H. L. MENCKEN
Stirring Up the Animals

HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN was born in Baltimore on September 12, 1880, the eldest of four children of a middle-class German-American family. He had a happy, secure, normal childhood: He described himself as “a larva of the comfortable and complacent bourgeoisie” and wrote that “we were encapsulated in affection and kept fat, saucy and contented.”

His father owned and managed a cigar factory and imbued his son with a belief in the efficacy of independent action and thought, and instilled in him a love of reading. There was a modest library in the Mencken home, and the young Harry, as he was called, obtained a reader’s card at Baltimore’s Pratt Library at the age of nine. It was there that he discovered Huckleberry Finn, an event he would later characterize as ‘the most stupendous of my whole life.”

He attended the Baltimore Polytechnic and went into the family business upon graduation but soon grew dissatisfied with his job and wanted to quit to become a newspaperman. When his father died in 1899, his uncle assumed control of the factory and Mencken was free to pursue a career in journalism. He immediately obtained a series of trial reporting assignments from the Baltimore Morning Herald, and within a few months, at the age of eighteen, he became the youngest reporter on the staff. By 1903 he had become city editor, and in 1905 he became the editor of the Evening Herald. He moved to the famous Baltimore Sun papers in 1906, first as a member of the staff of the Morning Sun and then of the Evening Sun. He became literary critic of The Smart Set in 1908. His “Free Lance” column in the Baltimore Evening Sun, which first appeared in 1910, influenced journalists all over the country with its vibrant, iconoclastic approach to the issues of the time.

In 1914, he became coeditor of The Smart Set with George Jean Nathan. In their first issue they published the following credo: “Our policy is to be lively without being nasty. On the one hand, no smut, and on the other, nothing uplifting. A magazine for civilized adults in their lighter moods.” In 1924, Mencken became the editor of The American Mercury where he published and supported such young American writers as Sinclair Lewis, James Branch Cabell, and Theodore Dreiser.

H. L. Mencken became one of the most influential and prolific American social critics of the first half of the twentieth century, reaching the peak of his influence and popularity in the twenties. His perennial target was American society, with which he maintained a love-hate relationship all his life. In “Catechism,” he anticipated the inevitable question: “Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here? A: Why do men go to zoos?”

He considered emotion the enemy of intelligence and tried to hold it at bay whenever possible, a conviction that formed one of the underpinnings of his individualistic, aristocratic worldview. He held pomposity, incompetence, and pedantry in utter contempt. He believed, above all else, in the freedom to speak one’s mind about anything at any time.

Mencken abominated Baptists and Methodists and delighted in skewering them in print, a practice that earned him the sobriquet “The Anti-Christ of Baltimore.” But he wasn’t anti-Christ, just anti-Christian, though he would have applauded the implementation of the teachings of Christ by Christians. He detested radio and television, abhorred liberals and the “Tory plutocracy,” the rabble and the “uplifters” alike. He considered himself a spokesman for the “civilized minority” and attacked anything he deemed inimical to the freedom of the artist. He once described his function as “stirring up the animals.”

Mencken had an abiding contempt for economists and economics. When he learned that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (whom he called “Roosevelt Minor”) had devalued the dollar, Mencken erupted in print, calling the measure downright robbery. He even briefly considered bringing legal action against the government. No sooner had he calmed down than the Supreme Court “packing” controversy exploded, sealing his opinion of “Roosevelt Minor” forever and marking the beginning of the decline in Mencken’s influence. When Hitler came to power in Germany, Mencken didn’t take him seriously and failed to attack him vigorously enough for many of his readers, who denounced Mencken as a Nazi and an anti-Semite.

He was one of our most distinguished and prolific men of letters. Walter Lippmann called him “the most powerful personal influence on this whole generation of educated people.” His literary output consisted of thirty books, countless essays and reviews, and voluminous correspondence. It has been estimated that he wrote five thousand words a day for forty years. He was a prodigious reader and probably had one of the largest vocabularies of any American writer. He coined many neologisms, most notably Bible Belt, booboisie, smuthound, and Boobus americanus.

The American Language, his monumental study of American English, was first published in 1919 and went through several editions and supplements. It demonstrated conclusively for the first time that American English was a separate entity from its British progenitor. His critical essays were collected in the six-volume Prejudices, and his autobiographical essays were collected in Happy Days, Newspaper Days, and Heathen Days.

He led a cheerful, active, gregarious private life. He enjoyed hearty food, good pilsner, and the company of women. Contrary to his oft-expressed sentiments on marriage (i.e., “If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse—as a man shoots himself”), in 1930, he surprised his friends and readers by marrying a beautiful Goucher College instructor named Sara Powell Haardt. Though her health was poor from the outset, they lived happily together for five years until her death from tuberculosis in 1935. He mourned her loss deeply, yet was able to say to a friend, “When I married Sara the doctors said she would not live more than three years. Actually she lived five, so I had two more years of happiness than I had any right to expect.”

Henry Louis Mencken died on January 29, 1956, eight years after a massive stroke had rendered him virtually aphasic. That he was deprived of his ability to read and write was a grotesque irony that wasn’t lost on Mencken himself: shortly before Mencken’s death, a visitor mentioned the name of a mutual acquaintance who had died in 1948. Mencken thought for a moment and finally said, “Ah, yes, he died the same year I did.”

Though Mencken portrayed himself as a misogynist, he liked women. He was no stranger to chorus girls, and he was acquainted with many prominent women of his day, among them Anita Loos, Lillian Gish, and Aileen Pringle. He read love poems and would gallantly kiss the hand of a lady when introduced. Still, he was America’s most unrepentant bachelor. That is, until he astonished his friends and readers by marrying a young college instructor name Sara Powell Haardt.

They met an Mencken’s annual lecture at Goucher College (titled “How to Catch a Husband,” it was actually a speech about writing). At twenty-four—eighteen years his junior—she was the youngest member of the English faculty, a frail, self-absorbed native of Montgomery, Alabama, who was active on behalf of women’s suffrage. They had much in common: Both were writers, both were of German ancestry; they had many Baltimore friends in common; and they shared the same social and political philosophy, a combination of libertarianism and a Victorian sense of propriety. They both hated sports and flowers, were basically unemotional, and distrusted marriage.

Their courtship lasted seven years, during which his letters to her betray an uncharacteristic tenderness: He admires her courage and cheerfulness in the face of tuberculosis and its complications, consoles her about frequent hospitalizations, recommends specialists, and repeatedly offers to lend her money to pay doctor bills. One hospitalization elicited what must be the closest to a whine that Mencken was capable of: “Tell [the doctor] he is not to hurt you. I can’t bear to see you in pain. It must be stopped.”

He was, in short, her mentor. He gave her advice and encouragement in her efforts to be a writer, helped her get a contract with Paramount as a screenwriter, steered her free-lance essays and short stories to the appropriate publications, and occasionally used his influence with editors on her behalf.

When they married in 1930, the headlines blared:

MIGHTY MENCKEN FALLS
MENCKEN, ARCH CYNIC, CAPITULATES TO CUPID
WEDLOCK SCOFFLA TO MARRY
ET TU, H. L.?

The marriage shattered his image and may even have contributed to his decline in popularity. His explanation to his confused and outraged fans was vintage Mencken: “I formerly was not as wise as I am now.”

It was an idyllic marriage. He mailed her postcards with the stamp intentionally upside down, a signal that her loved her; and many of his letters ended with “I kiss your hand.” He was devoted, affectionate, attentive. The Antichrist of Baltimore, the hard-bitten, cynical debunker of emotionalism, was a model husband.

With the arrival of the Depression and the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mencken’s popularity began to wane and he withdrew into the marriage. They spent most of their time at home, together, working on their respective writing. He spent less and less time at The American Mercury and finally resigned as its editor in 1933.

The Menckens lived happily together for five years as Sara’s health worsened. When she died in 1935, he mourned her loss deeply, yet was able to say to a friend, “When I married Sara the doctors said she would not live more than three years. Actually she lived five, so I had two more years of happiness than I had any right to expect.” And he later remarked, “I was fifty-five years old before I envied anyone, and then it was not so much for what others had as for what I had lost.”