_downdraughts_, who are only different from the accident of their
having friends who will rather be _weighed down_ by them to the very
earth—to the grave itself—than permit them to sink by themselves. The
downdraught is in reality a victim, and one of the darkest shade,
being generally a person totally worthless in character, and abandoned
in habits; but then he has not altogether cut the cables which bound
him to his native grade in society—he has not all forgot himself to
disgrace—he is still domesticated with his friends—he has a mother, or
a wife, or a brother, or a sister, or perhaps an old aunt, who will
try to keep him in food and clean linen, and, having lost all hope of
his ever being actively good, will do anything for him, if he will
only preserve a neutrality, and not be positively evil. He is a victim
in appearance (always excepting the clean shirt), but he enjoys the
happy superiority over that class, of having an open door to fly to
when he pleases, and either a kind relation, who considers him “only a
little wild in the meantime,” or else one who, for the sake of decent
appearances, will endeavour to patch up all his peccadiloes, and
even be tyrannised over by him, rather than shock society by an open
rupture. The personal tendencies of a downdraught to victimization
are strong as the currents of the great deep, but he is withheld from
it by others. He has always some anchorage or other upon decent life,
to keep him back from the gulf to which he would otherwise hurry on.
In many cases, the very kindness and indulgence of friends was the
original cause of his becoming a downdraught. He had every thing held
to his head. He was encouraged in his pretences of headaches as an
excuse for staying away from school. When afterwards an apprentice,
he was permitted to break off, on the score of being compelled to
put on fires and sweep out the shop. Or, perhaps, it was from none of
those causes. Possibly, he was just one of those persons who seem to
be totally destitute of all perception of the terms upon which men are
permitted to exist in this world; that is, that they are either to be
so fortunate as to have “their fathers born before them,” so that they
may accede to wealth without exertion, or must else do something to
induce their fellow-creatures to accord them the means of livelihood
without beggary. That many persons are really born without this great
leading faculty, is unfortunately but too indisputable; and, assuredly,
they are as proper inmates for a lunatic asylum as more frantic madmen;
for what is the use of reason, or even of talent, without the desire of
exerting it, either in one’s own behalf, or in behalf of mankind? The
terms of existence we allude to are expressed in the text of Scripture,
“By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn thy bread;” so that the man
must be considered a kind of heretic, as well as a fool, who will not,
or can not, understand them. Yet the fact is so, that many men arrive
at maturity with either a sense of these conditions of life, more or
less imperfect, or no sense of them at all. They perhaps conceive
themselves to be born to keep down the pavement of Prince’s Street with
boots one inch and a half deep in the heel, or to fumigate the air of
that elegant street with cigars at three shillings per dozen; but that
is the utmost extent to which their notions of the purposes of life
ever extend. These men, of course, are predestined downdraughts. We see
them already with our mind’s eye, exhausting the kindness and patience
of a brother, or a wife, yea almost of a mother, with their idle and
dissolute habits—dragging those relations slowly but surely down into
misery and disgrace—and only in the meantime saved from being kicked
out of doors, as they deserve, not by any regard for merits of their
own, for they have none, but by the tenderness of those relations for
their own reputation.
A decent citizen, of the name of Farney, retired about five-and-twenty
years ago from active life, and, planting himself in a neat villa a
little way beyond the southern suburbs of Edinburgh, resolved to do
nothing all the rest of his life but enjoy the ten or twelve thousand
pounds which he had made by business. He was a placid, inoffensive old
man, only somewhat easy in his disposition, and, therefore, too much
under the control of his wife, who unfortunately was a person of a
vulgarly ambitious character. The pair had but one child—a daughter,
Eliza Farney—the toast of all the apprentices in the South Bridge, and
really an elegant, and not unaccomplished young lady. The only object
which Mr and Mrs Farney now had in life, besides that of enjoying
all its comforts, was the disposal of this young lady in marriage.
Whenever there is such a thing as ten thousand pounds connected with
the name of a young lady, there is generally a great deal more fuss
made about it than when the sum is said to exist in any other shape or
circumstances. It is important in the eyes of all the young men who
think themselves within shot of it. It is important in the eyes of all
the young women who have to lament that they do not possess similar
advantages. It is important in the eyes of all the fathers and mothers
of sons, who think themselves within range of it. And, lastly, it is
important, immensely important indeed, in the eyes of parties, young
lady, mother and father, sister or brother, who have anything to say
in the disposal of it. Money in this shape, one would almost think, is
of a different value from money in any other: the exchange it bears
against cash in business, or cash in the prospect of him who knows he
can win it, is prodigious. At the very lowest computation, a thousand
pounds in the purse of a young lady is worth ten thousand in the stock
of a man of trade. Nay, it is astonishing what airs we have known a few
hundred pounds of this kind put on in respect, or rather disrespect, of
decent people, who were almost winning as much in the year. In fact,
the fiddle-faddle about the disposal of an heiress is a great farce,
and never fails to put either the parties concerned in the disposal,
or else the candidates for the acquisition, into a thousand shabby
and selfish attitudes. It is hard to say if the young lady herself is
the better for it all. The only _certain_ effect of her possessing
a fortune, is, that it deprives her of ever having the pleasing
assurance, given to most other women, that she is married for her own
sake alone. Sincere love is apt to retire from such a competition,
through the pure force of modesty, its natural accompaniment; and the
man most apt to be successful is he who, looking upon the affair as
only a mercantile adventure, pursues it as such, and only hopes to be
able to fall in love after marriage.
It happened that Eliza Farney was loved, truly and tenderly loved, by
a young man of the name of Russell, whose parents had been acquainted
with the Farneys in their earlier and less prosperous days, but were
now left a little behind them. Young Russell had been the playmate
of Eliza in their days of childhood; he had read books with her, and
taught her to draw, in their riper youth; and all the neighbours said,
that, but for the brilliant prospects of Miss Farney, she could not
have found a more eligible match. Russell, however, was still but the
son of a poor man. He was himself struggling in the commencement of a
business, which he had begun with slender means, in order to sustain
the declining fortunes of his parents. His walk in life was much
beneath the scope of his abilities, much beneath his moral deserts;
but, under a strong impulse of duty, he had narrowed his mind to the
path allotted to him, instead of attempting to do justice to his
talents by entering upon any higher and more perilous pursuit. Thus, as
often happens, an intellect and character, which might have brightened
the highest destinies, were doomed to a sphere all unmeet for them,
where they were in a manner worse than lost, as they only led to a
suspicion which was apt to be unfavourable to the prospects of their
possessor, namely, that he was likely to be led, by his superior
tastes, into pursuits to which his fortune was inadequate, or into
habits which would shipwreck it altogether. Russell looked upon Eliza
Farney, and despaired. He saw her, as she advanced into womanhood,
recede gradually from his sphere in society, and enter into one more
suitable to her father’s improving fortunes, into which it was not for
him to intrude. Eliza had, perhaps, entertained at one time a girlish
fondness for him; but it was not of so strong a character as to resist
the ambitious maxims of her mother, and the sense of her own importance
and prospects, which began to act upon her in her riper years.
“Amongst the rest young Edwin sighed,
But never talked of love.”
Some appearance of coldness, which he saw, or fancied he saw, in her
conduct towards him, caused his proud and pure nature to shrink back
from the vulgar competition which he saw going forward for the hand of
“the heiress.” It was not that the fondest wishes of his heart were met
with disappointment—perhaps he could have endured that—but he writhed
under the reflection, that external circumstances should separate
hearts that once were allied, and that no conscious purity of feeling,
no hope of hereafter distinguishing himself by his abilities, was of
avail against the selfish and worldly philosophy which dictated his
rejection. It was only left for him to retire into the chambers of his
own thoughts, and there form such solemn resolutions for improving his
circumstances and distinguishing his character, as might hereafter,
perhaps, enable him to prove to the cold being who now despised him,
how worthy, how more than worthy, perhaps, he was of having enjoyed
her affections, even upon the mean calculations by which he was now
measured and found wanting.
The mother, to whom this rupture was chiefly owing, now applied
herself heartily to the grand task of getting her daughter “properly
disposed of.” Every month or so, her house was turned topsy-turvy,
for the purpose of showing off the young lady in gay assemblies.
Care was taken that no one should be invited to these assemblies who
was merely of their own rank. Unless some capture could be made in a
loftier, or what appeared a loftier circle, it was all as nothing. The
human race hang all in a concatenation at each other’s skirts, those
before kicking with all their might to drive off those behind them,
at the same time that they are struggling might and main, despite of
corresponding kicks, to hold fast, and pull themselves up by means of
their own predecessors. This is particularly the case where a mother
has a daughter to dispose of with the reversion of a few thousands.
Money under these circumstances, as already explained, would be
absolutely thrown away if given only to a person who estimated it at
its ordinary value; it must be given to one who will appreciate it as
it ought to be, and sell pounds of free-will and honourable manhood for
shillings of the vile dross. At length, at a ball held in the Archers’
Hall—a kind of Almack’s in the east—the very man was met with—a genteel
young spark, said to be grand-nephew to a baronet in the north, and who
was hand in glove with the Greigsons, a family of _quis quis_ gentility
in the New Town, but who loomed very large in the eyes of a person
dwelling in the south side. This fellow, a mere loose adventurer,
whose highest destiny seemed to be to carry a pair of colours if he
could get them, and who positively had no claims upon consideration
whatsoever, except that he kept a decent suit of clothes upon his back,
and was on terms of intimacy with a family supposed to belong to the
_haut ton_—this poor unanealed wretch, recommended by impudence and
a moustache, which he amiably swore he would take off when married,
gained the prize from which the modest merit of Russell was repelled.
In a perfect fluster of delight with the attentions he paid to her
daughter, terrified lest he should change his mind, or any unforeseen
event prevent the consummation so devoutly to be wished, the managing
mother presented no obstruction to the courtship. “Such a genteel
young man!” she would say to her husband. “He is greatly taken out in
good company. Just the night before last, he was at the Honourable Mrs
——’s party in Oman’s Rooms. He danced with Miss Forster, the great
heiress, who, they say, is distractedly in love with him. But he says
she has naething like the elegant carriage o’ our ’Liza. Indeed,
between you and me, says he, jokingly, to me the other day, she’s
splay-footed. He could make his fortune at once, you see, however, and
I’m sure it’s really extraordinary o’ him to particulareese the like
o’ us in the way he’s doing”—and so forth. The old man sat twirling
his thumbs and saying nothing, but having his own fears all the time
that all was not really gold that glittered. He was, however, one of
those people who, upon habit and principle, never say a single word
about any speculative thing that is proposed to them, till the result
has been decided, and then they can tell that they all along thought it
would turn out so. It was untelling the prescience and wisdom that old
Farney believed himself to be thus possessed of. Suffice it to say, the
managing mother, within the month, made out a mittimus of destruction
in favour of her daughter, Eliza Farney, spinster, consigning her to
the custody of William Dempster, Esq., blackguard by commission, and
downdraught by destiny.
The fortune of Miss Farney was not exactly of the kind that suited Mr
Dempster’s views. It was only payable after the death of her father.
Mr Dempster, therefore, saw it to be necessary to take expedients for
obtaining the use of it by anticipation. He commenced a large concern
in some mercantile line, obtaining money in advance from the old
gentleman, in order to set the establishment on foot. He also procured
his signature to innumerable bills, to enable him to carry it on.
The business, in reality, was a mere mask for obtaining the means of
supporting his own depraved tastes and appetites. There was hardly any
kind of extravagance, any kind of vice, which he did not indulge in
at the expense of old Farney. The result was what might be expected
from such premises. Exactly a twelvemonth after the marriage, Dempster
stopped payment, and absconded without so much as even taking leave of
his wife. His folly and profligacy together had already absorbed the
whole fortune with which Mr Farney had retired from business, besides a
good deal more for which the unfortunate old man was security. He was
in consequence totally ruined, left destitute in old age, without the
least resource; while the young elegant female, who a short year before
was the admiration and envy of glittering circles, had just become a
mother, upon the bed which only waited for her convalescence to be sold
for behoof of her husband’s creditors.
Farney found refuge—and considered himself most fortunate in finding
it—in a beneficiary institution for decayed citizens, of which he had
himself, in better days, been one of the managers, but which he did
not live long to enjoy. His wife, about the same time, died of one of
those numberless and varied diseases which can only be traced to what
is called a broken heart. The daughter—the unhappy, and, in a great
measure, guiltless victim of her wretched ambition—had no eventual
resource, for the support of herself and her infant, but to open a
small school, in which she taught female children the elements of
reading, writing, and sewing. The striking infelicity of her fate,
joined to her own well-known taste and industrious habits, in time
obtained for her considerable patronage in this humble occupation; and
she would eventually have been restored to something like comfort,
but for the unhallowed wretch whose fate had become identified with
her own. Where this fellow went, or how he subsisted, for the three
years during which he was absent, no one ever knew. He was heard to
talk of the smugglers in the Isle of Man, but it can only be surmised
that he joined that respectable corps. One day, as Mrs Dempster sat in
the midst of her little flock of pupils, the door was opened, and in
crawled her prodigal husband, emaciated, travel-worn, and beggar-like,
with a large black spot upon one of his cheeks, the result of some
unimaginably low and scoundrelly brawl. The moment she recognised him,
she fainted in her chair; the children dispersed and fled from the
house, like a flock of chickens at sight of the impending hawk; and
when the unfortunate woman recovered, she found herself alone with
this transcendant wretch, the breaker of the peace of her family, the
murderer of her mother. He accosted her in the coolest manner possible,
said he was glad to see her so comfortably situated, and expressed an
anxiety for food and liquor. She went with tottering steps to purvey
what he wanted; and while she was busied in her little kitchen, he sat
down by her parlour fire, and commenced smoking from a nasty black
pipe, after the manner of the lowest mendicants. When food and drink
were set before him, he partook of both with voracious appetite. Mrs
Dempster sat looking on in despair, for she saw that the presence of
this being must entirely blight the pleasant scene which her industry
had created around her. She afterwards said, however, that she could
have perhaps overlooked all, and even again loved this deplorable
wretch, if he had inquired for his child, or expressed a desire to see
him. He did neither—he seemed altogether bent on satisfying his own
gross appetites. After spending a few hours in sulky unintermitted
smoking and drinking, he was conveyed to a pallet in the garret, there
to sleep off his debauch.
It were needless to go through all the distressing details of what
ensued. Dempster henceforth became a _downdraught_ on his wife. This
forlorn woman often confessed to her friends that she was perfectly
willing to support her husband, provided he would be but content
with the plain fare she could offer him, and just walk about and do
nothing. But he was not of a temper to endure this listlessness. He
required excitement. Instead of quietly spending his forenoons in the
arbour, called _the Cage_, in the Meadows, among decayed military
pensioners, and other harmless old men, he prowled about the crowded
mean thoroughfares, drinking where he could get liquor for nothing, and
roistering in companies of the most debased description. He incurred
debts in all directions on the strength of his wife’s character, and
she was necessarily compelled to liquidate them. The struggles which
she at this time made were very great. Like the mother of Gray the
poet, she endured all kinds of ill usage, and persevered under every
difficulty to give her son a respectable education, in order that he
might have an opportunity of wiping away the stains of his father’s
vices, and be a comfort to his mother in the decline of life. To do
this, and at the same time continue paying the vile debts of her
profligate husband, was altogether impossible. She exhausted the
beneficence, and even tired the pity of her friends. It need hardly be
mentioned, that the creditors of a husband have an undeniable claim
upon the effects of his wife. It unfortunately happened that the
wretches with whom Dempster contracted his debts, were as worthless as
himself. After draining every resource which his wife could command, he
summed up his villainy by giving a promissory note for fifteen pounds
to one of his lowest associates. It is supposed that he struck the
bargain for a couple of guineas, for with this sum he again absconded
from Edinburgh, and, taking his way to Greenock, shipped himself on
board of a vessel for America. At first, his wife was thankful for the
relief; she again breathed freely; but her joy was soon turned into
mourning. The promissory note made its appearance; she had just scraped
up and paid her rent; she had not therefore a farthing in the world.
In a fortnight, the whole of her effects were sold upon distraint. She
was turned to the street a second time, almost bent to the dust with
the burden of her miseries. The first night she received shelter in
the house of a respectable “much-tried” widow, who was the only person
she could freely speak to about her destitute condition. Next day, by
the advice of this good woman, she took a room in the neighbourhood,
and endeavoured to gather together her pupils, who, it seems, did not
desert her, but took a deep interest in her misfortunes. She had also
the good fortune to get her boy into one of the educational hospitals,
and she therefore expressed herself thankful for the mercies she still
received.
An interval of many years now occurs in the story of Mrs Dempster,
during which she heard nothing of her husband, except a rumour that he
was drowned on a lumbering excursion in the rapids of the St Lawrence.
Through the influence of her pitiable tale and real merit, she obtained
the situation of superintendant of a large public seminary for young
ladies in a country town. Here she lived in peace, comfort, and honour,
for some years, till she had almost forgot that ever such a wretch
as Dempster existed. What was her horror one day, when, as she was
entertaining a large party of respectable people at tea, the demon
of her fate stood once more before her, not the mere squalid beggar
which he formerly appeared, but a concentration of blackguardism and
shabbiness, of utterly ruined and broken-down humanity, such as was
never perhaps surpassed, even in the sinks of London and Parisian vice.
There was now more than mendicancy in his aspect—there was robbery,
murder, and every kind of desperate deed. The wan face, blackened and
battered with bruises and wounds—the troubled eye, bespeaking the
troubled spirit—the ropy, sooty attire, through which peeped the hardly
whiter skin—the feet bare, and ulcerated with walking—every thing
told but one tale of unutterable sin and misery. The guests shrunk
aghast from this hideous spectre, and the hostess shrieked outright.
Little regarding the alarm which he had occasioned, he exclaimed, in
a hollow and scarcely earthly voice, “Give me meat—give me drink—give
me clothing—I am destitute of all; there you sit in enjoyment of
every luxury, while your husband, who is flesh of your flesh, has not
known what it is to eat heartily, or to be covered from the piercing
wind, for weeks and months. Shrink not from me. Wretched as I seem, I
am still your husband. Nothing on earth can break that tie. Meat, I
say—drink—I am in my own house, and will be obeyed. For you, gentles,
get you gone; your company is not now agreeable.” The company dispersed
without farther ceremony, leaving the unhappy woman alone with her
husband.
Next day, the stranger appeared abroad in a decent suit of clothes,
and Mrs Dempster seemed to have recovered a little of her equanimity.
Every sacrifice, however, which she could make for this wretch, was
in vain, or only encouraged him to demand greater indulgences. An
unlimited supply of liquor in his own house would not satisfy him.
He required large sums wherewith to treat all the _canaille_ of the
town. Entreaties, indulgences, every thing that could be devised
to gratify him, were unavailing to impress him with a sense of his
wife’s situation. He intruded his unhallowed front into her school,
and insulted her before her pupils. Those who laughed at his antics
he would seize by the shoulders, and turn out of doors. He had also a
most perverse desire of pushing himself into her presence, whenever he
thought she was conversing with any of her employers, before whom an
observance of propriety and decorum was most particularly necessary.
Indeed, he just delighted to do exactly what his wife wished him not
to do, the grand object of his low mind being to show how much he had
her comfort and welfare in his power. At length, with every feeling
of respect for Mrs Dempster, her employers, the magistrates, found it
necessary to inform her, that they could not permit her to retain the
school any longer under such circumstances, as it was threatened with
utter annihilation by the gradual diminution of the number of pupils.
She proposed to her husband to allow him regularly the full half of
her earnings, if he would only stay in some other place, and never
again intrude upon her. But he scorned to be bought off, as he said. He
insisted rather upon her giving up the school, and accompanying him to
Edinburgh, where, with the little sum she had saved, and what besides
they could raise by the sale of her superfluous furniture, he would
enter into business on his own account, and she should never again be
obliged to work for either herself or for him. The poor woman had no
alternative. She was compelled to abandon the scene, where for so many
years she had enjoyed the comforts of life and the respect of society,
in order to be dragged at the chariot wheels, or rather at the cart’s
tail, of her husband’s vices and fortunes, through scenes to which she
shuddered to look forward.
In the capital, Dempster’s design of entering into business, if he
ever seriously entertained it, was no more talked of. Fleshed once
again with a taste of his former indulgences, he rushed headlong into
that infamous career, which already had twice ended in voluntary
banishment. His wife’s finances were soon exhausted; but, with the
barbarity of a demon taskmaster, he would every day leave her with a
threat, which she but too well knew he would execute, of beating her,
if she should not be able to produce next morning a sum necessary for
the gratification of his wretched appetites. It was now in vain to
attempt that mode of subsistence by which she had hitherto supported
herself. So long as she was haunted by this evil genius, _that_ was
impracticable. By the interest, however, of some of her former friends,
she obtained a scanty and precarious employment for her needle, by
which she endeavoured to supply the cravings of her husband, and her
own simpler wants. From morning early, through the whole day, and till
long after midnight, this modest and virtuous woman would sit in her
humble lodging, painfully exerting herself at a tedious and monotonous
task, that she might be able to give to her husband in the morning that
sum, without which she feared he would only rush into greater mischief,
if not into absolute crime. No vigils were grudged, if she only had
the gratification at last of seeing him return. Though he often staid
away the whole night, she never could permit herself to suppose that
he would do so again, but she would sit bending over her work, or, if
she could work no more from positive fatigue, gazing into the dying
embers of her fire, watching and watching for the late and solitary
foot, which, by a strange exertion of the sense, she could hear and
distinguish long ere any sound would have been perceptible to another
person. Alas, for the sleepless nights which woman so often endures for
the sake of her cruel helpmate! Alas, for the generous and enduring
affection which woman cherishes so often for the selfish heart by which
it is enslaved!