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Barry Lyndon

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> Barry Lyndon




I settled a hundred guineas on the old man when I got to Dublin, and
made him an annuity which enabled him to pass his old days in
comfort.

Poor Phil Purcell was amusing himself at a game of exceedingly dirty
cards with an old acquaintance of mine; no other than Tim, who was
called my 'valet' in the days of yore, and whom the reader may
remember as clad in my father's old liveries. They used to hang
about him in those times, and lap over his wrists and down to his
heels; but Tim, though he protested he had nigh killed himself with
grief when I went away, had managed to grow enormously fat in my
absence, and would have fitted almost into Daniel Lambert's coat, or
that of the vicar of Castle Brady, whom he served in the capacity of
clerk. I would have engaged the fellow in my service but for his
monstrous size, which rendered him quite unfit to be the attendant
of any gentleman of condition; and so I presented him with a
handsome gratuity, and promised to stand godfather to his next
child: the eleventh since my absence. There is no country in the
world where the work of multiplying is carried on so prosperously as
in my native island. Mr. Tim had married the girls' waiting-maid,
who had been a kind friend of mine in the early times; and I had to
go salute poor Molly next day, and found her a slatternly wench in a
mud hut, surrounded by a brood of children almost as ragged as those
of my friend the blacksmith.

From Tim and Phil Purcell, thus met fortuitously together, I got the
very last news respecting my family. My mother was well.

''Faith sir,' says Tim, 'and you're come in time, mayhap, for
preventing an addition to your family.'

'Sir!' exclaimed I, in a fit of indignation.

'In the shape of father-in-law, I mane, sir,' says Tim: 'the
misthress is going to take on with Mister Jowls the praacher.'

Poor Nora, he added, had made many additions to the illustrious race
of Quin; and my cousin Ulick was in Dublin, coming to little good,
both my informants feared, and having managed to run through the
small available remains of property which my good old uncle had left
behind him.

I saw I should have no small family to provide for; and then, to
conclude the evening, Phil, Tim, and I, had a bottle of usquebaugh,
the taste of which I had remembered for eleven good years, and did
not part except with the warmest terms of fellowship, and until the
sun had been some time in the sky. I am exceedingly affable; that
has always been one of my characteristics. I have no false pride, as
many men of high lineage like my own have, and, in default of better
company, will hob and nob with a ploughboy or a private soldier just
as readily as with the first noble in the land.

I went back to the village in the morning, and found a pretext for
visiting Barryville under a device of purchasing drugs. The hooks
were still in the wall where my silver-hiked sword used to hang; a
blister was lying on the window-sill, where my mother's 'Whole Duty
of Man' had its place; and the odious Doctor Macshane had found out
who I was (my countrymen find out everything, and a great deal more
besides), and sniggering, asked me how I left the King of Prussia,
and whether my friend the Emperor Joseph was as much liked as the
Empress Maria Theresa had been. The bell-ringers would have had a
ring of bells for me, but there was but one, Tim, who was too fat to
pull; and I rode off before the vicar, Doctor Bolter (who had
succeeded old Mr. Texter, who had the living in my time), had time
to come out to compliment me; but the rapscallions of the beggarly
village had assembled in a dirty army to welcome me, and cheered
'Hurrah for Masther Redmond!' as I rode away.

My people were not a little anxious regarding me, by the time I
returned to Carlow, and the landlord was very much afraid, he said,
that the highwaymen had gotten hold of me. There, too, my name and
station had been learned from my servant Fritz: who had not spared
his praises of his master, and had invented some magnificent
histories concerning me. He said it was the truth that I was
intimate with half the sovereigns of Europe, and the prime favourite
with most of them. Indeed I had made my uncle's order of the Spur
hereditary, and travelled under the name of the Chevalier Barry,
chamberlain to the Duke of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

They gave me the best horses the stable possessed to carry me on my
road to Dublin, and the strongest ropes for harness; and we got on
pretty well, and there was no rencontre between the highwaymen and
the pistols with which Fritz and I were provided. We lay that night
at Kilcullen, and the next day I made my entry into the city of
Dublin, with four horses to my carriage, five thousand guineas in my
purse, and one of the most brilliant reputations in Europe, having
quitted the city a beggarly boy, eleven years before.

The citizens of Dublin have as great and laudable a desire for
knowing their neighbours' concerns as the country people have; and
it is impossible for a gentleman, however modest his desires may be
(and such mine have notoriously been through life), to enter the
capital without having his name printed in every newspaper and
mentioned in a number of societies. My name and titles were all over
the town the day after my arrival. A great number of polite persons
did me the honour to call at my lodgings, when I selected them; and
this was a point very necessarily of immediate care, for the hotels
in the town were but vulgar holes, unfit for a nobleman of my
fashion and elegance. I had been informed of the fact by travellers
on the Continent; and determining to fix on a lodging at once, I
bade the drivers go slowly up and down the streets with my chariot,
until I had selected a place suitable to my rank. This proceeding,
and the uncouth questions and behaviour of my German Fritz, who was
instructed to make inquiries at the different houses until
convenient apartments could be lighted upon, brought an immense mob
round my coach; and by the time the rooms were chosen you might have
supposed I was the new General of the Forces, so great was the
multitude following us.

I fixed at length upon a handsome suite of apartments in Capel
Street, paid the ragged postilions who had driven me a splendid
gratuity, and establishing myself in the rooms with my baggage and
Fritz, desired the landlord to engage me a second fellow to wear my
liveries, a couple of stout reputable chairmen and their machine,
and a coachman who had handsome job-horses to hire for my chariot,
and serviceable riding-horses to sell. I gave him a handsome sum in
advance; and I promise you the effect of my advertisement was such,
that next day I had a regular levee in my antechamber: grooms,
valets, and maitres-d'hotel offered themselves without number; I had
proposals for the purchase of horses sufficient to mount a regiment,
both from dealers and gentlemen of the first fashion. Sir Lawler
Gawler came to propose to me the most elegant bay-mare ever stepped;
my Lord Dundoodle had a team of four that wouldn't disgrace my
friend the Emperor; and the Marquess of Ballyragget sent his
gentleman and his compliments, stating that if I would step up to
his stables, or do him the honour of breakfasting with him
previously, he would show me the two finest greys in Europe. I
determined to accept the invitations of Dundoodle and Ballyragget,
but to purchase my horses from the dealers. It is always the best
way. Besides, in those days, in Ireland, if a gentleman warranted
his horse, and it was not sound, or a dispute arose, the remedy you
had was the offer of a bullet in your waistcoat. I had played at the
bullet game too much in earnest to make use of it heedlessly: and I
may say, proudly for myself, that I never engaged in a duel unless I
had a real, available, and prudent reason for it.

There was a simplicity about this Irish gentry which amused and made
me wonder. If they tell more fibs than their downright neighbours
across the water, on the other hand they believe more; and I made
myself in a single week such a reputation in Dublin as would take a
man ten years and a mint of money to acquire in London. I had won
five hundred thousand pounds at play; I was the favourite of the
Empress Catherine of Russia; the confidential agent of Frederick of
Prussia; it was I won the battle of Hochkirchen; I was the cousin of
Madame Du Barry, the French King's favourite, and a thousand things
beside. Indeed, to tell the truth, I hinted a number of these
stories to my kind friends Ballyragget and Gawler; and they were not
slow to improve the hints I gave them.

After having witnessed the splendours of civilised life abroad, the
sight of Dublin in the year 1771, when I returned thither, struck me
with anything but respect. It was as savage as Warsaw almost,
without the regal grandeur of the latter city. The people looked
more ragged than any race I have ever seen, except the gipsy hordes
along the banks of the Danube. There was, as I have said, not an inn
in the town fit for a gentleman of condition to dwell in. Those
luckless fellows who could not keep a carriage, and walked the
streets at night, ran imminent risks of the knives of the women and
ruffians who lay in wait there,--of a set of ragged savage villains,
who neither knew the use of shoe nor razor; and as a gentleman
entered his chair or his chariot, to be carried to his evening rout,
or the play, the flambeaux of the footmen would light up such a set
of wild gibbering Milesian faces as would frighten a genteel person
of average nerves. I was luckily endowed with strong ones; besides,
had seen my amiable countrymen before.

I know this description of them will excite anger among some Irish
patriots, who don't like to have the nakedness of our land abused,
and are angry if the whole truth be told concerning it. But bah! it
was a poor provincial place, Dublin, in the old days of which I
speak; and many a tenth-rate German residency is more genteel. There
were, it is true, near three hundred resident Peers at the period;
and a House of Commons; and my Lord Mayor and his corporation; and a
roystering noisy University, whereof the students made no small
disturbances nightly, patronised the roundhouse, ducked obnoxious
printers and tradesmen, and gave the law at the Crow Street Theatre.
But I had seen too much of the first society of Europe to be much
tempted by the society of these noisy gentry, and was a little too
much of a gentleman to mingle with the disputes and politics of my
Lord Mayor and his Aldermen. In the House of Commons there were some
dozen of right pleasant fellows. I never heard in the English
Parliament better speeches than from Flood, and Daly, of Galway.
Dick Sheridan, though not a well-bred person, was as amusing and
ingenious a table-companion as ever I met; and though during Mr.
Edmund Burke's interminable speeches in the English House I used
always to go to sleep, I yet have heard from well-informed parties
that Mr. Burke was a person of considerable abilities, and even
reputed to be eloquent in his more favourable moments.

I soon began to enjoy to the full extent the pleasures that the
wretched place affords, and which were within a gentleman's reach:
Ranelagh and the Ridotto; Mr. Mossop, at Crow Street; my Lord
Lieutenant's parties, where there was a great deal too much boozing,
and too little play, to suit a person of my elegant and refined
habits. 'Daly's Coffee-house,' and the houses of the nobility, were
soon open to me; and I remarked with astonishment in the higher
circles, what I had experienced in the lower on my first unhappy
visit to Dublin, an extraordinary want of money, and a preposterous
deal of promissory notes flying about, for which I was quite
unwilling to stake my guineas. The ladies, too, were mad for play;
but exceeding unwilling to pay when they lost. Thus, when the old
Countess of Trumpington lost ten pieces to me at quadrille, she gave
me, instead of the money, her Ladyship's note of hand on her agent
in Galway; which I put, with a great deal of politeness, into the
candle. But when the Countess made me a second proposition to play,
I said that as soon as her Ladyship's remittances were arrived, I
would be the readiest person to meet her; but till then was her very
humble servant. And I maintained this resolution and singular
character throughout the Dublin society: giving out at 'Daly's' that
I was ready to play any man, for any sum, at any game; or to fence
with him, or to ride with him (regard being had to our weight), or
to shoot flying, or at a mark; and in this latter accomplishment,
especially if the mark be a live one, Irish gentlemen of that day
had no ordinary skill.

Of course I despatched a courier in my liveries to Castle Lyndon
with a private letter for Runt, demanding from him full particulars
of the Countess of Lyndon's state of health and mind; and a touching
and eloquent letter to her Ladyship, in which I bade her remember
ancient days, which I tied up with a single hair from the lock which
I had purchased from her woman, and in which I told her that
Sylvander remembered his oath, and could never forget his Calista.
The answer I received from her was exceedingly unsatisfactory and
inexplicit; that from Mr. Runt explicit enough, but not at all
pleasant in its contents. My Lord George Poynings, the Marquess of
Tiptoff's younger son, was paying very marked addresses to the
widow; being a kinsman of the family, and having been called to
Ireland relative to the will of the deceased Sir Charles Lyndon.

Now, there was a sort of rough-and-ready law in Ireland in those
days, which was of great convenience to persons desirous of
expeditious justice; and of which the newspapers of the time contain
a hundred proofs. Fellows with the nicknames of Captain Fireball,
Lieutenant Buffcoat, and Ensign Steele, were repeatedly sending
warning letters to landlords, and murdering them if the notes were
unattended to. The celebrated Captain Thunder ruled in the southern
counties, and his business seemed to be to procure wives for
gentlemen who had not sufficient means to please the parents of the
young ladies; or, perhaps, had not time for a long and intricate
courtship.

I had found my cousin Ulick at Dublin, grown very fat, and very
poor; hunted up by Jews and creditors: dwelling in all sorts of
queer corners, from which he issued at nightfall to the Castle, or
to his card-party at his tavern; but he was always the courageous
fellow: and I hinted to him the state of my affections regarding
Lady Lyndon.

'The Countess of Lyndon!' said poor Ulick; 'well, that IS a wonder.
I myself have been mightily sweet upon a young lady, one of the
Kiljoys of Ballyhack, who has ten thousand pounds to her fortune,
and to whom her Ladyship is guardian; but how is a poor fellow
without a coat to his back to get on with an heiress in such company
as that? I might as well propose for the Countess myself.'

'You had better not,' said I, laughing; 'the man who tries runs a
chance of going out of the world first.' And I explained to him my
own intention regarding Lady Lyndon. Honest Ulick, whose respect for
me was prodigious when he saw how splendid my appearance was, and
heard how wonderful my adventures and great my experience of
fashionable life had been, was lost in admiration of my daring and
energy, when I confided to him my intention of marrying the greatest
heiress in England.

I bade Ulick go out of town on any pretext he chose, and put a
letter into a post-office near Castle Lyndon, which I prepared in a
feigned hand, and in which I gave a solemn warning to Lord George
Poynings to quit the country; saying that the great prize was never
meant for the likes of him, and that there were heiresses enough in
England, without coming to rob them out of the domains of Captain
Fireball. The letter was written on a dirty piece of paper, in the
worst of spelling: it came to my Lord by the post-conveyance, and,
being a high-spirited young man, he of course laughed at it.

As ill-luck would have it for him, he appeared in Dublin a very
short time afterwards; was introduced to the Chevalier Redmond
Barry, at the Lord Lieutenant's table; adjourned with him and
several other gentlemen to the club at 'Daly's,' and there, in a
dispute about the pedigree of a horse, in which everybody said I was
in the right, words arose, and a meeting was the consequence. I had
had no affair in Dublin since my arrival, and people were anxious to
see whether I was equal to my reputation. I make no boast about
these matters, but always do them when the time comes; and poor Lord
George, who had a neat hand and a quick eye enough, but was bred in
the clumsy English school, only stood before my point until I had
determined where I should hit him.

My sword went in under his guard, and came out at his back. When he
fell, he good-naturedly extended his hand to me, and said, 'Mr.
Barry, I was wrong!' I felt not very well at ease when the poor
fellow made this confession: for the dispute had been of my making,
and, to tell the truth, I had never intended it should end in any
other way than a meeting.

He lay on his bed for four months with the effects of that wound;
and the same post which conveyed to Lady Lyndon the news of the
duel, carried her a message from Captain Fireball to say, 'This is
NUMBER ONE!'

'You, Ulick,' said I, 'shall be NUMBER TWO.'

''Faith,' said my cousin, 'one's enough:' But I had my plan
regarding him, and determined at once to benefit this honest fellow,
and to forward my own designs upon the widow.

CHAPTER XV

I PAY COURT TO MY LADY LYNDON

As my uncle's attainder was not reversed for being out with the
Pretender in 1745, it would have been inconvenient for him to
accompany his nephew to the land of our ancestors; where, if not
hanging, at least a tedious process of imprisonment, and a doubtful
pardon, would have awaited the good old gentleman. In any important
crisis of my life, his advice was always of advantage to me, and I
did not fail to seek it at this juncture, and to implore his counsel
as regarded my pursuit of the widow. I told him the situation of her
heart, as I have described it in the last chapter; of the progress
that young Poynings had made in her affections, and of her
forgetfulness of her old admirer; and I got a letter, in reply, full
of excellent suggestions, by which I did not fail to profit. The
kind Chevalier prefaced it by saying, that he was for the present
boarding in the Minorite convent at Brussels; that he had thoughts
of making his salut there, and retiring for ever from the world,
devoting himself to the severest practices of religion. Meanwhile he
wrote with regard to the lovely widow: it was natural that a person
of her vast wealth and not disagreeable person should have many
adorers about her; and that, as in her husband's lifetime she had
shown herself not at all disinclined to receive my addresses, I must
make no manner of doubt I was not the first person whom she had so
favoured; nor was I likely to be the last.

'I would, my dear child,' he added, 'that the ugly attainder round
my neck, and the resolution I have formed of retiring from a world
of sin and vanity altogether, did not prevent me from coming
personally to your aid in this delicate crisis of your affairs; for,
to lead them to a good end, it requires not only the indomitable
courage, swagger, and audacity, which you possess beyond any young
man I have ever known' (as for the 'swagger,' as the Chevalier calls
it, I deny it in toto, being always most modest in my demeanour);
'but though you have the vigour to execute, you have not the
ingenuity to suggest plans of conduct for the following out of a
scheme that is likely to be long and difficult of execution. Would
you have ever thought of the brilliant scheme of the Countess Ida,
which so nearly made you the greatest fortune in Europe, but for the
advice and experience of a poor old man, now making up his accounts
with the world, and about to retire from it for good and all?

'Well, with regard to the Countess of Lyndon, your manner of winning
her is quite en l'air at present to me; nor can I advise day by day,
as I would I could, according to circumstances as they arise. But
your general scheme should be this. If I remember the letters you
used to have from her during the period of the correspondence which
the silly woman entertained you with, much high-flown sentiment
passed between you; and especially was written by her Ladyship
herself: she is a blue-stocking, and fond of writing; she used to
make her griefs with her husband the continual theme of her
correspondence (as women will do). I recollect several passages in
her letters bitterly deploring her fate in being united to one so
unworthy of her.

'Surely, in the mass of billets you possess from her, there must be
enough to compromise her. Look them well over; select passages, and
threaten to do so. Write to her at first in the undoubting tone of a
lover who has every claim upon her. Then, if she is silent,
remonstrate, alluding to former promises from her; producing proofs
of her former regard for you; vowing despair, destruction, revenge,
if she prove unfaithful. Frighten her--astonish her by some daring
feat, which will let her see your indomitable resolution: you are
the man to do it. Your sword has a reputation in Europe, and you
have a character for boldness; which was the first thing that caused
my Lady Lyndon to turn her eyes upon you. Make the people talk about
you at Dublin. Be as splendid, and as brave, and as odd as possible.
How I wish I were near you! You have no imagination to invent such a
character as I would make for you--but why speak; have I not had
enough of the world and its vanities?'

There was much practical good sense in this advice; which I quote,
unaccompanied with the lengthened description of his mortifications
and devotions which my uncle indulged in, finishing his letter, as
usual, with earnest prayers for my conversion to the true faith. But
he was constant to his form of worship; and I, as a man of honour
and principle, was resolute to mine; and have no doubt that the one,
in this respect, will be as acceptable as the other.

Under these directions it was, then, I wrote to Lady Lyndon, to ask
on my arrival when the most respectful of her admirers might be
permitted to intrude upon her grief? Then, as her Ladyship was
silent, I demanded, Had she forgotten old times, and one whom she
had favoured with her intimacy at a very happy period? Had Calista
forgotten Eugenio? At the same time I sent down by my servant with
this letter a present of a little sword for Lord Bullingdon, and a
private note to his governor; whose note of hand, by the way, I
possessed for a sum--I forget what--but such as the poor fellow
would have been very unwilling to pay. To this an answer came from
her Ladyship's amanuensis, stating that Lady Lyndon was too much
disturbed by grief at her recent dreadful calamity to see any one
but her own relations; and advices from my friend, the boy's
governor, stating that my Lord George Poynings was the young kinsman
who was about to console her.

This caused the quarrel between me and the young nobleman; whom I
took care to challenge on his first arrival at Dublin.

When the news of the duel was brought to the widow at Castle Lyndon,
my informant wrote me that Lady Lyndon shrieked and flung down the
journal, and said, 'The horrible monster! He would not shrink from
murder, I believe;' and little Lord Bullingdon, drawing his sword--
the sword I had given him, the rascal!--declared he would kill with
it the man who had hurt Cousin George. On Mr. Runt telling him that
I was the donor of the weapon, the little rogue still vowed that he
would kill me all the same! Indeed, in spite of my kindness to him,
that boy always seemed to detest me.

Her Ladyship sent up daily couriers to inquire after the health of
Lord George; and, thinking to myself that she would probably be
induced to come to Dublin if she were to hear that he was in danger,
I managed to have her informed that he was in a precarious state;
that he grew worse; that Redmond Barry had fled in consequence: of
this flight I caused the Mercury newspaper to give notice also, but
indeed it did not carry me beyond the town of Bray, where my poor
mother dwelt; and where, under the difficulties of a duel, I might
be sure of having a welcome.

Those readers who have the sentiment of filial duty strong in their
mind, will wonder that I have not yet described my interview with
that kind mother whose sacrifices for me in youth had been so
considerable, and for whom a man of my warm and affectionate nature
could not but feel the most enduring and sincere regard.

But a man, moving in the exalted sphere of society in which I now
stood, has his public duties to perform before he consults his
private affections; and so, upon my first arrival, I despatched a
messenger to Mrs. Barry, stating my arrival, conveying to her my
sentiments of respect and duty, and promising to pay them to her
personally so soon as my business in Dublin would leave me free.

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