H.L. Mencken house in Baltimore.
August 11: Blows are exchanged between Ernest Hemingway and Max Eastman in Maxwell Perkins’ office on this day in 1937 after Hemingway rips open his shirt to show he really does have chest hair following an insult by Eastman in print. “Come out from behind that false hair on your chest,” Eastman wrote. The encounter is detailed in the NYT obit on Hemingway.
August 12: Death in Zurich on this day in 1955 for writer Thomas Mann.
August 13: The Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, is criticized by the Baltimore Chamber for damaging trade between the Maryland city with the South because of Mencken’s harsh criticism of the South in his coverage of the Scopes Trial in 1925.
August 14: Samuel Johnson meet James Boswell’s wife on this day in 1773 during a visit to Edinburgh to see his friend “Bozzy.” Margaret Boswell not impressed by the man who is the subject of her husband’s biography Life of Samuel Johnson.
August 15: Sir Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe, is born in Edinburgh. In Scotland, saw no less than three monuments dedicated to him.
