Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, May 22, 1945

              1#  SINCLAIR      LEWIS  2601    EAST   SECOND    ST.  DULUTH   5,   MINNESOTA  Tuesday, May 22  Darling, the first letter on the nev; Brentano-engraved  stationery.  After disasters with the first, stiff-necked, Swede-  and-stone cock and failure to get the second, who promised to come anfi didn't, my darling Lillian of last summer will arrive here this evening — to stay, I hope,  for twenty years — and there are prospects of a maid.  With the grand new six-burnetT""stove, a number of slick  new^chairs, a bedroom quite as good as mine, and a lovely  little new sitting-room off the kitchen — Mollie's one  real creation — Lillian should be as happy as a lark,  and I look forward to seeing you, your mother, and Lillian  playing gin-rummy here in 1976.  (Me? I shall be arranging my books in ray new house in Switzerland.)  Yes, got the two chess-master pictures, tho not till  yesterday.  They are as sumperb as they are mendacious.  What's the name of the champ with whom I'm playing*  Thw first copies of  gant, tho it's hard  wartime books. But  Harry Maule to send  know It one doesn't  Cass have arrived, and they look ele«  for me to get used to these skinny  most readable page.  I've asked  P.M.ft. a copy rightaway — let me  come. Don't show it even to Kay.  Call up some book dealer like Drake (or have Saxe do it  for you) and ask how much a copy of 1st edition of  Our Mr. Wrenn is worth.  No, we didn't go to the Rustic Inn at Two Harbors, where  we ate not with Uncle Bob but with Uncle Lyle Oreck —  it wasn't open — but we did well with a lunchroom and  a five-and-ten, purchasing freely of things that simply  can't be bought because, etc.  I agree with you about ALL real interior decorators;  nevless, you get after that Fawcett job. Anything wrong  with your making |75 a week?  No, I didn't find Mollle so hard, nor at all mercenary,  but incomparably sloppy, unsystematic, crazy about doing  at once some little fussy job that would better not  have been done — we have already thrown out several of  her cute little decorations — while neglecting basic  things; and every time a mirror was hung (in a spot that  your mother or I had picked out!), she and Wendell-Bendell  had to stop and have a highball (no*, not always of my  liquor) and sit and admire their craft for fifteen minutes,