e, quite
unworthy of the famous and fashionable Barry Lyndon.
Mr. Barry Lyndon's personal narrative finishes here, for the hand
of death interrupted the ingenious author soon after the period at which
the Memoir was compiled; after he had lived nineteen years an inmate
of the Fleet Prison, where the prison records state he died of delirium
tremens. His mother attained a prodigious old age, and the inhabitants
of the place in her time can record with accuracy the daily disputes
which used to take place between mother and son; until the latter, from
habits of intoxication, falling into a state of almost imbecility,
was tended by his tough old parent as a baby almost, and would cry if
deprived of his necessary glass of brandy.
His life on the Continent we have not the means of following accurately;
but he appears to have resumed his former profession of a gambler,
without his former success.
He returned secretly to England, after some time, and made an abortive
attempt to extort money from Lord George Poynings, under a threat of
publishing his correspondence with Lady Lyndon, and so preventing
his Lordship's match with Miss Driver, a great heiress, of strict
principles, and immense property in slaves in the West Indies.
Barry narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by the bailiffs who were
despatched after him by his lordship, who would have stopped his
pension; but Lady Lyndon would never consent to that act of justice,
and, indeed, broke with my Lord George the very moment he married the
West India lady.
The fact is, the old Countess thought her charms were perennial, and was
never out of love with her husband. She was living at Bath; her property
being carefully nursed by her noble relatives the Tiptoffs, who were to
succeed to it in default of direct heirs: and such was the address of
Barry, and the sway he still held over the woman, that he actually had
almost persuaded her to go and live with him again; when his plan and
hers was interrupted by the appearance of a person who had been deemed
dead for several years.
This was no other than Viscount Bullingdon, who started up to the
surprise of all; and especially to that of his kinsman of the house
of Tiptoff. This young nobleman made his appearance at Bath, with
the letter from Barry to Lord George in his hand; in which the former
threatened to expose his connection with Lady Lyndon--a connection,
we need not state, which did not reflect the slightest dishono
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