H. L. Mencken

That a violent critic should ever prove other than the most mild mannered of men is unthinkable. Mencken, the bitter, the cynical, the terrible, is in reality a large, healthy, Germanic figure who lives in a white house with green blinds in Baltimore, his home town, with his mother. He is thoroughly domestic and exceedingly fond of beer. There you have him! He is clever in his speech, though not so quick to the attack as his co-editor, George Jean Nathan. His complexion is florid, his manners sturdy, his gestures broad. His life has been devoted to journalism and to a hearty public dislike of American politics, and the more obvious “booberies” of the American scene. Yet he is an earnest ballyboo for such idiosyncrasies as the so-called American language, on which he has written a huge tome which must have involved much painstaking research. He is, in the main, anti-British, though he seems to have enjoyed himself when he was in London last season. At heart he is a sentimentalist. This he has learned to conceal; but he has never been able to destroy all copies of “Ventures into Verse” published in 1901. That and the quality of “The Smart Set” poetry betray him. As a critical force he has had large influence in molding the younger writers of America. He is often a champion for uncompromising realism. He is far more interested in life problems, however, than in the technique of writing. By nature a philosopher and a politician, he has become by accident an editor and critic. With his co-editor he is now engaged in a new venture, the establishing of a new monthly magazine, “The American Mercury.”

MR. MENCKEN REPLIES

My dear Walpole:

The facts, alas, confound you. During the past year I have reviewed exactly 25 novels in “The Smart Set”, setting aside mere notices. Of these, 7 were English and 18 were American. Of the English novels, I anointed 3 with praise, or 43%; of the American novels, 9, or 50%. Two of the English novels I denounced as garbage, and 5 of the American—28.5% and 27.7% respectively. Regarding two of the English novels and four of the American I was in doubt—28.5% and 22.3% respectively.

Certainly these figures show no chauvinistic bias. I receive about 350 novels every year—a great many more than any man could read. I pick out for review those that seem most likely to be interesting or significant. Is it remarkable that an American should find 2⁴⁄₇ times as many of these among American books as among English books? What English reviewer, in the other direction, shows a score so high, or even half so high? Or so close a correspondence between the two series of percentages?

The log-rolling I complain of has its chief scene in the United States, not in England. It takes the form of extravagant efforts to promote the American sale of books by Englishmen of a small group, most of them bad. It is carried on partly by publishing houses dealing in English goods, and partly by touring propagandists and literary bagmen. It is aided by certain American journals that practise a puerile and slimy Anglophilism. It has become a public nuisance, and when I deal with it at all I treat it as such. The English opinion upon which it is presumably based seems to me to be incompetent, and, in part at least, disingenuous. It is a body of opinion that is ignorantly and incurably anti-American.

I need not tell you, my dear Walpole, that when I chance to take a hack at such a fraud it is done without the slightest messianic purpose. I am entirely devoid of public spirit, and it would give me no more joy to see log-rolling stopped than it would give me to see baptism by total immersion stopped. But it diverts me to chase mountebanks, and so I occasionally yield to the vice. Now you jump into the arena and get in my way. Back to your place! Specifically, back to the bar under the grandstand, where I’ll be delighted presently to join you and drink a Humpen with you, for you are not a mountebank but an honest artist (as I have more than once declared in print), and you no more belong among the zanies I pursue than I belong among the syndics of the Y. M. C. A.

I refuse absolutely to talk about the American novel when I get to England, or about anything else so depressing. But I have some amusing scandal for you, and you may rest assured that I’ll not neglect your Irish Schnapps.

Yours——

H. L. Mencken.