In a never-before-seen photo, Clarence Darrow (standing, right) spars
with William Jennings Bryan (seated, left) on the first day of the
Scopes trial, held outdoors due to the heat, 80 years ago today.
Bryan died five days after the trial’s end.
Click to enlarge.

The Smithsonian has discovered a trove of some 60 photographs taken in Dayton, Tennessee, during the Scopes trial in July of 1925. The portion of the photos they’ve put online are a fascinating document, showing (among many other things) that by comparison we in 2005 should hang our heads in shame at our disgraceful wardrobes. I wish devoutly that I could wear an elegant straw skimmer like that gracing the head of young John Thomas Scopes without fear of reprisal at the hands of louts. I’d even wear it backwards if that would help. Ah, well.

The intimacy of these new photographs, and their evocation of a time so far and yet so depressingly near to ours, bring to mind the words of another eyewitness to these events, who might well be visible somewhere in that crowd, H. L. Mencken:

When I first encountered [Bryan], on the sidewalk in front of the office of the rustic lawyers who were his associates in the Scopes case, the trial was yet to begin, and so he was expansive and amiable. I had printed in the Nation, a week or so before, an article arguing that the Tennessee anti-evolution law, whatever its wisdom, was at least constitutional — that the yahoos of the State had a clear right to have their progeny taught whatever they chose, and kept secure from whatever knowledge violated their superstitions. The old boy professed to be delighted with the argument, and gave the gaping bystanders to understand that I was a publicist of parts. Not to be outdone, I admired the preposterous country shirt that he wore — sleeveless and with the neck cut very low. We parted in the manner of two ambassadors.

[Somebody please help me: Was Bryan wearing a wifebeater?!?!!?]

But that was the last touch of amiability that I was destined to see in Bryan. The next day [the day photographed above] the battle joined and his face became hard. By the end of the week he was simply a walking fever. Hour by hour he grew more bitter. What the Christian Scientists call malicious animal magnetism seemed to radiate from him like heat from a stove. From my place in the courtroom, standing upon a table, I looked directly down on him, sweating horribly and pumping his palm-leaf fan. His eyes fascinated me; I watched them all day long. They were blazing points of hatred….

Thus he fought his last fight, thirsting savagely for blood. All sense departed from him. He bit right and left, like a dog with rabies. He descended to demagogy so dreadful that his very associates at the trial table blushed. His one yearning was to keep his yokels heated up — to lead his forlorn mob of imbeciles against the foe. That foe, alas, refused to be alarmed. It insisted upon seeing the whole battle as a comedy. Even Darrow, who knew better, occasionally yielded to the prevailing spirit. One day he lured poor Bryan into the folly I have mentioned: his astounding argument against the notion that man is a mammal. I am glad I heard it, for otherwise I’d never believe it. There stood the man who had been thrice a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic — there he stood in the glare of the world, uttering stuff that a boy of eight would laugh at. The artful Darrow led him on: he repeated it, ranted for it, bellowed it in his cracked voice. So he was prepared for the final slaughter. He came into life a hero, a Galahad, in bright and shining armor. He was passing out a poor mountebank.

– from In Memoriam: W. J. B.

It’s quite possible our standards for polemical writing have decayed along with our dress sense.