Sinclair Lewis Remembered

18. Harrison Smith

18 / Harrison Smith Smith reminisced about the earliest and happiest period of Lewis’s first marriage, when he lived on Long Island and commuted by train to his job in the city. His literary career was advancing if not yet prospering, and to all outward appearances he seemed content. Source: Harrison Smith, “­ Sinclair Lewis: Remembrance of the Past,” Saturday Review of Literature, January 27, 1951, 8. We had foolish times together. Both of us treasured small adventures and the human curiosities we came across. I can bring back to mind a trip to Cape Cod to visit Lewis. I am not sure now that he was at that time on his honeymoon with Grace Hegger, the tall, slim, blonde girl he had married, but maybe I was not so indiscreet and it was a few weeks later. He was in love with Grace Hegger—or perhaps in love with being in love with her. At any rate, I remember how gay we all were and that a silly, striped parasol and a broken-­ down bicycle from which all of us fell off were a part of it. Later they took a tiny house in Port Washington, where I was a constant visitor. Lewis had become George Doran’s editor by that time and an excellent one, too. He had written Our Mr. Wrenn and when the Saturday Evening Post had published enough of his stories he cut loose from jobs forever and wrote at home. He worked hard, long hours and was always infuriated when at suburban parties the men inferred that he was a lazy, lucky dog, who stayed at home with the women. ...