Sinclair Lewis Remembered

102. Harrison Smith

102 / Harrison Smith However stoic Lewis appeared, according to Smith the death of his son devastated him. Source: Harrison Smith, “­ Sinclair Lewis: Remembrance of the Past,” Saturday Review of Literature, January 27, 1951, 38. I have always thought that the death of his son Wells in the war, though he rarely mentioned him, was a secret wound which he concealed even from himself. Wells was a strikingly handsome young man who was turning into a brilliant journalist and had published a novel just before he was killed. A friend of mine who met Lewis at Grand Central after he had heard the appalling news told me that his face was bland and expressionless, his answers to the gentlemen of the press courteous but curt. Wells Lewis might have been only a name of someone he remotely remembered. Another and almost a final object of human love and affection had been torn from him. ...