CHAPTER XIV. I RETURN TO IRELAND, AND EXHIBIT MY SPLENDOUR ANDGENEROSITY IN THAT KINGDOM
How were times changed with me now! I had left my country a poorpenniless boy--a private soldier in a miserable marching regiment.I returned an accomplished man, with property to the amount of fivethousand guineas in my possession, with a splendid wardrobe andjewel-case worth two thousand more; having mingled in all the scenes oflife a not undistinguished actor in them; having shared in war and inlove; having by my own genius and energy won my way from poverty andobscurity to competence and splendour. As I looked out from my chariotwindows as it rolled along over the bleak bare roads, by the miserablecabins of the peasantry, who came out in their rags to stare as thesplendid equipage passed, and huzza'd for his Lordship's honour asthey saw the magnificent stranger in the superb gilded vehicle, myhuge body-servant Fritz lolling behind with curling moustaches andlong queue, his green livery barred with silver lace, I could not helpthinking of myself with considerable complacency, and thanking my starsthat had endowed me with so many good qualities. But for my own meritsI should have been a raw Irish squireen such as those I saw swaggeringabout the wretched towns through which my chariot passed on its road toDublin. I might have married Nora Brady (and though, thank Heaven, Idid not, I have never thought of that girl but with kindness, and evenremember the bitterness of losing her more clearly at this moment thanany other incident of my life); I might have been the father of tenchildren by this time, or a farmer on my own account, or an agent toa squire, or a gauger, or an attorney; and here I was one of the mostfamous gentlemen of Europe! I bade my fellow get a bag of copper moneyand throw it among the crowd as we changed horses; and I warrant methere was as much shouting set up in praise of my honour as if my LordTownshend, the Lord Lieutenant himself, had been passing.
My second day's journey--for the Irish roads were rough in those days,and the progress of a gentleman's chariot terribly slow--brought me toCarlow, where I put up at the very inn which I had used eleven yearsback, when flying from home after the supposed murder of Quin in theduel. How well I remember every moment of the scene! The old landlordwas gone who had served me; the inn that I then thought so comfortablelooked wretched and dismantled; but the claret was as good as in the olddays, and I had the host to partake of a jug of it and hear the news ofthe country.
He was as communicative as hosts usually are: the crops and the markets,the price of beasts at last Castle Dermot fair, the last story about thevicar, and the last joke of Father Hogan the priest; how the Whiteboyshad burned Squire Scanlan's ricks, and the highwaymen had been beatenoff in their attack upon Sir Thomas's house; who was to hunt theKilkenny hounds next season, and the wonderful run entirely they hadlast March; what troops were in the town, and how Miss Biddy Toolehad run off with Ensign Mullins: all the news of sport, assize, andquarter-sessions were detailed by this worthy chronicler of small-beer,who wondered that my honour hadn't heard of them in England, or inforeign parts, where he seemed to think the world was as interestedas he was about the doings of Kilkenny and Carlow. I listened to thesetales with, I own, a considerable pleasure; for every now and then aname would come up in the conversation which I remembered in old days,and bring with it a hundred associations connected with them.
I had received many letters from my mother, which informed me of thedoings of the Brady's Town family. My uncle was dead, and Mick, hiseldest son, had followed him too to the grave. The Brady girls hadseparated from their paternal roof as soon as their elder brother cameto rule over it. Some were married, some gone to settle with theirodious old mother in out-of-the-way watering-places. Ulick, though hehad succeeded to the estate, had come in for a bankrupt property, andCastle Brady was now inhabited only by the bats and owls, and the oldgamekeeper. My mother, Mrs. Harry Barry, had gone to live at Bray, tosit under Mr. Jowls, her favourite preacher, who had a chapel there;and, finally, the landlord told me, that Mrs. Barry's son had gone toforeign parts, enlisted in the Prussian service, and had been shot thereas a deserter.
I don't care to own that I hired a stout nag from the landlord's stableafter dinner, and rode back at nightfall twenty miles to my old home.My heart beat to see it. Barryville had got a pestle and mortar over thedoor, and was called 'The Esculapian Repository,' by Doctor Macshane;a red-headed lad was spreading a plaster in the old parlour; the littlewindow of my room, once so neat and bright, was cracked in many places,and stuffed with rags here and there; the flowers had disappearedfrom the trim garden-beds which my good orderly mother tended. In thechurchyard there were two more names put into the stone over the familyvault of the Bradys: they were those of my cousin, for whom my regardwas small, and my uncle, whom I had always loved. I asked my oldcompanion the blacksmith, who had beaten me so often in old days, togive my horse a feed and a litter: he was a worn weary-looking man now,with a dozen dirty ragged children paddling about his smithy, and had norecollection of the fine gentleman who stood before him. I did notseek to recall my-self to his memory till the next day, when I put tenguineas into his hand, and bade him drink the health of English Redmond.
As for Castle Brady, the gates of the park were still there; but the oldtrees were cut down in the avenue, a black stump jutting out here andthere, and casting long shadows as I passed in the moonlight overthe worn grass-grown old road. A few cows were at pasture there. Thegarden-gate was gone, and the place a tangled wilderness. I sat down onthe old bench, where I had sat on the day when Nora jilted me; and I dobelieve my feelings were as strong then as they had been when I was aboy, eleven years before; and I caught myself almost crying again, tothink that Nora Brady had deserted me. I believe a man forgets nothing.I've seen a flower, or heard some trivial word or two, which haveawakened recollections that somehow had lain dormant for scores ofyears; and when I entered the house in Clarges Street, where I was born(it was used as a gambling-house when I first visited London), all of asudden the memory of my childhood came back to me--of my actual infancy:I recollected my father in green and gold, holding me up to look at agilt coach which stood at the door, and my mother in a flowered sack,with patches on her face. Some day, I wonder, will everything we haveseen and thought and done come and flash across our minds in this way?I had rather not. I felt so as I sat upon the bench at Castle Brady, andthought of the bygone times.
The hall-door was open--it was always so at that house; the moon wasflaring in at the long old windows, and throwing ghastly chequers uponthe floors; and the stars were looking in on the other side, in the blueof the yawning window over the great stair: from it you could see theold stable-clock, with the letters glistening on it still. There hadbeen jolly horses in those stables once; and I could see my uncle'shonest face, and hear him talking to his dogs as they came jumping andwhining and barking round about him of a gay winter morning. We used tomount there; and the girls looked out at us from the hall-window, whereI stood and looked at the sad, mouldy, lonely old place. There was ared light shining through the crevices of a door at one corner of thebuilding, and a dog presently came out baying loudly, and a limping manfollowed with a fowling-piece.
'Who's there?' said the old man.
'PHIL PURCELL, don't you know me?' shouted I; 'it's Redmond Barry.'
I thought the old man would have fired his piece at me at first, for hepointed it at the window; but I called to him to hold his hand, and camedown and embraced him.... Psha! I don't care to tell the rest: Phil andI had a long night, and talked over a thousand foolish old things thathave no interest for any soul alive now: for what soul is there alivethat cares for Barry Lyndon?
I settled a hundred guineas on the old man when I got to Dublin, andmade him an annuity which enabled him to pass his old days in comfort.
Poor Phil Purcell was amusing himself at a game of exceedingly dirtycards with an old acquaintance of mine; no other than Tim, who wascalled my 'valet' in the days of yore, and whom the reader may rememberas clad in my father's old liveries. They used to hang about him inthose times, and lap over his wrists and do
wn to his heels; but Tim,though he protested he had nigh killed himself with grief when I wentaway, had managed to grow enormously fat in my absence, and would havefitted almost into Daniel Lambert's coat, or that of the vicar of CastleBrady, whom he served in the capacity of clerk. I would have engagedthe fellow in my service but for his monstrous size, which rendered himquite unfit to be the attendant of any gentleman of condition; and so Ipresented him with a handsome gratuity, and promised to stand godfatherto his next child: the eleventh since my absence. There is no country inthe world where the work of multiplying is carried on so prosperouslyas in my native island. Mr. Tim had married the girls' waiting-maid,who had been a kind friend of mine in the early times; and I had to gosalute poor Molly next day, and found her a slatternly wench in a mudhut, surrounded by a brood of children almost as ragged as those of myfriend the blacksmith.
From Tim and Phil Purcell, thus met fortuitously together, I got thevery last news respecting my family. My mother was well.
''Faith sir,' says Tim, 'and you're come in time, mayhap, for preventingan addition to your family.'
'Sir!' exclaimed I, in a fit of indignation.
'In the shape of father-in-law, I mane, sir,' says Tim: 'the misthressis going to take on with Mister Jowls the praacher.'
Poor Nora, he added, had made many additions to the illustrious race ofQuin; and my cousin Ulick was in Dublin, coming to little good, both myinformants feared, and having managed to run through the small availableremains of property which my good old uncle had left behind him.
I saw I should have no small family to provide for; and then, toconclude the evening, Phil, Tim, and I, had a bottle of usquebaugh, thetaste of which I had remembered for eleven good years, and did not partexcept with the warmest terms of fellowship, and until the sun had beensome time in the sky. I am exceedingly affable; that has always beenone of my characteristics. I have no false pride, as many men of highlineage like my own have, and, in default of better company, will hoband nob with a ploughboy or a private soldier just as readily as withthe first noble in the land.
I went back to the village in the morning, and found a pretext forvisiting Barryville under a device of purchasing drugs. The hooks werestill in the wall where my silver-hiked sword used to hang; a blisterwas lying on the window-sill, where my mother's 'Whole Duty of Man' hadits place; and the odious Doctor Macshane had found out who I was (mycountrymen find out everything, and a great deal more besides), andsniggering, asked me how I left the King of Prussia, and whether myfriend the Emperor Joseph was as much liked as the Empress Maria Theresahad been. The bell-ringers would have had a ring of bells for me, butthere was but one, Tim, who was too fat to pull; and I rode off beforethe vicar, Doctor Bolter (who had succeeded old Mr. Texter, who hadthe living in my time), had time to come out to compliment me; but therapscallions of the beggarly village had assembled in a dirty army towelcome me, and cheered 'Hurrah for Masther Redmond!' as I rode away.
My people were not a little anxious regarding me, by the time I returnedto Carlow, and the landlord was very much afraid, he said, that thehighwaymen had gotten hold of me. There, too, my name and station hadbeen learned from my servant Fritz: who had not spared his praises ofhis master, and had invented some magnificent histories concerning me.He said it was the truth that I was intimate with half the sovereigns ofEurope, and the prime favourite with most of them. Indeed I had mademy uncle's order of the Spur hereditary, and travelled underthe name of the Chevalier Barry, chamberlain to the Duke ofHohenzollern-Sigmaringen.
They gave me the best horses the stable possessed to carry me on my roadto Dublin, and the strongest ropes for harness; and we got on prettywell, and there was no rencontre between the highwaymen and the pistolswith which Fritz and I were provided. We lay that night at Kilcullen,and the next day I made my entry into the city of Dublin, with fourhorses to my carriage, five thousand guineas in my purse, and one of themost brilliant reputations in Europe, having quitted the city a beggarlyboy, eleven years before.
The citizens of Dublin have as great and laudable a desire for knowingtheir neighbours' concerns as the country people have; and it isimpossible for a gentleman, however modest his desires may be (and suchmine have notoriously been through life), to enter the capital withouthaving his name printed in every newspaper and mentioned in a number ofsocieties. My name and titles were all over the town the day after myarrival. A great number of polite persons did me the honour to call atmy lodgings, when I selected them; and this was a point very necessarilyof immediate care, for the hotels in the town were but vulgar holes,unfit for a nobleman of my fashion and elegance. I had been informedof the fact by travellers on the Continent; and determining to fix ona lodging at once, I bade the drivers go slowly up and down the streetswith my chariot, until I had selected a place suitable to my rank. Thisproceeding, and the uncouth questions and behaviour of my German Fritz,who was instructed to make inquiries at the different houses untilconvenient apartments could be lighted upon, brought an immense mobround my coach; and by the time the rooms were chosen you might havesupposed I was the new General of the Forces, so great was the multitudefollowing us.
I fixed at length upon a handsome suite of apartments in Capel Street,paid the ragged postilions who had driven me a splendid gratuity, andestablishing myself in the rooms with my baggage and Fritz, desired thelandlord to engage me a second fellow to wear my liveries, a coupleof stout reputable chairmen and their machine, and a coachman whohad handsome job-horses to hire for my chariot, and serviceableriding-horses to sell. I gave him a handsome sum in advance; and Ipromise you the effect of my advertisement was such, that next day I hada regular levee in my antechamber: grooms, valets, and maitres-d'hoteloffered themselves without number; I had proposals for the purchase ofhorses sufficient to mount a regiment, both from dealers and gentlemenof the first fashion. Sir Lawler Gawler came to propose to me the mostelegant bay-mare ever stepped; my Lord Dundoodle had a team of four thatwouldn't disgrace my friend the Emperor; and the Marquess of Ballyraggetsent his gentleman and his compliments, stating that if I would stepup to his stables, or do him the honour of breakfasting with himpreviously, he would show me the two finest greys in Europe. Idetermined to accept the invitations of Dundoodle and Ballyragget,but to purchase my horses from the dealers. It is always the best way.Besides, in those days, in Ireland, if a gentleman warranted his horse,and it was not sound, or a dispute arose, the remedy you had was theoffer of a bullet in your waistcoat. I had played at the bullet game toomuch in earnest to make use of it heedlessly: and I may say, proudly formyself, that I never engaged in a duel unless I had a real, available,and prudent reason for it.
There was a simplicity about this Irish gentry which amused and made mewonder. If they tell more fibs than their downright neighbours acrossthe water, on the other hand they believe more; and I made myself in asingle week such a reputation in Dublin as would take a man ten yearsand a mint of money to acquire in London. I had won five hundredthousand pounds at play; I was the favourite of the Empress Catherine ofRussia; the confidential agent of Frederick of Prussia; it was I won thebattle of Hochkirchen; I was the cousin of Madame Du Barry, the FrenchKing's favourite, and a thousand things beside. Indeed, to tell thetruth, I hinted a number of these stories to my kind friends Ballyraggetand Gawler; and they were not slow to improve the hints I gave them.
After having witnessed the splendours of civilised life abroad, thesight of Dublin in the year 1771, when I returned thither, struck mewith anything but respect. It was as savage as Warsaw almost, withoutthe regal grandeur of the latter city. The people looked more raggedthan any race I have ever seen, except the gipsy hordes along the banksof the Danube. There was, as I have said, not an inn in the town fit fora gentleman of condition to dwell in. Those luckless fellows who couldnot keep a carriage, and walked the streets at night, ran imminent risksof the knives of the women and ruffians who lay in wait there,--of a setof ragged savage villains, who neither knew the use of shoe nor razor;and as a gentleman ente
red his chair or his chariot, to be carried tohis evening rout, or the play, the flambeaux of the footmen would lightup such a set of wild gibbering Milesian faces as would frighten agenteel person of average nerves. I was luckily endowed with strongones; besides, had seen my amiable countrymen before.
I know this description of them will excite anger among some Irishpatriots, who don't like to have the nakedness of our land abused, andare angry if the whole truth be told concerning it. But bah! it was apoor provincial place, Dublin, in the old days of which I speak; andmany a tenth-rate German residency is more genteel. There were, it istrue, near three hundred resident Peers at the period; and a House ofCommons; and my Lord Mayor and his corporation; and a roystering noisyUniversity, whereof the students made no small disturbances nightly,patronised the roundhouse, ducked obnoxious printers and tradesmen, andgave the law at the Crow Street Theatre. But I had seen too much of thefirst society of Europe to be much tempted by the society of these noisygentry, and was a little too much of a gentleman to mingle with thedisputes and politics of my Lord Mayor and his Aldermen. In the House ofCommons there were some dozen of right pleasant fellows. I never heardin the English Parliament better speeches than from Flood, and Daly, ofGalway. Dick Sheridan, though not a well-bred person, was as amusing andingenious a table-companion as ever I met; and though during Mr. EdmundBurke's interminable speeches in the English House I used always to goto sleep, I yet have heard from well-informed parties that Mr. Burke wasa person of considerable abilities, and even reputed to be eloquent inhis more favourable moments.
I soon began to enjoy to the full extent the pleasures that the wretchedplace affords, and which were within a gentleman's reach: Ranelagh andthe Ridotto; Mr. Mossop, at Crow Street; my Lord Lieutenant's parties,where there was a great deal too much boozing, and too little play, tosuit a person of my elegant and refined habits. 'Daly's Coffee-house,'and the houses of the nobility, were soon open to me; and I remarkedwith astonishment in the higher circles, what I had experienced in thelower on my first unhappy visit to Dublin, an extraordinary want ofmoney, and a preposterous deal of promissory notes flying about, forwhich I was quite unwilling to stake my guineas. The ladies, too, weremad for play; but exceeding unwilling to pay when they lost. Thus, whenthe old Countess of Trumpington lost ten pieces to me at quadrille, shegave me, instead of the money, her Ladyship's note of hand on heragent in Galway; which I put, with a great deal of politeness, into thecandle. But when the Countess made me a second proposition to play, Isaid that as soon as her Ladyship's remittances were arrived, I wouldbe the readiest person to meet her; but till then was her very humbleservant. And I maintained this resolution and singular characterthroughout the Dublin society: giving out at 'Daly's' that I was readyto play any man, for any sum, at any game; or to fence with him, or toride with him (regard being had to our weight), or to shoot flying, orat a mark; and in this latter accomplishment, especially if the mark bea live one, Irish gentlemen of that day had no ordinary skill.
Of course I despatched a courier in my liveries to Castle Lyndon witha private letter for Runt, demanding from him full particulars ofthe Countess of Lyndon's state of health and mind; and a touching andeloquent letter to her Ladyship, in which I bade her remember ancientdays, which I tied up with a single hair from the lock which I hadpurchased from her woman, and in which I told her that Sylvanderremembered his oath, and could never forget his Calista. The answer Ireceived from her was exceedingly unsatisfactory and inexplicit; thatfrom Mr. Runt explicit enough, but not at all pleasant in its contents.My Lord George Poynings, the Marquess of Tiptoff's younger son, waspaying very marked addresses to the widow; being a kinsman of thefamily, and having been called to Ireland relative to the will of thedeceased Sir Charles Lyndon.
Now, there was a sort of rough-and-ready law in Ireland in those days,which was of great convenience to persons desirous of expeditiousjustice; and of which the newspapers of the time contain a hundredproofs. Fellows with the nicknames of Captain Fireball, LieutenantBuffcoat, and Ensign Steele, were repeatedly sending warning lettersto landlords, and murdering them if the notes were unattended to. Thecelebrated Captain Thunder ruled in the southern counties, and hisbusiness seemed to be to procure wives for gentlemen who had notsufficient means to please the parents of the young ladies; or, perhaps,had not time for a long and intricate courtship.
I had found my cousin Ulick at Dublin, grown very fat, and very poor;hunted up by Jews and creditors: dwelling in all sorts of queer corners,from which he issued at nightfall to the Castle, or to his card-party athis tavern; but he was always the courageous fellow: and I hinted to himthe state of my affections regarding Lady Lyndon.
'The Countess of Lyndon!' said poor Ulick; 'well, that IS a wonder. Imyself have been mightily sweet upon a young lady, one of the Kiljoys ofBallyhack, who has ten thousand pounds to her fortune, and to whom herLadyship is guardian; but how is a poor fellow without a coat to hisback to get on with an heiress in such company as that? I might as wellpropose for the Countess myself.'
'You had better not,' said I, laughing; 'the man who tries runs achance of going out of the world first.' And I explained to him my ownintention regarding Lady Lyndon. Honest Ulick, whose respect for me wasprodigious when he saw how splendid my appearance was, and heard howwonderful my adventures and great my experience of fashionable life hadbeen, was lost in admiration of my daring and energy, when I confided tohim my intention of marrying the greatest heiress in England.
I bade Ulick go out of town on any pretext he chose, and put a letterinto a post-office near Castle Lyndon, which I prepared in a feignedhand, and in which I gave a solemn warning to Lord George Poynings toquit the country; saying that the great prize was never meant for thelikes of him, and that there were heiresses enough in England, withoutcoming to rob them out of the domains of Captain Fireball. The letterwas written on a dirty piece of paper, in the worst of spelling: it cameto my Lord by the post-conveyance, and, being a high-spirited young man,he of course laughed at it.
As ill-luck would have it for him, he appeared in Dublin a very shorttime afterwards; was introduced to the Chevalier Redmond Barry, at theLord Lieutenant's table; adjourned with him and several other gentlemento the club at 'Daly's,' and there, in a dispute about the pedigree ofa horse, in which everybody said I was in the right, words arose, anda meeting was the consequence. I had had no affair in Dublin sincemy arrival, and people were anxious to see whether I was equal to myreputation. I make no boast about these matters, but always do them whenthe time comes; and poor Lord George, who had a neat hand and a quickeye enough, but was bred in the clumsy English school, only stood beforemy point until I had determined where I should hit him.
My sword went in under his guard, and came out at his back. When hefell, he good-naturedly extended his hand to me, and said, 'Mr. Barry, Iwas wrong!' I felt not very well at ease when the poor fellow made thisconfession: for the dispute had been of my making, and, to tell thetruth, I had never intended it should end in any other way than ameeting.
He lay on his bed for four months with the effects of that wound;and the same post which conveyed to Lady Lyndon the news of the duel,carried her a message from Captain Fireball to say, 'This is NUMBERONE!'
'You, Ulick,' said I, 'shall be NUMBER TWO.'
''Faith,' said my cousin, 'one's enough:' But I had my plan regardinghim, and determined at once to benefit this honest fellow, and toforward my own designs upon the widow.