Barry Lyndon
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 
 Prev. P 11/293 next 
Back Top
Privacy Statement Terms of Service Contact