MENCKEN ON SINCLAIR "RED" LEWIS

This excerpt from My Life as Author and Editor—part of the papers that were recently uncrated in Baker Libraiy shows the frank side of Mencken. "Red" is the Nobel prizewinning writer Sinclair Lewis; "Grade" is Lewis's first wife; Nathan is George Jean Nathan.

IT WAS THE FASHION IN THE COCKTAIL AGE for married women of any pretensions to have followers, and Gracie soon acquired one in a man who alleged that his name was Tellesforo Casanova and that he was a Spanish count. Nathan and I suspected that he was actually a Grand street Jew, and diligently spread a tale to that effect, but Gracie took him at his face value, and was vastly flattered by his attentions. Her flaunting of them caused a great deal of malicious snickering at Red, and he found that his inferiority complex was not enough to console him. One day he came to lunch with me at my apartment in the Algonquin, told me at great length the tale of Gracie's attentats against his husbandly honor, and burst into hysterical tears at the table. Another time I invited him and Gracie to dinner at a restaurant in Hoboken, along with Philip and Lily Goodman, and Gracie insisted on bringing Casanova along. It was an unpleasant situation, and the Casanova made it worse by taking a seat beside Gracie, and stroking her bare arm throughout the dinner, the while she purred at him ecstatically.