Searching for Cousin Henry

by Robert J. Marton

 From Sarah Mencken’s journal (1972):

I dreamed of being a lawyer, but I enjoy being a reporter and editor.  I have been for 32 years.  You might say it is in my blood.  I am a Mencken, you know; related directly to H. L. Mencken, the famous writer for the Baltimore Sun.  He’s a cousin; my father’s third or fourth cousin, I believe.  I’ve never met cousin Henry (why not call him that?), but I feel a kinship to him anyway.  It is all about words: we both love them and we live them; or at least he did until he died in ‘56.

About five years before cousin Henry died, I decided I had to meet him.  He only lived 20 miles away.  So, one Sunday afternoon after church, my sister Dorie and I loaded film in the old Brownie Hawkeye camera we used at the Messenger and drove up the boulevard in Dorie’s 1940 red Ford Coupe (which she received in her divorce settlement the previous year from a relieved Henry Elliott, who would have given her anything to escape his marital hell.  Most people were still buying the standard black Ford in those days, but Dorie had cajoled poor Henry in springing for one of the new red ones.  Dorie is not an easy person to live with).

It was a breezy spring afternoon as Dorie drove past the junkyards, broken down motels, gas stations, restaurants and bars that dotted the boulevard. The landscape became even more dreary and odorous as we grew closer to the city, passing the whiskey distillery, and the flea killer dog building (you either remember it or you don’t; there’s no explaining it) and entering the city’s grimy southern warehouse and factory district.

We got lost several times trying to find Union Square. It was frightening, having to turn around in those slums with all those coloreds glaring –don’t they have anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon than plop on those filthy stoops and stare at people?

Finally, Dorie managed to find Hollins Street.  In the middle of a block of refined and well-maintained row homes was 1524, where cousin Henry lived with his younger brother, August, and had lived most of his life.

We parked across the street and just stood there, looking at the house.  It was a stately three-story red brick home in the traditional local urban fashion (no tacky formstone here).  I stared in awe at the second floor front window, which I knew was the study where cousin Henry did some of his greatest work – editing the books of Theodore Dreiser, writing his newspaper columns and books, and sharing martinis with James M. Cain (who, in my opinion, was far too low class for cousin Henry to associate with, despite Cain’s Annapolis and Chestertown connections).  It was rumored that it was in this room that he convinced Clarence Darrow to take on the Scopes Monkey Trial.

It may have been the afternoon shadows or just my imagination, but I thought I saw movement at the window.

I seemed frozen in place, but Dorie practically pulled me across the street.

Hesitantly, I climbed the four well-scrubbed white marble steps and up to the white arched doorway. I paused as I approached the door, unable to grab onto the polished brass door knocker.

“Come on, already,” Dorie said, standing safely at the curb.  “I got you here.  Just knock, for God’s sake.”

I knocked. The striking of brass on brass startled me and I jumped back, almost falling down the marble steps.

“That was a sissy knock, try again,” Dorie said.

“I knocked.  Let’s see what happens.”

Nothing did.  There were no sounds of life from inside.

“Knock again,” Dorie said.  “This time with some authority.  I’m not bringing you back here again, so you better do it right this time.”

I knocked harder and louder.

I thought I heard something.

Was there a rustling sound from inside?

Someone on the interior steps?

I could almost feel a presence on the other side of the door.

Was cousin Henry standing there, just inches away?

But no one answered the door.

“Turn the door knob, see if it’s unlocked,” Dorie said.

“I can’t do that,” I said.  “What if it is unlocked?  What would I do then?”

“Go in.”

Of course, I didn’t turn the doorknob.  I knocked again and waited a few minutes longer but nothing happened.

I followed as Dorie ventured around the block to the back of the house where the garden was located.  The surrounding wall was too tall to see over, but we were able to peek through the gate.  A pergola stretched from the back door of the house to the gate, and I glanced through the greenery, spotting inlaid tiles in the garden wall, even an odd looking picture of a human face, which I later found out was a death mask of Beethoven, cousin Henry’s favorite composer (and mine as well, at least from then on).

Hoping that cousin Henry was enjoying a cigar while relaxing in his outdoor refuge on a warm afternoon, I visually searched the small yard from side to side and front to back.  I thought I detected a trace of cigar scent, but no cousin Henry.  No sign of life at all.

There was nothing else I could do.  Either cousin Henry wasn’t home or he didn’t want visitors.  We walked back around to the front of the house.  I tried to discourage Dorie from spying into the lower front windows, but of course I couldn’t.  I pulled a note from my purse that I had written at home  –telling him who I was, how much we had in common, how much I wanted to meet him, and asking him to write to me so we could meet at another time—and slipped it through the mail slot in the door.

Disappointed, but proud we made the effort, Dorie and I drove back to Mayefield.

For months afterwards, I eagerly awaited the mail delivery, but no response from cousin Henry ever came.

He died in 1956.  I sent a letter of condolence to his cousin August, but he never responded either.