“I have lived in one house in Baltimore for nearly 45 years. It has changed in that time, as I have—but somehow, it still remains the same… It is as much a part of me as my two hands. If I had to leave it, I’d be as certainly crippled as if I lost a leg.” —H.L. Mencken

The sofa arrived on a dreary, wet evening this past winter after residing in the Annapolis office of former Maryland Senate Majority Leader Mike Miller for the past decade. The rain and damp weather didn’t diminish Brigitte Fessenden’s enthusiasm one bit.

“It was wrapped in a plastic cover and carried in by two women,” says Fessenden, president of the Society to Preserve H.L. Mencken’s Legacy, with a smile. “I think Mencken would’ve enjoyed watching that while he smoked his cigar.”

Shuttered for 23 years and recently reopened pre-quarantine, the longtime home of the journalist, essayist, and cultural critic known as the Sage of Baltimore faces Union Square in southwest Baltimore. In fact, the prolific Mencken, author of such works as Happy Days, Notes on Democracy, and The American Language, did much of his entertaining in the sitting room, where the sofa offered respite to F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others.

“It’s one more piece of the puzzle,” says Fessenden, who has spent much of the past year meticulously researching, recollecting, and reinstalling Mencken’s original chairs, lamps, carpeting, bookshelves, piano, and paintings and placing everything back where it was when the former Baltimore Sun newsman lived in the three-story rowhome.

The attention to his study alone, a palpable step back in time, is striking. (It was here where Mencken’s “councils of war” plotted strategy against various government book-banning efforts and where Mencken persuaded Clarence Darrow to defend John Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trial.) Mencken’s own lightweight, early 1900s L.C. Smith & Bros. typewriter, for example, has been restored to remarkable condition—evocative of a refurbished Stradivarius—with functioning type bars, spool, roller knob, and keys.

Nearby sits his favorite brand of thin replacement leads for his pencils, his sharpener, his memo pads—produced by the “Universal Atlas Cement Co.”—a box of Pilot brand staples, a bottle of Sheaffer Skrip ink, and five-cent mailing labels. His wooden chair is solid, upright, and worn—like those of all serious writers.

After the unexpected 1997 closure of Baltimore’s City Life Museums, which previously operated the Mencken House, the three-story brick home basically sat vacant. For the most part, the home’s belongings have been kept in storage by the Maryland Historical Society. Since his death in 1956, Mencken artifacts have scattered far and wide, including to the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s H.L. Mencken Room, private collectors, and the Smithsonian. Fessenden only recently discovered Mencken’s famous red suspenders in a wrongly marked box. “That made me happy,” she says with another smile.

That it took the city more than a dozen years to disperse a private $3-million bequest to fix the place up would not have surprised the acerbic Mencken. “Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under,” he once said.

Mencken’s legacy, of course, is complicated. There is no denying his stature as one of this country’s original thinkers. There is also no question he displayed anti-Semitism and used the racist pejoratives of the time. But Mencken also published black writers as founder of the groundbreaking American Mercury magazine. At the moment, there is the hope that the restoration and reopening of his home will not just attract visitors there, but will spark renewed interest in his work.

Going forward, there is additional hope the Mencken House can serve as a foundation for continued neighborhood development around the graceful, 2.5-acre city park at its doorstep. There’s even aspirations Mencken can become a Baltimore institution in the way the Edgar Allan Poe, whose home, of course, is a popular destination, has become inseparable from the city’s identity. But obstacles remain.

“Not all geniuses are movie-star good-looking,” says Jeff Jerome, former curator of the Poe House and now outreach coordinator with Mencken House, referring to the challenges of promoting the image of the portly, middleaged, sometimes dour, and often sarcastic writer. “At least Poe was weird-looking.”

Given that the property that once housed The Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, has been vacant for 20 years, it’s fair to assert that there are those in the city with limited knowledge as to just who he was. Even those overseeing a new project to turn the house into a museum—as well as an office space for the Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA)—acknowledge that there is a bit of forgotten history to the writer and journalist beloved by academics and scholars alike.

“As we get further in time, Mencken and his work is less and less well known,” says Jackson Gilman-Forlini, a historic preservation officer for the Baltimore City Department of General Services. “And what’s important is we have a museum that is relevant for contemporary people.”

Though widely recognized as a deeply talented writer of novels like The American Language and autobiography Happy Days, as well as a long-time columnist for the The Baltimore Sun and the The Evening Sun, Mencken is a controversial figure for his views that have often been called racist, misogynistic, and Anti-Semitic. Excerpts from his diary published by the Baltimore Evening Sun in the late ’80s revealed hateful language toward minorities, and there is much debate on his legacy and his place in history.

With this in mind, the museum that will occupy the first floor and half of the second floor of the H.L. Mencken House on Union Square in Southwest Baltimore will showcase his personal belongings and life inside the place he called home for most of his life, but it will also be a thoughtful consideration of how his ideas fit within a modern landscape.

To achieve this, the BNHA is partnering with the Society to Preserve the Legacy of H.L. Mencken—a local organization which holds the writer in high esteem—to find a consultant who will mediate and curate an all-encompassing experience and ensure that all sides of Mencken’s story are told.

“We want to use the space to start a dialogue,” says BNHA’s executive director Shauntee Daniels. “We want to shine a light on who he was, and show how people thought at that time.”

Though the house has been abandoned for an extended period of time, Gilman-Forlini says it is in decent shape compared to other preservation projects—thanks to a loyal group of neighbors who have tended to it. Interestingly, the house has only changed hands two times in its 140- year existence (after Mencken, it was taken over by the University of Maryland and later by the city). As such, its original architecture largely remains intact, serving as a time capsule for the tastes of that time.

“It’s a very elegant home,” Gilman-Forlini says. “It also is representative of how people in the city lived at that time and up to the present. We want to tell that story and preserve that.”

It’s also important to note that all preservation is being done through a private bequeathment. No taxpayer dollars were used in the project, which organizers are hopeful can be fully operational by next year, with the potential for the house itself to open to the public later this year. Baltimore has no shortage of historical homes—the Poe House and the Carroll Mansion are a few examples. The plan is for the H.L. Mencken house to also serve as the main office for the BNHA, where it can operate and work on other preservation initiatives throughout the city.

“We need to bring attention to neighborhoods that are long forgotten,” Daniels says. “It’s unreasonable to leave the house derelict. And for the Heritage Area, it’s a great opportunity to be in a historic property and to make sure it remains open to the public.”

In the 1960s, New York had counterculture artist Andy Warhol with his “Factory,” where beautiful people of all stripes came together to party, do drugs, have sex, and make art. In the ’70s, Baltimore had John Waters and his “Dreamlanders,” a ragtag group of outsiders, weirdos, and misfits who comprised the cast and crew of his subversive films. (And perhaps had sex and did drugs—hey, that’s their business.)

After all these years, it’s important to remember what a rebel Waters was in the early days. His films were designed to discomfit and shock; he wanted to eat the rich and take down the bourgeoisie. He famously scuffled with Maryland’s draconian censor board, and his movies were banned in several countries. In Baltimore, he was initially embraced only by arthouse fanatics and punks, but eventually—first with Pink Flamingos, then Polyester, and ultimately with his breakthrough hit, Hairspray—he was embraced by the mainstream.
Hairspray has become something of a cottage industry, but the original film shouldn’t be confused with the more mild-mannered (if still delightful) versions that followed. Waters’ Hairspray was a wonderful celebration of diversity and a takedown of racism, but it also had a scuzziness around the edges that the subsequent iterations lacked. (It also featured a touching and widely acclaimed performance by Waters’ dear friend the drag queen Divine, who tragically died shortly after the film debuted.)

By the time Cry Baby came around, Baltimore had already begun to commodify the kitsch of his films—selling pink flamingo lawn figurines and hairspray cans in his honor. Somehow, the notion of the “Hon”—so integral to Baltimore’s Charm City concept—became wrapped up in the Waters iconography. But in a 2008 article in USA Today, Waters swore off the word and even the Honfest. “To me, it’s used up,” he said. “The people that celebrate it are not from it. I feel that in some weird way they’re looking slightly down on it. I only celebrate something I can look up to.”

This is the most crucial aspect of Waters’ art. If you think he’s making fun of the Edie the Egg Lady, you’re missing the point. He loves these people, and he respects them, too. The world of John Waters is all-inclusive. The only people he judges are those who judge others. What could be more Baltimore than that?

Flickering Treasures

Amy Davis (Johns Hopkins University Press) 

In Baltimore, we don’t have to look far to find vestiges of cinema’s golden age—venues like the sparkling Senator or the majestic Parkway that remind us of a time when all our problems vanished with a night by the big screen. What we might not realize is how many more of these cinemas once existed in Baltimore, and that’s where Davis comes in. She photographs old movie houses—both those that are decayed or have been repurposed and the ones that remain grand and glorious. Juxtaposing current conditions with historical photos, Davis shows how much time has altered the face of our city. Her book is a comment on this transition, and a reminder that change is the only constant.

A Saturnalia of Bunk

H.L. Mencken, edited by S.T. Joshi
(Ohio University Press)

There’s a reason Henry Louis Mencken is called the Sage of Baltimore. His sardonic wit, explosive exuberance, and wry critical eye shaped the spunky attitude of our city. But while many in Baltimore know Mencken for his newspaper column “The Free Lance”—which he wrote six days a week for The Baltimore Evening Sun from 1911 to 1915—few have actually read them. In this collection of those columns, we get a sense of the issues that defined Mencken’s voice—freedom from censorship and battling against temperance and other moral reform movements among them—and the passion behind a man hellbent on ridding his community of, as he writes, “stupidity, flapdoodle, and buncombe.” 

Carol Evans sits on a couch in the lobby of Fells Point’s Vagabond Theatre and places a large Jim Beam bottle on the floor beside her. After something of a dramatic pause, Evans nods toward the bottle. “It’s a prop,” she says, smiling.

Its contents, indeed, appear more like apple cider than bourbon, which makes sense, because Evans, a Vagabond Players board member dressed in a navy blue sweater and slacks, looks more like a theater dame than raging partier. That said, she notes that the building used to house a tavern—Corral’s Bar—before Vagabond settled here in the 1970s. In fact, during a 1973 production of Tennessee Williams’s Small Craft Warnings, which is set in a bar, a sailor wandered in during the show, walked onto the set, and tried to order a drink.

Evans chuckles at the story, one of many colorful tales that circulated during this past season, which marked Vagabond’s centennial and gives it bragging rights as “America’s oldest little theatre.” Literary icons such as H.L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Eugene O’Neill figure into that history, alongside a multitude of mostly unheralded actors, directors, set builders, lighting designers, costumers, and sound techs.

Last year, MD Theatre Guide readers voted Vagabond “Best Community Theatre,” though Evans prefers calling it “non-equity” theater. Vagabond’s directors and actors do not get paid, but technical workers receive a small stipend. It’s an approach that “lets us showcase the tremendous talents of local, everyday people,” Evans says.

“You need dedication . . . and continuity to maintain a successful theater.”

As if on cue, one of those locals appears at the door, hauling a piece of furniture on his back. Evans springs from her seat to open the door, and Greg Guyton enters, slightly bent under the weight of a maroon and gold divan, which will be used as a prop in the next show, Moon Over Buffalo. Rehearsal begins in an hour, and Guyton plays one of the leads. “We make our actors do all the work,” he says, heading toward the stage. “The production is on our backs.”

He’s joking, but not really. Most Vagabond principals wear various hats. Besides being a board member, Evans is co-producing Moon Over Buffalo, handling publicity, and acting in the show. When asked about the producer’s responsibilities, she quips, “We make sure everything gets done.”

Plus, they all have day jobs: psychologist, orthopedic surgeon, bakery manager, or Ph.D. candidate. Evans is a retired educator.

“We’re all really hard workers,” she says. “You need that sort of dedication, leadership, and continuity to maintain a successful and solvent theater, which we’ve done for 100 years.”

The Vagabond history can be traced back to a spring night in 1916, when three theater enthusiasts were waiting for a streetcar outside the old St. James Hotel at Charles and Centre streets. (The hotel has since been razed.)

Carol Sax, head of The Maryland Institute College of Art’s design department, was chatting with New Yorker Constance D’Arcy Mackay, who was in town to spearhead an event commemorating the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and Adele Gutman Nathan, who acted with a touring theater troupe. They got talking about the Little Theatre Movement—which then popularized non-commercial, more experimental theater around the country—and agreed that Baltimore had enough homegrown talent to support such a scene.

Sax noticed a “For Rent” sign in the window of the hotel’s ground-floor storefront. Looking through the window, they saw an empty space, two-stories high. At the far end of the room, a raised platform looked like a stage, which they took as a good omen. The next morning, Sax returned to the St. James and paid $19 for the first month’s rent.

Sax and Nathan took the reins, recruited other supporters, and, with the help of Sax’s Maryland Institute students, transformed the vacant shop into an intimate theater. They chose the Vagabond name because it implied artistic independence and freedom.

“At the very beginning, the Vagabonds were what we might call today an ‘alternative’ theater,” says Evans’s husband, Tim, who is also a board member, actor, and the group’s unofficial historian. “It was a revolt against the traditional theater of the 19th century.”

The theater opened in November 1916 with the players performing one-act plays (usually three or four per night). The inaugural program of three short plays included Mencken’s The Artist. It was a biting satire set during a classical concert, with the thoughts of a German pianist and his audience substituting for traditional dialogue. Basically, the critics snooze, the men ogle the women, and the women swoon over “the great pianist,” who ruminates over Beethoven, the shortcomings of America’s women, and the gastrointestinal eruptions caused by all the beer he has consumed. Overall, Vagabond’s debut received positive notices, with one review noting that the stage “was but little larger than the kitchenette of the modern apartment.”

Vagabond’s second lineup of shows included Eugene O’Neill’s Bound East for Cardiff. That summer, Nathan had paid a visit to the Provincetown Playhouse, where she was impressed by several plays and paid $15 a piece for the manuscripts, including O’Neill’s, on the spot. It was the first time the playwright, who went on to win Pulitzer and Nobel prizes, was paid for his work. In addition to O’Neill, Vagabond would also introduce the city to new works by the likes of George Bernard Shaw, J.M. Barrie, August Strindberg, and Anton Chekhov.

Though The Sun noted that O’Neill’s play was not well received in Baltimore, Vagabond’s first season—infused as it was by local talent and quality work—proved to be a resounding success. Back in New York, Constance d’Arcy Mackay, in her 1917 book about the Little Theatre Movement, wrote prophetically, “The Vagabond Theatre expresses the native art impulse of Baltimore. It does not rely on outside forces but draws its forces from within, a thing that makes for permanence and stability.”

The 1932-1933 season (by then, Vagabonds was mounting full, three-act productions) included what is arguably the most infamous play in the theater’s history, a production involving F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who were then living in Baltimore. Written by Zelda, Scandalabra was, according to one critic, “a bizarre mix of supernatural characters and drawing room witticisms” that ran a whopping five hours long. At the premiere, the curtain reportedly rose at 8:15 and didn’t drop until after one o’clock in the morning. By 1:30, Scott was working through a case of beer and cutting the script to half its original length.

The 1932-1933 season involved F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Upstairs at Vagabond, amidst a jumble of props and costumes, Carol Evans points out the chair Fitzgerald sat in as he worked through the night. Preserved all these years, it has become somewhat mythic, a totem from Vagabond’s storied past. “It actually looks like a throne,” says Evans, before noting that Fitzgerald’s efforts were mostly for naught.

The critics had attended opening night and were merciless in the next day’s papers. The play flopped.

Over the next few decades, Vagabond weathered not only the occasional box office disaster, but also fallout from the Great Depression, World War II, competition from the film industry, and relocations to venues that included an old stable on West Monument Street, a carriage house on Read Street, and the basement bar at what was then the Congress Hotel on Franklin Street. Its prospects were, at times, tenuous, but the group fought hard to keep the doors open.

But the theater benefited mightily from enduring leadership by Helen Penniman and John Bruce Johnson. They virtually led the troupe through its first 80-plus years. Penniman, who joined the board in 1917 and retired as board president in 1961, resisted calls for the theater to turn professional and never wavered from a commitment to local talent. Johnson joined as an actor in 1960, presided over the board for 30 years, and oversaw Vagabond’s move to its current home in Fells Point. He also helped solidify its brand of programming—innovative and popular plays with an occasional edgy production in the mix—before retiring in 1998. Johnson’s 2008 obituary in The Sun said friends dubbed him “the patriarch of community theater in Baltimore.”

A white porcelain urn containing Johnson’s ashes sits on a desk in the theater’s upstairs office. “He’s always with us,” says Carol Evans.

Vagabond (lovingly called “Vags” by actors and theater devotees) transitioned away from its experimental roots, as public tastes and the local theater scene evolved over the years. The advent of Center Stage, Everyman Theatre, Theatre Project, and smaller groups such as Single Carrot Theatre amply filled the niche for new and challenging work. Though there have been memorable exceptions since Vagabond settled in Fells Point—like when John Waters’s colleague Steve Yeager wrote and directed a Freudian take on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde that included a young Kathleen Turner in 1976—the theater’s programming is decidedly mainstream, which provides the revenue needed to remain open. “At this point, we try to present shows that we know people want to see,” says Evans.

A porcelain urn containing Johnson’s ashes sits in the office. “He’s always with us.”

With that in mind, a board committee invites proposals from directors and maps out each season, generally a mix of a few comedies, one or two serious dramas, and a musical. For its centennial last season, Vagabond culled favorites like Our Town, The Lion in Winter, and Moon Over Buffalo from past seasons. The coming 2016-2017 season will include Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, The Complete History of America (abridged), and Avenue Q, the Tony-winning musical.

In addition, a 100th anniversary celebration is scheduled for Oct. 16 at Admiral Fell Inn, and the theater will host a commemorative staged reading of O’Neill’s Bound East for Cardiff on Dec. 7, exactly 100 years after it played at Vagabond.

Preparations are also underway for the next century of shows at Vagabond. The theater lobby was recently remodeled and new bathrooms were installed. This summer, the auditorium’s carpet and 104 seats are being replaced. The seats currently being used are mid-1970s hand-me-downs from the old Morris A. Mechanic Theatre. “We’ve certainly gotten a lot out of them,” says Evans, who points out that, these days, they are usually filled by a mix of Vagabond regulars, younger folks from the surrounding Fells Point neighborhood, and out-of-town visitors.

Evans stops speaking, as the sounds of clanging swords and stage fighting shouts of, “Hah! Hah!” drift upstairs from the stage below. In a few minutes, she’ll be needed onstage.

Rehearsal for Vagabond’s next show has begun.