Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, October 29, 1942

              SINCLAIR   LEWIS  Thursday, October, 29    Two grand & noble letters from you this week.  Entirely by coincidence, Franklin P. Adams and Dorothy (Miss Dorothy Thompson, you remember? the lady that managed Claire Boothe for President?) were to be over in St. Paul yesterday, for lecturing, Frank in the PM, Dorothy in the evening -- both at the same place!  Well, I had the damndest day. First my class, and I let Fega Wilson go to it, and she was astonished that the brats (average age maybe 20) were human and had read a book. Then Grace Flandrau (sister in law of Minnesota's most important writer, Charles Flandrau, who died a few years ago; herself a pretty good novelist, nice woman of about 55 or some other indecent old age; lives in Charles' house, built by C's father in about 1865, which in Minneaota [Minnesota] equals about 1665 -- have you got that all straight -- just run over it two or three more times and you will) had FPA, DT, and me for dinner.  With prairie chicken!  a fowl no longer to be often obtained in the world.... All most friendly and chatty. You would have thought D and I had always been good warm acquaintances, and certainly never anything more....She was terribly nice -- except just once, just at the end of dinner, when she started to lecture, and her voice rose and rose, and I had a vision of past irritations.    We put Frank on the train and went to her lecture…..An enormous auditorium, holding 11,000, and all seats filled (true, it's on a season-ticket basis). Dorothy extremely well dressed, in black with a smart lil hat, but grown very bulky. And so portentous and sometimes unpleasantly sneering as she talked.  A true clergyman.  A good woman.....who would be one of the most frightening dictators in the world....and in no sense any sort of bug, milly, junk, lamb, angel, pie, or other recognizable woolly animal. Then we put her on the train, and Joseph and I lost our way home for hours and hours in the rain (the country here has decided to take to permanent raining, giving up snowing, after an extensive^ trial) and the darkness and heathen unexploredness of St. Paul....And today, I write my darling and copy MS.... and tonight I speak to the English section of the  Minnesota Educational Association, my only, thank God, scheduled Public Address this season...and tomorrow[.]  I'll copy and copy and copy and copy and copy and copy and  LOVE!  l-o-v-e  love  love  love