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Barry Lyndon

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> Barry Lyndon




To add to all my perplexities, two years after my poor child's
death, my wife, whose vagaries of temper and wayward follies I had
borne with for twelve years, wanted to leave me, and absolutely made
attempts at what she called escaping from my tyranny.

My mother, who was the only person that, in my misfortunes, remained
faithful to me (indeed, she has always spoken of me in my true
light, as a martyr to the rascality of others and a victim of my own
generous and confiding temper), found out the first scheme that was
going on; and of which those artful and malicious Tiptoffs were, as
usual, the main promoters. Mrs. Barry, indeed, though her temper was
violent and her ways singular, was an invaluable person to me in my
house; which would have been at rack and ruin long before, but for
her spirit of order and management, and for her excellent economy in
the government of my numerous family. As for my Lady Lyndon, she,
poor soul! was much too fine a lady to attend to household matters--
passed her days with her doctor, or her books of piety, and never
appeared among us except at my compulsion; when she and my mother
would be sure to have a quarrel.

Mrs. Barry, on the contrary, had a talent for management in all
matters. She kept the maids stirring, and the footmen to their duty;
had an eye over the claret in the cellar, and the oats and hay in
the stable; saw to the salting and pickling, the potatoes and the
turf-stacking, the pig-killing and the poultry, the linen-room and
the bakehouse, and the ten thousand minutiae of a great
establishment. If all Irish housewives were like her, I warrant many
a hall-fire would be blazing where the cobwebs only grow now, and
many a park covered with sheep and fat cattle where the thistles are
at present the chief occupiers. If anything could have saved me from
the consequences of villainy in others, and (I confess it, for I am
not above owning to my faults) my own too easy, generous, and
careless nature, it would have been the admirable prudence of that
worthy creature. She never went to bed until all the house was quiet
and all the candles out; and you may fancy that this was a matter of
some difficulty with a man of my habits, who had commonly a dozen of
jovial fellows (artful scoundrels and false friends most of them
were!) to drink with me every night, and who seldom, for my part,
went to bed sober. Many and many a night, when I was unconscious of
her attention, has that good soul pulled my boots off, and seen me
laid by my servants snug in bed, and carried off the candle herself;
and been the first in the morning, too, to bring me my drink of
small-beer. Mine were no milksop times, I can tell you. A gentleman
thought no shame of taking his half-dozen bottles; and, as for your
coffee and slops, they were left to Lady Lyndon, her doctor, and the
other old women. It was my mother's pride that I could drink more
than any man in the country,--as much, within a pint, as my father
before me, she said.

That Lady Lyndon should detest her was quite natural. She is not the
first of woman or mankind either that has hated a mother-in-law. I
set my mother to keep a sharp watch over the freaks of her Ladyship;
and this, you may be sure, was one of the reasons why the latter
disliked her. I never minded that, however. Mrs. Barry's assistance
and surveillance were invaluable to me; and, if I had paid twenty
spies to watch my Lady, I should not have been half so well served
as by the disinterested care and watchfulness of my excellent
mother. She slept with the house-keys under her pillow, and had an
eye everywhere. She followed all the Countess's movements like a
shadow; she managed to know, from morning to night, everything that
my Lady did. If she walked in the garden, a watchful eye was kept on
the wicket; and if she chose to drive out, Mrs. Barry accompanied
her, and a couple of fellows in my liveries rode alongside of the
carriage to see that she came to no harm. Though she objected, and
would have kept her room in sullen silence, I made a point that we
should appear together at church in the coach-and-six every Sunday;
and that she should attend the race-balls in my company, whenever
the coast was clear of the rascally bailiffs who beset me. This gave
the lie to any of those maligners who said I wished to make a
prisoner of my wife. The fact is, that, knowing her levity, and
seeing the insane dislike to me and mine which had now begun to
supersede what, perhaps, had been an equally insane fondness for me,
I was bound to be on my guard that she should not give me the slip.
Had she left me, I was ruined the next day. This (which my mother
knew) compelled us to keep a tight watch over her; but as for
imprisoning her, I repel the imputation with scorn. Every man
imprisons his wife to a certain degree; the world would be in a
pretty condition if women were allowed to quit home and return to it
whenever they had a mind. In watching over my wife, Lady Lyndon, I
did no more than exercise the legitimate authority which awards
honour and obedience to every husband.

Such, however, is female artifice, that, in spite of all my
watchfulness in guarding her, it is probable my Lady would have
given me the slip, had I not had quite as acute a person as herself
as my ally: for, as the proverb says that 'the best way to catch one
thief is to set another after him,' so the best way to get the
better of a woman is to engage one of her own artful sex to guard
her. One would have thought that, followed as she was, all her
letters read, and all her acquaintances strictly watched by me,
living in a remote part of Ireland away from her family, Lady Lyndon
could have had no chance of communicating with her allies, or of
making her wrongs, as she was pleased to call them, public; and yet,
for a while, she carried on a correspondence under my very nose, and
acutely organised a conspiracy for flying from me; as shall be told.

She always had an inordinate passion for dress, and, as she was
never thwarted in any whimsey she had of this kind (for I spared no
money to gratify her, and among my debts are milliners' bills to the
amount of many thousands), boxes used to pass continually to and fro
from Dublin, with all sorts of dresses, caps, flounces, and
furbelows, as her fancy dictated. With these would come letters from
her milliner, in answer to numerous similar injunctions from my
Lady; all of which passed through my hands, without the least
suspicion, for some time. And yet in these very papers, by the easy
means of sympathetic ink, were contained all her Ladyship's
correspondence; and Heaven knows (for it was some time, as I have
said, before I discovered the trick) what charges against me.

But clever Mrs. Barry found out that always before my lady-wife
chose to write letters to her milliner, she had need of lemons to
make her drink, as she said; this fact, being mentioned to me, set
me a-thinking, and so I tried one of the letters before the fire,
and the whole scheme of villainy was brought to light. I will give a
specimen of one of the horrid artful letters of this unhappy woman.
In a great hand, with wide lines, were written a set of directions
to her mantua-maker, setting forth the articles of dress for which
my Lady had need, the peculiarity of their make, the stuff she
selected, &c. She would make out long lists in this way, writing
each article in a separate line, so as to have more space for
detailing all my cruelties and her tremendous wrongs. Between these
lines she kept the journal of her captivity: it would have made the
fortune of a romance-writer in those days but to have got a copy of
it, and to have published it under the title of the 'Lovely
Prisoner, or the Savage Husband,' or by some name equally taking and
absurd. The journal would be as follows:--

. . . . . . .

'MONDAY.--Yesterday I was made to go to church. My odious,
MONSTROUS, VULGAR SHE-DRAGON OF A MOTHER-IN-LAW, in a yellow satin
and red ribands, taking the first place in the coach; Mr. L. riding
by its side, on the horse he never paid for to Captain Hurdlestone.
The wicked hypocrite led me to the pew, with hat in hand and a
smiling countenance, and kissed my hand as I entered the coach after
service, and patted my Italian greyhound--all that the few people
collected might see. He made me come downstairs in the evening to
make tea for his company; of whom three-fourths, he himself
included, were, as usual, drunk. They painted the parson's face
black, when his reverence had arrived at his seventh bottle; and at
his usual insensible stage, they tied him on the grey mare with his
face to the tail. The she-dragon read the "Whole Duty of Man" all
the evening till bedtime; when she saw me to my apartments, locked
me in, and proceeded to wait upon her abominable son: whom she
adores for his wickedness, I should think, AS STYCORAX DID CALIBAN.'

. . . . . . .

You should have seen my mother's fury as I read her out this
passage! Indeed, I have always had a taste for a joke (that
practised on the parson, as described above, is, I confess, a true
bill), and used carefully to select for Mrs. Barry's hearing all the
COMPLIMENTS that Lady Lyndon passed upon her. The dragon was the
name by which she was known in this precious correspondence: or
sometimes she was designated by the title of the 'Irish Witch.' As
for me, I was denominated 'my gaoler,' 'my tyrant,' 'the dark spirit
which has obtained the mastery over my being,' and so on; in terms
always complimentary to my power, however little they might be so to
my amiability. Here is another extract from her 'Prison Diary,' by
which it will be seen that my Lady, although she pretended to be so
indifferent to my goings on, had a sharp woman's eye, and could be
as jealous as another:--

. . . . . . .

'WEDNESDAY.--This day two years my last hope and pleasure in life
was taken from me, and my dear child was called to heaven. Has he
joined his neglected brother there, whom I suffered to grow up
unheeded by my side: and whom the tyranny of the monster to whom I
am united drove to exile, and perhaps to death? Or is the child
alive, as my fond heart sometimes deems? Charles Bullingdon! come to
the aid of a wretched mother, who acknowledges her crimes, her
coldness towards thee, and now bitterly pays for her error! But no,
he cannot live! I am distracted! My only hope is in you, my cousin--
you whom I had once thought to salute by a STILL FONDER TITLE, my
dear George Poynings! Oh, be my knight and my preserver, the true
chivalric being thou ever wert, and rescue me from the thrall of the
felon caitiff who holds me captive--rescue me from him, and from
Stycorax, the vile Irish witch, his mother!'

(Here follow some verses, such as her Ladyship was in the habit of
composing by reams, in which she compares herself to Sabra, in the
'Seven Champions,' and beseeches her George to rescue her from THE
DRAGON, meaning Mrs. Barry. I omit the lines, and proceed:)--

'Even my poor child, who perished untimely on this sad anniversary,
the tyrant who governs me had taught to despise and dislike me.
'Twas in disobedience to my orders, my prayers, that he went on the
fatal journey. What sufferings, what humiliations have I had to
endure since then! I am a prisoner in my own halls. I should fear
poison, but that I know the wretch has a sordid interest in keeping
me alive, and that my death would be the signal for his ruin. But I
dare not stir without my odious, hideous, vulgar gaoler, the horrid
Irishwoman, who pursues my every step. I am locked into my chamber
at night, like a felon, and only suffered to leave it when ORDERED
into the presence of my lord (_I_ ordered!), to be present at his
orgies with his boon companions, and to hear his odious converse as
he lapses into the disgusting madness of intoxication! He has given
up even the semblance of constancy--he, who swore that I alone could
attach or charm him! And now he brings his vulgar mistresses before
my very eyes, and would have had me acknowledge, as heir to my own
property, his child by another!

'No, I never will submit! Thou, and thou only, my George, my early
friend, shalt be heir to the estates of Lyndon. Why did not Fate
join me to thee, instead of to the odious man who holds me under his
sway, and make the poor Calista happy?'

. . . . . . .

So the letters would run on for sheets upon sheets, in the closest
cramped handwriting; and I leave any unprejudiced reader to say
whether the writer of such documents must not have been as silly and
vain a creature as ever lived, and whether she did not want being
taken care of? I could copy out yards of rhapsody to Lord George
Poynings, her old flame, in which she addressed him by the most
affectionate names, and implored him to find a refuge for her
against her oppressors; but they would fatigue the reader to peruse,
as they would me to copy. The fact is, that this unlucky lady had
the knack of writing a great deal more than she meant. She was
always reading novels and trash; putting herself into imaginary
characters and flying off into heroics and sentimentalities with as
little heart as any woman I ever knew; yet showing the most violent
disposition to be in love. She wrote always as if she was in a flame
of passion. I have an elegy on her lap-dog, the most tender and
pathetic piece she ever wrote; and most tender notes of remonstrance
to Betty, her favourite maid; to her housekeeper, on quarrelling
with her; to half-a-dozen acquaintances, each of whom she addressed
as the dearest friend in the world, and forgot the very moment she
took up another fancy. As for her love for her children, the above
passage will show how much she was capable of true maternal feeling:
the very sentence in which she records the death of one child serves
to betray her egotisms, and to wreak her spleen against myself; and
she only wishes to recall another from the grave, in order that he
may be of some personal advantage to her. If I DID deal severely
with this woman, keeping her from her flatterers who would have bred
discord between us, and locking her up out of mischief, who shall
say that I was wrong? If any woman deserved a strait-waistcoat,--it
was my Lady Lyndon; and I have known people in my time manacled, and
with their heads shaved, in the straw, who had not committed half
the follies of that foolish, vain, infatuated creature.

My mother was so enraged by the charges against me and herself which
these letters contained, that it was with the utmost difficulty I
could keep her from discovering our knowledge of them to Lady
Lyndon; whom it was, of course, my object to keep in ignorance of
our knowledge of her designs: for I was anxious to know how far they
went, and to what pitch of artifice she would go. The letters
increased in interest (as they say of the novels) as they proceeded.
Pictures were drawn of my treatment of her which would make your
heart throb. I don't know of what monstrosities she did not accuse
me, and what miseries and starvation she did not profess herself to
undergo; all the while she was living exceedingly fat and contented,
to outward appearances, at our house at Castle Lyndon. Novel-reading
and vanity had turned her brain. I could not say a rough word to her
(and she merited many thousands a day, I can tell you), but she
declared I was putting her to the torture; and my mother could not
remonstrate with her but she went off into a fit of hysterics, of
which she would declare the worthy old lady was the cause.

At last she began to threaten to kill herself; and though I by no
means kept the cutlery out of the way, did not stint her in garters,
and left her doctor's shop at her entire service,--knowing her
character full well, and that there was no woman in Christendom less
likely to lay hands on her precious life than herself; yet these
threats had an effect, evidently, in the quarter to which they were
addressed; for the milliner's packets now began to arrive with great
frequency, and the bills sent to her contained assurances of coming
aid. The chivalrous Lord George Poynings was coming to his cousin's
rescue, and did me the compliment to say that he hoped to free his
dear cousin from the clutches of the most atrocious villain that
ever disgraced humanity; and that, when she was free, measures
should be taken for a divorce, on the ground of cruelty and every
species of ill-usage on my part.

I had copies of all these precious documents on one side and the
other carefully made, by my beforementioned relative, godson, and
secretary, Mr. Redmond Quin at present the WORTHY agent of the
Castle Lyndon property. This was a son of my old flame Nora, whom I
had taken from her in a fit of generosity; promising to care for his
education at Trinity College, and provide for him through life. But
after the lad had been for a year at the University, the tutors
would not admit him to commons or lectures until his college bills
were paid; and, offended by this insolent manner of demanding the
paltry sum due, I withdrew my patronage from the place, and ordered
my gentleman to Castle Lyndon; where I made him useful to me in a
hundred ways. In my dear little boy's lifetime, he tutored the poor
child as far as his high spirit would let him; but I promise you it
was small trouble poor dear Bryan ever gave the books. Then he kept
Mrs. Barry's accounts; copied my own interminable correspondence
with my lawyers and the agents of all my various property; took a
hand at piquet or backgammon of evenings with me and my mother; or,
being an ingenious lad enough (though of a mean boorish spirit, as
became the son of such a father), accompanied my Lady Lyndon's
spinet with his flageolet; or read French and Italian with her: in
both of which languages her Ladyship was a fine scholar, and with
which he also became conversant. It would make my watchful old
mother very angry to hear them conversing in these languages; for,
not understanding a word of either of them, Mrs. Barry was furious
when they were spoken, and always said it was some scheming they
were after. It was Lady Lyndon's constant way of annoying the old
lady, when the three were alone together, to address Quin in one or
other of these tongues.

I was perfectly at ease with regard to his fidelity, for I had bred
the lad, and loaded him with benefits; and, besides, had had various
proofs of his trustworthiness. He it was who brought me three of
Lord George's letters, in reply to some of my Lady's complaints;
which were concealed between the leather and the boards of a book
which was sent from the circulating library for her Ladyship's
perusal. He and my Lady too had frequent quarrels. She mimicked his
gait in her pleasanter moments; in her haughty moods, she would not
sit down to table with a tailor's grandson. 'Send me anything for
company but that odious Quin,' she would say, when I proposed that
he should go and amuse her with his books and his flute; for,
quarrelsome as we were, it must not be supposed we were always at
it: I was occasionally attentive to her. We would be friends for a
month together, sometimes; then we would quarrel for a fortnight;
then she would keep her apartments for a month: all of which
domestic circumstances were noted down, in her Ladyship's peculiar
way, in her journal of captivity, as she called it; and a pretty
document it is! Sometimes she writes, 'My monster has been almost
kind to-day;' or, 'My ruffian has deigned to smile.' Then she will
break out into expressions of savage hate; but for my poor mother it
was ALWAYS hatred. It was, 'The she-dragon is sick to-day; I wish to
Heaven she would die!' or, 'The hideous old Irish basketwoman has
been treating me to some of her Billingsgate to-day,' and so forth:
all which expressions, read to Mrs. Barry, or translated from the
French and Italian, in which many of them were written, did not fail
to keep the old lady in a perpetual fury against her charge: and so
I had my watch-dog, as I called her, always on the alert. In
translating these languages, young Quin was of great service to me;
for I had a smattering of French--and High Dutch, when I was in the
army, of course, I knew well--but Italian I knew nothing of, and was
glad of the services of so faithful and cheap an interpreter.

This cheap and faithful interpreter, this godson and kinsman, on
whom and on whose family I had piled up benefits, was actually
trying to betray me; and for several months, at least, was in league
with the enemy against me. I believe that the reason why they did
not move earlier was the want of the great mover of all treasons--
money: of which, in all parts of my establishment, there was a woful
scarcity; but of this they also managed to get a supply through my
rascal of a godson, who could come and go quite unsuspected: the
whole scheme was arranged under our very noses, and the post-chaise
ordered, and the means of escape actually got ready; while I never
suspected their design.

A mere accident made me acquainted with their plan. One of my
colliers had a pretty daughter; and this pretty lass had for her
bachelor, as they call them in Ireland, a certain lad, who brought
the letter-bag for Castle Lyndon (and many a dunning letter for me
was there in it, God wot!): this letter-boy told his sweetheart how
he brought a bag of money from the town for Master Quin; and how
that Tim the post-boy had told him that he was to bring a chaise
down to the water at a certain hour. Miss Rooney, who had no secrets
from me, blurted out the whole story; asked me what scheming I was
after, and what poor unlucky girl I was going to carry away with the
chaise I had ordered, and bribe with the money I had got from town?

Then the whole secret flashed upon me, that the man I had cherished
in my bosom was going to betray me. I thought at one time of
catching the couple in the act of escape, half drowning them in the
ferry which they had to cross to get to their chaise, and of
pistolling the young traitor before Lady Lyndon's eyes; but, on
second thoughts, it was quite clear that the news of the escape
would make a noise through the country, and rouse the confounded
justice's people about my ears, and bring me no good in the end. So
I was obliged to smother my just indignation, and to content myself
by crushing the foul conspiracy, just at the moment it was about to
be hatched.

I went home, and in half-an-hour, and with a few of my terrible
looks, I had Lady Lyndon on her knees, begging me to forgive her;
confessing all and everything; ready to vow and swear she would
never make such an attempt again; and declaring that she was fifty
times on the point of owning everything to me, but that she feared
my wrath against the poor young lad her accomplice: who was indeed
the author and inventor of all the mischief. This--though I knew how
entirely false the statement was--I was fain to pretend to believe;
so I begged her to write to her cousin, Lord George, who had
supplied her with money, as she admitted, and with whom the plan had
been arranged, stating, briefly, that she had altered her mind as to
the trip to the country proposed; and that, as her dear husband was
rather in delicate health, she preferred to stay at home and nurse
him. I added a dry postscript, in which I stated that it would give
me great pleasure if his Lordship would come and visit us at Castle
Lyndon, and that I longed to renew an acquaintance which in former
times gave me so much satisfaction. 'I should seek him out,' I
added, 'so soon as ever I was in his neighbourhood, and eagerly
anticipated the pleasure of a meeting with him.' I think he must
have understood my meaning perfectly well; which was, that I would
run him through the body on the very first occasion I could come at
him.

Then I had a scene with my perfidious rascal of a nephew; in which
the young reprobate showed an audacity and a spirit for which I was
quite unprepared. When I taxed him with ingratitude, 'What do I owe
you?' said he. 'I have toiled for you as no man ever did for
another, and worked without a penny of wages. It was you yourself
who set me against you, by giving me a task against which my soul
revolted,--by making me a spy over your unfortunate wife, whose
weakness is as pitiable as are her misfortunes and your rascally
treatment of her. Flesh and blood could not bear to see the manner
in which you used her. I tried to help her to escape from you; and I
would do it again, if the opportunity offered, and so I tell you to
your teeth!' When I offered to blow his brains out for his
insolence, 'Pooh!' said he,--'kill the man who saved your poor boy's
life once, and who was endeavouring to keep him out of the ruin and
perdition into which a wicked father was leading him, when a
Merciful Power interposed, and withdrew him from this house of
crime? I would have left you months ago, but I hoped for some chance
of rescuing this unhappy lady. I swore I would try, the day I saw
you strike her. Kill me, you woman's bully! You would if you dared;
but you have not the heart. Your very servants like me better than
you. Touch me, and they will rise and send you to the gallows you
merit!'

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