Barry Lyndon

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BARRY LYNDON

FROM THE WORKS OF

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

EDITED BY WALTER JERROLD

CONTENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

I.--MY PEDIGREE AND FAMILY--UNDERGO THE INFLUENCE OF THE TENDER
PASSION

II.--IN WHICH I SHOW MYSELF TO BE A MAN OF SPIRIT

III.--I MAKE A FALSE START IN THE GENTEEL WORLD

IV.--IN WHICH BARRY TAKES A NEAR VIEW OF MILITARY GLORY

V.--IN WHICH BARRY TRIES TO REMOVE AS FAR FROM MILITARY GLORY AS
POSSIBLE

VI.--THE CRIMP WAGGON--MILITARY EPISODES

VII.--BARRY LEADS A GARRISON LIFE, AND FINDS MANY FRIENDS THERE

VIII.--BARRY BIDS ADIEU TO THE MILITARY PROFESSION

IX.--I APPEAR IN A MANNER BECOMING MY NAME AND LINEAGE

X.--MORE RUNS OF LUCK

XI.--IN WHICH THE LUCK GOES AGAINST BARRY

XII.--CONTAINS THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF THE PRINCESS OF X-----

XIII.--I CONTINUE MY CAREER AS A MAN OF FASHION

XIV.--I RETURN TO IRELAND, AND EXHIBIT MY SPLENDOUR AND GENEROSITY
IN THAT KINGDOM

XV.--I PAY COURT TO MY LADY LYNDON

XVI.--I PROVIDE NOBLY FOR MY FAMILY, AND ATTAIN THE HEIGHT OF MY
(SEEMING) GOOD FORTUNE

XVII.--I APPEAR AS AN ORNAMENT OF ENGLISH SOCIETY

XVIII.--IN WHICH MY GOOD FORTUNE BEGINS TO WAVER

XIX.--CONCLUSION

BARRY LYNDON

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Barry Lyndon--far from the best known, but by some critics acclaimed
as the finest, of Thackeray's works--appeared originally as a serial
a few years before VANITY FAIR was written; yet it was not published
in book form, and then not by itself, until after the publication of
VANITY FAIR, PENDENNIS, ESMOND and THE NEWCOMES had placed its
author in the forefront of the literary men of the day. So many
years after the event we cannot help wondering why the story was not
earlier put in book form; for in its delineation of the character of
an adventurer it is as great as VANITY FAIR, while for the local
colour of history, if I may put it so, it is no undistinguished
precursor of ESMOND.

In the number of FRASER'S MAGAZINE for January 1844 appeared the
first instalment of 'THE LUCK OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ., A ROMANCE OF
THE LAST CENTURY, by FitzBoodle,' and the story continued to appear
month by month--with the exception of October--up to the end of the
year, when the concluding portion was signed 'G. S. FitzBoodle.'
FITZBOODLE'S CONFESSIONS, it should be added, had appeared
occasionally in the magazine during the years immediately precedent,
so that the pseudonym was familiar to FRASER'S readers. The story
was written, according to its author's own words, 'with a great deal
of dulness, unwillingness and labour,' and was evidently done as the
instalments were required, for in August he wrote 'read for "B. L."
all the morning at the club,' and four days later of '"B. L." lying
like a nightmare on my mind.' The journey to the East--which was to
give us in literary results NOTES OF A JOURNEY FROM CORNHILL TO
GRAND CAIRO--was begun with BARRY LYNDON yet unfinished, for at
Malta the author noted on the first three days of November--'Wrote
Barry but slowly and with great difficulty.' 'Wrote Barry with no
more success than yesterday.' 'Finished Barry after great throes
late at night.' In the number of Fraser's for the following month,
as I have said, the conclusion appeared. A dozen years later, in
1856, the story formed the first part of the third volume of
Thackeray's MISCELLANIES, when it was called MEMOIRS OF BARRY
LYNDON, ESQ., WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. Since then, it has nearly always
been issued with other matter, as though it were not strong enough
to stand alone, or as though the importance of a work was mainly to
be gauged by the number of pages to be crowded into one cover. The
scheme of the present edition fortunately allows fitting honour to
be done to the memoirs of the great adventurer.

To come from the story as a whole to the personality of the
eponymous hero. Three widely-differing historical individuals are
suggested as having contributed to the composite portrait. Best
known of these was that very prince among adventurers, G. J.
Casanova de Seingalt, a man who in the latter half of the eighteenth
century played the part of adventurer--and generally that of the
successful adventurer--in most of the European capitals; who within
the first five-and-twenty years of his life had been 'abbe,
secretary to Cardinal Aquaviva, ensign, and violinist, at Rome,
Constantinople, Corfu, and his own birthplace (Venice), where he
cured a senator of apoplexy.' His autobiography, MEMOIRES ECRIT PAR
LUI MEME (in twelve volumes), has been described as 'unmatched as a
self-revelation of scoundrelism.' It has also been suggested, with I
think far less colour of probability, that the original of Barry was
the diplomatist and satiric poet Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, whom
Dr Johnson described as 'our lively and elegant though too
licentious lyrick bard.' The third original, and one who, there
cannot be the slightest doubt, contributed features to the great
portrait, is a certain Andrew Robinson Stoney, afterwards Stoney-
Bowes.

The original of the Countess Lyndon was Mary Eleanor Bowes, Dowager
Countess of Strathmore, and heiress of a very wealthy Durham family.
This lady had many suitors, but in 1777 Stoney, a bankrupt
lieutenant on half pay, who had fought a duel on her behalf, induced
her to marry him, and subsequently hyphenated her name with his own.
He became member of Parliament, and ran such extravagant courses as
does Barry Lyndon, treated his wife with similar barbarity, abducted
her when she had escaped from him, and then, after being divorced,
found his way to a debtors' prison. There are similarities here
which no seeker after originals can overlook. Mrs Ritchie says that
her father had a friend at Paris, 'a Mr Bowes, who may have first
told him this history of which the details are almost incredible, as
quoted from the papers of the time.' The name of Thackeray's friend
is a curious coincidence, unless, as may well have been the case, he
was a connection of the family into which the notorious adventurer
had married. It is not unlikely that Thackeray had seen the work
published in 1810--the year of Stoney-Bowes's death--in which the
whole unhappy romance was set forth. This was 'THE LIVES OF ANDREW
ROBINSON BOWES ESQ., and THE COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE. Written from
thirty-three years' Professional Attendance, from letters and other
well authenticated Documents by Jesse Foot, Surgeon.' In this book
we find several incidents similar to ones in the story. Bowes cut
down all the timber on his wife's estate, but 'the neighbours would
not buy it.' Such practical jokes as Barry Lyndon played upon his
son's tutor were played by Bowes on his chaplain. The story of
Stoney and his marriage will be found briefly given in the notice of
the Countess's life in the DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY.

Whence that part of the romantic interlude dealing with the stay in
the Duchy of X----, dealt with in chapter x., etc., was inspired,
Thackeray's own note\books (as quoted by Mrs Ritchie) conclusively
show: 'January 4,1844. Read in a silly book called L'EMPIRE, a good
story about the first K. of Wurtemberg's wife; killed by her husband
for adultery. Frederic William, born in 1734 (?), m. in 1780 the
Princess Caroline of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel, who died the 27th
September 1788. For the rest of the story see L'EMPIRE, OU DIX ANS
SOUS NAPOLEON, PAR UN CHAMBELLAN: Paris, Allardin, 1836; vol. i.
220.' The 'Captain Freny' to whom Barry owed his adventures on his
journey to Dublin (chapter iii.) was a notorious highwayman, on
whose doings Thackeray had enlarged in the fifteenth chapter of his
IRISH SKETCH BOOK.

Despite the slowness with which it was written, and the seeming
neglect with which it was permitted to remain unreprinted, BARRY
LYNDON was to be hailed by competent critics as one of Thackeray's
finest performances, though the author himself seems to have had no
strong regard for the story. His daughter has recorded, 'My father
once said to me when I was a girl: "You needn't read BARRY LYNDON,
you won't like it." Indeed, it is scarcely a book to LIKE, but one
to admire and to wonder at for its consummate power and mastery.'
Another novelist, Anthony Trollope, has said of it: 'In imagination,
language, construction, and general literary capacity, Thackeray
never did anything more remarkable than BARRY LYNDON.' Mr Leslie
Stephen says: 'All later critics have recognised in this book one of
his most powerful performances. In directness and vigour he never
surpassed it.'

W.J.

The Memoires of BARRY LYNDON, ESQ.

CHAPTER I

MY PEDIGREE AND FAMILY--UNDERGO THE INFLUENCE OF THE TENDER PASSION

Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in
this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. Ever since ours
was a family (and that must be very NEAR Adam's time,--so old,
noble, and illustrious are the Barrys, as everybody knows) women
have played a mighty part with the destinies of our race.

I presume that there is no gentleman in Europe that has not heard of
the house of Barry of Barryogue, of the kingdom of Ireland, than
which a more famous name is not to be found in Gwillim or D'Hozier;
and though, as a man of the world, I have learned to despise
heartily the claims of some PRETENDERS to high birth who have no
more genealogy than the lacquey who cleans my boots, and though I
laugh to utter scorn the boasting of many of my countrymen, who are
all for descending from kings of Ireland, and talk of a domain no
bigger than would feed a pig as if it were a principality; yet truth
compels me to assert that my family was the noblest of the island,
and, perhaps, of the universal world; while their possessions, now
insignificant and torn from us by war, by treachery, by the loss of
time, by ancestral extravagance, by adhesion to the old faith and
monarch, were formerly prodigious, and embraced many counties, at a
time when Ireland was vastly more prosperous than now. I would
assume the Irish crown over my coat-of-arms, but that there are so
many silly pretenders to that distinction who bear it and render it
common.

Who knows, but for the fault of a woman, I might have been wearing
it now? You start with incredulity. I say, why not? Had there been a
gallant chief to lead my countrymen, instead or puling knaves who
bent the knee to King Richard II., they might have been freemen; had
there been a resolute leader to meet the murderous ruffian Oliver
Cromwell, we should have shaken off the English for ever. But there
was no Barry in the field against the usurper; on the contrary, my
ancestor, Simon de Bary, came over with the first-named monarch, and
married the daughter of the then King of Munster, whose sons in
battle he pitilessly slew.

In Oliver's time it was too late for a chief of the name of Barry to
lift up his war-cry against that of the murderous brewer. We were
princes of the land no longer; our unhappy race had lost its
possessions a century previously, and by the most shameful treason.
This I know to be the fact, for my mother has often told me the
story, and besides had worked it in a worsted pedigree which hung up
in the yellow saloon at Barryville where we lived.

That very estate which the Lyndons now possess in Ireland was once
the property of my race. Rory Barry of Barryogue owned it in
Elizabeth's time, and half Munster beside. The Barry was always in
feud with the O'Mahonys in those times; and, as it happened, a
certain English colonel passed through the former's country with a
body of men-at-arms, on the very day when the O'Mahonys had made an
inroad upon our territories, and carried off a frightful plunder of
our flocks and herds.

This young Englishman, whose name was Roger Lyndon, Linden, or
Lyndaine, having been most hospitably received by the Barry, and
finding him just on the point of carrying an inroad into the
O'Mahonys' land, offered the aid of himself and his lances, and
behaved himself so well, as it appeared, that the O'Mahonys were
entirely overcome, all the Barrys' property restored, and with it,
says the old chronicle, twice as much of the O'Mahonys' goods and
cattle.

It was the setting in of the winter season, and the young soldier
was pressed by the Barry not to quit his house of Barryogue, and
remained there during several months, his men being quartered with
Barry's own gallowglasses, man by man in the cottages round about.
They conducted themselves, as is their wont, with the most
intolerable insolence towards the Irish; so much so, that fights and
murders continually ensued, and the people vowed to destroy them.

The Barry's son (from whom I descend) was as hostile to the English
as any other man on his domain; and, as they would not go when
bidden, he and his friends consulted together and determined on
destroying these English to a man.

But they had let a woman into their plot, and this was the Barry's
daughter. She was in love with the English Lyndon, and broke the
whole secret to him; and the dastardly English prevented the just
massacre of themselves by falling on the Irish, and destroying
Phaudrig Barry, my ancestor, and many hundreds of his men. The cross
at Barrycross near Carrignadihioul is the spot where the odious
butchery took place.

Lyndon married the daughter of Roderick Barry, and claimed the
estate which he left: and though the descendants of Phaudrig were
alive, as indeed they are in my person,[Footnote: As we have never
been able to find proofs of the marriage of my ancestor Phaudrig
with his wife, I make no doubt that Lyndon destroyed the contract,
and murdered the priest and witnesses of the marriage.--B. L.] on
appealing to the English courts, the estate was awarded to the
Englishman, as has ever been the case where English and Irish were
concerned.

Thus, had it not been for the weakness of a woman, I should have
been born to the possession of those very estates which afterwards
came to me by merit, as you shall hear. But to proceed with my
family, history.

My father was well known to the best circles in this kingdom, as in
that of Ireland, under the name of Roaring Harry Barry. He was bred
like many other young sons of genteel families to the profession of
the law, being articled to a celebrated attorney of Sackville Street
in the city of Dublin; and, from his great genius and aptitude for
learning, there is no doubt he would have made an eminent figure in
his profession, had not his social qualities, love of field-sports,
and extraordinary graces of manner, marked him out for a higher
sphere. While he was attorney's clerk he kept seven race-horses, and
hunted regularly both with the Kildare and Wicklow hunts; and rode
on his grey horse Endymion that famous match against Captain Punter,
which is still remembered by lovers of the sport, and of which I
caused a splendid picture to be made and hung over my dining-hall
mantelpiece at Castle Lyndon. A year afterwards he had the honour of
riding that very horse Endymion before his late Majesty King George
II. at New-market, and won the plate there and the attention of the
august sovereign.

Although he was only the second son of our family, my dear father
came naturally into the estate (now miserably reduced to L400 a
year); for my grandfather's eldest son Cornelius Barry (called the
Chevalier Borgne, from a wound which he received in Germany)
remained constant to the old religion in which our family was
educated, and not only served abroad with credit, but against His
Most Sacred Majesty George II. in the unhappy Scotch disturbances in
'45. We shall hear more of the Chevalier hereafter.

For the conversion of my father I have to thank my dear mother, Miss
Bell Brady, daughter of Ulysses Brady of Castle Brady, county Kerry,
Esquire and J.P. She was the most beautiful woman of her day in
Dublin, and universally called the Dasher there. Seeing her at the
assembly, my father became passionately attached to her; but her
soul was above marrying a Papist or an attorney's clerk; and so, for
the love of her, the good old laws being then in force, my dear
father slipped into my uncle Cornelius's shoes and took the family
estate. Besides the force of my mother's bright eyes, several
persons, and of the genteelest society too, contributed to this
happy change; and I have often heard my mother laughingly tell the
story of my father's recantation, which was solemnly pronounced at
the tavern in the company of Sir Dick Ringwood, Lord Bagwig, Captain
Punter, and two or three other young sparks of the town. Roaring
Harry won 300 pieces that very night at faro, and laid the necessary
information the next morning against his brother; but his conversion
caused a coolness between him and my uncle Corney, who joined the
rebels in consequence.

This great difficulty being settled, my Lord Bagwig lent my father
his own yacht, then lying at the Pigeon House, and the handsome Bell
Brady was induced to run away with him to England, although her
parents were against the match, and her lovers (as I have heard her
tell many thousands of times) were among the most numerous and the
most wealthy in all the kingdom of Ireland. They were married at the
Savoy, and my grandfather dying very soon, Harry Barry, Esquire,
took possession of his paternal property and supported our
illustrious name with credit in London. He pinked the famous Count
Tiercelin behind Montague House, he was a member of 'White's,' and a
frequenter of all the chocolate-houses; and my mother, likewise,
made no small figure. At length, after his great day of triumph
before His Sacred Majesty at Newmarket, Harry's fortune was just on
the point of being made, for the gracious monarch promised to
provide for him. But alas! he was taken in charge by another
monarch, whose will have no delay or denial,--by Death, namely, who
seized upon my father at Chester races, leaving me a helpless
orphan. Peace be to his ashes! He was not faultless, and dissipated
all our princely family property; but he was as brave a fellow as
ever tossed a bumper or called a main, and he drove his coach-and-
six like a man of fashion.

I do not know whether His gracious Majesty was much affected by this
sudden demise of my father, though my mother says he shed some royal
tears on the occasion. But they helped us to nothing: and all that
was found in the house for the wife and creditors was a purse of
ninety guineas, which my dear mother naturally took, with the family
plate, and my father's wardrobe and her own; and putting them into
our great coach, drove off to Holyhead, whence she took shipping for
Ireland. My father's body accompanied us in the finest hearse and
plumes money could buy; for though the husband and wife had
quarrelled repeatedly in life, yet at my father's death his high-
spirited widow forgot all her differences, gave him the grandest
funeral that had been seen for many a day, and erected a monument
over his remains (for which I subsequently paid), which declared him
to be the wisest, purest, and most affectionate of men.

In performing these sad duties over her deceased lord, the widow
spent almost every guinea she had, and, indeed, would have spent a
great deal more, had she discharged one-third of the demands which
the ceremonies occasioned. But the people around our old house of
Barryogue, although they did not like my father for his change of
faith, yet stood by him at this moment, and were for exterminating
the mutes sent by Mr. Plumer of London with the lamented remains.
The monument and vault in the church were then, alas! all that
remained of my vast possessions; for my father had sold every stick
of the property to one Notley, an attorney, and we received but a
cold welcome in his house--a miserable old tumble-down place it was.
[Footnote: In another part of his memoir Mr. Barry will be found to
describe this mansion as one of the most splendid palaces in Europe;
but this is a practice not unusual with his nation; and with respect
to the Irish principality claimed by him, it is known that Mr.
Barry's grandfather was an attorney and maker of his own fortune.]

The splendour of the funeral did not fail to increase the widow
Barry's reputation as a woman of spirit and fashion; and when she
wrote to her brother Michael Brady, that worthy gentleman
immediately rode across the country to fling himself in her arms,
and to invite her in his wife's name to Castle Brady.

Mick and Barry had quarrelled, as all men will, and very high words
had passed between them during Barry's courtship of Miss Bell. When
he took her off, Brady swore he would never forgive Barry or Bell;
but coming to London in the year '46, he fell in once more with
Roaring Harry, and lived in his fine house in Clarges Street, and
lost a few pieces to him at play, and broke a watchman's head or two
in his company,--all of which reminiscences endeared Bell and her
son very much to the good-hearted gentleman, and he received us both
with open arms. Mrs. Barry did not, perhaps wisely, at first make
known to her friends what was her condition; but arriving in a huge
gilt coach with enormous armorial bearings, was taken by her sister-
in-law and the rest of the county for a person of considerable
property and distinction. For a time, then, and as was right and
proper, Mrs. Barry gave the law at Castle Brady. She ordered the
servants to and fro, and taught them, what indeed they much wanted,
a little London neatness; and 'English Redmond,' as I was called,
was treated like a little lord, and had a maid and a footman to
himself; and honest Mick paid their wages,--which was much more than
he was used to do for his own domestics,--doing all in his power to
make his sister decently comfortable under her afflictions. Mamma,
in return, determined that, when her affairs were arranged, she
would make her kind brother a handsome allowance for her son's
maintenance and her own; and promised to have her handsome furniture
brought over from Clarges Street to adorn the somewhat dilapidated
rooms of Castle Brady.

But it turned out that the rascally landlord seized upon every chair
and table that ought by rights to have belonged to the widow. The
estate to which I was heir was in the hands of rapacious creditors;
and the only means of subsistence remaining to the widow and child
was a rent-charge of L50 upon my Lord Bagwig's property, who had
many turf-dealings with the deceased. And so my dear mother's
liberal intentions towards her brother were of course never
fulfilled.

It must be confessed, very much to the discredit of Mrs. Brady of
Castle Brady, that when her sister-in-law's poverty was thus made
manifest, she forgot all the respect which she had been accustomed
to pay her, instantly turned my maid and man-servant out of doors,
and told Mrs. Barry that she might follow them as soon as she chose.
Mrs. Mick was of a low family, and a sordid way of thinking; and
after about a couple of years (during which she had saved almost all
her little income) the widow complied with Madam Brady's desire. At
the same time, giving way to a just though prudently dissimulated
resentment, she made a vow that she would never enter the gates of
Castle Brady while the lady of the house remained alive within them.

She fitted up her new abode with much economy and considerable
taste, and never, for all her poverty, abated a jot of the dignity
which was her due and which all the neighbourhood awarded to her.
How, indeed, could they refuse respect to a lady who had lived in
London, frequented the most fashionable society there, and had been
presented (as she solemnly declared) at Court? These advantages gave
her a right which seems to be pretty unsparingly exercised in
Ireland by those natives who have it,--the right of looking down
with scorn upon all persons who have not had the opportunity of
quitting the mother-country and inhabiting England for a while.
Thus, whenever Madam Brady appeared abroad in a new dress, her
sister-in-law would say, 'Poor creature! how can it be expected that
she should know anything of the fashion?' And though pleased to be
called the handsome widow, as she was, Mrs. Barry was still better
pleased to be called the English widow.

Mrs. Brady, for her part, was not slow to reply: she used to say
that the defunct Barry was a bankrupt and a beggar; and as for the
fashionable society which he saw, he saw it from my Lord Bagwig's
side-table, whose flatterer and hanger-on he was known to be.
Regarding Mrs. Barry, the lady of Castle Brady would make
insinuations still more painful. However, why should we allude to
these charges, or rake up private scandal of a hundred years old? It
was in the reign of George II that the above-named personages lived
and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they
are all equal now; and do not the Sunday papers and the courts of
law supply us every week with more novel and interesting slander?

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