Barry Lyndon

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At any rate, it must be allowed that Mrs. Barry, after her husband's
death and her retirement, lived in such a way as to defy slander.
For whereas Bell Brady had been the gayest girl in the whole county
of Wexford, with half the bachelors at her feet, and plenty of
smiles and encouragement for every one of them, Bell Barry adopted a
dignified reserve that almost amounted to pomposity, and was as
starch as any Quakeress. Many a man renewed his offers to the widow,
who had been smitten by the charms of the spinster; but Mrs. Barry
refused all offers of marriage, declaring that she lived now for her
son only, and for the memory of her departed saint.

'Saint forsooth!' said ill-natured Mrs. Brady.

'Harry Barry was as big a sinner as ever was known; and 'tis
notorious that he and Bell hated each other. If she won't marry now,
depend on it, the artful woman has a husband in her eye for all
that, and only waits until Lord Bagwig is a widower.'

And suppose she did, what then? Was not the widow of a Barry fit to
marry with any lord of England? and was it not always said that a
woman was to restore the fortunes of the Barry family? If my mother
fancied that SHE was to be that woman, I think it was a perfectly
justifiable notion on her part; for the Earl (my godfather) was
always most attentive to her: I never knew how deeply this notion of
advancing my interests in the world had taken possession of mamma's
mind, until his Lordship's marriage in the year '57 with Miss
Goldmore, the Indian nabob's rich daughter.

Meanwhile we continued to reside at Barryville, and, considering the
smallness of our income, kept up a wonderful state. Of the half-
dozen families that formed the congregation at Brady's Town, there
was not a single person whose appearance was so respectable as that
of the widow, who, though she always dressed in mourning, in memory
of her deceased husband, took care that her garments should be made
so as to set off her handsome person to the greatest advantage; and,
indeed, I think, spent six hours out of every day in the week in
cutting, trimming, and altering them to the fashion. She had the
largest of hoops and the handsomest of furbelows, and once a month
(under my Lord Bagwig's cover) would come a letter from London
containing the newest accounts of the fashions there. Her complexion
was so brilliant that she had no call to use rouge, as was the mode
in those days. No, she left red and white, she said (and hence the
reader may imagine how the two ladies hated each other) to Madam
Brady, whose yellow complexion no plaster could alter. In a word,
she was so accomplished a beauty, that all the women in the country
took pattern by her, and the young fellows from ten miles round
would ride over to Castle Brady church to have the sight of her.

But if (like every other woman that ever I saw or read of) she was
proud of her beauty, to do her justice she was still more proud of
her son, and has said a thousand times to me that I was the
handsomest young fellow in the world. This is a matter of taste. A
man of sixty may, however, say what he was at fourteen without much
vanity, and I must say I think there was some cause for my mother's
opinion. The good soul's pleasure was to dress me; and on Sundays
and holidays I turned out in a velvet coat with a silver-hilted
sword by my side and a gold garter at my knee, as fine as any lord
in the land. My mother worked me several most splendid waistcoats,
and I had plenty of lace for my ruffles, and a fresh riband to my
hair, and as we walked to church on Sundays, even envious Mrs. Brady
was found to allow that there was not a prettier pair in the
kingdom.

Of course, too, the lady of Castle Brady used to sneer, because on
these occasions a certain Tim, who used to be called my valet,
followed me and my mother to church, carrying a huge prayer-book and
a cane, and dressed in the livery of one of our own fine footmen
from Clarges Street, which, as Tim was a bandy-shanked little
fellow, did not exactly become him. But, though poor, we were
gentlefolks, and not to be sneered out of these becoming appendages
to our rank; and so would march up the aisle to our pew with as much
state and gravity as the Lord Lieutenant's lady and son might do.
When there, my mother would give the responses and amens in a loud
dignified voice that was delightful to hear, and, besides, had a
fine loud voice for singing, which art she had perfected in London
under a fashionable teacher; and she would exercise her talent in
such a way that you would hardly hear any other voice of the little
congregation which chose to join in the psalm. In fact, my mother
had great gifts in every way, and believed herself to be one of the
most beautiful, accomplished, and meritorious persons in the world.
Often and often has she talked to me and the neighbours regarding
her own humility and piety, pointing them out in such a way that I
would defy the most obstinate to disbelieve her.

When we left Castle Brady we came to occupy a house in Brady's town,
which mamma christened Barryville. I confess it was but a small
place, but, indeed, we made the most of it. I have mentioned the
family pedigree which hung up in the drawingroom, which mamma called
the yellow saloon, and my bedroom was called the pink bedroom, and
hers the orange tawny apartment (how well I remember them all!); and
at dinner-time Tim regularly rang a great bell, and we each had a
silver tankard to drink from, and mother boasted with justice that I
had as good a bottle of claret by my side as any squire of the land.
So indeed I had, but I was not, of course, allowed at my tender
years to drink any of the wine; which thus attained a considerable
age, even in the decanter.

Uncle Brady (in spite of the family quarrel) found out the above
fact one day by calling at Barryville at dinner-time, and unluckily
tasting the liquor. You should have seen how he sputtered and made
faces! But the honest gentleman was not particular about his wine,
or the company in which he drank it. He would get drunk, indeed,
with the parson or the priest indifferently; with the latter, much
to my mother's indignation, for, as a true blue Nassauite, she
heartily despised all those of the old faith, and would scarcely sit
down in the room with a benighted Papist. But the squire had no such
scruples; he was, indeed, one of the easiest, idlest, and best-
natured fellows that ever lived, and many an hour would he pass with
the lonely widow when he was tired of Madam Brady at home. He liked
me, he said, as much as one of his own sons, and at length, after
the widow had held out for a couple of years, she agreed to allow me
to return to the castle; though, for herself, she resolutely kept
the oath which she had made with regard to her sister-in-law.

The very first day I returned to Castle Brady my trials may be said,
in a manner, to have begun. My cousin, Master Mick, a huge monster
of nineteen (who hated me, and I promise you I returned the
compliment), insulted me at dinner about my mother's poverty, and
made all the girls of the family titter. So when we went to the
stables, whither Mick always went for his pipe of tobacco after
dinner, I told him a piece of my mind, and there was a fight for at
least ten minutes, during which I stood to him like a man, and
blacked his left eye, though I was myself only twelve years old at
the time. Of course he beat me, but a beating makes only a small
impression on a lad of that tender age, as I had proved many times
in battles with the ragged Brady's Town boys before, not one of
whom, at my time of life, was my match. My uncle was very much
pleased when he heard of my gallantry; my cousin Nora brought brown
paper and vinegar for my nose, and I went home that night with a
pint of claret under my girdle, not a little proud, let me tell you,
at having held my own against Mick so long.

And though he persisted in his bad treatment of me, and used to cane
me whenever I fell in his way, yet I was very happy now at Castle
Brady with the company there, and my cousins, or some of them, and
the kindness of my uncle, with whom I became a prodigious favourite.
He bought a colt for me, and taught me to ride. He took me out
coursing and fowling, and instructed me to shoot flying. And at
length I was released from Mick's persecution, for his brother,
Master Ulick, returning from Trinity College, and hating his elder
brother, as is mostly the way in families of fashion, took me under
his protection; and from that time, as Ulick was a deal bigger and
stronger than Mick, I, English Redmond, as I was called, was left
alone; except when the former thought fit to thrash me, which he did
whenever he thought proper.

Nor was my learning neglected in the ornamental parts, for I had an
uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped in
accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick ear and
a fine voice, which my mother cultivated to the best of her power,
and she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus
laid the foundation of my future success in life. The common dances
I learned (as, perhaps, I ought not to confess) in the servants'
hall, which, you may be sure, was never without a piper, and where I
was considered unrivalled both at a hornpipe and a jig.

In the matter of book-learning, I had always an uncommon taste for
reading plays and novels, as the best part of a gentleman's polite
education, and never let a pedlar pass the village, if I had a
penny, without having a ballad or two from him. As for your dull
grammar, and Greek and Latin and stuff, I have always hated them
from my youth upwards, and said, very unmistakably, I would have
none of them.

This I proved pretty clearly at the age of thirteen, when my aunt
Biddy Brady's legacy of L100 came in to mamma, who thought to employ
the sum on my education, and sent me to Doctor Tobias Tickler's
famous academy at Ballywhacket--Backwhacket, as my uncle used to
call it. But six weeks after I had been consigned to his reverence,
I suddenly made my appearance again at Castle Brady, having walked
forty miles from the odious place, and left the Doctor in a state
near upon apoplexy. The fact was, that at taw, prison-bars, or
boxing, I was at the head of the school, but could not be brought to
excel in the classics; and after having been flogged seven times,
without its doing me the least good in my Latin, I refused to submit
altogether (finding it useless) to an eighth application of the rod.
'Try some other way, sir,' said I, when he was for horsing me once
more; but he wouldn't; whereon, and to defend myself, I flung a
slate at him, and knocked down a Scotch usher with a leaden
inkstand. All the lads huzza'd at this, and some or the servants
wanted to stop me; but taking out a large clasp-knife that my cousin
Nora had given me, I swore I would plunge it into the waistcoat of
the first man who dared to balk me, and faith they let me pass on. I
slept that night twenty miles off Ballywhacket, at the house of a
cottier, who gave me potatoes and milk, and to whom I gave a hundred
guineas after, when I came to visit Ireland in my days of greatness.
I wish I had the money now. But what's the use of regret? I have had
many a harder bed than that I shall sleep on to-night, and many a
scantier meal than honest Phil Murphy gave me on the evening I ran
away from school. So six weeks' was all the schooling I ever got.
And I say this to let parents know the value of it; for though I
have met more learned book-worms in the world, especially a great
hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor, whom they called Johnson,
and who lived in a court off Fleet Street, in London, yet I pretty
soon silenced him in an argument (at 'Button's Coffeehouse'); and in
that, and in poetry, and what I call natural philosophy, or the
science of life, and in riding, music, leaping, the small-sword, the
knowledge of a horse, or a main of cocks, and the manners of an
accomplished gentleman and a man of fashion, I may say for myself
that Redmond Barry has seldom found his equal. 'Sir,' said I to Mr.
Johnson, on the occasion I allude to--he was accompanied by a Mr.
Buswell of Scotland, and I was presented to the club by a Mr.
Goldsmith, a countryman of my own--'Sir,' said I, in reply to the
schoolmaster's great thundering quotation in Greek, 'you fancy you
know a great deal more than me, because you quote your Aristotle and
your Pluto; but can you tell me which horse will win at Epsom Downs
next week?--Can you run six miles without breathing?--Can you shoot
the ace of spades ten times without missing? If so, talk about
Aristotle and Pluto to me.'

'D'ye knaw who ye're speaking to?' roared out the Scotch gentleman,
Mr. Boswell, at this.

'Hold your tongue, Mr. Boswell,' said the old schoolmaster. 'I had
no right to brag of my Greek to the gentleman, and he has answered
me very well.'

'Doctor,' says I, looking waggishly at him, 'do you know ever a
rhyme for ArisTOTLE?'

'Port, if you plaise,' says Mr. Goldsmith, laughing. And we had SIX
RHYMES FOR ARISTOTLE before we left the coffee-house that evening.
It became a regular joke afterwards when I told the story, and at
'White's' or the 'Cocoa-tree' you would hear the wags say, 'Waiter,
bring me one of Captain Barry's rhymes for Aristotle.' Once, when I
was in liquor at the latter place, young Dick Sheridan called me a
great Staggerite, a joke which I could never understand. But I am
wandering from my story, and must get back to home, and dear old
Ireland again.

I have made acquaintance with the best in the land since, and my
manners are such, I have said, as to make me the equal of them all;
and, perhaps, you will wonder how a country boy, as I was, educated
amongst Irish squires, and their dependants of the stable and farm,
should arrive at possessing such elegant manners as I was
indisputably allowed to have. I had, the fact is, a very valuable
instructor in the person of an old gamekeeper, who had served the
French king at Fontenoy, and who taught me the dances and customs,
and a smattering of the language of that country, with the use of
the sword, both small and broad. Many and many a long mile I have
trudged by his side as a lad, he telling me wonderful stories of the
French king, and the Irish brigade, and Marshal Saxe, and the opera-
dancers; he knew my uncle, too, the Chevalier Borgne, and indeed had
a thousand accomplishments which he taught me in secret. I never
knew a man like him for making or throwing a fly, for physicking a
horse, or breaking, or choosing one; he taught me manly sports, from
birds'-nesting upwards, and I always shall consider Phil Purcell as
the very best tutor I could have had. His fault was drink, but for
that I have always had a blind eye; and he hated my cousin Mick like
poison; but I could excuse him that too.

With Phil, and at the age of fifteen, I was a more accomplished man
than either of my cousins; and I think Nature had been also more
bountiful to me in the matter of person. Some of the Castle Brady
girls (as you shall hear presently) adored me. At fairs and races
many of the prettiest lasses present said they would like to have me
for their bachelor; and yet somehow, it must be confessed, I was not
popular.

In the first place, every one knew I was bitter poor; and I think,
perhaps, it was my good mother's fault that I was bitter proud too.
I had a habit of boasting in company of my birth, and the splendour
of my carriages, gardens, cellars, and domestics, and this before
people who were perfectly aware of my real circumstances. If it was
boys, and they ventured to sneer, I would beat them, or die for it;
and many's the time I've been brought home well-nigh killed by one
or more of them, on what, when my mother asked me, I would say was
'a family quarrel.' 'Support your name with your blood, Reddy my
boy,' would that saint say, with the tears in her eyes; and so would
she herself have done with her voice, ay, and her teeth and nails.

Thus, at fifteen, there was scarce a lad of twenty, for half-a-dozen
miles round, that I had not beat for one cause or other. There were
the vicar's two sons of Castle Brady--in course I could not
associate with such beggarly brats as them, and many a battle did we
have as to who should take the wall in Brady's Town; there was Pat
Lurgan, the blacksmith's son, who had the better of me four times
before we came to the crowning fight, when I overcame him; and I
could mention a score more of my deeds of prowess in that way, but
that fisticuff facts are dull subjects to talk of, and to discuss
before high-bred gentlemen and ladies.

However, there is another subject, ladies, on which I must
discourse, and THAT is never out of place. Day and night you like to
hear of it: young and old, you dream and think of it. Handsome and
ugly (and, faith, before fifty, I never saw such a thing as a plain
woman), it's the subject next to the hearts of all of you; and I
think you guess my riddle without more trouble. LOVE! sure the word
is formed on purpose out of the prettiest soft vowels and consonants
in the language, and he or she who does not care to read about it is
not worth a fig, to my thinking.

My uncle's family consisted of ten children; who, as is the custom
in such large families, were divided into two camps, or parties; the
one siding with their mamma, the other taking the part of my uncle
in all the numerous quarrels which arose between that gentleman and
his lady. Mrs. Brady's faction was headed by Mick, the eldest son,
who hated me so, and disliked his father for keeping him out of his
property: while Ulick, the second brother, was his father's own boy;
and, in revenge, Master Mick was desperately afraid of him. I need
not mention the girls' names; I had plague enough with them in
after-life, Heaven knows; and one of them was the cause of all my
early troubles: this was (though to be sure all her sisters denied
it) the belle of the family, Miss Honoria Brady by name.

She said she was only nineteen at the time; but I could read the
fly-leaf in the family Bible as well as another (it was one of the
three books which, with the backgammon-board, formed my uncle's
library), and know that she was born in the year '37, and christened
by Doctor Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: hence she was three-
and-twenty years old at the time she and I were so much together.

When I come to think about her now, I know she never could have been
handsome; for her figure was rather of the fattest, and her mouth of
the widest; she was freckled over like a partridge's egg, and her
hair was the colour of a certain vegetable which we eat with boiled
beef, to use the mildest term. Often and often would my dear mother
make these remarks concerning her; but I did not believe them then,
and somehow had gotten to think Honoria an angelical being, far
above all the other angels of her sex.

And as we know very well that a lady who is skilled in dancing or
singing never can perfect herself without a deal of study in
private, and that the song or the minuet which is performed with so
much graceful ease in the assembly-room has not been acquired
without vast labour and perseverance in private; so it is with the
dear creatures who are skilled in coquetting. Honoria, for instance,
was always practising, and she would take poor me to rehearse her
accomplishment upon; or the exciseman, when he came his rounds, or
the steward, or the poor curate, or the young apothecary's lad from
Brady's Town: whom I recollect beating once for that very reason. If
he is alive now I make him my apologies. Poor fellow! as if it was
HIS fault that he should be a victim to the wiles of one of the
greatest coquettes (considering her obscure life and rustic
breeding) in the world.

If the truth must be told--and every word of this narrative of my
life is of the most sacred veracity--my passion for Nora began in a
very vulgar and unromantic way. I did not save her life; on the
contrary, I once very nearly killed her, as you shall hear. I did
not behold her by moonlight playing on the guitar, or rescue her
from the hands of ruffians, as Alfonso does Lindamira in the novel;
but one day, after dinner at Brady's Town, in summer, going into the
garden to pull gooseberries for my dessert, and thinking only of
gooseberries, I pledge my honour, I came upon Miss Nora and one of
her sisters, with whom she was friends at the time, who were both
engaged in the very same amusement.

'What's the Latin for gooseberry, Redmond?' says she. She was always
'poking her fun,' as the Irish phrase it.

'I know the Latin for goose,' says I.

'And what's that?' cries Miss Mysie, as pert as a peacock.

'Bo to you!' says I (for I had never a want of wit); and so we fell
to work at the gooseberry-bush, laughing and talking as happy as
might be. In the course of our diversion Nora managed to scratch her
arm, and it bled, and she screamed, and it was mighty round and
white, and I tied it up, and I believe was permitted to kiss her
hand; and though it was as big and clumsy a hand as ever you saw,
yet I thought the favour the most ravishing one that was ever
conferred upon me, and went home in a rapture.

I was much too simple a fellow to disguise any sentiment I chanced
to feel in those days; and not one of the eight Castle Brady girls
but was soon aware of my passion, and joked and complimented Nora
about her bachelor.

The torments of jealousy the cruel coquette made me endure were
horrible. Sometimes she would treat me as a child, sometimes as a
man. She would always leave me if ever there came a stranger to the
house.

'For after all, Redmond,' she would say, 'you are but fifteen, and
you haven't a guinea in the world.' At which I would swear that I
would become the greatest hero ever known out of Ireland, and vow
that before I was twenty I would have money enough to purchase an
estate six times as big as Castle Brady. All which vain promises, of
course, I did not keep; but I make no doubt they influenced me in my
very early life, and caused me to do those great actions for which I
have been celebrated, and which shall be narrated presently in
order.

I must tell one of them, just that my dear young lady readers may
know what sort of a fellow Redmond Barry was, and what a courage and
undaunted passion he had. I question whether any of the jenny-
jessamines of the present day would do half as much in the face of
danger.

About this time, it must be premised, the United Kingdom was in a
state of great excitement from the threat generally credited of a
French invasion. The Pretender was said to be in high favour at
Versailles, a descent upon Ireland was especially looked to, and the
noblemen and people of condition in that and all other parts of the
kingdom showed their loyalty by raising regiments of horse and foot
to resist the invaders. Brady's Town sent a company to join the
Kilwangan regiment, of which Master Mick was the captain; and we had
a letter from Master Ulick at Trinity College, stating that the
University had also formed a regiment, in which he had the honour to
be a corporal. How I envied them both! especially that odious Mick
as I saw him in his laced scarlet coat, with a ribbon in his hat,
march off at the head of his men. He, the poor spiritless creature,
was a captain, and I nothing,--I who felt I had as much courage as
the Duke of Cumberland himself, and felt, too, that a red jacket
would mightily become me! My mother said I was too young to join the
new regiment; but the fact was, that it was she herself who was too
poor, for the cost of a new uniform would have swallowed up half her
year's income, and she would only have her boy appear in a way
suitable to his birth, riding the finest of racers, dressed in the
best of clothes, and keeping the genteelest of company.

Well, then, the whole country was alive with war's alarums, the
three kingdoms ringing with military music, and every man of merit
paying his devoirs at the court of Bellona, whilst poor I was
obliged to stay at home in my fustian jacket and sigh for fame in
secret. Mr. Mick came to and fro from the regiment, and brought
numerous of his comrades with him. Their costume and swaggering airs
filled me with grief, and Miss Nora's unvarying attentions to them
served to make me half wild. No one, however, thought of attributing
this sadness to the young lady's score, but rather to my
disappointment at not being allowed to join the military profession.

Once the officers of the Fencibles gave a grand ball at Kilwangan,
to which, as a matter of course, all the ladies of Castle Brady (and
a pretty ugly coachful they were) were invited. I knew to what
tortures the odious little flirt of a Nora would put me with her
eternal coquetries with the officers, and refused for a long time to
be one of the party to the ball. But she had a way of conquering me,
against which all resistance of mine was in vain. She vowed that
riding in a coach always made her ill. 'And how can I go to the
ball,' said she, 'unless you take me on Daisy behind you on the
pillion?' Daisy was a good blood-mare of my uncle's, and to such a
proposition I could not for my soul say no; so we rode in safety to
Kilwangan, and I felt myself as proud as any prince when she
promised to dance a country-dance with me.

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