[…]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Dublin
May 13, 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
Your letter came this morning, and glad to have same, to know that you’ll welcome us back. At the moment, I have no very good prospects of making it back: cold in my nose, cold in my office, and so on.
KA is being confirmed by the Abp of Dublin today and expects a question: “I’m in the front row, and he asks those in the front row, and if they know the answers, he doesn’t ask the others.” I did not tell her to counter with a question: “Why don’t you and O’Casey bury the hatchet?”2
The keys are cold to my touch this morning: it will not be a good day. I must go over to an auction and try to land a couple of elephant tusks. I got two the other day (supporting a dinner gong) and would like to get these today, which are unmounted, rough, as extracted. I plan to send the ivory to Don, who except for an occasional cue ball, is unable to procure the stuff for his work, mostly nodes on chalices.
[…]
Jim
Betty’s aunt, Birdie, and her husband, Al Strobel, made a trip to Ireland. They came as part of a guided tour, which they left for a few days to visit the Powers family and see the new baby.
BIRDIE AND AL STROBEL
29 Westland Row
Dublin
May 31, 1958
Dear Birdie and Al,
[…] You are better off at the Shelbourne than at the Gresham (which caters mostly to Americans and is on O’Connell Street, which has always struck me as being like Broadway, full of little junky shops). There is a whole book about the Shelbourne, by Elizabeth Bowen. We wonder if it’ll be possible to catch sight of you during those first days while you’re still attached to the tour. I thought I might watch for you in the Shelbourne lobby — I wouldn’t actually approach you — so I could at least tell Betty and the children how you were looking. Naturally, I would disguise myself. Anyway, we’re all happy that you’re coming, and looking forward to it. Don’t worry about us putting ourselves out for you. It hadn’t occurred to us to do so. You’ll find plenty of work to do, inside, and Al can work around the yard. You can think of the time with us as a resting-up period for your ensuing travels. Well, I think that’s all, and more, and so I’ll close.
Jim
FRED AND ROMY PETTERS
Ard na Fairrge
June 19, 1958
Dear Fred and Romy,
[…] It is seven in the evening. In the next few minutes, Betty will finish reading a book to the boys, and I’ll go up to the bathroom and shove them around for a while. No, Betty hasn’t had the baby yet. No, not yet. Wait a minute, I’ll look again. No, not yet. When she does, we’ll let someone know in the Movement. I won’t develop this subject further. Except to say that we’re appalled by the prospect. Last year at this time I thought I had trouble. I now think of last year as the English Channel and the year ahead as the Atlantic Ocean. I know, you don’t swim that; but that is what I mean.
We are at home every evening, listening to the radio, reading. I smoke while reading and Betty drinks. That’s about it here. […]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
June 24, 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
It’s in the early a.m., and somebody’s charging batteries, and I can’t play my Telefunken, usually my solace when Betty and the children are in bed. We were glad to hear you have a new typewriter — and to see that you have — and I must say it’s about time. You had the one before this about six months, didn’t you? I suppose it means something: some people wash their hands and some change mates and some change typewriters. Me, well, why go on? […]
Somebody at America sent me that issue with the Prince review in it, and so I saw the Waugh piece: too bad, why America can’t do better, I don’t know; the ghetto mentality, as we in liberal circles used to say. Life here much the same. Betty still with child, but the end shouldn’t be far away. Girls go swimming two or three times a week, as part of physical education, in the sea. They have tennis racquets too. Boz and Hugh go about their business, building, farming, trains, shipping (we see boats of all kinds in the sea below us), and I’ve just come from making Hugh’s bed, which he had stripped down to the springs, only to drop off, and then to wake up, mad at the dirty trick he’d played on himself. Which reminds me that I must teach the children short-sheeting, to round off the evening chaos. […]
JFP Ltd is pretty quiet except in Germany, where, since coming to Ireland, I have had three little books published; the publisher is breaking up my two books and administering them in the form of spitballs. Well, I go down to the office six days a week, sit down, and prowl about Duesterhaus. For the last month I’ve been redoing the rec room — and can’t seem to get the job done. Maybe tomorrow the ice will break (these metaphors I use are an author’s stock-in-trade). A man tried to break in on me today, an agent with a client presumably interested in renting space in the building. Since the agent didn’t seem to know I was there, but since I definitely was, I acted the part of the genuine tenant, a little outraged at this invasion of privacy. I have a deal with the owner of the building (£15 a quarter) for this hole I inhabit but would have to move out if he succeeded in interesting a regular tenant in my space; I have bet against this eventuality, in effect. In view of the luck I’ve been having, however, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised if asked to vacate. […] All for now.
Jim
Betty gave birth to Jane Elizabeth Powers on July 2, 1958, at the Leinster Nursing Home in Dublin. Betty’s journal, July 2, 1958: “8¼-pound daughter at 2:30 a.m. The news penetrates to me at one point and oh the relief of it. No pregnancy had felt so tedious, so completely unjust. But she is American, I’m sure now. The last product of the red house and my distress at leaving it.”
ART AND MONA WAHL
Friday morning [July 4, 1958]
Dear Art and Nana,
[…] The baby, by the way, looks very healthy and less gnomelike than I remember the other children looking at this stage. We don’t have a name, since it’s a girl. I had wanted it, if it were a boy, to be Hjalmar. Now I must close, get this to Betty, and get back here to my office. I enjoyed your letter, Nana — the vision of you dashing off to coffees. I think of these last days for Bertie in St Cloud and am glad to be elsewhere; the pace must be terrific. I see Art and Al, like mechanics in the pits, changing wheels in a matter of seconds, while you and Bertie wait impatient to be off to the next coffee, and then the next, and so on. I see you as wearing crash helmets. I shouldn’t bother you with these visions, I know. Incidentally, the boys and girls at home are doing very well under Mrs Kinsella’s supervision. She has a real talent with children. All for now.
Jim
Betty’s Journal, July 4, 1958
Five, five, five. How did it come about? I keep repeating Fr Egan — they are, in the end, the only thing that will have mattered. I believe it; I feel it. And yet they defy peace and order and what of art — of Jim’s if not mine? Are we to make him into just another man who will die, his body rot, his possessions be dispersed, and his immortality all in heaven? God does intend there to be man-made beauty on earth. We are to make order of it all. Order and art.