THE SCENE: A loudmouthed child embarrassing a parent at a dinner party seems to be an ageless phenomenon, as is demonstrated by this passage about Sir Walter Raleigh and his son.
THE TEXT: Walter Raleigh being invited to dinner to some great person where his son was to go with him, he said to his son, “Thou art expected today at dinner to go along with me, but thou art such a quarrelsome, affronting [redacted] that I am ashamed to have such a bear in my company.”
Mr. Walter humbled himself to his father, and promised he would behave himself mighty mannerly. So away they went. He sat next to his father and was very demure at least half dinner time.
Then said he, “I, this morning, not having the fear of God before my eyes but by the instigation of the devil, went to a whore. I was very eager of her, kissed her, and went to enjoy her, but she thrust me from her, and vowed I should not, “For your father lay with me but an hour ago.”
[Sir Walter Raleigh], being so strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face of a gentleman that say next to him and said, “Box about, ‘twill come to my father anon.”
– Brief Lives, John Aubrey, 17th Century AD
