Robert Quillen – Mark Twain or a Mencken?
Mill-Town Philosopher Reflects Southern Attitudes Between the Warss
Jun 3, 2009
In his book, The Voice of Small-Town America, the Selected Writings of Robert Quillen, John Hammond Moore says neither yes nor no. He just provides the evidence and stands out of the way to let the reader evaluate it. What results is a fascinatingly candid insight into small-town South Carolina in the period between the world wars.
Fountain Inn is a small town adjoining Interstate 385 about 15 miles southeast of Greenville, S.C. In the early 20th century, it was a textile mill town of around 2,500 people – an unlikely launching pad for a philosopher.
The Fountain Inn Tribune
A Kansas native, Robert Quillen arrived in Fountain Inn on the eve of World War I to publish the Fountain Inn Tribune. In time, he used the Tribune as a platform from which he could pitch pithy “paragraphs,” quirky editorial essays and hometown humor to more than 400 papers and some of the leading magazines of the day. America absorbed the view from Fountain Inn on subjects such as whiskey, smoking, religion, Roosevelt, Japan, politicians, blue jays and lovelorn cows.
The Tribune was in many ways a spoof of small-town newspapers. Quillen flavored it with his own dime-store philosophy, parodies and veiled jabs at local icons.
Wedding Announcement Spoof
One of his most popular articles was a spoof of a wedding announcement: “The bride is a skinny, fast little idiot who has been kissed and handled by every boy in town since she was 12 years old.”
Bounties for Blue Jays
He offered five-cent bounties for the heads of blue jays because they drove off his beloved songbirds. He had a similar hatred of cats – for the same reason.
But his letters to Louise, his adopted daughter, are full of tenderness and fatherly wisdom. He published them as columns.
Quillen could write lovingly of his town, his state and his region. But when he chose to turn caustic, he could out-scathe Mencken.
Jesus-Shouting Trash
The majority of South Carolinians, he said, are “dirt – psalm-singing, Jesus-shouting, liquor-guzzling, thieving trash, without the slightest conception of the meaning of honor – constitutionally incapable of decency – inherently filthy in mind, soul and body.”
His theory was that the majority of the state’s white population was descended from white indentured servants, “the scum of England’s gutters” and “a depraved, broken and filthy herd of cattle.”
Using the 'N' Word
Quillen’s attitude toward the black man was more condescension than hostility. He wrote: “When two races occupy the same land there seldom is trouble if the inferior race willingly accepts its inferior status and feels no resentment.” He used the “n” word frequently and casually, and Moore let it stand.
A Hint of Anti-Semitism
There was a hint of anti-Semitism in his thinking on the eve of the Holocaust. Of the New York Times, he wrote disapprovingly: “Its news from Europe too often is mere editorial interpretation flavored with the smoke of Sinai.”
The best description of Quillen’s work is the one he himself penned for his tongue-in-cheek obituary in 1932: “He was a writer of paragraphs and short editorials. He always hoped to write something of permanent value, but the business of making a living took most of his time and he never got around to it.”
On the evidence of Moore’s entertaining and enlightening collection of writings, Mencken remains unanswered and Twain remains unchallenged.
