V
At Oxford Stone had been an athlete, and an athlete and sportsman—oarsman, skater, fisherman and first-class shot—he remained almost to his life’s end. He was captain of the Pembroke boat, and stroked the college eight. Legend has it that he was chosen for his “Blue”—but did not have the honour of rowing against Cambridge for the following reason.
Between his merits as an oarsman and those of another candidate, there was absolutely nothing to choose. The other man was as good as, but no better than Stone, and Stone was as good as, but no better than, the other. As a way out of the difficulty it was thought best to decide the question by the spin of a coin, and Stone’s luck was uppermost. He was delighted, for no man would more eagerly have coveted his “Blue” than he, until he learned that it was a matter of “now or never” for his rival, who was shortly going down, and so would stand no other chance of rowing in the great race. As it could matter neither way for the boat’s success which had the seat, Stone, who was staying on at Pembroke and so would be eligible another year, pleaded that his rival be given this, his only chance—with the result that Stone’s own second chance never came.
So runs the legend of how Stone missed his “Blue.” As I never questioned him concerning its truth, and he was the last man to speak of such an incident himself, I relate it merely as it was related to me, and with no other comment than that such impulsive generosity is just what might have been expected from this clerical Don Quixote of lost causes, lost chances, forlorn hopes and self-forgetful chivalry.
To say of a man that all his geese were swans, as was often said of Stone, implies, indirectly, that he was something of a fool, if a generous one. It is true that Stone wished to think well of whatever a friend had done. If it were ill done he was not so blind as not to know it was ill done, and was too honest not to say so, if asked for an opinion, or to remain silent, if unasked. But if it were not ill done, then young and keen-visioned Joy, as well as dim-eyed Dame Pride alike clapped magnifying glasses on nose, to show him the thing not as it was, but as it appeared through the eyes of joy and pride in a friend’s work.
So, too, in regard to the friend himself. If Stone saw, or thought he saw, in his friend, some streak, no matter how rudimentary or infinitesimal of, let us say unselfishness, he saw it not as it was in his friend, but magnified to the scale in which it existed in himself. Hence his appreciation of a friend’s gifts or qualities and his own gratitude for some small service rendered were preposterously out of all proportion to the facts. For instance, I had been at some quite small trouble in reading, by his wish, the proofs of his Lays of Iona, and also, by his wish, in sending him my criticisms. Here is his letter (Oct. 23, 1897) in acknowledgment:
My dear Kernahan,
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.