Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963
Page 11
Lowell and I had good fun all the trip. We left better friends than ever. He paid for most of the gas, meals, etc. He ended by imitating the car’s voice all the time, always thinking, what was it thinking now? This morning we talked for hours about what if New York and Chicago had a war. […]
Henry19 lectures me in one letter: says I’ve got more fame than anybody ever had from one book of stories, including Joyce, Porter, and Welty. Wants me to relax and stop agitating. It’s a good letter, much sense in it; I do think, though, he had seven old-fashioneds for lunch that day. […] Take good care of yourself. I love you, Betty.
Jim
BETTY POWERS
Chicago
October 6, 1947
Dear Betty,
No letter from you today, but then I suppose you didn’t get mine today either, the one mailed yesterday. It is quite warm, even warmer than warm, here, and that doesn’t do much for me and Chicago. […]
I was wondering if you were being so lenient about my return—you said not before the 29th—on account of you are so sweet or on account of we still don’t have a well, with the prospects about the same. Which? Both, you say. Well, I’ll be back before the 29th, never fear. I may leave here around the 13th, stay a day or two with Jack Howe at Taliesin, a day or two in St Paul, and then, triumphantly, to Stearns County. Doesn’t seem much of a drive, Mpls to St Cloud, after my travels. Do wish my folks would get out of this animated ghost town. If they were somewhere near me, somewhere within easy distance, say a hundred miles or so, I think my greatest emotional worry would be over. I guess they would move all right if it weren’t for Grandma. She doesn’t want to leave her friends, the only trouble being that no one has ever seen one of them. Her money is in the bank here too. She probably can’t get it through her head that it could be transferred, or perhaps she just wants to make it miserable for my mother as long as she can. You get the situation. I think my mother could be your second friend—until me, you said, you never had a real friend—as she is a beautiful soul, always fixing up something, making something, for you. She is my mother. I am prejudiced. It is also all true. Well, I’ve come to the end of the page. No more. I love you. That’s all.
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
Taliesin
October 14, 1947
Dear Cal,
Just a line to tell you that Katherine Anne Porter and Dudley Fitts said yes, KA wiring me “by all means go ahead,” and writing a fine letter which makes me feel good.20 I heard from Kerker Quinn that she is doing the Sewanee review of my book; Zabel21 is doing the Accent one; and that is certainly flattering, for how many books do they review? You are the fourth one on my Guggenheim application, the three aforementioned [sic] and you. […]
Don’t think I’ll do the Sheil piece. It’d be rather ironic, the way I’d have to do it, now that I know what I know—too many microphones and cameras in the bishop’s life—and so I’m skipping it, though the Lord knows, and Betty knows even better, that we could use the money.
Staying here a day or two with two friends from the prison days.22 I saw a plan yesterday for raising the face of Pittsburgh. About all that remains of the riverfront is the cathedral of learning, and it’s dwarfed by other things. This is another monastery, devoted to another god. I seem to spend my life in other people’s monasteries, listening to talk of other gods. […]
My address now: Avon, Minn. Let me hear from you.
Jim
8
I’ve a few stipulations to read into the rural-life-family-life jive
November 6, 1947–April 5, 1948
The “house” in the Avon woods, 1947
Jim and Betty were living again out in the woods with inadequate heat, no water, and plenty of dampness. Betty’s baby was overdue.
HARVEY EGAN
Avon
November 6, 1947
Dear Fr Egan,
I haven’t heard from you in some time, hope you are still in good standing. It is snowing here today, the first snow of the season, which makes it seem like old times, and our roof is leaking, which really makes it seem like old times, and still we do not have a well. Already, however, Betty has filled a bucket with snow, thinking it will melt and give us water, but she does not reckon on our stove, which always stays cool, no matter what we do to it. In short the rural life is about the same. Betty is still very much with child, the event being over a week delayed now, and I must say I am getting tired of it. It holds up my trip to the Cities. […] There doesn’t appear to be any real prospect of our getting water—all we get are promises, the same ones we got this time last year—and we’ve been thinking we ought to postpone our life here. Do you suppose you could find a place in St Paul, cheap, roomy, private? Soon? I suppose not. I know what I’m asking. Still, it’s the only thing I can see. We might, probably will, stick it out here with baby and no water and damn little camaraderie, but I think we’d be happier this winter in St Paul. Or Mpls, I would say, though I prefer St Paul, as does Betty. I told Fr G. about this in a letter yesterday. Please let me know, only don’t strain yourself, I know it’s a long-shot bet at best.
Pax,
Jim
I was born on November 11, 1947. Jim and Betty stayed in St. Cloud for a while, Betty with her parents and Jim with the Strobels, Betty’s aunt, Birdie, and her husband, Al.
GEORGE GARRELTS
St Cloud
Martinmas, November 11, 1947
George,
It’s a girl … nine lbs and fourteen ounces. Very damned grueling, the whole business, really too much for a man to take. Slogan of the day, bandied from nun to nurse, and back again: she’ll never remember this when it’s all over. I guess the idea is not to discourage the male, lest the race die out. Tell Fr Egan, will you? I think he ought to know, and I don’t feel up to even a note like this. Katherine Anne will be the name, I think.
Pax,
James
HARVEY EGAN
St Cloud
Sunday morning, November 16, 1947
Dear Father Egan,
[…] I wrote Fr G. the other day, the day the baby was born, and asked him to relay the news to you. I trust he did. If he didn’t, it was a girl. So we can’t call it Harvey very well. We are calling it Katherine Anne, after Miss Porter and my dead aunt Kate. The baby was born on St Martin’s Day. “Martinmas” is the title of Betty’s story in the November 15 New Yorker, in case you want to look it up at the library. Tomorrow, I believe, Betty is coming home—home to the Wahls’. I am staying here, at the Strobels’—their house is bigger, more luxurious, my style—but not for long. I expect to visit the Cities any day. Research is calling me. […]
I am being felt out by St John’s to teach creative writing. Can’t make up my mind. Don’t go much for the teaching part, but do feel it’d give me a chance to use the library and meet the boys (not the students). […]
Jim
Jim took over a creative writing class at St. John’s for an instructor who had left mid-semester.
HARVEY EGAN
St Cloud
November 1947
Mon pere,
Rec’d yours yesterday on one of my jaunts up-country—you know of course that I keep a place in the country, a sort of hunting and fishing and praying retreat—and am happy that you thought to suggest the name Catherine Ann. The only thing is we are going to call it Katherine Anne. I have just come from the upper regions of the Wahl house, it is early in the morning, but already they are working on it, giving it a bath, etc. Add to all this the past week and I have had a snootful. Are you sure I am too old to get in at Nazareth Hall?1 I don’t know a lot of Latin, but always got good marks in English and with the vernacular on XXXX (no XXXXXXX eraser in the whole damned house; it was never blessed, I’m sure) the way, maybe I’d be just what they’d be looking for. I am also a close friend of R. M. Keefe, who did a lot of time at Mundelein,2 so may be said to know the ropes. I realize that I would have to give up “my writing,” as they say in pan
el discussions, but then that seems to be outmoded no matter how you look at it. Here, if I stay here, it is just a matter of time before I am clerking at the Schmid General Store in Avon or, if I would prefer the city, at Linneman’s in St Joe.3
I see that it snowed again last night. Well, it’ll have to do worse than that to keep me off the highway this week. I think it’ll be Thursday now. I am driving Don in too. I am going out to Avon and live by myself, beginning today. I’ve got the oil burner to keep me warm … and privacy. I may stay a week in St Paul and Mpls, so figure out where I can stay cheap and be able to work. I don’t mean the rectory. I intend to be around longer than that. A man’s got to breathe, don’t I?
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Rural Life
Avon
Thursday evening, November 1947
Dear Fr Egan,
Al Jolson is singing on the radio now, and naturally my thoughts turn to you. Very glad to have your note and the enclosure … but why is it that the Sign keeps picking on me? Why is it that Mrs Lamb doesn’t like me? (Al says at his time of life he likes beautiful music.) Very cool here in Stearns County, around 50 in our house, degrees, not people. I am still meeting my class. It is pretty much of a snap, though I do have to watch myself that I don’t take them too seriously and get them sore at the stuff they turn in. […]
We like to go to St John’s [Abbey Church] because there is no lay participation, or I do. I am only slowly getting the idea that I am surrounded by people who are working night and day for things like the dialogue Mass. Imagine my dismay at the discrepancy between the party line and my own feelings in these matters. However, it’s only feelings with me, not theory. Big party last Sunday night at the Cottons’: Zahn, Hyneses, Gene McCarthy, Nugents (Canadians come to live the good life in Stearns County), Gills (she’s the former Rosemary Jensen), L. Doyle (he’s the translator of the forthcoming Rule of St Benedict done in Easy Essays form) and Betty Finegan (she’s going to be L. Doyle’s wife, and that is news), and the Powerses (she’s the Dante scholar; he’s the former track man at Saratoga).
I am certainly considering your invitation to Laurel Avenue but will let you know for sure, and when, if. Fr G. was here last week, staying overnight, seeing us all, enjoying the winter sports (spitting at the stove), and I wish you’d find the time and enthusiasm to visit us, anytime. Dick Keefe will be the godfather by proxy.
Buck Moon at Doubleday announces from Florida, where he is resting up with his folks, that there’s a new Fr Murphy4 in the house and it makes Forever Amber sound like “The Three Bears.” I hope so. It ought to rip the book-reviewing boys and girls wide open in certain pious places. Buck is sending me a first-edition copy when published bound in the hide of a Black Protestant, so he says. He says all the Doubleday hands were wondering where they’d take Fr M. the last time he hit the big town, and Buck finally said, 21 of course. The others thought 21 might be too worldly. When they all arrived there, risking it, it turned out that all the waiters in the place knew Fr M., his favorite food. Enough for now. You’ll be hearing from me. You might send me a hockey schedule so I’ll know when to come.
Pax,
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
Wednesday, November 26 [1947]
Dear Cal,
[…] Well, we had a baby, a girl, on November 11, Armistice Day, but even more significantly St Martin’s Day, or Martinmas, which is the title of Betty’s story in The New Yorker for November 15. She’s heard from a few publishers already. Is it all right, since they are looking for novels, to mention yours?
Got a kick out of your description of goings-on in Davenport, especially likening the priests to Buck and Champ. That struck me as exactly right; they are that way, the Roman clergy—the only clergy today that is, perhaps accounting for the vitality of the Church, to say nothing of its blindness, its honest blindness.
Do not hear from Champ, indeed did not expect to, but I guess Buck would like a word. Be sure and see him if you’re in New York. There were a couple of days here, hell and high water days, when I was virtually off for the East. I had an offer of a job as editor at Commonweal, the one Broderick gave up for The New Yorker, but I saw it would take me away from my book, the St Paul book, and withstood the temptation. Then, too, it was not clear what I could do there, beyond seeing that a few books got properly reviewed. I didn’t want to get away from St Paul, find myself like Marguerite and Elizabeth Hardwick adrift in the great city at the mercy of it all.
The baby is crying like hell now. I am not liking it one bit and do not expect to grow used to it. What a foul fiend I am to have for a father.
I enjoy Ezra’s little messages. The last one: See here Darkness, don’t tell me you’re just a blue eye’d boy who sold one to a mag … I guess he’s right about that lowbrow stuff. But then I’ve come quite a way. It was the sort of thing I’d been given to believe in the Thirties, when I came of age, that stories were made of. And of course it’s the kind of thing Ezra set his sails against at the beginning.
We are calling the baby Katherine Anne, after you know who. Outside of that I haven’t had much to do with it. […]
You ask me how it feels to be a father. About the same, I think. Except I’ve a few stipulations to read into the rural-life-family-life jive that circulates in these liturgical parts. If you must get married, I say to young people, be sure you can afford a fifteen-room house and servants. That comes as a blow to them. They read The Catholic Worker and all the rest and are accustomed to thinking in terms of Mary and Joseph and the manger. We have the manger, but we are not Mary and Joseph. Anyway, we are not Joseph.
A monk got tired of teaching creative writing at St John’s, so I took the job for the rest of the semester. They are paying me $250, or about $20 an hour. It’s only an hour on Tuesday and an hour on Thursday, about my limit.
I had to write The New Republic and tell them I wasn’t the man to do the piece on Bishop Sheil. It would not have been very inspiring if I did it, and I don’t care to have a controversy with The NR or Catholics on those grounds. Harry Sylvester thought I was being precious in my objections. I say Bishop S. went into labor and race the way Notre Dame went into football under Rockne. Nobody would enjoy that, save perhaps my friends, if I wrote it that way.
Let me hear from you.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Avon
Monday night, December 1947
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Well, the child is baptized, and it is good, as you say, to have a little Christian among us. It gives Betty some company too. I have been weighing the future and believe, since you predict plenty of blood around the nets that night, I’ll journey St Paul–ward on Christmas Day, right after one of those family gatherings in St Cloud. It will serve as a beautiful excuse to leave early. So get those ducats for the 25th. Is there some concordance or Lives of the Saints I could read in the meantime so I’ll be as hep as you are? All I know is the blue line. […]
Peace,
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
Avon
December 12 [1947]
Dear Cal,
[…] My days are so active here that I don’t get much work done. Now it’s storm windows. Betty is painting them in the kitchen. The temperature in our house, so called, is always around 50. That doesn’t make for much relaxation. I bought a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of rum, a little cheer, but there is no one really to drink it with. Your plan which has us all teaching at one school is charming, but not teaching much. How about Buck and Ted? Can’t you work them into this perfect society? I had a letter today from the president of Bennington offering me a job for the spring quarter, I think it is. I asked Betty if she’d like to go to Vermont. She said she would like to. I like the idea, not settling down there, which isn’t indicated in the letter, I believe, but getting away from here for a while. You know I’ve been here in Stearns County two months now, fighting the elements every minute of it. […] I enclose a new p
icture of car. Guess what it was saying when I went out and found it like this one morning: Some shit!
Write.
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
Avon
February 13, 1948
Dear Cal,
[…] I heard from Buck today, and he has recommended me, at Ted’s instigation, to Bennington, but I do not hear. Do not worry so much about that, though. St John’s here owe me $250 but cannot bring themselves to remember, or perhaps I am getting it in prayers. Says Buck: “Champ was here and took New York, Doubleday, and the chickies like Grant took Richmond. He had steak, white wine, and truffles for lunch (thank God I’m not his editor) and was seldom found with a straight elbow during the cocktail hour.” Dear Champ, I knew him well, well, fairly well.
Glad to hear Caroline [Gordon]5 likes my stories. I enjoyed Tate’s piece on the bishop in the current Western Review, having reread The Crack-Up the night before and scenes from Gatsby. For some reason I can’t penetrate into Tender Is the Night. And got through first James the other night, “Lesson of the Master,” and think it quite wonderful, the main problem of the writer always.
Yes, it is too bad about the Living Gallery.6 I’ve seen pictures of the foundress, a thin little sister wasting away under the decisions she must make and the attack of un-housebroken authors like Harry Sylvester, and now you come along with perhaps the worst blow of all.7 So far as I know the only other living author not primarily a librarian she had was Waugh. I don’t know what I’d say if asked. […]