in good company 38

in good company 38

To Stone the halo of motherhood was visible, even around the head

of those whom this world counts and calls “fallen.” Motherhood was

to him, in itself, and apart from the attendant circumstances, so

sacred and beautiful, that the very word “mother,” as he spoke it,

seemed surrounded by the halo of his reverence. The widowed Queen

whom he knew and loved, and by whom he was held in regard and esteem,

was to him no less our Mother--the type and symbol of English

Motherhood--than she was our Sovereign. Of the august and ancient

Catholic Church of which he was so loyal a son he rarely used the

simile “The Bride of Christ,” which one frequently hears in sermons,

but spoke of her, and with eyes aglow, as the Mother of her people;

and it was of England, our Mother, that he sang with passionate love

in many of his poems. So, too, the words “Holy Communion” assumed, as

he spoke them, a meaning that was sacramental. The reverent lowering

of his voice was like the dipping of a battleship’s ensign.

 

Again, in that portion of the service, in which, preceding the

reading of the Ten Commandments, the Celebrant says, “God spake these

words, and said,” many clergymen lay no stress on any particular

word, but speak or intone all six in one more or less monotonous

voice. It was not so with Stone. He spoke the passage thus:

 

“God----” the Holy Name was uttered with intense reverence and

solemnity, which recalled to the congregation how awful is the Source

whence these ancient Commandments come. Then there was a pause that

every hearer might attune his or her thought to reverent attention,

and the Celebrant would continue--“spake these words, and said,”

passing on thence to the First Commandment.

 

And, lastly, I would say that I never heard human voice thrill with

such devotion, such worshipping and wondering adoration, as that

with which he spoke the name of our Saviour. That Name, the Holy and

adored Name of JESUS, was so linked with all that he held sacred that

he never uttered it without pausing before and after the Holy Name,

that no less hallowed a word should be neighbour to that Name on his

lips.

 

 

VII

 

Upon one incident in my long friendship with Stone I look back with

pain and sorrow. He came in late one night, just as the last post had

brought me the news--I would not write of such things here except in

so far as it bears upon my friend--that the whole edition of my first

little book had been sold out.

 

To-day the writing of a book, if only because it may be the means

of bringing influence to bear upon others, is, I am of opinion, an

occupation to be followed diligently, conscientiously, and with

pleasurable zest. None the less, as compared with what some men

are doing in the way of direct personal service to God, to their

King, their country and their fellow creatures, it seems to me an

occupation too inactive to afford cause for congratulation that one

is thus employed. But in those days I desired nothing more than to be

a successful author, little imagining that success in authorship does

not necessarily mean the making either of literature or of a man.

 

When Stone came in that night, so full was I of the great news, as

I held it to be, about my book, that I must needs rush at him, as

volubly and importantly to pour it all out, as if the fate of empires

hung upon the issue. He had a genius for friendship, and heard me

out patiently and gently to the end, to say: “I am so glad, so very

glad, dear fellow, and congratulate you with all my heart,” or words

to that effect. Then he broached the subject of his call, a matter of

infinitely more importance than any news of mine. It did not concern

himself, or I should, I hope, have acted differently, but a member

of his congregation, unknown to me, whom Stone was trying to assist

in a time of trouble and anxiety. So far as I remember I hastily

promised the assistance for which he asked, but, when he essayed to

speak further of the matter, I interrupted him rudely, once again and

boastfully to speak of my book.

 

Stone so habitually suppressed it, that few suspected how great was

his gift of satire. When he chose, or rather had he so chosen, he

could so wing his satiric shaft as to pierce the thickest hide, and

never was he more tempted to employ this “devil’s weapon” as he held

it to be, than when irritated by vulgar boastfulness.

 

Looking back long years after upon this incident, I know that to

no one could what happened that night be more irritating, and even

objectionable, than to Stone. On the part of a friend, it was an

affront to everything by which he held in our social code, a wound to

his own pride of breeding and good manners. How sorely I must have

tempted and irritated him, I now fully realise, yet his affection

for the offender held back the stinging word, and neither then,

nor at any other time in our long friendship, did I ever hear from

him one reproachful or ungentle word. I recall his forbearance to

me--a very young man when he was becoming middle-aged, and so might

reasonably have spoken--on this particular occasion, an occasion

which even now I cannot recall without shame. I recall a score of

times when I grieved him by my apathy upon some question upon which

he felt intensely, for Stone’s convictions were so positively held

that he would readily have gone to the stake in defence of them, and

that those he loved, and to whom he looked for sympathy, could be

apathetic upon matters which he held to be of vital consequence, was

to him a positive pain. I recall all these, and many other things in

which I failed or wounded him by some indifference, some thoughtless

act, or unconsidered word, and remembering that never once did he

fail me by sympathy, interest, help or love withheld--I sicken at my

own unworthiness, and at the thought of the sorry return I made for

all his love and forbearance.

 

It is with relief that I turn to another incident in the early days

of our friendship.

 

One night, in the eighties, when I was dining with Stone and his

and my kind old friend, the Rev. Frederick Arnold, at St. Paul’s

Vicarage, Haggerston, a maid brought in the last post. Stone asked

permission to run through his letters, in case there was anything

requiring an immediate answer. Over one he uttered an exclamation of

glad and grateful surprise.

 

“Good news?” one of us asked.

 

“Very good,” said Stone, flushed and radiant. He hesitated a moment.

Then, handing Mr. Arnold the letter, he said, “There is no reason why

you two, one an old, and the other a young, but both true and dear

friends of mine, should not see it.”

 

It was from the Bishop of London--I think Bishop Jackson, but of this

I am not quite sure. In any case it was a very gracious letter. Upon

Stone, the Bishop said, the mantle of John Keble had by virtue of his

hymns, admittedly fallen. Thus far Stone had for some fifteen years

given all his time, energies, and abilities to working among poor and

uneducated folk in an East End parish, where practically the whole of

the small stipend was swallowed up in church work and charities, and

where Stone had no time or opportunity to do justice to his gifts as

a writer. The Bishop was aware, he said, that Stone was fast wearing

himself out, and could not go on much longer. Hence he had pleasure

in putting before Stone the offer of preferment to a West End parish,

where he would have an educated, intellectual, and appreciative

congregation, as well as the leisure and the opportunity to devote

his great gifts as poet and hymn-writer for the benefit of the church

and the world.

 

It was a tempting offer, for much as Stone loved sport and travel he

had hitherto had neither the time nor the money for anything more

extended than a few weeks in Switzerland or in “God’s Infirmary” (as

quoting George MacDonald he often called the country), generally on a

visit to his old friend the Rev. Donald Carr, of Woolstaston Rectory,

Salop. Moreover, though Stone grudged no service given to God or to

his own congregation, he grieved sometimes that he had so little time

to devote to hymn-writing and to literature, concerning which he had

many projects. In a letter dated June 15, 1892, he had written to me,

“I am up to my ears in work and behindhand because, if you please, I

am in the thick of writing a religious novel. I am not really joking!”

 

But grateful as he was for the Bishop’s kind and fatherly offer,

Stone declined it as, later on, he declined similar offers, including

a Colonial Bishopric.

 

“I am not and I do not expect to be the man I was,” he said to Mr.

Arnold and me that night, “but I ought to be, and am, thankful that,

nervously constituted as I am, I have gone through fifteen years in

the East End, out of twenty-three in the Ministry. When health and

strength give out, when for my people’s sake I must let the work pass

into younger and stronger hands, I will go. Till then, in Haggerston,

where my heart is, and where the people whom I love are living, I

must remain.”

 

And in Haggerston he remained working early in the morning and late

in the night until 1890, when the collapse, alike of nerve and

physical strength, came, and he had to resign--to be appointed by

the Lord Chancellor to the comparatively easy living of All Hallows,

London Wall.

 

But Stone was not the man to spare himself in his new sphere of

labour. What the wrench of parting and the strain necessitated by

sweeping aside the cobwebs, and by trying to warm into life the dry

bones, as he put it, of a long-neglected City church cost him, may be

gathered from the one and only sad letter I ever had from him. It is written from the house of his sister, Mrs. Boyd.