Baltimore Evening Sun (11 May 1911): 6.

Why doesn’t some psychologist—or perhaps sociologist—concentrate his powerful intellect upon the subject of American society? I mean, of course, fashionable society—the society of sheep as opposed to goats. Every one of us knows what “society,” in that sense, means, but not many of us would presume to define it in words. What is social standing in Baltimore, for example? How is it acquired and maintained? What are the prerequisites for getting it, and how, once obtained, can it be lost?

The problem, it must be apparent, is a very difficult one. It is common to assume glibly that social standing depends upon wealth, but against that assumption there is the cold fact that many persons of undoubted wealth have no more social standing than so many car conductors. Family, perhaps? But isn’t it true that more than one person of eminence in Baltimore society has blood so slightly blue that, to the fishy eye of science, it appears a brilliant scarlet? And isn’t it true, again, that the more than one person of considerable (and authentic) genealogical pretensions is outside the breastworks?

In Europe society is more easily defined. The royal courts establish rules, requirements, conditions–and any person who can meet them gets in. But something else, of course, is still needed even in Europe, and that something else is the desire to get in. An Englishman may be a duke and yet not a figure in society. The chances are against it, but still the possibility is there.

Perhaps we have come upon a solution of our own problem. The important thing, in brief, seems to be the desire. Given a strong enough passion for such distinction (and enough money, let us add, to pay the fare), and any healthy human being ought to make fair social progress in any American city. The thing is done in Baltimore every day. Social climbers, consumed by their incandescent ambition, worm their way to the front. They are laughed at, but being laughed at is part of the cost—and tomorrow they will be laughing at the next-comers, just as they are being laughed at by yesterday’s climbers today.

But many obscure questions remain. What qualities, for, example, make for leadership within the fold? Who elects the bosses? And what sets folk upon their climbing? What is the reward they get for all the money they spend, all the disappointments they endure, all the wounds they suffer in their self-respect? Why do apparently sane human beings try to force themselves upon persons whose one overmastering yearning seems to be to avoid them?

Here is work for the psychologist who will tackle it. The matter is really an important one, for the social bee, at one time or another, buzzes in the head of every American family that gathers worldly goods. Why is this sense of caste so phenomenally acute in our democratic land?

“As for pigs’ feet,” says a correspondent, “the reason why they are enchanting is that they are hard to eat. The strong man craves a heavy task.”

Here, perhaps, is more truth than theory. The civilized white man, for all his polish, is yet a brother to the wolf and the Irish setter. He most enjoys his victuals when they give him adventure–in particular, when they put up an effective resistance. Such things as mush and milk, bouillon and ginger snaps, which yield to him like wheat to the wind, he hands over to infants and invalids. The very thought of them disgusts him, for they suggest weakness, helplessness, sickness.

But not so the pig’s foot, and not so the boiled hard crab, and not so such mobile and vivacious victuals as spaghetti, sauerkraut and fried chicken. To eat these things safely and with reasonable dispatch requires strength and courage. A man must have stout wrists and he must have his wits about him. The caitiff, approaching a mess of boiled hard crabs, swathes himself in linoleum and protects his eyes with automobile goggles. Perhaps he even goes to the length of donning a diving suit. But not so the man of heroic mold. This brave fellow, disdaining aid, tackles them unarmed and unarmored, and the harder the tussle they give him, the better he likes it.

Why are nine-tenths of all actors such blatant egotists? That they are I assume to be an established fact. No competent witness, so far as I know, has ever offered any sound evidence to the contrary. Loud denials, of course, have been made. Not long ago, when I incautiously referred to the subject, some writer in a New York theatrical paper called me a slanderer and a hyena, but such squealing is not argument. On the other side are thousands of witnesses, ranging from George Moore and Sir William Schwenk Gilbert to the humblest proprietors of village opry houses. Ask any dramatist. Ask any producing manager. Ask any stage hand.

Exceptions, true enough, are to be encountered. Several years ago a well-known American dramatist came to me with the startling news that he had encountered an actor who was not a preposterous, strutting, booming megalomaniac. He was much excited about it, and offered proofs. The fellow, he said, was the soul of modesty; never discussed his own beauty; said nothing about his press notices; didn’t aspire to play Hamlet; had no lies about Charles Frohman’s efforts to ensnare him. I forget the name of this marvel, but he actually existed. The point is that he was enough of a curiosity to get that dramatist into a cold sweat.

Another dramatist of my acquaintance cherishes two such discoveries. One of his humble actors is a lowly comedian; the other is a star–not a star of the first magnitude, perhaps, but still a star. He is never tired of talking about the pair, boasting about them, even lying about them. I myself also know two such—and one is a star. They are educated, intelligent men. They wear no outlandish clothes. They never mention the fact—patent enough in their cases—that they are good at their trade.

But why is the average actor everything that these men are not: a bombastic, noisy self-praiser; a bitter enemy of all other men who presume to meet him on his own ground; a master of the monologue? Two things, I suppose, help him to his folly. One is the fact that actors in general are treated by the press and public as if they were artists, pubic benefactors, persons of importance—which they are not. The other is the fact that the mere desire to act, when it appears in a healthy human male, is a presumptive indication of inherent silliness. It may, true enough, reveal the great artist, the Antoine, the Macready—but the chances are that it actually reveals the animated clothes-horse.

Imagine a young man at the threshold of life, casting about him for a career. If there is any solid stuff in that young man, if real capacity is in him and a true yearning to conquer difficulties, he will turn to business, to the law, to medicine, to to music, to burglary—to some vocation requiring sustained effort, alert intelligence, hard work in the heat of the day. But if he is vain and vacant-minded, a poseur, a pretty fellow, then he will turn to acting. In brief, the impulse to act is in itself, nine times out of ten, all the proof that is needed of the actor’s inherent stupidity and overmastering vanity. In the occasional artist it may be something high and noble—an irresistible yearning for self-expression. But in the average actor it is merely a yearning for self-exhibition.

Here we come to an explanation of a fact that has often engaged theatrical psychologists in my hearing—the fact, to wit, that the average actress is far more intelligent, far more modest and far more efficient than the the average actor. Why? Simply because the impulse to act, when it appears in a young woman, is a thousand times more natural and creditable than when it appears in a young man. Acting is. in many respects, the most inviting profession open to women. A woman cannot shine in business, she must be content with leavings at the bar, in medicine she is sorely handicapped, in most other trades and professions the cards are stacked againbt her. But in acting she has a fair chance. Hard work is sure to bring her rich rewards. And dissimulation and parading are native to her sex. A woman who constantly considers the visual effect she is producing is merely a normal woman. A man who constantly considers the visual effect he is producing is an intolerable donkey.

The result of all this is that acting invites the woman who is normal and sensible, just as it invites the man who is subnormal and senseless. The second result is that a two hour’s conversation with the average actress is no more exhausting than a similar encounter with any other woman, while a two hours’ conversation with the average actor is enough to send most men galloping to the nearest madhouse.

From actors who sign their names to magazine articles written by their press agents, from Ascot cravats and Pennsylvania cigars, from anti-vivisectionists and the poetry of Horace Traubel—good Lord, deliver us!

H. L. Mencken