The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. | Page 5

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