III
One of the cities was my birthplace, Baltimore, and one of my sources there was Elizabeth Gilman, daughter of the founder of Johns Hopkins University. She filled her home with professors one day and with schoolteachers the next, and they told me their troubles.
I have mentioned my friendship with Mencken. It began by mail; he was a tireless letter writer. There are some two hundred letters from him in the collection of my papers in the Lilly Library of the University of Indiana. He liked to write little short notes—he had secretaries and kept them busy. He didn’t care in the least what he said—provided only that it was funny. The more extravagant, the more fun; and the more seriously you took it, the still greater fun. When I was in New York, I called at the American Mercury office, and his conversation was just like his letters.
Now he had retired, and I visited his home in Baltimore—like Uncle Bland’s, it was one of those brick houses, four stories high, apparently built a whole block at a time in solid, uniform rows, each house with three or four white marble steps up to the front door. Mencken poured out his Jovian thunderbolts for a whole afternoon. This was the longest time I had with him, and the most diverting.
Uncle Bland, as I have already related, was the founder and president of the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company and had become one of the most important men in Baltimore—but he had never met his “Sunpaper” editor. He insisted that I invite Mencken out to Catonsville, his summer home, for dinner. For this occasion my cousin Howard Bland sent his wife and children over to the “big house,” and we four men had Howard’s dining room for the evening.
It wasn’t a pleasant occasion for me because the other three spent most of the time discussing the various brands of wines, brandies, and whiskies. Partly, of course, it was done to “kid” me. It was the time of prohibition, and Uncle Bland had a tragic experience to report. He had foreseen the trouble coming and had a large stock safely locked up in his cellar; but while he was in his town house for the winter, the cellar door was pried open, and everything was carted away in the night. Everybody but me was grieved.
I had shipped home various boxes containing documents. I came back and for several months labored and wrote The Goose-Step. As usual, I was warned about libel; but, as usual, it did not happen.
The Goose-Step, a big book, 488 pages, price two dollars, was published in 1923, and I assure you the college professors read it—and talked about it, even out loud. I could get paper this time, and filled all the orders, some twenty thousand copies. Then I wrote The Goslings, 454 pages, price two dollars, telling about schools of all sorts; the teachers read it, and many had the courage to write to me. I had given them weapons to fight with, or perhaps lanterns to light with; anyhow, I have seen changes in America, and I tell myself I have helped a little to bring them about.