Regency Men: Theodore Hook

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Theodore Hook Sydney Smith Samuel Rogers who talked better than he wrote and Henry Luttrell of whom the same may be said were society wits rather than beaux and moving in the society of the day cannot be excluded in any account of the lighter side of life under the Regency They were in great request at dinner parties and at country houses Rogers perhaps less than the others after a time for he showed a persistent dislike to moving in mixed company and they had a unique place and distinction It 1 66 has recently been related by Sir Henry Drummond Wolff how Abraham Hayward explaining the con stitution of English society to a Cingalese gentle man who had just come to this country said You will find in England that men of distinction who belong neither to the aristocracy nor to the richer classes but have made a mark either in literature or by their conversational powers are always received in great houses on a footing of perfect equality upon which the Cingalese remarked very naïvely But are these not called syco phants While some of the minor lights may have flattered the great wits were on the other hand the recipients of much adulation They may have been loved indeed but there is no doubt they were also feared for no man might attack them with impunity if they had a short way with bores they could and did annihilate impertinents with a phrase Hook's humour it must be confessed was akin to burlesque but the others had a more refined wit and it is beyond question that by their good sense and intelligence they exercised perhaps an unnoticed but certainly a no less effectual influence for good upon the society in which they moved Theodore Hook is but a name to day and that name but of very secondary importance his novels are not read his Sayings and Doings are forgotten his plays do not hold the stage and his humour is generally but to some extent unreasonably held especially by those who know nothing of his witty sallies to be old fashioned However though his works are dead himself lives for all time as Lord Steyne's henchman Wagg in Vanity Fair in which book Thackeray had the audacity to put into Wagg's mouth one of the jokes of that character's prototype Wagg is made to ask Mrs Bungay the publisher's wife Does your cook say he's a Frenchman and to reply when the lady expresses her ignorance of the servant's nationality Because if he does he's a quizzin yer cuisinier Disraeli too has helped to save Hook from oblivion by introducing him in Vivian Grey as Stanislaus Hoax and in Coningsby as Lucian Gay as Lucian Gay Nature had intended Lucian Gay for a scholar and a wit necessity had made him a scribbler and buffoon He had distinguished himself at the University but he had no patrimony nor those powers of perseverance which success in any learned pro fession requires He was good looking had great animal spirits and a keen sense of enjoyment and could not drudge Moreover he had a fine voice and sang his own songs with considerable taste accomplishments which made his fortune in society and completed his ruin This de scription is accurate and may well be taken as the basis of any account of the man whom Tom Campbell called a wonderful creature and Coleridge thought as true a genius as Dante The son of James Hook a musical composer and of a literary mother née Madden the author of many novels long since forgotten Theodore Edward Hook was born on September 22 1788 He was a precocious youngster and at sixteen years of age supplied the libretto to his father's comic opera The Soldier's Return and a year later wrote a popular melodrama Tekeli or The Siege of Mongratz which secured for him a niche in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers Gods o er those boards shall Folly rear her head Where Garrick trod and Kemble lives to tread On those shall Farce display Buffoon ry's mask And Hook conceal his heroes in a cask Before he came of age he had written pieces for Liston and Terry and had come into conflict with the dramatic Censor who refused to sanction the performance of one of his dramas Hook had an interview with the Licenser of Plays when the latter according to the angry author actually shook his head as if there were something in it but obtaining no satisfaction avenged himself by a slashing attack in a preface to the printed version of the play Already a distinguished personage Hook entered himself at St Mary's Hall Oxford and his in ability to resist a joke nearly cost him his admission When asked by the Vice Chancellor if he was prepared to sign the Thirty nine Articles he replied with what cannot be considered but as an excess of courtesy Oh yes sir quite ready Forty if you please The difficulty he had in explaining away this jest did not prevent him shortly afterwards answering an examination question the gist of which was Given CAB find Q Take your CAB through Hammer smith turn to the left just before you come to Brentford and Q Kew is right before you Before this however he had acquired fame as a chartered libertine of practical joking and was the proud possessor of a complete collection of knockers and bell pulls he had too with great daring and at much risk secured one of the wooden Highlanders that stood before tobacco nists shops and had even contrived to lasso a gilt eagle the sign hanging over an inn He was soon however to be exact in 1809 to eclipse all his previous efforts by inventing the famous Berners Street hoax which not funny in itself stands alone by virtue of the thoroughness with which it was carried out With the aid of two confederates a lady and a gentleman some four thousand letters were despatched inviting the recipients on some pretext or another to call on a certain day at 54 Berners Street Oxford Street the residence of a Mrs Tottenham who had on some account Hook's biographer states fallen under the displeasure of this formidable trio Scarce had the eventful morning begun to break the chronicler relates ere the neighbourhood resounded with the cries of Sweep uttered in every variety of tone and proceeding from crowds of sooty urchins and their masters who had assembled by five o clock beneath the windows of No 54 In the midst of the wrangling of the rival professors and protestations of the repudiating housemaid heavy waggons laden with chaldrons of coals from the different wharves came rumbling up the street blockading the thoroughfare impeding one another crushing and struggling to reach the same goal amid a 6 hurricane of imprecations from the respective conducteurs Now among the gathering crowd cleanly cook like men were to be seen cautiously making their way each with a massive wedding cake under his arm tailors boot makers up holsterers undertakers with coffins draymen with beer barrels etcetera succeeded in shoals and long before the cumbrous coal waggons were enabled to move off about a dozen travelling chariots and four all ready for the reception of as many happy pairs came dashing up to the spot Medical men with instruments for the amputation of limbs attorneys prepared to cut off entails clergymen summoned to minister to the mind and artists engaged to portray the features of the body unable to draw near in vehicles plunged manfully into the mob Noon came and with it about forty fishmongers bearing about forty cod and lobsters as many butchers with an equal number of legs of mutton and as the confusion reached its height and the uproar became terrific and the consternation of the poor old lady grew to be bordering on temporary insanity up drove the great Lord Mayor himself state carriage cocked hats silk stockings bag wigs and all Yet in this affair Hook flew at higher game than a Lord Mayor for the Governor of the Bank of England called allured thither by a letter stating that to him and to him alone would be revealed a complicated system of fraud pursued by minor officials at Threadneedle Street and a similar inducement brought the Chairman of the East India Company while royalty itself in the person of the Duke of Gloucester was drawn to Berners Street under the pretext that a dying woman once the attendant of his Royal Highness's mother would make a confidential communication of the greatest importance The hoax caused so much stir among the victims and especially among those tradesmen who had suffered in purse by executing the fictitious orders that an official inquiry was set on foot but so carefully had the preparations been made that there was no result although it was generally believed that Hook had a hand in it Indeed so strong was the suspicion that the wag thought it best to retire into the country until the matter had blown over However many years later in Gilbert Gurney he avowed the authorship of the colossal joke Copy the joke and it ceases to be one any fool can imitate an example once set he very rightly said in that novel but he could not refrain from patting himself on the back but for originality of thought and design I do think that was perfect There was no end to Hook's impertinences One afternoon walking down a street with Daniel Terry he saw a party sitting down to dinner and on the spot he made a bet with his companion that he would dine and remain there for five hours He entered the house was shown into the dining room took a seat at the table and with an apology for being late began to partake of the soup He had set the table in a roar with his jokes before his host a courteous old gentleman had recovered from his amazement I beg your pardon sir said the latter at last taking advantage of a lull in the conversation but your name sir I did not quite catch it servants are so abominably incorrect and I am really a little at a loss Don t apologise I beg Hook replied gra ciously Smith my name is Smith and as you justly observe servants are always making some stupid blunder or other I remember a curious instance 99 For several minutes Hook gave illustrations of the stupidity of servants But really my dear sir said the other sticking to the point which certainly was not the carelessness of domestics I think the mistake on the present occasion does not originate in the source you allude to I certainly did not anticipate the pleasure of Mr Smith's company to dinner to day 66 No I dare say not you said four in your note I know and it is now I see a quarter past five you are a little fast by the way but the fact is I have been detained in the City as I was about to explain when Pray said the host impatiently cutting short the explanation whom may I ask 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 on my arrival from Liverpool Frith Street four o clock family party come in boots you see I have taken you at your word I am only afraid I have kept you waiting No no not at all But permit me to observe my dear sir my name is not Thompson it is Jones and Jones exclaimed Smith affecting ex treme horror Jones why surely I must have yes I must Good heavens I see it all My dear sir what an unfortunate blunder wrong house what must you think of such an intrusion you will permit me to retire at present and to morrow And he added that his mis take was particularly annoying as he had told a man to call for him at that address at ten o clock The old gentleman however would not hear of Smith's going a stranger in London his friend who dined at four must long since have finished his meal a man coming to call for him too and in spite of Theodore's protests that he really must not trespass upon the other's hospi tality in the end he was prevailed upon to remain In return he exerted himself to the utmost to entertain the company until the actor arrived when he declared his identity I am very much pleased with your fare Your cellar's as prime as your cook My friend's Mr Terry the player And I m Mr Theodore Hook Delightful is the story of Hook addressing a pompous looking man in the Strand with the paralysing question I beg your pardon sir but may I ask are you anybody particular But it must be admitted that according to modern notions of humour that is one of the few really funny remarks he made Sydney Smith always declared that Hook was lacking in true wit and though at the time this remark was thought be at least in part inspired by jealousy there is no doubt if we may judge by the specimens that have been handed down to this generation that the Canon was right 66 66 Indeed in conversation and actions Hook seems as a rule to have been the buffoon rather the humorist and puns were his mainstay talk When it was announced that thirty baronets were to be made at the coronation Thirty one baronets he exclaimed a pretty game of the Whigs They ll make bloody hand of it at any rate Now isn this provoking he said to the Duke of Rutland when at Belvoir Castle on the occasion of coming of age of the Marquis of Granby I lost my hat what can I do Why the devil did you part with your hat never do Ah said the visitor but have especially good reason for sticking to beavor Belvoir Even death could not his punning for when asked if he had attended the funeral of Jack Reeve Yes he replied I met him in his private box going to the pit hat said his Grace These accomplishments opened the clubs to him he was elected a member of the Eccentrics to which Sheridan and Petersham belonged and then secured him the entrée into society the height of his success at this early date was his being presented by the Marchioness of Hertford to the Prince of Wales with which latter person age he was soon on intimate terms Dependent on his pen however Hook had to burn the candle at both ends and spending his nights in joviality he had to devote the days to the composition of farces and novels Still in spite of his literary activity his earnings did not keep pace with his careless expenditure and he was heavily in debt when suddenly a golden vista opened before him By the influence of the Regent or some other of his friends he to his great surprise and delight received in 1812 the appointment of Accountant General and Treasurer at the Mauritius a post worth two thousand a year

There was some scandal in Mauritius, when after five years on his post a heavy deficit in the accounts was discovered resulting in his arrest and deportation to England to be held over.  Hook was ultimately held in debt to the Crown for the missing amount, which resulted in his imprisonment at the Bench around 1823.  However, he quickly resumed his writing including some spicy political send ups.  He was then editor and principal contributor to John Bull for a large amount, around two thousand pounds a year.

66 Hook's editorship of John Bull was by no means his sole source of income and he received not less than one thousand pounds for each series of Sayings and Doings Being deterred by no thought for the morrow he never thought to lay by money for later years when his work might not be so much in demand and in 1827 he established himself in a large house in Cleve land Row Four years later however he was compelled to retrench and he removed to the less expensive neighbourhood of Fulham where he remained until his death in 1841 at the age of fifty two It is proof of his culpable careless ness in money matters that he died penniless and left his mistress and the five children she had borne him to the charity of others 1 Yet to the end

The Beaux of the Regency, Volume 2 (1908)

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