Chapter XVII

THE COMMON TEMPTATION, WITH ITS USUAL ACCOMPANIMENT.

A period of remarkably flourishing trade followed in Glasgow. The recent prosperous years had all been leading up to this flush of enterprise and attainment. The expansion, if it did not pervade every source, reached to many departments of trade. Never had the hammers of the boiler-makers and the shipbuilders rung with more inspiring din, sending sonorous music down the misty river. Never had such strings of casks rumbled heavily in and out of the sugar warehouses and the spirit vaults. Never had St. Rollax and its sister chimneys vomited forth heavier volumes of tainted smoke. Never had the Exchange been so thronged and so busy, or Buchanan Street so crowded with promenaders and purchasers, or the Broomielaw so besieged with the shipping of all nations.

Mechanics and mill-hands had the maximum of wages. The homes of employés abounded not only in comforts, but in expensive, inappropriate luxuries--in port wine, oysters, and early strawberries; in rosewood couches, pianos, and feather-beds. The women of the class figured, on high days and holidays, in silk and lace. The custom of the smaller shops became steady and richly remunerative; that of the larger swelled enormously, till it reached so grand a scale of fortune-making that it ceased to be worth while asking the hitherto crucial question whether the process were wholesale or retail.

There seemed a limitless buoyance in the markets, an inexhaustible capacity for buying and selling beyond what had ever been dreamt of. Only invention, of which necessity is the parent, languished, and Dr. Peter, out at Barley Riggs, shook his head.

‘It is a fever-fit,’ he said to Athole, ‘when the patient looks full in the face and rosy, with an eye like a star, and a pulse beating like the throbs of a steam-engine, and when the man has the strength of ten men. But even before the collapse, which will not tarry, can come, a train of evils, like Michael Scott’s wee devils, will start into being, come to the front, and plague the man for work to do to employ their spare energies, till he is worn out with the very power that is about to quit him in a moment, and leave him next to dead on his bed.’

But what although there were fewer Glasgow patents taken out this year than for a dozen or more years before? What although words of warning were spoken in the country by an elderly poorish man who had gone far and come back with his hands not above a quarter full, so that he had to take the not very distinguished post of doctor at the Drysdale Haugh Works, and be thankful for it? This was a man who, as many would have said, had ‘made a mull’ of his own life; it signified little, and might be taken as a matter of course, that he should deliver a jeremiad on the uncertainty of fortune. All the big men, the great traders and financiers, were taking the tide at its height, and seizing the opportunity to extend their already vast operations, to double and quadruple their huge receipts. It seemed as if the rebound would never reach them. This condition of splendid success must be fortified and confirmed, until it lasted to the extreme border of the century.

Men were so eager to avail themselves of the chances opening out before them, that wherever they had irons at all, they put every one into the fire. Speculators caught at the materials out of which millions might be made, and launched them on the rising waters, with a faith that scarcely knew a doubt. A large amount of capital was lifted out of the old channels, which, by comparison, paid miserably, and laid out in the new cent. per cent. ventures of a brilliant era in commerce. Credit followed capital, and he was counted happiest who could command most, who had a bank of which he was one of the principal directors at his back, into whose cash-box--speaking figuratively--he could dip his hand at will; or who belonged to an old-established firm in high repute for sagacity and wealth; or a new firm whose good fortune kept step with its daring, so that it dazzled the eyes of its contemporaries, forgetting to apply the word ‘plunging’ to its great triumphant undertakings.

The abounding life of manufacturing and mercantile Glasgow was not confined to itself by any means. It spread in wider and wider circles, till it might be said to girdle the world. The zone of trade extended from France to Russia, from the East to the West Indies, from America in the far north to America in the far south, from the territory of an enlightened Khedive in ancient Egypt, to the domains of a fore-seeing Queen in the special Pacific Island which had renounced cannibalism. In all these quarters men felt that great Glasgow was up and doing, that her craftsmen were wielding their brawny arms, and her merchants busying their shrewd brains with glorious results to the prosperity of lands beyond the seas.

Even the people who were least touched by the strong impetus, awoke to a distant rumour of the city’s tremendous transactions and mighty profits, and invented fables more incredible still of the men who were puddlers, or winders, or dock-labourers to-day and princes to-morrow; of granite palaces which were equivalent to streets paved with gold. The risings in life at the Australian and American diggings were a trifle to the upheavals in Glasgow society--nothing was said at this moment of the corresponding downfalls. The gold nuggets of Ballarat and San Francisco were not to be spoken of in a breath with the floating capital of Glasgow--the real nuggets were bills of lading and invoices. Tyre and Ormus, in their traditions, must thenceforth hide their diminished heads; Manchester bolstered up by Salford, and Liverpool backed by Birkenhead, had better withdraw from the idle competition.

Tam Drysdale was not out of the vortex, though for a time he trod it cautiously, more so than young Tam. When the latter encountered the full sweep of the current, he lost his head a little, as he found the order-books no longer fit to contain the orders and commissions for calico of every tint and pattern pouring in from the ends of the earth. Indeed, the longest hours were not long enough. All the workmen that could be pressed into the service, though they were to work day and night, would not have availed to bring the supply on a level with the demand. It was the first time that the young man had come into personal contact with the intoxication of trade, which was wont to address itself chiefly to the middle-aged, and to make up to them for the passing away of earlier stimulants in the visionary dreams of youth and the strong passions of manhood.

But, as time rolls on, the hurry of trade, in England and America particularly, engrosses younger and younger men, and becomes often their keenest pursuit. This is especially the case with the gilded youth of both countries. It had not been so hitherto with young Tam Drysdale; but it had been predicted of him, and who was he that he should resist the stream which was carrying all before it? What was characteristic about his plunge was that it took colouring from his previous associations. Young Tam, if left to himself, would have gone in a little wildly for ventures in his business, as the means of a millennium in trade, by an immediate raising of the masses, and rendering them decent and happy for ever afterwards, with civilization and Christianity borne in the conqueror’s car from pole to pole.

Auld Tam knew better than that, but his blood was up at last, and then it became plain what a giant in his sphere the man was. How he could contrive, organize, and execute on the most colossal lines, till beside his achievements the greatest deeds of his neighbours grew dwarfed. His office and works, his branch of trade, Glasgow itself, felt proud of him, and the sweet incense of general homage to auld Tam, who in his boyhood had been the poorest artisan of them all, rose to his brain also. The self-approbation and vanity which had never been deficient in his composition waxed rampant and soared to sublime heights.

Tam’s confidential talk became vapouring. He spoke as if every dyeing and calico-printing business in the world must yield to his and merge into it; as if all other trades would grow subordinate to the staining of cotton cloth in different colours and the stamping it in various designs; as if the wonders which chemical affinities and repulsions could produce had never been sounded to their depths, but he--Tam Drysdale--or if not he, his son, young Tam, was the man to sound them, and to discover the dye of dyes--before which Tyrian purple, Venetian green, Derby blue, magenta red, and coal-tar mauve, would sink into dimness and eclipse. He would witch the world with noble dyes. The kingdom of beauty should own his magnificent contributions. His grandsons would inherit the land when dyeing and printing had their proper place among the arts and sciences, and auld Tam’s descendants were the princes of dyers and printers. It was hearing his father, wise on all else, discourse thus madly that cured young Tam of his own dawning delusions.

In truth, the strain of that period of over-trade was awful, and it spoke much for the strength and balance of those West-country minds, that they were only shaken--not crushed and overthrown for ever--by the fierce tension. As the race quickened to lightning-speed, a tendency to push production to impossibilities in fair trade, to substitute spurious for genuine articles, to flood the markets with inferior goods, and pander to the craving for cheapness by apparent underselling, became more and more conspicuous. Auld Tam did not fall into this snare; he was at once too clear-sighted and too honest. But the necessity of fighting with his own weapons against such rivals, and the determination to come off the victor, drew him farther and farther into lawful but perilous speculation.

Commensurate with the strain was the exhaustion of such times. Men must have relaxation, and they must have artificial support, else flesh and blood would not endure the ordeal to which they were subjected. Different classes of men and different men themselves took their sops in various ways. The New-Year time, according to old style, was kept with such bestial excess, riot, and waste, by many of the people, as dismayed their best friends. Who was to know that the finer spirits, coming between the scum and the dregs, took their pleasure temperately, soberly? The select few among the working-men were laying by for an independent, peaceful old age, were rising in the social scale, carefully cultivating tastes for higher, more exquisite pleasures, making time for attendance at schools and lectures, buying books and reading them, haunting museums and picture-galleries. With the first breath of spring these men would snatch sails ‘down the water,’ and runs into the country; would nourish grand projects of holiday excursions to Ireland, to London--that capital of the world; to Manchester, or Birmingham--Glasgow’s sister town: to France, or Belgium--wide flights after the old yearly trips to Arran and Largs, with which the able-bodied holiday-makers had been formerly satisfied.

It would seem as if the mode of living all over Glasgow altered at this time, and the rate of family expenditure increased in proportion. Men who were in their shops and offices late and early, who were pursued by letters and caught by telegrams, whatever the season--on the wedding-morning of this lad, and when that father’s first-born lay cold in death--who were, in fact, hunted like runaway slaves to the last gasp, had need of all the indulgences and all the support which money, dearly earned, could procure for them. If their weakness should dream of haunches of venison, pipes of red Burgundy, whitebait soaked in white wine, let the spent toilers have their desires, though they had been contented at no distant day with legs of mutton, cod’s head and shoulders, poorish claret or sherry, and the native vintage of the country. When the over-burdened men returned home in the small hours, and sought to sup on devilled turkey, pine-apple, and the last best brand of champagne, don’t deny the wearied wights what they sought, though the least surfeit might increase the danger of apoplexy; it was to be hoped that lemon-squash and a pick-me-up would restore the balance next morning.

If wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, never saw their mankind from the drab-coloured dawn to the mirk midnight, except on Sundays; if even then the men were engrossed and oppressed, slept like logs in and out of the churches--to which Glasgow never neglects to go--and when awakened were flighty and cross beyond the conception of the liveliest imagination, surely the women, in their turn, deserved compensation for their enforced loneliness and dulness, in the loss of rational intercourse with the heads of their houses, Give matron and maiden their share of the spoil, which was costing everybody dear, in cookery and confectionery, to suit feminine tastes, in bigger houses, finer furniture, more servants, in sables and seal-skins, Duchesse and Valenciennes lace, in jewel-cases, opera-boxes, and carriages--where carriages had never been hinted at before. The two turning-points fondly contemplated in many a Glasgow career--‘to be riding in a carriage, and to be keeping a butler’--were attained by a multitude this year. By the way, this riding in a carriage seems peculiarly the goal of West-country ambition; nowhere else do men and women, who have stood behind a counter, toiled in shirt-sleeves, washed at a washing-tub, take instantly and inevitably to private carriages, like ducks to water, as the inhabitants of St. Mungo’s city take to them. And after the carriages, but at a considerable distance, come the large yachts.

When all was done, it was no great entertainment to be luxurious and splendid _en famille_. More and more visiting had to be resorted to, in order to put the top-stone to the fairy edifice, to divert the thoughts, to rouse the imagination, to excite the languid senses. When there was a moment to spare, it was filled up by some dinner or evening engagement. There was the theatre, if there was nothing else. The Glasgow clubs were becoming more and more like the London clubs; the whist-play was excellent, and if whist formed too strong meat, there were Napoleon and _vingt-et-un_. But the theatre was still the _pièce de résistance_. Glasgow could afford to pay the lessee to bring down the greatest stars to strut and sing and charm away its idle moments, when idleness there was none, unless among the women. There was not even the most necessary repose. The hurry of life was becoming hotter, more entangling and bewildering. The pace grew terrific. ‘I wish I could get a breathing-space to scart my broo [scratch my brow], no to speak of saying a prayer!’ exclaimed an unhappy man on the verge of desperation.

There were other men and women who had long ago ridden in their carriages and kept their butlers: these thrice fortunate individuals bought more of the estates which the old country gentry saw themselves compelled to bring to the hammer; rented the best deer-forests; extended and enlarged ranges of conservatories and picture-galleries; had visions of entering Parliament, or going on the turf--if only the men had leisure. Fathers promised their elder sons and daughters trips up the Nile and voyages round the world, and sent their younger children to the most strictly select and outrageously expensive schools that could be heard of for love or money.

Still, as the ball went round merrily, while handsomer incomes were taken for granted, and larger sums spent simply as a matter of course, there appeared the more absolute necessity for unrelaxing exertions to maintain the great trade which was to feed all these drains. The daughters of the horse-leech were crying, ‘Give, give!’ and refusing to add ‘Enough.’

The readers of Tennyson’s ‘Palace of Art’ know that there is only one end to self-indulgence, of however high a kind. The appetite fails, the food palls, the mind turns and preys upon itself, or it demands coarser and more powerful fare, and fierier stimulants. Men and women in all grades, who had been modest, contented, domestic, temperate, before the period of inordinate activity and prosperity, received from it the fatal bias which left them, after long years perhaps, arrogant, dissatisfied, unable to remain quietly at home, gluttons, drunkards in secret or openly.

At the same time, it would be false to say that the season of success was put to no great end. Grand improvements were inaugurated and brought to pass, worthy the public spirit of the mediæval Italian cities. Magnificent acts of charity, which the middle ages hardly knew, were performed without a grudge, almost without an effort. The citizens of St. Mungo’s city seldom button up their pockets. Her big, burly merchants are very humane, whatever their faults. Many of them are as liberal-hearted and open-handed as any men in Christendom, dispensing their bounty without hesitation or fuss. There is a gruff ‘Say no more about it’ tone in their generosity, which has a curious delicacy in its very abruptness. The fellow-feeling among the inhabitants is strong. In order to buy fresh machinery for a burnt-out or sold-out manufacturer, or to furnish the means of independence to the helpless, destitute children of a former townsman, five thousand--ten thousand--pounds have been subscribed for within an hour on the Exchange, with no stipulation made, except that the names of the donors should be withheld, in order that the recipients of the gift might remain in ignorance of their benefactors.

The almsgiving at this date was lavish, like everything else; and Tam Drysdale had his hand in it, as well as in sending to London for lists of dinner-services in silver-gilt, and for having out a famous authority to Drysdale Hall to see whether the corridor could not be supplied with panels painted in fresco by all the first artists in Europe. In the face of such prodigality auld Tam still raised a storm in the house when he found a crust of bread had been thrown to the pigs, and threatened to discharge a groom because he had paid a few pence beyond the ordinary charge for the feed of a horse in a country-inn stable. And all the time there was a pauper lunatic out at Gartnavel who clawed at the door of his cell, and chattered of Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh.