Out of The Aeons 10: Hook, Line & Ritual (Patreon)

What is this, creeping into your inboxes after a long night of brandy and Faro...is it nothing more than a seeking Out of The Aeons? Indeed it is! Hello once more and welcome back to the vagrant magicks of our temporal passion. This quarter we approach the late Georgian into Regency era, famed for its pride and its prejudice, its sense of scientific reason and its rakish sensibility. The focus of summoning on this occasion is the matter of a prank or practical joke - for on the 27th of November 1809* the events of the Berners Street Hoax played out. Here at the Apocalypse Players we have dug deep into the Arts of Chronomancy to see just how much this Hoax was an act of so called "gentlemanly wit" and how much was perhaps subject to far more demonic forces of speculation...

The Hazard Room, Thomas Rowlandson, watercolour (1792), Victoria & Albert Museum

Nowhere was it more apparent than the London of 1809 that the world had changed in the face of economic and scientific achievements. This was a city of more easily accessible goods, vigorous international commerce, trades in commodities and speculation on the financial markets. The age of The Adventurers was very much in place (by which we mean the Adventure Capitalists, not a player party of Barbarian, Dwarf, Thief and Mage, as one might expect...though more from me on those early 17th Century Capitalist Adventurers another time, JC). With such change in financial behaviour and circumstance, there came an inevitable shift too in morality and human purpose. With the rise of the Georgian beau and the progress towards Byronic Romanticism, the rake's charm and the rogue's wager had become a gentlemanly purusuit.  Decadence was a proof of elite status - dissolute behaviour a marker of the age. And so a season of hoaxes occurred, with Berners Street at the very heart of the examples, all reflecting a certain fluidity of financial position and philosophy relating to the appearance of things. Reputation, in the Georgian era, walked hand in hand with scandal. And at the heart of that paradox there was always a bet to be made - an honour to be maintained - and someone ready to take the fall...

James Gillray's 1808 satire, published by Hannah Humphrey - more evidence that when the English talk about the weather, they are rarely only ever talking about the weather (Public Domain).

Enter upon our stage Messrs. Theodore Hook and Samuel Beazley, Georgian "gentlemen", writers, architects, "play-boys", gamers and practical jokers. The papers of the day state that, likely in order to settle a bet, Hook, and by association his friend Beazley, saw fit to set about a hoax at No. 54 Berners St, where there lived one Mrs Tottenham (some detailed research here has suggested Tottingham, according to Parish records). The Morning Post , November 28th, 1810, reports the following:

"The greatest hoax that ever has been heard of in this metropolis was yesterday practised in Berners street, Oxford Street. The House of Mrs TOTTENHAM, a Lady of fortune, at No. 54, was beset by about a dozen tradespeople at one time, with their various commodities, and from the confusion altogether such crowds had collected as to render the street impassable. Wagons laden with coals from the Paddington wharfs, upholsterer’s goods in cart loads, organs, piano-fortes, linens, jewellery, and every other description of furniture sufficient to have stocked the whole street, were lodged as near as possible to the door of 54, with anxious trades-people and a laughing mob. About this time the LORD MAYOR of London arrived in his carriage, and two livery servants, but his Lordship’s stay was short, and he was driven to Marlborough-street Police Office."

The article goes on to give examples of the sort of letters Hook is supposed to have sent to the provisioners and tradesmen, the musicians and the MPs in order to send them to No.54, all on the very same day and all in the name of Mrs Tottenham.  Rumour has it that Hook, Beazley and others (one source insists it was a mysterious actress, but her name, if it was ever known, is lost to the shadows of time) hired an apartment overlooking the scene to enjoy the ensuing show. Reports state that no legal repercussions followed, but Beazley and Hook were both forced to take a few weeks in the country immediately after the affair.  This end point is generally agreed upon, but the machinations of how the bet came in to being are murky at best. One version of the story goes that, strolling down Oxford Street, the two young men were discussing reputations won and lost and Hook saw the "modest No. 54 Berners Street" and at once, on a whim, declared that he could make it, or any such place like it, the most talked about address in town.

Two gentlemen of fashion - not Hook & Beazley, but perhaps not far from the type...

The exact details of so "humorous" (cruel?) an exploit appear impossible to fix. Some say this was a simple bet between Samuel Beazley and Hook for the sum of a guinea - around £48.50 in new money. Others say it was purely for the thrill of the matter. Some suggest Hook had a personal vendetta against Mrs Tottenham/Tottingham/Tatteringhem?/Tatterdemallion - certainly other hoaxes previous to Berners Street had centred around the matter of revenge. Others denied Mrs Tottenham her part in the tale, stating it was "a certain Gentleman" at the address, not an innocent woman of some fortune. The dates too are uncertain* - the Morning Post delivers the news as November 1810 but other reports state this all happened in 1809, variously on the 27th to 29th November. A few Regency commentators even question wether the event happened at all, and if it did, to what extent was it retrospectively shaped in relation to Hook's nature and fame. His is the portrait of a complicated teller of light opera tales; a friend of the Prince Regent and the son of a composer, whose highly fictitious contemporary novels would go on to be extremely popular, and whose 1817 management of the Governor Accountancy of Mauritius ended in scandal, dismissal and debt. Oh, and in addition, Hook is credited as being the first recorded recipient of a postcard in 1840. The card is said to have depicted postal workers on the front and was most likely sent by himself...

Theodore Hook, trickster? By Samuel de Wilde, 1806 (Getty)

Truth is not always needed for the dark arts of the Aeons. In the case of the Berners Street Hoax, the shades of grey are perhaps assistant to our horology . What is clear is that the Hoax offers a gateway to understanding some perverse spirit of the age. Berners Street was not the only setting for such an affair - both before and after 1809 similar hoaxes were reported in Bond Street, Great Prescott Street, Sloane Street and indeed an estate outside Edinburgh. The notion of a gentleman choosing to dedicate so much energy and intellect to such a task seems to capture the contradictory nature of a generation of young men and women in the sphere of the ageing Prince Regent. This is the same generation that would volunteer to fight Napoleon in the costly and brutal peninsular campaign (Beazley among them) and who would battle for victory at Waterloo . The spirit of the wager is to be remembered - most articles attempting to deal with the matter do so by way of a litany of details and commodities. Linens. Chimney sweeps. Piano-fortes. Things. Imagine it! So many THINGS being ordered to one place. What larks! How rude! How fun! How WRONG! Public comments on such articles even now ring with a kind of quiet, liberal fury that anyone could do anything so utterly silly... Yet during my study of the event, I was surprised to find few if any psychological examinations of motive. It is as if the report alone is all that can be managed. The closest analysis is regarding the financial history of the years leading up to the event, the changes evident in upper and middle class values and the growth of a post agricultural society towards something altogether more Romantic...

The Invisibles, James Gilray 1810, Victoria & Albert Museum

One suggestion regarding the redistribution of wealth for the period is that the gaming mad Georgians literally gambled inheritances away in their millions. Certainly a great many men and women of wealth and power did suffer debts due to games of chance.  Beau Brummel was exiled due to gambling debts. Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire ran her own Faro bank and lost thousands playing and hosting - in today's money she died a staggering 3.7 million pounds in debt. The Earl of Sandwich is said to have invented his culinary masterpiece in order that he might not have to leave the gaming table for his meal. The notorious Whig statesman Charles James Fox was famed for his love of a wager, once spending 5 days at The Club (Whites) and gaming throughout, except for a brief trip to Parliament, having not slept for days. Indeed it was noted that, despite his evident intelligence and ability, Fox took great delight in games of pure luck over those of skill, favouring the mad sport of complete chance above all else.

Thomas Rowlandson's 'The English Dance of Death' , Flickr, Commons.

The British love of sport and fortune may, in some ways, have been part of why the Hoax appealed to men - and women - as intelligent and privileged as Beazley and Hook. The thrill of manipulating a society keen to trust to credit and patronage is a dark and sardonic pleasure, hinting at a vision that sees beyond the petty, civilising power of money, banking and above all speculation. Hook perhaps wanted to perversely prod and puncture the veneer of order and trust in place, when in truth men and women are usually only a few individual days away from a total collapse of civilised behaviour. This was a society that frequently appeared deeply hypocritical regarding liberty and piety whilst indulging a Prince and a ruling elite involved in awful abuses of power, sexual appetite, slavery and economy. A society deeply captivated by the power of the cartoon and the satire in the hands of Rowlandson and Gillray, as much as the elegant manners and sympathetic powers of Jane Austen's characters and their delicate sentiments. The hoax was foolish and childish - it was impish and silly - but it also made a curious point. We are creatures of trust and consumption. We order things expecting them to arrive - to be served up to us, and for a price we believe is worth paying. But perhaps behind such arrangements a terrible power lies regarding what fortune may bring. A cold, uncaring universe gives no thought to who orders what. It mechanistically delivers, offering chaos and unstoppable forces in equal measure...

James Gillray's Siege de la Colonne de Pompee - images@wellcome.ac.uk

In looking into the events of the Hoax unfolding I was held by the power of both Hook and Beazley needing to escape the shifting, mercurial world of the City Banks & Officers of the Peace in order to evade prosecution. They went into the old country to laugh at their wit. Or did they? Perhaps they left to seek out something older and quieter. I began to see Hook hiding in a village by an old estate, licking foolish, self-inflicted wounds of the restless, metaphysical kind. Driven there by his desire to play his hand against the fates - thrown by the Star that fortune had hurled at him, having uncovered something dreadful and strange. Without a doubt his life went on to be full of fortune, good and bad - as if blessed by some odd power or presence. Beazley too escaped death in Portugal, became a playwright and an architect - designing the great Lyceum theatre of the present West End, a temple to performance that shines even now in the devilish London air. But the true cost of how these rogues came across their fortunes, and the weird debt their wager brought about is known only to a few, who have their own dark reasons for knowing the tale. For your sake, reader, I note it down here, in the Apocalypse Players' record of the same - the true history of the Berners Street Hoax: Hook, Line & Ritual...

Comet, Thomas Rowldandson, 1821 (Encyclopedia Britannica)