H.L. MENCKEN, BANE OF THE BOOBOISIE
DAYTON, TENNESSEE — June 1925 — The stage is set for a truly American spectacle. While hucksters parade with chimpanzees, while preachers preach the evils of evolution, this Bible Belt town prepares for the Scopes “Monkey Trial.” But amid all the fun, one reporter sees a darker picture.
“Such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed. . . The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. . . They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge. . .”
During the 1920s, the roar of America was celebrated as “modernity.” There seemed no end to the delight, the decadence, the wonder of it all. But a lone voice in the wilderness of letters dared to disagree. From his ringside seat as columnist for the Baltimore Sun and editor of The American Mercury, Henry Louis Mencken held forth.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
“Truth is a commodity that the masses of undifferentiated men cannot be induced to buy.”
Politics was designed “to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
And with the “booboisie” ascendant, there would come “some great and glorious day [when] the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
“Nature abhors a moron.”
Hmmm...
Always outspoken, sometimes bitter or even ugly, H.L. Mencken cut a wide swath through his times. “Not unlike his hero Mark Twain,” Christopher Hitchens wrote, “he fulfilled the unofficial office of a one-man opposition.”
The wit and wisdom began in Baltimore when a young boy, speaking German until he went to school, first read Huckleberry Finn. Mencken was soon reading everything that interested him, which meant everything. By high school, he had read all of Shakespeare, most classics, plenty of history and plenty more. Graduating as valedictorian at age 15, he went where most bright boys went in the 1890s — to work.
He might have spent his life in his father’s cigar business but the old man died, setting him free. After taking a writing class — the only college course he ever took — he was hired as a police reporter on a Baltimore paper. He would spend the rest of his life pounding on an old typewriter, letting ‘em have it.
Like all crusty cynics, he had a soft center. His love of literature blossomed when he became literary critic for The Smart Set. There, as his New York Times obit recalled, “Mr. Mencken blew a blast of fresh air into the somewhat musty American literary scene.” He championed young writers — Dreiser, Joyce, and others. He welcomed new voices but also cast his jaundiced eye on government and on America’s affection for the average man. Homo boobus. Boobus Americanus.
“Never underestimate the booberie of the booboisie,” he wrote. Describing the prose of President Warren Harding, Mencken quipped: “It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights; it is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.”
Throughout the 1920s, Mencken was “the Sage of Baltimore.” He befriended novelists, drank with pundits, served as spokesman for skeptics nationwide. But his higher ideal was to become a scholar. Though he loathed the booboisie, he celebrated their colorful speech. Backtalk. Rubberneck. Down yonder. He began compiling examples, with references. The American Language Mencken’s compendium of American slang running to three thick volumes, jumpstarted the serious study of “American” as a unique idiom.
But cynicism is a progressive disease. On into the Depression, Mencken blasted the booboisie, but also took aim at the widely popular New Deal. He opposed World War II and relentlessly resisted the modern, the everyday, the new.
“It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything,” he wrote. “I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.”
In 1948, a stroke left him unable to read or write. He died eight years later, leaving his stark opinions on everything from democracy to letters to daily life in six volumes entitled Prejudices. He also left an epitaph, written when he was still young and brash and delightfully disruptive.
“If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.”
