Some recollections of Dom Dunstan Flanagan
Father Flanagan died on the Feast of the Purification of Our Lady, February 2nd, 1924, aged 71 years, of which over fifty-one were spent in Religion. It is safe to say that few deaths in recent years have been regretted more deeply. 'Poor old Dunstan, may the Lord have mercy on him' was the almost universal comment. It shewed the personal relation of affection and esteem in which he was held by all who knew him - and who, of his brethren, young or old, did not know him? His bright, cheerful, mirthful disposition endeared him to all. He was a character, in some ways unique; he had become in later years almost an institution. Wherever two or three were gathered together, or better still twenty or thirty, he was the very soul of the party. At Exhibition times, at our Annual Chapters at the end of Retreats, at any meeting of the brethren, he was a bubbling fount of merriment which never ran dry. There was something irresistible about him. You might laugh with him or you might laugh at him - to do him justice, he cared little which - but laugh you must when he was present. And so it came about that people always looked to him to start the fun. His repartees, most brilliant at times, his mimicry, his jokes, though often repeated, never seemed to tire people. How often have we heard at York or Gilling, 'Is Dunstan coming?' and how faces lightened if he were, for we knew that then, whatever else happened, there would be no dullness in the meeting. There is a place, there is a need for such in every Community and God alone knows the good they do. Non omnes eundem actum habent. I once heard him called by old Fr Richards 'the promoter of innocent mirth,' and there could not be a truer description. Like Peter Pan, in a sense, he never grew up. If any old school mate of the '60's were resurrected, I fear he would have some difficulty in identifying most of us survivors; I am sure he would at once have recognised Father Dunstan. As he was at 20, so he was at seventy, merry and bright and buoyant as a lad, kindly and self-sacrificing and generous to a degree. Poor old Dunstan! It is a sigh of regret from all. A light has gone out of our lives, and we who knew him best know that we at least shall not see his like again.
He was born in Liverpool in 1852 and came to Ampleforth in the early sixties. I first met him in 1867 and the meeting was characteristic of many future escapades. It was in Thirsk station where, in those days, we were held up for three hours, waiting for the last train. I was a new boy, and, like most seniors, he tried to impress me with his knowledge of affairs. It seems that it was almost de rigueur that old boys, willy nilly, should smoke on the last evening of the holidays. Smoking then was most strictly taboo. For years after I never heard of any one, except old Brother Benet, who indulged in the weed. So, somehow, as it was so strictly forbidden in the College, it came to be looked on as a symbol of liberty to smoke just before entering its precincts - the last kick of freedom. Shortly afterwards Dunstan produced a big black cigar and announced that he was going to begin. I looked on with awe, but he assured me that I should be doing the same next year. I can see him now, walking up and down that platform, waving his cigar as I am sure no smoker ever waved one, declaring 'it was grand.' My admiration increased for about five minutes and then he proposed we should sit down as it was 'getting too hot to walk.' It was about 8.30 p.m. in September! He grew more silent then and the puffs at the cigar grew fewer and fewer, though he still confided to me that it was grand. A moment or so later the grand cigar fell unheeded from his fingers and looking up I saw he was ghastly pale. He still protested that it was the heat. Some wag came along and suggested that the best cure for that 'sort of thing' was to roll up your sleeves and sink your arms in cold water. So he climbed to the iron ladder that led to the engine tank, waved his hands to us from the top with a very faint smile and plunged them in, and then in mid air, coram populo, 'that sort of thing' did happen and the climax was over. He was not the only martyr of liberty that night. A strange introduction, but from that hour we became fast friends in a friendship that has lasted nearly sixty years and was unbroken at the end. I had a letter from him the very day he died.
The first thing that a new boy learned about him was that his name was 'Kate.' I never could learn how he got the name; neither he nor anyone else could tell. There was nothing suitable about it, even judged by a schoolboy's standard, for he was in no way effeminate and his sister's name was Clare. Yet I doubt if there was ever a nickname which stuck to a man so persistently. Most such misnomers die out at the end of a school career; with him it remained all his life. He never resented it. He always answered to it. The smallest boy would call him 'Kate' with impunity and, horresco referens, even the masters used it. Of one in particular, an ultra polite and punctilious man, he told me that he could always tell what was in store for him by the mode of address. If it was 'Kate' all was well; if 'Joseph,' things were doubtful; when it was 'Flanagan' he knew he was in for trouble. It is phenomenal how that name lasted all his life. Long after generations had come and gone that 'knew not Joseph,' it survived his Christian and religious names, it survived any laws to the contrary and, to his intimates, he was 'Kate' to the last.
There is no doubt his most striking feature as a boy was his strong religious bias. He was a singularly pure-minded innocent boy, very pious, very regular, even scrupulous, who took his religion very seriously indeed. But it was about the only thing he did take seriously.
He was not distinguished at games. He did not shirk them, but he had more vigour than skill. He could give a good heavy charge at football, but he generally missed the ball and very often the man also. At cricket he was no good. He did not care for it, but there was always plenty of life in the field when he was about. Strange to say, though an enthusiast for bathing, he never learned to swim, not at least on the surface, but he used to claim that he could swim as well as any one - under water. I forget how many times he was rescued just in time, from a watery grave and only brought round by artificial respiration, in other words, a good pommelling! He must have been extremely strong. I remember, one St Cecily's day, he amazed us all by lifting a 56lb weight with one hand and holding it out, fair and square, from the shoulder - no small feat for a boy in his teens or for anyone else!
Neither was his success in studies very remarkable. He had plenty of ability, but competition for a place never troubled him. He had a wonderful memory and seldom forgot any thing he had once learned - a faculty which stood him good service when he came to Theology. Once towards the top of the school he got a prize. I can recall now the roar of applause that went up from the school when Joseph Flanagan was announced as the winner of a special prize-for Greek! And I can remember his confusion when he went up to receive it. It was a two guinea book given by an old Greek master on the Mission. Yet he had parted with it before dinner on the Exhibition day. I expostulated at the time, telling him his father, for whom he had extraordinary affection, would be hurt. 'Not he,' was the reply, 'he'd think I stole it. He wouldn't believe I could get a prize. He'd sooner hear I said the Rosary.' I don't think he ever heard the end of that Greek prize.
That vacation he and two other boys were on the stage waiting for the ferryboat to cross the Mersey when a Greek ship came and moored alongside. Dunstan suggested we should go on board. We did so. He saw a sailor leaning against the bulwark - a fine-looking fellow with a red knitted cap and a very truculent moustache. 'Let's go and talk to him,' said Dunstan. 'No, you are the one to talk to him - we never got a prize for Greek.' Noblesse oblige. Dunstan raised his hat and began *** p109 The man looked bewildered and shrugged his shoulders. 'Try him again,' we said, 'it sounds splendid.'
*** said Dunstan. I don't quite know what happened for we had begun to move away, but he was down the gangway in two bounds and hurried us away, firmly convinced that 'that villain was feeling for his dagger.'
It was towards the end of his school time that it was discovered he had a tenor voice of wonderful range and power. He had a good ear for music and a good memory but not much taste, and as he never learned to read music, and no one troubled to teach him, his gift was never cultivated, and what might have been the tenor voice of the century was lost to the world! But what he knew he always remembered, and he loved nothing better, when his sermon was over, in later days, than to join the choir in singing Mozart and Haydn and revel in Zingarelli's Laudate. His voice was a great asset to him in his preaching. There was a peculiar vibration or timbre in it, which had a strange power of moving people, even when the matter did not appeal to them. Of late years it became very throaty.
A more generous boy never lived. He never had anything for long. He gave away or shared everything he had. He was also the kindest hearted lad I knew. He would do anything to oblige anyone. I never heard him speak a harsh word to another. He was a universal favourite with boys and masters.
And yet, strange to say, he was seldom out of trouble. Some may judge from his name that he must have always set himself 'agin the Government.' It is more true to say that the Government set itself against him. But why? Everyone knew what a good fellow he was. He was most strict in his observance of rules - bar that of silence - and in his whole career I know that never once did he deliberately go out of bounds. It can only have been his abnormally high spirits, which the authorities thought they should repress and felt that mild means would be of no use. The result was that he was perpetually in penance. He had penances which would be thought savage now. I have known him a whole month, all his play time, on 'the Walk' with 'lines' for a mere trifle. One whole very cold winter he was excluded from libraries and playrooms - 'under the gas' in the passage was the technical name - just for romping once, a most severe penance. He felt the injustice very keenly, but luckily for us in later days, it never crushed his spirit nor soured him, and he never bore any malice. He had great trouble in writing poetry. He could not resist a joke and it was a fruitful source of difficulty for him. Once, altering just a word or two, he sent up Longfellow's poem on the 'Lighthouse' as his own - forty lines! He had to write another. Someone (he had many advisers while he was struggling with the Muse, and great was the hilarity) suggested he should name the ships that passed after the manner of Artemus Ward: -
He did so - eighty lines! He lost an afternoon's play over a poem on 'The Old Church Tower.' His first was rejected and he had to stay in and write another. In spite of a host of advisers, perhaps in consequence of them, he had got no further than this: -
He was undecided which of the three last lines to send in. We thought the last line the strongest. He could not resist the fun and another penance followed
He was, in spite of all, a great reader and he got through many books, and very seriously he took notes. He must have begun early for he had three fat volumes of notes quite full before he left the school.
As I look back on those days and think of all the quips and cranks and jokes and escapades and humorous adventures, scores of episodes occur to my mind which, after all these years, have not yet lost their savour, but out of them all there emerges clearly the figure of the most innocent, childlike, merriest and kindest boy I have ever known.
He entered the Novitiate in 1872. I followed him the next year. I was anxious to see the effect a year's noviceship had had on my predecessors and, quite as naturally, the predecessors did their best to impress the newcomers with the solemnity of religious life, and none more so than Dunstan. I met him in the cloister the morning after arrival. 'Brother Dunstan will you please tell me where we go for our rig out?' He put his hand up - 'Ssh!' ' Hang it, Brother Dunstan can't you tell us what to do?' He put his finger to his lips and looked hard down his nose, for fear I suppose, I should see the twinkle in his eye. 'Look here, Kate, if you don't tell us, you'll be answerable for a lost vocation. I'm off.' That fetched him. I could hear his quaint laugh beginning in the lower regions. Those who knew him will remember that laugh. It began low down, something like the simmering of a kettle and grew louder and louder till it boiled over and then there was an explosion. It was the most irresistibly infectious laugh I ever knew. It never failed to set everyone else off - no matter where or when. It was clear that, however spiritually refined and enriched, here, in the Brother Dunstan of 1873, was the old 'Kate' of 1872.
It was about this time that he began to acquire that gift of mimicry with which, for so many years, he entertained us. It was not that he could imitate the tricks of voice and manner exactly; I have known many who excelled him in that. Perhaps it would be more correct to call his gift caricature. He certainly had the knack of catching some leading feature or habit or mannerism, exaggerating it, and mixing it up with the drollery of his own imagination in a way that was most amusing. Some of our old fathers lived long after their time in Dunstan's 'Waxworks.' Who can ever forget Doctor Burchall and Father Hall singing the Exultet as a duet? or Abbot Snow's sermon on the 'Two Men?' or Father Bernard Hutchison's conversation with 'Sir Satin Tights' on the state of trade in Zanzibar! It is needless to say, there was not a spark of malice in it. I have seen his victims laughing at their own presentment till the tears ran down their cheeks.
On his religious life I do not intend to enlarge. I have set down a few of his earlier characteristics which most will recognise. No one who knew him will misunderstand them. But lest it may not be so with all, let me say there was another side to the irresponsible, rollicking Irishman he appeared to be in public. The secret of his mirth and his jollity was that from the very first he was a most mortified self-denying man.
He had a most sensitive conscience, scrupulous even - I had almost written a suffering conscience all his life. He was most nervously anxious never to step over the line between right and wrong, even in the smallest matters, and I don't believe he ever consciously did so - just as he never left bounds as a boy.
If the Opus Dei is the chief work of a monk, then he was one of the best monks I have met. Year in, year out, I never remember him once missing Matins at 5 a.m. For the ten years I was in community with him he was invariably the first in choir. I don't think he ever asked release for work or health, for he was never ill. Even on month days when the one monthly rest is allowed, over and over again I have known him give up his rest to another. At times when it was difficult to reckon on a quorum, such as Exhibition or Vacation times, we were always safe if Dunstan were about, no matter what hour he had been able to go to bed. And this he kept up till the end, or very nearly the end. In all the forty-three years he was on the Mission, whenever he returned to his Alma Mater, either for holiday or Retreat or any other purpose, his invariable practice was to attend choir, not merely the day hours but Matins and Lauds as well.
I have said he led a mortified life. Indeed I never knew anyone who was contented with so little in the way of food or raiment or comfort of any kind. He could enjoy a banquet with the best, but he seemed equally happy with a crust, and perhaps sparkled more readily. I never once knew him to complain in earlier or later life, no matter what provocation there was. It was the same with his room, his furniture, his clothes - he was perfectly contented always with the worst. Many have heard of the wonderful life of poverty he led for the last twenty-five years. He had very few of the comforts of life and lived every year on less than half the expenditure of any single mission. He was often offered help, but only once or twice during the war would he accept it. 'I'll manage all right' and he did so, as brightly and cheerfully as if Barton were the Paradise of Missions.
Then his roystering jokes and merry makings - how many know that for the last thirty years he has suffered from a most painful malady? Many and many a time when there were calls for him to amuse the company, I have known him to be suffering a very agony of pain and he would have given anything to be excused, but, sooner than disappoint, he has crushed back his feelings and entered into the fun as if he had not a care in the world and really enjoyed it.
But perhaps the most admirable feature in his nature was the way in which he sacrificed himself to help others. This may seem strained but it is absolutely true; I never remember him once refusing to help another, no matter what it cost him. In early days he would take a class or an hour's presiding, or someone's place in choir, or reading in the refectory - anything that would help, even though he had to make up for it in his own work afterwards; and in later days, who ever heard him refuse to take a sick call, or even a sermon to help one out of a difficulty? One could always count on Father Dunstan for kindness and, in well nigh sixty years, it never changed.
The fact is he was essentially a Community man. He loved Community life. He loved the Brethren, collectively and individually, and loved to be with them. He never forgot that he who enters Community life does not enter it to get all the benefit from it and then live a selfish individual life, giving nothing in return. He knew he had to put his share into the common stock. What he had he gave and gave without stint. Small wonder then if for these as well as his lighter gifts he was loved as few have been loved.
I pass over the details of his Mission career. He served in every district but South Wales and in many of our churches, but for twenty-five years he has lived at Barton on Humber. His health failed seriously about two years ago, and last November he had a bad heart seizure. For twelve months he had never been to bed and had to take what rest he could in a chair, but he had a marvellous spirit and said Mass every day, though he had to be led up to the Altar. He was most patient during his illness, though suffering intense pain, and gave great edification by the holiness and regularity of his life. The end came on Friday, February 1st. He said Mass as usual in the morning and was laughing and joking, also as usual, in the afternoon. At about 5 p.m. he had a fit of coughing and suddenly became unconscious. The priest from Brigg gave him Extreme Unction, and next morning on Our Lady's Feast he passed away. R.I.P.
Good-bye, dear old Dunstan! You have been more to many of us than you ever knew. You have brightened many an hour for us and your cheerful sacrifice and childlike innocence have taught us more than books can teach. May we soon meet again! If we follow you soon and meet you in Purgatory it will not be so strange, if you are there. Heaven will not lose its brightness by your presence; and if by God's grace we follow you there, we shall look to you to greet us at the gates and we know that no one will have for us a warmer welcome.
Quod faxit Deus.
JOSEPH DUNSTAN FLANAGAN 2 February 1924
1852 12 Aug Born Liverpool
1863-72 Educ Ampleforth
1872 29 Sep Habit at Belmont
1873 7 Oct Simple Vows
1875 29 Aug Minor Orders
1876 8 Dec Solemn Vows Ampleforth Prior S Kearney
1877 18 Nov Subdiaconate
1879 8 Mar Diaconate
1880 18 Sep Priesthood Bishop E Ilsley
1881 On the Mission at St Augustine's Liverpool
1884 Cleator
1887 St Mary's Warrington
1891 Brownedge
1896 St Anne's Liverpool
1899 Barton-on-Humber
1924 2 Feb Died at Barton-on-Humber
Buried at Barton-on-Humber