The American Caller
STAND BACK FROM THE PAGE!
And disinfect yourself.
-- Wilfred Owen
In a Purposely Exaggerated
Letter to his Mother
24 June 1918
Few and far between were the occasions when my friend and colleague, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, expressed concern about my well-being. I savour them all.
Astute readers will remember that after I had been shot by the American gangster Killer Evans, Holmes rushed to my side, genuinely fearing I had been wounded more severely than I had. When Holmes had experimented with a noxious poison called the Devil’s-foot root and almost killed us both in Cornwall, he admitted most gratifyingly that his behaviour was unbecoming a friend. Nor shall I forget his deeply-appreciated confession to feeling “lost” without his Boswell. I treasure all these expressions of closeness, yet only in the case related to the frightening influenza of 1918 can I recall that Holmes actually backed away from an investigation in order to gainsay my guilt.
Allow me to state from the beginning that even the most trifling of references to the ghastly Spanish flu—or the Spanish Lady, as some more crudely call it—arouse in me the deepest feelings of remorse. As a consequence, it is little wonder that readers will search my narratives in vain for any specific references to that terrible disease.
Nor am I alone in such thinking. Although the worst of the pandemic coincided with the end of the Great War, readers are similarly hard-pressed to find mention of the flu’s deadly toll in the plethora of histories and memoirs that recount the end of the hostilities.
I for one have found little mystery in the disinclination among such writers to revisit the terror. To me, it has always seemed obvious that those who physically survived the pandemic of ’18 purposely erased from their collective memory the dread associated with having confronted so lethal a disease. It was as if the act of forgetting began as soon as the dying had ended.
Unfortunately, my own case was even more dismal. For me, the horror did not stop with the ebbing of the flu; I had an additional abhorrence to face. For entwined with the tragic stories raised by the disease was the relentless guilt I suffered for having believed that through sheer stupidity I had caused the senseless death of a friend.
How annoying then to acknowledge the arrival at my door of a determined American writer whose search for details about a fatal disease inadvertently resurrected the memories I had worked so hard to repress, memories deleterious enough to eclipse not only the mistakes for which I held myself accountable, but also for the greater horrors suffered by countless others.
Neither the falsely-presumed demise of Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls nor even the death of my beloved wife Mary had caused me to spiral downward as did the reckless belief in my own malfeasance during the pandemic, a malfeasance which the American visitor so persistently forced me to confront.
🔍
In May of 1926, the American writer, Sinclair Lewis, refused his country’s Pulitzer Prize for Best Novel. Arguing that the lure of such awards might entice other authors to alter or modify their works for the primary purpose of winning just such a prize, Lewis rejected the honour. As he explained in his letter to the Pulitzer committee, the desire to win an award like the one he was rejecting encourages American writers to remain “safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.”
To be sure, some critics suggest that Lewis’s true motivation was his anger at the Pulitzer committee for not having honoured his novel Main Street years earlier. Yet one must also acknowledge that many of his contemporaries continue to regard Lewis’s rebelliousness as an act of literary courage.
I certainly do. In fact, though not precisely a demonstration of defiance on my part, I have no doubt that it was Lewis’s show of strength that provided me the will to make public the lingering shame I had steadfastly associated with the Spanish flu. In fact, it was but a month after the American’s bold rejection of the Pulitzer that I set about to compose this very narrative.
Lewis’s personal involvement in my evolution actually began on a crisp afternoon in early March of ’23, three years prior to his controversy with the Pulitzer committee. The insistent clanging of the electric bell at my Queen Anne Street door that day caused my young housekeeper, Miss Ross, to hurry in response.
Despite the decline in my hearing, I happened to be leaning on my stick by the entry hall as she opened the door and was thus in an advantageous position to hear an American accent proclaim, “I want to see Dr. John Watson.”
“Who should—?” Miss Ross attempted to ask, but the poor woman could not complete the question.
“I am Sinclair Lewis,” the man at the door interrupted, enunciating each word as if the appellation were an Open Sesame.
Although his identity meant nothing to Miss Ross, I immediately recognized the name. After all, at that very moment, two of the man’s satirical novels, Main Street and Babbitt, were earning international fame for the prickly American.
“Allow me,” I told the housekeeper.
The dependable Miss Ross had been working at Queen Anne Street long enough to tolerate the strange characters—most commonly, personages associated with earlier Holmes cases—who might come round. As a result, in such situations she would ask them in; inform me of their presence; and, as in this instance, immediately disappear.
I was about to invite the visitor to enter when, no sooner had Miss Ross vanished, than the tall and gangling fellow presumptuously stepped inside on his own. Wrapped as he was in a long, black cape, he cut quite the memorable figure. What is more, when he raised a hand in salutation and the cape fell open, I could clearly see its bright purple lining as well as the smartly-tailored black suit, blue bowtie, and white spats that completed his rakish attire.
Equally riveting was the man’s pink and pock-marked face. On its right side there appeared a burn-like scar—the result, I should imagine, of a medical attempt to resolve an extreme case of acne. He appeared to be close to forty; and with his ice-blue, gimlet eyes and tufts of ginger hair asserting themselves from under a flat cap of black-and-white tweed, he presented quite the striking image.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Lewis,” I said, angling sideways whilst still foolishly trying to usher him in.
“Thanks, John,” he addressed me with shocking American familiarity. Removing his cap to reveal his carrot-coloured hair, he added, “They call me Red.”
My lanky visitor followed me into the study—actually, my ground-floor library in which I had repositioned my upstairs desk. The move was a way to minimize the need for stair-climbing in light of my gamy knee. I took my place in the turning-chair behind the desk and offered Lewis one of the two wingchairs opposite. Tossing his cape and cap onto the empty seat beside him, he folded himself by sections into the chair I had indicated.
“It’s just gone four,” I said. “Might I offer you some tea? I’ll summon the girl.”
“Rather have whisky,” Lewis responded. “With soda.” As if requiring an excuse, he reminded me, “Such stuff’s illegal in the States, you know.”
A bottle of Arthur Bell’s finest stood nearby; and employing the gasogene to add the fizz, I joined Lewis in the refreshments.
“How I can be of service?” I asked after we both had sampled our drinks. Though I had retired years earlier and now no longer hung a plaque upon my door, I rather naively assumed he had come for medical reasons.
Sinclair Lewis returned to his whisky, his long fingers circling the glass. “Actually, John, if you’re open to it, I’ve come to bat around a few ideas with you concerning my latest novel.”
Although his continued familiarity still grated, I confess that I was flattered. The idea that so celebrated an author, especially one noted for his barbs against what he considered the pompous British literati—"smugly content,” he had described them—could be interested in my opinion of his work never crossed my mind. Even so, I felt compelled to remind him that I was not a writer of fiction.
“Oh,” he chuckled, “I know what you do. I’ve been following the adventures of Sherlock Holmes for quite a while now. I reckon it must be more than twenty years since I first read The Hound of the Baskervilles.” Before I could fully consume the compliment, he surprised me by fitting a monocle to his eye. “I’ll have you know,” he said, peering at me through his now-magnified blue orb, “the main character in my novel The Trail of the Hawk reads one of your stories while duck-hunting. I compared the tracking of the mallards to your descriptions of Holmes trailing after thieves.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling my face flush.
“Fine and good,” Lewis replied with a wave of his eye-glass. “But Hawk’s in the past. It’s my latest project I want to focus on now, the novel I’ve only just begun. By way of background, here’s what you need to know.”
Whilst Lewis slouched in his chair, I took a drink in preparation. The man seemed to have no limits when it came to talking.
“Ever since I was kid back in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, in the U.S. of A.,” he explained, “the medical profession has intrigued me. My father is a doctor. So were my grandfather and one of my uncles. My brother Claude is a surgeon. Why, when I was a student back at Yale, I even thought of going into the profession myself. With such a history behind me, I think you can see why I’ve often considered writing about doctors.”
As one who actually succumbed to the calling, I understood completely.
“Oh, I experimented a bit with Dr. Kennicott in Main Street,” Lewis said, “but ever since that god-awful flu destroyed so much of the world back in ’18, I’ve been giving more serious thought to a novel that actually champions the medical man. I want to depict a doctor as the hero in a battle against some formidable disease.”
Lewis’s mention of the deadly pandemic immediately evoked the memory that still traumatized me, and I feared he might somehow stumble upon that very topic.
“As noble as such a project might be, Mr. Lewis,” I said defensively, “I confess to you that the Spanish flu is not a subject I particularly want to recall. Not only did I contract the disease myself, but you should know that I lost a dear colleague to its clutches. His death haunts me still.”
Lewis offered another dismissive wave of the monocle. “Just hear me out. That’s all I ask.” He did not wait for my response. “Last summer,” he continued, “I went to Chicago to meet up with Gene Debs.”
“Eugene Debs, the Socialist?” I asked. “The fellow who continually tries to become your President?”
“That’s the fellow,” Lewis grinned. “Good to know you’ve heard of him over here. You see, originally, I was planning to feature him in a novel about the labour movement. Who knows? I still might. With a wink, he added, “It’s another reason people call me ‘Red’.”
I forced a dry chuckle.
“But then I got derailed. What happened was, while I was in Chicago, a medical-friend introduced me to a bacteriologist, a fellow named Paul de Kruif who used to be a professor at the U. of Michigan. Perhaps you’ve heard of him as well.”
“As a matter of fact, I have. I’ve read about him.” I may have been retired, but I still perused the odd medico periodical—The Journal of American Medicine chief among them. “De Kruif is one of those microbe hunters at the Rockefeller Institute in New York.”
Lewis clapped his hands together, almost spilling his drink. “The very same—though Paul no longer works there. Fired last year for writing an article that attacked their mercenary approach to medicine. Too aware of the marketplace, Paul said. Dollar-chasers. Called their capitalist approach medical ‘ga-ga-ism’.
“‘Bunk’ is what I call it—all those medical mafooskies trying to make their quick bucks. Paul said their materialism cried out to be exposed, and that’s what he did. I tell you, his passion is so infectious that he fired me up. We started off talking about my one-time interest in becoming a doctor, and then we moved on to discussing the Spanish flu. Soon we were philosophizing about larger issues like the relationship between science and medicine. ‘I ought to write a novel about all this,’ I declared. That was back in September.”
Lewis paused for a moment, stared into his glass, and changed directions.
“At the same time,” he said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about that terrible flu. It arrived like an invading army. On account of it, my wife Gracie and I moved back to Minneapolis. We were concerned about our son Wells—named after your H.G., by the way, the greatest living novelist in the world today. In any case, our Wells was just over a year old back in ’18, and his mother was worried to death he might catch the thing. We figured the Midwest would be safer than New York.”
“I’ve met H.G. Wells,” I had to interject.
Lewis’s eyes opened wider. “I hope to meet him myself—maybe on this trip.”
Happy to divert the conversation, I rambled on. “H.G.—Bertie—actually helped Holmes and me on a couple of cases—one involving your countryman Stephen Crane and the other dealing with someone who had actually lived in the so-called country of the blind, which Bertie himself made famous in a short story.”*
Lewis did not seem to hear. “Then again,” he reflected, “maybe it wasn’t the flu that got me riled up about doctors. Maybe it was just how de Kruif took on those fellows at Rockefeller—I’m calling it the McGurk Institute in the novel, by the way. In either case, I told de Kruif I was writing a morality tale about a medical man, a research scientist who’s driven to fight disease. His goal is noble, but on his journey to reach it, he discovers how much he has to learn—so much, in fact, that based on how little he knows at the start, I’m thinking of calling the novel The Barbarian.”
A strange title for a book about a doctor, I frowned, especially a book that is supposed to champion the modern medical man.
“John,” Lewis laughed, “if you could see the expression on your face. But think about it—the title makes sense. The doctor is going to start out as a kid in some hick country village—the way I did in Sauk Centre. In fact, he’s going to fall down so often that I also thought of calling the book The Stumbler. You probably don’t like that one either.”
“It’s just that—”
“Hold your horses,” the American interrupted. “I’ll be the first to admit that it’s tough to name a book that hasn’t been written yet. But thanks to Paul, I’ve created some outlines, selected one or two character names, and even composed a few pages. I did try coming up with more generalized titles—The Destroyer is one or maybe The Merry Death. But even with all those choices, I’ve got to say that I’ve always been partial to eponymous titles, the ones that use the names of people in the stories. Dickens had it right, you know—Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist.
“Main Street turned out well for you,” I reminded him.
“Ah, yes,” he said, pointing a finger at me as if to verify my literary acuity. “But I’ll never get another title that good, one that’s become part of everyday speech.”
“Indeed,” I said.
“But you know, John, however the title ends up, Paul liked the overall idea so much that he agreed to join me. So now we’re working on the novel together. We make an excellent duo. You see, I don’t really understand all the experiments and the research that go into fighting disease, and he does. I told him to dramatize ‘real science’, not the phony stuff you see in the movies.”
“It makes perfect sense,” I said.
“With Paul’s expertise, getting the science right has been the easy part. Why, he’s already furnished me with a pair of models for my primary scientist”—suddenly, Lewis broke into an exaggerated German accent— “ze fictional Max Gottlieb, ze Cherman Jew who mentors ze main character.”
I was surprised at hearing the dialect. I do not mind admitting it.
“For Gottlieb,” Lewis said, returning to his regular voice, “Paul suggested I combine the traits of two of his associates—a physiologist named Jacques Loeb and Paul’s former teacher, bacteriologist Frederick Novy. Don’t get me wrong—they’re perfect as scholars—Paul got that right—but I’m looking for more. I want the hunter tracking his prey—dare I say, ein detektif seeking ze murderer.”
At last—in spite of all the seemingly random history and humour, the word “detective” finally revealed where Lewis was leading this discussion.
“In fact,” he said in confirmation of my thoughts, “I was hoping you could introduce me to your friend Sherlock Holmes. He’s already a presence in the book. You see, based on your descriptions of him, I’m giving Gottlieb a hawklike nose and making him thin and tall and nervous. It goes without saying that he’ll inherit Holmes’s detecting skills, his hunger for Truth. And for the boobs who don’t get it, my narrator’s going to come right out and say that Gottlieb would have made an excellent Sherlock Holmes.”*
What a strange fellow, I thought, yet “Quite admirable” is what I said aloud. “You seem to be making excellent progress.”
“Would it were so, John; would it were so.” He replaced the monocle before adding, “But, you see, the plot continues to give me trouble.”
Curious, I thought, recalling an alternative view of Lewis’s plotting skills. In the case in ’02 that I titled The Outrage at the Diogenes Club, Holmes and I had met another American writer, the late Jack London. At one point, he had told us that Sinclair Lewis was so good inventing plotlines that Lewis actually sold them to other authors who were desperate for ideas. London himself confessed to buying some fourteen. I told my visitor as much.
“I know, I know,” Lewis replied, now twirling the monocle. “I’m supposed to be good at these things, but the opening section of this new novel—it moves too slowly. All I really have so far is just a detailed plan.” Here his long fingers withdrew a small notebook from an inner coat pocket. “These are my notes.”
Riffling through the pages to illustrate his point, Lewis displayed a collection of small yellow sheets filled with lots of scribblings and a number of unrecognizable but detailed maps. One page in particular was headed in block letters that read “BACTERIOLOGICAL NOTES”.
The American paused a moment and closed the notebook. “Funny you should mention Jack though,” he mused. “Most fitting. I remember I once suggested that he should create a character like Sherlock Holmes. He could use him in a magazine series about a World Police force I had thought up.”
I cocked an eyebrow. Holmes had enough disagreements with Scotland Yard; a world-wide police organization would drive my poor friend mad.
“Jack and I weren’t getting along near the end,” Lewis remembered. “He claimed I’d published something about him I wasn’t supposed to. Pure bunk!”
The man does like to talk, I marvelled once more.
“It’s this Spanish flu business,” Lewis carried on. “It’s too amorphous. From the start I haven’t been able to hang a complete storyline around it. That’s why de Kruif and I decided to write about the plague. At least, there’s a cure for that.”
“Thank God,” I said.
“Or thank the scientists who found the bacteria responsible. More to the point, de Kruif and I thought that to gain fresh ideas, we should to travel to places where people had suffered a lot. This past January we set out on an old freighter called the Guiana. According to my friend, Henry Mencken, Paul and I were both so drunk he had to pour us onto the deck. Personally, I can’t remember the details. At any rate, we headed for the West Indies. A hundred thousand people died there from flu, you know.”
I did not know. It was a staggering figure.
“We began on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. In Barbados, we took a Dutch steamer, the Crynssen, to Trinidad and then to the north coast of South America. We moved on to Panama and eventually to Plymouth. Now—a little more than two months after we first set out—here we are in London. We arrived a couple of days ago—March sixth, to be precise.”
“Welcome to England,” I said.
“You might be interested to know that I’ve made the trip before. But on this visit, I figured it was about time that I met Arthur Conan Doyle.”
“My agent.”
“Right. After all, the fellow is also a writer, and he lived through the flu. I figured I could gain some insights. But that was before we left. On the boat I read his piece on how the flu had killed his son.”
As I have reported elsewhere, unlike many of my colleagues, Sir Arthur publicly announced his own personal tragedy that resulted from the Spanish flu. In yet another of history’s grand ironies, his son Kingsley, an army medico—Sir Arthur called him ‘a very perfect man”— had barely survived the bloodiest conflict in British military history.
On 1 July 1916, the first day of the infamous Battle of the Somme, he was struck in the neck by two German bullets. Army doctors patched him up and trotted him out to the front lines again where, just weeks before the Armistice, he was killed not by enemy gunfire but by the influenza.
Whilst other fathers might have collapsed at the news, Sir Arthur reaffirmed his faith in Spiritualism. He assured everyone that he was sustained by his belief in the ability to communicate with those who have passed on. It was almost a year later that he experienced what he called “the supreme moment” of his spiritual life.
During a séance, Sir Arthur reported that he heard a familiar voice in the darkened room call, “Father.”
“Dear Boy, is that you?” he asked.
In response, he said he felt the breath of a face close to his own, sensed a kiss upon his brow, then heard the voice murmur, “Forgive me.”
Sir Arthur maintained that it was Kingsley he had heard requesting forgiveness for doubting the reality of spiritualism. The father asked his son if he was happy; and after a fearful silence, Sir Arthur heard the words he had sought: “Yes, I am so happy.”
“Conan Doyle,” I told Lewis, “truly believed it was his son who had spoken to him.”
“Bunk,” replied the American. “I know all about that other-world blather, that world-beyond-the-shade business. Why, I’ve heard the best of the Holy Rollers, Billy Sunday himself, spin a tale or two. Even pitched in my own hosannahs with the other saps just to see how it felt.” Suddenly, Lewis tilted his head back, opened his mouth wide, and shouted out a fierce whoop.
So loud was his shriek that Miss Ross came running into the sitting room. “Is everything all right?” she asked looking round.
“Everything’s fine,” I assured her and sent her off.
“My point is,” said Lewis, “I’m too practical to fall for those stories about life on the Other Side. I need a more solid approach. That’s why I decided to come see you instead, John. I reckoned that you—being a medical man and a gifted chronicler—you might be able to furnish me with some believable stories. I’m looking for tangible details, details that don’t come from some fantasy world, details—dare I say? —that are different from the ones I’ve picked apart in the states.”
I shook my head. “I’m certain that the American and British responses to the flu are fairly standard.” Hoping to fend off any further questions, I added, “I don’t imagine that I have anything new to offer.”
Lewis leaned back, balled his hands into fists, and slowly stretched his arms. “Well,” he sighed, drawing out the word, “I did already say that I’m hoping you can connect me with Sherlock Holmes. I’m sure,” he smiled broadly, “that he must have some original tales to tell about ‘The Spanish Lady’.”
Sinclair Lewis’s red face and leering grin suggested a more eccentric view of the matter than the more sombre approach to which I was accustomed. In fact, the more he joked, the more plentiful in my mind’s eye appeared the memories of the sick and dying.
Yet at the same time, I could not deny the sympathy I was feeling for a fellow-author in search of material. I realized that in his place, I would have appreciated any help I could acquire.
“I suppose I can provide you with a few details,” I told Lewis reluctantly. “But I cannot speak for Holmes. I do know that he spent most of the pandemic quarantined in the South Downs, so I can’t imagine he has much to offer—though he did come here to be my nursemaid after the infernal disease had struck me.”
“Take no offense at my interest in Holmes, John,” said Lewis. “Obviously, I want to hear your story as well as his.”
“In Holmes’s retirement,” I offered, feeling on firmer ground talking about my friend’s experience than my own, “he tends to keep to himself.”
“I’m a pretty persuasive fellow,” Lewis said, rubbing his hands together. “Why not arrange a meeting for all three of us?”
There was no doubt that Sinclair Lewis could be persuasive; yet even before I answered, he said, “But since I’m here right now, let’s begin with you.”
I furrowed my brow. Not only did I not want to remember, but I also understood a satirist’s ability to skewer his subjects—this satirist’s in particular.
Lewis held up his hand. “Not to worry, John. I respect your privacy. I’ll never mention your name.” He produced a pencil from another pocket, and re-opening the notebook that was resting on his knee, allowed the pencil tip to hover inches above a blank page. “If you don’t mind though, I’d like to take down the important facts.”
I had already given my approval. There seemed no cause to go back on my word. Besides, it was not his notetaking that had anything to do with the disturbing memories evoked by his questions. It was the memories themselves.
* See Watson’s narratives, The Baron of Brede Place and “An Adventure in Darkness.”
* In his essay “Sinclair Lewis, Max Gottlieb, and Sherlock Holmes” (Modern Fiction Studies, Autumn 1985), Robert L. Coard identifies Lewis’s specific references to the detective.
