Jim
BETTY WAHL
150 Summit Avenue
April 5, 1946
Dear Betty,
[…] You said nothing about the ring in your letters yesterday, and so I suppose it is still on the way. Well, there won’t be anything like that again, Betty. Old JF may not have this business sense, but he knows what happens to letters that come in the three-cent mail, how they are put aside and forgotten, and likewise orders which don’t come airmail. Are you still wearing your gloves to cover up your finger? I am sorry. It is in part my fault for waiting on Don so long. But of course the system, the good old system you don’t know about yet, is mostly to blame. I am closing now. I love you. Write.
Jim
By the way — whenever you want me to come, you’d better enclose train fare. I will need it then.
Father George Garrelts exerted a strange power over Jim. It sprang from his gargantuan personality, from his having been a member of Jim’s inner circle in their halcyon high-school days, and, not least, from his being a priest. He had nixed Jim’s other great love, Ramona Rawson; he pressed for writing collaborations with Jim; and, in time to come, he would push Betty to the side, most gallingly in a trip to Scotland that he, Jim, and Betty made together. Even before her marriage, Betty felt vaguely hostile toward Garrelts, beginning, perhaps, with a feeling that his initial disinclination to perform the marriage ceremony meant he disapproved of Jim’s marrying. She came to believe that Garrelts intended to intrude on their life as a couple — as, indeed, he had with the Humphreys.
BETTY WAHL
150 Summit Avenue
April 17, 1946
Dear Betty,
Wednesday, and your letter. Very nice letter, except one paragraph which is probably the worst thing I’ve ever heard from you, causing me to think back to the time a similar sentiment was expressed by a true love of mine and it was the last time I ever saw her. I quote it so you will know what I mean:
Who said Father Garrelts was going to come and spend his vacation with us? I hope it’s not you. We have absolutely no place for him anywhere, either at the lake2 or in our house when we have it.
Now, so far as I know, Fr Garrelts has no intention of spending his vacation with us, and I am damned sure he would not care to spend even a little time with us ever if he knew about this. I am sorry if you did not mean to sound the way these words sound. They do sound, however, and I won’t be able to forget.
When I think of how well I know Fr Garrelts, what a wonderful friend he has always been to me, and I think of what Mary Humphrey and her enemies (also Christian), between them, are doing to Fr Garrelts, I am afraid I can think of nothing but a lot of people who had a lot to say about one man none of them knew a long time ago, and it was Holy Week too. As yet Fr Garrelts has had nothing to say. And the comparison is not as strained as you might like to think. Now, you can either accept my evaluation of Fr Garrelts, and enjoy peace, or spend the rest of your life sharpshooting to make an impossible point.
I assure you the Blondie-Dagwood myth, which is held in such deep esteem generally, will never be true of us. I think it better to let you know this now — though I had thought it was pretty clear — before we are married, for afterward such a hard paragraph as this one and yours might easily qualify as the reality and our love as the illusion. Both are real, and one does not exclude the other, although either one, in this case, could kill the other if the truth were not told. Now I shall try to pick up the pieces and get to work. […]
You did not ask if I loved you, but in case you doubt it after reading the above, let me say I do, very much, I do.
Jim
Fr G. did ask me several weeks ago to find him a cottage near St Ben’s for a couple weeks in June, but I had never considered renting yours to him, or moving him in there, hard as that may be for you to believe. He had wanted to work with Don at carving, etc. I will now make it plain that Wisconsin is preferable. He was getting the cottage primarily for his mother and his stepfather, both of whom incidentally would be accepted where he never would be, both of them having done the right things all their lives and amounted to nothing unless you call 40 or 50 years switching trains something.
BETTY WAHL
150 Summit Avenue
April 19, 1946
Dear Betty,
[…] It is Friday morning, Haskins is here (shaving now), and in a few minutes we’ll eat breakfast and then out to Calvary Cemetery, I think, to see Fr Kelly’s grave. I want to get a look at it; there may be something significant. Last night I, or we, got a cable from Osaka, Japan, from my friend Weinstein, to the effect that the Japanese love us, that the cherry blossoms are in bloom, that we should be happy, and he signs it Lafcadio Hearn, whom I daresay you never heard of. He was an American writer who went to Japan to live about fifty years ago and died there, a good writer. It is not clear from the paragraph you write about Fr Garrelts how you came to say what you did, but it is all over now and perhaps ought to be a lesson to both of us. I think that is all. I am not very happy about things in general, outside of you. I mean my folks not coming according to schedule and so far as I can see the general failure of my relatives to remember the occasion tangibly. I would not mind if I did not know that even if you are above making comparisons, the others are not. I love you.
Jim
Jim and Betty were married on April 22, 1946.
KERKER QUINN
150 Summit Avenue
April 26, 1946
Dear Kerker,
[…] I was married last Monday. Please tell Chuck in case he wants to offer up a litany or two for my wife and me. It will be rough and tough on both of us, no doubt.
Pax,
Jim
6. Something seems to be missing, and you say it’s me, Memorial Day 1946–April 3, 1947
Jim, the 1931 Chevrolet, and Stearns County
Upon his marriage, Jim left the Marlborough and St. Paul and moved with Betty into her parents’ summer cottage on Big Spunk Lake in the little town of Avon, Minnesota (population approximately 880). The Wahls — Art, Money, Pat, John, and Tom — took up summer residence on Memorial Day weekend. Jim and Betty decamped to a small boathouse, an outbuilding of the cottage. The situation, with its constant family activity and common meals, was not a happy one. Betty and Jim were waiting for a house that was being built for them — by Art’s workmen — on land bought by the Wahls for the couple as a wedding present. It was in the Avon woods, some three miles from St. John’s.
CHARLES SHATTUCK
Avon
Memorial Day 1946
Dear Chuck,
Very glad to hear from you and that the stories are all right.1 […] I am sorry to be so reticent about my wife, about getting married, if I have been. I automatically figure it’s unimportant to other people. […] Well, we are living in a cottage owned by my wife’s folks. They are moving out here in a few days, however, and we will move 20 steps nearer to the lake, to this little 10 x 15 house I’m writing in now. It has a big window on the lake, which is called, amusingly enough for any reader of Joyce, “Big Spunk.” Now, Big Spunk, it seems, was an Indian chief, but I never think of him so much as of Molly Bloom when I hear a native pronounce the name. I get out on the dock and cast for large fish, using one of those plugs which always struck me as spectacular and incredible in Illinois. To date I have caught one fish, not counting bullheads (that I call catfish, after the fashion in Morgan County, Ill.) and two perch, a four-pound black bass. He was out of season, so I had to toss him back, thus creating the illusion that I am now a law-abiding citizen. The truth of it was I thought him too beautiful to cut up and eat. I guess that takes care of my private life and the local color. […]