by J.F. Powers
Jim
BETTY POWERS
150 Summit Avenue
November 15, 1948
Dear Betty,
[…] A note from Buck saying something called Thinker’s Digest wants to run excerpts from my stories, at their leisure, I guess, they want blanket permission and say they never pay for anything because they publicize books so well: need I tell you it’s a Catholic outfit? […] And now, once more, much love.
Jim
BETTY POWERS
150 Summit Avenue
November 22, 1948
Dear Betty,
[…] Feel pretty good today. I ate the last of the strawberry preserves and am into the cherry now, which isn’t so good. We had an interesting trip back,8 no dangerous accidents, or even narrow escapes, eating something at Elk River. Fr G. was on the famished side. I guess he’d hoped for a little something among our rural friends. […]
I picked up a yesterday paper from the basket by the elevator. I enjoy it more that way, I find, with no investment in it, just the loss of time. I did up the dishes and cleaned the ashtrays before I left yesterday, so the house is in good shape. You looked very sweet and pretty yesterday, and I was glad you are my wife. I know I repeat myself, but do try to anticipate the time, so I can be there in time. I realize too how weary you must get of someone asking you when you’re going to have the baby, but I can’t get it out of my head that you should know more about it than you do, or could know. […]
Much love,
Jim
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
St Cloud, Minnesota
November 29, 1948
Dear Katherine Anne,
[…] I am here in St Cloud, known rightly as Granite City, awaiting the birth of another baby. I hope it doesn’t come as the blow to you as it did to us (I might lift that line for my headstone, containing as it does much of my “thought” and more of my “style”). Betty is 18 days late in having this baby, and the strain is beginning to tell. We are set down here with her family, who are filled with all the expectation families seem to have at such a time; but even they, at this late date, find their joy a heavy thing. It is like a party that everyone’s tired of but won’t leave. And the truth about me is that I just don’t qualify as the ideal husband. The doctor with a big, knowing smile predicts a big bouncing boy, and I’m damned if he has my number there. Betty and I decided that having children is not the same thing for a writer. There is no room in our economy, in the largest sense; the old rowboat leaks already. […]
Your Katherine Anne here is a flourishing fatty. She has one flaw, an eye that doesn’t focus quite right, and one virtue that I take to be art: she dances to music, though she doesn’t yet walk.
Very best,
Jim
Mary Farl Powers was born on November 29, 1948. As they were to do in the case of all the babies, Betty’s parents paid the hospital bill.
BETTY POWERS
150 Summit Avenue
December 4, 1948
Dear Betty,
[…] I did a job on the house yesterday, cleaning. I scrubbed the bathroom with my own little hands, including the toilet bowl, and mopped the floor in here, including the hall, and including behind the davenport, where it was about an inch deep, the dust. I washed the windows on the inside, swept the kitchen, and thought how nice it would be if I could vacuum this rug, but I can’t take ours seriously, our vacuum cleaner. I must study it. […]
Do you need money? I don’t suppose you’d have enough sense (I mean this lovingly) to make your hospital check out big enough to get some. Tell me. Much love. Katherine Anne gave me some nice kisses when I left the other day.
Jim
BETTY POWERS
150 Summit Avenue
December 11, 1948
Dear Betty,
Saturday afternoon. Fr G. has been here for lunch, so to speak, beer, swiss cheese, pepperoni (a new food I’ve found, kind of bologna), and Black Forest bread. […] I won’t deny I’ve had a little too much beer, as you can tell from this typing, but it is wearing off. […]
I went to the Alvin9 last night. An old comedian from Chicago days, pretty good, but the girls weren’t much. I meant to speak to the manager, but didn’t. Do you think A History of Burlesque would go? Thomas More Bookshop Selection. I’m considering it. All for now. Much love. I vacuumed the rug yesterday. Very tough going, but I find the nozzle is good for sucking the dust out of corners, furniture, and picture frames.
Jim
I’m going to get some pepperoni for Ezra Pound. It will make a nice gift for him, something to go with the crackers.
Jim went to Chicago, to his parents’, for Christmas. His sister, Charlotte, was also there with her first child, Dennis, a toddler. Betty, Katherine, and Mary stayed in St. Cloud with Betty’s parents.
BETTY POWERS
Chicago
1948
J. F. Powers, His Christmas Letter
Dear Betty,
Here it is Christmas 1948, and another year has gone by. I am sitting here in my steamer robes writing to you, thinking of the years gone by, the years to come, thinking of our heritage of freedom, of the Minnesota centenary, of rural life, of rural fun, of Life …
Now, the truth is I have not heard from you for three days. Maybe I should have called you last night, or today, and maybe I will (there is some agitation here that I should), but I remember how unsatisfactory our phone calls have always been, and I hold back (there is also the matter of the cost, and I don’t know you well enough yet to determine whether you’d be happier to have me call or not to call: mystery of matrimony, inscrutability of woman). Anyway, as you can tell, I am irritated that I haven’t heard from you, but I realize you are probably very busy with our offspring, that and the confusion of the holidays, the dinner at your house today, or is it the Strobels’ on Christmas? I do hope you are not getting nervous and run-down, and I fear you are.
My one big plan now, aside from the novel, which is always with me, is to get a big house and someone to help you, and I don’t know how I can do it. I want to buy a house on Summit, big enough for my mother and dad to live upstairs or somewhere, and I fear you are not with me in this. It is the saddest thing in my life, however, to see my mother worked the way she is here, to say nothing of my father. I think, is it too much to ask of you, and really, all things considered, I think not. I think it would be good for you; I know it would be good for me. I think my mother might become the friend you’ve never had (and as I say that, I feel you draw away), but I believe that, Betty. With two other women I might have married, I know it would have worked out, and you are better than either one of them; no comparison, otherwise. However, I am not trying to be cunning about this, it is the simple truth, and I wish I could believe that you might see it. In any event, I feel I must work much, much harder, and I fully intend to, and I do not kid myself about schedules, etc., not since the one I made out before I married you, the one that used to hang on the wall. There is a little too much activity here (the child) for me to collect my thoughts very well, but you have the fragments.
I want to tell you, too (what I feel is unnecessary), that I love you very much, that I wish I might make your life easier, and that gets back to the house and help again. Will you try to go along with me on this? I almost say, If you love me … but that would be wrong; I know you love me. Perhaps you should listen to me in a few things, though, such as you did in having your hair cut, and they will be better for you than you can imagine. You are inclined to think along traditional lines; I mean, if we haven’t done things, it is a good reason not to do them; but we must make a few swift surgical moves and departures: after all that is how we got married in the first place, and to my mind that is the best way; at least it is good to think that we fell in love all at once and were not cautious then and we haven’t been, except at intervals, since then. We have won a lot that way; we have lost too; but I think I’d rather have what we’ve won … and I know exactly what I mean, though you might
think me vague. […]
I love you, then. […]
Jim
10
If you can’t win with me, stop playing the horses!
January 18, 1949–September 6, 1949
Evelyn Waugh and Jim, 1949
ROBERT LOWELL
150 Summit Avenue
St Paul, Minnesota
January 18, 1949
Dear Cal,
[…] What word of Ted?1 I always said, remember, we’d mean nothing to him if he ever married that money he talked about, but I did not think we’d be cut off until then.
This month is my “hard time.” I am trying to get a MS together for Mr Moe, with an eye to a renewal,2 but what I thought was going to be just a typing job has turned into a worse job than the original. Just imagine a doctor with the patient all apart on the table, or a mechanic with my car, and add the time element, the February deadline, and you have my predicament. I’ve had it from my agent that renewals are hard to get anyway. I’ve been flirting with the idea of buying a house (with the money I haven’t got but might get if I took a job with something called the Catechetical Guild here: they are dealers in all kinds of religious junk and are thinking of opening up a new department publishing, with Doubleday, Catholic “classics” in the Permabooks format. If that doesn’t develop, I don’t know what I could do there; even if it does develop, the least that would happen to me would be the loss of my faith, I think, just seeing all the junk they have to convert the heathen—games like Pollyanna or Monopoly, for instance, except they deal with the sacraments or dogma. Waugh would love it. Me too, but I wonder, buying a house on it, if I could do the novel about it that would inevitably accumulate).
The truth is I’ve got to buy a house, with these three girls of mine (I count Betty among them). And I think I’d try to buy some awful big damned place up the street, from 12 to 40 rooms, the kind nobody else wants anymore because they cost too much to heat and are gloomy; rather in the direction of Yaddo style, architecturally. But I haven’t really looked into it; don’t know what they cost. And also, I haven’t got the job I’d need. I couldn’t do it on the Guggenheim, though. Ah, well, let me be a lesson to you. Stay single. That way you can afford to be yourself. […] All for now and best.
Jim
Journal, February 14, 1949
Betty told me that the priests had been up to see Sister Mariella … and in the talk this came out about me: He’s lookin’ for a job, didja know that? And that because I was foolish enough to go out and see them at the Catechetical Guild. I thought I made it seem disinterested enough, but I guess not … I think it gave them joy to think I was around begging for work—from them, too, whom I’d hurt so much in the past. Oh, God. Impossible not to think of Joyce and all he had to say about the Church—or is it just the Irish?… That “He’s lookin’ for a job” is a terrible reminder of my own father and all the time he spent looking for a job … And the world is waiting for me as it waited for my father—he’s lookin’ for a job! Sister M. said the priests referred to me as to the devil incarnate—but that is probably exaggerated—a little.
Father Egan had run afoul of someone big in the St. Paul diocesan hierarchy, most likely because of his radical Christian views, and was assigned to a parish in Beardsley, Minnesota, a parched little town on the border of South Dakota. In the summer, it was one of the hottest places in the state. “Whenever the wind blows a particle of dust in my eye,” wrote Jim, “I think of you out there on the lunatic fringe of the world.” Egan threw himself into the duties of the parish and maintaining the rectory.
HARVEY EGAN
150 Summit Avenue
April 2, 1949
Dear Father Egan,
Friday night and I trust you are back in Beardsley by now. I enclose some clippings. I’ll try to keep sending these to you, only the best ones. You know I didn’t get a chance to send stuff to the boys in the last war (due to a little mix-up), and so I intend to make up for them with you. After all, it is like that, what you are going into. And I want you to know, speaking for our block, that we think of you often and will try to make it up to you if you ever return to the States. We are also holding forum meetings in which we discuss the problems of the day, and this, we humbly hope, will make St Paul a better place to live in, for us and for you when and if, as I say, you return. It shouldn’t have happened to a dog, what happened to you, but then we can’t have everything our own way all the time, can we? (I’m not so sure about that, but a certain Fr B.3 is said to hold with that doctrine, and so I go along, knowing what happened to some that set themselves, however secretly they thought, against him.) All for now. (Jamaica opened today: weather clear, track fast…)
jf
St. Paul, “Home of the Saints,” was much better suited to Jim’s temperament than rural Minnesota. The city provided the company of Saul Bellow, Robert Penn Warren, and other writers with whom he enjoyed the conversation and sense of fellow feeling for which he longed. Evelyn Waugh, who was writing a piece on American Catholicism for Life magazine, arrived in St. Paul. He and his wife came for dinner at the Marlborough, where Betty served them lobster Newburg.
HARVEY EGAN
150 Summit Avenue
May 2, 1949
Dear Fr Egan,
Your letter and enclosure rec’d this morning. You are very free with your funds, and kind as always. I would not hesitate to cash the check, and perhaps that’s what I’ll do. But I got $189.57 from England (advance on my book4 over there, just now arriving) last week, and that should take us through May. (We’ve already paid the rent with the usual flourish.) I’ve not had any luck with the two stories yet, but have not despaired entirely, and Betty mailed off a new one yesterday. I did get the shakes two days after I saw you last, however, and wrote to Marquette to say I was ready to deal again. That may end in nothing. I require certain things: housing, short hours, big pay—something to compensate me for leaving St Paul (though the attractions are fewer as time goes on; Fr G. is the only one left), and they may not see fit to provide.
Things are rather rough here with the babies. Don’t expect much peace during the day, but when they take over the night too, that’s bad. What’s the Church’s stand on desertion? Very rough on Betty, body and soul; only my soul suffers. (She, B., was down to have some of her hair cut today, a triumph for me.) So I’m going to keep your check, in readiness—please don’t change banks. Since you won’t mind, I think I ought to tell you, though, that I wouldn’t give the check much of a chance to pull through uncashed. Thanks. I wonder if you can get Marty O’Neill5 way out there but doubt that they make radios that good or that you’d have one. Anyway, the Saints won their 11th game tonight. That’s 11 and 0. I haven’t been out yet. Somebody said there’s now a plaque at Lex. where you used to sit.6 […]
I mentioned your slate roof to Art. He seems to think there’s nothing to it. He explained it all to me, how you replace them, using a certain kind of hammer to peck out a hole for the nails (they are nailed), and shove a piece of copper in, and … well, I’ll tell you, Father, I went through all this once, and it won’t do you any good coming from me. Anyway, it’s not much of a job, according to Art (come to think of it, nothing ever was). On another page I’ve prepared a scratch sheet for next Saturday.7 I called the Chancery, and it’s official you don’t have to hear confessions during the race. In fact, it might be laudable and meritorious if you listened to the broadcast and smoked a cigar. You see there’s nothing wrong with these things in …
Jim […]
Do you suppose from all the Latin Joe H. Palmer uses he’s an old assistant that went south?8
“If you can’t win with me, stop playing the horses!” —Clocker Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
150 Summit Avenue
St Paul, Minnesota
May 25, 1949
Dear Cal,
Are you mad at me or just in a tunnel? I haven’t even seen your name mentioned in Time or Life. The last I heard was some time before I
applied for a renewal of the Guggenheim that I didn’t get. A few weeks back I wrote to Mrs Ames about coming to Yaddo for August, Betty and me, and she said it would be all right. I wonder if I can hope to see you there. Or will you be going to Europe with everybody else, or can’t you go? I hope you’re working well.
I took a new grip on myself when the Guggenheim failed me and wrote a couple of stories for publication. To date nothing has happened to them that would lead me to think my plan to live by writing was a good one. So recently I signed up to teach creative writing at Marquette come September. I’ll have six hours only, and they say they’ll find us a place to live. Not the way I’d like it, but it does beat depending on the whims of editors of the magazines that pay a living wage. I remember you told me that in the beginning or what now seems like the beginning. So barring the unforeseen, I’ll be in Milwaukee for at least a year.
I signed up for a writers’ conference at Kansas last winter, and now that it’s almost upon me, I wish I hadn’t: mostly I mean I have to write a speech, and it is gradually dawning that I have nothing to say. I don’t know the truth about any writer, about literature, about culture, and so what my thesis will be is still a mystery. You don’t have an old college essay lying around that I might read, do you? As my own, of course. Perhaps I could say a few words about the eating and drinking habits of poets, with particular reference to Roethke. That is more in my line. Allen Tate and his wife9 will be at the conference. I don’t know them, though, and suppose I can’t look for much help there. They were here a couple of weeks ago—he gave a reading at the university—but I was out of town, on some kind of a trip with a clerical friend who was trying to get away from it all. We went fishing up on the Canadian border. Didn’t catch anything. Seems you have to have a pack of guides and an airplane to do it right. Some people from Chicago, two couples with two Cadillac convertibles, twins, did it right. It was good to see them going off in the morning and returning at night with all their army and equipment.
