The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 3

The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 3

Born in the same year with Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel, he was

their schoolfellow at Harrow, but not in the same memorable form,

though he often alluded to the coincidence of dates with an obvious

mixture of pride and regret--perhaps we ought to say, remorse.

 

We have met with no account of him whatever by any one who knew him

familiarly at that period. That he was as careless and inattentive to

the proper studies of the place, as he represents his Gurney to have

been, will not be thought improbable by most of his readers. But his

early performances, now forgotten, display many otiose quotations

from the classics, and even from the modern Latin poets; and these

specimens of juvenile pedantry must be allowed to indicate a vein

of ambition which could hardly have failed, with a mind of such

alacrity, to produce some not inconsiderable measure of attainment.

 

His entrance at Harrow was signalized by the perpetration of a

practical joke, which might have been attended with serious

consequences. On the night of his arrival, he was instigated by

young Byron, whose contemporary he was, to throw a stone at a window

where an elderly lady, Mrs. Drury, was undressing. Hook instantly

complied; but, though the window was broken, the lady happily escaped

unhurt. Whatever degree of boyish intimacy he might at this time

have contracted with his lordship, it was not sufficient to preserve

him from an ill-natured and uncalled-for sneer in the "English Bards

and Scotch Reviewers," an aggression amply repaid by the severe

strictures which appeared in the _John Bull_ on certain of the noble

bard's effusions, and on the "Satanic school of poetry" in general.

The acquaintance, such as it was, was broken off by Hook's premature

withdrawal from Harrow, and does not appear to have been resumed.

 

In 1802, his excellent mother died, and with her perished the only

hope of restraining the youthful Theodore within those bounds most

essential to be preserved at his age, and of maintaining him in that

course of study, which, if persevered in for a few years more, might

have enabled him to reach a position not less honourable than that

enjoyed by his more prosperous brother. Mrs. Hook appears, indeed,

to have been one of those best of wives and women, who, by the

unobtrusive and almost unconscious exercise of a superior judgment,

effect much towards preserving the position and respectability of a

family constantly imperilled by the indiscretion of its head--one

who, like a sweet air wedded to indifferent words, serves to disguise

and compensate for the inferiority of her helpmate.

 

Theodore's father, a clever but weak man, was easily persuaded not

to send him back to Harrow. He was proud already of his boy, found

his company at home a great solace at first, and even before the

house received its new mistress, had begun to discover that one of

his precocious talents might be turned to some account financially.

Theodore had an exquisite ear, and was already, living from the

cradle in a musical atmosphere, an expert player on the pianoforte;

his voice was rich, sweet, and powerful; he could sing a pathetic

song well, a comic one charmingly. One evening he enchanted his

father especially by his singing, to his own accompaniment, two new

ballads, one grave and one gay. Whence the airs--whence the words?

It turned out that verse and music were alike his own: in the music

the composer perceived much that might be remedied, but the verses

were to him faultless--meaning probably not much, but nothing more

soft than the liquid flow of the vocables, nothing more easy than

the balance of the lines. Here was a mine for the veteran artist;

hitherto he had been forced to import his words; now the whole

manufacture might go on at home. Snug, comfortable, amiable domestic

arrangement! The boy was delighted with the prospect--and at sixteen

his fate was fixed.

 

In the course of the following six years Theodore Hook produced at

least a dozen vaudevilles, comic operas, and dramatic pieces for the

stage, which all enjoyed a considerable run of popularity in their

time, but are now entirely, and perhaps deservedly, forgotten. His

_coup-d'essai_ in this line appeared in 1805, under the title of "The

Soldier's Return; or, What can Beauty do? a comic opera in two acts,

as performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane."

 

It would be as absurd to criticise such a piece as last year's

pantomime--like that, it answered its purpose and its author's, and

no more is to be said. At the same time, amidst all its mad, impudent

nonsense, there are here and there jokes which, if unborrowed,

deserved the applause of the pit. A traveller coming up to an

inn-door, says, "Pray, friend, are you the master of this house?"

"Yes, sir," answers Boniface, "my wife has been dead these three

weeks." We might quote one or two more apparently genuine Theodores.

The dialogue, such as it is, dances along, and the songs read

themselves into singing.

 

His _modus operandi_ in producing this earliest piece, was

ingenious. He bought three or four French vaudevilles, filched an

incident from each, and thus made up his drama.

 

The production of this little piece brought the young author into

contact with Mathews and Liston. These distinguished comedians were

both considerably his seniors. Both had their own peculiar style,

and yet both seemed at their best when treading the boards together.

With the view of providing an opportunity for their joint appearance,

Theodore Hook planned his second afterpiece, "Catch Him who Can"

(1806), in which abundant opportunity was contrived for exhibiting

the grave irresistible drollery of Liston in contrast with the

equally matchless vivacity and versatility of the prince of mimics

and ventriloquists. In the course of the farce Mathews figured in, we

think, seven different disguises. Such acting would have insured the

triumph of even a worse thing than the "Soldier's Return,"--but this

was better than that in every respect. One of Liston's songs was long

in vogue, perhaps still survives--

 

"I sing the loves, the smiling loves,

Of Clutterbuck and Higginbottom."

 

There are three other readable songs, "Mary," "Donna Louisa

Isabella," and the "Blacksmith," and not a few meritorious points in

the dialogue. It is impossible, however, as we have already hinted,

to be sure of the originality of anything either in the plot or the

dialogue of these early pieces. Hook pilfers with as much audacity as

any of his valets, and uses the plunder occasionally with a wonderful

want of thought. Liston's sweetheart, for instance, a tricky

chambermaid, knocks him down with Pope's famous saying, "Every man

has just as much vanity as he wants understanding."

 

"The Invisible Girl" next followed (1806). The idea appears to have

been taken from a newspaper account of a new French vaudeville;[3]

but it was worked out by the adapter with very great cleverness.

 

The fun is, that with a crowd of _dramatis personæ_, a rapid

succession of situations, and even considerable complication of

intrigue, no character ever gets out more than _yes_, _no_, a

_but_, a _hem_, or a _still_--except the indefatigable hero Captain

Allclack--for whose part it is difficult to believe that any English

powers but Jack Bannister's in his heyday could ever have been

adequate. This affair had a great run; and no wonder. If anybody

could play the Captain now, it would fill the house for a season.

Under a somewhat altered form, and with the title of "Patter _versus_

Clatter," it has indeed been reproduced by Mr. Charles Mathews, with

great success.

 

In the following year (1807) a drama, by Hook, in three acts,

entitled "The Fortress," and also taken from the French, was produced

at the Haymarket. As a fair specimen of the easy jingle with which

these pieces abounded, we select a song sung by Mathews, in the

character of Vincent, a gardener, much in vogue in its day:--

 

"When I was a chicken I went to school,

My master would call me an obstinate fool,

For I ruled the roast, and I roasted all rule,

And he wondered however he bore me;

I fired his wig, and I laughed at the smoke,

And always replied, if he rowed at the joke,

Why--my father did so before me!

 

I met a young girl, and I prayed to the miss,

I fell on my knee, and I asked for a kiss,

She twice said no, but she once said yes,

And in marriage declared she'd restore me.

We loved and we quarrell'd, like April our strife,

I guzzled my stoup, and I buried my wife,

But the thing that consoled me at this time of life

Was--my father did so before me!

 

Then, now I'm resolved all sorrows to blink,

Since winkin's the tippy, I'll tip them the wink,

I'll never get drunk when I cannot get drink,

Nor ever let misery bore me.

I sneer at the Fates, and I laugh at their spite,

I sit down contented to sit up all night,

And when the time comes, from the world take my flight,

For--my father did so before me!"

 

"Tekeli, or the Siege of Mongratz," produced about the same time, is

now chiefly remembered as having occasioned some caustic lines in the

"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 Buffoonery's mask,

And Hook conceal his heroes in a cask?"

 

"The Siege of St. Quentin," a drama of a similar description, quickly

followed. The plot was founded on the famous battle of that name

fought in 1557, when the French, endeavouring to raise the siege,

were signally defeated. The object of the piece, which was to excite

enthusiasm in favour of the Spanish nation, together with the

magnificence of the _mise en scène_, won for it considerable success.

It sleeps now with sundry others, such as "The Trial by Jury" (1811),

"Darkness Visible" (1811), "Safe and Sound" (1809), "Music Mad"

(1808). They all ran their course, and have perished--

 

"Unwept, unhonour'd, and unknown."

 

The last-named, however ("Music Mad"), perhaps deserves a word

of notice, if only on account of its transcendent absurdity. The

principal character, stolen bodily from _Il Fanatico per la Musica_

(which had been considered the masterpiece of the celebrated Naldi),

and rendered infinitely more ridiculous by being metamorphosed into

a native of our most unmusical isle, is, as the title indicates, an

amateur, and so passionately devoted to his favourite science as to

insist upon his servant's wearing a waistcoat scored all over with crotchets and semiquavers.