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.
And here I may interpolate that, a soldier’s grandson as he was, all
Stone’s boyhood longings were set on soldiering. Only the knowledge
that it was the heart’s desire of the father and mother he so revered
that he should follow his father by taking Holy Orders, and later
the conviction that he was called of God to the ministry, kept him
from a commission in the Army. His renunciation of his boyhood’s
dream was the first great act of obedience in a life of consistent
obedience and devotion to duty. The sacrifice--as it was--of his own
wishes, was made manfully and uncomplainingly, and he threw himself
whole-heartedly thereafter into his ministerial work. But the pang
remained, and to the last, when he spoke of soldiering, there was
that in his voice and in his eye which reminded one of an exile,
looking across far waters to the land of his birth. To Stone, to have
led a company, or a half-company, and for the first time, into action
in the service of his Sovereign and of his country, would have been,
in the words of George Meredith, the very “bend of passion’s rapids,”
as supreme a moment as Rossetti’s “sacred hour for which the years
did sigh.” That he would have made a gallant soldier, I am sure, but
not a great one. Leading a charge, he would have been irresistible,
but his was too highly-strung, too impulsive a temperament, calmly to
plan out and to carry through the cold-blooded details of a campaign.
He was to the last a soldier in heart, if not in looks, for, by the
beard and a certain breezy bluffness of presence, he might very well
have passed for a sailor. The head was finely moulded and on large
leonine lines, the forehead broad, full and lofty, the nose strong,
straight, purposeful and well-proportioned, and the set of the firm
mouth, and the shaping of the determined chin, were in keeping with
the forcefulness and the frankness of the eyes and of the whole
face. The darkness--so dark as to be almost black--of the straight
thick hair, which was brushed up and off the forehead, accentuated
the Saxon ruddiness of his complexion and the glossy red-brown (like
that of a newly-fallen chestnut) of his crisply curling moustache and
beard, which in sunlight were almost auburn.
His eyes instantly challenged and held your own, for he invariably
looked the person to whom he spoke fully and fearlessly, but never
inquisitively (one cannot think of the word in connection with
Stone), in the face; and it was his eyes that most remained in your
memory when he was gone. “Intent,” set, and full of fire, the look
in them was like the spoken word of command which calls soldiers to
attention. Brown in colouring, they were not the hard, glittering
and unrevealing brown which one sometimes sees in woman or in man,
but eyes that, when he was reading poetry, could shine as if his
soul were a lit taper, of which they were the flame. At other times,
I have seen them as merry as a happy boy’s, as untroubled as cool
clear agate stones at the bottom of a brook. His were eyes that
recalled the love and devotion which look out at us from the eyes
of some nobly-natured dog, yet eyes that when he was preaching, and
the very soul within him was trembling under a terrible sense of
responsibility to his people and to God, could burn fiercely red,
like a fanned coal in a furnace, but always as true, brave and loyal
eyes as ever looked out of human head.