by J.F. Powers
I am, sir, as always.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
November 15, 1963
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] After three weeks in London, the proprietors of this small hotel descended upon us, taking up residence in the wing where I had been assigned a room as an office. Nothing was said by way of explanation. And since in the lease there is a clause saying the proprietor might have access to two rooms on our side of the hotel, both kept locked, at any time, we thought at first that he was simply taking advantage of this clause (it was explained to us by Sean O’F. that the proprietor might exercise this privilege for one, two, or, at most, three nights in the four months we’d be tenants), but said proprietor, a drunk, and his wife, a coarse-grained golfer, have been here since October 26, with dog, which we looked after while they were in London.
Well, since nothing was said and the situation is so ridiculous, proving more so by stages, it wasn’t until yesterday that I decided to go to the house agent who contracted our lease and say I wanted out if we could find another place before our time was up here. […] Sean was outraged when he heard the proprietors were in residence, which fact we managed to keep from him until the other day, and wanted to throw them out, but I forbade him to get involved: the worst thing about such a deal is the wear and tear on your mind, just thinking about it, I mean. […]
We went up to see Sir Tyrone Guthrie in Co. Monaghan last week and spent a day with him, his wife, and Tanya Moisevitch, the stage designer, who was staying with them and working on paper models for next season’s sets. (She’d like to lay hands on 500 fox furs for Volpone.) We liked all three of them, and Sir T. said he’d be happy to have me spend the period of my Ford Fellowship in Mpls if the foundation (Ford) approved the idea, either for the coming season or the one after. I have written to the Ford people asking that I be given this assignment with the date left open [depending on] the housing situation in Ireland and the direction taken by my work, if you’ll pardon the expression.
This, too, I’d wish you to keep to yourself, as I don’t want to beat the gun so far as the Ford Foundation is concerned—for all I know they make a point of sending people to places they’d rather not go, like Texas, in which case I’m afraid I’d have to say no and claim my rights to your car prematurely and go into the taxi business. Let’s face it. I’ll have to find work pretty soon, work that I can do until I shuffle off this mortal coil. My fast one is gone. They are hitting my other stuff. Remember Frog Maranda.8 Remember Old Blue.
And now, with a sigh of relief, to your problems. 1. Let the sisters run the school. 2. Try to be out even more, if possible. 3. Don’t fight Frank9—even in his sleep he talks against those who oppose him (and God). 4. Change your position at Met Stadium, get out from under those echoing steel tiers and up into the sky where you can see the countryside. 5. Moderate your interest in pro football. 6. Chicken out in the interracial area. (Pope John is dead.) 7. Pray for Gene McCarthy. 8. Pray for me.
Anon.
Jim
JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
November 18, 1963
Dear Joe and Jody,
We were very glad to have your letter on Saturday and to hear of the sales of the prints. You don’t really say, but I suspect you have been having hard times, and the business with George hit you very hard: he is my friend, but I must say he has a way of handling people which has made him a lot of enemies.10 He has always wanted to play the grand patron, and you have to give him credit for imagination there anyway, but he hasn’t had enough money to pull it off—and will have less now than he’s been accustomed to in recent years, now that he is pastor of a parish that won’t support itself, let alone support the Newman Club, or so I’m told. I’m sure he’ll come through where you’re concerned, which I know still leaves out the time element, the big when. […]
If you really want to know what kind of dump we’re in, see Fr Walter. He was here at the hotel, in the doggy lounge, and he also used the chain-driven toilet. Tell him I said it was all right to talk. […]
Betty, as usual, is in Dublin. I don’t know what she does there, but as long as I don’t find any lipstick on her collar, I won’t worry: you know how it is, Joe, when you’re married to a woman who smokes cigars. […]
November 20
[…] Sometime soon I should write vividly of our new life in the Old World. I know you expect that. It is as Betty says in her letter, though—very dull, St Cloud without comfort and without friends, but then I expected it would be. As a writer, I am even less here, if possible—have yet to see a copy of my novel in a bookstore. I suppose it would be the same in Paris, where the novel has just been published, or Italy. We are sick of The Irish Times, though it seems to be the conscience of all Ireland, just tired of the daily fodder: Will there be a general election in the new year? Will the government fall because of the so-called turnover tax (2½% added onto the price of everything)? Will the Grand Canal, one of the neglected beauties of Dublin, be filled with sewage pipes and closed up? Will the exhibit of Irish goods at Lord & Taylor in New York stimulate exports? It is like party designation and industries for the Iron Range in The Minneapolis Tribune. You just get tired.
The future […] doesn’t seem to be any clearer today. One regrets the loss of time, time in which one might have worked (but probably wouldn’t have anyway), but having had very little choice (so it still appears), one can’t very well regret the decision to do what we’ve done. I have learned nothing I didn’t know about traveling with children—or about the impossibility of living with them in other people’s houses. Were it not for them, we wouldn’t be here, which is not to say we are martyrs, Betty and I, but would-be survivors. Last night I had to remove the radio from Katherine’s bed (listening to Radio Luxembourg, which is as close to WJON as you can get here). So we don’t expect a complete cure, but just hope to give the girls more of a perspective. The young men look positively cretinous here, and all dress like burglars. And yet … but as Betty says, there is no more depressing sight on earth than Irish snazzy.
She also said at breakfast that there was some talk at the girls’ school of a tour of Greece in the summer, and my first thought was: “Summer! My God! Will we still be here, living like this then?” Why not? For years I have lived on the hope that Time would, just by passing, someday, somehow, provide an out (I do not mean death, or at least didn’t), but how wrong I’ve been. It is still my best bet, though, such as it is. What do I want? I can no longer describe it except in general terms—a million dollars, or even fifty thousand—and thus I leave the decision to later. The motto of the J. F. Powers Company is Shoot high and don’t miss, but it is one I can only hope to achieve in my work, if there, and seems more and more out of the question in my life, in which, alas, I still take an interest. So much for today’s gospel. Just trying to help you understand us. […]
Jim
LEONARD DOYLE
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
November 29, 1963
Dear Leonard,
[…] We were floored by the crimes in Texas. I realized I’d been too hard on Kennedy in my own mind and hadn’t given him credit for using the best kind of people, to the extent that this is possible (it isn’t possible in the arts), to run the ship of state. Ireland and England were in deep mourning. Our PP, perhaps the only liturgist in Ireland in communion with Collegeville, only stalked the aisles during the memorial Mass on Tuesday, commenting on the Mass and whatever else occurred to him, and in the end praised Kennedy for four things and said we should write them down when we left the church: “edgication, self-edgication, social-minded, and parish-minded.” On a call recently, he told Betty that there was only one place in the U.S. that he wanted to visit and that was Minnesota because of St John’s, the liturgical capital of the world. Even if I weren’t
anti-laical (and of course anticlerical), I think I’d give thanks for the old guard in Rome, after divine worship with our PP calling the shots from the pulpit—a kind of triple dialogue Mass, celebrant and people patiently waiting to get a word in edgewise and the latter urged at the same time to speak up, say the prayers in any language they please, and, for the love of God, to pull themselves together and try to be more edgicated.11 […]
Jim
DICK PALMQUIST
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
November 30, 1963
Dear Dick,
[…] I try to keep in touch with reality by listening to the Armed Forces Radio from Germany—spot announcements telling me to turn down my radio, to install seat belts, to give blood, and to drive carefully. I followed the terrible events in Texas for several days (AFN had access to all three networks in America), and now that it’s over, I still don’t understand it, and I guess that is as it should be, sound and fury signifying nothing. […]
It is late. AFN’s Mr Midnight, a very romantic fella, has gone to bed. The wife and family have gone to bed. The only ones up are me and the Germans (on the radio), who never seem to go to bed. And now I’m going to bed. […]
The following morning. Frosty today, for the first time, a harbinger of the cold-assed days ahead, as we say in the writing game. […]
The house we’ll be moving into is comparatively new (1933) and consequently is snugger than we’re used to in Ireland. It has several rooms that appear to be quite livable—not perhaps as you would use the term, or I, ideally, but by the standards that apply here, at least to our income and experience. […] Best to you both from us both.
Jim
JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
Christmas Night 1963
Dear Friends,
Just because this letter comes to you mimeographed,12 do not think it does not come from the heart. Well, another year has almost ended, and once again, as I sit here before my fire (electric this year), my thoughts range back through the days gone by, gone but not forgotten. There was much to be thankful for, more than I have space for here, but here are some of the highlights that come immediately to mind. January and February, so far as I can tell from my diary, were taken up, as were the previous six or eight months, with correspondence with, and dark thoughts about, my publisher. March, as some of you may recall, was the month I won the National Book Award for Morte D’Urban, now available in paperback at 60¢, and went to New York City to be honored by the publishers, book manufacturers, booksellers, and gentle readers of America. Unworthy though I was, I could see no way out and tried to conduct myself like a good arthur and family man should, and in this I think I can say I did good. April passed without an award, but in May I went to Chicago, that toddlin’ town, for another. June was unsensational, as were July, August, and September until we kissed St Cloud goodbye. The rest you more or less know, and that brings us up to Christmas. I received the following gifts from members of my family: napkin ring (Mary); talcum powder, with built-in deodorant (Katherine); diary (Boz); socks (Hugh); pipe cleaners and clothes brush (Jane); and Drambuie (Betty).
The latter hit the hay at 8:45 p.m. tonight, which may be a new record, but then the poor kid carried the rest of us through the ordeal of Christmas, no little thing in our present circumstances.
We were very glad to get your letters, for which we waited and waited, which is not to say that we do not understand the many reasons for the delay. One you don’t mention, namely the busy and exciting life you lead. By our standards, I’m not kidding. NOTHING HAPPENS HERE. Well, yes, Boz did lean on a window in the lounge yesterday, and getting it repaired, or perhaps repairing it myself, may keep me occupied for days in this town, where nothing is easy, where a piece of glass 38" by 36" may mean a trip to the next town (Bray), and this on a bus, if you can picture us, me and the glass and probably a strong wind blowing. […]
The panel for George looks good under my magnifying glass—and all I can say against it is the medium, wood, which always has a way of looking wooden, particularly when new. Or so I think, and seem to recall you do. I pray it all ends well, with you and George, and I think it will. And right here I knock out ashes from a pipeful of #400, specially blended for Rev. Urban Roche, which I smoke on feast days and great occasions or would if there were any of the latter. I am down to about 4 oz. of #400 and two small packages of Brindley’s and have bought my first Irish tobacco at the going price of $1.40 for 2 oz. I am rationing out the other on those dark nights of the soul which come a bit oftener than formerly, as I take up the eternal subject of dirt, disrepair, folly, and waste with myself. […]
I loved “a heavily insured bag of nuts,” and Dickie should have used longer tacks.13 It’s all too easy to use short tacks and hit them harder, but where does it get you in the end? When I was a householder, and a goddamn good one too, I always kept a plentiful supply of tacks in assorted sizes. I checked my stock regularly to see that I wasn’t running low, and I also checked against rust spores, which have a way of getting into a nest of tacks, and if anything plays hell with tacks, it is rust. Keep plenty of tacks on hand at all times, and don’t let rust get to them lest there be hell to pay. Keep tacks on a high shelf, under lock and key, away from children. […]
We often think of you. I don’t know when we’ll go back to America, or where we’ll go when we do. We have literally no plans.
Jim
Epilogue: I once knew a writer (before I was married) who had a wife and four children, and he was always traveling around with them and his manuscript of the moment, which he kept in a metal file, which he carried, and when this writer came into a hotel dining room with his wife and children and the metal file and the violin case (one of the children played the violin), he’d turn on you in anger and say, “What’s everyone looking at?” That has since become the story of my life, except that I have five children (none of whom, however, plays the violin) and a leather case for my manuscript, and I don’t ask what everybody’s looking at.14
J. F. Powers, 1963
Afterword: Growing Up in This Story
Katherine A. Powers
Katherine Anne Powers
This volume ends with 1963. There are enough letters, further removals, and more ocean crossings en famille to supply at least another volume, but the novel Jim might have written concludes here. What lies ahead, years ahead to be sure, is a certain resignation. “It’s as if the story of my life has been badly cut, like a film, and what’s left has those specks and scratches on it from too many showings.”1 But what lies directly ahead—the near future, that is—is not suitable material for Jim’s gift.
His children were becoming adolescents and, infinitely worse to his way of thinking, teenagers. The presence all around him of burgeoning consciousnesses, of egos to rival his own, and, most harrowing, of his two older daughters’ growing fascination with the opposite sex was too much for this author to control and defuse through comedy. In 1963, he hadn’t yet come to see his children as people possessing identities and destinies separate from his own—that revelation was years away—but he was having trouble maintaining the illusion that his was the central point of view. Add to that the older children were beginning to be infected by popular culture, and not just any popular culture either, but that of what was becoming the sixties. This he viewed with appalled incredulity, and the move to Ireland in 1963 was made in part to stem the contagion. I cannot say that in this respect it was a roaring success.
Growing up in this family is not something I would care to do again. There was so much uncertainty, so much desperation about money, and so very little restraint on my parents’ part in letting their children know how precarious our existence was. Our terrible plight—as it was always painted—was made all the more so by how particular, not to say impossible, our requirements were in the realm of housing and style of living.
Read
ing these letters, I found myself becoming sad and occasionally angry at what could be described as a folie à deux. What really shocked me was seeing more clearly what my mother had taken upon herself in joining her life to this man’s. Jim had warned her repeatedly before they were married not to expect an ordinary life (“sometimes I get to thinking you don’t know me at all, don’t know what you’re getting into, and if you do, you think changes can be made which, as a matter of fact, won’t be made”). But Betty, who loved Jim and believed that he was an exceptional being, a true artist, also believed that he would be rewarded as such if only he would knuckle down and stop wasting time. He wouldn’t or couldn’t, but she did.
Betty wrote almost every day on a strict schedule, hoping to bring in some money—which she did, though nothing like what the situation required. She published a number of stories in magazines, including The New Yorker, and in 1969 her one novel appeared, Rafferty & Co. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux while Jim was trying desperately to get out of a multibook contract with the despised Doubleday, it was based in a gentle way, far too gentle, I would say, on life in Ireland with a man something like Jim. Aside from that, she cooked every meal from scratch and sewed most of our clothes; she went to her parents for aid; she scrimped, rationed, and cobbled together the wherewithal for our survival.
