TAM DRYSDALE IN HIS OFFICE.
There is no street in the whole city of bells and chimney-stacks with a
greater and richer mercantile traffic, containing more offices in which
business is conducted on a larger scale, than one of the side streets
running parallel to the handsome thoroughfare of Buchanan Street. At
certain business hours the street is as crowded with merchants and
merchants’ clerks, warehousemen, wholesale dealers in all the
commodities under the sun, as the Broomielaw is with porters and
sailors, the Sautmarket and the Gorbals with naturalized Highlanders and
Irish, or the different yards and lanes with craftsmen and mill-hands.
When the swarm of dark-coloured ants hurry along the pavement, it is
clear they mean business, hearty though the greetings are which burst
from the deep-throated, deep-chested pedestrians, worthy of the warm
hearts and frank tongues--careless of sing-song _patois_--of the mighty
men of Clydesdale. They will not tarry on their errands; they have to
put their shoulders to the wheel with a will, to bear up the load
imposed upon them. No doubt these sons of Anak, like their servants the
porters bearing the material bales and boxes, carry the burden of
engagements and obligations unflinchingly, well-nigh swaggeringly. Still
the giants show an inclination to get their work done as soon as may be,
to allow greater time for play. Carriage, or dogcart, or steamer--the
last in summer especially--whirl or puff the men away to the
country-houses, with their trim avenues and well-kept parks; or the
villas, luxurious as those of Roman citizens, by some mountain-girt
loch of the blue Clyde, where pines replace the olive trees and heather
the roses.
At such early hours as are devoted to the patron saint of
business--shall we say St. Luke?--few women, even when tucked under the
wing, or following in the wake of husband, brother, or son, venture to
bring the light incongruous flutter of their gowns, and the disturbing
element of their unabsorbed faces into the rank and file of the workers.
Heads of famous houses, young men with their fortunes yet to make, press
on as if they would trample down all obstacles, and protest in
self-defence ‘the de’il tak’ the hin’most!’
Who would think that within a day’s journey from that striving,
money-making mass of humanity the solemn Atlantic breaks on wild, lone
shores, where the cry of the seamew is the only voice to break the awful
stillness?
Within a certain solidly handsome door, over which a porter of
substance held sway, up a good staircase, under the circumstances
singularly spotless, any stranger invading the territory would find
another door, or rather pair of folding-doors, standing open. One of the
doors bore a brass plate on which had been engraved the
address--‘Messrs. Mackinnon & Murray, Dyers and Calico-Printers.’ The
engraver’s tool had passed over three of the words, and the place knew
its owners no more. The name which had replaced the others was that of
‘Drysdale.’ But though so much change had been made, the word ‘Messrs.’
was left to read like a foolish grammatical blunder, or as if the
remainder of the address hung in suspense, which was the true
explanation. The omission was not by accident, but by design.
‘Let a-be’ the present master of the office had charged the
respectfully-remonstrating engraver. ‘That may stand till another Tam
makes up his mind, and then “& Son” can easily be added.’ He referred
with would-be carelessness to his only son, and to the chance on which
he had set his heart, that his one boy might join him in his career,
might take up and extend the threads of all his projects, and, when he
laid them down, might hand them over to a third generation. There was a
little lurking superstition in the sparing of the ‘Messrs.’ already
inscribed there, inappropriate as it was in the meantime. There was also
the economy, almost parsimony, in trifles, which, in view of a future
exigency, would save the smallest risk of unnecessary expense.
Yet this was a man whose intelligence and enterprise had enabled him to
supersede his masters, rising gradually to their level, and then soaring
far beyond it, building up from a moderate foundation such a great
business of its kind, as any man of his type might have been proud to
claim for his individual handiwork. His daily business transactions
involved questions of thousands. He did not think twice of signing a
cheque for one or two of those thousands, to get possession of a picture
that caught his untutored fancy rather than his cultivated taste. His
wife’s diamonds were as brilliant as any to be met with in her circle,
which was saying a good deal. He would have given a hundred for a hunter
for his son, if Tam junior would have hunted with his compeers, the
young swells of the mercantile world. He did give as much for a pony
phaeton in perfect keeping, in which Claribel, or even little Eppie,
could drive out her mother. But he objected all the same to the small
waste in effacing the ‘Messrs.’ which might have ample significance in
the years yet to be born.
Tam Drysdale’s office not only held a large staff, it displayed every
modern improvement and well-considered plan for their accommodation.
Never were clerks better housed, stooled, or desked; blessed with more
regular, if long, hours in a press of business; ensured greater
punctuality at meal-times, or granted in turn more unfailing, if
limited, holidays. But woe betide any of these ‘pets’ of Tam Drysdale’s,
as they were sometimes termed derisively by less conscientious masters,
if a subordinate was discovered shirking a duty or slurring over a task.
These acts of cowardly, lubberly omission were treated as greater
offences than what might have seemed heavier sins of commission, in the
shape of occasional fits of folly and dissipation. Tam Drysdale had the
scorn for prodigality and the disgust at intemperance which might be
expected from a man whose rise in the world had been, in some degree,
the result of his prudence and sobriety from youth to middle age. But he
had mercy on a feather-headed lad who had got into debt for a gold watch
and chain before he had earned them, or a suit of clothes the price of
which was beyond the depth of his pocket. The employer had also a
considerable amount of rueful pity for a middle-aged sinner who had at
one time stood several steps higher than Tam on the social ladder, but
who had lost heart, and sought desperately to console himself for the
slowness of fortune in favouring him, by buying Dutch courage and
oblivion, in swallowing the enemy that stole away his brains. On the
other hand, for the lad or man who trifled or idled, and cheated his
master of his services, Tam Drysdale was apt to have judgment without
mercy. No wrathful words of ‘lazy blackguaird’ or ‘useless scoondrel’
were hot and sharp enough to launch at the culprit.
Tam Drysdale sat, like the king in the nursery rhyme, counting over his
money, in the inner sanctum, which in many respects reflected the man.
The various articles it contained--desk, table, chairs, carpet--were at
once the very best and the very plainest of mahogany, morocco, and
Kidderminster. The place was the essence of commercial comfort, and
even neatness, as if a woman and not a man drew up the blinds, set the
chairs at the proper angles, arranged the ledgers, and filed the papers.
The room was almost ostentatiously complete, but there was an absence of
luxury, a failure to recognise or claim any article that was out of the
ordinary catalogue of office furniture, an impatience, bordering on
contempt, of finery or frippery here, though it might be very well at
Drysdale Hall.
Tam Drysdale, leaning back in his chair, summing up an account with a
little knit in his brow, was not far above fifty years of age, and in
spite of all he had done before he reached his half-century he did not
look older. He was a hale man still, not beyond abundantly capable
middle life. He was below the ordinary standard of his native district
with regard to size. He was not the ‘braw man’ whose stature alone
ensures him popular admiration in the west of Scotland. He was little
above the middle height, and he was so finely built that he looked less
than he was. But it was a wiry slightness, and a delicacy that was
tempered like the keenness of steel. There were force and activity in
every well-knit, cleanly cut limb and feature; and the time had been
when, in spite of his antagonists’ greater height and weight, Tam
Drysdale had excelled in various muscular sports calling for more than
accuracy of eye and speed of foot, such as quoits, shinty, etc.
Tam’s clothes were of the best broadcloth, but old-fashioned and
somewhat clumsy, as well as out of date. There was a suspicion of
uncouthness in the style of the coat and vest, down to the very shoes
which were not boots, that vexed the soul of Mrs. Drysdale, and even of
Claribel, though young Eppie never could see that her father was
anything save perfect, both in his outer and inner man. The truth was
that Tam--very indulgent to his womankind in most particulars--became
restive and utterly unmanageable when he was pursued into the holes and
corners of what he reckoned his own affairs. He would not desert his old
tailor, who had made Tam’s wedding suit and risen in the world with him,
so far as a one-horse chaise and a villa at Gourock, though the poor
fellow did not follow all the freaks of fashion, and could not please a
parcel of fools of women. Tam would not make a puppy or an ass of
himself by dressing in a manner which would better befit his son. This
was supposing that young Tam ever condescended, nowadays, to appear in a
coat superior to the last year’s shooting-jacket, which was decidedly
the worse of the wear, as his father’s coats never were.
In like manner, no power, less than his Queen’s command, would have
induced Tam to drive in his well-appointed carriage to the door of his
office. He stuck to the point that better men than he contented
themselves with arriving at their places of business on their feet, or
at most in their dogcarts, and he would never shame himself and them by
instituting an odious comparison. He would not make himself a
laughing-stock to his fellows--including his old cronies and his very
clerks, who would be fully justified in saying that Tam Drysdale was as
vain as a peacock, and had forgotten the nest he had sprung from.
The carriage was in Glasgow several days a week with Mrs. Drysdale and
the girls, and, for the sake of their company, the owner of the equipage
would consent to meet it at some appointed place, as far out of the way
of his ordinary haunts and associations as possible, and would drive
home in a species of incognita with his family. However, this was a
weakness to be carefully concealed. None of Tam’s vainglory--rampant
enough elsewhere--broke forth in this direction. He positively hid his
diminished head, and shrank out of sight when he was detected in the
deed. He would no more have been guilty of driving in solitary state
through those familiar Glasgow streets, where he had been wont to walk
in fustian, than he would have worn a feather or a jewel in his hat.
‘Me in a carriage for my convenience! humph! a cadger’s cart would set
me better,’ he would say ironically. ‘What would folk think? What would
folk say?’ (Tam was apt to regard himself as the cynosure of every eye,
a source of endless interest and speculation to his public.) ‘Plenty of
them to see that knew a’ about me when I had not a couple of bawbees to
rub upon one anither. No, no! I’m not such a gowk as that comes to. I’ll
not set a pack of impident fellows jeering and sneering. A carriage is
all very well for mother, who is a woman and has married a rich man.
Moreover, she deserves the best, and she shall have it, as sure as my
name’s Tam Drysdale, as nice a turn-out as is to be seen in Glasgow.
Neither the Provost nor Sir James can beat it. For the young folk,
they’ve been born with silver spunes in their mouths, if that dour
deevil, young Tam, would only sup oot of his spune and be thankful. But
I was born to nothing better than a horn cutty [spoon], and a dugcart
will serve my turn, as it has served mony a better man and mony a real
gentleman born and bred.’
Tam had a great deal of appreciation, almost tender in its kind, of real
gentlemen and ladies. He never ‘evened’ himself to be one of them; he
never ‘evened’ ‘mother,’ much as he thought of her, and proud as he was
of her achievements in social life. Certainly he was inclined to put an
inordinate value on his success; he hugged himself on all that money
could procure and bestow. He boasted that no duke, no prince, need come
before him in the excellence and costliness of his surroundings. Money
would buy the best, and the best Tam Drysdale, who had risen and
thriven, would have in house and stud and cellar.
More than that--and Tam justly laid emphasis on the consideration--money
would enable a man to benefit his fellow-creatures, to give them work,
to insist that they should not live like brutes, to take measures for
their higher civilization. But, in estimating the power of money, he
drew the line with regard to what it could do beneath inherited gentle
breeding. He never failed in the respect which belonged by right in his
judgment to ancient gentility, however reduced in circumstances. He
testified instinctively and unhesitatingly his honour for that to which
neither he nor ‘mother’ could ever attain.
Nay, Tam had his doubts whether his very children could pretend to be a
real gentleman and real ladies till another generation or two had lived
and died. They might not do it--not young Tam, who was clever and
college bred, and, if he did not awe, troubled his father considerably;
not Claribel, who was as independent, had as fine a time of it, and was
as innocent of considering anything beyond her own will and pleasure, as
the American girls to whom she bore some resemblance; not even little
Eppie, who was as kind and guileless as her mother, and was both her
father and mother’s darling. Young Tam and the rest of them were on the
way to what was beyond auld Tam’s aspirations; but they had not yet,
with all the advantages their father had been proud to buy for them,
reached the desirable goal.
Gentlemen and ladies, pure and simple, were removed several degrees from
common clay in Tam Drysdale’s eyes. This implied no sycophancy or
slavishness on the man’s part. He could assert his claims, if anything,
a trifle too loudly. It belonged rather to a broad sense of justice
which would be fair to every man, and own in another what he himself
could not win--just as he expected that other to admit Tam Drysdale’s
superior achievements in his own line. It might have something to do
with Tam’s nationality; with the feudal element, the loyalty to heads of
houses and clans which long survived in some form in Scotch society;
with the slight but indestructible strain of poetry which often
underlies the prosaic matter-of-factness of Lowland Scotch natures.
Anyhow, there was found in the man this relieving trait of generous
admiration and regard for what was not tangible property, and for what,
unlike tangible property, could not be taken by assault on the part of
the _nouveau riche_, the conqueror of modern times. The sentiment formed
part of a composite character, and unquestionably it softened, to a
wonderful extent, the vulgarity of the contrasting traits of
self-sufficiency and ostentation.
Tam Drysdale’s face was so clean shaven that it not only rejected beard
and moustache, it barely admitted of the most modestly cropped and
abridged rather stubbly brown whisker to match the brown hair, hardly
dashed with grey. It was a decidedly handsome face, of a massive type,
with a square jaw, a square forehead, a good straight nose, and a good
full mouth, which no self-indulgence had spoilt; while neither had a
humid climate nor the apples and pears of the Clydeside orchards done
anything to impair the whiteness and regularity of the strong even
teeth, one of the many signs of health about the man. The colouring of
the face was fresh, with its native ruddiness just toned down by
office-work; but the hands, which had once been stained all the colours
of the rainbow in the dye-vats, were now only too white and soft--not
brown and hacked like young Tam’s, or even like those of young Eppie,
who had a weakness for playing at boy’s games.
Taken all in all, the aspect of the calico-printer was wholesome and
attractive, and it had much of the quiet power and burgher dignity which
are to be found in many Dutch and Flemish portraits.