Spirit of Chambers's Journal

by William Chambers; Robert Chambers

THE DOWNDRAUGHT.

Side by side with victims, might be placed the kindred species 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.