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After a few days it occurred to me to go to the office of Mr. J.M.M. Baxter-the solicitor who had sold Holmescroft to M'Leod. I explained I had some notion of buying the place. Would he act for me in the matter? Mr. Baxter, a large, greyish, throaty-voiced man, showed no enthusiasm. “I sold it to Mr. M'Leod,” he said. “It 'ud scarcely do for me to start on the running-down tack now. But I can recommend-”

This is from "The House Surgeon" by Rudyard Kipling.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2381/2381-h/2381-h.htm#link2H_4_0016
I don't understand the meaning of "It 'ud scarcely do for me to start on the running-down tack now."

I am glad if someone would kindly teach me.

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    "It 'ud scarcely do" means "It would not be proper." No idea about "running-down tack."
    – randomhead
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 5:00
  • Maybe "running down" can mean that as a buyer's agent, he would have to argue that the property wasn't worth as much, that is he'd have to run it down. "Tack" might be from sailing, where one alternates directions to sail against the wind. So, he'd have to switch from building up the property's value to sell it to M'Leod, then switch to running down the value to buy it. That might occasion some embarrassment for the agent.
    – Jack O'Flaherty
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 5:29
  • "It'ud" is how this character pronounces "It'd", the contraction of "It would".
    – gotube ♦
    Commented Oct 6, 2021 at 8:18

3 Answers 3

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In the final analysis it's a matter of opinion (the actual text is in principle "ambiguous"), but I'm pretty sure "running-down tack" here is a quirky / colloquial "nonce-noun" formation deriving from...

to run down = to criticize / find fault with
(combined with tack = direction / approach / course of action).

The speaker doesn't want to be openly critical about Mr M'Leod (to whom he sold the house), but it seems pretty obvious he doesn't think very highly of him. So the speaker is initially "diffident" about taking on the job of trying to buy the house back, but within a couple of paragraphs it's obvious he's agreed to do this.

Here's another instance of the exact text under consideration, where my interpretation obvious applies...

He's such an ugly man," said Miss Agnes, going on the running-down tack also

Here are several more written instances of the running-down tack from Google Books, so obviously the collocation isn't quite the "one-off nonce term" I originally thought when I started writing this answer. I'm now quite certain those Google Books matches will all have essentially the same meaning - but the "Miss Agnes" one above is probably the best for making that meaning contextually obvious.

As pointed out by @randomhead in a comment, It 'ud scarcely do means It would not be proper.

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It means that he doesn't feel it would now be worth his time to try to find the person.

In this case, "tack" means a course of action,

"running-down", means to track or find something

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  • Initially a plausible interpretation, but not once I looked more closely into things. It's running down = slagging off / criticizing
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 13:34
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This looks like a metaphor from sailing. In sailing, you can "tack" to sail into the wind. Or you can "run" to go with the wind.

And so "start on the running down tack" suggests "going back and undoing the work one has already done".

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