firstly at a private school and subsequently at University College School, London. He learnt drawing at a private academy and landscape painting of William Bennett (1811–1871), water-colour artist. As a young man he supported himself by drawing on wood for book illustrations. From 1849 to 1856 he illustrated publications of the Religious Tract Society and of Messrs. Cassell & Company, as well as his brother Frederick's ‘Our Iron Roads’ (1852); he also for a time was assistant to Sir John Gilbert [q. v. Suppl. I].
From 1854, when he made an extended walking tour in Northern Italy and Switzerland, his interest in painting centred in mountain scenery. In 1861 he settled at Salisbury, and founding there the maltster's business afterwards known as Williams Brothers, was engaged in trade until his retirement in 1886. Meanwhile, during the summer months he travelled, chiefly in Switzerland, pursuing his art, which occupied him wholly after his retirement. In 1878 he was elected a member of the Alpine Club. His subjects were chiefly drawn from the Alps and the mountains of Scotland, but in 1900–1 he spent twelve months in India. At the Alpine Club, exhibitions of his water-colour drawings were held in March 1889, of his Indian paintings in 1902, and again of water-colours from 5 to 23 Dec. 1905. Between 1880 and 1890 he exhibited four works at the Royal Academy, one at the Royal Society of British Artists, and one at the New Gallery. He was skilful in rendering the effect of sunlight on distant snow and in giving an impression of the size of great mountains. One of his water-colour drawings, ‘Monte Rosa at Sunrise from above Alagna,’ is in the Victoria and Albert Museum; another belongs to the corporation of Salisbury, and two to the Alpine Club.
He died at the Grand Hôtel, Ste. Maxime-sur-Mer, Var, France, on 19 March 1905, and was buried at Ste. Maxime. He married twice: (1) in 1863 Sarah, daughter of George Gregory of Salisbury, by whom he had no issue; and (2) in 1866 Eliza (d. 1892), daughter of William Walker of Northampton, by whom he had one son and one daughter.
[Information from Mr. Sidney S. Williams; pref. to cat. of Exhibition at Alpine Club in 1905; Graves, Dict. of Artists; Cat. of Water-colours, Victoria and Albert Museum.]
WILLIAMS, CHARLES (1838–1904), war correspondent, was born at Coleraine on 4 May 1838. On his father's side he was descended from Worcestershire yeomen (of Tenbury and Mamble), on his mother's from Scottish settlers in Ulster. Educated at Belfast Academy under Reuben Bryce and at a private school in Greenwich, he went for his health to the southern states of America, where he took part in a filibustering expedition to Nicaragua, saw some hard fighting, and won the reputation of a daring blockade-runner. On his return to England he became a zealous volunteer, and was engaged as leader-writer for the London ‘Evening Herald.’ In October 1859 he began a connection with the ‘Standard,’ which lasted till 1884. He conducted the ‘Evening Standard’ as its first editor for three years, and he was first editor of the ‘Evening News’ from 1881 to 1884.
Williams did his best work as war correspondent. For the ‘Standard’ he accompanied the headquarters of the French army of the Loire at the beginning of the second phase of the Franco-German war (1870), and was one of the first two correspondents in Strasburg after its fall. In the summer and autumn of 1877 he was correspondent on the staff of Ahmed Mukhtar Pasha, commanding the Turkish forces in Armenia. Williams remained almost constantly at the front, and his letters were the only continuous series which reached England. He published them in a revised and somewhat extended form in 1878 as ‘The Armenian Campaign.’ Though written from a pro-Turkish standpoint, the narrative was a faithful record of events. Williams followed Mukhtar to European Turkey, and described his defence of the lines of Constantinople against the Russians. He was with the headquarters of Skobeleff when the treaty of San Stefano was signed; and he subsequently recorded the phases of the Berlin Congress of 1878. At the end of that year he was in Afghanistan, and in 1879 published ‘Notes on the Operations in Lower Afghanistan, 1878–9, with Special Reference to Transport.’ Williams accompanied the Nile expedition for the relief of General Gordon [q. v.] in the autumn of 1884. In an article in the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ May 1885 (‘How we lost Gordon’), he ascribed to Sir Charles Wilson's delay and want of nerve the failure to relieve Gordon.
After leaving the ‘Standard’ in 1884, Williams was for some time connected with the ‘Morning Advertiser,’ but soon became war correspondent of the ‘Daily Chronicle.’ He was the only English correspondent with the Bulgarian army in the brief war
