The auction is next week, the rugs going off on Wednesday, but one need not have the total amount (a 25 % deposit is required at time articles are knocked down) until the end of the week. If the rugs (and there are other items of interest to a householder) should run around fifty or sixty pounds, as I imagine they will, and we should get two of them, we would be pushed to the wall in the fiscal department. I maybe ought to tell you more. I am finessing from nothing. Fifty in the St Cloud bank, which is just rotting — not enough to send for — and $33 in my pocket (as personal identification in case of accidents), and forty or fifty pounds, more or less, in the bank here. But should the story be acceptable to The New Yorker, we would be back in the bazaars in a big way; if it shouldn’t, it would be Doubleday, a source untapped for years, though available, and austerity — I would be in the bad position of drawing four or five hundred a month and having to produce accordingly on the novel. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, if one is settled down with one’s appliances and house around one, but if one is setting out for the New World with one’s wife and family, one needs what we used to call “getaway money.” So there you have it. A plan of many flaws, not the least of which is the intention to buy Oriental rugs while crossing the Delaware, as it were. […]
We have made a deposit on the Hanseatic (German ship), formerly the Empress of Scotland, but we have misgivings even now. Betty was badly shaken when her aunt wrote about a place on a half lot, with oil heater in the living room, and said she could just see us in it — with the emphasis (we thought) on us. Mighty nice here now, with the wind off somewhere else, the fire making itself felt in the fireplace, the radio tuned to a German station, light opera. A gay company at my table […]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
Dublin
November 1, 1958
Dear Fr Egan,
Bullion received, with thanks. Hectic days, these, with so much to do — which I won’t go into. Except that these last weeks, if I continue at the present pace, will be entirely wasted so far as immortal literature is concerned. However, I am going to make a great effort to salvage some time for it. Not easy when one has to think of everything, as I do.
What really takes the bounce out of me is the thoroughly unpromising housing situation to which we return. Art Wahl, some months ago, offered Betty — let’s be accurate — ten thousand to be applied on a house if we returned to Stearns. That is really all we’re holding, the only card. I had thought, a year ago, that we would just make it to Ireland (sane, that is), and would crawl ashore and lie gasping in the sand, but that we would be at our destination. Now it seems that this lies back in the other direction (yes, I know in which direction it really is, but let’s try to keep it in the park, huh?).
I confess the temptation to stay on still flits through my mind (about once an hour), but things have gone pretty far. People like us, with so many children, should stay at home, where our vulnerability wouldn’t be so noticeable. I mean a man can keep working the sand up around his head, and surrounded by others doing the same thing, nobody is going to come right out and say: Hey, fellas, our asses are all out. But that is the feeling I have more and more. I used to think that the worst thing about Don Humphrey’s parenthood was the indignity of it: something would happen in the neighborhood (a neighbor complaining about his cesspool or dry well, as he called it), and it would be crystal clear for a moment that he was considered a Jeeter Lester,5 really the sort of fellow who shouldn’t have moved to town. All this with reference to the house Betty’s aunt picked out for us in St Cloud: oil burner in living room, no basement (just a dirt pit), three bedrooms (one with no window), bathroom back of the kitchen, and half a lot (nine feet from the alley on one side, twelve feet to the neighbors on the other, the house itself that distance, I mean). This doesn’t mean I want you to look for a place, at least not yet. I am just trying to convey my feelings these days. (It should be said that Betty’s father nixed the house I’ve just mentioned.)
Meanwhile, I went to another auction (the one in Co. Offaly wasn’t worth the long drive) and came away with six “lots,” as we say in the trade: two old prints, a carving set, two Sheraton trays, and a Sheraton barometer: everything we’ll need to set up housekeeping, as you can see. Lovely to look at, though, especially the barometer, which is inlaid with shell designs and of course doesn’t work. By the time this reaches you, Gene McC. will be in or out. Time says he’s running ahead of Thye in the polls but that “knowing Minnesotans” expect Thye to squeeze through.6
I am not picking ’em, since I assured my mother Siri would be the next pope; I just told her, as though there was no doubt of it, thinking it would be more telling that way.7
Jim
I tried to tell the girls you were in line for the papacy, but they were indignant at the idea. “He’s not grand enough!” “He’s not even a bishop!”
JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL
Dalkey
November 29, 1:00 a.m., 1958
Dear Cho and Yody,8
The last night in the old house, down to the furniture and lighting we found here, and finishing off the dregs, and Hughie, whose bed has gone on before him, crying out from the foreign couch, and Betty finally going off under a heavy load of John Power and Son Gold Label; me, I’ve had the last of the Black and White. I smoked a cigar earlier, dug out in the course of packing. I have the radio tuned to a German station. I wonder what it’ll think of WJON, for we are taking it with us — leaving little behind, the baby’s Moses basket and two siphons of soda, some corrugated cardboard (kind packers like), some coal, some logs, some turf, and so on.
We have been through all this before, but this is the worst time yet. Too much stuff, too many people. We have two little leather tags, and I found myself switching the little cards around tonight — rather, Betty did, and thought it all too ironic. On one side the cards say J. F. Powers, Greystones, Co. Wicklow, Ireland; on the other, c/o A. Wahl, North River Rd, St Cloud, Minn. The latter is showing now — among other things. We have eleven packing cases, five trunks, and a number of smaller pieces. Fortunately, there is a worldwide shipping slump, and the rates are low. We may live in our packing cases, some of which are quite roomy. It now appears that the potty will have to be transported separately. […] If it were wrapped in brown paper, it wouldn’t be noticeable, we tell each other. How fair-minded can you get? Em and Arleen, yes, but they are immortal.
Sean O’Faolain was over earlier to bid us goodbye. He has been a great friend to us here, and he and his wife are sorry to see us go. But this is a feeling I cannot convey: setting forth under great difficulties and yet wondering how, if we did it again, we might do better, did return to Ireland, I mean. Whatever we do, though, in the future, it’ll be with less furniture.
Tomorrow we take the Cork Express for Cork, stay there overnight, and embark at Cobh the next morning for the New World. We are fortunate to be sailing on the SS Hanseatic, which derives her name from the Hanseatic League, a medieval association of friendly German and other European towns. Externally, the Hanseatic presents a striking appearance … a modern bow and cruiser-type stern (kind men like) and black hull (I’m black and I’m evil and I did not make myself) with white superstructure (natch) topped by two modern streamlined funnels. Each class has an attractive Children’s Playroom. The “Alster Club,” which extends the full width of the ship, will be one of the favorite gathering places for tourist-class passengers. In the attractive St. Pauli Tavern tourist-class passengers will find the gay spirit of a stroll on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. Here conviviality will reign in an exceptionally enjoyable atmosphere. For pleasant days and nights at sea the Hanseatic is your ship. Deck games, movies, dances, concerts, gang shags, entertainment, children’s parties, fancy dress balls, and other events are included in the diversified program, which is arranged for the enjoyment of all, young and old alike. CFM groups meet under ideal conditions. Imbued with the spirit of Old Hanse, the sterling qualities of all the German personnel bespeak reliability. Taking pride in their jobs and the efficient performance of9