From @UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU:XCHANGE@UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU Wed Jan 19 13:54:19 1994 X-FreePort-Flags: R Received: from UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU by freenet.victoria.bc.ca for /freenet/system/bin/m2mbox /freenet/home//17/ub774/mbox (4.1/1.39) id AA21350; Wed, 19 Jan 94 13:54:19 PST Message-Id: <9401192154.AA21350@freenet.victoria.bc.ca> Received: from UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU by UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 2802; Wed, 19 Jan 94 16:28:49 EST Received: from UNIVSCVM (NJE origin XCHANGE@UNIVSCVM) by UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 3532 for ; Wed, 19 Jan 1994 16:28:44 -0500 Date: Wed, 19 Jan 94 16:26:59 EST From: "Daniel R. McCloskey" Subject: The American Mercury/H.L. Mencken To: xchange list The following article on the history of H.L. Mencken's _American Mercury_ may be of interest to the xchange list. Notes and bibliography available on request. THE AMERICAN MERCURY During 1923, while he and the noted drama critic George Jean Nathan were still editing the Smart Set, Henry Louis Mencken gleefully anticipated the new monthly to be published the following January by Alfred A. Knopf. Mencken planned "a serious review the gaudiest and damndest ever seen in the Republic."' Theodore Dreiser suggested several flashy titles. ''What we need," Mencken explained to his old friend, "is something that looks highly respectable outwardly. The American Mercury is almost perfect for that purpose. What will go on inside the tent is another story. You will recall that the late P. T. Barnum got away with burlesque shows by calling them moral lectures.''2 During the next decade, Mencken would thrust his arms wide, gather in as much of America as possible, and make it all part of the show. Under his forceful hand, the American Mercury would provide rollicking, highly irreverent commentary upon the American scene. From 1924 to 1933, ''Mencken'' and the ''Mercury" would become synonymous. This coupling would prove to be one of the magazine's greatest strengths as well as a salient factor in its decline. When the American Mercury was established, Mencken and Nathan were each given twenty-five shares of stockthe remaining one hundred were divided among Knopf, his wife, and his fatheras well as full editorial control.3 The magazine was intended for the intelligent, solvent, urbane American who was skeptical about brummagem utopias and the yearning to save humanity. ''The American Mercury will never have a million circulation,'' Mencken explained. "It is not headed in that direction. Its function is to depict America for the more enlightened sort of Americansrealistically, with good humor and wholly without cant. It is read wherever a civilized minority survives the assaults of the general herd of yawpers and come-ons. Its aim is to entertain that minority and give it consolation.''4 The American Mercury was called many things, a number of them vicious, but few called it dull. Even fewer called it unattractive. As Mencken wished, the magazine's rambunctious content was sedately clothed by its respectable title and the distinctive Paris-green cover. The paper was expensive Scotch featherweight, and the Garamond type was set in double columns. There were no illustrations in each issue of 128 pages.5 Mencken had chafed under what he considered the ostentation of the Smart Set's cover and the poor quality of its paper. With the Mercury, he had a magazine whose understated elegance set it apart from many of its competitors. As he had done when he and Nathan were editing the Smart Set, Mencken continued to live in Baltimore and make periodic trips to New York City. Highly efficient, Mencken and Nathan decided to handle submissions as they had done earlier. If the first reader liked the manuscript, then he forwarded it to his colleague, whose approval was also necessary for a piece to be accepted. Disagreements were rare, and authors received a quick response to their material. Encouragement and incisive criticism accompanied many letters of rejection. This editorial courtesy, the prompt response and payment, and the prestige of appearing in the Mercury helped to atone for the magazine's low rate of pay: two cents per word for prose, and fifty cents per line for poetry. During Mencken's editorship, the Mercury published William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, and Edgar Lee Masters.6 But the magazine was also enlivened by a number of writers not actively courted by other magazines. Convicts and hoboes and dishwashers wrote for Mencken, as did taxi drivers and businessmen, physicians and clergymen, lawyers and diplomats and outdoorsmen. The Mercury remained open to newspapermen as well as academic critics, and the eclectic nature of its contributors benefited the magazine. The Smart Set had been primarily a magazine of fiction. But during his decade with the Mercury, Mencken's interest in fiction declined; he published less of it and reviewed it infrequently. The Mercury's nonfiction, as well as some of its more celebrated features, tended to be satirical. In fact, more than one-third of the essays published between 1924 and 1929 lampooned some aspect of the American scene.7 Some of the more vulnerable targets were assaulted repeatedly: pedagogy, chiropractic, Christian Science, Prohibition, puritanism, the sad credulity of rural America.s In "Americana," a feature continued from the Smart Set, the editors offered items gleaned from a variety of newspapers and magazines. Determined to prove the imbecility of the American mind, Mencken and Nathan did not lack material. For example, the Mercury recounted the story of the young man in Oregon who, believing that fasting would improve his health, died of starvation. And there was the sad tale of the wife who divorced her husband because, at the breakfast table, he took the milk for his coffee directly from a goat's udder.9 The initial printing for the Mercury's first issue was five thousand; a second printing was necessary, then a third. The January 1924 Mercury sold more than fifteen thousand copies, far surpassing the most optimistic expectations.'! By the end of the year, circulation had climbed past forty- two thousand." Nathan's resignation as coeditor in 1925 had no noticeable impact. (The men were heading in opposite directions: Nathan's interest remained literature, particularly drama, but Mencken was concerned with the American scene.)'2 By the end of June 1925, circulation had surpassed forty-six thousand.'3 April 1926 was marked by the uproar over "Hatrack,'' a chapter from Herbert Asbury's forthcoming book Up from Methodism. This episode brought the magazine and its editor even greater notoriety and placed both in the forefront of the battle against censorship. "Hatrack''the title is taken from an angular prostitute of that nameridicules evangelicalism, hypocritical religion, and the prurience of small-town life. The Reverend J. Frank Chase, secretary of the powerful Watch and Ward Society in Boston, found ''Hatrack" immoral, and a magazine peddler on Harvard Square was arrested for selling the issue in question. Mencken went to Boston to challenge the ruling, sold Chase a copy of the magazine, and was promptly arrested. Mencken was tried the next day and acquitted the following one. The victory cost over twenty thousand dollars in lost revenues and legal fees and a substantial loss of advertising, but the Mercury had taken a stand for freedom of speech, a cause that Mencken championed above all others. 14 At the end of 1926, Walter Lippmann called Mencken "the most powerful influence on this whole generation of educated people.'"5 Circulation approached eighty thousand in 1927 and peaked at eighty-four thousand in early 1928.'6 It has been argued repeatedly that the stock-market crash and the resulting depression began the Mercury's decline. Certainly, they proved to be major factors. Mencken's decision not to take the depression seriously hurt the magazine's credibility. Moreover, his iconoclasm proved less agreeable to the empty stomachs of the depression years. But circulation figures show that the magazine's popularity had begun to ebb prior to the crash in October 1929.l7 Mencken's satire, it appears, had run its course. It had been soinsistent, and in the end so successful, that there was less real need for it. Circulation continued to decline during the early years of the depression. A Jeffersonian liberal, Mencken defended laissez-faire capitalism and attacked proletarian literature. He was bitterly derided by the Left. In 1932, some of Mencken's old friends turned on him. May of that year saw the publication of the first issue of the American Spectator, edited by Nathan, Dreiser, Ernest Boyd (an Irish critic who had written a book about Mencken in 1925), James Branch Cabell, and Eugene O'Neill. Some of the American Spectator's features were outright imitations of those in the Mercury. 18 Mencken resigned as editor of the Mercury in December 1933, and his departure precipitated what Marvin Singleton has called ''the erratic downward course of the monthly.''l9 Henry Hazlitt, formerly of the Nation, edited four issues. When he was replaced by Charles Angoff, previously Mencken's assistant, the magazine moved to the Left. Knopf sold the magazine in December 1934 for only twenty-five thousand dollarsto Paul Palmer, formerly of the Baltimore Sunpapers.20 Never again would the Mercury evidence the quality or stability that it had shown under Knopf. In October 1936, the magazine was reduced to digest size, and the price was cut from fifty to thirty-five cents. Three years later, Palmer sold the magazine to Lawrence E. Spivak, a Harvard graduate who had become the magazine's business manager in 1933. Some old faces reappeared. In 1940, Nathan returned to his column on the theater. Angoff contributed to ''The Library" and served as both literary editor and managing editor, and Mencken wrote three pieces during 1939 and 1941.2' Under Spivak, the Mercury lacked the vitality that it had shown under Mencken. In 1946, the magazine merged with Common Sense. By December 1950, Spivak was reportedly losing forty thousand dollars an issue, and he sold the Mercury to Clendenin J. Ryan, the wealthy son of Thomas Fortune Ryan.22 Ryan published three issues under the title the New American Mercury and sold the magazine to William Bradford Huie in February 1951. In the issue of October 1951, Huie placed the legend ''Founded by Henry L. Mencken'' beneath the table of contents.23 The magazine reprinted several of Mencken's articles and ran a story by Herben Asbury about the Hatrack affair. In August 1952, Huie sold the Mercury to J. Russell Maguire, a wealthy oilman and munitions manufacturer. During Maguire's eight years, the Mercury ran more articles (much shorter ones) per issue and took a pronounced step to the Right. J. Edgar Hoover wrote for the magazine, as did Billy Graham, whose portrait graced the cover in January 1957. The Mercury defended Senator Joseph McCarthy and the doctrine of states' rights and attacked, among other things, the graduated income tax, the NAACP, the United Nations, NATO, the ACLU, and Zionism. In fact, for the remainder of its days the Mercury was engaged in a bitter battle with the Anti-Defamation League over charges of anti-Semitism. In January 1961, Maguire sold the Mercury to the Defenders of the Christian Faith, Inc., and the editorial offices were moved to Oklahoma City. Whereas earlier the magazine had been shaped by Mencken's skepticism, now it printed moral lectures and ran a number of reprints from fundamentalist periodicals. There was even an advertisement for recordings of Billy Sunday's sermons. Issues were missed now, and the magazine contained only sixty-four pages. In 1963, the Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc., bought the magazine and moved its offices to Texas. A religious editor was added to the staff. The magazine, which sometimes appeared late, attacked John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. In April 1963, the Mercury became a quarterly. In June 1966, the magazine announced an agreement with the Washington Observor, a four-page, semimonthly publication: the periodicals had to be subscribed to concurrently.24 At the same time, the Mercury announced a merger with Western Destiny, a monthly. The Mercury also inherited Northern World, Folk, and Right, publications that Western Destiny had succeeded. Beginning with the winter 1966 issue, editorial offices were moved to Torrance, California. A year later, the Mercury's circulation was under seven thousand.25 The magazine lambasted the Jews and carried articles on eugenics.26 Under Mencken, the Mercury had discussed many aspects of black culture and had published the writing of George Schuyler, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter White, and Countee Cullen.27 In 1967, the Mercury denounced racial integration and went so far as to state: "Negroes have never, at any time or place in the entire history of the world, created or maintained a culture above that of the stone age" (103:3-5). With the spring 1974 issue, the Mercury celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The magazine drew upon its illustrious past in an effort to enhance its popularity. The lead editorial, ''If Mencken Would Return. . . ,'' announced righteously, and wrongly, that Mencken ''would clearly approve of the lonely course [the] Mercury has taken since his departure.'' The editorial spoke confidently of the magazine moving "into its second half- century" and continuing "in [Mencken's] footsteps' ' (110:3-4) . It was a very short half-century, and the magazine ' s course was not one that Mencken had plotted. In 1976, the Mercury published Austin J. App's "H. L. Mencken, Most Influential German-American Author." Marred by several factual errors, the piece lamented that Mencken's insistence upon freedom of speech had unintentionally "furnished ammunition to the proponents of pornography."28 The Mercury ran anicles attacking black studies, the supposedly pernicious influence of modern art in general and Picasso's paintings in particular, and attempts by homosexuals to gain equality under the law. One editorial questioned the existence of the Holocaust and declared that ''Adolph Hitler had embarked upon the greatest task of any man in history . . . the creation of a new culture on the ruins of the old'' (114:3-4). In the fall 1979 issue, the editor announced a change in ownership and bravely spoke of returning to monthly publication with a magazine twice as long as the present one.29 With the winter issue, editorial offices were moved to Houston. The next year, 1980, marked the centennial of Mencken's birth, and the spring iSSUe was dedicated to his memory. Besides reprinting one of Mencken's articles and carrying a centennial graphic, the Mercury ran a lead editorial about Mencken that elegized an earlier, simpler time when "the virus of social, racial and sexual equality did not find fertile soil in the minds of most Amencans" (116:3-4). This issue ended with a special supplement soliciting contnbutions so that computers could index biographical information about Amenca's fifteen thousand most dangerous political activists. This plea marked the magazine's lugubnous end. With no notice of cessation, the Mercury shut down after publishing one issue in its fifty-seventh year.30 Few Amencan periodicals have changed as drastically as the Mercury did. At its best, dunng the early years under Mencken, the magazine stood at the forefront of Amencan culture by examining this country with an enlightened skepticism. At its worst, the magazine drifted into the foul backwaters of fear and intolerance. But the Mercury's demise should not detract from its achievements. Because of its uncompromising stand against censorship, its positive influence upon other Amencan magazines, the cogency of its satire, and the opportunities that it offered to a variety of wnters, the Mercury succeeded, at least for a while, in fulfilling the high expectations that Mencken held for it in 1923. Footnotes and biblio for this article available on request. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | Daniel R. 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