HOOK, THEODORE EDWARD
(1788?1841), English author,
was born in London on the 22nd of September 1788. He spent
a year at Harrow, and subsequently matriculated at Oxford,
but he never actually resided at the university. His father,
James Hook (1746?1827), the composer of numerous popular
songs, took great delight in exhibiting the boy’s extraordinary
musical and metrical gifts, and the precocious Theodore became
“the little pet lion of the green room.” At the age of sixteen,
in conjunction with his father, he scored a dramatic success
with
The Soldier’s Return
, a comic opera, and this he rapidly
followed up with a series of over a dozen sparkling ventures,
the instant popularity of which was hardly dependent on the
inimitable acting of John Liston and Charles Mathews. But Hook
gave himself up for some ten of the best years of his life to the
pleasures of the town, winning a foremost place in the world of
fashion by his matchless powers of improvisation and mimicry,
and startling the public by the audacity of his practical jokes.
His unique gift of improvising the words and the music of songs
eventually charmed the prince Regent into a declaration that
“something must be done for Hook.” The prince was as good
as his word, and Hook, in spite of a total ignorance of accounts,
was appointed accountant-general and treasurer of the Mauritius
with a salary of £2000 a year. For five delightful years he
was the life and soul of the island, but in 1817, a serious deficiency
having been discovered in the treasury accounts, he was arrested
and brought to England on a criminal charge. A sum of about
£12,000 had been abstracted by a deputy official, and for this
amount Hook was held responsible.
During the tardy scrutiny of the audit board he lived obscurely
and maintained himself by writing for magazines and newspapers.
In 1820 he launched the newspaper
John Bull
, the champion of
high Toryism and the virulent detractor of Queen Caroline.
Witty, incisive criticism and pitiless invective secured it a large
circulation, and from this source alone Hook derived, for the
first year at least, an income of £2000. He was, however,
arrested for the second time on account of his debt to the state,
which he made no effort to defray. In a sponging-house, where
he was confined for two years, he wrote the nine volumes of stories
afterwards collected under the title of
Sayings and Doings
(1826?1829). In the remaining twenty-three years of his life
he poured forth no fewer than thirty-eight volumes, besides
numberless articles, squibs and sketches. 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 died on the 24th of August
1841. His writings in great part are of a purely ephemeral
character; and the greatest triumphs of the improvisatore
may be said to have been writ in wine. Putting aside, however,
his claim to literary greatness, Hook will be remembered as one
of the most brilliant, genial and original figures of Georgian
times.
See the Rev. R. H. D. Barham’s
Life and Remains of Hook
(3rd ed.,
1877); and an article by J. G. Lockhart in the
Quarterly Review
(May 1843).