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116 / Alexander Manson Alexander Manson, who was of Polish ancestry and who had served in British military intelligence, was Lewis’s last private secretary. Lewis paid for his divorce so he could marry Tina Lazzerini and later hired her to be an assistant secretary and editor. Accounts of the couple’s honesty and competence vary widely, but Lewis apparently trusted them and considered them friends. Shortly after Lewis ’s death, Manson and his wife vanish from the record. Source: Alexander Manson, “The Last Days of ­ Sinclair Lewis,” Saturday Evening Post, March 31, 1951, 110–12. From De­ cem­ ber 1949 until Lewis was taken to the hospital on 31 De­ cem­ ber 1950, I was never separated from him for a single day. In all that time he drank nothing but wine, and then, except on a few occasions, only in reasonable quantities . However, at sixty-­ five he was not a healthy man. He had no appetite, his pulse was irregular, and he was extremely weak. At first he refused to see a doctor, but I finally persuaded him to. The doctor was not optimistic; he said that Lewis had ruined his health by excesses and that his heart had been bad for years. We put him on an extensive vitamin diet, and almost immediately he began to pick up weight and his appetite improved. Within a month he had gained fifteen pounds. This period, January and February 1950, was one of the best of Lewis’s final year. We spent days walking around Florence, visiting churches and museums. His favorite was the Monastery of San Marco, which contains the Fra An­ gelico frescoes. Red rarely entered San Marco without spending at least a half hour look­ ing at the Great Crucifixion, most famous of all the artist’s works. He became so fond of Fra Angelico that he made him our patron saint. Whatever he wanted, if nothing more than good weather instead of bad, he would whimsically appeal to Fra Angelico for it. Red really loved only one city, and that was Florence. He never spoke of his “hometown,” except to mention now and then that he had been born in Sauk Part 15. World So Wide / 347 Centre, Minnesota. In Florence he said he had the impression of being in the Middle Ages, which pleased him because he had a deep interest in the history of that period. He knew the city better than the Florentines themselves—every museum, church, old building, café and restaurant. His favorite eating places were in Maiano and Rotolino on the outskirts of the city. At first he had frequent contacts with the Ameri­ can colony there, but later—except for a few friends— lost touch because what he called the “clannishness” of the Anglo-­ Americans in Florence irritated him. He said they lived geographically in Italy, but had noth­ ing to do with Italy; that they surrounded themselves by the high wall within which they kept their own national caste. [. . .] He flew into a rage whenever he saw Ameri­ cans abroad who, he thought, were behaving tactlessly or giving Europeans reason to laugh at them. Loud-­ voiced Ameri­ cans in hotels infuriated him. Although he himself had made almost a profession of criticizing Ameri­ cans he writhed in discomfort when he heard Europeans criticizing them. He was like a father with a wayward child; he himself could get angry with Ameri­ cans, but God help anyone else who did. In his last press interview at the end of 1949, he said, “I’m a diagnostician, not a reformer.”13 I disagree with this statement, because I think his deep desire was to reform. He wanted Ameri­ cans to rise to a cultural maturity higher than in any other nation, and for this reason he prodded them with his satire. The fact that many Ameri­ cans resented this hurt him deeply. He hated all kinds of snobbery, particularly title manias, and was extremely annoyed because some of the biggest “title snobs” in Florence were Ameri­ cans. He also hated intellectual snobbery and what he called “literary people,” who liked to preside over literary salons and tried to add him as their pièce de résistance . In March 1950, when he was finishing his last book, World So Wide, he began to overwork. He spent nine or ten hours a day at his typewriter, tiring ­ himself so that he couldn’t eat or sleep; smoking three to five packages of cigarettes daily...

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