Your letter and enclosure rec’d this morning. You are very free with your funds, and kind as always. I would not hesitate to cash the check, and perhaps that’s what I’ll do. But I got $189.57 from England (advance on my book4 over there, just now arriving) last week, and that should take us through May. (We’ve already paid the rent with the usual flourish.) I’ve not had any luck with the two stories yet, but have not despaired entirely, and Betty mailed off a new one yesterday. I did get the shakes two days after I saw you last, however, and wrote to Marquette to say I was ready to deal again. That may end in nothing. I require certain things: housing, short hours, big pay — something to compensate me for leaving St Paul (though the attractions are fewer as time goes on; Fr G. is the only one left), and they may not see fit to provide.
Things are rather rough here with the babies. Don’t expect much peace during the day, but when they take over the night too, that’s bad. What’s the Church’s stand on desertion? Very rough on Betty, body and soul; only my soul suffers. (She, B., was down to have some of her hair cut today, a triumph for me.) So I’m going to keep your check, in readiness — please don’t change banks. Since you won’t mind, I think I ought to tell you, though, that I wouldn’t give the check much of a chance to pull through uncashed. Thanks. I wonder if you can get Marty O’Neill5 way out there but doubt that they make radios that good or that you’d have one. Anyway, the Saints won their 11th game tonight. That’s 11 and 0. I haven’t been out yet. Somebody said there’s now a plaque at Lex. where you used to sit.6 […]
I mentioned your slate roof to Art. He seems to think there’s nothing to it. He explained it all to me, how you replace them, using a certain kind of hammer to peck out a hole for the nails (they are nailed), and shove a piece of copper in, and … well, I’ll tell you, Father, I went through all this once, and it won’t do you any good coming from me. Anyway, it’s not much of a job, according to Art (come to think of it, nothing ever was). On another page I’ve prepared a scratch sheet for next Saturday.7 I called the Chancery, and it’s official you don’t have to hear confessions during the race. In fact, it might be laudable and meritorious if you listened to the broadcast and smoked a cigar. You see there’s nothing wrong with these things in …
Jim […]
Do you suppose from all the Latin Joe H. Palmer uses he’s an old assistant that went south?8
“If you can’t win with me, stop playing the horses!” —Clocker Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
150 Summit Avenue
St Paul, Minnesota
May 25, 1949
Dear Cal,
Are you mad at me or just in a tunnel? I haven’t even seen your name mentioned in Time or Life. The last I heard was some time before I applied for a renewal of the Guggenheim that I didn’t get. A few weeks back I wrote to Mrs Ames about coming to Yaddo for August, Betty and me, and she said it would be all right. I wonder if I can hope to see you there. Or will you be going to Europe with everybody else, or can’t you go? I hope you’re working well.
I took a new grip on myself when the Guggenheim failed me and wrote a couple of stories for publication. To date nothing has happened to them that would lead me to think my plan to live by writing was a good one. So recently I signed up to teach creative writing at Marquette come September. I’ll have six hours only, and they say they’ll find us a place to live. Not the way I’d like it, but it does beat depending on the whims of editors of the magazines that pay a living wage. I remember you told me that in the beginning or what now seems like the beginning. So barring the unforeseen, I’ll be in Milwaukee for at least a year.
I signed up for a writers’ conference at Kansas last winter, and now that it’s almost upon me, I wish I hadn’t: mostly I mean I have to write a speech, and it is gradually dawning that I have nothing to say. I don’t know the truth about any writer, about literature, about culture, and so what my thesis will be is still a mystery. You don’t have an old college essay lying around that I might read, do you? As my own, of course. Perhaps I could say a few words about the eating and drinking habits of poets, with particular reference to Roethke. That is more in my line. Allen Tate and his wife9 will be at the conference. I don’t know them, though, and suppose I can’t look for much help there. They were here a couple of weeks ago — he gave a reading at the university — but I was out of town, on some kind of a trip with a clerical friend who was trying to get away from it all. We went fishing up on the Canadian border. Didn’t catch anything. Seems you have to have a pack of guides and an airplane to do it right. Some people from Chicago, two couples with two Cadillac convertibles, twins, did it right. It was good to see them going off in the morning and returning at night with all their army and equipment.
Waugh was here in March. Said he came to Minnesota to see me and the Indian reservations. He is also interested in Father Divine. He was all right, and his wife, but it wasn’t anything like the bout I’d anticipated from his books. Suppose that’s life. Drank wine. Still don’t think I care for it, not dago red at ten in the morning. He wanted to know how old you were when I asked if you’d met yet. He wanted to know how old I was too. Seemed relieved to know he’d been younger when he pub’d his first book. I may be wrong about that, but that was all I could make out of it. The other day I rec’d a beautiful edition “edited” by him of Msgr Knox’s sermons.
I met R. P. Warren at a party in January or February, very fine, up to what you and everybody always said about him, though we didn’t see a lot of each other. It was a party for John Dos Passos given by the descendants of the Washburns, the flour people, and I was there, I know, as a prop, as were all the others who might conceivably qualify as writers. How about a catering service for such parties that would fly out some writers from New York, like seafood? Just an idea. I learned one thing that night (many of the other “writers” were off to Mexico or somewhere): a writer ought to own a chain of drugstores.
Pax,
Jim
P.S. — I ought to tell you that in a piece on St Paul I did for Partisan Review, I made use of your prophecy concerning the war between New York and Chicago. I thought of giving you your due in a footnote, but it seemed a little gauche to do so in print, not knowing your mind, so I didn’t. I had to use the idea, needing substance sorely. I hope you don’t mind.
Jim and Betty went to Yaddo at the end of July, leaving Katherine and Mary in St. Cloud with Betty’s sister, Pat.
HARVEY EGAN
Saratoga
Track Good
August 1, 1949
Dear Fr Egan,
Just a few lines to warm up on. We arrived here two days ago. The place is unchanged. We have the same rooms as last time. Today the races begin. It is also Monty Woolley day here. After Mass yesterday I got a Form. It’s going to be a hard day, tough, and I may not bet a race: two two-year-old races and a steeplechase. I was over at the track yesterday morning. Very pretty, the rose and green grandstand, and the men dragging the track to dry it out. […]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Yaddo
Wednesday night, August 18, 1949
Dear Fr Egan,
Your letter and five spot rec’d. I am happy to report that you are still breaking even, i.e., beating the game, for I have not risked it yet. I have been three times, losing a little each time. I know you won’t believe that, but there it is anyway. The way it is, so many two-year-old races and the daily hurdles, eliminates opportunity to get ahead. I have to concentrate on the remaining races, and haven’t done badly, but am a lot away from that $90,000 I set for myself. […]