Chapter XIV

Theodore Hook--Improvisatore Talent--Poetry--Sydney Smith--The "Dun
Cow"--Thomas Hood--Gin--Tylney Hall--John Trot--Barbara's Legends.

Theodore Hook was at Harrow with Lord Byron, and characteristically commenced his career there by breaking one of Mrs. Drury's windows at the suggestion of that nobleman. His father was a popular composer of music, and young Theodore's first employment was that of writing songs for him. This, no doubt, gave the boy a facility, and led to the great celebrity he acquired for his improvisatore talent. He was soon much sought for in society, and a friend has told me that he has heard him, on sitting down to the piano, extemporize two or three hundred lines, containing humorous remarks upon all the company. On one occasion, Sir Roderick Murchison was present, and some would have been a little puzzled how to bring such a name into rhyme, but he did not hesitate a moment running on:--

"And now I'll get the purchase on,
To sing of Roderick Murchison."

Cowden Clark relates that when at a party and playing his symphony, Theodore asked his neighbour what was the name of the next guest, and then sang:--

"Next comes Mr. Winter, collector of taxes,
And you must all pay him whatever he axes;
And down on the nail, without any flummery;
For though he's called Winter, his acts are all summary."

Horace Twiss tried to imitate him in this way, but failed. Hook's humour was not of very high class. He was fond of practical jokes, such as that of writing a hundred letters to tradesmen desiring them all to send goods to a house on a given day. Sometimes he would surprise strangers by addressing some strange question to them in the street. He started the "John Bull" newspaper, in which he wrote many humorous papers, and amused people by expressing his great surprise, on crossing the Channel, to find that every little boy and girl could speak French.

He wrote cautionary verses against punning:--

"My little dears, who learn to read, pray early learn to shun
That very silly thing, indeed, which people call a pun;
Read Entick's rules, and 'twill be found how simple an offence
It is to make the self-same sound afford a double sense.
For instance, _ale_ may make you _ail_, your _aunt_ an _ant_ may kill,
You in a _vale_ may buy a _veil_, and _Bill_ may pay the _bill_;
Or if to France your bark you steer, at Dover it may be,
A _peer_ appears upon the _pier_, who blind still goes to _sea_."

But he was much given to the practice he condemns--here is an epigram--

"It seems as if Nature had cunningly planned
That men's names with their trades should agree,
There's Twining the tea-man, who lives in the Strand,
Would be _whining_ if robbed of his T."

Mistakes of words by the uneducated are a very ordinary resource of humorists, but, of course, there is a great difference in the quality of such jests. Mrs. Ramsbottom in Paris, eats a _voulez-vous_ of fowl, and some pieces of _crape_, and goes to the _symetery_ of the _Chaise and pair_. Afterwards she goes to the _Hotel de Veal_, and buys some _sieve_ jars to keep _popery_ in.

Hook was a strong Tory, and some of his best humour was political. One of his squibs has been sometimes attributed to Lord Palmerston.

"Fair Reform, Celestial maid!
Hope of Britons! Hope of Britons!
Calls her followers to aid;
She has fit ones, she has fit ones!
They would brave in danger's day,
Death to win her! Death to win her;
If they met not by the way,
Michael's dinner! Michael's dinner!"

Alluding to a dinner-party which kept several Members from the House on the occasion of an important division.

Among his political songs may be reckoned "The Invitation" (from one of the Whig patronesses of the Lady's Fancy Dress Ball,)

"Come, ladies, come, 'tis now the time for capering,
Freedom's flag at Willis's is just unfurled,
We, with French dances, will overcome French vapouring,
And with ice and Roman punch amaze the world;
There's I myself, and Lady L----, you'll seldom meet a rummer set,
With Lady Grosvenor, Lady Foley, and her Grace of Somerset,
While Lady Jersey fags herself, regardless of the bustle, ma'am,
With Lady Cowper, Lady Anne, and Lady William Russell, ma'am.
Come, ladies, come, &c."

There is a sort of polite social satire running through Theodore Hook's works, but it does not exhibit any great inventive powers. In "Byroniana," he ridicules the gossiping books written after Byron's death, pretending to give the minutest accounts of his habits and occasional observations--and generally omitting the names of their authority. Thus Hook tells us in a serio-comic tone:--

"He had a strong antipathy to pork when underdone or stale, and
nothing could induce him to partake of fish which had been caught
more than ten days--indeed, he had a singular dislike even to the
smell of it. He told me one night that ---- told ---- that if ----
would only ---- him ---- she would ---- without any compunction:
for her ----, who though an excellent man, was no ----, but that
she never ----, and this she told ---- and ---- as well as Lady
---- herself. Byron told me this in confidence, and I may be blamed
for repeating it; but ---- can corroborate it; if it happens not to
be gone to ----"

The following written against an old-fashioned gentleman, Mr. Brown, who objects to the improvements of the age, is interesting. It is amusing now to read an ironical defence of steam, intended to ridicule the pretensions of its advocates.

"Mr. Brown sneers at steam and growls at gas. I contend that the
utility of constructing a coach which shall go by hot water, nearly
as fast as two horses can draw it at a trifling additional expense,
promises to be wonderfully useful. We go too fast, Sir, with
horses; besides, horses eat oats, and farmers live by selling oats;
if, therefore, by inconveniencing ourselves, and occasionally
risking our lives, we can, however imperfectly, accomplish by steam
what is now done by horses, we get rid of the whole race of
oat-sowers, oat-sellers, oat-eaters, and oat-stealers, vulgarly
called ostlers."

Sydney Smith especially aimed at pleasantry in his humour, there was no animosity in it, and generally no instruction. Mirth, pure and simple, was his object. Rogers observes "After Luttrell, you remembered what good things he said--after Smith how much you laughed."

In Moore's Diary we read "at a breakfast at Roger's, Smith, full of comicality and fancy, kept us all in roars of laughter." His wit was so turned, that it never wounded. When he took leave of Lord Dudley, the latter said, "You have been laughing at me constantly, Sydney, for the last seven years, and yet in all that time, you never said a thing to me that I wished unsaid."

It would be superfluous to give a collection of Smith's good sayings, but the following is characteristic of his style. When he heard of a small Scotchman going to marry a lady of large dimensions, he exclaimed,

"Going to marry her? you mean a part of her, he could not marry her
all. It would be not bigamy but trigamy. There is enough of her to
furnish wives for a whole parish. You might people a colony with
her, or give an assembly with her, or perhaps take your morning's
walk round her, always providing there were frequent resting-places
and you were in rude health. I was once rash enough to try walking
round her before breakfast, but only got halfway, and gave up
exhausted."

Smith's humour was nearly always of this continuous kind, "changing its shape and colour to many forms and hues." He wished to continue the merriment to the last, but such repetition weakened its force. His humour is better when he has some definite aim in view, as in his letters about America, where he lost his money. But we have not many specimens of it in his writings, the following is from "The Dun Cow:"--

"The immense importance of a pint of ale to a common man should
never be overlooked, nor should a good-natured Justice forget that
he is acting for Lilliputians, whose pains and pleasures lie in
very narrow compass, and are but too apt to be treated with neglect
and contempt by their superiors. About ten or eleven o'clock in the
morning, perhaps, the first faint shadowy vision of a future pint
of beer dawns on the fancy of the ploughman. Far, very far is it
from being fully developed. Sometimes the idea is rejected;
sometimes it is fostered. At one time he is almost fixed on the
'Red Horse,' but the blazing fire and sedulous kindness of the
landlady of the 'Dun Cow' shake him, and his soul labours! Heavy is
the ploughed land, dark, dreary, and wet the day. His purpose is at
last fixed for beer! Threepence is put down for the vigour of the
ale, and one penny for the stupefaction of tobacco, and these are
the joys and holidays of millions, the greatest pleasure and
relaxation which it is in the power of fortune to bestow."

Such kindly feelings as animated Sydney Smith were found more fully developed in Thomas Hood. He made his humour minister to philanthropy. The man who wrote the "Song of the Shirt" felt keenly for all the sufferings of the poor--he even favoured some of their unreasonable complaints. Thus he writes the "Address of the Laundresses to the Steam Washing Company," to show how much they are injured by such an institution. In a "Drop of Gin," he inveighs against this destructive stimulant.

"Gin! gin! a drop of gin!
What magnified monsters circle therein,
Bagged and stained with filth and mud,
Some plague-spotted, and some with blood."

He seems not to be well pleased with Mr. Bodkin, the Secretary for the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity--

"Hail! king of shreds and patches, hail!
Dispenser of the poor!
Thou dog in office set to bark
All beggars from the door!

* * * * *

"Of course thou art what Hamlet meant
To wretches, the last friend;
What ills can mortals have that can't
With a bare _bodkin_ end."

Mr. M'Adam is apostrophized--

"Hail Roadian, hail Colossus, who dost stand,
Striding ten thousand turnpikes on the land?
Oh, universal Leveller! all hail!"

In a sporting dialogue in "Tylney Hall," we have--

"'A clever little nag, that,' said the Squire, after a long
one-eyed look at the brown mare, 'knows how to go, capital action.'

"'A picture, isn't she?' said the Baronet. 'I bought her last week
by way of a surprise to Ringwood. She was bred by old Toby Sparks
at Hollington, by Tiggumbob out of Tolderol, by Diddledumkins,
Cockalorum, and so forth.'

"'An odd fish, old Toby;' said the Squire, 'always give 'em queer
names: can jump a bit, no doubt?'

"'She jumps like a flea,' said Dick, 'and as for galloping, she can
go from anywhere to everywhere in forty minutes--and back again.'"

We may also mention his description of an old-fashioned doctor.

"At first sight we were in doubt whether to set him down as a
doctor or a pedagogue, for his dress presented one very
characteristic appendage of the latter, namely a square cut black
coat, which never was, never would be, and probably never had been,
in fashion. A profusion of cambric frills, huge silver
shoe-buckles, a snuff-box of the same metal, and a gold-headed cane
belonging rather to the costume of the physician of the period. He
wore a very precise wig of a very decided brown, regularly crisped
at the top like a bunch of endive, and in front, following the
exact curves of the arches of two bushy eyebrows. He had dark eyes,
a prominent nose, and a wide mouth--the corners of which in smiling
were drawn towards his double chin. A florid colour on his face
hinted a plethoric habit, while a portly body and a very short
thick neck bespoke an apoplectic tendency. Warned by these
indications, prudence had made him a strict water-drinker, and
abstemious in his diet--a mode of treatment which he applied to all
his patients short or tall, stout or thin, with whom whatever their
disease, he invariably began by reducing them, as an arithmetician
would say, to their lowest terms. This mode of treatment raised him
much in the estimation of the parish authorities."

The humour in the following is of a lighter and more tricksy kind--

WRITTEN IN A YOUNG LADY'S ALBUM.

"Upon your cheek I may not speak,
Nor on your lip be warm,
I must be wise about your eyes,
And formal with your form;
Of all that sort of thing, in short,
On T. H. Bayly's plan,
I must not twine a single line,
I'm not a single man."

On hearing that Grimaldi had left the stage, he enumerates his funny performances--

"Oh, who like thee could ever drink,
Or eat--smile--swallow--bolt--and choke,
Nod, weep, and hiccup--sneeze and wink?
Thy very gown was quite a joke!
Though Joseph Junior acts not ill,
'There's no fool like the old fool still.'"

His felicity in playing with words is well exhibited in the stanzas on "John Trot."

"John Trot he was as tall a lad
As York did ever rear,
As his dear granny used to say,
He'd make a Grenadier.

"A serjeant soon came down to York
With ribbons and a frill;
My lad, said he, let broadcast be,
And come away to drill.

"But when he wanted John to 'list,
In war he saw no fun,
Where what is call'd a raw recruit,
Gets often over-done.

"Let others carry guns, said he,
And go to war's alarms,
But I have got a shoulder-knot
Imposed upon my arms.

"For John he had a footman's place,
To wait on Lady Wye,
She was a dumpy woman, tho'
Her family was high.

"Now when two years had passed away
Her lord took very ill,
And left her to her widowhood,
Of course, more dumpy still.

"Said John, I am a proper man,
And very tall to see,
Who knows, but now her lord is low
She may look up to me?

"'A cunning woman told me once
Such fortune would turn up,
She was a kind of sorceress,
But studied in a cup.'

"So he walked up to Lady Wye,
And took her quite amazed,
She thought though John was tall enough
He wanted to be raised.

"But John--for why? she was a dame
Of such a dwarfish sort--
Had only come to bid her make
Her mourning very short.

"Said he, 'your lord is dead and cold,
You only cry in vain,
Not all the cries of London now,
Could call him back again.

"'You'll soon have many a noble beau,
To dry your noble tears,
But just consider this that I
Have followed you for years.

"'And tho' you are above me far,
What matters high degree,
When you are only four foot nine,
And I am six foot three?

"'For though you are of lofty race,
And I'm a low-born elf,
Yet none among your friends could say,
You matched beneath yourself.'

"Said she, 'such insolence as this
Can be no common case;
Though you are in my service, Sir,
Your love is out of place.'

"'O Lady Wye! O Lady Wye!
Consider what you do;
How can you be so short with me,
I am not so with you!'

"Then ringing for her serving-men,
They show'd him to the door;
Said they, 'you turn out better now,
Why didn't you before?'

"They stripp'd his coat, and gave him kicks
For all his wages due,
And off instead of green and gold
He went in black and blue.

"No family would take him in
Because of this discharge,
So he made up his mind to serve
The country all at large.

"'Huzza!' the serjeant cried, and put
The money in his hand,
And with a shilling cut him off
From his paternal land.

"For when his regiment went to fight
At Saragossa town,
A Frenchman thought he look'd too tall,
And so he cut him down."

Barham's humour, as seen in his "Ingoldsby Legends," is of a lower character, but shows that the author possessed a great natural facility. He had keen observation, but his taste did not prevent his employing it on what was coarse and puerile. Common slang abounds, as in "The Vulgar Little Boy;" he talks of "the devil's cow's tail," and is little afraid of extravagances. His metre often assists him, and we have often comic rhyming as where "Mephistopheles" answers to "Coffee lees," and he says:--

"To gain your sweet smiles, were I Sardanapalus,
I'd descend from my throne, and be boots at an alehouse,"

But in raising a laugh and affording a pleasant distraction by fantastic humour on common subjects, the "Ingoldsby Legends" have been highly successful, and they are recommended by an occasional historical allusion, especially at the expense of the old monks. Being written by a man of knowledge and cultivation, they rise considerably above the standard of the contributions to lower class comic papers, which in some respects they resemble.