Irish Jesuit Province

Are Catholic Writers Handicapped?Source: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 38, No. 439 (Jan., 1910), pp. 1-6Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20502731 .

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THE IRISH MONTHLY

JANUARY, i9Io

ARE CATHOLIC WRITERS HANDICAPPED?

By THE EDITOR

I HAVE rashly undertaken to give some sort of answer to this question *: Are Catholic writers handicapped ? There

may be one or two persons present so innocent, so utterly unturfy, as not to know what " handicapped " means. For

their benefit I have consulted The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, which is coming out by instalments on so vast a scale, that I am not sanguine about being able to

wait till they reach the letter Z. But they reached the letter H long ago, and they devote more than two very long columns of very minute type to the history of the word and its various

meanings, with extracts from many books, old and new, showing how the word has been used. It dates back to the seventeenth century; but in the transferred general sense in which I am using it to-night, it is scarcely older than the year 1850. In its proper meaning, therefore, to handicap is to weight race horses in proportion to their known or assumed powers in order to equalize their chances; but in the general transferred sense that we are giving it, to handicap is to place anyone at a dis advantage by the imposition of any embarrassment, impediment, or disability. That is the sense in which we ask the question: Are Catholic writers handicapped ? Does the Catholic faith act as an embarrassment, an impediment, a disability in the career of a Catholic writer ? Does it give, not an equal, but a decidedly unequal chance in the race of life ?

This question was started a few months ago in the United

States. To the July number of St. John's Quarterly, published at

* In Iona Hall, North Great George's Street, Dublin.

VOL. xxxviii.-No. 439. I

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2 THE IRISH MONTHLY

Syrncuse, New York, an article entitled " The Young Catholic Writer: What shall he do?" was contributed by a very

clever priest, the Rev. John Talbot Smith, who contended that such a writer is fatally handicapped, penalized, disabled, and that his only chance is to keep his Catholicity out of sight. " Publishers and their readers of manuscripts," says Father Smith, " have a feeling against writers known to be Catholic, and it takes but a trifle to decide against a meritorious book. Critics also have the same prejudice. Secular editors refuse recognition to Catholic writers almost by instinct. The young

writer must keep the fact of his faith in the background until he has won his place in public favour. His books must be as indifferent in tone as if an indifferentist wrote them. He must

avoid all Catholic gatherings, associations, and movements. His voice should never be heard in protest against French persecution; " and then he goes on to mention some topics that interest Catholics in the United States. About these, the Catholic who wants to " get on " must be discreetly silent.

This sombre view has been combated very vigorously in the November number of the New York magazine, the Catholic World, which contains two articles on the subject. Not one only but two-and this seems to me a fine piece of editing on the part of the Paulist editor. Most editors would have said to the second would-be contributor: " We regret to say that

we cannot avail ourselves of your excellent article, as another ,on the same subject is already in type." But in reality the two essays gain greatly in interest by being placed near each other, though they are on the same side of the question. The writers of them are the most purely literary of the many Catholic women who in the United States ply their clever pens professionally. Most of these, like Miss Waggaman, Christian Reid, Marion Taggart, Anna Sadlier, and Grace Keon, confine themselves to bright and wholesome story-telling; but Miss

Agnes Repplier and Miss Imogen Guiney, especially the former, neglect that most popular form of literature, and have devoted themselves to more thoughtful, more studious, and more critical

departments of literary labour. When the University of Penn sylvania, a completely secular body with no Catholic proclivities, conferred on Miss Repplier the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, Dr. Howard Furness congratulated her on having "revived an art almost lost in these days-that of the essayist. There is," he continued, " no form of the essay that she has not touched, and she has touched nothing that she has not adorned."*

* The word nothing is always printed in this phrase as it is printed here; but I think it is nonsense unless you print "no thing " separately

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ARE CATHOLIC WRITERS HANDICAPPED? 3

I hope 'that those who heard him knew that he was only trans lating Dr. Johnson's Latin epitaph on poor Oliver Goldsmith; but at any rate the compliment and the occasion of it show what a standing Agnes Repplier has gained in the literary world by her essays gathered into many volumes-Books and Men, Points of View, Essays in Idleness, Essays in Miniature, and several others.

These delightful books have been welcomed eagerly by the general public, and most of the separate items they are composed of were previously welcomed by the editors of the chief magazines. Therefore, Miss Repplier is fully justified in running (as she says) " the risk of being profoundly egotistical," by appealing to her own experience. She was obliged to seek the best market that she could find for her wares, yet she has never found it necessary to ignore, much less conceal, her faith. " Nor have I,'" she adds, " ever been able to trace any failure on my part to an editor's distaste for my creed. . . . Nor have I ever been asked by editor or publisher to omit, to alter, to modify a single sentence, because that sentence proclaimed my religious belief."

Father Smith's other antagonist, Miss Guiney, takes a somewhat wider view of the subject, and admits the justice of some of his complaints, though she demurs to many of his statements, and protests against the pessimistic spirit of his artide. That article touched upon many topics overlooked by

Miss Repplier, who, as we have seen, was chiefly concerned with the case of a Catholic writer who wants to contribute to the periodical literature of the day. Even if we limit the question thus, I fear we could hardly take such a cheerful view of the situation --as this accomplished lady does. Perhaps there is greater freedom in such matters in the United States; but would not a Protestant writer be able to discuss a much greater number of acceptable subjects, and discuss them from a point of view more acceptable to a great majority of editors and readers ? We Catholics are, thanks be to God, to a certain extent, outsiders. " The world loves its own." That is a saying, not only of Holy Writ, but of our Redeemer Himself; and yet it is not too sacred for the present context, However earnestly some of us may deplore the loss of the ancient Celtic tongue, it seems providential that heresy should not have had a monopoly of English-that the Catholic Church should have, chiefly through the sons and daughters of Ireland, some com

mand of this pliant and copious language, so powerful an

as two words. What noun has "that" for its antecedent? Not

nothing" but " thing." Yet I confess the original Latin comes under

my displeasure, too, " Nihil non tetigitJ et nihil tetigit quod non ornavit."

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4 THE IRISH MONTHLY

exponent of human feelings, so skilful an interpreter of human thought, so universal an agent in human intercourse. It is well that Catholic writers of English should be able to supply some antidote for the heretical poison of which English is too often the vehicle, so that it may sometimes defend the truth, though it can hardly cease to be predominantly anti-Catholic or at least un-Catholic. In such a literature and in such a world, Catholcs must always be in a certain sense outsiders, foreigners, intruders; and to this extent the Catholic writer

may sometimes feel himself handicapped in the race. I mooted this point a while ago, that conditions may not

be quite the same on both sides of the Atlantic; but the com batants over there-in the little fight in which I am taking part unasked as umpire-have not kept to their own side exclusively. One of them, for instance, brings forward cas a proof of -the liberality that now prevails, this fact that certain Protestant writers, who are conspicuous for their splendid fairness in treating of Catholic topics, are special favourites.

with the reading public; and she (Miss Guiney) names in this very creditable connexion Dr. James Gairdner, Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. G. K. Chesterton, and Mr. William Hurrell Mallock. God bless all these gifted men for the noble assistance they have given to the cause of historical truth.

Another proof that those American friends of ours included these little British Islands within their purview, is that in

mentioning Catholics who have won universal recognition in spite of their Catholicity, along with some whom you probably never heard of, they name Canon William Barry of Leamington and Canon Patrick Augustine Sheehan of Doneraile. They omit several who might well be named in this category, such as Dorothea Gerard (Madame De Longard de Longarde), sister to Father John Gerard, editor of the Month, whose thirty third novel, The Red-hot Crown, is (according to the Tablet} " a work free from the slightest sympton of weariness, staleness, or over-writing," and, on the contrary, is " remarkable for its vivacity, freshness, and originality." Still more, that bold and brilliant champion of all Catholic causes, Hilaire Belloc, ought to have been mentioned as a Catholic who vaunts his faith on every possible and impossible occasion, and yet is en couraged by pubhshers and public to go on for ever writing On Everything or On Nothing.*

To treat our subject with any decent approach to com pleteness would require a more systematic division of it than I can

* The titles of two of his delightful collections of essays.

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ARE CATHOLIC WRITERS HANDICAPPED? 5

now attempt. For instance, what about the articles and books that do not aim at competing for the favour of the general public, but are addressed to Catholics exclusively ? How is a Catholic writer handicapped with regard to these ? Father Talbot Smith answers: " By the torpidity of Catholic publishers and the indifference of Catholic readers." Is this another instance of the application of the Gospel saying " The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." Are Catholic publishers energetic enough in puffing their wares ? Are they persistent enough in thrusting them under the noses of the public ? Are our business methods as satisfactory as those of the trade world of booksellers and publishers ? Is there among us a tradition of painstaking perseverance, of attention to small things ? See how the firms of Murray, Longman, Chambers, and Blackwood are still (in some cases after more than a hundred years) managed and controlled by

Murrays, Longmans, Chambers, and Blackwoods. We have nothing to match this among the Catholic booksellers and publishers of Great Britain and Ireland.

On the other hand, as for the buyers of books, I fear that there are a great many individuals, families, and communities belonging to the Catholic Church in these countries who do not contribute anything like their proper quota towards the success of Catholic books and periodicals. Newspapers, snuff, cigars, tobacco, porter, whiskey-how much cash dribbles away on things like these from the pockets of people who cannot afford to lay out a shilling on a good book !

This want of appreciation for books is perhaps the explana tion of what looks very like dishonesty on the part of some

who would be greatly shocked at being called dishonest. I have before my mind the conduct of some as regards returning books that they borrow, and the conduct of others as regards paying for the journals and magazines they sub scribe to. Both these points are touched upon in a curious passage that caught my eye lately in the fifth large volume of The Works o/ Bishop England-a very able and devoted Irish priest who laboured in Cork a hundred years ago, and then went to the United States to be a pioneer Bishop of Charleston, and to do an immense work under immense difficulties. At page 364 an article is quoted from the Boston Pilot of February 20, I835, by some J. S. B., who ends by saying: " If those who are able will follow the example of some of their neighbours and pay up their bills, some of which have been standing for years, and if others will return four-fifths of the books belonging to us now in their possession, our purse will be heavier by a

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6 THE IRISH MONTHLY

number of hundreds, our library will be augmented by the addition of two hundred volumes, our own debts will be paid, we will give them receipts, ask no questions, and bid them go in peace.

"

Now why should these people treat a borrowed book differently from a borrowed umbrella ? Why not return them both punctually with thanks ? Why should not a subscription for a magazine be paid as scrupulously as a grocer's bill ? I have never forgiven an old P.P. in Co. Clare who is dead this

many a year-I never knew his name-who, when J. F. O'Gorman, the Limerick bookseller, could not get him to pay his bill for the Dublin Review, and threatened to cut him off his list, replied, " Thank God, Mr. O'Gorman, you are neither

my butcher nor my baker. " His beef and mutton and his bread-he could not let these;be stopped; but.literature, and especially religious literature, does not come, it seems, under the rules of common honesty.

I wonder are these and other similar social shortcomings more rife among us Catholics than among corresponding classes of Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Anglicans, and the various other sects?

This is as much as I have been able to fasten down on paper of the thoughts suggested to me by the question: " Are Catholic writers handicapped ? " The Catholic writer and the Catholic everything-else are handicapped chiefly by themselves-by their sloth, by their want of earnest purpose and quiet perseverance, by their readiness to be content with much less than their best; worse still, by positive neglect of duty, by idleness, by dissipation, by shameful weakness and sin. Let us take it seriously to heart, and see how far we can, with God's help, be free from all such handicaps and impediments in a, far more important matter than the wvriting of books-the making sure that our names be wvritten in the Book of Life.

YESTERDAY

NESTLING among the woods it lay, The home our happy childhood knew,

Where all the livelong summer day We sported where the hazels grew:

When we were gayest of the gay Dear heart 1 it seems but yesterday.

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