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Walter White and Sinclair Lewis: The History of a Literary Friendship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Charles F. Cooney
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Extract

In a long and turbulent career, Sinclair Lewis met thousands of people. Only rarely, though, did chance meetings develop into more meaningful relationships, and what few friendships Lewis formed were invariably short-lived. Perhaps the stinging rebuffs he met as a child from the “gang” his brother Claude led made him wary of becoming close to people; perhaps the reasons lie elsewhere; but Sinclair Lewis spent much of his life largely friendless. However, the friendship he formed with Walter F. White lasted for nearly a quarter of a century and to some extent was reflected in Lewis' novels.

Type
An American Tragedy: A 50th Anniversary
Information
Prospects , Volume 1 , October 1976 , pp. 63 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

NOTES

1. Schorer, Mark, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961), esp. pp. 803–04Google Scholar; also Lewis, Grace Hegger, With Love From Gracie (New York: Harcourt, 1955), p. 334.Google Scholar

2. Schorer, , p. 21.Google Scholar

3. White, Walter F., A Man Called White (New York: Viking, 1948), pp. 35–69Google Scholar. A more detailed account of the writing and publication of The Fire in the Flint (New York: Knopf, 1924)Google Scholar is Cooney, Charles F., “Mencken's Midwifery,” Menckeniana, No. 42 (Fall, 1972), pp. 1–4.Google Scholar

4. White, Walter to Spingarn, Joel E., 07 18, 1924Google Scholar, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records, Administrative File, Personal Correspondence; Walter White, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Hereafter cited as NAACP Records; unless otherwise noted, all correspondence cited is from this particular file. I wish to thank the NAACP for their permission to consult their records.

5. For examples, see: Our Mr. Wrenn (New York: Harper, 1914), p. 27Google Scholar: “He had a … neck like a blue-gum nigger;” The Job (New York: Harper, 1917), p. 160Google Scholar; “She heard a negro shouting dithyrambics about some religion she could never make out” (also pp. 19, 200, and 233); and Free Air (New York: Harcourt, 1919), p. 256Google Scholar; “He begged of a high nosed colored functionary. … The Abyssinian Prince gave him a check.…”

6. Durham, Frank, ed., The Collected Short Stories of Julia Peterkin (Columbia: The Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1970), p. 53Google Scholar. I am indebted to Dr. Noel Polk of the University of South Carolina for bringing this item to my attention.

7. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 09 12, 1924Google Scholar; also, White, Walter to Spingarn, Joel E., 09 12, 1924.Google Scholar

8. White, Walter to Spingarn, Joel E., 10 22, 1924Google Scholar, and White, Walter to Smith, Paul Jordan, 10 6, 1924.Google Scholar

9. White, Walter to Spingarn, Joel E., 10 22, 1924.Google Scholar

10. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 10 15, 1924Google Scholar. White's activities on behalf of Black writers in the 1920s are discussed in Cooney, Charles F., “Walter White and the Harlem Renaissance,” Journal of Negro History, 57 (07, 1972), pp. 231–40.Google Scholar

11. White, Walter to McKay, Claude, 11 6, 1924.Google Scholar

12. Cited in Lewis, Grace Hegger, With Love From Grade, p. 291.Google Scholar

13. Cooper, Wayne, ed., The Passion of Claude McKay (New York: Schocken, 1973), p. 26.Google Scholar

14. McKay, Claude, A Long Way from Home (1937; rpt., New York: Harcourt, 1970), p. 259Google Scholar; also Cooper, , p. 333.Google Scholar

15. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 03 18, 1925.Google Scholar

16. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 08 1, 1925.Google Scholar

17. Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 08 14, 1925Google Scholar. I wish to thank Melville H. Cane for his permission to quote from Lewis' unpublished correspondence.

18. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 08 15, 1925.Google Scholar

19. Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 08 26, 1925Google Scholar, and White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 08 31, 1925.Google Scholar

20. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 09 4, 1925.Google Scholar

21. Cited in Lewis, Grace Hegger, With Love From Grade, p. 327.Google Scholar

22. White, Walter to Knopf, Blanche, 09 4, 1925Google Scholar, and White, Walter to Spingarn, Joel E., 09 9, 1925.Google Scholar

23. Lewis, Sinclair to Knopf, Blanche, 10 6, 1925.Google Scholar

24. White, Walter to Knopf, Blanche, 09 26, 1925.Google Scholar

25. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 01 29, 1926Google Scholar, and Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 02 19, 1926.Google Scholar

26. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 05 4, 1926Google Scholar; Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 05 7, 1926Google Scholar; White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 05 17, 1926Google Scholar, and White, Walter, “Spotlight,” Pittsburgh Courier, 05 15, 1926, p. 16, c. 6.Google Scholar

27. White, , A Man Called White, p. 93.Google Scholar

28. Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 10 22, 1926, and 11 1, 1926Google Scholar, with attached carbon copy of Lewis' report to the Guggenheim Foundation.

29. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 11 5, 1926.Google Scholar

30. Recommendations and related correspondence are in NAACP Records, White correspondence, October–November, 1926.

31. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 07 6, 1927.Google Scholar

32. White, Walter, Rope and Faggot (New York: Knopf, 1929)Google Scholar, and White, , A Man Called White, pp. 92–94, and 99–101.Google Scholar

33. White, , A Man Called White, pp. 103, 115Google Scholar, and Levy, Eugene, James Weldon Johnson: Black Leader, Black Voice (Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 289–96.Google Scholar

34. Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 02 4, and 03 21, 1932Google Scholar, are the only letters I have been able to locate for the period 1928–1934. NAACP Records, Administrative File, Special Correspondence: Sinclair Lewis.

35. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 04 9, 1934Google Scholar, NAACP Records, Administrative File, Subject File, Anti-Lynching Measures: Writer's League

36. Kellogg, Charles Flint, NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1967), pp. 216–20, 227–34Google Scholar, discusses the early efforts of the organization to combat lynching. Zangrando, Robert L., “The NAACP and A Federal Antilynching Bill, 1934–1940,” Journal of Negro History, 50 (04, 1965), pp. 106–17Google Scholar chronicles the efforts of the NAACP for the period indicated.

37. List of members, April 10, 1934, NAACP Records, Administrative File, Subject File, Anti-Lynching Measures: Writer's League.

38. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 01 17, 1935Google Scholar, NAACP Records, Administrative File, Subject File, Awards: Spingarn Award. Hereafter cited as Spingarn Award File.

39. An Art Commentary on Lynching, exhibition catalogue, Arthur U. Newton Galleries, NAACP Records, Administrative File, Subject File; Anti-Lynching Measures: Art Exhibit. Also, Zangrando, , p. 111.Google Scholar

40. Kellogg, , NAACP, pp. 140–42.Google Scholar

41. Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 01 16, 1935Google Scholar, Spingam Award File.

42. Memorandum to the Spingarn Medal Award Committee from White, Walter, 05 17, 1935, Spingarn Award File.Google Scholar

43. Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 04 15, 1936, and 05 13, 1936, Spingarn Award File.Google Scholar

44. Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 03 1, 1937, Spingarn Award File.Google Scholar

45. Wilkins, Roy to Barnett, Claude, 06 10, 1937, Spingarn Award File.Google Scholar

46. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 08 19, 1936Google Scholar. White's complaint seems to me to be unjustified. To be sure, Jews come in far more heavily than Negroes in It Can't Happen Here (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1935)Google Scholar, but see especially point 10 of Windrip, Berzelius's “The Fifteen Points of Victory for the Forgotten Men,” p. 77.Google Scholar

47. The NAACP Records in the Library of Congress have been organized for use and described only for the period 1909–1939. Due to the bulk of material and inadequate organization and description for the post 1940 period, it is possible that correspondence for the period 1940–1944 between Lewis and White exists in an unknown file in the collection.

48. Telegram, Walter White to Sinclair Lewis, nd, but November 13 or 14, 1944. NAACP Records, Post 1940, file 372, box 2. When and if this portion of the NAACP Records is organized, the file and box designations given will change.

49. Lewis, Sinclair, “Gentlemen, This is Revolution,” Esquire, 23 (06, 1945), pp. 76–77Google Scholar. This is a review essay of 4 books about racial problems, and reveals an acquaintance with a number of other books on the subject.

50. See, for example, White, Walter to Marshall, Thurgood, 10 15, 1945Google Scholar (NAACP Records, Post 1940, file 372, box 2).

51. Schorer, , p. 737.Google Scholar

52. Lewis, Sinclair to Jones, Madison, 01 3, 1946Google Scholar, NAACP Records, Post 1940, file 372, box 2.

53. See Sinclair Lewis' report to the Guggenheim Foundation, November 1, 1926.

54. Shelley v. Kraemer, Supreme Court of the United States, 334 U. S. 1 (1948) and Hurd v. Hodge, Supreme Court of the United States, 334 U.S. 24 (1948).

55. White, , A Man Called White, pp. 73–79.Google Scholar

56. Maule, Harry E. to White, Walter, 01 10, 1947Google Scholar, NAACP Records, Post 1940, file 372, box 2.

57. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 08 15, 1947Google Scholar, NAACP Records, Post 1940, file 372, box 2 and Walter White, “Hails Lewis' Book,” Chicago Daily News, 08 16, 1947, p. 6, c. 3.Google Scholar

58. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 01 9, 1948, NAACP Records, Post 1940, file 372, box 2.Google Scholar

59. Schorer, , p. 760Google Scholar; also Cannon, Poppy, A Gentle Knight: My Husband, Walter White (New York: Rinehart, 1956), p. 34.Google Scholar

60. Lewis, Sinclair to White, Walter, 01 14, 1948Google Scholar, NAACP Records, Post 1940, file 372, box 2. Jane is Jane White, Walter White's daughter, and an actress who on occasion visited Lewis in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with Marcella Powers. See Schorer, , p. 748.Google Scholar

61. White, Walter to Lewis, Sinclair, 01 22, 1948, NAACP Records, Post 1940, file 372, box 2.Google Scholar

62. Lewis, Sinclair, The God Seeker (New York: Random, 1949), pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

63. By describing Kingsblood Royal as one of Lewis' lesser novels, I am following the critical tradition of Schorer, , p. 759Google Scholar, Grebstein, Sheldon N., Sinclair Lewis (New York: Twayne, 1962), pp. 152–56Google Scholar, and Dooley, David J., The Art of Sinclair Lewis (Lincoln: The Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1967), pp. 224–27Google Scholar. More recently, lanni, Lawrence, “Sinclair Lewis as a Prophet of Black Pride,” Sinclair Lewis Newsletter, 3 (1971), pp. 13–15, 21Google Scholar; and McCullough, Sarah J., “Kingsblood Royal: A Revaluation,” Sinclair Lewis Newsletter, 4 (1972), pp. 10–12Google Scholar, have urged a re-examination of Kingsblood Royal, finding in it strengths that they believe have been overlooked.

64. In his will, Lewis left money both to the NAACP, and the National Urban League. See Schorer, , p. 770Google Scholar. A copy of Lewis' will and related correspondence is located in the Arthur Spingarn Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. I am indebted to the Spingarn Estate for permission to examine this material.