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

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 we 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. […]