Jim
Don Humphrey died 5:30 a.m., August 26, 1958.
Betty’s Journal, August 26, 1958
Don died today … I am struck by the wastefulness of nature — can understand sea creatures laying millions of eggs so that most can be lost, but an artist like Don at the beginning of his career doesn’t seem expendable. I felt of him much as I feel of Jim, destined by providence to fulfill role of artist, Don as accessory to priesthood, Jim as divinely inspired gadfly. Providence has always intervened in our favor at last minute in material matters, felt Calvinistically that a sign of being chosen. But this shakes my confidence.
DICK PALMQUIST
Dublin
August 30, 1958
Dear Dick,
[…] We learned of Don’s death with such feelings as you do not have to imagine. This has been the worst thing to happen to me, so far, and I know it is worse for Mary and the family — and worst of all for Don, looking at his life from this world, where he did accomplish much but only a small fraction of what he might have, with his gifts. Needless to say, his reward here was even more out of proportion. If his death was due to chemicals used in plating chalices, then that is indeed the final irony. That is my opinion, and I leave it to the others (of whom I’m sure there are many) to speak of how happy he must be in heaven. That I don’t doubt, but what happened here on earth was just too bad, and I for one will not forget it, and in this I know I am not alone.
All best wishes.
Jim
Don Humphrey was buried at Jacobs Prairie, fifteen miles from his home in St. Cloud. The reason for this inconvenience was that some years before he had carved the altar lectern and font for St. James, the church there. As sole payment he had been promised three grave sites in the cemetery. The new priest attempted to renege on the agreement, but the Humphrey family prevailed.
HARVEY EGAN
Dublin
September 5, 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
Your letter came this morning at breakfast (tea, toast, scrambled eggs, prunes), and then Betty, it being a sunny day, took the boys to Greystones for haircuts, a job I need myself but cannot free myself to get. From my work, that is. This story-chapter will either ring the bell as I have seldom rung it before, or — it won’t. Anyway, I am working without a net, so to speak, and am grateful for your offer, as before. I wake up in the morning, and gradually remembering who I am and what lies before me and all around me, namely responsibilities, I start to moan. It is not that erratic, blowing noise that you used to do in Beardsley (picked up from Fr Nolan, you said), which by the way I do a certain amount of here in my office, but a low, steady moaning, such as a man with an arrow in his ass (back in history) might make. Do you ever have that? Yes? Well, then you know what I mean.
Thanks for your account of the funeral. I had one from L. Doyle, very good, but not, of course, from the sanctuary side, where life is somehow headier.
I was glad to read (in L. Doyle first) that you and George and Bp Cowley and Fr Casey were there. Jacobs Prairie, though, that was more iron in the soul, not that St Cloud would’ve been better; where Don died, what was done thereafter didn’t matter, though it was a lot of work for friends and family. One would be better off going down at sea. Yes, I must do something about my will — though I find that word preposterous in my case.
All for now. They’re playing my music (“The Daring Young Man”), and I must go. Coming! Coming! […]
Jim
[…] Out to buy some Parmesan cheese for tonight’s spaghetti and was almost run down on Duke Street by the Earl of Longford, who was coming down the sidewalk with his wife; they look like Hardy and Laurel; but that’s one thing you don’t see too much of around St Cloud, earls and countesses, it occurs to me. A fellow needs a bit of that, and once he gets a taste of it …
LEONARD DOYLE
29 Westland Row
Dublin
October 7, 1958
Dear Len,
[…] We read about Fr Peyton’s crusade2 in your diocese, thanks to your thoughtfulness in sending the news story, and though I don’t take this particular aspect of our religion as hard as some people do, it did give us a jolt. The part that gets me is the sudden appearance of people you wouldn’t have thought it of, in the lineup. There was quite a lot of that in Nazi Germany, I believe. I am thinking of working up a prelate whose motto would be “I Love a Parade.” How would you put that into Latin? I remember a discussion which took place at my house a few years ago, when two priests were discussing the work of Fr Peyton, not very enthusiastically. Finally, one said: “Do you suppose he’s even a Christian?” Oh, I liked the storm troopers coming to your house to collect your pledge. It’s hard to be cool at such times, but that’s the correct attitude, I believe. Of course, a beard helps too, keeps people off balance. […]
Coolish these days in my office. I have on my electric fire, but it isn’t very noticeable. Likewise at home. We always seem to land in places where little has been done about such problems, and we have the option of fixing matters up for the short time allotted to us in any one place on earth (by destiny, I mean) or shivering through it.
I have always felt pretty sure of myself, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to live, or at least where I didn’t want to live. But the irony now is that this is no longer true. In the course of one day I change back and forth a hundred times, calling myself a fool to consider leaving Ireland and a fool to consider staying. Betty is doing the same thing. And so we are little help to each other. Fortunately, the children don’t seem to care what we do. They fondly imagine that the moment they walk in, if we do return, when everybody is glad to see them, that moment will go on and on. We, Betty and I, at least know about that.
Jim
Jim and Betty, homesick and discontented in the usual way, decided to return to the United States.
HARVEY EGAN
Ard na Fairrge
Dalkey
October 21, 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
Sitting here torn between reading the next installment of Monty’s war memoirs3 and Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier (the latter in its original Left Book Club edition, which I bought secondhand for sixpence), I happened to see an auction catalog on the table, and I then continued a discussion I’d been having with myself earlier: whether ’tis better to hope that we’ll not only hear favorably but suddenly from The New Yorker or to get in immediate touch with Mendota4 in case the Oriental rugs illustrated in the catalog are worth having and can be had at our price. […]