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 child’s head nurse was under my orders, not those of my lady; and a very handsome, red-cheeked, impudent jade she was; and a great fool she made me make of myself.  This woman was more mistress of the house than the poor-spirited lady who owned it.  She gave the law to the servants; and if I showed any particular attention to any of the ladies who visited us, the slut would not scruple to show her jealousy, and to find means to send them packing.  The fact is, a generous man is always made a fool of by some woman or other, and this one had such an influence over me that she could turn me round her finger. [Footnote:  From these curious confessions, it would appear that Mr. Lyndon maltreated his lady in every possible way; that he denied her society, bullied her into signing away her property, spent it