In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

22 / Grace Hegger Lewis Grace Hegger Lewis (1887–1981), Lewis’s first wife (they married in 1914), worked initially as assistant household editor and later as beauty editor at Vogue. ShehadfadingconnectionstohighsocietyandaffectedanEnglishaccent through­ out her entire life. This recollection is excerpted from her novel, a ­ fictionalized version of her life with Lewis in which she is “Susan” and he is “Timothy.”­ Ac­ cord­ ing to Schorer, this novel and her autobiography “are substantially the same.”61 She and Lewis separated in 1925 and divorced in 1928. She was remarried , to Telesforo Casanova (d. 1981), in 1933. Source: Grace Hegger Lewis, Half a Loaf (New York: Liveright, 1931), 79–81. One midsummer evening as they sat on their veranda, Susan questioned: “Why don’t you start writing short stories again? It would be a change after the long novel.” “I don’t think I have the short story mind,” he answered. “I need room to think. That’s why I was fired off every newspaper I was on—couldn’t fit myself into an allotted space.” “Try just for fun. Shall I get your notebooks? They are swarming with ideas. And send it first to the Post. Do you know how much they pay?” “It depends upon how well known the writer is.” “Well, you’re beginning to be known with two novels.” “Fatuous woman!” and he pulled his chair closer to hers and gently bit her ear. “Except in my home town and to a few people here and in New York I am about as prominent as one of those carrots hidden in that row down there. But I will be known some day,” his thin face hardened, “and I hope it won’t come too late for us both to enjoy it. Do you think you can stand waiting, little playmate?” She pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, and tied their wrists together .“Handcuffedforlife.Tryandloseme.[. ..]Onyourfeet,brother.Left,right, left, right, through the doors and into your room, and where’s the notebook?” And because the suggestion was born frivolously, it proved to be a gay story poking amiable fun at some of the Greenwich Villagers among whom he had 64 / Sinclair Lewis Remembered once lived. He couldn’t have written it two years ago, but now he was a married man, a householder, a commuter, and if his citizenship was not exactly solid, he at least no longer regarded all capitalists as fiends and all garment-­ workers as suffering angels. At the end of ten days they began to wonder if there was a chance that it had been accepted. Did the S.E.P. make quick decisions or did it take a long time? Perhaps the story had been lost in the mails. Heavens, ten days was nothing when you realized how many manuscripts they must receive. “Gosh, you’d think this was the first time I had ever sent anything to a magazine—an old timer like me.” Two days later, Susan accompanied Timothy to his offi ce. “Stick around, old darling, for a bit, and watch Papa work. Sit over there where I can see you, and see you still after you have gone. Do you love me in my lil office jackik?” He struggled into a frayed and shapeless gray mohair coat. She saw the door was closed and gave him a possessive hug. He shuffled through his mail. At least no large envelope with the returned manuscript. “Sue! a letter from the Post!” He tore at the envelope instead of neatly cutting it with a paper-­ knife. “A check! Oh, sweet, they’ve taken it! See, see, three hundred dollars!” “Let me see,” and she hung over his shoulder. “It’s five hundred! The number 5 like a 3, but the writing says five. Nearly two months’ salary. [. . .] What does the letter say?” “‘This is a capital yarn. Write us some more like this and we’ll make you as famous as Irvin Cobb and Phoebe Snow.’62 And it’s signed by George Horace Lorimer himself!” Timothy had never been happier. Success, money, love. He loved and was loved, perhaps not so passionately as he had dreamed it, but that would develop, and anyhow he didn’t seem to know what to do to change matters. “Write us some more like this.” Of course he could, a cinch. He was simmering with ideas. Why if he only wrote a story a month that would be six thousand a year, more...

Share