BARRY LYNDON
By William Makepeace Thackeray
From The Works Of William Makepeace Thackeray
Edited By Walter Jerrold
CONTENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
I.--MY PEDIGREE AND FAMILY--UNDERGO THE INFLUENCE OF THE TENDER
PASSION
II.--IN WHICH I SHOW MYSELF TO BE A MAN OF SPIRIT
III.--I MAKE A FALSE START IN THE GENTEEL WORLD
IV.--IN WHICH BARRY TAKES A NEAR VIEW OF MILITARY GLORY
V.--IN WHICH BARRY TRIES TO REMOVE AS FAR FROM MILITARY GLORY AS
POSSIBLE
VI.--THE CRIMP WAGGON--MILITARY EPISODES
VII.--BARRY LEADS A GARRISON LIFE, AND FINDS MANY FRIENDS THERE
VIII.--BARRY BIDS ADIEU TO THE MILITARY PROFESSION
IX.--I APPEAR IN A MANNER BECOMING MY NAME AND LINEAGE
X.--MORE RUNS OF LUCK
XI.--IN WHICH THE LUCK GOES AGAINST BARRY
XII.--CONTAINS THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF THE PRINCESS OF X-----
XIII.--I CONTINUE MY CAREER AS A MAN OF FASHION
XIV.--I RETURN TO IRELAND, AND EXHIBIT MY SPLENDOUR AND GENEROSITY
IN THAT KINGDOM
XV.--I PAY COURT TO MY LADY LYNDON
XVI.--I PROVIDE NOBLY FOR MY FAMILY, AND ATTAIN THE HEIGHT OF MY
(SEEMING) GOOD FORTUNE
XVII.--I APPEAR AS AN ORNAMENT OF ENGLISH SOCIETY
XVIII.--IN WHICH MY GOOD FORTUNE BEGINS TO WAVER
XIX.--CONCLUSION
BARRY LYNDON
A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Barry Lyndon--far from the best known, but by some critics acclaimed as
the finest, of Thackeray’s works--appeared originally as a serial a few
years before VANITY FAIR was written; yet it was not published in book
form, and then not by itself, until after the publication of VANITY
FAIR, PENDENNIS, ESMOND and THE NEWCOMES had placed its author in the
forefront of the literary men of the day. So many years after the event
we cannot help wondering why the story was not earlier put in book form;
for in its delineation of the character of an adventurer it is as great
as VANITY FAIR, while for the local colour of history, if I may put it
so, it is no undistinguished precursor of ESMOND.
In the number of FRASER’S MAGAZINE for January 1844 appeared the first
instalment of ‘THE LUCK OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ., A ROMANCE OF THE LAST
CENTURY, by FitzBoodle,’ and the story continued to appear month by
month--with the exception of October--up to the end of the year, when
the concluding portion was signed ‘G. S. FitzBoodle.’ FITZBOODLE’S
CONFESSIONS, it should be added, had appeared occasionally in the
magazine during the years immediately precedent, so that the pseudonym
was familiar to FRASER’S readers. The story was written, according to
its author’s own words, ‘with a great deal of dulness, unwillingness and
labour,’ and was evidently done as the instalments were required, for in
August he wrote ‘read for “B. L.” all the morning at the club,’ and four
days later of ‘“B. L.” lying like a nightmare on my mind.’ The journey
to the East--which was to give us in literary results NOTES OF A
JOURNEY FROM CORNHILL TO GRAND CAIRO--was begun with BARRY LYNDON yet
unfinished, for at Malta the author noted on the first three days of
November--‘Wrote Barry but slowly and with great difficulty.’ ‘Wrote
Barry with no more success than yesterday.’ ‘Finished Barry after great
throes late at night.’ In the number of Fraser’s for the following
month, as I have said, the conclusion appeared. A dozen years later, in
1856, the story formed the first part of the third volume of Thackeray’s
MISCELLANIES, when it was called MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ., WRITTEN
BY HIMSELF. Since then, it has nearly always been issued with other
matter, as though it were not strong enough to stand alone, or as though
the importance of a work was mainly to be gauged by the number of
pages to be crowded into one cover. The scheme of the present edition
fortunately allows fitting honour to be done to the memoirs of the great
adventurer.
To come from the story as a whole to the personality of the eponymous
hero. Three widely-differing historical individuals are suggested as
having contributed to the composite portrait. Best known of these was
that very prince among adventurers, G. J. Casanova de Seingalt, a man
who in the latter half of the eighteenth century played the part of
adventurer--and generally that of the successful adventurer--in most of
the European capitals; who within the first five-and-twenty years of
his life had been ‘abbe, secretary to Cardinal Aquaviva, ensign, and
violinist, at Rome, Constantinople, Corfu, and his own birthplace
(Venice), where he cured a senator of apoplexy.’ His autobiography,
MEMOIRES ECRIT PAR LUI MEME (in twelve volumes), has been described
as ‘unmatched as a self-revelation of scoundrelism.’ It has also
been suggested, with I think far less colour of probability, that the
original of Barry was the diplomatist and satiric poet Sir Charles
Hanbury Williams, whom Dr Johnson described as ‘our lively and elegant
though too licentious lyrick bard.’ The third original, and one who,
there cannot be the slightest doubt, contributed features to the great
portrait, is a certain Andrew Robinson Stoney, afterwards Stoney-Bowes.
The original of the Countess Lyndon was Mary Eleanor Bowes, Dowager
Countess of Strathmore, and heiress of a very wealthy Durham family.
This lady had many suitors, but in 1777 Stoney, a bankrupt lieutenant on
half pay, who had fought a duel on her behalf, induced her to marry him,
and subsequently hyphenated her name with his own. He became member
of Parliament, and ran such extravagant courses as does Barry Lyndon,
treated his wife with similar barbarity, abducted her when she had
escaped from him, and then, after being divorced, found his way to
a debtors’ prison. There are similarities here which no seeker after
originals can overlook. Mrs Ritchie says that her father had a friend
at Paris, ‘a Mr Bowes, who may have first told him this history of which
the details are almost incredible, as quoted from the papers of the
time.’ The name of Thackeray’s friend is a curious coincidence, unless,
as may well have been the case, he was a connection of the family into
which the notorious adventurer had married. It is not unlikely
that Thackeray had seen the work published in 1810--the year of
Stoney-Bowes’s death--in which the whole unhappy romance was set forth.
This was ‘THE LIVES OF ANDREW ROBINSON BOWES ESQ., and THE COUNTESS OF
STRATHMORE. Written from thirty-three years’ Professional Attendance,
from letters and other well authenticated Documents by Jesse Foot,
Surgeon.’ In this book we find several incidents similar to ones in
the story. Bowes cut down all the timber on his wife’s estate, but
‘the neighbours would not buy it.’ Such practical jokes as Barry Lyndon
played upon his son’s tutor were played by Bowes on his chaplain. The
story of Stoney and his marriage will be found briefly given in the
notice of the Countess’s life in the DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY.
Whence that part of the romantic interlude dealing with the stay in
the Duchy of X----, dealt with in chapter x., etc., was inspired,
Thackeray’s own note\books (as quoted by Mrs Ritchie) conclusively show:
‘January 4,1844. Read in a silly book called L’EMPIRE, a good story
about the first K. of Wurtemberg’s wife; killed by her husband for
adultery. Frederic William, born in 1734 (?), m. in 1780 the Princess
Caroline of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel, who died the 27th September 1788.
For the rest of the story see L’EMPIRE, OU DIX ANS SOUS NAPOLEON, PAR UN
CHAMBELLAN: Paris, Allardin, 1836; vol. i. 220.’ The ‘Captain Freny’ to
whom Barry owed his adventures on his journey to Dublin (chapter iii.)
was a notorious highwayman, on whose doings Thackeray had enlarged in
the fifteenth chapter of his IRISH SKETCH BOOK.
Despite the slowness with which it was written, and the seeming neglect
with which it was permitted to remain unreprinted, BARRY LYNDON was
to be hailed by competent critics as one of Thackeray’s finest
performances, though the author himself seems to have had no strong
regard for the story. His daughter has recorded, ‘My father once said
to me when I was a girl: “You needn’t read BARRY LYNDON, you won’t like
it.” Indeed, it is scarcely a book to LIKE, but one to admire and to
wonder at for its consummate power and mastery.’ Another novelist,
Anthony Trollope, has said of it: ‘In imagination, language,
construction, and general literary capacity, Thackeray never did
anything more remarkable than BARRY LYNDON.’ Mr Leslie Stephen says:
‘All later critics have recognised in this book one of his most powerful
performances. In directness and vigour he never surpassed it.’
W.J.
THE MEMOIRES OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ.
CHAPTER I. MY PEDIGREE AND FAMILY--UNDERGO THE INFLUENCE OF THE TENDER
PASSION
Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this
world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. Ever since ours was
a family (and that must be very NEAR Adam’s time,--so old, noble, and
illustrious are the Barrys, as everybody knows) women have played a
mighty part with the destinies of our race.
I presume that there is no gentleman in Europe that has not heard of
the house of Barry of Barryogue, of the kingdom of Ireland, than which a
more famous name is not to be found in Gwillim or D’Hozier; and though,
as a man of the world, I have learned to despise heartily the claims
of some PRETENDERS to high birth who have no more genealogy than the
lacquey who cleans my boots, and though I laugh to utter scorn the
boasting of many of my countrymen, who are all for descending from kings
of Ireland, and talk of a domain no bigger than would feed a pig as if
it were a principality; yet truth compels me to assert that my family
was the noblest of the island, and, perhaps, of the universal world;
while their possessions, now insignificant and torn from us by war, by
treachery, by the loss of time, by ancestral extravagance, by adhesion
to the old faith and monarch, were formerly prodigious, and embraced
many counties, at a time when Ireland was vastly more prosperous than
now. I would assume the Irish crown over my coat-of-arms, but that there
are so many silly pretenders to that distinction who bear it and render
it common.
Who knows, but for the fault of a woman, I might have been wearing
it now? You start with incredulity. I say, why not? Had there been a
gallant chief to lead my countrymen, instead or puling knaves who bent
the knee to King Richard II., they might have been freemen; had there
been a resolute leader to meet the murderous ruffian Oliver Cromwell, we
should have shaken off the English for ever. But there was no Barry in
the field against the usurper; on the contrary, my ancestor, Simon de
Bary, came over with the first-named monarch, and married the daughter
of the then King of Munster, whose sons in battle he pitilessly slew.
In Oliver’s time it was too late for a chief of the name of Barry
to lift up his war-cry against that of the murderous brewer. We were
princes of the land no longer; our unhappy race had lost its possessions
a century previously, and by the most shameful treason. This I know to
be the fact, for my mother has often told me the story, and besides had
worked it in a worsted pedigree which hung up in the yellow saloon at
Barryville where we lived.
That very estate which the Lyndons now possess in Ireland was once the
property of my race. Rory Barry of Barryogue owned it in Elizabeth’s
time, and half Munster beside. The Barry was always in feud with the
O’Mahonys in those times; and, as it happened, a certain English colonel
passed through the former’s country with a body of men-at-arms, on the
very day when the O’Mahonys had made an inroad upon our territories, and
carried off a frightful plunder of our flocks and herds.
This young Englishman, whose name was Roger Lyndon, Linden, or Lyndaine,
having been most hospitably received by the Barry, and finding him just
on the point of carrying an inroad into the O’Mahonys’ land, offered
the aid of himself and his lances, and behaved himself so well, as it
appeared, that the O’Mahonys were entirely overcome, all the Barrys’
property restored, and with it, says the old chronicle, twice as much of
the O’Mahonys’ goods and cattle.
It was the setting in of the winter season, and the young soldier was
pressed by the Barry not to quit his house of Barryogue, and remained
there during several months, his men being quartered with Barry’s own
gallowglasses, man by man in the cottages round about. They conducted
themselves, as is their wont, with the most intolerable insolence
towards the Irish; so much so, that fights and murders continually
ensued, and the people vowed to destroy them.
The Barry’s son (from whom I descend) was as hostile to the English as
any other man on his domain; and, as they would not go when bidden, he
and his friends consulted together and determined on destroying these
English to a man.
But they had let a woman into their plot, and this was the Barry’s
daughter. She was in love with the English Lyndon, and broke the whole
secret to him; and the dastardly English prevented the just massacre of
themselves by falling on the Irish, and destroying Phaudrig Barry, my
ancestor, and many hundreds of his men. The cross at Barrycross near
Carrignadihioul is the spot where the odious butchery took place.
Lyndon married the daughter of Roderick Barry, and claimed the estate
which he left: and though the descendants of Phaudrig were alive, as
indeed they are in my person,[Footnote: As we have never been able to
find proofs of the marriage of my ancestor Phaudrig with his wife,
I make no doubt that Lyndon destroyed the contract, and murdered the
priest and witnesses of the marriage.--B. L.] on appealing to the
English courts, the estate was awarded to the Englishman, as has ever
been the case where English and Irish were concerned.
Thus, had it not been for the weakness of a woman, I should have been
born to the possession of those very estates which afterwards came to me
by merit, as you shall hear. But to proceed with my family, history.
My father was well known to the best circles in this kingdom, as in that
of Ireland, under the name of Roaring Harry Barry. He was bred like many
other young sons of genteel families to the profession of the law, being
articled to a celebrated attorney of Sackville Street in the city of
Dublin; and, from his great genius and aptitude for learning, there is
no doubt he would have made an eminent figure in his profession, had not
his social qualities, love of field-sports, and extraordinary graces
of manner, marked him out for a higher sphere. While he was attorney’s
clerk he kept seven race-horses, and hunted regularly both with the
Kildare and Wicklow hunts; and rode on his grey horse Endymion that
famous match against Captain Punter, which is still remembered by lovers
of the sport, and of which I caused a splendid picture to be made and
hung over my dining-hall mantelpiece at Castle Lyndon. A year afterwards
he had the honour of riding that very horse Endymion before his late
Majesty King George II. at New-market, and won the plate there and the
attention of the august sovereign.
Although he was only the second son of our family, my dear father came
naturally into the estate (now miserably reduced to L400 a year); for my
grandfather’s eldest son Cornelius Barry (called the Chevalier Borgne,
from a wound which he received in Germany) remained constant to the old
religion in which our family was educated, and not only served abroad
with credit, but against His Most Sacred Majesty George II. in the
unhappy Scotch disturbances in ‘45. We shall hear more of the Chevalier
hereafter.
For the conversion of my father I have to thank my dear mother, Miss
Bell Brady, daughter of Ulysses Brady of Castle Brady, county Kerry,
Esquire and J.P. She was the most beautiful woman of her day in Dublin,
and universally called the Dasher there. Seeing her at the assembly,
my father became passionately attached to her; but her soul was above
marrying a Papist or an attorney’s clerk; and so, for the love of her,
the good old laws being then in force, my dear father slipped into my
uncle Cornelius’s shoes and took the family estate. Besides the force of
my mother’s bright eyes, several persons, and of the genteelest society
too, contributed to this happy change; and I have often heard my mother
laughingly tell the story of my father’s recantation, which was solemnly
pronounced at the tavern in the company of Sir Dick Ringwood, Lord
Bagwig, Captain Punter, and two or three other young sparks of the
town. Roaring Harry won 300 pieces that very night at faro, and laid
the necessary information the next morning against his brother; but his
conversion caused a coolness between him and my uncle Corney, who joined
the rebels in consequence.
This great difficulty being settled, my Lord Bagwig lent my father his
own yacht, then lying at the Pigeon House, and the handsome Bell Brady
was induced to run away with him to England, although her parents
were against the match, and her lovers (as I have heard her tell many
thousands of times) were among the most numerous and the most wealthy
in all the kingdom of Ireland. They were married at the Savoy, and my
grandfather dying very soon, Harry Barry, Esquire, took possession of
his paternal property and supported our illustrious name with credit in
London. He pinked the famous Count Tiercelin behind Montague House, he
was a member of ‘White’s,’ and a frequenter of all the chocolate-houses;
and my mother, likewise, made no small figure. At length, after his
great day of triumph before His Sacred Majesty at Newmarket, Harry’s
fortune was just on the point of being made, for the gracious monarch
promised to provide for him. But alas! he was taken in charge by another
monarch, whose will have no delay or denial,--by Death, namely, who
seized upon my father at Chester races, leaving me a helpless orphan.
Peace be to his ashes! He was not faultless, and dissipated all our
princely family property; but he was as brave a fellow as ever tossed
a bumper or called a main, and he drove his coach-and-six like a man of
fashion.
I do not know whether His gracious Majesty was much affected by this
sudden demise of my father, though my mother says he shed some royal
tears on the occasion. But they helped us to nothing: and all that was
found in the house for the wife and creditors was a purse of ninety
guineas, which my dear mother naturally took, with the family plate, and
my father’s wardrobe and her own; and putting them into our great coach,
drove off to Holyhead, whence she took shipping for Ireland. My father’s
body accompanied us in the finest hearse and plumes money could buy; for
though the husband and wife had quarrelled repeatedly in life, yet at my
father’s death his high-spirited widow forgot all her differences, gave
him the grandest funeral that had been seen for many a day, and erected
a monument over his remains (for which I subsequently paid), which
declared him to be the wisest, purest, and most affectionate of men.
In performing these sad duties over her deceased lord, the widow spent
almost every guinea she had, and, indeed, would have spent a great deal
more, had she discharged one-third of the demands which the ceremonies
occasioned. But the people around our old house of Barryogue, although
they did not like my father for his change of faith, yet stood by him at
this moment, and were for exterminating the mutes sent by Mr. Plumer of
London with the lamented remains. The monument and vault in the church
were then, alas! all that remained of my vast possessions; for my father
had sold every stick of the property to one Notley, an attorney, and we
received but a cold welcome in his house--a miserable old tumble-down
place it was. [Footnote: In another part of his memoir Mr. Barry will
be found to describe this mansion as one of the most splendid palaces
in Europe; but this is a practice not unusual with his nation; and with
respect to the Irish principality claimed by him, it is known that Mr.
Barry’s grandfather was an attorney and maker of his own fortune.]
The splendour of the funeral did not fail to increase the widow Barry’s
reputation as a woman of spirit and fashion; and when she wrote to her
brother Michael Brady, that worthy gentleman immediately rode across the
country to fling himself in her arms, and to invite her in his wife’s
name to Castle Brady.
Mick and Barry had quarrelled, as all men will, and very high words had
passed between them during Barry’s courtship of Miss Bell. When he took
her off, Brady swore he would never forgive Barry or Bell; but coming
to London in the year ‘46, he fell in once more with Roaring Harry, and
lived in his fine house in Clarges Street, and lost a few pieces to
him at play, and broke a watchman’s head or two in his company,--all
of which reminiscences endeared Bell and her son very much to the
good-hearted gentleman, and he received us both with open arms. Mrs.
Barry did not, perhaps wisely, at first make known to her friends what
was her condition; but arriving in a huge gilt coach with enormous
armorial bearings, was taken by her sister-in-law and the rest of the
county for a person of considerable property and distinction. For a
time, then, and as was right and proper, Mrs. Barry gave the law at
Castle Brady. She ordered the servants to and fro, and taught them,
what indeed they much wanted, a little London neatness; and ‘English
Redmond,’ as I was called, was treated like a little lord, and had a
maid and a footman to himself; and honest Mick paid their wages,--which
was much more than he was used to do for his own domestics,--doing
all in his power to make his sister decently comfortable under her
afflictions. Mamma, in return, determined that, when her affairs were
arranged, she would make her kind brother a handsome allowance for
her son’s maintenance and her own; and promised to have her handsome
furniture brought over from Clarges Street to adorn the somewhat
dilapidated rooms of Castle Brady.
But it turned out that the rascally landlord seized upon every chair and
table that ought by rights to have belonged to the widow. The estate to
which I was heir was in the hands of rapacious creditors; and the only
means of subsistence remaining to the widow and child was a rent-charge
of L50 upon my Lord Bagwig’s property, who had many turf-dealings with
the deceased. And so my dear mother’s liberal intentions towards her
brother were of course never fulfilled.
It must be confessed, very much to the discredit of Mrs. Brady of Castle
Brady, that when her sister-in-law’s poverty was thus made manifest,
she forgot all the respect which she had been accustomed to pay her,
instantly turned my maid and man-servant out of doors, and told Mrs.
Barry that she might follow them as soon as she chose. Mrs. Mick was of
a low family, and a sordid way of thinking; and after about a couple
of years (during which she had saved almost all her little income) the
widow complied with Madam Brady’s desire. At the same time, giving way
to a just though prudently dissimulated resentment, she made a vow that
she would never enter the gates of Castle Brady while the lady of the
house remained alive within them.
She fitted up her new abode with much economy and considerable taste,
and never, for all her poverty, abated a jot of the dignity which was
her due and which all the neighbourhood awarded to her. How, indeed,
could they refuse respect to a lady who had lived in London, frequented
the most fashionable society there, and had been presented (as she
solemnly declared) at Court? These advantages gave her a right which
seems to be pretty unsparingly exercised in Ireland by those natives who
have it,--the right of looking down with scorn upon all persons who have
not had the opportunity of quitting the mother-country and inhabiting
England for a while. Thus, whenever Madam Brady appeared abroad in a
new dress, her sister-in-law would say, ‘Poor creature! how can it
be expected that she should know anything of the fashion?’ And though
pleased to be called the handsome widow, as she was, Mrs. Barry was
still better pleased to be called the English widow.
Mrs. Brady, for her part, was not slow to reply: she used to say
that the defunct Barry was a bankrupt and a beggar; and as for the
fashionable society which he saw, he saw it from my Lord Bagwig’s
side-table, whose flatterer and hanger-on he was known to be. Regarding
Mrs. Barry, the lady of Castle Brady would make insinuations still more
painful. However, why should we allude to these charges, or rake up
private scandal of a hundred years old? It was in the reign of George
II that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad,
handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now; and do not the
Sunday papers and the courts of law supply us every week with more novel
and interesting slander?
At any rate, it must be allowed that Mrs. Barry, after her husband’s
death and her retirement, lived in such a way as to defy slander. For
whereas Bell Brady had been the gayest girl in the whole county of
Wexford, with half the bachelors at her feet, and plenty of smiles and
encouragement for every one of them, Bell Barry adopted a dignified
reserve that almost amounted to pomposity, and was as starch as any
Quakeress. Many a man renewed his offers to the widow, who had been
smitten by the charms of the spinster; but Mrs. Barry refused all offers
of marriage, declaring that she lived now for her son only, and for the
memory of her departed saint.
‘Saint forsooth!’ said ill-natured Mrs. Brady.
‘Harry Barry was as big a sinner as ever was known; and ‘tis notorious
that he and Bell hated each other. If she won’t marry now, depend on it,
the artful woman has a husband in her eye for all that, and only waits
until Lord Bagwig is a widower.’
And suppose she did, what then? Was not the widow of a Barry fit to
marry with any lord of England? and was it not always said that a woman
was to restore the fortunes of the Barry family? If my mother fancied
that SHE was to be that woman, I think it was a perfectly justifiable
notion on her part; for the Earl (my godfather) was always most
attentive to her: I never knew how deeply this notion of advancing my
interests in the world had taken possession of mamma’s mind, until
his Lordship’s marriage in the year ‘57 with Miss Goldmore, the Indian
nabob’s rich daughter.
Meanwhile we continued to reside at Barryville, and, considering the
smallness of our income, kept up a wonderful state. Of the half-dozen
families that formed the congregation at Brady’s Town, there was not a
single person whose appearance was so respectable as that of the widow,
who, though she always dressed in mourning, in memory of her deceased
husband, took care that her garments should be made so as to set off her
handsome person to the greatest advantage; and, indeed, I think,
spent six hours out of every day in the week in cutting, trimming,
and altering them to the fashion. She had the largest of hoops and the
handsomest of furbelows, and once a month (under my Lord Bagwig’s cover)
would come a letter from London containing the newest accounts of the
fashions there. Her complexion was so brilliant that she had no call to
use rouge, as was the mode in those days. No, she left red and white,
she said (and hence the reader may imagine how the two ladies hated each
other) to Madam Brady, whose yellow complexion no plaster could alter.
In a word, she was so accomplished a beauty, that all the women in the
country took pattern by her, and the young fellows from ten miles round
would ride over to Castle Brady church to have the sight of her.
But if (like every other woman that ever I saw or read of) she was proud
of her beauty, to do her justice she was still more proud of her son,
and has said a thousand times to me that I was the handsomest young
fellow in the world. This is a matter of taste. A man of sixty may,
however, say what he was at fourteen without much vanity, and I must say
I think there was some cause for my mother’s opinion. The good soul’s
pleasure was to dress me; and on Sundays and holidays I turned out in a
velvet coat with a silver-hilted sword by my side and a gold garter at
my knee, as fine as any lord in the land. My mother worked me several
most splendid waistcoats, and I had plenty of lace for my ruffles, and
a fresh riband to my hair, and as we walked to church on Sundays, even
envious Mrs. Brady was found to allow that there was not a prettier pair
in the kingdom.
Of course, too, the lady of Castle Brady used to sneer, because on these
occasions a certain Tim, who used to be called my valet, followed me and
my mother to church, carrying a huge prayer-book and a cane, and dressed
in the livery of one of our own fine footmen from Clarges Street, which,
as Tim was a bandy-shanked little fellow, did not exactly become him.
But, though poor, we were gentlefolks, and not to be sneered out of
these becoming appendages to our rank; and so would march up the aisle
to our pew with as much state and gravity as the Lord Lieutenant’s lady
and son might do. When there, my mother would give the responses and
amens in a loud dignified voice that was delightful to hear, and,
besides, had a fine loud voice for singing, which art she had perfected
in London under a fashionable teacher; and she would exercise her talent
in such a way that you would hardly hear any other voice of the little
congregation which chose to join in the psalm. In fact, my mother had
great gifts in every way, and believed herself to be one of the most
beautiful, accomplished, and meritorious persons in the world. Often and
often has she talked to me and the neighbours regarding her own humility
and piety, pointing them out in such a way that I would defy the most
obstinate to disbelieve her.
When we left Castle Brady we came to occupy a house in Brady’s town,
which mamma christened Barryville. I confess it was but a small place,
but, indeed, we made the most of it. I have mentioned the family
pedigree which hung up in the drawingroom, which mamma called the yellow
saloon, and my bedroom was called the pink bedroom, and hers the orange
tawny apartment (how well I remember them all!); and at dinner-time Tim
regularly rang a great bell, and we each had a silver tankard to drink
from, and mother boasted with justice that I had as good a bottle of
claret by my side as any squire of the land. So indeed I had, but I was
not, of course, allowed at my tender years to drink any of the wine;
which thus attained a considerable age, even in the decanter.
Uncle Brady (in spite of the family quarrel) found out the above fact
one day by calling at Barryville at dinner-time, and unluckily tasting
the liquor. You should have seen how he sputtered and made faces! But
the honest gentleman was not particular about his wine, or the company
in which he drank it. He would get drunk, indeed, with the parson or the
priest indifferently; with the latter, much to my mother’s indignation,
for, as a true blue Nassauite, she heartily despised all those of the
old faith, and would scarcely sit down in the room with a benighted
Papist. But the squire had no such scruples; he was, indeed, one of the
easiest, idlest, and best-natured fellows that ever lived, and many
an hour would he pass with the lonely widow when he was tired of Madam
Brady at home. He liked me, he said, as much as one of his own sons,
and at length, after the widow had held out for a couple of years, she
agreed to allow me to return to the castle; though, for herself,
she resolutely kept the oath which she had made with regard to her
sister-in-law.
The very first day I returned to Castle Brady my trials may be said,
in a manner, to have begun. My cousin, Master Mick, a huge monster of
nineteen (who hated me, and I promise you I returned the compliment),
insulted me at dinner about my mother’s poverty, and made all the girls
of the family titter. So when we went to the stables, whither Mick
always went for his pipe of tobacco after dinner, I told him a piece of
my mind, and there was a fight for at least ten minutes, during which I
stood to him like a man, and blacked his left eye, though I was myself
only twelve years old at the time. Of course he beat me, but a beating
makes only a small impression on a lad of that tender age, as I had
proved many times in battles with the ragged Brady’s Town boys before,
not one of whom, at my time of life, was my match. My uncle was very
much pleased when he heard of my gallantry; my cousin Nora brought brown
paper and vinegar for my nose, and I went home that night with a pint of
claret under my girdle, not a little proud, let me tell you, at having
held my own against Mick so long.
And though he persisted in his bad treatment of me, and used to cane
me whenever I fell in his way, yet I was very happy now at Castle
Brady with the company there, and my cousins, or some of them, and the
kindness of my uncle, with whom I became a prodigious favourite. He
bought a colt for me, and taught me to ride. He took me out coursing and
fowling, and instructed me to shoot flying. And at length I was released
from Mick’s persecution, for his brother, Master Ulick, returning from
Trinity College, and hating his elder brother, as is mostly the way in
families of fashion, took me under his protection; and from that time,
as Ulick was a deal bigger and stronger than Mick, I, English Redmond,
as I was called, was left alone; except when the former thought fit to
thrash me, which he did whenever he thought proper.
Nor was my learning neglected in the ornamental parts, for I had
an uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped in
accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick ear and a
fine voice, which my mother cultivated to the best of her power, and
she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus laid
the foundation of my future success in life. The common dances I learned
(as, perhaps, I ought not to confess) in the servants’ hall, which,
you may be sure, was never without a piper, and where I was considered
unrivalled both at a hornpipe and a jig.
In the matter of book-learning, I had always an uncommon taste for
reading plays and novels, as the best part of a gentleman’s polite
education, and never let a pedlar pass the village, if I had a penny,
without having a ballad or two from him. As for your dull grammar,
and Greek and Latin and stuff, I have always hated them from my youth
upwards, and said, very unmistakably, I would have none of them.
This I proved pretty clearly at the age of thirteen, when my aunt Biddy
Brady’s legacy of L100 came in to mamma, who thought to employ the sum
on my education, and sent me to Doctor Tobias Tickler’s famous academy
at Ballywhacket--Backwhacket, as my uncle used to call it. But six
weeks after I had been consigned to his reverence, I suddenly made my
appearance again at Castle Brady, having walked forty miles from the
odious place, and left the Doctor in a state near upon apoplexy. The
fact was, that at taw, prison-bars, or boxing, I was at the head of the
school, but could not be brought to excel in the classics; and after
having been flogged seven times, without its doing me the least good
in my Latin, I refused to submit altogether (finding it useless) to an
eighth application of the rod. ‘Try some other way, sir,’ said I, when
he was for horsing me once more; but he wouldn’t; whereon, and to defend
myself, I flung a slate at him, and knocked down a Scotch usher with a
leaden inkstand. All the lads huzza’d at this, and some or the servants
wanted to stop me; but taking out a large clasp-knife that my cousin
Nora had given me, I swore I would plunge it into the waistcoat of the
first man who dared to balk me, and faith they let me pass on. I slept
that night twenty miles off Ballywhacket, at the house of a cottier, who
gave me potatoes and milk, and to whom I gave a hundred guineas after,
when I came to visit Ireland in my days of greatness. I wish I had the
money now. But what’s the use of regret? I have had many a harder bed
than that I shall sleep on to-night, and many a scantier meal than
honest Phil Murphy gave me on the evening I ran away from school. So six
weeks’ was all the schooling I ever got. And I say this to let parents
know the value of it; for though I have met more learned book-worms in
the world, especially a great hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor,
whom they called Johnson, and who lived in a court off Fleet Street,
in London, yet I pretty soon silenced him in an argument (at ‘Button’s
Coffeehouse’); and in that, and in poetry, and what I call natural
philosophy, or the science of life, and in riding, music, leaping,
the small-sword, the knowledge of a horse, or a main of cocks, and the
manners of an accomplished gentleman and a man of fashion, I may say for
myself that Redmond Barry has seldom found his equal. ‘Sir,’ said I to
Mr. Johnson, on the occasion I allude to--he was accompanied by a Mr.
Buswell of Scotland, and I was presented to the club by a Mr. Goldsmith,
a countryman of my own--‘Sir,’ said I, in reply to the schoolmaster’s
great thundering quotation in Greek, ‘you fancy you know a great deal
more than me, because you quote your Aristotle and your Pluto; but can
you tell me which horse will win at Epsom Downs next week?--Can you run
six miles without breathing?--Can you shoot the ace of spades ten times
without missing? If so, talk about Aristotle and Pluto to me.’
‘D’ye knaw who ye’re speaking to?’ roared out the Scotch gentleman, Mr.
Boswell, at this.
‘Hold your tongue, Mr. Boswell,’ said the old schoolmaster. ‘I had no
right to brag of my Greek to the gentleman, and he has answered me very
well.’
‘Doctor,’ says I, looking waggishly at him, ‘do you know ever a rhyme
for ArisTOTLE?’
‘Port, if you plaise,’ says Mr. Goldsmith, laughing. And we had SIX
RHYMES FOR ARISTOTLE before we left the coffee-house that evening. It
became a regular joke afterwards when I told the story, and at ‘White’s’
or the ‘Cocoa-tree’ you would hear the wags say, ‘Waiter, bring me one
of Captain Barry’s rhymes for Aristotle.’ Once, when I was in liquor at
the latter place, young Dick Sheridan called me a great Staggerite, a
joke which I could never understand. But I am wandering from my story,
and must get back to home, and dear old Ireland again.
I have made acquaintance with the best in the land since, and my
manners are such, I have said, as to make me the equal of them all; and,
perhaps, you will wonder how a country boy, as I was, educated amongst
Irish squires, and their dependants of the stable and farm, should
arrive at possessing such elegant manners as I was indisputably allowed
to have. I had, the fact is, a very valuable instructor in the person of
an old gamekeeper, who had served the French king at Fontenoy, and who
taught me the dances and customs, and a smattering of the language of
that country, with the use of the sword, both small and broad. Many
and many a long mile I have trudged by his side as a lad, he telling me
wonderful stories of the French king, and the Irish brigade, and Marshal
Saxe, and the opera-dancers; he knew my uncle, too, the Chevalier
Borgne, and indeed had a thousand accomplishments which he taught me in
secret. I never knew a man like him for making or throwing a fly, for
physicking a horse, or breaking, or choosing one; he taught me manly
sports, from birds’-nesting upwards, and I always shall consider Phil
Purcell as the very best tutor I could have had. His fault was drink,
but for that I have always had a blind eye; and he hated my cousin Mick
like poison; but I could excuse him that too.
With Phil, and at the age of fifteen, I was a more accomplished man than
either of my cousins; and I think Nature had been also more bountiful to
me in the matter of person. Some of the Castle Brady girls (as you shall
hear presently) adored me. At fairs and races many of the prettiest
lasses present said they would like to have me for their bachelor; and
yet somehow, it must be confessed, I was not popular.
In the first place, every one knew I was bitter poor; and I think,
perhaps, it was my good mother’s fault that I was bitter proud too. I
had a habit of boasting in company of my birth, and the splendour of my
carriages, gardens, cellars, and domestics, and this before people who
were perfectly aware of my real circumstances. If it was boys, and they
ventured to sneer, I would beat them, or die for it; and many’s the time
I’ve been brought home well-nigh killed by one or more of them, on what,
when my mother asked me, I would say was ‘a family quarrel.’ ‘Support
your name with your blood, Reddy my boy,’ would that saint say, with the
tears in her eyes; and so would she herself have done with her voice,
ay, and her teeth and nails.
Thus, at fifteen, there was scarce a lad of twenty, for half-a-dozen
miles round, that I had not beat for one cause or other. There were the
vicar’s two sons of Castle Brady--in course I could not associate with
such beggarly brats as them, and many a battle did we have as to
who should take the wall in Brady’s Town; there was Pat Lurgan, the
blacksmith’s son, who had the better of me four times before we came
to the crowning fight, when I overcame him; and I could mention a score
more of my deeds of prowess in that way, but that fisticuff facts are
dull subjects to talk of, and to discuss before high-bred gentlemen and
ladies.
However, there is another subject, ladies, on which I must discourse,
and THAT is never out of place. Day and night you like to hear of it:
young and old, you dream and think of it. Handsome and ugly (and, faith,
before fifty, I never saw such a thing as a plain woman), it’s the
subject next to the hearts of all of you; and I think you guess my
riddle without more trouble. LOVE! sure the word is formed on purpose
out of the prettiest soft vowels and consonants in the language, and
he or she who does not care to read about it is not worth a fig, to my
thinking.
My uncle’s family consisted of ten children; who, as is the custom in
such large families, were divided into two camps, or parties; the one
siding with their mamma, the other taking the part of my uncle in all
the numerous quarrels which arose between that gentleman and his lady.
Mrs. Brady’s faction was headed by Mick, the eldest son, who hated me
so, and disliked his father for keeping him out of his property: while
Ulick, the second brother, was his father’s own boy; and, in revenge,
Master Mick was desperately afraid of him. I need not mention the girls’
names; I had plague enough with them in after-life, Heaven knows; and
one of them was the cause of all my early troubles: this was (though to
be sure all her sisters denied it) the belle of the family, Miss Honoria
Brady by name.
She said she was only nineteen at the time; but I could read the
fly-leaf in the family Bible as well as another (it was one of the three
books which, with the backgammon-board, formed my uncle’s library), and
know that she was born in the year ‘37, and christened by Doctor Swift,
Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin: hence she was three-and-twenty years old
at the time she and I were so much together.
When I come to think about her now, I know she never could have been
handsome; for her figure was rather of the fattest, and her mouth of the
widest; she was freckled over like a partridge’s egg, and her hair was
the colour of a certain vegetable which we eat with boiled beef, to
use the mildest term. Often and often would my dear mother make these
remarks concerning her; but I did not believe them then, and somehow
had gotten to think Honoria an angelical being, far above all the other
angels of her sex.
And as we know very well that a lady who is skilled in dancing or
singing never can perfect herself without a deal of study in private,
and that the song or the minuet which is performed with so much graceful
ease in the assembly-room has not been acquired without vast labour
and perseverance in private; so it is with the dear creatures who are
skilled in coquetting. Honoria, for instance, was always practising,
and she would take poor me to rehearse her accomplishment upon; or the
exciseman, when he came his rounds, or the steward, or the poor curate,
or the young apothecary’s lad from Brady’s Town: whom I recollect
beating once for that very reason. If he is alive now I make him my
apologies. Poor fellow! as if it was HIS fault that he should be a
victim to the wiles of one of the greatest coquettes (considering her
obscure life and rustic breeding) in the world.
If the truth must be told--and every word of this narrative of my life
is of the most sacred veracity--my passion for Nora began in a very
vulgar and unromantic way. I did not save her life; on the contrary, I
once very nearly killed her, as you shall hear. I did not behold her
by moonlight playing on the guitar, or rescue her from the hands of
ruffians, as Alfonso does Lindamira in the novel; but one day, after
dinner at Brady’s Town, in summer, going into the garden to pull
gooseberries for my dessert, and thinking only of gooseberries, I pledge
my honour, I came upon Miss Nora and one of her sisters, with whom
she was friends at the time, who were both engaged in the very same
amusement.
‘What’s the Latin for gooseberry, Redmond?’ says she. She was always
‘poking her fun,’ as the Irish phrase it.
‘I know the Latin for goose,’ says I.
‘And what’s that?’ cries Miss Mysie, as pert as a peacock.
‘Bo to you!’ says I (for I had never a want of wit); and so we fell to
work at the gooseberry-bush, laughing and talking as happy as might be.
In the course of our diversion Nora managed to scratch her arm, and it
bled, and she screamed, and it was mighty round and white, and I tied it
up, and I believe was permitted to kiss her hand; and though it was as
big and clumsy a hand as ever you saw, yet I thought the favour the
most ravishing one that was ever conferred upon me, and went home in a
rapture.
I was much too simple a fellow to disguise any sentiment I chanced to
feel in those days; and not one of the eight Castle Brady girls but
was soon aware of my passion, and joked and complimented Nora about her
bachelor.
The torments of jealousy the cruel coquette made me endure were
horrible. Sometimes she would treat me as a child, sometimes as a man.
She would always leave me if ever there came a stranger to the house.
‘For after all, Redmond,’ she would say, ‘you are but fifteen, and you
haven’t a guinea in the world.’ At which I would swear that I would
become the greatest hero ever known out of Ireland, and vow that before
I was twenty I would have money enough to purchase an estate six times
as big as Castle Brady. All which vain promises, of course, I did not
keep; but I make no doubt they influenced me in my very early life, and
caused me to do those great actions for which I have been celebrated,
and which shall be narrated presently in order.
I must tell one of them, just that my dear young lady readers may
know what sort of a fellow Redmond Barry was, and what a courage and
undaunted passion he had. I question whether any of the jenny-jessamines
of the present day would do half as much in the face of danger.
About this time, it must be premised, the United Kingdom was in a state
of great excitement from the threat generally credited of a French
invasion. The Pretender was said to be in high favour at Versailles,
a descent upon Ireland was especially looked to, and the noblemen and
people of condition in that and all other parts of the kingdom showed
their loyalty by raising regiments of horse and foot to resist the
invaders. Brady’s Town sent a company to join the Kilwangan regiment, of
which Master Mick was the captain; and we had a letter from Master
Ulick at Trinity College, stating that the University had also formed a
regiment, in which he had the honour to be a corporal. How I envied
them both! especially that odious Mick as I saw him in his laced scarlet
coat, with a ribbon in his hat, march off at the head of his men. He,
the poor spiritless creature, was a captain, and I nothing,--I who felt
I had as much courage as the Duke of Cumberland himself, and felt, too,
that a red jacket would mightily become me! My mother said I was too
young to join the new regiment; but the fact was, that it was she
herself who was too poor, for the cost of a new uniform would have
swallowed up half her year’s income, and she would only have her boy
appear in a way suitable to his birth, riding the finest of racers,
dressed in the best of clothes, and keeping the genteelest of company.
Well, then, the whole country was alive with war’s alarums, the three
kingdoms ringing with military music, and every man of merit paying his
devoirs at the court of Bellona, whilst poor I was obliged to stay at
home in my fustian jacket and sigh for fame in secret. Mr. Mick came
to and fro from the regiment, and brought numerous of his comrades with
him. Their costume and swaggering airs filled me with grief, and Miss
Nora’s unvarying attentions to them served to make me half wild. No one,
however, thought of attributing this sadness to the young lady’s
score, but rather to my disappointment at not being allowed to join the
military profession.
Once the officers of the Fencibles gave a grand ball at Kilwangan, to
which, as a matter of course, all the ladies of Castle Brady (and a
pretty ugly coachful they were) were invited. I knew to what tortures
the odious little flirt of a Nora would put me with her eternal
coquetries with the officers, and refused for a long time to be one of
the party to the ball. But she had a way of conquering me, against which
all resistance of mine was in vain. She vowed that riding in a coach
always made her ill. ‘And how can I go to the ball,’ said she, ‘unless
you take me on Daisy behind you on the pillion?’ Daisy was a good
blood-mare of my uncle’s, and to such a proposition I could not for my
soul say no; so we rode in safety to Kilwangan, and I felt myself as
proud as any prince when she promised to dance a country-dance with me.
When the dance was ended, the little ungrateful flirt informed me that
she had quite forgotten her engagement; she had actually danced the set
with an Englishman! I have endured torments in my life, but none like
that. She tried to make up for her neglect, but I would not. Some of the
prettiest girls there offered to console me, for I was the best dancer
in the room. I made one attempt, but was too wretched to continue, and
so remained alone all night in a state of agony. I would have played,
but I had no money; only the gold piece that my mother bade me always
keep in my purse as a gentleman should. I did not care for drink, or
know the dreadful comfort of it in those days; but I thought of killing
myself and Nora, and most certainly of making away with Captain Quin!
At last, and at morning, the ball was over. The rest of our ladies went
off in the lumbering creaking old coach; Daisy was brought out, and Miss
Nora took her place behind me, which I let her do without a word. But we
were not half-a-mile out of town when she began to try with her coaxing
and blandishments to dissipate my ill-humour.
‘Sure it’s a bitter night, Redmond dear, and you’ll catch cold without a
handkerchief to your neck.’ To this sympathetic remark from the pillion,
the saddle made no reply.
‘Did you and Miss Clancy have a pleasant evening, Redmond? You were
together, I saw, all night.’ To this the saddle only replied by grinding
his teeth, and giving a lash to Daisy.
‘O mercy! you’ll make Daisy rear and throw me, you careless creature
you: and you know, Redmond, I’m so timid.’ The pillion had by this
got her arm round the saddle’s waist, and perhaps gave it the gentlest
squeeze in the world.
‘I hate Miss Clancy, you know I do!’ answers the saddle; ‘and I only
danced with her because--because--the person with whom I intended to
dance chose to be engaged the whole night.’
‘Sure there were my sisters,’ said the pillion, now laughing outright in
the pride of her conscious superiority; ‘and for me, my dear, I had
not been in the room five minutes before I was engaged for every single
set.’
‘Were you obliged to dance five times with Captain Quin?’ said I; and
oh! strange delicious charm of coquetry, I do believe Miss Nora Brady
at twenty-three years of age felt a pang of delight in thinking that she
had so much power over a guileless lad of fifteen. Of course she replied
that she did not care a fig for Captain Quin: that he danced prettily,
to be sure, and was a pleasant rattle of a man; that he looked well in
his regimentals too; and if he chose to ask her to dance, how could she
refuse him?
‘But you refused me, Nora.’
‘Oh! I can dance with you any day,’ answered Miss Nora, with a toss
of her head; ‘and to dance with your cousin at a ball, looks as if you
could find no other partner. Besides,’ said Nora--and this was a
cruel, unkind cut, which showed what a power she had over me, and how
mercilessly she used it,--‘besides, Redmond, Captain Quin’s a man and
you are only a boy!’
‘If ever I meet him again,’ I roared out with an oath, ‘you shall see
which is the best man of the two. I’ll fight him with sword or with
pistol, captain as he is. A man indeed! I’ll fight any man--every man!
Didn’t I stand up to Mick Brady when I was eleven years old?--Didn’t I
beat Tom Sullivan, the great hulking brute, who is nineteen?--Didn’t I
do for the Scotch usher? O Nora, it’s cruel of you to sneer at me so!’
But Nora was in the sneering mood that night, and pursued her sarcasms;
she pointed out that Captain Quin was already known as a valiant
soldier, famous as a man of fashion in London, and that it was mighty
well of Redmond to talk and boast of beating ushers and farmers’ boys,
but to fight an Englishman was a very different matter.
Then she fell to talk of the invasion, and of military matters
in general; of King Frederick (who was called, in those days, the
Protestant hero), of Monsieur Thurot and his fleet, of Monsieur Conflans
and his squadron, of Minorca, how it was attacked, and where it was; we
both agreed it must be in America, and hoped the French might be soundly
beaten there.
I sighed after a while (for I was beginning to melt), and said how much
I longed to be a soldier; on which Nora recurred to her infallible ‘Ah!
now, would you leave me, then? But, sure, you’re not big enough for
anything more than a little drummer.’ To which I replied, by swearing
that a soldier I would be, and a general too.
As we were chattering in this silly way, we came to a place that has
ever since gone by the name of Redmond’s Leap Bridge. It was an old high
bridge, over a stream sufficiently deep and rocky, and as the mare Daisy
with her double load was crossing this bridge, Miss Nora, giving a loose
to her imagination, and still harping on the military theme (I would lay
a wager that she was thinking of Captain Quin)--Miss Nora said, ‘Suppose
now, Redmond, you, who are such a hero, was passing over the bridge, and
the inimy on the other side?’
‘I’d draw my sword, and cut my way through them.’
‘What, with me on the pillion? Would you kill poor me?’ (This young lady
was perpetually speaking of ‘poor me!’)
‘Well, then, I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d jump Daisy into the river,
and swim you both across, where no enemy could follow us.’
‘Jump twenty feet! you wouldn’t dare to do any such thing on Daisy.
There’s the Captain’s horse, Black George, I’ve heard say that Captain
Qui--’
She never finished the word, for, maddened by the continual recurrence
of that odious monosyllable, I shouted to her to ‘hold tight by my
waist,’ and, giving Daisy the spur, in a minute sprang with Nora over
the parapet into the deep water below. I don’t know why, now--whether
it was I wanted to drown myself and Nora, or to perform an act that
even Captain Quin should crane at, or whether I fancied that the enemy
actually was in front of us, I can’t tell now; but over I went. The
horse sank over his head, the girl screamed as she sank and screamed as
she rose, and I landed her, half fainting, on the shore, where we were
soon found by my uncle’s people, who returned on hearing the screams. I
went home, and was ill speedily of a fever, which kept me to my bed for
six weeks; and I quitted my couch prodigiously increased in stature,
and, at the same time, still more violently in love than I had been even
before. At the commencement of my illness, Miss Nora had been pretty
constant in her attendance at my bedside, forgetting, for the sake of
me, the quarrel between my mother and her family; which my good mother
was likewise pleased, in the most Christian manner, to forget. And, let
me tell you, it was no small mark of goodness in a woman of her haughty
disposition, who, as a rule, never forgave anybody, for my sake to give
up her hostility to Miss Brady, and to receive her kindly. For, like a
mad boy as I was, it was Nora I was always raving about and asking for;
I would only accept medicines from her hand, and would look rudely and
sulkily upon the good mother, who loved me better than anything else
in the world, and gave up even her favourite habits, and proper and
becoming jealousies, to make me happy.
As I got well, I saw that Nora’s visits became daily more rare: ‘Why
don’t she come?’ I would say, peevishly, a dozen times in the day;
in reply to which query, Mrs. Barry would be obliged to make the best
excuses she could find,--such as that Nora had sprained her ankle, or
that they had quarrelled together, or some other answer to soothe me.
And many a time has the good soul left me to go and break her heart in
her own room alone, and come back with a smiling face, so that I should
know nothing of her mortification. Nor, indeed, did I take much pains to
ascertain it: nor should I, I fear, have been very much touched even had
I discovered it; for the commencement of manhood, I think, is the period
of our extremest selfishness. We get such a desire then to take wing
and leave the parent nest, that no tears, entreaties, or feelings
of affection will counter-balance this overpowering longing after
independence. She must have been very sad, that poor mother of
mine--Heaven be good to her!--at that period of my life; and has often
told me since what a pang of the heart it was to her to see all her care
and affection of years forgotten by me in a minute, and for the sake of
a little heartless jilt, who was only playing with me while she could
get no better suitor. For the fact is, that during the last four weeks
of my illness, no other than Captain Quin was staying at Castle Brady,
and making love to Miss Nora in form. My mother did not dare to break
this news to me, and you may be sure that Nora herself kept it a secret:
it was only by chance that I discovered it.
Shall I tell you how? The minx had been to see me one day, as I sat up
in my bed, convalescent; she was in such high spirits, and so gracious
and kind to me, that my heart poured over with joy and gladness, and I
had even for my poor mother a kind word and a kiss that morning. I felt
myself so well that I ate up a whole chicken, and promised my uncle, who
had come to see me, to be ready against partridge-shooting, to accompany
him, as my custom was.
The next day but one was a Sunday, and I had a project for that day
which I determined to realise, in spite of all the doctor’s and my
mother’s injunctions: which were that I was on no account to leave the
house, for the fresh air would be the death of me.
Well, I lay wondrous quiet, composing a copy of verses, the first I ever
made in my life; and I give them here, spelt as I spelt them in those
days when I knew no better. And though they are not so polished and
elegant as ‘Ardelia ease a Love-sick Swain,’ and ‘When Sol bedecks the
Daisied Mead,’ and other lyrical effusions of mine which obtained me
so much reputation in after life, I still think them pretty good for a
humble lad of fifteen:--
THE ROSE OF FLORA.
Sent by a Young Gentleman of Quality to Miss Brady, of Castle Brady.
On Brady’s tower there grows a flower,
It is the loveliest flower that blows,--
At Castle Brady there lives a lady
(And how I love her no one knows):
Her name is Nora, and the goddess Flora
Presents her with this blooming rose.
‘O Lady Nora,’ says the goddess Flora,
‘I’ve many a rich and bright parterre;
In Brady’s towers there’s seven more flowers,
But you’re the fairest lady there:
Not all the county, nor Ireland’s bounty,
Can projuice a treasure that’s half so fair!
What cheek is redder? sure roses fed her!
Her hair is maregolds, and her eye of blew
Beneath her eyelid is like the vi’let,
That darkly glistens with gentle jew?
The lily’s nature is not surely whiter
Than Nora’s neck is,--and her arrums too.
‘Come, gentle Nora,’ says the goddess Flora,
‘My dearest creature, take my advice,
There is a poet, full well you know it,
Who spends his lifetime in heavy sighs,--
Young Redmond Barry, ‘tis him you’ll marry,
If rhyme and raisin you’d choose likewise.’
On Sunday, no sooner was my mother gone to church, than I summoned Phil
the valet, and insisted upon his producing my best suit, in which I
arrayed myself (although I found that I had shot up so in my illness
that the old dress was wofully too small for me), and, with my notable
copy of verses in my hand, ran down towards Castle Brady, bent upon
beholding my beauty. The air was so fresh and bright, and the birds sang
so loud amidst the green trees, that I felt more elated than I had been
for months before, and sprang down the avenue (my uncle had cut down
every stick of the trees, by the way) as brisk as a young fawn. My heart
began to thump as I mounted the grass-grown steps of the terrace, and
passed in by the rickety hall-door. The master and mistress were at
church, Mr. Screw the butler told me (after giving a start back at
seeing my altered appearance, and gaunt lean figure), and so were six of
the young ladies.
‘Was Miss Nora one?’ I asked.
‘No, Miss Nora was not one,’ said Mr. Screw, assuming a very puzzled,
and yet knowing look.
‘Where was she?’ To this question he answered, or rather made believe
to answer, with usual Irish ingenuity, and left me to settle whether she
was gone to Kilwangan on the pillion behind her brother, or whether she
and her sister had gone for a walk, or whether she was ill in her room;
and while I was settling this query, Mr. Screw left me abruptly.
I rushed away to the back court, where the Castle Brady stables stand,
and there I found a dragoon whistling the ‘Roast Beef of Old England,’
as he cleaned down a cavalry horse. ‘Whose horse, fellow, is that?’
cried I.
‘Feller, indeed!’ replied the Englishman: ‘the horse belongs to my
captain, and he’s a better FELLER nor you any day.’
I did not stop to break his bones, as I would on another occasion, for
a horrible suspicion had come across me, and I made for the garden as
quickly as I could.
I knew somehow what I should see there. I saw Captain Quin and Nora
pacing the alley together. Her arm was under his, and the scoundrel was
fondling and squeezing the hand which lay closely nestling against his
odious waistcoat. Some distance beyond them was Captain Fagan of the
Kilwangan regiment, who was paying court to Nora’s sister Mysie.
I am not afraid of any man or ghost; but as I saw that sight my knees
fell a-trembling violently under me, and such a sickness came over me,
that I was fain to sink down on the grass by a tree against which I
leaned, and lost almost all consciousness for a minute or two: then
I gathered myself up, and, advancing towards the couple on the walk,
loosened the blade of the little silver-hilted hanger I always wore in
its scabbard; for I was resolved to pass it through the bodies of the
delinquents, and spit them like two pigeons. I don’t tell what feelings
else besides those of rage were passing through my mind; what bitter
blank disappointment, what mad wild despair, what a sensation as if the
whole world was tumbling from under me; I make no doubt that my reader
hath been jilted by the ladies many times, and so bid him recall his own
sensations when the shock first fell upon him.
‘No, Norelia,’ said the Captain (for it was the fashion of those times
for lovers to call themselves by the most romantic names out of novels),
‘except for you and four others, I vow before all the gods, my heart has
never felt the soft flame!’
‘Ah! you men, you men, Eugenio!’ said she (the beast’s name was John),
‘your passion is not equal to ours. We are like--like some plant I’ve
read of--we bear but one flower and then we die!’
‘Do you mean you never felt an inclination for another?’ said Captain
Quin.
‘Never, my Eugenio, but for thee! How can you ask a blushing nymph such
a question?’
‘Darling Norelia!’ said he, raising her hand to his lips.
I had a knot of cherry-coloured ribands, which she had given me out of
her breast, and which somehow I always wore upon me. I pulled these out
of my bosom, and flung them in Captain Quin’s face, and rushed out with
my little sword drawn, shrieking, ‘She’s a liar--she’s a liar, Captain
Quin! Draw, sir, and defend yourself, if you are a man!’ and with these
words I leapt at the monster, and collared him, while Nora made the air
echo with her screams; at the sound of which the other captain and Mysie
hastened up.
Although I sprang up like a weed in my illness, and was now nearly
attained to my full growth of six feet, yet I was but a lath by the side
of the enormous English captain, who had calves and shoulders such as no
chairman at Bath ever boasted. He turned very red, and then exceedingly
pale at my attack upon him, and slipped back and clutched at his
sword--when Nora, in an agony of terror, flung herself round him,
screaming, ‘Eugenio! Captain Quin, for Heaven’s sake spare the child--he
is but an infant.’
‘And ought to be whipped for his impudence,’ said the Captain; ‘but
never fear, Miss Brady, I shall not touch him; your FAVOURITE is safe
from me.’ So saying, he stooped down and picked up the bunch of ribands
which had fallen at Nora’s feet, and handing it to her, said in a
sarcastic tone, ‘When ladies make presents to gentlemen, it is time for
OTHER gentlemen to retire.’
‘Good heavens, Quin!’ cried the girl; ‘he is but a boy.’
‘I am a man,’ roared I, ‘and will prove it.’
‘And don’t signify any more than my parrot or lap-dog. Mayn’t I give a
bit of riband to my own cousin?’
‘You are perfectly welcome, miss,’ continued the Captain, ‘as many yards
as you like.’
‘Monster!’ exclaimed the dear girl; ‘your father was a tailor, and
you are always thinking of the shop. But I’ll have my revenge, I will!
Reddy, will you see me insulted?’
‘Indeed, Miss Nora,’ says I, ‘I intend to have his blood as sure as my
name’s Redmond.’
‘I’ll send for the usher to cane you, little boy,’ said the Captain,
regaining his self-possession; ‘but as for you, miss, I have the honour
to wish you a good-day.’
He took off his hat with much ceremony, made a low CONGE, and was just
walking off, when Mick, my cousin, came up, whose ear had likewise been
caught by the scream.
‘Hoity-toity! Jack Quin, what’s the matter here?’ says Mick; ‘Nora in
tears, Redmond’s ghost here with his sword drawn, and you making a bow?’
‘I’ll tell you what it is, Mr. Brady,’ said the Englishman: ‘I have had
enough of Miss Nora, here, and your Irish ways. I ain’t used to ‘em,
sir.’
‘Well, well! what is it?’ said Mick good-humouredly (for he owed Quin a
great deal of money as it turned out); ‘we’ll make you used to our ways,
or adopt English ones.’
‘It’s not the English way for ladies to have two lovers’ (the ‘Henglish
way,’ as the captain called it), ‘and so, Mr. Brady, I’ll thank you
to pay me the sum you owe me, and I’ll resign all claims to this young
lady. If she has a fancy for schoolboys, let her take ‘em, sir.’
‘Pooh, pooh! Quin, you are joking,’ said Mick.
‘I never was more in earnest,’ replied the other.
‘By Heaven, then, look to yourself!’ shouted Mick. ‘Infamous seducer!
infernal deceiver!--you come and wind your toils round this suffering
angel here--you win her heart and leave her--and fancy her brother won’t
defend her? Draw this minute, you slave! and let me cut the wicked heart
out of your body!’
‘This is regular assassination,’ said Quin, starting back; ‘there’s two
on ‘em on me at once. Fagan, you won’t let ‘em murder me?’
‘Faith!’ said Captain Fagan, who seemed mightily amused, ‘you may settle
your own quarrel, Captain Quin;’ and coming over to me, whispered, ‘At
him again, you little fellow.’
‘As long as Mr. Quin withdraws his claim,’ said I, ‘I, of course, do not
interfere.’
‘I do, sir--I do,’ said Mr. Quin, more and more flustered.
‘Then defend yourself like a man, curse you!’ cried Mick again. ‘Mysie,
lead this poor victim away--Redmond and Fagan will see fair play between
us.’
‘Well now--I don’t--give me time--I’m puzzled--I--I don’t know which way
to look.’
‘Like the donkey betwixt the two bundles of hay,’ said Mr. Fagan drily,
‘and there’s pretty pickings on either side.’