GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 December 1934, Page 10

GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM

T . . V . HUMORIST BY ACCIDENT. Two American women who had gone | to' hear “George .A. Birmingham'’ fpre'ach at Dinarci were overheard exchanging opinions afterwards. “Well," said one. “I am' disappointed. I came all the way from St. Briac to hear him preach, and his sermons are not nearly so funny as his books. I scarcely laughed at al).’’; ''. Many people who take up the novelist’s volume of autobiography, “Pleasant Places,” published recently, may be surprised to find. that Canon Hannay is only a humorist by accident. His heart is and always has been in the Church; the books and plays, however successful,.’, were only side issues. His double life has not. however, been withqut it.s embarrassing moments, as witness the incident which he describes' as follows: — “Miss Cathleen Nesbit, not yet a famous actress, was anxious to obtain a part in my: ‘General John Regan.’ She wrote me enclosing a large photograph. , Knowing no other address, she sent the letter to St. Patrick's Cathedral. When • I wont into the clergy's rolling room one Sunday afternoon the letter was lying on the table. Dean Inge, was our preacher that .day, and there was a large gathering of-canons, including the Archbishop of Dublin. “I cut the string of my parcel and uncovered a photograph of a charming young, lady with very little on her. (She had been taken as Perdita, who, apparently, wore only a single garment.) . Our canons, including the Archbishop, who was one of them, discreetly turned their backs. I shuffled the photograph . back “into its paper. But it was no' use attempting any explanation. >My reputation for clerical decorum was gone.” ... PEN-NAME’S ORIGIN. I •The pen name '"Birmingham" was taken for his first novel, lie tells us. because it was a common name in County Mayo, where the scene was set. "The ‘Geoj'ge’ came because I knew no “Birmingham” with that Christian name. The ‘A’ I obtained for the sake of euphony.” The book. “The Seething Pot,” brought him into trouble because he was supposed to have caricatured a local priest—a charge which he emphatically denies. Canon Hannay fells us modestly that he has never been a “best seller.” He made more than one American tour, , but the results do not seem to have been encouraging. “The first had the result of decreasing the sales of my books, and the second very nearly

1 stopped them-altogether. I suppose I • lectured very badly.” He held two charges in Ireland. The first, at Westport. County Mayo, he resigned after 21 years’ residence, because his Nationalist views offended many of his parishioners. The other, at Carnalway, in County Kildare, ho gave up, partly because the violent developments of the. Sinn Fein movement offended him both as an Irishman and a. Christian. Perhaps there were other considerations. Writing, after some years of work in the pleasant cure of Mells, in Somerset, he says: “I loved the Church of Ireland and have to thank! her not only for my baptism and ordination, but for;’ such religion as I have. Yet I woulcLnot go back to her service now. I think the bonds with which she has tied herself would give

me spiritual cramp.” This sense of spiritual alienation from his native land may explain the curious strain of melancholy that underlies the autobiography, despite its many happy and entertaining remin- ! iscences. HIS FIRST PARISH. In his first Irish parish he got into disfavour over his Nationalist, leanings, but those 21 years at Westport, in Co. Mayo, not only provided him with the material for his best stories, but have left him with the happiest memories. There are many characteristic stories of the Mayo peasant. His disbelief in love matches, for example, and his faith in the marriage of arrangement. A young farmer, a friend of mine, once called on me. “I was wishing,” he said, “to speak to your Reverence about Biddy D.” “Yes,” I said, “I hear you are going to marry her.” “I might not then,” he said, “for they’re telling me she has varicose veins in her legs.” ... I couldn’t see what 1 had to do with the matter. I soon learned. “What 1 wanted to ask your Reverence,” he said, “was this: has she or has she not?” .1 had to confess utter ignorance of llie condition of Biddy’s legs. My friend sighed. “That’s pity new,” he said. “I thought your Reverence would be sure to know.” Canon Hannay started his first novel when he was a curate near Dublin shortly after his marriage, but he abandoned it a’fter a talk with his wife. She said, and quite rightly, that I could not devote myself -entirely to the work of the Church if I spent considerable part of my time writing novels. It was a choice between two professions. When the thing was put to mo that way I had no difficulty in j making my choice. 1 did want to be a faithful and good clergyman. 1 did not want particularly to be a novelist. Wo therefore dropped the whole idea of story-writing or novel-writing, and it was not for 15 or 1(5 years that we took it up again. At the very beginning of his wife's long illness, when Ada lay beside an open window looking out on the*'waters of the bay of Tangiers, she said this to me: “I have all my life wanted love more than anything, and 1 have had it.” With me it has been different. I have not consciously hungered much for love or desired it very deeply. Yet it has been given me. and when I thought that 1 was utterly alone I found that it was mine— [ the love of my children, of my friends, 1 of my people. Is there anything else which life has got to give comparable , to that? < 1