Background
Henry James William Finn the son of George Finn, a retired officer of the British navy, and of his wife Elizabeth, was born at Sydney, Nova Scotia, and was reared in New York City.
Henry James William Finn the son of George Finn, a retired officer of the British navy, and of his wife Elizabeth, was born at Sydney, Nova Scotia, and was reared in New York City.
He was educated at Traphagen’s Academy, Hackensack, and Finley’s Latin School, Newark.
If, as has been stated (Ireland, post, I, 332), he later attended Princeton, it is at least certain that he did not graduate.
After completing his formal education, he studied law for two or three years in New York and then visited England.
In England he joined a band of strollers and worked up to the Haymarket I heatre, London, where he played small parts in 1811 and 1812. His first American appearance of which a record is available occurred at Philadelphia in 1817 (Wood, post, p. 213).
His New York debut at the Park Theatre followed, January 16, 1818, and throughout the rest of his life his New York engagements were numerous. In 1818 he was acting successfully in Savannah, Georgia. Two years later, with I. K. Teff t, he edited the Savannah Georgian.
Being both restless and versatile, Finn returned to England in 1821, devoting himself to miniature painting and provincial acting until he obtained a leading position at the Surrey Theatre, London.
On October 28, 1822, he became associated with the Federal Street Theatre, Boston (Columbian Centinel, Oct. 5 and 26, 1822). Here he at first essayed such parts as Hamlet, Othello, and Richard III, but finding Cooper, Forrest, and Kean in secure possession of the tragic roles, he turned to eccentric comedy, in which he became one of the distinguished actors of the day.
A melodrama by Finn, Montgomery; or, the Falls of Montmorency (1825), which was brought out at Boston, February 21, 1825, and repeated four times during the rest of the season (Boston Patriot and Mercantile Advertiser, Feb. 21- Apr. 18, 1825), though a wretched piece of playmaking, provided its author with a good vehicle for his peculiar type of comic acting in the Yankee, Welcome Sobersides.
At about the same time he became a partner of Thomas Kilner in the management of the Federal Street Theatre. When a rival house, the Tremont, was built in 1827, Finn hastened to England and brought back some excellent recruits.
After two years of competition the rivals were forced to combine, but Finn, though withdrawing from management, remained with the company and continued to delight Boston audiences to the end of his life. He also made frequent starring trips through the country, especially the South, where he was an immense favorite.
While returning to his home vast and almost immediate popularity, supplying American Catholic counterparts of the Tom Brown books. They blended pranks, fun, shrewd observation, idealism, and deft moral teaching.
Though Finn could not keep to the level of these first stories, other books followed in rapid succession: Harry Dee (1893); Claude Lightfoot (1893); Mostly Boys (1897) ; New Faces and Old (1896) ; Ada Merton (1896) ; Ethelred Preston (1896) ; That Football Game (1897) ; The Best Foot Forward (1900) ; His First and Last Appearance (1900); But Thy Love and Thy Grace (1901) ; The Haunt of the Fairies (1906), a drama; The Fairy of the Snozvs (1913) ; That Office Boy (1915) ; Cupid of Campion (1916) ; Lucky Bob (1917) I His Luckiest Year (1918) ; Facing Danger (1919); Bobby in Movieland (1921); On the Run (1922); Lord Bountiful (1923) ; The Story of Jesus (1924); Sunshine and Freckles (1925 ) ; and Candles’ Beams (1927).
Various Jesuit schools furnished the background for most of these stories, though several of them are not concerned with college life. Finn was appointed professor of literature and the classics in St. Xavier’s College, Cincinnati, in 1897.
Two years later, primarily because of ill health, he was relieved of teaching and assigned to the staff of St. Xavier’s Church, in the same city. His chief duty became the direction of the parish school at 520 Sycamore St. Though he was constantly writing a book and had taken on added literary tasks—editing the St. Xavier Calendar and sponsoring the Little Flower Library—he devoted most of his energy to the school.
This, frequented by children of twenty-one immigrant nationalities, became the first fee-less Catholic school in the United States, owing largely to the ability of its director in raising an endowment. Father Finn also encouraged frequent social gatherings at which Catholic young men and women might meet—a relatively novel idea in the nineties.
He died in Cincinnati, Ohio. If he had lived a few months longer, he would have celebrated his fiftieth year as a Jesuit.