"Having been requested to do that which I never did in my life
before,--write two charades upon two given and by no means sublime
words,--here are they. It is right to say that they are to be taken with
reference to each other.
"My first is in triumphs most usually found;
Old houses and trees show my second;
My whole is long, spiral, red, tufted, and round,
And with beef is most excellent reckoned.
My first for age hath great repute;
My second is a tailor;
My whole is like the other root,--
Only a _little_ paler.
"THEODORE E. HOOK.
"September 4, 1835.
"Do you give them up?
"_Car-rot._ _Par-snip._"
The reader will permit me here to introduce some memories of the
immediate contemporaries and allies of Hook, whose names are, indeed,
continually associated with his, and who, on the principle of "'birds of
a feather," may be properly considered in association with this
master-spirit of them all.
The Reverend Mr. Barham, whose notes supplied material for the "Memoirs
of Hook," edited by his son, and whose "Ingoldsby Legends" are famous,
was a stout, squat, and "hearty-looking" parson of the old school. His
face was full of humor, although when quiescent it seemed dull and
heavy; his eyes were singularly small and inexpressive, whether from
their own color or the light tint of the lashes I cannot say, but they
seemed to me to be what are called white eyes. I do not believe that in
society he had much of the sparkle that characterized his friend, or
that might have been expected in so formidable a wit of the pen. Sam
Beazley, on the contrary, was a light, airy, graceful person, who had
much refinement, without that peculiar manner which bespeaks the
well-bred gentleman. He was the Daly of "Gilbert Gurney," whose epitaph
was written by Hook long before his death,--
"Here lies Sam Beazeley,
Who lived and died easily."[E]
When I knew him, he was practising as an architect in Soho Square. He
was one of Hook's early friends, but I believe they were not in close
intimacy for many years previous to the death of Hook. It was by Beazley
that the present Lyceum Theatre was built.
Tom Hill was another of Hook's more familiar associates. He is the Hull
of "Gilbert Gurney," and is said to have been the original of Paul Pry,
(which Poole, however, strenuously denied,)--a belief easily entertained
by those who knew the man. A little, round man he was, with straight and
well-made-up figure, and rosy cheeks that might have graced a milkmaid,
when his years numbered certainly fourscore.[F] But his age no one ever
knew. The story is well known of James Smith asserting that it never
could be ascertained, for that the register of his birth was lost in the
fire of London, and Hook's comment,--"Oh, he's much older than that:
he's one of the little Hills that skipped in the Bible." He was a merry
man, _toujours gai_, who seemed as if neither trouble nor anxiety had
ever crossed his threshold or broken the sleep of a single night of his
long life. His peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did, from
the minister of state to the stable-boy; and there are tales enough told
of his chats with child-maids in the Park, to ascertain the amounts of
their wages, and with lounging footmen in Grosvenor Square, to learn how
many guests had dined at a house the day previous. His curiosity seemed
bent upon prying into small things; for secrets that involved serious
matters he appeared to care nothing. "Pooh, pooh, Sir, don't tell me; I
happen to know!" That phrase was continually coming from his lips.
Of a far higher and better order was Hook's friend, Mr. Brodrick,--so
long one of the police magistrates,--a gentleman of large acquirements
and sterling rectitude. Nearly as much may be said of Dubois, more than
half a century ago the editor of a then popular magazine, "The Monthly
Mirror." Dubois, in his latter days, enjoyed a snug sinecure, and lived
in Sloane Street. He was a pleasant man in face and in manners, and
retained to the last much of the humor that characterized the
productions of his earlier years. To the admirable actor and estimable
gentleman, Charles Mathews, I can merely allude. His memory has received
full honor and homage from his wife; but there are few who knew him who
will hesitate to indorse her testimony to his many excellences of head
and heart.
Among leading contributors to the "New Monthly," both before and after
the advent of Mr. Hook, was John Poole, the author of "Little
Pedlington," "Paul Pry," and many other pleasant works, not witty, but
full of true humor. He was, when in his prime, a pleasant companion,
though nervously sensitive, and, like most professional jokers,
exceedingly irritable whenever a joke was made to tell against himself.
It is among my memories, that, during the first month of my editorship
of the "New Monthly," I took from a mass of submitted manuscripts one
written in a small, neat hand, entitled "A New Guide-Book." I had read
it nearly half through, and was about to fling it with contempt among
"the rejected" before I discovered its point. I had perused it so far as
an attempt to describe an actual watering-place, and to bring it into
notoriety. When, however, I did discover the real purpose of the writer,
my delight was large in proportion. The manuscript was the first part of
"Little Pedlington," which subsequently grew into a book.
It is, and was at the time, generally believed that Tom Hill suggested
the character of Paul Pry. Poole never would admit this. In a sort of
rambling autobiography which he wrote to accompany his portrait in the
"New Monthly," he thus gives the origin of the play.
"The idea of the character of Paul Pry was suggested to me by the
following anecdote, related to me several years ago by a beloved friend.
An idle old lady, living in a narrow street, had passed so much of her
time in watching the affairs of her neighbors, that she at length
acquired the power of distinguishing the sound of every knocker within
hearing. It happened that she fell ill and was for several days confined
to her bed. Unable to observe in person what was going on without, she
stationed her maid at the window, as a substitute, for the performance
of that duty. But Betty soon grew weary of that occupation; she became
careless in her reports, impatient and tetchy when reprimanded for her
negligence.
"'Betty, what _are_ you thinking about? Don't you hear a double knock at
No. 9? Who is it?'
"'The first-floor lodger, Ma'am.'
"'Betty, Betty, I declare I must give you warning. Why don't you tell me
what that knock is at No. 54?'
"'Why, lor, it's only the baker with pies.'
"'Pies, Betty? What _can_ they want with pies at 54? They had pies
yesterday!'"
Poole had the happy knack of turning every trifling incident to valuable
account. I remember his telling me an anecdote in illustration of this
faculty. I believe he never printed it. Being at Brighton one day, he
strolled into an hotel to get an early dinner, took his seat at a table,
and was discussing his chop and ale, when another guest entered, took
his stand by the fire, and began whistling. After a minute or two,--
"Fine day, Sir," said he.
"Very fine," answered Poole.
"Business pretty brisk?"
"I believe so."
"Do anything with Jones on the Parade?"
"Now," said Poole, "it so happened that Jones was the grocer from whom I
occasionally bought a quarter of a pound of tea; so I answered,--
"'A little.'
"'Good man, Sir,' quoth the stranger.
"'Glad to hear it, Sir.'
"'Do anything with Thomson in King Street?'
"'No, Sir.'
"'Shaky, Sir.'
"'Sorry to hear it, Sir; recommend Mahomet's baths!'
"'Anything with Smith in James Street?'
"'Nothing,--I have heard the name of Smith before, certainly; but of
this particular Smith I know nothing.'"
The stranger looked at Poole earnestly, advanced to the table, and with
his arms a-kimbo said,--
"By Jove, Sir, I begin to think you are a gentleman!"
"I hope so, Sir," answered Poole; "and I hope you are the same!"
"Nothing of the kind," said the stranger; "and if you are a gentleman,
what business have you here?"
Upon which he rang the bell, and, as the waiter entered, indignantly
exclaimed,--
"That's a gentleman,--turn him out!"
Poole had unluckily entered and taken his seat in the commercial room of
the hotel!
All who knew Poole know that he was ever full of himself,--believing his
renown to be the common talk of the world. A whimsical illustration of
this weakness was lately told me by a mutual friend. When at Paris
recently, he chanced to say to Poole, "Of course you are full of all the
theatres."--"No, Sir, I am not," he answered, solemnly and indignantly.
"Will you believe _this_? I went to the Opera Comique, told the Director
I wished a free admission; he asked me who I was; I said, 'John Poole.'
Sir, I ask you, will you believe _this_? He said, _he didn't know me_!"
The Queen gave him a nomination to the Charter-House, where his age
might have been passed in ease, respectability, comfort, and competence;
but it was impossible for one so restless to bear the wholesome and
necessary restraint of that institution. He came to me one day, boiling
over with indignation, having resolved to quit its quiet cloisters, his
principal ground for complaint being that he must dine at two o'clock
and be within walls by ten. He resigned the appointment, but
subsequently obtained one of the Crown pensions, took up his final abode
in Paris, where, during the last ten years of his life, he lived, if
that can be called "life" which consisted of one scarcely ever
interrupted course of self-sacrifice to _eau-de-vie_. His mind was of
late entirely gone. I met him in 1861, in the Rue St. Honore, and he did
not recognize me, a circumstance I could scarcely regret.
I am not aware of any details concerning his death. When I last inquired
concerning him, all I could learn was that he had gone to live at
Boulogne,--that two quarters had passed without any application from him
for his pension,--and that therefore, of course, he was dead. His death,
however, was a loss to none, and I believe not a grief to any.
He was a tall, handsome man, by no means "jolly," like some of his
contemporary wits,--rather, I should say, inclined to be taciturn; and I
do not think his habits of drinking were excited by the stimulants of
society.[G] Little, I believe, is known of his life, even to the actors
and playwrights, with whom he chiefly associated, from the time when his
burlesque of "Hamlet Travestie" (printed in 1810) commenced his career
of celebrity, if not of fame, to his death, (in the year 1862, I
believe,) being then probably about seventy years old.
I knew Dr. Maginn when he was a schoolmaster in Cork. He had even then
established a high reputation for scholastic knowledge, and attained
some eminence as a wit; and about the year 1820 astounded "the beautiful
city" by poetical contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine," in which
certain of its literary citizens were somewhat scurrilously assailed. I
was one of them. There were two parties, who had each their "society."
Maginn and a surgeon named Gosnell were the leaders of one: they were,
for the most part, wild and reckless men of talent. The other society
was conducted by the more sedate and studious. Gosnell wrote the _ottava
rima_ entitled "Daniel O'Rourke," which passed through three or four
numbers of "Blackwood": he died not long afterwards in London, one of
the many unhappy victims of misgoverned passions.
Maginn was also one of the earlier contributors to the "Literary
Gazette," and Jerdan has recorded with what delight he used to open a
packet directed in the well-known hand, with the post-mark Cork. The
Doctor, it is said, was invited to London in order to share with Hook
the labors of the "John Bull." I believe, however, he was but a very
limited help. Perhaps the old adage, "Two of a trade," applied in this
case; certain it is that he subsequently found a more appreciative
paymaster in Westmacott, who conducted "The Age," a newspaper then
greatly patronized, but, as I have said, one that now would be
universally branded with the term "infamous."
It is known also that he became a leading contributor to "Fraser's
Magazine,"--a magazine that took its name less from its publisher,
Fraser, than from its first editor, Fraser, a barrister, whose fate, I
have understood, was as mournful as his career had been discreditable.
The particulars of Maginn's duel with Grantley Berkeley are well known.
It arose out of an article in "Fraser," reviewing Berkeley's novel, in
the course of which he spoke in utterly unjustifiable terms of
Berkeley's mother. Mr. Berkeley was not satisfied with inflicting on the
publisher so severe a beating that it was the proximate cause of his
death, but called out the Doctor, who manfully avowed the authorship.
Each, it is understood, fired five shots, without further effect than
that one ball struck the whisker of Mr. Berkeley and another the boot of
Maginn, and when Fraser, who was Maginn's second, asked if there should
be another shot, Maginn is reported to have said, "Blaze away, by ----!
a barrel of powder!"
The career of Maginn in London was, to say the least, mournful. Few men
ever started with better prospects; there was hardly any position in the
state to which he might not have aspired. His learning was profound; his
wit of the tongue and of the pen ready, pointed, caustic, and brilliant;
his writings, essays, tales, poems, scholastic disquisitions, in short,
his writings upon all conceivable topics, were of the very highest
order; "O'Doherty" is one of the names that made "Blackwood" famous. His
acquaintances, who would willingly have been his friends, were not only
the men of genius of his time, but among them were several noblemen and
statesmen of power as well as rank. In a word, he might have climbed to
the highest round of the ladder, with helping hands all the way up: he
stumbled at its base.
Maginn's reckless habits soon told upon his character, and almost as
soon on his constitution. They may be illustrated by an anecdote related
of him in Barham's Life of Hook. A friend, when dining with him, and
praising his wine, asked where he got it. "At the tavern, close by,"
said the Doctor. "A very good cellar," said the guest; "but do you not
pay rather an extravagant price for it?" "I don't know, I don't know,"
returned the Doctor; "I believe they do put down something in a book."
And I have heard of Maginn a story similar to that told of Sheridan,
that, once when he accepted a bill, he exclaimed to the astonished
creditor, "Well, thank Heaven, _that_ debt is off my mind!"
It is notorious that Maginn wrote at the same time for the "Age,"
outrageously Tory, and for the "True Sun," a violently Radical paper.
For many years he was editor of the "Standard." It was, however, less
owing to his thorough want of principle than to his habits of
intoxication that his position was low, when it ought to have been
high,--that he was indigent, when he might have been rich,--that he lost
self-respect, and the respect of all with whom he came in contact,
except the few "kindred spirits" who relished the flow of wit, and
little regarded the impure source whence it issued. The evil seemed
incurable; it was indulged not only at noon and night, but in the
morning. He was one of the eight editors engaged by Mr. Murray to edit
the "Representative" during the eight months of its existence. I was a
reporter on that paper of great promise and large hopes. One evening
Maginn himself undertook to write a notice of a fancy-ball at the
Opera-House in aid of the distressed weavers of Spitalfields. It was a
grand affair, patronized by the royal family and a vast proportion of
the aristocracy of England. Maginn went, of course inebriated, and
returned worse. He contemplated the affair as if it had taken place
among the thieves and demireps of Whitechapel, and so described it in
the paper of the next morning. Well I remember the wrath and indignation
of John Murray, and the universal disgust the article excited.
I may relate another anecdote to illustrate this sad characteristic. It
was told to me by one of the Doctor's old pupils and most intimate and
steady friends, Mr. Quinten Kennedy of Cork. A gentleman was anxious to
secure Maginn's services for a contemplated literary undertaking of
magnitude, and the Doctor was to dine with him to arrange the affair.
Kennedy was resolved, that, at all events, he should go to the dinner
sober, and so called upon him before he was up, never leaving him for a
moment all day, and resolutely resisting every imploring appeal for a
dram. The hour of six drew near, and they sallied out. On the way,
Kennedy found it almost impossible, even by main force, to prevent the
Doctor entering a public-house. Passing an undertaker's shop, the Doctor
suddenly stopped, recollected he had a message there, and begged Kennedy
to wait for a moment outside,--a request which was readily complied
with, as it was thought there could be no possible danger in such a
place. Maginn entered, with his handkerchief to his eyes, sobbing
bitterly. The undertaker, recognizing a prospective customer, sought to
subdue his grief with the usual words of consolation,--Maginn blubbering
out, "Everything must be done in the best style, no expense must be
spared,--she was worthy, and I can afford it." The undertaker, seeing
such intense grief, presented a seat, and prescribed a little brandy.
After proper resistance, both were accepted; a bottle was produced and
emptied, glass after glass, with suggested "instructions" between
whiles. At length the Doctor rose to join his wondering and impatient
friend, who soon saw what had happened. He was, even before dinner, in
such a state as to preclude all business-talk; and it is needless to add
that the contemplated arrangement was never entered into.
He lived in wretchedness, and died in misery in 1842. His death took
place at Walton-on-Thames, and in the churchyard of that village he is
buried. Not long ago I visited the place, but no one could point out to
me the precise spot of his interment. It is without a stone, without a
mark, lost among the clay sepulchres of the throng who had no friends to
inscribe a name or ask a memory.[H]
Maginn was rather under than above the middle size; his countenance was
swarthy, and by no means genial in expression. He had a peculiar
thickness of speech, not quite a stutter. Latterly, excesses told upon
him, producing their usual effects: the quick intelligence of his face
was lost; his features were sullied by unmistakable signs of an
ever-degrading habit; he was old before his time.
He is another sad example to "warn and scare"; a life that might have
produced so much yielded comparatively nothing; and although there have
been several suggestions, from Lockhart and others, to collect his
writings, they have never been gathered together from the periodical
tombs in which they lie buried, and now, probably, they cannot be all
recognized.
* * * * *
From what I have written, the reader will gather that I knew Hook only
in his decline, the relic of a manly form, the decadence of a strong
mind, and the comparative exhaustion of a brilliant wit. Leigh Hunt,
speaking of him at a much earlier period, thus writes:--"He was tall,
dark, and of a good person, with small eyes, and features more round
than weak: a face that had character and humor, but no refinement." And
Mrs. Mathews describes him as with sparkling eyes and expressive
features, of manly form, and somewhat of a dandy in dress. When in the
prime of manhood and the zenith of fame, Mr. Barham says, "He was not
the tuft-hunter, but the tuft-hunted"; and it is easy to believe that
one so full of wit, so redolent of fun, so rich in animal spirits, must
have been a marvellously coveted acquaintance in the society where he
was so eminently qualified to shine: from that of royalty to the major
and minor clubs,--from "The Eccentrics" to "The Garrick," of which he
was all his life long a cherished member.
In 1825, when I first saw him, he was above the middle height, robust of
frame, and broad of chest, well-proportioned, with evidence of great
physical capacity. His complexion was dark, as were his eyes; there was
nothing fine or elevated in his expression; indeed, his features, when
in repose, were heavy; it was otherwise when animated; yet his manners
were those of a gentleman, less perhaps from inherent faculty than from
the polish which refined society ever gives.
He is described as a man of "iron energies," and certainly must have had
an iron constitution; for his was a life of perpetual stimulants,
intellectual as well as physical.
When I saw him last,--it was not long before his death,--he was aged,
more by care than time; his face bore evidence of what is falsely termed
"a gay life"; his voice had lost its roundness and force, his form its
buoyancy, his intellect its strength,--
"Alas! how changed from him,
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!"
Yet his wit was ready still; he continued to sparkle humor even when
exhausted nature failed; and his last words are said to have been a
brilliant jest.
At length the iron frame wore down. He was haunted by pecuniary
difficulties, yet compelled to daily work, not only for himself, but for
a family of children by a person to whom he was not married. He then
lived almost entirely on brandy, and became incapable of digesting
animal food.
Well may his friend Lockhart say, "He came forth, _at best_, from a long
day of labor at his writing-desk, after his faculties had been at the
stretch,--feeling, passion, thought, fancy, excitable nerves, suicidal
brain, all worked, perhaps wellnigh exhausted."
And thus, "at best," while "seated among the revellers of a princely
saloon," sometimes losing at cards among his great "friends" more money
than he could earn in a month, his thoughts were laboring to devise some
mode of postponing a debt only from one week to another. Well might he
have compared, as he did, his position to that of an alderman who was
required to relish his turtle-soup while forced to eat it sitting on a
tight rope!
The last time he went out to dinner was with Colonel Shadwell Clarke, at
Brompton Grove. While in the drawing-room he suddenly turned to the
mirror and said, "Ay! I see I look as I am,--done up in purse, in mind,
and in body, too, at last!"
He died on the 24th of August, 1841.
Yes, when I knew most of him, he was approaching the close, not of a
long, but of a "fast" life; he had ill used Time, and Time was not in
his debt! He was tall and stout, yet not healthfully stout; with a round
face which told too much of jovial nights and wasted days,--of toil when
the head aches and the hand shakes,--of the absence of self-respect,--of
mornings of ignoble rest to gather strength for evenings of useless
energy,--of, in short, a mind and constitution vigorous and powerful:
both had been sadly and grievously misapplied and misused.
No writer concerning Hook can claim for him an atom of respect. His
history is but a record of written or spoken or practical jokes that
made no one wiser or better; his career "points a moral" indeed, but it
is by showing the wisdom of virtue. In the end, his friends, so called,
were ashamed openly to give him help,--and although bailiffs did not, as
in the case of Sheridan,
"Seize his last blanket,"
his death-bed was haunted by apprehensions of arrest; and it was a
relief, rather than a loss to society, when a few comparatively humble
mourners laid him in a corner of Fulham churchyard.
Alas! let not those who read the records of many distinguished, nay,
many illustrious lives, imagine, that, because men of genius have too
often cherished the perilous habit of seeking consolation or inspiration
from what it is a libel on Nature to call "the social glass," it is
therefore reasonable or excusable, or can ever be innocuous. Talfourd
may gloss it over in Lamb, as averting a vision terrible; Seattle may
deplore it in Campbell, as having become a dismal necessity; the
biographer of Hook may lightly look upon the curse as the springhead of
his perpetual wit. I will not continue the list,--it is frightfully
long. Hook is but one of many men of rare intellect, large mental
powers, with faculties designed and calculated to benefit mankind, who
have sacrificed character, life, I had almost said SOUL, to habits which
are wrongly and wickedly called pleasures,--the pleasures of the table.
Many, indeed, are they who have thus made for themselves miserable
destinies, useless or pernicious lives, and unhonored or dishonorable
graves. I will add the warning of Wordsworth, when addressing the sons
of Burns:--
"But ne'er to a seductive lay
Let faith be given,
Nor deem the light that leads astray
Is light from heaven."