* * * * *
“POOR BILLY W----.”
_For the Table Book._
Some years ago my pen was employed to attempt the sketch of a Character,
but apprehending that the identity might be too strong and catch his
eye,--he was my friend, and a great reader of “periodicals”--I desisted.
I meant to say nothing ill-natured, yet I feared to offend a harmless
and inoffensive man, and I destroyed what had given me an hour’s
amusement. The reason no longer exists--death has removed him. Disease
and a broken spirit, occasioned by commercial misfortunes and
imprudences, weighed him down, and the little sphere in which he used to
shine has lost its chief attraction.
----What a man he was!--of the pure, real London cut. Saint Paul’s was
stamped on his forehead. He was the great oracle of a certain
coffee-house, not a hundred miles from Gray’s Inn; where he never dined
but in one box, nor placed himself but in one situation. His tavern
dignities were astounding--the waiters trembled at his approach--his
orders were obeyed with the nicest precision. For some years he was the
king of the room--he was never deposed, nor did he ever abdicate. His
mode of calling for his pint of wine, and the bankrupt part of the
Gazette, had a peculiar character past describing. I have now and then
seen a “rural,” in the same coffee-room, attempt the _thing_--but my
friend was “Hyperion to a satyr.”----
----I have him in my eye now--traversing to the city and
back--regulating his watch by the Royal Exchange clock daily; and daily
boasting he had the best “goer” in England. Like his watch, he was a
curious piece of mechanism. He seldom quitted London, for he was
persuaded every thing would “stand still” in his absence. It seemed, as
though he imagined that St. Paul’s clock would not strike--that the
letters by the general post would not be delivered.--Was he not right?
To me, the city was a “void” without him.----
----What a referee he was! He would tell you the price of stocks on any
past day; and dilate for hours on the interesting details in the
charters of the twelve city companies. He had a peculiar mode of
silencing an antagonist who ventured to obtrude an opinion--by adducing
a scriptural maxim, “Study to be quiet,” and “mind your own business;”
and now and then a few Latin mottos, obtained from the Tablet of Memory,
would be used with great felicity. His observations were made in an
elevated tone, they commanded attention--he used to declare that “money
was money;” that “many people were great fools;” and that “bankrupts
could not be expected to pay much.” After a remark of this kind he would
take a pinch of snuff, with grave self-complacency, and throw his
snuff-box on the table with inimitable importance--a species of
dignified ingenuity that lived and died with him. His medical panacea
was a certain “vegetable sirup,” whereon he would descant, by the hour
together, as a specific for all human maladies, and affirm “your
physicians and apothecaries--mere humbugs!”----
Then, he would astound the coffee-room by declaring he once bid the king
of Spain £700,000 for the island of Porto Rico--this was his grandest
effort, and if his ear ever caught the question “Who is he?” uttered by
a country listener, his thrown-back shoulders and expansion of chest
betrayed the delight he felt, that his bounce had been overheard.
Now and then, on a Saturday, he would break his city chains, and travel
to “The Spaniard” at Hampstead for a dinner; but no argument or
persuasion could get him to Richmond. His reply was always the
same--“the hotels at Richmond employ too much capital.” He was an
economist.
In his pleasantest humours, and he had few unpleasant ones, after dining
with him I have sometimes importuned him to pay the _whole_ bill; his
answer was peculiar and conclusive; “My good friend,” said he, “if I had
adopted the plan of paying for others, I might have kept company with
all the princes and nobles in the land, instead of plebeians like you.”
His Sunday, till one o’clock, was passed in “spelling the newspapers;”
after that he walked on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with his
hands behind him, till three--he then entered Lincoln’s Inn chapel, and
returned to boiled beef and suet pudding at five, which were always
brought to him first.--If an old friend or two dropped in, his
happiness was complete.
He was a philosopher too, at least he indulged in a _sort_ of
philosophy, and I am not sure that it was not a good sort, although not
a very elevated or poetical one. He evinced a disregard for life. The
sooner “we are all dead the better” was one of his favourite phrases.
And now _he is dead_.--Peace to his ashes!
This is the only tablet raised to his memory; the inscription is feeble,
but it has the novelty of truth, and may occasion some of his many
acquaintances to remember the quaintness and eccentricities of “POOR
BILLY W----.”