Down at Caxton's

by William A. McDermott

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,