken: Artist: A Drama without Words, In the Vestry Democratic nominee Al Smith’s Catholicism “1. The American: A Treatise” (6); “2. The Room, Seeing the World, Asepsis: A Deduction and opposition to Prohibition: “If [Smith] wins American Landscape” (7); “3. American Politics, in Scherzo Form, Death: A Philosophical tomorrow, it will be because American people Morality, and Religion” (6); and “4. American Discussion, The Wedding: A Stage Direction, and have decided at last to vote as they drink....If he Art, Literature, and Culture” (4). Mr. Joshi Heliogabalus: A Buffoonery in Three Acts. loses, it will be because those who fear the pope concludes with Mencken’s “Epilogue: Testament,” Part II, “Mencken on Drama,” offers outnumber those who are tired of the Anti-Saloon (Review of Reviews 76:413-416, October, 1927). the following: “By Way of Introduction” in League.” Smith lost. A RELIGIOUS ORGY IN TENNESSEE: A George Bernard Shaw: His Plays, “William RATNER-ROSENHAGEN, JENNIFER. REPORTER’S ACCOUNT OF THE SCOPES Shakespeare,” “A Drama of Ideas,” “A Plea for American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and MONKEY TRIAL, introduction by Art Comedy,” Et Dukkehjemiana,” “The Revival His Ideas. Chicago and London: University of Winslow. Hoboken, New Jersey: Melville House of the Printed Play,” “The New Dramatic Chicago Press, 2011, see Index. Publishing, 2006, 206 p. Literature,” “Brieux and Others,” “The Professor Ratner-Rosenhagen discusses This collection contains sixteen columns Terrible Swede,” “Synge and Others,” Gerhart Mencken in a variety of contexts. Mencken, from the Baltimore Evening Sun and “To Expose Hauptmann,” “Thirty-five Printed Plays,” “The and Randolph Bourne “mined a Fool,” (American Mercury, October, 1925). Ulster Polonius,” and “Ibsen: Journeyman Nietzsche’s texts for his critique of Judeo- The Mercury piece is a revision of Mencken’s Dramatist.” Christian asceticism and moral theology as they “Bryan,” the scathing obituary that ran in the Works Reprinted in Magazines attempted to come to terms with the lingering Baltimore Evening Sun the day after Bryan died. SMIRNOFF, MARC. The Best Southern Words influence of Puritanism on modern American (A New Edition). Ever?: Who Knows? But Here, in Commonplace- thought.” Introduction and Annotations by Marion Book Fashion, As Compiled by a Commoner, Are Mencken “interpreted the moral austerity and Elizabeth Rodgers. Afterword by Anthony Lewis. Dogged Candidates. Oxford American 77, Spring, intellectual vacuity of the American mind as ‘neo- New York: Dissident Books, 2006, 206 p. 2012, pp. 14-15. Puritanism, a la Nietzsche.” The author proceeds COLLECTED POEMS, H. L. MENCKEN, In his “Editor’s Box,” Marc Smirnoff offers to discuss “Puritanism as a Literary Force” in A edited by S, T, Joshi. New York: Hippocampus two Mencken quotations, the first in a letter to Book of Prefaces. Press, 2009, 145 p. Emily Clark, editor of The Reviewer, “Criticism Dr. Ratner-Rosenhagen explains that “no After Mr. Joshi’s “Introduction,” the volume and progress, to be effective, must be iconoclastic author did more to establish the persona of offers ninety-two of Mencken’s poems “arranged and pugnacious. Before a sound literature can Friedrich Nietzsche in America than H. L. chronologically by date of original publication” arise in the South, the old nonsense must be Mencken. His 1908 study, The Philosophy of (12). knocked down, and from within. It will be useless Friedrich Nietzsche, the first full-length English- MENCKEN ON MENCKEN: A NEW to attempt a compromise. You must arm yourself language book written for a general audience in COLLECTION OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL and take the high road, ready to cut throats American–offered a rollicking master narrative WRITINGS, edited by S. T. Joshi. Baton Rouge, whenever it is necessary. The thing must be done about Nietzsche’s religious upbringing, his La.: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. 263 p. boldly, and . . . a bit cruelly.” intellectual path from parsonage to public enemy, After his “Introduction” and “A Note on Mencken proclaimed that New Yorker Al his battles with poor health, and his warfare on the This Edition,” Mr. Joshi offers as “Prologue” Smith, the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for slave morality of modern Christianity.” This book the Sage’s “Henry Louis Mencken (1905).” He president in 1928, “has been ruined, I greatly fear, “was just the beginning of his Nietzscheana.... proceeds to divide the book into four sections by associating with rich men–a thing far more Nietzsche’s ideas and image were for Mencken 16 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 dangerous for politicians than ever booze or the gifts that kept on giving....” Bob Brugger, Vince Fitzpatrick, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers An Appreciation of Two Mencken Men Arthur J. Gutman, president of Arthur Gutman, 1911-2012 Baltimore, and out came anecdotes the Mencken Society for 20 years about the Baltimore fire of 1904, and since 1976 its chief booster, part of the impressive collection of the Cone sisters, what the city was conscience, and unofficial historian, Menckeniana that Gutman donated like during the 20s, 30s and 40s. died November 26. He was 101 years to the University of Maryland in He was a member of a generation old. 2003. The collection includes works who read Mencken’s columns when He was born in 1911 and graduated by Mencken as well as a nearly they appeared in the newspaper from Baltimore City College in 1928. complete set of Mencken Society each Monday. During World War He took a law degree at the University newsletters. II, “Arthur was one of many GI’s of Baltimore, graduating with an LLB He married his wife, the former carrying around Mencken’s DAYS in 1934. Mary Louise “Wheezie” Fleischmann, books, issued in pocket size for the He served in the Army Air Corps, in 1968. Mrs. Gutman, a former city armed forces overseas. Those books later to become the United States tennis champion and collector of became the basis for the collection of Air Force, from 1942-1945, and after British ceramics, died in 2008. Menckeniana that Arthur donated to mustering out continued serving in Mencken Society members were the University of Maryland in 2003. the reserves, from 1947-1949. He then quick to offer tribute. What made Arthur different from so served as staff Chief Warrant Officer many other rabid collectors was he of the 29th Infantry till 1955. bought all those books to read-- not His interest in H.L. Mencken began just for display. I suspect one reason in his youth, but bloomed during his Arthur traveled so often was just so stint in the air force. He explained in As Alfred Knopf he could haul new converts into the a letter to the editor in the Baltimore once said of Mencken Society net. Evening Sun: “Then there was his energy. Until

“One miserable rainy, cold day Mencken, no matter the end, he defied chronology. in January 1944, in Italy, an Air how many years Knowing he and Wheezie were night

Force sergeant with a couple of “ owls like me, I once telephoned leisure hours stopped in a Red passed, Arthur was them at ten o’clock; they were just Cross Club for a cup of coffee... The starting on their second cocktail. sergeant was a Baltimorean, one of always there. Now Senior living made Arthur feel caged those who loved his City. He was a he is gone, and for “ in. “The residents eat dinner at five,” third generation born Baltimorean, he growled, “and batten down the of German Jewish stock, from a so many of us, it hatches by six.” His kindnesses dry goods family who had been ranged from gifts of tomatoes from badly hurt in the Depression. He is a sad end to an his garden to playing surrogate had grown up believing there was era.” uncle to me, my parents, and later only one set of newspapers worth —Marion my husband. In his twilight years, reading, The Sun, The Evening Sun Elizabeth Rodgers he appreciated Mencken’s line, “As and The Sunday Sun. And in The he grew older, he grew worse.” As Evening Sun, you looked for the Alfred Knopf once said of Mencken, Monday night articles by Mencken. no matter how many years passed, You laughed with him, you groaned Arthur was always there. Now he is with him... The sergeant, waiting From Marion Elizabeth gone, and for so many of us, it is a sad for his coffee to cool and his feet Rodgers, Mencken scholar and end to an era.” to dry, looked over the Armed author of Mencken: The American From Bob Brugger, editor at Forces Library of paper backs. And Iconoclast and other works: Johns Hopkins University Press and lo and behold there was one with “There are two things people need president of the Mencken Society: Mencken’s name, called Heathen to know about Arthur Gutman. First, Arthur J. Gutman’s extensive Days. He leafed through it and he had the memory of an elephant. knowledge of Mencken and his then sat and read it, and it brought Cite any book: not only had he read work; his generous entertainment of Baltimore back to him as the words it, but he could rattle off paragraphs out-of-town attendees on the eve of Continued on next page flowed by.” verbatim, even tell personal stories The clipping is undated, and is about the author. Ask about bygone Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 17 Bob Brugger, Vince Fitzpatrick, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers Mencken Day; and overall his great investment of time and energy in the Mencken Society, which he had helped to establish, both sustained and built that group, especially during a presidency of twenty years after 1979. Members who attended the society’s morning sessions on Mencken Day will remember his gruff demeanor and quick wit. At times he could almost have been Mencken himself, running a meeting in the Wheeler Auditorium with full- throated hostility to Robert’s Rules of Order. God had to help those who spoke up on the wrong foot or were slow to finish a question. Offstage, he was pretty much the same figure, although memorably willing to listen to friends, commiserate when they unburdened themselves, and make Vince Fitzpatrick, Pratt librarian Sara Siebert, and Arthur Gutman on offers of help. He had many friends the steps of the H.L. Mencken House, June, 1982 in the Mencken Society. We shall (Photo courtesy Vince Fitzpatrick) miss him. From Vince Fitzpatrick, Curator A meeting was scheduled for the and for decades we discussed this of the H.L. Mencken Room at the Mencken House, then owned by remarkable writing, some of the best Enoch Pratt Free Library and author the University of Maryland. When prose non-fiction produced in this of H.L. Mencken: I tried to unlock the front door that gaudy republic that gave the Sage so I had the good fortune to know Saturday afternoon, I discovered that much delight and consternation. We Arthur Gutman for more than thirty the university had given me the wrong talked over many lunches, and we years. We first broke bread together key. I walked around to the alley, ate very well: crab cakes at Faidley’s; during the summer of 1979. I had Booth Street, and discovered that the corned beet at Mary Mervis and just finished graduate school, and he rear gate was locked, as usual. The Attman’s and Miller’s over on Smith was soon to succeed Dr. Carl Bode crowd swelled in front of the house. Avenue; and, more recently, pit beef as the President of the Mencken I sweated more and more. Finally, and pork barbecue at Andy Nelson’s. Society. Arthur asked me to serve inspiration seized me. We also talked frequently about as the Meetings Chairman. I held I knocked on the front door of military history, especially the Civil this position for eight years and very 1522 Hollins St., the house to the War. From the huge height of his much enjoyed my interactions with east, introduced myself, explained years, he spun out his memories of a Arthur. He very much enjoyed this our predicament, and asked the lady bygone Baltimore: a child sledding organization that was so dear to him, if I might gain access to her back down Eutaw Place toward North that he ran so expertly, and that did yard. Very graciously, she invited Avenue, buying oysters by the barrel, so much to help keep Mencken’s me inside. Once in her back yard, and the old Friends School in Bolton flame alive. We met in libraries and I scaled Mencken’s east wall and Hill. He had walked through the taverns, churches and colleges. The hopped down into his backyard. I history about which I had to read. He Society was informed and entertained found an unlocked window in the remembered everything, and he was by journalists and professors, as well dining room, raised it, slithered into an entrancing raconteur. as by a lawyer and a clergyman and the house, and proceeded to open Throughout his long and full life, the Belgian Ambassador to the United the front door. The crowd cheered, Arthur enjoyed himself immensely, States. and we proceeded with the meeting. and he remained always curious about These meetings usually proceeded For years afterwards, Arthur laughed time present as well as time past. We smoothly. The most memorable heartily about the absurd events of had a lot of fun together. Frater, Ave, exception occurred in June, 1982. that afternoon. atque Vale: Hail, brother, and farewell. 18 • Menckeniana • Fall 2012 Mencken’s work delighted Arthur, Friends of the H.L. Mencken House, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers Richard D. Pickens II, 1962-2012 Richard D. Pickens II, an interior hardworking, and got things to confidences, dear friend. designer and president of the Friends the point where we could taste “Last April he and I spent the day of the H.L. Mencken House, died victory in our long struggle to together at the Mencken House. Nov. 27 of cancer. He was 50 years reopen the Mencken House,” said By chance, the subject turned to old. Oleg Panczenko, secretary of the mortality. We observed how, in He was the owner of MGP preservation group. “Everything certain rooms, we could still feel Interiors, a Washington, D.C.-area seemed to be going our way, finally.” Mencken’s presence. I remarked that firm. His clients included the White Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, author after our earthly life is over, I believed House, numerous embassies and and biographer of Mencken, became our souls live on, as a form of energy. museums, law firms and private friends with Pickens through their He reacted with that infectious laugh homes. mutual interest in the Mencken of his, and then grew pensive. ‘Yes,’ He was the former registrar and House. Rodgers, author of “Mencken, he said, ‘You are probably right.’ His exhibitor relations coordinator for the American Iconoclast: The Life and memory remains vivid; even so, how I Smithsonian Institution, and studied Times of the Bad Boy of Baltimore,” will miss him.” in Venice, Italy, under a Guggenheim sent an appreciation. Studentship. For several years he was “Richard was one of those giving Pickens is survived by his parents, director of historic preservation for and accomplished people who are Robert and Babette Pickens, of the Union Square Association. all too rare. He was the driving and Annapolis; his brother, Robert Scott Pickens lived on Hollins Street, positive force behind the saving of Pickens; three aunts and an uncle. about a block away from the historic the Mencken House, to which he In lieu of flowers the family has H.L. Mencken House. devoted his talents and passions. requested memorial donations to the Phil Hildebrandt, vice president He was without ego, modest of his Friends of the H.L. Mencken House, of the Friends of the H.L. Mencken considerable gifts and skills. He P.O. Box 22501, Baltimore, MD House, said that Pickens’ death was a was a sympathetic listener, keeper of 21203. hard blow to the organization, which has been laboring for 15 years to restore and reopen the Union Square home where Mencken lived for most of his life. “Where do we go from here? He was a very pivotal person in our effort,” said Hildebrandt. “He was doing more than his share of work in the group.” Hildebrandt said that Pickens got involved in the effort to reopen the Mencken House two or three years ago. “He has lived in this neighborhood for several years now,” he said. “He’s not a Mencken scholar and not a fan of Mencken previously. He saw what we were doing to try to save the house and thought it was a worthwhile neighborhood project.” The Friends have been trying to negotiate a lease that would allow them to operate the three-story Sarah Littlepage, Richard Pickens and Jennifer Bodine tended the Victorian rowhouse at 1524 Hollins Friends of the H.L. Mencken House booth at the Baltimore Book Festival St. Pickens was helping to negotiate in September. the terms. (Photo by Stacy Spaulding, Friends of the H.L. Mencken House) “He was very effective and Menckeniana • Fall 2012 • 19 The Saturday Night Club coat of arms (The H.L. Mencken Collection, Enoch Pratt Free Library)

The Mencken Society Established in 1976 The society meets the morning of Mencken Day every year at the Central Library of the Enoch Pratt Free Library—when, according to H. L. Mencken’s own instructions, the Mencken Room is open to the public—and at other times as announced. The society devotes itself to the study of H. L. Mencken and his work; an appreciation of the Menckenian branch of skepticism, criticism, and humor; and the enjoyment of good discussion and company. The society contributes funds to the Pratt Library to support the Mencken Room and honor its first treasurer and long-time president, Arthur J. Gutman. Membership dues are $35 each year and include a subscription to Menckeniana. Address all correspondence to the society president or treasurer at P. O. Box 16218, Baltimore, MD 21210. Visit the society’s website: www.mencken.org.