JOSEPH O’CONNOR, EDITOR, AUTHOR AND POET, WHO DECEASED AT ROCHESTER, N. Y., OCTOBER 9TH, 1908.
Sketch of His Life. One of His Favorite Poems.
A great editor laid down forever a brilliant, beautiful and useful pen when Joseph O’Connor, the Rochesterian, passed into Eternity from his home in Rochester on the night of October 9, 1908.
In a few hours the news had flashed to all points of the compass, bringing a pause and a hush of sadness to thousands of homes, from Maine to California, wherein his unique personality was known and loved through his nearly forty years of journalistic leadership.
Born in New York State of Irish parents in 1841, he was educated in the best schools of his native State for the practice of the law, but he early chose journalism instead of law for his life work and he made a magnificent success of it.
He brought to the work a mind well-stocked with more of the true history of the world than falls to the lot of most students of history. He brought to his work a mind imbued with the true Christian philosophy of the Catholic catechism. He had formed from youth up a habit of broad, kindly outlook on things in general. He assumed and maintained a manly attitude in politics, uncompromising in principle, but tolerant of other men’s opinions. He had a born poet’s appreciation of true poetry, and a literary judgment that came to be universally respected. He had a gift of expression as a model of unique, finished, sincere writing. And his humility was the best of it all.
He won his readers to his way of seeing things as much by the very apparent unconsciousness of his own superiority as by his logical presentation of his subject.
Through all his long life of varied editorship and many degrees of political and literary success, there is no pessimism charged to his account, no animosity, no bitterness; not even discourtesy.
Many a time in the heat of a political campaign he had to strike at a champion of the other side, but his blow was always leonine. It was a settler of the subject in dispute, but it left no ugly memories—no galling personalities ever marred his political battles.
He scored his successes by the friendly hand shakes of his worsted antagonists.
He prized his independence in politics, and never jeopardized it by accepting favors or honors from friend or foe.
With one or two exceptions, every change that he made in his position was due to his insistent desire to maintain his personal independence as a writer. He left the Indianapolis Sentinel because he did not wish to conform to its political policy. His editorial work on the New York World became irksome on this same account. He broke with the managers of the Buffalo Courier in 1886 because he disliked Grover Cleveland and because he did not propose to stultify his editorial utterances in a newspaper whose proprietor was specially friendly at the time to the Buffalo President. He is said to have refused a flattering offer from Charles A. Dana to become editorial writer on the New York Sun because he did not believe he could conform to Mr. Dana’s ideas, however much he might admire the genius of that brilliant editor.
He set his editorial chair on a calm high level and from it addressed daily a clientele that loyally followed him in all his journeyings through fields of philosophy, history, poetry, romance and even the common things of everyday life. To read him once was to seek him again and remain his disciple.
He might have made his fame rest on his poetry, but he subordinated that gift to his passion for regular, constant work in his editorial chair, indulging in flights of fancy only as a pastime.
Mr. O’Connor was a master of the English language; indeed, it is doubtful if any man on the American press ever wrote it better. Some twenty years ago a correspondent of the New York Sun asked Mr. Dana for information regarding literary style. In the course of his reply he said:
“Among the newspaper writers of our own country and of the present day, perhaps the best style is that of Mr. Joseph O’Connor, the editor of The Post Express of Rochester. It is terse, lucid, calm, argumentative, and without a trace of effort or affectation.”
After quoting this tribute, said Father Cronin of the Buffalo Union and Times: “It is no small source of pride and gratification to us to know that one of the great princes of American journalism is an Irish American. Mr. O’Connor’s pen is like the Damascene blade, polished and beautiful, yet withal so smooth and keen that the victim of its blow is severed in twain almost without realizing the catastrophe. Long may Joseph O’Connor wield it, as he has always wielded it, a menace to evil and a swift and sure protection to the right.”
All over the State of New York the daily and weekly papers, the day after his death, contained most flattering and affectionate tributes to his memory, and these were echoed and reinforced since by the press of the whole country, for “The Rochesterian” gave the key to the right solution of many a question to hundreds of editors who sought in the exchanges for “J. O’C’s” latest.
Said the Rochester Times: “For intelligence and insight he had few peers among the great journalists of his time; but in addition he had what some more renowned than he have lacked—absolute bravery of conviction. His pen was unconditionally consecrated to truth as he saw truth; and nothing could weaken his allegiance. It is familiar history that he could have held some of the highest posts in American journalism had he been willing to bend his honor or relax his sincerity.”
“Intellectually,” says the Syracuse Herald, “he was one of the frankest and bravest of men, never hesitating to champion a cause that appealed to his reason or humanity because it happened to be temporarily unpopular.”
“Journalism,” says the Troy Press, “loses a philosophical writer, a brilliant scholar and a veritable ‘knowledge-box’ in the death of Joseph O’Connor of The Post Express. He was one of the few editors whose talent and resources were so abounding that adequately to replace him is practically out of the question.”
“He set before the men of his profession,” says the Rochester Herald, “an example of frankness, courage, and independence which is emulated wherever it is possible to follow it, and is admired and envied where conditions do not permit of its acceptance. The utterances of newspapers, elsewhere in the country as well as here, are more sincere, more fearless, and freer from cant and sham because of the ideals revered and upheld by Joseph O’Connor.”
“Mr. O’Connor,” says the Rochester Times, “was a man of extensive acquaintance, of legions of friends but with few ‘cronies.’ Among these favored few might be numbered Rev. Louis A. Lambert of Scottsville, editor-in-chief of the New York Freeman’s Journal; Rev. John L. Codyre of Fairport, Judge John D. Lynn, and a few others. His friendships were for literary characters and their conversation was of the ultra intellectual thought. Abstruse theological and philosophical problems were discussed with as much freedom as ordinary persons talk of the weather. Yet Mr. O’Connor in his kindly, lovable, winsome way could talk entertainingly on the commonest topic with any acquaintance and his was the tactful manner which never made one feel his smallness before him.”
Such is the tribute paid him by the Rochester, N. Y., Herald of October 10th, 1908, in its editorial column.
The Society, in response to its request for further information for its archives, received the following communication from Mr. O’Connor’s lifelong friend, Edmond Redmond, Esq., which we print in full:
230 Spencer St., Rochester, N. Y.,
November 13, 1908.
Mr. Thomas Z. Lee, Secretary-General American Irish Historical Society,
Providence, R. I.
Dear Sir: I duly received your letter of the 5th instant requesting such material as I may have in relation to a biographical sketch of the late Joseph O’Connor.
I assume that you have seen the notices printed in Rochester and other newspapers immediately following his decease. I regret that I can add but little to those eulogies, which were, I have reason to believe, written by intimate associates and came from the heart.
I thought that less was said by his recent friends about his interest in Ireland and her cause than deserves to be known. And on that point I can testify from acquaintance with him that few things were nearer or dearer to him than the land of his ancestors. His pen and voice were ever ready to work in the cause of Ireland, and I have no doubt that his personal fortunes, in the ordinary commercial sense, suffered from the persistence with which, all through life, he continued to bring to the attention of an indifferent public the wrongs inflicted on the people of the island. It was, however, a labor of love with him, and his zeal in the cause continued to the end. He had no confidence in secret societies effecting any great good in Irish politics; but he gave hearty support to the Land League in Parnell’s day. He was a delegate to the famous Land League convention of 1886 in Chicago, and was urged by friends to let them propose him for President of the American branch of the Society. He has been heard to say that he was indebted to the Land League for the experience which enabled him in later years to feel at home on his feet while engaged in public speaking on other subjects.
His regard for Ireland could not have been stronger had he been a native of the land, and it was evidently inherited. Years ago he heard a friend humming “As Slow Our Ship Her Foamy Track,” and said that when his father was leaving Ireland a group gathered about him on the deck of the ship as he sung that song, and before it was finished they were all in tears.
Although usually slow to anger, he was liable to be moved on hearing the creditable deeds of plain Irishmen ascribed, as they are so often, to the “Scotch-Irish,”—a designation which he detested, employed as it usually is to detract from Ireland the reflected honor to which she is entitled from the worthy fame of her children.
If the nature and scope of the work which you have in hand permits of eulogy, it would be impossible to speak too highly of O’Connor’s character. In both public and private life he was the soul of honor. His talents were of the first order and always exerted toward good ends. His integrity was unbounding. Like Gay his “manners were gentle, his affections mild.” In a word he was a really great and uncommonly good citizen, a true and noble man. One of his favorite poets was Goldsmith and I cannot better end this too brief sketch than with what the author of “The Deserted Village” said of Reynolds:—
To tell you my mind.
He has not left a greater or better behind.
Very truly yours,
EDMOND REDMOND.
Mr. O’Connor was the author of many poems, and in 1895 the Putnams brought out a little volume of his modestly entitled “Poems.” Many of the shorter poems in the book are characterized by delicate fancy and graceful rhyming; such poems as “Her Hands,” “Water Lilies,” and the “Wine Song.” He favored these smaller, slighter children of his fancy. He thought the best poem he ever wrote was “The Cavalier Sword,” and next in order he placed “The Fount of Castaly.” In our opinion “Her Hands” is the sweetest and most graceful of them all, and we print it herewith:
HER HANDS.
Sometimes I sit and try to trace
In memory’s records dim and faint,
The features of my mother’s face,
With the calm look of gentle grace
That marked our house’s quiet saint.
The innocence of her blue eyes,
The winning smile about her lips,
Child-simple and yet woman-wise,
Her shining hair, her modest guise,
All come in turn; each fades and slips.
I try to fix them, but in vain;
They waver, and yet will not fuse,
Howe’er imagination strain,
To form the face that it would feign—
Till on a sudden, as I muse
There comes a thought of her dear hands,
All wrinkled, tanned and labor-worn—
And there the simple woman stands,
To meet her duty’s hard demands,
Among the children she has borne.
No work nor written word remains,
Nor picture worthy to approve;
But read in knotted joints and veins,
And tendons strong, and honest stains,
The tale of service and of love.
O hands of ministry, that wrought
In constant care, through weal and woe,
Nor rest by crib or coffin caught,
This pang is mine—I never thought
To kiss your fingers long ago.