The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-22 00:00:00

THE BERNER.S-STREET HOAX.

Mr. Walter Thornbury is fast identifying his
name with London—as Leigh Hunt did before him.
While the latter has written such books as " The
Town" and " The Old Court Suburb," the former
has written " Haunted London;" and, besides that,
more recently, a charming series of papers—first of
all on our " London Parks," and then on our
" London Squares." He has now, we observe, just
commenced a new series of a similar character in
The Leader (and, judging from the first number, it
gives every promise of being a brilliant one) under
the title of " Legends and Traditions of London
Streets." No. I. relates, as the following extract
will show, the Great Hoax :of No. 54, Berners-
street—the perpetrator of which was that incorri-
gible joker, Theodore Hook, Of him Mr. Thorn-
bury here relates that--
His hoax of hoaxes was that of which Berners-street
was the scene in the year 1809. It was a repetition of a
smaller hoax played with equal success and cruelty on an
unfortunate quiet Quaker in Bedford-street. Ho has
sketched the story himself, but very imperfectly, in
4i Gilbert Gurney." Those who have heard him describe
these early pranks still rejoice to dilate on his bright
gleaming eye, the 4, deep gurgling glee of his voice," and
" the electrical facility of his pantomime." Life was then
with the young wit one long ceaseless farce, only inter-
rupted by sleep, and all the men and women he met
seemed merely players. Selfish and heartless many of his
tricks were, and painful enough to the persons transfixed
and beaten. To Theodore, that butt, the City man, " the
person living in Bloomsbury or some square of that name,"
wsa no more to be pitied than the old woman or the
more than the
.entymo-
aponabimg on his disk of cork.
Ho never stopped to
irpoeogfil iiescetetmeann pitiesthi nteh
fee
abFenhateeo mhcaused
mm
How this imperial hoax originated is not certain. Bar-
ham, Hook's biographer, says that it arose from some pique
against a Mrs. 'Tottenham, a lady of property, residing at
No. 54, and that Hook, Mr. ll—, and a well-known
actress had sworn revenge, and spent six weeks laying
the train. A reviewer of one of Hook's novels, in the
Quarterly of 1843, mentions a more natural origin. The
writer says that Hook, walking down the street with a
friend (perhaps Terry, the Adel Fla manager, good old Tom
Hill, the original Paul Pry, or his special crony, Mathews),
found the quiet spot leading northward from Oxford-street
presented no great opportunity for wit. Mr. Hook's friend
was suddenly taken by the exquisite neatness of No. 54.
The brass-plate with the name of " Tottenham" (a shop-
keeper's widow) was shining like gold, the window-sills
a was
talsi ef les.ias just
windowswere
swaewrne wfrehmitetialse
quarry, at
tthhee
eduorotarishteep
fresh and pleasant in colour—amid the dingo of London
the house looked like a daisy flowering on the brink of a
coalmine.

"How exquisitely neat and clean and quiet that house
is," said his friend.

Hook's eyes twinkled. " bet you a guinea," he said,
"that in one week (this does not agree, mind, with the
six weeks' preparation) I'll make that quiet little place the
most famous house in London."

The bet was laughingly taken and soon forgotten by
Hook'' friend ; but Hook nit ut his element :lOW. kb

went home, and with two confederates, began writing
letters, inviting people to call on a certain day and hourat
No. 54, Beraers-street. The conspirators wrote a wash-
ing-basket full of letters—four 'thousand, Mr. Barham
says ! Hook's knowledge-of the green-rooms and west-end
saloons—enabled him to throw for every fish with the
right sort of fly. He made cruel use of his knowledge
of the secret annoyance of families; he appealed
to each man's special vanity. The greed of trades-
men made them easy dupes ; the smell of money
a mile off was enough to dwv them in
shoals. Hook's invitations were generally for the same
hour, and punctuality was, in most cases, strictly insisted
upon. Thirty or forty chalilrons of coals, and 2,500 penny
tarts, from tho shops of 100 leading pastrycooks, were
mere side dishes at this lavish feast of fun. The next pro-
ceeding was to take lodgings, secure a first-floor window
opposite, and wait till Aurora, with her rosy- t-pped fingers,
lifted the curtain of the night, and lit the great solar lamp
that was to shine on the performance of the great and ex-
travagant farce (played by request for one day only).
How those cruel three (inexorable as the Fates) must
have shaken their sides while writing the 4,000 letters (the
Quarter:y says one thousand), how they must have waited
that clear summer morning, like urchins in ambuscade,
to see the commencement of the fun. It began pretty
early, the drowsy many-capped watchmen had scarcely
monotonously shouted "Past five and a: windy morning,"
when-from the north, south, east, and west, thick as rooks
on a new-sown field, boy sweeps and sooty master sweeps,
with black bags and black brushes, began to assemble
under the windows of the doomed no H. Now and then
ono rang ; very soon a dozen or two of them began to
quarrel, and can we say that the black eyes began to be
the exception. - Presently to them entered several cart;
with sacks of flour, forty heavy waggons from the Thames
side and from different wharves, while a dozen or two of
drays laden with casks of beer got hopelessly entangled
with the long string of sable horses, much to the noisy
'age of the men in the fantail hats and the imperfectly
white stockings. By this time Mrs. Tottenham and her
servant became aroused to a sense of something extraordi-
nary, her knocker having long since gone mad, and the bell
having been pulled out by the roots. The roadway now got
rather blocked, as a dozen yellow travelling chariots, with
four grey horses each, and with postillions wearing white
favours, were vainly attempting to force a way through
the coal waggons and brewers' drays, as if a dozen Napo-
leons were trying to escape from the defeat tat Waterloo,
to post off to Gretna-green. Our army in Flanders never
swore half so bad. The side pavement grew also tether
encumbered, as in 1809, it must be remembered, Oxford-
road could not be approached from Westminster, Mayfair,
or the City except by devious lanes and small by-

streets. These were crowded with pastrycooks' men in
charge of 2,500 tarts, 40 men carrying large-sized coffins,
40 butchers bringing legs of mutton, and 40 indignant
fishmongers, each thinking the other insane, shoul-
dering 40 cod and lobsters. These were jostled
by six men bearing an organ, by boys and
men with prints, books, feathers, ices, jellies, wigs,
band-boxes, optical instruments, and by " cleanly cook-
like men," each with a massive wedding cake under his
arm. There were every moment arriving accoucheurs,
dentists, attorneys, hairdressers, tailors, popular preachers,
and parliamentary philanthropists, &c. The crash, jam,
and tumult was tremendous, and it every moment in-
creased as the avalanche rolled on ; as Mr. Barham de-
scribes it, every moment arrived a medical man with in-
struments for the amputat'on of limbs, or attorney pre-
pared to cut off entails—clergymen summoned to minister
to the mind—artists engaged to portray the features of
the body unable to draw near in vehicles, plunged man-
fully into the mob. It would have killed the Laughing
Philosopher, as a crisis, when the uproar was
wildest, the poor widow nearly fit for Bedlam, and
the three wits almost tipsy with laughing, to
have seen the Governor of the Bank of Engle nd drive up
followed hard by the Lord Chief Justice, the chairman of
the East India Company, a Cabinet Minister, the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Gloucester, conspicuous
with his regal liveries, and, last and grandest of all, the
Lord Mayor in his State coach, cocked hat, silk stockings,
bag wigs, footmen, and all. The Mayor had come to re-
lease soma impressed seamen.
Hook had thrown everywhere the right bait. The
Archbishop hid come to hear the dying confession of the
author of Junius, or some such criminal ; the Duke of
Gloucester to see a dying nurse, once an attendant of his
mother; revelations about a gigantic forgery had drawn
the Governor of the Bank. There were never less than
a dozen people beating at the door of No. 54. The
widow was fainting again fast. Th) Lord Mayo
drove off foaming, to make a furious complaint at the
Marlborough-street police-office. Tho street by this time
was packed as close as a bale of cotton in a New Orleans
press. The three wicked wags, weary of laughing. retired
from the window for a short time to lunch.

The crowd of mere spectators had become tremendous,
and the pickpockets were peculiarly busy iu encouraging
fights. Presently the police officers from the Marlborough-
street office arrive 3, and tried to restore order, but for a
long time in vain. There were horses transfix ,t 1 by
shafts; coach-panels stove in; china smashed, jellies
trodden on, bier-barrels burst, wino spilt, pianos
run into by gigs, and glass- coaches reduced to
powder by coal-carts and furniture vans. At four o'clock
this witches' Sabbath still continued,a,lthough officers were
stationed at every corner to intreat and implore and order
infatuated tradesmen not to convoy goods to the house to
which they seemed all magnetically drawn, like moths to
the alluring flame of a candle. Just as order was dawn-
ing, about five o'clock, the street darkened with servants
of every description wanting places—at last darkness and
silence settled down on the quieted street, still strewn with
the debris of a fatal day.
The papers had never had such a godsend : it beat the
Despard conspiracy or the battle of Trafalgar. They
brimmed over with jokes about it, indignant complaints,
li and fresh daily theories about the "close contriver of all
harms." Very large rewards were offered by the police.
The loss and injury of property had been considerable.
No. 51 (a quiet, respectable-looking house, half-way up on
the left-hand side as you face the Middlesex Hospital) be-
came a place of pilgrimage for sightseers. Everyone
talked about the affair, some with admiration,
others with indignation. It was universally pro-
nounced an unfeeling but successful hoax. Anybody
could have done it, but very few would have origi-
nated it—still fewer have had the energy or animal
spirits to carry it out on so gigantic a scale. In the
Green-rooms Theodore Hook was more thau suspected,
but, alarmed at his own triumph, he and his confederates
maintained a firm silence. Hook just at this time, under
plea of illness, retired to the country—we believe to Ox-
ford —where he proposed to continuo his terms, but never
did. When it had all blown over he returned to town, as
demurely innocent as a monkey who has been stealing.
The hoax was in a short time imitated in the provinces
and in Paris, but for these plagiarisms of an original idea
Hook, in " Gilbert Gurney," professes a sarcastic con-
tempt. No. 54 is now St. Peter's Hospital.