[Burlesques by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link bookBurlesques CHAPTER XXIV 173/194
We are happy to state that it is a comfortable and almost a prosperous one. The Honorable and Right Reverend Lionel Thistlewood, Lord Bishop of Bullocksmithy, was mentioned as the uncle of Lady Angelina Silvertop. Her elopement with her cousin caused deep emotion to the venerable prelate: he returned to the palace at Bullocksmithy, of which he had been for thirty years the episcopal ornament, and where he married three wives, who lie buried in his Cathedral Church of St.Boniface, Bullocksmithy. The admirable man has rejoined those whom he loved.
As he was preparing a charge to his clergy in his study after dinner, the Lord Bishop fell suddenly down in a fit of apoplexy; his butler, bringing in his accustomed dish of devilled kidneys for supper, discovered the venerable form extended on the Turkey carpet with a glass of Madeira in his hand; but life was extinct: and surgical aid was therefore not particularly useful. All the late prelate's wives had fortunes, which the admirable man increased by thrift, the judicious sale of leases which fell in during his episcopacy, &c.
He left three hundred thousand pounds--divided between his nephew and niece--not a greater sum than has been left by several deceased Irish prelates. What Lord Southdown has done with his share we are not called upon to state.
He has composed an epitaph to the Martyr of Bullocksmithy, which does him infinite credit.
But we are happy to state that Lady Angelina Silvertop presented five hundred pounds to her faithful and affectionate servant, Mary Ann Hoggins, on her marriage with Mr.James Plush, to whom her Ladyship also made a handsome present--namely, the lease, good-will, and fixtures of the "Wheel of Fortune" public-house, near Shepherd's Market, May Fair: a house greatly frequented by all the nobility's footmen, doing a genteel stroke of business in the neighborhood, and where, as we have heard, the "Butlers' Club" is held. Here Mr.Plush lives happy in a blooming and interesting wife: reconciled to a middle sphere of life, as he was to a humbler and a higher one before.
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