Dances and theatricals were arranged for every winter, the mistress of the house having a perfect genius for entertaining. The only son and the eldest born was endowed with many gifts that helped to ensure these performances being of a higher order than is often the case. He had a ready pen, and when a young clerk in the Treasury wrote the words for the first musical sketch of the composer Frederic Clay, then also a clerk in the Treasury and a lifelong friend. The Idle Apprentices was the first of three operettas written by these two young men, and was performed by them and their friends in the drawing-rooms of 12 Bolton Row. At one time his sisters took to acting, and they owed much of any success they attained to the advice and assistance of their brother. They, however, were never allowed to act away from home, so that a wholesome, though at the time provoking, check was offered to their enthusiasm.
Charlie Stephenson made a name for himself conjointly with Clement Scott under the pseudonyms of Bolton Rowe and Savile Rowe in the production of three plays adapted from the French — Peril, Diplomacy, and Impulse — and wrote the words for Alfred Cellier's Dorothy and Dora.
In 1862 my father was made Chairman of the
Board of Inland Revenue, and retained that office until his retirement from public life in 1877. He had previously in 1871 received the K.C.B.
The conferring of this honour was announced to him in a private letter from Mr. Gladstone: —
" Private.
"II Carlton House Terrace, Oct. 24, 1 87 1.
" Dear Mr. Stephenson, — I have now an opportunity which I shall be very glad with your permission to turn to account of recommending your name to Her Majesty for the Civil K.C.B. I only await your approval, which I hope it may be agreeable to you to give. — Believe me, sincerely yours,
" W. E. Gladstone."
The Treasury Minute of July 2, 1877, announcing his resignation was as follows: —
" The First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer bring under the notice of the Board the letter of Sir William Stephenson, K.C.B., of the 9th ult., communicating his resignation of the office of Commissioner and Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, and asking that he may be recommended to the pension to which his services may be held to entitle him. Sir William Stephenson has completed upwards of fifty years in the public service, and has throughout that lengthened period deservedly enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most valuable and efficient members of the distinguished body to which he has belonged, and the honour of which he has done so much to uphold.
" As a principal officer of the Treasury for many years, and of late as Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, he has rendered the most important services to the State, and has acquired the confidence, the respect, and the regard of all who have been brought into communication with him. His loss must be deeply felt,
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
but the work which he has done and the example which he has set cannot fail to bear good fruit even after he himself shall have left his office; and it may not be too much to hope that his well-known public spirit and the interest which he feels for the profession to which he has devoted his life may incline him in his retirement to give the Government from time to time the advantage of his experience and of his judgment. Sir William Stephenson entered the public service at the early age of fifteen, and according to strict rule his first year would not count towards his pension. But the First Lord and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are of opinion that the rule excluding service under sixteen from the pension reckoning ought in this instance to be dispensed with on the ground of merit, and they accordingly recommend that Sir William Stephenson be granted a retiring allowance of;^200o a year, being the full amount of his salary. My Lords approve."
This was the last instance of a pension amounting to the full sum of the salary being granted to retiring civil servants.
Before the Treasury Minute was published a paragraph appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette of Wednesday, June 20, 1877, to the following effect: —