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Canon Sheehan
THE courteous request of the editor of "The Book News Monthly," to say something about my relations with Father Sheehan, implies that the biography of the author of "My New Curate" has had some vogue in general literary circles. This fact is noteworthy as one of a series of paradoxes encircling the career of the reserved pastor of Doneraile.
Lord Castletown, as Vice Chancellor of the Royal University of Ireland, an Eton and Oxford man of ripe experience in every field of public and educational activity, made no secret of what he owed to Father Sheehan in drawing up a national scheme of University education, and added that by the priest's death he lost not only a wise counsellor but also a friend who southed his soul as no one else could. Lord Castletown is not a Catholic. His lady, daughter of the fourth Viscount of Doneraile, built a town hall that this Catholic pastor might have a stage, and concert and billiard rooms for the youth of his flock. Nor was this attraction to the parish priest of Doneraile confined to the people of his home country. The clergy in Australia wanted him for their bishop; the leading magazines in America sought him as a contributor; from every part of Europe and America men who had read his books made pilgrimages to Doneraile to get a glimpse of him. These visitors were not merely curious people, not solely Irish Americans, but men of eminence in the sociological and literary world.
A typical instance of the fascination which the modest country pastor exercised on men of intellect and social standing is our own Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes. As guest of Lord and Lady Castletown he had met the Canon. The philosophical habit of mind and literary tastes of the two men drew them at once permanently to each other, and there sprang up between them
Canon Sheehan
By
Herman J. Heuser
an intimacy fruitful of rare intellectual intercourse, as is manifest from their correspondence covering nearly ten years, to the very eve of the priest's death. Mr. Justice Holmes went back to Ireland when he learned of his friend's illness and sat by his sickbed for many a day, shortly before the end. Now, it is well understood that the American jurist had no conscious leanings toward the Catholic faith, that his sphere of life, his social and professional procecupations separated him at a wide distance from the Irish churchman. Yet no man has shown less reserve in his sincere admiration and deep sympathy for the Canon as a man than did Justice Holmes.
Notwithstanding this international renown, Canon Sheehan (the titles "Canon" and "Doctor" came to him in his latter years and contributed nothing to his fame or his comfort) was at the time of his death the pastor of an obscure village, remote from the travelled road, in the south of Ireland. Fond of study and retirement, he had rarely left his rural home, unless to answer some call of duty as instructor or comforter. The daily routine of his pastoral life was singularly commonplace and restricted. His written comments on what he saw dealt with the everyday life of his people, and they are devoid of heroic incident or of that sensational element which lends piquancy to modern reading. When some years ago I approached Canon Sheehan's brother, Mr. Denis B. Sheehan, auditor of the Government Board at Queenstown, for some data to furnish a life-sketch of his deceased brother which the Messrs. Longmans, Green & Company of London had proposed to issue, he replied that there was no material for such a life; that, apart from the Canon's known reputation as a writer, his career was that of a retiring country pastor, and that his inner life could be of no interest to the general reader.
The Reverend Herman J. Heuser, editor of "The Ecclesiastical Review," is the author of a complete and very excellent biography of "Canon Sheehan of Doneraile." (Longmans, Green & Co., $3.50.) This is the only biography written of the good and well-loved parish priest who is known the world over for his remarkable novels built around the commonplaces of life as he saw them in his immediate surroundings. We owe Dr. Heuser a vote of thanks for the piece of work he has done and feel sure that many will be glad to have this intimate picture of a plain but wonderful man.
—THE EDITOR.
288
That Father Sheehan's stories should have become popular beyond the limited sphere to which they were directly addressed is equally remarkable. His novels, if we except one or two volumes that possess no striking merit, not only deal with the simplest commonplaces of parochial life, but they are confined in scenery and action to the parish of Doneraile or that of the neighboring town of Mallow; part of one volume, Luke Delmege, sketches ecclesiastical life across the English Channel. For the rest, his plots are not only uncompromisingly Catholic, but they centre round the Irish priest's life. Here, too, while there is much Celtic humor, the author fails to satisfy either the taste that runs to clerical gossip or the wish to read about a canonized saint. On the whole, Father Sheehan's writings are the diary of a country pastor, connecting the incidents of parish life by observations and reflections, but in such a fashion that they sketch complete scenes and figures. His object was of course to paint a moral.
All in all, these are modest recommendations to literary celebrity. If one adds to them the fact that the writer never corrected or revised his manuscript, that his calling as an author was to him of wholly secondary interest; that he wrote, as he conversed, because it gave him opportunity to instruct while he was recreating from what he considered his more serious duties as a pastor—visiting the schools and the sick; studying by daily contact the needs of his people, the farmers, the young folk; perfecting educational plans and attending to the sacred worship in his little church—the question why the biography of such a man should meet with more than ordinary local appreciation, presents a psychological problem.
One might, of course, suggest the case of Dr. Primrose finding his Goldsmith. But Canon Sheehan's biography is made up entirely of things which, as the documents show, he himself said or wrote and did. I am credited with having "discovered" the Irish author. That is true in the sense only in which a child going out on a spring morning discovers a crocus. The man that digs for clay may not see the flower; or may bury it with the upturned soil and justify his action by the utilitarian plea that at all events clay lasts longer than flowers. I saw Canon Sheehan only once, and that visit to his home added little or nothing to my knowledge or impression of him as derived from a previous correspondence of many years, and the reading of his books. These volumes give an exact portrait of him, that is, of his character, his aims, his methods, his hopes and ideals. Of these I wrote, mostly in his own terms, in the effort to paint his picture from real life. The biography is not a record, it is a likeness in which, as it were, only one costuming is used, that which he habitually wore. In painting it I borrowed as a light upon the canvas, the estimates of him by his own people; by the scholarly men who sought him in his solitude, or met him on occasions when enterprises of mutual benevolence and education were to be discussed in his neighborhood; but the gentry who often found through him not only the sole means of pacifying their tenants, but also the man whose culture improved their own.
The reader, then, may naturally ask what is the secret of the widespread attraction to the author of "My New Curate." The answer is another paradox. Broadly speaking, I should say that it was his religion. Father Sheehan demonstrated in his personal relations, more even than in his writings, though the la