REV. FR. CUTHBERT (DUNNE), C.P.
On Saturday, November 4th, Rev. Fr. Cuthbert (Dunne), C.P., of St. Joseph’s Province, passed peacefully to his eternal reward.
Known in the world as Patrick Francis Dunne, Fr. Cuthbert was born in Dublin on October 4th, 1869. Having received his early education at the College of the Vincentian Fathers at Castleknock. he entered the Passionist Novitiate at St. Saviour’s,. Broadway, Worcs., where he made his Religious Profession on April 5th, 1888.
Some time after his ordination he accompanied as secretary the late V. Rev.. Fr. Gregory (O’Callaghan), C.P.. Provincial, on a visitation of the Vice-Province of Australia. In addition to his ministrations on the home mission. he was engaged in parochial work in Kimberley, South Africa, and at the Passionist Church. Paris. He remained in Paris until. 1902. when the community was expelled by the anti-clerical legislation, of the French Government. It was during his stay there that his name became known all over the world as the young Passionist priest who received the dying Oscar Wilde into the Catholic Church.
At various times he filled the offices of Rector of St. Joseph’s Retreat. Highgate. London, and of Superior of the Preparatory College at Sandymount. Co. Dublin; Herne Bay, Kent.; and Avenue Hoche, Paris.
Cultured, gentlemanly and quietly-spoken, Fr. Cuthbert was of a retiring and unassuming disposition. It was only after much persuasion that he would speak of his really remarkable experiences abroad in the priestly ministry. Characteristically shunning all publicity in the fulfilment of his work he never spared himself in hidden and unobtrusive labours for all who sought his guidance.
May he rest in peace!
(The Cross, Vol. XLI, 1950-51; p. 242.)
REV. FATHER CUTHBERT DUNNE
The Province of St. Joseph lost its oldest member, the “Dean of the Province”, by the death of Fr. Cuthbert Dunne on Sat., 4th Nov. 1950. He had been in poor health for some time, and we all thought the end had come when he was anointed a few months before his death.
Known in the world as Patrick Francis Dunne, Father Cuthbert was born in Dublin on 4th October, 1869. He received his early education at the College of the Vincentian Fathers, Castleknock. At the age of 18 he entered the Passionist Novitiate at Broadway,Worcs., where he made his religious profession on 8th April, 1888. Some time after his ordination he accompanied the late Very Rev. Gregory (O’Callaghan), C.P., on a visitation of the Vice-Province of Australia.. Later he was engaged in parochial work in Kimberley, South Africa and at our house in Paris. He remained in Paris until 1902 when the community was expelled by the un-clerical laws of the French Government. It was during his stay there that his name became well known all over the world as the young Passionist priest who received the dying Oscar Wilde into the Catholic Church.
During his lifetime he filled various offices in the Congregation. He was Provincial Consultor, Rector of St. Joseph’s Retreat, Highgate and Superior of the Preparatory College at Sandymount. Dublin, as well as Avenue Hoche, Paris and Herne Bay. He was a member of the last community when he died.
The strain of the continuous air-raids during the war was too much for him and he received permission to go to Dublin where he remained until the end came. Father Cuthbert was of a retiring and unassuming disposition and rarely spoke of himself or his experiences. Although never of robust health, he took part in the giving of missions and retreats, especially the latter in which he excelled, as those of us who heard him can testify. His sermons were attractive and instructive, and we pray that his many and great works for the glory of God and the salvation of souls may crown him for eternity with the reward of the good and faithful labourer in the vineyard.
May he rest in peace.
CUTHBERT DUNNE, C.P., AND OSCAR WILDE
Interest in the centenary of the death of Oscar Wilde – he died in Paris on 30 November, 1900 – and his reception into the Church on his deathbed by the young Passionist priest, Fr. Cuthbert Dunne, has lead to the collection and arrangement of the Dunne archive. This, in turn, has lead to some interesting discoveries, principally from articles by Fr. Edmund Burke, C.P., (Oscar Wilde: The Final Scene – The London Magazine, May, 1961 Vol l No 2) and Rupert Croft-Cooke (Oscar Wilde discoveries – books and bookmen, February, 1974, Vol. 19, No. 5).
Wilde’s reception has been the cause of considerable controversy over the years; the general opinion being that he was unconscious at the time and that advantage was taken of that fact to receive him into the Church.
In 1905, following the posthumous publication of his De Profundus, an article, signed ‘A’ and presumed to have been written or inspired by his friend, and nemesis, Lord Alfred Douglas, appeared in the St. James’s Gazette which maintained that Wilde was unconscious for many hours before he died and that he died without ever having any idea of the liberty which had been taken with his unconscious body (Burke). This article was drawn to Cuthbert’s attention in March, 1905, by a friend of Oscar’s from their Oxford days, Abbot Hunter-Blair (affectionately known as ‘Dunskey’ by Wilde’s circle at Oxford) and he was asked to refute ‘A’s’ assertion (Burke and Croft-Cooke). No record survives of Cuthbert’s reply, though he faithfully preserved Hunter-Blair’s letter. He also copied out in his own hand some pages from the abbot’s book, In Victorian Days and Other Papers, published in 1938, and preserved them in an envelope with the title Oscar Wilde. Abbot Hunter-Blair’s recollection of Oxford Days and the Story of the Deathbed Repentance. Strangely, these pages do not contain any reference to the abbot’s letter of March 1905 or Cuthbert’s possible reply (Croft-Cooke).
Though Cuthbert did not break his silence about Oscar’s death and conversion, not even when Frank Harris, in 1916, wrote a scandalous and sensational book about Oscar, he did keep -scrupulously described and annotated- every scrap of evidence about his own actions in the case.
Among the sensational assertions of Harris, perhaps the most startling was his declaration that the dead body of Wilde had exploded from sheer corruption and filled the room with fragments of itself and mucus, driving everyone into the fresh air from the stench and horror of its decay. Harris claimed that Wilde’s friend, Robert Ross, who had brought Cuthbert to attend on, and reconcile, his dying friend, attested to this. The fact is, according to Croft-Cook, that Ross had only stated that he and Reggie Turner, who had been present, had a difficult time in attending to Oscar’s body after his death.
Edmund Burke in his article states that a particularly vicious reference to Oscar’s death, based upon Harris’s sensational biography, finally moved Cuthbert (in 1945) to take action. The reason for him breaking his long-held silence on the matter is slightly more interesting than that – as is clear from Croft-Cook’s article. In 1945, The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland published a pamphlet entitled The Pure in Heart by the American Jesuit, Rev. Daniel A. Lord, SJ. It contained’this: 7wish I could drag the young generation to the death-bed of Oscar Wilde, deserted by his nearest friends,who fled from the filthy stench of his lust-rotten body’. A lady brought the pamphlet to Cuthbert’s attention while he was in Dublin that year. He was so affected by it that he wrote to Lord, setting out the history of Wilde’s death and reception. He actually prepared three separate rough copies before he sent the final one to Fr, Lord. (Edmund Burke refers to them as his remembrances of Oscar’s final hours, giving all the pertinent facts as he recalled them to memory. Burke further states that Cuthbert also wrote a lengthy memoir of Wilde giving the history of his various approaches to the Catholic Church throughout the years.) Lord replied to Dunne, admitting that he got the statement from Harris’s ”supposedly official biography’, and promised that he will have it removed from future editions of his own pamphlet. He was true to his word as a later copy, kept by Cuthbert, reveals.
This collection of documents, gathered and kept by Cuthbert, contain an account of Wilde’s reception, He states emphatically, in one MS that Wilde was aware of what was taking place about him: ‘… when I told him I was a priest, come to receive him into the church and give him the sacraments of the sick, his signs and answers satisfied me as to his happy consent’ (Croft-Cooke). Edmund Burke, C.P., quotes more fully from another Dunne MS as follows: ‘As the man was in a semi-comatose condition, I did not venture to administer Holy Viaticum: still, I must add that he could be roused and was roused from his state in my presence. When roused, he gave signs of being inwardly conscious. He made brave efforts to speak, and would even continue for a time trying to talk, though he could not utter articulate words. Indeed, I was fully satisfied that he understood me when told that I was about to receive him into the Catholic Church and give him the Last Sacraments, From the signs he gave, as well as from his attempted words. I was satisfied as to his full consent. And when I repeated close to his ear the Holy Names, the Acts of Contrition, Faith, Hope and Charity, with acts of humble resignation to the Will of God, he tried all through to say the words after me’. This definitive statement from the prime witness to Oscar Wilde’s deathbed conversion and reception into the Church should put an end to the uncharitable assertion that an advantage was taken of the dying man.
Details are given below of other items in Cuthbert’s collection. These details are taken from Croft-Cooke’s article, as the papers are no longer available for consultation. Edmund Burke states that Cuthbert, saying that ‘in regard to all this, I must ask you to bejudex et pertibus’, entrusted all his material to him. It is evident from the Croft-Cooke article that he either had them in his possession or was able to consult them. This is borne out by evidence that Cuthbert’s collection of material concerning the death of Oscar Wilde, known as the Ross/Dunne papers and designated Lot No. 239, was sold at Christies of London on 4 April, 1973. Further evidence shows that Croft-Cooke was instrumental in arranging this sale.
Perhaps the most important item was Robert Ross’s visiting card, which he handed in to the Passionist Church, Paris on 29 November, 1900, with these words written on the verso: ‘Can I see one of the fathers about a very urgent case or can I hear of a priest elsewhere who can talk English to administer the sacraments to a dying man?’ This card lead to Cuthbert’s involvement in the history of Oscar Wilde. There was also another visiting card of Ross’s, un-inscribed, and a visiting card from the Hotel d’Alasace where Wilde died.
Three letters from Ross: (i) informing Cuthbert of Wilde’s death earlier that morning and asking where he could find a nun or some religious to come and watch by the body that night and the next: proposed arrangements for the funeral are mentioned: (ii) later that day, setting out the final funeral arrangements and inviting Cuthbert to be present: thanks for sending the Franciscan sisters: (iii) enclosing a donation for the Passionist Church in Paris and hoping that the congregation will not be affected by the bill at present before the French Chamber.
A letter from the Rector of Stonyhurst College, Father Joseph Brown, S.J. where Oscar’s second son, Vyvian, was a pupil. Vyvian was then 14 years old, and was anxious to learn about his father’s death and to be reassured of “his reported happy end”. (It would seem that Vvyian, even at that young age, had become a Catholic. The only reference to that fact which I can find is in Richard Ellmann’s biography Oscar Wilde (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1987,) where he states that Oscar’s two children, Cyril and Vyvian, after the deaths of their parents, were befriended by Robert Ross and that Vyvian had “suddenly said to his tutor ‘I am a Catholic'”.).
The letter from Fr. Brown must have been answered by Cuthbert, because he preserved (i) an acknowledgement from Fr, Browne and (ii) a letter written to him by Vyvian himself, from which it is evident that the boy was a Catholic.
There were also letters to Franciscans, and replies he had received (mostly negative) enquiring about Wilde’s supposed friendship with members of that Order, which had been relayed to him by Robert Ross.
Also preserved and meticulously catalogued were cuttings, in some cases hand-copied, and other pieces of print, from newspapers and magazines concerning Wilde and his death.
Some interesting facts concerning the Catholic Church and the Wilde saga remain to be related. His friend Robert Ross, who was instrumental in bringing Cuthbert to Oscar’s deathbed, had become a Catholic many years before. His nemesis, Lord Alfred Douglas, converted many years afterwards. It is reliably maintained that the Marquis of Queensbury (Lord Alfred Douglas’s father), who prosecuted Wilde over his relationship with his son, was attended by a priest on his own deathbed and was reconciled, though his funeral was carried out without any religious ceremony in accordance with his instructions.
Cuthbert died in Dublin on 5 November 1950. He is buried in the cemetery attached to Mount Argus Monastery. Not far away, Oscar’s father, Sir William Wilde, is buried in the nearby cemetery of Mount Jerome. It is a strange coincidence that Oscar’s natural and spiritual fathers should lie so close to each other in death.
There is one final twist to the Wilde story, Richard Ellmann (in his biography of Wilde referred to above) records, from an article, published in Donahoe’s Magazine (Boston: April. 1905) by Rev. L. C. Prideaux Fox and entitled People I Have Met, how he, at the request of the mother of Willie and Oscar Wilde, privately baptised the young brothers in the chapel of Glencree Reformatory when he was chaplain there.
However, they were not raised as Catholics. While Oscar never explicitly refers to this baptism, he does mention that her has a hazy recollection of it happening. (His friend, Ross, certainly was not aware of it when he summoned the aid of a priest from St. Joseph’s Passionist Monastery, Paris.) Ellman is inclined to accept this account by Prodeaux Fox as being true. In which event, Oscar’s deathbed conversion was, in fact, reconciliation rather than a reception.
Andrew O’Loughlin