Barry Lyndon

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With this the old fury of a marchioness left the room, and Lady
Lyndon in tears: I had the whole particulars of the conversation
from her Ladyship's companion, and augured the best result from it
in my favour.

Thus, by the sage influence of my Lady Tiptoff, the Countess of
Lyndon's natural friends and family were kept from her society. Even
when Lady Lyndon went to Court the most august lady in the realm
received her with such marked coldness, that the unfortunate widow
came home and took to her bed with vexation. And thus I may say that
Royalty itself became an agent in advancing my suit, and helping the
plans of the poor Irish soldier of fortune. So it is that Fate works
with agents, great and small; and by means over which they have no
control the destinies of men and women are accomplished.

I shall always consider the conduct of Mrs. Bridget (Lady Lyndon's
favourite maid at this juncture) as a masterpiece of ingenuity: and,
indeed, had such an opinion of her diplomatic skill, that the very
instant I became master of the Lyndon estates, and paid her the
promised sum--I am a man of honour, and rather than not keep my word
with the woman, I raised the money of the Jews, at an exorbitant
interest--as soon, I say, as I achieved my triumph, I took Mrs.
Bridget by the hand, and said, "Madam, you have shown such
unexampled fidelity in my service that I am glad to reward you,
according to my promise; but you have given proofs of such
extraordinary cleverness and dissimulation, that I must decline
keeping you in Lady Lyndon's establishment, and beg you will leave
it this very day:" which she did, and went over to the Tiptoff
faction, and has abused me ever since.

But I must tell you what she did which was so clever. Why, it was
the simplest thing in the world, as all master-strokes are. When
Lady Lyndon lamented her fate and my--as she was pleased to call it--
shameful treatment of her, Mrs. Bridget said, 'Why should not your
Ladyship write this young gentleman word of the evil which he is
causing you? Appeal to his feelings (which, I have heard say, are
very good indeed--the whole town is ringing with accounts of his
spirit and generosity), and beg him to desist from a pursuit which
causes the best of ladies so much pain? Do, my Lady, write: I know
your style is so elegant that I, for my part, have many a time burst
into tears in reading your charming letters, and I have no doubt Mr.
Barry will sacrifice anything rather than hurt your feelings.' And,
of course, the abigail swore to the fact.

'Do you think so, Bridget?' said her Ladyship. And my mistress
forthwith penned me a letter, in her most fascinating and winning
manner:--'Why, sir,' wrote she, 'will you pursue me? why environ me
in a web of intrigue so frightful that my spirit sinks under it,
seeing escape is hopeless from your frightful, your diabolical art?
They say you are generous to others--be so to me. I know your
bravery but too well: exercise it on men who can meet your sword,
not on a poor feeble woman, who cannot resist you. Remember the
friendship you once professed for me. And now, I beseech you, I
implore you, to give a proof of it. Contradict the calumnies which
you have spread against me, and repair, if you can, and if you have
a spark of honour left, the miseries which you have caused to the
heart-broken

'H. LYNDON.'

What was this letter meant for but that I should answer it in
person? My excellent ally told me where I should meet Lady Lyndon,
and accordingly I followed, and found her at the Pantheon. I
repeated the scene at Dublin over again; showed her how prodigious
my power was, humble as I was, and that my energy was still untired.
'But,' I added, 'I am as great in good as I am in evil; as fond and
faithful as a friend as I am terrible as an enemy. I will do
everything,' I said, 'which you ask of me, except when you bid me
not to love you. That is beyond my power; and while my heart has a
pulse I must follow you. It is MY fate; your fate. Cease to battle
against it, and be mine. Loveliest of your sex! with life alone can
end my passion for you; and, indeed, it is only by dying at your
command that I can be brought to obey you. Do you wish me to die?'

She said, laughing (for she was a woman of a lively, humorous turn),
that she did not wish me to commit self-murder; and I felt from that
moment that she was mine.

. . . .

A year from that day, on the 15th of May, in the year 1773, I had
the honour and happiness to lead to the altar Honoria, Countess of
Lyndon, widow of the late Right Honourable Sir Charles Lyndon, K.B.
The ceremony was performed at St. George's, Hanover Square, by the
Reverend Samuel Runt, her Ladyship's chaplain. A magnificent supper
and ball was given at our house in Berkeley Square, and the next
morning I had a duke, four earls, three generals, and a crowd of the
most distinguished people in London at my LEVEE. Walpole made a
lampoon about the marriage, and Selwyn cut jokes at the 'Cocoa-
Tree.' Old Lady Tiptoff, although she had recommended it, was ready
to bite off her fingers with vexation; and as for young Bullingdon,
who was grown a tall lad of fourteen, when called upon by the
Countess to embrace his papa, he shook his fist in my face and said,
'HE my father! I would as soon call one of your Ladyship's footmen
Papa!'

But I could afford to laugh at the rage of the boy and the old
woman, and at the jokes of the wits of St. James's. I sent off a
flaming account of our nuptials to my mother and my uncle the good
Chevalier; and now, arrived at the pitch of prosperity, and having,
at thirty years of age, by my own merits and energy, raised myself
to one of the highest social positions that any man in England could
occupy, I determined to enjoy myself as became a man of quality for
the remainder of my life.

After we had received the congratulations of our friends in London--
for in those days people were not ashamed of being married, as they
seem to be now--I and Honoria (who was all complacency, and a most
handsome, sprightly, and agreeable companion) set off to visit our
estates in the West of England, where I had never as yet set foot.
We left London in three chariots, each with four horses; and my
uncle would have been pleased could he have seen painted on their
panels the Irish crown and the ancient coat of the Barrys beside the
Countess's coronet and the noble cognisance of the noble family of
Lyndon.

Before quitting London, I procured His Majesty's gracious permission
to add the name of my lovely lady to my own; and henceforward
assumed the style and title of BARRY LYNDON, as I have written it in
this autobiography.

CHAPTER XVII

I APPEAR AS AN ORNAMENT OF ENGLISH SOCIETY

All the journey down to Hackton Castle, the largest and most ancient
of our ancestral seats in Devonshire, was performed with the slow
and sober state becoming people of the first quality in the realm.
An outrider in my livery went on before us, and bespoke our lodging
from town to town; and thus we lay in state at Andover, Ilminster,
and Exeter; and the fourth evening arrived in time for supper before
the antique baronial mansion, of which the gate was in an odious
Gothic taste that would have set Mr. Walpole wild with pleasure.

The first days of a marriage are commonly very trying; and I have
known couples, who lived together like turtle-doves for the rest of
their lives, peck each other's eyes out almost during the honeymoon.
I did not escape the common lot; in our journey westward my Lady
Lyndon chose to quarrel with me because I pulled out a pipe of
tobacco (the habit of smoking which I had acquired in Germany when a
soldier in Billow's, and could never give it over), and smoked it in
the carriage; and also her Ladyship chose to take umbrage both at
Ilminster and Andover, because in the evenings when we lay there I
chose to invite the landlords of the 'Bell' and the 'Lion' to crack
a bottle with me. Lady Lyndon was a haughty woman, and I hate pride;
and I promise you that in both instances I overcame this vice in
her. On the third day of our journey I had her to light my pipematch
with her own hands, and made her deliver it to me with tears in her
eyes; and at the 'Swan Inn' at Exeter I had so completely subdued
her, that she asked me humbly whether I would not wish the landlady
as well as the host to step up to dinner with us. To this I should
have had no objection, for, indeed, Mrs. Bonnyface was a very good-
looking woman; but we expected a visit from my Lord Bishop, a
kinsman of Lady Lyndon, and the BIENSEANCES did not permit the
indulgence of my wife's request. I appeared with her at evening
service, to compliment our right reverend cousin, and put her name
down for twenty-five guineas, and my own for one hundred, to the
famous new organ which was then being built for the cathedral. This
conduct, at the very outset of my career in the county, made me not
a little popular; and the residentiary canon, who did me the favour
to sup with me at the inn, went away after the sixth bottle,
hiccuping the most solemn vows for the welfare of such a p-p-pious
gentleman.

Before we reached Hackton Castle, we had to drive through ten miles
of the Lyndon estates, where the people were out to visit us, the
church bells set a-ringing, the parson and the farmers assembled in
their best by the roadside, and the school children and the
labouring people were loud in their hurrahs for her Ladyship. I
flung money among these worthy characters, stopped to bow and chat
with his reverence and the farmers, and if I found that the
Devonshire girls were among the handsomest in the kingdom is it my
fault? These remarks my Lady Lyndon especially would take in great
dudgeon; and I do believe she was made more angry by my admiration
of the red cheeks of Miss Betsy Quarringdon of Clumpton, than by any
previous speech or act of mine in the journey. 'Ah, ah, my fine
madam, you are jealous, are you?' thought I, and reflected, not
without deep sorrow, how lightly she herself had acted in her
husband's lifetime, and that those are most jealous who themselves
give most cause for jealousy.

Round Hackton village the scene of welcome was particularly gay: a
band of music had been brought from Plymouth, and arches and flags
had been raised, especially before the attorney's and the doctor's
houses, who were both in the employ of the family. There were many
hundreds of stout people at the great lodge, which, with the park-
wall, bounds one side of Hackton Green, and from which, for three
miles, goes (or rather went) an avenue of noble elms up to the
towers of the old castle. I wished they had been oak when I cut the
trees down in '79, for they would have fetched three times the
money: I know nothing more culpable than the carelessness of
ancestors in planting their grounds with timber of small value, when
they might just as easily raise oak. Thus I have always said that
the Roundhead Lyndon of Hackton, who planted these elms in Charles
II.'s time, cheated me of ten thousand pounds.

For the first few days after our arrival, my time was agreeably
spent in receiving the visits of the nobility and gentry who came to
pay their respects to the noble new-married couple, and, like
Bluebeard's wife in the fairy tale, in inspecting the treasures, the
furniture, and the numerous chambers of the castle. It is a huge old
place, built as far back as Henry V.'s time, besieged and battered
by the Cromwellians in the Revolution, and altered and patched up,
in an odious old-fashioned taste, by the Roundhead Lyndon, who
succeeded to the property at the death of a brother whose principles
were excellent and of the true Cavalier sort, but who ruined himself
chiefly by drinking, dicing, and a dissolute life, and a little by
supporting the King. The castle stands in a fine chase, which was
prettily speckled over with deer; and I can't but own that my
pleasure was considerable at first, as I sat in the oak parlour of
summer evenings, with the windows open, the gold and silver plate
shining in a hundred dazzling colours on the side-boards, a dozen
jolly companions round the table, and could look out over the wide
green park and the waving woods, and see the sun setting on the
lake, and hear the deer calling to one another.

The exterior was, when I first arrived, a quaint composition of all
sorts of architecture; of feudal towers, and gable-ends in Queen
Bess's style, and rough-patched walls built up to repair the ravages
of the Roundhead cannon: but I need not speak of this at large,
having had the place new-faced at a vast expense, under a
fashionable architect, and the facade laid out in the latest French-
Greek and most classical style. There had been moats, and
drawbridges, and outer walls; these I had shaved away into elegant
terraces, and handsomely laid out in parterres according to the
plans of Monsieur Cornichon, the great Parisian architect, who
visited England for the purpose.

After ascending the outer steps, you entered an antique hall of vast
dimensions, wainscoted with black carved oak, and ornamented with
portraits of our ancestors: from the square beard of Brook Lyndon,
the great lawyer in Queen Bess's time, to the loose stomacher and
ringlets of Lady Saccharissa Lyndon, whom Vandyck painted when she
was a maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, and down to Sir
Charles Lyndon, with his riband as a knight of the Bath; and my
Lady, painted by Hudson, in a white satin sack and the family
diamonds, as she was presented to the old King George II. These
diamonds were very fine: I first had them reset by Boehmer when we
appeared before their French Majesties at Versailles; and finally
raised L18,000 upon them, after that infernal run of ill luck at
'Goosetree's,' when Jemmy Twitcher (as we called my Lord Sandwich),
Carlisle, Charley Fox, and I played hombre for four-and-forty hours
SANS DESEMPARER. Bows and pikes, huge stag-heads and hunting
implements, and rusty old suits of armour, that may have been worn
in the days of Gog and Magog for what I know, formed the other old
ornaments of this huge apartment; and were ranged round a fireplace
where you might have turned a coach-and-six. This I kept pretty much
in its antique condition, but had the old armour eventually turned
out and consigned to the lumber-rooms upstairs; replacing it with
china monsters, gilded settees from France, and elegant marbles, of
which the broken noses and limbs, and ugliness, undeniably proved
their antiquity: and which an agent purchased for me at Rome. But
such was the taste of the times (and, perhaps, the rascality of my
agent), that thirty thousand pounds' worth of these gems of art only
went for three hundred guineas at a subsequent period, when I found
it necessary to raise money on my collections.

From this main hall branched off on either side the long series of
state-rooms, poorly furnished with high-backed chairs and long queer
Venice glasses, when first I came to the property; but afterwards
rendered so splendid by me, with the gold damasks of Lyons and the
magnificent Gobelin tapestries I won from Richelieu at play. There
were thirty-six bedrooms DE MAITRE, of which I only kept three in
their antique condition,--the haunted room as it was called, where
the murder was done in James II.'s time, the bed where William slept
after landing at Torbay, and Queen Elizabeth's state-room. All the
rest were redecorated by Cornichon in the most elegant taste; not a
little to the scandal of some of the steady old country dowagers;
for I had pictures of Boucher and Vanloo to decorate the principal
apartments, in which the Cupids and Venuses were painted in a manner
so natural, that I recollect the old wizened Countess of Frumpington
pinning over the curtains of her bed, and sending her daughter, Lady
Blanche Whalebone, to sleep with her waiting-woman, rather than
allow her to lie in a chamber hung all over with looking-glasses,
after the exact fashion of the Queen's closet at Versailles.

For many of these ornaments I was not so much answerable as
Cornichon, whom Lauraguais lent me, and who was the intendant of my
buildings during my absence abroad. I had given the man CARTE
BLANCHE, and when he fell down and broke his leg, as he was
decorating a theatre in the room which had been the old chapel of
the castle, the people of the country thought it was a judgment of
Heaven upon him. In his rage for improvement the fellow dared
anything. Without my orders he cut down an old rookery which was
sacred in the country, and had a prophecy regarding it, stating,
'When the rook-wood shall fall, down goes Hackton Hall.' The rooks
went over and colonised Tiptoff Woods, which lay near us (and be
hanged to them!), and Cornichon built a temple to Venus and two
lovely fountains on their site. Venuses and Cupids were the rascal's
adoration: he wanted to take down the Gothic screen and place Cupids
in our pew there; but old Doctor Huff the rector came out with a
large oak stick, and addressed the unlucky architect in Latin, of
which he did not comprehend a word, yet made him understand that he
would break his bones if he laid a single finger upon the sacred
edifice. Cornichon made complaints about the 'Abbe Huff,' as he
called him. ('Et quel abbe, grand Dieu!' added he, quite bewildered,
'un abbe avec douze enfans'); but I encouraged the Church in this
respect, and bade Cornichon exert his talents only in the castle.

There was a magnificent collection of ancient plate, to which I
added much of the most splendid modern kind; a cellar which, however
well furnished, required continual replenishing, and a kitchen which
I reformed altogether. My friend, Jack Wilkes, sent me down a cook
from the Mansion House, for the English cookery,--the turtle and
venison department: I had a CHEF (who called out the Englishman, by
the way, and complained sadly of the GROS COCHON who wanted to meet
him with COUPS DE POING) and a couple of AIDES from Paris, and an
Italian confectioner, as my OFFICIERS DE BOUCHE. All which natural
appendages to a man of fashion, the odious, stingy old Tiptoff, my
kinsman and neighbour, affected to view with horror; and he spread
through the country a report that I had my victuals cooked by
Papists, lived upon frogs, and, he verily believed, fricasseed
little children.

But the squires ate my dinners very readily for all that, and old
Doctor Huff himself was compelled to allow that my venison and
turtle were most orthodox. The former gentry I knew how to
conciliate, too, in other ways. There had been only a subscription
pack of fox-hounds in the county and a few beggarly couples of mangy
beagles, with which old Tiptoff pattered about his grounds; I built
a kennel and stables, which cost L30,000, and stocked them in a
manner which was worthy of my ancestors, the Irish kings. I had two
packs of hounds, and took the field in the season four times a week,
with three gentlemen in my hunt-uniform to follow me, and open house
at Hackton for all who belonged to the hunt.

These changes and this train de vivre required, as may be supposed,
no small outlay; and I confess that I have little of that base
spirit of economy in my composition which some people practise and
admire. For instance, old Tiptoff was hoarding up his money to
repair his father's extravagance and disencumber his estates; a good
deal of the money with which he paid off his mortgages my agent
procured upon mine. And, besides, it must be remembered I had only a
life-interest upon the Lyndon property, was always of an easy temper
in dealing with the money-brokers, and had to pay heavily for
insuring her Ladyship's life.

At the end of a year Lady Lyndon presented me with a son--Bryan
Lyndon I called him, in compliment to my royal ancestry: but what
more had I to leave him than a noble name? Was not the estate of his
mother entailed upon the odious little Turk, Lord Bullingdon? and
whom, by the way, I have not mentioned as yet, though he was living
at Hackton, consigned to a new governor. The insubordination of that
boy was dreadful. He used to quote passages of 'Hamlet' to his
mother, which made her very angry. Once when I took a horsewhip to
chastise him, he drew a knife, and would have stabbed me: and,
'faith, I recollected my own youth, which was pretty similar; and,
holding out my hand, burst out laughing, and proposed to him to be
friends. We were reconciled for that time, and the next, and the
next; but there was no love lost between us, and his hatred for me
seemed to grow as he grew, which was apace.

I determined to endow my darling boy Bryan with a property, and to
this end cut down twelve thousand pounds' worth of timber on Lady
Lyndon's Yorkshire and Irish estates: at which proceeding
Bullingdon's guardian, Tiptoff, cried out, as usual, and swore I had
no right to touch a stick of the trees; but down they went; and I
commissioned my mother to repurchase the ancient lands of Ballybarry
and Barryogue, which had once formed part of the immense possessions
of my house. These she bought back with excellent prudence and
extreme joy; for her heart was gladdened at the idea that a son was
born to my name, and with the notion of my magnificent fortunes.

To say truth, I was rather afraid, now that I lived in a very
different sphere from that in which she was accustomed to move, lest
she should come to pay me a visit, and astonish my English friends
by her bragging and her brogue, her rouge and her old hoops and
furbelows of the time of George II.: in which she had figured
advantageously in her youth, and which she still fondly thought to
be at the height of the fashion. So I wrote to her, putting off her
visit; begging her to visit us when the left wing of the castle was
finished, or the stables built, and so forth. There was no need of
such precaution. 'A hint's enough for me, Redmond,' the old lady
would reply. 'I am not coming to disturb you among your great
English friends with my old-fashioned Irish ways. It's a blessing to
me to think that my darling boy has attained the position which I
always knew was his due, and for which I pinched myself to educate
him. You must bring me the little Bryan, that his grandmother may
kiss him, one day. Present my respectful blessing to her Ladyship
his mamma. Tell her she has got a treasure in her husband, which she
couldn't have had had she taken a duke to marry her; and that the
Barrys and the Bradys, though without titles, have the best of blood
in their veins. I shall never rest until I see you Earl of
Ballybarry, and my grandson Lord Viscount Barryogue.'

How singular it was that the very same ideas should be passing in my
mother's mind and my own! The very title she had pitched upon had
also been selected (naturally enough) by me; and I don't mind
confessing that I had filled a dozen sheets of paper with my
signature, under the names of Ballybarry and Barryogue, and had
determined with my usual impetuosity to carry my point. My mother
went and established herself at Ballybarry, living with the priest
there until a tenement could be erected, and dating from 'Ballybarry
Castle;' which, you may be sure, I gave out to be a place of no
small importance. I had a plan of the estate in my study, both at
Hackton and in Berkeley Square, and the plans of the elevation of
Ballybarry Castle, the ancestral residence of Barry Lyndon, Esq.,
with the projected improvements, in which the castle was represented
as about the size of Windsor, with more ornaments to the
architecture; and eight hundred acres of bog falling in handy, I
purchased them at three pounds an acre, so that my estate upon the
map looked to be no insignificant one. [Footnote: On the strength of
this estate, and pledging his honour that it was not mortgaged, Mr.
Barry Lyndon borrowed L17,000 in the year 1786, from young Captain
Pigeon, the city merchant's son, who had just come in for his
property. At for the Polwellan estate and mines, 'the cause of
endless litigation,' it must be owned that our hero purchased them;
but he never paid more than the first L5000 of the purchase-money.
Hence the litigation of which he complains, and the famous Chancery
suit of 'Trecothick v. Lyndon,' in which Mr. John Scott greatly
distinguished himself.-ED.]

I also in this year made arrangements for purchasing the Polwellan
estate and mines in Cornwall from Sir John Trecothick, for L70,000--
an imprudent bargain, which was afterwards the cause to me of much
dispute and litigation. The troubles of property, the rascality of
agents, the quibbles of lawyers, are endless. Humble people envy us
great men, and fancy that our lives are all pleasure. Many a time in
the course of my prosperity I have sighed for the days of my meanest
fortune, and envied the boon companions at my table, with no clothes
to their backs but such as my credit supplied them, without a guinea
but what came from my pocket; but without one of the harassing cares
and responsibilities which are the dismal adjuncts of great rank and
property.

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