Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, August 17, 1942

              SINCLAIR  LEWIS
Monday morning August 17

We got back yesterday afternoon, and I found ten days' mail awaiting me, with two glorious letters from you. The portrait of Melodramatic Milly climbing the stairs is extremely funny and beautifully done. I loved it.

The first thing I did when I got here was to go up and look at your portrait.   And there you were, but it was different -- it always is -- there is a peculiar quality about you that always changes and shines.

Yessum, I'll be there on September 2nd, instead of the 4th, and I don't have to be back here till Sept. 24, when I meet my students....You say you can meet me at Keene, but as we study the train schedules out here in the mountains of the moon, there seems to be a train that leaves Worcester, Mass. at 8:55 AM and gets to Peterborough itself at 11:38 AM, and if I can, if the train still runs, I'll take that.

For your information -- it might be useful; I don’t know how, but considering your (highly understandable) somewhat strained relationship with the S's it somehow might be -- I'm sending Mrs. S today a check for $425, the completion of the $1000 I promised them. In other words, if it hadn't been for you, they would never have been able to keep open this summer; and while probably you'd never care to tell them so, it might be a satisfaction for you to know it -- to know that it was you who swung this, and not Johnny's art & artfulness.....Maybe some day -- I said SOME day,
don't pick me up like that -- you'd like a summer theater of your own, and then you can sit on top of twelve foot -- no, fourteen foot, twenty foot! -- ladders all night every night, painting all the scenery you want -- mostly with caricatures of S's.

I exaggerated, of course, about Micky being only 17% fun to travel with.    It's just that his informingness too much reminds me of his mother, that and his expectation of being the center of everything.... instead of a reasonable attitude, such as that I sh[oul]d be the center, or that wise lady, Miss S. Milly.

I think that over the ten days of the trip, I had
a good effect on him -- and I know he had a good effect
on me, compelling me to think a little before shooting
off  my  mouth about his shooting off  his mouth.
He likes the Wilson home and the senior Wilsons -- who