Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, May 20, 1944

              May 20 ~- Saturday  u  2601 East Second Street  Duluth  Hemlock 6817  that is my proud new address.  Downtownbuslness though the  ?       street sounds, It is way out in the Best Residential See-*  tlon as you go from Duluth toward the North Shore and Canada*  ^       It is a kind of English manor house; brick| enter a llttl©  v    <     courtyard; big drawing room, panfilled library, furniture  rather WMal^pWIi shabby but most comfortable; five masters'  £-    bedrooms with three baths| couple servants' rooms; in the  basement, a jolly foolish miniature bowling alley, and a  gam© room opening right out through sftm French doors on a  secluded lawn ���� wonderful for a summertime buffet supper.  There's a fine terrace with a view on one side to the great  open lake and on the other out to piney hills to the East  (Duluth runs East and West, not North and South, as it  o somehow should). It's all so quiet, with enough grpunds  ^ to walk about in....and third story, an unfinished vast  atticM which is the ""ballroom11 of the newspaper story en-  ^ L ""I closed....and outsi&e It, a balcony begging to be sun~  n bathed 4n«*...eI think I shallf love my manorial splendor,,  j    q -* I am also looking into matters of a shack that can be rented  at some one of the 4 or 5 lakes within 10 to 20 miles from  here — Superior is too cold to bathe In mm  so you can have  j swimmings; and a rentable car; and boats, small yachts,  -ft < hired by the day, that go up the magnificent hlll«*and«*rock~  ^    ' bound and Indian-haunted St. Louis River.  And the chess I discoursed of on the phones three games  .5 1 today with Old Mr, Frank SMMMM Crassweller, 88 years old,  _i  £ * born in Londonengland, lived for years as a kid in the Ganad-  /  ~H Ian woods, has practised law in Duluth for over 5© years©.,.  and has played chess, fairly regularly, for SEVENTY-SEVEN  -d   £     j a  YEARS|...*He looks only seventy or so; his age shows, really,  only in his stoop when he walks. Last years he did have  ^ 0  a bout of pneumonia and anaemia combined with the chronic  r   + diabetes he has had for years, and was, he manm says, a  \   ^x     little wdown,M but naturally, no lasting effects....Hell,  < ^ <he's only 65 years older than you are.  a 1 And so, for a contrast, yesterday I played, AND WON, with  >  _ v • Boh Rldder, son and nephew ©f the various Rldders owning the  4 V    newspapers here and in St. Paul (and Journal of Commerce  f and, I think, Staats-Zeltung in NY); himself starting in  1       the newspaper game; 24 yrs old and very much like my Wells  i\     S        Mn a lot of ways; nice wife*, jiice kid; a Freshman In Harvard  * when Wells was a senior. I beathim I beathlm I beathlm —  ~4  the only one besides Johnny Baxter, mteom whom I taught.  \  ~-     .«     «..v    ^«*,*W«    VVWMtf    mmmmmm*       muumu   wu«w   *    taUght,  that I hav^ been able to beat here!!! Licked by two professors, one obstetrician, and one 88«-yr-old lawyer mm  that's the kind of Capablanoa I am«  Darling, darling, darling, an hour ago I was hearing your  voice on the phone, and loving It so much, as ever....You  might like Duluth.....just because it jLs smaller §n Mpls  and so has no metropolitan pretentions*    ^  |#'  x