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

I love you, then. […]

Jim

Evelyn Waugh and Jim, 1949

ROBERT LOWELL

150 Summit Avenue

St Paul, Minnesota

January 18, 1949

Dear Cal,

[…] What word of Ted?1 I always said, remember, we’d mean nothing to him if he ever married that money he talked about, but I did not think we’d be cut off until then.

This month is my “hard time.” I am trying to get a MS together for Mr Moe, with an eye to a renewal,2 but what I thought was going to be just a typing job has turned into a worse job than the original. Just imagine a doctor with the patient all apart on the table, or a mechanic with my car, and add the time element, the February deadline, and you have my predicament. I’ve had it from my agent that renewals are hard to get anyway. I’ve been flirting with the idea of buying a house (with the money I haven’t got but might get if I took a job with something called the Catechetical Guild here: they are dealers in all kinds of religious junk and are thinking of opening up a new department publishing, with Doubleday, Catholic “classics” in the Permabooks format. If that doesn’t develop, I don’t know what I could do there; even if it does develop, the least that would happen to me would be the loss of my faith, I think, just seeing all the junk they have to convert the heathen — games like Pollyanna or Monopoly, for instance, except they deal with the sacraments or dogma. Waugh would love it. Me too, but I wonder, buying a house on it, if I could do the novel about it that would inevitably accumulate).

The truth is I’ve got to buy a house, with these three girls of mine (I count Betty among them). And I think I’d try to buy some awful big damned place up the street, from 12 to 40 rooms, the kind nobody else wants anymore because they cost too much to heat and are gloomy; rather in the direction of Yaddo style, architecturally. But I haven’t really looked into it; don’t know what they cost. And also, I haven’t got the job I’d need. I couldn’t do it on the Guggenheim, though. Ah, well, let me be a lesson to you. Stay single. That way you can afford to be yourself. […] All for now and best.

Jim

Journal, February 14, 1949

Betty told me that the priests had been up to see Sister Mariella … and in the talk this came out about me: He’s lookin’ for a job, didja know that? And that because I was foolish enough to go out and see them at the Catechetical Guild. I thought I made it seem disinterested enough, but I guess not … I think it gave them joy to think I was around begging for work — from them, too, whom I’d hurt so much in the past. Oh, God. Impossible not to think of Joyce and all he had to say about the Church — or is it just the Irish?… That “He’s lookin’ for a job” is a terrible reminder of my own father and all the time he spent looking for a job … And the world is waiting for me as it waited for my father — he’s lookin’ for a job! Sister M. said the priests referred to me as to the devil incarnate — but that is probably exaggerated — a little.

Father Egan had run afoul of someone big in the St. Paul diocesan hierarchy, most likely because of his radical Christian views, and was assigned to a parish in Beardsley, Minnesota, a parched little town on the border of South Dakota. In the summer, it was one of the hottest places in the state. “Whenever the wind blows a particle of dust in my eye,” wrote Jim, “I think of you out there on the lunatic fringe of the world.” Egan threw himself into the duties of the parish and maintaining the rectory.

HARVEY EGAN

150 Summit Avenue

April 2, 1949

Dear Father Egan,

Friday night and I trust you are back in Beardsley by now. I enclose some clippings. I’ll try to keep sending these to you, only the best ones. You know I didn’t get a chance to send stuff to the boys in the last war (due to a little mix-up), and so I intend to make up for them with you. After all, it is like that, what you are going into. And I want you to know, speaking for our block, that we think of you often and will try to make it up to you if you ever return to the States. We are also holding forum meetings in which we discuss the problems of the day, and this, we humbly hope, will make St Paul a better place to live in, for us and for you when and if, as I say, you return. It shouldn’t have happened to a dog, what happened to you, but then we can’t have everything our own way all the time, can we? (I’m not so sure about that, but a certain Fr B.3 is said to hold with that doctrine, and so I go along, knowing what happened to some that set themselves, however secretly they thought, against him.) All for now. (Jamaica opened today: weather clear, track fast…)

jf

St. Paul, “Home of the Saints,” was much better suited to Jim’s temperament than rural Minnesota. The city provided the company of Saul Bellow, Robert Penn Warren, and other writers with whom he enjoyed the conversation and sense of fellow feeling for which he longed. Evelyn Waugh, who was writing a piece on American Catholicism for Life magazine, arrived in St. Paul. He and his wife came for dinner at the Marlborough, where Betty served them lobster Newburg.

HARVEY EGAN

150 Summit Avenue

May 2, 1949

Dear Fr Egan,

Your letter and enclosure rec’d this morning. You are very free with your funds, and kind as always. I would not hesitate to cash the check, and perhaps that’s what I’ll do. But I got $189.57 from England (advance on my book4 over there, just now arriving) last week, and that should take us through May. (We’ve already paid the rent with the usual flourish.) I’ve not had any luck with the two stories yet, but have not despaired entirely, and Betty mailed off a new one yesterday. I did get the shakes two days after I saw you last, however, and wrote to Marquette to say I was ready to deal again. That may end in nothing. I require certain things: housing, short hours, big pay — something to compensate me for leaving St Paul (though the attractions are fewer as time goes on; Fr G. is the only one left), and they may not see fit to provide.

Things are rather rough here with the babies. Don’t expect much peace during the day, but when they take over the night too, that’s bad. What’s the Church’s stand on desertion? Very rough on Betty, body and soul; only my soul suffers. (She, B., was down to have some of her hair cut today, a triumph for me.) So I’m going to keep your check, in readiness — please don’t change banks. Since you won’t mind, I think I ought to tell you, though, that I wouldn’t give the check much of a chance to pull through uncashed. Thanks. I wonder if you can get Marty O’Neill5 way out there but doubt that they make radios that good or that you’d have one. Anyway, the Saints won their 11th game tonight. That’s 11 and 0. I haven’t been out yet. Somebody said there’s now a plaque at Lex. where you used to sit.6 […]

I mentioned your slate roof to Art. He seems to think there’s nothing to it. He explained it all to me, how you replace them, using a certain kind of hammer to peck out a hole for the nails (they are nailed), and shove a piece of copper in, and … well, I’ll tell you, Father, I went through all this once, and it won’t do you any good coming from me. Anyway, it’s not much of a job, according to Art (come to think of it, nothing ever was). On another page I’ve prepared a scratch sheet for next Saturday.7 I called the Chancery, and it’s official you don’t have to hear confessions during the race. In fact, it might be laudable and meritorious if you listened to the broadcast and smoked a cigar. You see there’s nothing wrong with these things in …