The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore Hook

by Theodore Edward Hook

He's notte thee manne to doe you wronge,

Nor wyth false speeeches bubble you.

Whyle Beef grows fatte, and Beer grows strong

Long lyfe to Matthewe W.

With this proof of his retiring disposition we are the more puzzled in looking at his conduct with respect to the Great Lady, because really, if we had not such powerful evidence as Ibbotson and others have adduced, one could hardly fancy any other incitement to her introduction into the country, than an officious desire to be meddling with things which did not at all concern him, for the mere sake of creating a sensation, of withdrawing the attention of his countrymen from the pursuit of their occupations, to the idle speculation of star-gazing and conjuring, and, in short, of making himself at any rate the Hero of a Story, by which his name might go down to posterity. In this he has certainly succeeded; but the price he has paid for notoriety appears (considering how he disliked it) to have been rather high.

One circumstance has been mentioned, as having probably given his disposition a turn, which is this: the Countess of Mountfort, or as she is called, Jane of Flanders, had visited England about five or six years before the period at which Whittington undertook his renowned expedition. This extraordinary woman, roused by the captivity of a husband to whom she was faithfully attached, had quitted the confined circle of domestic life, to which she was an ornament, and risked everything in the cause of her beloved Count: her party, however (spite of her personal success), declining on every side, she came to London, to solicit succours from the King of England, and to the reception she met with from the populace, and the praises bestowed on Sir Walter Manny, who suggested her appeal to the British Court, is by very many persons attributed the anxiety of Whittington to introduce his Cat or lady to the notice of the people.

But a much more probable account is suggested by the old ballad, and indeed countenanced by other authorities, namely, that a certain knavish lawyer who had, by some means, now unknown, and probably at no time very avowable, got about the Cat, and became intimately connected with all her secrets and mysteries whatever they were, had contrived to get the Cat into a bag, and so far from letting her out of the bag, as she and her followers no doubt expected, he is supposed to have formed the base design of selling the Cat to her enemies.

This account would naturally rouse the indignation of a man, even less high-minded than the illustrious Whittington, who combining, like many modern citizens, generosity with an eye to profit, justly considered that if the Cat were worth anything, he might as well have the gain as the lawyer; and with this magnanimous intention he resolved to get possession of the Cat. Not very much, it would appear, knowing or caring, in the blindness of his enthusiasm, whether she was a Cat or a witch; a great lady, or the devil.

What she really was, appeared afterwards, when the bag came to be opened.[38]

The zealous desire of possessing at all events this demi-human personage, made Whittington quite careless of the consequences of his blind bargain. He anticipated advantages to himself from exhibiting her, which (probably from the apprehension of being laughed at) he never ventured to mention to his nearest friends; a gentle hint on the subject thrown out to his better and bigger half, was received by her with all the rapture one might expect an obscure person to express at the prospect of becoming notorious; for though certain it is that Matthew's views and desires throughout the whole business were untinctured by the smallest wish for éclat or distinction, we are not prepared to say that his wife might not have cast a longing eye towards the Enchantress's banquets and gaieties, of which such splendid accounts had been given, or that her ambition (for these sort of people are ambitious in their sphere) might not have led her to hope that by the aid of the great lady's magic, her daughter (who had been some time on hand) might attain such an accession either of real property or personal attraction, as might get her respectably established in life.