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

Sorry — referring back to your letter — that it has come down to the Humphreys and the Bakers. Still, that is a lot, by our standards here. We see no one at all. We almost rented a house in the same borough Sean O’Faolain lives in, and from friends of the O’F.’s at that, and I suppose they’ll hear about us from that encounter. I haven’t got in touch with Sean, preferring to wait until we can appear in a better light, internally, that is. We have been pretty low and probably show it. We have rented a house, however, in Dalkey, which is up the line a piece, toward Dublin, once the home of G. B. Shaw, the town, that is, not the house we’ll be in. We can’t move in until December, though. It isn’t quite what I had in mind (hardly anything is, I find), is large enough, imposing enough, with views beyond my expectations, but it won’t give me the solitude I seem to require to do my own work. […]

The bathroom is practically American, and we’ll have the use of appliances such as vacuum cleaner, washing machine, and fridge. These are items you begin to covet when you live in a place like our present one: our toilet seat, for instance, is unfinished lumber that comes apart on one side like a jigsaw puzzle and has a leather hinge; the kitchen, to put it in understandable terms, would be fine for a blind sculptor to mess around in, has a concrete floor. […]

Best,

Jim

P.S.: If Em wears a fedora and his mouton storm coat, won’t he have to cut a hole for his eyes? Best. — Jim

HARVEY EGAN

St Stephens, Victoria Road

Greystones, County Wicklow

November 12, 1957

Dear Fr Egan,

I’m slow on the rebound, I know, but do you know what I’ve been through? Nobody knows the trouble: children seasick, flu in mid-Atlantic, Betty down in Cork, and more of the same here. This house has view of sea, Bray Head, railroad tracks, but prehistoric kitchen and bathroom (the toilet seat has a leather hinge), and when you pull the chain, it sounds like the Grand National field landing in Becher’s Brook. […] Around the first of December we’ll be moving to:

Ard na Fairrge

Mount Salus

Dalkey, County Dublin

This house is 125 years old, four bedrooms, two living rooms, one of which will become my study, kitchen — dining room (the owners removed a wall after tasting life in America), a large room we’ll turn over to the children, formerly a billiard room, at present site of a loom for weaving tweed. And wonderful views of Dublin and Killiney Bays; Dalkey Island with a small ruins said to have been the stamping grounds of St Begnet (I think that’s the name). […]

No theatre yet, haven’t had the mind for it. Only managed the races last Saturday at Leopardstown. Very fine. I came home three or four quid to the good, thanks to being on the longest shot of the day—30–1. I do believe if I could just get away from the family long enough to concentrate, I could support them in style on my handicapping. I made one sentimental bet with you in mind: a horse called Four Roses ridden by a jockey named Egan. Ran way out.

Fr Fennelly going ahead with the liturgy. We arrived at the end of a week advertised as “the Greystones Pattern,” devoted to “togetherness,” culminating in a Gaelic football game visible from our back windows. Did you ever stop to think what the Communion of the Saints really means? It doesn’t mean what you might think; not Communion and not Saints; Togetherness. We haven’t spoken to Fr F., only to a new curate who asked me what I thought of the to-do at Princeton, saying he was for the man there because his bishop was supporting him. I mumbled something about Maritain being on the other side, but I gathered that bishops were trumps. I can never remember what’s trumps.

We are lonesome for the North Star State and our dear brethren there. Even the snow we hear about sounds attractive now. Amazin’, ain’t it? Sometimes I wonder if old Abbé Garrelts with his monotonous line about the far-off hills always looking greener hasn’t got a hold of something. What one needs is a pass on the airlines good all over the world. Some of the angels found heaven itself dull, didn’t they?

I had a copy of The Reporter with my story3 in it sent to you, and I hope — not that you actually liked it — but that it didn’t make you pewk. The few reports I’ve had have been favorable.

All for now. Emerson Hynes, by the way, is in Paris at the moment, I understand, as aide to Gene McCarthy and a congressional delegation. That’s the way to travel.

Please write all the news.

Jim

ART AND MONA WAHL; BIRDIE AND AL STROBEL; BERTHA SEBERGER

St Stephens, Victoria Road

Greystones, County Wicklow

November 19, 1957

Postscript to Betty’s letter :

Just a word of thanks, Birdie, for sending on the mail; I am always glad to know when I’ve written a good story and was cheered by your comments and by Nana’s, and today by my mother’s (who ordinarily has little to say but who loved this one) and by Chuck Shattuck’s, sent in your letter rec’d today. He is one of the dedicatees of my first book, and my best critic, and when he says I’ve done my most best , as he does, I feel repaid a hundredfold. We haven’t heard anything from Ruth Mitchell yet, and hope she was not disappointed, didn’t expect something different: she only knew that it was about the house. Of course it is, but about much more.

It isn’t often that I think about the old house. I don’t like to think about it. I get upset and angry when I think that a year ago I missed the autumn there and little knew that that was the last one for me and for us there. We would all be happy back there, I know, but that chapter has ended. We did not end it — and I trust whoever was responsible (aside from the circumstance of the college expanding, an incidental to the swift kick we got) is now satisfied. […]

All for now. Please keep up the correspondence. I think I enjoy it more than anyone else, which is not to say that Betty doesn’t enjoy it to the fullest; I just enjoy it more. Once more, in writing, my thanks to you and Al, to Art and Nana, for all your labor and concern in our behalf.

Jim

LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE

St Stephens, Victoria Road

Greystones, County Wicklow

November 20, 1957

Dear Leonard and Betty,

We rec’d two communications today; your letter this morning and a royalty check for the British edition of Prince (1948): 67¢.

JF: Nine copies home, five export. Fourteen! Some sale!

Betty: Well, it’s up , isn’t it?

We are now nearing the hour of five, the light outside grows purple, the light inside is on, Betty is rustling The Irish Times , our glasses are empty (of Power’s Dublin Whiskey), the coal fire glows at $30 a ton, and the two boys nap on and on, and on the radio from somewhere in the hills of Durham a Catholic seminary choir sings vespers. I pick up my Doyle and am moved to respond to your fine letter.

The girls (to complete the picture) are on a train somewhere between Greystones and Killiney, where they are now enrolled at a convent school run by the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, an order founded by a woman named Connolly whose husband, I understand, after instigating her higher vocation, reverted to the flesh and wanted her back; too late. Anyway, it is a good, expensive school where the standards are apparently high. Ours were tested and found “intelligent but very backward educationally.”

The big news here is that the McCarthys4 walked in on us Sunday, around noon. I was reading The Observer , Betty slumming around in the kitchen. They were our first visitors — except for the curate. At first I thought, seeing Gene suddenly before me, that Em would follow, but he didn’t. He chose Rome over Ireland, tourism over the Movement — or so it seems to me — and thereby showed himself for what he is. We had dinner with Sean O’Faolain and others at a good restaurant Monday night — this at Gene’s invitation and expense. We had a good time. My regret, though, was that Em wasn’t there. The McCarthys are out of touch with the stirrings in the Movement. Gene seemed a little hurt that I didn’t consider him in it anymore. Let’s just say the McCarthys are on leave of absence. I promised them that if Gene lost the next election and returned to the land, we’d return to watch . […]