“JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY,
My very dear friend, and an honorable gentleman.”
It had O’Reilly’s warm word to speed and gain it a hearing, a word that
would have remained unwritten were it not that the little volume, of
its own worth, demanded that the word but expressed its merit. Since
those days, it has travelled and found a ready home. Its gentle humor
has made it quotable in the fashionable salons, its quaintness tickled
the lonely scholar, stinging notes against wrong and its brilliant
biting to the very core of silk-dressed sham, bespoke a hearty welcome
in the haunts of the poor and oppressed.
The volume was one of promise and large hope. Of it O’Reilly wrote:
“Not for years has such a first book as this appeared in America.”
This recognition was but a truth. The author is a true poet, not a
rhyme trickster or a cherry-stone filer, that brood so thoroughly
detested by O’Reilly. He has something to say, a genuine, poetical
impression to give in each poem. His genius, as that of most poets of
Celtic blood, is essentially dramatic. This may best be seen in that
fine, man-loving poem, “Netchaieff.” Netchaieff, a Russian Nihilist,
was condemned to prison for life. Deprived of writing materials, he
allowed his fingernail to grow until he fashioned it into a pen. With
this he wrote, in his blood, on the margin of a book, the story of
his sufferings. Almost his last entry was a note that his jailer had
just boarded up the solitary pane which admitted a little light into
his cell. The “letter written in blood” was smuggled out of prison and
published, and Netchaieff died very soon after. The poet’s opening
lines, relating to the Czar, Netchaieff’s death in prison, show that
the human interest of this poet swallows up all other interests. The
human alone can heat his blood and rouse in impassioned verse his
indignation. How finely conceived is the satire in these lines:
“Netchaieff is dead, your Majesty.
You knew him not. He was a common hind,
Who lived ten years in hell, and then he died—
To seek another hell, as we must think,
Since he was rebel to your Majesty.”
There are many startling lines in this poem, lines that would give
our fairy-airy school of poets material for a dozen sonnets. “For the
People” is another poem that shows the ink was not watered. It is full
of truth, unpleasant to the ears of the well-fed and easy living, but
truth nevertheless, painted with a bold and masterly hand. It is the
critic’s way to call poems of this kind passionate unreasonableness,
while an irregular ode to a cat or a ballade of the shepherdess is
filled with passionate reasonableness. All which proves that these
amusing gentlemen are unconsciously sitting by the volcano’s side.
They have eyes and they see not; they have ears and they hear not. The
prophetic voice of the poets who will sing from their inner seeing,
caring not whether the age listens or hurries on, is lost on these
so-called literary interpreters. The tocsin blast dies on the breeze,
or speaks to a few lonely thinkers who catch its notes for future
warning; the reed’s soft sensuous music is hugged and repeated by the
critics and the commonplace. When the lava tumbles forth, then the
singer whose songs were a part of him, passionate, conceived in the
white heat of truth, may have the diviner’s crown. The critics and
commonplace, in their suffering, remember the warning in these burning
lines:
“There’s a serf whose chains are of paper; there’s a king with
a parchment crown,
There are robber knights and brigands in factory, field and town;
But the vassal pays his tribute to a lord of wage rent;
And the baron’s toll is Shylock’s, with a flesh and blood per cent.
“The seamstress bends to her labor all night in a narrow room,
The child, defrauded of childhood, tiptoes all day at the loom,
The soul must starve, for the body can barely on husks be fed;
And the loaded dice of a gambler settle the price of bread.
“Ye have shorn and bound the Samson, and robbed him of learning’s
light;
But his sluggish brain is moving, his sinews have all their might,
Look well to your gates of Gaza, your privilege, pride and caste!
The Giant is blind and thinking, and his locks are growing fast.”
“Netchaieff” and “For the People” are poems with a meaning. Their
author is a thinker, a keen student of the social problems that
convulse our every-day life. He walks the city’s streets, and sees
sights and hears ominous murmuring. He uses the poet’s right to
translate these scenes and sights into his own impassioned verse.
This done, his duty done. The Creator must give brains to the
reader. If that has been done, the poet’s lines will fall fresh
and thought-provoking on his ears. It will take him from Mittens,
Marjorie’s Kisses, April Maids and the school of fantastic littleness,
to man’s inhumanity to man, the burning wrong of our day. An Adirondack
climb, but then the point of view repays the exertion. It is generally
written that the author of Songs and Satires is a comic poet. A
half-way truth is expressed. If by comic is meant humor, yes; all poets
who are worth looking into have in a greater or less degree that
precious gift. It is a distinct gain if the author is an artist and
knows how to use it, dangerous to the commonplace, who put it on with a
white-wash brush. It is a nice line that divides humor from buffoonery.
Our author is a humorist of that school whose genius has been used to
alleviate human suffering. Its shafts are not forged by the hammer of
spleen on the anvil of malice, but the workmanship of love mourning
for misery. His spirit is akin to Hood’s. His touch is light, but his
poniard is a Damascene blade well pointed. Cant has no foil to set it
off. “A Concord Love Song” is a charming bit of satire. I can well
remember the effect it had on a teacher of mine, a proud sage of that
school of word-twisting and transcendental gush. He sniffed and pawed
viciously, a sure sign that the poet’s dart was safely lodged in the
bull’s eye. Those who have, as a sleep seducer, read some of the
Concord fraternity’s vapid musings on the pensive Here and the doubtful
Yonder, will deliciously relish such lines as these:
“Ah, the joyless fleeting
Of our primal meeting,
And the fateful greeting
Of the How and Why!
Ah, the Thingness flying
From the Hereness, sighing
For a love undying
That fain would die.
“Ah, the Ifness sadd’ning,
The Whichness madd’ning,
And the But ungladd’ning
That lie behind!
When the signless token
Of love is broken
In the speech unspoken,
Of mind to mind.”
It is to his later and serious poems that the critic must go to find
the poet at his best. “At Sea” is a poem with a memory, inasmuch as
it is the “embodiment of as beautiful a story of brotherly love as the
world makes record.” The poet’s brother, Mr. John Roche, pay-clerk in
the United States Navy, died a hero’s death in the Samoan disaster of
March, 1889. Doubtless it was from this loved brother that the poet
took his love for the sea, and the gallant deeds of our young navy.
Here he is in his own field. “The Fight of the Armstrong Privateer”
shows genuine inspiration. It has color and passion. The reader feels
the swing of the graphic lines and a quickness in his own blood, while
the tale of daring rapidly and gracefully unfolds itself.
James Jeffrey Roche was born at Mount Mellick, Queens county, Ireland,
forty-six years ago. His father was a schoolmaster, and to him the poet
is indebted for his early education. At a suitable age he entered St.
Dunstan’s College, Charlottetown, Prince Edward’s Island, the family
having emigrated there in the poet’s infancy. Here he finished his
classics and showed his literary bent by the publishing of a college
journal. Having the valedictory assigned to him, he hopelessly broke
down. The present year he returned to St. Dunstan’s the orator of
Commencement day, as he wittily remarked, to finish the valedictory
that had overtaxed his strength as a small boy. After leaving college
the poet came to Boston, entered commercial life, remaining in that
hardly genial business for sixteen years. During these years his pen
was busy at the real vocation of his life. He was for several years the
Boston correspondent of the _Detroit Free Press_, and had been long an
editorial contributor to the _Pilot_, before he took the position of
assistant editor on it, in 1883. As a journalist Mr. Roche has few
equals. His keen mind easily grapples the questions of the day, while
his good sense in their discussion never deserts him. In a few lines
he goes to the core. If his trenchant sarcasm punctures the bubble,
his humor will not fail to make it ridiculous. It is not the windy
editorial in our day that tortures the quacks, but the bright, pointed
dart of a paragraph. It is so easy to remember, may be stored in the
reader’s brain so readily, and used with deadly effect at any moment. A
writer who knows him well has this to say: “As a journalist he combines
two qualities not often found together, discretion and brilliancy. The
former quality was well exemplified in his editorial course during the
recent crisis in the history of the Irish National movement. He handles
political topics ably, and in the treatment of the still broader social
and economic questions, writes with the strength and spirit worthy of
the associate and successor of that apostle of human liberty and human
brotherhood, John Boyle O’Reilly.”
In truth, the one thing most essentially felt in this writer, whether
in prose or poetry, is his sanity. There is no buncombe in the former,
no mawkishness nor pedantic prettiness in the latter. His genius has
no pose. So much the better for his fame and future. Mr. Roche’s
prose works are: “The Story of the Filibusters,” a subject dear to a
poet’s heart, and the “Life of John Boyle O’Reilly,” his chief and
friend. This volume was the work of ten weeks, and that in the hours
free from his editorial charge. It was a feat that few men could so
successfully achieve. It had to be done. No sacrifice was too great
for Roche to make for his dead friend. That his health did not give
way after the sleeplessness, work and worry of those ten weeks, is
the wonder of those who stood near to him. Despite the limited time
allowed to Mr. Roche, his biography shows few signs of haste. It is
well and interestingly written, a lasting memorial and a deep tribute
of affection to one of the most lovable characters of the century.
O’Reilly rises from this book as he was. Friendship, while giving
what was his due, restrains all affections that might mar the truth
of the portrait. His stature was felt to be large enough, without any
additions that crumble to time.
There are those of us who hope that the poet, with greater leisure,
will give to O’Reilly’s race a monograph to be treasured and read by
each household, a monograph where the best in O’Reilly’s character
shall be emphasized, and so lovingly set that those who read shall take
heed and learn, while blessing him who gave the setting. The book as
it is costs too much and is hardly compact enough for those who need
the strong lessons of such a life as O’Reilly’s. In a smaller compass
and at less cost, done in that delightful way so thoroughly shown in
his art of paragraphing, the little book would be a guide-post to many
a struggling lad and lass. And to the young of our race must we look
and to the exiled part for the full flowering. As the poet, so is
the man, cheery, unaffected, kindly and man-loving. He has no airs,
lacks the melodramatic of the airy-fairy school. He does not pretend
that the gift of prophecy is his, nor hint that it sleeps amid verbal
ingenuities. He has a song to sing, a tale to tell, and he does it with
all the craft that is in him. In person Mr. Roche is of the medium
height, well-built, rather dark complexioned, with abundant jet-black
hair and brilliant hazel eyes.
In concluding this sketch of a genuine man and true poet, I am tempted
to quote the little poem he so graciously wrote in the fly-leaf of his
“Songs and Satires:”
“They chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone;
The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own;
The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone,
Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her,
Ye left her there alone!
“My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy pain;
The night that hath no morrow was brooding on the main;
But lo! a light is breaking, of hope for thee again;
’Tis Perseus’ sword a-flaming, thy dawn of day proclaiming,
Across the Western main.
O Ireland! O my country! he comes to break thy chain.”