31 OCTOBER 1958, Page 6

I HAD KNOWN Willie Stone (who died on Sunday at

well over 101) since he was a mere eighty-five Few men can ever have so thoroughly enjoyed so completely wasting such a long life. He came down from Cambridge in 1878 with a First in Natural Sciences, having turned down—he told me—the offer of a fellowship at his college (Peterhouse) in favour of becoming a man of fashion, and he had never done a stroke of work since. Yet he once said to me indignantly, a pr0PoS of the changes in social behaviour in his life' time, that nowadays two-thirds of the member of one of his six clubs (I think he referred to the Oxford and Cambridge) were civil servant9' 'Civil servants! My dear Pharos,' he exclaimed 'Parasites! They live on the likes of us!'