l the most
fashionable prigs, or tobymen, sought to get him into their set; and the
most crack blowen in London would have given her ears at any time for
a loving word from Bachelor Bill. But Bill was a longheaded, prudent
fellow, and of a remarkably cautious temperament. He avoided marriage
and friendship; namely, he was neither plundered nor cornuted. He was a
tall, aristocratic cove, of a devilish neat address, and very gallant,
in an honest way, to the blowens. Like most single men, being very much
the gentleman so far as money was concerned, he gave them plenty of
"feeds," and from time to time a very agreeable hop. His bingo [Brandy]
was unexceptionable; and as for his stark-naked [Gin], it was voted the
most brilliant thing in nature. In a very short time, by his blows-out
and his bachelorship,--for single men always arrive at the apex of haut
ton more easily than married,--he became the very glass of fashion; and
many were the tight apprentices, even at the west end of the town,
who used to turn back in admiration of Bachelor Bill, when of a Sunday
afternoon he drove down his varment gig to his snug little box on the
borders of Turnham Green. Bill's happiness was not, however, wholly
without alloy. The ladies of pleasure are always so excessively angry
when a man does not make love to them, that there is nothing they will
not say against him; and the fair matrons in the vicinity of Fiddler's
Row spread all manner of unfounded reports against poor Bachelor
Bill. By degrees, however,--for, as Tacitus has said, doubtless with
a prophetic eye to Bachelor Bill, "the truth gains by delay,"--these
reports began to die insensibly away; and Bill now waxing near to the
confines of middle age, his friends comfortably settled for him that he
would be Bachelor Bill all his life. For the rest, he was an excellent
fellow,--gave his broken victuals to the poor, professed a liberal
turn of thinking, and in all the quarrels among the blowens (your crack
blowens are a quarrelsome set!) always took part with the weakest.
Although Bill affected to be very select in his company, he was never
forgetful of his old friends; and Mrs. Margery Lobkins having been very
good to him when he was a little boy in a skeleton jacket, he invariably
sent her a card to his soirees. The good lady, however, had not of late
years deserted her chimney-corner. Indeed, the racket of fashionable
life was too much for her nerves; and the invitation had become