Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life

by J.F. Powers

  I can’t say that we have a roaring time either. Every now and then he looks at you—usually, Betty—and says, “Well, what did you think of Eva Perón?” or “Well, how’re the family?” Seems Eva was just a peasant girl, before she met Perón. Weather in America—he’s been there, was out west in Buffalo—pretty tropical. Yes, we bathe in the river and irrigate the plantation (sometimes it’s the ranch), and you can really hear dem banjos ringin’. Takes soda in his Drambuie, thinks it’s regular scotch, I think. But all right. Brought us some inedible apples in a briefcase, much appreciated by Betty. When someone brings me watermelon, I’ll sit up. Or Smucker’s. I confessed Smucker’s last time, got the works; wants me to cut it out or at least—the confessor was on the in se himself—to cut down. How can I? I’m human.

  In England, Geo. and I saw Fr D’Arcy (who has since written to the Earl of Wicklow,10 who has now written to me, and I have to him; we’ll have a meal: he wanted us to join him on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, if you’re wondering how well we know each other). Fr D’Arcy fine, no ball of fire as we understand the term, but seems to have a way with people who read. Saw his room on Farm Street, lots of pre-Reformation junk, statues, chalices, plaques, big chair before fireplace, electric fire also nearby—someone said he’s waiting (and wants) to die—and I could see him there. Confessed desire for subscription to Time. Must see if George arranged for that, though it seems criminal to increase the circulation.

  Saw Msgr Knox, briefly, after sermon at Clifton, Bristol Diocese. He’s a healthy man. I hadn’t thought that from his pictures, where his head looks like it’s making a basket—two points—in his collar. I’m afraid he didn’t know who I was. Do you know? I told him about the Irish customs wanting to take his book (Enthusiasm) away from us, as banned. Only memorable thing I said on the whole trip; I’m not much anymore.

  Saw Waugh at Piers Court. All a lie about liveried servants. Carried out his dishes himself. Very nice, but no fun for me. Gave me his new book, not published, Men at Arms, which I haven’t had time to read, and that should tell you I’m working. Feel guilty about that, about not being able to write and tell him that I like it, as I think I will. George and Betty read it. They say it has a wonderful chapter on a chemical toilet, which George seemed to think was my baby, if it was ever to become literature. It may not be what some would consider sex, but it still isn’t my sort of thing. I’m waiting for someone to point out that whatever else old JF may be, he’s never dealt in sex. But, no, there’s no one saying it, and America’s cleanest writer goes his lonely way. I may duck out and come into the church again, in time for my novel’s publication, to get the full convert treatment if the market holds. You can see I’m brooding, can’t you? All for now. Thanks for the clippings. My blessing upon you and all your lawn mowers.

  Jim […]

  HARVEY EGAN

  Greystones

  September 9, 1952

  Dear Fr Egan,

  […] Betty and I have been working in my office for over a week, a ten-by-ten room, radio, map of Minnesota, electric fire, a stack of unread London Times, four numbers of Time, and so on. They’ve been repairing our chimney and papering the walls—this in our good room, with the view—and we go back in there this evening, with roaring fire, gale raging outside, sea crashing on rocks. Perfect site for a bestselling author, but again something comes between one and sales. Incidentally, about Prince11 being on that bargain list in Springfield, I suppose they bought too many copies (out of personal admiration) and just couldn’t sell them. I was never very strong in Sangamon County. Horses for courses. George used to make good money at the state fair, barking up the Unborn Baby show.

  Was there any truth in what you said about yourself, your health, in a previous letter? Do you actually suffer from something—physical, I mean? Wouldn’t make much sense, if you did. I’m afraid I’d be tempted to peel and eat a Clark Bar right in front of you. Give me a little more information on that. Remember I was once very close to medicine. […]

  We did meet the Earl of Wicklow and Saturday had dinner with him at the Bailey. Like him a lot. According to his friend, a young barrister (former European 147 lb champ), Lord Wicklow is holy, not pious, which is a distinction I’ve heard made over here once before. The earl’s favorite phrase is “Don’t you know!” Another friend of his—young man working for the transportation bureau—sounded positively American, when, oh, when would we start living according to Christ in this most Christian of countries (he and the champ both drank club orange, by the way), to which I made no immediate reply, to which Lord Wicklow said, “Don’t you know!! Don’t you know!” The apostle in transportation, unmarried like the champ (who also drinks club orange), takes his pleasure in letters to The Evening Mail, some of which I’ve sent you in the past and a few snatches this time, never knows when he’s coming out in print. He writes mostly under the nom de course “Pro Publico Bono” and hits pretty hard, I understand, and they also say he is easy to read. But I do want you to understand that I found the earl and his two friends great sport, the best people I’ve seen in Ireland for my purposes, which admittedly are not everyone’s. We hope to have them out.

  Here’s the payoff on Fr Fennelly. You know he usually talks about the need to use a missal. Whatever he talks about, though, there is one rather dirty bastard whom he keeps referring to as “the ordinary man,” and it is this fellow who is running the world today, outvoting men like Fr Fennelly, crossing him at every turn, and unlike the landed gentry in the old days the ordinary man just doesn’t pick up the check, wants his union wage, his newfound position, without the responsibilities. And so on. The payoff is that while getting my hair cut the other day, the barber (an usher at the nine o’clock), who speaks fondly of former pastors, how nice they were, etc., referred to Fr Fennelly as “the ordinary man.” I guess that’s what the natives call him. He had it coming, I guess, but I am still one of his supporters, preferring excitement on Sunday. I admitted to the barber, however, that it might be because I was just passing through. To which he said, “Well, for that matter, we all are.” So there is a certain quickness, aptitude for the verities, among the common people here. […] All for now. Write.

  Jim

  LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE

  Greystones

  September 25, 1952

  Dear Leonard and Betty,

  Can’t remember whether I owe you a letter or not, but feel a desire to renew communications with someone in the Big Missal Country. Here, incidentally, it’s enough that we use Fr Stedman’s little number. Betty (my wife), always one to be more Catholic than the Church, now uses a rosary during Mass.12 […]

  We’ve had Fr Petrek (former seminarian at St John’s) for a couple of days and enjoyed having him. He’s very young, as we older men say; not even Rome seems to have slowed him up, apostolically, I mean. He’s going to Louvain now for a few years. Talks of taking rooms with a family, so as to be close to it all, and there was nothing I could do to dissuade him, and I used both precept and example. […]

  I was beginning to take heart about American politics until reading about Mr Nixon’s speech this morning, about his wife, his dog, his love for his country, etc. Apparently, since the speech went over, things haven’t changed a lot. Fortunately—so I’m informed—he won’t make it, even with all that to offer. Is Gene McCarthy going to the post again? I heard him nominate Humphrey over the American Forces Radio from Germany, kept tuned all the way, enjoying Gene’s voice, hoping he’d mention some of us in passing. […]

  Jim

  HARVEY EGAN

  J. F. Powers

  America’s Cleanest Lay Author

  Greystones

  September 26, 1952

  Dear Fr Egan,

  Yours rec’d, with enclosure, much enjoyed. I must say Catholic Action News fills a long-felt need here. But why quarterly? Surely we ought to get it oftener than that. Unless I miss my guess, they’ll have to put it out monthly, then weekly, and ultimately it will be the Catholic daily we’
ve all been wanting. If they want my recommendation for publicity purposes, here it is, and you may quote me without changing a word: “Good, good, good!”

  It will be nice for you—it will, it really will, if I remember rightly—to be able to catch Bp Sheen on TV when you go in for your treatments, which I trust you’ll arrange accordingly. Now for a word from the ignorant. Get rid of that fluorescent light in your office. You sit in the dark, except for it, and that’s bad for the eyes. I don’t say your trouble doesn’t go deeper than that, but I do say sitting in the dark, with only a fluorescent light, is bad. I do not have this advice from science but from my own observation of myself in like conditions. Call it spot glare, which is what Betty calls it. Of all the manifestations of Standard Oil, in the broad sense, as we used to employ it, the fluorescent light is the worst. […]

  Betty is sore at Nixon, doesn’t go for that mother and dog line he puts out. (Dick Nixon is the candidate for the vice presidency on the Republican ticket.) Letter from Dick Keefe indicates he may go political if Stevenson wins. Hopes for the commissariat of education and hopes to make scholastic philosophy for first graders a required subject. One of Dick’s brothers (Tom) has been on the Stevenson bandwagon for years. But I think he’s all right, if we want an educated man for such an important job.

  I wrote to Leonard Doyle last night and now hope for word on my friends, or should I say acquaintances, in the Big Missal Country. I enjoy a little gossip, you know, see nothing wrong in it, in itself. What I don’t like is to sit around for hours and even days just talking, but I don’t have to tell you that.

  Humphaus wrote one letter, something of a record for him, but not very rewarding. Dear Jim, How are you? Everybody same here. Don.

  Winter on here. We have our fireplace going. Tourists gone. Seafront vacant. Flat races running out; the hunt season, steeplechases, beginning. We may return by Christmas, if things work out. […]

  Jim

  Give me a ten-day trial on the light. The idea is to have more than one light in the room—and real lights. […] No heart, no food value, in fluorescent light.

  HARVEY EGAN

  November 3, 1952

  Dear Fr Egan,

  […] Fr Fennelly over last night for a few minutes. No believer in democracy, he, he says. It is a hard thing to take when you’ve lived under a king. But I’ll take democracy, since it’s closer to reality, as I see it; closer, its idea, to Christianity. Waugh and others want noblesse oblige, but after the fact that those who should have had it, didn’t, hence the deluge. As near as I can make out, listening to Fr Fennelly, Waugh, others, something just happened; the great did their best. Did you read the Rhys Davies story, though, in a recent New Yorker? (“A Visit to Eggeswick Castle.”) A good argument for the other side, the monarchists. The right way lies somewhere in between. Hey, how about that?

  We went to the Phoenix Park races one day, a lovely course, one nearest Dublin but we’d never been there. No winners but rewarding. We have so much to learn from the Old World. Como13 could be like that. […]

  The election tomorrow. Betty’s gone over to Stevenson—to the dismay of her folks, who are part of that tight little band who expect the miracle of the loaves and fishes every four years, the miracle in reverse, I mean.14 Ever since George was here and assured me Stevenson would win, I’ve been convinced of it, except for a few days there when Nixon resorted to soap opera; I was not so sure then. As Stagg15 feared Purdue, I feared that.

  1:00 a.m., listening to a German station, as usual; my favorite language. Tomorrow night, the unholy family goes to see The Pirates of Penzance in Dublin, at the special request of the girls. Mary gets tired sitting around the house every night. Looks accusingly at me and says, “Why never don’t we see a show?” They went to Pinafore only last November, but that’s youth for you, always on the go. All for now.

  Jim

  13

  In Ireland, I am an American. Here, I’m nothing

  Christmas 1952–June 3, 1953

  Betty and Mary and Don Humphrey. Summer 1953, living with Art and Money, up the river

  The family returned to the United States on the SS America, arriving at the beginning of December 1952, and once again moved in with Betty’s parents. It was not a happy arrangement from anyone’s point of view except that of the children, who loved being with their grandparents in the clean, modern “rambler” on the banks of the Mississippi. Jim quickly set off for Albuquerque to visit his parents. He returned mid-January.

  HARVEY EGAN

  Albuquerque

  Christmas 1952

  Dear Fr Egan,

  […] I am now in Albuquerque. Spending the Christmas and days to follow with my folks. […] Betty and children on the Mississippi. We’ll be there, officially, when the Wahls—in another providential break—leave for Florida for three months. After that—who knows? It’s too early to care, when you have put yourself, as we have, beyond mortal cares. (It says here.) Betty had a piece in The New Yorker two weeks ago.1 I have a story coming, a long one, certain to bring me orchids and other things from one and all.2 It is My Answer. I hope you’ll like it but suspect you won’t, which is where we both came in. I have another at The New Yorker, of another sort, as indeed I ought to have, having come to the end of my moneys from Doubleday, having turned down a job at Marquette for next fall; one at Univ. of Washington, for a semester; a writers’ conference next July in Bloomington, Indiana. So hold that sexton’s job open. I understand Bp Bartholome3 is going to hire a chauffeur—or at least a man to drive him around—and I was wondering … […] I saw George, passing through Mpls, and had a good evening with him. He drove me to St Cloud, for my triumphal return—not so triumphal, by the way, though Don did throw a party at which people who hadn’t ventured out for camaraderie for some time (Emerson, for instance) were present. They tell me I’ve not changed. Little do they know. I’ve aged; my perspective on my own, my native land, is sharper. […] I’ll be returning and will let you know when. We’ll have room and bath for you on the Mississippi. I do even less drinking than I used to, and so am not the dangerous companion I used to be.

  I am, sir, Yr Obed. Servant,

  Jim

  BETTY POWERS

  Albuquerque

  December 29, 1952

  Dear Betty,

  […] Yesterday with my father and mother I went to see The Quiet Man,4 and it was all right—very melancholy making, however, seeing the trains, the houses, the scenery. I think it was the trains and the CIE men that made me think most of Ireland; it was Technicolor, and the green of the train carriages—the white 1s and 3s for first and third class—was authentic. There were little authentic touches along the way: the retired English officer reading the London Illustrated during all the commotion of a riot; the C of I clergyman and his wife—Eileen Crowe of the Abbey. Too many of the actors were American, I’m afraid; they didn’t sound rightly Irish, but suppose they’d been difficult to understand if they had; even Barry Fitzgerald sounded American to me, except in those flourishes of language. Perhaps the best thing was when the American arrived on the train and everyone began to tell him how to get to where he was going; I remember that happening to me. Anyway, you should see it if you get a chance; the story itself is silly. […]

  Well, I think that’s all for now. I think of you often, pray you periodically pull yourself together and try to look and walk like a lady—which you’re getting to be, you know.

  Jim

  BETTY POWERS

  Albuquerque

  Tuesday afternoon [January 1953]

  Dear Betty,

  The bad news—The New Yorker rejecting the story. I enclose Henry’s letter.5 It came yesterday. I’ve been low ever since. And rather expect I’ll be that way for some time, unless, by some miracle, Collier’s should take the story. The immediate future is now jeopardized, as I see it, for the novel, I mean—which is where I came in last October. I don’t know just how we stand, economically, though my overall feeling is one of despa
ir, what with taxes, the cost of living we’ll soon be bearing, to say nothing of setting up housekeeping if we should find a place. I find myself vacillating between stories and the novel again, but I think it folly to think of the latter—until I get to thinking now I’d like to have another book published. And then I think the next book I publish will probably be short stories, and so on. You know how it goes. […]

  I’ve not heard from The New Yorker since mailing off the working proof. I suppose I will, soon, and there’ll be a lot more work on the story. I don’t know what to think about the rejection. I’m just full of nothing; numb and void. I wonder where you’re living by now. You don’t say where I should direct this letter; in fact you didn’t even sign your name. I understand, though. […]

  I’m very glad the girls are better. Would they want cowboy boots? No, I wouldn’t want them to have them; I would, if Hopalong Cassidy and all that hadn’t come along. I’ve seen television here a couple of times. It’s not worth it, I think. They have only one outlet here, a combination of NBC and CBS and other programs, but I doubt that that makes the difference everyone says: if we just had more outlets! I’m right up to here—meaning my gills—with advertising, supermarkets, etc. This was evidently a deep-fry Christmas among the young married set. Remember the pressure-cooker Christmas when we were first married? Those were the days. It’s time for Betty Crocker, and here she is—America’s first lady of food. Fr Egan’s friends (the Regans) live according to the stiff observance, wheat bread, etc. They tell me brown sugar is actually refined, then colored brown. The only good sugar is raw sugar, which you get at those vegetarian stores. One would do well to sell one’s soul to Betty Crocker, at an early age, for invincible ignorance. How’s the lemon bisque? My mother’s suit (as I indicate earlier here) did come, and in good condition, and you did very well with the pressing. You are a good girl, and I’m sorry I can’t do more for you, can’t settle you somewhere with maid, etc. But I can’t, I guess, and that’s your cross. All for now, except try to relax, and much love.