SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 6.

turntable, so that in narrow quarters, when it could not be
manoeuvred with the motor, it can be detached and manhandled as
easily as a car of half the length. The caravan brake is attached
to the hand brake of the car, so that one is safe on the steepest
Devonshire hills.

As befits a caravan, with its jaunty gipsy air, there are
plenty of windows, latticed casement windows, with a glimpse of
orange curtains inside; and fore and aft there are curving bow
windows, like an eighteenth century cottage.

The interior is very gay and trim -- the curtains; settees
upholstered in tapestry, at night turning into beds in the fashion
of a convertible davenport; rugs on the linoleum floor; a vase of
roses on the polished oak dresser; and up in the cupola -- like
that of a Pullman car -- electric dome lights fed by a plug con-
nected with the batteries of the automobile. The seat-beds are
at either end. The door, reached by detachable steps from the
ground, is a quarter way along on one side. Looking down the
interior from the door on the left there is wardrobe, large enough
for eight suits, with a wide drawer beneath it and a long mirror
in the door. Next, a dresser with five drawers, and the settee,
with folding tables which are lowered for meals -- or for type-
writing, as at this moment. (Lovely the Sussex downs through
this open door!)

It is impossible to give a notion of the appearance by such a
detailed description. It's like the detective stories in which
the author tries to impress on you that the library in which
Sir Harry Wilberham Snooks, P.C., K.B.E., F.R.G.S., was found
murdered was to the right of the circular drawing room and to the
left -- no, the LEFT, I said -- that's where Sir Harry's secretary
was seen cracking Brazil nuts at eight seventeen P.M. -- to the
left of Sir Harry's private and secret underground vault for his
stamp collection.

When you have read this, all you know is that Sir Harry was

-3-

SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 6.

murdered somewhere or other and that, as the secretary obviously
did it -- and jolly well ought to have done it -- therefore he
didn't.

So, without trying to make a definite picture, I suggest only
that tucked in at the end, near the settee, are two tricky up-
holstered seats, one of which is, with its cover removed, a cup-
board for towels, and the other a tiny ice box, with a drain to
the ground. And the bed-settees themselves form the covers for
locker large enough to contain all the bedclothes.

Coming back on the other side of the caravan, there is
another dresser, half of which is for kitchen utensils, above
which is perfectly practicable drain and sink, metal-lined and
possessed of a concealing oak cover. Then the stove, a two-
burner kerosene affair -- American, by the way -- set in a tin-
lined alcove with a kind of a mantelpiece above it, behind which is
a warming cupboard heated from the stove and invaluable for dish-
towels and wet bathing suits. Then an enclosed chemical toilet,
and the bed settee at the other end.

Along the roof, high enough above seats and dressers to be
out of the way, are plenty of cupboards for everything from boxes
of breakfast food to manuscript paper, rubber boots, and shaving
soap.

Here are some of the groceries which we are carrying -- aside
from the meat, eggs, bacon, bread, milk which one must pick up,
fresh, along the way:

Canned corn and baked beans, tomatoes and raspberries;
chicken and corned beef and tongue, herrings and sardines and
salmon, taragon vinegar and olive oil and ketchup, corned meal and
Swedish rye bread and German sausages and French peas, Chambertin
and Barsac and Bass's, and perhaps a dozen other emergency stores.
If we took care to keep our water and kerosene cans filled, we
could live in luxury for ten days without going near shop or hotel,
and we could get along somehow for twenty.

-4-

SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 6.

The caravan makes up, really, into five rooms. It is large enough so that when the central portion serves as kitchen, one end is an undisturbed dining room -- and very attractive, with a checkered Italian peasant table cloth on the folding table, a vase of buttercups, and a little pot of cloudy orange-blossom honey from California. With dishes washed and cloth whisked away, the whole caravan becomes a living-room, rather like the cabin of a houseboat. At night this living-room is well lighted, with lanterns supplementing the electric dome-lights, and it is so much serenier to read in a meadow, with only a rustle of trees about, than in an inn lounge creaking with the silent disapproval which inn guests invariably feel toward all other guests. At night the caravan becomes all a bedroom, with two wide double beds, so that one could put up two guests -- and at night one still has the country peace immediately at hand, not shut off by hotel lounges, courtyards, and that curious stuffy smell which clings to even the best of hotels.

Finally, for travelling, the caravan is a warehouse. One can pile in it enough folding chairs, tents, and the like, to provide an outdoor dining room for warm weather, or to make a whole extra encampment for week-end guests.

The spaciousness of a home, the mobility of a motor -- what could be better for a vacation?

Americans, whether they are millionaires or factory hands, show little imagination in holidays. They are tied by the mania for speed. They must hasten somewhere in a train or an automobile. Yet there are so many curious and amusing ways of travel. I do not advocate caravanning any more than I do a walking trip, floating down a river in a houseboat, cruising in a cranky sloop, or, for

-5-

SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 6.

those who are stout enough to stand it, a horseback tour in the mountains. It is curious that in a country like America, which has convinced itself and Europe that it is so simple, vacation cruisers should have forgotten all these pioneer modes of travel.

It is not the American frontiersman who hikes off, rucksack on back, tasting the dawn and sleeping under the pines, free to leave nightways and penetrate forest and mountain paths, but the Herr Doctor Graf von Etwas, or Sir John Whoozis, Master of Oldtime College, Oxford.

You are in the Bernese Oberland. Up the slope toils a dusty figure, sack on shoulder, puffing a pipe, humming contentedly. Past him, with a murmur like the tearing of silk, slips a great motor, driven by a chauffeur. The miserable occupants are insulated from everything by plate glass. Ah! That is the brave, naive American communing with nature on foot, and the wicked Austrian archduke who is driving!

Well! The man on foot is the archduke, while the motorist with the agonizingly elegant women is Mr. J. Splivens Tibbs, the celebrated fish-canner of Seattle.

I have never been a benefactor, but I now propose to set up in that Rockefellarian business with two great donations to my hot-house countrymen: caravanning and walking. I need never provide further benefactions. I shall spend the rest of my life getting them to accept these two.

To my previous comments on the bleak Lady Manageresses of British hotels, let me apolegetically add that in ancient inns at Rye, Fittelworth, and Storrington I have found manageresses who were intelligent, agreeable, and really willing to provide meals for complete strangers.

Incidentally, why does any Englishman seek "quaintness", as it is so quaintly called, in Brittany or Belgium, when in those

-6-

SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 6.

towns, and in Amberley and Arundel, he can find the sweetest of
old world villages? And, more incidentally, why is it that the
curse of a place like Rye, once perfect in being unspoiled, is
that arty people find it and instantly open shops to sell glazed
pottery in choice shades of peasoup green and fainting purple?
The same thing has happened in Rappallo and Clovelly, in Province-
town and Carmel, California. What is it about demure ancient
cottages or secluded mountains and sea that makes the visitors
ragingly hungry to buy such objects as near-Russian embroidery and
not-very-near Burmese batiks?

I actually saw in Canterbury, a few weeks ago, a tea emporium
seriously placarded "Ye Quaint Tea Shoppe", a name which I once
invented as what I thought was a burlesque of Old English possible
only in America.

The caravan moves on to Dorset and Wiltshire, the land of
Thomas Hardy, an author now canonized by the self-same periodi-
cals and professors that, a generation ago, spoke of him as they
now speak of Mencken, because, like Mencken, he sometimes quest-
ioned whether a stupid lout, elevated by creeping seniority to
power in state or university or church or business, did not remain
a stupid lout.

In with the chairs and tent, slam the door, and on to the
moorlands of Jude, and Tess, and the Returned Native!

-7-

NOTE TO EDITORS: This article must not be published before

SATURDAY,

AUGUST 24th, 1928.

UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATIONS.

ARTICLE No. 7.

MAIN STREETS AND BABBITS OF BRITAIN,

By Sinclair Lewis.

(World copyright by United Press Associations. All rights reserved.)

Some years ago I heard Mr. George Bernard Shaw holding forth on the peculiarities of the United States, neither the brilliance nor the dogmatism of his views impaired by the fact that he had never seen America or very many Americans. "The trouble with America," he said, "is that it is a nation of villagers.

And several weeks of caravanning through rural England have convinced me that precisely the opposite is true.

England, more than any country that I know, is a nation of villagers. America, by contrast, is what it was in Indian times -- nomadic. The Main Street of America is as long as the country itself: a continental highway; but England's "High Street" is intermittent and different. Is there, for instance, any village in England, besides Southwick, on the sea, in Sussex, which especially prides itself on the fact that all the little girls can stand on their heads? Yet it is a tradition in Southwick for all children, and especially girls, to learn to stand on their heads almost as soon as they can stand on their feet, and one may see half a dozen of them practising almost any afternoon on the village green.

I do not know what it is in the atmosphere or landscape of Southwick which encourages these topsy-turvy instincts in female youth, but they are carefully nurtured, and I have no doubt that

-1-

SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 7.

move from Kent, "because a man oughtn't to leave his own county".
He seems, instinctively to associate himself with the very trees of
the district, which do not grow so well transplanted.

In a little pub. in Cornwall, a fine old chap, learning that
we had come that day from St. Ives, 35 miles away, said, "Now,
I've always wanted one day to go to St. Ives. Had a chum as a boy,
I did. Finest fellow I ever knew. We were like brothers. But
he went to St. Ives thirty years ago, and often I've wondered what
he's grown up like, and thought I'd like to see him. But it's a
bit of a way."

And although the keeper of the Cornwall pub was no doubt an
extreme example, it was only a few days before that one of the
great men of England, who has travelled through the world, is a
thorough cosmopolitan in his education, acquainted with the lan-
guages and literatures of half a dozen countries, speaking of the
beautiful place to which he has lately moved in Hampshire said,
"The best thing about it is that from the highest ground I can at
least catch a glimpse of the sea. I never feel comfortable out
of sight of the sea."

This place sense, this feeling of being rooted in a certain
part of the earth and flourishing only there, may not be conducive
to progress interpreted in terms of speed and mobility, but if it
means stagnation along some lines it also means a kind of inner
stability which a nation which has lost psychic contact with the
land does not know.

The sense of nationality which is associated with the earth
itself is almost ineradicable. Every other kind is more suscep-
tible to disintegration. The American transplanted may keep his
speech and mannerisms, and may continue always to speak of "God's
country", but he notoriously loses his Americanism. He may lose
it in the Café du Dome in Paris, or he may lose it in an American
embassy, where he supposedly represents the United States, but
often better represents the power to which he is sent. I doubt

-3-

SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 7.

to the national art of cooking). Seldom in Germany, and never in
Austria, have I encountered an inn where it was not possible, at
almost any hour, to obtain a freshly cooked meal. One has usually
to wait for half an hour for the soup-of-the-day, the freshly cooked
schnitzel, the cool salad and crisp radishes, which together with
fruit, cheese, and perhaps pancakes or a sweet omelette can be
expected in any Austrian country inn. And coffee! COFFEE!
German coffee is despised by Austrians, but what would they think
of the pallid and aromaless concoctions served in English inns, if
it is served at all?

I know that British on the continent complain that they
cannot get a decent cup of tea, and this is true. But there are,
outside of England, more coffee drinkers in the western world than
there are tea drinkers; English hardware shops sell one of the
best coffee machines ever invented; and as good coffee can be
bought on British markets as anywhere. Why must it be ruined in the
making?

Why, in the land of chops and steaks, can one never get a
freshly broiled piece of meat in any country inn? Why, in country
districts infested with chickens, can one never get an omelette,
in any one of its many variations? Why with excellent native
cheeses -- Stilton, for instance -- can a hungry tourist, halting
by the way-side, expect only a lump of hard, grayish substance
which would disgust a self-respecting mouse? Why cannot road-
side inns keep in stock sufficient bottled or canned goods which,
with fresh salad and some fruit, would make a possible meal? I
have been turned away from half a dozen pubs on this trip alone by
innkeepers who were unable to make me even a sandwich. One inn in
Sussex, which could not produce even a piece of bread and butter
boasted a large sign, "Special catering for all needs of motorists."
When people say, "Why do you encumber yourself with a caravan in
England?" this is one of the answers.

At the local inn, where, but for our caravan house, with its

-6-

SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 7.

two burner oil stove, and tiny oven, I would have dined, there was
a floury brown soup, an overdone joint -- because in these long and
lovely twilights one likes to dine late, and all the time between
seven and eight-thirty the joint is in the oven -- some watery
cabbage, and some curdled custard on a piece of sponge cake. In
the caravan -- where the cook is not a professional innkeeper, but
a professional journalist -- there was a spring chicken in casserole,
with fresh peas, string beans, little carrots, and mushrooms; a
crisp salad of romaine and tomatoes, with a dressing which did not
come, ready mixed and too sharp, out of a bottle; and finally some
fresh raspberries -- all purchased on the streets of the last
village we had passed through, and all at less than the cost of
the inn meal.

Yet it is not true that English food is bad. English food --
as far as the ingredients are concerned -- is excellent. In good
private houses the cooking is wholesome and delicious. But food
in England, more than anywhere in the western world, is a class
matter. The table of the English aristocrat is as good as any;
that of the English bourgeoisie is worse than any. And there
seems to be no desire to change.

The innkeeper's conservatism will make the British village
less alluring to tourists than are those of the continent. It has
always been said of the Germans that they have no understanding of
foreign psychology. Yet it is in Germany that the Commercial High
School has started a course for the study of the culinary tastes
of tourists. Although the German bed, designed to keep not only
the head but also the toes out in the air, and with a queer feather
cushion to balance on the stomach, continues to be the despair of
the tucked-in peoples, even here Germans are beginning to see the
light, and it was in a Berlin hotel, that my bedside table had the
following small notice:

> Please tell the chambermaid exactly how you
> like your bed made -- whether with blankets or
> feather bed, with down quilt, or plumeau, tucked
> in firmly or loosely at the foot, and with or
> without head bolster. She will make it to suit you.

-7-

SINCLAIR LEWIS No. 7.

That is intelligent. And my experience is that nowhere in Europe is there such a desire to come into contact with other tastes and mentalities, as in to-day's Germany. The German small town knows the writings of Bennett, Wells, Galsworthy, Shaw, and Michael Arlen, and even such an esoteric writer as Virginia Woolf is beginning to be recognized, while most of the Americans, including such younger writers as Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, are translated and read. The desire to find out what other people eat, how other women dress, what their manners and customs are, accompanies the desire to know what the rest of the world thinks.

But then, Germany believes in intelligence, whereas Britain, while possessing some of the world's best intellects, has a national distrust of thinking fully as great as that in the United States. I can conceive of no other country where the correspondent of a leading newspaper would brag -- as one did the other day in London -- that the future First Citizen was "thank God, not an intellectual."

For villages which offer me good food, I shall go to France, Austria, or some parts of Germany. When I wish to see village life into which the national culture has penetrated and reveals itself in living expression, I shall go to Scandinavia, Germany, Austria. But English downs, English roofs, English trees, English churches, and the human kindness of English village folk, who are always ready with a hand when the caravan is stuck, with a cheery word, and with a helpfulness devoid of meddling curiosity--these will bring me back to England as long as there are ships on the sea or above it to carry me here.

-8-