A Founder of the Fortean Society—but not, in any real sense, a Fortean.
Which indicates a pattern among Founders, it would seem.
Harry Elmer Barnes was born 15 June 1889 in Auburn, New York, making him about Fort’s junior by about fifteen years. He received a Ph.D. in history from Columbia in 1918. Barnes became a respected and sought-after writer and lecturer on all manner of historical, sociological, and economic topics. He was associated with the circle of thinkers around H. L. Mencken that viewed American parochialism and obeisance to Puritan values stifling. In 1928, for example, as Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science he gave an address called “Science vs. Religion”; the next year he wrote a book called “The Twilight of Christianity” which was not a defense of atheism—he said—but was heralded by one reviewer as the most important critical appraisal of religion since Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason.”
That year also saw him give up a position at Smith College to become editor with the Scripps-Howard newspaper service, which he continued until 1940. He continued to write magazine articles and books at a furious pace, though, and his bibliography is immense. He was one of the leading advocates of a historical school known as the Revisionists, which critically evaluated orthodoxy—a Fortean endeavor, no? Among the conclusions he championed was that Germany was not responsible for the Great War and had been vilified by the Allies. (Including by a younger Harry Elmer Barnes, who had been pro-War in the teens.) Although Barnes was associated with Mencken and had given up academia for journalism, he was far from opposed to academic thinking.
Which indicates a pattern among Founders, it would seem.
Harry Elmer Barnes was born 15 June 1889 in Auburn, New York, making him about Fort’s junior by about fifteen years. He received a Ph.D. in history from Columbia in 1918. Barnes became a respected and sought-after writer and lecturer on all manner of historical, sociological, and economic topics. He was associated with the circle of thinkers around H. L. Mencken that viewed American parochialism and obeisance to Puritan values stifling. In 1928, for example, as Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science he gave an address called “Science vs. Religion”; the next year he wrote a book called “The Twilight of Christianity” which was not a defense of atheism—he said—but was heralded by one reviewer as the most important critical appraisal of religion since Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason.”
That year also saw him give up a position at Smith College to become editor with the Scripps-Howard newspaper service, which he continued until 1940. He continued to write magazine articles and books at a furious pace, though, and his bibliography is immense. He was one of the leading advocates of a historical school known as the Revisionists, which critically evaluated orthodoxy—a Fortean endeavor, no? Among the conclusions he championed was that Germany was not responsible for the Great War and had been vilified by the Allies. (Including by a younger Harry Elmer Barnes, who had been pro-War in the teens.) Although Barnes was associated with Mencken and had given up academia for journalism, he was far from opposed to academic thinking.
In 1931, for example, he wrote an article on the need for Modernists to more thoroughly accept the importance of science to the re-arrangement of religion. He concluded that the traditional religious quest for the good life would not reach its culmination in revealed theological dogmas—that still reeked of “the medicine man,” as did so much so-called Modernist thinking. Rather, it was the social scientist—men like him—who would sketch out the structure and practice of the good life. Science was a necessary and sufficient tool to discover how best to live.
By the 1940s, Barnes’s star was fading. His revisionism had led him to oppose World War II, which put him outside the main circles of intellectual thought. Indeed, Barnes, who no longer classed himself as a liberal, thought that the war would end Liberalism tout court. Barnes was, of course, wrong about the War ending liberalism—it became a defining feature of the post-War scene—and so he spent the next quarter century opposing it, applying to it the tools of Revisionism he had honed earlier. He argued that World War II had again been started by the opponents of Germanys and that Hitler had been a reasonable man. This view inevitably merged into denial of Germany’s atrocities.
His books in this period were increasingly self-published.
Harry Elmer Barnes died 25 August 1968 in Malibu, California. He was 79.
********************
It is easy enough to see continuities between Barnes and the Fortean Society as it came to be administered by Tiffany Thayer. Thayer collected a number of revisionists and German apologists in his club. Thayer was stridently opposed to World War II, though not because of political allegiances, but, rather, from his pacifism. Still, another voice in opposition would have been welcomed. Barnes’s opposition to old-time religion fit well, too, though not his advocating the authority of science. He fit well enough into the mold of the skeptic at the time, along the lines of T. Swann Harding, which was mostly skeptical of conventional religion. His opposition to historic orthodoxies, so called, would have also been a good fit.
And yet, that was not the case. Barnes did little more than lend his name to the cause, and was quick to repudiate any continued connection.
In November 1930, after Thayer had broached the idea of founding a Fortean Society to advertise Fort’s third book, “Lo!”—an idea original formulated by J. David Stern—Dreiser wrote friends recruiting them to the cause. Among those to receive copies of “Book of the Damned” and “New Lands” was Harry Elmer Barnes, who was a friend of Dreiser. It was enough, seemingly, to get Barnes interested. He was announced as founder of the Society in publicity from the middle of January, and was supposed to be at the meeting, on 26 January, but he did not make it, for whatever reason. Still, in later write-ups on Fort’s book, Barnes continued to be enumerated among the Founders.
But he was immediately leery of such association. A St. Louis “Post-Dispatch” article on Fort, the Fortean Society, and “Lo!” that ran 31 May 1931—the publicity paid off, the article covered an entire page—it was noted, “Harry Elmer Barnes is a Fortean to the extent of believing that science really ought to try to explain some of the phenomena Mr. Fort has collected.” He was in the tradition of Maynard Shipley and others who did not like religion, and so science as a bulwark against it, but worried that science had blindspots and was missing a chance for more explanations and further expansion. (There is no mention of Fort in the correspondence between Barnes and Dreiser, and so no further elaboration.)
Barnes was never again connected to the Society in any way of which he approved—and he dismissed it publicly. In September 1937, when Thayer’s plan to revive the Society caused a break with Dreiser, Dreiser’s lawyer sent letters to the various founders asking for their opinion on the Society. Barnes’s response was brief—it was a phony organization. The next month, he wrote an article to “Time” magazine protesting his continued association with the Society in public reports.
The letter seems to have been edited for publication, with ellipses in the original, but the gist is quite clear:
“Barnes's Repudiation
Sirs:
I noted in your issue of Sept. 27, an article implying that a number of American authors, including myself, have approved and sponsored the scientific writings and dogmas of Charles Fort.
I can speak only for myself, but certainly I have never approved any of the late Mr. Fort's quaint scientific notions. . . .
Some years ago personal friends of Charles Fort wrote me and apparently the other so-called "sponsors," stating that Mr. Fort was in straitened circumstances, that he needed to market his works, and that he could get no fair hearing for them. I was asked to subscribe to the opinion that they were interesting and worth reading, which I gladly did then and would do now. I have never regarded them as other than a contribution to curious literature and chaste levity. They are amusing and edifying and will certainly not mislead anybody worth misleading.
Later an attempt was made to represent those who had approved Mr. Fort's writings as esoteric literature as being followers of his ideas. I promptly and publicly repudiated any such implication ... in my column in the Scripps-Howard newspapers. Indeed, so far as I know, Benjamin DeCasseres is the only writer, aside from Mr. [Tiffany] Thayer, who has ever taken Fort seriously as a scientist. It is not likely that such persons as the late Justice Holmes, Lincoln Steffens and myself would entertain any such views as those implicit in Mr. Fort's writings. . . .”
Seemingly because of the—as Time called it—repudiation, Thayer quite using Barnes’s name. It was his habit to replace those Founders who had passed with new Honorary Founders. But he replaced Barnes no later than 1944—which was when he started the project of naming Honorary Founders—and perhaps earlier; in either case, long before Barnes had passed. Barnes’s name was replaced by another skeptic and public intellectual, T. Swann Harding. Thayer also never devoted an issue of the Fortean Society magazine to Barnes, as he did many other founders.
Even as early as it happened, the replacement was a long time coming, and it is hard to know why Thayer bothered to list Barnes as a Founder—if only to note that he had been replaced—give there were other people who lent their name to the Society early on who were never mentioned again.
Unless Thayer wanted to associate the Society, albeit obliquely, with Barnes's political stances.
By the 1940s, Barnes’s star was fading. His revisionism had led him to oppose World War II, which put him outside the main circles of intellectual thought. Indeed, Barnes, who no longer classed himself as a liberal, thought that the war would end Liberalism tout court. Barnes was, of course, wrong about the War ending liberalism—it became a defining feature of the post-War scene—and so he spent the next quarter century opposing it, applying to it the tools of Revisionism he had honed earlier. He argued that World War II had again been started by the opponents of Germanys and that Hitler had been a reasonable man. This view inevitably merged into denial of Germany’s atrocities.
His books in this period were increasingly self-published.
Harry Elmer Barnes died 25 August 1968 in Malibu, California. He was 79.
********************
It is easy enough to see continuities between Barnes and the Fortean Society as it came to be administered by Tiffany Thayer. Thayer collected a number of revisionists and German apologists in his club. Thayer was stridently opposed to World War II, though not because of political allegiances, but, rather, from his pacifism. Still, another voice in opposition would have been welcomed. Barnes’s opposition to old-time religion fit well, too, though not his advocating the authority of science. He fit well enough into the mold of the skeptic at the time, along the lines of T. Swann Harding, which was mostly skeptical of conventional religion. His opposition to historic orthodoxies, so called, would have also been a good fit.
And yet, that was not the case. Barnes did little more than lend his name to the cause, and was quick to repudiate any continued connection.
In November 1930, after Thayer had broached the idea of founding a Fortean Society to advertise Fort’s third book, “Lo!”—an idea original formulated by J. David Stern—Dreiser wrote friends recruiting them to the cause. Among those to receive copies of “Book of the Damned” and “New Lands” was Harry Elmer Barnes, who was a friend of Dreiser. It was enough, seemingly, to get Barnes interested. He was announced as founder of the Society in publicity from the middle of January, and was supposed to be at the meeting, on 26 January, but he did not make it, for whatever reason. Still, in later write-ups on Fort’s book, Barnes continued to be enumerated among the Founders.
But he was immediately leery of such association. A St. Louis “Post-Dispatch” article on Fort, the Fortean Society, and “Lo!” that ran 31 May 1931—the publicity paid off, the article covered an entire page—it was noted, “Harry Elmer Barnes is a Fortean to the extent of believing that science really ought to try to explain some of the phenomena Mr. Fort has collected.” He was in the tradition of Maynard Shipley and others who did not like religion, and so science as a bulwark against it, but worried that science had blindspots and was missing a chance for more explanations and further expansion. (There is no mention of Fort in the correspondence between Barnes and Dreiser, and so no further elaboration.)
Barnes was never again connected to the Society in any way of which he approved—and he dismissed it publicly. In September 1937, when Thayer’s plan to revive the Society caused a break with Dreiser, Dreiser’s lawyer sent letters to the various founders asking for their opinion on the Society. Barnes’s response was brief—it was a phony organization. The next month, he wrote an article to “Time” magazine protesting his continued association with the Society in public reports.
The letter seems to have been edited for publication, with ellipses in the original, but the gist is quite clear:
“Barnes's Repudiation
Sirs:
I noted in your issue of Sept. 27, an article implying that a number of American authors, including myself, have approved and sponsored the scientific writings and dogmas of Charles Fort.
I can speak only for myself, but certainly I have never approved any of the late Mr. Fort's quaint scientific notions. . . .
Some years ago personal friends of Charles Fort wrote me and apparently the other so-called "sponsors," stating that Mr. Fort was in straitened circumstances, that he needed to market his works, and that he could get no fair hearing for them. I was asked to subscribe to the opinion that they were interesting and worth reading, which I gladly did then and would do now. I have never regarded them as other than a contribution to curious literature and chaste levity. They are amusing and edifying and will certainly not mislead anybody worth misleading.
Later an attempt was made to represent those who had approved Mr. Fort's writings as esoteric literature as being followers of his ideas. I promptly and publicly repudiated any such implication ... in my column in the Scripps-Howard newspapers. Indeed, so far as I know, Benjamin DeCasseres is the only writer, aside from Mr. [Tiffany] Thayer, who has ever taken Fort seriously as a scientist. It is not likely that such persons as the late Justice Holmes, Lincoln Steffens and myself would entertain any such views as those implicit in Mr. Fort's writings. . . .”
Seemingly because of the—as Time called it—repudiation, Thayer quite using Barnes’s name. It was his habit to replace those Founders who had passed with new Honorary Founders. But he replaced Barnes no later than 1944—which was when he started the project of naming Honorary Founders—and perhaps earlier; in either case, long before Barnes had passed. Barnes’s name was replaced by another skeptic and public intellectual, T. Swann Harding. Thayer also never devoted an issue of the Fortean Society magazine to Barnes, as he did many other founders.
Even as early as it happened, the replacement was a long time coming, and it is hard to know why Thayer bothered to list Barnes as a Founder—if only to note that he had been replaced—give there were other people who lent their name to the Society early on who were never mentioned again.
Unless Thayer wanted to associate the Society, albeit obliquely, with Barnes's political stances.
