The Luck of Barry Lyndon

Thackeray began writing The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century. By Fitz-Boodle in Paris[2] in October 1843, and Fraser's began publishing installments starting in January of the following year. Throughout the monthly releases, Thackeray managed to keep an advance of one or two chapters, but in October 1844, the promised manuscript was not ready on time, and the editor-in-chief Nickisson published another text in its place. The author complains about the difficulty of the task, which requires much more reading than he thought and deals with a subject that is not very sympathetic. He wrote on 14 August 1844 that it had become a nightmare and with relief, on 3 November 1844, he put the final period, noting: Finished Barry after much agony last night. The final part was written during a trip to Egypt, and the ultimate chapter in Malta in October 1844 on the way back, while the ship was in quarantine in the port of Valletta.[3]

The original title of the 1844 publication contains the word luck, which in this context does not mean "chance" but "worldly success".[4] The choice of this word indicates that this success results from the wealth and social importance that come from marrying the richest widow in the kingdom. According to a terminology peculiar to Barry, the alternation between luck and ill-luck marks the fluctuations of his fortune.

The first edition of 1844 includes two very asymmetrical parts: sixteen chapters are devoted to Barry's social ascent, and only three (published in September, November, and December 1844) to his decline and fall. This disparity is not explained by the needs of the narrative, but more likely by the author's weariness. Thackeray knows that his novel is not well-liked by the readers of Fraser's Magazine, who complain about the immorality of the story, so after the fact, Thackeray is obliged to add paragraphs, digressions, and explanations to justify his ironic attitude and make his point clearer.

Almost all of these additions were abandoned in 1856 when Barry Lyndon was republished,[N 1] along with several other stories, in a book titled Miscellanies;[5] the novel became The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq., By Himself, the publisher's initiative followed by a plethora of pompous mentions emphasizing the grandiose destiny of the scoundrel.[6] This version contains some modifications: the first two chapters were merged into one; in the second part, the beginning of chapter XVII was deleted; and a long passage from the conclusion dealing with immanent justice was also deleted. This justice, indeed, Thackeray writes, but this comment is deleted in 1856, is absent from this world, with villains remaining rich while honest people are just as poor, and further insisting a little later "Justice, great God! Does human life show justice in this way? Do the good always ride in a gilded carriage and the wicked go to the hospice? Is the charlatan never preferred to the capable? Does the world always reward merit, never fall for verbiage, never rush to hear some ass bray from his pulpit?". In short, according to Dodds interpreting Thackeray's thought, this is an illusion of the novelist in the way the world turns. In addition, some of the digressions written in the third person, actually intrusions by the author, are reinserted, but in the first person, that is, placed this time in Barry's mouth. Finally, the pseudonym Fitz-Boodle is abandoned, and Miscellanies in its entirety is signed by William Makepeace Thackeray. In 1856, twelve years after the first version was published, Thackeray had become famous and no longer needed masks.

Although the book was harshly judged during its serialization, the tone changed considerably upon its publication in volumes. By 1856, Thackeray was recognized as one of the masters of the English novel, and his works were appreciated with greater consideration. The influential Saturday Review, founded by A.J.B. Beresford Hope in 1855, considered Barry Lyndon to be the most characteristic and successful of Thackeray's works. Several of the author's colleagues emphasized the tour de force represented by this novel, particularly Trollope, who proclaimed that "if Dickens revealed the best of his creative power early in life, Thackeray showed himself to have a superior intellect. Never has the strength of his mind been raised higher than in Barry Lyndon, and I know of no storyteller whose intellectual faculties can surpass this prodigious enterprise." American writer William Dean Howells, who read the novel as early as 1852, wrote that it was "the most perfect creation [...] a fabulous feat of pure irony." Finally, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, the novelist's daughter, after recounting the anecdote in which her father advised her against reading the book, wrote: "Certainly, it is a difficult book to love, but one admires it for its consummate power and art."

Thackeray got the idea for this novel during a visit with the art collector John Bowes (whom he knew from school)[7] to Streatlam Castle in June and July 1841. In Fraser's Magazine, he wrote:

During my travels in the provinces, I have found material (a character, rather) for a story; I am certain that there is material for amusement in this… for my story about BARRY-LYNN (or whatever name one might give him) [...]

.[8] In fact, these documents come from the Strathmore family, of which John Bowes is the illegitimate descendant, and are collected in a pamphlet by Jesse Foot, entitled Lives of Andrew Robinson Stoney-Bowes and the Countess of Strathmore, published in London in 1812.[2] Bowes owns an annotated copy that Thackeray probably knew about, and the character of Andrew Robinson Bowes immediately fascinates him[9][10]

According to other sources, an inspiration for his character was Captain James Freney, the "Irish Robin Hood," whose adventures he read about in an inn in Galway in 1841,[11] whom he places in his novel on Barry's path in Ireland shortly after his hero's departure for the great world, and who is briefly mentioned in chapter IV where Barry learns about his exploits from Mrs Fitzsimmons.[12] However, while Freney, in Thackeray's words,

declines great deeds with all modesty

, Barry brandishes

little deeds high and loud

.[13] According to another hypothesis, the model encompasses the Irish in general, whom he sketched in his Irish Sketch Book of 1843,

this brilliant, audacious, belligerent, exuberant, whiskey-drinking people

.[14]

In fact, "Barry Lyndon" contains several episodes already used in this "Irish Sketch Book," for example, Barry's arrival in Dublin where he is greeted with much fervor and adulation. In his travel journal, Thackeray notes:

There is candor in the way these brave people regard their ecclesiastics and respect all titles, whether real or spurious [...] Do the Irish have so many reasons to respect their aristocrats that they must chronicle all their movements and not only admire their genuine nobles, but make up others to admire in turn?

.[15]

Finally, as Thackeray wrote, he traveled constantly, hence, according to some critics, the cosmopolitan aspect of the novel, with significant episodes set in France or Germany, and also some details echoing the author's Middle Eastern tour, such as Barry's stay in Ludwigslust where he is accompanied by a "negro" named Zamor, dresses in Turkish clothing, and stays in a

palace arranged in an Oriental and quite sumptuous manner

.[2]

From the first paragraphs of his narrative, with the help of heraldists, the Englishman Gwillim and the Frenchman Louis Pierre d'Hozier (p. 13, then 139, according to the 1975 edition used as a reference), Barry takes stock of his lineage: "I am of the opinion that there is no gentleman in all of Europe who has not heard of the Barry family of Barryogue, in the kingdom of Ireland [...]" Throughout the novel, he frequently returns to this subject, especially in chapter IV where his uncle, the Chevalier de Bali-Bari, asserts that this is "the only knowledge becoming of a gentleman." In fact, Thackeray himself shared this concern for genealogy, particularly while writing the novel; Fraser's Magazine had just featured Drummond (a list of noble families with mention of their genealogy) as a theme before The Luck of Barry Lyndon.

This question of nobility of heart as opposed to that of birth is in the air: Dickens takes it up four years after Barry Lyndon in Great Expectations (1860), another first-person novel, where he has Herbert Pocket say exactly the same thing as he undertakes to instill some life principles in young Pip and quotes his father Matthew Pocket: "It is one of his principles that no man has ever behaved like a gentleman without first having been, since the world began, a gentleman at heart. He says, there is no veneer that can hide the grain of wood, and the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself." In the same novel, Joe Gargery the blacksmith, who has always protected Pip from the wrath of his shrewish sister, goes to London to see his young brother-in-law. Not knowing quite what to do with his hat on arrival, he realizes that Pip is now ashamed of him; sorry for not having respected his rank, he returns disillusioned to his forge, while Pip, led astray by snobbery, says, "He made me lose my temper and exasperated me" (chapter XXVII, p. 631).

Another concern of Thackeray's is the events in Ireland: although the story of Barry Lyndon is supposed to take place in the 18th century, the book echoes the Anglo-Irish relations of the first half of the 19th century, especially the campaign for the abolition of the Act of Union, which, under the impetus of Daniel O'Connell, raged in the 1840s and culminated in 1843 with the revival of the so-called Irish Home Rule movement.

The last part of the story, concerning Redmond Barry's tumultuous relationship with Lady Lyndon, is inspired by the life of Andrew Robinson Stoney-Bowes, a type of character that the English commonly call a "Rake" or "Rakehell", meaning a gambler, debaucher, reveller, and indebted person.[16] And according to Robert A. Colby, the plot involving the Princess of X is based on what Thackeray called "a silly little book", titled L'Empire, ou, Dix ans sous Napoléon (1836), by Baron Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon (1786-1864),[17] which relates, among other things, the execution of Princess Caroline by the King of Wurttemberg for adultery[18][N 2] The two stories seem to have merged in Thackeray's mind, as both involve tyrannical husbands, hysterical wives, and adultery against a backdrop of a corrupt society.[2]

Barry's grim ending echoes that of the real-life Irish journalist and co-founder of Fraser's Magazine, William Maginn (1794-1842).

Maginn a superb subject for a little morality

, comments Thackeray upon reading an obituary tribute published in Fraser's.[19] However, unlike Barry, who is uneducated, Maginn is a scholarly and witty scholar, but shares with him an easy charm and an abyssal prodigality, and in 1842 his indebtedness landed him in the Fleet Prison, from which he only emerged, consumed by tuberculosis, to die that same year.

A parallel can also be drawn between the shameful end of Barry in prison and the miserable exile of the famous "Beau" Brummell (1778-1840) in France, who fled from his debts and whose career has been in the spotlight since William Jesse published his biography in 1844. Thackeray himself gave a review of this publication in the Morning Chronicle of 6 May 1844, reprinted in Thackeray's Contributions to the Morning Chronicle, Gordon N. Ray, Urbana, Illinois, 1995, p. 31-39.</ref> while Barry Lyndon was being written. Moreover, in Chapter XIII, p. 193, Thackeray places an allusion in the form of a wink under the pen of his narrator hero:

Think of the fashion of London being led by a Br-mm-l! [Footnote: This manuscript must have been written at the time when Mr. Brummel was the leader of the London fashion.] a nobody’s son: a low creature, who can no more dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee; who cannot even crack a bottle like a gentleman; who never showed himself to be a man with his sword in his hand: as we used to approve ourselves in the good old times, before that vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the world!

, an exclamation intended for the Victorian public.[19]

Finally, it is not excluded, according to Anisman, cited by Colby, that Thackeray may have thought, or even borrowed from the Mémoires de Casanova to which Barry refers in Chapter IX, the Venetian adventurer Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) mentioned twice (p. 128, 141) and who, like Barry, writes that he

lived like a philosopher

.