The Diary of H.L. Mencken

The Diary of H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken

Language: English

Pages: 510

ISBN: 039456877X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


A Historical Treasure: the never-before, published diary of the most outspoken, iconoclastic, ferociously articulate of American social critics -- the sui generis newspaperman, columnist for the Baltimore Sun, editor of The American Mercury, and author of The American Language, who was admired, feared, and famous for his merciless puncturing of smugness, his genius for deflating pomposity and pretense, his polemical brilliance. Walter Lippmann called him, in 1926, "the most powerful personal influence on this whole generation of educated Americans."

H. L. Mencken's diary was, at his own request, kept sealed in the vaults of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Library for a quarter of a century after his death. The diary covers the years 1930 -- 1948, and provides a vivid, unvarnished, sometimes shocking picture of Mencken himself, his world, and his friends and antagonists, from Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and William Faulkner to Franklin D. Roosevelt, for whom Mencken nourished a hatred that resulted in spectacular and celebrated feats of invective.

From the more than 2,000 pages of typescript that have now come to light, the Mencken scholar Charles A. Fecher has made a generous selection of entries carefully chosen to preserve the whole range, color, and impact of the diary. Here, full scale, is Mencken the unique observer and disturber of American society. And here too is Mencken the human being of wildly contradictory impulses: the skeptic who was prey to small superstitions, the dare-all warrior who was a hopeless hypochondriac, the loving husband and generous friend who was, alas, a bigot.

Mencken emerges from these pages unretouched -- in all the often outrageous gadfly vitality that made him, at his brilliant best, so important to the intellectual fabric of American life.

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With it: Jesuiten Garten. Afterward: brandy, Scotch highballs and beer. I dropped into the club at noon to see how the preparations were coming on, and found that the steward was having a hard time getting enough butter for the terrapin, which takes a lot. But he got it somehow. I took my own cigars—Cabañas that I bought in Havana in the Spring of 1941. I had made reservations at the Belvedere for Brakeley, Boyd, Hergesheimer and Hopper, but at the last minute Hergy decided to spend the night at

Spring Betty Hanes found large gobs of candle grease on her furniture and floors, and also marks of oil lamps. In fact, the damage that the thieves did was almost as bad as their stealing. Such are “the only pure Anglo-Saxons left in the United States.” Physically as well as morally they are a poor lot. The women are dumpy, puffy and pale, and the men are tall, thin and cadaverous. The war industries have brought thousands of these anthropoids to Baltimore, and the neighborhood of Hollins street

Black (1887–1956), chairman of the board of the A. S. Abell Company from 1930 until his death. 13 Samuel Knopf (1862–1932) was the father of Alfred A. Knopf, Mencken’s publisher and good friend. He served as business manager for his son’s company and acted in the same capacity for The American Mercury during most of the years when Mencken was editing the magazine. 14 Franklin Pierce Adams (1881–1960), better known simply as “F.P.A.,” newspaper columnist, humorist, and radio personality. 15

called up again. His call on May 5th was his third. I told him definitely that I would not consider his proposal. Who his backers are I haven’t any idea. His paper always seemed to me to be somewhat dubious, but I made no objection to his reprinting of my articles. In general, I always gave permission to any paper that asked for it. BALTIMORE, MD. JULY 11, 1941. When I came to the end of the page proofs of “Newspaper Days” I discovered to my consternation that the last page was 313, which

other way out. The canon conducted the Protestant Episcopal burial service, and it was mercifully short. There was an impressive group of honorary pallbearers, including nearly all the principal Johns Hopkins Medical School men. Old Dr. Howard A. Kelly sat with the family, squired by Dr. Thomas S. Cullen. He looked shrunken and pathetic, and it was obvious that his 83 years were closing in on him. The burial was in Loudon Park Cemetery. Save for the family, only a few persons went to the grave.

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