It is very seldom that an Irishman lacks the gift of speech. Take away our Irish orators and journalists, and this would be a dumb and cheerless country indeed. Here, for instance, is an offhand list of Irish writers of the past and present:
Capt. Mayne Reid, the idol of American boys, and a soldier in our War with Mexico; John Boyle O’Reilly, the editor and poet; FitzJames O’Brien, who wrote the famous short story, “The Diamond Lens”; Ignatius Donnelly, the most versatile and picturesque public man of his generation in Minnesota; Edwin Lawrence Godkin, of the New York Evening Post, a fighter in the high realm of national morality; Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution; Patrick Walsh, who was editor of the Augusta Chronicle and represented Georgia in the United States Senate; and Joseph Medill, founder of the Chicago Tribune.
Among those still living are James Jeffrey Roche, now in the consular service; Joseph Fitzgerald, author and translator; William M. Laffan, proprietor of the New York Sun; George T. Oliver, of the Pittsburg Gazette; Eugene M. O’Neill, of the Pittsburg Dispatch; John McLeod Keating, who won fame by his fight against yellow fever in the South; and John F. Finerty, the eloquent founder of the Chicago Citizen.
Three great publishers of Irish birth have been Mathew Carey, of Philadelphia, the friend of Lafayette; Robert Bonner, founder of the New York Ledger; and Patrick Donahoe, founder of the Boston Pilot and Donahoe’s Magazine. The name of William Desmond O’Brien, too, deserves to be included in this paragraph. Mr. O’Brien was a wealthy contractor of New York who devoted eighteen years of his life to the preparation of an Encyclopedia Hibernica, and who died, broken-hearted, in 1893, with his great project unfinished. Among Irish-American publishers now living, the most notable is P. F. Collier, founder of Collier’s Weekly.
This power of expression, which is typical of the Irish race, rises frequently to the heights of art. The Goddess of Liberty, on the dome of the Capitol at Washington, was chiseled by the hands of Thomas Crawford, who was of Irish parentage, and whose son is the well-known novelist, F. Marion Crawford. Many an American city has been enriched by the genius of Augustus St. Gaudens, one of the best beloved and most eminent of American sculptors. The statue upon which St. Gaudens is now working, in his Vermont studio, is a heroic figure of Parnell for the City of Dublin, St. Gaudens’ birthplace. Among the landscape painters, Edward Gay, of New York, has held a place for forty years; and another veteran artist of Irish birth is William Magrath, who painted “On the Ould Sod”—a clever study of Irish character that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
It is to Dublin, also, that we are indebted for Victor Herbert, our popular conductor and composer, and for Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, the famous band master of Civil War times. There have not been so many Irish singers of operatic rank, although the Irishman who cannot sing at all is as rare as a white blackbird. Probably the most notable was Catherine Hayes, who arrived in this country in 1851, married an American husband and settled in California. Among the best-known dramatic stars of Irish birth now upon the stage are Ada Rehan and James O’Neil, and the elder John Drew was a son of Erin. Andrew Mack and Chauncey Olcott are the most popular of those who portray Irish life.
That the Irish have been in politics goes without saying. In most states they have furnished more than their share, both of bosses and of reformers. Richard Croker, the Tammany Hall leader, and Charles O’Conor, who overthrew the Tweed Ring, fairly represent the two contending forces in American political life. So much has been written indiscriminately of Irish bossism that it is nothing but fair to state that some of the present leaders of the “anti-graft” movement are Mayor Dunne, of Chicago; Mayor Fagan, of Jersey City; District Attorney Moran, of Boston; and Hugh McCaffrey, a member of Mayor Weaver’s cabinet, in Philadelphia. The late Patrick A. Collins, congressman, consul-general in London and mayor of Boston, was for years the foremost Irishman in New England.
In the present Congress there are dozens of members of Irish descent, but only three of Irish birth—Senator Thomas M. Patterson, of Denver, who has been for thirty years a national figure; Representative Bourke Cockran, who is unequaled in the Celtic flow of his eloquence; and Delegate Bernard S. Rodney, of New Mexico. Senator Thomas Kearns, one of the solid pillars of the state of Utah, was born in Canada of Irish parents; and James D. Phelan, the well-known Californian, was the son of a wealthy Irish merchant of San Francisco. Three other public men of Irish birth are Thomas Taggart, of Indianapolis; William McAdoo, of New York; and ex-Governor James E. Boyd, of Nebraska. And no Irishman will ever allow the fact to be forgotten that James G. Blaine, one of the greatest figures in all American political history, was of Irish descent. His great-grandfather, Ephraim Blaine, bore an honorable part in the Revolutionary struggle, and far back in colonial days the Blaines were among the hardiest pioneers of the Cumberland Valley.
Rising to the religious world, we find many noted Irish names, alike in the Protestant and Catholic churches. There are no fewer than twenty-three bishops and five archbishops in this country who learned their first prayers on Irish soil. This may also be said of Cardinal Gibbons, who was born in the United States, but taken to Ireland in infancy. The five archbishops are John M. Farley, John J. Glennon, John Ireland, John Joseph Keane, and Patrick John Ryan. When was there ever before such a distinguished quintet of Johns?
Like St. Gaudens and Herbert, Dr. William S. Rainsford hails from Dublin. Thirty years ago he entered New York an unknown young curate, and proceeded to establish the foremost institutional church in America, having at the present time more than 5,000 members. Unfortunately, overwork has recently compelled him to resign.