Caustic, abrasive, and always controversial, H. L. Mencken is the cynic's cynic. He wouldn't stand a chance in politically correct modern America. He has been jeered for anti-Semitism, but many of his best friends were Jews. He was among the first to publicize what was happening to Jews in the early days of the Holocaust and took Roosevelt and America to task for not making a place for European Jews in America. Some of his writing is extremely racist by today's standards, and there is no doubt that he felt superior to blacks in general, but he treated blacks graciously, encouraged black artists, musicians, and writers, and convinced his publisher to work with emerging black authors. He was a lifelong vocal agnostic, but many of his jabs at organized religion have the ring of truth to me - a devout Christian. He might well fit the Internet, he crusaded against censorship throughout his career. He and Herbert Asbury gained national prominence in 1926 when Mencken's American Mercury printed Asbury's "Hatrac," a story about a prostitute who wanted a better life and went to the local Methodist church for religion. They didn't attempt to convert her, they ignored her, judged her as beyond redemption, offered no forgiveness, and she remained the town harlot. The American Mercury was promptly banned in Boston, and Mencken rushed right up to get arrested for selling it. As a result, the American Mercury thrived. In fact, Mencken was a rare success as a writer and never had to worry about money. He was confident that what he wrote would appeal to the public, and never took an advance in his life. He ridiculed sham, pretension, provincialism, and prudery. In the words of Charles Fecher, editor of Mencken's diary, "He wrote with a bludgeon. He hurled thunderbolts at everybody."
Today is quite a day for births in the publishing world, grist for future years: Richard Hoe, the developer of the rotary web press that made large newspapers possible, was born in 1812. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times from 1935 to 1968, was born in 1891. Alfred A. Knopf, Mencken's publisher, was born in 1892.
US Patent 3,000,000 was issued on this day in 1961, 36 years after number 2,000,000 but only 15 years before number 4,000,000. We also remember the tragic and brutal death of one of the leaders in the battle against apartheid in South Africa.
1902 - Black Friday, a day in western Washington when 110 forest fires, many sparked by poor logging practices, covered the region in smoke. Ships couldn't navigate on the Columbia River, St Helens was dark at noon, pedestrians carried lanterns, trains stopped. Thirty five lives were lost, along with 239,000 acres valued at $12 billion.
1919 - Gabriele d'Annunzio, a writer who had become a hero in the Italian airforce and was an early advocate of fascism, leads a volunteer force to capture the town of Fiume. He set himself up as a dictator and ruled the city-state for eighteen months.
1922 - The House of Bishops of the US Protestant Episcopal Church voted 36-27 to delete the word "obey" from the vows of their denomination's official marriage service.
1961 - US Patent No. 3,000,000 granted to Kenneth Eldredge for an automatic electric meter reading system.
1970 - Drug guru and former Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary, serving time for possession of marijuana, escaped from the Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo, California with help from the Weather Underground, left the US and joined Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers.
1977 - Steven Biko, honorary president of the Black People's Convention, was beaten into a coma by nine Eastern Cape Security Police officers during an interrogation at Port Elizabeth, South Africa. When they couldn't revive him they put his body in a Land Rover and drove 1,000 kilometers to Pretoria, where he died two days later.
Defenders' Day, Maryland - Commemorates the start of the Battle of North Point in 1814, during which the British bombarded Fort McHenry at Baltimore for 25 hours. An attorney named Francis Scott Key, on board a British frigate to negotiate a prisoner exchange but detained during the actual battle, wrote a poem called "The Battle of Fort McHenry" on the morning of the 14th. He set it to a popular English pub song "To Anacreon in Heaven," we know it as "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Harvest Moon Festival, China - The fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar year. According to legend, Chang-Er was wife to the tyrant Hou-Yi, she stole the elixer of youth from her husband to sooner end his reign. When she drank it she became a fairy and floated to the moon where she still dwells, and on this brightest full moon she is offered respect. Also called Mid-Autumn Festival.
1880
- Henry Louis Mencken, US journalist, commentator - Born at Baltimore,
Maryland to German immigrant parents, attended private school, the Baltimore
Polytechnic. Reporter for Baltimore Morning Herald 1899 - 1906, then joined
staff of Baltimore Sun where worked most of his career, until his stroke
in 1948. (His German roots caused him to oppose both World Wars, his column
did not appear in the Sun for much of World War I.) Coedited an urban
literary magazine, The Smart Set, with George Jean Nathan 1914 to 1923.
With Nathan founded the American Mercury, which Mencken edited until 1933.
Constant opponent of censorship, when the "Hatrack" issue of American
Mercury was banned by the Boston Watch and Ward Society he immediately
went to Boston and sold a copy on Boston Common, was arrested, and acquitted.
Also constantly caustic, particularly about government, ridiculing every
president and mot public programs, often in his "Monday Papers" editorials
in the Sun. Promoted new authors and artists, notably Theodore Dreiser
and Sinclair Lewis. Wrote the authoritative analysis of English development
in the US, The American Language, in 1919, expanded editions in 1921 and
1923, major fourth edition 1936 with supplements in 1945 and 1948. Married
once at age 50 to a woman aged 32 with "three years to live," devoted
to her for five years, no children. He was a member of the Board of Directors
of the A.S. Abel Company, the publishers of the Baltimore Sun papers,
and a director of Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated, his publisher. Devoted
agnostic. He died at Baltimore on 29 January 1956, having lived in the
same house for all but eight years of his life. This photograph, taken
during Prohibition, says "Breakfast in a free state" in Mencken's hand.
Yes, that's a pint of beer.
Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records
for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating
the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone
ever lost public office thereby.
- H. L. Mencken, All
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