H. L. Mencken didn’t like Southerners or suffragists. But when the famed American essayist, critic, and journalist met Sara Haardt, a Southern suffragist and Goucher College professor, he couldn’t resist and promptly broke another one of his rules and married her.
Their unlikely, and tragically short, love story is documented in Goucher’s exhibit A Charmed Love: The Baltimore of Sara Haardt and H. L. Mencken, 1923-1935. The exhibit can be viewed in the Special Collections and Archives of the Goucher College Library in the Sanford J. Ungar Athenaeum from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily through Friday, June 26, 2015.
Through letters and photographs, the exhibit illuminates the relationship between the two writers and the Baltimore they loved. Also shown are the pair’s opinions on writing, the film industry, and national and international events of the 1920s and 1930s. Then-and-now photographs record many of the Menckens’ favorite Baltimore places.
H. L. Mencken donated the H. L. and Sara Haardt Mencken Collection to Goucher College after Sara’s death. It includes more than 800 letters between the two, as well as bound albums of photographs and Sara’s writings and her correspondence with other prominent writers.
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Exhibit Opening Reception
An opening reception will be held Saturday, November 8, 3-5 p.m. in the Batza Room and the fourth floor of the Sanford J. Ungar Athenaeum. This event is free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved at goucher.edu/tickets or by calling 410-337-6333. Contact Randi Kennedy, assistant to the college librarian, with any questions at randalynn.kennedy@goucher.edu or 410-337-6362.
Join the Friends of the Goucher College Library for German-inspired hors d’oeuvres; locally brewed beer; and a program featuring Marion Elizabeth Rodgers ’81, author of Mencken and Sara, and Goucher Professor of Art and Art History and Communication and Media Studies Ed Worteck, who will share photographs. Copies of Rodgers’ newest book H. L. Mencken: The Days Trilogy, Expanded Edition will be available for sale and signing.