He is a man of middle height, straight, slim, dark, with eyes like the middle of August, black hair which he brushes back à la francaise, and a rather sullen mouth…. He never reads the political news in the papers…. He was born, as the expression has it, with a gold spoon in his mouth. He has never had to work for a living…. His telephone operator, at his apartment, has a list of five persons to whom he will talk – so many and no more. He refuses to answer the telephone before five o’clock in the afternoon…. He never visits a house a second time in which he has encountered dogs, cats, children, automatic pianos, grace before or after meals, women authors, actors, The New Republic, or prints of the Mona Lisa…. He own three top hats, fourteen walking sticks, and two Russian wolf-hounds.
—George Jean Nathan qtd. in Terry Teachout’s The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken.