Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, August 8, 1943

              /«■•  CHflfTEJTO fDHRmoriT  8221 SUNSET BOULEVARD  HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES , CALIFORNIA  Sunday Aug 8  Even professional writers are so inarticulate...1 would like  to fill my letters to you, my darling, with dreams, not too  impractical, that I have of you and me together in the halcyon  time when we stop"", rushing about and start living:  sailing  across our bay in Maine (you are to teach me all that and I  to be an eager scholar) and picnicking on a rocky isle with  little dwarf cedars and tiny paradises of moss where the  long summer afternoon breathes softly and sedately and the  waves are stilled"" to a meditation rhythmic like the whisper  of the crickets London in the rain and a bright tea-dance  at the Savoy -- you shall- teach me all that, too....Our house  in New York — yes, house — and one kindly evening when we  sit and read and play the records that we'll then have, and  the next when, letting ourselves G-o Social im the mildest of  wa$s, with a couple of good servants and no more food rationing, we have a dinner-party with Bob Hutchins, Kate Hepburn,  K*V#"" * IBertfeHKsliellTX Cedrlc Hardwicke, Martha G-elhorn... .So much  Sotld'c, \we could do if we decided what we wanted and worked at it  E.ve,  V3o «y«^^>  together....Yet none o£ the shiny brisknesses and activities  quite So sweet to me as the thing I can never quite express -  the stilled gray-and-green lichen-filled hollow scented tlth  sea-wind and you so tanned and content....and planning your  ook for a change... .and the sound of little waves-, and  the presence of you.  »».»•«  just got the Sept Cosmopolitan/''and it pains me to tell  who are the true and loyal ping in G-ood Housekeeping,  I like both the presentation and the cutting much better  I did same of Harri in a magazinewhickshallbenameless.  I move on eggs, a delicate-footed little bird.....who unfortunately will sometimes slip and with his sweet lil bill make  the goddamndest hole in an eggshell.  Yesterday, lunching alone at Players, Hed<$y Lemarr, if that's  her name, with husband Loder at next table.  I Inform her,  ""I was just meditating about you — thinking how internationally famous you are.""  You know — expecting maidenly disclaimer.  ""Quite,"" says Mr. Loder, being English, ""isn't it strange  to think that she Is better known than Napoleon.""  (Now don't  say that — I heard him, dicta- I?)