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

I bought my first ticket on the Grand National sweepstakes. First prize is £50,000. I wasn’t able to tell Betty what I’d do with the money if I won.* That shows the state of my mind.

Saw the Earl of Wicklow crossing Westland Row to St Andrew’s Church Saturday, but he didn’t see me. He is one of Fr D’Arcy’s converts, and we once had dinner together. When are we going to take a meal?

Jim

JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL

Ard na Fairrge

Mount Salus

Dalkey, County Dublin

March 19, 1958

Dear Joe and Jody,

Very glad to have your letter yesterday: we had definitely given up on the Movement. For some time, in the past, I’d say to Betty, what do you suppose it means? Did it ever occur to you that we may not be liked at all by people? And Betty would say, Oh, that’s true, of course, but I think they think they’re busy. It isn’t so easy for people to sit down and write, you know. But that was a long time ago. For some weeks, the Movement went unmentioned except for an occasional “Damn the Movement!” when the mail arrived, or didn’t. We have been considering the idea of returning with a flinty eye — wondering if there could be anything worse than returning with no prospects of a home, billeting ourselves on Betty’s relatives, probably having to split up our family because of its unmanageable size, and so on. There is only one thing to be said for returning, and that, of course, is the presence of people like yourselves — but we, in the circumstances I suggest, wouldn’t be able to appreciate you, I think, and vice versa. The last time, we were almost a year finding a place to live, and we are even harder now to accommodate, to say nothing of the aesthetic side. We wouldn’t care to live in the country. We have had our fill of pioneering — too damn much of it right now, here, in fact. Heaven for me would be never having to enter a hardware store again — and still I am fascinated by hardware. Well, anyway, whatever we do, you can be sure it will be done after much consideration.

Betty is already taking precautions against liking this house and situation when warmer weather comes, drumming it into herself, and me, that six months of the year in a freezing mausoleum just isn’t it. She speaks of trying to find a warmer house. I have declared myself not a participant in this game. I have my office in Dublin now and must really bear down if we are to have money to do whatever it is we will do in the end. Except for a few days when I was still looking for furniture — a chair, a table — the weather has made it impossible to work in the office. Today I am staying home because I can hardly move: a recurrence of trouble with my back. Betty is in Dublin for an auction, where she hopes to pick up a chair that she can sit in comfortably during the rest of her pregnancy. That , as you might guess, was the last straw. So I thought until I found myself unable to turn over in bed — with visions of myself being lifted into an airplane and ever after being a blanketed invalid, but perhaps getting more work done.

I have a hot-water bottle strapped to my back and now must remove it for refilling. Thus I leave you for the time being.

March 21. Nothing to add to the above, I’m afraid. I go on suffering, spared only the gibes of those who can’t see me as I am now, a bent figure tottering from bed to chair to radio. I enclose some clippings for you, Joe, and also Don — say, whatever happened to those people anyway? There were two of them — Mary and Don, I think they were called. Best to you.

Jim

DON AND MARY HUMPHREY

March 26, 1958

Dear Don and Mary,

I really shouldn’t be writing to two such … as yourselves, but then I was ever one for returning good for evil. I am sitting here in my office — or “studio,” as it’s called in my lease — at 29 Westland Row, Dublin, thinking of you. I’ve just about got this place arranged so that I feel comfortable here: floor stained, rug down, table amputated so that I can type while sitting in my easy chair, a light suspended over the typewriter, pink shade, which brings out the lights in the mahogany table, and pipe cleaner drying on the shade: JF at his ease. I have a glass of porter in my stomach, having decided that it is better than having tea and rolls for lunch. I have an electric fire playing on my feet, for it’s still chilly here (of late I’ve been sitting here with my coat and gloves on). There is a fireplace, but I am four flights up and would have to hire somebody to tend the fire and ashes, and I am trying to cut expenses. Oh, yes, I am smoking a new pipe — a bargain, or I never would’ve bought it. Before settling down here for the day, I “viewed” some articles which will come up for auction tomorrow at noon. A lovely set of demitasse cups and saucers; a card table with drawers for each player, also a place for his glass — but I can’t quite see the use of these things for me. Still … […]

— Now, I must leave you. What, if anything, can I send you? […]

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

29 Westland Row

Dublin

Good Friday [April 4], 1958

Dear Fr Egan,

[…] Let me thank you for your kind invitation to return to America. I can’t remember reading of anybody like myself (the Lord knows what Betty really wants; nothing for certain, I’d say) in this dilemma of where to spend my future. Today, for instance, the maid didn’t show up at home, finally called and said she was too weak to rise, then said she’d tried three times before she found our number in the book (which isn’t in the book yet), and so on, until Betty, not knowing whether she was really sick or not, said she should stay home. The last time it snowed (yes, it’s snowing here today), the maid didn’t appear for two days, not a word from her, and then one morning there she was. So that’s the domestic scene. Fortunately, the girls are home all during April (vacation) and can help some.

So I get on the train at the usual time, around ten, and come down here, turn on the electric fire, and go out for a walk in the snow, or sleet, or whatever it is, waiting for the room to warm up. It’s a bitter day in Dublin, most of the shops closed, a few men standing by excavations in the pavement, the postmen making their rounds, and small boys wheeling turf home in the family pram; the very poor are allowed so much free; and a baker’s horse and cart going by: “Kennedy’s Machine Made Bread,” to show you how up-to-date we are. The pubs are closed. […]

Still, as I was about to say on the other side of this page, I am pleased in many ways with these surroundings, seeing more of Dublin this trip, being able to walk out to secondhand bookstores and attend furniture auctions whenever the desire is on me to do so, or just to walk around looking at the 18th century. I do not consider myself terribly sensitive to my surroundings, but perhaps the most painful thing for me about America, about Minnesota anyway, is having to look at what I see around me, from wooden shack to concrete supermarket in 100 years, with very little in between, hardly anything in St Cloud. You could say that the automobiles here, in general, are easier to look at; people keep them forever; and those that aren’t mere bugs, the economy models, are more or less appealing: I particularly like the ones with headlights as big as washtubs, the old Jaguars, Bentleys, and Daimlers. But of course all of this is by the way — not fundamental like my work to interest and survival — but then so much of life is by the way, don’t you think?

I am way behind schedule in the novel. I should be nearing Grand Forks, but I am just leaving Cut Bank, Montana. Sometimes the train doesn’t seem to be moving at all, and sometimes it appears that the engineer has got out of the cab and is fishing off a bridge with no thought of the job he’s supposed to be doing. […]