Some words about Baltimore from its master observer
And you thought indifferent pols were a recent phenomenon?
Above: H. L. Mencken celebrates the end of Prohibition in 1933.
H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken was born on September 12, 1880, making this day the 133th birthday of the city’s most famous journalist, essayist, satirist, philologist, libertarian, traditionalist, and critic of all cant, Puritanism and New Deal lawmakers.
He was also one hell of a historian, larding his latter-day recollections of Baltimore with understated beauty and finely-tempered humor.
In honor of the great raconteur, we bring you several selections from Happy Days, his 1940 book about growing up on Hollins Street:
“The Baltimore of the eighties was a noisy town, for the impact of iron wagon tires on hard cobblestone was almost like that of a hammer on an anvil. To be sure, there was a dirt road down the middle of every street, kept in repair by the accumulated sweepings of the sidewalks, but this cushioned track was patronized only by hay-wagons from the country and like occasional traffic: milk-men, grocery deliverymen and other such regulars kept to the areas where the cobbles were naked, and so made a fearful clatter. . .
“West Baltimore had rival perfumes of its own – for example, the emanation from the Wilkins hair factory. When a breeze from the southwest, bouncing its way over the Wilkins factory, reached Hollins street the effect was almost that of poison gas. It happened only seldom, but when it happened it was surely memorable. The householders of the vicinage always swarmed down to City Hall the next day, but they never got anything save promises. . .
“The Baltimoreans of those days were complacent beyond the ordinary, and agreed with their envious visitors that life in their town was swell. I can’t recall ever hearing anyone complain of the fact that there was a great epidemic of typhoid fever every Summer, and a wave of malaria every Autumn, and more than a scattering of smallpox, especially among the colored folk in the alleys, every Winter. Spring, indeed, was the only season free from serious pestilence, and in Spring the communal laying off of heavy woolen underwear was always followed by an epidemic of colds.”
And, finally, H. L.’s “Epitaph” from his days at the Smart Set, perhaps a veiled reference to the city he observed so closely:
“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.”