The Books: A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing, “In Memoriam, W.J.B.,” by H.L. Mencken

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Next up on the essays shelf:

A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing, by H.L. Mencken

Poor William Jennings Bryan. History has not been kind to him. He backed the wrong philosophical horse too many times. He was a pacifist Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, which, of course, did not work out. He was pro-Prohibition. He was, to put it mildly, anti-Darwin. He was one of those politicians who turned things he believed in into Fiery Crusades. And so he basically fell on his own sword. He was beloved of the “common man”, and much of his politics came out of a resentment of city folk. We see that attitude now, alive and well, in some of our more noxious public figures. Witness Sarah Palin’s botched ridiculous telling of the Paul Revere story. She got none of it right. And yet people listen to her and feel validated by her “sticking it” to the snobby urban folk. Well I’m a snobby city folk but I actually know the Paul Revere story, I actually care about it, I am very patriotic, and you got every detail wrong, lady. What she validates in the people who think she’s smart (the mind boggles at the thought) is their own resentment at feeling inferior. And I don’t even want to get into this spectacle and what it says about the folks who think he’s a Big Thinker, someone to listen to at all (outside of his entertainment value, I mean, which should be obvious). I’m a weird and itchy liberal at times, especially with that right-wing streak I’ve got going on, but I know I want nothing to do with people who find KNOWLEDGE suspect. William Jennings Bryan was one of those. How much of it was a pose? How much of it was pandering to his base?

WJB

H.L. Mencken despised him. Mencken came into close contact with Bryan during the Scopes trial. Bryan had been campaigning to get evolution banned from schools, so when the Scopes trial came, he was asked to represent the World Christian Fundamentals Association (the name alone is terrifying) at the trial. Mencken traveled to Tennessee to cover the Scopes trial and wrote back blistering reports about the know-nothing idiots who supported WCFA, and who thought Bryan was a hero. The trial was a circus. The courthouse steps crowded with screaming groups of protestors, on either side. Bryan ate it UP. Clarence Darrow, of course, was the prosecutor. Bryan himself seemed to get more and more fundamentalist (no other word for it) as the trial went on. Mencken saw this happening and wrote about it. The more Clarence Darrow elegantly and calmly tried to poke holes in the defense’s argument, the more Bryan fired up the flames of his own beliefs until he had pushed himself into a corner. “The Bible is good enough for me…” was one of Bryan’s comments along those lines. He became more rigid as the trial went on. Was it armor he erected as protection? Was it a true belief? I think it was, but I’m not sure about the rest of it. It’s a familiar type. I’ve met those people, I used to have a bunch of those people who read here … and it’s a curious experience debating with them, or even just hanging out with them, because the resentment shows up in every comment. It is compulsive. They feel left out, made fun of, mocked. So you say you read James Joyce, or you link to something in The New Republic, and out pour the sneers. These are the cultural warriors, these are the people who operate SOLELY from cultural resentment. Just one very benign example in the comments section here, which should be immediately apparent. He was a regular on my site for years before he just couldn’t take it anymore.

When you take that attitude (which is its own brand of snobbery) and put it into the political realm, that’s when you get into very dangerous territory. That’s when you start dehumanizing your opponent. That’s when you go through the looking glass and you are dealing with phantom enemies, spectres and ghouls and propaganda, rather than reality. All of this was going on in the Scopes Trial.

Mencken’s pieces on the Scopes trial are well worth seeking out. They are a ground-level eyewitness account of that momentous case. And the arguments will all seem eerily familiar since we still deal with this issue today with the Young Earthers and other such intellectual heavyweights. Or, even more insidious, those charlatans who want biology teachers to “Just teach the controversy.” Ugh.

Interestingly enough, Bryan won the Scopes trial, but then it was reversed on appeal. And even more interesting, after the trial, Bryan went on a mad 5 day lecture tour (he was big on the chautauqua circuit). He was hailed as a hero by people who felt that he had validated their desire to Not Learn Anything New or Scary. He returned to Dayton, Tennessee after this small tour, and promptly died. In a one-horse town. Mencken thought that was fitting. A one-horse town for a third-rate man. Also, worth noting Bryan’s deep roots in the Democratic Party (he was their candidate for President three times). His prudery and proud ignorance and crusading spirit would make him a Tea Partier today, but that just goes to show you how the concepts of “right” and “left” are in flux, and always have been.

William Jennings Bryan died on July 26, 1925. This piece by Mencken appeared in the Baltimore Evening Sun the following day (and then, in one of his later books, in an edited and expanded version). There is an interesting personal aspect to the essay, describing Mencken’s first meeting of Bryan, and the amiability the man showed at first. But once Mencken’s pieces started coming out, that amiability vanished. But Mencken provides eloquent glimpses of Bryan in action, not just in the courtroom, but out about town, holding court on the courthouse steps or in front of restaurants, glorying in his notoriety and the rightness of his cause.

Here is an excerpt.

A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing, “In Memoriam: W.J.B.,” by H.L. Mencken

Bryan lived too long, and descended too deeply into the mud, to be taken seriously hereafter by fully literate men, even of the kind who write schoolbooks. There was a scattering of sweet words in his funeral notices, but it was no more than a response to conventional sentimentality. The best verdict the most romantic editorial writer could dredge up, save in the humorless South, was to the general effect that his imbecilities were excused by his earnestness – that under his clowning, as under that of the juggler of Notre Dame, there was the zeal of a steadfast soul. But this was apology, not praise; precisely the same thing might be said of Mary Baker G. Eddy. The truth is that even Bryan’s sincerity will probably yield to what is called, in other fields, definitive criticism. Was he sincere when he opposed imperialism in the Philippines, or when he fed it with deserving Democrats in Santo Domingo? Was he sincere when he tried to shove the Prohibitionists under the table, or when he seized their banner and began to lead them with loud whoops? Was he sincere when he bellowed against war, or when he dreamed of himself as a tin-soldier in uniform, with a grave reserved at Arlington among the generals? Was he sincere when he fawned over Champ Clark, or when he betrayed Clark? Was he sincere when he pleaded for tolerance in New York, or when he bawled for the faggot and the stake in Tennessee?

This talk of sincerity, I confess, fatigues me. If the fellow was sincere, then so was P.T. Barnum. The word is disgraced and degraded by such uses. He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without sense or dignity. His career brought him into contact with the first men of his time; he preferred the company of rustic ignoramuses. It was hard to believe, watching him at Dayton, that he had traveled, that he had been received in civilized societies, that he had been a high officer of state. He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. He was a peasant come home to the barnyard. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not. What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition – the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits. His whole career was devoted to raising those half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine.

His last battle will be grossly misunderstood if it is thought of as a mere exercise in fanaticism – that is, if Bryan the Fundamentalist Pope is mistaken for one of the bucolic Fundamentalists. There was much more in it than that, as everyone knows who saw him on the field. What moved him, at bottom, was simply hatred of the city men who had laughed at him so long, and brought him at last to so tatterdemalion an estate. He lusted for revenge upon them. He yearned to lead the anthropoid rabble against them, to punish them for their execution upon him by attacking the very vitals of their civilization. He went far beyond the bounds of any merely religious frenzy, however inordinate. When he began denouncing the notion that man is a mammal even some of the hinds at Dayton were agape. And when, brought upon Clarence Darrow’s cruel hook, he writhed and tossed in a very fury of malignancy, bawling against the veriest elements of sense and decency like a man frantic – when he came to that tragic climax of his striving there were snickers among the hinds as well as hosannas.

Upon that hook, in truth, Bryan committed suicide, as a legend as well as in the body. He staggered from the rustic court ready to die, and he staggered from it ready to be forgotten, save as a character in a third-rate farce, witless and in poor taste.

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20 Responses to The Books: A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing, “In Memoriam, W.J.B.,” by H.L. Mencken

  1. Paul says:

    Interesting excerpt.. I think Mencken is a bit unjust in his eulogy. I would argue that Bryan did some good early in his career – speaking out against the trusts and their very real corrupting influence on government. Arguably he helped set the terms of the nation debate that led the way to anti-trust reforms under Teddy Roosevelt. I think he fails to distinguish between the intellectual elite and the moneyed elite – while I do agree with Mencken regarding the former (not everyone’s ideas are of equal quality), regarding the latter I believe everyone should be on the same footing under the law. So in that sense I’d applaud his efforts ‘raising those half-wits against their betters’.

    • sheila says:

      Paul – thanks for your comment! Mencken certainly had a personal bone to pick with Bryan, hence the unjustness you sense. Mencken’s personal interactions/experience of Bryan during the trial were such that he held him in contempt (obviously). He describes Bryan in the courtroom later on in the piece, and it’s a broad caricature (which, to be fair, is what Mencken actually thought Bryan was by that point – a caricature of himself).

      And you are 100% right about equality under the law! It’s an important point. I have a feeling that Mencken was so over it that he didn’t even fully believe in that concept anymore. He didn’t want the “rubes” to totally take over the national conversation. He did his best to shut them down through mockery.

      All of this is making me want to watch Inherit the Wind again. :)

  2. Paul says:

    Funny – I was just thinking I should watch Inherit the Wind :-) We started watching it freshman year in high school (theology) but for some reason I don’t think we ever got to the end! (must have run out of time or something). Aside: the best movie we ever watched in high school was A Clockwork Orange (psychology class). For a catholic school I have to give them props for that one.

    • sheila says:

      Wow!! I love your teacher for showing that film in psychology – do you remember the discussions?? Great!

      • Paul says:

        Yeah – it was a lot of fun. The movie is actually a very good discussion kick-off for behaviorism, Skinner, etc. That class actually motivated me to pick my major in college (psychology with dual major in music) – though I later chose not to go with psychology as a career. The teacher was pretty funny – the extra credit question on the test was Alex’s prisoner number . Despite the number being stated umpteen times in the movie (that’s how he’s always referred to by the guards), I don’t think anyone got the answer right.

  3. JessicaR says:

    This makes me want to watch Inherit the Wind again. It’s depressing to realize that film probably couldn’t get made today.

    • sheila says:

      You don’t think it could get made today?

      One of the things I remember about Inherit the Wind is the courtroom full of people fanning themselves. Such a great image – you could feel the heat/body odor in that room!

      • sheila says:

        and yes, I just said the same thing to Paul above – makes me want to see it again, especially to take a look at the Mencken-esque character played by Gene Kelly. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it!

  4. JessicaR says:

    I honestly do, considering that Creation, the Paul Bettany as Darwin biopic couldn’t get a theatrical release here. Inherit the Wind is a wonderful movie, it’ fascinating watching the two Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hydes face off against each other.

    • sheila says:

      Forgot about that – thanks, Jessica. It’s quite amazing, then, that Inherit the Wind was made at all! Of course they changed all the names, but I do recall really getting the sense of the anger surrounding the issue. And love Fredric March so much!!

      • sheila says:

        (and – side note – you can certainly see the critique of McCarthyism in Inherit the Wind – similar to The Crucible or On the Waterfront, etc. Dangerous ideological times!!)

  5. Syd says:

    The late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a kind essay about Bryan that – while not defending Bryan’s creationism – put his views in context and showed that the contest of ideas wasn’t entirely as one-sided as Mencken and “Inherit the Wind” claim.

    In his essay, “William Jennings Bryan’s Last Campaign”, Gould claims that the Tennessee textbook that Scopes used had a section headed “Parasitism and Its Cost to Society – the Remedy.” There it cites the false Jukes family case study as a reason for eugenics:

    — “Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality and crime to all parts of this counlry. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm t0 others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them, the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

    If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.” —

    Gould also points out that early in his career Bryan was not against evolution. What turned Bryan around was the misuse of the theory of evolution by biologists to justify Social Darwinism and militarism. (Bryan was by no means alone in this revulsion at what some biologists had done. George Bernard Shaw also turned against evolution after WW1 for the same reason. But Shaw became a more fervent believer in the “life-force” rather than a Creationist.)

    Obviously this doesn’t justify Bryan’s dogmatism, but I couldn’t help feeling a little bit more sympathetic to the man after learning this.

  6. karen says:

    Since you mention both Sarah Palin and dehumanizing your political opponents in the same post, I am curious what you think about the “gang-rape the bitch”, “cunt”, “whore”, and “bad mother” rhetoric and fantasies directed towards her in 2008 and beyond. Do you think that’s dangerous territory, or is it acceptable and even entertaining? If it’s the latter, I’m genuinely curious why you think she’s exempt, since I’ve never seen a coherent answer beyond “but she IS a cunt, ha ha ha ha ha!”

    (Please note: I do not think she should be President.)

    • sheila says:

      I think going after women in that manner is reprehensible. I don’t care what her politics are. Of course I don’t applaud people going after her in that way and I have never done so myself. Not sure why you think I would have. Anything on my site ever suggest that I would have? Read me more carefully if you think that is true.

      I defended her on those grounds during her campaign. Same with Michelle Bachmann and other loonies who happen to have vaginas. Anything that lowers the discourse to that level of attack puts all women at risk. It normalizes misogyny.

  7. karen says:

    “Not sure why you think I would have. Anything on my site ever suggest that I would have?”

    I honestly wasn’t sure if you would have or not. You write a great deal about feminism, but I know plenty of feminists who thought it didn’t count, or that it was funny, or that she and her daughters deserved it. If you were and are outraged by it, you are in the minority of feminists I know or know of personally. It just doesn’t register as the same thing to them, no matter how ugly it gets. I know better than to assume that just because someone is furious about Sandra Fluke being called a slut, they will be equally furious about the same being directed at Sarah Palin or any other woman they hate, particularly for political reasons, even though it would it seem to follow if what really makes you angry is women in public life being called sluts.

    There’s also an implicit critique of the members of the media, artists, and entertainers who have engaged in this and fed it to the public. I’ve certainly read you carefully enough to know how you view criticism of people in those groups and the argument that something they produce might be toxic. People who have the same response to them, for any reason, that you did to John Derbyshire years ago (regarding which I say fair enough, by the way) are dangerous know-nothing anti-intellectuals. Which of course they sometimes are. But in that context, you might well give it a pass. And if you did, you’d have plenty of company. That’s why I asked.

    I was always a feminist. I read Ms. when I was 15. I’m ambivalent now for a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with, but I am not one of your former commenters coming at this from some Men’s Rights Brigade angle. It was and is such vile textbook misogyny, but it’s been played for laughs for years, often by the same people who earnestly worry about what those terrible other people who dehumanize their political opponents are doing to the country. Your post had a bit of the latter element and rang that bell.

    • sheila says:

      I don’t subscribe to groupthink or identity politics. I find them dangerous. I can’t stand the “lumping in” that goes on with it. Because dehumanization of “the other side” is always right behind. I believe in critical thinking and making up my own mind.

      When I have called out Republicans for the demagogues in their midst, they act like I’m ruining their party. (Or they did, when I wrote about politics.) It was the homophobia and misogyny that I cannot engage with, or support, or ignore. Until they deal with that cultural-conservative element, they will always have my contempt and never get my vote! Funny how they all stopped reading me when I stopped writing about politics. They only “liked” me when they thought I would be their cheerleader. Good riddance, I say. :)

      But we’re seeing progress, and those on the wrong side of history (and there is a wrong side) are flailing about, right on schedule.

      If you’ve read me carefully (which it seems you have – thank you) then you can see why I don’t “fit” in with groupthink liberal ideas either – but I’m honestly fine with that. :)

      It makes things hot and bothered sometimes – and there were some dust-ups on Facebook, primarily, during Palin’s campaign – especially when liberal friends thought making fun of her children was fair game. I do not support that, and I do not support misogyny. People who ONLY call out “the other side” are hypocrites of the worst kind.

      I’m happy to be free, in other words. I’m happy to be an individual, although the comfort of the group certainly looks nice on occasion. But no thanks!!

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