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The View from Summit Avenue: Inspiration Point for ’s

ralph l. goldstein

n a fine June morning in 1903, eighteen- stay, he cranked out more stories to pay the Oyear-old Harry Sinclair Lewis emerged bills while imagining scenes including the view from the Clarendon Hotel at Sixth and Waba- from the cliff that ultimately found a place in sha Streets and walked to Central High School Main Street, the novel published in 1920 that to take the last of the examinations that might would succeed beyond Lewis’s most optimistic qualify him to enter . He’d trav- expectations in gaining ’s a/ention. eled to Saint Paul and taken the exams the pre- That groundbreaking work, along with Babbi!, vious year, passing only eleven of thirteen. In , , and , 1903, he passed them all. In the late a.ernoons brought him the renown that led in 1930 to following the testing that was conducted over being the first American to win the three days, the 6'1" redheaded boy from Sauk for Literature and continues to secure his place Centre strolled through the capital city in his in the world literary canon. Footloose through- ill-fi/ing clothes. He noted in his diary that he out much of his adult life, Lewis nevertheless “went up to look at the magnificent white mar- regarded his home state as a lodestar, providing ble Capitol, which is being built,”¹ marveled at inspiration for his writing and a comforting the residences on Summit Avenue and the grand place to return. view from the edge of a huge cliff, and declared, This year marks the one hundredth anniver- “I like St. Paul very well be/er than Chi or Mpls. sary of Main Street’s publication, and Saint Paul Woul’d [sic] like to live here.”² has plans to honor Lewis with an exhibition at At the insistence of his Returning to the city in October 1917 as an the Historical Society and a histori- father, Sinclair Lewis accomplished writer of short stories and nov- cal presentation about his life at the History used the Clarendon Hotel as home base in 1902 els that enjoyed a modicum of critical praise, Theatre in 2021.⁴ and 1903 when in town Lewis leased for his wife Grace Hegger Lewis to complete college en- and three-month-old son, Wells, the house at Growing Up “Harry” trance exams. Courtesy of Ramsey County Historical 516 Summit Avenue, which had been built three While growing up in rural Minnesota, young Society. years earlier.³ During their nearly six-month Harry, as he was called then, was seen by some as a misfit. Older brothers Fred and Claude were more outgoing and athletic, intro- spective than the avid reader of history and literature. Lewis’s teenage diary reflects both a fierce a/achment to Sauk Centre and a simul- taneous yearning to flee ’s provincial confines to test his academic prowess in the Ivy League. It shows his developing skill as a keen observer of others and his involvement with peers as an active cribbage player, literary soci- ety president, and yell king at basketball games. Afflicted by a severe case of acne, Lewis was less a/ractive to girls than he would have liked. He particularly pined for the lovely Myra Hendryx, enthusing about her in a diary entry, “What a waist, what a head, what arms, what shoulders,

12 • RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020 and what legs! O, what a charming girl she is of how it ge/eth into the veins of a good man & and how I love her.”⁵ Seizing on any shred of true.”¹² conversation that might indicate interest on her One of Lewis’s first a/empts to depict this part, his hopes went unfulfilled, and in a sort of “virus” crippling the aspirations of the rural payback twenty-two years later, Lewis endowed young is in the “A Theory of Values,” George Babbi/’s wife, whose plump middle-age published in 1906 by the Yale Monthly Maga- neck bagged and whose corsets bulged, with the zine. It begins as a le/er from small-town name Myra.⁶ resident Karl Nelson to college student James Lewis’s father, an esteemed doctor in the Bradford, thanking him for the tour of “hustling community of 2,200, was doubtful about the Minneapo lis, and your chat of courses at the boy’s future. He once remarked to his sons, U. of Minn., of books and of occupations possi- who went on to careers in local agriculture and ble for the college man, [giving] me something medicine, “You boys will always be able to make beside the weather to think about.”¹³ Karl is a a living. But poor Harry, there’s nothing he can store clerk who reads Charles Dickens, follows do.”⁷ Nevertheless, convinced that his youngest politics, and tries to save money to start law son’s passionate aspiration for Yale over colleges school in the Twin Cities, but his hopes evapo- closer to home was sincere, Dr. Lewis agreed to rate as his aged parents need his help with support the boy’s desire to matriculate there. chores and paying the mortgage. Born into a Yale English professor William Lyon Phelps supportive family that saved him from a simi- noted Lewis not taking “the slightest interest in lar fate, Lewis shows in this story his emerging the idols of the place—athletics, societies, and talent for mimicry and ability to capture local so on”⁸ and shared with him an appreciation speech. for Minnesota poet Arthur Upson, who main- Following graduation, Lewis lived in the tained correspondence with Harry a.er they bohemian community of Carmel, , met at Brooks Bookstore in , where and a.er brief stints with newspapers in San Upson worked part-time. Phelps was impressed Francisco and Waterloo, Iowa, he se/led down by Lewis’s frenetic energy and supportive of the in New York City where he met Vogue caption freshman’s early literary efforts that included writer Grace Livingstone Hegger, who became becoming the first member of his class pub- his wife on April 15, 1914.¹⁴ lished in the Yale Literary Magazine.⁹ As the young couple set off two years later Always on — newlyweds Grace and to visit in Sauk Centre, Hegger Lewis Sinclair Lewis loved to Becoming a Writer and the sensed her husband’s nervousness that prairie- travel. They are packed Makings of Main Street village simplicity and his family’s home life up and ready to go in this 1916 image. Courtesy The earliest stirrings for Main Street began in might disappoint her. Mother was welcoming, of the St. Cloud State the summer of 1905 when Lewis returned a.er but Dr. Lewis less so. They were to take their University Archives. his sophomore year to Sauk Centre, where the contrast between the provincial town and the swi. intellectual currents of the East stood out for him in sharp relief. His diary reveals his irri- tation with what he calls “this dull, too-familiar bourgeois life.”¹⁰ But the ennui was broken that summer when Lewis met Charles Dorion, a young lawyer with common interests. Dorion eventually le. town a.er failing to a/ract an ade- quate clientele. Decades later, Lewis explained envisioning for Main Street the character of lawyer Guy Pollock “as a learned, amiable, and ambitious young man . . . who started practice in a prairie village and spiritually starved.”¹¹ Shortly before returning to Yale, Lewis wrote, “‘The village virus’—I shall have to write a book

Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY • 13 Sauk Centre’s Main Street in the early . Courtesy of Sauk Centre Area History Museum.

meals at specific times, keep the connubial bedroom door open at night to let a breeze flow through the house, and avail themselves of the Saturday night bath using hot water from the kitchen tank. Once, when Hegger Lewis suffered from “the curse” and Lewis asked that a break- fast tray be brought to her, his father complained about “New York fol-de-rols” making trouble for the maid. They would have le. in anger the following day had not Dr. Lewis brought home a copy of Woman’s Home Companion containing his son’s story “” and expressed pride over it.¹⁵ The visit enabled Lewis to see the place through his bride’s eyes: exposing her to its puritanical small-mindedness, visualizing Dr. Lewis’s office as Main Street’s Carol Milford Kennico/ might have first seen her husband Will’s, and experiencing his own ambivalence about familial comforts and oppressiveness. He had previously shared with his wife his idea for a novel about “the village virus,” and the ideas continued to germinate a year later in Saint Paul at Summit Avenue’s “lemon meringue pie” house, nicknamed for its bright yellow brick and white trim. The house was the scene of parties described later by Hegger Lewis where Sinclair Lewis grew up in a home/doctor’s office on Third Street in Sauk Centre. Today, the street has been renamed Sinclair Lewis Avenue. From the Prints and Photographs Division, courtesy of both millionaire industrialists and Farmer-Labor the Library of Congress. officials could fraternize and where there was a

14 • RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020 reading by members of Saint Paul’s Li/le Thea- ter Association of one of Lewis’s early ventures, Hobohemia, a play that follows a Midwestern businessman to New York in hopes of winning back his sweetheart enchanted with Greenwich Village’s art scene. The play had a brief run at the Unique Theater on Hennepin Avenue.¹⁶ While living in Saint Paul, Lewis considered writing a novel based on the life of the late rail- road magnate James J. Hill, whose mansion was nearby at 240 Summit Avenue, but Main Street kept nibbling at him.¹⁷ The family stayed at the Summit Avenue house through the winter and early spring. The couple’s sense of belonging in wartime Saint Paul was similarly brief, as Hegger Lewis remembered the criticism leveled at them Sinclair Lewis began early work on his novel Main Street while living at 516 Summit Avenue, for her refusing to discharge a nurse who was although, according to his wife, Grace Hegger Lewis, the home was more conducive to entertain- German, for Lewis’s visit to a lumber camp near ing and parties than solitary writing. Lewis finally had to rent a nearby workroom to concentrate. Cass Lake where there had been labor agitation, Courtesy of Summit Images, LLC – Robert Muschewske and Leaetta Hough. and for his defense of violinist Fritz Kreisler’s support of Austrian artists.¹⁸ Street’s October 23, 1920 publication stoked an Lewis le. the city for New York in of immediate demand that mushroomed through 1918. His wife and son joined him in April. Nu- the holidays such that bookstores struggled to merous short-term rentals around the country keep copies in stock. When a novel reaches followed, but Lewis applied the finishing touches beyond the usual book-buying public, observed to his book back in New York. In her memoir, writer Malcolm Cowley, “it is being purchased Hegger Lewis describes the crea tive process that took place leading up to its publication: A 1920 edition of Sinclair Lewis’s wildly popular Main Street was with us day and night. We novel Main Street. Photo by Jim Umhoefer, courtesy talked about it constantly when we were of Roberta Olson and the alone . . . he o.en phoned me from his work- Sinclair Lewis Foundation. room to tell me some adroit situation which had just come to him or to discuss the right word to use when the thesaurus failed him. He brought home a dozen pages at a time for me to read, never taking his eyes off me as I went through them, and demanding to know what in the pages had caused each change in my expression as I read, what had brought a smile or a laugh, what had made me cry.¹⁹

Main Street Mania The rootlessness and hectic moving from place to place prior to Main Street’s publication did not hamper its ultimate impact. A.er reading the manuscript, Lewis’s publisher Alfred estimated the book might sell 40,000 copies, a number well above the author’s own hopes. Heywood Broun’s review three days before Main

Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY • 15 Sinclair Lewis auto- send their children to be protected from “the graphed and dedicated this photograph to W. wickedness of the universities.” Set at a historic S. Leeds of New York crossroads between earlier traditions and mod- two years after the ern potential, as American rural precedence publication of Main Street in 1922. Courtesy erodes and urban influence looms larger, so of the Local History Center Main Street begins.²² at The Port Washington Carol was born not in a prairie town but in Public Library. Mankato. Her independent streak leads her to want “to be different from brisk efficient book-ignoring people,” and as senior year ap- proaches, she cycles through career possibili- ties: town planner, teacher, and, following the advice of an English professor, librarian. A.er graduation from Blodge/ and a course in pro- fessional library work, Carol finds herself “not unhappy and . . . not exhilarated,”²³ employed at the Saint Paul Public Library. One Sunday evening in 1912 at the invitation of a friend, Carol is at supper talking extensively with a doctor visiting from rural Gopher Prairie, by families in the remoter villages, families Will Kennico/, who wonders if she’s sick of the which acquire no more than ten books in a gen- city. As Lewis himself noted as a teen about Saint eration. In the year 1921, if you visited the parlor Paul, Carol declares, “I don’t know of any lovelier of almost any boarding house, you would see a view than when you stand on Summit Avenue copy of Main Street standing between the Bible and look across Lower Town to the Mississippi and Ben Hur.”²⁰ cliffs and the upland farms beyond.” Will knows What was it about this novel that drew in the the Twin Cities, took his BA and MD at the U and multitudes? his internship in Minneapolis, “but still,” he tells Carol, “you don’t get to know folks here, way you On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippe- do up home. I feel I’ve got something to say about was camped two generations ago, a girl running Gopher Prairie, but you take it in a big stood in relief against the cornflower blue city of two-three hundred thousand, and I’m just of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; one flea on the dog’s back.”²⁴ she saw flour-mills and the blinking win- The Sunday supper leads to a walk along the dows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and river, where as the two of them look back at the St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squaws city’s hills, “an imperial sweep from the dome of and portages, and the Yankee fur-traders the cathedral to the dome of the state capitol,” whose shadows were all about her. She was Will makes his pitch: “Come to Gopher Prairie. meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays Show us. Make the town—well—make it artis- of Brieux, the reasons why heels run over, tic. It’s mighty pre/y, but I’ll admit we aren’t any and the fact that the chemistry instructor too darn artistic. Probably the lumber-yard isn’t had stared at the new coiffure which con- as scrumptious as all these Greek temples. But cealed her ears.²¹ go to it! Make us change!”²⁵ They marry and se/le in the prairie town, She is Carol Milford, daughter of the North- where her immediate options are three: “Have ern Middlewest, whose “every cell . . . was children; start her career of reforming; or be- alive—thin wrists, quince-blossom skin, in- come so definitely a part of the town that she génue eyes, black hair.” She’s an enquiring spirit would be fulfilled by the activities of church and and member of the Class of 1909 at the fictional study-club and bridge-parties.” She’s not ready Blodge/ College, the church-affiliated school for children, and her husband wants more fi- “on the edge of Minneapolis,” where families nancial security before they have them. Neither

16 • RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020 in Mankato nor in Saint Paul did church-going from Will relieve her weariness of the prairie hold importance for her, and neither is Carol town, to which she eventually returns.³⁰ eager to play bridge, which one of Gopher Prai- rie’s leading ladies claims is “half the fun of life.” Now a “Somebody” Some say Carol is eccentric and patronizing, too Its authenticity, study of compromise, and re- frivolous and too chummy with her maid; they fraction of history and sociology through fiction resent her references to anywhere farther away were part of what drove an unprecedented num- than Minneapolis, resent her dressing well, and ber of readers, many of whom hailed from small resent her showing off by saying “American” towns, to this novel. Critics Lewis Mumford and rather than “Ammurrican.” From Guy Pollock, E. M. Forster recognized Lewis for his convinc- graduate of Columbia Law School who le. New ing, photographic-like portraits.³¹ Influential York for Gopher Prairie, she becomes aware of editor and author H. L. Mencken lauded Main the “village virus” that “infects ambitious people Street for “its packed and brilliant detail . . . who stay too long in the provinces . . . lawyers [its] a/empt not to solve the American cultural and doctors and ministers and college-bred problem, but simply to depict with great care a merchants . . . who have had a glimpse of the group of typical Americans . . . represent[ing] world that thinks and laughs, but have returned their speech vividly and accurately.”³² to their swamp.”²⁶ Praise was not universal. W. J. McNally in Yet Carol forges ahead with hopes to create a the Sunday Tribune saw Lewis striving so hard special place for free dances and lectures on im- to avoid sentimentality that he leaves in the portant topics, to refurbish the city hall, library, horrors but slights the beauty of both prairie and public women’s restroom. These ideas fail town and big city. McNally found the realism to gain traction, and she begs Will “to ‘run down hollow and inauthentic and the depictions of to the Cities’ with her” for a break from small- Minneapolis faulty. But conceding some of the town existence. novel’s strengths, notably the conflict between They take the train to Minneapolis. Her mood individual and community, and predicting brightens when they reach the hotel, where the controversy to ensue over the book, McNally room furnishings, le/erhead stationery, and concluded that Minnesotans can be proud “that ice-water tap delight her. They buy clothes and one of its sons has scored an achievement” and books, Carol goes to a hairdresser, and they eat that its publication “represents a notable day in at a Chinese restaurant that has “a brassy, auto- Minnesota’s literary history.”³³ matic piano playing.”²⁷ Exploring Minneapolis, And there was this seemingly congratulatory le/er to Lewis from Saint Paul native F. Sco/ (t)hey looked across and the Fitzgerald, who called Main Street “the best Parade to the towers of St. Mark’s and American novel. The amount of sheer data in the Procathedral,²⁸ and the red roofs of it is amazing! As a writer and a Minnesotan let houses climbing Kenwood Hill. They drove me swell the chorus a.er a third reading.”³⁴ about the chain of garden-circled lakes, Biographer Robert Sklar finds ambiguity here, and viewed the houses of the millers and as “‘sheer data’ was not a stylistic quality Fitz- lumbermen and real estate peers . . . They gerald was likely to admire.”³⁵ A month earlier, surveyed the small eccentric bungalows Fitzgerald had wri/en to editor Burton Rascoe with pergolas, the houses of pebbledash and a snarky assessment of contemporary writers: tapestry brick with sleeping-porches above “I still think [Floyd Dell’s] Moon-Calf is punk, sun-parlors, and one vast incredible chateau [Sherwood Anderson’s] Poor White is fair, and fronting the Lake of the Isles. . . .²⁹ Main Street is ro/en.”³⁶ In her memoir, Hegger Lewis recalls that she Back at home, however, Carol’s mood dark- and her husband did not know Fitzgerald when ens, as she sees her neighbors as a “savorless they received his le/er, and they fraternized people, gulping tasteless food . . . and viewing with him very li/le therea.er. Disdaining the themselves as the greatest race in the world.” fast, rich crowd she saw “Fitzgerald regard[ed] A trip to California and a temporary separation as supremely admirable. . . . Most Americans at

Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY • 17

Lake Minnetonka, he traveled throughout the appearance. Poet and Meridel Le Sueur state in 1942, stopping in small towns and won- shed tears when she saw him.⁴⁹ Exacerbated by dering in his diary, “These Main Streets have alcoholism, his condition continued to deterio- improved so much in solidity of architecture. . . . rate, and on , 1951, Lewis died while Did the complaining Carol Kennico/ help?” working in Italy. The funeral service held in Sauk With renewed affection for his hometown, he Centre’s high school auditorium included a read- noticed “stores have new fronts with tapestry ing from “The Long Arm of the Small Town,” a brick; black and translucent glass; neon and piece Lewis had wri/en twenty years earlier at fluorescent lights. . . . Even second-rate country the invitation of the school‘s yearbook staff to roads hard-surfaced. . . . Beauty shops in small commemorate its fi.ieth anniversary edition. places; women using many cosmetics, have hair In it he concluded about his formative years, “It dressed, nails colored.”⁴⁷ Following the road was a good time, a good place, and a good prepa- trip, he rented a home on Mount Curve Avenue ration for life.”⁵⁰ in Minneapolis to finish his novel Gideon Plan- In numerous ways, his memory is kept alive: ish. He taught creative writing at the University his family home is now a museum on the street of Minnesota, a.er which he purchased a man- renamed Sinclair Lewis Avenue, and at the cor- sion on East Second Street in Duluth. He lived ner of Main Street is a mural prominently fea- there sporadically from 1944 to 1946, conjuring turing Lewis as a young man. The Chamber of his fictional Grand Republic, Minnesota, as the Commerce hosts the annual Sinclair Lewis Days se/ing of his next two novels, festival, and in a happy irony, the high school’s (1945) and . athletic teams, on which gawky Harry could In September 1947, Lewis made his last never play, are now called The Mainstreeters. visit to Minnesota, staying for two months at Lewis’s major novels remain in print, some of The Saint Paul Hotel while researching at the them assigned not only in college English de- Minnesota Historical Society for his penulti- partments but also for courses in urbanization, mate novel, The God-Seeker, set in and around consumerism, history, and geography. The 2016 mid-nineteenth century Saint Paul. Published presidential campaign caused sales of Lewis’s two years before his death, Lewis regarded it as 1935 nightmarish tale of demagoguery It Can’t “certainly the most serious”⁴⁸ among his books. Happen Here to spike, inspiring a new stage ad- aptation of the novel and community readings Respects to a Minnesota Author nationwide. The Sinclair Lewis Society, formed His months of research in Saint Paul afforded in 1992 for the purpose of encouraging the study him the chance to spend time with a few Minne- of Lewis’s life and work, regularly receives inqui- sota friends who noticed his debilitated physical ries from readers in the US and around the world.

A view of Summit Avenue in 1903 when young Sinclair Lewis set out on his own to explore the city. From the Prints and Photographs Division, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

20 • RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020

NOTES 1. Sinclair Lewis, transcribed diary (herea.er SL 15. Lewis’s birth mother, Emma Kermo/ Lewis, died Diary), June 26, 1903, Yale Archives. when he was six. A year later, Lewis’s father married Is- 2. “Clarendon Hotel,” St. Paul City Directory (St. abel Warner Lewis, called “Mother” by the boys; Hegger Paul: R.L. Polk & Co.), 1903; E. J. Lewis, le/er to “Harry” Lewis, 89, 93-94. Lewis, June 14, 1902, in SL Diary, 45-47; SL Diary, June 16. Hegger Lewis, 115; “‘Hobohemia’ to Be Presented 26-27, 1903, 134. by the Unique Players,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 3. St. Paul Building Permit 63489, Ramsey County 27, 1919, 57. Historical Society Research Center. The home was built 17. Hegger Lewis, 114. by Butler Brothers Company; owned by William Butler. 18. Hegger Lewis, 116. 4. Because of COVID-19, the Minnesota Historical 19. Hegger Lewis, 145. Society plans to celebrate the centennial of Sinclair 20. Alfred Harcourt, Some Experiences (Riverside, CT: Lewis’s book Main Street with a rescheduled exhibition privately printed, 1934) in G. Scharnhorst, 80; Heywood opening in the spring of 2021. A presentation of The Life Broun, “Books,” New York Tribune, October 20, 1920, 8; and Loves of Sinclair Lewis at The History Theatre, in Malcolm Cowley, “Garcong! Garcong!” Brentano’s Book conjunction with the Sinclair Lewis Foundation, has Chat, May/June 1927, 26, cited in Lingeman, 158. been rescheduled to June. 21. Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (New York: Harcourt, 5. SL Diary, 2-3; SL Diary, November 17, 1900, 5. Brace & World, Inc., 1920), 1. 6. SL Diary, March 18, 1902, 37; Sinclair Lewis, Bab- 22. Lewis, 2. bi! (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1922), 7. 23. Lewis, 6, 7, 10. 7. “Population of Sauk Centre, MN, 1900,” ac- 24. Lewis, 13. cessed May 12, 2020, https://population.us/mn/sauk 25. Lewis, 16-17. -centre; Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American 26. Lewis, 85, 44, 95, 156. Life (New York: Dell, 1961), 19. Fred Lewis worked in a 27. Andy Sturdevant, “Gosh: What Would Dr. and local flour mill. Claude had a successful medical prac- Mrs. Kennico/ of Gopher Prairie Have to Say?” Minn- tice in St. Cloud. Ben DuBois in Robert T. Smith, Min- Post, accessed May 12, 2020, https://www.minnpost neapolis Tribune, September 4, 1968, cited in Richard .com/stroll/2014/02/gosh-what-would-dr-and-mrs Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street (New -kennico/-gopher-prairie-have-say/. Sturdevant sug- York: , 2002), 7. gested the hotel might be based on the Leamington 8. William Lyon Phelps, “Men Now Famous,” De- or Dyckman, and the Chinese restaurant “is probably lineator 117 (September 1930), 94, in Sinclair Lewis Re- an anachronistic reference to the famous Nankin Café membered, Gary Scharnhorst and Ma/hew Hofer, eds. on 7th Street a block east of Hennepin (which opened (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 21. in 1919).” 9. “Hail! Minnesota,” University of Minnesota, 28. R. L. Cartwright, “The Basilica of St. Mary, Minne- accessed May 12, 2020, h/ps://cla.umn.edu/music/ apolis,” accessed May 13, 2020, h/ps://www.mnopedia ensembles-creative-work/marching-band/history .org/structure/basilica-st-mary-minneapolis. Built in -traditions/school-songs/hail-minnesota. Poet Arthur 1914 in Minneapolis, the Church of the Immaculate Upson (1877-1908) moved to Saint Paul in 1894. He Conception was known as the Pro-Cathedral. In 1926, it studied at the University of Minnesota and revised became the Basilica of Saint Mary. portions of the school song, “Hail! Minnesota,” which 29. Lewis, Main Street, 213. was adapted as the state song in 1945; “100 Years Ago,” 30. Lewis, 265, 450. University of Minnesota Friends of the Sherlock Holmes 31. Quoted in D. J. Dooley, The Art of Sinclair Lewis Collection, September 2005, 2, accessed May 12, 2020, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 261. h/ps://www.lib.umn.edu/pdf/holmes/v9n3.pdf. When 32. H. L. Mencken, “Consolation,” in Sinclair Lewis: Lewis wrote Main Street, Carol Kennico/ describes Eric A Collection of Critical Essays. Mark Schorer, ed. (Engle- Valborg, an aspiring poet, as “Keats was in his face, and wood Cliffs, NJ: 1962), 19. Shelley, and Arthur Upson, whom she had once seen in 33. McNally, 61. McNally gripes: “At none of the four Minneapolis;” Phelps, 94. likely Chinese restaurants Will and Carol would’ve gone 10. SL Diary, August 3, 1905. to would there be ‘a brassy automatic piano;’ they would 11. Sinclair Lewis, “Introduction to Main Street,” in have to be cross-eyed to see St. Marks and the Procathe- Harry E. Maule & Melville H. Cane, The Man from Main dral by looking across Loring Park and The Parade . . . Street: Selected Essays and Other Writings, 1904-1950 and in Chapter II the Mississippi would have to reverse (New York: Random House, 1953), 214. its course in order for them to walk ‘from St. Paul down 12. SL Diary, September 12, 1905. the river to Mendota.’” 13. Sinclair Lewis, “A Theory of Values,” in The Minne- 34. Le/er to Sinclair Lewis, January 20, 1921, in The sota Stories of Sinclair Lewis, Sally E. Parry, ed. (St. Paul: Le!ers of F. Sco! Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scrib- Borealis Books, 2005), 19. ner’s Sons, 1963), 467. 14. Grace Hegger Lewis, With Love from Gracie: Sin- 35. Robert Sklar, F. Sco! Fitzgerald: The Last Laocoon clair Lewis 1912-1925 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 82. Company, 1951), 29. 36. Le/er to Burton Rascoe, December 7, 1920, in

22 • RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020 Correspondence of F. Sco! Fitzgerald, Ma/hew J. Bruc- Swedish.” Today, some books also are available in Slovene coli and Margaret M. Duggan, eds. (New York: Random and Serbo-Croatian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese. House, 1980), 73. c. “100 Best Novels,” Modern Library, accessed 37. G. Lewis, 187; John J. Koblas, Sinclair Lewis: Home April 14, 2020, www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100 at Last (Bloomington, MN: Voyageur Press, 1981), 42. -best-novels/. “The Literary Punch Bowl,” St. Paul Daily News, July 9, d. “Authors,” Open Syllabus Explorer, accessed April 1922, 6. In 1922, Hal and Gracie were said to have vis- 14, 2020, www.opensyllabus.org/results-list/authors? ited the Fitzgeralds, who were summering at White Bear size=50&findPersons=sinclair%20lewis. Yacht Club. e. Brian Stelter, “’s best-seller list takes a 38. Sinclair Lewis to Alfred Harcourt, July 9, 1922, in dystopian turn in the Trump era,” CNN Business, Janu- From Main Street to Stockholm: Le!ers of Sinclair Lewis, ary 28, 2017, accessed April 14, 2020, h/ps://money.cnn 1919-1930, Harrison Smith, ed. (New York: Harcourt .com/2017/01/28/media/it-cant-happen-here-1984 Brace, 1952) 104. -best-sellers/. 39. “‘Sauk Centre Has Sheepish Pride in Sinclair f. “All Nobel Prizes in Literature,” Nobel Media AB Lewis,’ Says St. Paul Dispatch Staff Writer,” Sauk Centre 2020, accessed April 14, 2020, www.nobelprize.org/ Herald, June 17, 1926, 3, cited in Lingeman, 287. prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature. Minnesota 40. “Le/er to the Commi/ee,” in Maule leads the nation with Sinclair Lewis (Sauk Centre) as and Cane, eds., 19. the first American writer to win in 1930 and 41. Sinclair Lewis, statement to the press, November (Duluth) as the most recent in 2016. Other US-born re- 5, 1930, in From Main Street to Stockholm, 297. cipients: Eugene O’Neill (New York, 1936), Pearl Buck 42. “Lewis Wins the Nobel Award,” Minneapolis Tri- (West Virginia, 1938), T. S. Eliot (Missouri, 1948), William bune, November 7, 1930. Faulkner (Mississippi, 1949), (Illi- 43. Quoted in , “The Boy and Man nois, 1954), (California.1962), and Toni From Sauk Centre,” Atlantic 206 (November 1960): 39-48. Morrison (Ohio, 1993). Reprinted in , Dorothy and Red (London: Heinemann, 1964), 273. Notes to Sidebar on p. 18 44. Hegger Lewis, 45. a. Sinclair Lewis, (New York: Grosset & 45. Thompson in Sheean, 282-283. Dunlap, 1917), 314. 46. Brian Bruce, “Thomas Boyd: Jazz Age Author and b. Richard Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Editor,” Minnesota History Magazine (Spring 1998): 11; Main Street (New York: Random House, 2002), 73. “Lewis Returns to Warn State of Provincialism,” Minne- c. Grace Hegger Lewis, With Love from Gracie (New apolis Star, January 18, 1939, 7; “Folks from ‘Main Street’ York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951), 68. Honor Most Famous Son,” Minneapolis Star, January d. Sinclair Lewis, “Is America a Paradise for 20, 1939, 26. Women?” The Pictorial Review (June 1929) in Harry E. 47. Sinclair Lewis, Minnesota Diary 1942-46, George Maule & Melville H. Cane, The Man from Main Street: Killough, ed. (Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press, Selected Essays and Other Writings, 1904-1950 (New 2000), May 28, 1942, 89 and June 28, 1942, 113-14. York: Random House, 1953), 304. 48. Sinclair Lewis to A.S. Frere, December 30, 1948, e. Charles F. Cooney, “Walter White and Sinclair from Yale Archives, cited in Lingeman, 529. Lewis: The History of a Literary Friendship.” Prospects, 1 49. Lingeman, 525. (1976): 72, 75. 50. Sinclair Lewis, “The Long Arm of the Small f. “Lewis Says World End is ‘Bi/er Jest’ for Pio- Town,” in Maule and Cane, eds., 272. neers,” Sauk Centre Herald, October 9, 1947, cited in 51. Lewis, Babbi!, 2. Lingeman, 526.

Notes to “By the Numbers” on the inside front cover Notes to Sidebar on p. 21 a. Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life a. Don Shelby is an award-winning journalist, tele- (New York: Dell, 1961), 30. vision anchor, and star and producer of a one-man b. James M. Hutchisson, The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, show on Mark Twain. 1920-1930 (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsyl- b. Bob Beverage, The Life and Loves of Sinclair vania State University Press, 1997), 204. “By 1930, eleven Lewis, Sinclair Lewis Foundation, 2020. of Lewis’s thirteen books had been translated into Rus- c. See Dave Simpkins’s article “Sinclair Lewis: Suf- sian, German and Polish; seven into Hungarian, Danish, fragent” in Minnesota History at h/p://collections.mnhs. Norwegian, and Czech; six into French; four into Dutch; org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/64/v64i08p330-336 two into Spanish; and one, Babbi!, into Italian and He- .pdf. brew. Most of Lewis’s books had also been translated into

Volume 55 • Number 2 • Summer 2020 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY • 23

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