The Not of an English Opium-Eater | Page 5

was in
harmony with the general subtlety of his character, and his polished
hatred of brutality, that by universal agreement his manners were
distinguished for exquisite suavity: the tiger's heart was masked by the
most insinuating and snaky refinement. All his acquaintances
afterwards described his dissimulation as so ready and so perfect, that if,
in making his way through the streets, always so crowded on a
Saturday night in neighborhoods so poor, he had accidentally jostled
any person, he would (as they were all satisfied) have stopped to offer
the most gentlemanly apologies: with his devilish heart brooding over
the most hellish of purposes, he would yet have paused to express a
benign hope that the huge mallet, buttoned up under his elegant surtout,
with a view to the little business that awaited him about ninety minutes
further on, had not inflicted any pain on the stranger with whom he had
come into collision. Titian, I believe, but certainly Rubens, and perhaps
Vandyke, made it a rule never to practise his art but in full dress--point
ruffles, bag wig, and diamond-hilted sword; and Mr. Williams, there is

reason to believe, when he went out for a grand compound massacre (in
another sense, one might have applied to it the Oxford phrase of _going
out as Grand Compounder_), always assumed black silk stockings and
pumps; nor would he on any account have degraded his position as an
artist by wearing a morning gown. In his second great performance, it
was particularly noticed and recorded by the one sole trembling man,
who under killing agonies of fear was compelled (as the reader will
find) from a secret stand to become the solitary spectator of his
atrocities, that Mr. Williams wore a long blue frock, of the very finest
cloth, and richly lined with silk. Amongst the anecdotes which
circulated about him, it was also said at the time, that Mr. Williams
employed the first of dentists, and also the first of chiropodists. On no
account would he patronize any second-rate skill. And beyond a doubt,
in that perilous little branch of business which was practised by himself,
he might be regarded as the most aristocratic and fastidious of artists.
But who meantime was the victim, to whose abode he was hurrying?
For surely he never could be so indiscreet as to be sailing about on a
roving cruise in search of some chance person to murder? Oh, no: he
had suited himself with a victim some time before, viz., an old and very
intimate friend. For he seems to have laid it down as a maxim--that the
best person to murder was a friend; and, in default of a friend, which is
an article one cannot always command, an acquaintance: because, in
either case, on first approaching his subject, suspicion would be
disarmed: whereas a stranger might take alarm, and find in the very
countenance of his murderer elect a warning summons to place himself
on guard. However, in the present ease, his destined victim was
supposed to unite both characters: originally he had been a friend; but
subsequently, on good cause arising, he had become an enemy. Or
more probably, as others said, the feelings had long since languished
which gave life to either relation of friendship or of enmity. Marr was
the name of that unhappy man, who (whether in the character of friend
or enemy) had been selected for the subject of this present Saturday
night's performance. And the story current at that time about the
connection between Williams and Marr, having (whether true or not
true) never been contradicted upon authority, was, that they sailed in
the same Indiaman to Calcutta; that they had quarrelled when at sea;
but another version of the story said--no: they had quarrelled after

returning from sea; and the subject of their quarrel was Mrs. Marr, a
very pretty young woman, for whose favor they had been rival
candidates, and at one time with most bitter enmity towards each other.
Some circumstances give a color of probability to this story. Otherwise
it has sometimes happened, on occasion of a murder not sufficiently
accounted for, that, from pure goodness of heart intolerant of a mere
sordid motive for a striking murder, some person has forged, and the
public has accredited, a story representing the murderer as having
moved under some loftier excitement: and in this case the public, too
much shocked at the idea of Williams having on the single motive of
gain consummated so complex a tragedy, welcomed the tale which
represented him as governed by deadly malice, growing out of the more
impassioned and noble rivalry for the favor of a woman. The case
remains in some degree doubtful; but, certainly, the probability is, that
Mrs. Marr had been the true cause, the causa