Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963
Page 27
We met Padraic Colum at Sean O’Faolain’s house last Sunday night; a nice old gentleman. He (with his late wife) has a book coming out this spring, from Doubleday: Our Friend James Joyce. He said that Doubleday had wanted him to change the title because some of the salesmen thought it was likely to be confusing to booksellers—too close to My Friend Flicka. He didn’t tell this as a joke. He is not changing the title, though. “A very popular book,” he said, referring to Flicka, “about a dog, I believe.” “A horse,” I said, not having read it and still overwhelmed by the suggestion that he change the title for that reason. “A pony,” Sean said. One card, Father?
Since I last wrote, our Abp1 has been in the news. He nixed the votive Mass to open the Spring Festival (An Tostal, in Irish) because of two plays, one based on Ulysses, the other a new one by Sean O’Casey; Beckett, the dramatist famous for Waiting for Godot, then withdrew his contributions to the festival; and finally the whole thing—the drama part—was canceled. Plenty of people wrote to The Irish Times, including Kate O’Brien and Colum, but apparently the shooting is over; the odor lingers but is nothing new, I guess. The Abp, in theory, is in the clear. The trouble all began when some pious trade unionists petitioned for the Mass. The moral: never ask if you can’t take no for an answer.
I was glad to hear that you liked the last story in The New Yorker.
I can’t recall whether I made it clear that we have had the shakes about remaining in Ireland. […] And—the payoff—we are going to have another baby in July. […] How does it look from there? Bad, I suppose, but could be worse—and perhaps will be. I still have my aim, however. All I have to do is run the table. Rack ’em up.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
29 Westland Row
Dublin
March 4, 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
Your letter came yesterday, having passed mine in the mails, and we were both very sorry to hear of your attack. It must have been very painful, and I do hope it won’t color your outlook on suffering—which I personally do very badly but which, through associating with you, I have developed quite a good feeling for—in others. Let’s just hope nothing ever happens to me, now that I’ve had my appendix out and my teeth fixed again. Anyway, I take it you’re much improved and equipped now with good and holy reasons to enjoy yourself (this is a reference to the ban on milk) like a proper St Paul Diocese man. Better put that bag of beer I left in the front parlor in the fridge.
Well, I was an hour late coming down to the office today, having gone to Greystones with Boz for a haircut. It being about noon, I had some tea and buns nearby and then climbed up to it. Very pleasant here. Yesterday I patched the mahogany table my typewriter rests on, arranged the lamp with its pink shade (it hangs down directly over the typewriter, the best lighting I have had), and polished the copper of my electric fire. The little rug is down, with newspapers under it for padding, and the chair is a wonderful buy at 35 bob: a Victorian mahogany tufted one, with dark red leatherette cover, ripped in a few places. My back is to the one window, five feet off the floor and running up to the ceiling, which is only a little over seven feet, and so I have the best daylight too. I can hear the rumble of traffic from Westland Row (to the front of the building; I am to the back) and Nassau Street to the rear and sometimes pigeons nearby and sometimes gulls in the distance. I am at the head of the stair, and so there’s no traffic at all outside my door; not much on the floors below, occupied by solicitors, engineering consultants, etc.
We get very little mail these days from the Movement (our colleagues in the St Cloud Diocese) and often wonder, if and when we return, how we’ll stand it. You can have little idea of our dilemma—as to where we want to spend eternity on earth, the future, that is. What we couldn’t do last fall—find a place to live—we won’t be able to do next winter any better. I personally dislike this stretch of life ahead of me: the father of numerous children; the husband of a woman with no talent for motherhood (once she’s conceived); and with the prospect of making no more money than in the past. I see another office, spending more and more time in it and away from home, darting to the rescue at home, spanking this child, playing with that one, and finally gumshoeing the girls through their teens, tottering down the aisle with them when they marry and trying not to think about their husbands, who, I daresay, good for nothing else, won’t even make money. Don will drop off, or live forever, and we’ll all be on special diets. So what do I know for sure? Only that I’ll have my art, and so I should pay more attention to it. Do not set a place for me at the church supper. Do not expect to see me running with the others in the stretch simply because I started with them at the beginning. I am looking for another course.
I bought my first ticket on the Grand National sweepstakes. First prize is £50,000. I wasn’t able to tell Betty what I’d do with the money if I won.* That shows the state of my mind.
Saw the Earl of Wicklow crossing Westland Row to St Andrew’s Church Saturday, but he didn’t see me. He is one of Fr D’Arcy’s converts, and we once had dinner together. When are we going to take a meal?
Jim
JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL
Ard na Fairrge
Mount Salus
Dalkey, County Dublin
March 19, 1958
Dear Joe and Jody,
Very glad to have your letter yesterday: we had definitely given up on the Movement. For some time, in the past, I’d say to Betty, what do you suppose it means? Did it ever occur to you that we may not be liked at all by people? And Betty would say, Oh, that’s true, of course, but I think they think they’re busy. It isn’t so easy for people to sit down and write, you know. But that was a long time ago. For some weeks, the Movement went unmentioned except for an occasional “Damn the Movement!” when the mail arrived, or didn’t. We have been considering the idea of returning with a flinty eye—wondering if there could be anything worse than returning with no prospects of a home, billeting ourselves on Betty’s relatives, probably having to split up our family because of its unmanageable size, and so on. There is only one thing to be said for returning, and that, of course, is the presence of people like yourselves—but we, in the circumstances I suggest, wouldn’t be able to appreciate you, I think, and vice versa. The last time, we were almost a year finding a place to live, and we are even harder now to accommodate, to say nothing of the aesthetic side. We wouldn’t care to live in the country. We have had our fill of pioneering—too damn much of it right now, here, in fact. Heaven for me would be never having to enter a hardware store again—and still I am fascinated by hardware. Well, anyway, whatever we do, you can be sure it will be done after much consideration.
Betty is already taking precautions against liking this house and situation when warmer weather comes, drumming it into herself, and me, that six months of the year in a freezing mausoleum just isn’t it. She speaks of trying to find a warmer house. I have declared myself not a participant in this game. I have my office in Dublin now and must really bear down if we are to have money to do whatever it is we will do in the end. Except for a few days when I was still looking for furniture—a chair, a table—the weather has made it impossible to work in the office. Today I am staying home because I can hardly move: a recurrence of trouble with my back. Betty is in Dublin for an auction, where she hopes to pick up a chair that she can sit in comfortably during the rest of her pregnancy. That, as you might guess, was the last straw. So I thought until I found myself unable to turn over in bed—with visions of myself being lifted into an airplane and ever after being a blanketed invalid, but perhaps getting more work done.
I have a hot-water bottle strapped to my back and now must remove it for refilling. Thus I leave you for the time being.
March 21. Nothing to add to the above, I’m afraid. I go on suffering, spared only the gibes of those who can’t see me as I am now, a bent figure tottering from bed to chair to radio. I enclose some clippings for you, Joe, and also Don—say, whatever happened to those p
eople anyway? There were two of them—Mary and Don, I think they were called. Best to you.
Jim
DON AND MARY HUMPHREY
March 26, 1958
Dear Don and Mary,
I really shouldn’t be writing to two such … as yourselves, but then I was ever one for returning good for evil. I am sitting here in my office—or “studio,” as it’s called in my lease—at 29 Westland Row, Dublin, thinking of you. I’ve just about got this place arranged so that I feel comfortable here: floor stained, rug down, table amputated so that I can type while sitting in my easy chair, a light suspended over the typewriter, pink shade, which brings out the lights in the mahogany table, and pipe cleaner drying on the shade: JF at his ease. I have a glass of porter in my stomach, having decided that it is better than having tea and rolls for lunch. I have an electric fire playing on my feet, for it’s still chilly here (of late I’ve been sitting here with my coat and gloves on). There is a fireplace, but I am four flights up and would have to hire somebody to tend the fire and ashes, and I am trying to cut expenses. Oh, yes, I am smoking a new pipe—a bargain, or I never would’ve bought it. Before settling down here for the day, I “viewed” some articles which will come up for auction tomorrow at noon. A lovely set of demitasse cups and saucers; a card table with drawers for each player, also a place for his glass—but I can’t quite see the use of these things for me. Still … […]
—Now, I must leave you. What, if anything, can I send you? […]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
29 Westland Row
Dublin
Good Friday [April 4], 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Let me thank you for your kind invitation to return to America. I can’t remember reading of anybody like myself (the Lord knows what Betty really wants; nothing for certain, I’d say) in this dilemma of where to spend my future. Today, for instance, the maid didn’t show up at home, finally called and said she was too weak to rise, then said she’d tried three times before she found our number in the book (which isn’t in the book yet), and so on, until Betty, not knowing whether she was really sick or not, said she should stay home. The last time it snowed (yes, it’s snowing here today), the maid didn’t appear for two days, not a word from her, and then one morning there she was. So that’s the domestic scene. Fortunately, the girls are home all during April (vacation) and can help some.
So I get on the train at the usual time, around ten, and come down here, turn on the electric fire, and go out for a walk in the snow, or sleet, or whatever it is, waiting for the room to warm up. It’s a bitter day in Dublin, most of the shops closed, a few men standing by excavations in the pavement, the postmen making their rounds, and small boys wheeling turf home in the family pram; the very poor are allowed so much free; and a baker’s horse and cart going by: “Kennedy’s Machine Made Bread,” to show you how up-to-date we are. The pubs are closed. […]
Still, as I was about to say on the other side of this page, I am pleased in many ways with these surroundings, seeing more of Dublin this trip, being able to walk out to secondhand bookstores and attend furniture auctions whenever the desire is on me to do so, or just to walk around looking at the 18th century. I do not consider myself terribly sensitive to my surroundings, but perhaps the most painful thing for me about America, about Minnesota anyway, is having to look at what I see around me, from wooden shack to concrete supermarket in 100 years, with very little in between, hardly anything in St Cloud. You could say that the automobiles here, in general, are easier to look at; people keep them forever; and those that aren’t mere bugs, the economy models, are more or less appealing: I particularly like the ones with headlights as big as washtubs, the old Jaguars, Bentleys, and Daimlers. But of course all of this is by the way—not fundamental like my work to interest and survival—but then so much of life is by the way, don’t you think?
I am way behind schedule in the novel. I should be nearing Grand Forks, but I am just leaving Cut Bank, Montana. Sometimes the train doesn’t seem to be moving at all, and sometimes it appears that the engineer has got out of the cab and is fishing off a bridge with no thought of the job he’s supposed to be doing. […]
So much for that and me. […]
Jim
Betty’s Journal, April 11, 1958
Jim’s first work in Ireland done today, 6 months & one day after our arrival, followed by his picking up “low ladie’s chair” from auction.
MICHAEL MILLGATE
April 15, 1958
Dear Michael,
Your letter rec’d, and the weekend of May 10 is fine—or any weekend, for that matter. Our only problem is how to entertain you in the custom of the country, for we just sit around and brood and hardly utter a brilliant word. But we would like to see you and hope you’ll come. Just let me know when, exactly, and I’ll try to meet you at the airport.
No, I’m not interested in teaching at Salzburg or anywhere else. And if I were, what would I teach? I gather education, in Europe, hasn’t crumbled to the point where I could step in.
I have nothing to say about your marriage, if any, only hope she has money.
I am writing this from my office on Westland Row, where I have been freezing until lately. It is a lot like my office in St Cloud (in that I don’t know who else would have it) but quieter.
Too bad you aren’t here now, or sometime in the next ten days, for Edwin O’Connor, author of The Last Hurrah, is in town, and you could interview him. He has some good stories about Boston. One: Abp Cushing is showing ex–Lord Mayor Briscoe through a seminary and throws open a door to an auditorium where the seminarians are all assembled. “There they are,” he says, “five hundred of the best anti-Semites you ever saw.” Asked later what Briscoe said, the Abp said, “He took it very well.”
Write, giving time of arrival. Until then, all best.
Jim
DON AND MARY HUMPHREY
April 29, 1958
Dear Don and Mary,
We were so glad to hear from you, and the fact that there has been a slight time lag since then doesn’t mean a thing—except that we think it better that some of the delay be on our side. You would gladden our lives, however, if you replied at once. I don’t have your letter at the office—where things are humming as usual—but I do remember that you, Mary, were busy with your sewing and that Don was busy with his haw-hawing. […]
Very odd that you haven’t had the pleasure of [the Hyneses’] company. I fear, too, that with the approaching warm weather they may seek to make amends by throwing one of their famous picnics in a public park. And what of the Doyle? He hasn’t written to us, I think, in all the time we’ve been at our present address. Something I said, I suppose, without having a clue as to what. We spend less time than we did in imagining what you are all doing. This was a regular part of our life until recently. “Are they at Hyneses’ tonight,” I’d say to Betty. Or “I think Fred called, and they’re going over there tonight. Don had to stop for cigarettes.” Or “Hyneses came by, but Don wasn’t there, and Mary had retired.” We just don’t get enough information to engage our imaginations these days.
Last year, about this time, it became clear that we were going to have to move, and I saw that the two, possibly three, years of economic security were not to be. And now, again, I am facing up to the same situation—the necessity to make some big money. It doesn’t seem to be in the cards that we’ll ever enjoy the small fruits of our labors. This, I’d say if it were happening to anyone else, and they were able to survive each crisis, as we’ve been able to do so far, would be a good thing, a device to prevent one from getting into a rut. But this too can be a rut. I think now I’d have been wise to stay on somehow in St Cloud and finish my novel in the office there—there would’ve been no change there. I have wasted months getting set up again, physically and mentally, and now that I have, I see it’s not to be for very long, that it’s starting up all over again. And this time, there isn’t the objective there was, the
feeling that if we could just get to Ireland, everything would be all right. The feeling now is that everything will not be all right, whatever we do, that hardly anything will be all right. Not a good spirit in which to advance toward the future.
[…]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Dublin
May 13, 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
Your letter came this morning, and glad to have same, to know that you’ll welcome us back. At the moment, I have no very good prospects of making it back: cold in my nose, cold in my office, and so on.
KA is being confirmed by the Abp of Dublin today and expects a question: “I’m in the front row, and he asks those in the front row, and if they know the answers, he doesn’t ask the others.” I did not tell her to counter with a question: “Why don’t you and O’Casey bury the hatchet?”2
The keys are cold to my touch this morning: it will not be a good day. I must go over to an auction and try to land a couple of elephant tusks. I got two the other day (supporting a dinner gong) and would like to get these today, which are unmounted, rough, as extracted. I plan to send the ivory to Don, who except for an occasional cue ball, is unable to procure the stuff for his work, mostly nodes on chalices.
[…]
Jim