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

I have heard twice from Leonard, believe it or not, and mean to write him a suitable reply as soon as possible. He feels we have failed him and ourselves by not making a go of our venture in Ireland, and he may be right. I do not like to think of it as a mistake, but that is the word for it. It is also the word for whatever else we might have done at the time we did this. It is the word for coming back again. That is what I am doing to accept the idea that, so far as domestic arrangements are concerned, we cannot bring the fact into accord with the desire. There is too much against us, but still I do not intend to throw in the sponge. I may be seen emptying diapers, but I may be seen too at auctions looking for something to fill up one of the numerous gaps in my life, in the decor of the house I don’t have. […]

Leopardstown races today — Saturday — but I won’t be there. October, I think. In October, maybe I’ll feel more like it, I think. I am suffering from dry rot. I saw a fellow out the train window this morning whom I’d met at Sean O’Faolain’s last winter — a novelist named Mervyn Wall whom I really liked — and he was getting on the train I was on, but I couldn’t summon up the feeling to go and sit with him. I suppose for the same reason that I seldom have a drink at home: I don’t want to set the stage, strike up the band, for nothing.

Now, when I was younger … I was blinder.

No, we didn’t see Bucky1 or his dome. It was on radio — Bucky chatting. He doesn’t speak English — runs his words together like John Foster Dulles and pretty much sounds like a Consumers Union report: “snowload,” etc. I’d say he comes halfway between F. L. Wright and the tool section in Sears’s basement (before it burned)— achievementwise , to use what may well be one of his words.

Jim

LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE

August 23, 1958

Dear Doyles,

I was raking through the debris here on the desk in the study, looking for a piece of paper so I could write to you, and what should I find but this letter already begun by another hand. Let me say, in passing, so that you’ll better comprehend the foregoing sentence, that this desk is used almost exclusively by the woman of the house, a published arthur in her own right, my candidate for the Christian Mother of the Year, among other things. She is now slumbering overhead, among her troops, and I am listening to the BBC — the Light Programme, getting this week’s top twenty. In this way, I keep faith with you all out there. To your letter then, Leon. (Why, I asked myself a moment ago, does no one call Leonard Leon?) […]

Sometimes I think I ought to get together another collection of phonograph records and keep adding to them; same with books; same with everything, and keep busy that way. Takes money, though. Sometimes I think I should start collecting money, keep adding to it, keep busy that way — and in that way broaden my circle of friends, people of kindred interests. Perhaps you’d care to join me in this. […]

The home life is such that one often doesn’t care to venture out, one feels he might be picked up, for blinking, flinching involuntarily, as if he were an escapee from an asylum rather than a good Christian Family type suffering from FF (Family Fatigue), which, by the way, is not going to go away but get worse and worse. Some of those white rats just don’t answer any bell, in the end I imagine. With my office in Dublin, I escape a lot of this; I have to if I am to make a living; but I get a good shaking up before I leave in the morning and the first thing when I come home. Much of this wouldn’t be true for a lot of other people, but I am not a lot of other people,* unfortunately — or fortunately if I am to go on unlike a lot of other people, making it as a writer, that is. But what the hell, Leon. I’ve told you enough. And much, much more than is necessary, since in a way I’m talking about your life. It’s true I don’t have to play pals with a lot of people I buy things from — people I don’t know don’t call me “Jim” here — and Dublin, for all its dirt, is much easier on the eyes than any place I’ve seen in America. […]

Jim

Don Humphrey died 5:30 a.m., August 26, 1958.

Betty’s Journal, August 26, 1958

Don died today … I am struck by the wastefulness of nature — can understand sea creatures laying millions of eggs so that most can be lost, but an artist like Don at the beginning of his career doesn’t seem expendable. I felt of him much as I feel of Jim, destined by providence to fulfill role of artist, Don as accessory to priesthood, Jim as divinely inspired gadfly. Providence has always intervened in our favor at last minute in material matters, felt Calvinistically that a sign of being chosen. But this shakes my confidence.

DICK PALMQUIST

Dublin

August 30, 1958

Dear Dick,

[…] We learned of Don’s death with such feelings as you do not have to imagine. This has been the worst thing to happen to me, so far, and I know it is worse for Mary and the family — and worst of all for Don, looking at his life from this world, where he did accomplish much but only a small fraction of what he might have, with his gifts. Needless to say, his reward here was even more out of proportion. If his death was due to chemicals used in plating chalices, then that is indeed the final irony. That is my opinion, and I leave it to the others (of whom I’m sure there are many) to speak of how happy he must be in heaven. That I don’t doubt, but what happened here on earth was just too bad, and I for one will not forget it, and in this I know I am not alone.

All best wishes.

Jim

Don Humphrey was buried at Jacobs Prairie, fifteen miles from his home in St. Cloud. The reason for this inconvenience was that some years before he had carved the altar lectern and font for St. James, the church there. As sole payment he had been promised three grave sites in the cemetery. The new priest attempted to renege on the agreement, but the Humphrey family prevailed.

HARVEY EGAN

Dublin

September 5, 1958

Dear Fr Egan,

Your letter came this morning at breakfast (tea, toast, scrambled eggs, prunes), and then Betty, it being a sunny day, took the boys to Greystones for haircuts, a job I need myself but cannot free myself to get. From my work, that is. This story-chapter will either ring the bell as I have seldom rung it before, or — it won’t. Anyway, I am working without a net, so to speak, and am grateful for your offer, as before. I wake up in the morning, and gradually remembering who I am and what lies before me and all around me, namely responsibilities, I start to moan. It is not that erratic, blowing noise that you used to do in Beardsley (picked up from Fr Nolan, you said), which by the way I do a certain amount of here in my office, but a low, steady moaning, such as a man with an arrow in his ass (back in history) might make. Do you ever have that? Yes? Well, then you know what I mean.

Thanks for your account of the funeral. I had one from L. Doyle, very good, but not, of course, from the sanctuary side, where life is somehow headier.

I was glad to read (in L. Doyle first) that you and George and Bp Cowley and Fr Casey were there. Jacobs Prairie, though, that was more iron in the soul, not that St Cloud would’ve been better; where Don died, what was done thereafter didn’t matter, though it was a lot of work for friends and family. One would be better off going down at sea. Yes, I must do something about my will — though I find that word preposterous in my case.

All for now. They’re playing my music (“The Daring Young Man”), and I must go. Coming! Coming! […]

Jim

[…] Out to buy some Parmesan cheese for tonight’s spaghetti and was almost run down on Duke Street by the Earl of Longford, who was coming down the sidewalk with his wife; they look like Hardy and Laurel; but that’s one thing you don’t see too much of around St Cloud, earls and countesses, it occurs to me. A fellow needs a bit of that, and once he gets a taste of it …