THE "TRUTH"
275
"Nihil human'um mihi alienum est,"
he wrote in his diary in ,the winter
of 1907 as he set out by steamer for Panama. But it was only informa–
tion that he recorded, long Whitmanesque catalogues, all about fact
and little about character; what things looked like, not what they meant;
data rather than ideas. Later on as a novelist, he was a fact-gatherer, a
forerunner, as Professor Schorer points out, of the modern sociologist
who assiduously studies the current scene in the hope that if he can
only gather
all
the facts he will find the answer to it all. Most of
Lewis' novels were conceived as compendiums of sociological fact.
But irrespective of novels his craving for information was inex–
haustible. Upon arrival in any American city, he immediately called
the local newspaper: "This is Red Lewis, I'm here." He would then
tour the local churches, for he was an indefatigable student of church
architecture; also he always assiduously read the newspaper accounts
of all the sermons, another favorite interest. (When gathering informa–
tion for
Elmer Gantry,
he consorted with ministers constantly and
actually preached some sermons himself.) Religion, real estate, feminism,
medicine, and so on--each of his novels is always about something.
He was likewise interested in aviation, automobiles, ships, hotels, labor,
Negroes, the stage, teaching, cats, chess, philanthropy, houses, and so on.
He even had an interest in toy soldiers and urged John Hersey to go into
the business.
His surface character was equally widespread and chaotic right
from the start. The queer lonely boy was "profoundly sentimental"
and "not without a smothered sweetness;" but he could be insolent
and he was given to tantrums. He was peculiarly and repeatedly
gullible, always the butt of crude, sometimes cloacal, jokes; and he
had only one friend. He was "almost endearingly incompetent." In
his
Oberlin days he was said to be trigger-tempered, repulsive to girls,
"caustic," "sarcastic," a pariah; at
this
same time he himself was
intensely religious, engaged constantly in Y.M.C.A. activities, and
was committing to memory the Sermon on the Mount. At Yale
he was a pariah known as "God-Forbid" (the meaning of the epithet
is obscure): again the outsider. He was always picking up nick–
names, a sure sign that one is either very popular (not the case here),
or a figure of fun.
As his life went on the complexities and contradictions only
in–
creased as the fissures in his character deepened: a physical coward,
a mimic of genius, possessed of a prodigious memory-he could quote
Donne's "Canonization" or the trial scene from
Pickwick
verbatim–
a pacifist, a clever and experienced publicist; hair-triggered, charming
