ON H. L. MENCKEN
By George Jean Nathan
In the monthly department, “Répétition Générale,” which we jointly conduct in The Smart Set Magazine, there was some months ago incorporated the following paragraph:
“When one of us, in the course of his critical writings, indulges himself in polite words about the other, it is a common antic of the newspaper literary supplement professors to observe that this encomium is merely by way of mutual log-rolling, that it is based upon no sounder critical ground than our friendship for each other and our commercial alliance, and that it is perhaps not honestly believed in by either the one or the other. This, of course, is idiotic. We are friends and partners, not because we admire each other’s beauty, or each other’s conversation, or each other’s waistcoats or wives, but because we respect each other professionally, because each to the other seems to know his work in the world, and how to do it, and how to do it—it may be—just a little bit better than the next nearest man. This, obviously, is the soundest of all bases for friendship. It is not friendship that makes men approve one another; it is mutual approval that makes them friends.”
Let me add a word about Mencken in particular. I respect him, and am his friend, because he is one of the very few Americans I know who is entirely free of cheapness, toadyism and hypocrisy. In close association with him for more than twelve years, I have yet to catch him in a lie against himself, or in a compromise with his established faiths. There have been times when we have quarrelled and times, I dare say, when we have hated each other: but when we have met again it has been always on a ground of approval and friendship made doubly secure and doubly substantial by the honesty of his point of view (however wrong I have held it), by the wholesomeness of his hatred, and by his frank and ever self-doubting conduct at our several Appomattoxes.
Perhaps no man has ever been more accurately mirrored by his writings than this man. He has never, so far as I know, written a single line that he hasn’t believed. He has never sold a single adjective—and there have been times when opulent temptations have dangled before him. And on certain of these occasions he could have used the money. There may be times when he is wrong and when his opinions are biased—I believed that there are not a few such times—yet if he is wrong, he is wrong honestly, and if he is biased, he neither knows it in his own mind nor feels it in his own heart. He is the best fighter I have ever met. And he is the fairest, the cleanest, and the most relentless.
But does he accept himself with forefinger to temple, with professorial wrinkles, as an Uplifting Force, a Tonic Influence? Not on your ball-room socks! No critic has ever snickered at him as loudly and effectively as he snickers at himself. “What do you think of your new book?” I usually ask him when he has finished one. And his reply generally is, “It’s got some good stuff in it—and a lot of cheese. What the hell’s the use of writing such a book, anyway? My next one....”
Life to him is a sort of Luna Park, and he gets the same sort of innocent, idiotic fun out of it. He would rather drink a glass of good beer than write; he would rather talk to a pretty girl than read; he would rather wallop the keys of a piano than think; he would rather eat a well-cooked dinner than philosophize. His work, which so clearly reflects him spiritually, represents him equally clearly in helpless revolt against his corporeal self.
This; a snapshot of Henry Mencken, for ever applying the slapstick to his own competence, constantly sceptical of his own talents, and ever trying vainly to run away from the pleasure that his temperament rebelliously mocks. I am happy to know him, for knowing him has made the world a gayer place and work a more diverting pastime. I am glad to be his partner, his collaborator, his co-editor, his drinking companion, and his friend. For after all these many years of our friendship and professional alliance, there is only one thing that I can hold against him. For ten years he has worn the damndest looking overcoat that I’ve ever seen.