Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, June 12, 1944

              Monday, June 12, 1944     ™*  And the garden is so lovely now, with lawn, great bushes of  white lilacs and the purple French lilacs, cherry blossoms,  white-blossoming mountain laurel which later will have red  berries, elms and maples and so many kinds of conifers white  pine and balsam and spruce*  I suppose every city of over 40,000 has its Greenwich Village,  its Bohemia* The other night I saw one part of Duluth*s in  the music at Hannakainen1s; last evening a humbler but livelier  and rather sfSeeter part — differing from a NY Greenwich Vge  party not so much in talent as in a humble,MM almost-unalcoholic  and non-posing friendliness* (beer ©•^(•y^t  »Clara Stocker, spinster of maybe 37, daughter ©f a prosperous/  • .  ^osN/  y~Duluth doctorkhas that eternal artistic longing whlchCshows (  ^^  a*^<L)  ) itself in writing symphony-orchestra notes, in adoring music, V  }J   in having wandered about Europe, especially Finland, a lot,  and In preferring to live alone and like it rather than manage  to marry another graln«eommisslon man with a brick house on  the hill*  She has a tiny — four-room — white cottage  out on Minnesota Point, a long flat arm of land which divides  the ocean-like Lake from the Harbor. 1*## St. Louis Bay*  It is right on the water ®£m of the harbor* When the Malicks  (Unitarian) and I arrived, there was fog, and the bay was  magic, low green islands, anchored sail boats, the water  rippling silk under the grayness, and little puttering amateur  boatyards along the shore*.,*Inside, believe it or not, that  empty wicker-covered Chianti bottle that used to be the sign  and adornment of Hobohemla a generation ago* But also, comfortable chairs, and a couple pretty good original paintings  — one by David Erickson, The local artist, now 70 — I have  still to meet him*  Presents besides Malicks and met  old Juho Rissanen, refugee  Finnish artist .**» really of some, though not large, standing  in Europe* Clara showed us a volume about him, printed in  Finland, and h&+  solemnly, with that magnificent artistic  egotism which I really lack and thus can never aspire to the  greatness of a Faith Baldwin or a Phllipvandorensternstern,  he showed us what* seemed like a million photographs of  his paintings — Finn peasant women braiding each other's  hair, hairy gents with axes or fishing boats — and.of his  designs for stained glass windows*  He looked like Sibeliuss a mm huge solid chunk of head with  •Slit mouth, solid and solemn*  But then he began to sing  Finnish folk sounds — they sounded dirty to me -— and you  loved him; you saw him in every Paris atelier any time from  1800 to 1939* He is here because there are  about M 40,000  Finns in Minnesota — most of them farmers or Iron-miners  on the Mesabe Range, but between 3000 and 10000 here in  Duluth — and they have clmmlssloned him to paint, for the  State Historical Society, a panel about pioneer Finn farming*  (2) Dr, Allan!, a really charming Finnish scholar and up-  lifter, a jolly old cigar-smoking egg, half student and  half business-man, who has been in America for years, and who  runs the Minnesota co-operatives, which were founded largely  by the Finns*