Barry Lyndon

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I then began to enter into a controversy with Mr. Runt, and confided
to him some doubts which I had, and a very very earnest leaning
towards the Church of Rome. I made a certain abbe whom I knew write
me letters upon transubstantiation, &c., which the honest tutor was
rather puzzled to answer. I knew that they would be communicated to
his lady, as they were; for, asking leave to attend the English
service which was celebrated in her apartments, and frequented by
the best English then at the Spa, on the second Sunday she
condescended to look at me; on the third she was pleased to reply to
my profound bow by a curtsey; the next day I followed up the
acquaintance by another obeisance in the public walk; and, to make a
long story short, her Ladyship and I were in full correspondence on
transubstantiation before six weeks were over. My Lady came to the
aid of her chaplain; and then I began to see the prodigious weight
of his arguments: as was to be expected. The progress of this
harmless little intrigue need not be detailed. I make no doubt every
one of my readers has practised similar stratagems when a fair lady
was in the case.

I shall never forget the astonishment of Sir Charles Lyndon when, on
one summer evening, as he was issuing out to the play-table in his
sedan-chair, according to his wont, her Ladyship's barouche and
four, with her outriders in the tawny livery of the Lyndon family,
came driving into the courtyard of the house which they inhabited;
and in that carriage, by her Ladyship's side, sat no other than the
'vulgar Irish adventurer,' as she was pleased to call him: I mean
Redmond Barry, Esquire. He made the most courtly of his bows, and
grinned and waved his hat in as graceful a manner as the gout
permitted; and her Ladyship and I replied to the salutation with the
utmost politeness and elegance on our parts.

I could not go to the play-table for some time afterwards for Lady
Lyndon and I had an argument on transubstantiation, which lasted for
three hours; in which she was, as usual, victorious, and, in which
her companion, the Honourable Miss Flint Skinner, fell asleep; but
when, at last, I joined Sir Charles at the casino, he received me
with a yell of laughter, as his wont was, and introduced me to all
the company as Lady Lyndon's interesting young convert. This was his
way. He laughed and sneered at everything. He laughed when he was in
a paroxysm of pain; he laughed when he won money, or when he lost
it: his laugh was not jovial or agreeable, but rather painful and
sardonic.

'Gentlemen,' said he to Punter, Colonel Loder, Count du Carreau, and
several jovial fellows with whom he used to discuss a flask of
champagne and a Rhenish trout or two after play, 'see this amiable
youth! He has been troubled by religious scruples, and has flown for
refuge to my chaplain, Mr. Runt, who has asked for advice from my
wife, Lady Lyndon; and, between them both, they are confirming my
ingenious young friend in his faith. Did you ever hear of such
doctors, and such a disciple?'

''Faith, sir,' said I, 'if I want to learn good principles, it's
surely better I should apply for them to your lady and your chaplain
than to you!'

'He wants to step into my shoes!' continued the knight.

'The man would be happy who did so,' responded I, 'provided there
were no chalk-stones included!' At which reply Sir Charles was not
very well pleased, and went on with increased rancour. He was always
free-spoken in his cups; and, to say the truth, he was in his cups
many more times in a week than his doctors allowed.

'Is it not a pleasure, gentlemen,' said he, 'for me, as I am drawing
near the goal, to find my home such a happy one; my wife so fond of
me, that she is even now thinking of appointing a successor? (I
don't mean you precisely, Mr. Barry; you are only taking your chance
with a score of others whom I could mention.) Isn't it a comfort to
see her, like a prudent housewife, getting everything ready for her
husband's departure?'

'I hope you are not thinking of leaving us soon, knight?' said I,
with perfect sincerity; for I liked him, as a most amusing
companion. 'Not so soon, my dear, as you may fancy, perhaps,'
continued he. 'Why, man, I have been given over any time these four
years; and there was always a candidate or two waiting to apply for
the situation. Who knows how long I may keep you waiting?' and he
DID keep me waiting some little time longer than at that period
there was any reason to suspect.

As I declared myself pretty openly, according to my usual way, and
authors are accustomed to describe the persons of the ladies with
whom their heroes fall in love; in compliance with this fashion, I
perhaps should say a word or two respecting the charms of my Lady
Lyndon. But though I celebrated them in many copies of verses, of my
own and other persons' writing; and though I filled reams of paper
in the passionate style of those days with compliments to every one
of her beauties and smiles, in which I compared her to every flower,
goddess, or famous heroine ever heard of,--truth compels me to say
that there was nothing divine about her at all. She was very well;
but no more. Her shape was fine, her hair dark, her eyes good, and
exceedingly active; she loved singing, but performed it as so great
a lady should, very much out of tune. She had a smattering of half-
a-dozen modern languages, and, as I have said before, of many more
sciences than I even knew the names of. She piqued herself on
knowing Greek and Latin; but the truth is, that Mr. Runt, used to
supply her with the quotations which she introduced into her
voluminous correspondence. She had as much love of admiration, as
strong, uneasy a vanity, and as little heart, as any woman I ever
knew. Otherwise, when her son, Lord Bullingdon, on account of his
differences with me, ran--but that matter shall be told in its
proper time. Finally, my Lady Lyndon was about a year older than
myself; though, of course, she would take her Bible oath that she
was three years younger.

Few men are so honest as I am; for few will own to their real
motives, and I don't care a button about confessing mine. What Sir
Charles Lyndon said was perfectly true. I made the acquaintance of
Lady Lyndon with ulterior views. 'Sir,' said I to him, when, after
the scene described and the jokes he made upon me, we met alone,
'let those laugh that win. You were very pleasant upon me a few
nights since, and on my intentions regarding your lady. Well, if
they ARE what you think they are,--if I DO wish to step into your
shoes, what then? I have no other intentions than you had yourself.
I'll be sworn to muster just as much regard for my Lady Lyndon as
you ever showed her; and if I win her and wear her when you are dead
and gone, corbleu, knight, do you think it will be the fear of your
ghost will deter me?'

Lyndon laughed as usual; but somewhat disconcertedly: indeed I had
clearly the best of him in the argument, and had just as much right
to hunt my fortune as he had.

But one day he said, 'If you marry such a woman as my Lady Lyndon,
mark my words, you will regret it. You will pine after the liberty
you once enjoyed. By George! Captain Barry,' he added, with a sigh,
'the thing that I regret most in life--perhaps it is because I am
old, blase, and dying--is, that I never had a virtuous attachment.'

'Ha! ha! a milkmaid's daughter!' said I, laughing at the absurdity.

'Well, why not a milkmaid's daughter? My good fellow, I WAS in love
in youth, as most gentlemen are, with my tutor's daughter, Helena, a
bouncing girl; of course older than myself' (this made me remember
my own little love-passages with Nora Brady in the days of my early
life), 'and do you know, sir, I heartily regret I didn't marry her?
There's nothing like having a virtuous drudge at home, sir; depend
upon that. It gives a zest to one's enjoyments in the world, take my
word for it. No man of sense need restrict himself, or deny himself
a single amusement for his wife's sake: on the contrary, if he
select the animal properly, he will choose such a one as shall be no
bar to his pleasure, but a comfort in his hours of annoyance. For
instance, I have got the gout: who tends me? A hired valet, who robs
me whenever he has the power. My wife never comes near me. What
friend have I? None in the wide world. Men of the world, as you and
I are, don't make friends; and we are fools for our pains. Get a
friend, sir, and that friend a woman--a good household drudge, who
loves you. THAT is the most precious sort of friendship; for the
expense of it is all on the woman's side. The man needn't contribute
anything. If he's a rogue, she'll vow he's an angel; if he's a
brute, she will like him all the better for his ill-treatment of
her. They like it, sir, these women. They are born to be our
greatest comforts and conveniences; our--our moral bootjacks, as it
were; and to men in your way of life, believe me such a person would
be invaluable. I am only speaking for your bodily and mental
comfort's sake, mind. Why didn't I marry poor Helena Flower, the
curate's daughter?'

I thought these speeches the remarks of a weakly disappointed man;
although since, perhaps, I have had reason to find the truth of Sir
Charles Lyndon's statements. The fact is, in my opinion, that we
often buy money very much too dear. To purchase a few thousands a
year at the expense of an odious wife, is very bad economy for a
young fellow of any talent and spirit; and there have been moments
of my life when, in the midst of my greatest splendour and opulence,
with half-a-dozen lords at my levee, with the finest horses in my
stables, the grandest house over my head, with unlimited credit at
my banker's, and--Lady Lyndon to boot, I have wished myself back a
private of Bulow's, or anything, so as to get rid of her. To return,
however, to the story. Sir Charles, with his complication of ills,
was dying before us by inches! and I've no doubt it could not have
been very pleasant to him to see a young handsome fellow paying
court to his widow before his own face as it were. After I once got
into the house on the transubstantiation dispute, I found a dozen
more occasions to improve my intimacy, and was scarcely ever out of
her Ladyship's doors. The world talked and blustered; but what cared
I? The men cried fie upon the shameless Irish adventurer; but I have
told my way of silencing such envious people: and my sword had by
this time got such a reputation through Europe, that few people
cared to encounter it. If I can once get my hold of a place, I keep
it. Many's the house I have been to where I have seen the men avoid
me. 'Faugh! the low Irishman,' they would say. 'Bah! the coarse
adventurer!' 'Out on the insufferable blackleg and puppy!' and so
forth. This hatred has been of no inconsiderable service to me in
the world; for when I fasten on a man, nothing can induce me to
release my hold: and I am left to myself, which is all the better.
As I told Lady Lyndon in those days, with perfect sincerity,
'Calista' (I used to call her Calista in my correspondence)--'
Calista, I swear to thee, by the spotlessness of thy own soul, by
the brilliancy of thy immitigable eyes, by everything pure and
chaste in heaven and in thy own heart, that I will never cease from
following thee! Scorn I can bear, and have borne at thy hands.
Indifference I can surmount; 'tis a rock which my energy will climb
over, a magnet which attracts the dauntless iron of my soul!' And it
was true, I wouldn't have left her--no, though they had kicked me
downstairs every day I presented myself at her door.

That is my way of fascinating women. Let the man who has to make his
fortune in life remember this maxim. ATTACKING is his only secret.
Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes,
dare again, and it will succumb. In those days my spirit was so
great, that if I had set my heart upon marrying a princess of the
blood, I would have had her!

I told Calista my story, and altered very very little of the truth.
My object was to frighten her: to show her that what I wanted, that
I dared; that what I dared, that I won; and there were striking
passages enough in my history to convince her of my iron will and
indomitable courage. 'Never hope to escape me, madam,' I would say:
'offer to marry another man, and he dies upon this sword, which
never yet met its master. Fly from me, and I will follow you, though
it were to the gates of Hades.' I promise you this was very
different language to that she had been in the habit of hearing from
her Jemmy-Jessamy adorers. You should have seen how I scared the
fellows from her.

When I said in this energetic way that I would follow Lady Lyndon
across the Styx if necessary, of course I meant that I would do so,
provided nothing more suitable presented itself in the interim. If
Lyndon would not die, where was the use of my pursuing the Countess?
And somehow, towards the end of the Spa season, very much to my
mortification I do confess, the knight made another rally: it seemed
as if nothing would kill him. 'I am sorry for you, Captain Barry,'
he would say, laughing as usual. 'I'm grieved to keep you, or any
gentleman, waiting. Had you not better arrange with my doctor, or
get the cook to flavour my omelette with arsenic? What are the odds,
gentlemen,' he would add, 'that I don't live to see Captain Barry
hanged yet?'

In fact, the doctors tinkered him up for a year. 'It's my usual
luck,' I could not help saying to my uncle, who was my confidential
and most excellent adviser in all matters of the heart. 'I've been
wasting the treasures of my affections upon that flirt of a
countess, and here's her husband restored to health and likely to
live I don't know how many years!' And, as if to add to my
mortification, there came just at this period to Spa an English
tallow-chandler's heiress, with a plum to her fortune; and Madame
Cornu, the widow of a Norman cattle-dealer and farmer-general, with
a dropsy and two hundred thousand livres a year.

'What's the use of my following the Lyndons to England,' says I, 'if
the knight won't die?'

'Don't follow them, my dear simple child,' replied my uncle. 'Stop
here and pay court to the new arrivals.'

'Yes, and lose Calista for ever, and the greatest estate in all
England.'

'Pooh, pooh! youths like you easily fire and easily despond. Keep up
a correspondence with Lady Lyndon. You know there's nothing she
likes so much. There's the Irish abbe, who will write you the most
charming letters for a crown apiece. Let her go; write to her, and
meanwhile look out for anything else which may turn up. Who knows?
you might marry the Norman widow, bury her, take her money, and be
ready for the Countess against the knight's death.'

And so, with vows of the most profound respectful attachment, and
having given twenty louis to Lady Lyndon's waiting-woman for a lock
of her hair (of which fact, of course, the woman informed her
mistress), I took leave of the Countess, when it became necessary
for her return to her estates in England; swearing I would follow
her as soon as an affair of honour I had on my hands could be
brought to an end.

I shall pass over the events of the year that ensued before I again
saw her. She wrote to me according to promise; with much regularity
at first, with somewhat less frequency afterwards. My affairs,
meanwhile, at the play-table went on not unprosperously, and I was
just on the point of marrying the widow Cornu (we were at Brussels
by this time, and the poor soul was madly in love with me,) when the
London Gazette was put into my hands, and I read the following
announcement:--

'Died at Castle-Lyndon, in the kingdom of Ireland, the Right
Honourable Sir Charles Lyndon, Knight of the Bath, member of
Parliament for Lyndon in Devonshire, and many years His Majesty's
representative at various European Courts. He hath left behind him a
name which is endeared to all his friends for his manifold virtues
and talents, a reputation justly acquired in the service of His
Majesty, and an inconsolable widow to deplore his loss. Her
Ladyship, the bereaved Countess of Lyndon, was at the Bath when the
horrid intelligence reached her of her husband's demise, and
hastened to Ireland immediately in order to pay her last sad duties
to his beloved remains.'

That very night I ordered my chariot and posted to Ostend, whence I
freighted a vessel to Dover, and travelling rapidly into the West,
reached Bristol; from which port I embarked for Waterford, and found
myself, after an absence of eleven years, in my native country.

CHAPTER XIV

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

How were times changed with me now! I had left my country a poor
penniless boy--a private soldier in a miserable marching regiment. I
returned an accomplished man, with property to the amount of five
thousand guineas in my possession, with a splendid wardrobe and
jewel-case worth two thousand more; having mingled in all the scenes
of life a not undistinguished actor in them; having shared in war
and in love; having by my own genius and energy won my way from
poverty and obscurity to competence and splendour. As I looked out
from my chariot windows as it rolled along over the bleak bare
roads, by the miserable cabins of the peasantry, who came out in
their rags to stare as the splendid equipage passed, and huzza'd for
his Lordship's honour as they saw the magnificent stranger in the
superb gilded vehicle, my huge body-servant Fritz lolling behind
with curling moustaches and long queue, his green livery barred with
silver lace, I could not help thinking of myself with considerable
complacency, and thanking my stars that had endowed me with so many
good qualities. But for my own merits I should have been a raw Irish
squireen such as those I saw swaggering about the wretched towns
through which my chariot passed on its road to Dublin. I might have
married Nora Brady (and though, thank Heaven, I did not, I have
never thought of that girl but with kindness, and even remember the
bitterness of losing her more clearly at this moment than any other
incident of my life); I might have been the father of ten children
by this time, or a farmer on my own account, or an agent to a
squire, or a gauger, or an attorney; and here I was one of the most
famous gentlemen of Europe! I bade my fellow get a bag of copper
money and throw it among the crowd as we changed horses; and I
warrant me there was as much shouting set up in praise of my honour
as if my Lord Townshend, the Lord Lieutenant himself, had been
passing.

My second day's journey--for the Irish roads were rough in those
days, and the progress of a gentleman's chariot terribly slow--
brought me to Carlow, where I put up at the very inn which I had
used eleven years back, when flying from home after the supposed
murder of Quin in the duel. How well I remember every moment of the
scene! The old landlord was gone who had served me; the inn that I
then thought so comfortable looked wretched and dismantled; but the
claret was as good as in the old days, and I had the host to partake
of a jug of it and hear the news of the country.

He was as communicative as hosts usually are: the crops and the
markets, the price of beasts at last Castle Dermot fair, the last
story about the vicar, and the last joke of Father Hogan the priest;
how the Whiteboys had burned Squire Scanlan's ricks, and the
highwaymen had been beaten off in their attack upon Sir Thomas's
house; who was to hunt the Kilkenny hounds next season, and the
wonderful run entirely they had last March; what troops were in the
town, and how Miss Biddy Toole had run off with Ensign Mullins: all
the news of sport, assize, and quarter-sessions were detailed by
this worthy chronicler of small-beer, who wondered that my honour
hadn't heard of them in England, or in foreign parts, where he
seemed to think the world was as interested as he was about the
doings of Kilkenny and Carlow. I listened to these tales with, I
own, a considerable pleasure; for every now and then a name would
come up in the conversation which I remembered in old days, and
bring with it a hundred associations connected with them.

I had received many letters from my mother, which informed me of the
doings of the Brady's Town family. My uncle was dead, and Mick, his
eldest son, had followed him too to the grave. The Brady girls had
separated from their paternal roof as soon as their elder brother
came to rule over it. Some were married, some gone to settle with
their odious old mother in out-of-the-way watering-places. Ulick,
though he had succeeded to the estate, had come in for a bankrupt
property, and Castle Brady was now inhabited only by the bats and
owls, and the old gamekeeper. My mother, Mrs. Harry Barry, had gone
to live at Bray, to sit under Mr. Jowls, her favourite preacher, who
had a chapel there; and, finally, the landlord told me, that Mrs.
Barry's son had gone to foreign parts, enlisted in the Prussian
service, and had been shot there as a deserter.

I don't care to own that I hired a stout nag from the landlord's
stable after dinner, and rode back at nightfall twenty miles to my
old home. My heart beat to see it. Barryville had got a pestle and
mortar over the door, and was called 'The Esculapian Repository,' by
Doctor Macshane; a red-headed lad was spreading a plaster in the old
parlour; the little window of my room, once so neat and bright, was
cracked in many places, and stuffed with rags here and there; the
flowers had disappeared from the trim garden-beds which my good
orderly mother tended. In the churchyard there were two more names
put into the stone over the family vault of the Bradys: they were
those of my cousin, for whom my regard was small, and my uncle, whom
I had always loved. I asked my old companion the blacksmith, who had
beaten me so often in old days, to give my horse a feed and a
litter: he was a worn weary-looking man now, with a dozen dirty
ragged children paddling about his smithy, and had no recollection
of the fine gentleman who stood before him. I did not seek to recall
my-self to his memory till the next day, when I put ten guineas into
his hand, and bade him drink the health of English Redmond.

As for Castle Brady, the gates of the park were still there; but the
old trees were cut down in the avenue, a black stump jutting out
here and there, and casting long shadows as I passed in the
moonlight over the worn grass-grown old road. A few cows were at
pasture there. The garden-gate was gone, and the place a tangled
wilderness. I sat down on the old bench, where I had sat on the day
when Nora jilted me; and I do believe my feelings were as strong
then as they had been when I was a boy, eleven years before; and I
caught myself almost crying again, to think that Nora Brady had
deserted me. I believe a man forgets nothing. I've seen a flower, or
heard some trivial word or two, which have awakened recollections
that somehow had lain dormant for scores of years; and when I
entered the house in Clarges Street, where I was born (it was used
as a gambling-house when I first visited London), all of a sudden
the memory of my childhood came back to me--of my actual infancy: I
recollected my father in green and gold, holding me up to look at a
gilt coach which stood at the door, and my mother in a flowered
sack, with patches on her face. Some day, I wonder, will everything
we have seen and thought and done come and flash across our minds in
this way? I had rather not. I felt so as I sat upon the bench at
Castle Brady, and thought of the bygone times.

The hall-door was open--it was always so at that house; the moon was
flaring in at the long old windows, and throwing ghastly chequers
upon the floors; and the stars were looking in on the other side, in
the blue of the yawning window over the great stair: from it you
could see the old stable-clock, with the letters glistening on it
still. There had been jolly horses in those stables once; and I
could see my uncle's honest face, and hear him talking to his dogs
as they came jumping and whining and barking round about him of a
gay winter morning. We used to mount there; and the girls looked out
at us from the hall-window, where I stood and looked at the sad,
mouldy, lonely old place. There was a red light shining through the
crevices of a door at one corner of the building, and a dog
presently came out baying loudly, and a limping man followed with a
fowling-piece.

'Who's there?' said the old man.

'PHIL PURCELL, don't you know me?' shouted I; 'it's Redmond Barry.'

I thought the old man would have fired his piece at me at first, for
he pointed it at the window; but I called to him to hold his hand,
and came down and embraced him.... Psha! I don't care to tell the
rest: Phil and I had a long night, and talked over a thousand
foolish old things that have no interest for any soul alive now: for
what soul is there alive that cares for Barry Lyndon?

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