I really shouldn’t be writing to two such … as yourselves, but then I was ever one for returning good for evil. I am sitting here in my office — or “studio,” as it’s called in my lease — at 29 Westland Row, Dublin, thinking of you. I’ve just about got this place arranged so that I feel comfortable here: floor stained, rug down, table amputated so that I can type while sitting in my easy chair, a light suspended over the typewriter, pink shade, which brings out the lights in the mahogany table, and pipe cleaner drying on the shade: JF at his ease. I have a glass of porter in my stomach, having decided that it is better than having tea and rolls for lunch. I have an electric fire playing on my feet, for it’s still chilly here (of late I’ve been sitting here with my coat and gloves on). There is a fireplace, but I am four flights up and would have to hire somebody to tend the fire and ashes, and I am trying to cut expenses. Oh, yes, I am smoking a new pipe — a bargain, or I never would’ve bought it. Before settling down here for the day, I “viewed” some articles which will come up for auction tomorrow at noon. A lovely set of demitasse cups and saucers; a card table with drawers for each player, also a place for his glass — but I can’t quite see the use of these things for me. Still … […]
— Now, I must leave you. What, if anything, can I send you? […]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
29 Westland Row
Dublin
Good Friday [April 4], 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
[…] Let me thank you for your kind invitation to return to America. I can’t remember reading of anybody like myself (the Lord knows what Betty really wants; nothing for certain, I’d say) in this dilemma of where to spend my future. Today, for instance, the maid didn’t show up at home, finally called and said she was too weak to rise, then said she’d tried three times before she found our number in the book (which isn’t in the book yet), and so on, until Betty, not knowing whether she was really sick or not, said she should stay home. The last time it snowed (yes, it’s snowing here today), the maid didn’t appear for two days, not a word from her, and then one morning there she was. So that’s the domestic scene. Fortunately, the girls are home all during April (vacation) and can help some.
So I get on the train at the usual time, around ten, and come down here, turn on the electric fire, and go out for a walk in the snow, or sleet, or whatever it is, waiting for the room to warm up. It’s a bitter day in Dublin, most of the shops closed, a few men standing by excavations in the pavement, the postmen making their rounds, and small boys wheeling turf home in the family pram; the very poor are allowed so much free; and a baker’s horse and cart going by: “Kennedy’s Machine Made Bread,” to show you how up-to-date we are. The pubs are closed. […]
Still, as I was about to say on the other side of this page, I am pleased in many ways with these surroundings, seeing more of Dublin this trip, being able to walk out to secondhand bookstores and attend furniture auctions whenever the desire is on me to do so, or just to walk around looking at the 18th century. I do not consider myself terribly sensitive to my surroundings, but perhaps the most painful thing for me about America, about Minnesota anyway, is having to look at what I see around me, from wooden shack to concrete supermarket in 100 years, with very little in between, hardly anything in St Cloud. You could say that the automobiles here, in general, are easier to look at; people keep them forever; and those that aren’t mere bugs, the economy models, are more or less appealing: I particularly like the ones with headlights as big as washtubs, the old Jaguars, Bentleys, and Daimlers. But of course all of this is by the way — not fundamental like my work to interest and survival — but then so much of life is by the way, don’t you think?
I am way behind schedule in the novel. I should be nearing Grand Forks, but I am just leaving Cut Bank, Montana. Sometimes the train doesn’t seem to be moving at all, and sometimes it appears that the engineer has got out of the cab and is fishing off a bridge with no thought of the job he’s supposed to be doing. […]
So much for that and me. […]
Jim
Betty’s Journal, April 11, 1958
Jim’s first work in Ireland done today, 6 months & one day after our arrival, followed by his picking up “low ladie’s chair” from auction.
MICHAEL MILLGATE
April 15, 1958
Dear Michael,
Your letter rec’d, and the weekend of May 10 is fine — or any weekend, for that matter. Our only problem is how to entertain you in the custom of the country, for we just sit around and brood and hardly utter a brilliant word. But we would like to see you and hope you’ll come. Just let me know when, exactly, and I’ll try to meet you at the airport.
No, I’m not interested in teaching at Salzburg or anywhere else. And if I were, what would I teach? I gather education, in Europe, hasn’t crumbled to the point where I could step in.
I have nothing to say about your marriage, if any, only hope she has money.
I am writing this from my office on Westland Row, where I have been freezing until lately. It is a lot like my office in St Cloud (in that I don’t know who else would have it) but quieter.
Too bad you aren’t here now, or sometime in the next ten days, for Edwin O’Connor, author of The Last Hurrah, is in town, and you could interview him. He has some good stories about Boston. One: Abp Cushing is showing ex — Lord Mayor Briscoe through a seminary and throws open a door to an auditorium where the seminarians are all assembled. “There they are,” he says, “five hundred of the best anti-Semites you ever saw.” Asked later what Briscoe said, the Abp said, “He took it very well.”
Write, giving time of arrival. Until then, all best.
Jim
DON AND MARY HUMPHREY
April 29, 1958
Dear Don and Mary,
We were so glad to hear from you, and the fact that there has been a slight time lag since then doesn’t mean a thing — except that we think it better that some of the delay be on our side. You would gladden our lives, however, if you replied at once. I don’t have your letter at the office — where things are humming as usual — but I do remember that you, Mary, were busy with your sewing and that Don was busy with his haw-hawing. […]
Very odd that you haven’t had the pleasure of [the Hyneses’] company. I fear, too, that with the approaching warm weather they may seek to make amends by throwing one of their famous picnics in a public park. And what of the Doyle? He hasn’t written to us, I think, in all the time we’ve been at our present address. Something I said, I suppose, without having a clue as to what. We spend less time than we did in imagining what you are all doing. This was a regular part of our life until recently. “Are they at Hyneses’ tonight,” I’d say to Betty. Or “I think Fred called, and they’re going over there tonight. Don had to stop for cigarettes.” Or “Hyneses came by, but Don wasn’t there, and Mary had retired.” We just don’t get enough information to engage our imaginations these days.
Last year, about this time, it became clear that we were going to have to move, and I saw that the two, possibly three, years of economic security were not to be. And now, again, I am facing up to the same situation — the necessity to make some big money. It doesn’t seem to be in the cards that we’ll ever enjoy the small fruits of our labors. This, I’d say if it were happening to anyone else, and they were able to survive each crisis, as we’ve been able to do so far, would be a good thing, a device to prevent one from getting into a rut. But this too can be a rut. I think now I’d have been wise to stay on somehow in St Cloud and finish my novel in the office there — there would’ve been no change there. I have wasted months getting set up again, physically and mentally, and now that I have, I see it’s not to be for very long, that it’s starting up all over again. And this time, there isn’t the objective there was, the feeling that if we could just get to Ireland, everything would be all right. The feeling now is that everything will not be all right, whatever we do, that hardly anything will be all right. Not a good spirit in which to advance toward the future.