If it be difficult to say what wit
is, it is well nigh as hard to pronounce what is not
wit. In a sad world, mirth hath its full honour,
let it come in rags or in purple raiment. The
age that patronises a ‘Punch’ every Saturday?
and a pantomime every Christmas, has no right to complain,
if it finds itself barren of wits, while a rival age
has brought forth her dozens. Mirth is, no doubt,
very good. We would see more, not less, of it
in this unmirthful land. We would fain imagine
the shrunken-cheeked factory-girl singing to herself
a happy burthen, as she shifts the loom, the
burthen of her life, and fain believe that the voice
was innocent as the sky-lark’s. But if it
be not so and we know it is not so shall
we quarrel with any one who tries to give the poor
care-worn, money-singing public a little laughter for
a few pence? No, truly, but it does not follow
that the man who raises a titter is, of necessity,
a wit. The next age, perchance, will write a book
of ’Wits and Beaux,’ in which Mr. Douglas
Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on, will represent
the wit of this passing day; and that future
age will not ask so nicely what wit is, and not look
for that last solved of riddles, its definition.
Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the head
of modern wits. When kings were kings, they bullied,
beat, and and brow-beat their jesters. Now and
then they treated them to a few years in the Tower
for a little extra impudence. Now that the people
are sovereign, the jester fares better nay,
too well. His books or his bon-mots are read
with zest and grins; he is invited to his Grace’s
and implored to my Lord’s; he is waited for,
watched, pampered like a small Grand Lama, and, in
one sentence, the greater the fool, the more fools
he makes.
If Theodore Hook had lived in the
stirring days of King Henry VIII., he would have sent
Messrs. Patch and Co. sharply to the right-about, and
been presented with the caps and bells after his first
comic song. No doubt he was a jester, a fool
in many senses, though he did not, like Solomon’s
fool, ‘say in his heart’ very much.
He jested away even the practicals of life, jested
himself into disgrace, into prison, into contempt,
into the basest employment that of a libeller
tacked on to a party. He was a mimic, too, to
whom none could send a challenge; an improvisatore,
who beat Italians, Tyroleans, and Styrians hollow,
sir, hollow. And lastly oh! shame
of the shuffle-tongued he was, too, a punster.
Yes, one who gloried in puns, a maker of pun upon pun,
a man whose whole wit ran into a pun as readily as
water rushes into a hollow, who could not keep out
of a pun, let him loathe it or not, and who made some
of the best and some of the worst on record, but still puns.
If he was a wit withal, it was malgre
soi, for fun, not for wit, was his ‘aspiration.’
Yet the world calls him a wit, and he has a claim to
his niche. There were, it is true, many a man
in his own set who had more real wit. There were
James Smith, Thomas Ingoldsby, Tom Hill, and others.
Out of his set, but of his time, there was Sydney Smith,
ten times more a wit: but Theodore could amuse,
Theodore could astonish, Theodore could be at home
anywhere; he had all the impudence, all the readiness,
all the indifference of a jester, and a jester he was.
Let any one look at his portrait,
and he will doubt if this be the king’s jester,
painted by Holbein, or Mr. Theodore Hook, painted by
Eddis. The short, thick nose, the long upper lip,
the sensual, whimsical mouth, the twinkling eyes,
all belong to the regular maker of fun. Hook
was a certificated jester, with a lenient society to
hear and applaud him, instead of an irritable tyrant
to keep him in order: and he filled his post
well. Whether he was more than a jester may well
be doubted; yet Coleridge, when he heard him, said:
’I have before in my time met with men of admirable
promptitude of intellectual power and play of wit,
which, as Stillingfleet says:
“The rays of wit gild wheresoe’er
they strike,”
but I never could have conceived such
readiness of mind and resources of genius to be poured
out on the mere subject and impulse of the moment.’
The poet was wrong in one respect. Genius can
in no sense be applied to Hook, though readiness was
his chief charm.
The famous Theodore was born in the
same year as Byron, 1788, the one on the 22nd of January,
the other on the 22nd of September; so the poet was
only nine months his senior. Hook, like many other
wits, was a second son. Ladies of sixty or seventy
well remember the name of Hook as that which accompanied
their earliest miseries. It was in learning Hook’s
exercises, or primers, or whatever they were called,
that they first had their fingers slapped over the
piano-forte. The father of Theodore, no doubt,
was the unwitting cause of much unhappiness to many
a young lady in her teens. Hook pere was
an organist at Norwich. He came up to town, and
was engaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall;
so that Theodore had no excuse for being of decidedly
plebeian origin, and, Tory as he was, he was not fool
enough to aspire to patricianism.
Theodore’s family was, in real
fact, Theodore himself. He made the name what
it is, and raised himself to the position he at one
time held. Yet he had a brother whose claims
to celebrity are not altogether ancillary. James
Hook was fifteen years older than Theodore. After
leaving Westminster School he was sent to immortal
Skimmery (St. Mary’s Hall), Oxford, which has
fostered so many great men and spoiled them.
He was advanced in the church from one preferment
to another, and ultimately became Dean of Worcester.
The character of the reverend gentleman is pretty
well known, but it is unnecessary here to go into it
farther. He is only mentioned as Theodore’s
brother in this sketch. He was a dabbler in literature,
like his brother, but scarcely to the same extent
a dabbler in wit.
The younger son of ‘Hook’s
Exercises’ developed early enough a taste for
ingenious lying so much admired in his predecessor Sheridan,
He ‘fancied himself’ a genius, and therefore,
from school-age, not amenable to the common laws of
ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable
prize-ring thanks to two brutes who have
brought that degraded pastime into prominent notice will
hear a great deal about a man ’fancying himself.’
It is common slang and heeds little explanation.
Hook ’fancied himself’ from an early period,
and continued to ‘fancy himself,’ in spite
of repeated disgraces, till a very mature age.
At Harrow, he was the contemporary, but scarcely the
friend, of Lord Byron. No two characters could
have been more unlike. Every one knows, more or
less, what Byron’s was; it need only be said
that Hook’s was the reverse of it in every respect.
Byron felt where Hook laughed. Byron was morbid
where Hook was gay. Byron abjured with disgust
the social vices to which he was introduced; Hook
fell in with them. Byron indulged in vice in a
romantic way; Hook in the coarsest. There is some
excuse for Byron, much as he has been blamed.
There is little or no excuse for Hook, much as his
faults have been palliated. The fact is that goodness
of heart will soften, in men’s minds, any or
all misdemeanours. Hook, in spite of many vulgar
witticisms and cruel jokes, seems to have had a really
good heart.
I have it on the authority of one
of Hook’s most intimate friends, that he was
capable of any act of kindness, and by way of instance
of his goodness of heart, I am told by the same person
that he on one occasion quitted all his town amusements
to solace the spirit of a friend in the country who
was in serious trouble. I, of course, refrain
from giving names: but the same person informs
me that much of his time was devoted in a like manner,
to relieving, as far as possible, the anxiety of his
friends, often, indeed, arising from his own carelessness.
It is due to Hook to make this impartial statement
before entering on a sketch of his ‘Sayings
and Doings,’ which must necessarily leave the
impression that he was a heartless man.
Old Hook, the father, soon perceived
the value of his son’s talents; and, determined
to turn them to account, encouraged his natural inclination
to song-writing. At the age of sixteen Theodore
wrote a kind of comic opera, to which his father supplied
the music. This was called ‘The Soldier’s
Return.’ It was followed by others, and
young Hook, not yet out of his teens, managed to keep
a Drury Lane audience alive, as well as himself and
family. It must be remembered, however, that Liston
and Matthews could make almost any piece amusing.
The young author was introduced behind the scenes
through his father’s connection with the theatre,
and often played the fool under the stage while others
were playing it for him above it, practical jokes
being a passion with him which he developed thus early.
These tricks were not always very good-natured, which
may be said of many of his jokes out of the theatre.
He soon showed evidence of another
talent, that of acting as well as writing pieces.
Assurance was one of the main features of his character,
and to it he owed his success in society; but it is
a remarkable fact, that on his first appearance before
an audience he entirely lost all his nerve, turned
pale, and could scarcely utter a syllable. He
rapidly recovered, however, and from this time became
a favourite performer in private theatricals, in which
he was supported by Mathews and Mrs. Mathews, and
some amateurs who were almost equal to any professional
actors. His attempts were, of course, chiefly
in broad farce and roaring burlesque, in which his
comic face, with its look of mock gravity, and the
twinkle of the eyes, itself excited roars of laughter.
Whether he would have succeeded as well in sober comedy
or upon public boards may well be doubted. Probably
he would not have given to the profession that careful
attention and entire devotion that are necessary to
bring forward properly the highest natural talents.
It is said that for a long time he was anxious to
take to the stage as, a profession, but, perhaps as
the event seems to show unfortunately for
him, he was dissuaded from what his friends must have
thought a very rash step, and in after years he took
a violent dislike to the profession. Certainly
the stage could not have offered more temptations than
did the society in which he afterwards mixed; and
perhaps under any circumstances Hook, whose moral
education had been neglected, and whose principles
were never very good, would have lived a life more
or less vicious, though he might not have died as
he did.
Hook, however, was not long in coming
very prominently before the public in another capacity.
Of all stories told about him, none are more common
or more popular than those which relate to his practical
jokes and hoaxes. Thank heaven, the world no
longer sees amusement in the misery of others, and
the fashion of such clever performance is gone out.
It is fair, however, to premise, that while the cleverest
of Hook’s hoaxes were of a victimizing character,
a large number were just the reverse, and his admirers
affirm, not without some reason, that when he had got
a dinner out of a person whom he did not know, by
an ingenious lie, admirably supported, he fully paid
for it in the amusement he afforded his host and the
ringing metal of his wit. As we have all been
boys except those that were girls and
not all of us very good boys, we can appreciate that
passion for robbery which began with orchards and
passed on to knockers. It is difficult to sober
middle-age to imagine what entertainment there can
be in that breach of the eighth commandment, which
is generally regarded as innocent. As Sheridan
swindled in fun, so Hook, as a young man, robbed in
fun, as hundreds of medical students and others have
done before and since. Hook, however, was a proficient
in the art, and would have made a successful ‘cracksman’
had he been born in the Seven Dials. He collected
a complete museum of knockers, bell-pulls, wooden
Highlanders, barbers’ poles, and shop signs
of all sorts. On one occasion he devoted a whole
fortnight to the abstraction of a golden eagle over
a shop window, by means of a lasso. A fellow
dilettante in the art had confidentially informed him
of its whereabouts, adding that he himself despaired
of ever obtaining it. At length Hook invited
his friend to dinner, and on the removal of the cover
of what was supposed to be the joint, the work of art
appeared served up and appropriately garnished.
Theodore was radiant with triumph; but the friend,
probably thinking that there ought to be honour among
thieves, was highly indignant at being thus surpassed.
Another achievement of this kind was
the robbery of a life-sized Highlander, who graced
the door of some unsuspecting tobacconist. There
was little difficulty in the mere displacement of the
figure; the troublesome part of the business was to
get the bare legged Celt home to the museum, where
probably many a Lilliputian of his race was already
awaiting him. A cloak, a hat, and Hook’s
ready wit effected the transfer. The first was
thrown over him, the second set upon his bonneted
head, and a passing hackney coach hailed by his captor,
who before the unsuspecting driver could descend,
had opened the door, pushed in the prize, and whispered
to Jehu, ’My friend very respectable
man but rather tipsy.’ How he managed to
get him out again at the end of the journey we are
not told.
Hook was soon a successful and valuable
writer of light pieces for the stage. But farces
do not live, and few of Hook’s are now favourites
with a public which is always athirst for something
new. The incidents of most of the pieces many
of them borrowed from the French excited
laughter by their very improbability; but the wit which
enlivened them was not of a high order, and Hook,
though so much more recent than Sheridan, has disappeared
before him.
But his hoaxes were far more famous
than his collection of curiosities, and quite as much
to the purpose; and the imprudence he displayed in
them was only equalled by the quaintness of the humour
which suggested them. Who else would have ever
thought, for instance, of covering a white horse with
black wafers, and driving it in a gig along a Welsh
high-road, merely for the satisfaction of being stared
at? It was almost worthy of Barnum. Or who,
with less assurance, could have played so admirably
on the credulity of a lady and daughters fresh from
the country as he did, at the trial of Lord Melville?
The lady, who stood next to him, was, naturally, anxious
to understand the proceedings, and betrayed her ignorance
at once by a remark which she made to her daughter
about the procession of the Lords into the House.
When the bishops entered in full episcopal costume,
she applied to Hook to know who were ‘those
gentlemen?’ ‘Gentlemen,’ quoth Hook,
with charming simplicity; ’ladies, I think you
mean; at any rate, those are the dowager peeresses
in their own right.’ Question followed question
as the procession came on, and Theodore indulged his
fancy more and more. At length the Speaker, in
full robes, became the subject of inquiry. ’And
pray, sir, who is that fine looking person?’ ’That,
ma’am, is Cardinal Wolsey,’ was the calm
and audacious reply. This was too much even for
Sussex; and the lady drew herself up in majestic indignation.
’We know better than that, sir,’ she replied:
’Cardinal Wolsey has been dead many a good year.’
Theodore was unmoved. ‘No such thing, my
dear madam,’ he answered, without the slightest
sign of perturbation: ’I know it has been
generally reported so in the country, but without the
slightest foundation; the newspapers, you know, will
say anything.’
But the hoax of hoaxes, the one which
filled the papers of the time for several days, and
which, eventually, made its author the very prince
of hoaxsters, if such a term can be admitted, was
that of Berners Street. Never, perhaps, was so
much trouble expended, or so much attention devoted,
to so frivolous an object. In Berners Street there
lived an elderly lady, who, for no reason that can
be ascertained, had excited the animosity of the young
Theodore Hook, who was then just of age. Six
weeks were spent in preparation, and three persons
engaged in the affair. Letters were sent off
in every direction, and Theodore Hook’s autograph,
if it could have any value, must have been somewhat
low in the market at that period, from the number
of applications which he wrote. On the day in
question he and his accomplices seated themselves
at a window in Berners Street, opposite to that unfortunate
Mrs. Tottenham, of No 54, and there enjoyed the fun.
Advertisements, announcements, letters, circulars,
and what not, had been most freely issued, and were
as freely responded to. A score of sweeps, all
’invited to attend professionally,’ opened
the ball at a very early hour, and claimed admittance,
in virtue of the notice they had received. The
maid-servant had only just time to assure them that
all the chimneys were clean, and their services were
not required, when some dozen of coal-carts drew up
as near as possible to the ill-fated house. New
protestations, new indignation. The grimy and
irate coalheavers were still being discoursed with,
when a bevy of neat and polite individuals arrived
from different quarters, bearing each under his arm
a splendid ten-guinea wedding-cake. The maid
grew distracted; her mistress was single, and had
no intention of doubling herself; there must be some
mistake; the confectioners were dismissed, in a very
different humour to that with which they had come.
But they were scarcely gone when crowds began to storm
the house, all ‘on business.’ Rival
doctors met in astonishment and disgust, prepared
for an accouchement; undertakers stared one
another mutely in the face, as they deposited at the
door coffins made to order elm or oak so
many feet and so many inches; the clergymen of all
the neighbouring parishes, high church or low church,
were ready to minister to the spiritual wants of the
unfortunate moribund, but retired in disgust when
they found that some forty fishmongers had been engaged
to purvey ‘cod’s head and lobsters’
for a person professing to be on the brink of the
grave.
The street now became the scene of
fearful distraction. Furious tradesmen of every
kind were ringing the house-bell, and rapping the
knocker for admittance such, at least, as
could press through the crowd as far as the house.
Bootmakers arrived with Hessians and Wellingtons ’as
per order’ or the most delicate of
dancing-shoes for the sober old lady; haberdashers
had brought the last new thing in evening dress, ‘quite
the fashion,’ and ‘very chaste:’
hat-makers from Lincoln and Bennett down to the Hebrew
vendor in Marylebone Lane, arrived with their crown-pieces;
butchers’ boys, on stout little nags, could
not get near enough to deliver the legs of mutton which
had been ordered; the lumbering coal-carts ‘still
stopped the way.’ A crowd the
easiest curiosity in the world to collect soon
gathered round the motley mob of butchers, bakers,
candlestick-makers, and makers and sellers of everything
else that mortal can want; the mob thronged the pavement,
the carts filled the road, and soon the carriages of
the noble of the land dashed up in all the panoply
of state, and a demand was made to clear the way for
the Duke of Gloucester, for the Governor of the Bank,
the Chairman of the East India Company, and last, but,
oh! not least, the grandee whose successor the originator
of the plot afterwards so admirably satirized the
great Lord Mayor himself. The consternation,
disgust, and terror of the elderly female, the delight
and chuckling of Theodore and his accomplices, seated
at a window on the opposite side of the road, ‘can
be more easily imagined than described;’ but
what were the feelings of tradesmen, professional
men, gentlemen, noblemen, and grand officials, who
had been summoned from distant spots by artful lures
to N, and there battled with a crowd in vain only
to find that there were hoaxed; people who had thus
lost both time and money, can be neither described
nor imagined. It was not the idea of the hoax simple
enough in itself which was entitled to the
admiration accorded to ingenuity, but its extent and
success, and the clever means taken by the conspirators
to insure the attendance of every one who ought not
to have been there. It was only late at night
that the police succeeded in clearing the street,
and the dupes retired, murmuring and vowing vengeance.
Hook, however, gloried in the exploit, which he thought
‘perfect.’
But the hoaxing dearest to Theodore for
there was something to be gained by it was
that by which he managed to obtain a dinner when either
too hard-up to pay for one, or in the humour for a
little amusement. No one who has not lived as
a bachelor in London and been reduced in
respect of coin to the sum of twopence-halfpenny,
can tell how excellent a strop is hunger to sharpen
wit upon. We all know that
‘Mortals with stomachs can’t
live without dinner;’
and in Hook’s day the substitute
of ‘heavy teas’ was not invented.
Necessity is very soon brought to bed, when a man puts
his fingers into his pockets, finds them untenanted,
and remembers that the only friend who would consent
to lend him five shillings is gone out of town; and
the infant, Invention, presently smiles into the nurse’s
face. But it was no uncommon thing in those days
for gentlemen to invite themselves where they listed,
and stay as long as they liked. It was only necessary
for them to make themselves really agreeable, and deceive
their host in some way or other. Hook’s
friend, little Tom Hill, of whom it was said that
he knew everybody’s affairs far better than they
did themselves, was famous for examining kitchens
about the hour of dinner, and quietly selecting his
host according to the odour of the viands. It
is of him that the old ‘Joe Miller’ is
told of the ‘haunch of venison.’ Invited
to dinner at one house, he happens to glance
down into the kitchen of the next, and seeing a tempting
haunch of venison on the spit, throws over the inviter,
and ingratiates himself with his neighbour, who ends
by asking him to stay to dinner. The fare, however,
consisted of nothing more luxurious than an Irish
stew, and the disappointed guest was informed that
he had been ‘too cunning by half,’ inasmuch
as the venison belonged to his original inviter, and
had been cooked in the house he was in by kind permission,
because the chimney of the owner’s kitchen smoked.
The same principle often actuated
Theodore; and, indeed, there are few stories which
can be told of this characteristic of the great frolicker,
which have not been told a century of times.
For instance: two young men are
strolling, towards 5 P.M., in the then fashionable
neighbourhood of Soho; the one is Terry, the actor the
other, Hook, the actor, for surely he deserves the
title. They pass a house, and sniff the viands
cooking underground. Hook quietly announces his
intention of dining there. He enters, is
admitted and announced by the servant, mingles with
the company, and is quite at home before he is perceived
by the host. At last the denouement came;
the dinner-giver approached the stranger, and with
great politeness asked his name. ‘Smith’
was, of course, the reply, and reverting to mistakes
made by servants in announcing, &c., ‘Smith’
hurried off into an amusing story, to put his host
in good humour. The conversation that followed
is taken from ’Ingoldsby’:
‘But, really, my dear sir,’
the host put in, ’I think the mistake on the
present occasion does not originate in the source you
allude to; I certainly did not anticipate the honour
of Mr. Smith’s company to-day.’
’No, I dare say not. You
said four in your note, I know, and it is now,
I see, a quarter past five; but the fact is, I have
been detained in the City, as I was going to explain ’
‘Pray,’ said the host,
‘whom do you suppose you are addressing?’
’Whom? why Mr. Thompson, of
course, old friend of my father. I have not the
pleasure, indeed, of being personally known to you,
but having received your kind invitation yesterday,’
&c. &c.
‘No, sir, my name is not Thompson,
but Jones,’ in highly indignant accents.
‘Jones!’ was the well-acted
answer: ’why, surely, I cannot have yes
I must good heaven! I see it all.
My dear sir, what an unfortunate blunder; wrong
house what must you think of such an intrusion?
I am really at a loss for words in which to apologize;
you will permit me to retire at present, and to-morrow ’
‘Pray, don’t think of
retiring,’ rejoined the host, taken with the
appearance and manner of the young man. ’Your
friend’s table must have been cleared long ago,
if, as you say, four was the hour named, and I am
too happy to be able to offer you a seat at mine.’
It may be easily conceived that the
invitation had not to be very often repeated, and
Hook kept the risible muscles of the company upon the
constant stretch, and paid for the entertainment in
the only coin with which he was well supplied.
There was more wit, however, in his
visit to a retired watchmaker, who had got from government
a premium of L10,000 for the best chronometer.
Hook was very partial to journeys in search of adventure;
a gig, a lively companion, and sixpence for the first
turnpike being generally all that was requisite; ingenuity
supplied the rest. It was on one of these excursions,
that Hook and his friend found themselves in the neighbourhood
of Uxbridge, with a horse and a gig, and not a sixpence
to be found in any pocket. Now a horse and gig
are property, but of what use is a valuable of which
you cannot dispose or deposit at a pawnbroker’s,
while you are prevented proceeding on your way by that
neat white gate with the neat white box of a house
at its side? The only alternative left to the
young men was to drive home again, dinnerless, a distance
of twenty miles, with a jaded horse, or to find gratuitous
accommodation for man and beast. In such a case
Sheridan would simply have driven to the first inn,
and by persuasion or stratagem contrived to elude
payment, after having drunk the best wine and eaten
the best dinner the house could afford. Hook
was really more refined, as well as bolder in his
pillaging.
The villa of the retired tradesman
was perceived, and the gig soon drew up before the
door. The strangers were ushered in to the watchmaker,
and Hook, with great politeness and a serious respectful
look, addressed him. He said that he felt he
was taking a great liberty so he was but
that he could not pass the door of a man who had done
the country so much service by the invention of what
must prove the most useful and valuable instrument,
without expressing to him the gratitude which he,
as a British subject devoted to his country’s
good, could not but feel towards the inventor, &c.
&c. The flattery was so delicately and so seriously
insinuated, that the worthy citizen could only receive
it as an honest expression of sincere admiration.
The Rubicon was passed; a little lively conversation,
artfully made attractive by Hook, followed, and the
watchmaker was more and more gratified. He felt,
too, what an honour it would be to entertain two real
gentlemen, and remarking that they were far from town,
brought out at last the longed-for invitation, which
was, of course, declined as out of the question.
Thereupon the old gentleman became pressing:
the young strangers were at last prevailed upon to
accept it, and very full justice they did to the larder
and cellar of the successful chronometer-maker.
There is nothing very original in
the act of hoaxing, and Hook’s way of getting
a hackney-coach without paying for it, was, perhaps,
suggested by Sheridan’s, but was more laughable.
Finding himself in the vehicle, and knowing that there
was nothing either in his purse or at home to pay
the fare, he cast about for expedients, and at last
remembered the address of an eminent surgeon in the
neighbourhood. He ordered the coachman to drive
to his house and knock violently at the door, which
was no sooner opened than Hook rushed in, terribly
agitated, demanded to see the doctor, to whom in a
few incoherent and agitated sentences, he gave to
understand that his wife needed his services, immediately,
being on the point of becoming a mother.
‘I will start directly,’
replied the surgeon; ’I will order my carriage
at once.’
’But, my dear sir, there is
not a moment to spare. I have a coach at the
door, jump into that.’
The surgeon obeyed. The name
and address given were those of a middle-aged spinster
of the most rigid virtue. We can imagine her
indignation, and how sharply she rung the bell, when
the surgeon had delicately explained the object of
his visit, and how eagerly he took refuge in the coach.
Hook had, of course, walked quietly away in the meantime,
and the Galenite had to pay the demand of Jehu.
The hoaxing stories of Theodore Hook
are numberless. Hoaxing was the fashion of the
day, and a childish fashion too. Charles Mathews,
whose face possessed the flexibility of an acrobat’s
body, and who could assume any character or disguise
on the shortest notice, was his great confederate
in these plots. The banks of the Thames were their
great resort. At one point there was Mathews
talking gibberish in a disguise intended to represent
the Spanish Ambassador, and actually deceiving the
Woolwich authorities by his clever impersonation.
At another, there was Hook landing uninvited with
his friends upon the well-known, sleek-looking lawn
of a testy little gentleman, drawing out a note-book
and talking so authoritatively about the survey for
a canal, to be undertaken by Government, that the
owner of the lawn becomes frightened, and in his anxiety
attempts to conciliate the mighty self-made official
by the offer of dinner of course accepted.
Then the Arcades ambo show
off their jesting tricks at Croydon fair, a most suitable
place for them. On one occasion Hook personates
a madman, accusing Mathews, ‘his brother,’
of keeping him out of his rights and in his custody.
The whole fair collects around them, and begins to
sympathise with Hook, who begs them to aid in his escape
from his ‘brother.’ A sham escape
and sham capture take place, and the party adjourn
to the inn, where Mathews, who had been taken by surprise
by the new part suddenly played by his confederate,
seized upon a hearse, which drew up before the inn,
on its return from a funeral, persuaded the company
to bind the ‘madman,’ who was now becoming
furious, and who would have deposited him in the gloomy
vehicle, if he had not succeeded in snapping his fetters,
and so escaped. In short, they were two boys,
with the sole difference, that they had sufficient
talent and experience of the world to maintain admirably
the parts they assumed.
But a far more famous and more admirable
talent in Theodore than that of deception was that
of improvising. The art of improvising belongs
to Italy and the Tyrol. The wonderful gift of
ready verse to express satire, and ridicule, seems,
as a rule, to be confined to the inhabitants of those
two lands. Others are, indeed, scattered over
the world, who possess this gift, but very sparsely.
Theodore Hook stands almost alone in this country
as an improviser. Yet to judge of such of his
verses as have been preserved, taken down from memory
or what not, the grand effect of them and
no doubt it was grand must have been
owing more to his manner and his acting, than to any
intrinsic value in the verses themselves, which are,
for the most part, slight, and devoid of actual wit,
though abounding in puns. Sheridan’s testimony
to the wonderful powers of the man is, perhaps, more
valuable than that of any one else, for he was a good
judge both of verse and of wit. One of Hook’s
earliest displays of his talent was at a dinner given
by the Drury Lane actors to Sheridan at the Piazza
Coffee House in 1808. Here, as usual, Hook sat
down to the piano, and touching off a few chords,
gave verse after verse on all the events of the entertainment,
on each person present, though he now saw many of
them for the first time, and on anything connected
with the matters of interest before them. Sheridan
was delighted, and declared that he could not have
believed such a faculty possible if he had not witnessed
its effects: that no description ’could
have convinced him of so peculiar an instance of genius,’
and so forth.
One of his most extraordinary efforts
in this line is related by Mr. Jerdan. A dinner
was given by Mansell Reynolds to Lockhart, Luttrell,
Coleridge, Hook, Tom Hill, and others. The grown-up
schoolboys, pretty far gone in Falernian, of a home-made,
and very homely vintage, amused themselves by breaking
the wine-glasses, till Coleridge was set to demolish
the last of them with a fork thrown at it from the
side of the table. Let it not be supposed that
any teetotal spirit suggested this inconoclasm, far
from it the glasses were too small, and
the poets, the wits, the punsters, the jesters, preferred
to drink their port out of tumblers. After dinner
Hook gave one of his songs which satirized successively,
and successfully, each person present. He was
then challenged to improvise on any given subject,
and by way of one as far distant from poetry as could
be, cocoa-nut oil was fixed upon. Theodore
accepted the challenge; and after a moment’s
consideration began his lay with a description of
the Mauritius, which he knew so well, the negroes
dancing round the cocoa-nut tree, the process of extracting
the oil, and so forth, all in excellent rhyme and rhythm,
if not actual poetry. Then came the voyage to
England, hits at the Italian warehousemen, and so
on, till the oil is brought into the very lamp before
them in that very room, to show them with the light
it feeds and make them able to break wine-glasses
and get drunk from tumblers. This we may be sure
Hook himself did, for one, and the rest were probably
not much behind him.
In late life this gift of Hook’s improvising
I mean, not getting intoxicated was his
highest recommendation in society, and at the same
time his bane. Like Sheridan, he was ruined by
his wonderful natural powers. It can well be
imagined that to improvise in the manner in which
Hook did it, and at a moment’s notice, required
some effort of the intellect. This effort became
greater as circumstances depressed his spirits more
and more and yet with every care upon his mind, he
was expected, wherever he went, to amuse the guests
with a display of his talent. He could not do
so without stimulants, and rather than give up society,
fell into habits of drinking, which hastened his death.
We have thrown together the foregoing
anecdotes of Hook, irrespective of time, in order
to show what the man’s gifts were, and what his
title to be considered a wit. We must proceed
more steadily to a review of his life. Successful
as Hook had proved as a writer for the stage, he suddenly
and without any sufficient cause rushed off into another
branch of literature, that of novel-writing.
His first attempt in this kind of fiction was ‘The
Man of Sorrow,’ published under the nom de
plume of Alfred Allendale. This was
not, as its name would seem to imply, a novel of pathetic
cast, but the history of a gentleman whose life from
beginning to end is rendered wretched by a succession
of mishaps of the most ludicrous but improbable kind.
Indeed Theodore’s novels, like his stage-pieces,
are gone out of date in an age so practical that even
in romance it will not allow of the slightest departure
from reality. Their very style was ephemeral,
and their interest could not outlast the generation
to amuse which they were penned. This first novel
was written when Hook was one-and-twenty. Soon
after he was sent to Oxford, where he had been entered
at St. Mary’s Hall, more affectionately known
by the nickname of ‘Skimmery.’ No
selection could have been worse. Skimmery was,
at that day, and, until quite recently, a den of thieves,
where young men of fortune and folly submitted to
be pillaged in return for being allowed perfect licence,
as much to eat as they could possibly swallow, and
far more to drink than was at all good for them.
It has required all the enterprise of the present
excellent Principal to convert it into a place of
sober study. It was then the most ‘gentlemanly’
residence in Oxford; for a gentleman in those days
meant a man who did nothing, spent his own or his
father’s guineas with a brilliant indifference
to consequences, and who applied his mind solely to
the art of frolic. It was the very place where
Hook would be encouraged instead of restrained in
his natural propensities, and had he remained there
he would probably have ruined himself and his father
long before he had put on the sleeves.
At the matriculation itself he gave
a specimen of his ‘fun.’
When asked, according to the usual
form, ’if he was willing to sign the Thirty-nine
Articles,’ he replied, ’Certainly, sir,
forty if you please.’ The gravity
of the stern Vice-Chancellor was upset, but as no
Oxford Don can ever pardon a joke, however good, Master
Theodore was very nearly being dismissed, had not
his brother, by this time a Prebendary of Winchester,
and ‘an honour to his college, sir,’ interceded
in his favour.
The night before, he had given a still
better specimen of his effrontery. He had picked
up a number of old Harrovians, with whom he had repaired
to a tavern for song, supper, and sociability, and
as usual in such cases, in the lap of Alma Mater,
the babes became sufficiently intoxicated, and not
a little uproarious. Drinking in a tavern is
forbidden by Oxonian statutes, and one of the proctors
happening to pass in the street outside, was attracted
into the house by the sound of somewhat unscholastic
merriment. The effect can be imagined. All
the youths were in absolute terror, except Theodore,
and looked in vain for some way to escape. The
wary and faithful ‘bulldogs’ guarded the
doorway; the marshal, predecessor of the modern omniscient
Brown, advanced respectfully behind the proctor into
the room, and passing a penetrating glance from one
youth to the other, all of whom except
Theodore again he knew by sight for
that is the pride and pleasure of a marshal mentally
registered their names in secret hopes of getting
half-a-crown a-piece to forget them again.
No mortal is more respectful in his
manner of accosting you than an Oxford proctor, for
he may make a mistake, and a mistake may make him
very miserable. When, for instance, a highly respectable
lady was the other day lodged, in spite of protestations,
in the ’Procuratorial Rooms,’ and there
locked up on suspicion of being somebody very different,
the over-zealous proctor who had ordered her incarceration
was sued for damages for L300, and had to pay them
too! Therefore the gentleman in question most
graciously and suavely inquired of Mr. Theodore Hook
’I beg your pardon, sir, but
are you a member of this university?’ the
usual form.
‘No, sir, I am not. Are you?’
The suavity at once changed to grave
dignity. The proctor lifted up the hem of his
garment, which being of broad velvet, with the selvage
on it, was one of the insignia of his office, and
sternly said, ’You see this, sir.’
‘Ah!’ said Hook, cool
as ever, and quietly feeling the material, which he
examined with apparent interest, ’I see; Manchester
velvet: and may I take the liberty, sir, of inquiring
how much you have paid per yard for the article?’
A roar of laughter from all present
burst forth with such vehemence that it shot the poor
official, red with suppressed anger, into the street
again, and the merrymakers continued their bout till
the approach of midnight, when they were obliged to
return to their respective colleges.
Had Theodore proceeded in this way
for several terms, no doubt the outraged authorities
would have added his name to the list of the great
men whom they have expelled from time to time most
unprophetically. As it was, he soon left the
groves of Academus, and sought those of Fashion in
town. His matriculation into this new university
was much more auspicious; he was hailed in society
as already fit to take a degree of bachelor of his
particular arts, and ere long his improvising, his
fun, his mirth as yet natural and over-boiling his
wicked punning, and his tender wickedness, induced
the same institution to offer him the grade of ‘Master’
of those arts. In after years he rose to be even
‘Doctor,’ and many, perhaps, were the
minds diseased to which his well-known mirth ministered.
It was during this period that some
of his talents were displayed in the manner we have
described, though his great fame as an improvisatore
was established more completely in later days.
Yet he had already made himself a name in that species
of wit not a very high one which
found favour with the society of that period.
We allude to imitation, ’taking off,’
and punning. The last contemptible branch of wit-making,
now happily confined to ‘Punch,’ is as
old as variety of language. It is not possible
with simple vocabularies, and accordingly is seldom
met with in purely-derived languages. Yet we
have Roman and Greek puns; and English is peculiarly
adapted to this childish exercise, because, being made
up of several languages, it necessarily contains many
words which are like in sound and unlike in meaning.
Punning is, in fact, the vice of English wit, the
temptation of English mirth-makers, and, at last, we
trust, the scorn of English good sense. But in
Theodore’s day it held a high place, and men
who had no real wit about them could twist and turn
words and combinations of words with great ingenuity
and much readiness, to the delight of their listeners.
Pun-making was a fashion among the conversationists
of that day, and took the place of better wit.
Hook was a disgraceful punster, and a successful one.
He strung puns together by the score nothing
more easy in his improvised songs and conversation.
Take an instance from his quiz on the march of intellect:
’Hackney-coachmen from Swift
shall reply, if you feel
Annoyed at being needlessly
shaken;
And butchers, of course, be flippant from
Steele,
And pig-drivers well versed
in Bacon.
From Locke shall the blacksmiths
authority brave,
And gas-men cite Coke
at discretion;
Undertakers talk Gay as they go
to the grave,
And watermen Rowe by
profession.’
I have known a party of naturally
stupid people produce a whole century of puns one
after another, on any subject that presented itself,
and I am inclined to think that nothing can, at the
same time, be more nauseous, or more destructive to
real wit. Yet Theodore’s strength lay in
puns, and when shorn of them, the Philistines might
well laugh at his want of strength. Surely his
title to wit does not lie in that direction.
However, he amused, and that gratis;
and an amusing man makes his way anywhere if he have
only sufficient tact not to abuse his privileges.
Hook grew great in London society for a time, and might
have grown greater if a change had not come.
He had supported himself, up to 1812,
almost entirely by his pen: and the goose-quill
is rarely a staff, though it may sometimes be a walking-stick.
It was clear that he needed what so many
of us need and cannot get a certainty.
Happy fellow! he might have begged for an appointment
for years in vain, as many another does, but it fell
into his lap, no one knows how, and at four-and-twenty
Mr. Theodore Edward Hook was made treasurer to the
Island of Mauritius, with a salary of L2,000 per annum.
This was not to be, and was not, despised. In
spite of climate, mosquitoes, and so forth, Hook took
the money and sailed.
We have no intention of entering minutely
upon his conduct in this office, which has nothing
to do with his character as a wit. There are a
thousand and one reasons for believing him guilty of
the charges brought against him, and a thousand and
one for supposing him guiltless. Here was a young
man, gay, jovial, given to society entirely, and not
at all to arithmetic, put into a very trying and awkward
position native clerks who would cheat
if they could, English governors who would find fault
if they could, a disturbed treasury, an awkward currency,
liars for witnesses, and undeniable evidence of defalcation.
In a word, an examination was made into the state
of the treasury of the island, and a large deficit
found. It remained to trace it home to its original
author.
Hook had not acquired the best character
in the island. Those who know the official dignity
of a small British colony can well understand how
his pleasantries must have shocked those worthy big-wigs
who, exalted from Pump Court, Temple, or Paradise
Row, Old Brompton, to places of honour and high salaries,
rode their high horses with twice the exclusiveness
of those ‘to the manner born.’ For
instance, Hook was once, by a mere chance, obliged
to take the chair at an official dinner, on which
occasion the toasts proposed by the chairman were to
be accompanied by a salute from guns without.
Hook went through the list, and seemed to enjoy toast-drinking
so much that he was quite sorry to have come to the
end of it, and continued, as if still from the list,
to propose successively the health of each officer
present. The gunners were growing quite weary,
but having their orders, dared not complain.
Hook was delighted, and went on to the amazement and
amusement of all who were not tired of the noise,
each youthful sub, taken by surprise, being quite
gratified at the honour done him. At last there
was no one left to toast; but the wine had taken effect,
and Hook, amid roars of laughter inside, and roars
of savage artillery without, proposed the health of
the waiter who had so ably officiated. This done,
he bethought him of the cook, who was sent for to
return thanks; but the artillery officer had by this
time got wind of the affair, and feeling that more
than enough powder had been wasted on the health of
gentlemen who were determined to destroy it by the
number of their potations, took on himself the responsibility
of ordering the gunners to stop.
On another occasion he incurred the
displeasure of the governor, General Hall, by fighting
a duel fortunately as harmless as that of
Moore and Jeffrey
’When Little’s leadless pistol
met his eye,
And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing
by,’
as Byron says. The governor was
sensible enough to wish to put down the ‘Gothic
appeal to arms,’ and was therefore the more irate.
These circumstances must be taken
into consideration in Hook’s favour in examining
the charge of embezzlement. It must also be stated
that the information of the deficit was sent in a
letter to the governor by a man named Allan, chief
clerk in the Treasury, who had, for irregular conduct,
been already threatened with dismissal. Allan
had admitted that he had known of the deficit for
fifteen months, and yet he had not, till he was himself
in trouble, thought of making it known to the proper
authorities. Before his examination, which of
course followed, could be concluded, Allan committed
suicide. Now, does it not, on the face of it,
seem of the highest probability that this man was the
real delinquent, and that knowing that Hook had all
the responsibility, and having taken fair precautions
against his own detection, he had anticipated a discovery
of the affair by a revelation, incriminating the treasurer?
Quien sabe; dead men tell no tales.
The chest, however, was examined,
and the deficit found far greater yet than had been
reported. Hook could not explain, could not understand
it at all; but if not criminal, he had necessarily
been careless. He was arrested, thrown into prison,
and by the first vessel despatched to England to take
his trial, his property of every kind having been sold
for the Government. Hook, in utter destitution,
might be supposed to have lost his usual spirits,
but he could not resist a joke. At St. Helena
he met an old friend going out to the Cape, who, surprised
at seeing him on his return voyage after a residence
of only five years, said: ‘I hope you are
not going home for your health.’ ’Why,’
said Theodore, ’I am sorry to say they think
there is something wrong in the chest. Something
wrong in the chest’ became henceforward the ordinary
phrase in London society in referring to Hook’s
scrape.
Arrived in England, he was set free,
the Government here having decided that he could not
be criminally tried; and thus Hook, guilty or not,
had been ruined and disgraced for life for simple
carelessness. True, the custody of a nation’s
property makes negligence almost criminal; but that
does not excuse the punishment of a man before he is
tried.
He was summoned, however, to the Colonial
Audit Board, where he underwent a trying examination;
after which he was declared to be in the debt of Government:
a writ of extent was issued against him; nine months
were passed in that delightful place of residence a
Sponging-house, which he then exchanged for the ’Rules
of the Bench’ the only rules which
have no exception. From these he was at last liberated,
in 1825, on the understanding that he was to repay
the money to Government if at any time he should be
in a position to do so.
His liberation was a tacit acknowledgment
of his innocence of the charge of robbery; his encumberment
with a debt caused by another’s delinquencies
was, we presume, a signification of his responsibility
and some kind of punishment for his carelessness.
Certainly it was hard upon Hook, that, if innocent,
he should not have gone forth without a stain on his
character for honesty; and it was unjust, that, if
guilty, he should not have been punished. The
judgment was one of those compromises with stern justice
which are seldom satisfactory to either party.
The fact was that, guilty or not guilty,
Hook had been both incompetent and inconsiderate.
Doubtless he congratulated himself highly on receiving,
at the age of twenty-five, an appointment worth L2,000
a year in the paradise of the world; but how short-sighted
his satisfaction, since this very appointment left
him some ten years later a pauper to begin life anew
with an indelible stain on his character. It was
absurd to give so young a man such a post; but it
was absolutely wrong in Hook not to do his utmost
to carry out his duties properly. Nay, he had
trifled with the public money in the same liberal perhaps
a more liberal spirit as if it had
been his own made advances and loans here
and there injudiciously, and taken little heed of the
consequences. Probably, at this day, the common
opinion acquits Hook of a designed and complicated
fraud; but common opinion never did acquit him of
misconduct, and even by his friends this affair was
looked upon with a suspicion that preferred silence
to examination.
But why take such pains to exonerate
Hook from a charge of robbery, when he was avowedly
guilty of as bad a sin, of which the law took no cognizance,
and which society forgave far more easily than it could
have done for robbing the State? Soon after his
return from the Mauritius, he took lodgings in the
cheap, but unfashionable neighbourhood of Somers Town.
Here, in the moment of his misfortune, when doubting
whether disgrace, imprisonment, or what not awaited
him, he sought solace in the affection of a young
woman, of a class certainly much beneath his, and
of a character unfit to make her a valuable companion
to him. Hook had received little moral training,
and had he done so, his impulses were sufficiently
strong to overcome any amount of principle. With
this person to use the modern slang which
seems to convert a glaring sin into a social misdemeanour ’he
formed a connection.’ In other words, he
destroyed her virtue. Hateful as such an act is,
we must, before we can condemn a man for it without
any recommendation to mercy, consider a score of circumstances
which have rendered the temptation stronger, and the
result almost involuntary. Hook was not a man
of high moral character very far from it but
we need not therefore suppose that he sat down coolly
and deliberately, like a villain in a novel, to effect
the girl’s ruin. But the Rubicon once passed,
how difficult is the retreat! There are but two
paths open to a man, who would avoid living a life
of sin: the one, to marry his victim; the other,
to break off the connection before it is too late.
The first is, of course, the more proper course; but
there are cases where marriage is impossible.
From the latter a man of any heart must shrink with
horror. Yet there are cases, even, where
the one sin will prove the least where she
who has loved too well may grieve bitterly at parting,
yet will be no more open to temptation than if she
had never fallen. Such cases are rare, and it
is not probable that the young person with whom Hook
had become connected would have retrieved the fatal
error. She became a mother, and there was no
retreat. It is clear that Hook ought to have married
her. It is evident that he was selfish and wrong
not to do so; yet he shrank from it, weakly,
wickedly, and he was punished for his shrinking.
He had sufficient feeling not to throw his victim
over, yet he was content to live a life of sin, and
to keep her in such a life. This is perhaps the
blackest stain on Hook’s character. When
Fox married, in consequence of a similar connection,
he ‘settled down,’ retrieved his early
errors, and became a better man, morally, than he
had ever been. Hook ought to have married.
It was the cowardly dread of public opinion that deterred
him from doing so, and, in consequence, he was never
happy, and felt that this connection was a perpetual
burden to him.
Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource
but his literary talents, and it is to be deplored
that he should have prostituted these to serve an
ungentlemanly and dishonourable party in their onslaught
upon an unfortunate woman. Whatever may be now
thought of the queen of ’the greatest gentleman’ or
roue of Europe, those who hunted
her down will never be pardoned, and Hook was one
of those. We have cried out against an Austrian
general for condemning a Hungarian lady to the lash,
and we have seen, with delight, a mob chase him through
the streets of London and threaten his very life.
But we have not only pardoned, but even praised, our
favourite wit for far worse conduct than this.
Even if we allow, which we do not, chat the queen
was one half as bad as her enemies, or rather her
husband’s parasites, would make her out, we
cannot forgive the men who, shielded by their incognito,
and perfectly free from danger of any kind, set upon
a woman with libels, invectives, ballads, epigrams,
and lampoons, which a lady could scarcely read, and
of which a royal lady, and many an English gentlewoman,
too, were the butts.
The vilest of all the vile papers
of that day was the ‘John Bull,’ now settled
down to a quiet periodical. Perhaps the real John
Bull, heavy, good-natured lumberer as he is, was never
worse represented than in this journal which bore
his name, but had little of his kindly spirit.
Hook was its originator, and for a long time its main
supporter. Scurrility, scandal, libel, baseness
of all kinds formed the fuel with which it blazed,
and the wit, bitter, unflinching, unsparing, which
puffed the flame up, was its chief recommendation.
No more disgraceful climax was ever
reached by a disgraceful dynasty of profligates than
that which found a King of England long,
as Regent, the leader of the profligate and degraded at
war with his injured Queen. None have deserved
better the honest gratitude of their country than
those who, like Henry Brougham, defended the oppressed
woman in spite of opposition, obloquy, and ridicule.
But we need not go deeply into a history
so fresh in the minds of all, as that blot which shows
John Bull himself upholding a wretched dissipated
monarch against a wife, who, whatever her faults, was
still a woman, and whatever her spirit for
she had much of it, and showed it grandly at need was
still a lady. Suffice it to say that ‘John
Bull’ was the most violent of the periodicals
that attacked her, and that Theodore Hook, no Puritan
himself, was the principal writer in that paper.
If you can imagine ‘Punch’
turned Conservative, incorporated in one paper with
the ‘Morning Herald,’ so that a column
of news was printed side by side with one of a jocular
character, and these two together devoted without
principle to the support of a party, the attack of
Whiggism, and an unblushing detraction of the character
of one of our princesses, you can form some idea of
what ‘John Bull’ was in those days.
There is, however, a difference: ‘Punch’
attacks public characters, and ridicules public events;
‘John Bull’ dragged out the most retired
from their privacy, and attacked them with calumnies
for which, often, there was no foundation. Then,
again, ‘Punch’ is not nearly so bitter
as was ‘John Bull:’ there is not in
the ’London Charivari’ a determination
to say everything that spite can invent against any
particular set or party; there is a good nature, still,
in master ‘Punch.’ It was quite the
reverse in ‘John Bull,’ established for
one purpose, and devoted to that. Yet the wit
in Theodore’s paper does not rise much higher
than that of our modern laughing philosopher.
Of Hook’s contributions the
most remarkable was the ’Ramsbottom Letters,’
in which Mrs. Lavinia Dorothea Ramsbottom describes
all the memory billions of her various tours
at home and abroad, always, of course, with more or
less allusion to political affairs. The ‘fun’
of these letters is very inferior to that of ‘Jeames’
or of the ’Snob Papers,’ and consists
more in Malaprop absurdities and a wide range of bad
puns, than in any real wit displayed in them.
Of the style of both, we take an extract anywhere:
’Oh! Mr. Bull, Room is
raley a beautiful place. We entered it by the
Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and Sally
at Porchmouth, only they call Sally there Port, which
is not known in Room. The Tiber is a nice river,
it looks yellow, but it does the same there as the
Thames does here. We hired a carry-lettz and a
cocky-olly, to take us to the Church of Salt Peter,
which is prodigious big; in the centre of the pizarro
there is a basilisk very high, on the right and left
two handsome foundlings; and the farcy, as Mr. Fulmer
called it, is ornamented with collateral statutes
of some of the Apostates.’
We can quite imagine that Hook wrote
many of these letters when excited by wine. Some
are laughable enough, but the majority are so deplorably
stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, that when
the temporary interest was gone, there was nothing
left to attract the reader. It is scarcely possible
to laugh at the Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old world
puns, and the trite stories of Hook ‘remains.’
Remains! indeed; they had better have remained where
they were.
Besides prose of this kind, Hook contributed
various jingles there is no other name
for them arranged to popular tunes, and
intended to become favourites with the country people.
These like the prose effusions, served the
purpose of an hour, and have no interest now.
Whether they were ever really popular remains to be
proved. Certes, they are forgotten now, and long
since even in the most Conservative corners of the
country. Many of these have the appearance of
having been originally recitati, and their
amusement must have depended chiefly on the face and
manner of the singer Hook himself; but in
some he displayed that vice of rhyming which has often
made nonsense go down, and which is tolerable only
when introduced in the satire of a ’Don Juan’
or the first-rate mimicry of ‘Rejected Addresses.’
Hook had a most wonderful facility in concocting out-of-the-way
rhymes, and a few verses from his song on Clubs will
suffice for a good specimen of his talent:
’If any man loves comfort,
and has little cash to buy it, he
Should get into a crowded club a most
select society;
While solitude and mutton-cutlets serve infelix
uxor, he
May have his club (Like Hercules), and revel there
in luxury.
Bow,
wow, wow, &c.
’Yes, clubs knock houses on
the head; e’en Hatchett’s can’t demolish
them;
Joy grieves to see their magnitude, and Long longs
to abolish them.
The inns are out; hotels for single men scarce keep
alive on it;
While none but houses that are in the family way
thrive on it.
Bow,
wow, wow, &c.
’There’s first the Athenaeum
Club, so wise, there’s not a man of it,
That has not sense enough for six (in fact, that
is the plan of it);
The very waiters answer you with eloquence Socratical;
And always place the knives and forks in order
mathematical.
Bow,
wow, wow, &c.
’E’en Isis has a house
in town, and Cam abandons her city.
The master now hangs out at the Trinity University.
’The Union Club is quite superb;
its best apartment daily is,
The lounge of lawyers, doctors, merchants, beaux,
cum multis aliis.
’The Travellers are in Pall
Mall, and smoke cigars so cosily,
And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the
plains of Moselai.
’These are the stages which
all men propose to play their parts upon,
For clubs are what the Londoners have clearly
set their hearts
upon.
Bow, wow, wow, tiddy-iddy-iddy-iddy, bow,
wow, wow, &c.
This is one of the harmless ballads
of ‘Bull.’ Some of the political
ones are scarcely fit to print in the present day.
We cannot wonder that ladies of a certain position
gave out that they would not receive any one who took
in this paper. It was scurrilous to the last degree,
and Theodore Hook was the soul of it. He preserved
his incognito so well, that in spite of all attempts
to unearth him, it was many years before he could
be certainly fixed upon as a writer in its columns.
He even went to the length of writing letters and
articles against himself, in order to disarm suspicion.
Hook now lived and thrived purely
on literature. He published many novels gone
where the bad novels go, and unread in the present
day, unless in some remote country town, which boasts
only a very meagre circulating library. Improbability
took the place of natural painting in them; punning
supplied that of better wit; and personal portraiture
was so freely used, that his most intimate friends old
Mathews, for instance did not escape.
Meanwhile Hook, making a good fortune,
returned to his convivial life, and the enjoyment if
enjoyment it be of general society.
He ’threw out his bow window’ on the strength
of his success with ‘John Bull,’ and spent
much more than he had. He mingled freely in all
the London circles of thirty years ago, whose glory
is still fresh in the minds of most of us, and everywhere
his talent as an improvisatore, and his conversational
powers, made him a general favourite.
Unhappy popularity for Hook!
He, who was yet deeply in debt to the nation who
had an illegitimate family to maintain, who owed in
many quarters more than he could ever hope to pay was
still fool enough to entertain largely, and receive
both nobles and wits in the handsomest manner.
Why did he not live quietly? why not, like Fox, marry
the unhappy woman whom he had made the mother of his
children, and content himself with trimming vines
and rearing tulips? Why, forsooth? because he
was Theodore Hook, thoughtless and foolish to the last.
The jester of the people must needs be a fool.
Let him take it to his conscience that he was not
as much a knave.
In his latter years Hook took to the
two dissipations most likely to bring him into misery play
and drink. He was utterly unfitted for the former,
being too gay a spirit to sit down and calculate chances.
He lost considerably, and the more he lost the more
he played. Drinking became almost a necessity
with him. He had a reputation to keep up in society,
and had not the moral courage to retire from it altogether.
Writing, improvising, conviviality, play, demanded
stimulants. His mind was overworked in every
sense. He had recourse to the only remedy, and
in drinking he found a temporary relief from anxiety,
and a short-lived sustenance. There is no doubt
that this man, who had amused London circles for many
years, hastened his end by drinking.
It is not yet thirty years since Theodore
Hook died. He left the world on August the 24th,
1841, and by this time he remains in the memory of
men only as a wit that was, a punster, a hoaxer, a
sorry jester, with an ample fund of fun, but not as
a great man in any way. Allowing everything for
his education the times he lived in, and
the unhappy error of his early life we
may admit that Hook was not, in character, the worst
of the wits. He died in no odour of sanctity,
but he was not a blasphemer or reviler, like others
of this class. He ignored the bond of matrimony,
yet he remained faithful to the woman he had betrayed;
he was undoubtedly careless in the one responsible
office with which he was intrusted, yet he cannot
be taxed, taking all in all, with deliberate peculation.
His drinking and playing were bad very bad.
His improper connection was bad very bad;
but perhaps the worst feature in his career was his
connection with ‘John Bull,’ and his ready
giving in to a system of low libel. There is
no excuse for this but the necessity of living; but
Hook, had he retained any principle, might have made
enough to live upon in a more honest manner.
His name does, certainly, not stand out well among
the wits of this country, but after all, since all
were so bad, Hook may be excused as not being the worst
of them. Requiescat in pace.