J. Powers - Suitable Accommodations - An Autobiographical Story of Family Life - The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963

I love you.

Jim

Jim rejoiced when his obligation to work at the hospital was lifted. He arrived at the “great idea” of giving up the job and devoting himself to his own work with the financial assistance of Father Egan. This, two months into their engagement, was Betty’s first experience of Jim’s intransigence on the matter of work.

JOHN MARSHALL

150 Summit Avenue

January 19, 1946

Dear Marsh,

A note I’d like you to answer at once. George Barnhart4 called me from New York last night and said that it is now official, that it was “authorized,” that we are now free to accept such employment as we wish at such wages as we can get, meaning the hospital stuff is no more. […] I’d like to know what the word is in Chicago and assume you’ve had a better opportunity than I have here to find out. […] I don’t want a job, of course. Only the freedom to write and, it may be, starve. For I intend to make it like that, have had my mind made up for some time, and might as well begin to find out now if it’s possible. […]

Jim

BETTY WAHL

150 Summit Avenue

January 23, 1946

My dear Betty,

Your letter rec’d and read and reread. Also one from Fr Garrelts, with more ideas for the play;5 from a friend in Chicago who gives me the lowdown on parole there, and it looks like I am a free man, but I am not rushing down to demand it, am giving them a few days; a card from Fr Egan in which he says “Prince of Darkness”6 will only make the literati smirk, says it’s a balloon in fancy dress, but he is glad it’s over and now I can get down to work (I’ve got a notion to go over and confront him with my freedom, ask to be supported — he’s always talking about he’ll do it if I ever want him to); and that’s the mail. […]

And now … amen.

Pax,

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

150 Summit Avenue

January 1946

Dear Pere,

I have just rec’d your bill of disapproval. I wish that you’d try to be more approving. After all, where would the NY Times Book Section be today if they’d not liked as many masterpieces as you are on record for not liking. You’ll never be popular with that old critical attitude, finding everything wrong and poking fun. Did you ever stop to think that you and not the world may be wrong! Well, I am mostly curious about where you saw the story. More and more I am thinking you should have been a Jesuit, with your fabulous connections and interests, and all of them leading right smack into Rome. […]

Incidentally, turning to a subject dear to you, you can get your checkbook out any day now. There is a report that old JF will go free (my agents in Chicago and New York both tell me that’s the way it is now), and […] of course I am going on the HFXE7 payroll immediately. It was good of Fr Egan to offer to help me, and I was sure he meant it because he was always urging me to forsake my material concerns and fly to him. Pax.

Jim

JF “I can live on $100 a m.” P

BETTY WAHL

St Joseph’s Hospital

January 24, 1946

Dear Betty,

It’s a little past four in the morning, Thursday, and a few minutes ago, as I was removing the third “load” from the sterilizer, a great idea came to me. It does not directly concern you, so it is not absolutely great. But it is fairly great. I immediately thought of telling it to you, as I’m about to do, and then a few moments later it occurred to me that I ought to ask your advice, even permission. Here it is. I will quit this job and go live with Don and Mary, upstairs in one of those side rooms, the lightest one and warmest (though I will depend on an electric heater of some sort for heat), and write the stories I have in mind for the book, only two or three more, and will begin either my novel about priests ( The Green Revolution ) or the one about jail ( The Hotel ). By the time we get married, I will have a lot done. I work pretty damned well when I don’t do anything but write, I know from experience. I will pay Mary and Don at least seven dollars a week, more if I sell some stories for very much. Now tell me what you think of that, what you really think. […]

I hope this letter doesn’t upset you in any way. I don’t see why it should, but a couple of times I felt that you thought $80 a month, even if I had to work 48 hours to get it and you had to sleep alone nights, was the best we could hope for. I think a clean break is necessary. The pills must go, and we must have some surgery (powerful imagery). I will not go into this any further. It is very simple. More than anything, I want your honest and intimate opinion. I don’t want you giving way if you think the idea is all wrong. It would seem to me to be a chance to get a head start on our future, so much of it as entails my writing for our living. And now, turning to the center of things, I love you.

Jim

BETTY WAHL

150 Summit Avenue

January 26, 1946

Dear Betty,

I looked for a letter very much from you today, but none came. It is three in the afternoon, Saturday. I got up at ten this morning and went to Fr Patrick Kelly’s funeral, solemnized by the archbishop, at the cathedral. He was a wonderful old priest at the hospital, actually loved by everybody. He is a subject of mine, and I have only put off writing about him and Sr Eugene Marie,8 who looked after him until she was transferred to North Dakota, because he was still living. I knew that when she left, he would die. He did five months later. I then stopped off at the parole office to see the man. It is all set: I am a free man whenever I wish to go, only have to let the hospital know and teach someone the job I have. I think it’ll be the 9th, my last night. I had hoped to have your letter today so as to know what you thought of the idea I broached the other night (and also to have your reaction to “Prince of Darkness”). […]

I also bought a ticket for Here Is Ireland this morning and will go all by myself — the only one I know who takes me seriously on the subject of Ireland — tomorrow afternoon. I expect to enjoy myself. I made some coffee two days ago but forgot to drink it. I am drinking it now. It tastes flat. Does coffee get flat? Then, after buying the ticket, I bought a pecan roll. Then I went to see Fr Egan about the good news. To discuss us. He would like an early marriage. The dog (the Pastor’s) tried to bite him while I was there. Very funny. I must write it. […]

Fr Kelly lay in his coffin with his biretta on, dapper to the last. I am quite tired from not sleeping. To bed then. I love you but would like to hear oftener and at more length from you. It is a scheme to make me love you more. You can’t.

Jim

Jim, ca. 1928, “a member of the Blackfoot tribe”

Betty, who had the Teuton’s boundless appetite for drawing up schedules, budgets, inventories, instructions, and rules, embarked on a lifelong, utterly hopeless crusade to convert Jim to the joys of time management.

BETTY WAHL

150 Summit Avenue

January 29, 1946

Dear Betty,

It is Tuesday. I think you ought to know that, and I’ve been waiting since last Friday or Saturday for a letter. This morning two of them arrived. Yesterday, when no letter came, I was thinking of altering my future, or rather that it had been altered for me: you had decided I was too this or that, and you’d heard from Elmo again. Well, getting into your letter, I am sorry it caused you so much grief, my big idea. I know you are as anxious as I am to have me amount to something, as they say. I doubt that I will at this rate. When you split up the day and proved I had plenty of time for writing if I’d only stop fuming … shades of my mother. It would seem, though, when the smoke has cleared away, that I ought to stay here and continue what I’ve been doing. All right, we’ll see.