The Diary of H. L. Mencken
Fecher, Charles A.
THE DIARY OF H. L. MENCKEN Edited by Charles A. Fecher/Alfred A. Knopf/476 pp. $30 Theo Lippman, Jr. O n November 5, 1930, when he wa fifty years and two months old H. L. Mencken began to keep a...
...It was, but my reading of the diary is of a Mencken no more anti-Semitic and anti-black and anti-poor white than he was anti-everything else...
...Or wants you to...
...Much of tha is still in print today...
...If he was anti-American one sense, he was very much pro-Amer ican in another...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1990 35 rr he only answer I can come up with 1 is that Fecher loaded the dice against Mencken in his introduction and they came up snake-eyes...
...It reveals, to the surprise of some readers today, that when he blasted away at American (and other) ideas, customs, and heroes, he meant it...
...1926...
...It is full of "racist" remarks and "anti-Semitism," not to mention gross attacks on poor white Southerners, contempt for President Roosevelt, and a subversive lack of patriotism...
...Present: Governor Ritchie, Senator Tydings, President Ames of the Johns Hopkins, Bernard Baruch, Herbert Bayard Swope . . ." "Dinner with Philip Goodman at the Three Stars in 47th street...
...This brings me to what put the diary on the front pages...
...Others present: George Gershwin . . . Dashiell Hammett, the writer of detective stories, came in drunk . . . " "William Faulkner, the Mississippian, who came in late, also got drunk . . . " "Ellery Sedgwick, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, was here for dinner last night . . . " "F...
...Mencken left a note saying that the material was planned for books never written—and that he might decide later not to use it...
...This work was good enough to be proposed by Mark Sullivan for a Pulitzer in 1936 (a proposal Mencken shot down...
...The material criticized Jews as a group for a number of sins—smugness, rudeness, a lack of patriotism, ruthlessness, and so on...
...Mencken never had a chance, especially with younger journalists and their readers who knew little or nothing about Mencken or his times...
...His iconoclasm ap pealed greatly to the young, the literar Bohemians, the disenchanted intellec tuals...
...Good beer...
...They are sealed from public view until 1991...
...Fecher is a self-educated Baltimore native and lifelong resident, like Mencken, and is somewhat simpatico...
...Why this surprises some people today is strange...
...He writes that he finds blacks superstitious and black women unintelligent, which is probably the worst example of stereotypical thinking about minority groups in the book...
...Some may read this episode and, linking it to some apparently derogatory Mencken comments about blacks, conclude that what I call his generosity and caring are nothing but Southern white paternalism...
...In every other respect I think his editing was superb...
...And about beer...
...Here is what upset them: "brisk, clever Jew . . . French Jewess...
...By 1930, some of his critics and even some of his friends were saying he was through...
...One of the best things about this book is that Fecher has done an excellent job of identifying the cast of characters...
...He is full of curious stuff about Ross . . . " "William Lyons Phelps was here for lunch . . . " "Lunch today at the Maryland Club with Samuel E. Morison...
...Mencken was no a shooting star or a passing fancy...
...So why Fecher, who wrote in the 1978 book that it did not prove to him that Mencken was anti-Semitic, now changes his mind is an absurd mystery...
...That same year Mencken wrote a column in the Sun advocating wholesale entry into the United States of German Jewish refugees...
...He even stoops to quoting a diary entry not published in the book in which Mencken used the word "kikes...
...Let it be said at once," he writes, "clearly and unequivocally: Mencken was an anti-Semite...
...L et me give you a sense of the people and moments put down in his diary...
...So is the New Dictionary of Quotations, also completed in the 1930s...
...After much legal and editorial wrangling, a truncated version containing about a third of the original hit bookstores and the front pages at the end of 1989...
...She looked splendid...
...So the news stories went...
...Most of these are neutral or only mildly suggestive of prejudice: ". . a Negro portrait painter . . . the colored cook . . . the decent colored people of Baltimore . . . the colored musicians...
...And, of course, a lot of people who would never say "nigger" or "kike" in public or private made damn sure that policy was never adopted...
...I believe it will forevermore be on the bookshelves of all those who want to write about or just know about the politics, literature, and journalism of the 1930s and 1940s...
...Per haps just as important as his critica journalism was his editing skill am perspective...
...Blacks who have-actually read the diary and/or know something about Mencken's rather lonely encouragement and support of black writers in the 1920s and 1930s, and who know that he was threatened with physical violence on Maryland's Eastern Shore for his anti-lynching columns and was criticized for urging desegregation of the University of Maryland Law School and Baltimore's public tennis courts, have not been as upset over the diaries as have Jews...
...colored factotum . . ." That sort of thing...
...I read the diary typescript in 1982 and found it tedious, repetitive, and depressing...
...How could he have been so good at it if he was faking it...
...So much of the commentary in the wake of the stories went...
...His subsequent entries on the anniversaries of her death —his thoughts, his descriptions of his visits to her grave—will show you a Mencken you were not quite aware of, one only hinted at in earlier books, even the best ones, dealing with him and Sara...
...The cliché goes like this: Mencken was splendid to read when he was attacking the politicians and institutions of the twenties (Harding, Prohibition), but not when he was attacking those of the thirties (Roosevelt, the New Deal...
...We had two Jews among the members . . . low-grade Jews . . . the last of the Chosen on the club roll . . . a shrewd Jew . . . a highly dubious Jew . . . The Jew who owns it never spends a cent on decorations . . . The Jews of Hollywood certainly have not given him much money . . . a smart Jew . . . I don't think Kent liked being bracketed with two Jews...
...Each ran to about 1,800 typed pages, including appendices and indexes...
...And, most of all, about Mencken...
...This is the same Mencken described in the biographies and his published autobiographies, but the picture is much clearer, much more focused...
...Then, skipping through it: "Dinner at Hugh H. Young's house last night...
...But in fact, for the eighteen years covered by this diary begun in 1930, Mencken did more work and more good work than ever before...
...Sara was plainly a great success...
...I suggested earlier that Fecher had done a good job of identifying old names...
...He was one of the few journalists to do so...
...For all this—his writing, his editing his point of view—he was called (b...
...But this introduction—God...
...Hedefended Mencken in a delightful, no-nonsense column, even while noting that his own kin were among those poor Southern whites who had moved into Mencken's neighborhood and drawn his bitter scorn—they specifically, not poor Southern white immigrants generally...
...Though she is polite, she finds it hard to conceal her distrust of me as a German . . . a young Harvard Jew .. . Like most other young Jewish intellectuals . . . looks decidedly Jewish...
...Walter Lippmann) "the most powerfu personal influence on this whole genet ation of educated people...
...he thought the prize "trashy...
...This daily journalism was also enduring enough to make up about a third of the 1956 collection of his Evening Sun columns, A Carnival of Buncombe...
...That is especially true regarding Baltimore and Baltimoreans...
...It is certainly high-class social and literary history, in the gossipy and self-revealing way that only a. few diaries of historical value can be said to be...
...I made a bet with [Carl] Van Doren . . . " "To Washington today to discuss the situation in Michigan with Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg . . . " "Oscar Garrison Villard dropped off in Baltimore last night . . . " "Dr...
...He wrote his articles for his owi magazines, The Smart Set and thei The American Mercury, and for hi hometown newspapers, the Sunpaper of Baltimore...
...But if the awards continue, I herewith nominate Russell Baker for the next one...
...She died in 1935, five years after they were married...
...the next morning Lewis appeared at the small house and woke up Sara and me...
...36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1990...
...What went before was tintype...
...The caring, responsible Mencken is best shown in a long account of his going to the aid of the family of his old housekeeper in a time of tragedy...
...In fact, it's uglier than anything in the diary...
...It reveals, of course, that he could bemean and biting, even cruel, in his thoughts...
...The finished product may represent the best work Mencken did during this productive period...
...He made the right decisions on what to keep in and what to take out...
...So are the fourth edition of The American Language and its Supplements I and II, which were also written during the diary years...
...Maybe one or two percent of the diary contains references to Jews and blacks...
...He said of ethnic and racial stereotyping that it was common then and thus more or less excusable...
...At 4 a.m...
...In almost every entry in which then-famous names are dropped, Mencken adds spice by recounting the conversation at some length or by describing behavior and appearance or by commenting on his companions with the honesty that comes of knowing it will be several decades before the comment will become public...
...His gentlemanliness is best shown in this explanation of why he will not mention his sexual liaisons: "Such things, it seems to me, are nobody's business...
...Fecher devotes five of the nineteen pages of his introduction to his indictment of Mencken as anti-black and anti-Semitic, anti-war and antiFDR, all of which he slyly links...
...Scott Fitzgerald and his wife were here to lunch yesterday . . . " "Jim 'Dilly came down from New York . . . " "Ellen Glasgow was here to lunch last Sunday . . . " "Bishop James Cannon, Jr., and his wife . . . " "I had dinner last night with Theodore Dreiser " ". . encountered Roose34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1990 velt . . . and we had a pleasant meeting . . . " "I dropped in to see [Gerald L. K. Smith] . . . " "Louis Untermeyer . . . came in to dinner yesterday . . . " "Edgar Lee Masters . . . told me that Dreiser . . . is broke . . . " "Raymond Moley called me up yesterday from New York . . . " "I had a chance to talk with [Thurber...
...But of course...
...It was sealed until 1981...
...In addition, Mencken at this time was also writing two other autobiographical works, "Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work" and "My Life as Author and Editor...
...Since in fact many—perhaps most—of Mencken's best friends were Jews, and since he had a long history of working with them and hiring them and socializing with them and praising them in public and in private—and since there is evidence in the book of his discomfort with the anti-Semitism of others—why were so many people so upset...
...Arnold Gingrich . . . Samuel Hopkins Adams . . . Abel Green . . . Morris Fishbein . . . Grove Patterson . . . Ezra Pound . . . " and on and on...
...When he appeared at dinner he was visibly tight...
...I recommend you skip the introduction and judge Mencken for yourself...
...So are Happy Days Newspaper Days, and Heathen Days, his extraordinary autobiographies which were also written duringthis period...
...A. former winner of the Sunpapers' H. L. Mencken Writing Award returned the prize and the $2,500 that went with it, on the grounds that Mencken was now revealed as "bigoted...
...It begins, "Sara and I went to West Chester . . . to visit the Hergesheimers...
...If it hasn't by now, I suggest the Press Club un-name its library —out of respect for Mencken: he loathed the Washington press corps, and made that clear in his published writings as well as in this diary...
...He uses "nigger in the woodpile" once and "niggerish" once...
...Here is an excerpt from his entry about a weekend in Vermont: "[Sinclair] Lewis disappeared during the afternoon...
...The Sunpapers' president announced he had considered doing away with the award but decided against it...
...That was ii Theo Lippman, Jr is an editorial write for the Baltimore Sun...
...It will be indispensable to anyone wanting to understand Baltimore of the era...
...O n November 5, 1930, when he wa fifty years and two months old H. L. Mencken began to keep a diary During the decade and era that hac ended almost exactly one year before with the great crash of the stock mar ket, Mencken had been as well knows as any American, except perhaps the Presidents, movie stars, and athletes He achieved his notoriety—for that what it largely was—by writing scath ingly about almost everything mos Americans valued...
...All I can say to that is, Mencken was the least Southern Marylander who ever lived...
...Present: his wife and daughter, Sinclair Lewis and wife, Franklin P. Adams . . . " "James M. Cain came to the Algonquin to lunch . . . " "Ritchie came in last night to talk about his presidential campaign . . . " "After the concert I picked up Sara at the Algonquin and we went to Ethel Knopf apartment...
...Many names won't be familiar to you...
...This is a Nikon job...
...That book is still in print...
...It's not pretty stuff...
...It will be extremely helpful to anyone wanting to know about the city's principal industry, medicine...
...To his house in 10th street later...
...When Mencken's entry doesn't do the job, Fecher does, as concisely and accurately as could be wished...
...To begin with, there was his irregular political reporting for the Sun and his regular column for the Evening Sun...
...He encouraged am championed new writers who were cre ating an American literature that wa more native and less dependent m European and especially English ante cedents...
...I have a nasty theory, which I have confided to my secret diary...
...dropped off in Baltimore yesterday . . . " "From Luchow's Nathan and I went to the Stork Club and there met Walter Winchell . . . " "Our guests were Frank Knox . . . " "I had James T. Farrell, the novelist, to lunch at the Maryland Club . . . " "George S. Schuyler, the Negro journalist, was here last night, and August and I put in a couple of hours palavering with him in Hollins street . . . " "I had lunch with Anita Loos . . . " "I gave a dinner at the Maryland Club last night to Justice Felix Frankfurter . . . " "Manuel L. Quezon . . . T. S. Eliot...
...In fact, it is probably the dominant thought...
...The romanticism applies to his wife, Sara...
...The National Press Club in Washington scheduled a meeting of its board to consider un-naming its H. L. Mencken Library...
...They are in fact not even the author's business...
...The last word: The folder material was written in 1939...
...But even Baker missed the point, it seems to me...
...Many of the things hi Wrote were printed in other newspaper and collected in books...
...He was in his dressing gown and palpably drunk . . . " All these comments taken together give us a far better portrait of the commentator than any I have read before...
...T f there is one surprise in the book, 1 it is the revelation of Mencken's romantic, tender soul, his gentlemanliness, his concern for unfortunate people...
...In fact, he could be said, on the basis of the diary and the example of his life, to be relatively pro-Semitic and pro-black...
...He says Mencken was no Hitler, but the linkage and the disproportion suggest he feels otherwise...
...This is particularly bizarre in light of a book Fecher published back in 1978 in which he drew on a folder in the Enoch Pratt Free Library's Mencken Room archive that contains several pages of anti-Semitic material written but never published by Mencken...
...F E. Townsend...
...Since this is a diary that also includes stinging insults directed at many named individuals, including most notably his good friends and colleagues at the Sun-papers, and casually expressed disdain for almost every group, I kept asking myself, as the Jewish shock and outrage manifested itself in letters to the editorand on talk shows, what's going on here...
...That is a thought still heard today...
...Cather, Fanny Hurst and various others made much of her...
...And he wrote a diary of some 2,000 typed pages...
...It was good enough to convince the Hearst newspaper chain to offer him $52,000 a year in 1936—$468,000 in today's dollars—to write for it (an offer he refused because he felt his lot was cast with the Sunpapers, where he was also a member of the board...
...Fecher's version is much more readable, and offers a much clearer portrait, 'than the unedited mass...
...The Sunpapers probably ought to end the awards in the same spirit, considering how Mencken felt about prizes...
Vol. 23 • March 1990 • No. 3
