Hardly had his old friend and fellow-novice been laid in his grave at Brownedge than Fr. Wilfrid was discovered to be ill - to be looking ill as well as complaining of illness. For about a dozen years he had not been his old energetic, hard-working self. All the time he had seemed to others strong and healthy enough; and his manual labour on our hill side showed that he had some real strength and some health also of a sort, though it was not satisfactory to himself. Consequently, most of us had come to think him hypochondriacal, particularly as no one - not even the doctors - could see in him signs of the ailments and diseases he fancied himself to possess. We knew that this hypochondriasis is a disease in itself, although it is one which does not appeal strongly to our pity or sympathy. Hence he was never asked to do anything he did not think himself fit to undertake, and it may be that our cheerful assumption of his real healthiness was the best and kindest help and encouragement we could have given him. His last illness, so short and mysterious and inevitable, makes it evident that for a long while, perhaps for years, a terrible disease had been preying upon him unseen in a quarter unsuspected even by himself. Whilst the enemy was burrowing its secret way into the fortress, he was for ever sounding an alarm at the gates and we remained undisturbed because we knew that the alarm was unfounded.
Francis Sumner was born in the year 1841 at Coughton in Warwickshire, of a well-known old Catholic family. He came to Ampleforth in 1854 and took the Benedictine habit in 1862. He was professed in the year following, returned to his College in 1866 and was ordained priest in 1869. When we first knew him as a young religious he was a sturdy, strong-limbed, determined-looking young man, a willing and untiring worker, active in mind and body. The quality of his work was its conscientiousness, and it was the evidence of this also in his spiritual life which to us boys made him an edifying influence. There are many now living who will gratefully testify to the effect of his intelligent and dutiful work as a master, and to his sane and discriminative appreciation of men and things. He was one of those who gave great attention to small details, and we found this instructive and interesting. We generally wanted to know what Fr. Wilfrid had to say about a new statue or picture, a new book, a new building, or, indeed, a new anything; he was sure to have something to say worth hearing and to be as anxious to say it as we were to listen to it. He was a free and outspoken critic, but always from the constructive point of view. His humour led him to want to better things and add to them and finish them; to point out and remedy defects; to weigh and balance plans and schemes. When his discussions and arguments persuaded him to adopt a view, he became an enthusiastic advocate who delighted to win converts over to his side. His ideas seemed almost to run away with him. His speech became as hurried as his short steps and bustling manner. But he always had a very clear idea of what he wanted to do and to say, and his enthusiasms were never likely to lead him into an unjust prejudice or a rash initiative.
As a sample of his teaching methods, we remember how an indignant surprise that a certain senior class should be so ignorant of the meaning of such terms as frieze and plinth, ogival, gable and the like impelled him to introduce into the course - whether classical, mathematical, historical or what, we do not recollect - a series of lectures on the various styles of Architecture. They were dictated and written out, illustrated also by some who had artistic leanings, and, though necessarily brief and elementary, they were sufficiently sound and comprehensive to serve as a foundation or outline which could be safely built upon and added to and filled up by after reading and experience. And as a sample of Fr. Wilfrid's attention to detail, let us recall to those who witnessed it his setting of Julius Caesar on our little stage. By a careful study of Montfaucon and other authorities and a certain practical ingenuity of his own, he contrived to introduce into the dresses and accessories, with but small means at his disposal, as much realism and archaeological accuracy as we should expect to find in a modern pageant. Nothing was too trivial or too difficult to be considered beneath or beyond attention and care.
After filling the offices of Prefect, Junior-Master and Sub-Prior he was sent into the North Province. His first independent charge was Egremont in Cumberland, from which he was transferred to St. Mary's, Buttermarket Street, Warrington. He was there for thirteen years and it was the common opinion of his superiors, during the time, that they had no better manager of a mission than Fr. Wilfrid. He was restlessly active and attentive to his work and most successful in everything he undertook. The interior of the fine church, then little more than a shell, he fitted up and beautified almost beyond recognition. He had always some scheme of improvement on hand to which he devoted the energies of both mind and body - so closely, that we heard it said of him more than once 'he is wearing himself out.' But he could not help himself; whatever its effect might be, this extravagant expenditure of energy was a part of his nature. Once we heard him complain of being quite tired out, and he said he had planned for himself a holiday of complete rest. He would go, he said, to Llandudno or to Cornwall and spend all the days lying on the Orme's Head or the Cornish cliffs, doing nothing but bask in the sunshine and gaze over the sea, with a book to read if he cared to look at it. He carried out his plan and went to Cornwall with a companion but, once there, he bustled all over the county and dragged his tired socius to every point of smallest interest that could be reached on foot, by coach or by train.
His working days were broken off abruptly many years before his death. But his retirement did not bring him peace. He was able to take interest and find distraction in many things yet we believe that he found most rest and happiness in the work he was still able to do at times - some brief spells of duty on the mission and his manual labour on the hill-side. The evening of his life was not yet reached; he did not look nor feel himself to be an old man altogether past work. But the clouds gathered suddenly, and the light failed quickly, and God called him to his rest. R.I.P.
Francis Wilfrid SUMNER 2 September 1909 1841 17 Oct Born 1862 Clothed 1863 Professed (Simply) 1869 Priest 1880 Egremont 1883 St Mary's Warrington 1897 Canton 1900 St Anne's Liverpool 1909 2 Sep died