THE ANNALS, 130 YEARS OLD - LOOKING BACK, PART 1, 1889-1930
Keeping accounts in1911
The Australian Annals, Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, began publication in 1889. This month we celebrate 130 years.
To commemorate this anniversary, we will have this article today, another next week and a third the week after.
This history was written for the Annals, now Annals Australasia, by former Provincial, Fr John F. McMahon MSC.
When an historian tries to write something about the Editors of Annals over the past one hundred years he finds it difficult to identify the people who held the position! The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart who were responsible for publishing this magazine had a policy of requiring editors to remain anonymous and until very recent times, the editor never signed his name, except on letters he wrote personally to contributors or subscribers On occasions when the editor was away his understudy would take over, again as an anonymous writer, and it is not always easy to work out who this was.
To complicate the issue further, there was for many years a separate 'Director of Annals" who saw to the business side of the production and sometimes was identified with the editor. Daniel Hogan, who founded the Catholic Boy Scouts, was editor for a short time when Michael Forrest was overseas; and John Lee acted as editor during Fr. Treand's absence. Archbishop Sir Virgil Copas when he was a newly ordained priest, with no hint of his later importance in the Church of Papua New Guinea was a Bursar/ Director of Annals for a short time in the 1940's. The present arrangement with the editor being also the director, is a much better arrangement as far as the chronicler is concerned.
An old cover, French Annales
The first issue of Annals appeared in December 1889. The driving forced behind it was a pioneer Missionary of the Sacred Heart, Emile Merg, who came to Sydney in 1887 and was appointed as curate to Randwick Parish until he left in 1909. Being a French-speaking priest he depended very heavily on a gifted volunteer trained teacher in the parish school at Randwick named Mary Agnes Finn. It was Miss Finn who translated into English much of the early material in Annals and who wrote many a short story and the longer serial stories for so many years to come. Her brothers were also well-known commercial printers in the city of Sydney and became before long the early printers of Annals.
When Pierre Treand became Superior of Randwick and Provincial of the MSC in Australia, he took over Annals and he too was very dependent on Mary Agnes Finn as well as on a rising younger Catholic journalist, Miss Agatha le Breton, also a teacher, who wrote under the pen-name "Miriam Agatha". These two dedicated and gifted ladies did most of the writing for Annals and were something more than mere contributors. Were it not such an ugly word I should be inclined to refer to them as "editresses".
In 1914 the Office of Annals was transferred to the Sacred Heart Monastery at Kensington, then the seminary of the MSC in Australia and the Provincial House of the Congregation until 1977.
To mark the transition, an Australian editor was appointed for the first time, Michael Davit Forrest. This very gifted priest, who was involved in all the burning questions of the day both inside and outside the Church, built up the circulation especially among young people, and also succeeded in embarrassing his Superiors by his forthright views on the Anglo-Irish question which at that time was hotly contested in the local papers. One must admit, however, there was little of a controversial nature in the pages of Annals. Michael Forrest spent a year or so overseas and wrote all the time as an absentee Editor under the pen-name of "The Wanderer". (See "Michael Davitt Forrest (1883-1970), controversial third editor of Annals Australia", in Annals, May 1989, PP. 22- 26.)
Eventually Michael Forrest, after a half-hearted attempt to try his vocation as a Benedictine in Ireland (and a later try in America which also proved unsuccessful) joined the American Province of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. His place was taken by Eric Dignam, a young priest recently ordained who brought a completely new approach to the editorial chair.
Eric Dignam had been ordained in 1924 and from the outset of his life as a priest and in his ministry among people showed a striking personality. He was very musical, had a fine tenor voice much in demand for liturgical functions, and was an engaging conversationalist, with a great love of books and literary pursuits.
He was in great demand for retreats especially retreats for boys with whom he had a quite unusual rapport. He was to spend many years doing this sort of work.
With the cover printed in color and all copy printed on art paper, with a wealth of illustrations and line-drawings and a lay-out that showed the hand of a professional somewhere in the printing shop, Annals made quite an impression without any increase in price. To be continued...
