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Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History
A charming and anecdotal account of Baltimore history―as fresh today as it was when first published in 1928. A teacher of English and English History at the Friends School in Baltimore, Letitia Stockett was inspired to write her whimsical history of the city when a friend told her that nothing much had been done in the way of a history of Baltimore since J. Thomas Scharf's The Chronicles of Baltimore (1874). Rising to the challenge, she spent all of her spare time on the book, telling curious friends and family merely that she "had work to do." A Not Too Serious History was the result, a charming and anecdotal account of the city's history that is as fresh today as it was when first published in 1928. "Would you know Baltimore? Then put deliberately out of your mind the fact that the town makes more straw hats than any other city in the world. Aesthetically speaking, that is a fearsome thought. Forget, too, that Baltimore is the centre of the oyster packing industry. Worse, far worse than a straw hat is a packed oyster; Baltimoreans ought to know better. In truth they do; they export the tinned bivalve to the unsuspecting, unsophisticated Westerner. These two enterprises are worthy and profitable, but a knowledge of these facts will not help you understand this city any more truly than the study of those long lists of products once diligently conned in school gave you an inkling of Tunis, Singapore and Wilkes-Barre."―from A Not too Serious History
384 pages, Paperback
First published June 19, 1997
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October 25, 2015
Baltimore is a quirky and distinctive American city with a fascinating history, as Letitia Stockett makes clear in her book Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History. While this book, first published in 1928, is dated – sometimes painfully dated – in a number of its sensibilities, the city’s cultural distinctiveness, along with its importance to American history generally, becomes clear over the course of Stockett’s narrative.
Stockett, a Baltimore native whose education began at the city’s Eastern High School and concluded with a degree from Goucher College, had been teaching at Baltimore’s Friends School when a colleague pointed out to her that the city’s story had not been told by an historian in fifty years. Stockett applied herself to the task with energy and enthusiasm, exploring the city’s streets and neighborhoods and setting down their stories in an anecdotal manner.
Starting in the historic Mount Vernon neighborhood, with its iconic Washington Monument (the first in the nation), Stockett takes the reader on a consistently interesting journey through historic areas of Baltimore: the Battle Monument, Little Italy, Charles Street, Howard Street, Greenmount.
Stockett’s enthusiasm for all things Baltimore comes through in a description of the old Fountain Inn that once stood on Light Street:
“The bright gushing fountain on the sign board was welcome indeed to Washington, who always made this house his headquarters. Here, too, came Lafayette, and here Francis Scott Key on the morning after the bombardment of Fort McHenry. On a breakfast table at the Fountain, Key read again the scribbled copy of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and revised it with the loving care of a poet, while the waiter drew his ale and brought him – whatever people ate for breakfast in 1814. And the food at the Fountain was Lucullan. Never were there such oysters, such canvasback duck, such terrapin. Never such venison, such meat pies or such lusty draughts of punch and cider – to say nothing of sherry, port and burgundy. Pure gushing water was all very well upon the sign board, but the table told another story.” (p. 100)
Stockett provides a comparable level of detail regarding all that she cares about in Baltimore. Consider, for example, her meditations on Old Saint Paul’s Church, a beautiful and historic edifice that Stockett accurately identifies as “the mother church of all the Anglican parishes in Baltimore” (p. 201). She writes lovingly of the church, inviting the reader to “Clear away now all that impedes your view; remove all adjacent shops and offices; eliminate the traffic policeman. Now you can see clearly a fair and spacious plot of ground and a plain dignified Georgian building of warm red brick. The windows were set with small panes of clear glass. The roof, peaked, with a cornice slightly extending over the corners was crowned with a quaint steeple. Many trees cast their shadows on the churchyard lawn” (p. 203). I love Old Saint Paul’s. And if you’re reading Stockett’s book, then I hope you love Old Saint Paul’s too; because Stockett spends eight pages on it.
Indeed, Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History is very much a white and mostly upper-class version of Baltimore’s life as a city. Edgar Allan Poe, who began his literary career in Baltimore, and later died and was buried there, gets his fair share of recognition: “Can’t you see that shabbily dressed haughty figure on Light Street!” (p. 77). But what about Frederick Douglass, who came to Baltimore as a young man, taught himself to read and write in Baltimore, forged in Baltimore his unquenchable determination to be free? Not one word from Stockett about him. Indeed, to read Stockett’s dismissive and often demeaning words regarding the African Americans of Baltimore – a city where African-American culture has always been so strong and vibrant that, even in slavery times, Baltimore was known as “freedom’s port” – is profoundly disheartening. In those passages of the book, one is reminded of much that was worst about life in Baltimore, and in Maryland, and in the United States of America, in 1928.
The reader is likely to be much more comfortable reading passages like those in which Stockett considers H.L. Mencken, the journalist, writer, and editor known then and now as “the Sage of Baltimore.” Stockett writes appreciatively of Mencken’s home in the city’s west end: “No wonder he commutes to New York. Solid and red and white it faces Union Square – one of those green patches that do so much to relieve the tedium of brick in the West End….This comfortable house looks out upon green grass and trees all day long. Could one get this in New York? In the centre of the Square is a pleasant fountain, and nearby…a sort of Belvedere with a prim Greek cupola. Neat flower beds planted in the manner of the seventies with coleus and petunias give colour to the spotless lawns. Old men dozed in the sunny corners; a horse occasionally clop clopped by on the north side of the Square. Mr. Mencken has chosen an abode of peace” (p. 299).
This passage is characteristic in its air of appreciation for Baltimore as a city and as a community. Reprinted as part of Johns Hopkins University’s Maryland Paperback Bookshelf series, this 1997 edition of Stockett’s book benefits from a variety of evocative photographs of Old Baltimore, and from a perceptive foreword by Maryland historian Harold A. Williams. For all of the shortcomings of Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History -- its viewing of the city’s life from a profoundly blinkered viewpoint in terms of race and socioeconomic class – it provides a powerfully detailed look at the life of the city at an earlier point in its history. Students of the life of Baltimore will find the book valuable for that reason alone.
Stockett, a Baltimore native whose education began at the city’s Eastern High School and concluded with a degree from Goucher College, had been teaching at Baltimore’s Friends School when a colleague pointed out to her that the city’s story had not been told by an historian in fifty years. Stockett applied herself to the task with energy and enthusiasm, exploring the city’s streets and neighborhoods and setting down their stories in an anecdotal manner.
Starting in the historic Mount Vernon neighborhood, with its iconic Washington Monument (the first in the nation), Stockett takes the reader on a consistently interesting journey through historic areas of Baltimore: the Battle Monument, Little Italy, Charles Street, Howard Street, Greenmount.
Stockett’s enthusiasm for all things Baltimore comes through in a description of the old Fountain Inn that once stood on Light Street:
“The bright gushing fountain on the sign board was welcome indeed to Washington, who always made this house his headquarters. Here, too, came Lafayette, and here Francis Scott Key on the morning after the bombardment of Fort McHenry. On a breakfast table at the Fountain, Key read again the scribbled copy of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and revised it with the loving care of a poet, while the waiter drew his ale and brought him – whatever people ate for breakfast in 1814. And the food at the Fountain was Lucullan. Never were there such oysters, such canvasback duck, such terrapin. Never such venison, such meat pies or such lusty draughts of punch and cider – to say nothing of sherry, port and burgundy. Pure gushing water was all very well upon the sign board, but the table told another story.” (p. 100)
Stockett provides a comparable level of detail regarding all that she cares about in Baltimore. Consider, for example, her meditations on Old Saint Paul’s Church, a beautiful and historic edifice that Stockett accurately identifies as “the mother church of all the Anglican parishes in Baltimore” (p. 201). She writes lovingly of the church, inviting the reader to “Clear away now all that impedes your view; remove all adjacent shops and offices; eliminate the traffic policeman. Now you can see clearly a fair and spacious plot of ground and a plain dignified Georgian building of warm red brick. The windows were set with small panes of clear glass. The roof, peaked, with a cornice slightly extending over the corners was crowned with a quaint steeple. Many trees cast their shadows on the churchyard lawn” (p. 203). I love Old Saint Paul’s. And if you’re reading Stockett’s book, then I hope you love Old Saint Paul’s too; because Stockett spends eight pages on it.
Indeed, Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History is very much a white and mostly upper-class version of Baltimore’s life as a city. Edgar Allan Poe, who began his literary career in Baltimore, and later died and was buried there, gets his fair share of recognition: “Can’t you see that shabbily dressed haughty figure on Light Street!” (p. 77). But what about Frederick Douglass, who came to Baltimore as a young man, taught himself to read and write in Baltimore, forged in Baltimore his unquenchable determination to be free? Not one word from Stockett about him. Indeed, to read Stockett’s dismissive and often demeaning words regarding the African Americans of Baltimore – a city where African-American culture has always been so strong and vibrant that, even in slavery times, Baltimore was known as “freedom’s port” – is profoundly disheartening. In those passages of the book, one is reminded of much that was worst about life in Baltimore, and in Maryland, and in the United States of America, in 1928.
The reader is likely to be much more comfortable reading passages like those in which Stockett considers H.L. Mencken, the journalist, writer, and editor known then and now as “the Sage of Baltimore.” Stockett writes appreciatively of Mencken’s home in the city’s west end: “No wonder he commutes to New York. Solid and red and white it faces Union Square – one of those green patches that do so much to relieve the tedium of brick in the West End….This comfortable house looks out upon green grass and trees all day long. Could one get this in New York? In the centre of the Square is a pleasant fountain, and nearby…a sort of Belvedere with a prim Greek cupola. Neat flower beds planted in the manner of the seventies with coleus and petunias give colour to the spotless lawns. Old men dozed in the sunny corners; a horse occasionally clop clopped by on the north side of the Square. Mr. Mencken has chosen an abode of peace” (p. 299).
This passage is characteristic in its air of appreciation for Baltimore as a city and as a community. Reprinted as part of Johns Hopkins University’s Maryland Paperback Bookshelf series, this 1997 edition of Stockett’s book benefits from a variety of evocative photographs of Old Baltimore, and from a perceptive foreword by Maryland historian Harold A. Williams. For all of the shortcomings of Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History -- its viewing of the city’s life from a profoundly blinkered viewpoint in terms of race and socioeconomic class – it provides a powerfully detailed look at the life of the city at an earlier point in its history. Students of the life of Baltimore will find the book valuable for that reason alone.
July 15, 2022
As a precursor to a review, it’s so very weird for me to read a book that includes such blatant racism in an unapologetic manner that it’s almost funny as well as horrifying. That said, this book is so full of the early history of the city and its characters and places that I can’t believe I really live there and didn’t know any of this. I grew up around all of these places and had no idea of their history or why they were there. I just saw them at the time and never wondered what they meant or where they came from. Let’s hear it for idiotic childish ignorance. I’m going to file this under anthropology because the authors prejudices are also part of the story
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