Of all the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church in America the late Cardinal McCloskey was confessedly the most generally popular, and his last hours were watched with genuine solicitude. He was especially revered and loved by women, and to woman’s influence in its highest, purest sense he has been peculiarly susceptible. The story goes that in his infancy he was preserved by the untirin’ kindness and devotion of a lady who acted as his foster mother, and it has been authoritatively stated that in his early manhood his whole career was changed by the death of a young woman he adored. Yes, like Washington Irving and James Buchanan, Cardinal McCloskey lived and died in celibacy from an unfortunate love affair. His suit was favored and the young lady was most worthy, but she was taken from this world to a better, and from the hour of her death the young McCloskey, who had been only in his leisure moments inclined to the study of theology, became a recluse, a devotee and a priest. In afterlife his warm, affectionate nature found vent in tenderness to his nieces, one of whom married John Kelly. And by one of those strange dramatic contrasts which fate sometimes delights in, John Kelly’s lot was precisely the opposite of his uncle’s, the Cardinal’s. McCloskey was by the death of a woman led to become a priest–Kelly was by the life and love of a woman prevented from becomin’ a monk.
It has been for some years well-known to his intimate friends that John Kelly had off and on, before his second marriage, entertained serious thoughts of joinin’ some monastic order and retirin’ from the world. He has always from early life suffered from nervous hypochondria, which forces him into occasional solitude, as well as from chronic sleeplessness or insomnia. These ailments were increased by domestic afflictions, the loss of his first wife and her children. His first wife was a Miss McIlhargy, the daughter of an adopted Irish citizen of New York, and by her he had two daughters and a son. Some twenty years ago the mother died of consumption and her children soon followed her to the grave, each fallin’ a victim to the same complaint. John Kelly’s grief over his affliction was terrible. His son Hugh was but twenty when he died. It was agony, indeed, and for a while the Tammany leader gave way and nearly gave in.
Foreign travel bein’ recommended he made an extended tour abroad and passed a comparatively long period in Rome and in the Holy Land, contemplatin’ religious scenes and subjects. Vicar General Quinn, of New York, was for a period his travelin’ companion, as was also the late Bishop McGill, of Richmond, Va. While Mr. Kelly stayed in Rome he was constantly visitin’ churches and monasteries and little else, and when he went to Ireland he was principally interested in its Catholic institutions. All his readin’ was of a religious order and all his associates were priests. Altogether, his mind and life were takin’ a theological turn.
He had retired from politics forever. So he said and thought at the time; and shuttin’ himself up in his house he communed only with priests and monks. His favorite book was Thomas a Kempis, and there can be no doubt that had he not met just at this time Miss Teresa Mullen, a niece of Cardinal McCloskey’s, and had not the Cardinal himself regarded their acquaintance with evident favor and given the desolate man every opportunity for courtin’ his relative, John Kelly might to-day have been Father Kelly of some holy Institution. But the Cardinal, who, with all his asceticism, was very shrewd, saw that Kelly was more useful and would be more happy in active life as a political leader than in a monastery. He was not the stuff of which monks were made, and so it happened that John Kelly some eight or ten years ago married the niece of Cardinal McCloskey, and until within a few months past, has been a more healthful and hearty man ever since. So that New York is not only indebted directly to the late Cardinal for finishin’ the Cathedral, but indirectly for rejuvenating John Kelly.
[Editor’s Notes: Cardinal John McCloskey was born in 1810 and died on Oct. 10, 1885, the day before this column was published. He was Archbishop of New York for twenty-one years, during which time the Church grew enormously; and oversaw the construction of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. He is buried under the main altar.
John Kelly (1822-1886) was the leader of the Tammany Hall political machine in the 1870s and early 1880s, assuming control over it after the Boss Tweed ring was toppled by the exposure of its corruption. Kelly served in U. S. Congress in the 1850s, and in the 1860s acted as New York county sheriff.]
