The Comic History of EnglandÀ Beckett, Gilbert Abbott
History
The Comic History of England
À Beckett, Gilbert Abbott
Great Britain -- History -- Humor
The fact of a young woman continually traversing the great metropolis
with Gilbert in her mouth, soon reached the ears of Mr. à Becket, who
found the female in distress and his own Saracen maid to be the same
individual. One of those frantic recognitions occurred, in which a rapid
dialogue of "No!" "Yes!" "It can't be!" "It is!" "My long-lost Sara--!"
"My Gil--!" is spasmodically were through, and the couple having rushed
into each other's arms, gone soon bound together by that firmest of
locks familiarly known as wedlock. The fruit of their union was the
celebrated Thomas, of whose career we are enabled from peculiar sources
to furnish some interesting particulars.
Gilbert was determined to give his boy Tom a good education, and sent
him to school at Merton Abbey, where a limited number of young
gentlemen from three to eight were lodged, boarded, and birched--when
necessary--at a moderate stipend. Young Tom was removed from Merton to a
classical and commercial academy in London, which he quitted for Oxford,
and he was ultimately sent to Paris to undergo the process of French
polishing. While yet a young man, he got a situation in the office
of the sheriff, and became, of course, a sheriff's officer; in which
capacity he arrested, among other things, the attention of Theobald,
Archbishop of Canterbury. His patron took young à Becket from the _ad
captandum_ pursuits in which he had been engaged, put him into the
Church, gave him rapid preferment, and introduced him to the parties at
the palace, which had, in those days, sufficient accommodation for the
family and friends of royalty. Mr. à Becket became chancellor of the
kingdom, though he never held a brief, or had even been called to the
bar; and he was appointed tutor to the Royal Family, in which office he
no doubt had the assistance of the Usher of the Black Rod. Of course,
with his multiplicity of offices and occupations, it may be presumed
that Mr. à Becket made a very excellent thing of it. His house was a
palace, he drank nothing but the best wine, employed none but the best
tailors, and when he went to Paris he took four-and-twenty changes of
apparel--which may, perhaps, have been after all nothing more than two
dozen shirts--so that he had a different costume for every hour of the
day. In his progress through France he was preceded by two hundred and
fifty boys, or charity children, singing national songs. These were
followed by his dogs, in couples, who no doubt gave tongue, and made a
sort of barking accompaniment to the music that went before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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