Mencken Weekend, September 15-16, 2007

Dr Susan Hamilton (Courtesy of Dr Hamilton)

The Mencken Society will have two speakers Saturday (09-15) morning: at 10:30 Dr Susan Hamilton will speak on “The First New Yorker: Mencken’s and Nathan’s The Smart Set Magazine and the Making of Modern New York” (It took two Baltimore boys to show New Yorkers how to be New Yorkers) and at 11:30 Mr David Donovan will speak on “H. L. Mencken: Musician and Music Critic”.

From 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM, Cynthia Horsburgh Requardt will offer an informal preview of the George H. Thompson Mencken Collection at the George Peabody Library, 17 East Mt Vernon Place.

At 2:15 in the afternoon, the Memorial Lecturer will be Anthony Lewis, a man well-known to readers of The New York Times, who will be speaking on “Beyond Scorn”.

The New Mencken Room at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, normally open only by appointment, will be open to the general public. The room has been decorated with a drawing, and paintings and portraits. New exhibits are “H. L. Mencken and the Combs Family” and “Children’s Books of the Mencken Family.”

A vicinity map showing the locations of the places of interest on Mencken Day is available for download here.

A Mencken Opera

A special event starting at 5:00 PM will be the production of Mr Mencken’s opera (yes, you read that right), The Artist: A Drama Without Words, with score by Louis Cheslock (heavily derived from Ludwig van Beethoven), and directed by Roger Brunyate of the Johns Hopkins Peabody School of Music with performers from the Peabody Opera Company. The opera will run about twenty-five minutes and will be performed at the Maryland Historical Society, which is a short (~1/4-mile) walk from the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

On Mencken Day David S. Thaler will publish The Artist: A Drama Without Words. The book features a foreword by Mr Thaler and essays by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers and Roger Brunyate. The price is $20 and all proceeds will go to the Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Maryland Historical Society. Those with good memories will recall that Mr Thaler wrote “H. L. Mencken and the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute”, Menckeniana 87:10-13 (1983 Fall).

Mencken House to be Open for a Day

On Sunday, 09-16, The Mencken House will be open to the public from 10:00 AM to 2:00  PM. The effort to reopen the house as a museum is ongoing.

“Speaking of Mencken” at Mercy Ridge

In the evening of August 16, Mencken Society member John Dausch spoke for over an hour before approximately one hundred retirees at the Mercy Ridge retirement community in Timonium, MD.

Mr Dausch contrasted the serious Mencken with the playful Mencken. The man who introduced the American public to such now literary and philosophic standards as Joseph Conrad and Friedrich Nietzsche, who was involved in the Scopes Monkey Trial, and who was a critic of the New Deal could also exchange very funny faux reminiscences of Old Baltimore with George Jean Nathan (collected in the book Do You Remember?) and celebrate a “A Neglected Anniversary”, also known as ‘The Bathtub Hoax’.

The audience was attentive and responsive and Mr Dausch agreeably went beyond the hour set aside for the talk.

Schrader update, June 2007

The current cumulative set of updates to Dr Richard J. Schrader’s invaluable H. L. Mencken: A Descriptive Bibliography is dated June 2007 and was previously updated January, 2007. The additions and corrections can be downloaded as a pdf format file from http://www2.bc.edu/~schrader/mencken.pdf.

Mr Mencken before the Doctors

On June 7 at the Maryland Club, Mencken Society member John Duasch was the dinnertime speaker before the Edwin J. Wylie Society, the alumni association of vascular surgeons who trained at the University of California–San Francisco. Mr Dausch was invited to speak on a topic of local interest and chose Mr Mencken.

Mr Dausch, a “born and bred Baltimore boy”, works professionally for an agency of the United States government but his great avocation is living history. In addition to portraying Mr Mencken, which he did at the City Life Museums Mencken House for many years, he also portrays a Prussian military observer of the period 1861-1865.

A gracious note sent subsequently by Dr Kenneth Cherry, president of the Wylie Society, thanked Mr Dausch for his “… wonderful presentation concerning H. L. Mencken” and added that “I can’t tell you how many people came up to me and told me how much your talk added to the evening and to their enjoyment of the whole trip to Baltimore. I had already appreciated Mr. Mencken and now appreciate him even more after listening to you.”

Cdr Norris K. Combs, USN (Ret.), 1915-2007

The Mencken Sociey notes with sadness the death of long-time member Cdr Norris K. Combs, USN (Ret.). His uncle, Dr. Josiah Henry Combs (1886-01-02, Hazard, Perry Co, KY—1960-06-28, Fort Worth, Tarrant Co, TX), chairman of the Texas Christian University department of foreign languages from 1927 to 1947, corresponded with Mr Mencken who twice references his work in Supplement I to The American Language. Cdr Combs donated the correspondence between his uncle and Mr Mencken to the Pratt Library’s Mencken room.

Norris K. Combs, 91, of Pensacola, FL passed away Tuesday, May 29, 2007.

Mr. Combs was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Ira and Myrtle Combs. He grew up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, the land of his ancestors. Mr. Combs and his family had lived in Pensacola since 1963, when he reported for duty at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine.

An Aerospace Physiologist, Mr. Combs was stationed in Pensacola from 1963 to 1968, when he retired after approximately thirty years service. He served as a Hospital Corpsman (Pharmacist’s Mate) during WWII in the South Pacific, including Guadalcanal, as well as other locations.

Norris received a B.S. degree from Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL and a M.S. from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. He then returned to the Navy as an officer, where he was involved in the initial development of the full-pressure flight suit flown by Navy Test Pilots and our original Astronauts.

Survivors include his loving wife of 66 years, Loretta Combs; three sons, Thomas Combs, Richard Combs (Debbie), and Robert Combs (Lisa); four grandchildren, Tina Taylor (Stacy), Amy Combs, Tyler Combs, and Laura Mitchell (David); also two great-grandchildren Will and Whitney Taylor.

Visitation will be held 5-7pm Thursday, May 31, 2007 at Harper-Morris Memorial Chapel.

Mass of Christian Burial will be held 10:00am Friday, June 1, 2007 at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart with Msgr. Michael Reed celebrant. Burial will follow at Barrancas National Cemetery with full military honors.

Pallbearers will be Ed Moyer, John Fox, Dan Gilmore, Zac Gilmore, Grant Hofberger, and Tyler Combs.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Naval Aviation Museum, 1750 Radford Blvd., Suite B, NAS Pensacola, FL 32508.

HARPER-MORRIS MEMORIAL CHAPEL is in charge of arrangements

[Obituary from Pensacola News Journal, 2007-05-31]

The truth about “Ventures Into Verse”

It is common knowledge that Mr Mencken considered his first published work, a collection of his poetry, to be so bad that he bought all the copies he could and destroyed them.

Common knowledge is wrong.

Mr Mencken repudiates this story as shown in the two following letters.

The first is dated December 2, 1940:

Gentlemen:

     This is not a complaint, but a piece of information.
I note that your catalog of American first editions, item
375, says that I have been in the habit of buying up and
destroying copies of my first book, “Ventures Into Verse”.
This is an old story, but completely false. I haven’t the
slightest objection to the circulation of the book. The
only copies I have ever bought were bought to give to
friends. Who started the original tale, I don't know.
Please bear in mind hereafter that it is false.

The second is dated December 4, 1940:

Dear Mr. Randall:

     Why Starrett should be spreading so infamous
a libel I can’t make out. I’ll tackle him on the subject
the next time I encounter him. Meanwhile, my best thanks
for your note. “Ventures Into Verse” was brought out in
an edition of less than a hundred copies, and so it is
somewhat scarce. In the palmy days of American firsts
it sold up in the hundreds of dollars. In those days
people naturally beset me for copies, and inasmuch as I
had none I kept an eye on the bargain market. Several
times I picked up the book for personal friends at less
that the market rate. Virtually all the copies in
public libraries were stolen at that time.

(Source: These letters are part of the Robert A. Wilson Collection of H. L. Mencken, the Sheridan Libraries of The Johns Hopkins University.)