Sinclair Lewis Remembered

67. Vincent Sheean

67 / Vincent Sheean The wedding of Lewis and Thompson in London was, as their friend Sheean remembered , surprisingly conventional. Source: Vincent Sheean, “The Tangled Romance of ­ Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson,” Harper’s 227 (Oc­ to­ ber 1963): 136–38. The first Mrs. Lewis obtained her divorce decree on 16 April [1928]; on April 23 Red, passing through Rome on his way to London, announced his engagement to Dorothy. [. . .] The frabjous day arrived: 14 May 1928. Dorothy had come to London promptly for the civil formalities, which were completed that morning by the ceremony at the registry offi ce—S. Martin’s in Henrietta Street, surrounded by book publishers. Jonathan Cape1 and his wife were the witnesses; Jonathan was then Red’s London publisher. A church ceremony (with all the vows, as both Red and Dorothy had wished) took place immediately afterwards in the Savoy Chapel2 in the presence of a score or more guests, friends new and old, who repaired to the Savoy Hotel for a wedding luncheon afterwards. There is something rather touching in Red’s desire to have a thoroughly conventional wedding with all the “old” vows. It made the whole thing more “real,” just as being married in England did. His first marriage, at the Ethical Culture Society’s Lecture Room in New York, had been nothing like this. It is not too much to suppose that by doing things in the prescribed manner he hoped (consciously or unconsciously) to make his marriage more certain to endure. Neither then nor at any other time did he show signs of religious feeling—indeed, his ferocious Elmer Gantry had been published only the year before. It was the proprieties , rather than the religious ritual, that seemed valuable to him in solemnizing the event. Neither Dorothy nor Red ever spoke to me, so far as I can remember, about their own feelings on that day, their hopes or fears. Red was probably so elated, so proud of Dorothy, so anxious to show off the prize he had won, that he had no moment of relaxation, much less of anxiety. We know that he could not resist the chance to deliver one of his monologues when it came time for the toasts 182 / Sinclair Lewis Remembered after lunch as the Savoy. This one was (or so I have heard) quite funny, but many in London were wearying of Red’s incessant performances: only two weeks before Arnold Bennett, after a dinner party, had written in his journal, “­ Sinclair did too many imitations.” The guests at the Savoy and at the luncheon afterwards included Mrs. ­ Bertrand Russell (Dora),3 Hugh Walpole, Rebecca West, Anita Loos,4 Gilbert Frankau,5 and a good many others. With this marriage Dorothy was entering upon the phase known as celebrity, in its fullest sense, with the Ameri­ can press (and on this occasion also the English press) out in force to observe. [. . .] To Dorothy it was a transference of role, as if she had suddenly stepped up from the audience into the limelight; and if Red ever did grow weary of his pub­ lic personage (which he probably did toward the end), there was no hint of it in the zest with which he played himself in those days. ...