Section 4
On November 29, 1900, Father Cuthbert Dunne came to Oscar Wilde’s bedside and in his words, “Mr. Wilde received the Sacrament of Extreme Unction.” The next day at two o’clock in the afternoon, Wilde sat up in bed, gasped, sighed, and sank back onto the pillow. There were no last words. One friend stated with irony, “It was not a religion with which he could live, but one he clearly wanted to die in…. His decision was the best one he ever made.”
On December 3, the funeral was held at Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the bills paid for by a friend. There was no music and no choir. Father Dunne said the mass. Black horses pulled an undecorated hearse, marked with the number thirteen, followed by about fifty well-wishers and friends. He was first buried in a suburban cemetery in Bagneux. In 1909, his remains were moved to Père Lachaise.
On one side of his monument is the verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol cited in the prologue. On the other side are the words from Job 29:22—“After I had spoken, they spoke no more; my words fell gently on their ears.”
Apart from any theological questions about his last hours and the rites administered, there is little doubt that in a most profound sense, Wilde’s was a life tossed between the sensual and the spiritual—indeed, a life terribly misspent. To debate whether he was genuinely repentant or not is both to grasp the point and to miss it. We grasp it in the sense that there is a tragic side to a deathbed conversion, if indeed there was one. There are mixed feelings about those last moments and about what one has called a “late convert’s hell.” Yes, much is forgiven, but how much was lost, and how many were plundered by such reckless living before the awakening moment. One can only weep for the loss of all the years that could have been spent in the investment of a brilliant mind for the cause of the Lord.
But it is to miss the point because we can only leave the unknown in the hands of God, who has assured us in His Word that the judge of all the earth will do right. There are those who receive a reward from the “landlord’s” gracious hand even though they came to work in His vineyard at the eleventh hour. And so we must leave Wilde’s destiny in the hands of our heavenly Father. I cannot help but think of the following words penned by Isaac Watts. If Wilde’s repentance was genuine, these words could well have been written by him:
Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!
A study of Wilde’s life reveals with no mistake that the gift of sexuality is a precious gift from God; any perversion of it in any form plunders the sacred and denudes beauty. Anything that is beautiful is governed by laws. The laws are there for its protection because it does not take much to destroy beauty. A work of art that takes years to create can be desecrated in seconds.
In a society that has gone pleasure-mad, we would do well to go back to the author of life and see what His plan is. If we do not, we destroy the beautiful and live with the hideous, all the while masking it by our pretense that all is well. Those who honor what He intended for us to honor will find fulfillment. Those who desecrate what He has made sacred will leave themselves empty and ravaged. At a time in our cultural struggle when sex and sexuality create huge divisions among us, we would do well to remember that the enjoyment of sex was not man’s idea, but God’s. But to enjoy it by ungodly means is man’s idea, not God’s.
May you find Oscar Wilde’s story a telling lesson on what a tragedy life becomes when it loses its way in the name of pleasure, at the cost of the sacred. God desires that we live a life of fulfillment and has reminded us that we will find eternal pleasure only in knowing Him and loving Him with all of our hearts. May the fire of His joy and presence be your trust, your experience, and your delight.