Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray (robert munsch read aloud txt) 📕

If the world were not composed of a race of ungrateful scoundrels, who share your prosperity while it lasts, and, even when gorged with your venison and Burgundy, abuse the generous giver of the feast, I am sure I merit a good name and a high reputation: in Ireland, at least, where my generosity was unbounded, and the splendour of my mansion and entertainments unequalled by any other nobleman of my time. As long as my magnificence lasted, all the country was free to partake of it; I had hunters sufficient in my stables to mount a regiment of dragoons, and butts of wine in my cellar which would have made whole counties drunk for years. Castle Lyndon became the headquarters of scores of needy gentlemen, and I never rode a-hunting but I had a dozen young fellows of the best blood of the country riding as my squires and gentlemen of the horse. My son, little Castle Lyndon, was a prince; his breeding and manners, even at his early age, showed him to be worthy of the two noble families from whom he was descended: I don’t know what high hopes I had for the boy, and indulged in a thousand fond anticipations as to his future success and figure in the world. But stern Fate had determined that I should leave none of my race behind me, and ordained that I should finish my career, as I see it closing now—poor, lonely, and childless. I may have had my faults; but no man shall dare to say of me that I was not a good and tender father. I loved that boy passionately; perhaps with a blind partiality: I denied him nothing. Gladly, gladly, I swear, would I have died that his premature doom might have been averted. I think there is not a day since I lost him but his bright face and beautiful smiles look down on me out of heaven, where he is, and that my heart does not yearn towards him. That sweet child was taken from me at the age of nine years, when he was full of beauty and promise: and so powerful is the hold his memory has of me that I have never been able to forget him; his little spirit haunts me of nights on my restless solitary pillow; many a time, in the wildest and maddest company, as the bottle is going round, and the song and laugh roaring about, I am thinking of him. I have got a lock of his soft brown hair hanging round my breast now: it will accompany me to the dishonoured pauper’s grave; where soon, no doubt, Barry Lyndon’s worn-out old bones will be laid.

My Bryan was a boy of amazing high spirit (indeed how, coming from such a stock, could he be otherwise?), impatient even of my control, against which the dear little rogue would often rebel gallantly; how much more, then, of his mother’s and the women’s, whose attempts to direct him he would laugh to scorn. Even my own mother (‘Mrs. Barry of Lyndon’ the good soul now called herself, in compliment to my new family) was quite unable to check him; and hence you may fancy what a will he had of his own. If it had not been for that, he might have lived to this day: he might—but why repine? Is he not in a better place? would the heritage of a beggar do any service to him? It is best as it is—Heaven be good to us!—Alas! that I, his father, should be left to deplore him.

It was in the month of October I had been to Dublin, in order to see a lawyer and a moneyed man who had come over to Ireland to consult with me about some sales of mine and the cut of Hackton timber; of which, as I hated the place and was greatly in want of money, I was determined to cut down every stick. There had been some difficulty in the matter. It was said I had no right to touch the timber. The brute peasantry about the estate had been roused to such a pitch of hatred against me, that the rascals actually refused to lay an axe to the trees; and my agent (that scoundrel Larkins) declared that his life was in danger among them if he attempted any further despoilment (as they called it) of the property. Every article of the splendid furniture was sold by this time, as I need not say; and as for the plate, I had taken good care to bring it off to Ireland, where it now was in the best of keeping—my banker’s, who had advanced six thousand pounds on it: which sum I soon had occasion for.

I went to Dublin, then, to meet the English man of business; and so far succeeded in persuading Mr. Splint, a great shipbuilder and timber-dealer of Plymouth, of my claim to the Hackton timber, that he agreed to purchase it off-hand at about one-third of its value, and handed me over five thousand pounds: which, being pressed with debts at the time, I was fain to accept. HE had no difficulty in getting down the wood, I warrant. He took a regiment of shipwrights and sawyers from his own and the King’s yards at Plymouth, and in two months Hackton Park was as bare of trees as the Bog of Allen.

I had but ill luck with that accursed expedition and money. I lost the greater part of it in two nights’ play at ‘Daly’s,’ so that my debts stood just as they were before; and before the vessel sailed for Holyhead, which carried away my old sharper of a timber-merchant, all that I had left of the money he brought me was a couple of hundred pounds, with which I returned home very disconsolately: and very suddenly, too, for my Dublin tradesmen were hot upon me, hearing I had spent the loan, and two of my wine-merchants had writs out against me for some thousands of pounds.

I bought in Dublin, according to my promise, however—for when I give a promise I will keep it at any sacrifices—a little horse for my dear little Bryan; which was to be a present for his tenth birthday, that was now coming on: it was a beautiful little animal and stood me in a good sum. I never regarded money for that dear child. But the horse was very wild. He kicked off one of my horse-boys, who rode him at first, and broke the lad’s leg; and, though I took the animal in hand on the journey home, it was only my weight and skill that made the brute quiet.

When we got home I sent the horse away with one of my grooms to a farmer’s house, to break him thoroughly in, and told Bryan, who was all anxiety to see his little horse, that he would arrive by his birthday, when he should hunt him along with my hounds; and I promised myself no small pleasure in presenting the dear fellow to the field that day: which I hoped to see him lead some time or other in place of his fond father. Ah me! never was that gallant boy to ride a fox-chase, or to take the place amongst the gentry of his country which his birth and genius had pointed out for him!

Though I don’t believe in dreams and omens, yet I can’t but own that when a great calamity is hanging over a man he has frequently many strange and awful forebodings of it. I fancy now I had many. Lady Lyndon, especially, twice dreamed of her son’s death; but, as she was now grown uncommonly nervous and vapourish, I treated her fears with scorn, and my own, of course, too. And in an unguarded moment, over the bottle after dinner, I told poor Bryan, who was always questioning me about the little horse, and when it was to come, that it was arrived; that it was in Doolan’s