Irish Story

Jerome Connor, Irish sculptor, was as elusive as an Irish moonbeam. In all the recent arts of Ireland there was no evanescence quite like his. He was the man who was going to carve a memorial to the dead of the Lusitania in the waterfront square of the town of Cobh, an easy gull's night from the Lusitania's ocean grave.

For 18 years the carving of that memorial was imminent. Eighteen years ago Jerome Connor pocketed a substantial advance sum for the work from the memorial committee in New York* and went off to his Dublin studio to get busy. And then Jerome Connor's evanescence began to manifest itself.

Years ago he managed to erect a plinth, as a base for his monument, in the Cobh town square. Months went by; Jerome Connor was nowhere to be seen; nothing appeared on the plinth. Years went by. One fine day a committee of Cobh councilmen referred to the empty plinth as "unsightly."

Jerome Connor's friends, however, stoutly defended him. He was transparently, said they, an artist and a man of parts. They recalled that as a child he had gone from County Kerry to the U.S., where he had worked manfully as foundry-man, professional prize fighter, machinist, sign painter, stonecutter and, finally, sculptor. The versatile Connor also found time to serve as a Japanese intelligence officer in Mexico. But it was with the chisel that he really made his mark--most notably with the Nuns of the Battlefield tablet located in Washington, D.C. He was bound, his friends swore, to provide a superb piece of statuary for the plinth in Cobh.

Committee Meetings. Photographs of the Lusitania project kept appearing in Irish, English and U.S. newspapers. To be sure, the designs appeared to keep changing, but Jerome Connor would from time to time cross to New York and hold explanatory conferences with the memorial committee. Now it was the graceful announcement of a postponement. Now it was the equally graceful revelation of a new date for the unveiling. When the date arrived, however, Jerome Connor had usually volatilized again.

At long last the elders of Cobh cried that he had gone into thin air entirely. They threatened to withdraw their gift of the monument site. But Jerome Connor came forward again, with one of the most melodious of all his explanations.

Said he: "The idea and design of the memorial are being submitted for the approval of the American people. It consists of an exedra and pedestal surmounted by a figure of Peace . . . backed by an illuminated cross. . . ."

Last month Jerome Connor vanished for the last time. At the age of 67, in a Dublin slum, he died. Last week, Jerome Connor's friends formed a committee to have his work completed by another sculptor in order to "save Ireland's honor."

* Among its members: William H. Vanderbilt (chairman), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mrs T Borden Harriman, Owen D. Young.

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