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MEMOIR OF THEODORE HOOK.

The life of the distinguished humourist whose opera minora we now present to the world, was so chequered and diversified by remarkable incidents and adventures, and passed so much in the broad eye of the world and of society, as to be more than ordinarily interesting. The biography of a man of letters in modern times seldom affords so entertaining a narrative, or so instructive and pathetic a lesson, exhibiting how useless and futile are the most brilliant powers and talents, both original and transmitted, without a due admixture of that moral principle and wisdom in daily life necessary to temper and control them.

Theodore Edward Hook—one of the most brilliant wits, and one of the most successful novelists of this century—was born in London, at Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, on the 22nd of September, 1788, in the same year as Lord Byron, whose contemporary he afterwards was at Harrow. The first school that Theodore attended was an "academy," in the Vauxhall districts. The master, a Mr. Allen, had also other pupils in his charge who afterwards rose to eminence. Here he remained till his tenth year, when he was sent to a kind of seminary for young gentlemen, a green-doored, brass-plated establishment, in Soho Square. While at this school, he appears systematically to have played truant, to have employed his time in wandering about the streets, and to have invented ingenious excuses to explain his absence to the authorities. On the day of the illumination for the Peace of Amiens, he preferred to spend the morning at home, and informed his parents that a whole holiday had been given on account of the general rejoicings. Unfortunately, his elder brother, James, happened to pass through the Square, and observing signs of business going on as usual at the academy, he went in, made inquiries, and found that the young scape-grace had not made his appearance there for three weeks. Theodore, instead of witnessing the fireworks, was duly punished, and locked up in the garret for the rest of the afternoon.

Theodore was the second son of Mr. James Hook, the popular musical composer, whose pleasing strains had delighted the preceding generation, when Vauxhall Garden was a fashionable resort. His mother (a Miss Madden) is described as a woman of singular beauty, talents,[1] accomplishments, and worth. To the fact that he lost her gentle guidance at the early age of fourteen, may be attributed many of the misfortunes and irregularities of his after-life.

There was but one other child of Mr. James Hook's first marriage, the late Dr. James Hook, Dean of Worcester; and he being Theodore's senior by eighteen years, had left the paternal roof long before the latter was sent to school.

The Dean, with a great deal of the wit and humour that made his brother famous,[2] and with perhaps much the same original cast of disposition and temper generally, had possessed one great advantage over him at the start of life. His excellent mother watched over him all through the years of youth and early manhood. Theodore could only remember her, and fondly and tenderly he did so to the last, as the gentle parent of a happy child. He had just approached the first era of peril when this considerate and firm-minded woman was lost to her family. The composer soon afterwards married again; but Theodore found not, what, in spite of a thousand proverbs, many men have found under such circumstances—a second mother. But for that deprivation we can hardly doubt that he might, like his more fortunate brother, have learned to regulate his passions and control his spirits, and risen to fill with grace some high position in an honourable profession. The calamitous loss of his mother is shadowed very distinctly in one of his novels, and the unlucky hero (Gilbert Gurney) is represented as having a single prosperous brother, exactly eighteen years older than himself. But, indeed, that novel is very largely autobiographical: when his diary alludes to it as in progress, the usual phrase is, "Working at my Life."

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—