“I had got under cover of a big boulder, and had tethered my horse beside me. I was just munchin’ a beskit, when a shall burst on the rock, an’ shot the nosebag right off my charger. He had shoved his daumned ould head out of cover.”
“And you?” asked Pearse.
“I just went on munchin’ my beskit.”
“But,” suggested Dunning, “if the shell took away the nosebag, it ought to have carried away the beast’s head as well.”
“It did!” replied Williams, with the utmost sang-froid.
In the same place, but on another occasion, I heard him aver with the utmost solemnity that he had been selected by the Liberal party to oppose Sir Hugh M’Calmont Cairns, when that eminent man—afterwards Earl Cairns—first stood for Belfast in the Conservative interest.
“Ef,” declared Charlie, “I’d stud against Sir Hugh when first he put up for Bel-fawst, there’d be no such a personage now as Lord Cairns, Lord High Chawncellor of England!”
He was a bit of a romancer, was Williams. It should be admitted, however, that Williams did, at a later period in his career, stand as a candidate for Imperial Parliament. He opposed Herbert Gladstone at Leeds.
Another promotion of Russell’s was his club for ladies. As a sort of major-domo for this establishment, Russell engaged the services of the obese but obliging “Fatty” Coleman, who had some time previously left the mild pursuits of a private life for the bustle of a public one. He was assistant-manager of the Aquarium when Russell captured him. “Fatty” was a broad and beaming man, of immense geniality, and in every sense a most expansive person. As the presiding genius of a club for ladies he was entirely in his element. But the time for what were irreverently called “cock-and-hen” clubs had not fully come, and this venture of the indefatigable promoter went the road to dusty death which had been taken by the unfortunate gentleman’s other efforts to divert and refine human society. The adventures of the ingenuous “Fatty” would make a volume of their own. I last encountered him in a French watering-place, where he was acting as a sort of manager’s representative to an hotel much frequented by Englishmen. He had lost some of his flesh, but none of his beaming bonhomie. There was a legend—I have never tested its authenticity—that “Fatty” had at one time held a commission in a regiment of the Guards.
While the social activities of Russell were at their busiest, the field was entered by another club-promoter. He, however, after a short experience became weary of well-doing. This was the Hon. John Colborne. The Hon. John—“Dirty Jack” was his sobriquet in his regiment—had become known to the public as the defendant in a criminal libel suit brought against him by a moneylender. John had got deep into the books of the remorseless Israelite, and, seeing no way of settling with him in coin, determined to pay him in kind; so he sat down and wrote an extremely diverting and trenchant little book entitled “The Vampires of London.” Herein the methods of usury were exposed in a fierce light. This, however, the wily Jew might have forgiven. What he could never forgive was the ridicule which the gallant officer threw on his ménage. He had invited his customer to accept the hospitality of his home, and now the secrets of that home were held up to public ridicule and contempt. The writer had not spared the members of the family. The very children of Israel were sacrificed on the altar of John’s vengeance. The allurements of Rachael, the schemes of “blear-eyed Leah,” were set forth with fiendish particularity.