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
was a connection of the family into which the notorious adventurer
had married. It is not unlikely that Thackeray had seen the work
published in 1810--the year of Stoney-Bowes's death--in which the
whole unhappy romance was set forth. This was 'THE LIVES OF ANDREW