“To say that [Baltimore] is an ugly city is to give an altogether false impression, for ugliness ordinarily is construed as a negative quality, the absence of beauty. The astounding, the incredible, the downright fabulous ugliness of Baltimore, on the other hand, is distinctively a positive quality. The amazed newcomer to the city is almost persuaded that she studied ugliness, practiced it long and toilsomely, made a philosophy of ugliness and raised it to a fine art, so that in the end it has become a work of genius more fascinating than spick-and-span tidiness could ever be.” – Gerald W. Johnson, Century Magazine, 1928
Gerald W. Johnson has a brief biography written before the first of his two recipe contributions to “Eat Drink and Be Merry in Maryland,” in which he is noted as a biographer of Andrew Jackson and John Randolph of Roanoke. Nearly 100 years later, Johnson is more remembered for his outspoken liberal (for the time) opinions than by these works.
Born in North Carolina in 1890, he moved to Baltimore in 1926 and remained here for the rest of his life, writing for the Evening Sun in addition to many national publications. Johnson reflected on national politics from a Southern perspective, but also on Maryland issues – upon his arrival, he wrote, he was surprised to see the Taney statue; “in a respectable city I should as soon expected to find a statue of Beelzebub.” Johnson spent many of his years in Maryland at a home on 1310 Bolton Street. He had more recently been living in Towson when he died in 1980.
From the vantage of this Union state just below the Mason-Dixon line, Johnson famously criticized the South and the glorification of a war that had been lost because “God Almighty had decreed that slavery had to go.”
According to biographer Vincent Fitzpatrick:
“In Johnson’s published assessments, the Agrarians had a flawed vision of Southern history; they gloried in a storybook past that existed only in their own minds. Moreover, he thought them sheltered from the more unattractive aspects of contemporary Southern life. He recognized that they were highly literate, patriotic, and well-intentioned, but he found them a dangerous foe that needed to be vanquished. The Agrarians, in turn, saw Johnson as a flaming liberal, a Menckenite, and a turncoat, now living with the enemy, whose criticism profaned his native land.” – Gerald W. Johnson: From Southern Liberal to National Conscience, Vincent Fitzpatrick
Frederick Phillip Steiff promoted this romanticized view of Southern sensibility in “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland.” Nonetheless, he proudly included Johnson’s recipes for “Stuffed Eggplant” and “Artichokes from Armenia” along with the short bio of Johnson. The two men possibly met through connections at the Hamilton Street Club, which is said to have been the nexus of Johnson’s Baltimore social life.
Gerald W. Johnson’s writings stand in contrast to his friend and Sun paper colleague H.L. Mencken. Johnson wrote with a fair share of outrage, but a sense of optimism in a time when social change appeared to be underway. In 1965, he wrote:
“The historical significance of this republic is simply that it affords men an opportunity to learn how to be free, unhampered by the bonds that Church and State have laid upon the generations of the past; but every rational man knows that the heaviest bonds of Church and State were not as weighty as the gyves locked upon our wrists by passion, prejudice, ignorance, and superstition.”
Despite Gerald W. Johnson’s tirades against inequality, Fitzpatrick points out that Johnson still paradoxically defended segregation and was known as a “liberal segregationist.” Again: there are no heroes in history. Johnson’s writing attempted to turn an eye on the contradictions of society – many of which we are still grappling with today.
Recipe:
- eggplant
- salt
- Ground meat (esp lamb)
- small amount cooked rice
- Seeded raisins
- Black pepper
- breadcrumbs
- butter
Remove the stem from the eggplant and cut it in half lengthwise. Boil in salted water until the meaty inside of the eggplant is tender enough to be scooped out with a spoon, (about fifteen minutes). Mix the scooped out eggplant with ground meat, preferably lamb (*I seasoned my lamb with ras el hanout and it was great), a small amount of cooked rice, some seeded raisins and salt and pepper to taste. Pack the mixture back into the shell, and place in a greased baking dish. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and dot with butter, and bake at 375° for fifteen minutes, or until the top is lightly browned. (Maybe stick it under the broiler for a few seconds for a more dramatic effect.)
Recipe Adapted from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland”
