Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/56

 GRIFFIN

32

GRIFFIN

and Helen Howard being the first teachers. Over one hundred and fifty pupils attended. This was the be- ginning of the well-known Sacred Heart or Rideau Street Boarding School. At the same time, a sister in charge of the sick poor organized the laity into helping centres. Providentially a hospital was in woiking order when the ship-fever victims arrived from Ireland in the famine year of 1847. Teaching and the works of mercy are on a footing in this community. The Grey Nuns undertake any needed good work. Their novitiate receives choir nuns and lay sisters. The institute has so steadily increased that it has in Ottawa, in addition to Rideau Street convent, two high schools and sixteen parochial schools. The teachers hold summer schools, attend the normal summer school and qualify for the highest diplomas.

Attached to the hospital is the first training-school for mu-ses formed in Canada. There are also five homes for children and the aged poor, supported by voluntary offerings and a government allowance. In Hull, opposite Ottawa, are large parish .schools, aca- demic and elementary. \ Catholic normal school will be opened in September, 1909. At Hud.son Bay is an Indian school for the Crees; along the Ottawa River from its upper waters are three boarding schools, ten parochial schools and five hospitals; at Lake St. Peter, in Quebec province, are two boarding schools and an Intlian school for the Abnaki. In 18.57 a school was opened in Holy Angels parish, Buffalo, N. Y. It is situated on Porter and Prospect Avenues and has had a very successful history.

In 1860 a boarding school and academy was founded at Plattsburg, N. Y. A parish school, governed by the public school principal and supported by the pub- lic school funds, existed imtil the "Garb-question" caused the sisters to withdraw. Plattsburg School Board sent protests in vain to Albany. There was but one answer: the exciting garb must be discarded. But the school .still exists, supported by Catholics. In 1.SG3 a school was opened at Ogdensburg, -\'. Y., in the old Ford mansion, on a beautiful site, facing the St. Lawrence. It is now a home for the homeless. St. Mary's or the Cathedral school of Ogdensburg is second to none under the Regents. At the ^^'^k^s Fair it w'as accorded a medal in the exhibit of the LIniversity of New York. The sisters have also two hospitals at Ogden.shurg. Since 1881 Lowell and Haverhill, Mass., have had parochial schools. Leo XIII proclaimed Mother d'Youville venerable. Her canonization is being considered at Rome. As she, the first Grey Nun, chose the Cross as her emblem, and the object of her special devotion, Leo XIII named her faithful daughters "Grey Nuns of the Cross", a title limited to the Ottawa foundation only, the head- quarters of the houses mentioned above.

Sister Vehonic.\ O'Lk.^uy.

Griffin, Ger.-vld, novelist, dramatist, l3Ticist; b. 12 December, 180.3, at Limerick, Ireland; d. at Cork, 12 June, 1840. His parents came from good families in the south of Ireland. Thirteen children were born to them, nine boys (of whom Gerald was the youngest) and four girls. When Gerald was .seven years old his parents moved to Fairj' Lawn by the river Shannon, abovit twenty-seven miles from Limerick. Geraltl re- ceived a good education; he had m.any teachers, but he owed most to his mother, a woman of deep religious feeling and great talent. "She was", as Dr. Griffin, Gerald's brother and biographer, remarks, "of exceed- ingly fine tastes on most subjects, intimately ac- quainted with the best models of English cla.ssical literature, and always endeavoured to cultivate a taste for them in her children". Gerald's early life was happy and profitable. When free from his books he was wont to roam through the neigh- bouring country, so rich in ruins, which told him of the past glories of his native land. At that time.

too, he got an insight into the customs of the people and became familiar with the popular legends and folk-tales which he later worked into his stories. In 1820 the family at Fairy Lawn was broken up. The parents with several of the children emigrated to America, and settled in the State of Pennsyl- vania. Gerald, with one brother and two sisters, was left behind under the care of an elder brother, a practising physician in .\dare. County Limerick. Gerald had thought of following the profession of his brother, but love of literature had too strong a hold on him. His chief interest was in the drama. The modern stage he considered in a deca-

Ce-metkkv of thk L'HnisTi-w Brothers .vnu the Git.wE OF Gerald Griffin, Cork, Ireland

dent condition. Boy though he was, he conceived the bold project "of revolutionizing the dramatic ta.stes of the time by writing for the stage". With this idea in view he wrote .several plays, expecting to have them staged in London, ^\'hen only nineteen years old he started on his quixotic journe)' — "a laughable delusion", he called it some years later, "a young gentleman totally unknown coming into town with a few pounds in one pocket and a brace of tragedies in the other". His life during the first two years was life in a city wilderness; it is .sad reading. He could not get an opening for his dramas; he did not live to .see his "Gisippus" acted at Drury Lane in 1S42, when Macready presented it in his elTort to restore the clas- sical drama to the stage.

Disapjiointed in his dram.atic aspirations he tried his hand at all sorts of literary drudgery; he trans- lated works from the French aiul the Spanish; he wrote for some of the great magazines and weekly publications, most of which, he .says, cheated him abominably. .\nd yet he kept on writing, ever hope- ful of success, though he wxs often in straitened cir- cumstances, going for days without food. His resolve to relv on his own efforts for success, and his abhor- rence of auN-thing that savoured of patronage, kept him from making known his needs. To disappoint- ment was added ill-health, an affection of the lungs and palpitation of the heart. At the end of two years