The "Last Gentleman" priest
How Father Twomey found his way into Walker Percy's pages
I’m grateful to share with you the first Matters Twomey post in more than a month. There’s some personal news at the end.
Before I knew anything about Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ, the remarkable New Orleans Jesuit whose life I am chronicling, I knew that Walker Percy held him in awe. In Percy’s preface to At Face Value, the slim 1978 monograph by Father C.J. McNaspy, SJ, that introduced me to Twomey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Southern novelist and convert to Catholicism wrote, “As much as anyone, [Twomey] pricked and wakened the conscience of the South. … He doesn’t need us to remember him now, but we need to.”1
Now that I am midway through composing my biography of Father Twomey, A Priest in Good Trouble, I know much more about the influence that he had on Percy’s life and work. It is an influence that “cannot be overstated,” as Farrell O’Gorman has observed.2
Percy, a convert to Catholicism, became aware of Father Twomey’s work, as well as that of his fellow Loyola University New Orleans faculty member Father Joseph H. Fichter, SJ (who worked closely with Twomey to promote interracialism),3 very early in his Catholic life. In fact, given that, according to biographer Patrick Samway, SJ, Percy first encountered Twomey when the Southern Jesuit was preaching at Holy Name Catholic Church, it is possible that they met even before the future novelist was received. Holy Name was where Percy and his wife Bunt took instruction in the Catholic faith; they were conditionally baptized there in December 1947.4
Father Twomey’s influence in Percy’s life was greatest during the mid-1950s, when he was a leading figure in an informal New Orleans men’s group that brought white liberals together to discuss civil-rights issues and to get to know prominent members of the local Black community. Percy’s participation in the group—where, according to biographer Jay Tolson, he mostly listened to Twomey hold forth—informed his understanding of social Catholicism, particularly integration.5
Throughout the 1960s, the decade when he received his greatest acclaim as an author, Percy remained in touch with Twomey. In a September 1968 Harper’s article on life in New Orleans, after criticizing the Jesuit-owned local CBS Radio outlet WWL for airing white supremacist H.L. Hunt’s show, Percy added, “And yet there is Jesuit Father Louis Twomey, who has done more than any one man hereabouts to translate Catholic social principles into meaningful action. His Institute of Human Relations has performed valuable services in labor-management conciliation, in its campaign for social justice for the Negro, and in the education of the unskilled.”6
Both Tolson and Percy’s other biographer, Patrick Samway, SJ, wrote of Twomey’s importance in the novelist’s Catholic intellectual formation. But neither noted any presence of the Jesuit in Percy’s writings apart from the Harper’s article and the introduction to At Face Value. Not until I read a 1999 article by Farrell O’Gorman (who today chairs the English department at Belmont Abbey College) did I learn that Twomey’s presence possibly extended into Percy’s fiction as well.
In his Mississippi Quarterly essay “Walker Percy, the Catholic Church, and Southern Race Relations (ca. 1947–1970),” while writing of Percy’s 1966 novel The Last Gentleman, O’Gorman speculated in a footnote,
Is the priest who baptizes Jamie Vaught at the end—though not here explicitly connected with race—somehow reflective of Father Twomey? In the preface to At Face Value Percy describes Twomey as “as square a priest as one could imagine” (p. 4) and recalls his short-lived baseball career: “I don't know what position he played but he talked like an angry shortstop” (p. 5). The fictional priest, Father Boomer, is plain and unassuming—“the gold stems of his bifocals pressed snugly against muscular temples” (p. 309)—and he does not “intone in a religious voice. He was more like a baseball umpire in his serviceable serge.”7
Although the similarities that O’Gorman identified between Father Twomey and The Last Gentleman’s Father Boomer were not quite sufficient to lead to the conclusion that Percy had Twomey in mind as a model for the character, they were tantalizing enough to lead me to explore further. When I did, I found more similarities—including one that gives me the confidence to conclude that O’Gorman’s intuition was correct.
The End of the Affair—and the beginning of Percy’s inspiration
To understand how Twomey helped inspire Percy in creating his fictional priest, it will be helpful first to examine Percy’s other models for Father Boomer—for I believe there were more than one.
In a 1975 letter that Percy wrote to critic Simone Vauthier—the one occasion that the author himself wrote about his inspiration for the character—he recalled that Father Boomer was most likely suggested by a priest in one of Graham Greene’s novels.8 He didn’t say which priest or which novel, but, given the possible options, it seems he had in mind the character of Father Crompton in The End of the Affair. Crompton appears briefly in that novel as he attempts to convince a widower that his recently deceased wife should receive a Catholic burial, since she had expressed the desire to become Catholic.
Although Crompton is clearly sincere in his faith, there is no misty mysticism in his manner; it is all business. He knows the theological and canonical prerequisites for a non-Catholic to receive a Catholic burial, and he knows that the deceased woman fulfilled them. Therefore he tries in his best professional manner to convince her non-Catholic husband to consent to his handling the arrangements.
Crompton is not cold-hearted. Rather, his dry manner serves to drive home Greene’s point, which is that, putting aside any pastoral gifts that a particular priest may have, the priestly vocation is founded not on feelings but on facts. If a priest dispenses the sacraments, then souls will be saved, regardless of whether he himself is a saint or (in the case of Greene’s iconic whisky priest) a sinner.
It seems, then, that when Percy originally conceived the character of Father Boomer, he intended to do as Greene did. He would insert a priest into his novel’s deathbed scene who would be so dry as to make the supernatural truth of Catholic faith shine in the clearest possible light. From an artistic standpoint, it’s an ingenious approach, albeit a counterintuitive one, since the more predictable tack to soften readers towards Catholicism would be to make the priest an attractive character.
Flannery leads Percy to the Finn-ish line
In addition to Father Crompton, Father Boomer may well have an additional literary precedent, from a character created by an author Percy greatly admired, a fellow Southerner whom he met in November 1962 when she spoke at Loyola University New Orleans: Flannery O’Connor.9
Everything that Rises Must Converge, a posthumous collection of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, appeared in January 1965, during the period when Percy was writing The Last Gentleman. It included “The Enduring Chill,” in which a pretentious and egotistical non-Catholic man who is suffering from fever demands that a priest be called to minister to him—not for the sacraments but only for intellectual conversation. But whereas the patient assumes that a young, liberal Jesuit will fly to his bedside, he instead finds himself face-to-face with the elderly Father Finn. The priest quickly susses out the patient’s real problem—he is a “lazy ignorant conceited youth”—and shouts passages of the Baltimore catechism at him like flaming arrows. It is not what the priggish patient wants, but it proves to be exactly what he needs.
In The Last Gentleman, when Father Boomer appears to minister at the deathbed of the non-Catholic Jamie Vaught, he speaks with a blunt simplicity (and a ready grasp of the Baltimore catechism) that places him much closer to the earthy Father Finn than the posh Father Crompton. Yet Boomer also has qualities that are distinctively Twomey’s, one of which is so distinctive that it is unmistakably intended as a playful gibe at him. Today, we would say that Percy was trolling Twomey—but clearly with love.
A league of his own
What, then, are the clues that point to Father Twomey as one of the inspirations for The Last Gentleman’s Father Boomer, besides the ones already noted by O’Gorman? Some of them may be merely coincidental. Percy likens Boomer’s body language to that of a “storekeeper” and describes his voice as “mercantile.” Could he have known that Twomey’s father was in the dry-goods business, owning a store in Tampa, Florida, that sold linens and other textiles? Likewise, Boomer makes passing mention of a “Father Gillis of Conway, Arkansas.” Could Percy have known that the nationally famous Boston priest of that name, Catholic World editor Father James Gillis, CSP, was the first to publish articles by Twomey on social justice? Maybe, but maybe not.
Another possible clue—but still falling well short of definite evidence of Twomey’s influence on Percy in creating the character—may lie in Boomer’s bedside manner. In this, Boomer’s approach, although artless, departs from that of The Enduring Chill’s Finn. When Finn shouts the Baltimore catechism’s theological tenets, it is to put the fear of God into his listener: “Do you want your soul to suffer eternal damnation? Do you want to be deprived of God for all eternity? Do you want to suffer the most terrible pain, greater than fire, the pain of loss?”
In contrast, Boomer employs the catechism to instruct the dying Jamie Vaught not in divine judgment but rather in divine mercy: “Do you accept the truth that God exists and that He made you and loves you and that He made the world so that you might enjoy its beauty and that He himself is your final end and happiness, that He loved you so much that He sent his only son to die for you … .” That is very much the approach that Twomey took in his preaching, as a “square” priest (in Percy’s phrase) who, like the good Jesuit he was, harbored an intense devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
But to discover the most obvious links between Twomey and the priest of The Last Gentleman, we must turn to Percy’s physical description of Boomer. As O’Gorman observed, the priest-chaplain wears gold-tone bifocals “pressed snugly against muscular temples.” That neatly describes how Twomey wore his glasses at the time, as witnessed in this screenshot from a home movie of a dinner in his honor that took place in October 1966, the year of The Last Gentleman’s publication.
Not every physical aspect of Father Boomer matches Father Twomey. Whereas Boomer is chunky, Twomey was “lank,” as Percy wrote in his introduction to At Face Value.10 Boomer’s hair is auburn; Twomey’s was “very dark,” Percy noted.11
Notably, however, the one aspect of Boomer’s physique that Percy returns to, again and again, is that which most closely resembles Twomey: his hands. Over the course of Boomer’s brief yet crucial appearance in The Last Gentleman (which spans only about twelve of the novel’s four-hundred-plus pages), Percy obsesses over the priest’s hands. Those hands ultimately come to encompass Boomer’s entire personality, much as O’Connor ends up compressing Finn’s personality into his “terrible eye” that strikes a nail of judgment into his hapless interlocutor.
Boomer’s hands, Percy writes, are “thick through the palm and heavily freckled.” Three times, he mentions their freckles. Twomey’s hands were noticeably freckled, as seen in the photo of him with Percy that appears at the top of this post.
As noted, Percy also makes numerous baseball references when speaking of Boomer. They extend to the way the novelist describes the priest’s hands. Three times he writes that Boomer forms his hands like “brackets.” Given that writers don’t normally liken priests to baseball players, it is hard to imagine that Percy didn’t have in mind Father Twomey, whose friends were aware that he had turned down a contract with the Washington Nationals to enter the Society of Jesus. Farrell O’Gorman has pointed out to me that, although Percy’s written oeuvre includes references to other sports, such as football, his description of Boomer is the only occasion in all his published works where he employs baseball language imagery.12
And this finally brings us to what is, for me, incontrovertible evidence that Percy not only had Twomey in mind when creating Father Boomer, but actually was ribbing Twomey in the manner of a good friend. After Boomer baptizes the dying Jamie, as he speaks words of comfort to the youth, Percy describes how the priest puts Jamie’s “narrow, waxy hand” between “his big ruddy American League paws.”
Anyone close to Twomey who ever discussed baseball knew that, true to the team that unsuccessfully tried to recruit him, the Jesuit rooted for one league, and one league only: the National League. In fact, on a recording of an office birthday party held for him on October 5, 1966—the same year that The Last Gentleman was published—Twomey can be heard answering a guest who asks who he is rooting for in the World Series. He answers “the Dodgers,” and adds emphatically, “Always National League!” (Listen online, courtesy of Special Collections & Archives at Loyola University New Orleans; the question and Twomey’s answer can be heard just before the 16-minute mark.)
In The Last Gentleman, as the novel’s protagonist, Will Barrett, watches Boomer patiently minister to his dying friend, he finds himself moved by the beauty of a love that descends from on high “to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow” (Luke 1:79). If Boomer’s ministry contributes to Barrett’s continuing desire to walk, however stumblingly, towards the light, part of the credit goes to the example Twomey gave Percy of a man who “[had] done more than any one man” in New Orleans to bring Christian love where it was most needed.13
A personal postscript: As I wrote at the top of this post, this is my first Matters Twomey entry since late February. March was the most difficult month that I have experienced in some time. It began with moving apartments, a move that, as I wrote earlier, was necessitated by my landlord’s informing me that the apartment I’d rented since 2018, a condo, was being sold. Then, just as I was settling into my new place, I learned that my dear friend Lyle Brooks had died suddenly.
During this time of stress and grieving, getting back on track with work on my Father Twomey biography has felt like swimming through mud. But I told myself that if I could only complete something for Matters Twomey readers—especially for the paid subscribers and Kickstarter supporters, whose support is a much-needed help at this time when I am seeking full-time work—then I could regain the habit of writing.
All of which is to say that I am very grateful to you who are reading this, because your interest in Father Twomey has helped me gain the motivation I needed to press ahead. I am far behind where I want to be, but at least I am moving forward. Thank you and God bless you. As Pope Francis says, please pray for me and I’ll pray for you.
Walker Percy, “Preface,” in C.J. McNaspy, SJ, At Face Value (New Orleans: Loyola University of the South, 1978), 5.
Farrell O’Gorman, “Walker Percy, the Catholic Church, and Southern Race Relations (ca. 1947-1970),” The Mississippi Quarterly 53, no. 1 (1999): 72, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26476939.
R. Bentley Anderson, SJ’s excellent Black, White, and Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947–1956 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005) chronicles Fichter’s work promoting interracialism at Loyola University New Orleans, including his collaborative efforts with Twomey.
Patrick Samway, SJ, Walker Percy: A Life (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1997), 149–151. The Percys approached Holy Name’s pastor, Father John J. McCarthy, SJ, in mid-September 1947 to begin their instruction. Technically speaking, they did not receive their instruction in Holy Name itself but rather in a parlor in Thomas Hall, the Jesuit residence at Loyola University. But they likely attended Sunday Mass at Holy Name during their instruction, where they would have been permitted to stay through the homily, so they might have first heard Twomey at that time.
Jay Tolson, Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 274.
Walker Percy; Patrick Samway, SJ, ed., Signposts in a Strange Land (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1991), 18.
Farrell O’Gorman, “Walker Percy, the Catholic Church, and Southern Race Relations (ca. 1947–1970),” Mississippi Quarterly 53, no. 1 (Winter 1999–2000), 85. The page numbers for The Last Gentleman refer to the 1966 Avon edition.
Samway, Walker Percy, 218.
An account of the occasion when Percy heard O’Connor speak and met her afterwards appears in Tolson, Pilgrim in the Ruins, 207–208.
Percy, “Preface,” 4.
Percy, “Preface,” 4. I suspect that Twomey put something in his hair that made it appear darker, as his hair was blond in college before turning brown when he was in his thirties. His father had owned a linens store, and his family was known for its attention to dress. With that said, as a priest, apart from being neatly groomed, Twomey was not known for being ostentatious in any way. He took his vow of poverty very seriously, to the point where, towards the end of his life, a friend pulled an elaborate prank upon him to force him to accept the gift of a new suit. C. Michael Winters, interview with the author, September 21, 2023.
Farrell O’Gorman, telephone conversation with the author, March 13, 2025.
Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, 18.
Wonderful to learn of this Twomey connection with Percy, an author of whom I'm quite fond. Now I'm inspired to pick up his Last Gentleman!
Dear Dawn, my condolences on the passing of your dear friend Lyle Brooks. I knew he was dear to your heart, but I didn't realize how deeply his passing could hurt you.
Also, thank you for all your writings, biography excerpts, and research on the precious Father Twomey, S.J., and for the heart and quality you put into it.
Your photo is beautiful.
Many blessings to you, your family, and your ministry.
In Christ and the Virgin Mary,
Théo