BALTIMORE — The reputation of H.L. Mencken, one of the nation’s literary and journalistic icons, may be tarnished permanently by publication of his previously secret diary, which even sympathetic Mencken scholars call shocking in its anti-Semitism, misanthropy and apparently pro-German leanings during World War II.
Written between 1930 and 1948 and sealed on Mencken’s instructions for a quarter-century after his death in 1956, the diary has been available to scholars since 1981, but quoting either directly or indirectly from the 2,100- page document was prohibited.
Only now being published, the diary shows Mencken to have been a virulent anti-Semite, a paternalistic racist, a mean-spirited critic of colleagues who considered him their friend, and a Germanophile who never denounces Hitler but instead rants against American participation in World War II as “dishonest” and “dishonorable.”
On the subject of Jews, Mencken writes:
— Dec. 2, 1943
“(The secretary of the Maryland Club) told me … there was no objection … to bringing an occasional Jew to a meal at the club, but … this applied only to out of town Jews, not to local ones. There was a time when the club always had one Jewish member, but the last was Jacob Ulman. Ulman was married to a Christian woman … and had little to do with the other Jews of Baltimore. When he died the board of governors decided that he should be the last of the Chosen on the club roll. There is no other Jew in Baltimore who seems suitable.”
— April 14, 1946
“To Washington yesterday for the Spring dinner of the Gridiron Club. … Truman … paid his satirical respects to three newspaper columnists who frequently criticize him — Walter Lippmann, David Lawrence and Frank R. Kent. It was good-humored stuff, but I think Kent did not enjoy being bracketed with two Jews. …”
On blacks, he writes:
— Sept. 23, 1943
“… it is impossible to talk anything resembling discretion or judgment to a colored woman. They are all essentially child-like, and even hard experience does not teach them anything. …”
On World War II:
— Oct. 24, 1945
“… The course of the United States in World War II … was dishonest, dishonorable and ignominious, and the Sun papers, in supporting Roosevelt’s foreign policy, shared in this disgrace. …”
The National Press Club in Washington has a library named in Mencken’s honor; the Baltimore Sun bestows an annual H.L. Mencken writing award; and Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, repository of his papers, sponsors an annual Mencken lecture. His colorful observations and often brilliant social criticism are quoted gleefully and often by modern journalists.
During a prolific career, he spent 40 years at The Evening Sun, edited the Smart Set and the American Mercury magazines, wrote dozens of books, and contributed to a substantial number of other publications.
Now those who have honored and quoted Mencken will have to reconcile their homage to him with the misanthropic, bigoted man who emerges from his diary, edited by Mencken scholar Charles A. Fecher and published by Alfred A. Knopf. The book, The Diary of H.L. Mencken, was scheduled for January publication but is already available in many bookstores; list price is $30.
“His feelings about World War II are incredible in a man of his intelligence, knowledge and perception,” Fecher writes in his introduction to the diary. “He seems to have had no conception at all of what a German- Japanese victory would have meant to the civilized world, or to the liberties that he himself so cherished.”
Even as late as 1944, Mencken was still privately berating The Sun for supporting the Allied cause “against all reason and all the obvious facts.” He does not elaborate on what “the obvious facts” were. After the war, he makes no comment on the discovery of the Nazi death camps.
Mencken’s attitude toward blacks “was a curious mingling of total egalitarianism … and patronizing superiority …,” Fecher says.
He regularly published black writers in his magazine, the American Mercury; persuaded his publisher, Knopf, to publish their books; corresponded with and was cordial to black journalists; had his portrait painted by a black artist; and was generous to and genuinely concerned about the two black women who cooked and cleaned for him. The last article he wrote for The Evening Sun in 1948 attacked segregation laws in Baltimore that prevented blacks from playing on certain city tennis courts and golf courses.
But the diary shows Mencken’s “deeply ingrained conviction that black people were by their very nature inferior to white,” Fecher says. Mencken disparagingly refers in one entry to “the Afro-American race, and … its psychological stigmata.”
Some Mencken experts say that the writer’s words may permanently diminish his reputation. Other Mencken scholars think Mencken’s standing will survive publication of the diary, which concludes in November 1948, only days before he was felled by a disabling stroke.
Fecher notes in his introduction that he once defended Mencken against charges of anti-Semitism in his 1978 book, Mencken: A Study of His Thought.
“Today I would be much less ready to take such a stand. Let it be said at once, clearly and unequivocally: Mencken was an anti-Semite,” writes Fecher, who also edits Menckeniana, the Pratt’s magazine of scholarly articles on Mencken.
Mencken’s bigotry against Jews is “inexplicable” because “if ever any man had a right to claim ‘some of my best friends are …,’ Mencken did,” Fecher says. Mencken’s publisher, Knopf; his co-editor of the Smart Set, George Jean Nathan; Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter; and literally dozens of lawyers, doctors, writers, editors and academics in New York, Baltimore, Washington and elsewhere were Jews with whom Mencken was “on the most cordial terms,” Fecher writes.
Yet Mencken is pleased that a North Carolina resort he enjoys visiting keeps Jews out; expresses annoyance when Jews move into his neighborhood; and suspects that Jews lurk in an academic audience he addresses at Johns Hopkins University.
Mencken’s comments about Jews have “an ugliness about them, both when they are directed at an individual and when they are applied en bloc, that is very disturbing,” Fecher concludes.
