Naturally, I’ll take up the novel again, providing I can get rid of the hammer and saw I carry about with me, night and day, and wallpaper brush. Send me some of your old yellow slips: squirrel hole, hole under my workroom, hole in shed, hole in attic, wiring in cellar, furnace, pad for my room, rug for my room, Hamm’s, and so on.
[…] It is a run-down place but very beautiful in its way, and the grounds are the loveliest in St Cloud, I think. The owners, sisters of advanced age, both unmarried, name of Mitchell, Presbyterians, are descended from the original Yankee settlers; their father was author of the History of Stearns County and had a newspaper and holding company here. I like them, Ruth and Eleanor. They live in Mpls and St Paul, respectively; Hampshire Arms and Laurel Avenue. That’s about it. […]
Write. Come.
Jim
James Ansbury Powers was born on November 13, 1953. His name mutated from Bother Brown to Bozzer to Boz.
HARVEY EGAN
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
November 14, 1953
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] I am alone here, Betty in the hospital. We had a boy yesterday morning (6:09 a.m.) and will call him James, I guess, making him the fourth one. The girls, who wanted another girl, are staying at Wahls. They consider boys selfish, “miners”—someone who grabs things and says, “That’s mine!” Hump says now I’m really in business, in the family-life sense, and I guess expects my life to become more of a shambles, but we’ll see. […]
Went to see Martin Luther, the movie, and found it interesting, but confirmed in my faith, which proves something, I guess. If you would shake my faith, let me see a movie made under Catholic auspices. When I saw Luther at home, with Mrs Luther rocking the cradle, sewing, and Dr Luther teaching nine-year-olds sitting all in a row, I saw that the appeal was primarily sentimental, and so I guess it must always be, here, in lieu of anything else, anything like theology. Letter this morning from the First Methodist Church, mimeographed, welcoming me to St Cloud, suggesting that I come around unless I have other affiliations — which is very often not the case. The curate is Japanese.
Les McCarthys1 (French) were here Wednesday afternoon. Word from them on the Sylvesters. Guess Rita is in a state asylum. Harry teaching in N. Carolina and divorced from her, in love with another. There’s comedy and tragedy for you. He never should’ve left the sport page, Gene McCarthy said, and that’s about it, I think. […]
Now I must close, pick up some food for Betty to eat in the hospital. She says she’s never tasted any like it.
When are you coming to see us?
Jim
CHARLES SHATTUCK
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
November 30, 1953
Dear Chuck,
[…] We have found this house, a place too good to believe we live in, run-down as it is, owned by these elderly sisters who come for a few days now and then and are easy to take: I see they have left me the Saturday Review with KAP’s picture on it, knowing we named our Katherine Anne after her. And I got this grant, after giving up on it, having applied last spring and expected to hear in July, and got it in the nick of time, in October, with Betty about to have a baby, movers to pay (from Milwaukee, where our furniture was in storage), and though I didn’t know it until four days later — there were four days of perfect bliss — with a rejection from The New Yorker in store for me: another cat story, one I would’ve bet on, and consider, with the usual revisions to be made, superior to the other two. […] For someone as unprolific, or lazy, as I am, it’s a bitter blow, from which I’m just now recovering. I took it out on the red squirrels that have made the attic and the walls of this house their home; with trap, gun, and fence I fought them, as the character in Joyce’s “Counterparts” made up for everything by beating his children.
Anyway, I’m damn happy to have the grant and to be eating, as is Betty. She had a baby November 13, a boy, and we’re calling him James Ansbury, after my father. His father was also a James: the Ansbury was his mother’s name (she came from York, he from Waterford [Ireland] where all the Powerses come from). […]
Jim
ROBERT LOWELL
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
December 2, 1953
Dear Cal,
Glad to have your letter. I want to thank you for your efforts in my behalf, with regard to the $3,000 grant from Iowa. I wish I could do something for you, someday. […]
I have looked up Duxbury on the Mass. map in my Britannica (1890), and I see it’s on the sea and that the “Telegraph Cable to France” is close by on the coast. I think your idea of going there and living and reading is wonderful. I know those 1937 Packards. I think they were the last cars — the following years got more and more away from the Rolls-Royce front — made in this country. I was going to buy one in 1949, having sold my car which you remember so vividly. It was a dark Pullman green and had a trunk rack in back and a mohair steering wheel, which showed that the previous owner was the careful sort, but I didn’t buy it. I hope to ride in yours and trust that Elizabeth does all the driving. I think you need a battery, a new one, if you’re not getting out these mornings, or maybe the connecting wires are afflicted with verdigris. You’ve got to live with your car, Cal, and whatever you do, don’t laugh at it, don’t talk against it. […]
Do write.
Jim
JACK CONROY
509 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
March 17, 1954
Dear Jack,
[…] No, Jack, I’m not running a tavern here. I do keep a little Hamm’s in the house, though. If you ask me, it’s the best of the better beers. But I seldom drink anything. I mean that. I don’t know why. No proper company, I guess. I go down to the bus station and get the Chicago Tribune, for kicks, and it always reassures me that I was right in leaving Chicago. The local paper reassures me that I’d do well to leave here too. The truth is, Jack, that my heart is often in the highlands a-chasing a deer. By that, I mean I don’t see any future for me here. I think I’d do better in Ireland. Where I was happier — with the newspapers (London ones, which I subscribe to here), plays at the Abbey and Gate, which I could afford, and horse racing. Also, I didn’t feel so different from most people there. Here I sometimes look askance at the life I lead, wonder how long it’ll be before the system catches up with me. I find, too, as I grow older, I don’t care for the writers-project way of life, if you know what I mean; going around taking what’s left by my betters, the salesmen of this world, the food they won’t eat, the houses or apartments they won’t live in, the cars they won’t drive. I don’t want to get in and pitch with them, or against them. I just want to go away. I must say you would’ve enjoyed the sight of me in Ireland, having my morning coffee before the fire, unfolding my Irish Times, listening to music from the BBC and from my stomach, full of good bacon and toast and marmalade; or at Leopardstown Racecourse; or walking along the sea …