CHAPTER XVII. I APPEAR AS AN ORNAMENT OF ENGLISH SOCIETY
All the journey down to Hackton Castle, the largest and most ancient ofour ancestral seats in Devonshire, was performed with the slow and soberstate becoming people of the first quality in the realm. An outrider inmy livery went on before us, and bespoke our lodging from town to town;and thus we lay in state at Andover, Ilminster, and Exeter; and thefourth evening arrived in time for supper before the antique baronialmansion, of which the gate was in an odious Gothic taste that would haveset Mr. Walpole wild with pleasure.
The first days of a marriage are commonly very trying; and I have knowncouples, who lived together like turtle-doves for the rest of theirlives, peck each other's eyes out almost during the honeymoon. I did notescape the common lot; in our journey westward my Lady Lyndon chose toquarrel with me because I pulled out a pipe of tobacco (the habit ofsmoking which I had acquired in Germany when a soldier in Billow's, andcould never give it over), and smoked it in the carriage; and also herLadyship chose to take umbrage both at Ilminster and Andover, becausein the evenings when we lay there I chose to invite the landlords ofthe 'Bell' and the 'Lion' to crack a bottle with me. Lady Lyndon wasa haughty woman, and I hate pride; and I promise you that in bothinstances I overcame this vice in her. On the third day of our journeyI had her to light my pipematch with her own hands, and made her deliverit to me with tears in her eyes; and at the 'Swan Inn' at Exeter I hadso completely subdued her, that she asked me humbly whether I would notwish the landlady as well as the host to step up to dinner with us. Tothis I should have had no objection, for, indeed, Mrs. Bonnyface was avery good-looking woman; but we expected a visit from my Lord Bishop,a kinsman of Lady Lyndon, and the BIENSEANCES did not permit theindulgence of my wife's request. I appeared with her at evening service,to compliment our right reverend cousin, and put her name down fortwenty-five guineas, and my own for one hundred, to the famous new organwhich was then being built for the cathedral. This conduct, at the veryoutset of my career in the county, made me not a little popular; andthe residentiary canon, who did me the favour to sup with me at the inn,went away after the sixth bottle, hiccuping the most solemn vows for thewelfare of such a p-p-pious gentleman.
Before we reached Hackton Castle, we had to drive through ten miles ofthe Lyndon estates, where the people were out to visit us, the churchbells set a-ringing, the parson and the farmers assembled in their bestby the roadside, and the school children and the labouring people wereloud in their hurrahs for her Ladyship. I flung money among these worthycharacters, stopped to bow and chat with his reverence and the farmers,and if I found that the Devonshire girls were among the handsomest inthe kingdom is it my fault? These remarks my Lady Lyndon especiallywould take in great dudgeon; and I do believe she was made more angry bymy admiration of the red cheeks of Miss Betsy Quarringdon of Clumpton,than by any previous speech or act of mine in the journey. 'Ah, ah, myfine madam, you are jealous, are you?' thought I, and reflected, notwithout deep sorrow, how lightly she herself had acted in her husband'slifetime, and that those are most jealous who themselves give most causefor jealousy.
Round Hackton village the scene of welcome was particularly gay: a bandof music had been brought from Plymouth, and arches and flags had beenraised, especially before the attorney's and the doctor's houses, whowere both in the employ of the family. There were many hundreds of stoutpeople at the great lodge, which, with the park-wall, bounds one side ofHackton Green, and from which, for three miles, goes (or rather went) anavenue of noble elms up to the towers of the old castle. I wished theyhad been oak when I cut the trees down in '79, for they would havefetched three times the money: I know nothing more culpable than thecarelessness of ancestors in planting their grounds with timber of smallvalue, when they might just as easily raise oak. Thus I have always saidthat the Roundhead Lyndon of Hackton, who planted these elms in CharlesII.'s time, cheated me of ten thousand pounds.
For the first few days after our arrival, my time was agreeably spentin receiving the visits of the nobility and gentry who came to pay theirrespects to the noble new-married couple, and, like Bluebeard's wifein the fairy tale, in inspecting the treasures, the furniture, and thenumerous chambers of the castle. It is a huge old place, built as farback as Henry V.'s time, besieged and battered by the Cromwellians inthe Revolution, and altered and patched up, in an odious old-fashionedtaste, by the Roundhead Lyndon, who succeeded to the property at thedeath of a brother whose principles were excellent and of the trueCavalier sort, but who ruined himself chiefly by drinking, dicing, anda dissolute life, and a little by supporting the King. The castle standsin a fine chase, which was prettily speckled over with deer; and I can'tbut own that my pleasure was considerable at first, as I sat in the oakparlour of summer evenings, with the windows open, the gold and silverplate shining in a hundred dazzling colours on the side-boards, a dozenjolly companions round the table, and could look out over the wide greenpark and the waving woods, and see the sun setting on the lake, and hearthe deer calling to one another.
The exterior was, when I first arrived, a quaint composition of allsorts of architecture; of feudal towers, and gable-ends in Queen Bess'sstyle, and rough-patched walls built up to repair the ravages of theRoundhead cannon: but I need not speak of this at large, having had theplace new-faced at a vast expense, under a fashionable architect, andthe facade laid out in the latest French-Greek and most classical style.There had been moats, and drawbridges, and outer walls; these I hadshaved away into elegant terraces, and handsomely laid out in parterresaccording to the plans of Monsieur Cornichon, the great Parisianarchitect, who visited England for the purpose.
After ascending the outer steps, you entered an antique hall of vastdimensions, wainscoted with black carved oak, and ornamented withportraits of our ancestors: from the square beard of Brook Lyndon, thegreat lawyer in Queen Bess's time, to the loose stomacher and ringletsof Lady Saccharissa Lyndon, whom Vandyck painted when she was a maid ofhonour to Queen Henrietta Maria, and down to Sir Charles Lyndon, withhis riband as a knight of the Bath; and my Lady, painted by Hudson, ina white satin sack and the family diamonds, as she was presented tothe old King George II. These diamonds were very fine: I first hadthem reset by Boehmer when we appeared before their French Majesties atVersailles; and finally raised L18,000 upon them, after that infernalrun of ill luck at 'Goosetree's,' when Jemmy Twitcher (as we calledmy Lord Sandwich), Carlisle, Charley Fox, and I played hombre forfour-and-forty hours SANS DESEMPARER. Bows and pikes, huge stag-headsand hunting implements, and rusty old suits of armour, that may havebeen worn in the days of Gog and Magog for what I know, formed the otherold ornaments of this huge apartment; and were ranged round a fireplacewhere you might have turned a coach-and-six. This I kept pretty much inits antique condition, but had the old armour eventually turned outand consigned to the lumber-rooms upstairs; replacing it with chinamonsters, gilded settees from France, and elegant marbles, of which thebroken noses and limbs, and ugliness, undeniably proved their antiquity:and which an agent purchased for me at Rome. But such was the tasteof the times (and, perhaps, the rascality of my agent), that thirtythousand pounds' worth of these gems of art only went for three hundredguineas at a subsequent period, when I found it necessary to raise moneyon my collections.
From this main hall branched off on either side the long series ofstate-rooms, poorly furnished with high-backed chairs and long queerVenice glasses, when first I came to the property; but afterwardsrendered so splendid by me, with the gold damasks of Lyons and themagnificent Gobelin tapestries I won from Richelieu at play. Therewere thirty-six bedrooms DE MAITRE, of which I only kept three in theirantique condition,--the haunted room as it was called, where the murderwas done in James II.'s time, the bed where William slept afterlanding at Torbay, and Queen Elizabeth's state-room. All the rest wereredecorated by Cornichon in the most elegant taste; not a little to thescandal of some of the steady old country dowagers; for I had picturesof Boucher and Vanloo to decorate the principal apartmen
ts, in which theCupids and Venuses were painted in a manner so natural, that I recollectthe old wizened Countess of Frumpington pinning over the curtains of herbed, and sending her daughter, Lady Blanche Whalebone, to sleep with herwaiting-woman, rather than allow her to lie in a chamber hung all overwith looking-glasses, after the exact fashion of the Queen's closet atVersailles.
For many of these ornaments I was not so much answerable as Cornichon,whom Lauraguais lent me, and who was the intendant of my buildingsduring my absence abroad. I had given the man CARTE BLANCHE, and when hefell down and broke his leg, as he was decorating a theatre in the roomwhich had been the old chapel of the castle, the people of thecountry thought it was a judgment of Heaven upon him. In his rage forimprovement the fellow dared anything. Without my orders he cut downan old rookery which was sacred in the country, and had a prophecyregarding it, stating, 'When the rook-wood shall fall, down goes HacktonHall.' The rooks went over and colonised Tiptoff Woods, which lay nearus (and be hanged to them!), and Cornichon built a temple to Venus andtwo lovely fountains on their site. Venuses and Cupids were the rascal'sadoration: he wanted to take down the Gothic screen and place Cupids inour pew there; but old Doctor Huff the rector came out with a large oakstick, and addressed the unlucky architect in Latin, of which he did notcomprehend a word, yet made him understand that he would break hisbones if he laid a single finger upon the sacred edifice. Cornichonmade complaints about the 'Abbe Huff,' as he called him. ('Et quel abbe,grand Dieu!' added he, quite bewildered, 'un abbe avec douze enfans');but I encouraged the Church in this respect, and bade Cornichon exerthis talents only in the castle.
There was a magnificent collection of ancient plate, to which I addedmuch of the most splendid modern kind; a cellar which, however wellfurnished, required continual replenishing, and a kitchen which Ireformed altogether. My friend, Jack Wilkes, sent me down a cook fromthe Mansion House, for the English cookery,--the turtle and venisondepartment: I had a CHEF (who called out the Englishman, by the way, andcomplained sadly of the GROS COCHON who wanted to meet him with COUPS DEPOING) and a couple of AIDES from Paris, and an Italian confectioner,as my OFFICIERS DE BOUCHE. All which natural appendages to a man offashion, the odious, stingy old Tiptoff, my kinsman and neighbour,affected to view with horror; and he spread through the country a reportthat I had my victuals cooked by Papists, lived upon frogs, and, heverily believed, fricasseed little children.
But the squires ate my dinners very readily for all that, and old DoctorHuff himself was compelled to allow that my venison and turtle weremost orthodox. The former gentry I knew how to conciliate, too, inother ways. There had been only a subscription pack of fox-hounds inthe county and a few beggarly couples of mangy beagles, with which oldTiptoff pattered about his grounds; I built a kennel and stables,which cost L30,000, and stocked them in a manner which was worthy ofmy ancestors, the Irish kings. I had two packs of hounds, and tookthe field in the season four times a week, with three gentlemen inmy hunt-uniform to follow me, and open house at Hackton for all whobelonged to the hunt.
These changes and this train de vivre required, as may be supposed, nosmall outlay; and I confess that I have little of that base spirit ofeconomy in my composition which some people practise and admire. Forinstance, old Tiptoff was hoarding up his money to repair his father'sextravagance and disencumber his estates; a good deal of the moneywith which he paid off his mortgages my agent procured upon mine. And,besides, it must be remembered I had only a life-interest upon theLyndon property, was always of an easy temper in dealing with themoney-brokers, and had to pay heavily for insuring her Ladyship's life.
At the end of a year Lady Lyndon presented me with a son--Bryan LyndonI called him, in compliment to my royal ancestry: but what more had I toleave him than a noble name? Was not the estate of his mother entailedupon the odious little Turk, Lord Bullingdon? and whom, by the way, Ihave not mentioned as yet, though he was living at Hackton, consigned toa new governor. The insubordination of that boy was dreadful. He usedto quote passages of 'Hamlet' to his mother, which made her very angry.Once when I took a horsewhip to chastise him, he drew a knife, and wouldhave stabbed me: and, 'faith, I recollected my own youth, which waspretty similar; and, holding out my hand, burst out laughing, andproposed to him to be friends. We were reconciled for that time, andthe next, and the next; but there was no love lost between us, and hishatred for me seemed to grow as he grew, which was apace.
I determined to endow my darling boy Bryan with a property, and to thisend cut down twelve thousand pounds' worth of timber on Lady Lyndon'sYorkshire and Irish estates: at which proceeding Bullingdon's guardian,Tiptoff, cried out, as usual, and swore I had no right to touch astick of the trees; but down they went; and I commissioned my mother torepurchase the ancient lands of Ballybarry and Barryogue, which had onceformed part of the immense possessions of my house. These she boughtback with excellent prudence and extreme joy; for her heart wasgladdened at the idea that a son was born to my name, and with thenotion of my magnificent fortunes.
To say truth, I was rather afraid, now that I lived in a very differentsphere from that in which she was accustomed to move, lest she shouldcome to pay me a visit, and astonish my English friends by her braggingand her brogue, her rouge and her old hoops and furbelows of the timeof George II.: in which she had figured advantageously in her youth, andwhich she still fondly thought to be at the height of the fashion. SoI wrote to her, putting off her visit; begging her to visit us whenthe left wing of the castle was finished, or the stables built, and soforth. There was no need of such precaution. 'A hint's enough for me,Redmond,' the old lady would reply. 'I am not coming to disturb youamong your great English friends with my old-fashioned Irish ways. It'sa blessing to me to think that my darling boy has attained the positionwhich I always knew was his due, and for which I pinched myself toeducate him. You must bring me the little Bryan, that his grandmothermay kiss him, one day. Present my respectful blessing to her Ladyshiphis mamma. Tell her she has got a treasure in her husband, which shecouldn't have had had she taken a duke to marry her; and that the Barrysand the Bradys, though without titles, have the best of blood in theirveins. I shall never rest until I see you Earl of Ballybarry, and mygrandson Lord Viscount Barryogue.'
How singular it was that the very same ideas should be passing in mymother's mind and my own! The very title she had pitched upon had alsobeen selected (naturally enough) by me; and I don't mind confessing thatI had filled a dozen sheets of paper with my signature, under thenames of Ballybarry and Barryogue, and had determined with my usualimpetuosity to carry my point. My mother went and established herselfat Ballybarry, living with the priest there until a tenement could beerected, and dating from 'Ballybarry Castle;' which, you may be sure,I gave out to be a place of no small importance. I had a plan of theestate in my study, both at Hackton and in Berkeley Square, and theplans of the elevation of Ballybarry Castle, the ancestral residence ofBarry Lyndon, Esq., with the projected improvements, in which the castlewas represented as about the size of Windsor, with more ornaments tothe architecture; and eight hundred acres of bog falling in handy, Ipurchased them at three pounds an acre, so that my estate upon the maplooked to be no insignificant one. [Footnote: On the strength of thisestate, and pledging his honour that it was not mortgaged, Mr. BarryLyndon borrowed L17,000 in the year 1786, from young Captain Pigeon, thecity merchant's son, who had just come in for his property. At for thePolwellan estate and mines, 'the cause of endless litigation,' it mustbe owned that our hero purchased them; but he never paid more than thefirst L5000 of the purchase-money. Hence the litigation of which hecomplains, and the famous Chancery suit of 'Trecothick v. Lyndon,' inwhich Mr. John Scott greatly distinguished himself.-ED.]
I also in this year made arrangements for purchasing the Polwellanestate and mines in Cornwall from Sir John Trecothick, for L70,000--animprudent bargain, which was afterwards the cause to me of much disputeand litigation. The troubles of property, the rascality of agents, thequibbles of lawyers, are end
less. Humble people envy us great men, andfancy that our lives are all pleasure. Many a time in the course of myprosperity I have sighed for the days of my meanest fortune, and enviedthe boon companions at my table, with no clothes to their backs butsuch as my credit supplied them, without a guinea but what came frommy pocket; but without one of the harassing cares and responsibilitieswhich are the dismal adjuncts of great rank and property.
I did little more than make my appearance, and assume the command of myestates, in the kingdom of Ireland; rewarding generously those personswho had been kind to me in my former adversities, and taking my fittingplace among the aristocracy of the land. But, in truth, I had smallinducements to remain in it after having tasted of the genteeler andmore complete pleasures of English and Continental life; and we passedour summers at Buxton, Bath, and Harrogate, while Hackton Castle wasbeing beautified in the elegant manner already described by me, and theseason at our mansion in Berkeley Square.
It is wonderful how the possession of wealth brings out the virtues ofa man; or, at any rate, acts as a varnish or lustre to them, andbrings out their brilliancy and colour in a manner never known when theindividual stood in the cold grey atmosphere of poverty. I assure you itwas a very short time before I was a pretty fellow of the first class;made no small sensation at the coffee-houses in Pall Mall andafterwards at the most famous clubs. My style, equipages, and elegantentertainments were in everybody's mouth, and were described in all themorning prints. The needier part of Lady Lyndon's relatives, and such ashad been offended by the intolerable pomposity of old Tiptoff, began toappear at our routs and assemblies; and as for relations of my own, Ifound in London and Ireland more than I had ever dreamed of, of cousinswho claimed affinity with me. There were, of course, natives of my owncountry (of which I was not particularly proud), and I received visitsfrom three or four swaggering shabby Temple bucks, with tarnished laceand Tipperary brogue, who were eating their way to the bar in London;from several gambling adventurers at the watering-places, whom I soonspeedily let to know their place; and from others of more reputablecondition. Among them I may mention my cousin the Lord Kilbarry, who, onthe score of his relationship, borrowed thirty pieces from me to pay hislandlady in Swallow Street; and whom, for my own reasons, I allowed tomaintain and credit a connection for which the Heralds' College gave noauthority whatsoever. Kilbarry had a cover at my table; punted at play,and paid when he liked, which was seldom; had an intimacy with, and wasunder considerable obligations to, my tailor; and always boasted of hiscousin the great Barry Lyndon of the West country.
Her Ladyship and I lived, after a while, pretty separate when in London.She preferred quiet: or to say the truth, I preferred it; being a greatfriend to a modest tranquil behaviour in woman, and a taste for thedomestic pleasures. Hence I encouraged her to dine at home with herladies, her chaplain, and a few of her friends; admitted three or fourproper and discreet persons to accompany her to her box at the opera orplay on proper occasions; and indeed declined for her the too frequentvisits of her friends and family, preferring to receive them only twiceor thrice in a season on our grand reception days. Besides, she was amother, and had great comfort in the dressing, educating, and dandlingour little Bryan, for whose sake it was fit that she should give up thepleasures and frivolities of the world; so she left THAT part of theduty of every family of distinction to be performed by me. To say thetruth, Lady Lyndon's figure and appearance were not at this time such asto make for their owner any very brilliant appearance in the fashionableworld. She had grown very fat, was short-sighted, pale in complexion,careless about her dress, dull in demeanour; her conversations withme characterised by a stupid despair, or a silly blundering attempt atforced cheerfulness still more disagreeable: hence our intercourse wasbut trifling, and my temptations to carry her into the world, or toremain in her society, of necessity exceedingly small. She would try mytemper 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 wasan accomplished performer, she would as often as not begin to cry, andleave the room. My company from this, of course, fancied I was a tyrantover 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 awholesome and effectual hold of her; for if in any of her tantrums orfits of haughtiness--(this woman was intolerably proud; and repeatedly,at first, in our quarrels, dared to twit me with my own original povertyand low birth),--if, I say, in our disputes she pretended to have theupper hand, to assert her authority against mine, to refuse to sign suchpapers as I might think necessary for the distribution of our large andcomplicated property, I would have Master Bryan carried off to Chiswickfor a couple of days; and I warrant me his lady-mother could hold outno longer, and would agree to anything I chose to propose. The servantsabout her I took care should be in my pay, not hers: especially thechild's head nurse was under MY orders, not those of my lady; and a veryhandsome, red-cheeked, impudent jade she was; and a great fool she mademe make of myself. This woman was more mistress of the house than thepoor-spirited lady who owned it. She gave the law to the servants; andif I showed any particular attention to any of the ladies who visitedus, the slut would not scruple to show her jealousy, and to find meansto send them packing. The fact is, a generous man is always made a foolof by some woman or other, and this one had such an influence over methat she could turn me round her finger. [Footnote: From these curiousconfessions, it would appear that Mr. Lyndon maltreated his lady inevery possible way; that he denied her society, bullied her intosigning away her property, spent it in gambling and taverns, was openlyunfaithful to her; and, when she complained, threatened to remove herchildren from her. Nor, indeed, is he the only husband who has donethe like, and has passed for 'nobody's enemy but his own:' a jovialgood-natured fellow. The world contains scores of such amiable people;and, indeed, it is because justice has not been done them that wehave edited this autobiography. Had it been that of a mere hero ofromance--one of those heroic youths who figure in the novels of Scottand James--there would have been no call to introduce the reader to apersonage already so often and so charmingly depicted. Mr. Barry Lyndonis not, we repeat, a hero of the common pattern; but let the reader lookround, and ask himself, Do not as many rogues succeed in life as honestmen? more fools than men of talent? And is it not just that the lives ofthis class should be described by the student of human nature as wellas the actions of those fairy-tale princes, those perfect impossibleheroes, whom our writers love to describe? There is something naiveand simple in that time-honoured style of novel-writing by which PrincePrettyman, at the end of his adventures, is put in possession of everyworldly prosperity, as he has been endowed with every mental and bodilyexcellence previously. The novelist thinks that he can do no more forhis 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 berewards and conditions of good, as well as that bodily prosperity whichall of us unconsciously set up for worship. But this is a subject foran essay, not a note; and it is best to allow Mr. Lyndon to resume thecandid and ingenious narrative of his virtues and defects.]
Her infernal temper (Mrs. Stammer was the jade's name) and my wife'smoody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant: hence I wasdriven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fashion at every club,tavern, and assembly, I, of course, was obliged to resume my old habit,and to commence as an amateur those games at which I was once unrivalledin Europe. But whether a man's temper changes with prosperity, or hisskill leaves him when, deprived of a confederate, and pursuing the gameno 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 of1774-75 I lost much money at 'White's' and the 'Cocoa-Tree,' andwas compelled to meet my losses by borrowing largely upon m
y wife'sannuities, insuring her Ladyship's life, and so forth. The terms atwhich I raised these necessary sums and the outlays requisite for myimprovements were, of course, very onerous, and clipped the propertyconsiderably; and it was some of these papers which my Lady Lyndon (whowas 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 myhistory at this time; but, in truth, I have no particular pleasurein recalling my Newmarket doings. I was infernally bit and bubbled inalmost every one of my transactions there; and though I could ridea horse as well as any man in England, was no match with the Englishnoblemen at backing him. Fifteen years after my horse, Bay Bulow, bySophy Hardcastle, out of Eclipse, lost the Newmarket stakes, for whichhe was the first favourite, I found that a noble earl, who shall benameless, had got into his stable the morning before he ran; and theconsequence was that an outside horse won, and your humble servant wasout to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds. Strangers had no chancein those days on the heath: and, though dazzled by the splendour andfashion assembled there, and surrounded by the greatest persons of theland,--the royal dukes, with their wives and splendid equipages; oldGrafton, with his queer bevy of company, and such men as Ancaster,Sandwich, Lorn,--a man might have considered himself certain of fairplay and have been not a little proud of the society he kept; yet, Ipromise you, that, exalted as it was, there was no set of men in Europewho knew how to rob more genteelly, to bubble a stranger, to bribea jockey, to doctor a horse, or to arrange a betting-book. Even _I_couldn't stand against these accomplished gamesters of the highestfamilies 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, bothmy skill and my luck seemed to be deserting me. Everything I touchedcrumbled in my hand; every speculation I had failed, every agent Itrusted deceived me. I am, indeed, one of those born to make, and not tokeep fortunes; for the qualities and energy which lead a man to effectthe first are often the very causes of his ruin in the latter case:indeed, I know of no other reason for the misfortunes which finallybefell me. [Footnote: The Memoirs seem to have been written about theyear 1814, in that calm retreat which Fortune had selected for theauthor at the close of his life.]
I had always a taste for men of letters, and perhaps, if the truth mustbe told, have no objection to playing the fine gentleman and patronamong the wits. Such people are usually needy, and of low birth, andhave an instinctive awe and love of a gentleman and a laced coat; as allmust have remarked who have frequented their society. Mr. Reynolds, whowas afterwards knighted, and certainly the most elegant painter ofhis day, was a pretty dexterous courtier of the wit tribe; and it wasthrough this gentleman, who painted a piece of me, Lady Lyndon, andour little Bryan, which was greatly admired at the Exhibition (Iwas represented as quitting my wife, in the costume of the TippletonYeomanry, of which I was major; the child starting back from my helmetlike 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 scoreof these gentlemen, and their great chief, Mr. Johnson. I always thoughttheir great chief a great bear. He drank tea twice or thrice at myhouse, misbehaving himself most grossly; treating my opinions with nomore respect than those of a schoolboy, and telling me to mind myhorses and tailors, and not trouble myself about letters. His Scotchbear-leader, Mr. Boswell, was a butt of the first quality. I never sawsuch a figure as the fellow cut in what he called a Corsican habit,at one of Mrs. Cornely's balls, at Carlisle House, Soho. But thatthe stories connected with that same establishment are not the mostprofitable tales in the world, I could tell tales of scores of queerdoings there. All the high and low demireps of the town gathered there,from his Grace of Ancaster down to my countryman, poor Mr. OliverGoldsmith the poet, and from the Duchess of Kingston down to the Birdof Paradise, or Kitty Fisher. Here I have met very queer characters,who came to queer ends too: poor Hackman, that afterwards was hanged forkilling Miss Reay, and (on the sly) his Reverence Doctor Simony, whommy friend Sam Foote, of the 'Little Theatre,' bade to live even afterforgery 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'mwriting now in my gouty old age, and people have grown vastly more moraland matter-of-fact than they were at the close of the last century, whenthe world was young with me. There was a difference between a gentlemanand a common fellow in those times. We wore silk and embroidery then.Now every man has the same coachmanlike look in his belcher and capedcoat, and there is no outward difference between my Lord and his groom.Then it took a man of fashion a couple of hours to make his toilette,and he could show some taste and genius in the selecting it. What ablaze 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! Mygilt curricle and out-riders, blazing in green and gold, were verydifferent objects from the equipages you see nowadays in the ring, withthe stunted grooms behind them. A man could drink four times as much asthe milksops nowadays can swallow; but 'tis useless expatiating on thistheme. Gentlemen are dead and gone. The fashion has now turned upon yoursoldiers and sailors, and I grow quite moody and sad when I think ofthirty years ago.
This is a chapter devoted to reminiscences of what was a very happyand splendid time with me, but presenting little of mark in the way ofadventure; as is generally the case when times are happy and easy. Itwould seem idle to fill pages with accounts of the every-day occupationsof a man of fashion,--the fair ladies who smiled upon him, the dresseshe wore, the matches he played, and won or lost. At this period of time,when youngsters are employed cutting the Frenchmen's throats in Spainand France, lying out in bivouacs, and feeding off commissariat beef andbiscuit, they would not understand what a life their ancestors led; andso I shall leave further discourse upon the pleasures of the times wheneven the Prince was a lad in leading-strings, when Charles Fox had notsubsided into a mere statesman, and Buonaparte was a beggarly brat inhis native island.
Whilst these improvements were going on in my estates,--my house, froman antique Norman castle, being changed to an elegant Greek temple,or palace--my gardens and woods losing their rustic appearance to beadapted to the most genteel French style--my child growing up at hismother's knees, and my influence in the country increasing,--it mustnot be imagined that I stayed in Devonshire all this while, and that Ineglected to make visits to London, and my various estates in Englandand Ireland.
I went to reside at the Trecothick estate and the Polwellan Wheal, whereI found, instead of profit, every kind of pettifogging chicanery; Ipassed over in state to our territories in Ireland, where I entertainedthe gentry in a style the Lord Lieutenant himself could not equal; gavethe fashion to Dublin (to be sure it was a beggarly savage city in thosedays; and, since the time there has been a pother about the Union, andthe misfortunes attending it, I have been at a loss to account for themad praises of the old order of things, which the fond Irish patriotshave invented); I say I set the fashion to Dublin; and small praise tome, for a poor place it was in those times, whatever the Irish party maysay.
In a former chapter I have given you a description of it. It wasthe Warsaw of our part of the world: there was a splendid, ruined,half-civilised nobility, ruling over a half-savage population. I sayhalf-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 weresplendid (the latter unfinished for the most part); but the people werein a state more wretched than any vulgar I have ever known: the exerciseof their religion was only half allowed to them; their clergy wereforced to be educated out of the country; their aristocracy was quitedistinct from them; there was a Protestant nobility, and in the towns,poor insolent Protestant corporations, with a bankrupt retinue ofmayors, aldermen, and municipal officers--all of whom figured inaddresses and had the public voice in the country; but there wa
s nosympathy and connection between the upper and the lower people ofthe Irish. To one who had been bred so much abroad as myself, thisdifference between Catholic and Protestant was doubly striking;and though as firm as a rock in my own faith, yet I could not helpremembering my grandfather held a different one, and wondering thatthere should be such a political difference between the two. I passedamong my neighbours for a dangerous leveller, for entertaining andexpressing such opinions, and especially for asking the priest of theparish to my table at Castle Lyndon. He was a gentleman, educatedat Salamanca, and, to my mind, a far better bred and more agreeablecompanion than his comrade the rector, who had but a dozen Protestantsfor his congregation; who was a lord's son, to be sure, but he couldhardly spell, and the great field of his labours was in the kennel andcockpit.
I did not extend and beautify the house of Castle Lyndon as I had doneour other estates, but contented myself with paying an occasional visitthere; exercising an almost royal hospitality, and keeping open houseduring my stay. When absent, I gave to my aunt, the widow Brady, and hersix unmarried daughters (although they always detested me), permissionto inhabit the place; my mother preferring my new mansion of Barryogue.
And as my Lord Bullingdon was by this time grown excessively talland troublesome, I determined to leave him under the care of a propergovernor in Ireland, with Mrs. Brady and her six daughters to take careof him; and he was welcome to fall in love with all the old ladies if hewere so minded, and thereby imitate his stepfather's example. When tiredof Castle Lyndon, his Lordship was at liberty to go and reside at myhouse 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 asever I myself could possibly do.
The county of Devon is not so lucky as the neighbouring county ofCornwall, and has not the share of representatives which the latterpossesses; where I have known a moderate country gentleman, with afew score of hundreds per annum from his estate, treble his income byreturning three or four Members to Parliament, and by the influence withMinisters which these seats gave him. The parliamentary interest of thehouse 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 theadroit old hypocrite of Tiptoff Castle, who acted as most kinsmen andguardians do by their wards and relatives, and robbed them. The Marquessof Tiptoff returned four Members to Parliament: two for the borough ofTippleton, which, as all the world knows, lies at the foot of our estateof Hackton, bounded on the other side by Tiptoff Park. For time outof mind we had sent Members for that borough, until Tiptoff, takingadvantage of the late lord's imbecility, put in his own nominees. Whenhis eldest son became of age, of course my Lord was to take his seat forTippleton; when Rigby (Nabob Rigby, who made his fortune under Clive inIndia) died, the Marquess thought fit to bring down his second son, myLord George Poynings, to whom I have introduced the reader in a formerchapter, and determined, in his high mightiness, that he too should goin and swell the ranks of the Opposition--the big old Whigs, with whomthe Marquess acted.
Rigby had been for some time in an ailing condition previous to hisdemise, and you may be sure that the circumstance of his failing healthhad not been passed over by the gentry of the county, who were staunchGovernment men for the most part, and hated my Lord Tiptoff's principlesas dangerous and ruinous, 'We have been looking out for a man to fightagainst him,' said the squires to me; 'we can only match Tiptoff outof Hackton Castle. You, Mr. Lyndon, are our man, and at the next countyelection 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 thosewho visited us; they kept the women of the county from receivingmy wife: they invented half the wild stories of my profligacy andextravagance with which the neighbourhood was entertained; they saidI 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, thathis treatment was odious, and that I wanted to put him out of the wayto 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 mydealings with my lawyers and agents. If a creditor was unpaid, everyitem of his bill was known at Tiptoff Hall; if I looked at a farmer'sdaughter, 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 regularityor temper; but Lady Lyndon and I did not quarrel more than fashionablepeople do, and, at first, we always used to make it up pretty well. Iam a man full of errors, certainly, but not the devil that these odiousbackbiters at Tiptoff represented me to be. For the first three yearsI never struck my wife but when I was in liquor. When I flung thecarving-knife at Bullingdon I was drunk, as everybody present cantestify; but as for having any systematic scheme against the poor lad,I can declare solemnly that, beyond merely hating him (and one'sinclinations are not in one's power), I am guilty of no evil towardshim.
I had sufficient motives, then, for enmity against the Tiptoffs, and amnot 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 haughtiestmen breathing, and treated commoners as his idol the great Earl used totreat them--after he came to a coronet himself--as so many low vassals,who might be proud to lick his shoe-buckle. When the Tippleton mayor andcorporation waited upon him, he received them covered, never offered Mr.Mayor a chair, but retired when the refreshments were brought, or hadthem served to the worshipful aldermen in the steward's room. Thesehonest Britons never rebelled against such treatment, until instructedto do so by my patriotism. No, the dogs liked to be bullied; and, in thecourse of a long experience, I have met with but very few Englishmen whoare 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 prettygroceress she was, by the way) I made sit by my wife, and drove themboth out to the races in my curricle. Lady Lyndon fought very hardagainst 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! Awild-cat has a temper, but a keeper can get the better of it; and I knowvery few women in the world whom I could not master.
Well, I made much of the mayor and corporation; sent them bucks fortheir dinners, or asked them to mine; made a point of attending theirassemblies, dancing with their wives and daughters, going through, inshort, all the acts of politeness which are necessary on such occasions:and though old Tiptoff must have seen my goings on, yet his head wasso much in the clouds, that he never once condescended to imagine hisdynasty could be overthrown in his own town of Tippleton, and issuedhis mandates as securely as if he had been the Grand Turk, and theTippletonians 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 friendsof the hunt used to laugh and say, 'Rigby's worse; there's a corporationdinner at Hackton.'
It was in 1776, when the American war broke out, that I came intoParliament. My Lord Chatham, whose wisdom his party in those days usedto call superhuman, raised his oracular voice in the House of Peersagainst the American contest; and my countryman, Mr. Burke--a greatphilosopher, but a plaguy long-winded orator--was the champion of therebels in the Commons--where, however, thanks to British patriotism, hecould get very few to back him. Old Tiptoff would have sworn black waswhite if the great Earl had bidden him; and he made his son give up hiscommission in the Guards, in imitation of my Lord Pitt, who resigned hisensigncy rather than fight against what he called his American brethren.
But this was a height of patriotism extremely little relished inEngland, where, ever since the breaking out of hostilities, our peoplehated the Americans heartily; and where, when we heard of the fight ofLexington, and the glorious victory of Bunker's Hill (as we used to callit in those da
ys), the nation flushed out in its usual hot-headed anger.The talk was all against the philosophers after that, and the peoplewere most indomitably loyal. It was not until the land-tax wasincreased, that the gentry began to grumble a little; but still my partyin the West was very strong against the Tiptoffs, and I determined totake the field and win as usual.
The old Marquess neglected every one of the decent precautions which arerequisite in a parliamentary campaign. He signified to the corporationand freeholders his intention of presenting his son, Lord George, andhis desire that the latter should be elected their burgess; but hescarcely gave so much as a glass of beer to whet the devotedness of hisadherents: and I, as I need not say, engaged every tavern in Tippletonin my behalf.
There is no need to go over the twenty-times-told tale of an election. Irescued the borough of Tippleton from the hands of Lord Tiptoff and hisson, Lord George. I had a savage sort of satisfaction, too, in forcingmy 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 anddistribute my colours when the day of election came. And when we spokeat one another, I told the crowd that I had beaten Lord George inlove, that I had beaten him in war, and that I would now beat him inParliament; and so I did, as the event proved: for, to the inexpressibleanger of the old Marquess, Barry Lyndon, Esquire, was returned member ofParliament for Tippleton, in place of John Rigby, Esquire, deceased; andI 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 Irishpeerage, to be enjoyed after me by my beloved son and heir.