in good company 34

in good company 34

MY DEAR KERNAHAN,

 

Thank you for your charming letter. I have been very ill and

unable to correct my proofs, but have sent them off now. _I have

changed my mind about the passage about temptation._ One can’t

pull a work of art about without spoiling it, and after all it

is merely Luther’s “Pecca Fortiter” put dramatically into the

lips of a character.

 

Do you think I should add to preface the definition of “morbid”

and “unhealthy” art I gave in the _Fortnightly_ for February? The

one on morbidity is really good.

 

Will you also look after my “wills” and “shalls” in proof! I am

Celtic in my use of these words, not English.

 

You are excellent on Rossetti. I read you with delight.

 

Your sincere friend,

OSCAR WILDE.

 

When next I met Wilde I recurred to the matter, but it was then too

late, for the book, he said, was in great part printed. Moreover, he

had now another excuse to put forward.

 

“After I had left you,” he said, “I remembered that a friend of mine,

a well-known critic, had read the book in manuscript when it was

first written. He said something to the same effect as you did, but

less strongly. Honestly it was that, more than anything else, which

finally decided me to leave the passage in. Had I taken it out, he

would have claimed that I did so in deference to his strictures, and

haul down my flag to a professional critic I never have and never

will.”

 

This incident (though Wilde has been dead sixteen years I have

neither written of it nor spoken of it before) shows Wilde as weak,

it shows him as yielding--as we all, alas, too often yield--to evil

influences, and to inclination as opposed to conscience, and as a

man who was determined to shine at all costs. His vanity would not

allow him to withhold the word that he was pleased to think daring,

original, and above all brilliant, though he knew that word to be

only brilliantly bad. Even in his sinning, it seems to me, he fed

and flattered his insatiable vanity, by electing, even in sin, to

be unlike others; and how far vanity, even more than viciousness,

was accountable for Wilde’s downfall, only the God who made him and

the devil who fostered and fed that vanity, till it less resembled a

pardonable human weakness than a hideous excrescence and disease, can

ever truly say.

 

The setting of Wilde’s sun (which had risen on so fair a prospect,

and with such promise of splendour) in foul quagmires of sin and

shame, was the greatest tragedy I have known. I met his friend and

mine, Mr. Hall Caine, immediately after the verdict and sentence.

I have seen Caine ill, and I have seen him deeply moved, even

distressed, but I remember always to his honour (for Wilde not seldom

made Caine’s writing the butt of his wit) the anguish in his face as

he said:

 

“God pity him in this hour when human pity there seems none! To think

of it! that man, that genius as he is, whom you and I have seen

fêted and flattered! whose hand we have grasped in friendship! a

felon, and come to infamy unspeakable! It haunts me, it is like some

foul and horrible stain on our craft and on us all, which nothing

can wash out. It is the most awful tragedy in the whole history of

literature.”

 

 

 

 

S. J. STONE, THE HYMN-WRITER

 

 

I

 

The Rev. S. J. Stone, M.A., was the author of two hymns that are

known wherever the English tongue is spoken, one the beautiful Lenten

litany of love, trust and repentance, “Weary of earth and laden with

my sin”; the other that soul-stirring triumph-song, “The Church’s One

Foundation,” which--set as it is to majestic battle-march music that

fires the imagination--has become, as it were, the Marseillaise of

the Church militant and victorious.

 

When Stone died, and where he wished to die, in the Charterhouse, the

busy world learned that the Rector of a City Church, who had done

memorable work in an East End parish, and was the author of some

famous hymns, had passed away. Those who knew and loved him were

aware that a great soul, a hero-heart, a rarely beautiful spirit, had

gone to God.

 

In my little life, the years of which are fast approaching

threescore, it has so happened that I have known, sometimes

intimately, a number of so-called “eminent” women and men. I have

known not a few who in intellectual power, in the brilliance of

their gifts, their attainments and achievements, or in what is

called “fame,” stood immeasurably higher than Stone. I have known

none who, judged by the beauty, purity, and nobility of life and

character, was half as great as he. I do not say this, be it noted,

under the emotional stress which follows the death of a dearly-loved

friend. In such an hour of bitter self-reproach when in retrospect we

think of the kindly act which, had it been done (alas, that it was

not done!) would have helped our friend through a time of trouble;

the generous word which had it been spoken (alas, that it remained

unspoken!) might have heartened him when we knew him to be most cast

down--these and possibly our poignant sense of remorse, it may be for

an actual wrong done, not infrequently cause us to lose our sense of

proportion. For the time being at least we over-estimate what was

good in him, and under-estimate what was indifferent, or worse.

 

It is not so that I write of S. J. Stone. Sixteen long years, in

which life has never been, nor will be, quite the same, missing

that loved presence, have passed away since he was laid to rest in

Norwood Cemetery; and to-day with my own life’s end nearing I can

say, not only for myself, but for many others who knew him, that so

brave of heart was he as to make possible for us the courage of a

Cœur de Lion, so knightly of nature as to make possible the honour of

an Arthur or a Galahad, so nearly stainless in the standard he set

himself, in the standard he attained, as to come, as near as human

flesh and blood can come, almost to making possible the purity of the

Christ.

 

I am not unaware what will be in the mind of many who read these

words. Some will suspect me if not of insincerity, at least of the

foolish use of superlative and hyperbole. Not a few will hold my

last comparison as scarcely reverent. And all the while there will

not be a single woman or man, with any intimate knowledge of Stone,

who, reading what I have written, will not say, at least of what is

wholly appreciative (many will resent what I have hereafter to say of

his temperamental weaknesses and human defects), “All this is truth,

sober and unexaggerated, and yet the man himself was in many respects

infinitely greater than he is drawn.”

 

 

II

 

Ever since Stone died my intention has been, before laying down my

own pen, some day and so far as I am able, to picture him as I knew

him. It seemed to me a duty, no less than a trust, that some of us

should put on record what manner of man it was who wrote these noble

hymns, and how nobly he lived and died. My reason for delaying thus

long about what to me is a labour of love, was the difficulty of

picturing Stone as he was, without seeming to exaggerate. Fortunately

it has not been left only to me to bear tribute, for the Rev. F. G.

Ellerton, Vicar of Ellesmere, to whose father we owe the famous hymn,

“Saviour, again to Thy dear Name we raise,” has written a Memoir

of his former Vicar (I recollect Mr. Ellerton as Stone’s curate,

more than a score of years ago), which was prefixed to a volume of

“Selections” from Stone’s _Poems and Hymns_. Only one who had lived

and worked with Stone could have drawn so true and sympathetic a

picture of Stone the Christian, Stone the Churchman, Stone the

hymn-writer, and Stone the man; and, except for the fact that Mr.

Ellerton and I approach our subjects from different standpoints, his

beautiful Appreciation will be found amply to confirm what I say in

my briefer Silhouette.

 

It is to a sister of mine that I owe my first meeting with Stone.

From her girlhood upward she had contributed poems, sketches and

stories to the magazines, earning each year by her pen sums which to

the rest of us--how wonderful it all was!--seemed princely, and very

proud of her we all were.

 

Ill-health, and her determination never, after marriage, to let her

writing interfere with her duties as wife and mother, have prevented

her from following up, except very occasionally, the work in

literature which she so loved, though two years ago she was able to

publish, and with success, a first long novel.

 

But at that time she had made some girlish reputation as a writer

of religious verse, and was commissioned to contribute “A Golden

Song” each week to a well-known periodical. Stone’s attention was

attracted by the sweet-briar simplicity and beauty of some of these

“Golden Songs,” and when he and my sister chanced to meet, each was

singularly drawn to the other, and so it was that first she and he,

thereafter he and I, became friends and remained so to the end.

 

Now let me try to describe Stone as he was at the time of our first

meeting, when he was in early middle life. Emerson said once that

we take a man’s measure when first we meet him--and every time we

meet him. One’s first comment at sight of Stone would inevitably have

been: “A Man!” And one’s second: “An Englishman!”

 

Englishman was written, as the phrase runs, “all over him”--in

appearance, in voice, as well as bearing--and I can conceive no

disguise out of which the unmistakable Englishman would not have

peeped. Unmistakably English as he was in appearance, yet, when one

talked with him, and he became interested, enthusiastic, excited,

when he spoke of his life’s work, his life’s hopes and dreams, but

most of all when one could induce him to talk of England, Oxford,

patriotism, loyalty, love, duty or poetry, and saw the flash in the

eye, the throb at the temples, and heard the thrill in the voice,

one’s next comment was, “Here surely is not part Anglo-Saxon, but all

Celt!”

 

The Celt in him, for--though he never told us whence it came--the

quicksilver of Celtic blood, there must have been in his veins,

made mock continually of the Anglo-Saxon. Yet, either the Fairy

Godmother, or the forgotten forbear who was responsible for this

freakish intermingling of quick-running Celtic blood, all ardour

and eagerness, with the slower, surer and steadier pulsing of an

Anglo-Saxon strain, doled out to Stone none of the Celtic defects

but only of the Celtic best. From the irritability, uncertainty, and

the “impossibility” which make some Celts--at all events some of us

Irishmen--an inscrutable problem and mystery of Providence, as well

as an ever-present perplexity to our best friends, Stone was entirely

free. In that respect he was inwardly, and in character, as truly

English as he was truly English in the outer man.

 

He was of exceptional physique and presence. Only slightly above the

middle height, but muscular of limb, broad and square-shouldered, and

deep-chested as a lion, Stone was a fine specimen of virile manhood.

Proud of his strength, for, though devoid of vanity, he had his

full share of what I may call a seemly and proper pride, he carried

himself well and erectly--head up, shoulders squared--walking with a step that was firm, steady and soldierly.