‘Time, Energy and Brass’ Why Studies Did Not Fail

Abstract

Studies • volume 106 • number 422 209 ‘Time, Energy and Brass’: Why Studies Did Not Fail Declan O’Keeffe Studies first saw the light of day in March 1912. It was inspired by the French Jesuit publication, Études, established in 1856, from which it took its name, and modelled on the more recent America, first published by the American Jesuits in 1909. It was not itself the first effort at publishing a journal of this kind by the Jesuits in Ireland but actually the third, following in the wake of the Lyceum (1889) and the New Ireland Review (1894). As the direct descendant of these, it was the latest in the apostolic succession of publications attached to Cardinal Newman’s Catholic University and the Jesuit-run University College which evolved from Newman’s short-lived institution. This line of succession had commenced with Newman’s Atlantis, founded in 1858, ‘In order to afford the faculty … an organ in which they could give to the public the results of their studies’.1 For a variety of reasons, the Catholic University had failed to flourish and Newman had soon returned to England. In 1883, following the establishment of the Royal University as an examining body which – unlike the Catholic University – could award degrees, control of what had become its principal constituent college, University College, on St Stephen’s Green, was taken over by the Jesuits, and they supplied most of the faculty members. The eventual prospering of a university which – unlike the so-called ‘godless colleges’, forbidden to their flocks by the Irish bishops – Catholics could attend was an important factor in promoting their full participation in the professional, intellectual and cultural life of their own country. The Jesuit journals established in those years were designed to play their part in that process. Of those mentioned, the Lyceum had made way for the New Ireland Review in 1894 and the latter had continued publication until 1911. Meanwhile, The Irish Monthly, founded as early as 1873 as a devotional magazine, had evolved into a landmark Irish literary journal, which would continue to appear until 1954. Studies alone has continued in existence, appearing without fail four ‘Time, Energy and Brass’: Why Studies Did Not Fail 210 Studies • volume 106 • number 422 times a year for over a century since its inception, a singular achievement for an Irish journal of any kind. Much has been written recently about its success and its importance in intellectual debate over these years. But the circumstances surrounding its foundation and its precarious early days are not widely known. This article seeks to shed some light on the period from 1912–20, when, from a combination of financial difficulties and human resource problems, the fledgling magazine might well have foundered. The role of Tom Finlay The indefatigable Thomas Finlay SJ (1848–1940), professor of philosophy and economics at University College, was involved in the foundation of all of the Jesuit journals mentioned, as well as being editor of the Lyceum and the New Ireland Review. He also founded the radical Irish Homestead (1895), mouthpiece of the Irish co-operative movement (of which body he was a cofounder ). He recognised the importance of the written word and, in particular, of periodicals in polite society. In the Irish Homestead he wrote, ‘Not to have a publication is to be in danger of being thought insignificant’.2 The Lyceum and its successors, the New Ireland Review and Studies, provided the loci for a series of conversations between those who saw themselves as the movers and shakers in Irish Catholic society at the time and as the architects of a ‘new Ireland’. While they were not official publications of the now Jesuit-run institution on St Stephen’s Green, they were closely tied to it, covered most of its lifetime and were ‘considered to reflect in a large measure … the mind of the choicest spirits of the old University College’.3 These were magazines founded by Irish Jesuits as opposed to necessarily being ‘Irish Jesuit magazines’and they did not all bear the ‘imprimatur’of the Society of Jesus. Indeed, in 1890 Finlay’s ‘outspokenness and independence of thought’ led him into conflict with the...