Denis Kearney: Sandlot Orator a Chronicle of California
Graduation Date
Summer 1937
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Degree Granting Institution
Catholic University of America
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
Well might the child of the seventies be the distinguished pioneer of to-day who, when I questioned him about the sand-lot orator (having traveled fifty miles to do so) ejaculated:"Denis Kearney! Why write about him?"
Yes, why write about Denis Kearney? Simply because to use the words of the New York Nation of August 1, 1878 - here transcribed into the past tense -
He was a kind of animal for which neither American politics nor manners had made as yet the slightest preparation, and because he was the first to assert a claim which had long been in the air, viz., the claim not simply of the poor man to rule the state, but of the brutal, ignorant, blaspheming ruffian to have his way with the frugal, industrious, prudent and religious.
Harsh words these. From an Eastern journal, true; but withal the consensus of contemporary San Franciscan opinion.
Further, to quote the same source, Kearney "had in one of the foremost communities of the modem world a considerable following and was an object of interest, and even of deference to most of the politicians.” And the San Francisco Argonaut. December 31, 1881, is authority for the statement that "Kearney’s fame ceased to be local and became national." He received mention in the London Times; the St. Petersburg Golos carried articles about him;
readers of Vienna’s Neue Frie Presse followed the stormy career of "this little man." Even the Berliner Tagblatt allotted him space. In short, "all the great journals and periodicals of Christendom" publicized the sand-lot orator of San Francisco.
Hence, the story of Denis Kearney of County Cork, naturalized American, who for three years made life exceedingly lively in the City by the Golden Gate, and who for briefer periods created a flurry throughout the United States. Even after he had passed his heyday he still, at various intervals until his death in 1907, reminded the public of his existence by the continued interest he manifested in the affairs of his adopted city, state and country. Rather than a biography the story of the sand-lot orator is more truly a chronicle of "Kearneyfomia."
Finally, because the California of Kearney's day was the "rhymster's paradise” inasmuch as there were "more writers of verse in San Francisco and its suburbs than in the whole State of New York (though it was verse ”ab ovo usque ad mala”) many of the jingles pertinent to our story have been included in the text.