Barry Lyndon

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Every post which brought us any account of Rigby's increasing
illness, was the sure occasion of a dinner from me; so much so, that
my friends of the hunt used to laugh and say, 'Rigby's worse;
there's a corporation dinner at Hackton.'

It was in 1776, when the American war broke out, that I came into
Parliament. My Lord Chatham, whose wisdom his party in those days
used to call superhuman, raised his oracular voice in the House of
Peers against the American contest; and my countryman, Mr. Burke--a
great philosopher, but a plaguy long-winded orator--was the champion
of the rebels in the Commons--where, however, thanks to British
patriotism, he could get very few to back him. Old Tiptoff would
have sworn black was white if the great Earl had bidden him; and he
made his son give up his commission in the Guards, in imitation of
my Lord Pitt, who resigned his ensigncy rather than fight against
what he called his American brethren.

But this was a height of patriotism extremely little relished in
England, where, ever since the breaking out of hostilities, our
people hated the Americans heartily; and where, when we heard of the
fight of Lexington, and the glorious victory of Bunker's Hill (as we
used to call it in those days), the nation flushed out in its usual
hot-headed anger. The talk was all against the philosophers after
that, and the people were most indomitably loyal. It was not until
the land-tax was increased, that the gentry began to grumble a
little; but still my party in the West was very strong against the
Tiptoffs, and I determined to take the field and win as usual.

The old Marquess neglected every one of the decent precautions which
are requisite in a parliamentary campaign. He signified to the
corporation and freeholders his intention of presenting his son,
Lord George, and his desire that the latter should be elected their
burgess; but he scarcely gave so much as a glass of beer to whet the
devotedness of his adherents: and I, as I need not say, engaged
every tavern in Tippleton in my behalf.

There is no need to go over the twenty-times-told tale of an
election. I rescued the borough of Tippleton from the hands of Lord
Tiptoff and his son, Lord George. I had a savage sort of
satisfaction, too, in forcing my wife (who had been at one time
exceedingly smitten by her kinsman, as I have already related) to
take part against him, and to wear and distribute my colours when
the day of election came. And when we spoke at one another, I told
the crowd that I had beaten Lord George in love, that I had beaten
him in war, and that I would now beat him in Parliament; and so I
did, as the event proved: for, to the inexpressible anger of the old
Marquess, Barry Lyndon, Esquire, was returned member of Parliament
for Tippleton, in place of John Rigby, Esquire, deceased; and I
threatened him at the next election to turn him out of BOTH his
seats, and went to attend my duties in Parliament.

It was then I seriously determined on achieving for myself the Irish
peerage, to be enjoyed after me by my beloved son and heir.

CHAPTER XVIII

MY GOOD FORTUNE BEGINS TO WAVER

And now, if any people should be disposed to think my history
immoral (for I have heard some assert that I was a man who never
deserved that so much prosperity should fall to my share), I will
beg those cavillers to do me the favour to read the conclusion of my
adventures; when they will see it was no such great prize that I had
won, and that wealth, splendour, thirty thousand per annum, and a
seat in Parliament, are often purchased at too dear a rate, when one
has to buy those enjoyments at the price of personal liberty, and
saddled with the charge of a troublesome wife.

They are the deuce, these troublesome wives, and that is the truth.
No man knows until he tries how wearisome and disheartening the
burthen of one of them is, and how the annoyance grows and
strengthens from year to year, and the courage becomes weaker to
bear it; so that that trouble which seemed light and trivial the
first year, becomes intolerable ten years after. I have heard of one
of the classical fellows in the dictionary who began by carrying a
calf up a hill every day, and so continued until the animal grew to
be a bull, which he still easily accommodated upon his shoulders;
but take my word for it, young unmarried gentlemen, a wife is a very
much harder pack to the back than the biggest heifer in Smithfield
and, if I can prevent one of you from marrying, the 'Memoirs of
Barry Lyndon, Esq.' will not be written in vain. Not that my Lady
was a scold or a shrew, as some wives are; I could have managed to
have cured her of that; but she was of a cowardly, crying,
melancholy, maudlin temper, which is to me still more odious: do
what one would to please her, she would never be happy or in good-
humour. I left her alone after a while; and because, as was natural
in my case, where a disagreeable home obliged me to seek amusement
and companions abroad, she added a mean detestable jealousy to all
her other faults: I could not for some time pay the commonest
attention to any other woman, but my Lady Lyndon must weep, and
wring her hands, and threaten to commit suicide, and I know not
what.

Her death would have been no comfort to me, as I leave any person of
common prudence to imagine; for that scoundrel of a young Bullingdon
(who was now growing up a tall, gawky, swarthy lad, and about to
become my greatest plague and annoyance) would have inherited every
penny of the property, and I should have been left considerably
poorer even than when I married the widow: for I spent my personal
fortune as well as the lady's income in the keeping up of our rank,
and was always too much a man of honour and spirit to save a penny
of Lady Lyndon's income. Let this be flung in the teeth of my
detractors, who say I never could have so injured the Lyndon
property had I not been making a private purse for myself; and who
believe that, even in my present painful situation, I have hoards of
gold laid by somewhere, and could come out as a Croesus when I
choose. I never raised a shilling upon Lady Lyndon's property but I
spent it like a man of honour; besides incurring numberless personal
obligations for money, which all went to the common stock.
Independent of the Lyndon mortgages and incumbrances, I owe myself
at least one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, which I spent while
in occupancy of my wife's estate; so that I may justly say that
property is indebted to me in the above-mentioned sum.

Although I have described the utter disgust and distaste which
speedily took possession of my breast as regarded Lady Lyndon; and
although I took no particular pains (for I am all frankness and
above-board) to disguise my feelings in general, yet she was of such
a mean spirit, that she pursued me with her regard in spite of my
indifference to her, and would kindle up at the smallest kind word I
spoke to her. The fact is, between my respected reader and myself,
that I was one of the handsomest and most dashing young men of
England in those days, and my wife was violently in love with me;
and though I say it who shouldn't, as the phrase goes, my wife was
not the only woman of rank in London who had a favourable opinion of
the humble Irish adventurer. What a riddle these women are, I have
often thought! I have seen the most elegant creatures at St. James's
grow wild for love of the coarsest and most vulgar of men; the
cleverest women passionately admire the most illiterate of our sex,
and so on. There is no end to the contrariety in the foolish
creatures; and though I don't mean to hint that _I_ am vulgar or
illiterate, as the persons mentioned above (I would cut the throat
of any man who dared to whisper a word against my birth or my
breeding), yet I have shown that Lady Lyndon had plenty of reason to
dislike me if she chose: but, like the rest of her silly sex, she
was governed by infatuation, not reason; and, up to the very last
day of our being together, would be reconciled to me, and fondle me,
if I addressed her a single kind word.

'Ah,' she would say, in these moments of tenderness--'Ah, REDMOND,
if you would always be so!' And in these fits of love she was the
most easy creature in the world to be persuaded, and would have
signed away her whole property, had it been possible. And, I must
confess, it was with very little attention on my part that I could
bring her into good-humour. To walk with her on the Mall, or at
Ranelagh, to attend her to church at St. James's, to purchase any
little present or trinket for her, was enough to coax her. Such is
female inconsistency! The next day she would be calling me 'Mr.
Barry' probably, and be bemoaning her miserable fate that she ever
should have been united to such a monster. So it was she was pleased
to call one of the most brilliant men in His Majesty's three
kingdoms: and I warrant me OTHER ladies had a much more flattering
opinion of me.

Then she would threaten to leave me; but I had a hold of her in the
person of her son, of whom she was passionately fond: I don't know
why, for she had always neglected Bullingdon her older son, and
never bestowed a thought upon his health, his welfare, or his
education.

It was our young boy, then, who formed the great bond of union
between me and her Ladyship; and there was no plan of ambition I
could propose in which she would not join for the poor lad's behoof,
and no expense she would not eagerly incur, if it might by any means
be shown to tend to his advancement. I can tell you, bribes were
administered, and in high places too,--so near the royal person of
His Majesty, that you would be astonished were I to mention what
great personages condescended to receive our loans. I got from the
English and Irish heralds a description and detailed pedigree of the
Barony of Barryogue, and claimed respectfully to be reinstated in my
ancestral titles, and also to be rewarded with the Viscounty of
Ballybarry. 'This head would become a coronet,' my Lady would
sometimes say, in her fond moments, smoothing down my hair; and,
indeed, there is many a puny whipster in their Lordships' house who
has neither my presence nor my courage, my pedigree, nor any of my
merits.

The striving after this peerage I considered to have been one of the
most unlucky of all my unlucky dealings at this period. I made
unheard-of sacrifices to bring it about. I lavished money here and
diamonds there. I bought lands at ten times their value; purchased
pictures and articles of vertu at ruinous prices. I gave repeated
entertainments to those friends to my claims who, being about the
Royal person, were likely to advance it. I lost many a bet to the
Royal Dukes His Majesty's brothers; but let these matters be
forgotten, and, because of my private injuries, let me not be
deficient in loyalty to my Sovereign.

The only person in this transaction whom I shall mention openly, is
that old scamp and swindler, Gustavus Adolphus, thirteenth Earl of
Crabs. This nobleman was one of the gentlemen of His Majesty's
closet, and one with whom the revered monarch was on terms of
considerable intimacy. A close regard had sprung up between them in
the old King's time; when His Royal Highness, playing at battledore
and shuttlecock with the young lord on the landing-place of the
great staircase at Kew, in some moment of irritation the Prince of
Wales kicked the young Earl downstairs, who, falling, broke his leg.
The Prince's hearty repentance for his violence caused him to ally
himself closely with the person whom he had injured; and when His
Majesty came to the throne there was no man, it is said, of whom the
Earl of Bute was so jealous as of my Lord Crabs. The latter was poor
and extravagant, and Bute got him out of the way, by sending him on
the Russian and other embassies; but on this favourite's dismissal,
Crabs sped back from the Continent, and was appointed almost
immediately to a place about His Majesty's person.

It was with this disreputable nobleman that I contracted an unluckly
intimacy; when, fresh and unsuspecting, I first established myself
in town, after my marriage with Lady Lyndon: and, as Crabs was
really one of the most entertaining fellows in the world, I took a
sincere pleasure in his company; besides the interesting desire I
had in cultivating the society of a man who was so near the person
of the highest personage in the realm.

To hear the fellow, you would fancy that there was scarce any
appointment made in which he had not a share. He told me, for
instance, of Charles Fox being turned out of his place a day before
poor Charley himself was aware of the fact. He told me when the
Howes were coming back from America, and who was to succeed to the
command there. Not to multiply instances, it was upon this person
that I fixed my chief reliance for the advancement of my claim to
the Barony of Barryogue and the Viscounty which I proposed to get.

One of the main causes of expense which this ambition of mine
entailed upon me was the fitting out and arming a company of
infantry from the Castle Lyndon and Hackton estates in Ireland,
which I offered to my gracious Sovereign for the campaign against
the American rebels. These troops, superbly equipped and clothed,
were embarked at Portsmouth in the year 1778; and the patriotism of
the gentleman who had raised them was so acceptable at Court, that,
on being presented by my Lord North, His Majesty condescended to
notice me particularly, and said, 'That's right, Mr. Lyndon, raise
another company; and go with them, too!' But this was by no means,
as the reader may suppose, to my notions. A man with thirty thousand
pounds per annum is a fool to risk his life like a common beggar:
and on this account I have always admired the conduct of my friend
Jack Bolter, who had been a most active and resolute cornet of
horse, and, as such, engaged in every scrape and skirmish which
could fall to his lot; but just before the battle of Minden he
received news that his uncle, the great army contractor, was dead,
and had left him five thousand per annum. Jack that instant applied
for leave; and, as it was refused him on the eve of a general
action, my gentleman took it, and never fired a pistol again: except
against an officer who questioned his courage, and whom he winged in
such a cool and determined manner, as showed all the world that it
was from prudence and a desire of enjoying his money, not from
cowardice, that he quitted the profession of arms.

When this Hackton company was raised, my stepson, who was now
sixteen years of age, was most eager to be allowed to join it, and I
would have gladly consented to have been rid of the young man; but
his guardian, Lord Tiptoff, who thwarted me in everything, refused
his permission, and the lad's military inclinations were balked. If
he could have gone on the expedition, and a rebel rifle had put an
end to him, I believe, to tell the truth, I should not have been
grieved over-much; and I should have had the pleasure of seeing my
other son the heir to the estate which his father had won with so
much pains.

The education of this young nobleman had been, I confess, some of
the loosest; and perhaps the truth is, I DID neglect the brat. He
was of so wild, savage, and insubordinate a nature, that I never had
the least regard for him; and before me and his mother, at least,
was so moody and dull, that I thought instruction thrown away upon
him, and left him for the most part to shift for himself. For two
whole years he remained in Ireland away from us; and when in
England, we kept him mainly at Hackton, never caring to have the
uncouth ungainly lad in the genteel company in the capital in which
we naturally mingled. My own poor boy, on the contrary, was the most
polite and engaging child ever seen: it was a pleasure to treat him
with kindness and distinction; and before he was five years old, the
little fellow was the pink of fashion, beauty, and good breeding.

In fact he could not have been otherwise, with the care both his
parents bestowed upon him, and the attentions that were lavished
upon him in every way. When he was four years old, I quarrelled with
the English nurse who had attended upon him, and about whom my wife
had been so jealous, and procured for him a French gouvernante, who
had lived with families of the first quality in Paris; and who, of
course, must set my Lady Lyndon jealous too. Under the care of this
young woman my little rogue learned to chatter French most
charmingly. It would have done your heart good to hear the dear
rascal swear Mort de ma vie! and to see him stamp his little foot,
and send the manants and canaille of the domestics to the trente
mille diables. He was precocious in all things: at a very early age
he would mimic everybody; at five, he would sit at table, and drink
his glass of champagne with the best of us; and his nurse would
teach him little French catches, and the last Parisian songs of Vade
and Collard,--pretty songs they were too; and would make such of his
hearers as understood French burst with laughing, and, I promise
you, scandalise some of the old dowagers who were admitted into the
society of his mamma: not that there were many of them; for I did
not encourage the visits of what you call respectable people to Lady
Lyndon. They are sad spoilers of sport,--tale-bearers, envious
narrow-minded people; making mischief between man and wife. Whenever
any of these grave personages in hoops and high heels used to make
their appearance at Hackton, or in Berkeley Square, it was my chief
pleasure to frighten them off; and I would make my little Bryan
dance, sing, and play the diable a quatre, and aid him myself, so as
to scare the old frumps.

I never shall forget the solemn remonstrances of our old square-toes
of a rector at Hackton, who made one or two vain attempts to teach
little Bryan Latin, and with whose innumerable children I sometimes
allowed the boy to associate. They learned some of Bryan's French
songs from him, which their mother, a poor soul who understood
pickles and custards much better than French, used fondly to
encourage them in singing; but which their father one day hearing,
he sent Miss Sarah to her bedroom and bread and water for a week,
and solemnly horsed Master Jacob in the presence of all his brothers
and sisters, and of Bryan, to whom he hoped that flogging would act
as a warning. But my little rogue kicked and plunged at the old
parson's shins until he was obliged to get his sexton to hold him
down, and swore, corbleu, morbleu, ventrebleu, that his young friend
Jacob should not be maltreated. After this scene, his reverence
forbade Bryan the rectory-house; on which I swore that his eldest
son, who was bringing up for the ministry, should never have the
succession of the living of Hackton, which I had thoughts of
bestowing on him; and his father said, with a canting hypocritical
air, which I hate, that Heaven's will must be done; that he would
not have his children disobedient or corrupted for the sake of a
bishopric, and wrote me a pompous and solemn letter, charged with
Latin quotations, taking farewell of me and my house. 'I do so with
regret,' added the old gentleman, 'for I have received so many
kindnesses from the Hackton family that it goes to my heart to be
disunited from them. My poor, I fear, may suffer in consequence of
my separation from you, and my being hence-forward unable to bring
to your notice instances of distress and affliction; which, when
they were known to you, I will do you the justice to say, your
generosity was always prompt to relieve.'

There may have been some truth in this, for the old gentleman was
perpetually pestering me with petitions, and I know for a certainty,
from his own charities, was often without a shilling in his pocket;
but I suspect the good dinners at Hackton had a considerable share
in causing his regrets at the dissolution of our intimacy: and I
know that his wife was quite sorry to forego the acquaintance of
Bryan's gouvernante, Mademoiselle Louison, who had all the newest
French fashions at her fingers' ends, and who never went to the
rectory but you would see the girls of the family turn out in new
sacks or mantles the Sunday after.

I used to punish the old rebel by snoring very loud in my pew on
Sundays during sermon-time; and I got a governor presently for
Bryan, and a chaplain of my own, when he became of age sufficient to
be separated from the women's society and guardianship. His English
nurse I married to my head gardener, with a handsome portion; his
French gouvernante I bestowed upon my faithful German Fritz, not
forgetting the dowry in the latter instance; and they set up a
French dining-house in Soho, and I believe at the time I write they
are richer in the world's goods than their generous and free-handed
master.

For Bryan I now got a young gentleman from Oxford, the Rev. Edmund
Lavender, who was commissioned to teach him Latin, when the boy was
in the humour, and to ground him in history, grammar, and the other
qualifications of a gentleman. Lavender was a precious addition to
our society at Hackton. He was the means of making a deal of fun
there. He was the butt of all our jokes, and bore them with the most
admirable and martyrlike patience. He was one of that sort of men
who would rather be kicked by a great man than not be noticed by
him; and I have often put his wig into the fire in the face of the
company, when he would laugh at the joke as well as any man there.
It was a delight to put him on a high-mettled horse, and send him
after the hounds,--pale, sweating, calling on us, for Heaven's sake,
to stop, and holding on for dear life by the mane and the crupper.
How it happened that the fellow was never killed I know not; but I
suppose hanging is the way in which HIS neck will be broke. He never
met with any accident, to speak of, in our hunting-matches: but you
were pretty sure to find him at dinner in his place at the bottom of
the table making the punch, whence he would be carried off fuddled
to bed before the night was over. Many a time have Bryan and I
painted his face black on those occasions. We put him into a haunted
room, and frightened his soul out of his body with ghosts; we let
loose cargoes of rats upon his bed; we cried fire, and filled his
boots with water; we cut the legs of his preaching-chair, and filled
his sermon-book with snuff. Poor Lavender bore it all with patience;
and at our parties, or when we came to London, was amply repaid by
being allowed to sit with the gentlefolks, and to fancy himself in
the society of men of fashion. It was good to hear the contempt with
which he talked about our rector. 'He has a son, sir, who is a
servitor: and a servitor at a small college,' he would say. 'How
COULD you, my dear sir, think of giving the reversion of Hackton to
such a low-bred creature?'

I should now speak of my other son, at least my Lady Lyndon's: I
mean the Viscount Bullingdon. I kept him in Ireland for some years,
under the guardianship of my mother, whom I had installed at Castle
Lyndon; and great, I promise you, was her state in that occupation,
and prodigious the good soul's splendour and haughty bearing. With
all her oddities, the Castle Lyndon estate was the best managed of
all our possessions; the rents were excellently paid, the charges of
getting them in smaller than they would have been under the
management of any steward. It was astonishing what small expenses
the good widow incurred; although she kept up the dignity of the TWO
families, as she would say. She had a set of domestics to attend
upon the young lord; she never went out herself but in an old gilt
coach and six; the house was kept clean and tight; the furniture and
gardens in the best repair; and, in our occasional visits to
Ireland, we never found any house we visited in such good condition
as our own. There were a score of ready serving-lasses, and half as
many trim men about the castle; and everything in as fine condition
as the best housekeeper could make it. All this she did with
scarcely any charges to us: for she fed sheep and cattle in the
parks, and made a handsome profit of them at Ballinasloe; she
supplied I don't know how many towns with butter and bacon; and the
fruit and vegetables from the gardens of Castle Lyndon got the
highest prices in Dublin market. She had no waste in the kitchen, as
there used to be in most of our Irish houses; and there was no
consumption of liquor in the cellars, for the old lady drank water,
and saw little or no company. All her society was a couple of the
girls of my ancient flame Nora Brady, now Mrs. Quin; who with her
husband had spent almost all their property, and who came to see me
once in London, looking very old, fat, and slatternly, with two
dirty children at her side. She wept very much when she saw me,
called me 'Sir,' and 'Mr. Lyndon,' at which I was not sorry, and
begged me to help her husband; which I did, getting him, through my
friend Lord Crabs, a place in the excise in Ireland, and paying the
passage of his family and himself to that country. I found him a
dirty, cast-down, snivelling drunkard; and, looking at poor Nora,
could not but wonder at the days when I had thought her a divinity.
But if ever I have had a regard for a woman, I remain through life
her constant friend, and could mention a thousand such instances of
my generous and faithful disposition.

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