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Malta the author noted on the first three days of November--'Wrote
Barry but slowly and with great difficulty.' 'Wrote Barry with no
more success than yesterday.' 'Finished Barry after great throes
late at night.' In the number of Fraser's for the following month,
as I have said, the conclusion appeared. A dozen years later, in
1856, the story formed the first part of the third volume of
Thackeray's MISCELLANIES, when it was called MEMOIRS OF BARRY
LYNDON, ESQ., WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. Since then, it has nearly always
been issued with other matter, as though it were not strong enough
to stand alone, or as though the importance of a work was mainly to
be gauged by the number of pages to be crowded into one cover. The
scheme of the present edition fortunately allows fitting honour to
be done to the memoirs of the great adventurer.
To come from the story as a whole to the personality of the
eponymous hero. Three widely-differing historical individuals are
suggested as having contributed to the composite portrait. Best
known of these was that very prince among adventurers, G. J.
Casanova de Seingalt, a man who in the latter half of the eighteenth
century played the part of adventurer--and generally that of the
successful adventurer--in most of the European capitals; who within
the first five-and-twenty years of his life had been 'abbe,
secretary to Cardinal Aquaviva, ensign, and violinist, at Rome,
Constantinople, Corfu, and his own birthplace (Venice), where he
cured a senator of apoplexy.' His autobiography, MEMOIRES ECRIT PAR
LUI MEME (in twelve volumes), has been described as 'unmatched as a
self-revelation of scoundrelism.' It has also been suggested, with I
think far less colour of probability, that the original of Barry was
the diplomatist and satiric poet Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, whom
Dr Johnson described as 'our lively and elegant though too
licentious lyrick bard.' The third original, and one who, there
cannot be the slightest doubt, contributed features to the great
portrait, is a certain Andrew Robinson Stoney, afterwards Stoney-
Bowes.
The original of the Countess Lyndon was Mary Eleanor Bowes, Dowager
Countess of Strathmore, and heiress of a very wealthy Durham family.
This lady had many suitors, but in 1777 Stoney, a bankrupt
lieutenant on half pay, who had fought a duel on her behalf, induced
her to marry him, and subsequently hyphenated her name with his own.
He became member of Parliament, and ran such extravagant courses as
does Barry Lyndon, treated his wife with similar barbarity, abducted
her when she had escaped from him, and then, after being divorced,
found his way to a debtors' prison. There are similarities here
which no seeker after originals can overlook. Mrs Ritchie says that
her father had a friend at Paris, 'a Mr Bowes, who may have first
told him this history of which the details are almost incredible, as
quoted from the papers of the time.' The name of Thackeray's friend
is a curious coincidence, unless, as may well have been the case, he
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