Recollections of the Late W. G. Wills (1891)

Abstract

W. G. Wills was essentially a man of artistic temperament. The habit of a Bohemian life, during which he had manifested several different gifts, and had made his mark in several quite different ways, had rendered him almost a child of circumstance. His nature was a most affectionate one. I suppose that in the whole multitude of his friends and acquaintances—and they were many—there was not one who did not love him. He was, perhaps, as little of a self-seeker as any man of his time; and it is a rare thing to find any one who has arrived at anything approaching his eminence who has retained so much simplicity as he had. This very simplicity, although it stood as a rock in the way of his material prosperity, and prevented him from accumulating any fair proportion of his earnings, was to him a sort of armour, and protected him from dangers which would have destroyed a perhaps stronger man.

This obituary article is reprinted from The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, no. 1151 (December 19, 1891): 722. It was kindly donated to this collection by Paul McAlduff of bramstoker.org.