I was glad to hear that you liked the last story in The New Yorker.
I can’t recall whether I made it clear that we have had the shakes about remaining in Ireland. […] And — the payoff — we are going to have another baby in July. […] How does it look from there? Bad, I suppose, but could be worse — and perhaps will be. I still have my aim, however. All I have to do is run the table. Rack ’em up.
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
29 Westland Row
Dublin
March 4, 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
Your letter came yesterday, having passed mine in the mails, and we were both very sorry to hear of your attack. It must have been very painful, and I do hope it won’t color your outlook on suffering — which I personally do very badly but which, through associating with you, I have developed quite a good feeling for — in others. Let’s just hope nothing ever happens to me, now that I’ve had my appendix out and my teeth fixed again. Anyway, I take it you’re much improved and equipped now with good and holy reasons to enjoy yourself (this is a reference to the ban on milk) like a proper St Paul Diocese man. Better put that bag of beer I left in the front parlor in the fridge.
Well, I was an hour late coming down to the office today, having gone to Greystones with Boz for a haircut. It being about noon, I had some tea and buns nearby and then climbed up to it. Very pleasant here. Yesterday I patched the mahogany table my typewriter rests on, arranged the lamp with its pink shade (it hangs down directly over the typewriter, the best lighting I have had), and polished the copper of my electric fire. The little rug is down, with newspapers under it for padding, and the chair is a wonderful buy at 35 bob: a Victorian mahogany tufted one, with dark red leatherette cover, ripped in a few places. My back is to the one window, five feet off the floor and running up to the ceiling, which is only a little over seven feet, and so I have the best daylight too. I can hear the rumble of traffic from Westland Row (to the front of the building; I am to the back) and Nassau Street to the rear and sometimes pigeons nearby and sometimes gulls in the distance. I am at the head of the stair, and so there’s no traffic at all outside my door; not much on the floors below, occupied by solicitors, engineering consultants, etc.
We get very little mail these days from the Movement (our colleagues in the St Cloud Diocese) and often wonder, if and when we return, how we’ll stand it. You can have little idea of our dilemma — as to where we want to spend eternity on earth, the future, that is. What we couldn’t do last fall — find a place to live — we won’t be able to do next winter any better. I personally dislike this stretch of life ahead of me: the father of numerous children; the husband of a woman with no talent for motherhood (once she’s conceived); and with the prospect of making no more money than in the past. I see another office, spending more and more time in it and away from home, darting to the rescue at home, spanking this child, playing with that one, and finally gumshoeing the girls through their teens, tottering down the aisle with them when they marry and trying not to think about their husbands, who, I daresay, good for nothing else, won’t even make money. Don will drop off, or live forever, and we’ll all be on special diets. So what do I know for sure? Only that I’ll have my art, and so I should pay more attention to it. Do not set a place for me at the church supper. Do not expect to see me running with the others in the stretch simply because I started with them at the beginning. I am looking for another course.
I bought my first ticket on the Grand National sweepstakes. First prize is £50,000. I wasn’t able to tell Betty what I’d do with the money if I won.* That shows the state of my mind.
Saw the Earl of Wicklow crossing Westland Row to St Andrew’s Church Saturday, but he didn’t see me. He is one of Fr D’Arcy’s converts, and we once had dinner together. When are we going to take a meal?
Jim
JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL
Ard na Fairrge
Mount Salus
Dalkey, County Dublin
March 19, 1958
Dear Joe and Jody,
Very glad to have your letter yesterday: we had definitely given up on the Movement. For some time, in the past, I’d say to Betty, what do you suppose it means? Did it ever occur to you that we may not be liked at all by people? And Betty would say, Oh, that’s true, of course, but I think they think they’re busy. It isn’t so easy for people to sit down and write, you know. But that was a long time ago. For some weeks, the Movement went unmentioned except for an occasional “Damn the Movement!” when the mail arrived, or didn’t. We have been considering the idea of returning with a flinty eye — wondering if there could be anything worse than returning with no prospects of a home, billeting ourselves on Betty’s relatives, probably having to split up our family because of its unmanageable size, and so on. There is only one thing to be said for returning, and that, of course, is the presence of people like yourselves — but we, in the circumstances I suggest, wouldn’t be able to appreciate you, I think, and vice versa. The last time, we were almost a year finding a place to live, and we are even harder now to accommodate, to say nothing of the aesthetic side. We wouldn’t care to live in the country. We have had our fill of pioneering — too damn much of it right now, here, in fact. Heaven for me would be never having to enter a hardware store again — and still I am fascinated by hardware. Well, anyway, whatever we do, you can be sure it will be done after much consideration.
Betty is already taking precautions against liking this house and situation when warmer weather comes, drumming it into herself, and me, that six months of the year in a freezing mausoleum just isn’t it. She speaks of trying to find a warmer house. I have declared myself not a participant in this game. I have my office in Dublin now and must really bear down if we are to have money to do whatever it is we will do in the end. Except for a few days when I was still looking for furniture — a chair, a table — the weather has made it impossible to work in the office. Today I am staying home because I can hardly move: a recurrence of trouble with my back. Betty is in Dublin for an auction, where she hopes to pick up a chair that she can sit in comfortably during the rest of her pregnancy. That, as you might guess, was the last straw. So I thought until I found myself unable to turn over in bed — with visions of myself being lifted into an airplane and ever after being a blanketed invalid, but perhaps getting more work done.
I have a hot-water bottle strapped to my back and now must remove it for refilling. Thus I leave you for the time being.
March 21. Nothing to add to the above, I’m afraid. I go on suffering, spared only the gibes of those who can’t see me as I am now, a bent figure tottering from bed to chair to radio. I enclose some clippings for you, Joe, and also Don — say, whatever happened to those people anyway? There were two of them — Mary and Don, I think they were called. Best to you.
Jim
DON AND MARY HUMPHREY
March 26, 1958
Dear Don and Mary,