Chapter III: 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.