The Lord Mayor.—Did you discharge him from his office on constitutional grounds, or for acting against Mr. Alderman Wood?
The Porter.—Bless your worship, no: I can’t tell why he went off.
Alderman Wood professed himself satisfied with this contradiction: he thought the affair unworthy of farther attention. He had been challenged to prove his statement respecting the bills, and he had proved it.[234]
From this description of the “initial” to the Mansion-house, he seemed “a fit and proper person” to be taken by a “limner,” and represented, by the art of the engraver, to the readers of the Every-Day Book. An artist every way qualified was verbally instructed to view him; but instead of transmitting his “faithful portrait,” he sent a letter, of which the following is a
Copy.
To Mr. Hone.
Dear Sir,—I went this morning to the Mansion-house and had an interview with the porter, but that porter was very different to what I expected to have found. Instead of a very fat lazy fellow, fatted by indolence, I found a short active little man, about five feet high, not fat, nor lean, but a comfortable size, dressed in black, powdered hair, and top boots, pleasing and easy in his manners, and such a one that every one would suppose would get an inferior person to do his dirty work. There is nothing extraordinary in him to be remarkable, therefore I made no sketch of him; but proceeded to Limehouse on a little business, and from thence home, and feel so excessively tired that I send this scrawl, hoping you will excuse me coming myself.
Yours respectfully,
—— ——
Between this gentleman’s “view of the subject,” and the preceding “report,” there is a palpable difference; where the mistake lies, it is not in the power of the editor to determine. The letter-writer himself is “of a comfortable size,” and is almost liable to the suspicion of having seen the porter of the Mansion-house, from the opposite passage of the Mansion-house tavern, as through an inverted telescope. The lord mayor’s alleged comparison of the porter at his own gate, with the porter of the “Castle of Indolence,” may justify an extract of the stanzas wherein “that porter,” and “his man,” are described.
Wak’d by the crowd, slow from his bench arose
A comely full spread porter, swoln with sleep:
His calm, broad, thoughtless aspect, breath’d repose
And in sweet torpour he was plunged deep,
Nor could himself from ceaseless yawning keep;
While o’er his eyes the drowsy liquor ran,
Thro’ which his half-wak’d soul would faintly peep—
Then taking his black staff, he call’d his man,
And rous’d himself as much as rouse himself he can.