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

Jim

Don Humphrey (1912–1958)

Dick Palmquist wrote to say that Don Humphrey had been diagnosed with a tumor in his head.

DICK PALMQUIST

Dublin

July 26, 1958

Dear Dick,

[…] About Don, I haven’t been the same since I read your letter, and know I never shall be, now. I do hope you are right in thinking he has a good chance. I don’t know a thing about such cases — I don’t even know what kind of case Don’s is, beyond that he has a tumor — but I am praying he comes out of it all right. I am sick with this news, for which I nevertheless thank you. I wish you’d keep me informed, since I can’t count on anyone else to do it, the way people are there about writing. Now that you’ve written once, perhaps you can go on doing it. I am tempted to call Mary long-distance, but I fear the consequences: fear it will not be the right time.

Until this morning, I didn’t really know what I intended to do with myself and family, whether we’d return to St Cloud or not. Now I know that if Don pulls through all right, that is what we’ll do. I guess I had thought of him as my best friend but had never realized until this morning how very much he means. I suppose you feel the same way these days, and many other people, to say nothing of his family. I will not pretend that I am hopeful. You can see anyway that I am not. This year has been a bad one. I pray God will redeem it by restoring Don to us and that I for one will get a chance to appreciate him again.

All for now. I know there’s no need for this letter, for this kind of letter, but I am like a man buried in a mine, tapping, going through the motions of hoping — I am hoping.

Jim

Journal, July 26, 1958

This, if it is the end, would go too well with Don’s poor, poor life. This is a tragic life. I pray it is not the end and that he recovers and that we both live as friends again. St Cloud without Don would have very little to offer me. I am already feeling what Don’s death would mean. Such a life, though, figures to end in such a way.

JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL

August 1, 1958

Dear Joe and Jody,

Very grateful to you for writing so often these last few days, for there is nothing else on my mind but Don. We have been hoping that all this will come to nothing, and though your latest seems to be a step in this direction — I mean I regard it as hopeful that the doctors can discover nothing wrong — I don’t feel much relieved. Too many people, in the last few months, have commented on Don’s appearance. […] How I wish I could go in with you on Tuesday. The picture of him enjoying himself with good food three times a day and visitors like Fr Egan, George, and Bp Cowley, well, that gives me great pleasure. If you should get this letter before you go to Mpls, please tell Don that I say, “Stop it. You’re hoggin’ the stage. First with your great reconversion and now this. Give someone else a chance.” […]

You ask how Ireland is. Well, there was our new baby, then a visit from the Strobels (during which time I rented a car and drove them around some, not my idea of fun), and then came the news about Don. So I go to my office six days of the week, and some days I sit here and brood, hardly turning a hand, and some days I go out to an auction. […]

We are not definitely committed to returning, but I think that is what will happen if, as I say, I can produce the wherewithal. If I should fail, I suppose we might have to stay on here — and neither of us is at all certain we’d be worse off doing so. We do have a house here, although it’s a freezing proposition in the winter, and I do have a life of sorts in Dublin, wandering about, plenty of newspapers, bookstores, auction sales, and, though I haven’t felt easy enough in my mind of late to visit these, theatres and racecourses.

What I mean, Joe, is that it’s more satisfying than dropping in at the bus station in St Cloud to see if they’ve changed the racks. When I think that Don may not be there anymore, the place gets really hard to take. There are a few others — Fred Petters, Dick Palmquist — but they have other sources of pleasure than friends.* And there are you country people, but you all — you as long as you work — have ways and means of scotching discontent that either never worked for me or no longer do. These old eyes, though they are not the eyes of a painter or sculptor, have to be fed too. I think that’s the hardest thing, the thing that’s always hurting me in Stearns County whether I’m conscious of it or not: just having to look at the mess, the landscape, the offenses against architecture (which is a rather grand way of putting it, like accusing dogs of adultery). Ah, well. You know what I mean. Eyestrain, however, is a very great factor, as I define the term here.

All for now. Please keep writing. Best to you both.

Jim

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

Ard na Fairrge

Mount Salus

Dalkey, County Dublin

August 21, 1958

Dear Katherine Anne,

[…] It is odd — to me — how as one grows older, memoirs become such an interesting form of writing. When I was young, working in bookstores, I could never understand why they were published at all. The British are great for memoirs, and I must say I never miss reading the reviews of them, of books by people I’ve never heard of usually. Harold Nicolson’s Some People you probably know; fictitious memoirs, a way of getting at people and life that we Americans don’t seem to have tried at all, as a form of fiction, I mean. Perhaps we don’t see enough memoirs to play upon the idea. […]

A few facts. Betty had a baby girl on July 2. We call her Jane, for reasons almost entirely euphonious. She is healthy. We plan to return to the U.S. — to what, we don’t know — in November or December. I am in the act of earning our passage back these days — which is precisely where I was last year at this time. It is either that or look for another house here — one we can be warm in when winter comes, a full-time job and probably an impossibility anyway. The children are much better off in school here, I enjoy — as, say, a clam would — Dublin, but there are other considerations. Unfortunately, they do not outweigh the considerations for staying on, nor do those outweigh these for not staying. They balance out perfectly. We will not realize our mistake until we make it, and this, I fear, will continue as long as we live. We won’t be in the least surprised either, each time it happens. We have not here a lasting home, is the text, but there isn’t much satisfaction in that, is there?

Jim

JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL

August 23, 1958

Dublin

Dear Jody and Joe,

Your last came this morning before I left for the office, where I am now, and we are both very glad to hear that Don is holding on. We did hear from Em, a good letter but rather disturbing too in its description of the New Don (as he was before the stroke), which I guess is what you were saying too, only Em, of course, is well pleased with the results of so much tribulation. That is how I should be too if I thought I were going to die, I know. If Don does recover, though, I think we can count on a certain amount of backsliding — welcome relief, you might say. I would not care if he stopped a long way short of his Sputnik period (which I only heard about) but would not want him an Ade Bethune woodcut either, one-dimensional, illustrating some one virtue.

We also heard from Fr G., who expressed more confidence in Don’s recovery than others have. He seems to be suffering from camp followers at the hospital—“all those people.”