case of a man who had sneered so freely at his fellow-creatures, they
may afford a useful lesson. One of his fancies was to give imaginary
parties, when his tallow dips were all set alight and his servant
announced with proper decorum, 'The Duchess of Devonshire,' 'Lord
Alvanley, 'Mr. Sheridan,' or whom not. The poor old idiot received the
imaginary visitors with the old bow, and talked to them in the old
strain, till his servant announced their imaginary carriages, and he was
put drivelling to bed. At last the idiocy became mania. He burnt his
books, his relics, his tokens. He ate enormously, and the man who had
looked upon beer as the _ne plus ultra_ of vulgarity, was glad to
imagine it champagne. Let us not follow the poor maniac through his
wanderings. Rather let us throw a veil over all his drivelling
wretchedness, and find him at his last gasp, when coat and collar, hat
and brim, were all forgotten, when the man who had worn three shirts a
day was content to change his linen once a month. What a lesson, what a
warning! If Brummell had come to this pass in England, it is hard to say
how and where he would have died. He was now utterly penniless, and had
no prospect of receiving any remittances. It was determined to remove
him to the Hospice du Bon Sauveur, a _Maison de Charité_, where he would
be well cared for at no expense. The mania of the poor creature took, as
ever, the turn of external preparation. When the landlord of his inn
entered to try and induce him to go, he found him with his wig on his
knee, his shaving apparatus by his side, and the quondam beau deeply
interested in lathering the peruke as a preliminary to shearing it. He
resisted every proposal to move, and was carried down stairs, kicking
and shrieking. Once lodged in the Hospice, he was treated by the soeurs
de charité with the greatest kindness and consideration. An attempt was
made to recall him to a sense of his future peril, that he might at
least die in a more religious mood than he had lived; but in vain. It is
not for us, erring and sinful as we are, to judge any fellow-creature;
but perhaps poor Brummell was the last man to whom religion had a
meaning. His heart was good; his sins were more those of vanity than
those of hate; it may be that they are regarded mercifully where the
fund of mercy is unbounded. God grant that they may be so; or who of us
would escape? None but fiends will triumph over the death of any man in
sin. Men are not fiends; they must and will always feel for their
fellow-men, let them die as they will. No doubt Brummell was a fool--a
fool of the first water, but that he was equally a knave was not so
certain. Let it never be certain to blind man, who cannot read the
heart, that any man is a knave. He died on the 30th of March, 1840, and
so the last of the Beaux passed away. People have claimed, indeed for
D'Orsay, the honour of Brummell's descending mantle, but D'Orsay was not
strictly a beau, for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress. It
has never been advanced that Brummell's heart was bad, in spite of his
many faults. Vanity did all. Vanitas vanitatem. O young men of this age,
be warned by a Beau, and flee his doubtful reputation! Peace then to the
coat-thinker. Peace to all--to the worst. Let us look within and not
judge. It is enough that we are not tried in the same balance.
THEODORE EDWARD HOOK.
The Greatest of Modern Wits.---What Coleridge said of Hook.--Hook's
Family.--Redeeming Points.--Versatility.--Varieties of Hoaxing.--The
Black-wafered Horse.--The Berners Street Hoax.--Success of the Scheme.--
The Strop of Hunger.--Kitchen Examinations.--The Wrong House.--Angling
for an Invitation.--The Hackney-coach Device.--The Plots of Hook and
Mathews.--Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.--The Gift becomes his
Bane.--Hook's Novels.--College Fun.--Baiting a Proctor.--The Punning
Faculty.--Official Life Opens.--Troublesome Pleasantry.--Charge of
Embezzlement.--Misfortune.--Doubly Disgraced.--No Effort to remove the
Stain.--Attacks on the Queen.--An Incongruous Mixture.--Specimen of the
Ramsbottom Letters.--Hook's Scurrility.--Fortune and Popularity.--The End.
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 _malgré 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 _père_ 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.[12] He was a
dabbler in literature, like his brother, but scarcely to the same extent
a dabbler in wit.
[12: Dr. James Hook, Dean of Worcester, was father to Dr. Walter
Farquhar Hook, now the excellent Dean of Chichester, late Vicar of
Leeds.]
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 No. 54, 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;'