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When she met Sinclair Lewis in 1927 Dorothy Thompson was restless again. She had just divorced the elusive Josef Bard and Lewis was being divorced by his first wife. After their marriage in 1928, she plunged into her new career as wife of the No. 1 U. S. novelist as energetically as she had followed her previous ones. She helped to rebuild a house in Vermont and filled it with guests. She set up an establishment in Bronxville that soon became famous as a salon. She called herself Mrs. Sinclair Lewis. She had a baby. For two years she hardly read a book. She wrote some articles and short stories, but they were not enough to keep her busy. Following her inevitable pattern, she was restless and dissatisfied again. The columnist's job Saved her from boredom and turned her burgeoning energy into the channels from which she could derive the most personal satisfaction. And the ideas she had absorbed since childhood became her credo as a columnist.
Columnist's Credo. Dorothy Thompson thinks: a) that Roosevelt is headstrong (so is she) but b) has "a real world sense" (and so has she); c) that WPA is unhealthy (it smacks of social work); d) that the democratic ideal is most nearly realized in Vermont ("where the town meeting is still a living, functioning institution," i. e., where democracy functions as in the past); e) that the New Deal is incipient Fascism (she sees dictators in every closet); f) that government should be decentralized (her first seven years in small towns were happy); g) that "the educated female is, in general, dewomanized" (but not Dorothy Thompson).
She has been accused of being an oppositionist, of having no program of her own. Dorothy Thompson has a program for herself. It is aristo-democratic, polysyllabic and not so very clear. Excerpts:
"All my instincts and most of my intelligence incline me toward conservatism. I distrust any program which does not carefully take into account the nature of man. I believe that fundamental, biological inequality is a fact of nature. I also believe that the instinct to preserve society is one of the highest sublimations of the erotic instinct plus reason and intelligence. The democratic idea, of the value of every human soul and the right of every human being to protect his own interests in so far as they do not too drastically infringe upon the interests of others, is not in the least incompatible with the aristocratic conception, provided the latter is removed from the field of privilege. A good society should produce a natural leadership of the biologically and mentally superior. The best society—and here I agree with Walt Whitman—is the one which produces the largest number of healthy, happy, cooperative, competent human beings.
"The injustice and disorder of our times comes from the fact that individuals and groups have gratified their appetites by instruments of political power. . . . I do not think . . . that this country would produce a higher general level of physical and economic well being if it were governed by trade unions monopolizing the political power, than it is when governed by the owning classes monopolizing political power.