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

Jane (Boz and Hugh in background), Greystones beach

Jim rented an office in Dublin, which improved his spirits, although not his ability to write much aside from letters. He spent his time away from home reading newspapers, studying racing forms, fixing up his office, wandering around Dublin, attending estate auctions, and ministering to his purchases: rubbing unguents into leather-bound books and cases, gluing furniture, and pursuing woodworm with a hypodermic needle primed with poison.

HARVEY EGAN

Ard na Fairrge

Mount Salus

Dalkey, County Dublin

February 26, 1958

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] I have put off replying to your last with the intention of writing my first letter from my new office to you, as I did last year about this time from my office in St Cloud. I have been in possession of the office since the 22nd of the month, but not established there because I haven’t been able to find the furniture. I sat through a whole auction unable to buy anything I wanted last Thursday. Today, however, I got the writing table — actually a dressing table — and a rug. I still lack a chair but hope to find one tomorrow in Dublin. I want a chair that I can rest in as well as work in: you might say that’s the story of my life as a writer. Tonight I attended a night auction in Dun Laoghaire and got no chair but something I wanted without seeing its purpose clearly. A writing box, so called; brass bound, about the size of an overnight bag, wood, with a desk-like surface in it that unfolds; thirty shillings; and engraved on a brass plate on the outside: “Major Talbot.” I have discovered that I take inordinate pleasure in auctions, even when I can’t afford to participate actively. I like to look at this old furniture; nothing, I think, shows better how far we’ve sunk in the last two or three hundred years.

The office is in Dublin, on Westland Row, a few doors from where Oscar Wilde was born in 1854, a business district now, near the railroad station that serves the line that runs through Dalkey. I am on the top floor, back, with one window looking out in the direction of Trinity College; the top floor being the fourth and quite a climb. The previous tenant, a manufacturer’s agent by the name of MacEgan, has a partner by the name of Egan, and they have moved down to the ground floor (just too much for them, the climb with their sample cases). The rent: £5 a month. This is about a third less than the going rate, and I am there with the understanding that I vacate if a proper tenant is found. I think this unlikely, with times so hard here. It’s aesthetically the Dublin equivalent of my St Cloud hole. I have done practically nothing since coming to Ireland. The chips will be down from now on — or else.

We met Padraic Colum at Sean O’Faolain’s house last Sunday night; a nice old gentleman. He (with his late wife) has a book coming out this spring, from Doubleday: Our Friend James Joyce . He said that Doubleday had wanted him to change the title because some of the salesmen thought it was likely to be confusing to booksellers — too close to My Friend Flicka . He didn’t tell this as a joke. He is not changing the title, though. “A very popular book,” he said, referring to Flicka , “about a dog, I believe.” “A horse,” I said, not having read it and still overwhelmed by the suggestion that he change the title for that reason. “A pony,” Sean said. One card, Father?

Since I last wrote, our Abp1 has been in the news. He nixed the votive Mass to open the Spring Festival (An Tostal, in Irish) because of two plays, one based on Ulysses , the other a new one by Sean O’Casey; Beckett, the dramatist famous for Waiting for Godot , then withdrew his contributions to the festival; and finally the whole thing — the drama part — was canceled. Plenty of people wrote to The Irish Times , including Kate O’Brien and Colum, but apparently the shooting is over; the odor lingers but is nothing new, I guess. The Abp, in theory, is in the clear. The trouble all began when some pious trade unionists petitioned for the Mass. The moral: never ask if you can’t take no for an answer.

I was glad to hear that you liked the last story in The New Yorker .

I can’t recall whether I made it clear that we have had the shakes about remaining in Ireland. […] And — the payoff — we are going to have another baby in July. […] How does it look from there? Bad, I suppose, but could be worse — and perhaps will be. I still have my aim, however. All I have to do is run the table. Rack ’em up.

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

29 Westland Row

Dublin

March 4, 1958

Dear Fr Egan,

Your letter came yesterday, having passed mine in the mails, and we were both very sorry to hear of your attack. It must have been very painful, and I do hope it won’t color your outlook on suffering — which I personally do very badly but which, through associating with you, I have developed quite a good feeling for — in others. Let’s just hope nothing ever happens to me, now that I’ve had my appendix out and my teeth fixed again. Anyway, I take it you’re much improved and equipped now with good and holy reasons to enjoy yourself (this is a reference to the ban on milk) like a proper St Paul Diocese man. Better put that bag of beer I left in the front parlor in the fridge.

Well, I was an hour late coming down to the office today, having gone to Greystones with Boz for a haircut. It being about noon, I had some tea and buns nearby and then climbed up to it. Very pleasant here. Yesterday I patched the mahogany table my typewriter rests on, arranged the lamp with its pink shade (it hangs down directly over the typewriter, the best lighting I have had), and polished the copper of my electric fire. The little rug is down, with newspapers under it for padding, and the chair is a wonderful buy at 35 bob: a Victorian mahogany tufted one, with dark red leatherette cover, ripped in a few places. My back is to the one window, five feet off the floor and running up to the ceiling, which is only a little over seven feet, and so I have the best daylight too. I can hear the rumble of traffic from Westland Row (to the front of the building; I am to the back) and Nassau Street to the rear and sometimes pigeons nearby and sometimes gulls in the distance. I am at the head of the stair, and so there’s no traffic at all outside my door; not much on the floors below, occupied by solicitors, engineering consultants, etc.

We get very little mail these days from the Movement (our colleagues in the St Cloud Diocese) and often wonder, if and when we return, how we’ll stand it. You can have little idea of our dilemma — as to where we want to spend eternity on earth, the future, that is. What we couldn’t do last fall — find a place to live — we won’t be able to do next winter any better. I personally dislike this stretch of life ahead of me: the father of numerous children; the husband of a woman with no talent for motherhood (once she’s conceived); and with the prospect of making no more money than in the past. I see another office, spending more and more time in it and away from home, darting to the rescue at home, spanking this child, playing with that one, and finally gumshoeing the girls through their teens, tottering down the aisle with them when they marry and trying not to think about their husbands, who, I daresay, good for nothing else, won’t even make money. Don will drop off, or live forever, and we’ll all be on special diets. So what do I know for sure? Only that I’ll have my art, and so I should pay more attention to it. Do not set a place for me at the church supper. Do not expect to see me running with the others in the stretch simply because I started with them at the beginning. I am looking for another course.