Barry Lyndon Part 11

It is wonderful how the possession of wealth brings out the virtues of a man; or, at any rate, acts as a varnish or l.u.s.tre to them, and brings out their brilliancy and colour in a manner never known when the individual stood in the cold grey atmosphere of poverty. I a.s.sure you it was a very short time before I was a pretty fellow of the first cla.s.s; made no small sensation at the coffee-houses in Pall Mall and afterwards at the most famous clubs. My style, equipages, and elegant entertainments were in everybody's mouth, and were described in all the morning prints. The needier part of Lady Lyndon's relatives, and such as had been offended by the intolerable pomposity of old Tiptoff, began to appear at our routs and a.s.semblies; and as for relations of my own, I found in London and Ireland more than I had ever dreamed of, of cousins who claimed affinity with me. There were, of course, natives of my own country (of which I was not particularly proud), and I received visits from three or four swaggering shabby Temple bucks, with tarnished lace and Tipperary brogue, who were eating their way to the bar in London; from several gambling adventurers at the watering-places, whom I soon speedily let to know their place; and from others of more reputable condition. Among them I may mention my cousin the Lord Kilbarry, who, on the score of his relations.h.i.+p, borrowed thirty pieces from me to pay his landlady in Swallow Street; and whom, for my own reasons, I allowed to maintain and credit a connection for which the Heralds' College gave no authority whatsoever. Kilbarry had a cover at my table; punted at play, and paid when he liked, which was seldom; had an intimacy with, and was under considerable obligations to, my tailor; and always boasted of his cousin the great Barry Lyndon of the West country.

Her Ladys.h.i.+p and I lived, after a while, pretty separate when in London. She preferred quiet: or to say the truth, I preferred it; being a great friend to a modest tranquil behaviour in woman, and a taste for the domestic pleasures. Hence I encouraged her to dine at home with her ladies, her chaplain, and a few of her friends; admitted three or four proper and discreet persons to accompany her to her box at the opera or play on proper occasions; and indeed declined for her the too frequent visits of her friends and family, preferring to receive them only twice or thrice in a season on our grand reception days. Besides, she was a mother, and had great comfort in the dressing, educating, and dandling our little Bryan, for whose sake it was fit that she should give up the pleasures and frivolities of the world; so she left THAT part of the duty of every family of distinction to be performed by me. To say the truth, Lady Lyndon's figure and appearance were not at this time such as to make for their owner any very brilliant appearance in the fas.h.i.+onable world. She had grown very fat, was short-sighted, pale in complexion, careless about her dress, dull in demeanour; her conversations with me characterised by a stupid despair, or a silly blundering attempt at forced cheerfulness still more disagreeable: hence our intercourse was but trifling, and my temptations to carry her into the world, or to remain in her society, of necessity exceedingly small. She would try my temper at home, too, in a thousand ways. When requested by me (often, I own, rather roughly) to entertain the company with conversation, wit, and learning, of which she was a mistress: or music, of which she was an accomplished performer, she would as often as not begin to cry, and leave the room. My company from this, of course, fancied I was a tyrant over her; whereas I was only a severe and careful guardian over a silly, bad-tempered, and weak-minded lady.

She was luckily very fond of her youngest son, and through him I had a wholesome and effectual hold of her; for if in any of her tantrums or fits of haughtiness-(this woman was intolerably proud; and repeatedly, at first, in our quarrels, dared to twit me with my own original poverty and low birth),-if, I say, in our disputes she pretended to have the upper hand, to a.s.sert her authority against mine, to refuse to sign such papers as I might think necessary for the distribution of our large and complicated property, I would have Master Bryan carried off to Chiswick for a couple of days; and I warrant me his lady-mother could hold out no longer, and would agree to anything I chose to propose. The servants about her I took care should be in my pay, not hers: especially the child's head nurse was under MY orders, not those of my lady; and a very handsome, red-cheeked, impudent jade she was; and a great fool she made me make of myself. This woman was more mistress of the house than the poor-spirited lady who owned it. She gave the law to the servants; and if I showed any particular attention to any of the ladies who visited us, the s.l.u.t would not scruple to show her jealousy, and to find means to send them packing. The fact is, a generous man is always made a fool of by some woman or other, and this one had such an influence over me that she could turn me round her finger. [Footnote: From these curious confessions, it would appear that Mr. Lyndon maltreated his lady in every possible way; that he denied her society, bullied her into signing away her property, spent it in gambling and taverns, was openly unfaithful to her; and, when she complained, threatened to remove her children from her. Nor, indeed, is he the only husband who has done the like, and has pa.s.sed for 'n.o.body's enemy but his own:' a jovial good-natured fellow. The world contains scores of such amiable people; and, indeed, it is because justice has not been done them that we have edited this autobiography. Had it been that of a mere hero of romance-one of those heroic youths who figure in the novels of Scott and James-there would have been no call to introduce the reader to a personage already so often and so charmingly depicted. Mr. Barry Lyndon is not, we repeat, a hero of the common pattern; but let the reader look round, and ask himself, Do not as many rogues succeed in life as honest men? more fools than men of talent? And is it not just that the lives of this cla.s.s should be described by the student of human nature as well as the actions of those fairy-tale princes, those perfect impossible heroes, whom our writers love to describe? There is something naive and simple in that time-honoured style of novel-writing by which Prince Prettyman, at the end of his adventures, is put in possession of every worldly prosperity, as he has been endowed with every mental and bodily excellence previously. The novelist thinks that he can do no more for his darling hero than make him a lord. Is it not a poor standard that, of the summum bonum? The greatest good in life is not to be a lord; perhaps not even to be happy. Poverty, illness, a humpback, may be rewards and conditions of good, as well as that bodily prosperity which all of us unconsciously set up for wors.h.i.+p. But this is a subject for an essay, not a note; and it is best to allow Mr. Lyndon to resume the candid and ingenious narrative of his virtues and defects.]

Her infernal temper (Mrs. Stammer was the jade's name) and my wife's moody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant: hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fas.h.i.+on at every club, tavern, and a.s.sembly, I, of course, was obliged to resume my old habit, and to commence as an amateur those games at which I was once unrivalled in Europe. But whether a man's temper changes with prosperity, or his skill leaves him when, deprived of a confederate, and pursuing the game no longer professionally, he joins in it, like the rest of the world, for pastime, I know not; but certain it is, that in the seasons of 1774-75 I lost much money at 'White's' and the 'Cocoa-Tree,' and was compelled to meet my losses by borrowing largely upon my wife's annuities, insuring her Ladys.h.i.+p's life, and so forth. The terms at which I raised these necessary sums and the outlays requisite for my improvements were, of course, very onerous, and clipped the property considerably; and it was some of these papers which my Lady Lyndon (who was of a narrow, timid, and stingy turn) occasionally refused to sign: until I PERSUADED her, as I have before shown.

My dealings on the turf ought to be mentioned, as forming part of my history at this time; but, in truth, I have no particular pleasure in recalling my Newmarket doings. I was infernally bit and bubbled in almost every one of my transactions there; and though I could ride a horse as well as any man in England, was no match with the English n.o.blemen at backing him. Fifteen years after my horse, Bay Bulow, by Sophy Hardcastle, out of Eclipse, lost the Newmarket stakes, for which he was the first favourite, I found that a n.o.ble earl, who shall be nameless, had got into his stable the morning before he ran; and the consequence was that an outside horse won, and your humble servant was out to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds. Strangers had no chance in those days on the heath: and, though dazzled by the splendour and fas.h.i.+on a.s.sembled there, and surrounded by the greatest persons of the land,-the royal dukes, with their wives and splendid equipages; old Grafton, with his queer bevy of company, and such men as Ancaster, Sandwich, Lorn,-a man might have considered himself certain of fair play and have been not a little proud of the society he kept; yet, I promise you, that, exalted as it was, there was no set of men in Europe who knew how to rob more genteelly, to bubble a stranger, to bribe a jockey, to doctor a horse, or to arrange a betting-book. Even I couldn't stand against these accomplished gamesters of the highest families in Europe. Was it my own want of style, or my want of fortune? I know not. But now I was arrived at the height of my ambition, both my skill and my luck seemed to be deserting me. Everything I touched crumbled in my hand; every speculation I had failed, every agent I trusted deceived me. I am, indeed, one of those born to make, and not to keep fortunes; for the qualities and energy which lead a man to effect the first are often the very causes of his ruin in the latter case: indeed, I know of no other reason for the misfortunes which finally befell me. [Footnote: The Memoirs seem to have been written about the year 1814, in that calm retreat which Fortune had selected for the author at the close of his life.]

I had always a taste for men of letters, and perhaps, if the truth must be told, have no objection to playing the fine gentleman and patron among the wits. Such people are usually needy, and of low birth, and have an instinctive awe and love of a gentleman and a laced coat; as all must have remarked who have frequented their society. Mr. Reynolds, who was afterwards knighted, and certainly the most elegant painter of his day, was a pretty dexterous courtier of the wit tribe; and it was through this gentleman, who painted a piece of me, Lady Lyndon, and our little Bryan, which was greatly admired at the Exhibition (I was represented as quitting my wife, in the costume of the Tippleton Yeomanry, of which I was major; the child starting back from my helmet like what-d'ye-call'im-Hector's son, as described by Mr. Pope in his 'Iliad'); it was through Mr. Reynolds that I was introduced to a score of these gentlemen, and their great chief, Mr. Johnson. I always thought their great chief a great bear. He drank tea twice or thrice at my house, misbehaving himself most grossly; treating my opinions with no more respect than those of a schoolboy, and telling me to mind my horses and tailors, and not trouble myself about letters. His Scotch bear-leader, Mr. Boswell, was a b.u.t.t of the first quality. I never saw such a figure as the fellow cut in what he called a Corsican habit, at one of Mrs. Cornely's b.a.l.l.s, at Carlisle House, Soho. But that the stories connected with that same establishment are not the most profitable tales in the world, I could tell tales of scores of queer doings there. All the high and low demireps of the town gathered there, from his Grace of Ancaster down to my countryman, poor Mr. Oliver Goldsmith the poet, and from the d.u.c.h.ess of Kingston down to the Bird of Paradise, or Kitty Fisher. Here I have met very queer characters, who came to queer ends too: poor Hackman, that afterwards was hanged for killing Miss Reay, and (on the sly) his Reverence Doctor Simony, whom my friend Sam Foote, of the 'Little Theatre,' bade to live even after forgery and the rope cut short the unlucky parson's career.

It was a merry place, London, in those days, and that's the truth. I'm writing now in my gouty old age, and people have grown vastly more moral and matter-of-fact than they were at the close of the last century, when the world was young with me. There was a difference between a gentleman and a common fellow in those times. We wore silk and embroidery then. Now every man has the same coachmanlike look in his belcher and caped coat, and there is no outward difference between my Lord and his groom. Then it took a man of fas.h.i.+on a couple of hours to make his toilette, and he could show some taste and genius in the selecting it. What a blaze of splendour was a drawing-room, or an opera, of a gala night! What sums of money were lost and won at the delicious faro-table! My gilt curricle and out-riders, blazing in green and gold, were very different objects from the equipages you see nowadays in the ring, with the stunted grooms behind them. A man could drink four times as much as the milksops nowadays can swallow; but 'tis useless expatiating on this theme. Gentlemen are dead and gone. The fas.h.i.+on has now turned upon your soldiers and sailors, and I grow quite moody and sad when I think of thirty years ago.

This is a chapter devoted to reminiscences of what was a very happy and splendid time with me, but presenting little of mark in the way of adventure; as is generally the case when times are happy and easy. It would seem idle to fill pages with accounts of the every-day occupations of a man of fas.h.i.+on,-the fair ladies who smiled upon him, the dresses he wore, the matches he played, and won or lost. At this period of time, when youngsters are employed cutting the Frenchmen's throats in Spain and France, lying out in bivouacs, and feeding off commissariat beef and biscuit, they would not understand what a life their ancestors led; and so I shall leave further discourse upon the pleasures of the times when even the Prince was a lad in leading-strings, when Charles Fox had not subsided into a mere statesman, and Buonaparte was a beggarly brat in his native island.

Whilst these improvements were going on in my estates,-my house, from an antique Norman castle, being changed to an elegant Greek temple, or palace-my gardens and woods losing their rustic appearance to be adapted to the most genteel French style-my child growing up at his mother's knees, and my influence in the country increasing,-it must not be imagined that I stayed in Devons.h.i.+re all this while, and that I neglected to make visits to London, and my various estates in England and Ireland.

I went to reside at the Trecothick estate and the Polwellan Wheal, where I found, instead of profit, every kind of pettifogging chicanery; I pa.s.sed over in state to our territories in Ireland, where I entertained the gentry in a style the Lord Lieutenant himself could not equal; gave the fas.h.i.+on to Dublin (to be sure it was a beggarly savage city in those days; and, since the time there has been a pother about the Union, and the misfortunes attending it, I have been at a loss to account for the mad praises of the old order of things, which the fond Irish patriots have invented); I say I set the fas.h.i.+on to Dublin; and small praise to me, for a poor place it was in those times, whatever the Irish party may say.

In a former chapter I have given you a description of it. It was the Warsaw of our part of the world: there was a splendid, ruined, half-civilised n.o.bility, ruling over a half-savage population. I say half-savage advisedly. The commonalty in the streets were wild, unshorn, and in rags. The most public places were not safe after nightfall. The College, the public buildings, and the great gentry's houses were splendid (the latter unfinished for the most part); but the people were in a state more wretched than any vulgar I have ever known: the exercise of their religion was only half allowed to them; their clergy were forced to be educated out of the country; their aristocracy was quite distinct from them; there was a Protestant n.o.bility, and in the towns, poor insolent Protestant corporations, with a bankrupt retinue of mayors, aldermen, and munic.i.p.al officers-all of whom figured in addresses and had the public voice in the country; but there was no sympathy and connection between the upper and the lower people of the Irish. To one who had been bred so much abroad as myself, this difference between Catholic and Protestant was doubly striking; and though as firm as a rock in my own faith, yet I could not help remembering my grandfather held a different one, and wondering that there should be such a political difference between the two. I pa.s.sed among my neighbours for a dangerous leveller, for entertaining and expressing such opinions, and especially for asking the priest of the parish to my table at Castle Lyndon. He was a gentleman, educated at Salamanca, and, to my mind, a far better bred and more agreeable companion than his comrade the rector, who had but a dozen Protestants for his congregation; who was a lord's son, to be sure, but he could hardly spell, and the great field of his labours was in the kennel and c.o.c.kpit.

I did not extend and beautify the house of Castle Lyndon as I had done our other estates, but contented myself with paying an occasional visit there; exercising an almost royal hospitality, and keeping open house during my stay. When absent, I gave to my aunt, the widow Brady, and her six unmarried daughters (although they always detested me), permission to inhabit the place; my mother preferring my new mansion of Barryogue.

And as my Lord Bullingdon was by this time grown excessively tall and troublesome, I determined to leave him under the care of a proper governor in Ireland, with Mrs. Brady and her six daughters to take care of him; and he was welcome to fall in love with all the old ladies if he were so minded, and thereby imitate his stepfather's example. When tired of Castle Lyndon, his Lords.h.i.+p was at liberty to go and reside at my house with my mamma; but there was no love lost between him and her, and, on account of my son Bryan, I think she hated him as cordially as ever I myself could possibly do.

The county of Devon is not so lucky as the neighbouring county of Cornwall, and has not the share of representatives which the latter possesses; where I have known a moderate country gentleman, with a few score of hundreds per annum from his estate, treble his income by returning three or four Members to Parliament, and by the influence with Ministers which these seats gave him. The parliamentary interest of the house of Lyndon had been grossly neglected during my wife's minority, and the incapacity of the Earl her father; or, to speak more correctly, it had been smuggled away from the Lyndon family altogether by the adroit old hypocrite of Tiptoff Castle, who acted as most kinsmen and guardians do by their wards and relatives, and robbed them. The Marquess of Tiptoff returned four Members to Parliament: two for the borough of Tippleton, which, as all the world knows, lies at the foot of our estate of Hackton, bounded on the other side by Tiptoff Park. For time out of mind we had sent Members for that borough, until Tiptoff, taking advantage of the late lord's imbecility, put in his own nominees. When his eldest son became of age, of course my Lord was to take his seat for Tippleton; when Rigby (Nabob Rigby, who made his fortune under Clive in India) died, the Marquess thought fit to bring down his second son, my Lord George Poynings, to whom I have introduced the reader in a former chapter, and determined, in his high mightiness, that he too should go in and swell the ranks of the Opposition-the big old Whigs, with whom the Marquess acted.

Rigby had been for some time in an ailing condition previous to his demise, and you may be sure that the circ.u.mstance of his failing health had not been pa.s.sed over by the gentry of the county, who were staunch Government men for the most part, and hated my Lord Tiptoff's principles as dangerous and ruinous, 'We have been looking out for a man to fight against him,' said the squires to me; 'we can only match Tiptoff out of Hackton Castle. You, Mr. Lyndon, are our man, and at the next county election we will swear to bring you in.'

I hated the Tiptoffs so, that I would have fought them at any election. They not only would not visit at Hackton, but declined to receive those who visited us; they kept the women of the county from receiving my wife: they invented half the wild stories of my profligacy and extravagance with which the neighbourhood was entertained; they said I had frightened my wife into marriage, and that she was a lost woman; they hinted that Bullingdon's life was not secure under my roof, that his treatment was odious, and that I wanted to put him out of the way to make place for Bryan my son. I could scarce have a friend to Hackton, but they counted the bottles drunk at my table. They ferreted out my dealings with my lawyers and agents. If a creditor was unpaid, every item of his bill was known at Tiptoff Hall; if I looked at a farmer's daughter, it was said I had ruined her. My faults are many, I confess, and as a domestic character, I can't boast of any particular regularity or temper; but Lady Lyndon and I did not quarrel more than fas.h.i.+onable people do, and, at first, we always used to make it up pretty well. I am a man full of errors, certainly, but not the devil that these odious backbiters at Tiptoff represented me to be. For the first three years I never struck my wife but when I was in liquor. When I flung the carving-knife at Bullingdon I was drunk, as everybody present can testify; but as for having any systematic scheme against the poor lad, I can declare solemnly that, beyond merely hating him (and one's inclinations are not in one's power), I am guilty of no evil towards him.

I had sufficient motives, then, for enmity against the Tiptoffs, and am not a man to let a feeling of that kind lie inactive. Though a Whig, or, perhaps, because a Whig, the Marquess was one of the haughtiest men breathing, and treated commoners as his idol the great Earl used to treat them-after he came to a coronet himself-as so many low va.s.sals, who might be proud to lick his shoe-buckle. When the Tippleton mayor and corporation waited upon him, he received them covered, never offered Mr. Mayor a chair, but retired when the refreshments were brought, or had them served to the wors.h.i.+pful aldermen in the steward's room. These honest Britons never rebelled against such treatment, until instructed to do so by my patriotism. No, the dogs liked to be bullied; and, in the course of a long experience, I have met with but very few Englishmen who are not of their way of thinking.

It was not until I opened their eyes that they knew their degradation. I invited the Mayor to Hackton, and Mrs. Mayoress (a very buxom pretty groceress she was, by the way) I made sit by my wife, and drove them both out to the races in my curricle. Lady Lyndon fought very hard against this condescension; but I had a way with her, as the saying is, and though she had a temper, yet I had a better one. A temper, psha! A wild-cat has a temper, but a keeper can get the better of it; and I know very few women in the world whom I could not master.

Well, I made much of the mayor and corporation; sent them bucks for their dinners, or asked them to mine; made a point of attending their a.s.semblies, dancing with their wives and daughters, going through, in short, all the acts of politeness which are necessary on such occasions: and though old Tiptoff must have seen my goings on, yet his head was so much in the clouds, that he never once condescended to imagine his dynasty could be overthrown in his own town of Tippleton, and issued his mandates as securely as if he had been the Grand Turk, and the Tippletonians no better than so many slaves of his will.

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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sert 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 cla.s.sical 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 h.o.a.rds of gold laid by somewhere, and could come out as a Croesus when I choose. I never raised a s.h.i.+lling 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 inc.u.mbrances, 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 das.h.i.+ng 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 coa.r.s.est and most vulgar of men; the cleverest women pa.s.sionately admire the most illiterate of our s.e.x, 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 s.e.x, 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 pa.s.sionately 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 Ladys.h.i.+p; 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 t.i.tles, 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 Lords.h.i.+ps' 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 n.o.bleman 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 shuttlec.o.c.k 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 emba.s.sies; 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 n.o.bleman 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 n.o.bleman 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sociate. 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 s.h.i.+ns until he was obliged to get his s.e.xton 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 pet.i.tions, and I know for a certainty, from his own charities, was often without a s.h.i.+lling 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 fas.h.i.+ons 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 guardians.h.i.+p. 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 b.u.t.t 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 guardians.h.i.+p 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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-la.s.ses, 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 b.u.t.ter 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 pa.s.sage 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.

Young Bullingdon, however, was almost the only person with whom she was concerned that my mother could not keep in order. The accounts she sent me of him at first were such as gave my paternal heart considerable pain. He rejected all regularity and authority. He would absent himself for weeks from the house on sporting or other expeditions. He was when at home silent and queer, refusing to make my mother's game at piquet of evenings, but plunging into all sorts of musty old books, with which he muddled his brains; more at ease laughing and chatting with the pipers and maids in the servants' hall, than with the gentry in the drawing-room; always cutting jibes and jokes at Mrs. Barry, at which she (who was rather a slow woman at repartee) would chafe violently: in fact, leading a life of insubordination and scandal. And, to crown all, the young scapegrace took to frequenting the society of the Romish priest of the parish-a threadbare rogue, from some Popish seminary in France or Spain-rather than the company of the vicar of Castle Lyndon, a gentleman of Trinity, who kept his hounds and drank his two bottles a day.

Regard for the lad's religion made me not hesitate then how I should act towards him. If I have any principle which has guided me through life, it has been respect for the Establishment, and a hearty scorn and abhorrence of all other forms of belief. I therefore sent my French body-servant, in the year 17-, to Dublin with a commission to bring the young reprobate over; and the report brought to me was that he had pa.s.sed the whole of the last night of his stay in Ireland with his Popish friend at the ma.s.s-house; that he and my mother had a violent quarrel on the very last day; that, on the contrary, he kissed Biddy and Dosy, her two nieces, who seemed very sorry that he should go; and that being pressed to go and visit the rector, he absolutely refused, saying he was a wicked old Pharisee, inside whose doors he would never set his foot. The doctor wrote me a letter, warning me against the deplorable errors of this young imp of perdition, as he called him; and I could see that there was no love lost between them. But it appeared that, if not agreeable to the gentry of the country, young Bullingdon had a huge popularity among the common people. There was a regular crowd weeping round the gate when his coach took its departure. Scores of the ignorant savage wretches ran for miles along by the side of the chariot; and some went even so far as to steal away before his departure, and appear at the Pigeon-House at Dublin to bid him a last farewell. It was with considerable difficulty that some of these people could be kept from secreting themselves in the vessel, and accompanying their young lord to England.

To do the young scoundrel justice, when he came among us, he was a manly n.o.ble-looking lad, and everything in his bearing and appearance betokened the high blood from which he came. He was the very portrait of some of the dark cavaliers of the Lyndon race, whose pictures hung in the gallery at Hackton: where the lad was fond of spending the chief part of his time, occupied with the musty old books which he took out of the library, and which I hate to see a young man of spirit poring over. Always in my company he preserved the most rigid silence, and a haughty scornful demeanour; which was so much the more disagreeable because there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take hold of to find fault with: although his whole conduct was insolent and supercilious to the highest degree. His mother was very much agitated at receiving him on his arrival; if he felt any such agitation he certainly did not show it. He made her a very low and formal bow when he kissed her hand; and, when I held out mine, put both his hands behind his back, stared me full in the face, and bent his head, saying, 'Mr. Barry Lyndon, I believe;' turned on his heel, and began talking about the state of the weather to his mother, whom he always styled 'Your Ladys.h.i.+p.' She was angry at this pert bearing, and, when they were alone, rebuked him sharply for not shaking hands with his father.

'My father, madam?' said he; 'surely you mistake. My father was the Right Honourable Sir Charles Lyndon. I at least have not forgotten him, if others have.' It was a declaration of war to me, as I saw at once; though I declare I was willing enough to have received the boy well on his coming amongst us, and to have lived with him on terms of friendliness. But as men serve me I serve them. Who can blame me for my after-quarrels with this young reprobate, or lay upon my shoulders the evils which afterwards befell? Perhaps I lost my temper, and my subsequent treatment of him WAS hard. But it was he began the quarrel, and not I; and the evil consequences which ensued were entirely of his creating.

As it is best to nip vice in the bud, and for a master of a family to exercise his authority in such a manner as that there may be no question about it, I took the earliest opportunity of coming to close quarters with Master Bullingdon; and the day after his arrival among us, upon his refusal to perform some duty which I requested of him, I had him conveyed to my study, and thrashed him soundly. This process, I confess, at first agitated me a good deal, for I had never laid a whip on a lord before; but I got speedily used to the practice, and his back and my whip became so well acquainted, that I warrant there was very little CEREMONY between us after a while.

If I were to repeat all the instances of the insubordination and brutal conduct of young Bullingdon, I should weary the reader. His perseverance in resistance was, I think, even greater than mine in correcting him: for a man, be he ever so much resolved to do his duty as a parent, can't be flogging his children all day, or for every fault they commit: and though I got the character of being so cruel a stepfather to him, I pledge my word I spared him correction when he merited it many more times than I administered it. Besides, there were eight clear months in the year when he was quit of me, during the time of my presence in London, at my place in Parliament, and at the Court of my Sovereign.

At this period I made no difficulty to allow him to profit by the Latin and Greek of the old rector; who had christened him, and had a considerable influence over the wayward lad. After a scene or a quarrel between us, it was generally to the rectory-house that the young rebel would fly for refuge and counsel; and I must own that the parson was a pretty just umpire between us in our disputes. Once he led the boy back to Hackton by the hand, and actually brought him into my presence, although he had vowed never to enter the doors in my lifetime again, and said, 'He had brought his Lords.h.i.+p to acknowledge his error, and submit to any punishment I might think proper to inflict.' Upon which I caned him in the presence of two or three friends of mine, with whom I was sitting drinking at the time; and to do him justice, he bore a pretty severe punishment without wincing or crying in the least. This will show that I was not too severe in my treatment of the lad, as I had the authority of the clergyman himself for inflicting the correction which I thought proper.

Twice or thrice, Lavender, Bryan's governor, attempted to punish my Lord Bullingdon; but I promise you the rogue was too strong for HIM, and levelled the Oxford man to the ground with a chair: greatly to the delight of little Byran, who cried out, 'Bravo, Bully! thump him, thump him!' And Bully certainly did, to the governor's heart's content; who never attempted personal chastis.e.m.e.nt afterwards; but contented himself by bringing the tales of his Lords.h.i.+p's misdoings to me, his natural protector and guardian.

With the child, Bullingdon was, strange to say, pretty tractable. He took a liking for the little fellow,-as, indeed, everybody who saw that darling boy did,-liked him the more, he said, because he was 'half a Lyndon.' And well he might like him, for many a time, at the dear angel's intercession of 'Papa, don't flog Bully to-day!' I have held my hand, and saved him a horsing, which he richly deserved.

With his mother, at first, he would scarcely deign to have any communication. He said she was no longer one of the family. Why should he love her, as she had never been a mother to him? But it will give the reader an idea of the dogged obstinacy and surliness of the lad's character, when I mention one trait regarding him. It has been made a matter of complaint against me, that I denied him the education befitting a gentleman, and never sent him to college or to school; but the fact is, it was of his own choice that he went to neither. He had the offer repeatedly from me (who wished to see as little of his impudence as possible), but he as repeatedly declined; and, for a long time, I could not make out what was the charm which kept him in a house where he must have been far from comfortable.

It came out, however, at last. There used to be very frequent disputes between my Lady Lyndon and myself, in which sometimes she was wrong, sometimes I was; and which, as neither of us had very angelical tempers, used to run very high. I was often in liquor; and when in that condition, what gentleman is master of himself? Perhaps I DID, in this state, use my Lady rather roughly; fling a gla.s.s or two at her, and call her by a few names that were not complimentary. I may have threatened her life (which it was obviously my interest not to take), and have frightened her, in a word, considerably.

After one of these disputes, in which she ran screaming through the galleries, and I, as tipsy as a lord, came staggering after, it appears Bullingdon was attracted out of his room by the noise; as I came up with her, the audacious rascal tripped up my heels, which were not very steady, and catching his fainting mother in his arms, took her into his own room; where he, upon her entreaty, swore he would never leave the house as long as she continued united with me. I knew nothing of the vow, or indeed of the tipsy frolic which was the occasion of it; I was taken up 'glorious,' as the phrase is, by my servants, and put to bed, and, in the morning, had no more recollection of what had occurred any more than of what happened when I was a baby at the breast. Lady Lyndon told me of the circ.u.mstance years after; and I mention it here, as it enables me to plead honourably 'not guilty' to one of the absurd charges of cruelty trumped up against me with respect to my stepson. Let my detractors apologise, if they dare, for the conduct of a graceless ruffian who trips up the heels of his own natural guardian and stepfather after dinner.

This circ.u.mstance served to unite mother and son for a little; but their characters were too different. I believe she was too fond of me ever to allow him to be sincerely reconciled to her. As he grew up to be a man, his hatred towards me a.s.sumed an intensity quite wicked to think of (and which I promise you I returned with interest): and it was at the age of sixteen, I think, that the impudent young hangdog, on my return from Parliament one summer, and on my proposing to cane him as usual, gave me to understand that he would submit to no farther chastis.e.m.e.nt from me, and said, grinding his teeth, that he would shoot me if I laid hands on him. I looked at him; he was grown, in fact, to be a tall young man, and I gave up that necessary part of his education.

It was about this time that I raised the company which was to serve in America; and my enemies in the country (and since my victory over the Tiptoffs I scarce need say I had many of them) began to propagate the most shameful reports regarding my conduct to that precious young scapegrace my stepson, and to insinuate that I actually wished to get rid of him. Thus my loyalty to my Sovereign was actually construed into a horrid unnatural attempt on my part on Bullingdon's life; and it was said that I had raised the American corps for the sole purpose of getting the young Viscount to command it, and so of getting rid of him. I am not sure that they had not fixed upon the name of the very man in the company who was ordered to despatch him at the first general action, and the bribe I was to give him for this delicate piece of service.

But the truth is, I was of opinion then (and though the fulfilment of my prophecy has been delayed, yet I make no doubt it will be brought to pa.s.s ere long), that my Lord Bullingdon needed none of MY aid in sending him into the other world; but had a happy knack of finding the way thither himself, which he would be sure to pursue. In truth, he began upon this way early: of all the violent, daring, disobedient scapegraces that ever caused an affectionate parent pain, he was certainly the most incorrigible; there was no beating him, or coaxing him, or taming him.

For instance, with my little son, when his governor brought him into the room as we were over the bottle after dinner, my Lord would begin his violent and undutiful sarcasms at me.

'Dear child,' he would say, beginning to caress and fondle him, 'what a pity it is I am not dead for thy sake! The Lyndons would then have a worthier representative, and enjoy all the benefit of the ill.u.s.trious blood of the Barrys of Barryogue; would they not, Mr. Barry Lyndon?' He always chose the days when company, or the clergy or gentry of the neighbourhood, were present, to make these insolent speeches to me.

Another day (it was Bryan's birthday) we were giving a grand ball and gala at Hackton, and it was time for my little Bryan to make his appearance among us, as he usually did in the smartest little court-suit you ever saw (ah me! but it brings tears into my old eyes now to think of the bright looks of that darling little face). There was a great crowding and t.i.ttering when the child came in, led by his half-brother, who walked into the dancing-room (would you believe it?) in his stocking-feet, leading little Bryan by the hand, paddling about in the great shoes of the elder! 'Don't you think he fits my shoes very well, Sir Richard Wargrave?' says the young reprobate: upon which the company began to look at each other and to t.i.tter; and his mother, coming up to Lord Bullingdon with great dignity, seized the child to her breast, and said, 'From the manner in which I love this child, my Lord, you ought to know how I would have loved his elder brother had he proved worthy of any mother's affection!' and, bursting into tears, Lady Lyndon left the apartment, and the young lord rather discomfited for once.

At last, on one occasion, his behaviour to me was so outrageous (it was in the hunting-field and in a large public company), that I lost all patience, rode at the urchin straight, wrenched him out of his saddle w