THE GREAT "J.J."

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1074, 13 March 1911, Page 6

THE GREAT "J.J."

AN UNUSUAL SORT OF CURATE, SEETHING IRELAND,

' (By jiQX)

I wish to say a good, word for tho cable man. Let it bo admitted that too often ho sends us news we don't particularly want, and withholds tho intelligence that we most fervently desire. Let us grumble to any extent at the meagreness of his message, and their cryptbgranimic character. I do not and will not condone any of his sins of omission' or commission. But I thank him for; telling us. that the Rev. J. 0. Hannay is better known as "George'A. Birmingham." I do not say that my thanks should be counted to him for journalistic righteousness. Very likely ho ought to have'., sent some other information instead of what Mr. Hannay told the Sinn Fchumceting about the mixed marriages quostion. Tho message that has rejoiced mo may :be .another ..instance of tho errancy of tho cablo man's theory of news values. Or wo may owo it merely to tho fortuitous juxtaposition of scissors, paste, and a paragraph of convenient length. But. idlo questionings aside, I hope' I am not tho only newspaper reader who, until two or three days .ago, knew so much and so little about George A. Birmingham that we were filled with grati- , tude;whcn we learnt his real name, his vocation, as indicated by the prefix "Rev.," and his standing as an authority (to Sinn Fein and the cable man, at any rate)/ on the attitude of tho Irish people towards mixed marriages. What we knew mado us want to know more, were it over so little. We had searched the referenco books, in 'vain. They were copious .on "Birmingham', Bishop of,' and so-on; but of "Birmingham, Georgo A.," never' a word. Wo now find that they are equally bilcnt- on the Rev. J. 0. -Hannay. Of him we know only what the cable man has just told us and what we had discovered in his books. And, of course, tho best is in the books. The author of "Spanish Gold" is a genius and a great humorist. He is proved a genius by his achievement in creating the character of the Rev. Joseph John Meklon, better known (the cable man would say) as "J.J." Now, I despiso and mistrust all such common and facile declarations as that Mr. So-and-So is tho new- Dickens, and Jlr. Such-and-Such is only to be compared with Homer at his best, .and .1 must therefore not be supposed to mean any more than I say, nvhen I testify (as I hereby do) that "J.J." is to me us much and as enjoyable company as Falstaff, who was created by William Shakespeare, or Sahauel' Johnson, who was created (in the literary sense) by James Boswell, or Charles Lamb, who 'was created (again in the literary sense) by himself. I hasten to add—in case this should meet the eye of any of those eccentric, though numerous, people, who read nothing 'but novels and newspapers—that . "Spanish Gold" is a story, which can be read, without any intellectual effort. Also, as I have already hinted, it is amusing. , No printed ; pages have made me laugh'longer, louder, or more happily than those of "Spanish Gold." ' The inventions and discoveries of ."J.J." give ono the sort of laughter that promotes tho flow of the gastric, juices, opens the pores of the skin, encourages the liver, : , kills disease germs,, arrests, decay of the teeth, and makes the hair grow. Talk of laughter as an aid to digestion! After Teading "Spanish Gold," anybody could digest all the keys of the Terrace Gaol. I don't want, anybody to tnko Mr. Huunay's humour on trust, but I am not going to give samples. "J.J." is too discursive and volublo : for quotation. Tho only tiling for people to do is to read the book for themselves. I am not going to tell how'the Rev. Joseph John, most imaginative, j garrulous, . free-and-easy, happy-go-lucky—in. a. word, most uncuratical of curates, carried off his staid, elderly friend, Major Kent, to search for lost Armada treasure on the little'Connaught island of Inishgowlan; how he passed off the Major within a few hours as a professor of sea-serpents,, and .as a . mining expert in tho pay of the LordLieutenant and the Chief Secretary; how he mystified and circumvented tho other treasure-seekers, and the emissary of tho Congested Districts Board, and Thomas O'Flaherty Pat, and even the Chief Secretary, and everybody but Father Mulcrono, and how he. finally solved the mys-: tery of the .hidden gold, and married the little girl at' Rathmines. Peoplo who •want to know about these things must read the book for themselves. I reopened it .just now, in the midst of writing the. last sentence but one,'and I was .unable'to close it until I had read over again "J.J.'s" explanation of how Higginbotham's bed became full of oars and broken glass; his endeavour to show a > Cabinet Minister tho difference between liragmatisin and telling lies; his much more successful raid upon the said Cab- ' inet Minister's cigars; and the verbal .victory by which he talked that wrathful statesman into helplessness. The conversational powers of''J .J." aro wonderful. He is at one and the same time logical and 'unreasonable, sensible, and nonsensical, trnthful_ and mendacious. He is unanswerable, and he always gets his own ,way. His nncuraticality—by which I mean his unlikeness to the usual curate of fiction and tho stage—is partly accounted for when one knows that his author can write "Rev." before his own name. It ■ is one parson's way of saying that the clergy also aro men. The reader, however conscientious ho mSiy be, cannot (unless -lie is mentally abnormal) disapof tha impudent inventions, • the towering mendacities of "J.J." Ho tells any number ol what fomo of his friends call lies, but tho reader only admires him tho more. And tlin only objectionable thing about the book is that it keeps one up when ono ought to be abed, and Makes one laic for appointments. Mr. Hannay has written other • books, but tho only other one I-have come across is "The Seething Pot." I am looking out for his latest, in which J.J. reappears. "The Seething Pot" is a good book, bet quite differont from "Spanish Gold." It is not funny, though it has funny bits. It just succeeds in being a novel, while its true business is to make a picture of social and political Ireland. Most of the characters are types—the agent,, the priest, the Protestant rector, landlords of sorts, 'Celtic revivalists, home industries enthusiasts, and so forth. Some of them arc portraits. John O'Neill, the Nationalist leader, who despised Irishmen and loved Ireland, and.who said to a Prime Minister, "I have no objection whatever to selling my 80 votes to you for any purpose, good or bad, but I must have my price." is, of course,' tho late Charles' Stewart Parnell. Tho "price," of course, was an independent Parliament for Ireland. There is much political satiro in the book, but scarcely any propaganda. Young Sir Gerald Geoghegan, the Australianborn Irishman, who unexpectedly inherits a great estate in Connaiight, and determines to devote himself to the semco-of Ireland, has to confess bewilderment and failure. "Tho misery of my life lies in this—that it will he happy. I shall livo here. I shall be loved, and warmed., and fed. I shall grow slowiy older, and in tho end I shall die peaceably. I shall be quite happy, but I shall do nothing. In • the end I suppose I shall come to not even love Ireland." That last and worst affliction, if his wisest Desmond O'llara, jourpal ist, is right, will not come upon him. "Would we," asks O'Hera, "love Ireland so well as wo do if wo had not got to love her in spite of hex breaking our hearts?" Hr likens Ireland to the seething pot of Jeremiah's vision. The scum may bubble and spill, but there is something good underneath. T do not know whether the Rev. J. 0. nannay is right or wrong about mixed irrnrriages. but I lmyo a great respect for anything ho may say about Ireland.