What _thoroughness_ of friendship you have shown me from first
to last in the matter of the _Lays_! Certainly I will alter the
“no” to “not” in the Preface, if a second edition permits me. I
had not noticed the error and jumped with a “How could I”! of
exclamation when I read your note. You comforted me very much in
the latter part of your note when you spoke of sundry passages
you approved, especially by what you said of the humorous part of
the work. I had specially feared about this, and indeed I had put
in these two occasional pieces only to please my sister.
Good-bye, dear friend,
Ever yours gratefully and affectionately,
S. J. STONE.
Everyone who knew Stone intimately will bear me out in saying that
the gratitude here expressed, and disproportionate as it may be, was
absolutely sincere. He literally glowed with gratitude for any small
service done, or trivial personal kindness, and said no word more
than he meant in making his acknowledgment, for of “gush,” of what
was effusive or insincere, he had something like horror, and was as
incapable of it, as he was of falsehood or of craft. And in regard
to men and women whom he loved, it was not so much that he mistook
geese for swans, as that he remembered that, on land, a swan’s waddle
is no less unlovely than a goose’s, whereas, on water or on wing, a
goose, no less than a swan, is not without grace. He idealised his
friends--he saw in his mind’s eyes, his geese a-wing in the heavens
or a-sail on water, as well as waddling on land, and loved them for
the possibilities, and for the hidden graces he saw within. He was by
no means the merely credulous, if generous fool, that some thought
him. On the contrary, for most human weaknesses, he had an uncommonly
shrewd and sharp eye, but he appealed always to the best and noblest,
never to the vain or selfish side of those with whom he came into
contact, and so his own unwavering faith in God, in Christ, and in
human nature, was not only the cause of, but seemed to create similar
and sincere faith on the part of others, just as his own integrity
made even the rascal or the infirm of purpose ashamed of rascality or
of weakness. But tricked, betrayed and deceived, or confronted with
evil, Stone’s wrath was terrible and consuming.
I remember the blaze in his eyes, the fury in his face, concerning a
scoundrel who had boasted of the deliberate betrayal, and cowardly
and calculated desertion of a trustful girl. Had the villain fallen
at the moment, when Stone first heard the facts, into my friend’s
hands, there would have been left upon the fellow’s body and face,
and from Stone’s fist, marks which would have borne witness to the
end of his life of the punishment he had received. His own bitterest
enemy, Stone could freely forgive, but for the man or woman whom he
held to be the enemy of God, he had small mercy. Even in matters
not of great consequence, but upon which he felt strongly, he was
inclined to override his opponent, and generally to carry things with
a high hand. That he always spoke, wrote, or acted with judgment, I
do not maintain. His motives none could question, but his judgment,
even his best friend sometimes doubted.
When I speak of him as obstinate, I must not be understood as
meaning the type of obstinacy which is more frequently associated
with weakness than with strength. Obstinacy, however, of a
sort--stubbornness if you so like to call it--was undoubtedly a
temperamental defect. He was inflexibly convinced that his own
beliefs in regard to God, to the Throne, to the State, to the Church,
and even in regard to politics--inherited as some of these beliefs
were, influenced as were others by class feeling, by education, and
by environment--were the only possible beliefs for a Christian,
a Churchman, an Englishman and a gentleman. Hence he could not
understand the position of those who differed, and was impatient of
opposition.
I once heard him described by some one who misunderstood him as a man
with a grievance, and a man with too thin a skin. His sensitiveness
I do not deny, but it was a sensitiveness which was all for others,
never for himself. And so far from being one of those single-cuticle
abnormalities whose skin “goose-fleshes” at the very thought of cold,
who at the approach of a rough blast wince in anticipation as well
as in reality, and suffer more perhaps from the imagined effects of
the buffeting than from the buffeting itself, Stone not only never
troubled to ask whether the blast was, or was not, coming his way,
but enjoyed battling with it when it came. If things went badly with
him, he took Fate’s blows unconcernedly, and blamed only himself.
About his own ills and sorrows, or breakdown in health, he was the
most cheerful of men, but he could and would concern himself about
the sorrows or troubles of others, and would move heaven and earth
in his efforts to right their wrongs, if wrongs to be righted there
were. That is not the way of the man with a grievance. The man with a
grievance growls but never fights. He wears his grievance as a badge
in his buttonhole, that all may see, and you could do him no unkinder
turn than to remove the cause of it.
Stone never had a grievance, but he was ready to make the grievances
of his people, real grievances, their grievous wrongs, not fancied
ones, his own; and more than one employer of sweated labour, more
than one owner of an insanitary slum, and occasionally some Parish
Council, or public body in which Bumbledom and vested interests were
not unknown, had cause to think Stone too touchy, too sensitive, and
too thin-skinned, where the lives of little children, and the bodily
and spiritual welfare of his people were concerned.