HARVEY EGAN
August 19, 1961
Dear Fr Egan,
I must tell you I rec’d word this morning that Esquire wants the story (“Twenty-Four Hours in a Strange Diocese”) but will pay only $750, this although I sent my special jacking-up letter when I sent the MS. I can’t do better, though, and so I must ask you to carry me on the books a while longer. Now, I know you’ll do this with a smile, and probably don’t even like to hear about it, but still I feel I must report in from time to time. We will now buy shoes and so on and probably get through October, by which time I trust my book will be finished and I can get back on Doubleday’s relief rolls. […]
Jim
Journal, September 22, 1961
No money even before I started writing for a living — no money is the story of my life.
In the autumn of 1961, the Doyles moved to Angola, New York, for a year, where Leonard taught at Calasanctius Preparatory School. While away, Leonard provided Jim with a Latin translation for a passage in Morte D’Urban. Emerson Hynes and his family were living in Washington most of the time, where Emerson was Senator Eugene McCarthy’s legislative assistant.
LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE
October 21, 1961
Dear Leonard and Betty,
I don’t know whether you remember me or not, but at one time I was prominent in apostolic circles in these parts. I have since fallen out of favor with just about everybody, and though there is a tendency in me to sulk and to think ill of myself simply because others do, and — what is worse — to think ill of others, necessity demands that I write and ask if you’ll do some Latin for me, for which I’ll pay you, say, $25, when I can afford to; at the moment, I can’t. […]
Nothing has happened since you left — nothing at all.
Jim
LEONARD DOYLE
412 First Avenue South
St Cloud, Minnesota
November 4, 1961
Dear Leonard,
Your wire rec’d yesterday, and your translation today — for which very many thanks. […] When I can, I’ll try to reward you in part anyway for the time and trouble. Times have been hard for me for a couple of years now. At the moment they are the hardest, with Xmas and all that coming on and the mail disappointing me daily. Still, I have finished the book, and for me at least that is something. I am now rewriting the early chapters, which have proved a sore disappointment to me.
I feel you’d be happy if I could fill you in on the local scene. I feel that you must think something must be happening, as I did when I was away, but I don’t think a thing has happened since you left. […] Whether you are missed by others, I don’t know. It is a moot question whether anybody can be missed in this life we all lead. The O’Connells we see about once a week. Joe is still going back and forth to Mankato. He may do the jacket for my book. Hyneses, of course, were here in all their reflected glory, reflecting it. Em has written me a line since, saying Dick Keefe — remember him? — was in our nation’s capital doing good work for education, as well he might, and who better, considering what it’s like. Fred Petters, Dick Palmquist, Joe, and I went out one afternoon and put up Don’s tombstone, but I understand it’s loosened up in the meantime, in its foundation cement. I haven’t seen Mary Humphrey for months. Fr Egan is returning from a couple of months abroad, looking into the cathedral situation with the idea of building one of his own. What else? The Gophers beat the Spartans10 this afternoon, a stunning upset. Buses, I understand, a dozen or so every Sunday, come to St John’s with students, nuns, et al., to see the new church, as it’s called.11 Our home life is all children and their fights and falling-outs. Let me know, if you find out what you’re living for, but do not give up. The Baks, it seems, have taken your place on the highways, Hetty delivering children to various schools all day long. Now I must sign off. Best to youse both.
Jim
LEONARD AND BETTY DOYLE
St Cloud, Minnesota
December 7, 1961
Dear Leonard and Betty,
Whatever you say, there is something nice about getting a Christmas letter from me — something that might not happen to you if you weren’t away from home — if that is what we have here. Myself, I’m afraid we have here no lasting home, any of us, except the Hyneses, of course, who have the marvelous faculty of being away from it without really leaving it (to hear them tell it), so there isn’t the onus of treason or desertion in their case such as there’s always been in ours. […]
Joe is getting on with the job. He is also working on a jacket for my book. Jody has a new dog whose name is Mac. Joe has had a couple of feelers from St John’s, one small job, one in Puerto Rico — you get the feeling they feel guilty about freezing him out and now that Frank12 has been “fired” again are not afraid to approach Joe. Oh hell, don’t ask me why Frank was fired — it would take you to get it all straight, and, of course, he isn’t really fired. It happened before the Walker Gallery showing of the new church plans, pictures, etc. The payoff on this (the Walker show) was Bruno Bak being invited with other notables to the private showing and walking in with the abbot, and Fr John, and others — and then seeing that Breuer had made up some glass for the occasion. No sign of Bruno’s work. We’re told (by the Baks, though) that the abbot was humiliated by the situation he found himself in, as was Fr John, and that the Walker people were disgusted, too, by this kind of dirty pool (Breuer’s men, presumably, arranged the exhibit), which, I think, has the odor of Frank about it. Ah, well. If I never hear another word (happy thought!) about that church, I’ll be happy. There are times when I think I may have to immortalize them all there. I am not sure, though, that even if I did it as it should be done, they’d recognize it, or themselves. Intellectually, and aesthetically, they just don’t burn with a hard gemlike flame. Have to go out there on Sunday, however, so as to escape the pledge taking that will go on everywhere else. […]
Jim
HARVEY EGAN
December 26, 1961
Dear Fr Egan,
I got your note, and thanks, but I wasn’t myself for a few days, including yesterday; nothing serious, just not able to take nourishment, and had my hands full chauffeuring Betty and the children up and down the river.13 […] The last I saw (on Xmas Eve), people were circling around other people with flashbulbs and cameras, and that was all I saw yesterday when I called for Betty and the kids (I stayed in the car). “Ever think of pornography?” I said to them out of the side of my mouth on the first night. […]
I heard our bishop’s midnight Mass address last night on radio (a playback): pretty strong stuff. He figures the nation’s leaders, and not only this nation’s leaders but other nations’ leaders, are about ready to take the Bethlehem lesson to heart, having tried everything else, and if not now, then in centuries to come. By the way, he traded in the baby-blue Cad for a black Continental … […]
Word reaches me that Fr Godfrey14 was hard-hit by Pope John’s words on vernacular (or Latin), set “us” back fifty years.15 “Send ’em Worship! Send ’em Worship!” he cried, meaning Time magazine, and not Pope John, oddly enough. Ho, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum. This pronouncement (of Pope John’s) changes nothing in my book. Could it be that I, of all people, am in touch with the mind of the Church?