Description

Posterity may — rightly — prefer to
remember James Jeffrey Roche
almost solely for his years with the
Boston Pilot newspaper, proferring him
a modest but distinguished place alongside
his editorial antecedents Thomas
D'Arcy McGee and John Boyle O'Reilly
in the pantheon of Irish-American history.
Certainly, Roche's affiliation with
the widely circulated and highly influential
weekly newspaper, dating back to
1883 when he joined the paper as assistant
to O'Reilly, must be regarded as his
most lasting contribution to American
society and culture. A thorough consideration
of Roche, however, reveals a
figure more complex, more subtle, even
more engaging than the mere advocate
for matters Irish and matters Catholic in
turn-of-the-century America. Forthe very
qualities that so qualified Jeffrey Roche
for his work on The Pilot—his integrity
and his eloquence, his humanity and his
humour — are reflected in his non-journalistic
writing and in his public life as
well, suggesting that while he was indisputably
an Irishman both by birth and
conviction, his remarkable personal successes
in Boston —journalistic, belletristic,
and social—may owe as much to his
upbringing and his schooling on Prince
Edward Island as to his "old world" ethnicity
and sympathies.