by J. F. Powers
Jim […]
Greek Song took down $50,000 first money at Arlington a week ago last Saturday. My brother, who subscribes to my service, had him across the board. He (GS) goes in the Arlington Handicap next Saturday. Listen at 3:30, NBC.
JACK CONROY
Milwaukee
August 9, 1950
Dear Jack,
[…] Very warm and dull in Milwaukee. I was in Chicago last week for a day. I was on North Clark but only in a streetcar. I find I’m getting a little old for the good life. I toured the Near North Side in daytime, alone, and meditated on the vanished splendor. I doubt that it’s vanished from anywhere but me. I heard Nelson Algren on the Chez Show, a radio program emanating from the Sapphire Bar of the Chez Paree—you see I’ve sunk to the lower depths—and he got off a line about Hollywood being a con man’s paradise, which wasn’t a very nice thing to say in that setting. The following week I heard this fellow Stuart Brent,12 and he seems to be in charge of culture in Chicago. He’s sore at New York, apparently, for thinking it’s so smart. […] Drop me a line, let me know who’s there13 this year, and thanks for the leaflets—do you have one on narcotics? I’m trying to kick my habit.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
November 1, 1950
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Just six years ago, about this time of day, I was being measured for my whites at St Joseph’s Hospital; I had already been shown my room; and I had a great hunger for coffee and cake, which I satisfied at Mother Merrill’s and Mickey’s Diner, alternating so as not to seem an addict. It was the start of an era which closed with matrimony; then there was another era; and now, I think, I am somewhere in the middle of the one after that. […] If there were some way of becoming writer in residence at, say, Belmont, I do think that may be the field for me. I’ll never know, though, this way, deprived of even a Form.
Waugh sent me a signed copy of Helena, “with warm regards,” and I’m grateful for that. Joe Dever messed up the review in The Commonweal. I don’t see why they don’t remove him from the reviewing staff. I think Joe can write some, but he’s no reviewer. His mentor, Fr John Louis Bonn,14 was here some weeks ago, from Boston College—he has a new novel, the Catholic Book Club selection—and I could see where Joe picked up part of his act, the worst part. I met Bonn at Pick’s one night and found him fairly interesting. Then the lecture … it was as rough as anything I’ve ever heard. All he needed was an electric cane and a rubber nose. I mean it was pure ham, and to top it off, he ended on that Fulton Sheen pitch, whispering and groaning about our Lord Jesus Christ in the Tabernacle, which has nothing to do with anything he’d said. Shades of our old retreat master at QCA, Fr Peter Crumbley, OFM. […] Please write.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Milwaukee
Washington’s Birthday [February 22, 1951]
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Suppose you’ve been mulling over the big basketball scandals in New York.15 I hope they don’t dig into things to the point where they discover what really happened to us Little Hawks in the State Tournament in ’35 at Decatur. I don’t know what Dick Keefe got, but I do know that George and I were living mighty high when it was all over. You may remember that we downed the home team, St Theresa, in the first round, and the talk was that I’d be All-State. But in the next round, going against a clumsy but determined St Bede’s five, I fouled out early (so as to be able to go through the lockers in peace), Dick dropped his cup and just wasn’t himself after that, and George complained of an old ailment with him, shin splints. They said we went down fighting, but I wonder what they would’ve said if they could’ve seen us being paid off later in Ott Quintenz’s tavern16 (Ott had been a Hawk himself at one time). I could tell you some tales. All I wanted was to set myself up in business. All for now. Write.
Jim
CHARLES SHATTUCK
Milwaukee
March 30, 1951
Dear Chuck,
[…] I had hopes of a summer near the ocean, I’d sent for a directory of cottages in Maine, but when I got the rejection,17 I knew I’d been kidding myself, thinking I was Irwin Shaw or somebody. It’ll probably be Big Spunk Lake at Avon—leaky roof, outdoor toilet, mosquitoes, the salty breeze off North Dakota. […] Just goes to show heaven is our destination.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
May 2, 1951
Dear Fr Egan,
Thanks for sending the McManus book and piece about Ireland. McM. is pretty rich for my blood; Betty is reading it. The piece about Ireland is informative but lame in spots—not enough about why the good Irish writers are “anticlerical”—I think it’s just a natural reaction, and I wouldn’t call Frank O’Connor that. Sean O’Faolain gives a depressing picture of Dublin—the Sacred Heart picture in the hallway, all the young men belonging (at one time) to the IRA, their female equivalent to the Legion of Mary—both organizations, he says, bore him. Much moviegoing, as here, among all classes. I mention these things so you’ll think I know about these things even now. I would not expect anything better … and I am not going to Ireland (if I’m going to Ireland) to get material, etc. I’m going for the change, to work on my book about characters over here. So many people make that mistake about me. Rectors and seminaries, I understand, are closed to me because it is believed that I’m looking for material! Incredible but true! You know better. It’s true I’m not above taking away a little, if it’s good, but I never go anywhere to explore. That kills whatever it touches, that spirit, like a conducted tour. […]
I had a letter from Sr Eugene Marie, with an enclosure—your church bulletin. I don’t see how you do it sober. I think you’re growing gage (marihuana) in your back yard, and incidentally that would be an ideal crop, terrain, weather considered, and the church would be a perfect blind. […]
I’m grateful for your invitation and plan to come. Will let you know when. One thing, however: make that discipline tough. I had the impression you were being soft. We move out of here on May 31. Write. Come.
Jim
No baseball for me, second base my spot, but I can no longer make the double play. Legs gone.
At some point around this time, much of the land attached to the house in Avon was taken by eminent domain for the construction of a highway. Though they didn’t especially want to live there, the couple was incensed by the state’s high-handedness. Jim left Marquette with the idea of moving with Betty and the children to Ireland that coming fall. After leaving Milwaukee, he made an extended visit to Father Egan in Beardsley, Minnesota, while Betty and the two girls stayed with the Wahls in their new house on the Mississippi, four miles up the river from St. Cloud.
BETTY POWERS
Beardsley, Minnesota
June 1951
Dear Betty,
Saturday afternoon—3:30. After I left you yesterday, I stopped at the place in Avon (our place). The grass is high. Some trees have been uprooted near the Achman road, which has been widened, and that may be why the trees were leveled. Except that along the old road (the one we used for a driveway) there is one tree cut down and lying partly across that road; an ax was used, and I can’t make anything out of that, any reason for it, I mean. The house itself is the same. Except the storm window on the window near the door is out, several panes broken (it was leaning against the remains of that old icebox, but I moved it), and possibly someone has been snooping around inside, though there are no signs of vandalism, no more than we left, I mean. The place is wet inside and shows some evidence of things like gophers. I didn’t go in, however; all this seen through the window I slid open. I looked for highway department stakes and saw two: one in the old driveway and one just on the house side of the bank that goes down to the old driveway. Not very far in, I thought, but they are very insubstantial-looking stakes, just lathes, and perhaps don’t mean very much. It’s sad, going back there, as you might imagine. But it’s sad because of what we did there, all the work and inconvenience; not sad when one thinks, as I d
id, that we don’t have to make anything out of it. […] Much love to you.
Jim
BETTY POWERS
Beardsley, Minnesota
July 1951
Dear Betty,
This is Thursday afternoon. I look out the window and see Fr Egan working some kind of gasoline agricultural instrument. I’m using his big wide-carriage typewriter, the one he probably uses for his mimeographing. I’ve been working in the church basement but thought of knocking out this letter to you here in the house. I just took a bath, having done some carpentry work for Fr Egan this morning, cutting three inches off a chest he has by the refrigerator for brooms, jars, etc. Now the chest and refrigerator—reefer, as you and Mr Chopp say—fit snug, and Fr Egan, possibly even the housekeeper, is happy. […] Much love.
Jim
I was compelled to buy a can of Velvet, America’s Smoothest Smoke. Pretty tough, after Brindley’s, but I suppose I’ll harden to it.
On his return from Beardsley, Jim joined the rest of the family, living with the Wahls. In October, he visited his own parents, who had moved from Chicago to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Charlotte and her family now lived.
HARVEY EGAN
3509 East Smith Avenue
Albuquerque, New Mexico
October 7, 1951
Dear Fr Egan,
As you can see from my address, I am visiting my folks—and that means that the story was sold, after all, to The New Yorker, after rewriting.18 […] I expect to leave in about ten days. We have made preparations to leave for Ireland on October 25: applications for passport, passage, etc. It is going to run into more money than we hoped (for instance, no tourist accommodations available, have to go cabin class, because of our last-minute arrangements), but then, as you always say, what is money? Standard Oil gasoline down here is known as Chevron. Great need for grass and trees. Drop me a line if there’s anything you want me to look into, Penitentes,19 etc. All for now.
Jim
12
The water, the green, the vines, stone walls, the pace, all to my taste
November 7, 1951–November 3, 1952
Leopardstown Racecourse, 1952
The Powers family boarded the SS America on October 25, 1951, bound for Ireland, and arrived in Cobh on October 31, 1951. Jim was smitten by the look of the country on the train from Cobh to Cork: “Most beautiful vegetation … hundreds of plants growing together and many kinds of trees. Gulls and many varieties … of fishing birds trekking in the mud of tideland. Stone fences which would be worth a fortune to a millionaire in U.S. Moss growing in cracks in slate roofs. Green and grey the color of the day.” In Cork he found, as was his wont, the plight of humanity reflected in the animal world: “Gulls crying, swans moored, it seemed, against the other bank, not to associate with gulls. But fresh sewage pouring into river—the Lee—brings them together at intervals. Commentary on reality, on gaining one’s daily bread, what you have to do.”
HARVEY EGAN
Standard Hotel
Harcourt Street
Dublin
November 7, 1951
Dear Fr Egan,
I’ve just told the girls a story about a dirty old grey rat that used to eat mice and baby seagulls, and now the questions are flying concerning the whole rotten business. We arrived in Ireland one week ago, went up to Cork, stayed there until last Saturday, then came here. We’re staying at the Standard Hotel on Harcourt Street, famous for Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, a high school up the street they both attended. The street is beautiful in my opinion, solid Georgian stone and brick, immense windows, lots of brass plates, oversize doorknobs. The big business in Dublin or in Cork, for that matter, is candy, sweets of all kind, tobacco, and stout. The big business on Harcourt Street is “Dental Surgery”; door after door with brass plate, So and So, Dental Surgeon. Needless to say, I’m telling them what’s wrong with them. Every day I grab a candy bar—Cadbury’s milk chocolate is the favorite—out of people’s hands. Naturally, until I explain why, this strikes them as odd. My theory, derived from you doubtless, is that they eat all this junk, have tea all the time too, because they don’t eat a square meal all day. It must be a great place for the tapeworms.
We’ve discovered that the meat here is good, the tea, eggs, but look out for the vegetables—if cold, like the remains you see in the sink after the dishes are done, a sprig of sad lettuce, a tomato skin with one seed hanging on it; if hot, just mush. They should bring in the Chinese to teach them about vegetables. Instead, there’s a big deal about African missions, tag day, etc., Negro dolls dressed up like Martin de Porres. After seeing Santa Fe, hearing McKeon on the need for money there—to work with people who are already presumably Catholic—I am cold to African missions.
There’s something rotten about religion here, I think, and something great, both to an extent, I suspect, that we don’t have in America.1 Little boys and girls, all patches and hobnailed shoes or rubber boots without stockings, kneeling for half an hour at a time, apparently praying. I don’t remember anything like that where I come from. Of course the gigglers and punchers are here too, but the others stay with me. On the other side, there are many hard-faced women, some in black shawls, and I’m not so pleased by the look of them. Perhaps they all had drunks for husbands, or perhaps they didn’t have husbands to avoid the inevitable, I don’t know. […]
The poverty here is tremendous. It’s a Dickens world. Lots of talk about the duty Irishmen have to stay here, not to emigrate, and yet it’s a dog’s life if one stays, I think, in too many cases. Betty was at an employment bureau, went down to “interview” someone to look after the girls when we go looking at houses tomorrow and Friday. Women all herded together in a common room. The woman who runs the employment agency shouts at one—like scooping out a minnow—and she comes. Name: Mary Ryan. Wage: 10 shillings ($1.40) a day; the employment agency’s charge (of us): 10 shillings. A maid is supposed to be lucky to get $5.00 a week, but there’s also a shortage. Many contradictions. For instance, a worn copy of Prince of Darkness in the rental library of Eason’s, the biggest bookstore in Dublin. Naturally, I picked it up and demanded that it be banned. […] All for now. (I realize I’ve overstepped my limits, set by you, in writing such a long letter, but ask forgiveness) …
Jim
Jim and Betty rented Dysart, a house in Greystones, county Wicklow, and took up residence on November 15, 1951. Betty hired a sixteen-year-old girl, B___, to look after Mary and me while she wrote. B___ was good fun, taking us on walks during which she would meet her best friend. This girl, also sixteen, was already equipped with a complete set of false teeth and earned our horrified admiration on one occasion by taking them out to remove a piece of toffee.
HARVEY EGAN
Dysart, Kimberley Road
Greystones, County Wicklow
Heaven on Earth
November 21, 1951
Dear Fr Egan,
I picked up your letter and enclosures when in Dublin yesterday and now hasten to reply so you’ll have our permanent address—I mean as permanent as an address can be when heaven’s our destination. […] Art slipped me a twenty when we left that morning for New York, and that just about completed my drive. I now owe everyone something—you the most—and I’d suffer more than I do—I do suffer considerably, by the way—if it weren’t that the thing I do is priceless. At the moment the thing I’m doing is lighting a pipeful of Carroll’s Donegal (Aromatic) Sliced Plug, and a little later on I’ll open a bottle of Guinness—run by the Freemasons, by the way. Then I’ll maybe jot down a few pages of my memoirs. I’ve given up stories and the novel I used to talk about—when I’d talk, that is, for I’ve not forgotten your complaint about my silence, my unwillingness just to sit and talk for days on end, your comparing me with one other friend. I’m calling the new book My Turn to Make the Tea. There’s another one out by that title, by Monica Dickens, […] but by the time mine is out, I daresay the title will sound fresh again. […]
Yesterday w
e started having a maid. She asked for 25 shillings, or bob, a week, and so we are magnanimously paying her 30—I wonder how are things down below for those who defraud the workers. Still, it’s that way all over. She’s just a kid, 16, […] about ten kids in her family, went through the eighth grade—to get to this position in the world. […] Life is real, earnest, tough, for most people in Ireland who have to work, I think.
A paperhanger told me that only 10 percent of the people in Greystones have to work; all retired, ex–army men, pensions, coupon clippers, and 95 percent pro-British, he said. He was himself, it turned out, told me Guinness was run by the Freemasons, as indeed everything really big is, to which I showed no feelings one way or the other—fortunately, I guess, because he ultimately showed that he believed that to be the way things ought to be. He thought I must be Protestant—because American, I guess—and spoke for a while about “us,” how we have incentive, “they” don’t, hence the situation he described. Irish, he said, the victim of large families. If they’d just use their heads, lay in a little contraceptive jelly, well, they might have a chance. I pointed out it would go hard with “us” then, nobody to wait on us, no poverty-stricken large families condemned to carry our water, hew our wood, for what we’d be willing and able to pay. When I confessed to being a Catholic, the conversation tapered off, and a good thing, for I was weary of homely wisdom. I gather, in little ways, that the Catholic government is the opposite side of the coin that has tails on both sides. Nobody can win for losing. I send you the latest list of censored books. But it’s a beautiful place, everything I dreamed it might be, a lot draftier in the house—I didn’t dream of that—but the water, the green, the vines, stone walls, the pace, all to my taste, and the meat and drink, likewise, mea culpa. […]
