Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963
Page 12
Pax,
Jim
Regards to Ezra and Mrs Pound. (I sent the list of names for advance copies, the Italian translation, of my book to my agent, asking counsel, and he replied for God’s sake let’s stay clear of Pound’s old fascist colleagues—Ezra had sent me a list of Italians who’d be able to “introduce” my book properly over there.)
ROBERT LOWELL
Bad Avon8
February 18, 1948
Dear Cal,
[…] I ought to tell you that work was completed today on our drainage system. I have been digging a trench, in which I have been hoping to put sewer pipe, building fires to melt the ice, chopping the ice, looking at the ice, and now it is all over, and the mud is drying on my galoshes. I see that the foregoing gives the wrong impression, the impression of achievement. What I meant to say was that I gave the damned thing up. The pipe is stacked outside our door. We await the thaws of spring …
Thanks for the James list; I appreciate not having to wade into his collected stories cold turkey. I am more skeptical than ever of Faulkner. Several weeks ago I read his story “Spotted Horses,” described as one of the funniest in the language by Cowley in the Portable I have,9 and though I liked spots very much, the whole thing is not for me.* I get tired trying to put his sentences together, not just for sense and transition, but to get some idea of the effect he had in mind … I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness the other night—my first Conrad, incidentally, having been killed off in previous attempts—and I was reminded, especially in the action scenes on the steamboat, of Faulkner, the confusion of the language. I have a secret theory, not that, just a feeling, that action is better and easier when described not in chronological, realistic terms but as impression, with here and there a realistic effect. Faulkner does that. So does Conrad. It enables the prose writer to use poetry. I don’t feel it’s legitimate, though—at least now I don’t—and I don’t want to try it for fear I’d find it easy, the sloppy way, and I don’t intend to try it. I see, on rereading this, I am trying to make it all sound reasonable. The truth is I feel it is not a matter I can be reasonable about. I do not care for Faulkner—spots, yes, the story “A Rose for Emily,” for instance—as I don’t care for Hemingway. In these apostolic parts I am always meeting people who think Graham Greene wonderful. It is the same thing, only I do not mind so much being in disagreement with the Greene-ites … Enough for now.
Pax,
Jim
Weary of the rigors of living without running water in a damp half cellar in the woods, Jim and Betty started looking for an apartment in St. Paul—which is to say, they put out the call to their various friends.
HARVEY EGAN
Avon, Minnesota
1948
Wish to rent apt in Cathedral district. Writers, smoke, drink, have baby, but no narcotics. Consider exchanging same for uninhabitable woodland retreat near monastery. Fairly desperate.
Catholic couple wishes to rent apt in Cathedral dist. Have baby, own furniture, Mixmaster. Best ecclesiastical reference. Reasonable.
Hockey fan and wife need roomy apt suitable for salon. Baby but …
Have you an apt to rent to famous author, critic, lecturer and wife and offspring? Could coach basketball or baseball.
Friend of Rev. R. Bandas10 desires living quarters in or near Cathedral. Homeless today. Is this tomorrow?
Will the Saints get out of the cellar in ’48? Will young author, wife, child? What have you?
Ex–second baseman needs a home near Cathedral and Lex. Has batted against Fritz Ostermueller’s brother.
Homeless horseplayer, wife, and child seek living quarters and floor space adjoining suitable for handbook in exchange for reliable turf information.
Dear Fr Egan,
I have been mulling over the housing situation, as you can see from the above, but can’t quite settle on the best angle. Fr G. was here for a few days during which Betty was in St Cloud and we lived the full life out here. Now he has gone to Quincy. He wanted me to go, but I was just strong enough to refuse. He threatens to run ad like #2 above in Mpls paper, but Betty says we do not want to live there, only St Paul, only near the cathedral, so I must head him off before he returns this week Thursday. Things are not too bad here, at least not for me (very hard on Betty with no water and diapers all the time), and I was thinking for a time at Mass this morning that it might work out. I get little flashes like that, though this one might have been due to the fact that I worked until 5:00 a.m. last night. I think it was Bp Schenk11 kneeling up in front this morning, but couldn’t be sure, he wouldn’t turn his head. Had a lot of trouble with his skullcap, though, kept falling off.
Thanks for the clip on Harry and Msgr Smith. I don’t know which one is wilder. I kept wondering who the good Catholic publications were that Msgr Smith had in mind. The Register, I suppose, for one; the Visitor for two; and Sign, Extension, and the Catholic World. Spare us, O Lord. Why don’t we start a magazine called Puck, with you doing a column called In the Sin Bin? Wish I could be there for the Winter Carnival. Looks awfully good in today’s paper.12
Pax,
Jim
A possible four-room apartment in St. Paul found by Father Egan fell through.
HARVEY EGAN
Avon, Minnesota
1948
Dear Father Egan,
[…] I rec’d a note from Fr Judge13 (remember him, healthy-looking fellow in a black suit?) with a ten spot enclosed & I would not have thought a few months ago watching them saddle up under the trees of Saratoga that $10 could mean so much. […]
Letter from Sr Eugene Marie, still flourishing, and her brother’s wife or somebody in St Paul will look for a place for us and let you know if anything ensues. I’m afraid, though, we won’t get the vision of four rooms again, which I liked the sound of, thinking I could have my mother and father visit sometime. When I took my solemn vows, I did not understand that I would have to forgo the sight of my father and mother, rather dear to me, but that’s the way it turns out; I do get to see Art and Money, however. We were in today, always a struggle, lugging the wash around and water cans and baby.
I do take advantage of the occasion, though, to pick up a Pioneer Press and Chicago Trib, and the latter has the complete morning lines and results, and that keeps me handicapping far into the night. I am thinking of inserting a little ad in The Commonweal, asking that readers who have subscriptions send me their old copies of the Racing Form. A world of good reading. I am disgusted with the Saints. Every time I tune in Halsey Hall,14 they have dropped another. Yes, I am dust … but some of my best friends are clergymen.
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
Avon
April 1, 1948
Dear Cal,
Glad to get your letter today. Please tell Jarrell15 at once that I am grateful he thought of me, but it doesn’t seem like my kind of place, just as Bennington doesn’t, from whom I’ve heard again. I told you, or did I, that they hired somebody else for the spring quarter but would pay my expenses there for an interview with an eye to next fall. I must write to Burkhardt, the president, right away and tell him I’m not coming. I think I’m going to Marquette. I had a talk with them a month ago in Milwaukee: good, Champish characters, and I’d have only six hours a week—4:30 to 6:00 at that, the lost part of the day anyway for me—and they’ll pay $3,000. The big thing would be being around the clergy, for I’ll be in the middle of my St Paul novel, and incidentally St Paul, where we can’t locate, is only six hours from Milwaukee on good trains. Not being close enough to my material would be the trouble with Bennington—and I expect I’d have to put in a full schedule there too—and North Carolina … but again please thank Jarrell.
About this summer, now that is something I look forward to. I am thinking of Ireland; perhaps I’ll go in May so as to get back in time for Marquette. How can I afford it? I can’t even with this break I got last week. I rec’d one of those American Arts and Letters things that you got last year; through
K. A. Porter, I know for sure, and perhaps through you, for all I know. If so, thanks. It is supposed to be a secret till they announce it officially, I’m told, so please keep it to yourself; I told Buck, but nobody else (I felt I had to tell Buck: I know he worries I’ll try to knock them down for more advance money). […]
Well, it’s bock beer time here, the best time of the year, simply because of that. They could close up the place if it weren’t for that. If I go to Ireland in May, I’ll meet the two friends who may also go, in Ireland: one is a priest, the other an unfrocked seminarian,16 both of whom are in my novel. It would be good if you could be along. Your kind of fun. Both big men over 200 lbs, inclined to cigars and thirst. You see I am trying to interest you, but I know you can’t be in Ireland and Washington at once, or can you? […]
Sorry you’ve had so much to do; it is a little hard to imagine … do you get things done? I’ll say a prayer for your father. I am partial to fathers and mothers when they get old. One of the good things about Champ; he loved his mother, didn’t care what it looked like in the eyes of the analysts at Yaddo. […]
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
Avon, Minnesota
April 5, 1948
Dear Cal,
Late Thursday night, heavy with bock, Betty in town with her folks, my good friends and bad company gone lurching off to their homes and rectories, and I want to tell you, first opportunity I’ve had, I am a Guggenheim fellow. Got the good word Saturday last and want to thank you now for the backing up you gave me. I might have written sooner, but I went to Mpls–St Paul to decide what I ought to do. Finally decided I’m not going to teach, am going to use this year right. Not that I couldn’t write and teach if it meant only six hours a week, but I’ll go better this way, and I need all the time I can plus the best breaks to get this book in hand. […]
We might get a place in St Paul for six weeks. That will enable us to explore the possibilities for a permanent place. Maybe we’ll get a place big enough to hold you and Champ and Buck and all your mallets and balls and bottles. Ireland looks dimmer now, too much money, too much trouble with boats, etc. I think I can get a passport. I found out in Chicago that I got amnesty, but I never heard from the gov’t; it was in the paper there around Christmas.
All for now. My regards to Mr Ransom if he’s there. How did Ezra and Randall fare together? Don’t know Randall, of course, but think it might have been good to see. Guess it would be good to see anybody with a few opinions of his own having an afternoon with Pound. Sorry about the Maine mess, postponement, etc.17 It seems a funny, public business for you to be mixed up in, but you can’t have everything, all that peace and quiet and singleness without paying somehow.
So long.
Jim
We have founded this day a Third Order of St Bock. There are two divisions, lay and clerical, devoted to cockery and bockery, respectively, though both are united under Bockery in the larger sense. We wear a bottle opener on a string around our waist, beneath our underwear of course.
9
The truth about me is that I just don’t qualify as the ideal husband
July 1948–Christmas 1948
Mary Farl Powers, 1952
Jim and Betty moved with the baby to St. Paul in mid-April, bringing to an end their adventure in rural living. They lived first in an apartment at 414 North Lexington Avenue while looking for a more permanent place. In the end, they moved back into the old Marlborough at 150 Summit Avenue around the end of May. Betty was expecting another baby in November.
ROBERT LOWELL
150 Summit Avenue, St Paul
July 1948
Dear Cal,
We’re all Americans. It is very damned hot in the land of the sky-blue water,… and I look forward to the summer encampment of the Order of St Bock. In the meantime I’ve placed gin in my aspergillum.1 That was nice of you to invite me and the family to Yaddo. I’d like to be there, but in August, for the races. Instead, though, I’ll be here and for two weeks on an island in Lake Superior.
I broke down, and I do not mean that lightly, and bought The Kenyon Review with your nun poem in it. I think it is very fine, which is what I told you, I think, at the time you were putting it together. I do have some doubts on Rabelais. I’ve been rereading him lately, and though I can see why Mother should have been reading him, would she? Wish I could come upon a few nuns reading Rabelais. I particularly like the brisk dialogue which takes place between Panurge and the Semiquaver Friar.
Do not lament your singleness. You are well-off, and I rather think you know it. Let that be taken as a word to the wise from the … and no commentary on me and mine. I wrote a review of Waugh’s new book2 for The Commonweal, my last venture in that field for some time to come. I hope if Taylor saw my review of his book, he liked it.3 I know I meant well, and if that didn’t come through, it is because I don’t know the forks of reviewing, for which thanks be to God. Meantime, as I say, we’re all Americans.
ROBERT LOWELL
150 Summit Avenue
St Paul, Minnesota
September 29, 1948
Dear Cal,
It’s night, and I’m just back from the Temple Baptist Church, where I heard an “ex-priest” tell them all about it. He is evidently one of the crowd which advertises all the time in The Nation. I came prepared to pity the man, I suppose, and indeed I did before he spoke, all during the time the various deacons gave thanks for his salvation, said deacons reminding me of the Jehovah’s Witnesses I’ve known; but when he began to speak, I could tell, or thought I could, that he was quite serious about it; and as the fates would have it, there were two Catholics sitting in front of me who giggled and sneered and sighed, “Oh, the lies!” So I came away, curiosity fairly well sated, and will have news for the brethren the next time we bend an elbow together. One very hot item is the plan to open up a home or seminary, it wasn’t quite clear, for those of them who want to pull out but can’t figure out where to go, and this to be established in St Paul or Mpls. […]
I’d like to take you up on Yaddo, but it is utterly impossible. Betty will have another baby in November, and even if that weren’t in the offing, my book keeps me here, also the rent we have to pay, and I might even mention that I’d need an invitation from Elizabeth,4 to whom extend my best wishes. I’ll admit the prospect of your putting my book into a sonnet interests me. Are you sure a couplet wouldn’t do it? After all, it’s just prose. […]
And you? Will you attend the World Series in Boston and throw out the first bottle? Things are pretty furious here on the apostolic-athletic level. The Saints (our team) are in the play-off, and if they win that, we’ll play Montreal in the Little World Series. If so, the box seats, more than ever, will be a sea of black suits. I have already rec’d orders and money from Rome to buy up a section. Did I tell you I now smoke cigars? I have to, if I don’t want to stand out in our crowd. Enjoy the Saratoga autumn. I imagine it’s very good.
Pax,
Jim
P.S. I sold the car; sold, I said. Ora for it.
Betty went to St. Cloud to stay with her parents to await the baby’s birth.
ROBERT LOWELL
150 Summit Avenue, St Paul
All Saints’ 1948 [November 1]
Dear Cal,
[…] Now an ironic thing is happening on the radio. My friend and candidate5 (the first time anything like this ever happened to me or anyone I’ve known) has just thanked us one and all for all we’ve done, while in the bathroom, stashed away, are the circulars I was supposed to circulate in this building, about sixty apartments. I’d postponed it till tonight, but now that he’s thanking us, I wonder if it isn’t too late. The candidate is really a nice fellow who never amounted to anything like all my friends, but he has deserted our ranks, and I still can’t believe it.
I drove Betty to St Cloud yesterday, and now she awaits the coming. At that time I’ll journey hence. Two babies is a lot. I have no idea how we’ll manage; it was enough with one. I may
have to rent an office in the Pioneer or Guardian building. They look sufficiently broken-down to support literature. That’s an idea for a foundation. Given a billion dollars, I’d establish a trust to set up everybody in one old building, each with an office, with the name on the frosted glass: Theo. Roethke … Rob’t Lowell … Wm Barrett … B. Moon … The Pig … E. Pound … Mrs Chas Seide … Horace Cayton … Marg. Young … Card. Spellman … all the literary lights of this century and regular hours with lunch from 12:00 to 1:00. I forgot Clocker Webster. And myself, of course.
My book goes slowly. […] I am living here alone, doing my own cooking. Today it was breakfast: a glass of milk; lunch: T-bone steak, bread, milk; dinner: a malted milk; tonight: beer, olives, swiss cheese. All for now, Cal. Wish I were there. I saw a movie this afternoon which showed the Saratoga racetrack. I yearned to be there, making my selections.
Pax,
Jim
Drink my health in Sperry’s. Have you forgotten it … on Caroline Street, I believe.
Have you read Gogarty? Sackville Street? Tumbling in the Hay?
BETTY POWERS
150 Summit Avenue
November 5, 1948
Dear Betty,
[…] That is very interesting about your father sitting down with pencil and paper awaiting the returns after sixteen long years.6 I imagine my father did likewise. Fr Garrelts, I guess, is the only one who forecast the turn of events, except Harry himself. Fr G. has the best theory, I think: there just aren’t enough Republicans to go around; it is like the soft jobs and big money; just not enough of it to go around. Fr Murphy was left at the post too, hoping for a Rep victory. So far as anybody could tell, however, he was against the Dems because Barkley7 is “too old.” “Yes,” Fr G. agreed, “he’s about old enough for the cardinalate,” which put things in a stronger light, I guess. […]