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H. L., the name he liked to call himself, came about according to William Manchester in the biography about Henry Mencken, because Mencken and his father destroyed most of the letters of the alphabet when trying to assemble a line of type for a toy printing press. As he was only able to compose the H and the L that's the way it was to be and except in official documents - tax bills, subpoenas, death certificates and the like, he was to be called H. L. by friends and enemies alike.
Mencken was a pig-headed, self-righteous, pseudointellectual, who was far better with words than any of those who crossed swords with him. In an argument, he never lost - simply because he refused to admit that he had been bested. As a writer, he was so-so, books and other attempts at putting words to paper were failures. Only his acerbic tongue which found voice in the press brought him to fame. He had few friends and if they and the world laughed with him that was fine and if others chose not to, tough s---, he had no sympathy for them. Except for family who he used just as unmercifully as he did the members of the publishing families, he had little regard for what anyone though about him.
The writing of H. L. Mencken and his closet of friends was mostly of sex, attacks on Democracy, ridicule directed at business and the ignorance of the people. He became the darling of intellectuals of 20's because he was for booze, sex, shocking language, and a Communistic pap that masqueraded under the guise of freedom. He was no more for the "common man" than was Napoleon, Hitler, Cromwell, Marx, Stalin or the broadcast personalities that live within the fish bowl we call television. He would have been loved by John Kennedy and Bill Clinton who would have thought him so very clever and amusing, not unlike Pierre Salinger in his pink tennis shorts or George Stephanopoulos chasing Hollywood starlets.
But Mencken was smart - very smart. And he had the newspaper man's habit of writing everything down and keeping it filed away to be used as either foundation for a story or perhaps as blackmail to gain leverage when it became necessary. His American Language and the two supplements that followed were an accident that happened and for which we all should be grateful - not because Mencken wrote them, but because they served to chisel a line separating the United States from the rest of the world. (He would probably in disgust, refuse to add a third supplement of today's vernacular because it represented a culture of scientist, criminal elements and advertisers, among others. They would be destroying "his" language, not adding to it.)
Others, as example Molly Ivins have thought they should be considered a part of Mencken's circle of knowing ones. In a few short words, "God what an elephant." She makes you want to burn every bed in the world." or the like, he would send her to the trash basket, if they thought them self to be considered in the same light as the "great" man. Otherwise, they would have received a few private words of encouragement so that they might continue to try to please him. If it was to his benefit, they might be given a few crumbs from his table, that is, permitted them to have their names associate with him or his publications. But, in the case of Ivins, she would be called a hick, trailer-park queen or worse and left to discover that his razor was so sharp that she didn't know her throat had been cut until she tried to turn her head.
Henry L. Mencken's books occupy a prominent place on my desk book shelf, alongside Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary, Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms, Crabb's Synonymes and other books that occupy this favored place, from time to time. But Dresser-Mencken Letters, My Life as Author and Editor and other books that pay homage to Mencken gather dust in the closet, just a step away from being a donation to Goodwill. The man, was and is a product of his heritage and his wrong-headed ideas and platitudes deserve to be remembered and so did William Manchester in Disturber of the Peace, describe him. "The Emperor has no clothes."
Henry Louis Mencken, September 12, 1880 - 1956.
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