Barry Lyndon

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> Barry Lyndon

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

'But do you know HOW she died, sir? That, too, is a mystery.
Weissenborn, the page, was concerned in this dark tragedy; and the
secret was so dreadful, that never, believe me, till Prince Victor's
death, did I reveal it.

'After the fatal ESCLANDRE which the Princess had made, the Prince
sent for Weissenborn, and binding him by the most solemn adjuration
to secrecy (he only broke it to his wife many years after: indeed,
there is no secret in the world that women cannot know if they
will), despatched him on the following mysterious commission.

'"There lives," said his Highness, "on the Kehl side of the river,
opposite to Strasbourg, a man whose residence you will easily find
out from his name, which is MONSIEUR DE STRASBOURG. You will make
your inquiries concerning him quietly, and without occasioning any
remark; perhaps you had better go into Strasbourg for the purpose,
where the person is quite well known. You will take with you any
comrade on whom you can perfectly rely: the lives of both, remember,
depend on your secrecy. You will find out some period when MONSIEUR
DE STRASBOURG is alone, or only in company of the domestic who lives
with him (I myself visited the man by accident on my return from
Paris five years since, and hence am induced to send for him now, in
my present emergency). You will have your carriage waiting at his
door at night; and you and your comrade will enter his house masked;
and present him with a purse of a hundred louis; promising him
double that sum on his return from his expedition. If he refuse, you
must use force and bring him; menacing him with instant death should
he decline to follow you. You will place him in the carriage with
the blinds drawn, one or other of you never losing sight of him the
whole way, and threatening him with death if he discover himself or
cry out. You will lodge him in the old Tower here, where a room
shall be prepared for him; and his work being done, you will restore
him to his home with the same speed and secrecy with which you
brought him from it."

'Such were the mysterious orders Prince Victor gave his page; and
Weissenborn, selecting for his comrade in the expedition Lieutenant
Bartenstein, set out on his strange journey.

'All this while the palace was hushed, as if in mourning, the
bulletins in the COURT GAZETTE appeared, announcing the continuance
of the Princess's malady; and though she had but few attendants,
strange and circumstantial stories were told regarding the progress
of her complaint. She was quite wild. She had tried to kill herself.
She had fancied herself to be I don't know how many different
characters. Expresses were sent to her family informing them of her
state, and couriers despatched PUBLICLY to Vienna and Paris to
procure the attendance of physicians skilled in treating diseases of
the brain. That pretended anxiety was all a feint: it was never
intended that the Princess should recover.

'The day on which Weissenborn and Bartenstein returned from their
expedition, it was announced that her Highness the Princess was much
worse; that night the report through the town was that she was at
the agony: and that night the unfortunate creature was endeavouring
to make her escape.

'She had unlimited confidence in the French chamber-woman who
attended her, and between her and this woman the plan of escape was
arranged. The Princess took her jewels in a casket; a private door,
opening from one of her rooms and leading into the outer gate, it
was said, of the palace, was discovered for her: and a letter was
brought to her, purporting to be from the Duke, her father-in-law,
and stating that a carriage and horses had been provided, and would
take her to B----: the territory where she might communicate with
her family and be safe.

'The unhappy lady, confiding in her guardian, set out on the
expedition. The passages wound through the walls of the modern part
of the palace and abutted in effect at the old Owl Tower, as it was
called, on the outer wall: the tower was pulled down afterwards, and
for good reason.

'At a certain place the candle, which the chamberwoman was carrying,
went out; and the Princess would have screamed with terror, but her
hand was seized, and a voice cried "Hush!" The next minute a man in
a mask (it was the Duke himself) rushed forward, gagged her with a
handkerchief, her hands and legs were bound, and she was carried
swooning with terror into a vaulted room, where she was placed by a
person there waiting, and tied in an arm-chair. The same mask who
had gagged her, came and bared her neck and said, "It had best be
done now she has fainted."

'Perhaps it would have been as well; for though she recovered from
her swoon, and her confessor, who was present, came forward and
endeavoured to prepare her for the awful deed which was about to be
done upon her, and for the state into which she was about to enter,
when she came to herself it was only to scream like a maniac, to
curse the Duke as a butcher and tyrant, and to call upon Magny, her
dear Magny.

'At this the Duke said, quite calmly, "May God have mercy on her
sinful soul!" He, the confessor, and Geldern, who were present, went
down on their knees; and, as his Highness dropped his handkerchief,
Weissenborn fell down in a fainting fit; while MONSIEUR DE
STRASBOURG, taking the back hair in his hand, separated the
shrieking head of Olivia from the miserable sinful body. May Heaven
have mercy upon her soul!'

. . . .

This was the story told by Madame de Liliengarten, and the reader
will have no difficulty in drawing from it that part which affected
myself and my uncle; who, after six weeks of arrest, were set at
liberty, but with orders to quit the duchy immediately: indeed, with
an escort of dragoons to conduct us to the frontier. What property
we had, we were allowed to sell and realise in money; but none of
our play debts were paid to us: and all my hopes of the Countess Ida
were thus at an end.

When Duke Victor came to the throne, which he did when, six months
after, apoplexy carried off the old sovereign his father, all the
good old usages of X----were given up,--play forbidden; the opera
and ballet sent to the right-about; and the regiments which the old
Duke had sold recalled from their foreign service: with them came my
Countess's beggarly cousin the ensign, and he married her. I don't
know whether they were happy or not. It is certain that a woman of
such a poor spirit did not merit any very high degree of pleasure.

The now reigning Duke of X----himself married four years after his
first wife's demise, and Geldern, though no longer Police Minister,
built the grand house of which Madame de Liliengarten spoke. What
became of the minor actors in the great tragedy, who knows? Only
MONSIEUR DE STRASBOURG was restored to his duties. Of the rest--the
Jew, the chamber-woman, the spy on Magny--I know nothing. Those
sharp tools with which great people cut out their enterprises are
generally broken in the using: nor did I ever hear that their
employers had much regard for them in their ruin.

CHAPTER XIII

I CONTINUE MY CAREER AS A MAN OF FASHION

I find I have already filled up many scores of pages, and yet a vast
deal of the most interesting portion of my history remains to be
told, viz. that which describes my sojourn in the kingdoms of
England and Ireland, and the great part I played there; moving among
the most illustrious of the land, myself not the least distinguished
of the brilliant circle. In order to give due justice to this
portion of my Memoirs, then,--which is more important than my
foreign adventures can be (though I could fill volumes with
interesting descriptions of the latter),--I shall cut short the
account of my travels in Europe, and of my success at the
Continental Courts, in order to speak of what befell me at home.
Suffice it to say that there is not a capital in Europe, except the
beggarly one of Berlin, where the young Chevalier de Balibari was
not known and admired; and where he has not made the brave, the
high-born, and the beautiful talk of him. I won 80,000 roubles from
Potemkin at the Winter Palace at Petersburg, which the scoundrelly
favourite never paid me; I have had the honour of seeing his Royal
Highness the Chevalier Charles Edward as drunk as any porter at
Rome; my uncle played several matches at billiards against the
celebrated Lord C----at Spa, and I promise you did not come off a
loser. In fact, by a neat stratagem of ours, we raised the laugh
against his Lordship, and something a great deal more substantial.
My Lord did not know that the Chevalier Barry had a useless eye; and
when, one day, my uncle playfully bet him odds at billiards that he
would play him with a patch over one eye, the noble lord, thinking
to bite us (he was one of the most desperate gamblers that ever
lived), accepted the bet, and we won a very considerable amount of
him.

Nor need I mention my successes among the fairer portion of the
creation. One of the most accomplished, the tallest, the most
athletic, and the handsomest gentlemen of Europe, as I was then, a
young fellow of my figure could not fail of having advantages, which
a person of my spirit knew very well how to use. But upon these
subjects I am dumb. Charming Schuvaloff, black-eyed Sczotarska, dark
Valdez, tender Hegenheim, brilliant Langeac!--ye gentle hearts that
knew how to beat in old times for the warm young Irish gentleman,
where are you now? Though my hair has grown grey now, and my sight
dim, and my heart cold with years, and ennui, and disappointment,
and the treachery of friends, yet I have but to lean back in my arm-
chair and think, and those sweet figures come rising up before me
out of the past, with their smiles, and their kindnesses, and their
bright tender eyes! There are no women like them now--no manners
like theirs! Look you at a bevy of women at the Prince's, stitched
up in tight white satin sacks, with their waists under their arms,
and compare them to the graceful figures of the old time! Why, when
I danced with Coralie de Langeac at the fetes on the birth of the
first Dauphin at Versailles, her hoop was eighteen feet in
circumference, and the heels of her lovely little mules were three
inches from the ground; the lace of my jabot was worth a thousand
crowns, and the buttons of my amaranth velvet coat alone cost eighty
thousand livres. Look at the difference now! The gentlemen are
dressed like boxers, Quakers, or hackney-coachmen; and the ladies
are not dressed at all. There is no elegance, no refinement; none of
the chivalry of the old world, of which I form a portion. Think of
the fashion of London being led by a Br-mm-l! [Footnote: This
manuscript must have been written at the time when Mr. Brummel was
the leader of the London fashion.] a nobody's son: a low creature,
who can no more dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee; who cannot
even crack a bottle like a gentleman; who never showed himself to be
a man with his sword in his hand: as we used to approve ourselves in
the good old times, before that vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of
the world! Oh, to see the Valdez once again, as on that day I met
her first driving in state, with her eight mules and her retinue of
gentlemen, by the side of yellow Mancanares! Oh, for another drive
with Hegenheim, in the gilded sledge, over the Saxon snow! False as
Schuvaloff was, 'twas better to be jilted by her than to be adored
by any other woman. I can't think of any one of them without
tenderness. I have ringlets of all their hair in my poor little
museum of recollections. Do you keep mine, you dear souls that
survive the turmoils and troubles of near half a hundred years? How
changed its colour is now, since the day Sczotarska wore it round
her neck, after my duel with Count Bjernaski, at Warsaw.

I never kept any beggarly books of accounts in those days. I had no
debts. I paid royally for everything I took; and I took everything I
wanted. My income must have been very large. My entertainments and
equipages were those of a gentleman of the highest distinction; nor
let any scoundrel presume to sneer because I carried off and married
my Lady Lyndon (as you shall presently hear), and call me an
adventurer, or say I was penniless, or the match unequal. Penniless!
I had the wealth of Europe at my command. Adventurer! So is a
meritorious lawyer or a gallant soldier; so is every man who makes
his own fortune an adventurer. My profession was play: in which I
was then unrivalled. No man could play with me through Europe, on
the square; and my income was just as certain (during health and the
exercise of my profession) as that of a man who draws on his Three-
per-cents., or any fat squire whose acres bring him revenue. Harvest
is not more certain than the effect of skill is: a crop is a chance,
as much as a game of cards greatly played by a fine player: there
may be a drought, or a frost, or a hail-storm, and your stake is
lost; but one man is just as much an adventurer as another.

In evoking the recollection of these kind and fair creatures I have
nothing but pleasure. I would I could say as much of the memory of
another lady, who will henceforth play a considerable part in the
drama of my life,--I mean the Countess of Lyndon; whose fatal
acquaintance I made at Spa, very soon after the events described in
the last chapter had caused me to quit Germany.

Honoria, Countess of Lyndon, Viscountess Bullingdon in England,
Baroness Castle Lyndon of the kingdom of Ireland, was so well known
to the great world in her day, that I have little need to enter into
her family history; which is to be had in any peerage that the
reader may lay his hand on. She was, as I need not say, a countess,
viscountess, and baroness in her own right. Her estates in Devon and
Cornwall were among the most extensive in those parts; her Irish
possessions not less magnificent; and they have been alluded to, in
a very early part of these Memoirs, as lying near to my own paternal
property in the kingdom of Ireland: indeed, unjust confiscations in
the time of Elizabeth and her father went to diminish my acres,
while they added to the already vast possessions of the Lyndon
family.

The Countess, when I first saw her at the assembly at Spa, was the
wife of her cousin, the Right Honourable Sir Charles Reginald
Lyndon, Knight of the Bath, and Minister to George II. and George
III. at several of the smaller Courts of Europe. Sir Charles Lyndon
was celebrated as a wit and bon vivant: he could write love-verses
against Hanbury Williams, and make jokes with George Selwyn; he was
a man of vertu like Harry Walpole, with whom and Mr. Grey he had
made a part of the grand tour; and was cited, in a word, as one of
the most elegant and accomplished men of his time.

I made this gentleman's acquaintance as usual at the play-table, of
which he was a constant frequenter. Indeed, one could not but admire
the spirit and gallantry with which he pursued his favourite
pastime; for, though worn out by gout and a myriad of diseases, a
cripple wheeled about in a chair, and suffering pangs of agony, yet
you would see him every morning and every evening at his post behind
the delightful green cloth: and if, as it would often happen, his
own hands were too feeble or inflamed to hold the box, he would call
the mains, nevertheless, and have his valet or a friend to throw for
him. I like this courageous spirit in a man; the greatest successes
in life have been won by such indomitable perseverance.

I was by this time one of the best-known characters in Europe; and
the fame of my exploits, my duels, my courage at play, would bring
crowds around me in any public society where I appeared. I could
show reams of scented paper, to prove that this eagerness to make my
acquaintance was not confined to the gentlemen only; but that I hate
boasting, and only talk of myself in so far as it is necessary to
relate myself's adventures: the most singular of any man's in
Europe. Well, Sir Charles Lyndon's first acquaintance with me
originated in the right honourable knight's winning 700 pieces of me
at picquet (for which he was almost my match); and I lost them with
much good-humour, and paid them: and paid them, you may be sure,
punctually. Indeed, I will say this for myself, that losing money at
play never in the least put me out of good-humour with the winner,
and that wherever I found a superior, I was always ready to
acknowledge and hail him.

Lyndon was very proud of winning from so celebrated a person, and we
contracted a kind of intimacy; which, however, did not for a while
go beyond pump-room attentions, and conversations over the supper-
table at play: but which gradually increased, until I was admitted
into his more private friendship. He was a very free-spoken man (the
gentry of those days were much prouder than at present), and used to
say to me in his haughty easy way, 'Hang it, Mr. Barry, you have no
more manners than a barber, and I think my black footman has been
better educated than you; but you are a young fellow of originality
and pluck, and I like you, sir, because you seem determined to go to
the deuce by a way of your own.' I would thank him laughingly for
this compliment, and say, that as he was bound to the next world
much sooner than I was, I would be obliged to him to get comfortable
quarters arranged there for me. He used also to be immensely amused
with my stories about the splendour of my family and the
magnificence of Castle Brady: he would never tire of listening or
laughing at those histories.

'Stick to the trumps, however, my lad,' he would say, when I told
him of my misfortunes in the conjugal line, and how near I had been
winning the greatest fortune in Germany. 'Do anything but marry, my
artless Irish rustic' (he called me by a multiplicity of queer
names). 'Cultivate your great talents in the gambling line; but mind
this, that a woman will beat you.'

That I denied; mentioning several instances in which I had conquered
the most intractable tempers among the sex.

'They will beat you in the long run, my Tipperary Alcibiades. As
soon as you are married, take my word of it, you are conquered. Look
at me. I married my cousin, the noblest and greatest heiress in
England--married her in spite of herself almost' (here a dark shade
passed over Sir Charles Lyndon's countenance). 'She is a weak woman.
You shall see her, sir, HOW weak she is; but she is my mistress. She
has embittered my whole life. She is a fool; but she has got the
better of one of the best heads in Christendom. She is enormously
rich; but somehow I have never been so poor as since I married her.
I thought to better myself; and she has made me miserable and killed
me. And she will do as much for my successor, when I am gone.'

'Has her Ladyship a very large income?' said I. At which Sir Charles
burst out into a yelling laugh, and made me blush not a little at my
gaucherie; for the fact is, seeing him in the condition in which he
was, I could not help speculating upon the chance a man of spirit
might have with his widow.

'No, no!' said he, laughing. 'Waugh hawk, Mr. Barry; don't think, if
you value your peace of mind, to stand in my shoes when they are
vacant. Besides, I don't think my Lady Lyndon would QUITE condescend
to marry a'----

'Marry a what, sir?' said I, in a rage.

"Never mind what: but the man who gets her will rue it, take my word
on't. A plague on her! had it not been for my father's ambition and
mine (he was her uncle and guardian, and we wouldn't let such a
prize out of the family), I might have died peaceably, at least;
carried my gout down to my grave in quiet, lived in my modest
tenement in Mayfair, had every house in England open to me; and now,
now I have six of my own, and every one of them is a hell to me.
Beware of greatness, Mr. Barry. Take warning by me. Ever since I
have been married and have been rich, I have been the most miserable
wretch in the world. Look at me. I am dying a worn-out cripple at
the age of fifty. Marriage has added forty years to my life. When I
took off Lady Lyndon, there was no man of my years who looked so
young as myself. Fool that I was! I had enough with my pensions,
perfect freedom, the best society in Europe; and I gave up all
these, and married, and was miserable. Take a warning by me, Captain
Barry, and stick to the trumps."

Though my intimacy with the knight was considerable, for a long time
I never penetrated into any other apartments of his hotel but those
which he himself occupied. His lady lived entirely apart from him;
and it is only curious how they came to travel together at all. She
was a goddaughter of old Mary Wortley Montagu: and, like that famous
old woman of the last century, made considerable pretensions to be a
blue-stocking and a bel esprit. Lady Lyndon wrote poems in English
and Italian, which still may be read by the curious in the pages of
the magazines of the day. She entertained a correspondence with
several of the European savans upon history, science, and ancient
languages, and especially theology. Her pleasure was to dispute
controversial points with abbes and bishops; and her flatterers said
she rivalled Madam Dacier in learning. Every adventurer who had a
discovery in chemistry, a new antique bust, or a plan for
discovering the philosopher's stone, was sure to find a patroness in
her. She had numberless works dedicated to her, and sonnets without
end addressed to her by all the poetasters of Europe, under the name
of Lindonira or Calista. Her rooms were crowded with hideous China
magots, and all sorts of objects of VERTU.

No woman piqued herself more upon her principles, or allowed love to
be made to her more profusely. There was a habit of courtship
practised by the fine gentlemen of those days, which is little
understood in our coarse downright times: and young and old fellows
would pour out floods of compliments in letters and madrigals, such
as would make a sober lady stare were they addressed to her
nowadays: so entirely has the gallantry of the last century
disappeared out of our manners.

Lady Lyndon moved about with a little court of her own. She had
half-a-dozen carriages in her progresses. In her own she would
travel with her companion (some shabby lady of quality), her birds,
and poodles, and the favourite savant for the time being. In another
would be her female secretary and her waiting-women; who, in spite
of their care, never could make their mistress look much better than
a slattern. Sir Charles Lyndon had his own chariot, and the
domestics of the establishment would follow in other vehicles.

Also must be mentioned the carriage in which rode her Ladyship's
chaplain, Mr. Runt, who acted in capacity of governor to her son,
the little Viscount Bullingdon,--a melancholy deserted little boy,
about whom his father was more than indifferent, and whom his mother
never saw, except for two minutes at her levee, when she would put
to him a few questions of history or Latin grammar; after which he
was consigned to his own amusements, or the care of his governor,
for the rest of the day.

The notion of such a Minerva as this, whom I saw in the public
places now and then, surrounded by swarms of needy abbes and
schoolmasters, who flattered her, frightened me for some time, and I
had not the least desire to make her acquaintance. I had no desire
to be one of the beggarly adorers in the great lady's train,--
fellows, half friend, half lacquey, who made verses, and wrote
letters, and ran errands, content to be paid by a seat in her
Ladyship's box at the comedy, or a cover at her dinner-table at
noon. 'Don't be afraid,' Sir Charles Lyndon would say, whose great
subject of conversation and abuse was his lady: 'my Lindonira will
have nothing to do with you. She likes the Tuscan brogue, not that
of Kerry. She says you smell too much of the stable to be admitted
to ladies' society; and last Sunday fortnight, when she did me the
honour to speak to me last, said, "I wonder, Sir Charles Lyndon, a
gentleman who has been the King's ambassador can demean himself by
gambling and boozing with low Irish blacklegs!" Don't fly in a fury!
I'm a cripple, and it was Lindonira said it, not I.'

This piqued me, and I resolved to become acquainted with Lady
Lyndon; if it were but to show her Ladyship that the descendant of
those Barrys, whose property she unjustly held, was not an unworthy
companion for any lady, were she ever so high. Besides, my friend
the knight was dying: his widow would be the richest prize in the
three kingdoms. Why should I not win her, and, with her, the means
of making in the world that figure which my genius and inclination
desired? I felt I was equal in blood and breeding to any Lyndon in
Christendom, and determined to bend this haughty lady. When I
determine, I look upon the thing as done.

My uncle and I talked the matter over, and speedily settled upon a
method for making our approaches upon this stately lady of Castle
Lyndon. Mr. Runt, young Lord Bullingdon's governor, was fond of
pleasure, of a glass of Rhenish in the garden-houses in the summer
evenings, and of a sly throw of the dice when the occasion offered;
and I took care to make friends with this person, who, being a
college tutor and an Englishman, was ready to go on his knees to any
one who resembled a man of fashion. Seeing me with my retinue of
servants, my vis-a-vis and chariots, my valets, my hussar, and
horses, dressed in gold, and velvet, and sables, saluting the
greatest people in Europe as we met on the course, or at the Spas,
Runt was dazzled by my advances, and was mine by a beckoning of the
finger. I shall never forget the poor wretch's astonishment when I
asked him to dine, with two counts, off gold plate, at the little
room in the casino: he was made happy by being allowed to win a few
pieces of us, became exceedingly tipsy, sang Cambridge songs, and
recreated the company by telling us, in his horrid Yorkshire French,
stories about the gyps, and all the lords that had ever been in his
college. I encouraged him to come and see me oftener, and bring with
him his little viscount; for whom, though the boy always detested
me, I took care to have a good stock of sweetmeats, toys, and
picture-books when he came.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28