JANUARY 20, 1934 THE SATURDAY REVIEW OP LUERATURE 421

knew, later became the wife of Harry Leon Wilson. We were all great friends, even The Earlier Lewis though Mrs. Cooke dubbed me "William the Silent," and "Red" somewhat annoyed BY WILLIAM ROSE BENET Helen Cooke, solely out of his admiration for her, by chanting a most complimen­ tary song about her which he had made NCE a man attains fame he is Henry Mencken, who professes a low i up, entitled "A Fugitive Queen." "Red" trailed by the "I-knew-him- opinion of poetry in general is, I believe, i and I swam in the Pacific, picnicked on when"-ers. I am not writing this still trying to suppress any reappearance '• the beach, took long walks, did our own Oarticle precisely in that spirit. At the re­ of his own early poetic efforts. As a mat- ' cooking, and even tried experiments with quest of the editor of The Saturday Re­ ter of fact, "Red's" undergraduate verse | our own laundry. I was amazed then, as I view of Literature I am setting down a was not at all bad for those days. I have have been ever since, at the man's ability few reminiscences concerning a man who some of it still, clipped from old Courants. to reel off stories. .On the way home from was at one time one of my best friends, He soon began to sell verse here and there George Sterling's, through the Carmel a man to some of whose early stages as to New York magazines. I remember a woods, of a summer night, he would a writer I was witness, a man for whom most rollicking stave he wrote about a \ launch into some yarn that he had made I have retained a sincere admiration as priest, highly laudatory of this particular ! up on the spur of the moment; and be­ one of the most independent and honest priest's convivial spirit and called "Father fore we were back at our cottage—we had spirits of our time. In certain formative Kileen." It was modeled upon the late moved into better quarters due to the years after leaving college—for I was late Richard Hovey's "Barney McGee." At that benevolence of a grand old lady who was in developing a mature viewpoint—"Red" time there was another man of literary then one of the leading spirits in Carmel Lewis was one of the strongest influences promise in Yale College, Allan Updegraff. —the whole story would have been com­ in my life, and, I may say, a thoroughly He and Lewis were great friends and were pleted in recitative. It was a marvellous SINCLAIR LEWIS IN CALIFORNIA beneficial one. That is not to say that we associates later, I think, on Transatlantic performance, and apparently his fund of always got along well together. Our ideas Tales in New York, where they set them- : invention was inexhaustible. Also there Village, "Red" being employed by the often clashed. It is from such clashes, when selves to translating foreign masterpieces ! were, as doubtless there are still—-and as Frederick A. Stokes firm of publishers, I you are yovmg, that sparks are struck to of fiction. Updegraff has since become a appears in "The Man Who Knew Cool- as a cub editor on the old Century Maga­ kindle new ideas. The controversial bat­ well-known novelist. idge"—the almost endless monologues in zine. The youth of that period was chiefly tles of youth are necessary to growth. I never saw Lewis again, that I remem­ which he suddenly took on a character interested in sociological matters. It was I first heard of Harry Lewis, as he was ber, in college. It was after graduation, in part, and the fantastic imaginings that some years before the war, and after the called then—Sinclair being his middle California, that my best friend, Henry would be worked out in the most intricate war the more or less disillusioned youth name—^when I was a Yale tmdergraduate. Hoyt (Elinor Wylie's brother), wrote me detail, till one almost screamed for sur­ of America seemed to turn, in the Scott As he was in Yale College and I was in that he had run into "Red" in New York, cease from the spate of words. From in­ Fitzgerald days, toward intense individu­ the Scientific School we had no occasion found him a great scout, and that Lewis tense hilarity the man would also, at times, alism and the "eat, drink, and be merry to meet. Second to the historic Yale Lit­ was coming to the Coast. I must meet him. turn as grave and didactic as a Baptist for tomorrow we die" attitude. Not so in erary Magazine in those days there was At that time Henry and I had decided, minister and proceed to lay down the that earlier time. Most of the young people another small literary magazine modeled with the arrogance of youth, that most moral law, according to his own highly were out to reform the world in one way somewhat upon Stone & Kimball's Chap- people were bovine and that a soul could individual ideas, with an almost snarling or another—and, by Golly, the world was Book, known as the Yale Courant. Lewis be discerned in very few. By that we earnestness that seemed to bode hell-fire going to reform or know the reason why! was already drawing more books from the meant, I suppose, that most people had for the unbeliever. It appeared as if Shel­ ley himself could never have been more It was the day of the old Masses with Yale library than, I believe, any under­ very little independence of mind or spirit. Max Eastman and Floyd Dell as editors; graduate has before or since, and trying "Red," however, quite evidently had. deeply stirred by the injustices and tyran­ nies of the economic order, or disorder. of "The Working Girls' Home," namely his prentice hand at writing, as he had I had lately come back from across the the back room of O'Connor's old Cafe on doubtless done in school. It was quite nat­ Pacific as deck yeoman on an Army trans­ My brain, to use Henry Hoyt's expres­ the comer of Greenwich Avenue and ural that he quickly "made" both the Lit port, and I decided now to take a trip to sion, was sometimes thoroughly "sand­ Sixth, where beer flowed freely and music and the Courant and was elected to the Carmel, California, to meet this avatar. I papered" by the constant dissection of had charms—the place where John Mase- Chairmanship of the latter. This office he arrived over a sandhill in a creaking buck- ideas, the questioning of every premise, fleld himself once tended bar. It was the almost immediately resigned to devote his board of some sort to have a lanky indi­ the rovings of "Red's" insatiable curiosity day of "The Old Grapevine," long gone, up literary energies to the Lit. I stood second vidual, in corduroys and sweater or some- concerning preconceived notions, and the Sixth Avenue a few blocks, whe'-e wero in the Courant competition and succeeded I thing of the kind, topped by the bonfire constant challenge of his argument. And checker players and bar philosopfc • > it did me a whole l;t of good. This man was ^ fot th^t wfllkptl r>ii the bar; it ' not content to stand and gaze at the ho­ day of the Anarchist Ball, where I - rizon. He stalked forth immediately to troduced to Emma Goldman; it was uie crest the hill and find the next one. He day when Frances Perkins, now a member may have come from Minnesota, but he of President Roosevelt's cabinet, was lay­ was spiritually from Missouri, and had ing the foundation for a notable career in to be "shown." His intellect and his imagi­ labor matters; when Edna Kenton lived nation were steaming up for the battle not so far off; when Union Square was a with life, and the ferment of young ambi­ veritable Hyde Park for soap-box orators; tion in him shriveled up any "green sick­ when "Red" came home one day with news ness" of youth. The days of the making of a new Stokes author who had just swum of a writer are days wonderful and ab­ into their ken, by name Edna Ferber;when surd. "Red" himself has caught the yearn­ John Reed managed to get some of my ing absurdity of such a period beautifully poetry into the American Magazine; when in his latest novel, "Work of Art," in the Sinclair Lewis, on his way from Sauk grand Swinburnian poem that the young­ Centre to Stockholm, pounded furiously ster in Black Thread chants from a roof­ at his typewriter, in his Van Nest Place top. We had great days—as they seem to room, lit by a tattered welsbach, compos­ me now—days of typewriter-pounding ing lyrics for a comic opera he was sure he with "great thoughts." Nights of convivi­ was going to sell to George M. Cohan. At ality and tremendous conversations. Once the same time he had become fascinated we "hiked" a long way down the Coast to­ by aviation and journeyed out to Mineola gether, camping out at night. Then the to renew acquaintance with Captain Paul time at Carmel came to an end. Beck, one of the first Army fliers, whom he Lewis took a job on the San Francisco had originally met in Benicia, California. Bulletin and I went back to Benicia Ar­ He also took time off from the office and senal, the Ordnance post of which my wrote Stokes a boys' book, about a boy YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE BOARD, 1906 father was then in command. I had "Red" aviator; and he was as busy as a bird-dog Sinclair Lewis at extreme right out to stay at the Arsenal and meet my doing a thousand and one literary jobs and fanuly. He took an immediate strong sitting up arguing till davra. to his vacated office. Therefore, one after­ of his hair, hail me from the door of a liking for my father whose enormous Then "Red" wrote his first novel, "Our noon, passing the precincts of the Lit in shack. I lighted down, and "Red" intro­ reading, individual mind, humorous dis­ Mr. Wreim," and got married. His second a basement passage of White Hall, on the duced me to our mutual dwelling. As I re­ position, and liking for discussion exhila­ novel, "The Trail of the Hawk," reflecting way to my own editorial cubicle, I hap­ member it, we sat up all that first night rated him. My father retained a deep fond­ his still strong interest in flying—the con­ pened to espy the fellow of whose bril­ discussing the Christian religion. I was ness for one he would always speak of as quest of the air took a strong hold upon liance and independence I had already quite conventional in my religious views "Harry" Lewis, as he had known him. He his vivid imagination—dealt in 1915 with heard. A long, gangling youth with a con­ at that time and Lewis proceeded to give admired the questing intelligence and the a character in some ways the prototype of flagrate head of hair was stretched out on me all the benefit of the higher criticism. spiritual integrity of the man. Naturally Lindbergh. In fact, when "The Spirit of * a high window-seat smoking a pipe. He in­ On the other hand, I contributed a song they were usually on opposite sides of an St. Louis" did land at Le Bourget, taxying vited me in with a wave of the hand. We I had learned from an Army officer, a argument—but then my father enjoyed to a stop with no casualties in spite of the exchanged a few remarks, the usual "kid­ nonsense song which "Red" immediately that. In fact it was a habit of his to take the enormous onrushing crowd, it seemed to ding," I think, of undergraduates. caught up and proceeded to troll lustily. opposite side. Otherwise there was no me as though an early Sinclair Lewis novel A little later, of course, Lewis threw in It became one of his favorites. sharpening of wits, no arraying of the had come true. He had called the prophetic his fortunes with Upton Sinclair's "Heli­ We spent some time in Carmel together. whole armament of opinion. This was right turn upon American history—I do not con Hall," where he wrote poetry while We got to know the late George Sterling, up "Red's" street, and they would sit up mean in exact achievement, I mean in the tending a socialistic fiunace. He wrote a drank his muscadel and ate his abalone. half the night in an intellectual duello that spirit of American aviation. Charles Lind­ lot of verse in those days. He caused quite We wrote and wrote. I was writing pretty fascinated them both. bergh, with his upstanding liberal of a a stir at Yale by his eminently charac­ bad verse and Lewis was, at the time, writ­ Lewis returned to the East, and soon I father, with his own Minnesota back­ teristic espousing of the socialist cause so ing short stories considerably imder the followed him. He got me a hall bedroom ground, and his own sturdy independence, early in his career. It seemed to me at the influence of Edith Wharton whose work next to his own larger room on Van Nest would have been just the sort of Ameri­ time an interesting and sporting thing to he intensely admired. He was acting at Place in the middle of Charles Street. That can "Red" could have novelised with ve­ do. It still does. Carmel as secretary for Grace MacGowan was long before the days when, as now, hemence and enthusiasm. Cooke and her sister Alice MacGowan. I am not going to dwell on Sinclair Seventh Avenue cut a swath through that In my first marriage my wife and I lived Mrs. Cooke's daughter, Helen, whom we Lewis's undergraduate literary efforts. section of town. So we lived in Greenwich hardly a stone's throw from the Lewises

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 422 THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE JANUARY 20, 1934 at Port Washington, Long Island. "Red" The Lady of the Lakes and in loving-kindness to one's fellow- and I commuted on the same train of a men; but from these records she appears Going Nowhere (Continued from first page) morning; but I regret to say that his in­ I to have been neither a closely attached YOUTH CAN'T BE SERVED. By Norah His style is a model of restraint, economy, dustry in that period quite put me to church-woman nor a bibliolater; rather, Hoult. New York: Harper & Brothers. shame. While I was content to loll in the and vigor, free from ostentation, and en­ • she foimd divine admonitions in her heart, 1934. $2.50. smoker with a newspaper, "Red" was in tirely appropriate to the subject. i in nature, and in the demands of duty. another car, secreted from the conversa­ Dorothy Wordsworth was a poem, in­ I Her reading was extensive, yet she was no Reviewed by GLADYS GHAHAM tion of commuters, writing furiously upon deed, and the source of poetry in her i bluestocking. She loved company, and HETHER or not youth can or a new book during the whole journey from brother ctnd in Coleridge. Her aptitude for i found it as attractive "in huts where poor must be served the three Port Washington to New York. Was that discovering interest in things and persons j men lie" as in great men's houses. She had young people in Miss Hoult's "The Trail of the Hawk," or could it have furnished matter for their imaginations to a cheerfxil disposition, which was kept W novel receive no help from outside in their been "The Job"? At any rate, it was when mould into poetic form. She was their first fresh by incessant useful activity and struggles against a world that takes little he was still being published by Harper's, audience. To her sensitive understanding much exercise in the open air. She loved thought of the individual as such. But the before Alfred Harcourt had left Henry they addressed their ideas; on her deli­ Coleridge with something more than sis­ middle-aged are no better off. The mother Holt and Company to set up his own shop cate language sense they tried their terly or comradely affection—^with ro­ and father in the novel have never suc­ and to become Sinclair Lewis's publisher. words; by her fine ear they tested the mantic attachment, firmly restrained; but ceeded for a moment in understanding After jobs with Adventure and the Pub­ music of their lines. They recognized her she loved her brother more. themselves, and their children appear to lishers' Newspaper Syndicate (under as their equal in the basic appreciation of The family tradition that her physical them not only headstrong and incompre­ "Bill" Woodward, so well-known now as human nature and poetic expression, I and mental breakdown in her fifty-eighth hensible but perverse as well. With these a biographer) "Red" had become editor however superior they may have felt ! year was due to having taken excessively five people, each inward looking and for George H. Doran. He began to sell themselves to be in knowledge of books. i long walks is not confirmed by the testi- hastily impatient of the others. Miss Hoult stories to The Saturday Evening Post, and A more indirect, but almost equally use­ I mony of this book. Nor is it apparent that works out the unhappy drama of uncon­ "The Innocents" and "Free Air" came ful, contribution to their success was her \ it was caused by too much housework, genial family life. Ancient history used to along in their time. I am not, however, sure unselfish, constant attention to practical I though this may have contributed. There teach that the family is the cornerstone of of my dat,es here—and the rest is history: affairs affecting their comfort and happi­ was cause enough in the intensity of her the state; modern fiction finds it the begin­ how he took "time out" to write the novel ness. In this she was like many other good emotions, strained agcdn and again by ning of most evE. Alfred Harcourt believed would be his women everywhere and through all time, William's complications with Annette The Boyces live outside London. Mr. most vital, how he went to Washington to by whose advice, encouragement, and Vallon, by her brother John's death, by Boyce has as little as possible to do with do it (where Henry Hoyt and I once protection from petty cares men have been Coleridge's defection from their friend­ his family, and while he means no partic­ dropped in upon him at the room apart enabled to do their work. ship and from his own high calling. She ular harm he does no partiotdar good. His from his home that he had rented for a was always at the disposal of a large It is pleasant to observe that William feeble revenge on life for cheating him of workshop), how he produced "Main family connection when someone was Wordsworth's character for generosity, romance is a constant barrage of sarcasm Street" with only the motive of giving as needed to nurse the sick or take care of tenderness of heart, and thoughtful atten­ directed at his wife and children. Shut fast true a picture of his own Middle West as a children or entertain visitors. If it be said tion to his family and friends is enhanced in his study, reading and dreaming of scrupulous artist could give; and then, that these and the ordinary cares of cook­ by the intimate revelations in this book. strange places, he can achieve a mirage surprisingly to him, the fame and the ing and cleaning are, after all, the lot of Mary, his wife, is shown to have been a like happiness for himself. No help here fanfare. most women the world over, it should be wise and lovable woman. Coleridge does for youth. remembered that an equal amount of in­ The simile one instinctively thinks of not fare so well. We find here many new Mrs. Boyce knows what mothers should first for Sinclair Lewis is "dynamo." He is be like if children woxild only be what the journalist par excellence. He has that children should. She could love and listen absorbing curiosity about life without to a son who thought of her first, daugh­ which no great writer was ever born. I ters who turned to her for advice on fa­ was lucky to hear something of that curi­ miliar problems, but these daughters and osity stated in his earlier years, to be in son who tell her nothing, whose problems contact for awhile with that keen and are beyond her guessing, snatch from her searching mind, to have my lazy thinking a coveted role she had hoped to play. She questioned and exposed by that search­ can turn to them only a sweet, false face. light intellect. Conversation with him was One of the daughters finds her own way always intensely stimulating. He could out easily and complacently. She becomes suggest a myriad new ideas in half an engaged to an automobile salesman and hour. And there is one incident I remem­ refuses to look beyond this private haven. ber well because it seems to me the essen­ It is the other children, Eileen and Ron­ tial Lewis. Not Lewis the critic of his ald, who wage the conflict against an un­ country, though he has been a badly- interested world. Feeling themselves to be needed satirist of its institutions and the "different" because they want more than flame of his rage against our national stu­ they can have and desire to do more than pidities has been a splendid cauterization. lies within possibility, they ease their un­ We were dining together one night, and rest by breaking away from home. Sepa­ to our table came a stranger, a travelling rately they go to London to seek freedom. salesman, whose conversation I thought a They find new bondages. great bore and whose personality afflicted DOVE COTTAGE ABOUT 1805 Haphazardly, since she has no definite my intolerance. But "Red" plunged into From "Dorothy Wordsworth," by Ernest de Selincourt drive in any direction, Eileen decides to conversation with him. Before he knew it try the stage. She joins a school of drama the man was revealing all his characteris­ pieces of testimony that Wordsworth gave tellectual labor was also her portion. She called "the Pansy" and settles in stuffy tic ways of thinking and emoting, as well him much money out of his own very was amanuensis, critic, secretary, and lodgings with an uncongenial semi-friend. as giving us a good slice of his life. I can limited supply; helped to support his chil­ outdoor companion to a very active- Classes, movies, slovenly living, and fur­ remember that I still maintained a rather dren, and afforded him unrestricted hos­ minded poet, who was also a statesman, tive little sorties into romance make up a annoyed attitude. The type didn't appeal pitality. Not only WiUiam, but even more and when Coleridge was with them her life no richer than that at home. Another to me. Then the man left and "Red" turned the women of his household, Dorothy, intellectual tasks were more than doubled. break for freedom leads only to uglier sur­ to me with a most quizzical smile. "Do you Mary, and Sarah her sister, were infinitely It was in 1829 that her bodily health failed, roundings and further hopelessness. Brief­ like that type of fellow?" I said—or words patient with him when for long weeks he and soon afterwards her bright intellect ly, in contact with love, EUeen attains ac­ to that effect—believing my toplofty atti­ stayed in their already over-crowded was dimmed. She survived till 1855, ten­ tuality. From being just any girl playing tude to be inalienably the right one. house, a querulous, irresponsible guest. derly cherished by her family. Professor at life, she becomes for a few days an in­ "That's the trouble with you, Bill," said Dorothy's own literary qualities^ob- de Selincourt wisely withdraws our gaze dividual in her own right in earnest grip "Red" (or words to that effect), "you re­ servation, sympathy, style—^were of a very at the point where darkness fell. with something real. gard him Eis hoi polloi, he doesn't even high order. Jane Austen is the only other In spite of all her vicarious suffering, in Ronald runs a different course. He wants represent the cause of labor or anything woman of English race and speech who spite of the demands made on her physi­ to be social minded, to make the world a dramatic—but I understand that man—by comes quite up to her level. Perhaps one cal strength, and in spite of copying mil­ better place for man to live in. He passes God, I love him." should add the author of "Cranford" and lions of words for her brother, which she from Fabian socialism to Social Revo­ Of course this is misquoted after all "Mary Barton"; or perhaps such compari­ was glad to do since they were his, and lutionism. He attends meetings and can­ these years; but what I am trying to con­ sons are altogether to be avoided! Peccari. also in some sense hers, Dorothy was a vasses votes, but all his activities are vey is that Sinclair Lewis does love the Her style at least, in its sweet simplicity, happy girl and woman during her fifty- tinged with the same unreality that marks essential humanness of people. He can be is absolutely perfect for narration and de­ seven years of health. Her own writings, Eileen's more personal attempts to find savagely against the ideas they may hold; scription. Her qualities were feminine: many of which are now for the first time herself. Love eludes him on whatever just as he can scourge, and has scourged accuracy of observation, interest in de­ published, make this evident. Fully half plane he seeks her. America, for many things. But when he tails, delicacy of feeling, tenderness of of the volume consists of her language, These are the Boyces,—the futile lot of said, as he did recently, that he loved this heart, devotion to those whom she loved. and this is well. The biographer has ef­ them. A short epilogue shows them all country, he said the truth. He is funda­ It is her distinction to have been a woman faced himself judiciously. more content after a few years. Husband mentally an American. No other soil could of eminent literary genius chiefly because Professor de Selincourt has wisely re­ and wife reconciled to each other's inade­ have grown him. And he is a better thing in her all womanly virtues were present frained from including the only known quacies, Jean married, and Ronald and than a humanist, he is a human-beingist. and harmoniously combined. Her charac­ portrait of Dorothy, which was taken late Eileen sinking into the conventional I think it is one of Fannie Hurst's titles— ter, too, might serve as an example for all in her life and bears no resemblance to grooves which will carry them to a medi­ "Every Soul has its Song." That is what time. It has an eternal fitness and is not of the sane, healthy, lovable woman whom ocre middle age. Norah Hoult presents her Sinclair Lewis fundamentally believes. her epoch alone nor merely of her coun­ Hazlitt, De Quincey, and others describe. characters vividly, she creates groups in And he can extort that song from even the try. She was free from vanity, bigotry, He has enriched his book with the beauti­ self-absorbed activities that can scarcely queerest kinds of human beings. I'll bet superstition, and triviality. Many of her ful and significant Edridge drawing of her be bettered as self-revealing and self- he could easily extort it from the most contemporaries of the upper and middle brother, with which most people are un­ destroying portraiture, and she keeps her laconic of red Indians! And that is why classes in England were either compla­ familiar but which is one of the best por­ narrative clear of impediment, but when when two or three of us who have "known cently conformist or excitedly mystical in traits of the poet. Facsimiles of Dorothy's all the characters in a novel are as unpre­ him when" are gathered together, though their religious behavior, eighteenth-cen­ handwriting are also given. possessing as the Boyces and all so busily we may criticize him for this or that now tury indifference surviving in some, nine­ Altogether this is a notable biography, going nowhere the novel itself takes on and again, we usually end up by smiling teenth-century enthusiasm beginning to written by a true scholar, who to his rich something of dulness and indirection. The into space at some particularly vivid re­ stir in others. She, on the other hand, was equipment of knowledge adds discrimina­ parts stand out with their separate merits miniscence of him, and murmur to our­ practically religious, if religion consists in tion, distinction of thought, and a charm­ but they are tinfortimately greater than selves, "A great scout, 'Red'!" reverence for what is best and highest ing style. their whole.

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