me with her
ladies, her chaplain, and a few of her friends; admitted three or four
proper and discreet persons to accompany her to her box at the opera or
play on proper occasions; and indeed declined for her the too frequent
visits of her friends and family, preferring to receive them only twice
or thrice in a season on our grand reception days. Besides, she was a
mother, and had great comfort in the dressing, educating, and dandling
our little Bryan, for whose sake it was fit that she should give up the
pleasures and frivolities of the world; so she left THAT part of the
duty of every family of distinction to be performed by me. To say the
truth, Lady Lyndon's figure and appearance were not at this time such as
to make for their owner any very brilliant appearance in the fashionable
world. She had grown very fat, was short-sighted, pale in complexion,
careless about her dress, dull in demeanour; her conversations with
me characterised by a stupid despair, or a silly blundering attempt at
forced cheerfulness still more disagreeable: hence our intercourse was
but trifling, and my temptations to carry her into the world, or to
remain in her society, of necessity exceedingly small. She would try my
temper at home, too, in a thousand ways. When requested by me (often,
I own, rather roughly) to entertain the company with conversation, wit,
and learning, of which she was a mistress: or music, of which she was
an accomplished performer, she would as often as not begin to cry, and
leave the room. My company from this, of course, fancied I was a tyrant
over her; whereas I was only a severe and careful guardian over a silly,
bad-tempered, and weak-minded lady.

She was luckily very fond of her youngest son, and through him I had a
wholesome and effectual hold of her; for if in any of her tantrums or
fits of haughtiness--(this woman was intolerably proud; and repeatedly,
at first, in our quarrels, dared to twit me with my own original poverty
and low birth),--if, I say, in our disputes she pretended to have the
upper hand, to assert her authority against mine, to refuse to sign such
papers as I might think necessary for the distribution of our large and
complicated property, I would have Master Bryan carried off to Chiswick
for a couple of days; and I warrant me his lady-mother could hold out
no longer, and would agree to anything I chose to propose. The servants
about her I took care should be in my pay, not hers: especially the