Image credit: William Heath, 1810. Public Domain.
I’ve been away from substack for a few weeks, because I’ve been cheerfully busy with the launch of Superhabits: The Universal System for a Successful Life.
I want to share today an extract from the book, Chapter 8: Eutrapelia, the superhabit of having good leisure. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that “enjoyment is rest for the soul,” and that’s what I wish for all of you this Sunday.
Late one Afternoon, theodore Edward Hook, early nineteenth- century London’s biggest practical joker, was walking the streets of a well-to-do part of the city with a close friend of his. As they passed one particularly luxurious home, they caught the aroma of a delicious dinner about to be served. His colleague wished out loud that he could join that dinner party. Inspired, Hook bet his friend that he could get himself invited.
He promptly walked up the steps to the front door of the house, knocked, and was admitted by a servant, who, assuming he was a guest, showed him to where a large party were gathering for drinks before dinner. Hook right away engaged a group of the guests, and had them captivated by his amusing anecdotes before the dinner party host noticed the intruder. Our hero continued his entertaining chatter until the majority of the dinner guests were gathered around him. The host was finally was able to interrupt, and the conversation went something like this:
Host: “I beg your pardon, sir, but your name, sir — I did not quite catch it — servants are so useless — and I am really a little at a loss.”
Hook: “Don’t apologize, I beg. Smith—my name is Smith— and as you justly observe, servants are always making some stupid blunder or another; I remember a remarkable instance . . . ” — and at this point, he launched into a long and hilarious anecdote about a bumbling servant.
Once that anecdote was over, the host replied that he actually didn’t think it was a problem with the servants, because he “had not anticipated the pleasure of Mr. Smith’s company at dinner this evening.”
Hook’s response was a genius stroke of improvisation, deliber- ately misunderstanding the point:
“No, I dare say not — you said four o’clock in your note, I know, and it is now more than an hour past that, so I could see how you would assume that I wasn’t coming. But the fact is, I have been de- tained in the City — as I was about to explain when — ”
“Wait a minute!” interrupts the host, “Who do you think I am?”
Hook couldn’t possibly know his host’s name, having picked this house at random. But once again, improvisation came to the rescue. “You? why Mr. Thompson, of course,” making up a name “an old
friend of my father’s. I have not had the pleasure, indeed, of meeting you before, but having received your kind invitation yesterday, on my arrival from Liverpool, here I am! I am only afraid that I have kept you waiting.”
“No, no! not at all,” replies the polite host. “But permit me to observe, my dear sir, my name is not exactly Thompson. It is Jones. . . .”
And now, the calculated gamble:
“Jones!—why surely I cannot have—yes, I must— Good Heavens! I see it all! My dear sir, what an unfortunate blunder — I’m in the wrong house — what must you think of such an intrusion! — I am really at a loss for words in which to apologize — you must allow me to leave immediately . . .”
Which pays off:
“Pray don’t think of leaving,” says the hospitable, if rather gull- ible, host, “dinner at your friend’s must be almost over now, since it was supposed to start at four o’clock, and I am only too happy to offer you a seat at my table...”
There followed some further discussion, during which Hook affirmed that he could in no way trespass on the kindness of a stranger, that he must leave immediately, and so on, while the host kept insisting that he join them. And so Hook sat down to a very fine meal and continued to entertain the guests with his wit for the rest of the evening.
An amusing prank. A little dishonest, perhaps, but mostly harm- less—in return for his freeloaded meal, Hook gave his hosts an evening of entertainment.
Some of his other pranks were not so benign.
Hook’s most famous — and most elaborate — joke, the “Berners Street Hoax” of 1809, is still remembered, more than two hundred years later. For some reason that history does not record, a Mrs. Tot- tenham, living at 54 Berners Street, in London, had earned Hook’s displeasure. He, along with two accomplices, spent six weeks writing and mailing four thousand letters, ordering a wide range of food and merchandise, and inviting a large number of people, all to arrive on the same given date at Mrs. Tottenham’s home.
The day began with several sooty boys showing up at the door, each having received a request for a chimney sweep. While the ser- vant who answered the door was chasing them away, a number of large wagons heavily loaded with coal deliveries arrived, blocking the street. As the wagon drivers tried to sort out the mess, several cooks appeared, each carrying a large wedding cake. They were followed by waves of “tailors, boot-makers, upholders [undertakers] with cof- fins,” and wagons delivering beer barrels.
As the coal wagons tried to extricate themselves from the con- gestion, a dozen carriages arrived, each expecting to take a married couple to their honeymoon. Then came doctors with instruments for amputation, lawyers, clergymen, and portrait painters. As each group arrived, they found the street to be thoroughly jammed, but nevertheless tried to force their way through to the front door to make their delivery and collect payment—none of the orders had been paid in advance.
By this time, it was noon. Forty fishmongers arrived, each bear- ing a large delivery of fresh fish, and then forty butchers with as many legs of mutton. At the peak of the chaos, as “the poor old lady grew to be bordering on temporary insanity,” the lord mayor of London arrived. He was followed in turn by the governor of the Bank of Eng- land, the chairman of the East India Company, and the Duke of Gloucester.
How did Hook get them to show up?
Hook was well-connected and had access to all sorts of gossip. He knew enough stories about each of these four powerful visitors that he had been able to include in his invitation to each of them tempting insinuations that would force them to come. In his letter to the Duke of Gloucester, for example, he wrote that an old woman, formerly a lady-in-waiting to the King’s mother, lay dying and had some confidential information (i.e., gossip) that she wanted to share with him.
Police were ordered to Berners Street in large numbers, to re- store order. As they arrived, they ran into six large men delivering an organ, several barbers carrying new wigs, and a small army of den- tists. Around five o’clock in the afternoon, while the police were still trying to calm everything down, a horde of out-of-work servants descended on the street from every direction, to apply for positions that had been posted. It was late in the evening when the street was finally brought back to normal.
Hook and his accomplices, who had rented the apartment across the street for the day and were watching the whole thing, must have found it all hysterically funny. But this was no harmless joke. There was the day-long disruption of the household and indeed the entire street, the large number of police who had to be occupied with trying to restore order, the stress on Mrs. Tottenham and her family and servants—and the very large number of butchers, bakers, coffin makers, fishmongers, and so on, all of whom lost money and time preparing and delivering goods they were never paid for.
Hook was strongly suspected of being behind the hoax, since he was so well known as a practical joker. Many tried to sue him for their losses, but there wasn’t sufficient evidence and all charges were dropped.
His joking around was not just harmful to his victims. It eventu- ally ruined his own life, too. He had many talents, including intelligence, quick wit, and charm. But he wasted these in a life of frivolity. He did get one civil service appointment, as government treasurer for the island of Mauritius, but he didn’t take it seriously enough. It ended badly when one of his subordinates disappeared with cash worth over a million dollars in today’s money, and Hook was held liable. He died at a fairly young age, severely in debt, leaving his wife and children more or less destitute.
There is a superhabit for dealing with the desire to have fun. The habit is called Eutrapelia, the habit of playing well — of having good leisure. Eutrapelia is a Greek word that means wittiness or liveliness. We use it because there’s no English word that quite describes the habit of playing well.
The vice of “frivolity” opposes Eutrapelia from one extreme: too much playfulness. Frivolity tends to come in one of three types. The first is joking that is harmful or offensive. Hook’s Berners Street Hoax is an example of this. The second type is joking around at the wrong time or place. Putting a fake spider on a friend’s shoulder might be funny in a locker room, for example, but not in a courtroom. The third type of excessive playfulness is using your leisure time in ways that would undo any of the superhabits that you have developed. If you’ve spent weeks or months developing the superhabit of Restraint, for example, it would be contrary to Eutrapelia to spend your vacation giving in to every single desire, because you’d be undoing all your efforts to build Restraint.
The opposite extreme is having too little playfulness, or none at all. It is the vice of mirthlessness, the inability or unwillingness to relax, to enjoy leisure time. Mirthlessness is a vice, because playful- ness is good for you. Studies show that playful adults have greater life satisfaction, for example.
Too little playfulness can also cause serious problems…