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.