Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, August 27, 1943

              /«.  CHHTEiOT ffiHRmOOT  8221 SUNSET BOULEVARD  HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES .CALIFORNIA  Friday, August 27  Dear Love:  At last It Can Be Told.  God and the U.S. Government  being willing, I shall arrive in New York on Tuesday, September 7th, 11:50 A.M., Grand Central Station, on a New York  Central train from Chicago wittily named ""The Water Level.""  I doubt If you'd better try to meet me and WM  go thru the  dinginess of getting bags into taxis etc. but I'd be glad iff  you could get away from office very early and get up to Big IT,  by about four, when I shall have bathed and put on M the glories of a new-pressed suit, WFd^TWMIJfMM and we could have tea  and even talk a little.  You might ask Tessie Povah to have  lunch there for me, and we'll all have dinner there, and oh  God! I'm so eager to see you.  You know me — I'm never a fusser — and SM it has not been  in any spirit of fussing but just as the strictest scientific  ecology that I have by now re-arranged your two photographs  about 16 times. One now lords It, -th$t  young queen, on the  tall bureau in my bedroom; one is on the grand piano — well,  about 3/4- grand — in my living room.  I wondered why there was  a piano there. Now I know.  The thing that increasingly impresses me about them M is the  intensity of the eyes.  They indicate a tremendous spirit,  soul, personality, call it what you like, behind them. There  is, too; more than even you yourself know, as you change from  pretty SS girl to great lady. It has always been my vanity  that I have perceived that inner spirit better than any one  else -- even you.  It's a-lovely one, to become lovelier as  you grow, and it may be, in the complicated scheme of human  personality, that when you are suddenly petulant and somewhat  bitchy, it's-not at all a bad sign but rather the good sign  of fire within.  been in from this tiny dining-room which I have  a work room to look at you on the piano. The  and wise and deep and living And ador-  that, returned to NY, I could pose as a glittering strange fellow with whom hundred's of Hollywood hussies  are enraptured, but the littlest sight of you and these palms  plaster will vanish in dry dust.  I have just  turned Into  eyes are so direct  able I wish  and  Ji  <»\/<r  « o  *s