My study has two impossible chairs, which we continue to sit in, however, and the best fireplace in the house, especially made for burning turf; there are two holes on either side, toward the front of it, connected with tile pipe which runs a few feet through the hall, and into an entryway from which it sucks cold air, just naturally does it, and this blows on the turf, making it burn beautifully. Turf makes a very pleasant fuel, but most of these fireplaces are too small for it, being designed for coal. Turf has to have room to be spread, and you have to introduce the fresh pieces to the rear of the fireplace, pull forward the hot ones. The odor is nice, and a good thing it is, for we get some very strong, wayward breezes up here so high, so close to the sea. I mention this because I’ve just come from the studio, eyes streaming, having had to transfer the turf from it to my study and give up on the fire in the studio for today; I think the chimney is too low for the wind we have now. […] All for now. […]
Jim
Journal, December 7, 1957
We have had a thorough shaking up. We no longer know what’s best for us. I don’t anyway — and this is a startling statement for me to make. Here it is past midnight now, and I am sitting here in the study, with the radio playing, alone. I might be back in St Cloud, St Paul, Milwaukee, Cape Cod, Greystones, or Avon — ten years ago — for all the change there has been in my habits. The radio station is German — but so it was six years ago in Greystones. I am not unhappy at this time of day — except now and then. But when the days pass as they have lately, I do feel the pressure of waste … This is the time to get on with my work. It will be hard, unless conditions change — unless we can find a way to order our family life — to make the months ahead mean anything for my work. Betty’s probable pregnancy is the final turn of the screw — worse than ever before, this one, in these circumstances. We must somehow manage. We aren’t far from the rocks, must somehow negotiate them. I have to be careful, to keep control.
BIRDIE AND AL STROBEL; ART AND MONA WAHL; BERTHA SEBERGER
Ard na Fairrge
Mount Salus
Dalkey, County Dublin
Tuesday morning [Before December 13, 1957]
Dear Birdie and All,
While Betty is doing the dishes, I’ll add a few lines to this letter that we keep neglecting to mail. Today there is a full gale blowing, and my study, which faces the sea, is taking in a certain amount of wind and water: the rain gets in somehow. But the kitchen and playroom are warmer, which may account for the presence there of Betty and the boys. For two days we couldn’t have a fire in the playroom. The wind was wrong, and the place filled up with smoke. So it goes: all difficulties we can put up with but would not want to do so for a lifetime, I think. […]
We had a good evening with the O’F.’s9 the other night. They both thought that we’d be all right once we got some proper help. That may be. The mornings here are the worst time: getting up the boys, getting off the girls, getting the fires going. There are periods of almost solid comfort — when the wind is right, when the children are occupied or asleep. We are little by little, by hook and crook, making my study a place to hole up in. Here we have the radio, here is the best fireplace for burning turf, and the two chairs are improved by putting foam rubber cushions over the ruptured springs (the foam rubber cushions from two other chairs in the living room). […]
Thanks again to you and to Nana for all the kind words about the Reporter story. You were and were not in it, Birdie; it is the usual mixture of fact and fiction and should not be read for anything but entertainment. The requirements of art demand that you do violence sometimes to the facts as they took place, or interpret them differently, or make up incidents and conjure up characters that life itself, being such an erratic artist, seldom provides.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
PHONE=84102
Ard na Fairrge
Mount Salus
Dalkey, County Dublin
December 13, 1957
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Glad to hear — indirectly — that people are reading my books in your waiting rooms. Don’t forget to order plenty of Prince in the Image edition for your vestibule, and tell your friends. Unfortunately, I am not available for autographing parties, but send my best to one and all.
It is getting dark, around four in the afternoon, and I have the typewriter on a Schweppes case parked in front of the turf fire. This morning I made a stand for the Christmas tree, which is set up in the billiard room. We have bought one string of lights (twelve bulbs instead of the eight we know in the U.S.), a few ornaments, and probably will keep adding more to cover the bareness. Everything we do reminds us that we were awfully free with our hard-earned possessions, having given away our lights, stand, ornaments. I call it detachment. […]
Sean and Eileen O’Faolain were over last Sunday evening, a good session, and Eileen has been working to find us a maid. It now appears we’ll have one right after Xmas, use fill-ins until then.
We have been suffering from homesickness (without having a home), Betty and I, that is. The kids seem happy. The girls are gone from 8:30 until 5:00 daily; half day on Saturday; and are doing all right in school, after finding catechism and arithmetic very advanced at first. They wear green outfits and go by train to and from Killiney, where the school is (Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, apparently an order more English than Irish with laywomen — they call them “mistresses”—doing most of the teaching). Under the patronage of the Abp of Dublin (McQuaid). I am smoking Mick McQuaid tobacco.
For Xmas, I got them badminton racquets, etc., and think it’ll be possible to play in the billiard room (it measures 38 by 14); Hugh a tricycle; Boz a large wooden train, a locomotive, that is, that he can sit on. Boz already has a chain-driven tricycle; Hugh a wheelbarrow. What Boz really wants is cords and plugs, the electrical equipment he had in St Cloud. […]
Write. Merry Xmas from us all.
Jim
CHARLES AND SUSAN SHATTUCK
Ard na Fairrge
Mount Salus
Dalkey, County Dublin
Xmas 1957
Dear Chuck and Suzie,
Thanks for your soothing compliments on the story, Chuck. Nobody’s mean so much to me. This is our address for the next year — it was to have been a three-year lease, but I got cold feet at the prospect — with no other prospects, however. Not at all pleasant to realize I don’t know my own mind: however ignorant I am, I’ve always known that in the past. I have not taken to drink or anything, but I did subscribe to Time magazine, and I’d say that certifies me.