“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——.”
W. H.