Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963
Page 36
Boston, judging by this column12 I enclose, sounds like a much better place to live, or do I mean die?
Jim
CHARLES SHATTUCK
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
May 27, 1963
Dear Chuck,
Thanks for the letter. I am glad you like the story13 as you are the highest court I recognize in such a matter. […]
I played Chicago last Friday night, the King Arthur Room of the Sheraton-Chicago (actually the Medinah Athletic Club), and, as usual, knocked them in the old Kent Road with my speech. For the first time in my life, I wore a tuxedo (rented) and liked my looks so much that I sat up for hours, after the ball was over, just admiring myself in the mirror. I mean to get one first thing when I am rich. I don’t know what it means—secret hankering for order, holy orders, great wealth, you name it. This was in connection with the Monsen award given by the Society of Midland Authors, $500. I was sorry I missed the Pulitzer, as I’m told it’s good for sales. My sales, however, have been good since the National Book Award, have now reached 23,000, which is just a little less than half of what I’d hoped for about this time last year, before the book was published. It is going as well now, though, as it did at any time last fall, and I hope it continues so I can get out of the field entirely and into something more remunerative, something, perhaps, that would require that I wear evening dress. Am I entering a new period—my “Raffles” phase?
We still don’t know where* we’re going by summer’s end, or perhaps before if the house we’re living in is sold out from under us. I think I told you deaths in Betty’s family will require that we move on.
I have had some good job offers but have turned them down.
Best to you both …
Jim
JACK CONROY
412 First Avenue South
June 29, 1963
Dear Jack,
Thanks for the publication with my picture (and the other NBA winners) in it: I don’t mind being from St Cloud, Illinois—it may lead to a clarifying footnote in years to come, and it may change my luck. […]
I was sorry not to see you in Chicago but needed the time I might have used for a decent meal with you, needed it for my speech, which turned out all right but gave me a lot of trouble and worry until it was over. I didn’t meet Hoke Norris14 (whom I’d met in N.Y.) but did see Van Allen Bradley15 again and met Herman Kogan for the first time. I had the feeling that I was better known to them than to the ordinary membership, but I am used to that: my fame and fortune, if any, will be posthumous, I fear. […]
I’m sure Wharton16 would’ve done a better job than the Jesuit: he had no idea, of course, that the book would create the stir it did and was only doing what he could to downgrade it, a thing that happened to me here and there, with a certain amount of malice aforethought. Why, I don’t know, for to know me is to love me.
If I live long enough, and don’t find another, better way to make a living, my next book will have little or nothing to do with the Church … and we’ll see how they like them apples.
I’ve read most of Algren’s new book,17 and find some good lines and touches and a point of view that holds up, but the book misses in too many places: things like his Ked Gavilans,18 for God’s sake. On the other hand, I enjoyed his treatment of Mailer and Baldwin, neither of whom I know, but both of whom make my arse tired, they themselves rather than their work, though I did find Baldwin’s last novel unbelievably bad. But all of them, including Algren, still believe in Santa Claus, which I guess is the distinguishing mark of the American, writer or not.
May large birds defecate on the heads of most of the reading public for not buying the works of J. F. Powers.
I am, sir —Jim
J. F. Powers
HARVEY EGAN
August 6, 1963
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] I am crazy with the heat, and so is my typewriter, which, ever since Scotty, of Scotty’s business machines downstairs, fixed it, hasn’t been the same. Instead of a twenty-dollar gold piece when I die, so the boy’ll know I was standing pat, I want my typewriter in the coffin with me. I love this little machine.
I have decided on the first word of my new novel. It is “I” and now for the second one. […] Anon.
Jim
Jim’s hope that Morte D’Urban would bring financial salvation and a place to live was finally extinguished. The novel sold only twenty-five thousand copies in hardcover, and so, he wrote, “the great experiment with the great American (and British) reading public is over, so far as I am concerned.”
JACK CONROY
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
August 29, 1963
Dear Jack,
[…] We are hauling ass for Ireland soon. I am apprehensive, but that is the only place that lights up at all on the map, if only dimly. […] I am trying to get into a new novel, nonclerical, but not doing so well at the moment, what with all the commotion of packing and disposing (again) of worldly goods. In the words of Lead Belly, I am, like the boll weevil, lookin’ for a home. We have here below no lasting home, we all know, but in my case there seems no margin for error to build on. I keep having to get rid of furniture and sets of books that were going to adorn my estate after which the collected edition of my works was going to be named, but perhaps it’s just as well. We sail from New York on September 13, on the Nieuw Amsterdam. Anon, then, Jack.
Jim
28
Ireland grey and grey and grey, then seen closer, green, green, green
September 23, 1963–Christmas 1963
Sailing to Ireland aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, September 1963
The Powers family traveled to New York by train and sailed on the Holland America Line’s Nieuw Amsterdam (“easy voyage and bad food”), arriving in Ireland on September 19. From the United States, they had arranged to stay in the Trenarren Hotel in Greystones as paying guests for the rest of the month. After that, the proprietors were moving to England for four months, during which the Powers family would have sole occupancy. That was the plan, but it was not how it worked out in the end. It became a dismal affair.
DOYLES, O’CONNELLS, PALMQUISTS, PETTERSES
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
Ireland
September 23, 1963
Dear All,
[…] Let me say at the outset that nothing has been gained so far and nothing lost. I do not find myself any clearer in mind than I was a month ago. The trip, as regards weather and children, was better in the first and about what I expected in the second. Arriving in St Paul, we went to the St Paul Hotel, got the children to bed—all of us in one big room, with two bathrooms—and Betty and I went down for a drink in the Gopher Grill, Carlsberg beer, and then back to the room, where the ten o’clock news was coming on. I began to watch Channel 4 for what I thought just might be the last time when Fr Egan showed up. He regaled us all until the children dropped off, and then I took him to his car, which, a Mercedes diesel, I am to inherit on his death.
The trip down the river the next morning on the Builder1 was beautiful in a way I’ve seldom seen in the Middle West: raining slightly, with fog hanging over the river and in notches in the little mountainous hills, with grey herons set out like lawn furniture at suitable intervals, literally hundreds of them. Chicago was humid and eightyish and no place to shop for salami, cheese, pickles, bread, beer, and canned soft drinks, with only an hour to do it in, which was what I did, but fortunately I know my way around the Loop and have plenty of money for cabs. This stuff we ate and drank in our compartments so we didn’t have to appear en masse in the diner on the 20th Century.2 (By now you will have noticed that we were following in the footsteps of Fr Urban, from Builder to Century.)
New York was also humid and eightyish the next morning. We were compelled by our numbers to take two cabs to our hotel. We then quarreled for a while, the whole family, and some of us took b
aths, and some went out to see the Empire State Bldg, I leading this group and, one thing leading to another, actually going up and paying money to do so and glimpsing the Nieuw Amsterdam at her berth in the distance. I returned and called various people in publishing and show business such as Al Jolson and soon, as luck would have it, was out on the streets again leading the same group as before (Jane, Hugh, Boz) from Schrafft’s for sodas to Hoffritz’s for a brass compass to Gimbels for a very good buy in lead soldiers and a paddle and ball, all of which we needed, with our baggage, like yet another hole in the head. But as you might guess, I was fighting for my life by this time.
That evening we dined and wined at Robt Lowell’s apartment, and the next morning he saw us off at the boat. The ship sailed easily except late on the first day and once or twice for short intervals, but the food was a large disappointment to all and particularly to Fatso, who had been looking forward to a gastronomic bash. In the end, she consoled herself with innumerable Holland gins at ten cents a throw and little Dutch cigars. I spent hours on the deck in my chair and blanket and wondered at the meaning of life aboard ship. Everywhere I looked I saw Hedi and Bruno living it up and, having traveled on American, German, and British vessels before, thought there was really no way to escape the sight of same. One man and his wife were particularly hard to stomach: he was handsomely grey with a sabre scar on his left cheek, à la Heidelberg, and she was long-legged (in yellow slacks) and leathery of visage, and when separated by other acquaintances they were busily striking up in all directions would call and wave and smile to each other sweetly from time to time. “Blow it out!” I’d say to myself from time to time, resorting to this nautical term, although the navy was not my branch of the service.
We saw The Leopard in the cinema aboard and enjoyed it more for the scenery and for what it might have been than what it was. The last night, as we approached Ireland, there was fog, and consequently thoughts of immortality. The name Nieuw Amsterdam struck me as just right for a sea disaster, doubtless because of Hopkins’s poem about the wreck of the Deutschland or something. Ireland grey and grey and grey and then seen closer, green, green, green: the same old tender coming out to meet us, the same old fat man employed by American Express, and the wonderful consideration shown by porters and customs men and baggage men, as always, which is why, when you travel in the other direction, you are almost killed by New York.
Train to Cork (from Cobh), from Cork to Dublin, and on to Dun Laoghaire, and then by cab (“You must have a very big trunk—boot, that is—to get all that luggage stored away”—“Vauxhall has a very big boot, sir”) to the Trenarren Hotel in Greystones. It is not, we saw right away, the hotel we had in mind. It is dumpy in its furnishings but excellent in its cuisine, miraculously so, and we’ll be all right, I guess, for the next four months. The boys went to school today, Christian Brothers, and seemed to fare very well, and this I regard as a blessing from God, as I feared this aspect of our trip as much as any. We had tea with the O’Faolains this afternoon. They say we could buy a house with only a little down, but, though this is news to me, I don’t know. I have been so busy cursing Doubleday and the American reading public for not giving me a bestseller that the idea of lighting a candle is strange to me. Now I’ll close with gratitude to you all—for your various favors, especially the ladies.
Jim
FRED AND ROMY PETTERS
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
October 7, 1963
Dear Fred and Romy,
[…] For the last five or six days we’ve been running the hotel by and for ourselves. This, in the former respect, mostly means Betty, who even now is down in the kitchen—one of them—scraping grease off the wall behind the stove—one of them. I want you to understand what I’m saying but can only bear to look in for moments at a time in that region: there are what we would call four or five large rooms down there, all parts of the cooking setup: a room with stoves in it, one with a sink, one with a refrigerator, and so on, so that Betty gets plenty of exercise whenever she prepares a meal.
I am writing this from my office in the unused half of the hotel, somewhat away from the madding crowd. I have a distant view of the sea and a much better one of a filling station where there are Mobiloil and Castro signs, the latter being some kind of gas or oil, I guess. […]
What I should’ve said right away is that you don’t have to send a money order for the car; in fact, you don’t have to pay for it immediately, or even soon. […] Here was what gave me constant trouble: the hubcaps. Do not remove them unless you have to, and if you do, be sure you have them on just so or they’ll come off—they depend entirely on those little metal flanges which get bent and oh, what the hell … […] Be very careful, in this connection, Fred, or you’ll have missing hubcaps, and if there is anything that looks bad, it is a car with missing hubcaps, I think. Better you lose your manhood than your hubcaps. […]
Jim
JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
October 8, 1963
Dear Jody and Joe,
[…] Boz asks me when we’re alone, walking down the street, why I don’t buy a house, and I tell him or I don’t, depending how I feel, but in a day or so or a week it happens again, and he is very gentle about it, and quite hopeless, I sense, that I’ll be able to pull it off. I see myself as an alcoholic at such times—not a bad person, really, but one from whom little can be expected. That, in outline, may be my problem. […]
You are there and we are here. I can see the sea out my window, about two blocks away, and it is municipal-swimming-pool green close to shore, with low whitecaps, and deep green on the horizon. Right across the road from the hotel, as I told Fred and Romy in a letter yesterday, is a filling station with Mobiloil, Shell, and Castrol signs, and not Castro signs, as I reported yesterday. My electric fire is on (and my own fires are banked), and I still have some wiring jobs to do on lamps if I decide to spend the evening hours here instead of in our bedroom, where we have an electric fire, Scotch and Irish (his and hers), and Boz’s transistor radio. We have been absolutely nowhere socially—tea once with the O’Faolains. The Dublin Theatre Festival came and went. We get The Irish Times delivered daily, and The Observer, Sunday Times, and Telegraph on Sunday, which, with churchgoing, pretty well takes care of that evil day. […]
We have just had lunch, Betty and I, tea, roast beef (not good) sandwiches, and several kinds of cheese, with nobody home but us and Jane and Terry. The latter is our dog. Only on loan, fortunately, the property of the hotel owners, who thought they wouldn’t be able to find accommodations for all three of them (they have no children) in London. Terry is a woolly dog, spayed (I believe the term is), with the body, or flesh consistency, of a woman, to the touch, that is. This I noticed this morning, when searching for fleas (we all seem to have bites). He (I refer to Terry) is a pleasant enough dog, has very intelligent brown eyes, and the kids love him. I can’t look at him, though, without wanting to clean him up, beginning with Murine for his eyes, which are suffering from erosion at the corners. Betty really has to take care of him: take him out at night, remove his collar, tuck him under his blanket in what is known as the Smoking Room here at the Trenarren.
Here there are Aer Lingus schedules for the summer of 1962 (take one) and a small so-called billiard table, with holes into which you try to get the balls to drop (it is like a pinball machine, not a pool table, though covered with good green felt). I must say I looked forward to a game when, on the first night here, the proprietor invited me to take the children into the Smoking Room whenever I felt like it, for a game of billiards. But you have to put in a sixpence, in order to open up the holes, and get about ten minutes of play. This, as you might imagine, can mount up with a family the size of ours all waiting to use the table and nobody but Betty and Himself with the slightest idea of the relationship there is between a sixpence piece and real money. There is a humming noise wh
ile the ten minutes are running out, and everybody seems to feel that this adds to the fun—a noise from somewhere in the table. What I was going to say, though, is that wherever Terry goes, there is a slightly doggy odor, and a layer of lanolin, too, and he goes everywhere, following the sun from bed to bed, room to room, during the day. I guess that ought to fill you in, along with what Betty will tell you in her letter. […]
We are glad to hear that Romy was delivered of her baby and that all is well.3 We hadn’t heard until your letters came. Now, for the love of life, why don’t you get Fred drunk and back him into a lathe or something? What about Dr D. in the role of the disbarred famous surgeon, asked to do a job, and actually turning in a whale of a performance for a half-pint? While you, Joe, and Dickie, and Dick Palmquist, and Leonard play cards in the next room, a candle in a bottle, and Jody is stalking around in a coat from Petters’s Furs? Somebody switches on the TV (updated from radio), and there we see the president of the United States (played by J. F. Powers) just completing a fireside talk on crime when suddenly, seen through the window, there are headlights—commercial here—and more headlights—and oodles of monks* pouring out of squad cars—too late, though, to prevent the operation. Titled Tragedy in Hardon County.
Cheers, and do write.
Jim
The owners of the Trenarren returned from London and took up occupancy in a few rooms of the hotel. It was not part of the agreement and led to a great deal of unpleasantness and, eventually, to Jim’s story “Tinkers.” (“So far it is writing itself. And also killing me.”)
DICK PALMQUIST
Trenarren Hotel
Greystones, County Wicklow
November 13, 1963
Dear Dick,
[…] You are lucky enough to have a friend who thinks enough of you to celebrate your birthday with a gift of champagne. As I recall, even when you provide same, it is hard to get anybody to come over and celebrate in St Cloud. It is the same the world over, though. I have always wished to be part of a going concern whose day-by-day existence makes for a few laughs, with our own stationery, office equipment, calendars, branches, and branch managers, perhaps a lake in Ontario where we go to relax (further) from time to time. You don’t have all those things, but you do have some and much more. So hang on to your job.4 Word is that Speltz will be the auxiliary, if that’s the way it’s spelt.5 Get that old suction pump going the moment he walks through the door—some of Mary’s pâté de foie gras gift wrapped in money might not be taken amiss. Talk down Alfrink’s heretical suggestion that laymen should do the office jobs at the Vatican and not the bishops.6 Stick up for Ottaviani.7 He is one of the first to talk against the bomb. His father was a baker, his mother a swan, hence his neck. Deny me and all my pomps. So much for good counsel, Dick. […]