users boldly, though I lavished sums of money in
the election, though I flung open Hackton Hall and kept champagne and
Burgundy running there, and at all my inns in the town, as commonly as
water, the election went against me. The rascally gentry had all turned
upon me and joined the Tiptoff faction: it was even represented that
I held my wife by force; and though I sent her into the town alone,
wearing my colours, with Bryan in her lap, and made her visit the
mayor's lady and the chief women there, nothing would persuade the
people but that she lived in fear and trembling of me; and the brutal
mob had the insolence to ask her why she dared to go back, and how she
liked horsewhip for supper.

I was thrown out of my election, and all the bills came down upon me
together--all the bills I had been contracting during the years of my
marriage, which the creditors, with a rascally unanimity, sent in until
they lay upon my table in heaps. I won't cite their amount: it was
frightful. My stewards and lawyers made matters worse. I was bound up
in an inextricable toil of bills and debts, of mortgages and insurances,
and all the horrible evils attendant upon them. Lawyers upon lawyers
posted down from London; composition after composition was made, and
Lady Lyndon's income hampered almost irretrievably to satisfy these
cormorants. To do her justice, she behaved with tolerable kindness at
this season of trouble; for whenever I wanted money I had to coax
her, and whenever I coaxed her I was sure of bringing this weak and
light-minded woman to good-humour: who was of such a weak terrified
nature, that to secure an easy week with me she would sign away a
thousand a year. And when my troubles began at Hackton, and I determined
on the only chance left, viz. to retire to Ireland and retrench,
assigning over the best part of my income to the creditors until their
demands were met, my Lady was quite cheerful at the idea of going, and
said, if we would be quiet, she had no doubt all would be well; indeed,
was glad to undergo the comparative poverty in which we must now live
for the sake of the retirement and the chance of domestic quiet which
she hoped to enjoy.

We went off to Bristol pretty suddenly, leaving the odious and
ungrateful wretches at Hackton to vilify us, no doubt, in our absence.
My stud and hounds were sold off immediately; the harpies would have
been glad to pounce upon my person; but that was out of their power.
I had rai