Sinclair Lewis Remembered

9. William Rose Benét

9 / William Rose Benét William Rose Benét (1886–1950), writer, editor, and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, was Lewis’s classmate at Yale, where he edited the student newspaper. They lived together during the summer of 1909 in Carmel and later moved in the same New York literary circle: Lewis worked for the publishing firm of Frederick A. Stokes Company from Oc­ to­ ber 1910 to Oc­ to­ ber 1912, while Benét was on the staff of Century. Benét was one of the founders of the Saturday Review of Literature in 1924 and worked for the magazine until his death. He married four times: his first wife was Theresa Thompson, sister of Kathleen Norris (see headnote , chapter 31), and his third wife was the poet Elinor Wylie (1885–1928). Source: William Rose Benét, “The Earlier Lewis,” Saturday Review of Literature, January 20, 1934, 421. In certain formative years after leaving college—for I was late in developing a mature viewpoint—“Red” Lewis was one of the strongest influences in my life, and, I may say, a thoroughly beneficial one. That is not to say that we always got along well together. Our ideas often clashed. It is from such clashes, when you are young, that sparks are struck to kindle new ideas. The controversial battles of youth are necessary to growth. I first heard of Harry Lewis, as he was called then—­ Sinclair being his middle name—when I was a Yale undergraduate. As he was in Yale College and I was in the Scientific School2 we had no occasion to meet. Second to the historic Yale Literary Magazine in those days there was another small literary magazine modeled somewhat upon Stone & Kimball’s Chap-­ Book, known as the Yale Courant . Lewis was already drawing more books from the Yale library than, I believe , any undergraduate has before or since, and trying his apprentice hand at writing, as he had doubtless done in school. It was quite natural that he quickly “made” both the Lit and the Courant and was elected to the Chairmanship of the latter. This offi ce he almost immediately resigned to devote his literary energies to the Lit. I stood second in the Courant competition and succeeded to his vacated offi ce. Therefore, one afternoon, passing the precincts of the Lit in a base- 32 / Sinclair Lewis Remembered ment passage of White Hall, on the way to my own editorial cubicle, I happened to espy the fellow of whose brilliance and independence I had already heard. A long, gangling youth with a conflagrate head of hair was stretched out on a high-­ window seat smoking a pipe. He invited me in with a wave of the hand. We exchanged a few remarks, the usual “kidding,” I think, of undergraduates. A little later, of course, Lewis threw in his fortunes with Upton ­ Sinclair’s Heli­ con Hall, where he wrote poetry while tending a socialistic furnace. He wrote a lot of verse in those days. He caused quite a stir at Yale by his eminently characteristic espousing of the socialist cause so early in his career. It seemed to me at the time an interesting and sporting thing to do. It still does. I am not going to dwell on ­ Sinclair Lewis’s undergraduate literary efforts. Henry Mencken,3 who professes a low opinion of poetry in general is, I believe , still trying to suppress any reappearance of his own early poetic efforts. As a matter of fact, “Red’s” undergraduate verse was not at all bad for those days. I have some of it still, clipped from old Courants. He soon began to sell verse here and there to New York magazines. I remember a most rollicking stave he wrote about a priest, highly laudatory of this priest’s convivial spirit and called­ “Father Kileen” [Yale Courant, No­ vem­ ber 24, 1905]. It was modeled upon the late Richard Hovey’s “Barney McGee.”4 At that time there was another man of literary promise in Yale College, Allan Updegraff.5 He and Lewis were great friends and were associates later, I think, on Transatlantic Tales in New York, where they set themselves to translating foreign masterpieces of fiction. Updegraff has since become a well-­ known novelist. I never saw Lewis again, that I remember, in college. It was after graduation, in California, that my best friend, Henry Hoyt6 (Elinor Wylie’s brother), wrote me that Lewis was coming to the Coast. I...