Thomas Wilks

“ To be humane, generous, and candid, is a very high degree of merit in any case; but those qualities deserve still greater praise, when they are found in that condition, which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.
As Mr. Wilks was one of those to whom calamity seldom complained without relief, he naturally took an unfortunate wit into his protection and not only assisted him in any casual distresses, but continued an equal and steady kindness to the time of his death. ”

“ The civil wars took many a good actor from the stage, but they also contributed the sons and daughters of many ancient but impoverished families to the foremost rank among distinguished players. Some of the daughters of these old and decayed houses thought it no disparagement to wed with these players, or to take humble office in the theatre. Wilks's first wife, Miss Knapton, was the daughter of the Town Clerk of Southampton, and Steward of the New Forest, posts of trust, and, at one time, of emolument. ”

“ Before turning in for the night, he looked in upon Wilkinson, whom he found awake. After enquiries as to his arm and general health, he said: "Wilks, my boy, congratulate me on being an ass; I've lost the finest woman in all the world by my own stupidity." His friend smiled at him, and answered: "Do not be down-hearted, Corry; I will speak to Ceci—Miss Du Plessis I mean, and she will arrange matters for you." The lawyer fervently exclaimed: "God bless you, Wilks!" ”

“ Wilks smiled a satisfied smile. "He came to ask my advice about business," he said, softly. "He's 'eard two or three speak o' me as knowing a thing or two, and being young, and just starting, 'e came to talk it over with me. I never see a young man so pleased and ready to take advice as wot he is."
"He is coming again for more, I suppose?" said Miss Nugent, carelessly.
Mr. Wilks acquiesced. "And he asked me to go over to his 'ouse to smoke a pipe with 'im on Tuesday," he added, in the casual manner in which men allude to their aristocratic connections. "He's a bit lonely, all by himself." ”

“ Wilks, doubtfully.
"I s'pose so," rejoined the other. "Young Nu-gent trusts you, and, of course, he'll take anything from your 'ouse. That's the beauty of 'aving a character, Mr. Wilks; a good character and a face like a baby with grey whiskers."
Mr. Wilks bent down and, taking up a small brush, carefully tidied up the hearth.
"Like as not, if my part in it gets to be known," pursued Mr. Smith, mournfully, "I'll 'ave that gal of Kybird's scratching my eyes out or p'r'aps sticking a hat-pin into me. I had that once; the longest hat-pin that ever was made, I should think." ”

“ Wilks was Campley. In the Tatler (No. 182) , Steele says: "To beseech gracefully, to approach respectfully, to pity, to mourn, to love, are the places wherein Wilks may be said to shine with the utmost beauty!" ”

“ WILKS, Sir SAMUEL, baronet (1824–1911) , physician, born at Camberwell, on 2 June 1824, was second son of Joseph Barber Wilks, treasurer at the East India House, by his wife Susannah Edwards, daughter of William Bennett of Southborough, Kent. He went to Aldenham grammar school in 1836, and spent three years there, followed by a year at University College school in London. He was then apprenticed to Richard Prior, a general practitioner in Newington, and in 1842 entered as a student at Guy's Hospital; in 1847 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. ”

“ On many of the tombstones the maiden name of the wife is given, and preceding it is the word alias.
Major Wilks, on his retirement from the Governorship of St. Helena, where he had the charge of the Emperor Napoleon, settled in the Isle of Man. He brought with him a black servant, who died a few years after leaving his native country. He was buried in this graveyard, and over his remains Major Wilks erected a stone bearing an inscription as follows:—
Governor Wilks was a gentleman of high character, personable and courtier-like manners. ”

“ Wilks, one of the Patentees of that House; The first was so, for a short Time, but the latter, who is very remarkable, notwithstanding his Profession, for his Humanity and Generosity, has continu'd his Friendship to him to the last, and done him many very kind and charitable Offices: The other Gentleman gave him a constant Allowance, and was for a while so fond of him that, it is said, he proposed his natural Daughter to him, for a Wife, with a Thousand Pounds Portion, and his Interest, which was thought to be very good at that Time, to put him into some small Place in the Government ”

“ Wilks, now the great favourite of the town, justified all Betterton's prognostications. Like Betterton, he was to the end convinced that he might become more perfect by study and perseverance. Taking the extant score of judgments recorded of him, I find that Wilks was careful, judicious, painstaking in the smallest trifles; in comedy always brilliant, in tragedy always graceful and natural. For zeal, Cibber had not known his equal for half a century; careful himself, he allowed no one else to be negligent ”

“ Wilks.
“Why should you think my father wanted your bed?” he inquired.
“I don't know,” was the reply. “I thought p'r'aps 'e'd maybe taken a little more than 'e ought to have taken. But it's all a myst'ry to me. I'm more astonished than wot you are.”
“Well, I can't make head or tail of it,” said Nugent, rising and pacing the room. “I came here to meet my father. So far as I remember I had one drink of whisky—your whisky—and then I woke up in your bedroom with a splitting headache and a tongue like a piece of leather. Can you account for it?”
Mr. Wilks shook his head again. ”

“ Wilks, unasked, poured himself out another glass of ale, and drank it off with the air of a man who intended to make sure of that. It seemed a trifle more flat than the last.
"So many men o' your age and thereabouts," continued Mr. Silk, "think that they're going to live on to eighty or ninety, but there's very few of 'em do. It's only a short while, Mr. Wilks, and the little children'll be running about over your grave and picking daisies off of it." ”

“ Mr. Wilks, still dazed, muttered that he was very well. Then he sat bolt upright in his chair and eyed his visitor suspiciously.
“I've been longing for a chat with you about old times,” said Hardy; “of all my old friends you seem to have changed the least. You don't look a day older.”
“I'm getting on,” said Mr. Wilks, trying to speak coldly, but observing with some gratification the effect produced upon his neighbours by the appearance of this well-dressed acquaintance. ”

“ WILKS, ROBERT (1665?–1732) , actor, a descendant of a Worcester family, the fortunes of which were seriously impaired by the civil war, was the second son of Edward Wilks, who took refuge in Dublin, and became a pursuivant of the lord lieutenant. The actor's grandfather, Judge Wilks, is said to have raised a troop of horse for the king, which his grand-uncle, Colonel Wilks, who is mentioned by Clarendon, commanded. ”

“ Mr. Wilks closed his eyes with a snap and his heart turned to water. He held his breath and ran-sacked his brain in vain for a reply which should ignore the inner meaning of the fatal words. Something careless and jocular he wanted, combined with a voice which should be perfectly under control. Failing these things, he kept his eyes closed, and, very wide-awake indeed, feigned sleep. He slept straight away from eleven o'clock in the morning until Edward Silk came in at seven o'clock in the evening.
"I feel like a new man," he said, rubbing his eyes and yawning. ”

“ For Wilks, by being in Possession of so many good Parts, fell into the common Error of most Actors, that of over-rating their Merit, or never thinking it is so thoroughly consider'd as it ought to be, which generally makes them proportionably troublesome to the Master, who they might consider only pays them to profit by them. ”

“ Wilks shook his head. “People in the alley are beginning to talk,” he said, dolefully. “Just as I came in this afternoon old George Lee screwed up one eye at two or three women wot was gossiping near, and when I asked 'im wot 'e'd got to wink about he said that a bit o' wedding-cake 'ad blowed in his eye as I passed. It sent them silly creeturs into fits a'most.”
“They'll soon get tired of it,” said Hardy.
Mr. Wilks, still gloomy, ventured to doubt it, but cheered up and became almost bright when his visitor announced his intention of trying to smooth over matters for him at Equator Lodge. ”

“ I have told you that Wilken knew nothing about chemistry, paper-making, engraving, printing, dyeing, and photography—all of them necessary arts of the counterfeiter. I assure you he knew absolutely nothing about any one of those things. But he did the thing that must commend itself to all successful men.
He stuck to his advertising job by day and spent his 238nights in the public libraries. He read every available technical volume treating on engraving. Then he went out and bought the tools of the engraver. ”

“ After several failures better fortune attended his efforts in another direction, for on the 3rd of May 1782 all the declarations and orders against him for his elections in Middlesex were ordered to be expunged from the journals of the House. In 1779 Wilkes was elected chamberlain of the city by a large majority, and the office became his freehold for life. He died at his house in Grosvenor Square, London, on the 26th of December 1797. ”

“ A temperament daring, crafty, and unscrupulous, a fluent pen, and a sarcastic wit, were the instruments of an ambition as remorseless, worldly, and grasping, as dwelt in the bosom of a Cæsar Borgia or a Catiline.
An outline of this singular man's bustling career will best show the pertinacity, the trials, and the troubles which belonged to the candidate for the Tribuneship of Great Britain.
John Wilkes, born in 1727, the son of a rich distiller, began his public life in the canvass for Berwick—alluded to by Lord Temple's letter. ”

“ Wilkes had wearied of Continental life. His affection for his own country was so earnest and so sincere that, in a letter to the Duke of Grafton, he declared his willingness to bury himself in the obscurity of private life, if he were permitted to return unmolested to England. The appeal failed to extract a satisfactory reply. The Ministers would make no terms with their ruined foeman. Wilkes then resolved to show that he was not so helpless as his enemies appeared to think him. He published in 1767, in London, a pamphlet, in which he stated his case with indignation, but not without dignity. ”

“ So, in despair, Thomson began to cultivate Wilcox. He began to feel that Wilcox was a type of the world, a bad world, for which he was not responsible. The world's servant he must be, if he received its wages. When he secured the coveted appointment, through the political pull of Wilcox and the mild kindness of Mrs. Wilcox, he was ready to teach whatever was wanted of him, whether it was truth in Germany or not. He found that he could change his notions of truth. The Wilcox idea was that everything in America is all right just as it is. ”

“ Walpole was no less struck with the irrepressibility of Wilkes's character than annoyed at his being elected to an office which would bring him into close contact with the king;—"Wilkes is another Phœnix revived from his own ashes. He was sunk—it was over with him; but the ministers too precipitately hurrying to [Pg 122] bury him alive, blew up the embers, and he is again as formidable as ever; and what will seem worse he must go into the very closet whenever the city sends him there with a message.... Wilkes in prison is chosen member of Parliament and then alderman of London. ”

“ He abhorred Wilkes, he said; and drew a severe picture of him, and another panegyrical of the great Whig Lords at the time of the Revolution, and of those at the accession of the present Royal Family. “But it seems,” continued he, “we are not to have a resolution, but a bill. The first time was always the best time; the natural mode the best mode. One advantage had been derived from Wilkes, he had stopped a growing evil. Nobody could think what thirty years more in abler hands would have done. This warrant without description of person might take up any man under any description of a libel. ”

“ Rarely did Mr. Wilkins use that word, and never, never in the presence of a lady or a client. While as for the towel—why had he come? Why had he not stayed in Hampstead? It would be impossible to live this down.
But Mr. Wilkins was reckoning without Scrap. She, indeed, screwed up her face at the first flash of him on her astonished sight in an enormous effort not to laugh, and having choked the laughter down and got her face serious again, she said as composedly as if he had had all his clothes on, “How do you do.”
What perfect tact. Mr. Wilkins could have worshipped her. ”

“ WILKES, JOHN (1727-1797) , English politician, descended from a family long connected with Leighton-Buzzard in Bedfordshire, was born at Clerkenwell, London, on the 17th of October 1727, being the second son of Israel Wilkes, a rich distiller, and the owner, through his wife Sarah, daughter of John Heaton of Hoxton, of considerable house property in its north-eastern suburbs. After some training under private tuition John Wilkes was sent to the university of Leyden, matriculating there on the 8th of September 1744. ”

“ Your Grace can best inform us for which of Mr Wilkes's good qualities you first honoured him with your friendship, or how long it was before you discovered those bad ones in him, at which, it seems, your delicacy was offended. Remember, my Lord, that you continued your connection with Mr Wilkes long after he had been convicted of those crimes, which you have since taken pains to represent in the blackest colours of blasphemy and treason. How unlucky is it, that the first instance you have given us of a scrupulous regard to decorum is united with the breach of a moral obligation! ”