Sinclair Lewis Remembered

34. Frazier Hunt

34 / Frazier Hunt Frazier Hunt (1885–1967) was a writer, radio announcer, and European correspondent for the International News Service. The Hearst Corporation owned both the INS and Cosmopolitan, so Hunt was pressed into service in London to recruit Lewis as a contributor. Lewis reminisced about his long friendship with Hunt in “Tom Sawyer on Dowling Street,” Newsweek, February 7, 1938, 28: “I have known Spike Hunt for years, and I have truly seen that not merely in writing about the scattered Little People but in casual meetings with them has he a genius of sympathetic friendship.” Source: Frazier Hunt, One Ameri­ can and His Attempt at Education (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1938), 248–54. Throughout the first three years of my total five years of London residence, ­ Sinclair Lewis was to play a strong part and exert an inordinate influence. I had been back in London less than a month from my painful search for Irish “peace,” when I received a cable from Ray Long3 telling me that the author of Main Street had just arrived in London and that I was to approach him at once and try to land his next novel for Cosmopolitan. I found that he was stopping “in chambers” at the comfortable old Georgian House at 10 Bury Street, near Piccadilly Circus, under the wise and friendly wing of Dungar, the unapproachable major-­ domo. I telephoned Lewis for an appointment. I was to come at four o’clock. There was a friendly smile on his battle-­ scarred face when he met me at the door. He welcomed me profusely, and introduced me to a somewhat cross-­ eyed European-­ Britisher named Bechhofer—later to be styled Bechhofer Roberts— who was by way of being a writer-­ critic-­ friend-­ and-­ philosopher.4 We sat down and Lewis poured a tall drink. I was “Mr. Hunt” to him for a full ten minutes, and then I became “Frazier.” A little later he thundered: “Say! what in hell is your real name, anyway?You’ve surely got some other name besides Frazier. My name is Red.” “Friends and enemies call me Spike,” I answered. 94 / Sinclair Lewis Remembered “Well, that’s better. Let me get you a little drink, Spike.” That was all there was to it. We mixed like Scotch and soda. From that moment we were almost inseparables. When friends couldn’t locate Red at his own diggings they would call up my house or offi ce, and two-­ thirds of the time they’d run him down—or vice versa. Main Street had shot Red to the very top of Ameri­ can authors. I always had a suspicion that the real reason he was so popu­ lar at this time with English crafts­ men and the British pub­ lic generally was because he had cracked down so frankly and brutally on the Ameri­ can small town. He painted just the sort of picture of the Ameri­ can scene and its crude intolerances that the average Britisher wanted to read. They welcomed him as one of their own kind—superior, a bit snooty, and extremely criti­ cal of inferior breeds. But Red fooled them. He saw through their own sham and hypocrisy as easily as he could see through a freshly polished pane of glass. When great and near-­ great tried to patronize his own Ameri­ can self-­ criticism they were met by a stinging rebuff. Certainly he was not showing up the weakness and intolerance of his own land for the benefit of Englishmen. The famous bohemian Savage Club asked Lewis to talk at one of their Saturday-­ nightentertainments.ManydistinguishedAmeri­ canmenof letters—MarkTwain, Bret Harte, Stephen Crane, Artemus Ward—had addressed the club and left behind them a tradition of friendly salute to “the mother country.”5 Club mem­ bers naturally expected honeyed phrases for English literature and hopes that some day America might catch up. Instead, Lewis charged them like Pancho Villa’s irregular cavalry.6 He explained that he would like to write a Main Street about this self-­ satisfied and behind-­ the-­ times land. He had written Main Street for the good of America and not to make his country the misunderstood laughingstock of a people who were so placid and secure in their own ignorance that they seldom traveled or bothered to keep in touch with other people’s points of view and accomplishments. It left the good ale drinkers aghast. They had never heard such impertinence. But Red made...