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

Here’s the payoff on Fr Fennelly. You know he usually talks about the need to use a missal. Whatever he talks about, though, there is one rather dirty bastard whom he keeps referring to as “the ordinary man,” and it is this fellow who is running the world today, outvoting men like Fr Fennelly, crossing him at every turn, and unlike the landed gentry in the old days the ordinary man just doesn’t pick up the check, wants his union wage, his newfound position, without the responsibilities. And so on. The payoff is that while getting my hair cut the other day, the barber (an usher at the nine o’clock), who speaks fondly of former pastors, how nice they were, etc., referred to Fr Fennelly as “the ordinary man.” I guess that’s what the natives call him. He had it coming, I guess, but I am still one of his supporters, preferring excitement on Sunday. I admitted to the barber, however, that it might be because I was just passing through. To which he said, “Well, for that matter, we all are.” So there is a certain quickness, aptitude for the verities, among the common people here. […] All for now. Write.

Jim

LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE

Greystones

September 25, 1952

Dear Leonard and Betty,

Can’t remember whether I owe you a letter or not, but feel a desire to renew communications with someone in the Big Missal Country. Here, incidentally, it’s enough that we use Fr Stedman’s little number. Betty (my wife), always one to be more Catholic than the Church, now uses a rosary during Mass.12 […]

We’ve had Fr Petrek (former seminarian at St John’s) for a couple of days and enjoyed having him. He’s very young, as we older men say; not even Rome seems to have slowed him up, apostolically, I mean. He’s going to Louvain now for a few years. Talks of taking rooms with a family, so as to be close to it all, and there was nothing I could do to dissuade him, and I used both precept and example. […]

I was beginning to take heart about American politics until reading about Mr Nixon’s speech this morning, about his wife, his dog, his love for his country, etc. Apparently, since the speech went over, things haven’t changed a lot. Fortunately — so I’m informed — he won’t make it, even with all that to offer. Is Gene McCarthy going to the post again? I heard him nominate Humphrey over the American Forces Radio from Germany, kept tuned all the way, enjoying Gene’s voice, hoping he’d mention some of us in passing. […]

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

J. F. Powers

America’s Cleanest Lay Author

Greystones

September 26, 1952

Dear Fr Egan,

Yours rec’d, with enclosure, much enjoyed. I must say Catholic Action News fills a long-felt need here. But why quarterly? Surely we ought to get it oftener than that. Unless I miss my guess, they’ll have to put it out monthly, then weekly, and ultimately it will be the Catholic daily we’ve all been wanting. If they want my recommendation for publicity purposes, here it is, and you may quote me without changing a word: “Good, good, good!”

It will be nice for you — it will, it really will, if I remember rightly — to be able to catch Bp Sheen on TV when you go in for your treatments, which I trust you’ll arrange accordingly. Now for a word from the ignorant. Get rid of that fluorescent light in your office. You sit in the dark, except for it, and that’s bad for the eyes. I don’t say your trouble doesn’t go deeper than that, but I do say sitting in the dark, with only a fluorescent light, is bad. I do not have this advice from science but from my own observation of myself in like conditions. Call it spot glare, which is what Betty calls it. Of all the manifestations of Standard Oil, in the broad sense, as we used to employ it, the fluorescent light is the worst. […]

Betty is sore at Nixon, doesn’t go for that mother and dog line he puts out. (Dick Nixon is the candidate for the vice presidency on the Republican ticket.) Letter from Dick Keefe indicates he may go political if Stevenson wins. Hopes for the commissariat of education and hopes to make scholastic philosophy for first graders a required subject. One of Dick’s brothers (Tom) has been on the Stevenson bandwagon for years. But I think he’s all right, if we want an educated man for such an important job.

I wrote to Leonard Doyle last night and now hope for word on my friends, or should I say acquaintances, in the Big Missal Country. I enjoy a little gossip, you know, see nothing wrong in it, in itself. What I don’t like is to sit around for hours and even days just talking, but I don’t have to tell you that.

Humphaus wrote one letter, something of a record for him, but not very rewarding. Dear Jim, How are you? Everybody same here. Don.

Winter on here. We have our fireplace going. Tourists gone. Seafront vacant. Flat races running out; the hunt season, steeplechases, beginning. We may return by Christmas, if things work out. […]

Jim

Give me a ten-day trial on the light. The idea is to have more than one light in the room — and real lights. […] No heart, no food value, in fluorescent light.

HARVEY EGAN

November 3, 1952

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] Fr Fennelly over last night for a few minutes. No believer in democracy, he, he says. It is a hard thing to take when you’ve lived under a king. But I’ll take democracy, since it’s closer to reality, as I see it; closer, its idea, to Christianity. Waugh and others want noblesse oblige, but after the fact that those who should have had it, didn’t, hence the deluge. As near as I can make out, listening to Fr Fennelly, Waugh, others, something just happened; the great did their best. Did you read the Rhys Davies story, though, in a recent New Yorker ? (“A Visit to Eggeswick Castle.”) A good argument for the other side, the monarchists. The right way lies somewhere in between. Hey, how about that ?

We went to the Phoenix Park races one day, a lovely course, one nearest Dublin but we’d never been there. No winners but rewarding. We have so much to learn from the Old World. Como13 could be like that. […]

The election tomorrow. Betty’s gone over to Stevenson — to the dismay of her folks, who are part of that tight little band who expect the miracle of the loaves and fishes every four years, the miracle in reverse, I mean.14 Ever since George was here and assured me Stevenson would win, I’ve been convinced of it, except for a few days there when Nixon resorted to soap opera; I was not so sure then. As Stagg15 feared Purdue, I feared that.

1:00 a.m., listening to a German station, as usual; my favorite language. Tomorrow night, the unholy family goes to see The Pirates of Penzance in Dublin, at the special request of the girls. Mary gets tired sitting around the house every night. Looks accusingly at me and says, “Why never don’t we see a show?” They went to Pinafore only last November, but that’s youth for you, always on the go. All for now.

Jim

Betty and Mary and Don Humphrey. Summer 1953, living with Art and Money, up the river

The family returned to the United States on the SS America, arriving at the beginning of December 1952, and once again moved in with Betty’s parents. It was not a happy arrangement from anyone’s point of view except that of the children, who loved being with their grandparents in the clean, modern “rambler” on the banks of the Mississippi. Jim quickly set off for Albuquerque to visit his parents. He returned mid-January.