General Hall instantly communicated this information to Mr. Hook, and appointed another commission to re-examine the condition of the public chest and accounts. The commission began their work on the 11th of February: Allan was examined vivâ-voce before them on that and on several successive days. He addressed, while his examination was in progress, letters upon letters to the deputy-governor and also to the commissioners, in which he reiterated his assertions that a large deficiency existed, that its existence had been known to himself during many succeeding quarters, and that he had so long concealed it from reluctance to bring himself into collision with his superior, the Treasurer. His letters, from the first very strangely written, became wilder at every step; and on the morning of the 27th, before the commissioners met, he shot himself. His last letter alleged that he had been tampered with by Hook, who offered to pay him thenceforth an allowance of twenty-five dollars per month if he would instantly make his escape from the Mauritius, and never re-appear there; but the person whom he named as having brought Hook's message instantly contradicted the statement in toto on oath before the commissioners. There were many other witnesses; and the result was the detection of not a few irregularities, omissions, and discrepancies in the books of the Treasury.
The inquiry proceeded till the 9th of March; at eleven that night Hook was arrested at a friend's house, where he was supping, and dragged, by torchlight, through crowded streets to the common prison. The town having shortly before been the scene of a terrible conflagration, the prison had been almost entirely destroyed. There was only one cell in which the Treasurer could be placed, and that was in so wretched a condition that at three in the morning he was admitted to bail, escorted to the house of his bail-man, and left there under his surveillance by the police. After a few days he was handed over to the care of a millitary detachment, and embarked with them for England as a culprit, to be tried for crimes. Before he sailed, his property in the island was disposed of, and the whole amount placed to the public credit in the Treasury. Even the minutest articles belonging to him were seized. After he was on board ship, a negro slave came alongside to beg his acceptance of his writing-desk, which the poor fellow had bought at the auction for ten shillings.
He had a protracted and most unhappy voyage of nine months. For one whole month they were tossed in a hurricane off the Cape of Good Hope, and for six weeks reduced to the allowance of half a pound of mouldy buiscuit and half a pint of water by the day. While refitting at the Cape, however, Hook, who had by that time conciliated the regard of his keepers by his unshaken fortitude and good-humoured submission, was made their companion on shore, on parole; and how completely he could, under such calamitous circumstances, exert his faculties of observation, we may judge from the most picturesque sketches of the Cape, the capital, and its inhabitants, which occur in one of his subsequent stories—Maxwell. The ship also stopped for a day or two at St. Helena; and by the kindness of the officers, Hook accompanied them when they went to Longwood to be presented to Napoleon.
The ship reached Portsmouth in January, 1819, and the warrant of arrest and other documents were transmitted to London, and referred to the law officers. The Attorney-General reported, that however irregular Mr. Hook's official conduct might have been, and however justly he might be prosecuted for a civil debt, there was no apparent ground for a criminal procedure. He was therefore liberated; and reaching London with two gold mohurs in his pocket, was immediately subjected to the scrutiny of the Audit Board—a scrutiny which did not terminate until after the lapse of nearly five years.
During this long suspense, eternal commissions and cross-examinations before the auditors of public accounts, and a very voluminous series of correspondence with them and others on the subject of the defalcation, had not occupied the whole of Hook's attention. If they had, he must have starved; for though his successor was not appointed till late in the inquiry, he never received a farthing in his official capacity, from the time of his original arrest.
By the end of 1819, Hook had established himself in a very humble cottage at Somers Town, where his household consisted of a single maid-servant; and formed connections with newspapers or magazines, which supplied the small necessities of the passing day. He seems at first to have felt his position far too painfully to think of reclaiming any but a few of his older and, comparatively speaking, humble allies—such as Mathews, Terry, and good little Hill; the last of whom had encountered sad reverses during his absence, and was now, perhaps, except himself, the poorest of the set. On their kindness he might rely implicitly—as well as upon the cordial friendship and sound professional advice of Messrs. Powell and Broderip.
It was shortly after his location at Somers Town that Hook renewed his acquaintance with Mr. Wilson Croker, in whose society no small portion of his time was spent, both at the Admiralty and at the latter's villa at Molesey. He was also occasionally a visitor at General Phipps's (a relation of his mother's), in Harley-street, where he met and speedily became intimate with the late Speaker, Lord Canterbury. They were afterwards seen a great deal together, and the pair strolling arm-in-arm down St. James's-street, forms the subject of one—not the most happy—of the HB sketches.[6] With these exceptions, for a long period his position as a public defaulter, together with the res angustæ domi, confined him to the narrow and comparatively inexpensive circle of his old literary and theatrical associates.
During the summer of 1820, Theodore Hook opened his campaign against the Queen by a thin octavo, which at the time made considerable noise. It was entitled "Tentamen; or an Essay towards the History of Whittington and his Cat," by Dr. Vicesimus Blenkinsop. The Whittington, of course, was no other than Alderman Wood, and Caroline was the cat. "Throughout the whole libellus," says Lockhart, "there was a prodigious rattle of puns and conundrums—but the strong points of the case against Whittington and Co. were skilfully brought out, nevertheless. Hook being as yet quite in obscuro, nobody suspected him. It was pretty generally ascribed to the manufacturers of the 'New Whig Guide.'"
"Tentamen" was followed by several similar pamphlets, chiefly in verse, all directed against Alderman Wood and the other supporters of the Queen, and all published in the same year (1820) by Wright, of Fleet-street. They are also to be distinguished by a caricature likeness of the celebrated Alderman, the same portrait appearing on the title-page both of "Tentamen" and the others. One of these we recollect is entitled Solomon Logwood.[7]
In the spring of this year (1820), Hook, with the assistance of his old friend, Daniel Terry, started a small periodical. It was published, and we believe suggested, by Mr. Miller, who had recently engaged extensive premises in—what was then expected to prove a great mart for the lighter description of literature—a sort of occidental "Row,"—the Burlington Arcade. Hence the name of the first-born, "The Arcadian," but which, to say the truth, had little of the pastoral in its composition, if we except a certain long ballad of melodious rhythm and provoking pungency, addressed to Lady Holland, and commencing,—