Barry Lyndon

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I went home in a fury which can't be described; and having Lord
Crabs to dinner that day, assailed his Lordship by pulling his wig
off his head, and smothering it in his face, and by attacking him in
that part of the person where, according to report, he had been
formerly assaulted by Majesty. The whole story was over the town the
next day, and pictures of me were hanging in the clubs and print-
shops performing the operation alluded to. All the town laughed at
the picture of the lord and the Irishman, and, I need not say,
recognised both. As for me, I was one of the most celebrated
characters in London in those days: my dress, style, and equipage
being as well known as those of any leader of the fashion; and my
popularity, if not great in the highest quarters, was at least
considerable elsewhere. The people cheered me in the Gordon rows, at
the time they nearly killed my friend Jemmy Twitcher and burned Lord
Mansfield's house down. Indeed, I was known as a staunch Protestant,
and after my quarrel with Lord North veered right round to the
Opposition, and vexed him with all the means in my power.

These were not, unluckily, very great, for I was a bad speaker, and
the House would not listen to me, and presently, in 1780, after the
Gordon disturbance, was dissolved, when a general election took
place. It came on me, as all my mishaps were in the habit of coming,
at a most unlucky time. I was obliged to raise more money, at most
ruinous rates, to face the confounded election, and had the Tiptoffs
against me in the field more active and virulent than ever.

My blood boils even now when I think of the rascally conduct of my
enemies in that scoundrelly election. I was held up as the Irish
Bluebeard, and libels of me were printed, and gross caricatures
drawn representing me flogging Lady Lyndon, whipping Lord
Bullingdon, turning him out of doors in a storm, and I know not
what. There were pictures of a pauper cabin in Ireland, from which
it was pretended I came; others in which I was represented as a
lacquey and shoeblack. A flood of calumny was let loose upon me, in
which any man of less spirit would have gone down.

But though I met my accusers boldly, though I lavished sums of money
in the election, though I flung open Hackton Hall and kept champagne
and Burgundy running there, and at all my inns in the town, as
commonly as water, the election went against me. The rascally gentry
had all turned upon me and joined the Tiptoff faction: it was even
represented that I held my wife by force; and though I sent her into
the town alone, wearing my colours, with Bryan in her lap, and made
her visit the mayor's lady and the chief women there, nothing would
persuade the people but that she lived in fear and trembling of me;
and the brutal mob had the insolence to ask her why she dared to go
back, and how she liked horsewhip for supper.

I was thrown out of my election, and all the bills came down upon me
together--all the bills I had been contracting during the years of
my marriage, which the creditors, with a rascally unanimity, sent in
until they lay upon my table in heaps. I won't cite their amount: it
was frightful. My stewards and lawyers made matters worse. I was
bound up in an inextricable toil of bills and debts, of mortgages
and insurances, and all the horrible evils attendant upon them.
Lawyers upon lawyers posted down from London; composition after
composition was made, and Lady Lyndon's income hampered almost
irretrievably to satisfy these cormorants. To do her justice, she
behaved with tolerable kindness at this season of trouble; for
whenever I wanted money I had to coax her, and whenever I coaxed her
I was sure of bringing this weak and light-minded woman to good-
humour: who was of such a weak terrified nature, that to secure an
easy week with me she would sign away a thousand a year. And when my
troubles began at Hackton, and I determined on the only chance left,
viz. to retire to Ireland and retrench, assigning over the best part
of my income to the creditors until their demands were met, my Lady
was quite cheerful at the idea of going, and said, if we would be
quiet, she had no doubt all would be well; indeed, was glad to
undergo the comparative poverty in which we must now live for the
sake of the retirement and the chance of domestic quiet which she
hoped to enjoy.

We went off to Bristol pretty suddenly, leaving the odious and
ungrateful wretches at Hackton to vilify us, no doubt, in our
absence. My stud and hounds were sold off immediately; the harpies
would have been glad to pounce upon my person; but that was out of
their power. I had raised, by cleverness and management, to the full
as much on my mines and private estates as they were worth; so the
scoundrels were disappointed in THIS instance; and as for the plate
and property in the London house, they could not touch that, as it
was the property of the heirs of the house of Lyndon.

I passed over to Ireland, then, and took up my abode at Castle
Lyndon for a while; all the world imagining that I was an utterly
ruined man, and that the famous and dashing Barry Lyndon would never
again appear in the circles of which he had been an ornament. But it
was not so. In the midst of my perplexities, Fortune reserved a
great consolation for me still. Despatches came home from America
announcing Lord Cornwallis's defeat of General Gates in Carolina,
and the death of Lord Bullingdon, who was present as a volunteer.

For my own desires to possess a paltry Irish title I cared little.
My son was now heir to an English earldom, and I made him assume
forthwith the title of Lord Viscount Castle Lyndon, the third of the
family titles. My mother went almost mad with joy at saluting her
grandson as 'my Lord,' and I felt that all my sufferings and
privations were repaid by seeing this darling child advanced to such
a post of honour.

CHAPTER XIX

CONCLUSION

If the world were not composed of a race of ungrateful scoundrels,
who share your prosperity while it lasts, and, even when gorged with
your venison and Burgundy, abuse the generous giver of the feast, I
am sure I merit a good name and a high reputation: in Ireland, at
least, where my generosity was unbounded, and the splendour of my
mansion and entertainments unequalled by any other nobleman of my
time. As long as my magnificence lasted, all the country was free to
partake of it; I had hunters sufficient in my stables to mount a
regiment of dragoons, and butts of wine in my cellar which would
have made whole counties drunk for years. Castle Lyndon became the
headquarters of scores of needy gentlemen, and I never rode a-
hunting but I had a dozen young fellows of the best blood of the
country riding as my squires and gentlemen of the horse. My son,
little Castle Lyndon, was a prince; his breeding and manners, even
at his early age, showed him to be worthy of the two noble families
from whom he was descended: I don't know what high hopes I had for
the boy, and indulged in a thousand fond anticipations as to his
future success and figure in the world. But stern Fate had
determined that I should leave none of my race behind me, and
ordained that I should finish my career, as I see it closing now--
poor, lonely, and childless. I may have had my faults; but no man
shall dare to say of me that I was not a good and tender father. I
loved that boy passionately; perhaps with a blind partiality: I
denied him nothing. Gladly, gladly, I swear, would I have died that
his premature doom might have been averted. I think there is not a
day since I lost him but his bright face and beautiful smiles look
down on me out of heaven, where he is, and that my heart does not
yearn towards him. That sweet child was taken from me at the age of
nine years, when he was full of beauty and promise: and so powerful
is the hold his memory has of me that I have never been able to
forget him; his little spirit haunts me of nights on my restless
solitary pillow; many a time, in the wildest and maddest company, as
the bottle is going round, and the song and laugh roaring about, I
am thinking of him. I have got a lock of his soft brown hair hanging
round my breast now: it will accompany me to the dishonoured
pauper's grave; where soon, no doubt, Barry Lyndon's worn-out old
bones will be laid.

My Bryan was a boy of amazing high spirit (indeed how, coming from
such a stock, could he be otherwise?), impatient even of my control,
against which the dear little rogue would often rebel gallantly; how
much more, then, of his mother's and the women's, whose attempts to
direct him he would laugh to scorn. Even my own mother ('Mrs. Barry
of Lyndon' the good soul now called herself, in compliment to my new
family) was quite unable to check him; and hence you may fancy what
a will he had of his own. If it had not been for that, he might have
lived to this day: he might--but why repine? Is he not in a better
place? would the heritage of a beggar do any service to him? It is
best as it is--Heaven be good to us!--Alas! that I, his father,
should be left to deplore him.

It was in the month of October I had been to Dublin, in order to see
a lawyer and a moneyed man who had come over to Ireland to consult
with me about some sales of mine and the cut of Hackton timber; of
which, as I hated the place and was greatly in want of money, I was
determined to cut down every stick. There had been some difficulty
in the matter. It was said I had no right to touch the timber. The
brute peasantry about the estate had been roused to such a pitch of
hatred against me, that the rascals actually refused to lay an axe
to the trees; and my agent (that scoundrel Larkins) declared that
his life was in danger among them if he attempted any further
despoilment (as they called it) of the property. Every article of
the splendid furniture was sold by this time, as I need not say; and
as for the plate, I had taken good care to bring it off to Ireland,
where it now was in the best of keeping--my banker's, who had
advanced six thousand pounds on it: which sum I soon had occasion
for.

I went to Dublin, then, to meet the English man of business; and so
far succeeded in persuading Mr. Splint, a great shipbuilder and
timber-dealer of Plymouth, of my claim to the Hackton timber, that
he agreed to purchase it off-hand at about one-third of its value,
and handed me over five thousand pounds: which, being pressed with
debts at the time, I was fain to accept. HE had no difficulty in
getting down the wood, I warrant. He took a regiment of shipwrights
and sawyers from his own and the King's yards at Plymouth, and in
two months Hackton Park was as bare of trees as the Bog of Allen.

I had but ill luck with that accursed expedition and money. I lost
the greater part of it in two nights' play at 'Daly's,' so that my
debts stood just as they were before; and before the vessel sailed
for Holyhead, which carried away my old sharper of a timber-
merchant, all that I had left of the money he brought me was a
couple of hundred pounds, with which I returned home very
disconsolately: and very suddenly, too, for my Dublin tradesmen were
hot upon me, hearing I had spent the loan, and two of my wine-
merchants had writs out against me for some thousands of pounds.

I bought in Dublin, according to my promise, however--for when I
give a promise I will keep it at any sacrifices--a little horse for
my dear little Bryan; which was to be a present for his tenth
birthday, that was now coming on: it was a beautiful little animal
and stood me in a good sum. I never regarded money for that dear
child. But the horse was very wild. He kicked off one of my horse-
boys, who rode him at first, and broke the lad's leg; and, though I
took the animal in hand on the journey home, it was only my weight
and skill that made the brute quiet.

When we got home I sent the horse away with one of my grooms to a
farmer's house, to break him thoroughly in, and told Bryan, who was
all anxiety to see his little horse, that he would arrive by his
birthday, when he should hunt him along with my hounds; and I
promised myself no small pleasure in presenting the dear fellow to
the field that day: which I hoped to see him lead some time or other
in place of his fond father. Ah me! never was that gallant boy to
ride a fox-chase, or to take the place amongst the gentry of his
country which his birth and genius had pointed out for him!

Though I don't believe in dreams and omens, yet I can't but own that
when a great calamity is hanging over a man he has frequently many
strange and awful forebodings of it. I fancy now I had many. Lady
Lyndon, especially, twice dreamed of her son's death; but, as she
was now grown uncommonly nervous and vapourish, I treated her fears
with scorn, and my own, of course, too. And in an unguarded moment,
over the bottle after dinner, I told poor Bryan, who was always
questioning me about the little horse, and when it was to come, that
it was arrived; that it was in Doolan's farm, where Mick the groom
was breaking him in. 'Promise me, Bryan,' screamed his mother, 'that
you will not ride the horse except in company of your father.' But I
only said, 'Pooh, madam, you are an ass!' being angry at her silly
timidity, which was always showing itself in a thousand disagreeable
ways now; and, turning round to Bryan, said, 'I promise your
Lordship a good flogging if you mount him without my leave.'

I suppose the poor child did not care about paying this penalty for
the pleasure he was to have, or possibly thought a fond father would
remit the punishment altogether; for the next morning, when I rose
rather late, having sat up drinking the night before, I found the
child had been off at daybreak, having slipt through his tutor's
room (this was Redmond Quin, our cousin, whom I had taken to live
with me), and I had no doubt but that he was gone to Doolan's farm.

I took a great horsewhip and galloped off after him in a rage,
swearing I would keep my promise. But, Heaven forgive me! I little
thought of it when at three miles from home I met a sad procession
coming towards me: peasants moaning and howling as our Irish do, the
black horse led by the hand, and, on a door that some of the folk
carried, my poor dear dear little boy. There he lay in his little
boots and spurs, and his little coat of scarlet and gold. His dear
face was quite white, and he smiled as he held a hand out to me, and
said painfully, 'You won't whip me, will you, papa?' I could only
burst out into tears in reply. I have seen many and many a man
dying, and there's a look about the eyes which you cannot mistake.
There was a little drummer-boy I was fond of who was hit down before
my company at Kuhnersdorf; when I ran up to give him some water, he
looked exactly like my dear Bryan then did--there's no mistaking
that awful look of the eyes. We carried him home and scoured the
country round for doctors to come and look at his hurt.

But what does a doctor avail in a contest with the grim invincible
enemy? Such as came could only confirm our despair by their account
of the poor child's case. He had mounted his horse gallantly, sat
him bravely all the time the animal plunged and kicked, and, having
overcome his first spite, ran him at a hedge by the roadside. But
there were loose stones at the top, and the horse's foot caught
among them, and he and his brave little rider rolled over together
at the other side. The people said they saw the noble little boy
spring up after his fall and run to catch the horse; which had
broken away from him, kicking him on the back, as it would seem, as
they lay on the ground. Poor Bryan ran a few yards and then dropped
down as if shot. A pallor came over his face, and they thought he
was dead. But they poured whisky down his mouth, and the poor child
revived: still he could not move; his spine was injured; the lower
half of him was dead when they laid him in bed at home. The rest did
not last long, God help me! He remained yet for two days with us;
and a sad comfort it was to think he was in no pain.

During this time the dear angel's temper seemed quite to change: he
asked his mother and me pardon for any act of disobedience he had
been guilty of towards us; he said often he should like to see his
brother Bullingdon. 'Bully was better than you, papa,' he said; 'he
used not to swear so, and he told and taught me many good things
while you were away.' And, taking a hand of his mother and mine in
each of his little clammy ones, he begged us not to quarrel so, but
love each other, so that we might meet again in heaven, where Bully
told him quarrelsome people never went. His mother was very much
affected by these admonitions from the poor suffering angel's mouth;
and I was so too. I wish she had enabled me to keep the counsel
which the dying boy gave us.

At last, after two days, he died. There he lay, the hope of my
family, the pride of my manhood, the link which had kept me and my
Lady Lyndon together. 'Oh, Redmond,' said she, kneeling by the sweet
child's body, 'do, do let us listen to the truth out of his blessed
mouth: and do you amend your life, and treat your poor loving fond
wife as her dying child bade you.' And I said I would: but there are
promises which it is out of a man's power to keep; especially with
such a woman as her. But we drew together after that sad event, and
were for several months better friends.

I won't tell you with what splendour we buried him. Of what avail
are undertakers' feathers and heralds' trumpery? I went out and shot
the fatal black horse that had killed him, at the door of the vault
where we laid my boy. I was so wild, that I could have shot myself
too. But for the crime, it would have been better that I should,
perhaps; for what has my life been since that sweet flower was taken
out of my bosom? A succession of miseries, wrongs, disasters, and
mental and bodily sufferings which never fell to the lot of any
other man in Christendom.

Lady Lyndon, always vapourish and nervous, after our blessed boy's
catastrophe became more agitated than ever, and plunged into
devotion with so much fervour, that you would have fancied her
almost distracted at times. She imagined she saw visions. She said
an angel from heaven had told her that Bryan's death was as a
punishment to her for her neglect of her first-born. Then she would
declare Bullingdon was alive; she had seen him in a dream. Then
again she would fall into fits of sorrow about his death, and grieve
for him as violently as if he had been the last of her sons who had
died, and not our darling Bryan; who, compared to Bullingdon, was
what a diamond is to a vulgar stone. Her freaks were painful to
witness, and difficult to control. It began to be said in the
country that the Countess was going mad. My scoundrelly enemies did
not fail to confirm and magnify the rumour, and would add that I was
the cause of her insanity: I had driven her to distraction, I had
killed Bullingdon, I had murdered my own son; I don't know what else
they laid to my charge. Even in Ireland their hateful calumnies
reached me: my friends fell away from me. They began to desert my
hunt, as they did in England, and when I went to race or market
found sudden reasons for getting out of my neighbourhood. I got the
name of Wicked Barry, Devil Lyndon, which you please: the country-
folk used to make marvellous legends about me: the priests said I
had massacred I don't know how many German nuns in the Seven Years'
War; that the ghost of the murdered Bullingdon haunted my house.
Once at a fair in a town hard by, when I had a mind to buy a
waistcoat for one of my people, a fellow standing by said, ''Tis a
strait-waistcoat he's buying for my Lady Lyndon.' And from this
circumstance arose a legend of my cruelty to my wife; and many
circumstantial details were narrated regarding my manner and
ingenuity of torturing her.

The loss of my dear boy pressed not only on my heart as a father,
but injured my individual interests in a very considerable degree;
for as there was now no direct heir to the estate, and Lady Lyndon
was of a weak health, and supposed to be quite unlikely to leave a
family, the next in succession-that detestable family of Tiptoff--
began to exert themselves in a hundred ways to annoy me, and were at
the head of the party of enemies who were raising reports to my
discredit. They interposed between me and my management of the
property in a hundred different ways; making an outcry if I cut a
stick, sunk a shaft, sold a picture, or sent a few ounces of plate
to be remodelled. They harassed me with ceaseless lawsuits, got
injunctions from Chancery, hampered my agents in the execution of
their work; so much so that you would have fancied my own was not my
own, but theirs, to do as they liked with. What is worse, as I have
reason to believe, they had tamperings and dealings with my own
domestics under my own roof; for I could not have a word with Lady
Lyndon but it somehow got abroad, and I could not be drunk with my
chaplain and friends but some sanctified rascals would get hold of
the news, and reckon up all the bottles I drank and all the oaths I
swore. That these were not few, I acknowledge. I am of the old
school; was always a free liver and speaker; and, at least, if I did
and said what I liked, was not so bad as many a canting scoundrel I
know of who covers his foibles and sins, unsuspected, with a mask of
holiness. As I am making a clean breast of it, and am no hypocrite,
I may as well confess now that I endeavoured to ward off the devices
of my enemies by an artifice which was not, perhaps, strictly
justifiable. Everything depended on my having an heir to the estate;
for if Lady Lyndon, who was of weakly health, had died, the next day
I was a beggar: all my sacrifices of money, &c., on the estate would
not have been held in a farthing's account; all the debts would have
been left on my shoulders; and my enemies would have triumphed over
me: which, to a man of my honourable spirit, was 'the unkindest cut
of all,' as some poet says.

I confess, then, it was my wish to supplant these scoundrels; and,
as I could not do so without an heir to my property, _I_ DETERMINED
TO FIND ONE. If I had him near at hand, and of my own blood too,
though with the bar sinister, is not here the question. It was then
I found out the rascally machinations of my enemies; for, having
broached this plan to Lady Lyndon, whom I made to be, outwardly at
least, the most obedient of wives,--although I never let a letter
from her or to her go or arrive without my inspection,--although I
allowed her to see none but those persons who I thought, in her
delicate health, would be fitting society for her; yet the infernal
Tiptoffs got wind of my scheme, protested instantly against it, not
only by letter, but in the shameful libellous public prints, and
held me up to public odium as a 'child-forger,' as they called me.
Of course I denied the charge--I could do no otherwise, and offered
to meet any one of the Tiptoffs on the field of honour, and prove
him a scoundrel and a liar: as he was; though, perhaps, not in this
instance. But they contented themselves by answering me by a lawyer,
and declined an invitation which any man of spirit would have
accepted. My hopes of having an heir were thus blighted completely:
indeed, Lady Lyndon (though, as I have said, I take her opposition
for nothing) had resisted the proposal with as much energy as a
woman of her weakness could manifest; and said she had committed one
great crime in consequence of me, but would rather die than perform
another. I could easily have brought her Ladyship to her senses,
however: but my scheme had taken wind, and it was now in vain to
attempt it. We might have had a dozen children in honest wedlock,
and people would have said they were false.

As for raising money on annuities, I may say I had used her life
interest up. There were but few of those assurance societies in my
time which have since sprung up in the city of London; underwriters
did the business, and my wife's life was as well known among them
as, I do believe, that of any woman in Christendom. Latterly, when I
wanted to get a sum against her life, the rascals had the impudence
to say my treatment of her did not render it worth a year's
purchase,--as if my interest lay in killing her! Had my boy lived,
it would have been a different thing; he and his mother might have
cut off the entail of a good part of the property between them, and
my affairs have been put in better order. Now they were in a bad
condition indeed. All my schemes had turned out failures; my lands,
which I had purchased with borrowed money, made me no return, and I
was obliged to pay ruinous interest for the sums with which I had
purchased them. My income, though very large, was saddled with
hundreds of annuities, and thousands of lawyers' charges; and I felt
the net drawing closer and closer round me, and no means to
extricate myself from its toils.

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