Chapter 14

by William Makepeace Thackeray

　　I RETURN TO IRELAND, AND EXHIBIT MY SPLENDOUR AND GENEROSITY IN THATKINGDOM.How were times changed with me now! I had left my country a poorpenniless boy--a private soldier in a miserable marching regiment. Ireturned 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 scenesof life a not undistinguished actor in them; having shared in warand in love; having by my own genius and energy won my way frompoverty and obscurity to competence and splendour. As I looked outfrom my chariot windows as it rolled along over the bleak bareroads, by the miserable cabins of the peasantry, who came out intheir rags to stare as the splendid equipage passed, and huzza'd forhis Lordship's honour as they saw the magnificent stranger in thesuperb gilded vehicle, my huge body-servant Fritz lolling behindwith curling moustaches and long queue, his green livery barred withsilver lace, I could not help thinking of myself with considerablecomplacency, and thanking my stars that had endowed me with so manygood qualities. But for my own merits I should have been a raw Irishsquireen such as those I saw swaggering about the wretched townsthrough which my chariot passed on its road to Dublin. I might havemarried Nora Brady (and though, thank Heaven, I did not, I havenever thought of that girl but with kindness, and even remember thebitterness of losing her more clearly at this moment than any otherincident of my life); I might have been the father of ten childrenby this time, or a farmer on my own account, or an agent to asquire, 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 coppermoney and throw it among the crowd as we changed horses; and Iwarrant me there was as much shouting set up in praise of my honouras if my Lord Townshend, the Lord Lieutenant himself, had beenpassing.My second day's journey--for the Irish roads were rough in thosedays, and the progress of a gentleman's chariot terribly slow--brought me to Carlow, where I put up at the very inn which I hadused eleven years back, when flying from home after the supposedmurder of Quin in the duel. How well I remember every moment of thescene! The old landlord was gone who had served me; the inn that Ithen thought so comfortable looked wretched and dismantled; but theclaret was as good as in the old days, and I had the host to partakeof a jug of it and hear the news of the country.He was as communicative as hosts usually are: the crops and themarkets, the price of beasts at last Castle Dermot fair, the laststory about the vicar, and the last joke of Father Hogan the priest;how the Whiteboys had burned Squire Scanlan's ricks, and thehighwaymen had been beaten off in their attack upon Sir Thomas'shouse; who was to hunt the Kilkenny hounds next season, and thewonderful run entirely they had last March; what troops were in thetown, and how Miss Biddy Toole had run off with Ensign Mullins: allthe news of sport, assize, and quarter-sessions were detailed bythis worthy chronicler of small-beer, who wondered that my honourhadn't heard of them in England, or in foreign parts, where heseemed to think the world was as interested as he was about thedoings of Kilkenny and Carlow. I listened to these tales with, Iown, a considerable pleasure; for every now and then a name wouldcome up in the conversation which I remembered in old days, andbring 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 brothercame to rule over it. Some were married, some gone to settle withtheir odious old mother in out-of-the-way watering-places. Ulick,though he had succeeded to the estate, had come in for a bankruptproperty, and Castle Brady was now inhabited only by the bats andowls, and the old gamekeeper. My mother, Mrs. Harry Barry, had goneto live at Bray, to sit under Mr. Jowls, her favourite preacher, whohad a chapel there; and, finally, the landlord told me, that Mrs.Barry's son had gone to foreign parts, enlisted in the Prussianservice, and had been shot there as a deserter.I don't care to own that I hired a stout nag from the landlord'sstable after dinner, and rode back at nightfall twenty miles to myold home. My heart beat to see it. Barryville had got a pestle andmortar over the door, and was called 'The Esculapian Repository,' byDoctor Macshane; a red-headed lad was spreading a plaster in the oldparlour; the little window of my room, once so neat and bright, wascracked in many places, and stuffed with rags here and there; theflowers had disappeared from the trim garden-beds which my goodorderly mother tended. In the churchyard there were two more namesput into the stone over the family vault of the Bradys: they werethose of my cousin, for whom my regard was small, and my uncle, whomI had always loved. I asked my old companion the blacksmith, who hadbeaten me so often in old days, to give my horse a feed and alitter: he was a worn weary-looking man now, with a dozen dirtyragged children paddling about his smithy, and had no recollectionof the fine gentleman who stood before him. I did not seek to recallmy-self to his memory till the next day, when I put ten guineas intohis hand, and bade him drink the health of English Redmond.As for Castle Brady, the gates of the park were still there; but theold trees were cut down in the avenue, a black stump jutting outhere and there, and casting long shadows as I passed in themoonlight over the worn grass-grown old road. A few cows were atpasture there. The garden-gate was gone, and the place a tangledwilderness. I sat down on the old bench, where I had sat on the daywhen Nora jilted me; and I do believe my feelings were as strongthen as they had been when I was a boy, eleven years before; and Icaught myself almost crying again, to think that Nora Brady haddeserted me. I believe a man forgets nothing. I've seen a flower, orheard some trivial word or two, which have awakened recollectionsthat somehow had lain dormant for scores of years; and when Ientered the house in Clarges Street, where I was born (it was usedas a gambling-house when I first visited London), all of a suddenthe memory of my childhood came back to me--of my actual infancy: Irecollected my father in green and gold, holding me up to look at agilt coach which stood at the door, and my mother in a floweredsack, with patches on her face. Some day, I wonder, will everythingwe have seen and thought and done come and flash across our minds inthis way? I had rather not. I felt so as I sat upon the bench atCastle Brady, and thought 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 chequersupon the floors; and the stars were looking in on the other side, inthe blue of the yawning window over the great stair: from it youcould see the old stable-clock, with the letters glistening on itstill. There had been jolly horses in those stables once; and Icould see my uncle's honest face, and hear him talking to his dogsas they came jumping and whining and barking round about him of agay winter morning. We used to mount there; and the girls looked outat us from the hall-window, where I stood and looked at the sad,mouldy, lonely old place. There was a red light shining through thecrevices of a door at one corner of the building, and a dogpresently came out baying loudly, and a limping man followed with afowling-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, forhe pointed it at the window; but I called to him to hold his hand,and came down and embraced him.... Psha! I don't care to tell therest: Phil and I had a long night, and talked over a thousandfoolish old things that have no interest for any soul alive now: forwhat soul is there alive that 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 incomfort.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 mayremember as clad in my father's old liveries. They used to hangabout him in those times, and lap over his wrists and down to hisheels; but Tim, though he protested he had nigh killed himself withgrief when I went away, had managed to grow enormously fat in myabsence, and would have fitted almost into Daniel Lambert's coat, orthat of the vicar of Castle Brady, whom he served in the capacity ofclerk. I would have engaged the fellow in my service but for hismonstrous size, which rendered him quite unfit to be the attendantof any gentleman of condition; and so I presented him with ahandsome gratuity, and promised to stand godfather to his nextchild: the eleventh since my absence. There is no country in theworld where the work of multiplying is carried on so prosperously asin 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 togo salute poor Molly next day, and found her a slatternly wench in amud hut, surrounded by a brood of children almost as ragged as thoseof my friend 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, forpreventing an addition to your family.''Sir!' exclaimed I, in a fit of indignation.'In the shape of father-in-law, I mane, sir,' says Tim: 'themisthress is going to take on with Mister Jowls the praacher.'Poor Nora, he added, had made many additions to the illustrious raceof Quin; and my cousin Ulick was in Dublin, coming to little good,both my informants feared, and having managed to run through thesmall available remains of property which my good old uncle had leftbehind 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,the taste of which I had remembered for eleven good years, and didnot part except with the warmest terms of fellowship, and until thesun had been some time in the sky. I am exceedingly affable; thathas always been one of my characteristics. I have no false pride, asmany men of high lineage like my own have, and, in default of bettercompany, will hob and nob with a ploughboy or a private soldier justas readily as with the 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 hookswere still in the wall where my silver-hiked sword used to hang; ablister was lying on the window-sill, where my mother's 'Whole Dutyof Man' had its place; and the odious Doctor Macshane had found outwho I was (my countrymen find out everything, and a great deal morebesides), and sniggering, asked me how I left the King of Prussia,and whether my friend the Emperor Joseph was as much liked as theEmpress Maria Theresa had been. The bell-ringers would have had aring of bells for me, but there was but one, Tim, who was too fat topull; and I rode off before the vicar, Doctor Bolter (who hadsucceeded old Mr. Texter, who had the living in my time), had timeto come out to compliment me; but the rapscallions of the beggarlyvillage had assembled in a dirty army to welcome me, and cheered'Hurrah for Masther Redmond!' as I rode away.My people were not a little anxious regarding me, by the time Ireturned to Carlow, and the landlord was very much afraid, he said,that the highwaymen had gotten hold of me. There, too, my name andstation had been learned from my servant Fritz: who had not sparedhis praises of his master, and had invented some magnificenthistories concerning me. He said it was the truth that I wasintimate with half the sovereigns of Europe, and the prime favouritewith most of them. Indeed I had made my uncle's order of the Spurhereditary, and travelled under the name of the Chevalier Barry,chamberlain to the Duke of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.They gave me the best horses the stable possessed to carry me on myroad to Dublin, and the strongest ropes for harness; and we got onpretty well, and there was no rencontre between the highwaymen andthe pistols with which Fritz and I were provided. We lay that nightat Kilcullen, and the next day I made my entry into the city ofDublin, with four horses to my carriage, five thousand guineas in mypurse, and one of the most brilliant reputations in Europe, havingquitted the city a beggarly boy, eleven years before.The citizens of Dublin have as great and laudable a desire forknowing their neighbours' concerns as the country people have; andit is impossible for a gentleman, however modest his desires may be(and such mine have notoriously been through life), to enter thecapital without having his name printed in every newspaper andmentioned in a number of societies. My name and titles were all overthe town the day after my arrival. A great number of polite personsdid me the honour to call at my lodgings, when I selected them; andthis was a point very necessarily of immediate care, for the hotelsin the town were but vulgar holes, unfit for a nobleman of myfashion and elegance. I had been informed of the fact by travellerson the Continent; and determining to fix on a lodging at once, Ibade the drivers go slowly up and down the streets with my chariot,until I had selected a place suitable to my rank. This proceeding,and the uncouth questions and behaviour of my German Fritz, who wasinstructed 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 themultitude following us.I fixed at length upon a handsome suite of apartments in CapelStreet, paid the ragged postilions who had driven me a splendidgratuity, and establishing myself in the rooms with my baggage andFritz, desired the landlord to engage me a second fellow to wear myliveries, a couple of stout reputable chairmen and their machine,and a coachman who had handsome job-horses to hire for my chariot,and serviceable riding-horses to sell. I gave him a handsome sum inadvance; and I promise you the effect of my advertisement was such,that next day I had a regular levee in my antechamber: grooms,valets, and maitres-d'hotel offered themselves without number; I hadproposals for the purchase of horses sufficient to mount a regiment,both from dealers and gentlemen of the first fashion. Sir LawlerGawler came to propose to me the most elegant bay-mare ever stepped;my Lord Dundoodle had a team of four that wouldn't disgrace myfriend the Emperor; and the Marquess of Ballyragget sent hisgentleman and his compliments, stating that if I would step up tohis 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 bestway. Besides, in those days, in Ireland, if a gentleman warrantedhis horse, and it was not sound, or a dispute arose, the remedy youhad was the offer of a bullet in your waistcoat. I had played at thebullet game too much in earnest to make use of it heedlessly: and Imay say, proudly for myself, that I never engaged in a duel unless Ihad a real, available, and prudent reason for it.There was a simplicity about this Irish gentry which amused and mademe wonder. If they tell more fibs than their downright neighboursacross the water, on the other hand they believe more; and I mademyself in a single week such a reputation in Dublin as would take aman ten years and a mint of money to acquire in London. I had wonfive hundred thousand pounds at play; I was the favourite of theEmpress Catherine of Russia; the confidential agent of Frederick ofPrussia; it was I won the battle of Hochkirchen; I was the cousin ofMadame Du Barry, the French King's favourite, and a thousand thingsbeside. Indeed, to tell the truth, I hinted a number of thesestories to my kind friends Ballyragget and Gawler; and they were notslow 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,without the regal grandeur of the latter city. The people lookedmore ragged than any race I have ever seen, except the gipsy hordesalong the banks of the Danube. There was, as I have said, not an innin the town fit for a gentleman of condition to dwell in. Thoseluckless fellows who could not keep a carriage, and walked thestreets at night, ran imminent risks of the knives of the women andruffians who lay in wait there,--of a set of ragged savage villains,who neither knew the use of shoe nor razor; and as a gentlemanentered his chair or his chariot, to be carried to his evening rout,or the play, the flambeaux of the footmen would light up such a setof wild gibbering Milesian faces as would frighten a genteel personof average nerves. I was luckily endowed with strong ones; 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,and are angry if the whole truth be told concerning it. But bah! itwas a poor provincial place, Dublin, in the old days of which Ispeak; and many a tenth-rate German residency is more genteel. Therewere, it is true, near three hundred resident Peers at the period;and a House of Commons; and my Lord Mayor and his corporation; and aroystering noisy University, whereof the students made no smalldisturbances nightly, patronised the roundhouse, ducked obnoxiousprinters and tradesmen, and gave the law at the Crow Street Theatre.But I had seen too much of the first society of Europe to be muchtempted by the society of these noisy gentry, and was a little toomuch of a gentleman to mingle with the disputes and politics of myLord Mayor and his Aldermen. In the House of Commons there were somedozen of right pleasant fellows. I never heard in the EnglishParliament better speeches than from Flood, and Daly, of Galway.Dick Sheridan, though not a well-bred person, was as amusing andingenious a table-companion as ever I met; and though during Mr.Edmund Burke's interminable speeches in the English House I usedalways to go to sleep, I yet have heard from well-informed partiesthat Mr. Burke was a person of considerable abilities, and evenreputed to be eloquent in his more favourable moments.I soon began to enjoy to the full extent the pleasures that thewretched place affords, and which were within a gentleman's reach:Ranelagh and the Ridotto; Mr. Mossop, at Crow Street; my LordLieutenant's parties, where there was a great deal too much boozing,and too little play, to suit a person of my elegant and refinedhabits. 'Daly's Coffee-house,' and the houses of the nobility, weresoon open to me; and I remarked with astonishment in the highercircles, what I had experienced in the lower on my first unhappyvisit to Dublin, an extraordinary want of money, and a preposterousdeal of promissory notes flying about, for which I was quiteunwilling to stake my guineas. The ladies, too, were mad for play;but exceeding unwilling to pay when they lost. Thus, when the oldCountess of Trumpington lost ten pieces to me at quadrille, she gaveme, instead of the money, her Ladyship's note of hand on her agentin Galway; which I put, with a great deal of politeness, into thecandle. But when the Countess made me a second proposition to play,I said that as soon as her Ladyship's remittances were arrived, Iwould be the readiest person to meet her; but till then was her veryhumble servant. And I maintained this resolution and singularcharacter throughout the Dublin society: giving out at 'Daly's' thatI was ready to play any man, for any sum, at any game; or to fencewith him, or to ride with him (regard being had to our weight), orto shoot flying, or at a mark; and in this latter accomplishment,especially if the mark be a live one, Irish gentlemen of that dayhad no ordinary skill.Of course I despatched a courier in my liveries to Castle Lyndonwith a private letter for Runt, demanding from him full particularsof the Countess of Lyndon's state of health and mind; and a touchingand eloquent letter to her Ladyship, in which I bade her rememberancient days, which I tied up with a single hair from the lock whichI had purchased from her woman, and in which I told her thatSylvander remembered his oath, and could never forget his Calista.The answer I received from her was exceedingly unsatisfactory andinexplicit; that from Mr. Runt explicit enough, but not at allpleasant in its contents. My Lord George Poynings, the Marquess ofTiptoff's younger son, was paying very marked addresses to thewidow; being a kinsman of the family, and having been called toIreland relative to the will of the deceased Sir Charles Lyndon.Now, there was a sort of rough-and-ready law in Ireland in thosedays, which was of great convenience to persons desirous ofexpeditious justice; and of which the newspapers of the time containa hundred proofs. Fellows with the nicknames of Captain Fireball,Lieutenant Buffcoat, and Ensign Steele, were repeatedly sendingwarning letters to landlords, and murdering them if the notes wereunattended to. The celebrated Captain Thunder ruled in the southerncounties, and his business seemed to be to procure wives forgentlemen who had not sufficient means to please the parents of theyoung ladies; or, perhaps, had not time for a long and intricatecourtship.I had found my cousin Ulick at Dublin, grown very fat, and verypoor; hunted up by Jews and creditors: dwelling in all sorts ofqueer corners, from which he issued at nightfall to the Castle, orto his card-party at his tavern; but he was always the courageousfellow: and I hinted to him the state of my affections regardingLady Lyndon.'The Countess of Lyndon!' said poor Ulick; 'well, that is a wonder.I myself have been mightily sweet upon a young lady, one of theKiljoys of Ballyhack, who has ten thousand pounds to her fortune,and to whom her Ladyship is guardian; but how is a poor fellowwithout a coat to his back to get on with an heiress in such companyas that? I might as well propose 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 myown intention regarding Lady Lyndon. Honest Ulick, whose respect forme was prodigious when he saw how splendid my appearance was, andheard how wonderful my adventures and great my experience offashionable life had been, was lost in admiration of my daring andenergy, when I confided to him my intention of marrying the greatestheiress in England.I bade Ulick go out of town on any pretext he chose, and put aletter into a post-office near Castle Lyndon, which I prepared in afeigned hand, and in which I gave a solemn warning to Lord GeorgePoynings to quit the country; saying that the great prize was nevermeant for the likes of him, and that there were heiresses enough inEngland, without coming to rob them out of the domains of CaptainFireball. The letter was written on a dirty piece of paper, in theworst of spelling: it came to 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 veryshort time afterwards; was introduced to the Chevalier RedmondBarry, at the Lord Lieutenant's table; adjourned with him andseveral other gentlemen to the club at 'Daly's,' and there, in adispute about the pedigree of a horse, in which everybody said I wasin the right, words arose, and a meeting was the consequence. I hadhad no affair in Dublin since my arrival, and people were anxious tosee whether I was equal to my reputation. I make no boast aboutthese matters, but always do them when the time comes; and poor LordGeorge, who had a neat hand and a quick eye enough, but was bred inthe clumsy English school, only stood before my point until I haddetermined 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, I was wrong!' I felt not very well at ease when the poorfellow made this confession: for the dispute had been of my making,and, to tell the truth, I had never intended it should end in anyother way than a meeting.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 theduel, carried her a message from Captain Fireball to say, 'This isnumber one!''You, Ulick,' said I, 'shall be number two.'''Faith,' said my cousin, 'one's enough:' But I had my planregarding him, and determined at once to benefit this honest fellow,and to forward my own designs upon the widow.