WILLIAM STONE was a friend to three generations of my family. He was called the Squire of Piccadilly because he spent the last 65 of his 101 years in Albany, the residence of rich and famous bachelors, which belonged originally to George III's brother, the Duke of York and Albany.

Stone claimed not to have missed a West End first night in forty years. In this picture the butler, on Albany's front steps, proffers gloves to complete his master's theatregoing attire.

Stone's apartment (Set A1) was stuffed with souvenirs of his attendance at the coronation of the last Tsar, of collecting butterflies in South America, of witnessing the first transatlantic cable being laid, and of sailing the Nile with his crew of ten men and two female bread-makers. He explained: "At night you tie up on the bank and unless you had the women on board the men would have gone off to the nearest village and perhaps never come back."

Whenever I visited Mr. Stone, he gossiped about all his notable acquaintances, some being fellow members of his seven London clubs. But he always avoided any mention of his family. According to the 1861 census he was the youngest of the six children of a solicitor, John Stone, the Town Clerk of Bath, though in his memoirs Stone said "I was never much in Bath."

Like his eldest brother John F.M.H. Stone, he was educated at Clifton College and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he kept many dozen cases of champagne in the cellar. He lectured in botany at Newnham but refused payment, and he turned down a Peterhouse Fellowship, preferring independence and travel, whereas John F.M.H. had to earn a living, first as a barrister, and later as a writer on camping and caravanning.

HOW TO LIVE TO 101
Mr. Stone attributed his longevity to following advice given to him by Professor Sir George Murray Humphry FRS: Drink half a pint of hot tea early every morning, and, except in the tropics, always wear a woollen vest under your pyjamas. Sir George died in his 77th year.

At his death in 1958 William Stone left to Peterhouse a vast fortune, too vast for someone who was just the son of a provincial lawyer.

I believe that he was one of the illegitimate children of Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister of England. Nicknamed Lord Cupid, Palmerston was a notorious womanizer who had affairs with Lady Jersey and Princess Dorothy de Lieven. Early in Queen Victoria’s reign he tried to rape one of her ladies-in-waiting while a guest at Windsor Castle. At the age of 79 he was cited as co-respondent in a divorce case.

His affair with Emily, Lady Cowper continued for 29 years until her husband died. The very wealthy Palmerston gave his illegitimate daughter by Emily a house designed by Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, with 4 reception rooms, 7 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a conservatory.

I surmise that the solicitor and his wife were well paid to register Palmerston’s illegitimate son as their own in 1857, and, perhaps at the real mother's insistence, liberal provision was made for him in later life. However, vindictiveness may have prompted Palmerston’s choice of name for the unwanted child, because, as Prime Minister, Palmerston was embarrassed, not long before William Stone was conceived, by the resignation from his cabinet of William Gladstone.