Theodore Hook

“ Hardcastle's tastes for old wine and old books will not like Theodore Hook any the less, because he does not happen to be at all "Fin de Siècle". He is like Berowne in the comedy, the merriest man—perhaps not always within the limits of becoming mirth—to spend an hour's talk withal. ”

“ 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 book contains some capital stories of poor Theodore Hook, that marvellously wasted intellect. His great power lay in impromptu, of prose or verse, spoken or written. No man has ever equalled him at a paragraph or a squib, except as to the latter, Garrick and Coleridge. Nobody was ever so exquisite a conversational wit. ”

“ Theodore Hook was relating to his friend, Charles Mathews, how, on one occasion, when supping in the company of Peake, the latter surreptitiously removed from his plate several slices of tongue; and, affecting to be very much annoyed by such practical joking, Hook concluded with the question, "Now, Charles, what would you do to anybody who treated you in such a manner?"—"Do?" exclaimed Mathews, "if any man meddled with my tongue, I'd lick him!" ”

“ Theodore Hook was chosen editor, because he knew society, was quick, witty, satirical, and thoroughly unscrupulous. For his "splendid abuse"—as his biographer, the unreverend Mr. Barham, calls it—he received the full pay of a greedy hireling. Tom Moore and the Whigs now met with a terrible adversary. Hook did not hew or stab, like Churchill and the old rough lampooners of earlier days, but he filled crackers with wild fire, or laughingly stuck the enemies of George IV. over with pins. ”

“ He could gravely persuade his young wife, when she was first learning the mysteries of housekeeping, that she must never purchase plaice with red spots, for they were a proof that the fish were not fresh. But he was incapable of any of the cruel pleasantries for which Theodore Hook was famous: indeed, the only person he ever frightened, even, with a practical joke, was himself ”

“ There is no better key to the age in which Hook glittered, than Hook's own stories. The London of that day—the London which is as dead and gone as Nineveh or Karnak or Troy—lives with extraordinary freshness in Theodore Hook's pages. And how entertaining those pages are. It is not always the greatest writers who are the most mirth provoking, but how much we owe to them. The man must have no mirth in him if he fail to be tickled by the best of Labiche's comedies, aye and the worst too, if such a term [xv] can be applied to any of the enchanting series ”

“ Theodore Hook was one of the most experienced exponents of the Town Life of his day: in habits, a bachelor, notwithstanding his industry as a man of letters, he saw more of the outside world than the majority of idle men. He has left many of these experiences in his novels, which, as pictures of life, are valuable.
Thus, in Gilbert Gurney, he gives this admirable bit of club criticism: “People who are conscious of what is due to themselves never display irritability or impetuosity ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 135] a gentleman, less, perhaps, from inherent faculty than the polish which refined society ever gives.”—1828.
Barham’s
Life of Hook.
“In person Theodore Hook was above the middle height, his frame was robust and well-proportioned, possessing a breadth and depth of chest which, joined to a constitution naturally of the strongest order, would have seemed, under ordinary care, to hold out promise of a long and healthy life. ”

“ The Humourous Works of the late Theodore Hook (London, 1873) , in addition to the parody quoted on page 238, contain another on The young May-Moon but it is quite out of date. A review of “Mr. Minus the Poet” is also included in the above collection; it is a skit upon Moore’s versification and philosophy, and contains a short imitation of his poetry, entitled Fanny’s Bower, somewhat resembling The Living Lustres in the Rejected Addresses.
“Jack Randall’s Diary, or proceedings at the House of Call for Genius,” written by Mr. Breakwindow. London, Simpkin, 1820. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unfortunately, the green-room was the too frequent study of the youth; for his father's fame and income were chiefly derived from the composition of operetta songs, for which Theodore usually wrote the libretti. When little more than a boy he had produced perhaps thirty farces, and in 1808 gave birth to a novel. Those who remember the two great actors of a long period, Mathews and Liston, will be at no loss to comprehend the popularity of Hook's farces: for they were his "props." ”

“ 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 dabbler in literature, like his brother, but scarcely to the same extent a dabbler in wit. ”

“ His novels are not works of enduring interest, but they are saved from mediocrity by frequent passages of racy narrative and vivid portraiture. The best are Maxwell (1830) , Love and Pride (1833) , the autobiographic Gilbert Gurney (1836) , Jack Brag (1837) , Gurney Married (1838) , and Peregrine Bunce (1842) . Incessant work had already begun to tell on his health, when Hook returned to his old social habits, and a prolonged attempt to combine industry and dissipation resulted in the confession that he was “done up in purse, in mind and in body too at last.” ”

“ He gave music lessons, and excelled as an organist, performing an organ concerto every night at Vauxhall (Parke) . He died at Boulogne in 1827. Hook's first wife was Miss Madden (d. 1795) . Their two sons were James [q. v.] , afterwards dean of Worcester, and Theodore [q. v.] , the humorist. Hook, the composer, was himself a wit. His second wife died 5 April 1873. ”

“ The shattering of broad sheets of ice around then was a warning of what might happen to the frail support of their chase. One thrust of the boat-hook sometimes cleft a cake that to the eye seemed stout enough to bear a heavier weight than a woman’s. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hook said courteously, "did any other gentlemen say mutiny?" Seizing a lantern and raising his claw with a menacing gesture, "I'll bring out that doodle-doo myself," he said, and sped into the cabin. "Five." How Slightly longed to say it. He wetted his lips to be ready, but Hook came staggering out, without his lantern. "Something blew out the light," he said a little unsteadily. "Something!" echoed Mullins. "What of Cecco?" demanded Noodler. "He's as dead as Jukes," said Hook shortly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jasparin woke him to a sense of his peril and his importance. This boy or lad occupied a chamber in what is now, I think, Mr. Headlam’s house, which was part of the old meeting place of Pop (now more splendidly housed) , and he woke about midnight to find Hook sitting in his room. Addressed indignantly, the Solitary was meditating too profoundly to hear, and the boy was about to make another remark when he fell asleep again. He will never come nearer to being torn apart like a pair of shorts. How Hook obtained access to this room is not known. ”

“ In 1641 appeared in London his sermon entitled ‘New England's Teares for Old England's Feares,’ which was preached on 23 July 1640, ‘being a day of publique humiliation.’ Winthrop cannot be right in identifying Hook with the William Hooke who was in New England as early as 1633, when he witnessed the delivery of the Pemaquid grant, and was afterwards one of Sir Ferdinando Gorges's council.
In America, says Wood, Hook ‘continued his practices without control for some time;’ in other words he preached as an independent. ”

“ We are free to confess that two things surprise us in this business. The first, that anything which we have thought worthy of giving to the public should have been mistaken for Mr. [Pg 138] Hook's; and secondly, that such a person as Mr. Hook should think himself disgraced by a connection with John Bull.'
After the death of the Queen, Hook devoted himself to the demolition of the Whigs and Radicals. ”

“ No testimony need be given to sustain Hooker's courage: no man ever showed more. No better general ever commanded an army corps in our service: this is abundantly vouched for. But Hooker could not lead an hundred thousand men; and, unlike his predecessor, he was unable to confess it. Perhaps he did not own it to himself. Certainly his every explanation of this campaign involved the shifting of the onus of his defeat to the shoulders of his subordinates,—principally Howard and Sedgwick. ”

“ After the Restoration Hook seems to have kept up his connection with the independents of New England. Samuel Wilson Taylor, when arrested on his way to New England, on 3 April 1664, confessed that news-books and letters found upon him had been given to him by Hook for delivery in New England. Hook died on 21 March 1677, and was buried in Bunhill Fields, London (Dexter's Congregationalism, 586 n.) ”

“ These are all the facts I have been able to learn about Hook at Eton, and if you agree that once in his life, that night, he did all that such as he could do for his old school I seek to draw no other moral. Though surely the proud, if detestable, position he attained is another proof that the Etonian is a natural leader of men. Educationally, I gather from the log-book, his sympathies were with the classical rather than the modern side. In politics he was a Conservative. So far as I can learn there never was any woman in his life. His furrow had therefore to be a lonely one. ”

“ The Indian name of Verdrietig Hoek, or Tedious Point, is of record Newas-ink in the De Hart Patent, and in several other forms of record—Navish, Navoash-ink, Naurasonk, Navisonk, Newasons, etc., and Neiak takes the forms of Narratsch, Narrich, Narrock, Nyack, etc. Verdrietig Hoek, the northeastern promontory of Hook Mountain, is a rocky precipitous bluff forming the angle of the range. It rises six hundred and sixty-eight feet above the level of the Hudson into which it projects like a buttress. Its Dutch-English name "Tedious Point," has been spoken of in connection with Pocantico, which see. ”

“ Mullins and Alf Mason and many another ruffian long known and feared on the Spanish Main. In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a right hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them to increase their pace. As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him. ”