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

We had a good evening with the O’F.’s9 the other night. They both thought that we’d be all right once we got some proper help. That may be. The mornings here are the worst time: getting up the boys, getting off the girls, getting the fires going. There are periods of almost solid comfort — when the wind is right, when the children are occupied or asleep. We are little by little, by hook and crook, making my study a place to hole up in. Here we have the radio, here is the best fireplace for burning turf, and the two chairs are improved by putting foam rubber cushions over the ruptured springs (the foam rubber cushions from two other chairs in the living room). […]

Thanks again to you and to Nana for all the kind words about the Reporter story. You were and were not in it, Birdie; it is the usual mixture of fact and fiction and should not be read for anything but entertainment. The requirements of art demand that you do violence sometimes to the facts as they took place, or interpret them differently, or make up incidents and conjure up characters that life itself, being such an erratic artist, seldom provides.

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

PHONE=84102

Ard na Fairrge

Mount Salus

Dalkey, County Dublin

December 13, 1957

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] Glad to hear — indirectly — that people are reading my books in your waiting rooms. Don’t forget to order plenty of Prince in the Image edition for your vestibule, and tell your friends. Unfortunately, I am not available for autographing parties, but send my best to one and all.

It is getting dark, around four in the afternoon, and I have the typewriter on a Schweppes case parked in front of the turf fire. This morning I made a stand for the Christmas tree, which is set up in the billiard room. We have bought one string of lights (twelve bulbs instead of the eight we know in the U.S.), a few ornaments, and probably will keep adding more to cover the bareness. Everything we do reminds us that we were awfully free with our hard-earned possessions, having given away our lights, stand, ornaments. I call it detachment. […]

Sean and Eileen O’Faolain were over last Sunday evening, a good session, and Eileen has been working to find us a maid. It now appears we’ll have one right after Xmas, use fill-ins until then.

We have been suffering from homesickness (without having a home), Betty and I, that is. The kids seem happy. The girls are gone from 8:30 until 5:00 daily; half day on Saturday; and are doing all right in school, after finding catechism and arithmetic very advanced at first. They wear green outfits and go by train to and from Killiney, where the school is (Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, apparently an order more English than Irish with laywomen — they call them “mistresses”—doing most of the teaching). Under the patronage of the Abp of Dublin (McQuaid). I am smoking Mick McQuaid tobacco.

For Xmas, I got them badminton racquets, etc., and think it’ll be possible to play in the billiard room (it measures 38 by 14); Hugh a tricycle; Boz a large wooden train, a locomotive, that is, that he can sit on. Boz already has a chain-driven tricycle; Hugh a wheelbarrow. What Boz really wants is cords and plugs, the electrical equipment he had in St Cloud. […]

Write. Merry Xmas from us all.

Jim

CHARLES AND SUSAN SHATTUCK

Ard na Fairrge

Mount Salus

Dalkey, County Dublin

Xmas 1957

Dear Chuck and Suzie,

Thanks for your soothing compliments on the story, Chuck. Nobody’s mean so much to me. This is our address for the next year — it was to have been a three-year lease, but I got cold feet at the prospect — with no other prospects, however. Not at all pleasant to realize I don’t know my own mind: however ignorant I am, I’ve always known that in the past. I have not taken to drink or anything, but I did subscribe to Time magazine, and I’d say that certifies me.

House large, Georgian, scaly-walled affair, with tremendous views of the sea, we have turf in the fireplaces, and I understand the cottage where Bernard Shaw lived is a block farther up this hill we’re on, but I can’t get up the strength to get up there and look at it. If you lived there, I think I might make it; Cyril Cusack, the actor, lives close by, according to the owners of this house (who have moved into a flat, not caring for the breezes), and is a friend of theirs, and we’ve seen Sean O’Faolain once, but there seems to be a shortage of outgoingness, if that’s a word. I feel like the late Aga Khan toward the end, without his padding. Best to you both.

Betty and Jim

DON AND MARY HUMPHREY

Christmas 1957

Dear Don and Mary,

[…] A word about Christmas. I think Betty took it harder than I did, being away from home. Now and then I’d think of the old house — which waited all year to be in style, with its red and green — and feel a dart of pain, some scene, some room, some noise or other, gone, gone, gone. But I didn’t encourage myself along these lines, and now Christmas is all over again — for good, I sometimes think, for me. The kids, I think, had a good time in their youth. We managed to get in quite a bit of stuff, toys and games, and tonight we all had dinner together (Betty and I have been eating in my study, not being able to stand the meals with them), and the plum pudding flaming with Jamaica rum in a darkened room was such a success that we had to do it three times. The turkey, unfrozen, was good; mushrooms and chestnuts in the dressing; and so on. I mention it because, as I said to Betty, I don’t often have such a meal, not as often as I used to, hence my comparative thinness. I am still soft, Don — never fear — but I am thin-soft. Christmas, however, didn’t really come. The weather has something to do with it: in the forties and fifties, some sun, some rain, some fog, some sun, and so on. Church was harrowing, very crowded, and constant coming and going to the Communion rail, no sermon, one song; not just uninspiring but depressing, like a bargain basement with more people than bargains.

I went out looking for an office the other day, in the next town, Dun Laoghaire, or Kingstown, as it used to be, and ran into a literary house agent, or auctioneer, as they’re called here. He had a letter from Bernard Shaw on the wall of his office (having sold Shaw’s cottage in Dalkey). We have an appointment for next week to look at a room over a bookmaker’s premises, the bookmaker (P. Byrne) being the landlord — which could be expensive in the long run, I suppose.

All for now, Don. I don’t have much incentive to write. We did receive one card (Palmquists) from the Movement and were glad to get it.

All for now.

Jim

Next day, Boxing Day. One year ago tonight we had our gala party. How long ago that seems now. Celebrated today at Leopardstown with Sean O’Faolain, who has a car and drove us to the races. Afterward tea and cake at his house and conversation, mostly about America. […]

The next day (Dec. 27). I’m having trouble getting to the post office (which anyway was closed yesterday) with this, but I am glad. For this morning we hit the jackpot: letters and enclosures from Hyneses and O’Connells. I placed them unread at my right hand as I ate a good breakfast of bacon, oatmeal, fruit bread, and tea. Then I retired to my study, and bit by bit — taking about an hour — I got through them, savoring every line. Jody, using two mediums, made it all very vivid to us. And how I’d like to hear Em on Rome. His letter is full of it, and I am almost sold on going there — as a surprising result. I keep hoping, Don, that you’ll somehow be able to make it over here this fall. All for now: I must get back to the letters, plenty of juice and deep-down goodness in them yet. My blessings, then, upon you one and all.