MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN

MEMOIR

OF

FLEEMING JENKIN

BY

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1902

, D

'f

903/c

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

On the death of Fleeming Jenkin, his family
and friends determined to publish a selection of
his various papers; by way of introduction, the
following pages were drawn up ; and the whole,
forming two considerable volumes, has been is-
sued in England. In the States, it has not been
thought advisable to reproduce the whole; and
the memoir appearing alone, shorn of that other
matter which was at once its occasion and its
justification, so large an account of a man so
little known may seem to a stranger out of all
proportion. But Jenkin was a man much more
remarkable than the mere bulk or merit of his
work approves him. It was in the world, in the
commerce of friendship, by his brave attitude
towards life, by his high moral value and un-
wearied intellectual effort, that he struck the

(V)

vi Preface to the American Edition,

minds of his contemporaries. His was an in-
dividual figure, such as authors delight to draw,
and all men to read of, in the pages of a novel.
His was a face worth painting for its own sake.
If the sitter shall not seem to have justified the
portrait, if Jenkin, after his death, shall not
continue to make new friends, the fault will be

altogether mine.

R.L.S.
Sahanac, Oct^ 1887.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

PAOB

The Jenkins of Stowting — Fleeming's grandfather— Mrs. Buck-
ner's fortune — Fleeming's father; goes to sea; at St.
Helena ; meets Kmg Tom ; service in the West Indies ;
end of his career— The Campbell-Jacksons — Fleeming's
mother — Fleeming's Uncle John f

CHAPTER II.

1833—1851.

Birth and Childhood — Edinburgh — Frankfort-on-the-Main —
Paris — The Revolution of 1848 — The Insurrection — Flight
to Italy— Sympathy with Italy— The Insurrection in Genoa
—A Student in Genoa— The Lad and his Mother . . 34

CHAPTER III.

1851— 1858.

Return to England— Fleeming at Fairbaim*s— Experience in
a Strike— Dr. Bell and Greek Architecture— The Gaskells
— Fleeming at Greenwich — The Austins— Fleeming and
the Austins — His Engagement— Fleeming and Sir W.
Thomson 71

CHAPTER IV.
1859— 1868.

Fleeming's Marriage — His Married Life— Professional Diffi-
culties— Life at Claygate — Illness of Mrs. F. Jenkin ; and
of Fleeming — Appointment to the Chair at Edinburgh xoi

(vii)

viii Contents,

CHAPTER V.

rAOB

Notes of Telegraph Voyages, 1858 to 1873 .... 123

CHAPTER VI.

1869— 1885.

Edinburgh — Colleag:ues — Farrago Vitce — I. The Family Cir-
cle— Fleeming and his Sons — Highland Life — The Cruise
of the Steam Launch — Summer in Styria — Rustic Manners
— n. The Drama — Private Theatricals — IIL Sanitary As-
sociations— The Phonograph — IV. Fleeming's Acquaint-
ance with a Student — His late Maturity of Mind— Religion
and Morahty — His Love of Heroism — Taste in Literature
—V. His Talk — His late Popularity— Letter from M.
Trelat 198

CHAPTER Vn.

1875—1885.

Mrs. Jenkin's Illness— Captain Jenkin— The Golden Wedding
— Death of Uncle John — Death of Mr. and Mrs. Austin —
Illness and Death of the Captain — Death of Mrs. Jenkin —
Effect on Fleeming— Telpherage — The End . . , 357

Appekdix • • 077

MEMOIR

OF

Fleeming Jenkin

CHAPTER I.

The Jenkins of Stowting — Fleeming's grandfather — Mrs. Bucknert
fortune — Fleeming's father ; goes to sea ; at St. Helena ; meets
King Tom ; service in the West Indies ; end of his career — The
Campbell-Jacksons — Fleeming's mother — Fleeming's uncle John.

TN the reign of Henry VIII., a family of the
•*• name of Jenkin, claiming to come from York,
and bearing the arms of Jenkin ap Philip of St.
Melans, are found reputably settled in the county
of Kent. Persons of strong genealogical pinion
pass from William Jenkin, Mayor of Folke-
stone in 1555, to his contemporary 'John
Jenkin, of the Citie of York, Receiver General
of the County,' and thence, by way of Jenkin ap
Philip, to the proper summit of any Cambrian
pedigree — a prince ; * Guaith Voeth, Lord of
Cardigan,* the name and style of him. It may

2 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

suffice, however, for the present, that these
Kentish Jenkins must have undoubtedly derived
from Wales, and being a stock of some efficiency,
they struck root and grew to wealth and conse-
quence in their new home.

Of their consequence we have proof enough
in the fact that not only was William Jenkin (as
already mentioned) Mayor of Folkestone in
1555, but no less than twenty-three times in the
succeeding century and a half, a Jenkin (Will-
iam, Thomas, Henry, or Robert) sat in thesami.
place of humble honour. Of their wealth w^
know that in the reign of Charles I., Thornasi
Jenkin of Eythorne was more than once in the
market buying land, and notably, in 1633, ac-
quired the manor of Stowting Court. This was
an estate of some 320 acres, six miles from
Hythe, in the Bailiwick and Hundred of Stow-
ting, and the Lathe of Shipway, held of the
Crown in capite by the service of six men and
a constable to defend the passage of the sea at
Sandgate. It had a chequered history before it
fell into the hands of Thomas of Eythorne, hav-
ing been sold and given from one to another —
to the Archbishop, to Herkigods, to the Burgh-

Genealogy a Human Science. 3

ershes, to Pavelys, Trivets, Cliffords, Wenlocks,
Beauchamps, Nevilles, Kempes, and Clarkes : a
piece of Kentish ground condemned to see new
faces and to be no man's home. But from 1633
onward it becstme the anchor of the Jenkin
family in Kent; and though passed on from
brother to brother, held in shares between uncle
and nephew, burthened by debts and jointures,
and at least once sold and bought in again, it
remains to this day in the hands of the direct
line. It is not my design, nor have I the neces-
sary knowledge, to give a history of this ob-
scure family. But this is an age when genealogy
has taken a new lease of life, and become for the
first time a human science ; so that we no longer
study it in quest of the Guaith Voeths, but to
trace out some of the secrets of descent and des-
tiny ; and as we study, we think less of Sir Ber-
nard Burke and more of Mr. Galton. Not only
do our character and talents lie upon the anvil
and receive their temper during generations ;
but the very plot of our life's story unfolds itself
on a scale of centuries, and the biography of the
man is only an episode in the epic of the family.
From this point of view I ask the reader's leave

4 Memoir of Fleeming yenktn,

to begin this notice of a remarkable man who
was my friend, with the accession of his great-
grandfather, John Jenkin.

This John Jenkin, a grandson of Damaris
Kingsley, of the family of * Westward Ho ! ' was
born in 1727, and married Elizabeth, daugh-
ter of Thomas Frewen, of Church House, Nor-
thiam. The Jenkins had now been long enough
intermarrying with their Kentish neighbours to
be Kentish folk themselves in all but name ; and
with the Frewens in particular their connec-
tion is singularly involved. John and his wife
were each descended in the third degree from
another Thomas Frewen, Vicar of Northiam,
and brother to Accepted Frewen, Archbishop of
York. John's mother had married a Frewen for
a second husband. And the last complication
was to be added by the Bishop of Chichester's
brother, Charles Buckner, Vice-Admiral of the
White, who was twice married, first to a paternal
cousin of Squire John, and second to Anne, only
sister of the Squire's wife, and already the widow
of another Frewen. The reader must bear Mrs.
Buckner in mind ; it was by means of that lady
that Fleeming Jenkin began life as a poor man.

Stepheit yenkzjt, the Vicar. 5

Meanwhile, the relationship of any Frewen to
any Jenkin at the end of these evolutions pre-
sents a problem almost insoluble ; and we need
not wonder if Mrs. John, thus exercised in her
immediate circle, was in her old age * a great
genealogist of all Sussex families, and much con-
sulted.* The names Frewen and Jenkin may
almost seem to have been interchangeable at
will ; and yet Fate proceeds with such particu-
larity that it was perhaps on the point of name
that the family was ruined.

The John Jenkins had a family of one daughter
and five extravagant and unpractical sons. The
eldest, Stephen, entered the Church and held
the living of Salehurst, where he offered, we may
hope, an extreme example of the clergy of the
age. He was a handsome figure of a man ; jo-
vial and jocular ; fond of his garden, which pro-
duced under his care the finest fruits of the
neighbourhood; and like all the family, very
choice in horses. He drove tandem ; like Jehu,
furiously. His saddle horse, Captain (for the
names of horses are piously preserved in the
family chronicle which I follow), was trained to
break into a gallop as soon as the vicar's foot

6 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

was thrown across its back ; nor would the rein
be drawn in the nine miles between Northiam
and the Vicarage door. Debt was the man's
proper element ; he used to skulk from arrest
in the chancel of his church ; and the speed of
Captain may have come sometimes handy. At
an early age this unconventional parson married
his cook, and by her he had two daughters and
one son. One of the daughters died unmarried ;
the other imitated her father, and married * im-
prudently.* The son, still more gallantly con-
tinuing the tradition, entered the army, loaded
himself with debt, was forced to sell out, took
refuge in the Marines, and was lost on the Dog-
ger Bank in the war-ship Minotaur. If he did
not marry below him, like his father, his sister,
and a certain great-uncle William, it was per-
haps because he never married at all.

The second brother, Thomas, who was em-
ployed in the General Post-Office, followed in
all material points the example of Stephen,
married ' not very creditably,* and spent all the
money he could lay his hands on. He died
without issue; as did the fourth brother, John,
who was of weak intellect and feeble health, and

Fleemmgs Grandfather, 7

the fifth brother, William, whose brief career as
one of Mrs. Buckner's satellites will fall to be
considered later on. So soon, then, as the Mino-
taur had struck upon the Dogger Bank, Stow-
ting and the line of the Jenkin family fell on the
shoulders of the third brother, Charles.

Facility and self-indulgence are the family
marks; facility (to judge by these imprudent
marriages) being at once their quality and their
defect ; but in the case of Charles, a man of
exceptional beauty and sweetness both of face
and disposition, the family fault had quite grown
to be a virtue, and we find him in consequence
the drudge and milk-cow of his relatives. Born
in 1766, Charles served at sea in his youth, and
smelt both salt water and powder. The Jenkins
had inclined hitherto, as far as I can make out,
to the land service. Stephen's son had been a
soldier ; William (fourth of Stowting) had been
an officer of the unhappy Braddock's in America,
where, by the way, he owned and afterwards sold
an estate on the James River, called after the
parental seat; of which I should like well to
hear if it still bears the name. It was probably
by the influence of Captain Buckner, already con-

8 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

nected with the family by his first marriage, that
Charles Jenkin turned his mind in the direction
of the navy ; and it was in Buckner's own ship,
the ProtJi^e, 64, that the lad made his only cam-
paign. It was in the days of Rodney's war,
when the Proth^e^ we read, captured two large
privateers to windward of Barbadoes, and was
* materially and distinguishedly engaged ' in
both the actions with De Grasse. While at sea
Charles kept a journal, and made strange archaic
pilot-book sketches, part plan, part elevation,
some of which survive for the amusement of
posterity. He did a good deal of surveying, so
that here we may perhaps lay our finger on the
beginning of Fleeming's education as an engin-
eer. What is still more strange, among the
relics of the handsome midshipman and his stay
in the gun-room of the Proih^e^ I find a code of
signals graphically represented, for all the world
as it would have been done by his grandson.

On the declaration of peace, Charles, because
he had suffered from scurvy, received his mother's
orders to retire ; and he was not the man to re-
fuse a request, far less to disobey a command
Thereupon he turned farmer, a trade he was to

The Sailor -Farmer at Stow ting. g

practice on a large scale; and we find him mar-
ried to a Miss Schirr, a woman of some fortune,
the daughter of a London merchant. Stephen,
the not very reverend, was still alive, galloping
about the country or skulking in his chancel.
It does not appear whether he let or sold the
paternal manor to Charles ; one or other, it
must have been ; and the sailor-farmer settled
at Stowting, with his wife, his mother, his un-
married sister, and his sick brother John. Out
of the six people of whom his nearest family
consisted, three were in his own house, and two
others (the horse-leeches, Stephen and Thomas)
he appears to have continued to assist with more
amiability than wisdom. He hunted, belonged
to the Yeomanry, owned famous horses, Mag-
gie and Lucy, the latter coveted by royalty
itself. * Lord Rokeby, his neighbour, called
him kinsman,' writes my artless chronicler,
* and altogether life was very cheery.' At
Stowting his three sons, John, Charles, and
Thomas Frewen, and his younger, daughter,
Anna, were all born to him ; and the reader
should here be told that it is through the re-
port of this second Charles (born 1801) that he

lo Memoir of Fleeming yenkin,

has been looking on at these confused passages
of family history.

In the year 1805 the ruin of the Jenkins was
begun. It was the work of a fallacious lady al-
ready mentioned, Aunt Anne Frewen, a sister
of Mrs. John. Twice married, first to her cousin
Charles Frewen, clerk to the Court of Chancery,
Brunswick Herald, and Usher of the Black Rod,
and secondly to Admiral Buckner, she was de-
nied issue in both beds, and being very rich —
she died worth about 60,000/., mostly in land —
she was in perpetual quest of an heir. The
mirage of this fortune hung before successive
members of the Jenkin family until her death
in 1825, when it dissolved and left the latest
Alnaschar face to face with bankruptcy. The
grandniece, Stephen's daughter, the one who
had not * married imprudently,* appears to have
been the first ; for she was taken abroad by the
golden aunt, and died in her care at Ghent in
1792. Next she adopted William, the youngest
of the five nephews ; took him abroad with her
— it seems as if that were in the formula ; was
shut up with him in Paris by the Revolution ;
brought him back to Windsor, and got him a

Mrs. Buckners Fortune, ii

place in the King's Body-Guard, where he at-
tracted the notice of George III. by his pro-
ficiency in German, In 1797, being on guard at
St. James's Palace, William took a cold which
carried him off ; and Aunt Anne was once more
left heirless. Lastly, in 1805, perhaps moved by
the Admiral, who had a kindness for his old
midshipman, perhaps pleased by the good looks
and the good nature of the man himself, Mrs.
Buckner turned her eyes upon Charles Jenkin.
He was not only to be the heir, however, he was
to be the chief hand in a somewhat wild scheme
of family farming. Mrs. Jenkin, the mother,
contributed 164 acres of land; Mrs. Buckner,
570, some at Northiam, some farther ofT ; Charles
let one-half of Stowting to a tenant, and threw
the other and various scattered parcels into
the common enterprise ; so that the whole
farm amounted to near upon a thousand acres,
and was scattered over thirty miles of country.
The ex-seaman of thirty-nine, on whose wisdom
and ubiquity the scheme depended, was to live
in the meanwhile without care or fear. He was
to check himself in nothing ; his two extrava-
gances, valuable horses and worthless brothers

12 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

were to be indulged in comfort ; and whether
the year quite paid itself or not, whether suc-
cessive years left accumulated savings or only a
growing deficit, the fortune of the golden aunt
should in the end repair all.

On this understanding Charles Jenkin trans-
ported his family to Church House, Northiam :
Charles the second, then a child of three, among
the number. Through the eyes of the boy we
have glimpses of the life that followed : of Ad-
miral and Mrs. Buckner driving up from Wind-
sor in a coach and six, two post-horses and their
own four ; of the house full of visitors, the great
roasts at the fire, the tables in the servants' hall
laid for thirty or forty for a month together ; of
the daily press of neighbours, many of whom,
Frewens, Lords, Bishops, Batchellors, and
Dynes, were also kinsfolk ; and the parties * un-
der the great spreading chestnuts of the old fore
court,' where the young people danced and
made merry to the music of the village band.
Or perhaps, in the depth of winter, the father
would bid young Charles saddle his pony ; they
would ride the thirty miles from Northiam to
Stowting, with the snow to the pony's saddle

Fleeini7igs Father, 13

girths, and be received by the tenants like
princes.

This Hfe of delights, with the continual visible
comings and goings of the golden aunt, was well
qualified to relax the fibre of the lads. John,
the heir, a yeoman and a fox-hunter, * loud and
notorious with his whip and spurs,' settled down
into a kind of Tony Lumpkin, waiting for the
shoes of his father and his aunt. Thomas
Frewen, the youngest, is briefly dismissed as ' a
handsome beau '; but he had the merit or the
good fortune to become a doctor of medicine, so
that when the crash came he was not empty-hand-
ed for the war of life. Charles, at the day-school
of Northiam, grew so well acquainted with the
rod, that his floggings became matter of pleas-
antry and reached the ears of Admiral Buckner.
Hereupon that tall, rough-voiced, formidable
uncle entered with the lad into a covenant:
every time that Charles was thrashed he was to
pay the Admiral a penny ; every day that he
escaped, the process was to be reversed. * I
recollect,* writes Charles, * going crying to my
mother to be taken to the Admiral to pay my
debt.' It would seem by these terms the spec-

14 Memoir of Fleeniing yeitkin.

ulation was a losing one ; yet it is probable it
paid indirectly by bringing the boy under re-
mark. The Admiral was no enemy to dunces ;
he loved courage, and Charles, while yet little
more than a baby, would ride the great horse
into the pond. Presently it was decided that
here was the stuff of a fine sailor ; and at an
early period the name of Charles Jenkin was
entered on a ship's books.

From Northiam he was sent to another school
at Boonshill, near Rye, where the master took
* infinite delight * in strapping him. * It keeps
me warm and makes you grow,' he used to say.
And the stripes were not altogether wasted, for
the dunce, though still very * raw,' made prog-
ress with his studies. It was known, moreover,
that he was going to sea, always a ground of
pre-eminence with schoolboys ; and in his case
the glory was not altogether future, it wore
a present form when he came driving to
Rye behind four horses in the same carriage
with an Admiral. * I was not a little proud, you
may believe,* says he.

In 1 8 14, when he was thirteen years of age,
he was carried by his father to Chichester to the

^ Charles will restore the old Family,^ 15

Bishop's Palace. The Bishop had heard from
his brother the Admiral that Charles was likely
to do well, and had an order from Lord Melville
for the lad's admission to the Royal Naval Col-
lege at Portsmouth. Both the Bishop and the
Admiral patted him on the head and said,

* Charles will restore the old family '; by which
I gather with some surprise that, even in these
days of open house at Northiam and golden
hope of my aunt's fortune, the family was sup-
posed to stand in need of restoration. But the
past is apt to look brighter than nature, above
all to those enamoured of their genealogy ; and
the ravages of Stephen and Thomas must have
always given matter of alarm.

What with the flattery of bishops and admi-
rals, the fine company in which he found
himself at Portsmouth, his visits home, with
their gaiety and greatness of life, his visits
to Mrs. Buckner (soon a widow) at Windsor,
where he had a pony kept for him, and visit-
ed at Lord Melville's and Lord Harcourt's
and the Leveson-Gowers, he began to have

* bumptious notions,' and his head was * some-
what turned with fine people ; as to some ex-

1 6 Memoir of Fleeming J en kin,

tent it remained throughout his innocent and
honourable life.

In this frame of mind the boy was appointed
to the Conqueror^ Captain Davie, humorously
known as Gentle Johnnie. The captain had
earned this name by his style of discipline, which
would have figured well in the pages of Marryat :
* Put the prisoner's head in a bag and give him
another dozen ! ' survives as a specimen of his
commands ; and the men were often punished
twice or thrice in a week. On board the ship
of this disciplinarian, Charles and his father were
carried in a billy-boat from Sheerness in Decem-
ber, i8i6 : Charles with an outfit suitable to his
pretensions, a twenty-guinea sextant and 120
dollars in silver, which were ordered into the
care of the gunner. ' The old clerks and mates/
he writes, * used to laugh and jeer me for joining
the ship in a billy-boat, and when they found I
was from Kent, vowed I was an old Kentish
smuggler. This to my pride, you will believe,
was not a little offensive.'

The Conqueror carried the flag of Vice-Ad-
miral Plampin, commanding at the Cape and
St. Helena ; and at that all-important islet, in

Life on the Guard-ship, 17

July, 1 81 7, she relieved the flagship of Sir Pul-
teney Malcolm. Thus it befel that Charles Jen-
kin, coming too late for the epic of the French
wars, played a small part in the dreary and dis-
graceful afterpiece of St. Helena. Life on the
guard-ship was onerous and irksome. The anchor
was never lifted, sail never made, the great guns
were silent ; none was allowed on shore except
on duty ; all day the movements of the imperial
captive were signalled to and fro ; all night the
boats rowed guard around the accessible por-
tions of the coast. This prolonged stagnation
and petty watchfulness in what Napoleon him-
self called that * unchristian' climate, told cruel-
ly on the health of the ship's company. In
eighteen months, according to O'Meara, the
Conqueror had lost one hundred and ten men
and invalided home one hundred and seven,
* being more than a third of her complement.
It does not seem that our young midshipman so
much as once set eyes on Bonaparte ; and yet in
other ways Jenkin was more fortunate than
some of his comrades. He drew in water-colour ;
not so badly as his father, yet ill enough ; and
this art was so rare aboard the Conqueror that

1 8 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

even his humble proficiency marked him out and
procured him some alleviations. Admiral Plam-
pin had succeeded Napoleon at the Briars : and
here he had young Jenkin staying with him to
make sketches of the historic house. One of
these is before me as I write, and gives a strange
notion of the arts in our old English Navy. Yet
it was again as an artist that the lad was taken
for a run to Rio, and apparently for a second
outing in a ten-gun brig. These, and a cruise
of six weeks to windward of the island under-
taken by the Co7iqueror\\^rst\.{ in quest of health,
were the only breaks in three years of murderous
inaction ; and at the end of that period Jenkin
was invalided home, having * lost his health en-
tirely.'

As he left the deck of the guard-ship the his-
toric part of his career came to an end. For
forty-two years he continued to serve his coun-
try obscurely on the seas, sometimes thanked for
inconspicuous and honourable services, but de-
nied any opportunity of serious distinction. He
was first two years in the Larne^ Captain Tait.
hunting pirates and keeping a watch on the
Turkish and Greek squadrons in the Archipelago

Meets King Tom. 19

Captain Tait was a favourite with Sir Thomas
Maitland, High Commissioner of the Ionian Isl-
ands— King Tom as he was called — who fre-
quently took passage in the Lame, King Tom
knew every inch of the Mediterranean, and was
a terror to the officers of the watch. He would
come on deck at night ; and with his broad
Scotch accent, ' Well, sir,' he would say, * what
depth of water have ye ? Well now, sound ; and
ye'll just find so or so many fathoms,* as the case
might be ; and the obnoxious passenger was
generally right. On one occasion, as the ship
was going into Corfu, Sir Thomas came up the
hatchway and cast his eyes towards the gallows.
* Bangham ' — Charles Jenkin heard him say to
his aide-de-camp. Lord Bangham — * where the
devil is that other chap? I left four fellows
hanging there ; now I can only see three. Mind
there is another there to-morrow.* And sure
enough there was another Greek dangling the
next day. * Captain Hamilton, of the Cam-
brian, kept the Greeks in order afloat,' writes
my author, * and King Tom ashore.'

From 1823 onward, the chief scene of Charles
Jenkin's activities was in the West Indies, where

20 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

he was engaged off and on till 1844, now as a
subaltern, now in a vessel of his own, hunting
out pirates, * then very notorious ' in the Leeward
Islands, cruising after slavers, or carrying dollars
and provisions for the Government. While yet
a midshipman, he accompanied Mr. Cockburn
to Caraccas and had a sight of Bolivar. In the
brigantine Griffon^ which he commanded in his
last years in the West Indies, he carried aid to
Guadeloupe after the earthquake, and twice
earned the thanks of Government : once for an
expedition to Nicaragua to extort, under threat
of a blockade, proper apologies and a sum of
money due to certain British merchants ; and
once during an insurrection in San Domingo,
for the rescue of certain others from a perilous
imprisonment and the recovery of a * chest of
money ' of which they had been robbed. Once,
on the other hand, he earned his share of public
censure. This was in 1837, when he command-
ed the Rojnney lying in the inner harbour of
Havannah. The Rojnney was in no proper sense
a man-of-war ; she was a slave-hulk, the bonded
warehouse of the Mixed Slave Commission ;
where negroes, captured out of slavers under

The Mixed Slave Commission, 21

Spanish colours, were detained provisionally,
till the Commission should decide upon their
case and either set them free or bind them to
apprenticeship. To this ship, already an eye-
sore to the authorities, a Cuban slave made his
escape. The position was invidious ; on one
side were the tradition of the British flag and
the state of public sentiment at home ; on the
other, the certainty that if the slave were kept,
the Romncy would be ordered at once out of
the harbour, and the object of the Mixed Com-
mission compromised. Without consultation
with any other officer. Captain Jenkin (then
lieutenant) returned the man to shore and took
the Captain-General's receipt. Lord Palmer-
ston approved his course ; but the zealots of
the anti-slave trade movement (never to be
named without respect) were much dissatisfied ;
and thirty-nine years later, the matter was again
canvassed in Parliament, and Lord Palmerston
and Captain Jenkin defended by Admiral Er-
skine in a letter to the Times (March 13, 1876).
In 1845, while still lieutenant, Charles Jenkin
acted as Admiral Pigot's flag captain in the
Cove of Cork, where there were some thirtv

22 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

pennants ; and about the same time, closed his
career by an act of personal bravery. He had
proceeded with his boats to the help of a mer-
chant vessel, whose cargo of combustibles had
taken fire and was smouldering under hatches ;
his sailors were in the hold, where the fumes
were already heavy, and Jenkin was on deck
directing operations, when he found his orders
were no longer answered from below : he jumped
down without hesitation and slung up several
insensible men with his own hand. For this
act, he received a letter from the Lords of the
Admiralty expressing a sense of his gallantry ;
and pretty soon after was promoted Com-
mander, superseded, and could never again ob-
tain employment.

In 1828 or 1829, Charles Jenkin was in the
same watch with another midshipman, Robert
Colin Campbell Jackson, who introduced him
to his family in Jamaica. The father, the Hon-
ourable Robert Jackson, Custos Rotulorum of
Kingston, came of a Yorkshire family, said to
be originally Scotch ; and on the mother's side,
counted kinship with some of the Forbeses.
The mother was Susan Campbell, one of the

The Campbell-Jacksons. 23

Campbells of Auchenbreck. Her father Colin,
a merchant in Greenock, is said to have been
the heir to both the estate and the baronetcy ;
he claimed neither, which casts a doubt upon
the fact ; but he had pride enough himself, and
taught enough pride to his family, for any
station or descent in Christendom. He had
four daughters. One married an Edinburgh
writer, as I have it on a first account — a min-
ister, according to another — a man at least of
reasonable station, but not good enough for the
Campbells of Auchenbreck ; and the erring one
was instantly discarded. Another married an
actor of the name of Adcock, whom (as I re-
ceive the tale) she had seen acting in a barn ;
but the phrase should perhaps be regarded
rather as a measure of the family annoyance,
than a mirror of the facts. The marriage was
not in itself unhappy ; Adcock was a gentleman
by birth and made a good husband ; the family
reasonably prospered, and one of the daughters
married no less a man than Clarkson Stanfield.
But by the father, and the two remaining Miss
Campbells, people of fierce passions and a truly
Highland pride, the derogation was bitterly re-

24 Memoir of Fleeining yenktn,

sented. For long the sisters lived estranged
then, Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Adcock were rec*
onciled for a moment, only to quarrel the more
fiercely; the name of Mrs. Adcock was pro-
scribed, nor did it again pass her sister's lips,
until the morning when she announced : * Mary
Adcock is dead ; I saw her in her shroud last
night.* Second sight was hereditary in the
house ; and sure enough, as I have it reported,
on that very night Mrs. Adcock had passed
away. Thus, of the four daughters, two had,
according to the idiotic notions of their friends,
disgraced themselves in marriage ; the others
supported the honour of the family with a bet-
ter grace, and married West Indian magnates of
whom, I believe, the world has never heard and
would not care to hear : So strange a thing is
this hereditary pride. Of Mr. Jackson, beyond
the fact that he was Fleeming's grandfather, I
know naught. His wife, as I have said, was a
woman of fierce passions; she would tie her
house slaves to the bed and lash them with her
own hand ; and her conduct to her wild and
down-going sons, was a mixture of almost
insane self-sacrifice and wholly insane violence

Fleemings Mother. 25

of temper. She had three sons and one
daughter. Two of the sons went utterly to
ruin, and reduced their mother to poverty.
The third went to India, a slim, delicate
lad, and passed so wholly from the knowl-
edge of his relatives that he was thought to be
long dead. Years later, when his sister was
living in Genoa, a red-bearded man of great
strength and stature, tanned by years in India,
and his hands covered with barbaric gems, en-
tered the room unannounced, as she was playing
the piano, lifted her from her seat, and kissed
her. It was her brother, suddenly returned out
of a past that was never very clearly under-
stood, with the rank of general, many strange
gems, many cloudy stories of adventure, and
next his heart, the daguerreotype of an Indian
prince with whom he had mixed blood.

The last of this wild family, the daughter,
Henrietta Camilla, became the wife of the mid-
shipman Charles, and the mother of the subject
of this notice, Fleeming Jenkin. She was a
woman of parts and courage. Not beautiful,
she had a far higher gift, the art of seeming so ;
played the part of a belle in society, while far

26 Memoir of F teeming yen kin.

lovelier women were left unattended ; and up to
old age, had much of both the exigency and
the charm that mark that character. She drew
naturally, for she had no training, with unusual
skill ; and it was from her, and not from the two
naval artists, that Fleeming inherited his eye
and hand. She played on the harp and sang
with something beyond the talent of an amateur.
At the age of seventeen, she heard Pasta in
Paris ; flew up in a fire of youthful enthusiasm ;
and the next morning, all alone and without in-
troduction, found her way into the presence of
ih.^ prima donna and begged for lessons. Pasta
made her sing, kissed her when she had done,
and though she refused to be her mistress,
placed her in the hands of a friend. Nor was
this all ; for when Pasta returned to Paris, she
sent for the girl (once at least) to test her prog-
ress. But Mrs. Jenkin's talents were not so re-
markable as her fortitude and strength of will ;
and it was in an art for which she had no nat-
ural taste (the art of literature) that she ap-
peared before the public. Her novels, though
they attained and merited a certain popularity
both in France and England, are a measure only

Mrs. Jenkins dauntless Courage. 27

of her courage. They were a task, not a be-
loved task ; they were written for money in days
of poverty, and they served their end. In the
least thing as well as in the greatest, in every
piovince of life as well as in her novels, she dis-
played the same capacity of taking infinite pains,
which descended to her son. When she was
about forty (as near as her age was known) she
lost her voice ; set herself at once to learn the
piano, working eight hours a day; and attained
to such proficiency that her collaboration in
chamber music was courted by professionals.
And more than twenty years later, the old lady
might have been seen dauntlessly beginning the
study of Hebrew. This is the more ethereal
part of courage ; nor was she wanting in the
more material. Once when a neighbouring
groom, a married man, had seduced her maid,
Mrs. Jenkin mounted her horse, rode over to
the stable entrance and horsewhipped the man
with her own hand.

How a match came about between this talent-
ed and spirited girl and the young midshipman,
is not very easy to conceive. Charles Jenkin
was one of the finest creatures breathing ; loy

28 Memoir of Fleeming ye^tkzn.

alty, devotion, simple natural piety, boyish
cheerfulness, tender and manly sentiment in the
old sailor fashion, were in him inherent and in-
extinguishable either by age, suffering, or in-
justice. He looked, as he was, every inch a
gentleman ; he must have been everywhere
notable, even among handsome men, both for
his face and his gallant bearing ; not so much
that of a sailor, you would have said, as like one
of those gentle and graceful soldiers that, to this
day, are the most pleasant of Englishmen to
see. But though he was in these ways noble,
the dunce scholar of Northiam was to the end
no genius. Upon all points that a man must
understand to be a gentleman, to be upright,
gallant, affectionate and dead to self. Captain
Jenkin was more knowing than one among a
thousand ; outside of that, his mind was very
largely blank. He had indeed a simplicity that
came near to vacancy; and in the first forty
years of his married life, this want grew more
accentuated. In both families imprudent mar-
riages had been the rule; but neither Jenkin
nor Campbell had ever entered into a more un-
equal union. It was the captain's good looks,

Father aiid Mother, 29

we may suppose, that gained for him this eleva-
tion ; and in some ways and for many years of
his life, he had to pay the penalty. His wife,
impatient of his incapacity and surrounded by
brilliant friends, used him with a certain con-
tempt. She was the managing partner ; the life
was hers, not his ; after his retirement they
lived much abroad, where the poor captain, who
could never learn any language but his own, sat
in the corner mumchance ; and even his son,
carried away by his bright mother, did not rec-
ognise for long the treasures of simple chivalry
that lay buried in the heart of his father. Yet
it would be an error to regard this marriage as
unfortunate. It not only lasted long enough to
justify itself in a beautiful and touching epi-
logue, but it gave to the world the scientific
work and what (while time was) were of far
greater value, the delightful qualities of Fleem-
ing Jenkin. The Kentish-Welsh family, facile,
extravagant, generous to a fault and far from
brilliant, had given the father, an extreme ex-
ample of its humble virtues. On the other side,
the wild, cruel, proud, and somewhat blackguard
stock of the Scotch Campbell-Jacksons, had put

30 Memoir of Fleemifig Jenkin,

forth, in the person of the mother, all its force
and courage.

The marriage fell in evil days. In 1823, the
bubble of the Golden Aunt's inheritance had
burst. She died holding the hand of the nephew
she had so wantonly deceived ; at the last she
drew him down and seemed to bless him, surely
with some remorseful feeling ; for when the will
was opened, there was not found so much as
the mention of his name. He was deeply in
debt ; in debt even to the estate of his deceiver,
50 that he had to sell a piece of land to clear
himself. ' My dear boy,' he said to Charles,
* there will be nothing left for you. I am a
ruined man.' And here follows for me the
strangest part of this story. From the death of
the treacherous aunt, Charles Jenkin, senior,
had still some nine years to live ; it was perhaps
too late for him to turn to saving, and perhaps
his affairs were past restoration. But his famil>
at least had all this while to prepare ; they were
still young men, and knew what they had to
look for at their father's death ; and yet when
that happened in September, 183 1, the heir was
still apathetically waiting. Poor John, the days

Fleemings Uncle yohn. 31

of his whips and spurs, and Yeomanry dinners,
were quite over ; and with that incredible soft-
ness of the Jenkin nature, he settled down for
the rest of a long life, into something not far
removed above a peasant. The mill farm at
Stowting had been saved out of the wreck ; and
here he built himself a house on the Mexican
model, and made the two ends meet with rustic
thrift, gathering dung with his own hands upon
the road and not at all abashed at his employ-
ment. In dress, voice, and manner, he fell into
mere country plainness ; lived without the least
care for appearances, the least regret for the
past or discontentment with the present ; and
when he came to die, died with Stoic cheerful-
ness, announcing that he had had a comfortable
time and was yet well pleased to go. One would
think there was little active virtue to be inherit-
ed from such a race; and yet in this same vol-
untary peasant, the special gift of Fleeming
Jenkin was already half developed. The old
man to the end was perpetually inventing ; his
strange, ill-spelled, unpunctuated correspond-
ence is full (when he does not drop into cook-
ery receipts) of pumps, road engines, steam-

32 Memoir of Flecmmg Jenkin,

diggers, steam-ploughs, and steam-threshing
machines ; and I have it on Fleeming's word
that what he did was full of ingenuity — only, as
if by some cross destiny, useless. These disap-
pointments he not only took with imperturbable
good humour, but rejoiced with a particular rel-
ish over his nephew's success in the same field.
* I glory in the professor,' he wrote to his broth-
er ; and to Fleeming himself, with a touch of
simple drollery, * I was much pleased with your
lecture, but why did you hit me so hard with
Conisure's ' (connoisseur's, quasi amateur's) * en-
gineering? Oh, what presumption! — either of
you or myseli ! ' A quaint, pathetic figure, this
of uncle John, with his dung cart and his inven-
tions ; and the romantic fancy of his Mexican
house; and his craze about the Lost Tribes
which seemed to the worthy man the key of all
perplexities ; and his quiet conscience, looking
back on a life not altogether vain, for he was a
good son to his father while his father lived, and
when evil days approached, he had proved him-
self a cheerful Stoic.

It followed from John's inertia, that the duty
of winding up the estate fell into the hands of

The Purchase of Stow ting, 33

Charles. He managed it with no more skill
than might be expected of a sailor ashore,
saved a bare livelihood for John and nothing
for the rest. Eight months later, he married
Miss Jackson ; and with her money, bought in
some two-thirds of Stowting. In the beginning
of the little family history which I have been
following to so great an extent, the Captain
mentions, with a delightful pride: *A Court
Baron and Court Leet are regularly held by
the Lady of the Manor, Mrs. Henrietta Ca-
milla Jenkin *; and indeed the pleasure of so
describing his wife, was the most solid benefit
of the investment ; for the purchase was heavily
encumbered and paid them nothing till some
years before their death. In the meanwhile,
the Jackson family also, what with wild sons,
an indulgent mother and the impending eman-
cipation of the slaves, was moving nearer and
nearer to beggary; and thus of two doomed
and declining houses, the subject of this me-
moir was bom, heir to an estate and to no
money, yet with inherited qualities that were
to make him known and loved.

CHAPTER II.
1833— 1851.

Birth and Childhood — Edinburgh — Frankfort-on-the-Main— Paris—
The Revolution of 1848 — The Insurrection — Flight to Italy—
Sympathy with Italy — The Insurrection in Genoa — A Student in
Genoa — The Lad and his Mother.

TTENRY CHARLES FLEEMING JEN-
"*■ ■*• KIN (Fleeming, pronounced Flemming,
to his friends and family) was born in a Gov-
ernment building on the coast of Kent, near
Dungeness, where his father was serving at the
time in the Coastguard, on March 25, 1833, ^^^
named after Admiral Fleeming, one of his fa-
ther's protectors in the navy.

His childhood was vagrant like his life.
Once he was left in the care of his grand-
mother Jackson, while Mrs. Jenkin sailed in
her husband's ship and stayed a year at the
Havannah. The tragic woman was besides
from time to time a member of the family
she was in distress of mind and reduced in
fortune by the misconduct of her sons ; her
(34)

His Childhood. 35

destitution and solitude made it a recurring
duty to receive her, her violence continually
enforced fresh separations. In her passion of
a disappointed mother, she was a fit object of
pity ; but her grandson, who heard her load his
own mother with cruel insults and reproaches,
conceived for her an indignant and impatient
hatred, for which he blamed himself in later life.
It is strange from this point of view to see his
childish letters to Mrs. Jackson ; and to think
that a man, distinguished above all by stubborn
truthfulness, should have been brought up to
such dissimulation. But this is of course un-
avoidable in life ; it did no harm to Jenkin ;
and whether he got harm or benefit from a so
early acquaintance with violent and hateful
scenes, is more than I can guess. The expe-
rience, at least, was formative ; and in judging
his character it should not be forgotten. But
Mrs. Jackson was not the only stranger in their
gates ; the Captain's sister. Aunt Anna Jenkin,
lived with them until her death ; she had all the
Jenkin beauty of countenance, though she was
unhappily deformed in body and of frail health ;
and she even excelled her gentle and ineffectual

36 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

family in all amiable qualities. So that each of
the two races from which Fleeming sprang, had
an outpost by his very cradle ; the one he in-
stinctively loved, the other hated ; and the life-
long war in his members had begun thus early
by a victory for what was best.

We can trace the family from one country
place to another in the south of Scotland ; where
the child learned his taste for sport by riding
home the pony from the moors. Before he was
nine he could write such a passage as this about
a Hallowe*en observance : * I pulled a middling-
sized cabbage-runt with a pretty sum of gold
about it. No witches would run after me when
I was sowing my hempseed this year ; my nuts
blazed away together very comfortably to the
end of their lives, and when mamma put hers in
which were meant for herself and papa they
blazed away in the like manner.' Before he was
ten he could write, with a really irritating pre-
cocity, that he had been * making some pictures
from a book called " Les Frangais peints par
euxmdmes." ... It is full of pictures of all
classes, with a description of each in French.
The pictures are a little caricatured, but not

In Edinburgh and Frankfort, 2>7

much/ Doubtless this was only an echo from
his mother, but it shows the atmosphere in
which he breathed. It must have been a good
change for this art critic to be the playmate of
Mary Macdonald, their gardener's daughter at
Barjarg, and to sup with her family on potatoes
and milk ; and Fleeming himself attached some
value to this early and friendly experience of
another class.

His education, in the formal sense, began at
Jedburgh. Thence he went to the Edinburgh
Academy, where he was the classmate of Tait
and Clerk Maxwell, bore away many prizes, and
was once unjustly flogged by Rector Williams.
He used to insist that all his bad schoolfellows
had died early, a belief amusingly characteristic
of the man's consistent optimism. In 1846 the
mother and son proceeded to Frankfort-on-the-
Main, where they were soon joined by the father,
now reduced to inaction and to play something
like third fiddle in his narrow household. The
emancipation of the slaves had deprived them
of their last resource beyond the half-pay of a
captain ; and life abroad was not only desirable
for the sake of Fleeming's education, it was d-

^S Memoir of F kerning Jenkin.

most enforced by reasons of economy. But it
was, no doubt, somewhat hard upon the captain.
Certainly that perennial boy found a companion
in his son; they were both active and eager,
both willing to be amused, both young, if not in
years, then in character. They went out together
on excursions and sketched old castles, sitting
side by side ; they had an angry rivalry in walk-
ing, doubtless equally sincere upon both sides ;
and indeed we may say that Fleeming was ex-
ceptionally favoured, and that no boy had ever
a companion more innocent, engaging, gay, and
airy. But although in this case it would be easy
to exaggerate its import, yet, in thejenkin fam-
ily also, the tragedy of the generations was pro-
ceeding, and the child was growing out of his
father's knowledge. His artistic aptitude was
of a different order. Already he had his quick
sight of many sides of life ; he already over-
flowed with distinctions and generalisations, con-
trasting the dramatic art and national character
of England, Germany, Italy, and France. If he
were dull, he would write stories and poems, * I
have written,' he says at thirteen, * a very long
story in heroic measure, 300 lines, and another

At Paris. 39

Scotch story and Innumerable bits of poetry ';
and at the same age he had not only a keen
feeling for scenery, but could do something with
his pen to call it up. I feel I do always less
than justice to the delightful memory of Captain
Jenkin ; but with a lad of this character, cutting
the teeth of his intelligence, he was sure to fall
into the background.

The family removed in 1847 to Paris, where
Fleeming was put to school under one Deluc.
There he learned French, and (if the captain is
right) first began to show a taste for mathemat-
ics. But a far more important teacher than
Deluc was at hand; the year 1848, so moment-
ous for Europe, was momentous also for Fleem-
ing's character. The family politics were Liberal ;
Mrs. Jenkin, generous before all things, was sure
to be upon the side of exiles ; and in the house
of a Paris friend of hers, Mrs. Turner— already
known to fame as Shelley's Cornelia de Boin-
Wlle — Fleeming saw and heard such men as
Manin, Gioberti, and the Ruffinis. He was thus
prepared to sympathise with revolution ; and
when the hour came, and he found himself in
the midst of stirring and influential events, the

40 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

lad's whole character was moved. He cone.
sponded at that time with a young Edinburgh
friend, one Frank Scott ; and I am here going
to draw somewhat largely on this boyish corre-
spondence. It gives us at once a picture of the
Revolution and a portrait of Jenkin at fifteen ;
not so different (his friends will think) from the
Jenkin of the end — boyish, simple, opinionated,
delighting in action, delighting before all things
in any generous sentiment.

* February 23, 1848.
* When at 7 o'clock to-day I went out, I met
a large band going round the streets, calling on
the inhabitants to illuminate their houses, and
bearing torches. This was all very good fun,
and everybody was delighted ; but as they stop-
ped rather long and were rather turbulent in the
Place de la Madeleine, near where we live ' [in
the Rue Caumartin] * a squadron of dragoons
came up, formed, and charged at a hand-gallop.
This was a very pretty sight ; the crowd was
not too thick, so they easily got away ; and the
dragoons only gave blows with the back of the
sword, which hurt but did not wound. I was
as close to them as I am now to the other side

The Revolution of 1848. 41

of the table ; it was rather impressive, however.
At the second charge they rode on the pave-
ment and knocked the torches out of the fellows*
hands ; rather a shame, too — wouldn't be stood
in England. . . .

[At] * ten minutes to ten ... I went a long
way along the Boulevards, passing by the office
of Foreign Affairs, where Guizot lives, and where
to-night there were about a thousand troops
protecting him from the fury of the populace.
After this was passed, the number of the people
thickened, till about half a mile further on, I met
a troop of vagabonds, the wildest vagabonds in
the world — Paris vagabonds, well armed, having
probably broken into gunsmiths* shops and taken
the guns and swords. They were about a hun-
dred. These were followed by about a thousand
(I am rather diminishing than exaggerating num-
bers all through), indifferently armed with rusty
sabres, sticks, etc. An uncountable troop of
gentlemen, workmen, shopkeepers* wives (Paris
women dare anything), ladies' maids, common
women — in fact, a crowd of all classes, though
by far the greater number were of the bet-
ter dressed class — followed. Indeed, it was a

42 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

splendid sight : the mob in front chanting the
^^Marseillaise,'' the national war hymn, grave and
powerful, sweetened by the night air — though
night in these splendid streets was turned into
day, every window was filled with lamps, dim
torches were tossing in the crowd . . . for Gui-
zot has late this night given in his resignation,
and this was an improvised illumination.

' I and my father had turned with the crowd,
and were close behind the second troop of vaga-
bonds. Joy was on every face. I remarked to
papa that " I would not have missed the scene
for anything, I might never see such a splendid
one," when plong went one shot — every face
went pale — r-r-r-r-r went the whole detachment,
[and] the whole crowd of gentlemen and ladies
turned and cut. Such a scene ! — ladies, gentle-
men, and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud,
not shot but tripped up ; and those that went
down could not rise, they were trampled over.
... I ran a short time straight on and did not
fall, then turned down a side street, ran fifty
yards and felt tolerably safe ; looked for papa,
did not see him ; so walked on quickly, giving
the news as I went.* [It appears, from another

The Revolution of 1848. 43

letter, the boy was the first to carry word of the
firing to the Rue St. Honor^ ; and that his news
wherever he brought it was received with hur-
rahs. It was an odd entrance upon Hfe for a
little EngHsh lad, thus to play the part of rumour
in such a crisis of the history of France.]

*■ But now a new fear came over me. I had
little doubt but my papa was safe, but my fear
was that he should arrive at home before me
and tell the story ; in that case I knew my
mamma would go half mad with fright, so on I
went as quick as possible. I heard no more dis-
charges. When I got half way home, I found
my way blocked up by troops. That way or the
Boulevards I must pass. In the Boulevards they
were fighting, and I was afraid all other passages
might be blocked up . . . and I should have to
sleep in a hotel in that case, and then my mamma
— however, after a long d^tour^ I found a pas-
sage and ran home, and in our street joined
papa.

* . . . I'll tell you to-morrow the other facts
gathered from newspapers and papa. . . . To-
night I have given you what I have seen with
my own eyes an hour ago, and began trembling

44 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin,

with excitement and fear. If I have been too
long on this one subject, it is because it is yet
before my eyes.

* Monday, 24.

* It was that fire raised the people. There was
fighting all through the night in the Rue Notre
Dame de Lorette, on the Boulevards where they
had been shot at, and at the Porte St. Denis.
At ten o'clock, they resigned the house of the
Minister of Foreign Affairs (where the disastrous
volley was fired) to the people, who immediately
took possession of it. I went to school, but
[was] hardly there when the row in that quarter
commenced. Barricades began to be fixed.
Everyone was very grave now ; the exiernes
went away, but no one came to fetch me, so I
had to stay. No lessons could go on. A troop
of armed men took possession of the barricades,
so it was supposed I should have to sleep there.
The revolters came and asked for arms, but
Deluc (head-master) is a National Guard, and
he said he had only his own and he wanted
them ; but he said he would not fire on them.
Then they asked for wine, which he gave them.

The Revolution of 1848. 45

They took good care not to get drunk, knowing
they would not be able to fight. They were
very polite and behaved extremely well.

* About 12 o'clock a servant came for a boy
who lived near me, [and] Deluc thought it best
to send me with him. We heard a good deal of
firing near, but did not come across any of the
parties. As we approached the railway, the
barricades were no longer formed of palings,
planks, or stones; but they had got all the om-
nibuses as they passed, sent the horses and pas-
sengers about their business, and turned them
over. A double row of overturned coaches
made a capital barricade, with a few paving
stones.

* When I got home I found to my astonish-
ment that in our fighting quarter it was much
quieter. Mamma had just been out seeing the
troops in the Place de la Concorde, when sud-
denly the Municipal Guard, now fairly exasper-
ated, prevented the National Guard from pro-
ceeding, and fired at them ; the National Guard
had come with their muskets not loaded, but at
length returned the fire. Mamma saw the Na-
tional Guard fire. The Municipal Guard were

46 Memoir of Fleemiiig Jenkin.

round the corner. She was delighted for she
saw no person killed, though many of the Mu-
nicipals were

* I immediately went out with my papa (mam-
ma had just come back with him) and went to
the Place de la Concorde. There was an enor-
mous quantity of troops in the Place. Suddenly
the gates of the gardens of the Tuileries opened :
we rushed forward, out gallopped an enormous
number of cuirassiers, in the middle of which
were a couple of low carriages, said first to con-
tain the Count de Paris and the Duchess of Or-
leans, but afterwards they said it was the King
and Queen ; and then I heard he had abdicated.
I returned and gave the news.

'Went out again up the Boulevards. The
house of the Minister of Foreign Affairs was
filled with people and ^^ Hotel du Peuple'' written
on it ; the Boulevards were barricaded with fine
old trees that were cut down and stretched all
across the road. We went through a great
many little streets, all strongly barricaded, and
sentinels of the people at the principal of them.
The streets were very unquiet, filled with armed
men and women, for the troops had followed

The Revolution of 1848. 47

the ex-King to Neuilly and left Paris in the
power of the people. We met the captain of
the Third Legion of the National Guard (who
had principally protected the people), badly
wounded by a Municipal Guard, stretched on a
litter. He was in possession of his senses. He
was surrounded by a troop of men crying " Our
brave captain — we have him yet — he's not
dead! Vive la Refonne!'' This cry was re-
sponded to by all, and every one saluted him as
he passed. I do not know if he was mortally
wounded. That Third Legion has behaved
splendidly.

* I then returned, and shortly afterwards went
out again to the garden of the Tuileries. They
were given up to the people and the palace was
being sacked. The people were firing blank car-
tridges to testify their joy, and they had a can-
non on the top of the palace. It was a sight to
see a palace sacked and armed vagabonds firing
out of the windows, and throwing shirts, papers,
and dresses of all kinds out of the windows.
They are not rogues, these French; they are
not stealing, burning, or doing much harm. In
the Tuileries they have dressed up some of the

48 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

statues, broken some, and stolen nothing but
queer dresses. I say, Frank, you must not hate
the French ; hate the Germans if you like. The
French laugh at us a little, and call out Goddam
in the streets; but to-day, in civil war, when
they might have put a bullet through our heads,
I never was insulted once.

*At present we have a provisional Govern-
ment, consisting of Odion \sic\ Barrot, Lamar-
tine, Marast, and some others ; among them a
common workman, but very intelligent. This is
a triumph of liberty — rather !

*Now then, Frank, what do you think of it?
I in a revolution and out all day. Just think,
what fun ! So it was at first, till I was fired at
yesterday ; but to-day I was not frightened, but
it turned me sick at heart, I don't know why.
There has been no great bloodshed, [though] I
certainly have seen men's blood several times.
But there's something shocking to see a whole
armed populace, though not furious, for not one
single shop has been broken open, except the
gunsmiths' shops, and most of the arms will
probably be taken back again. For the French
have no cupidity in their nature ; they don't like

The Revolution of 1848. 49

to steal — it is not in their nature. I shall send
this letter in a day or two, when I am sure the
post will go again. I know I have been a long
time writing, but I hope you will find the matter
of this letter interesting, as coming from a per-
son resident on the spot ; though probably you
don't take much interest in the French, but I
can think, write, and speak on no other subject.

Feb. 25.

* There is no more fighting, the people have
conquered ; but the barricades are still kept up,
and the people are in arms, more than ever fear-
ing some new act of treachery on the part of the
ex-King. The fight where I was was the prin-
cipal cause of the Revolution. I was in little
danger from the shot, for there was an immense
crowd in front of me, though quite within gun-
shot. [By another letter, a hundred yards
from the troops.] I wished I had stopped
there.

* The Paris streets are filled with the most ex*
traordinary crowds of men, women and children,
ladies and gentlemen. Every person joyful.
The bands ot armed men are perfectly polite.

50 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin.

Mamma and aunt to-day walked through armed
crowds alone, that were firing blank cartridges in
all directions. Every person made way with
the greatest politeness, and one common man
with a blouse, coming by accident against her
immediately stopped to beg her pardon in the
politest manner. There are few drunken men.
The Tuileries is still being run over by the peo-
ple : they only broke two things, a bust of Louis
Philippe and one of Marshal Bugeaud, who fired
on the people

*■ I have been out all day again to-day, and
precious tired I am. The Republican party
seem the strongest, and are going about with
red ribbons in their button-holes

*The title of *' Mister" is abandoned; they
say nothing but " Citizen," and the people are
shaking hands amazingly. They have got to
the top of the public monuments, and, mingling
with bronze or stone statues, five or six make a
sort of tableau vivant, the top man holding up
the red flag of the Republic ; and right well
they do it, and very picturesque they look. 1
think I shall put this letter in the post to-mor-
row as we got a letter to-night.

The Revolution of 1848. 51

(On Envelope.)
* M. Lamartine has now by his eloquence con-
quered the whole armed crowd of citizens
threatening to kill him if he did not immedi-
ately proclaim the Republic and red flag. He
said he could not yield to the citizens of Paris
alone, that the whole country must be consulted,'
that he chose the tricolour, for it had followed
and accompanied the triumphs of France all
over the world, and that the red flag had only
been dipped in the blood of the citizens. For
sixty hours he has been quieting the people:
he is at the head of everything. Don't be prej-
udiced, Frank, by what you see in the papers.
The French have acted nobly, splendidly ; there
has been no brutality, plundering, or stealing.
... I did not like the French before ; but in
this respect they are the finest people in the
world. I am so glad to have been here.'

And there one could wish to stop with this
apotheosis of liberty and order read with the
generous enthusiasm of a boy ; but as the reader
knows, it was but the first act of the piece. The
letters, vivid as they are, written as they were

52 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkm,

by a hand trembling with fear and excitement,
yet do injustice, in their boyishness of tone, to
the profound effect produced. At the sound of
these songs and shot of cannon, the boy's mind
awoke. He dated his own appreciation of the
art of acting from the day when he saw and
heard Rachel recite the ''Marseillaise' at the
Frangais, the tricolour in her arms. What is
still more strange, he had been up to then in-
vincibly indifferent to music, insomuch that he
could not distinguish * God save the Queen '
from * Bonnie Dundee '; and now, to the chant-
ing of the mob, he amazed his family by learn-
ing and singing ^Mourir pour la Patrie.* But
the letters, though they prepare the mind for
no such revolution in the boy's tastes and feel-
ings, are yet full of entertaining traits. Let the
reader note Fleeming's eagerness to influence
his friend Frank, an incipient Tory (no less) as
further history displayed ; his unconscious in-
difference to his father and devotion to his
mother, betrayed in so many significant ex*
pressions and omissions; the sense of dignity
of this diminutive * person resident on the spot,'
who was so happy as to escape insult ; and the

A Born Optimist, 53

strange picture of the household — father,
mother, son, and even poor Aunt Anna — all
day in the streets in the thick of this rough
business, and the boy packed off alone to school
in a distant quarter on the ver>'- morrow of the
massacre.

They had all the gift of enjoying life's texture
as it comes ; they were all born optimists. The
name of liberty was honoured in that family, its
spirit also, but within stringent limits ; and some
of the foreign friends of Mrs. Jenkin were, as I
have said, men distinguished on the Liberal
side. Like Wordsworth, they beheld

France standing on the top of golden hours
And human nature seeming born again.

At once, by temper and belief, they were formed
to find their element in such a decent and whig-
gish convulsion, spectacular in its course, mod-
erate in its purpose. For them,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.
But to be young was very heaven.

And I cannot but smile when I think that

54 Me?notr of Fleeming yenkin.

(again like Wordsworth) they should have so
specially disliked the consequence.

It came upon them by surprise. Liberal
friends of the precise right shade of colour had
assured them, in Mrs. Turner's drawing-room,
that all was for the best ; and they rose on Jan-
uary 23 without fear. About the middle of the
day they heard the sound of musketry, and the
next morning they were wakened by the can-
nonade. The French, who had behaved so
'splendidly,' pausing, at the voice of Lamar-
tine, just where judicious Liberals could have
desired — the French, who had * no cupidity in
their nature,' were now about to play a varia-
tion on the theme rebellion. The Jenkins took
refuge in the house of Mrs. Turner, the house
of the false prophets, 'Anna going with Mrs.
Turner, that she might be prevented speaking
English, Fleeming, Miss H. and I (it is .he
mother who writes) walking together. As we
reached the Rue de Clichy, the report of the
cannon sounded close to our ears and made our
hearts sick, I assure you. The fighting was at
the barrier Rochechouart, a few streets off.
All Saturday and Sunday we were a prey to

The Pai'is Ltsurrection, 55

great alarm, there came so many reports that
the insurgents were getting the upper hand.
One could tell the state of affairs from the ex-
treme quiet or the sudden hum in the street.
When the news was bad, all the houses closed
and the people disappeared ; when better, the
doors half opened and you heard the sound of
men again. From the upper windows we could
see each discharge from the Bastille — I mean
the smoke rising — and also the flames and
smoke from the Boulevard la Chapelle. We
were four ladies, and only Flceming by way of
a man, and difficulty enough we had to keep
him from joining the National Guards — his
pride and spirit were both fired. You cannot
picture to yourself the multitudes of soldiers,
guards, and armed men of all sorts we watched
— not close to the window, however, for such
havoc had been made among them by the firing
from the windows, that as the battalions marched
by, they cried, " Fermez vos fenetres ! " and it
was very painful to watch their looks of anxiety
and suspicion as they marched by.'

*The Revolution,* writes Fleeming to Frank
Scott, 'was quite delightful: getting popped

56 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin,

at and run at by horses, and giving sous fof
the wounded into httle boxes guarded by the
raggedest, picturesquest, delightfullest, senti-
nels ; but the insurrection ! ugh, I shudder to
think at \sic\ it/ He found it ' not a bit of fun
sitting boxed up in the house four days almost.
. . . . I was the ovXy gentleman to four ladies,
and didn't they keep me in order ! I did not
dare to show my face at a window, for fear of
catching a stray ball or being forced to enter
the National Guard ; [for] they would have it
I was a man full-grown, French, and every way
fit to fight. And my mamma was as bad as any
of them ; she that told me I was a coward last
time if I stayed in the house a quarter of an
hour! But I drew, examined the pistols, of
which I found lots with caps, powder, and
ball, while sometimes murderous intentions of
killing a dozen insurgents and dying violently

overpowered by numbers * We may drop

this sentence here: under the conduct of its
boyish writer, it was to reach no legitimate
end.

Four days of such a discipline had cured the
family of Paris ; the same year Fleeming was to

Flight to Italy, 57

write, in answer apparently to a question of
Frank Scott's, * I could find no national game
in France but revolutions '; and the witticism
was justified in their experience. On the first
possible day, they applied for passports, and
were advised to take the road to Geneva. It
appears it was scarce safe to leave Paris for
England. Charles Reade, with keen dramatic
gusto, had just smuggled himself out of that
city in the bottom of a cab. English gold had
been found on the insurgents, the name of Eng-
land was in evil odour; and it was thus — for
strategic reasons, so to speak — that Fleeming
found himself on the way to that Italy where
he was to complete his education, and for which
he cherished to the end a special kindness.

It was in Genoa they settled ; partly for the
sake of the captain, who might there find naval
comrades; partly because of the Ruffinis, who
had been friends of Mrs. Jenkin in their time
of exile and were now considerable men at
home ; partly, in fine, with hopes that Fleem-
ing might attend the University ; in prepara-
tion for which he was put at once to school.
It was the year of Novara; Mazzini was in

58 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

Rome; the dry banes of Italy were moving;
and for people of alert and liberal sympathies
the time was inspiriting. What with exiles
turned Ministers of State, universities thrown
op>en to Protestants, Fleeming himself the first
Protestant student in Genoa, and thus, as his
mother writes, *a living instance of the prog-
ress of liberal ideas ' — it was little wonder if the
enthusiastic young woman and the clever boy
were heart and soul upon the side of Italy. It
should not be forgotten that they were both on
their first visit to that country ; the mother still

* child enough ' to be delighted when she saw

* real monks '; and both mother and son thrill-
ing with the first sight of snowy Alps, the blue
Mediterranean, and the crowded port and the
palaces of Genoa. Nor was their zeal without
knowledge. Ruffini, deputy for Genoa and
soon to be head of the University, was at
their side; and by means of him the family
appear to have had access to much Italian so.
ciety. To the end, Fleeming professed his ad*-
miration of the Piedmontese and his unalter-
able confidence in the future of Italy undei
their conduct; for Victor Emanuel, Cavour,

Sympathy with Italy, 59

the first La Marmora and Garibaldi, he had
var^'ing degrees of sympathy and praise : per-
haps highest for the King, whose good sense
and temper filled him with respect — perhaps
least for Garibaldi, whom he loved but yet
mistrusted.

But this is to look forward : these were the
days not of Victor Emanuel but of Charles Al-
bert ; and it was on Charles Albert that mother
and son had now fixed their eyes as on the
sword-bearer of Italy. On Fleeming's sixteenth
birthday, they were, the mother writes, * in
great anxiety for news from the army. You
can have no idea what it is to live in a country
where such a struggle is going on. The inter-
est is one that absorbs all others. We eat,
drink, and sleep to the noise of drums and
musketry. You would enjoy and almost admire
Fleeming's enthusiasm and earnestness — and
courage, I may say — for we are among the small
minority of English who side with the Italian?
The other day, at dinner at the Consul's, boy
as he is, and in spite of my admonitions, Fleem-
ing defended the Italian cause, and so well that
he "tripped up the heels of his adversary"

6o Memoir of Fleeming J en kin,

simply from being well-informed on the subject
and honest. He is as true as steel, and for no

one will he bend right or left Do not

fancy him a Bobadil/ she adds, ' he is only
a very true, candid boy. I am so glad he
remains in all respects but information a great
child.'

If this letter is correctly dated, the cause was
already lost and the King had already abdicated
when these lines were written. No sooner did
the news reach Genoa, than there began ' tumult-
uous movements ' ; and the Jenkins' received
hints it would be wise to leave the city. But
they had friends and interests ; even the captain
had English officers to keep him company, for
Lord Hardwicke's ship, the Vengeance ^ lay in
port ; and supposing the danger to be real, I
cannot but suspect the whole family of a di-
vided purpose, prudence being possibly weaker
than curiosity. Stay, at least, they did, and
thus rounded their experience of the revo-
lutionary year. On Sunday, April i, Fleeming
and the captain went for a ramble beyond the
walls, leaving Aunt Anna and Mrs. Jenkin to
walk on the bastions v/ith some friends. On

Insurrection of Genoa. 6i

the way back, this party turned aside to rest in
the Church of the Madonna delle Grazie. * We
had remarked/ writes Mrs. Jenkin, * the entire
absence of sentinels on the ramparts, and how
the cannons were left in solitary state ; and I
had just remarked " How quiet everything is! "
when suddenly we heard the drums begin to
beat and distant shouts. Accustomed as we are
to revolutions, we never thought of being fright-
ened.' For all that, they resumed their return
home. On the way they saw men running and
vociferating, but nothing to indicate a general
disturbance, until, near the Duke's palace, they
came upon and passed a shouting mob dragging
along with it three cannon. It had scarcely
passed before they heard ' a rushing sound ';
one of the gentlemen thrust back the party of
ladies under a shed, and the mob passed again.
A fine-looking young man was in their hands ;
and Mrs. Jenkin saw him with his mouth open
as if he sought to speak, saw him tossed from
one to another like a ball, and then saw him no
more. ' He was dead a few instants after, but
the crowd hid that terror from us. My knees
shook under me and my sight left me.' With

62 Memoir of Fleeniing yen kin,

this street tragedy, the curtain rose upon their
second revolution.

The attack on Spirito Santo, and the capitu-
lation and departure of the troops speedily fol-
lowed. Genoa was in the hands of the Repub-
licans, and now came a time when the English
residents were in a position to pay some return
for hospitality received. Nor were they back-
ward. Our Consul (the same who had the bene-
fit of correction from Fleeming) carried the In-
tendente on board the Vengeance, escorting him
through the streets, getting along with him on
board a shore boat, and when the insurgents
levelled their muskets, standing up and naming
himself, * Console Inglese' A friend of the Jen-
kins', Captain Glynne, had a more painful, if a
less dramatic part. One Colonel Nosozzo had
been killed (I read) while trying to prevent his
own artillery from firing on the mob; but in
that hell's cauldron of a distracted city, there
were no distinctions made, and the Colonel's
widow was hunted for her life. In her grief and
peril, the Glynnes received and hid her ; Cap-
tain Glynne sought and found her husband's
body among the slain, saved it for two days,

Insurrection of Genoa. 63

brought the widow a lock of the dead man's
hair ; but at last, the mob still strictly search-
ing, seems to have abandoned the body, and
conveyed his guest on board the Vengeance,
The Jenkins also had their refugees, the family
of an employe threatened by a decree. * You
should have seen me making a Union Jack to
nail over our door,* writes Mrs. Jenkin. * I
never worked so fast in my life. Monday and
Tuesday,* she continues, * were tolerably quiet,
our hearts beating fast in the hope of La Mar-
mora's approach, the streets barricaded, and
none but foreigners and women allowed to leave
the city.' On Wednesday, La Marmora came
indeed, but in the ugly form of a bombard-
ment ; and that evening the Jenkins sat with-
out lights about their drawing-room window,
* watching the huge red flashes of the cannon '
from the Brigato and La Specula forts, and
hearkening, not without some awful pleasure, to
the thunder of the cannonade.

Lord Hardwicke intervened between the reb-
els and La Marmora; and there followed a
troubled armistice, filled with the voice of panic.
Now the Vengeance v/as known to be cleared

64 Memoir of Fleemiiig J en kin.

for action ; now it was rumoured that the galley
slaves were to be let loose upon the town, and
now that the troops would enter it by storm.
Crowds, trusting in the Union Jack over the
Jenkins' door, came to beg them to receive their
linen and other valuables ; nor could their in-
stances be refused ; and in the midst of all this
bustle and alarm, piles of goods must be ex-
amined and long inventories made. At last the
captain decided things had gone too far. He
himself apparently remained to watch over the
linen ; but at five o'clock on the Sunday morn-
ing, Aunt Anna, Fleeming, and his mother were
rowed in a pour of rain on board an English
merchantman, to suffer * nine mortal hours of
agonising suspense.' With the end of that time,
peace was restored. On Tuesday morning offi-
cers with white flags appeared on the bastions;
then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched
in, two hundred men sleeping on the ground
floor of the Jenkins' house, thirty thousand in
all entering the city, but without disturbance,
old La Marmora being a commar.der of a
Roman sternness.

With the return of quiet, and the reopening

A Student in Genoa. 65

of the universities, we behold a new character,
Signer Flaminio : the professors, it appears,
made no attempt upon the Jenkin ; and thus
readily italianised the Fleeming. He came well
recommended ; for their friend Rufifini was then,
or soon after, raised to be the head of the Uni-
versity ; and the professors were very kind and
attentive, possibly to Ruffini's proteg^, perhaps
also to the first Protestant student. It was no
joke for Signor Flaminio at first ; certificates
had to be got from Paris and from Rector Will-
iams ; the classics must be furbished up at
home that he might follow Latin lectures ; ex-
aminations bristled in the path, the entrance
examination with Latin and English essay, and
oral trials (much softened for the foreigner) in
Horace, Tacitus, and Cicero, and the first Uni-
versity examination only three months later, in
Italian eloquence, no less, and other wider sub-
jects. On one point the first Protestant student
was moved to thank his stars : that there was
no Greek required for the degree. Little did he
think, as he set down his gratitude, how much,
in later life and among cribs and dictionaries,
he was to lament this circumstance; nor how

66 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

much of that later life he was to spend acquir-
ing, with infinite toil, a shadow of what he
might then have got with ease and fully. But
if his Genoese education was in this particular
imperfect, he was fortunate in the branches that
more immediately touched on his career. The
physical laboratory was the best mounted in
Italy. Bancalari, the professor of natural phi-
losophy, was famous in his day ; by what seems
even an odd coincidence, he went deeply into
electro-magnetism ; and it was principally in
that subject that Signor Flaminio, questioned
in Latin and answering in Italian, passed his
Master of Arts degree with first-class honours.
That he had secured the notice of his teachers,
one circumstance sufficiently proves. A philo-
sophical society was started under the presidency
of Mamiani, ' one of the examiners and one of
the leaders of the Moderate party '; and out of
five promising students brought forward by the
professors to attend the sittings and present es-
says, Signor Flaminio was one. I cannot find
that he ever read an essay ; and indeed I think
his hands were otherwise too full. He found
his fellow-students * not such a bad set of

Sttcdying Music, 67

chaps,' and preferred the Piedmontese before
the Genoese ; but I suspect he mixed not very
freely with either. Not only were his days filled
with university work, but his spare hours were
fully dedicated to the arts under the eye of a
beloved task-mistress. He worked hard and
well in the art school, where he obtained a sil-
ver medal * for a couple of legs the size of life
drawn from one of Raphael's cartoons.* His
holidays were spent in sketching ; his evenings,
when they were free, at the theatre. Here at the
opera he discovered besides a taste for a new
art, the art of music ; and it was, he wrote, * as
if he had found out a heaven on earth.' * I am
so anxious that whatever he professes to know,
he should really perfectly possess,' his mother
wrote, * that I spare no pains '; neither to him
nor to myself, she might have added. And so
when he begged to be allowed to learn the
piano, she started him with characteristic bar-
barity on the scales ; and heard in consequence
' heart-rending groans ' and saw * anguished
claspings of hands ' as he lost his way among
their arid intricacies.

In this picture of the lad at the piano, there

68 Memoir of Fleemmg Jeitkin,

is something, for the period, girlish. He was
indeed his mother's boy ; and it was fortunate
his mother was not altogether feminine. She
gave her son a womanly delicacy in morals, to
a man's taste — to his own taste in later life —
too finely spun, and perhaps more elegant than
healthful. She encouraged him besides in
drawing-room interests. But in other points
her influence was manlike. Filled with the
spirit of thoroughness, she taught him to make
of the least of these accomplishments a virile
task ; and the teaching lasted him through life.
Immersed as she was in the day's movements
and buzzed about by leading Liberals, she
handed on to him her creed in politics : an en-
during kindness for Italy, and a loyalty, like
that of many clever women, to the Liberal party
with but small regard to men or measures. This
attitude of mind used often to disappoint me in
a man so fond of logic ; but I see now how it
was learned from the bright eyes of his mother
and to the sound of the cannonades of 1848.
To some of her defects, besides, she made him
heir. Kind as was the bond that united her to
her son, kind and even pretty, she was scarce a

His Home and School Training. 6g

woman to adorn a home ; loving as she did to
shine ; careless as she was of domestic, studious
of public graces. She probably rejoiced to see
the boy grow up in somewhat of the image
of herself, generous, excessive, enthusiastic,
external ; catching at ideas, brandishing them
when caught ; fiery for the right, but always
fiery; ready at fifteen to correct a consul,
ready at fifty to explain to any artist his own
art.

The defects and advantages of such a training
w^ere obvious in Fleeming throughout life. His
thoroughness was not that of the patient scholar,
but of an untrained woman with fits of passion-
ate study ; he had learned too much from dog-
ma, given indeed by cherished lips ; and preco-
cious as he was in the use of the tools of the
mind, he was truly backward in knowledge of
life and of himself. Such as it was at least,
his home and school training was now com-
plete ; and you are to conceive the lad as being
formed in a household of meagre revenue,
among foreign surroundings, and under the
influence of an imperious drawing-room queen ;
from whom he learned a great refinement of

70 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

morals, a strong sense of duty, much forward-
ness of bearing, all manner of studious and
artistic interests, and many ready-made opinions
which he embraced with a son s and a disciple's
loyalty.

CHAPTER III.

1851— 1858.

Return to England — Fleeming at Fairbaim's— Experience in •
Strike— Dr. Bell and Greek Architecture— The Gaskells— Fleem-
ing at Greenwich — The Austins— Fleeming and the Austins —
His Engagement — Fleeming and Sir W. Thomson,

TN 1851, the year of Aunt Anna's death, the
■^ family left Genoa and came to Manchester,
where Fleeming was entered in Fairbairn's works
as an apprentice. From the palaces and Alps,
the Mole, the blue Mediterranean, the humming
lanes and the bright theatres of Genoa, he fell —
and he was sharply conscious of the fall — to the
dim skies and the foul ways of Manchester.
England he found on his return * a horrid place,*
and there is no doubt the family found it a dear
one. The story of the Jenkin finances is not
easy to follow. The family, I am told, did not
practice frugality, only lamented that it should
be needful; and Mrs. Jenkin, who was always
complaining of 'those dreadful bills,* was * al-
ways a good deal dressed.* But at this time of

(71)

72 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin,

the return to England, things must have gone
further. A holiday tour of a fortnight, Fleeir>-
ing feared would be beyond what he could af-
ford, and he only projected it * to have a castle
in the air.' And there were actual pinches.
Fresh from a warmer sun, he was obliged to go
without a greatcoat, and learned on railway
journeys to supply the place of one with wrap-
pings of old newspaper.

From half-past eight till six, he must * file and
chip vigorously in a moleskin suit and infernally
dirty.' The work was not new to him, for he
had already passed some time in a Genoese
shop ; and to Fleeming no work was without
interest. Whatever a man can do or know, he
longed to know and do also. * I never learned
anything,' he wrote, 'not even standing on my
head, but I found a use for it.' In the spare
hours of his first telegraph voyage, to give an
instance of his greed of knowledge, he meant
* to learn the whole art of navigation, every rope
in the ship and how to handle her on any occa-
sion '; and once when he was shown a young
lady's holiday collection of seaweeds, he must
cry out, *■ It showed me my eyes had been idle.*

His Love of Handicraft, 73

Nor wafj his the case of the mere literary smat-
terer, content if he but learn the names of things.
In him, to do and to do well, was even a dearer
ambition than to know. Anything done well,
any craft, despatch, or finish, delighted and in-
spired him. I remember him with a twopenny
Japanese box of three drawers, so exactly
fitted that, when one was driven home, the oth-
ers started from their places ; the whole spirit
of Japan, he told me, was pictured in that box ;
that plain piece of carpentry was as much in-
spired by the spirit of perfection as the happiest
drawing or the finest bronze ; and he who could
not enjoy it in the one was not fully able to en-
joy it in the others. Thus, too, he found in
Leonardo's engineering and anatomical drawings
a perpetual feast ; and of the former he spoke
even with emotion. Nothing indeed annoyed
Fleeming more than the attempt to separate the
fine arts from the arts of handicraft ; any defi-
nition or theory that failed to bring these two
together, according to him, had missed the
point; and the essence of the pleasure received
lay in seeing things well done. Other qualities
must be added ; he was the last to deny that

74 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

but this, of perfect craft, was at the bottom of
all. And on the other hand, a nail ill-driven, a
joint ill-fitted, a tracing clumsily done, anything
to which a man had set his hand and not set it
aptly, moved him to shame and anger. With
such a character, he would feel but little drudg-
ery at Fairbairn's. There would be something
daily to be done, slovenliness to be avoided, and
a higher mark of skill to be attained ; he would
chip and file, as he had practiced scales, impa-
tient of his own imperfection, but resolute to
learn.

And there was another spring of delight. For
he was now moving daily among those strange
creations of man's brain, to some so abhorrent,
to him of an interest so inexhaustible : in which
iron, water, and fire are made to serve as slaves,
now with a tread more powerful than an ele-
phant's, and now with a touch more precise and
dainty than a pianist's. The taste for machin-
ery was one that I could never share with him,
and he had a certain bitter pity for my weak-
ness. Once when I had proved, for the hun-
dredth time, the depth of this defect, he looked
at me askance : * And the best of the joke,' said

Fleeming at Fairbairns, 75

he, * is that he thinks himself quite a poet.* For
to him the struggle of the engineer against brute
forces and with inert allies, was nobly poetic.
Habit never dulled in him the sense of the
greatness of the aims and obstacles of his pro-
fession. Habit only sharpened his inventor's
gusto in contrivance, in triumphant artifice, in the
Odyssean subtleties, by which wires are taught
to speak, and iron hands to weave, and the
slender ship to brave and to outstrip the tem-
pest. To the ignorant the great results alone
are admirable ; to the knowing, and to Fleem-
ing in particular, rather the infinite device and
sleight of hand that made them possible.

A notion was current at the time that, in such
a shop as Fairbairn's, a pupil would never be
popular unless he drank with the workmen and
imitated them in speech and manner. Fleem-
ing, who would do none of these things, they
accepted as a friend and companion ; and this
was the subject of remark in Manchester, where
some memory of it lingers till to-day. He
thought it one of the advantages of his profes-
sion to be brought into a close relation with the
working classes ; and for the skilled artisan he

76 Memoir of Flecming Jenkin,

had a great esteem, liking his company, his vir-
tues, and his taste in some of the arts. But he
knew the classes too well to regard them, like a
platform speaker, in a lump. He drew, on the
other hand, broad distinctions; and it was his
profound sense of the difference between one
working man and another that led him to de-
vote so much time, in later days, to the further-
ance of technical education. In 1852 he had
occasion to see both men and masters at their
worst, in the excitement of a strike ; and very
foolishly (after their custom) both would seem
to have behaved. Beginning with a fair show
of justice on either side, the masters stultified
their cause by obstinate impolicy, and the men
disgraced their order by acts of outrage. * On
Wednesday last,' writes Fleeming, * about three
thousand banded round Fairbairn's door at 6
o'clock : men, women, and children, factory boys
and girls, the lowest of the low in a very low
place. Orders came that no one was to leave
the works ; but the men inside (Knobsticks, as
they are called) were precious hungry and
thought they would venture. Two of my com-
panions and myself went out with the very first,

Experience of a Strike, yy

and had the full benefit of every possible groan
and bad language.* But the police cleared a
lane through the crowd, the pupils were suffered
to escape unhurt, and only the Knobsticks fol-
lowed home and kicked with clogs; so that
Fleeming enjoyed, as we may say, for nothing,
that fine thrill of expectant valour with which
he had sallied forth into the mob. * I never be
fore felt myself so decidedly somebody, instead
of nobody,* he wrote.

Outside as inside the works, he was * prett}
merry and well to do,* zealous in study, wel-
come to many friends, unwearied in loving-kind-
ness to his mother. For some time he spent
three nights a week with Dr. Bell, ' working
away at certain geometrical methods of getting
the Greek architectural proportions': a business
after Fleeming's heart, for he was never so
pleased as when he could marry his two devo-
tions, art and science. This was besides, in all
likelihood, the beginning of that love and inti-
mate appreciation of things Greek, from the
least to the greatest, from the Agamemnori (per-
haps his favourite tragedy) down to the details
of Grecian tailoring, which he used to express

yS Me7noir of Fleemmg Jenkin,

in his familiar phrase : * The Greeks were the
boys.* Dr. Bell — the son of George Joseph, the
nephew of Sir Charles, and though he made less
use of it than some, a sharer in the distinguished
talents of his race — had hit upon the singular
fact that certain geometrical intersections gave
the proportions of the Doric order. Fleeming,
under Dr. Bell's direction, applied the same
method to the other orders, and again found the
proportions accurately given. Numbers of dia-
grams were prepared ; but the discovery was
never given to the world, perhaps because of the
dissensions that arose between the authors. For
Dr. Bell believed that 'these intersections were
in some way connected with, or symbolical of,
the antagonistic forces at work *; but his pupil
and helper, with characteristic trenchancy,
brushed aside this mysticism, and interpreted
the discovery as * a geometrical method of divid-
ing the spaces or (as might be said) of setting
out the work, purely empirical and in no way
connected with any laws of either force or
beauty.' * Many a hard and pleasant fight we
had over it,* wrote Jenkin, in later years; *and
impertinent as it may seem, the pupil is still

The Gaskells.

79

unconvinced by the arguments of the master/
I do not know about the antagonistic forces in
the Doric order ; in Fleeming they were plain
enough ; and the Bobadil of these affairs with
Dr. Bell was still, like the corrector of Italian
consuls, * a great child in ever>'thing but infor-
mation.' At the house of Colonel Cleather, he
might be seen with a family of children ; and
with these, there was no word of the Greek or-
ders ; with these Fleeming was only an uproar-
ious boy and an entertaining draughtsman ; so
that his coming was the signal for the young
people to troop into the playroom, where some-
times the roof rang with romping, and some-
times they gathered quietly about him as he
amused them with his pencil.

In another Manchester family, whose name
will be familiar to my readers — that of the Gas-
kells, Fleeming was a frequent visitor. To Mrs.
Gaskell, he would often bring his new ideas, a
process that many of his later friends will under-
stand and, in their own cases, remember. With
the girls, he had * constant fierce wrangles,' forc-
ing them to reason out their thoughts and to
explain their prepossessions; and I hear from

8o Memoi7' of Fleeming yen kin.

Miss Gaskell that they used to wonder how he
could throw all the ardour of his character into
the smallest matters, and to admire his unself-
ish devotion to his parents. Of one of these
wrangles, I have found a record most character-
istic of the man. Fleeming had been laying
down his doctrine that the end justifies the
means, and that it is quite right 'to boast of
your six men-servants to a burglar or to steal a
knife to prevent a murder'; and the Miss Gas-
kells, with girlish loyalty to what is current, had
rejected the heresy with indignation. From
such passages-at-arms, many retire mortified and
rufHed ; but Fleeming had no sooner left the
house than he fell into delighted admiration of
the spirit of his adversaries. From that it was
but a step to ask himself * what truth was stick-
ing in their heads '; for even the falsest form of
words (in Fleeming's life-long opinion) reposed
upon some truth, just as he could * not even al-
low that people admire ugly things, they admire
what is pretty in the ugly thing.' And before
he sat down to write his letter, he thought he
had hit upon the explanation. ' I fancy the true
idea,* he wrote, ' is that you must never do your-

Fleemzng at Greenwich. 8i

self or anyone else a moral injury — make any
man a thief or a liar — for any end '; quite a
different thing, as he would have loved to point
out, from never stealing or lying. But this per-
fervid disputant was not always out of key with
his audience. One whom he met in the same
house announced that she would never again be
happy. ' What does that signify ? ' cried Fleem-
ing. ' We are not here to be happy, but to be
good.' And the words (as his hearer writes to
me) became to her a sort of motto during life.

From Fairbairn's and Manchester, Fleeming
passed to a railway survey in Switzerland, and
*hence again to Mr. Penn's at Greenwich, where
he was engaged as draughtsman. There in 1856,
we find him in * a terribly busy state, finishing
up engines for innumerable gun-boats and steam
frigates for the ensuing campaign.* From half-
past eight in the morning till nbe or ten at
night, he worked in a crowded office among un-
congenial comrades, ' saluted by chaff, generally
low personal and not witty,' pelted with oranges
and apples, regaled with dirty stories, and seek-
ing to suit himself with his surroundings or (as
he writes it) trying to be as little like himself as

82 Memoir of F teeming Jenkin.

possible. His lodgings were hard by, * across a
dirty green and through some half-built streets
of two-storied houses *; he had Carlyle and the
poets, engineering and mathematics, to study
by himself in such spare time as remained to
him ; and there were several ladies, young and
not so young, with whom he liked to cor-
respond. But not all of these could compen-
sate for the absence of that mother, who had
made herself so large a figure in his life, for
sorry surroundings, unsuitable society, and work
that leaned to the mechanical. * Sunday,' says
he, * I generally visit some friends in town and
seem to swim in clearer water, but the dirty
green seems all the dirtier when I get back.
Luckily I am fond of my profession, or I could
not stand this life.' It is a question in my mind,
if he could have long continued to stand it with-
out loss. * We are not here to be happy, but to
be good,' quoth the young philosopher ; but no
man had a keener appetite for happiness than
Fleeming Jenkin. There is a time of life be-
sides when, apart from circumstances, few men
are agreeable to their neighbours and still fewer
to themselves; and it was at this stage that

Fleeming s Correspojidence, 83

Fleeming had arrived, later than common and
even worse provided. The letter from which I
have quoted is the last of his correspondence
with Frank Scott, and his last confidential let
ter to one of his own sex. * If you consider it
rightly/ he wrote long after, * you will find the
want of correspondence no such strange want
in men's friendships. There is, believe me,
something noble in the metal which does not
rust though not burnished by daily use.' It is
well said ; but the last letter to Frank Scott is
scarcely of a noble metal. It is plain the writer
has outgrown his old self, yet not made ac-
quaintance with the new. This letter from a
busy youth of three and twenty, breathes of
seventeen : the sickening alternations of con-
ceit and shame, the expense of hope in vacuo^
the lack of friends, the longing after love ; the
whole world of egoism under which youth stands
groaning, a voluntary Atlas.

With Fleeming this disease was never seem-
ingly severe. The very day before this (to me)
distasteful letter, he had written to Miss Bell of
Manchester in a sweeter strain ; I do not quote
the one, I quote the other ; fair things are the

Sd Memoir of Fleeming yen kin.

best. ' I keep my own little lodgings,' he writes,
' but come up every night to see mamma * (who
was then on a visit to London) * if not kept too
late at the works ; and have singing lessons once
more, and sing ^^ Donne Vamore ^ scaltro pargo-
letto "/ and think and talk about you ; and listen
to mamma s projects de Stowting. Everything
turns to gold at her touch, she's a fairy and no
mistake. We go on talking till I have a picture
in my head, and can hardly believe at the end
that the original is Stowting. Even you don't
know half how good mamma is ; in other things
too, which I must not mention. She teaches
me how it is not necessary to be very rich to do
much good. I begin to understand that mam-
ma would find useful occupation and create
beauty at the bottom of a volcano. She has
little weaknesses, but is a real generous-hearted
woman, which I suppose is the finest thing in
the world.' Though neither mother nor son
could be called beautiful, they make a pretty
picture; the ugly, generous, ardent woman
weaving rainbow illusions ; the ugly, clear-
sighted, loving son sitting at her side in one of
his rare hours of pleasure, half-beguiled, half-

Two Words of Hope. 85

amused, wholly admiring, as he listens. But as
he goes home, and the fancy pictures fade, and
Stowting is once more burthened with debt, and
the noisy companions and the long hours of
drudgery once more approach, no wonder if the
dirty green seems all the dirtier or if Atlas must
resume his load.

But in healthy natures, this time of moral
teething passes quickly of itself, and is easily
alleviated by fresh interests ; and already, in the
letter to Frank Scott, there are two words of
hope : his friends in London, his love for his
profession. The last might have saved him ; for
he was ere long to pass into a new sphere, where
all his faculties were to be tried and exercised,
and his life to be filled with interest and effort.
But it was not left to engineering : another and
more influential aim was to be set before him.
He must, in any case, have fallen in love ; in
any case, his love would have ruled his life ; and
the question of choice was, for the descendant
of two such families, a thing of paramount im-
portance. Innocent of the world, fiery, gener.
ous, devoted as he was, the son of the wild
Jacksons and the facile Jenkins might have been

&6 Memoir of Fleemmg yenkin,

led far astray. By one of those partialities that
fill men at once with gratitude and wonder, his
choosing was directed well. Or are we to say
that by a man's choice in marriage, as by a cru-
cial merit, he deserves his fortune ? One thing
at least reason may discern : that a man but
partly chooses, he also partly forms, his help-
mate ; and he must in part deserve her, or the
treasure is but won for a moment to be lost.
Fleeming chanced if you will (and indeed all
these opportunities are as * random as blind
man's buff') upon a wife who was worthy of
him ; but he had the wit to know it, the courage
to wait and labour for his prize, and the tender-
ness and chivalry that are required to keep such
prizes precious. Upon this point he has himself
written well, as usual with fervent optimism,
but as usual (in his own phrase) with a truth
sticking in his head.

* Love,' he wrote, * is not an intuition of the
person most suitable to us, most required by
us ; of the person with whom life flowers and
bears fruit. If this were so, the chances of our
meeting that person would be small indeed ; our
intuition would often fail ; the blindness of love

Fleemings idea of Love, Z"]

would then be fatal as it is proverbia!. No, love
works differently, and in its blindness lies its
strength. Man and woman, each strongly de-
sires to be loved, each opens to the other that
heart of ideal aspirations which they have often
hid till then ; each, thus knowing the ideal of
the other, tries to fulfil that ideal, each partially
succeeds. The greater the love, the greater the
success ; the nobler the idea of each, the more
durable, the more beautiful the effect. Mean-
while the blindness of each to the other's de-
fects enables the transformation to proceed
[unobserved,] so that when the veil is withdrawn
(if it ever is, and this I do not know) neither
knows that any change has occurred in the per-
son whom they loved. Do not fear, therefore.
I do not tell you that your friend will not
change, but as I am sure that her choice cannot
be that of a man with a base ideal, so I am sure
the change will be a safe and a good one. Do
not fear that anything you love will vanish, he
must love it too.*

Among other introductions in London, Fleem-
ing had presented a letter from Mrs. Gaskell to
the Alfred Austins. This v/as a family certain

88 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

to interest a thoughtful young man. Alfred,
the youngest and least known of the Austins,
had been a beautiful golden-haired child, petted
and kept out of the way of both sport and study
by a partial mother. Bred an attorney, he had
(like both his brothers) changed his way of life,
and was called to the bar when past thirty. A
Commission of Enquiry into the state of the
poor in Dorsetshire gave him an opportunity of
proving his true talents ; and he was appointed
a Poor Law Inspector, first at Worcester, next
at Manchester, where he had to deal with the
potato famine and the Irish immigration of the
'forties, and finally in London, where he again
distinguished himself during an epidemic of
cholera. He was then advanced to the Perma-
nent Secretaryship of Her Majesty's Office of
Works and Public Buildings ; a position which
he filled with perfect competence, but with an
extreme of modesty ; and on his retirement, in
1868, he was made a Companion of the Bath.
While apprentice to a Norwich attorney, Alfred
Austin was a frequent visitor in the house of
Mr. Barron, a rallying place in those days of in-
tellectual society. Edward Barron, the son of a

Taylor and Barron. 89

rich saddler or leather merchant in the Borough,
was a man typical of the time. When he was
a child, he had once been patted on the head in
his father's shop by no less a man than Samuel
Johnson, as the Doctor went round the Borough
canvassing for Mr. Thrale ; and the child was
true to this early consecration. * A life of let-
tered ease spent in provincial retirement,' it is
thus that the biographer of that remarkable
man, William Taylor, announces his subject ;
and the phrase is equally descriptive of the life
of Edward Barron. The pair were close friends :
* W. T. and a pipe render everything agreeable/
writes Barron in his diary in 1828 ; and in 1833,
after Barron had moved to London and Taylor
had tasted the first public failure of his powers,
the latter wrote : ' To my ever dearest Mr. Bar-
ron say, if you please, that I miss him more than
I regret him — that I acquiesce in his retirement
from Norwich, because I could ill brook his ob-
servation of my increasing debility of mind.*
This chosen companion of William Taylor must
himself have been no ordinary man ; and he was
the friend besides of Borrow, whom I find him
helping in his Latin. But he had no desire for

go Memoir of F teeming yenkin.

popular distinction, lived privately, married a
daughter of Dr. Enfield of Enfield's Speaker,
and devoted his time to the education of his
family, in a deliberate and scholarly fashion, and
with certain traits of stoicism, that would sur-
prise a modern. From these children we must
single out his youngest daughter, Eliza, who
learned under his care to be a sound Latin, an
elegant Grecian, and to suppress emotion with-
out outward sign after the manner of the Godwin
school. This was the more notable, as the girl
really derived from the Enfields ; whose high-
flown romantic temper, I wish I could find space
to illustrate. She was but seven years old, when
Alfred Austin remarked and fell in love with
her ; and the union thus early prepared was sin-
gularly full. Where the husband and wife dif-
fered, and they did so on momentous subjects,
they differed with perfect temper and content ;
and in the conduct of life, and in depth and dura-
bility of love, they were at one. Each full of high
spirits, each practised something of the same
repression : no sharp word was uttered in their
house. The same point of honour ruled them,
a guest was sacred and stood within the pale

The Austins. 91

from criticism. It was a house, besides, of un-
usual intellectual tension. Mrs. Austin remem-
bered, in the early days of the marriage, the
three brothers, John, Charles, and Alfred, march-
ing to and fro, each with his hands behind his
back, and * reasoning high' till morning; and
how, like Dr. Johnson, they would cheer their
speculations with as many as fifteen cups of tea.
And though, before the date of Fleeming's visit,
the brothers were separated, Charles long ago
retired from the world at Brandeston, and John
already near his end in the ' rambling old house *
at Weybridge, Alfred Austin and his wife were
still a centre of much intellectual society, and
still, as indeed they remained until the last,
youthfully alert in mind. There was but one
child of the marriage, Anne, and she v/as herself
something new for the eyes of the young vis-
itor; brought up, as she had been, like her
mother before her, to the standard of a man's
acquirements. Only one art had she been de-
nied, she must not learn the violin — the thought
was too monstrous even for the Austins ; and
indeed it would seem as if that tide of reform
which we may date from the days of Mary Well-

92 Memoir of Fleeming yenktn,

stonecraft had in some degree even receded;
for though Miss Austin was suffered to learn
Greek, the accomplishment was kept secret like
a piece of guilt. But whether this stealth was
caused by a backward movement in public
thought since the time of Edward Barron, or by
the change from enlightened Norwich to barba-
rian London, I have no means of judging.

When Fleeming presented his letter, he fell
in love at first sight with Mrs. Austin and the
life and atmosphere of the house. There was
in the society of the Austins, outward, stoical
conformers to the world, something gravely
suggestive of essential eccentricity, something
unpretentiously breathing of intellectual effort,
that could not fail to hit the fancy of this hot-
brained boy. The unbroken enamel of courtesy,
the self-restraint, the dignified kindness of these
married folk, had besides a particular attraction
for their visitor. He could not but compare
what he saw, with what he knew of his mother
and himself. Whatever virtues Fleeming pos-
sessed, he could never count on being civil;
whatever brave, true-hearted qualities he was able
to admire in Mrs. Jenkin, mildness of demeanour

Fleeming and the Austins. 93

was not one of them. And here he found per
sons who were the equals of his mother and
himself in intellect and width of interest, and
the equals of his father in mild urbanity of dis-
position. Show Fleeming an active virtue, and
he always loved it. He went away from that
house struck through with admiration, and vow-
ing to himself that his own married life should
be upon that pattern, his wife (whoever she
might be) like Eliza Barron, himself such an-
other husband as Alfred Austin. What is more
strange, he not only brought away, but left be-
hind him, golden opinions. He must have been
— he was, I am told — a trying lad ; but there
shone out of him such a light of innocent can-
dour, enthusiasm, intelligence, and appreciation,
that to persons already some way forward in
years, and thus able to enjoy indulgently the
perennial comedy of youth, the sight of him was
delightful. By a pleasant coincidence, there
was one person in the house whom he did not
appreciate and who did not appreciate him :
Anne Austin, his future wife. His boyish van-
ity ruffled her ; his appearance, never impress-
ive, was then, by reason of obtrusive boyishness.

94 Memoir of Fleeming yeftkzn.

still less so ; she found occasion to put him in
the wrong by correcting a false quantity ; and
when Mr. Austin, after doing his visitor the al-
most unheard-of honour of accompanying him
to the door, announced *That was what young
men were like in my time ' — she could only re-
ply, looking on her handsome father, * I thought
they had been better looking.'

This first visit to the Austins took place in
1855 ; and it seems it was some time before
Fleeming began to know his mind; and yet
longer ere he ventured to show it. The cor-
rected quantity, to those who knew him well,
will seem to have played its part ; he was the
man always to reflect over a correction and to
admire the castigator. And fall in love he did ;
not hurriedly but step by step, not blindly but
with critical discrimination ; not in the fashion
of Romeo, but before he was done, with all
Romeo's ardour and more than Romeo's
faith. The high favour to which he presently
rose in the esteem of Alfred Austin and his wife,
might well give him ambitious notions ; but the
poverty of the present and the obscurity of the
future were there to give him pause ; and when

Fleeming s Engagement, 95

his aspirations began to settle round Miss
Austin, he tasted, perhaps for the only time in
his life, the pangs of diffidence. There was in-
deed opening before him a wide door of hope.
He had changed into the service of Messrs.
Liddell & Gordon ; these gentlemen had begun
to dabble in the new field of marine telegraphy ;
and Fleeming was already face to face with his
life's work. That impotent sense of his own
value, as of a ship aground, which makes one of
the agonies of youth, began to fall from him.
New problems which he was endowed to solve,
vistas of new enquiry which he was fitted to ex-
plore, opened before him continually. His gifts
had found their avenue and goal. And with
this pleasure of effective exercise, there must
have sprung up at once the hope of what is
called by the world success. But from these
low beginnings, it was a far look upward to Miss
Austin : the favour of the loved one seems
always more than problematical to any lover;
the consent of parents must be always more than
doubtful to a young man with a small salary
and no capital except capacity and hope. But
Fleeming was not the lad to lose any good thing

g6 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkijt,

for the lack of trial ; and at length, in the autumn
of 1857, this boyish -sized, boyish-mannered, and
superlatively ill-dressed young engineer, en-
tered the house of the Austins, with such sink-
ings as we may fancy, and asked leave to pay
his addresses to the daughter. Mrs. Austin
already loved him like a son, she was but too
glad to give him her consent ; Mr. Austin re-
served the right to inquire into his character;
from neither was there a word about his pros-
pects, by neither was his income mentioned.
' Are these people,' he wrote, struck with won-
der at this dignified disinterestedness, * are these
people the same as other people?' It was not
till he was armed with this permission, that Miss
Austin even suspected the nature of his hopes:
so strong, in this unmannerly boy, was the prin-
ciple of true courtesy ; so powerful, in this im-
petuous nature, the springs of self-repression.
And yet a boy he was ; a boy in heart and mind ;
and it was with a boy's chivalry and frankness
that he won his wife. His conduct was a model
of honour, hardly of tact ; to conceal love from
the loved one, to court her parents, to be silent
and discreet till these are won, and then with-

Correspondence zvitJi his Betrothed, 97

out preparation to approach the lady — these are
not arts that I would recommend for imitation.
They lead to final refusal. Nothing saved
Fleeming from that fate, but one circumstance
that cannot be counted upon — the hearty favour
of the mother, and one gift that is inimitable
and that never failed him throughout life, the
gift of a nature essentially noble and outspoken.
A happy and high-minded anger flashed through
his despair : it won for him his wife.

Nearly two years passed before it was possible
to marry : two years of activity, now in London ;
now at Birkenhead, fitting out ships, inventing
new machinery for new purposes, and dipping
into electrical experiment ; now in the Elba on
his first telegraph cruise between Sardinia and
Algiers : a busy and delightful period of bound-
ing ardour, incessant toil, growing hope and
fresh interests, with behind and through all,
the image of his beloved. A few extracts
from his correspondence with his betrothed
will give the note of these truly joyous years.
* My profession gives me all the excitement
and interest I ever hope for, but the sorry
jade is obviously jealous of you.' — * '' Poor

gS Memoir of Fleeming Je7tkin.

Fleeming," in spite of wet, cold and wind, clam-
bering over moist, tarry slips, wandering among
pools of slush in waste places inhabited by
wandering locomotives, grows visibly stronger,
has dismissed his office cough and cured his
toothache.' — * The whole of the paying out and
lifting machinery must be designed and ordered
in two or three days, and I am half crazy with
work. I like it though: it's like a good ball,
the excitement carries you through.' — ' I was
running to and from the ships and warehouse
through fierce gusts of rain and wind till near
eleven, and you cannot think what a pleasure it
was to be blown about and think of you in your
pretty dress.' — * I am at the works till ten and
sometimes till eleven. But I have a nice office
to sit in, with a fire to myself, and bright brass
scientific instruments all round me, and books
to read, and experiments to make, and enjoy
myself amazingly. I find the study of electricity
so entertaining that I am apt to neglect my
other work.' And for a last taste, ' Yesterday
I had some charming electrical experiments.
What shall I compare them to — a new song ? a
Greek play ? *

Sir Willia77i Thomson, 99

It was at this time besides that he made the
acquaintance of Professor, now Sir William,
Thomson. To describe the part played by these
two in each other's lives would lie out of my
way. They worked together on the Committee
on Electrical Standards ; they served together
at the laying down or the repair of many deep-
sea cables ; and Sir William was regarded by
Fleeming, not only with the * worship ' (the word
is his own) due to great scientific gifts, but with
an ardour of personal friendship not frequently
excelled. To their association, Fleeming brought
the valuable element of a practical understand-
ing; but he never thought or spoke of himself
where Sir William was in question ; and I recall
quite in his last days, a singular instance of this
modest loyalty to one whom he admired and
loved. He drew up a paper, in a quite personal
interest, of his own services ; yet even here he
must step out of his way, he must add, where
it had no claim to be added, his opinion that, in
their joint work, the contributions of Sir Will-
iam had been always greatly the most valuable.
Again, I shall not readily forget with what emo-
tion he once told me an incident of their associ-

lOO Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

ated travels. On one of the mountain ledges of
Madeira, Fleeming's pony bolted between Sir
William and the precipice above ; by strange
good fortune and thanks to the steadiness of
Sir William's horse, no harm was done ; but for
the moment, Fleeming saw his friend hurled
into the sea, and almost by his own act : it was
a memory that haunted him.

CHAPTER IV.
1859- -1868.

Pleeming's Marriage — His Married Life— Professional DiffictJtiei
— Life at Claygate — Illness of Mrs. F. Jenkin ; and of Fleem-
ing — Appointment to the Chair at Edinburgh,

r\N Saturday, Feb. 26, 1859, profiting by a
^ holiday of four days, Fleeming was mar-
ried to Miss Austin at Northiam : a place con-
nected not only with his own family but with
that of his bride as well. By Tuesday morning,
he was at work again, fitting out cableships at
Birkenhead. Of the walk from his lodgings to
the works, I find a graphic sketch in one of his
letters : * Out over the railway bridge, along a
wide road raised to th-^ level of a ground floor
above the land, which, not being built upon,
harbours puddles, ponds, pigs, and Irish hovels ;
— so to the dock warehouses, four huge piles of
building with no windows, surrounded by a wall
about twelve feet high ; — in through the large
gates, round which hang twenty or thirty rusty
Irish, playing pitch and toss and waiting for em-

(lOl)

I02 Me77ioir of Fleeming J en kin.

ployment ; — on along the railway, which came
in at the same gates and which branches down
between each vast block — pa-'jt a pilot-engine
butting refractory trucks into their places — on
to the last block, [and] down the branch, sniffing
the guano-scented air and detecting the old
bones. The hartshorn flavour of the guano be-
comes very strong, as I near the docks where,
across the Elba's decks, a huge vessel is discharg-
ing her cargo of the brown dust, and where huge
vessels have been discharging that same cargo
for the last five months.' This was the walk he
took his young wife on the morrow of his return.
She had been used to the society of lawyers and
civil servants, moving in that circle which seems
to itself the pivot of the nation and is in truth
only a clique like another ; and Fleeming was to
her the nameless assistant of a nameless firm ot
engineers, doing his inglorious business, as she
now saw for herself, among unsavoury surround-
ings. But when their walk brought them with-
in view of the river, she beheld a sight to her of
the most novel beauty : four great, sea-going
ships dressed out with flags, * How lovely ! *
she cried. ' What is it for ? ' — * For you,' said

Fleeming s Marriage, 103

Fleeming. Her surprise was only equalled by
her pleasure. But perhaps, for what we may
call private fame, there is no life like that of the
engineer ; who is a great man in out-of-the-way
places, by the dockside or on the desert island
or in populous ships, and remains quite unheard
of in the coteries of London. And Fleeming
had already made his mark among the few who
had an opportunity of knowing him.

His marriage was the one decisive incident uf
his career ; from that moment until the day of
his death, he had one thought to which all the
rest were tributary, the thought of his wife. No
one could know him even slightly, and not re-
mark the absorbing greatness of that sentiment ;
nor can any picture of the man be drawn that
does not in proportion dwell upon it. This is a
delicate task ; but if we are to leave behind us
(as we wish) some presentment of the friend we
have lost, it is a task that must be undertaken.

For all his play of mind and fancy, for all his
indulgence — and, as time went on, he grew in-
dulgent— Fleeming had views of duty that were
even stern. He was too shrewd a student of his
fellow-men to remain long content with rigid

I04 Me^noir of Fleeining yenktn,

formulae of conduct. Iron-bound, impersonal
ethics, the procrustean bed of rules, he soon saw
at their true value as the deification of averages.
* As to Miss (I declare I forget her name) being
bad,' I find him writing, ' people only mean that
she has broken the Decalogue — which is not at
all the same thing. People who have kept in
the high-road of Life really have less opportuni-
ty for taking a comprehensive view of it than
those who have leaped over the hedges and
strayed up the hills ; not but what the hedges
are very necessary, and our stray travellers often
have a weary time of it. So, you may say, have
those in the dusty roads.* Yet he was himself
a very stern respecter of the hedgerows ; sought
safety and found dignity in the obvious path of
conduct ; and would palter with no simple and
recognised duty of his epoch. Of marriage in
particular, of the bond so formed, of the obliga-
tions incurred, of the debt men owe to their
children, he conceived in a truly antique spirit :
not to blame others, but to constrain himself.
It was not to blame, I repeat, that he held these
views ; for others, he could make a large allow-
ance ; and yet he tacitly expected of his friends

His Married Life. 105

and his wife a high standard of behaviour. Nor
was it always easy to wear the armour of that
ideal.

Acting upon these beliefs; conceiving that he
had indeed * given himself (in the full meaning
of these words) for better, for worse ; painfully
alive to his defects of temper and deficiency in
charm ; resolute to make up for these ; thinking
last of himself: Fleeming was in some ways the
very man to have made a noble, uphill fight of
an unfortunate marriage. In other ways, it is
true he was one of the most unfit for such a trial.
And it was his beautiful destiny to remain to the
last hour the same absolute and romantic lover,
who had shown to his new bride the flag-draped
vessels in the Mersey. No fate is altogether
easy ; but trials are our touchstone, trials over-
come our reward ; and it was given to Fleeming
to conquer. It was given to him to live for
another, not as a task, but till the end as an en-
chanting pleasure. * People may write novels,'
he wrote in 1869, 'and other people may write
poems, but not a man or woman among them
can write to say how happy a man may be, who
is desperately in love with his wife after ten

lo6 Memoir of F teeming Jenkin,

years of marriage.' And again in 1885, after
more than twenty-six years of marriage, and
within but five weeks of his death : 'Your first
letter from Bournemouth/ he wrote, * gives me
heavenly pleasure — for which I thank Heaven
and you too — who are my heaven on earth.*
The mind hesitates whether to say that such a
man has been more good or more fortunate.

Any woman (it is the defect of her sex) comes
sooner to the stable mind of maturity than any
man ; and Jenkin was to the end of a most de-
liberate growth. In the next chapter, when I
come to deal with his telegraphic voyages and
give some taste of his correspondence, the reader
will still find him at twenty-five an arrant school-
boy. His wife besides was more thoroughly
educated than he. In many ways she was able
to teach him, and he proud to be taught ; in
many ways she outshone him, and he delighted
to be outshone. All these superiorities, and
others that, after the manner of lovers, he no
doubt forged for himself, added as time v/ent on
to the humility of his original love. Only once,
in all I know of his career, did he show a touch
of smallness. He could not learn to sing cor-

His Married Life. 107

rectly ; his wife told him so and desisted from
her lessons ; and the mortification was so sharply
felt that for years he could not be induced to go
to a concert, instanced himself as a typical man
without an ear, and never sang again. I tell it ;
for the fact that this stood singular in his be-
haviour, and really amazed all who knew him, is
the happiest way I can im.agine to commend the
tenor of his simplicity ; and because it illustrates
his feeling for his wife. Others were always
welcome to laugh at him ; if it amused them, or
if it amused him, he would proceed undisturbed
with his occupation, his vanity invulnerable.
With his wife it was different : his wife had
laughed at his singing ; and for twenty years the
fibre ached. Nothing, again, was more notable
than the formal chivalry of this unmannered man
to the person on earth with whom he was the
most familiar. He was conscious of his own in-
nate and often rasping vivacity and roughness
and he was never forgetful of his first visit to
the Austins and the vow he had registered on
liis return. There was thus an artificial element
in his punctilio that at times might almost raise
a smile. But it stood on noble grounds ; for

io8 Memoir of Flee77iing yenkin,

this was how he sought to shelter from his own
petulance the woman who was to him the sym-
bol of the household and to the end the beloved
of his youth.

I wish in this chapter to chronicle small beer ;
taking a hasty glance at some ten years of mar-
ried life and of professional struggle ; and re-
serving till the next all the more interesting
matter of his cruises. Of his achievements and
their worth, it is not for me to speak : his friend
and partner, Sir William Thomson, has con-
tributed a note on the subject, which will be
found in the Appendix, and to which I must
refer the reader. He is to conceive in the mean-
while for himself Fleeming's manifold engage-
ments : his service on the Committee on Elec-
trical Standards, his lectures on electricity at
Chatham, his chair at the London University,
his partnership with Sir William Thomson and
Mr. Varley in many ingenious patents, his grow-
ing credit with engineers and men of science ;
and he is to bear in mind that of all this activity
and acquist of reputation, the immediate profit
was scanty. Soon after his marriage, Fleeming
had left the service of Messrs. Liddell & Gordon,

Professio7ial DijficuHies. 109

and entered into a general engineering partner-
ship with Mr. Forde, a gentleman in a good way
of business. It was a fortunate partnership in
this, that the parties retained their mutual re-
spect unlessened and separated with regret ; but
men's affairs, like men, have their times of sick-
ness, and by one of these unaccountable varia-
tions, for hard upon ten years the business was
disappointing and the profits meagre. ' Indit-
ing drafts of German railways which will never
get made ': it is thus I find Fleeming, not with-
out a touch of bitterness, describe his occupa-
tion. Even the patents hung fire at first. There
was no salary to rely on ; children were coming
and growing up ; the prospect was often anxious.
In the days of his courtship, Fleeming had writ-
ten to Miss Austin a dissuasive picture of the
trials of poverty, assuring her these were no fig-
ments but truly bitter to support ; he told her
this, he wrote, beforehand, so that when the
pinch came and she suffered, she should not be
disappointed in herself nor tempted to doubt her
own magnanimity: a letter of admirable wisdom
and solicitude. But now that the trouble came,
he bore it very lightly. It was his principle, as

no Memoir of Fleemtng Jenkin,

he once prettily expressed it, * to enjoy each
day's happiness, as it arises, like birds or chil-
dren.' His optimism, if driven out at the door,
would come in again by the window ; if it found
nothing but blackness in the present, would hit
upon some ground of consolation in the future
or the past. And his courage and energy were
indefatigable. In the year 1863, soon after the
birth of their first son, they moved into a cot-
tage at Claygate near Esher ; and about this time,
under manifold troubles both of money and
health, I find him writing from abroad : ' The
country will give us, please God, health and
strength. I will love and cherish you more
than ever, you shall go where you wish, you
shall receive whom you wish — and as for
money you shall have that too. I cannot be
mistaken. I have now measured myself with
many men. I do not feel weak, I do not
feel that I shall fail. In many things I have
succeeded, and I will in this. And meanwhile
the time of waiting, which, please Heaven,
shall not be long, shall also not be so bitter.
Well, well, I promise much, and do not know
at this moment how you and the dear child

Life at Claygate. iii

are. If he is but better, courage, my girl, for I

see light.'

This cottage at Claygate stood just without
the village, well surrounded with trees and com-
manding a pleasant view. A piece of the garden
was turfed over to form a croquet green, and
Fleeming became (I need scarce say) a very
ardent player. He grew ardent, too, in garden-
ing. This he took up at first to please his wife,
having no natural inclination ; but he had no
sooner set his hand to it, than, like everything
else he touched, it became with him a passion.
He budded roses, he potted cuttings in the
coach-house ; if there came a change of weather
at night, he would rise out of bed to protect his
favourites ; when he was thrown with a dull
companion, it was enough for him to discover
in the man a fellow gardener ; on his travels, he
would go out of his way to visit nurseries and
gather hints ; and to the end of his life, after
other occupations prevented him putting his
own hand to the spade, he drew up a yearly
programme for his gardener, in which all details
were regulated. He had begun by this time to
write. His paper on Darwin, which had the

1 1 2 Memoir of Fleeining yenkin,

merit of convincing on one point the philosopher
himself, had indeed been written before this in
London lodgings ; but his pen was not idle at
Claygate ; and it was here he wrote (among
other things) that review of * Fecimdity^ Fertility^
Sterility y and Allied Topics^' which Dr. Matthews
Duncan prefixed by way of introduction to the
second edition of the work. The mere act of
writing seems to cheer the vanity of the most
incompetent ; but a correction accepted by Dar-
win, and a whole review borrowed and reprinted
by Matthews Duncan, are compliments of a rare
strain, and to a man still unsuccessful must have
been precious indeed. There was yet a third of
the same kind in store for him ; and when Munro
himself owned that he had found instruction in
the paper on Lucretius, we may say that Fleem-
ing had been crowned in the capitol of review-
ing.

Croquet, charades, Christmas magic lanterns
for the village children, an amateur concert or a
review article in the evening; plenty of hard
work by day ; regular visits to meetings of the
British Association, from one of which I find
h'jPi characteriuically writing : * I cannot say

His Friends and Neighbours. 1 1 3

that I have had any amusement yet, but I am
enjoying the dulness and dry bustle of the whole
thing * ; occasional visits abroad on business,
when he would find the time to glean (as I ha\ e
said) gardening hints for himself, and old folk-
songs or new fashions of dress for his wife ;
and the continual study and care of his chil-
dren : these were the chief elements of his life.
Nor were friends wanting. Captain and Mrs.
Jenkin, Mr. and Mrs. Austin, Clerk Maxwell,
Miss Bell of Manchester, and others came to
them on visits. Mr. Hertslet of the Foreign
Office, his wife and his daughter, were neigh-
bours and proved kind friends ; in 1867 the
Howitts came to Claygate and sought the
society of * the two bright, clever young peo-
ple '; * and in a house dose by, Mr. Frederick
Ricketts came to live with his family. Mr.
Ricketts was a valued friend during his short
life; and when he was lost with every circum-
stance of heroism in the La Plata, Fleeming
mourned him sincerely.

I think I shall give the best idea of Fleeming

^ Reminiscetices of My Later Life, by Mary Hewitt
Good Words, Mav 1886.

114 Memoir of Flee7ning Jenkin,

in this time of his early married life, by a few
sustained extracts from his letters to his wife,
while she was absent on a visit in 1864.

^ Nov. II. — Sunday was too wet to walk to
Isleworth, for which I was sorry, so I staid and
went to Church and thought of you at Ardwick
all through the Commandments, and heard Dr.

expound in a remarkable way a prophecy

of St. Paul's about Roman Catholics, which
mutatis mutandis would do very well for Prot-
estants in some parts. Then I made a little
nursery of Borecole and Enfield market cabbage,
grubbing in wet earth with leggings and gray
coat on. Then I tidied up the coach-house to
my own and Christine's admiration. Then en-
couraged by bouts-rim^s I wrote you a copy of
verses ; high time 1 think ; I shall just save my
tenth year of knowing my lady-love without
inditing poetry or rhymes to her.

*Then I rummaged over the box with my
father's letters and found interesting notes from
myself. One I should say my first letter, which
little Austin I should say would rejoice to see
and shall see — with a drawing of a cottage and
a spirited "cob." What w^as more to the pur-

Letters to his Wife. 1 1 5

pose, I found with it a paste-cutter which Mary
begged humbly for Christine and I generously
gave this morning.

'■ Then I read some of Congreve. There are
admirable scenes in the manner of Sheridan ;
all wit and no character, or rather one character
in a great variety of situations and scenes. I
could show you some scenes, but others are too
coarse even for my stomach hardened by a
course of French novels.

* All things look so happy for the rain.
'■Nov. 16. — Verbenas looking well. ... I am
but a poor creature without you ; I have natu-
rally no spirit or fun or enterprise in me. Only
a kind of mechanical capacity for ascertaining
whether two really is half four, etc. ; but when
you are near me I can fancy that I too shine,
and vainly suppose it to be my proper light ;
whereas by my extreme darkness when you are
not by, it clearly can only be by a reflected brill-
iance that I seem aught but dull. Then for
the moral part of me : if it were not for you
and little Odden, I should feel by no means
sure that I had any affection power in me. . . .
Even the muscular me suffers a sad deteriora*

ii6 Memoir of Fleevzing Je^ikm.

tion in your absence. I don't get up when I
ought to, I have snoozed in my chair after din-
ner ; I do not go in at the garden with my
wonted vigour, and feel ten times as tired as
usual with a walk in your absence ; so you see,
when you are not by, I am a person without
ability, affections or vigour, but droop dull, self-
ish, and spiritless ; can you wonder that I love
you?

^ Nov. 17. — . . . I am very glad we married
young. I would not have missed these five
years, no, not for any hopes ; they are my own.

* Nov. 30. — I got through my Chatham lecture
very fairly though almost all my apparatus went
astray. I dined at the mess, and got home to
Isleworth the same evening; your father very
kindly sitting up for me.

''Dec. I. — Back at dear Claygate. Many cut-
tings flourish, especially those which do honour
to your hand. Your Californian annuals are up
and about. Badger is fat, the grass green. . . .

^ Dec. 3. — Odden will not talk of you, while
you are away, having inherited, as I suspect, his
father's way of declining to consider a subject
which is painful, as your absence is. ... I cer

Letters to his Wife, 1 1 7

tainly should like to learn Greek and I think it
would be a capital pastime for the long- winter
evenings. . . . How things are misrated ! I
declare croquet is a noble occupation compared
to the pursuits of business men As for so-
called idleness — that is, one form of it — I vow
it is the noblest aim of man. When idle, one
can love, one can be good, feel kindly to all,
devote oneself to others, be thankful for exist-
ence, educate one's mind, one's heart, one's
body. When busy, as I am busy now or have
been busy to-day, one feels just as you some-
times felt when you were too busy, owing to
want of servants.

'Dec. 5. — On Sunday I was at Islev/orth, chiefly
engaged in playing with Odden. We had the
most enchanting walk together through the
brickfields. It was very muddy, and, as he re-
marked, not fit for Nanna, but fit for us men.
The dreary waste of bared earth, thatched sheds
and standing water, was a paradise to him ; and
when we walked up planks to deserted mixing
and crushing mills, and actually saw where the
clay was stirred with long iron prongs, and
chalk or lime ground with '* a tind of a mill,"

ii8 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

his expression of contentment and triumphant
heroism knew no limit to its beauty. Of course
on returning I found Mrs. Austin looking out
at the door in an anxious manner, and thinking
Wsi had been out quite long enough. ... I am
reading Don Quixote chiefly and am his fervent
admirer, but I am so sorry he did not place his
affections on a Dulcinea of somewhat worthier
stamp. In fact I think there must be a mistake
about it. Don Quixote might and would serve
his lady in most preposterous fashion, but I am
sure he would have chosen a lady of merit. He
imagined her to be such no doubt, and drew a
charming picture of her occupations by the
banks of the river; but in his other imagina-
tions, there was some kind of peg on which
to hang the false costumes he created ; wind-
mills are big, and wave their arms like giants ;
sheep in the distance are somewhat like an
army ; a little boat on the river-side must look
much the same whether enchanted or belonging
to millers ; but except that Dulcinea is a wom-
an, she bears no resemblance at all to the
damsel of his imagination.*

At the time of these letters, the oldest son

Illness of Mrs, F. Jenkin, 1 1 g

only was born to them. In September of the
next year, with the birth of the second, Charles
Frewen, there befell Fleeming a terrible alarm
and what proved to be a lifelong misfortune.
Mrs. Jenkin was taken suddenly and alarmingly
ill ; Fleeming ran a matter of two miles to fetch
the doctor, and drenched with sweat as he was,
returned with him at once in an open gig. On
their arrival at the house, Mrs. Jenkin half un-
consciously took and kept hold of her husband's
hand. By the doctor's orders, windows and
doors were set open to create a thorough
draught, and the patient was on no account to
be disturbed. Thus, then, did Fleeming pass
the whole of that night, crouching on the floor
in the draught, and not daring to move lest he
should wake the sleeper. He had never been
strong ; energy had stood him instead of vigour;
and the result of that night's exposure was
flying rheumatism varied by settled sciatica.
Sometimes it quite disabled him, sometimes it
was less acute ; but he was rarely free from it
until his death. I knew him for many years;
for more than ten we were closely intimate ; I
have lived with him for weeks ; and during all

1 20 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin,

this time, he only once referred to his infirmity
and then perforce as an excuse for some trouble
he put me to, and so slightly worded that I
paid no heed. This is a good measure of his
courage under sufferings of which none but the
untried will think lightly. And I think it worth
noting how this optimist was acquainted with
pain. It will seem strange only to the super-
ficial. The disease of pessimism springs never
from real troubles, which it braces men to bear,
which it delights men to bear well. Nor does
it readily spring at all, in minds that have con-
ceived of life as a field of ordered duties, not
as a chase in which to hunt for gratifications.
* We are not here to be happy, but to be good ';
I wish he had mended the phrase : ' We are not
here to be happy, but to try to be good,' comes
nearer the modesty of truth. With such old-
fashioned morality, it is possible to get through
life, and see the worst of it, and feel some of
the worst of it, and still acquiesce piously and
even gladly in man's fate. Feel some of the
worst of it, I say ; for some of the rest of the
worst is, by this simple faith, excluded.

It was in the year 1868, that the clouds finally

In the University of Edinburgh. 121

rose. The business in partnership with ]\Ir
Forcle began suddenly to pay well ; about the
same time the patents showed themselves a
valuable property ; and but a little after,
Fleem.ing was appointed to the new chair of
engineering in the University of Edinburgh.
Thus, almost at once, pecuniary embarrass-
ments passed for ever out of his life. Here is
his own epilogue to the time at Claygate, and
his anticipations of the future in Edinburgh.

* . . . . The dear old house at Claygate is
not let and the pretty garden a mass of weeds.
I feel rather as if we had behaved unkindly to
them. We were very happy there, but now that
it is over I am conscious of the weight of anx-
iety as to money which I bore all the time.
With you in the garden, with Austin in the
coach-house, with pretty songs in the little, low
white room, with the moonlight in the dear room
up-stairs, ah, it was perfect ; but the long walk,
wondering, pondering, fearing, scheming, and
the dusty jolting railway, and the horrid fusty
office with its endless disappointments, they
are well gone. It is well enough to fight and
scheme and bustle about in the eager crowd

122 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkm,

here [in London] for a while now and then, but
not for a hfetime. What I have now is just
perfect. Study for winter, action for summer,
lovely country for recreation, a pleasant town
for talk. . • • /

CHAPTER V.

NOTES OF TELEGRAPH VOYAGES, 1 85 8 TO 1 873.

"OUT it is now time to see Jenkin at his life's
-"-^ work. I have before me certain imperfect
series of letters written, as he says, ' at hazard,
for one does not know at the time what is im-
portant and what is not *: the earlier addressed
to Miss Austin, after the betrothal ; the later to
Mrs. Jenkin the young wife. I should premise
that I have allowed myself certain editorial free-
doms, leaving out and splicing together much
as he himself did with the Bona cable : thus
edited the letters speak for themselves, and will
fail to interest none who love adventure or activ-
ity. Addressed as they were to her whom he
called his * dear engineering pupil,* they give a
picture of his work so clear that a child may un-
derstand, and so attractive that I am half afraid
their publication may prove harmful, and still
further crowd the ranks of a profession already
overcrov/ded. But their most engaging quality
is the picture of the writer; with his indomi-

(123)

1 2^ Memoir of Fleeming J en kin.

table self-confidence and courage, his readiness
in every pinch of circumstance or change of
plan, and his ever fresh enjoyment of the
whole web of human experience, nature, adven-
ture, science, toil and rest, society and solitude.
It should be borne in mind that the writer of
these buoyant pages was, even while he wrote,
harassed by responsibility, stinted in sleep and
often struggling with the prostration of sea-sick-
ness. To this last enemy, which he never over-
came, I have omitted, in my search after con-
densation, a good many references ; if they were
all left, such was the man's temper, they would
not represent one hundredth part of what he
suffered, for he was never given to complaint.
But indeed he had met this ugly trifle, as he
met every thwart circumstance of life, with a
certain pleasure of pugnacity; and suffered it
not to check him, whether in the exercise of his
profession or the pursuit of amusement.

I.

• Birkenhead : April i8, 1858.

'Well, you should know, Mr. having a

contract to lay down a submarine telegraph

The African Cable. 125

from Sardinia to Africa failed three times in
the attempt. The distance from land to land
is about 140 miles. On the first occasion, after
proceeding some 70 miles, he had to cut the ca-
ble— the cause I forget ; he tried again, same
result ; then picked up about 20 miles of the
lost cable, spliced on a new piece, and very
nearly got across that time, but ran short of
cable, and when but a few miles off Galita in
very deep water, had to telegraph to London
for more cable to be manufactured and sent out
whilst he tried to stick to the end : for five days,
I think, he lay there sending and receiving mes-
sages, but heavy weather coming on the cable

parted and Mr. went home in despair — at

least I should think so.

' He then applied to those eminent engineers,
R. S. Newall & Co., who made and laid down a
cable for him last autumn — Fleeming Jenkin
(at the time in considerable mental agitation)
having the honour of fitting out the Elba for
that purpose.' [On this occasion, the Elba
has no cable to lay; but] 'is going out in the
beginning of May to endeavour to fish up the
cables Mr. lost. There are two ends at or

126 Memoir of Fleeming ycjzkzn,

near the shore : the third will probably not be
found within 20 miles from land. One of these
ends will be passed over a very big pulley or
sheave at the bows, passed six times round a
big barrel or drum ; which will be turned round
by a steam engine on deck, and thus wind up
the cable, while the Elba slowly steams ahead.
The cable is not wound round and round the
drum as your silk is wound on its reel, but on
the contrary never goes round more than six
times, going off at one side as it comes on at
the other, and going down into the hold of the
Elba to be coiled along in a big coil or skein.

* I went down to Gateshead to discuss with
Mr. Newall the form which this tolerably sim-
ple idea should take, and have been busy since
I came here drawing, ordering, and putting up
the machinery — uninterfered with, thank good-
ness, by any one. I own I like responsibility ;
it flatters one and then, your father might say,
I have more to gain than to lose. Moreover I
do like this bloodless, painless combat with
wood and iron, forcing the stubborn rascals to
do my will, licking the clumsy cubs into an act-
ive shape, seeing the child of to-day's thought

Getting Ready to Sail. 127

working to-morrow in full vigour at his ap-
pointed task.

* May 12.

* By dint of bribing, bullying, cajoling, and go-
ing day by day to see the state of things or-
dered, all my work is very nearly ready now ;
but those who have neglected these precautions
are of course disappointed. Five hundred fath-
oms of chain [were] ordered by some three

weeks since, to be ready by the loth without
fail; he sends for it to-day — 150 fathoms all
they can let us have by the 15th — and how the
rest is to be got, who knows ? He ordered a
boat a month since and yesterday we could see
nothing of her but the keel and about two
planks. I could multiply instances without
end. At first one goes nearly mad with vexa-
tion at these things ; but one finds so soon that
they are the rule, that then it becomes necessary
to feign a rage one does not feel. I look upon
it as the natural order of things, that if I order
a thing, it will not be done — if by accident it
gets done, it will certainly be done wrong : the
only remedy being to watch the performance at
every stage.

128 Memoir of Fleerning J en kin.

* To-day was a grand field-day. I had steam
up and tried the engine against pressure or re-
sistance. One part of the machinery is driven
by a belt or strap of leather. I always had my
doubts this might slip ; and so it did, wildly. I
had made provision for doubling it, putting on
two belts instead of one. No use — off they
went, slipping round and off the pulleys in-
stead of driving the machinery. Tighten them
— no use. More strength there — down with the
lever — smash something, tear the belts, but get
them tight — now then, stand clear, on with the
steam ; — and the belts slip away as if nothing
held them. Men begin to look queer ; the cir-
cle of quidnuncs make sage remarks. Once
more — no use. I begin to know I ought to
feel sheepish and beat, but somehow I feel
cocky instead. I laugh and say, "Well, I am
bound to break something down " — and sud-
denly see. " Oho, there's the place ; get weight
on there, and the belt won't slip." With much
labour, on go the belts again. " Now then, a
spar thro' there and six men's weight on ; mind
you're not carried away." — " Ay, ay, sir." But
evidently no one believes in the plan, " Hur

The 'Elba Sails. 129

rah, round she goes — stick to your spar. All
right, shut off steam." And the difficulty is
vanquished.

* This or such as this (not always quite so bad)
occurs hour after hour, while five hundred tons
of coal are rattling down into the holds and
bunkers, riveters are making their infernal row
all round, and riggers bend the sails and fit the
rigging : — a sort of Pandemonium, it appeared
to young Mrs. Newall, who was here on Mon-
day and half-choked with guano ; but it suits the
likes o* me.

'S.S. Elba, River Mersey: May 17.

* We are delayed in the river by some of the
ship's papers not being ready. Such a scene at
the dock gates. Not a sailor will join till the
last moment ; and then, just as the ship forges
ahead through the narrow pass, beds and bag-
gage f^y on board, the men half tipsy clutch at
the rigging, the captain swears, the women
scream and sob, the crowd cheer and laugh,
while one or two pretty little girls stand still and
cry outright, regardless of all eyes.

* These two days of comparative peace have
quite set me on my legs again. 1 was getting

1 30 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

worn and weary with anxiety and work As
usual I have been delighted with my ship-
wrights. I gave them some beer on Saturday,
making a short oration. To-day when they
went ashore and I came on board, they gave
three cheers, whether for me or the ship I hard-
ly know, but I had just bid them good-bye, and
the ship was out of hail ; but I was startled and
hardly liked to claim the compliment by ac-
knowledging it.

•S.S. ^/(5« .• May 25.

* My first intentions of a long journal have
been fairly frustrated by sea-sickness. On Tues-
day last about noon we started from the Mersey
in very dirty weather, and were hardly out of
the river when we met a gale from the south-
west and a heavy sea, both right in our teeth ;
and the poor Elba had a sad shaking. Had I
not been very sea-sick, the sight would have
been exciting enough, as I sat wrapped in my
oilskins on the bridge ; [but] in spite of all my
efforts to talk, to eat, and to grin, I soon col-
lapsed into imbecility ; and I was heartily thank-
ful towards evening to find myself in bed.

* Next morning, I fancied it grew quieter and,

In Holyhead Harbour. 131

as I lirtened, heard, " Let go the anchor," where-
on I concluded we had run into Holyhead Har-
bour, as was indeed the case. All that day we
lay in Holyhead, but I could neither read nor
v/rite nor draw. The captain of another steamer
which had put in came on board, and we all went
for a walk on the hill ; and in the evening there
was an exchange of presents. We gave some
tobacco I think, and received a cat, two pounds
of fresh butter, a Cumberland ham, Westward
Ho! and Thackeray's English Humourists, I
was astonished at receiving two such fair books
from the captain of a little coasting screw. Our
captain said he [the captain of the screw]
had plenty of money, five or six hundred a
year at least. — " What in the world makes him
go rolling about in such a craft, then ? **
— " Why, I fancy he's reckless ; he's desperate
in love with that girl I mentioned, and she
won't look at him." Our honest, fatj old cap-
tain says this very grimly in his thick, broad
voice.

* My head won't stand much writing yet, so I
will run up and take a look at the blue night
sky ofif the coast of Portugal.

132 Memoir of F teeming Jenkin.

* May 26.

* A nice lad of some two and twenty, A ■

by name, goes out in a nondescript capacity as
part purser, part telegraph clerk, part generally
useful person. A was a great comfort dur-
ing the miseries [of the gale] ; for when with a
dead head wind and a heavy sea, plates, books,
papers, stomachs were being rolled about in sad
confusion, we generally managed to lie on our
backs, and grin, and try discordant staves of the
Flowers of the Forest and the Low-backed Car,
We could sing and laugh, when we could do noth-
ing else ; though A was ready to swear after

each fit was past, that that was the first time he
had felt anything, and at this moment would de-
clare in broad Scotch that he'd never been sick at
all, qualifying the oath with "except for a minute
now and then." He brought a cornet-a-piston
to practice on, having had three weeks' instruc-
tions on that melodious instrument ; and if you
could hear the horrid sounds that come ! especial
ly at heavy rolls. When I hint he is not improv-
ing, there comes a confession : *' I don't feel quite
right yet, you see ! " But he blows away manfully,
and in self-defence I try to roar the tune louder.

The Second Mates Story. 133

' II :3o P.M.

* Long past Cape St. Vincent now. We went
within about 400 yards of the cHffs and Hght-
house in a calm moonlight, with porpoises
springing from the sea, the men crooning long
ballads as they lay idle on the forecastle and the
sails flapping uncertain on the yards. As we
passed, there came a sudden breeze from land,
hot and heavy scented ; and now as I write its
warm rich flavour contrasts strongly with the
salt air we have been breathing.

* I paced the deck v/ith H , the second

mate, and in the quiet night drew a confession
that he was engaged to be married, and gave
him a world of good advice. He is a very nice,
active, little fellow, with a broad Scotch tongue
and ** dirty, little rascal " appearance. He had
a sad disappointment at starting. Having been
second mate on the last voyage, when the first
mate was discharged, he took charge of the Elba
all the time she was in port, and of course looked
forward to being chief mate this trip. Liddell
promised him the post. He had not authority
to do this ; and when Newall heard of it, he ap-
pointed another man. Fancy poor H having

134 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

told all the men and most of all, his sweetheart .
But more remains behind ; for when it came to

signing articles, it turned out that O , the

new first mate, had not a certificate which al-
lowed him to have a second mate. Then came

rather an affecting scene. For H proposed

to sign as chief (he having the necessary higher
certificate) but to act as second for the lower
wages. At first O would not give in, but of-
fered to go as second. But our brave little H

said, no : " The owners wished Mr. O to be

chief mate, and chief mate he should be." So
he carried the day, signed as chief and acts as
second. Shakespeare and Byron are his favour-
ite books. I walked into Byron a little, but can
well understand his stirring up a rough, young
sailor's romance. I lent him Westward Ho from
the cabin ; but to my astonishment he did not
care much for it ; he said it smelt of the shilling
railway library; perhaps I had praised it too
highly. Scott is his standard for novels. I am
very happy to find good taste by no means con-
fined to gentlemen, H having no pretensions

to that title. He is a man after my own heart.
* Then I came down to the cabin and heard

Off Fort Genova, 135

young A 's schemes for the future. His

highest picture is a conimission in the Prince
of Vizianagram's irregular horse. His eldest
brother is tutor to his Highness's children, and
grand vizier, and magistrate, and on his Highness's
household staff, and seems to be one of those
Scotch adventurers one meets with and hears of
in queer berths — raising cavalry, building palaces,
and using some petty Eastern king's long purse
with their long Scotch heads.

' Off Bona ; June 4.

* I read your letter carefully, leaning back in
a Maltese boat to present the smallest surface of
my body to a grilling sun, and sailing from the
Elba to Cape Hamrah about three miles distant.
How we fried and sighed ! At last, we reached
land under Fort Genova, and I was carried ashore
pick-a-back, and plucked the first flower I saw for
Annie. It was a strange scene, far more novel
than I had 'magined : the high, steep banks cov-
ered with rich, spicy vegetation of which I hard-
ly knew one plant. The dwarf palm with fan-
like leaves, growing about two feet high, formed
the staple of the verdure. As we brushed through

136 Mejnoir of Fleeming y en kin,

them, the gummy leaves of a cistus stuck to the
clothes ; and with its small white flower and yel-
low heart, stood for our English dog-rose. In
place of heather, we had myrtle and lentisque
with leaves somewhat similar. That large bulb
with long flat leaves? Do not touch it if your
hands are cut ; the Arabs use it as blisters for
their horses. Is that the same sort ? No, take
that one up ; it is the bulb of a dwarf palm, each
layer of the onion peels off, brown and netted,
like the outside of a cocoa-nut. It is a clever
plant that ; from the leaves we get a vegetable
horsehair; — and eat the bottom of the centre
spike. All the leaves you pull have the same
aromatic scent. But here a little patch of cleared
ground shows old friends, who seem to cling by
abused civilisation : — fine, hardy thistles, one of
them bright yellow, though ; — honest, Scotch-
looking, large daisies or gowans ; — potatoes here
and there, looking but sickly ; and dark sturdy
fig-trees looking cool and at their ease in the
burning sun.

* Here we are at Fort Genova, crowning the
little point, a small old building, due to my old
Genoese acquaintance who fought and traded

In Fort Genova, 137

bravely once upon a time. A broken cannon
of theirs forms the threshold ; and through a
dark, low arch, we enter upon broad terraces
sloping to the centre, from which rain water
may collect and run into that well. Large-
breeched French troopers lounge about and are
most civil ; and the whole party sit down to
breakfast in a little white-washed room, from
the door of which the long, mountain coastline
and the sparkling sea show of an impossible blue
through the openings of a white-washed ram-
part. I try a sea-egg, one of those prickly fel-
lows— sea-urchins, they are called sometimes ;
the shell is of a lovely purple, and when opened,
there are rays of yellow adhering to the inside ;
these I eat, but they are very fishy.

* We are silent and shy of one another, and
soon go out to watch v^hile turbaned, blue-
breeched, barelegged Arabs dig holes for the
land telegraph posts on the following principle :
one man takes a pick and bangs lazily at the
hard earth ; when a little is loosened, his mate
with a small spade lifts it on one side ; and da
capo. They have regular features and look quite
in place among the palms. Our English work*

138 Memoir of Fleeming y en kin.

men screw the earthenware insulators on the
posts, strain the wire, and order Arabs about by

the generic term of Johnny. I find W has

nothing for me to do ; and that in fact no one
has anything to do. Some instruments for test-
ing have stuck at Lyons, some at Cagliari ; and
nothing can be done — or at any rate, is done.
I wander about, thinking of you and staring at
big, green grasshoppers — locusts, some people
call them — and smelling the rich brushwood.
There was nothing for a pencil to sketch, and I
soon got tired of this work, though I have paid
willingly much money for far less strange and
lovely sights.

* Off Cape Spartivento : June 8.
* At two this morning, we left Cagliari ; at
five cast anchor here. I got up and began pre-
paring for the final trial ; and shortly afterwards
everyone else of note on board went ashore to
make experiments on the state of the cable,
leaving me with the prospect of beginning to
lift at 12 o'clock. I was not ready by that time;
but the experiments were not concluded and
moreover the cable was found to be imbedded
some four or five feet in sand, so that the boat

Grappling for the Cable, 139

could not bring off the end. At three, Messrs.
Liddell, &c., came on board in good spirits, hav-
ing found two wires good or in such a state as
permitted messages to be transmitted freely.
The boat now went to grapple for the cable
some way from shore while the Elba towed a
small lateen craft which was to take back the
consul to Cagliari some distance on its way.
On our return we found the boat had been un-
successful ; she was allowed to drop astern,
while we grappled for the cable in the Elba
[without more success]. The coast is a low
mountain range covered with brushwood or
heather — pools of water and a sandy beach at
their feet. I have not yet been ashore, my

hands having been very full all day.

* June 9.

* Grappling for the cable outside the bank had
been voted too uncertain ; [and the day was
spent in] efforts to pull the cable off through
the sand which has accumulated over it. By
getting the cable tight on to the boat, and let-
ting the swell pitch her about till it got slack,
and then tightening again with blocks and pul-
leys, we managed to get out from the beach

140 Memoir of Fleerning J en k 171.

towards the ship at the rate of about twenty
yards an hour. When they had got about 100
yards from shore, we ran round in the Elba to
try and help them, letting go the anchor in the
shallowest possible water, this was about sunset.
Suddenly someone calls out he sees the cable at
the bottom : there it was sure enough, appar-
ently wriggling about as the waves rippled.
Great excitement ; still greater when we find
our own anchor is foul of it and has been the
means of bringing it to light. We let go a
grapnel, get the cable clear of the anchor on to
the grapnel — the captain in an agony lest we
should drift ashore meanwhile — hand the grap-
pling line into the big boat, steam out far
enough, and anchor again. A little more work
and one end of the cable is up over the bows
round my drum. I go to my engine and we
start hauling in. All goes pretty well, but it is
quite dark. Lamps are got at last, and men ar-
ranged. We go on for a quarter of a mile or
so from shore and then stop at about half-past
nine with orders to be up at three. Grand work
at last ! A number of the Saturday Revieio
here ; it reads so hot and feverish, so tomblike

A Fortitnate Day, 141

and unhealthy, in the midst of dear Nature's
hills and sea, with good wholesome work to do.
Pray that all go well to-morrow.

* June 10.

* Thank heaven for a most fortunate day. At
three o'clock this morning in a damp, chill mist
all hands were roused to work. With a small
delay, for one or two improvements I had seen
to be necessary last night, the engine started
and since that time I do not think there has
been half an hour's stoppage. A rope to splice,
a block to change, a wheel to oil, an old rusted
anchor to disengage from the cable which
brought it up, these have been our only ob-
structions. Sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred,
a hundred and twenty revolutions at last, my
little engine tears av/ay. The even black rope
comes straight out of the blue heaving water :
passes slowly round an open-hearted, good-tem-
pered looking pulley, five feet diameter; aft
past a vicious nipper, to bring all up should
anything go wrong ; through a gentle guide ; on
to a huge bluff drum, who wraps him round his
body and says "Come you must," as plain aa
drum can speak : the chattering pauls say " I've

142 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin,

got him, I've got him, he can't get back":
whilst black cable, much slacker and easier in
mind and body, is taken by a slim V-pulley and
passed down into the huge hold, where half a
dozen men put him comfortably to bed after his
exertion in rising from his long bath. In good
sooth, it is one of the strangest sights I know
to see that black fellow rising up so steadily in
the midst of the blue sea. We are more than
half way to the place where we expect the fault ;
and already the one wire, supposed previously
to be quite bad near the African coast, can be
spoken through. I am very glad I am here, for
my machines are my own children and I look
on their little failings with a parent's eye and
lead them into the path of duty with gentleness
and firmness. I am naturally in good spirits,
but keep very quiet, for misfortunes may arise
at any instant ; moreover to-morrow my paying-
out apparatus will be wanted should all go well,
and that will be another nervous operation.
Fifteen miles are safely in ; but no one knows
better than I do that nothing is done till all is
done.

Hauling in the Cable, 143

• June II.

* 9 A.M. — We have reached the splice supposed
to be faulty, and no fault has been found. The

two men learned in electricity, L and

W , squabble where the fault is.

^Evening, — A weary day in a hot broiling

sun ; no air. After the experiments, L said

the fault might be ten miles ahead ; by that
time, we should be according to a chart in about
a thousand fathoms of water — rather more than
a mile. It was most difficult to decide whether
to go on or not. I made preparations for a
heavy pull, set small things to rights and went
to sleep. About four in the afternoon, Mr.
Liddell decided to proceed, and we are now (at
seven) grinding it in at the rate of a mile and
three-quarters per hour, which appears a grand
speed to us. If the paying-out only works well I
I have just thought of a great improvement in
it ; I can't apply it this time, however. — The
sea is of an oily calm, and a perfect fleet of
brigs and ships surrounds us, their sails hardly
filling in the lazy breeze. The sun sets behind
the dim coast of the Isola San Pietro, the coasfe
of Sardinia high and rugged becomes softer and

144 Memoir of Fleeinmg Jenkin,

softer in the distance, while to the westward
still the isolated rock of Toro springs from the
horizon. — It would amuse you to see how cool
(in head) and jolly everybody is. A testy word
now and then shows the wires are strained a lit-
tle, but everyone laughs and makes his little
jokes as if it were all in fun : yet we are all as
much in earnest as the most earnest of the
earnest bastard German school or demonstrative
of Frenchmen. I enjoy it very much.

*June 12.

* 5.30 A.M. — Out of sight of land : about
thirty nautical miles in the hold ; the wind ris-
ing a little ; experiments being made for a fault,
while the engine slowly revolves to keep us
hanging at the same spot : depth supposed
about a mile. The machinery has behaved ad-
mirably. Oh ! that the paying-out were over !
The new machinery there is but rough, meant
for an experiment in shallow water, and here we
are in a mile of water.

'6.30. — I have made my calculations and find
the new paying-out gear cannot possibly answei
at this depth, some portion would give way.

Htiniiiig for the Faults, 145

Luckily, I have brought the old things with mc
and am getting them rigged up as fast as may
be. Bad news from the cable. Number four
has given in some portion of the last ten miles :
the fault in number three is still at the bottom
of the sea: number two is now the only good
wire • and the hold is getting in such a mess,
through keeping bad bits out and cutting for
splicing and testing, that there will be great risk
in paying out. The cable is somewhat strained
in its ascent from one mile below us ; what it
will be when we get to two miles is a problem
we may have to determine.

*9 P.M. — A most provoking unsatisfactory
day. We have done nothing. The wind and
sea have both risen. Too little notice has been
given to the telegraphists who accompany this
expedition ; they had to leave all their instru-
ments at Lyons in order to arrive at Bona in
time; our tests are therefore of the roughest,
and no one really knows where the faults are.

Mr. L in the morning lost much time ; then

he told us, after we had been inactive for about
eight hours, that the fault in number three was
within six miles ; and at six o'clock in the even-

146 Me7noir of Fleemmg yenkin,

ing, when all was ready for a start to pick up
these six miles, he comes and says there must
be a fault about thirty miles from Bona ! By
this time it was too late to begin paying out to-
day, and we must lie here moored in a thousand
fathoms till light to-morrow morning. The ship
pitches a good deal, but the wind is going down.

*June 13, Sunday.
* The wind has not gone down, however. It
now (at 10.30) blows a pretty stiff gale, the sea
has also risen ; and the Elba's bows rise and fall
about 9 feet. We make twelve pitches to the
minute, and the poor cable must feel very sea-
sick by this time. We are quite unable to do
anything, and continue riding at anchor in one
thousand fathoms, the engines going constantly
so as to keep the ship's bows up to the cable,
which by this means hangs nearly vertical and
sustains no strain but that caused by its own
weight and the pitching of the vessel. We
were all up at four, but the weather entirely for-
bade work for to-day, so some went to bed and
most lay down, making up our leeway, as we
nautically term our loss of sleep. I must say

Finis king the Work. 147

Liddell is a fine fellow and keeps his patience
and temper wonderfully; and yet how he does
fret and fume about trifles at home ! This wind
has blown now for 36 hours, and yet we have
telegrams from Bona to say the sea there is as
calm as a mirror. It makes one laugh to re-
member one is still tied to the shore. Click,
click, click, the pecker is at work : I wonder what

Herr P says to Herr L , — tests, tests,

tests, nothing more. This will be a very anx-
ious day.

•June 14.

* Another day of fatal inaction.

•June 15.

* 9.30. — The wind has gone down a deal ; but
even now there are doubts whether we shall
start to-day. When shall I get back to you ?

*9 P.M. — Four miles from land. Our run has
been successful and eventless. Now the work
is nearly over I feel a little out of spirits — why,
I should be puzzled to say — mere wantonness,
or reaction perhaps after suspense.

•June 16.

* Up this morning at three, coupled my self-
acting gear to the brake and had the satisfaction

148 Memoir of Fleemi7ig Jcfikin,

of seeing it pay out the last four miles in very
good style. With one or two little improve-
ments, I hope to make it a capital thing. The
end has just gone ashore in two boats, three out
of four wires good. Thus ends our first expe-
dition. By some odd chance a Times of June
the 7th has found its way on board through the
agency of a wretched old peasant who watches
the end of the line here. A long account of
breakages in the Atlantic trial trip. To-night
we grapple for the heavy cable, eight tons to
the mile. I long to have a tug at him ; he may
puzzle me, and though misfortunes or rather
difficulties are a bore at the time, life when work-
ing with cables is tame without them.

*■ 2 P.M. — Hurrah, he is hooked, the big fellow,
almost at the first cast. He hangs under our
bows looking so huge and imposing that I could
find it in my heart to be afraid of him.

'June 17.

* We went to a little bay called Chia, where a
fresh-water stream falls into the sea, and took in
water. This is rather a long operation, so I
went a walk up the valley with Mr. Liddell.

In Cilia Bay, 149

The coast here consists of rocky mountains 800
to 1,000 feet high covered with shrubs of a
brilliant green. On landing our first amuse-
ment was watching the hundreds of large fish
who lazily swam in shoals about the river ; the
big canes on the further side hold numberless
tortoises, we are told, but see none, for just now
they prefer taking a siesta. A little further on,
and what is this with large pink flowers in such
abundance? — the oleander in full flower. At
first I fear to pluck them, thinking they must
be cultivated and valuable ; but soon the banks
show a long line of thick tall shrubs, one mass of
glorious pink and green. Set these in a little val-
ley, framed by mountains whose rocks gleam out
blue and purple colours such as pre-Raphaelites
only dare attempt, shining out hard and weird-
like amongst the clumps of castor-oil plants,
oistus, arbor vitae and many other evergreens,
whose names, alas ! I know not ; the cistus is
brown now, the rest all deep or brilliant green.
Large herds of cattle browse on the baked de-
posit at the foot of these large crags. One or
two half-savage herdsmen in sheepskin kilts, &c.,
ask for cigars ; partridges whirr up on either

150 Memoir of Fleemirtg ye7ikt7t,

side of us ; pigeons coo and nightingales sing
amongst the blooming oleander. We get six
sheep and many fowls, too, from the priest of
the small village ; and then run back to Spar-
tivento and make preparations for the morning.

'June 18.
* The big cable is stubborn and will not be-
have like his smaller brother. The gear em-
ployed to take him off the drum is not strong
enough ; he gets slack on the drum and plays
the mischief. Luckily for my own conscience,
the gear I had wanted was negatived by Mr.
Newall. Mr. Liddell does not exactly blame
me, but he says we might have had a silver pul-
ley cheaper than the cost of this delay. He has
telegraphed for more men to Cagliari, to try to
pull the cable off the drum into the hold, by
hand. I look as comfortable as I can, but feel
as if people were blaming me. I am trying my
best to get something rigged which may help
us ; I wanted a little difficulty, and feel much
better. — The short length we have picked up
was covered at places with beautiful sprays of
coral, twisted and twined with shells of those

Paying-in the Big Cable. 151

small, fairy animals we saw in the aquarium at
home; poor little things, they died at once,
with their little bells and delicate bright tints.

^120 clock. — Hurrah, victory ! for the present
anyhow. Whilst in our first dejection, I thought
I saw a place where a flat roller would remedy
the whole misfortune ; but a flat roller at Cape
Spartivento, hard, easily unshipped, running
freely ! There was a grooved pulley used for
the paying-out machinery with a spindle wheel,
which might suit me. I filled him up with
tarry spunyarn, nailed sheet copper round him,
bent some parts in the fire ; and we are paying-
in without more trouble now. You would think
some one would praise me ; no, no more praise
than blame before ; perhaps now they think bet-
ter of me, though.

* 10 P.M. — We have gone on very comfortably
for nearly six miles. An hour and a half was
spent washing down ; for along with many col-
oured polypi, from corals, shells and insects, the
big cable brings up much mud and rust, and
makes a fishy smell by no means pleasant: the
bottom seems to teem with life. — But now we
are startled by a most unpleasant, grinding noise ;

152 Memoh' of Flcemiiig Jenkin,

which appeared at first to come from the large
low pulley, but when the engines stopped, the
noise continued ; and we now imagine it is
something slipping down the cable, and the
pulley but acts as sounding-board to the big
fiddle. Whether it is only an anchor or one of
the two other cables, we know not. We hope
it is not the cable just laid down.

* June 19.

* 10 A.M. — All our alarm groundless, it would
appear: the odd noise ceased after a time, and
there was no mark sufficiently strong on the
large cable to warrant the suspicion that we had
cut another line through. I stopped up on the
look-out till three in the morning, which made
23 hours between sleep and sleep. One goes
dozing about, though, most of the day, for it is
only when something goes wrong that one has
to look alive. Hour after hour, I stand on the
forecastle-head, picking off little specimens of
polypi and coral, or lie on the saloon deck read-
ing back numbers of the Times — till something
hitches, and then all is hurly-bur.ly once more.
There are awnings all along the ship, and a most
ancient, fish-like smell beneath.

The Cables Cross, 153

* I o^clock. — Suddenly a great strain in only
95 fathoms of water — belts surging and general
dismay ; grapnels being thrown out in the hope
of finding what holds the cable. — Should it
prove the young cable ! We are apparently
crossing its path — not the working one, but the
lost child ; Mr. Liddell would start the big one
first though it was laid first : he wanted to see
the job done, and meant to leave us to the
small one unaided by his presence.

'3.30. — Grapnel caught something, lost it
again ; it left its marks on the prongs. Started
lifting gear again; and after hauling in some
50 fathoms — grunt, grunt, grunt — we hear the
other cable slipping down our big one, playing
the selfsame tune we heard last night — louder,
however.

* 10 P.M. — The pull on the deck engines be-
came harder and harder. I got steam up in a
boiler on deck, and another little engine starts
hauling at the grapnel. I wonder if there ever
v/as such a scene of confusion : Mr. Liddell and
W and the captain all giving orders contra-
dictory, &c., on the forecastle ; D , the fore-
man of our men, the mates, &€., following the

1 54 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

example of our superiors; the ship's engine and
boilers below, a 50-horse engine on deck, a
boiler 14 feet long on deck beside it, a little
steam winch tearing round : a dozen Italians (20
have come to relieve our hands, the men we
telegraphed for to Cagliari) hauling at the rope ;
wiremen, sailors, in the crevices left by ropes
and machinery; everything that could swear
swearing — I found myself swearing like a
trooper at last. We got the unknown difificulty
within ten fathoms of the surface; but then the
forecastle got frightened that, if it was the small
cable which we had got hold of, we should cer-
tainly break it by continuing the tremendous
and increasing strain. So at last Mr. Liddell
decided to stop ; cut the big cable, buoying its
end ; go back to our pleasant watering-place at
Chia, take more water and start lifting the small
cable. The end of the large one has even now
regained its sandy bed ; and three buoys — one
to grapnel foul of the supposed small cable, two
to the big cable — are dipping about on the sur-
face. One more — a flag-buoy — will soon follow,
and then straight for shore.

The Small Cable, 155

' June 20.
' It is an ill-wind, &c. I have an unexpected
opportunity of forwarding this engineering let-
ter; for the craft which brought out our Italian
sailors must return to Cagliari to-night, as the
little cable will take us nearly to Galita, and the
Italian skipper could hardly find his way from
thence. To-day — Sunday — not much rest. Mr.
Liddell is at Spartivento telegraphing. We are
at Chia, and shall shortly go to help our boat's
crew in getting the small cable on board. We
dropped them some time since in order that they
might dig it out of the sand as far as possible.

* June 21.
* Yesterday — Sunday as it was — all hands were
kept at work all day, coaling, watering, and mak-
ing a futile attempt to pull the cable from the
shore on board through the sand. This attempt
was rather silly after the experience we had
gained at Cape Spartivento. This morning we
grappled, hooked the cable at once, and have
made an excellent start. Though I have called
this the small cable, it is much larger than the
Bona one. — Here comes a break down and a
bad one.

156 Memoir of Fleemiitg J en kin,

* June 22.
* We got over it, however ; but it is a warning
to me that my future difficulties will arise from
parts wearing out. Yesterday the cable was
often a lovely sight, coming out of the water
one large incrustation of delicate, net-like corals
and long, white curling shells. No portion of
the dirty black wires was visible; instead we
had a garland of soft pink with little scarlet
sprays and white enamel intermixed. All was
fragile, however, and could hardly be secured in
safety ; and inexorable iron crushed the tender
leaves to atoms. — This morning at the end of
my watch, about 4 o'clock, we came to the
buoys, proving our anticipations right concern-
ing the crossing of the cables. I went to bed
for four hours, and on getting up, found a sad
mess. A tangle of the six-wire cable hung to
the grapnel which had been left buoyed, and the
small cable had parted and is lost for the present.
Our hauling of the other day must have done
the mischief.

'June 23.

*We contrived to get the two ends of the
large cable and to pick the short end up. The

Mode of Dredging, 157

long end, leading us seaward, was next put round
the drum and a mile of it picked up ; but then,
fearing another tangle, the end was cut and
buoyed, and we returned to grapple for the
three-wire cable. All this is very tiresome for
me. The buoying and dredging are managed
entirely by W , who has had much experi-
ence in this sort of thing ; so I have not enough
to do and get very homesick. At noon the
wind freshened and the sea rose so high that we
had to run for land and are once more this even-
ing anchored at Chia.

• June 24.

* The whole day spent in dredging without
success. This operation consists in allowing the
ship to drift slowly across the line where you
expect the cable to be, while at the end of a
long rope, fast either to the bow or stern, a
grapnel drags along the ground. This grapnel
is a small anchor, made like four pot-hooks tied
back to back. When the rope gets taut, the
ship is stopped and the grapnel hauled up to
the surface in the hopes of finding the cable on
its prongs. — I am much discontented with my-
self for idly lounging about and reading West-

158 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

ward Ho for the second time, instead of taking
to electricity or picking up nautical information.
I am uncommonly idle. The sea is not quite
so rough, but the weather is squally and the rain
comes in frequent gusts.

*June 25.

* To-day about i o'clock we hooked the three-
wire cable, buoyed the long sea end, and picked
up the short [or shore] end. Now it is dark and
we must wait for morning before lifting the
buoy we lowered to-day and proceeding sea-
wards.— The depth of water here is about 600
feet, the height of a respectable English hill ;
our fishing line was about a quarter of a mile
long. It blows pretty fresh, and there is a great
deal of sea.

• 26th.

* This morning it came on to blow so heavily
that it was impossible to take up our buoy.
The Elba recommenced rolling in true Baltic
style and towards noon we ran for land.

* 27th, Sunday.
'This morning was a beautiful calm. We
reached the buoys at about 4.30 and com-

Kinks, 159

menced picking up at 6.30. Shortly a new
cause of anxiety arose. Kinks came up in
great quantities, about thirty in the hour. To
have a true conception of a kink, you must see
one : it is a loop drawn tight, all the wires get
twisted and the gutta-percha inside pushed out.
These much diminish the value of the cable, as
they must all be cut out, the gutta-percha made
good, and the cable spliced. They arise from
the cable having been badly laid down so that
it forms folds and tails at the bottom of the sea.
These kinks have another disadvantage: they
weaken the cable very much. — At about six
o'clock [p.m.] we had some twelve miles lifted,
when I went to the bows ; the kinks were ex-
ceedingly tight and were giving way in a most
alarming manner. I got a cage rigged up to
prevent the end (if it broke) from hurting any-
one, and sat down on the bowsprit, thinking I
should describe kinks to Annie : — suddenly I
saw a great many coils and kinks altogether at
the surface. I jumped to the gutta-percha pipe,
by blowing through which the signal is given to
stop the engine. I blow, but the engine does
not stop ; again — no answer : the coils and kinks

i6o Memoir of Fleeming yen kin.

jam in the bows and I rush aft shouting stop ,
Too late : the cable had parted and must lie in
peace at the bottom. Someone had pulled the
gutta-percha tube across a bare part of the steam
pipe and melted it. It had been used hundreds
of times in the last few days and gave no symj>-
toms of failing. I believe the cable must have
gone at any rate ; however, since it went in my
watch and since I might have secured the tub-
ing more strongly, I feel rather sad

' June 28.

* Since I could not go to Annie I took down
Shakespeare, and by the time I had finished
Antony and Cleopatra^ read the second half of
Troilus and got some way in Coriolanus, I felt
it was childish to regret the accident had hap-
pened in my watch, and moreover I felt myself
not much to blame in the tubing matter — it had
been torn down, it had not fallen down ; so I
went to bed, and slept without fretting, and
woke this morning in the same good mood —
for which thank you and our friend Shake-
speare. I am happy to say Mr. Liddell said
the loss of the cable did not much matter;

More Kinks, i6i

though this would have been no consolation
had I felt myself to blame. — This morning we
have grappled for and found another length of
small cable which Mr. dropped in loo fath-
oms of water. If this also gets full of kinks, we
shall probably have to cut it after lo miles or
so, or more probably still it will part of its own
free will or weight.

* lo P.M. — This second length of three-wire
cable soon got into the same condition as its
fellow — i. e. came up twenty kinks an hour —
and after seven miles were in, parted on the
pulley over the bows at one of the said kinks ;
during my watch again, but this time no earthly
power could have saved it. I had taken all
manner of precautions to prevent the end do-
ing any damage when the smash came, for come
I knew it must. We now return to the six-wire
cable. As I sat watching the cable to-night,
large phosphorescent globes kept rolling from
it and fading in the black water.

' 29th.

* To-day we returned to the buoy we had left
at the end of the six-wire cable, and after much
trouble from a series of tangles, got a fair start

1 62 Meinoir of Fleeming Jeiikin.

at noon. You will easily believe a tangle of iron
rope inch and a half diameter is not easy to un-
ravel, especially with a ton or so hanging to
the ends. It is now eight o'clock and we have
about six and a half miles safe : it becomes very
exciting, however, for the kinks are coming fast
and furious.

'July 2.

* Twenty-eight miles safe in the hold. The
ship is now so deep, that the men are to be
turned out of their aft hold, and the remainder
coiled there ; so the good Elbas nose need not
burrow too far into the waves. There can only
be about lO or 12 miles more, but these weigh
80 or TOO tons.

'July 5.

* Our first mate was much hurt in securing a
buoy on the evening of the 2nd. As interpre-
ter [with the Italians] I am useful in all these
cases ; but for no fortune would I be a doctor
to witness these scenes continually. Pain is a
terrible thing. — Our work is done: the whole of
the six-wire cable has been recovered ; only a
small part of the three-wire, but that wire was
bad and, owing to its twisted state, the value

The Greek Isles. 163

small. We may therefore be said to have been
very successful.'

II.

I have given this cruise nearly in full. From
the notes, unhappily imperfect, of two others, I
will take only specimens ; for in all there are
features of similarity and it is possible to have
too much even of submarine telegraphy and the
romance of engineering. And first from the
cruise of 1859 i^ ^^e Greek Islands and to Al-
exandria, take a few traits, incidents and pic-
tures.

* May 10, 1859.

*We had a fair wind and we did very well,
seeing a little bit of Cerig or Cythera, and lots
of turtle-doves wandering about over the sea
and perching, tired and timid, in the rigging of
our little craft. Then Falconera, Antimilo, and
Milo, topped with huge white clouds, barren,
deserted, rising bold and mysterious from the
blue, chafing sea; — Argentiera, Siphano, Sca-
pho, Paros, Antiparos, and late at night Syra it-
self. Adam Bede in one hand, a sketch-book in

164 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

the other, lying on rugs under an awning, 1 en-
joyed a very pleasant day.

* May 14.

*Syra is semi-eastern. The pavement, huge
shapeless blocks sloping to a central gutter;
from this bare two-storied houses, sometimes
plaster many coloured, sometimes rough-hewn
marble, rise, dirty and ill-finished to straight,
plain, flat roofs; shops guiltless of windows,
with signs in Greek letters; dogs, Greeks in
blue, baggy. Zouave breeches and a fez, a few
narghilehs and a sprinkling of the ordinary con-
tinental shopboys. — In the evening I tried one
more walk in Syra with A , but in vain en-
deavoured to amuse myself or to spend money ;
the first effort resulting in singing Doodah to a
passing Greek or two, the second in spending,
no, in making A spend, threepence on cof-
fee for three.

* May 16.

* On coming on deck, I found we were at an-
chor in Canea bay, and saw one of the most
lovely sights man could witness. Far on either
hand stretch bold mountain capes, Spada and
Maleka, tender in colour, bold in outline ; rich

In Canea. 165

sunny levels lie beneath then:i, framed by the
azure sea. Right in front, a dark brown for-
tress girdles white mosques and minarets. Rich
and green, our mountain capes here join to form
a setting for the town, in whose dark walls —
still darker — open a dozen high-arched caves in
which the huge Venetian galleys used to lie in
wait. High above all, higher and higher yet,
up into the firmament, range after range of blue
and snow-capped mountains. I was bewildered
and amazed, having heard nothing of this great
beauty. The town when entered is quite east-
ern. The streets are formed of open stalls un-
der the first story, in which squat tailors, cooks,
sherbet vendors and the like, busy at their work
or smoking narghilehs. Cloths stretched from
house to house keep out the sun. Mules rattle
through the crowd ; curs yelp between your legs ;
negroes are as hideous and bright clothed as
usual ; grave Turks with long chibouques con-
tinue to march solemnly without breaking
them ; a little Arab in one dirty rag pokes fun
at two splendid little Turks with brilliant fezzes ;
wiry mountaineers in dirty, full, white kilts,
shouldering long guns and one hand on their

1 66 Memoir of Fleeyiting Jenkin,

pistols, stalk untamed past a dozen Turkish
soldiers, who look sheepish and brutal in worn
cloth jacket and cotton trousers. A headless,
wingless lion of St. Mark still stands upon a
gate, and has left the mark of his strong clutch.
Of ancient times when Crete was Crete, not a
trace remains ; save perhaps in the full, well-cut
nostril and firm tread of that mountaineer, and
I suspect that even his sires were Albanians,
mere outer barbarians.

*May 17.

* I spent the day at the little station where
the cable was landed, which has apparently been
first a Venetian monastery and then a Turkish
mosque. At any rate the big dome is very cool,
and the little ones hold [our electric] batteries
capitally. A handsome young Bashibazouk
guards it, and a still handsomer mountaineer
is the servant ; so I draw them and the monas-
tery and the hill, till I'm black in the face with
heat and come on board to hear the Canea cable
is still bad.

May 23.

* We arrived in the morning at the east end
of Candia, and had a glorious scramble ovei

The 'Elba' Agrou7id, 167

the mountains which seem built of adamantn
Time has worn away the softer portions of the
rock, only leaving sharp jagged edges of steel.
Sea eagles soaring above our heads ; old tanks,
ruins, and desolation at our feet. The ancient
Arsinoe stood here ; a few blocks of marble
with the cross attest the presence of Venetian
Christians ; but now — the desolation of deso-
lations. Mr. Liddell and I separated from the
rest, and when we had found a sure bay for the
cable, had a tremendous lively scramble back to
the boat. These are the bits of our life which
I enjoy, which have some poetry, some gran-
deur in them.

' May 29 (?).

' Yesterday we ran round to the new harbour
[of Alexandria], landed the shore end of the
cable close to Cleopatra's bath, and made a
very satisfactory start about one in the after-
noon. We had scarcely gone 200 yards when I
noticed that the cable ceased to run out, and I
wondered why the ship had stopped. People
ran aft to tell me not to put such a strain on
the cable ; I answered indignantly that there
was no strain ; and suddenly it broke on every

1 68 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

one in the ship at once that we were aground
Here was a nice mess. A violent scirocco blew
from the land ; making one's skin feel as if it
belonged to some one else and didn't fit, making
the horizon dim and yellow with fine sand, op-
pressing every sense and raising the thermom-
eter 20 degrees in an hour, but making calm
water round us which enabled the ship to lie
for the time in safety. The wind might change
at any moment, since the scirocco was only ac-
cidental ; and at the first wave from seaward
bump would go the poor ship, and there would
[might] be an end of our voyage. The captain,
without waiting to sound, began to make an
effort to put the ship over what was supposed to
be a sandbank ; but by the time soundings were
made, this was found to be impossible, and he
had only been jamming the poor Elba faster on
a rock. Now every effort was made to get her
astern, an anchor taken out, a rope brought to
a winch I had for the cable, and the engines
backed ; but all in vain. A small Turkish Gov-
ernment steamer, which is to be our consort,
came to our assistance, but of course very slowly,
and much time was occupied before we could

The 'Elba' still Aground, 169

get a hawser to her. I could do no good after
havincT made a chart of the soundinq;s round
the ship, and went at last on to the bridge to
sketch the scene. But at that moment the
strain from the winch and a jerk from the Turk-
ish steamer got off the boat, after we had been
some hours aground. The carpenter reported
that she had made only two inches of water in
one compartment ; the cable was still uninjured
astern, and our spirits rose ; when, will you be-
lieve it ? after going a short distance astern, the
pilot ran us once more fast aground on what
seemed to me nearly the same spot. The very
same scene was gone through as on the first oc-
casion, and dark came on whilst the wind shift-
ed, and we were still aground. Dinner was
served up, but poor Mr. Liddell could eat very
little; and bump, bump, grind, grind, went the
ship fifteen or sixteen times as we sat at dinner.
The slight sea, however, did enable us to bump
off. This morning we appear not to have suf-
fered in any way ; but a sea is rolling in, which
a few hours ago would have settled the poor old
Elba.

1 70 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

'June — .

* The Alexandria cable has again failed ; aftei
paying out two-thirds of the distance success-
fully, an unlucky touch in deep water snapped
the line. Luckily the accident occurred in Mr.
Liddell's watch. Though personally it may not
really concern me, the accident weighs like a
personal misfortune. Still I am glad I was pres-
ent : a failure is probably more instructive than
a success ; and this experience may enable us tp
avoid misfortune in still greater undertakings.

' June — .

* We left Syra the morning after our arrival
on Saturday the 4th. This we did (first) be-
cause we v/ere in a hurry to do something and
(second) because, coming from Alexandria, we
had four days' quarantine to perform. We were
all mustered along the side while the doctor
counted us ; the letters were popped into a lit-
tle tin box and taken away to be smoked ; the
guardians put on board to see that we held no
communication with the shore — without them
we should still have had four more days' quar-
antine ; and with twelve Greek sailors besides,

The Canea Cable, 171

we started merrily enough picking up the Canea
cable. . . . To our utter dismay, the yarn cov-
ering began to come up quite decayed, and the
cable, which when laid should have borne half
a ton, was now in danger of snapping with a
tenth part of that strain. We went as slow as
possible in fear of a break at every instant. My
watch was from eight to twelve in the morning,
and during that time we had barely secured
three miles of cable. Once it broke inside the
ship, but I seized hold of it in time — the weight
being hardly anything — and the line for the
nonce was saved. Regular nooses were then
planted inboard with men to draw them taut,

should the cable break inboard. A , who

should have relieved me, was unwell, so I had
to continue my look-out ; and about one o'clock
the line again parted, but was again caught in
the last noose, with about four inches to spare.
Five minutes afterwards it again parted and
was yet once more caught. Mr. Liddell (whom
I had called) could stand this no longer ; so we
buoyed the line and ran into a bay in Siphano,
waiting for calm weather, though I was by no
means of opinion that the slight sea and wind

172 Memoir of Flceming yenkin,

had been the cause of our failures. — All next
day (Monday) we lay off Siphano, amusing our-
selves on shore with fowling-pieces and navy
revolvers. I need not say we killed nothing;
and luckily we did not wound any of ourselves.
A guardiano accompanied us, his functions being
limited to preventing actual contact with the
natives, for they might come as near and talk
as much as they pleased. These isles of Greece
are sad, interesting places. They are not really
barren all over, but they are quite destitute of
verdure ; and tufts of thyme, wild mastic or
mint, though they sound well, are not nearly
so pretty as grass. Many little churches, glit-
tering white, dot the islands ; most of them, I
believe, abandoned during the whole year
with the exception of one day sacred to their
patron saint. The villages are mean, but the
inhabitants do not look wretched and the men
are good sailors. There is something in this
Greek race yet ; they will become a powerful
Levantine nation in the course of time. — What
a lovely moonlight evening that was ! the bar-
ren island cutting the clear sky with fantastic
outline, marble cliffs on either hand fairly

A Pull at the Oars, 173

gleaming over the calm sea. Next day, the
wind still continuing, I proposed a boating ex-
cursion and decoyed A , L , and S >

into accompanying me. We took the little gig,
and sailed away merrily enough round a point
to a beautiful white bay, flanked with two glis-
tening little churches, fronted by beautiful dis-
tant islands ; when suddenly, to my horror, I
discovered the Elba steaming full speed out from
the island. Of course we steered after her;
but the wind that instant ceased, and we were
left in a dead calm. There was nothing for it
but to unship the mast, get out the oars and
pull. The ship was nearly certain to stop at
the buoy ; and I wanted to learn how to take an
oar, so here was a chance with a vengeance !

L steered, and we three pulled — a broiling

pull it was about half way across to Palikandro
— still we did come in, pulling an uncommon
good stroke, and I had learned to hang on my

oar. L had pressed me to let him take

my place ; but though I was very tired at the
end of the first quarter of an hour, and then
every successive half hour, I would not give in.
I nearly paid dear for my obstinacy, however ;

1 74 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

for in the evening I had alternate fits of shiver-
ing and burning.'

III.

The next extracts, and I am sorry to say the
last, are from Fleeming's letters of i860, when
he was back at Bona and Spartivento and for
the first time at the head of an expedition.
Unhappily these letters are not only the last,
but the series is quite imperfect ; and this is
the more to be lamented as he had now begun
to use a pen more skilfully, and in the following
notes there is at times a touch of real distinc-
tion in the manner.

'Cagliari: Octobers, i86o.

* All Tuesday I spent examining what was on
board the Elba^ and trying to start the repairs
of the Spartivento land line, which has been
entirely neglected, and no wonder, for no one
has been paid for three months, no, not even
the poor guards who have to keep themselves,
their horses and their families, on their pay.
Wednesday morning, I started for Spartivento
and got there in time to try a good many ex-
periments. Spartivento looks more wild and

Spartivento Again, 175

savage than ever, but is not without a strange
deadly beauty : the hills covered with bushes of
a metallic green with coppery patches of soil in
between ; the valleys filled with dry salt mud
and a little stagnant water; where that very
morning the deer had drunk, where herons, cur-
lews^ and other fowl abound, and where, alas !
malaria is breeding with this rain. (No fear for
those who do not sleep on shore.) A little iron
hut had been placed there since 1858; but the
windows had been carried off, the door broken
down, the roof pierced all over. In it, we sat
to make experiments ; and how it recalled
Birkenhead ! There was Thomson, there was
my testing board, the strings of gutta-percha ;

Harry P even, battering with the batteries ;

but where was my darling Annie? Whilst I
sat feet in sand, with Harry alone inside the hut
— mats, coats, and wood to darken the window
— the others visited the murderous old friar,
who is of the order of Scaloppi, and for whom I
brought a letter from his superior, ordering him
to pay us attention ; but he was away from
home, gone to Cagliari in a boat with the pro-
duce of the farm belonging to his convent.

1/6 Memoir of Fleemuig yen km.

Then they visited the tower of Chia, but couki
not get in because the door is thirty feet off the
ground ; so they came back and pitched a mag-
nificent tent which I brought from the Bahimta
a long time ago — and where they will live (if I
mistake not) in preference to the friar's, or the

owl- and bat-haunted tower. MM. T and

S will be left there : T , an intelligent,

hard-working Frenchman, with whom I am well
pleased ; he can speak English and Italian well,

and has been two years at Genoa. S is a

French German with a face like an ancient Gaul,
who has been sergeant-major in the French line
and who is, I see, a great, big, xaxn'^zwX-as faineant.
We left the tent pitched and some stores in
charge of a guide, and ran back to Cagliari.

Certainly, being at the head of things is
pleasanter than being subordinate. We all
agree very well ; and I have made the testing
office into a kind of private room where I can
come and vv^rite to you undisturbed, surrounded
by my dear, bright brass things which all of
them remind me of our nights at Birkenhead.
Then I can work here, too, and try lots of ex-
periments ; ygu know hgw I like that ! and

At Cagliari, 177

now and then I read — Shakespeare principally.
Thank you so much for making me bring him :
I think I must get a pocket edition of Hamlet
and Henry the Fifth, so as never to be without
them.

* Cagliari : October 7.

* [The town was full ?] . . . of red-shirted
English Garibaldini. A very fine looking set
of fellows they are, too : the officers rather
raffish, but with medals Crimean and Indian ;
the men a very sturdy set, with many lads of
good birth I should say. They still wait their
consort the Emperor and will, I fear, be too late
;0 do anything. I meant to have called on
them, but they are all gone into barracks some
way from the tov/n, and I have been much too
busy to go far.

* The view from the ramparts was very strange
and beautiful. Cagliari rises on a very steep
rock, at the mouth of a wide plain circled by
large hills and three-quarters filled with lagoons ;
it looks, therefore, like an old island citadel.
Large heaps of salt mark the border between
the sea and the lagoons ; thousands of flamingoes
whiten the centre of the huge shallow marsh ;

178 Memoir of Fleemzng J en kin.

hawks hover and scream among the trees under
the high mouldering battlements. — A Httle lower
down, the band played. Men and ladies bowed
and pranced, the costumes posed, church bells
tinkled, processions processed, the sun set be-
hind thick clouds capping the hills; I pondered
on you and enjoyed it all.

* Decidedly I prefer being master to being
man : boats at all hours, stewards flying for
marmalade, captain enquiring when ship is to
sail, clerks to copy my writing, the boat to steer
when we go out — I have run her nose on several
times ; decidedly, I begin to feel quite a little
king. Confound the cable, though I I shall
never be able to repair it.

' Bona : October 14.

* We left Cagliari at 4.30 on the 9th and soon
got to Spartivento. I repeated some of my ex-
periments, but found Thomson, who was to
have been my grand stand-by, would not work
on that day in the wretched little hut. Even if
the windows and door had been put in, the wind
which was very high made the lamp flicker about
and blew it out ; so I sent on board and got old
sails, and fairly wTapped the hut up in them ; and

The Camp at Spartivento. 179

then we were as snug as could be, and I left the
hut in glorious condition with a nice little stove
in it. The tent which should have been forth-
coming from the curb's for the guards, had gone
to Ca-gliari ; but I found another, [a] green,
Turkish tent, in the Elba and soon had him up.
The square tent left on the last occasion was
standing all right and tight in spite of wind and
rain. We landed provisions, two beds, plates,
knives, forks, candles, cooking utensils, and were
ready for a start at 6 P.M. ; but the wind mean-
while had come on to blow at such a rate that

I thought better of it, and we stopped. T

and S-— — slept ashore, however, to see how they

liked it ; at least they tried to sleep, for S

the ancient sergeant-major had a toothache, and

T thought the tent was coming down every

minute. Next morning they could only com-
plain of sand and a leaky coffee-pot, so I leave
them with a good conscience. The little en-
campment looked quite picturesque : the green
round tent, the square white tent and the hut all
wrapped up in sails, on a sand hill, looking on
the sea and masking those confounded marshes
at the back. One would have thought the Cag-

i8o Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

liaritaiis were in a conspiracy to frighten the
two poor fellows, who (I believe) will be safe
enough if they do not go into the marshes after

nightfall. S brought a little dog to amuse

them, such a jolly, ugly little cur without a tail,
but full of fun ; he will be better than quinine.

*The wind drove a barque, which had an-
chored near us for shelter, out to sea. We
started, however, at 2 P.M., and had a quick pas-
sage but a very rough one, getting to Bona by
daylight [on the nth]. Such a place as this is
for getting anything done ! The health boat

went away from us at 7.30 with W on board ;

and we heard nothing of them till 9.30, when

W came back with two fat Frenchmen who

are to look on on the part of the Government.
They are exactly alike : only one has four bands
and the other three round his cap, and so I
know them. Then I sent a boat round to Fort
Genois [Fort Genova of 1858], where the cable
is landed, with all sorts of things and directions,
whilst I went ashore to see about coals and a
room at the fort. We hunted people in the
little square in their shops and offices, but only
found them in caf^s. One amiable gentleman

Waiting for Coals. i8l

wasn't up at 9.30, was out at 10, and as soon aa
he came back the servant said he would go to
bed and not get up till 3 : he came, however, to
find us at a caf^, and said that, on the contrary,
two days in the week he did not do so ! Then
my two fat friends must have their breakfast
after their ** something " at a caf^ ; and all the
shops shut from 10 to 2 ; and the post does not
open till 12 ; and there was a road to Fort
Genois, only a bridge had been carried away, &c.
At last I got off, and we rowed round to Fort
Genois, where my men had put up a capital
gipsy tent with sails, and there was my big
board and Thomson's number 5 in great glory.
I soon came to the conclusion there was a
break. Two of my faithful Cagliaritans slept
all night in the little tent, to guard it and my
precious instruments ; and the sea, which was
rather rough, silenced my Frenchmen.

* Next day I went on with my experiments,
whilst a boat grappled for the cable a little way
from shore and buoyed it where the Elba could
get hold. I brought all back to the Elba, tried
my machinery and was all ready for a start next
morning. But the wretched coal had not come

1 82 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkhi,

yet ; Government permission from Algiers to be
got ; lighters, men, baskets, and I know not what
forms to be got or got through — and everybody
asleep ! Coals or no coals, I was determined to
start next morning ; and start we did at four in
the morning, picked up the buoy with our deck
engine, popped the cable across a boat, tested
the wires to make sure the fault was not behind
us, and started picking up at 1 1. Everything
worked admirably, and about 2 P.M., in came the
fault. There is no doubt the cable was broken
by coral fishers ; twice they have had it up to
their own knowledge.

* Many men have been ashore to-day and
have come back tipsy, and the whole ship is in
a state of quarrel from top to bottom, and they
will gossip just within my hearing. And we
have had, moreover, three French gentlemen and
a French lady to dinner, and I had to act host
and try to manage the mixtures to their taste.
The good-natured little Frenchwoman was most
amusing ; when I asked her if she would have
some apple tart — " Alon Dieu^' with heroic res^
ignation, "/<? veux bien "/ or a little ploinbod-
ding — ^^ Mais ce que voiis voudrez^ Monsieur ! "

An Eventful Day, 183

' S.S. Elba, somewhere not far from Bona : Oct. 19.
'Yesterday [after three previous days of use-
less grappling] was destined to be very eventful.
We began dredging at daybreak and hooked at
once every time in rocks ; but by capital luck,
just as we were deciding it was no use to con-
tinue in that place, we hooked the cable : up
it came, was tested, and lo ! another complete
break, a quarter of a mile off. I was amazed at
my own tranquillity under these disappoint-
ments, but I was not really half so fussy as
about getting a cab. Well, there was nothing
for it but grappling again, and, as you may im-
agine, we were getting about six miles from
shore. But the water did not deepen rapidly ;
we seemed to be on the crest of a kind of sub-
marine mountain in prolongation of Cape de
Gonde, and pretty havoc we must have made
with the crags. What rocks we did hook ! No
sooner was the grapnel down than the ship was
anchored ; and then came such a business : ship's
engines going, deck engine thundering, belt
slipping, fear of breaking ropes : actually break-
ing grapnels. It was always an hour or more
before we could get the grapnel down again.

184 Memoir of Fleenihig Jenkin,

At last we had to give up the place, though we
knew we were close to the cable, and go further
to sea in much deeper water ; to my great fear,
as I knew the cable was much eaten away and
would stand but little strain. Well, we hooked
the cable first dredge this time, and pulled it
slowly and gently to the top, with much trepi-
dation. Was it the cable ? was there any weight
on? it was evidently too small. Imagine my
dismay when the cable did come up, but hang-
ing loosely, thus

A.

instead of taut, thus

showing certain signs of a break close by. For
a moment I felt provoked, as I thought, '' Here
we are in deep water, and the cable will not
stand lifting ! " I tested at once, and by the
very first wire found it had broken towards

Cable Fishing. 185

shore and was good towards sea. This was of
course very pleasant ; but from that time to
this, though the wires test very well, not a sig-
nal has come from Spartivento. I got the cable
into a boat, and a gutta-percha line from the
ship to the boat, and we signalled away at a
great rate — but no signs of life. The tests, how-
ever, make me pretty sure one wire at least is
good ; so I determined to lay down cable from
where we were to the shore, and go to Sparti-
vento to see what had happened there. I fear
my men are ill. The night was lovely, perfect-
ly calm ; so we lay close to the boat and signals
were continually sent, but with no result. This
morning I laid the cable down to Fort G^nois
in style ; and now we are picking up odds and
ends of cable between the different breaks, and
getting our buoys on board, &c. To-morrow I
expect to leave for Spartivento.'

IV.

And now I am quite at an end of journal
keeping; diaries and diary letters being things
of youth which Fleeming had at length out-

1 86 Meinoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

grown. But one or two more fragments from
his correspondence may be taken, and first this
brief sketch of the laying of the Norderney ca-
ble ; mainly interesting as showing under what
defects of strength and in what extremities of
pain, this cheerful man must at times continue
to go about his work.

' I slept on board 29th September having ar-
ranged everything to start by daybreak from
where we lay in the roads: but at daybreak a
heavy mist hung over us so that nothing of land
or water could be seen. At midday it Hfted
suddenly and away we went with perfect weath-
er, but could not find the buoys Forde left, that
evening. I saw the captain was not strong in
navigation, and took matters next day much
more into my own hands and before nine o'clock
found the buoys ; (the weather had been so fine
we had anchored in the open sea near Texel).
It took us till the evening to reach the buoys,
get the cable on board, test the first half, speak

to Lowestoft, make the splice, and start. H

had not finished his work at Norderney, so I
was alone on board for Renter. Moreover the
buoys to guide us in our course were not placed,

The Norderney Cable, 187

and the captain had very vague ideas about keep-
ing his course ; so I had to do a good deal, and
only lay down as I was for two hours in the night.
I managed to run the course perfectly. Every-
thing went well, and we found Norderney just
where we wanted it next afternoon, and if the
shore end had been laid, could have finished
there and then, October ist. But when we got
to Norderney, we found the Caroline with shore
end lying apparently aground, and could not un-
derstand her signals ; so we had to anchor sud-
denly and I went off in a small boat with the
captain to the Caroline, It was cold by this
time, and my arm was rather stiff and I was
tired ; I hauled myself up on board the Caroline

by a rope and found H and two men on

board. All the rest were trying to get the shore
end on shore, but had failed and apparently had
stuck on shore, and the waves were getting up.
We had anchored in the right place and next
morning we hoped the shore end would be laid,
so we had only to go back. It was of course
still colder and quite night. I went to bed and
hoped to sleep, but, alas, the rheumatism got
into the joints and caused me terrible pain so

1 88 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

that I could not sleep. I bore it as long as I
could in order to disturb no one, for all were
tired ; but at last I could bear it no longer and
managed to wake the steward and got a mustard
poultice which took the pain from the shoulder;
but then the elbow got very bad, and I had to
call the second steward and get a second poul-
tice, and then it was daylight, and I felt very ill
and feverish. The sea was now rather rough —
too rough rather for small boats, but luckily a
sort of thing called a scoot came out, and we
got on board her with some trouble, and got on
shore after a good tossing about which made us
all sea-sick. The cable sent from the Caroline
was just 60 yards too short and did not reach
the shore, so although the Caroline did make
the splice late that night, we could neither test
nor speak. Renter was at Norderney, and I
had to do the best I could, which was not much,
and went to bed early ; I thought I should never
sleep again, but in sheer desperation got up in
the middle of the night and gulped a lot of raw
whiskey and slept at last. But not long. A

Mr. F washed my face and hands and

dressed me ; and we hauled the cable out of the

The ' Great Eastern! 189

sea, and got it joined to the telegraph station,
and on October 3rd telegraphed to Lowestoft
first and then to London. Miss Clara Volkman,
a niece of Mr. Reuter's, sent the first message to
Mrs. Reuter, who was waiting (Varley used Miss
Clara's hand as a kind of key), and I sent one of
the first messages to Odden. I thought a mes-
sage addressed to him would not frighten you,
and that he would enjoy a message through
Papa's cable. I hope he did. They were all
very merry, but I had been so lowered by pain
that I could not enjoy myself in spite of the
success.'

V.

Of the 1869 cruise in the Great Eastern, I give
what I am able ; only sorry it is no more, for
the sake of the ship itself, already almost a
legend even to the generation that saw it
launched.

^ June 17, 1869. — Here are the names of our
staff in whom I expect you to be interested, as
future Great Eastern stories may be full of
them : Theophilus Smith, a man of Latimer
Clark's ; Leslie C. Hill, my prizeman at Uni-

1 90 Memoir of Fleemtng Jenkin.

versity College ; Lord Sackville Cecil ; King,
one of the Thomsonian Kings ; Laws, goes for
Willoughby Smith, who will also be on board ;
Varley, Clark, and Sir James Anderson make
up the sum of all you know anything of. A
Captain Halpin commands the big ship. There
are four smaller vessels. The Wm. Cory, which
laid the Norderney cable, has already gone to
St. Pierre to lay the shore ends. The Hawk
and Chiltern have gone to Brest to lay shore
ends. The Hawk and Scanderia go with us
across the Atlantic and we shall at St. Pierre be
transhipped into one or the other.

'■ Ju7ie 18. Somewhere in London, — The shore
end is laid, as you may have seen, and we are
all under pressing orders to march, so we start
from London to-night at 5.10.

^ June 20. Off Ushant — I am getting quite
fond of the big ship. Yesterday morning in the
quiet sunlight, she turned so slowly and lazily
in the great harbour at Portland, and bye and
bye slipped out past the long pier with so little
stir, that I could hardly believe we were really
off. No men drunk, no women crying, no sing-
ing or swearing, no confusion or bustle on deck

The * Great Easter7i,^ 191

— nobody apparently aware that they had any-
thing to do. The look of the thing was that
the ship had been spoken to civilly and had
kindly undertaken to do everything that was
necessary without any further interference. I
have a nice cabin with plenty of room for my
legs in my berth and have slept two nights like
a top. Then we have the ladies' cabin set apart
as an engineer's office, and I think this de^
cidedly the nicest place in the ship: 35 ft. x
20 ft. broad — four tables, three great mirrors,
plenty of air and no heat from the funnels
which spoil the great dining-room. I saw a
whole library of books on the walls when here
last, and this made me less anxious to provide
light literature ; but alas, to-day I find that they
are every one bibles or prayer-books. Now one
cannot read many hundred bibles. ... As for
the motion of the ship it is not very much,
but 'twill suffice. Thomson shook hands and
wished me well. I do like Thomson. . . . Tell
Austin that the Great Eastern has six masts
and four funnels. When I get back I will
make a little model of her for all the chicks
and pay out cotton reels. . . . Here we are at

192 Memoir of Fleejning Jenkin.

4.20 at Brest. We leave probably to-morrow
morning.

''Jidy 12. Great Eastern. — Here as I write
we run our last course for the buoy at the St.
Pierre shore end. It blows and lightens, and
our good ship rolls, and buoys are hard to find ;
but we must soon now finish our work, and
then this letter will start for home. . . . Yes-
terday we were mournfully groping our way
through the wet grey fog, not at all sure where
we were, with one consort lost and the other
faintly answering the roar of our great whistle
through the mist. As to the ship which was to
meet us, and pioneer us up the deep channel, we
did not know if we should come within twenty
miles of her ; when suddenly up went the fog,
out came the sun, and there, straight ahead, was
the Win, Cory^ our pioneer, and a little dancing
boat, the Gidnare, sending signals of welcome
with many-coloured flags. Since then we have
been steaming in a grand procession ; but now
at 2 A.M. the fog has fallen, and the great roar-
ing whistle calls up the distant answering notes
all around us. Shall we, or shall we not find
the buoy?

The Brazilian Cable, 193

^July 13. — All yesterday we lay in the damp
dripping fog, with whistles all round and guns
firing so that we might not bump up against one
another. This little delay has let us get our
reports into tolerable order. We are now at 7
o'clock getting the cable end again, with the
main cable buoy close to us.'

A telegram of July 20 : * I have received your
four welcome letters. The Americans are charm-
ing people.*

VI.

And here to make an end are a few random
bits about the cruise to Pernambuco : —

^ Plymouth, June 21, 1873. — I have been down
to the sea-shore and smelt the salt sea and like
it ; and I have seen the Hooper pointing her
great bow sea-ward, while light smoke rises
from her funnels telling that the fires are being
lighted ; and sorry as I am to be without you,
something inside me answers to the call to be
off and doing.

* Lalla Rookh. Plymouth, June 22. — We have
been a little cruise in the yacht over to the
Eddystone lighthouse, and my sea-legs seem

194 Memoir of Fleemiiig Jenkin,

very well on. Strange how alike all these starts
are — first on shore, steaming hot days with a
smell of bone-dust and tar and salt water ; then
the little puffing, panting steam-launch that
bustles out across a port with green woody sides,
little yachts sliding about, men-of-war training-
ships, and then a great big black hulk of a thing
with a mass of smaller vessels sticking to it like
parasites ; and that is one's home being coaled.
Then comes the Champagne lunch where every-
one says all that is polite to everyone else, and
then the uncertainty when to start. So far as
we know now, we are to start to-morrow morn-
ing at daybreak ; letters that come later are to
be sent to Pernambuco by first mail. . . . My
father has sent me the heartiest sort of Jack
Tar's cheer.

^ S. S. Hooper, Off Funchal, June 2<^. — Here
we are off Madeira at seven o'clock in the
morning. Thomson has been sounding with his
special toy ever since half-past three (1087
fathoms of water). I have been watching the
day break, and long jagged islands start into
being out of the dull night. We are still some
miles from land ; but the sea is calmer than

The Cook a7id the Goat, 195

Loch Eil often was, and the big Hooper rests
very contentedly after a pleasant voyage and
favourable breezes. I have not been able to do
any real work except the testing [of the cable],
for though not sea-sick, I get a little giddy when
I try to think on board. . . . The ducks have
just had their daily souse and are quacking and
gabbling in a mighty way outside the door of
the captain's deck cabin where I write. The
cocks are crowing, and new-laid eggs are said to
be found in the coops. Four mild oxen have
been untethered and allowed to walk along the
broad iron decks — a whole drove of sheep seem
quite content while licking big lumps of bay
salt. Two exceedingly impertinent goats lead
the cook a perfect life of misery. They steal
round the galley and witt nibble the carrots or
turnips if his back is turned for one minute ;
and then he throws something at them and
misses them ; and they scuttle off laughing im-
pudently, and flick one ear at him from a safe
distance. This is the most impudent gesture I
ever saw. Winking is nothing to it. The ear
normally hangs down behind ; the goat turns
sideways to her enemy — by a little knowing

196 Memoir of Fleemiitg Jenkin.

cock of the head flicks one ear over one eye,
and squints from behind it for half a minute —
tosses her head back, skips a pace or two
further off, and repeats the manoeuvre. The
cook is very fat and cannot run after that goat
much.

^ PernajnhicOj Atig. i. — We landed here yes-
terday, all well and cable sound, after a good
passage. . . . I am on familiar terms with cocoa-
nuts, mangoes, and bread-fruit trees, but I think
I like the negresses best of anything I have
seen. In turbans and loose sea-green robes,
with beautiful black-brown complexions and a
stately carriage, they really are a satisfaction to
my eye. The weather has been windy and
rainy ; the Hooper has to lie about a mile from
the town, in an open roadstead, with the whole
swell of the Atlantic driving straight on shore.
The little steam launch gives all who go in her a
good ducking, as she bobs about on the big
rollers ; and my old gymnastic practice stands
me in good stead on boarding and leaving her.
We clamber down a rope ladder hanging from
the high stem, and then taking a rope in one
hand, swing into the launch at the moment

The President of Pernambuco. 197

when she can contrive to steam up under us —
bobbing about like an apple thrown into a tub
all the while. The President of the province
and his suite tried to come off to a State lunch-
eon on board on Sunday; but the launch be-
ing rather heavily laden, behaved worse than
usual, and some green seas stove in the Presi-
dent's hat and made him wetter than he had
probably ever been in his life ; so after one or
two rollers, he turned back ; and indeed he was
wise to do so, for I don't see how he could have
got on board. . . . Being fully convinced that
the world will not continue to go round unless
I pay it personal attention, I must run away to
my work.*

CHAPTER VI.
1869— 1885.

Edinburgh— Colleagues— /^2rra^<? Vita— I. The FamUy Circle—
Fleeming and his Sons— Highland Life— The Cruise of the
Steam Launch — Summer in Styria — Rustic Manners — IL The
Drama — Private Theatricals — IH. Sanitary Associations — The
Phonograph — IV. Fleeming's Acquaintance with a Student — His
late Maturity of Mind — Religion emd Morality — His Love of
Heroism — Taste in Literature — V. His Talk — His late Popularity
—Letter from M. Trelat.

n^HE remaining external incidents of Fleem-
■■■ ing's life, pleasures, honours, fresh interests,
new friends, are not such as will bear to be told
at any length or in the temporal order. And
it is now time to lay narration by, and to look
at the man he was and the life he lived, more
largely.

Edinburgh, which was thenceforth to be his
home, is a metropolitan small town ; where col-
lege professors and the lawyers of the Parliament
House give the tone, and persons of leisure, at-
tracted by educational advantages, make up
much of the bulk of society. Not, therefore, an

unlettered place, yet not pedantic, Edinburgh
(198)

His Colleagues, 1 99

will compare favourably with much larger cities.
A hard and disputatious element has been com-
mented on by strangers: it would not touch
Fleeming, who was himself regarded, even in
this metropolis of disputation, as a thorny table-
mate. To golf unhappily he did not take, and
golf is a cardinal virtue in the city of the winds.
Nor did he become an archer of the Queen's
Body-Guard, which is the Chiltern Hundreds
of the distasted golfer. He did not even fre-
quent the Evening Club, where his colleague
Tait (in my day) was so punctual and so genial.
So that in some ways he stood outside of the
lighter and kindlier life of his new home. I
should not like to say that he was generally
popular; but there as elsewhere, those who
knew him well enough to love him, loved him
well. And he, upon his side, liked a place
where a dinner party was not of necessity un-
intellectual, and where men stood up to him in
argument.

The presence of his old classmate, Tait, was
one of his early attractions to the chair ; and now
that Fleeming is gone again, Tait still remains,
ruling and really teaching his great classes.

200 Memoir of F teeming J en kin.

Sir Robert Christison was an old friend of his
mother's; Sir Alexander Grant, Kelland, and
Sellar, were new acquaintances and highly
valued; and these too, all but the last, have
been taken from their friends and labours.
Death has been busy in the Senatus. I will
speak elsewhere of Fleeming's demeanour to
his students ; and it will be enough to add here
that his relations with his colleagues in general
were pleasant to himself.

Edinburgh, then, with its society, its universi-
ty work, its delightful scenery, and its skating
in the winter, was thenceforth his base of opera-
tions. But he shot meanwhile erratic in many
directions : twice to America, as we have seen,
on telegraph voyages; continually to London
on business ; often to Paris ; year after year to
the Highlands to shoot, to fish, to learn reels
and Gaelic, to make the acquaintance and fall
in love with the character of Highlanders ; and
once to Styria, to hunt chamois and dance with
peasant maidens. All the while, he was pursuing
the course of his electrical studies, making fresh
inventions, taking up the phonograph, filled
with theories of graphic representation ; read-

Interests and Activities, 201

ing, writing, publishing, founding sanitary as.
sociations, interested in technical education,
investigating the laws of metre, drawing, acting,
directing private theatricals, going a long way
to see an actor — a long way to see a picture ; in
the very bubble of the tideway of contemporary
interests. And all the while he was busied about
his father and mother, his wife, and in particulai
his sons ; anxiously watching, anxiously guiding
these, and plunging with his whole fund of
youthfulness into their sports and interests.
And all the while he was himself maturing —
not in character or body, for these remained
young — but in the stocked mind, in the tolerant
knowledge of life and man, in pious acceptance
of the universe. Here is a farrago for a chap-
ter : here is a world of interests and activities,
human, artistic, social, scientific, at each of which
he sprang with impetuous pleasure, on each of
which he squandered energy, the arrow drawn
to the head, the whole intensity of his spirit
bent, for the moment, on the momentary pur-
pose. It was this that lent such unusual in-
terest to his society, so that no friend of his
can forget that figure of Fleeming coming

202 Mejnoir of Fleemiitg yenkzn,

charged with some new discovery: it is this
that makes his character so difficult to represent.
Our fathers, upon some difficult theme, would
invoke the Muse ; I can but appeal to the
imagination of the reader. When I dwell
upon some one thing, he must bear in mind it
was only one of a score ; that the unweariable
brain was teeming at the very time with other
thoughts ; that the good heart had left no kind
duty forgotten.

I.

In Edinburgh, for a considerable time, Flem-
ing's family, to three generations, was united :
Mr. and Mrs. Austin at Hailes, Captain and
Mrs. Jenkin in the suburb of Merchiston, Fleem-
ing himself in the city. It is not every family
that could risk with safety such close interdo-
mestic dealings ; but in this also Fleeming was
particularly favoured. Even the two extremes,
Mr. Austin and the Captain, drew together. It
is pleasant to find that each of the old gentle-
men set a high value on the good looks of the
other, doubtless also on his own ; and a fine
picture they made as they walked the green ter-

Fleeming and his Sons. 203

race at Hailes, conversing by the hour. What
they talked of is still a mystery to those who
knew thena ; but Mr. Austin always declared
that on these occasions he learned much. To
both of these families of elders, due service was
paid of attention ; to both, Fleeming's easy
circumstances had brought joy ; and the eyes
of all were on the grandchildren. In Fleem-
ing's scheme of duties, those of the family stood
first ; a man was first of all a child, nor did he
cease to be so, but only took on added obliga-
tions, when he became in turn a father. The
care of his parents was always a first thought
with him, and their gratification his delight.
And the care of his sons, as it was always a
grave subject of study with him, and an affair
never neglected, so it brought him a thousand
satisfactions. ' Hard work they are,' as he once
wrote, 'but what fit work!* And again: ' O,
it's a cold house where a dog is the only repre-
sentative of a child ! ' Not that dogs were de-
spised ; we shall drop across the name of Jack,
the harum-scarum Irish terrier ere we have
done ; his own dog Plato went up with him
daily to his lectures, and still (like other friends)

204 Memoii' of Fleeming J en kin.

feels the loss and looks visibly for the reappear,
ance of his master ; and Martin, the cat, Fleem-
ing has himself immortalised, to the delight of
Mr. Swinburne, in the columns of the Spectator.
Indeed there was nothing in which men take in-
terest, in which he took not some ; and yet al-
ways most in the strong human bonds, ancient
as the race and woven of delights and duties.

He was even an anxious father; perhaps that
is the part where optimism is hardest tested.
He was eager for his sons ; eager for their
health, whether of mind or body; eager for
their education ; in that, I should have thought,
too eager. But he kept a pleasant face upon all
things, believed in play, loved it himself, shared
boyishly in theirs, and knew how to put a face
of entertainment upon business and a spirit of
education into entertainment. If he was to test
^■he progress of the three boys, this advertise-
ment would appear in their little manuscript
paper : — ' Notice : The Professor of Engineer-
ing in the University of Edinburgh intends at
the close of the scholastic year to hold examina-
tions in the following subjects: (i) For boys in
the fourth class of the Academy — Geometry

Fie em in g and his Sons, 205

and Algebra ; (2) For boys at Mr. Henderson's
school — Dictation and Recitation ; (3) For boys
taught exclusively by their mothers — Arithme-
tic and Reading.' Prizes were given ; but what
prize would be so conciliatory as this boyish
little joke? It may read thin here; it would
smack racily in the playroom. Whenever his
sons * started a new fad ' (as one of them writes
to me) they * had only to tell him about it, and
he was at once interested and keen to help.*
He would discourage them in nothing unless it
was hopelessly too hard for them ; only, if there
was any principle of science involved, they must
understand the principle ; and whatever was at-
tempted, that was to be done thoroughly. If it
was but play, if it was but a puppetshow they
were to build, he set them the example of being
no sluggard in play. When Frewen, the second
son, embarked on the ambitious design to make
an engine for a toy steamboat, Fleeming made
him begin with a proper drawing — doubtless to
the disgust of the young engineer; but once
that foundation laid, helped in the work with
unflagging gusto, 'tinkering away,' for hours,
and assisted at the Hnal trici! 'in the big bath '

2o6 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

with no less excitement than the boy. * He
would take any amount of trouble to help us,*
writes my correspondent. * We never felt an
affair was complete till we had called him to see,
and he would come at any time, in the middle
of any work.' There was indeed one recognised
playhour, immediately after the despatch of the
day's letters ; and the boys were to be seen wait-
ing on the stairs until the mail should be ready
and the fun could begin. But at no other time
did this busy man suffer his work to interfere
with that first duty to his children ; and there is
a pleasant tale of the inventive Master Frewen,
engaged at the time upon a toy crane, bringing
to the study where his father sat at work a half-
wound reel that formed some part of his design,
and observing, * Papa, you might finiss windin*
this for me ; I am so very busy to-day.*

I put together here a few brief extracts from
Fleeming's letters, none very important in itself,
but all together building up a pleasant picture
of the father with his sons.

^ Jan, i^thy 1875. — Frewen contemplates sus-
pending soap bubbles by silk threads for experi-
mental purposes. I don't think he will manage

F'leeming and his Sons. ^07

that. Bernard' [the youngest] 'volunteered to
blow the bubbles with enthusiasm.*

^ jfait. I'/th. — I am learning a great deal of
electrostatics in consequence of the perpetual
cross-examination to which I am subjected. I
long for you on many grounds, but one is that I
may not be obliged to deliver a running lecture
on abstract points of science, subject to cross-
examination by two acute students. Bernie does
not cross-examine much ; but if anyone gets dis-
comfited, he laughs a sort of little silver-whistle
giggle, which is trying to the unhappy blun-
derer.'

* May gih. — Frewen is deep in parachutes. I
beg him not to drop from the top landing in one
of his own making.'

* jfune 6thy 1876. — Frewen's crank axle is a
failure just at present — but he bears up.'

* June \\th. — The boys enjoy their riding. It
gets them whole funds of adventures. One of
their caps falling off is matter for delightful
lerniniscences ; and when a horse breaks his
step, the occurrence becomes a rear, a shy, or a
plunge as they talk it over. Austin, with quiet
confidence, speaks of the greater pleasure in rid*

2o8 Memoir of Flccmiiig yenkz7t.

ing a spirited horse, even if he does give a little
trouble. It is the stolid brute that he dislikes.
(N.B. You can still see six inches between him
and the saddle when his pony trots.) I listen
and sympathise and throw out no hint that their
achievements are not really great.'

^ June iS^/i. — Bernard is much impressed by
the fact that I can be useful to Frewen about
the steamboat ' [which the latter irrepressible
inventor was making]. * He says quite with
awe, " He would not have got on nearly so well
if you had not helped him." '

* June 2'jth. — I do not see what I could do
without Austin. He talks so pleasantly and is
so truly good all through.'

* July Jth. — My chief difficulty with Austin
is to get him measured for a pair of trousers.
Hitherto I have failed, but I keep a stout heart
and mean to succeed. Frewen the observer, in
describing the paces of two horses, says, " Polly
takes twenty-seven steps to get round the school.
I couldn't count Sophy, but she takes more than
a hundred." '

'Feb. \Zthy 1877.— We all feel very lonely with-
out you, Frewen had to come up and sit in my

Fleeming and his Sons. 209

room for company last night and I actually kissed
him, a thing that has not occurred for years.
Jack, poor fellow, bears it as well as he can, and
has taken the opportunity of having a fester on
his foot, so he is lame and has it bathed, and this
occupies his thoughts a good deal.*

'Feb. igth.—As to Mill, Austin has not got
the list yet. I think it will prejudice him very
much against Mill — but that is not my affair.
Education of that kind ! . . . I would as soon
cram my boys with food and boast of the pounds
they had eaten, as cram them with literature.'

But if Fleeming was an anxious father, he did
not suffer his anxiety to prevent the boys from
any manly or even dangerous pursuit. What-
ever it might occur to them to try, he would
carefully show them how to do it, explain the
risks, and then either share the danger himself
or, if that were not possible, stand aside and
wait the event v/ith that unhappy courage of
the looker-on. He was a good swimmer, and
taught them to swim. He thoroughly loved all
manly exercises ; and during their holidays, and
principally in the Highlands, helped and en-
couraged them to excel in as many as possible

2.10 Memoir of Fleeming Jc7ikin,

to shoot, to fish, to walk, to pull an oar, to hand,
reef and steer, and to run a steam launch. In
all of these, and in all parts of Highland life, he
shared delightedly. He was well on to forty when
he took once more to shooting, he was forty-
three when he killed his first salmon, but no boy
could have more single - mindedly rejoiced in
these pursuits. His growing love for the High-
land character, perhaps also a sense of the diffi-
culty of the task, led him to take up at forty-one
the study of Gaelic ; in which he made some
shadow of progress, but not much : the fast-
nesses of that elusive speech retaining to the
last their independence. At the house of his
friend Mrs. Blackburn, who plays the part of a
Highland lady as to the manner born, he learned
the delightful custom of kitchen dances, which
became the rule at his own house and brought
him into yet nearer contact with his neighbours.
And thus at forty-two, he began to learn the
reel ; a study, to which he brought his usual
smiling earnestness ; and the steps, diagrammat-
ically represented by his own hand, are before
me as I write.

It was in iS/g that a new feature was added

Cruise of the Steam Launch. 211

to the Highland life : a steam launch, called the
PurglCy the Styrian corruption of Walpurga,
after a friend to be hereafter mentioned. * The
steam launch goes,' Fleeming wrote. * I wish
you had been present to describe two scenes of
which she has been the occasion already : one
during which the population of Ullapool, to a
baby, was harnessed to her hurrahing — and the
other in v/hich the same population sat with
its legs over a little pier, watching Frewen and
Bernie getting up steam for the first time.*
The Purgle was got with educational intent ;
and it served its purpose so well, and the boys
knew their business so practically, that when
the summer was at an end, Fleeming, Mrs.
Jenkin, Frewen the engineer, Bernard the stoker,
and Kenneth Robertson a Highland seaman, set
forth in her to make the passage south. The
first morning they got from Loch Broom into
Gruinard bay, where they lunched upon an
island ; but the wind blowing up in the after-
noon, with sheets of rain, it was found impossi-
ble to beat to sea; and very much in the situa-
tion of castaways upon an unknown coast, the
party landed at the mouth of Gruinard river.

2 1 2 Memoir of Fleeming J en kin.

A shooting lodge was spied among the trees ;
there Fleeming went ; and though the master,
Mr. Murray, was from home, though the two
Jenkin boys were of course as black as colliers,
and all the castaways so wetted through that,
as they stood in the passage, pools formed about
their feet and ran before them into the house,
yet Mrs. Murray kindly entertained them for the
night. On the morrow, however, visitors were
to arrive ; there would be no room and, in so
out-of-the-way a spot, most probably no food
for the crew of the Piirgle ; and on the morrow
about noon, with the bay white with spindrift
and the wind so strong that one could scarcely
stand against it, they got up steam and skulked
under the land as far as Sanda Bay. Here they
crept into a seaside cave, and cooked some food ;
but the weather now freshening to a gale, it
was plain they must moor the launch where she
was, and find their way overland to some place
of shelter. Even to get their baggage from on
board was no light business ; for the dingy was
blown so far to leeward every trip, that they must
carry her back by hand along the beach. But
this once managed, and a cart procured in the

Cruise of the Steam Launch. 2 1 3

neighbourhood, they were able to spend the
night in a pot-house on Ault Bea. Next day,
the sea was unapproachable ; but the next they
had a pleasant passage to Poolewe, hugging the
cliffs, the falling swell bursting close by them
in the gullies, and the black scarts that sat like
ornaments on the top of every stack and pin-
nacle, looking down into the Piirgle as she
passed. The climate of Scotland had not done
with them yet : for three days they lay storm-
stayed in Poolewe, and when they put to sea
on the morning of the fourth, the sailors prayed
them for God's sake not to attempt the passage.
Their setting out was indeed merely tentative ;
but presently they had gone too far to return,
and found themselves committed to double Rhu
Reay with a foul wind and a cross sea. From
half-past eleven in the morning until half-past
five at night, they were in immediate and un-
ceasing danger. Upon the least mishap, the
Purgle must either have been swamped by the
seas or bulged upon the cliffs of that rude
headland. Fleeming and Robertson took turns
baling and steering; Mrs. Jcnkin, so violent was
the commotion of the boat, held on with both

214 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkiii.

hands ; Frewen, by Robertson's direction, ran
the engine, slacking and pressing her to meet
the seas; and Bernard, only twelve years old^
deadly sea-sick, and continually thrown against
the boiler, so that he was found next day to be
covered with burns, yet kept an even fire. It
was a very thankful party that sat down that
evening to meat in the Hotel at Gairloch. And
perhaps, although the thing was new in the
family, no one was much surprised when Fleem-
ing said grace over that meal. Thenceforward
he continued to observe the form, so that there
was kept alive in his house a grateful memory
of peril and deliverance. But there was noth-
ing of the muff in Fleeming; he thought it a
good thing to escape death, but a becoming and
a healthful thing to run the risk of it ; and
what is rarer, that which he thought for himself,
he thought for his family also. In spite of the
terrors of Rhu Reay, the cruise was persevered
in and brought to an end under happier con-
ditions.

One year, instead of the Highlands, Alt
Aussee, in the Steiermark, was chosen for the
holidays ; and the place, the people, and the

Siyrian Peasants, 215

life delighted Fleeming. He worked hard at
German, which he had much forgotten since he
was a boy ; and what is highly characteristic,
equally hard at the patois, in which he learned
to excel. He won a prize at a Schiitzen-fest ;
and though he hunted chamois without much
success, brought down more interesting game
in the shape of the Styrian peasants, and in
particular of his gillie, Joseph. This Joseph
was much of a character; and his appreciations
of Fleeming have a fine note of their own. The
bringing up of the boys he deigned to approve
of : ^ fast so gut wie ein Batter^ was his trenchant
criticism. The attention and courtly respect
with which Fleeming surrounded his wife, was
something of a puzzle to the philosophic gillie;
he announced in the village that Mrs. Jenkin —
die silberne Frau, as the folk had prettily named
her from some silver ornaments — was a ^geborene
Grdfijz who had married beneath her ; and when
Fleeming explained what he called the English
theory (though indeed it was quite his own) of
married relations, Joseph, admiring but uncon-
vinced, avowed it was ^ gar schon' Joseph's
cousin, Walpurga Moser, to an orchestra of

2i6 Memoir of Flee?mng Jenkin,

clarionet and zither, taught the family the coun-
try dances, the Steierisch and the Landler, and
gained their hearts during the lessons. Her
sister Loys, too, who was up at the Alp with
the cattle, came down to church on Sundays,
made acquaintance with the Jenkins, and must
have them up to see the sunrise from her house
upon the Loser, where they had supper and all
slept in the loft among the hay. The Mosers
were not lost sight of ; Walpurga still corresponds
with Mrs. Jenkin, and it was a late pleasure of
Fleeming's to choose and despatch a wedding
present for his little mountain friend. This
visit was brought to an end by a ball in the
big inn parlour; the refreshments chosen, the
list of guests drawn up, by Joseph ; the best
music of the place in attendance ; and hosts
and guests in their best clothes. The ball was
opened by Mrs. Jenkin dancing Steierisch with
a lordly Bauer, in gray and silver and with a
plumed hat ; and Fleeming followed with Wal-
purga Moser.

There ran a principle through all these holi-
day pleasures. In Styria as in the Highlands,
the same course was followed : Fleeming threw

Rustic Manners, 217

himself as fully as he could into the life and oc-
cupations of the native people, studying every-
where their dances and their language, and con-
forming, always with pleasure, to their rustic
etiquette. Just as the ball at Alt Aussee was
designed for the taste of Joseph, the parting
feast at Attadale was ordered in every particular
to the taste of Murdoch the Keeper. Fleeming
was not one of the common, so-called gentle-
men, who take the tricks of their own coterie
to be eternal principles of taste. He was aware,
on the other hand, that rustic people dwelling
in their own places, follow ancient rules with
fastidious precision, and are easily shocked and
embarrassed by what (if they used the word)
they would have to call the vulgarity of visitors
from town. And he, who was so cavalier with
men of his own class, was sedulous to shield
the more tender feelings of the peasant ; he,
who could be so trying in a drawing-room, was
even punctilious in the cottage. It was in all
respects a happy virtue. It renewed his life,
during these holidays, in all particulars. It
often entertained him with the discovery of
strange survivals ; as when, by the orders of

2i8 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin.

Murdoch, Mrs. Jenkin must publicly taste of
every dish before it was set before her guests.
And thus to throw himself into a fresh life and
a new school of manners was a grateful exercise
of Fleeming's mimetic instinct ; and to the
pleasures of the open air, of hardships support-
ed, of dexterities improved and displayed, and
of plain and elegant society, added a spice of
drama.

II.

Fleeming was all his life a lover of the play
and all that belonged to it. Dramatic literature
he knew fully. He was one of the not very nu-
merous people who can read a play : a knack,
the fruit of much knowledge and some imag-
ination, comparable to that of reading score.
Few men better understood the artificial princi-
ples on which a play is good or bad ; few more
unaffectedly enjoyed a piece of any merit of con-
struction. His own play was conceived with a
double design ; for he had long been filled with
his theory of the true story of Griselda ; used
to gird at Father Chaucer for his misconception :

The Drama. 219

and was, perhaps first of all, moved by the de«
sire to do justice to the Marquis of Saluces,
and perhaps only in the second place, by the
wish to treat a story (as he phrased it) like a sum
in arithmetic. I do not think he quite suc-
ceeded ; but I must own myself no fit judge.
Fleeming and I were teacher and taught as to
the principles, disputatious rivals in the prac-
tice, of dramatic writing.

Acting had always, ever since Rachel and the
Marseillaise, a particular power on him. ' If I
do not cry at the play,' he used to say, * I want
to have my money back.' Even from a poor
play with poor actors, he could draw pleasure.
*Giacometti's Elisabetta' I find him writing,
* fetched the house vastly. Poor Queen Eliza-
beth ! And yet it was a little good.* And
again, after a night of Salvini : ' I do not sup-
pose any one with feelings could sit out Othello^
if lago and Desdemona were acted.' Salvini
was, in his view, the greatest actor he had seen.
We were all indeed moved and bettered by the
visit of that wonderful man. — '• I declare I feel
as if I could pray ! ' cried one of us, on the
return from Hamlet, — *That is prayer,* said

220 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin,

Fleeming. W. B. Hole and I, in a fine enthu-
siasm of gratitude, determined to draw up an
address to Salvini, did so, and carried it to
Fleeming ; and I shall never forget with what
coldness he heard and deleted the eloquence of
our draft, nor with what spirit (our vanities once
properly mortified) he threw himself into the
business of collecting signatures. It was his
part, on the ground of his Italian, to see and
arrange with the actor ; it was mine to write in
the Acade7ny a notice of the first performance
of Macbeth. Fleeming opened the paper, read
so far, and flung it on the floor. * No,' he
cried, * that won't do. You were thinking of
yourself, not of Salvini ! ' The criticism was
shrewd as usual, but it was unfair through ig-
norance ; it was not of myself that I was think-
ing, but of the difficulties of my trade which I
had not well mastered. Another unalloyed dra-
matic pleasure which Fleeming and I shared the
year of the Paris Exposition, was the Marquis
de Villemer^ that blameless play, performed by
Madeleine Brohan, Delaunay, Worms, and
Broisat — an actress, in such parts at least, to
whom I have never seen full justice rendered.

Private Theatricals, 221

He had his fill of weeping on that occasion;
and when the piece was at an end, in front of a
cafe, in the mild, midnight air, we had our fill
of talk about the art of acting.

But what gave the stage so strong a hold on
Fleeming was an inheritance from Norwich,
from Edward Barron, and from Enfield of the
Speaker. The theatre was one of Edward Bar-
ron's elegant hobbies ; he read plays, as became
Enfield's son-in-law, with a good discretion ; he
wrote plays for his family, in which Eliza Bar-
ron used to shine in the chief parts ; and later
in life, after the Norwich home was broken up,
his little granddaughter would sit behind him in
a great armchair, and be introduced, with his
stately elocution, to the world of dramatic lit-
erature. From this, in a direct line, we can de-
duce the charades at Claygate ; and after money
came, in the Edinburgh days, that private thea-
tre which took up so much of Fleeming's energy
and thought. The company — Mr, and Mrs. R.
O. Carter of Colwall, W. B. Hole, Captain
Charles Douglas, Mr. Kunz, Mr. Burnett, Pro-
fessor Lewis Campbell, Mr. Charles Baxter, and
many more — made a charming society for them-

2 22 Memoi7' of Fleerning yerikin,

selves and gave pleasure to their audience. Mr.
Carter in Sir Toby Belch it would be hard to
beat. Mr. Hole in broad farce, or as the herald
in the Trachinice, showed true stage talent. As
for Mrs. Jenkin, it was for her the rest of us ex-
isted and were forgiven ; her powers were an
endless spring of pride and pleasure to her hus-
band ; he spent hours hearing and schooling her
in private ; and when it came to the perform-
ance, though there was perhaps no one in the
audience more critical, none was more moved
than Fleerning. The rest of us did not aspire
so high. There were always five performances
and weeks of busy rehearsal ; and whether we
came to sit and stifle as the prompter, to be the
dumb (or rather the inarticulate) recipients of
Carter's dog whip in the Taming of the Shrew ^
or having earned our spurs, to lose one more il-
lusion in a leading part, we were always sure at
least of a long and an exciting holiday in mirth-
ful company.

In this laborious annual diversion, Fleeming's
part was large. I never thought him an actor,
but he was something of a mimic, which stood
him in stead. Thus he had seen Got in Poirier;

Fleeming as an Actor, 223

and his own Poirier, when he came to play it,
breathed meritoriously of the model. The last
part I saw him play was Triplet, and at first I
thought it promised well. But alas ! the boys
went for a holiday, missed a train, and were not
heard of at home till late at night. Poor Fleem-
ing, the man who never hesitated to give his sons
a chisel or a gun, or to send them abroad in a
canoe or on a horse, toiled all day at his re-
hearsal, growing hourly paler, Triplet growing
hourly less meritorious. And though the re-
turn of the children, none the worse for their
little adventure, brought the colour back into
his face, it could not restore him to his part. I
remember finding him seated on the stairs in
some rare moment of quiet during the subse-
quent performances. * Hullo, Jenkin,' said I,
*you look down in the mouth.' — * My dear boy,*
said he, ' haven't you heard me ? I have not one
decent intonation from beginning to end.'

But indeed he never supposed himself an
actor; took a part, when he took any, merely
for convenience, as one takes a hand at whist ;
and found his true service and pleasure in the
more congenial business of the manager. Augier,

224 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

Racine, Shakespeare, Aristophanes in Hookham
Frere's translation, Sophocles and -^schylus in
Levvis Campbell's, such were some of the au-
thors whom he introduced to his public. In
putting these upon the stage, he found a thou-
sand exercises for his ingenuity and taste, a
thousand problems arising which he delighted
to study, a thousand opportunities to make
these infinitesimal improvements which are so
much in art and for the artist. Our first Greek
play had been costumed by the professional cos-
tumer, with unforgetable results of comicality
and indecorum : the second, the Trachinice of
Sophocles, he took in hand himself, and a de-
lightful task he made of it. His study was
then in antiquarian books, where he found con-
fusion, and on statues and bas-reliefs, where he
at last found clearness ; after an hour or so at
the British Museum, he was able to master * the
chiton, sleeves and all *; and before the time was
ripe, he had a theory of Greek tailoring at his
fingers* ends, and had all the costumes made
under his eye as a Greek tailor would have made
them. *The Greeks made the best plays and
the best statues, and were the best architects*

Stage Managing, 225

of course, they were the best tailors, too/ said
he ; and was never weary, when he could find a
tolerant listener, of dwelling on the simplicity,
the economy, the elegance both of means and
effect, which made their system so delightful.

But there is another side to the stage-man-
ager's employment. The discipline of acting is
detestable ; the failures and triumphs of that
business appeal too directly to the vanity ; and
even in the course of a careful amateur per-
formance such as ours, much of the smaller side
of man will be displayed. Fleeming, among
conflicting vanities and levities, played his part
to my admiration. He had his own view ; he
might be wrong; but the performances (he
would remind us) were after all his, and he
must decide. He was, in this as in all other
things, an iron taskmaster, sparing not himself
nor others. If you were going to do it at all,
he would see that it was done as well as you
were able. I have known him to keep two cul-
prits (and one of these his wife) repeating the
same action and the same two or three words
for a whole weary afternoon. And yet he
gained and retained warm feelings from far the

^26 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

most of those who fell under his domination,
and particularly (it is pleasant to remember)
from the girls. After the slipshod training and
the incomplete accomplishments of a girls*
school, there was something at first annoying,
at last exciting and bracing, in this high stand
ard of accomplishment and perseverance.

III.

It did not matter why he entered upon any
study or employment, whether for amusement
like the Greek tailoring or the Highland reels,
whether from a desire to serve the public as
with his sanitary work, or in the view of bene-
fiting poorer men as with his labours for tech-
nical education, he * pitched into it ' (as he would
have said himself) with the same headlong zest.
I give in the Appendix a letter from Colonel
Fe'-gusson, which tells fully the nature of the
sanitary work and of Fleeming's part and suc-
cess in it. It will be enough to say here that it
was a scheme of protection against the blunder-
ing of builders and the dishonesty of plumbers.
Started with an eye rather to the houses of the

Sanitary Associations. 227

rich, Fleeming hoped his Sanitary Associations
would soon extend their sphere of usefulness
and improve the dwellings of the poor. In this
hope he was disappointed ; but in all other ways
the scheme exceedingly prospered, associations
sprang up and continue to spring up in many
quarters, and wherever tried they have been
found of use.

Here, then, was a serious employment ; it has
proved highly useful to mankind ; and it was
begun besides, in a mood of bitterness, under
the shock of what Fleeming would so sensitive-
ly feel — the death of a whole family of children.
Yet it v/as gone upon like a holiday jaunt. I
read in Colonel Fergusson's letter that his
schoolmates bantered him when he began to
broach his scheme ; so did I at first, and he took
the banter as he always did with enjoyment,
until he suddenly posed me with the question :
* And now do you see any other jokes to make?
Well, then,' said he, * that's all right. I wanted
you to have your fun out first ; now we can be
serious.' And then with a glowing heat of
pleasure, he laid his plans before me, revelling
in the details, revelling in hope. It was as he

228 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

wrote about the joy of electrical experiment*
* What shall I compare them to ? A new song?
— a Greek play ? ' Delight attended the exer-
cise of all his powers ; delight painted the future.
Of these ideal visions, some (as I have said)
failed of their fruition. And the illusion was
characteristic. Fleeming believed we had only
to make a virtue cheap and easy, and then al.
would practise it ; that for an end unquestion-
ably good, men would not grudge a little trouble
and a little money, though they might stumble
at laborious pains and generous sacrifices. He
could not believe in any resolute badness. * I
cannot quite say,' he wrote in his young man-
hood, * that I think there is no sin or misery.
This I can say : I do not remember one single
malicious act done to myself. In fact it is
rather awkward when I have to say the Lord's
Prayer. I have nobody's trespasses to forgive.'
And to the point, I remember one of our dis-
cussions. I said it was a dangerous error not
to admit there were bad people ; he, that it was
only a confession of blindness on our part, and
that we probably called others bad only so far
as we were wrapped in ourselves and lacking in

The Phonograph, 229

the transmigratory forces of imagination. 1
undertook to describe to him three persons ir-
redeemably bad and whom he should admit to
be so. In the first case, he denied my evidence :
'You cannot judge a man upon such testimony/
said he. For the second, he owned it made him
sick to hear the tale ; but then there was no
spark of malice, it was mere weakness I had de-
scribed, and he had never denied nor thought
to set a limit to man's weakness. At my
third gentleman, he struck his colours. * Yes,'
said he, 'I'm afraid that is a bad man.* And
then looking at me shrewdly : * I wonder if it
isn't a very unfortunate thing for you to have
met him.* I showed him radiantly how it was
the world we must know, the world as it was,
not a world expurgated and prettified with
optimistic rainbows. * Yes, yes,' said he ; * but
this badness is such an easy, lazy explanation.
Won't you be tempted to use it, instead of try-
ing to understand people ? '

In the year 1878, he took a passionate fancy
for the phonograph : it was a toy after his heart,
a toy that touched the skirts of life, art, and
science, a toy prolific of problems and theories.

230 Memoir of Fleeming J en kin.

Something fell to be done for a University
Cricket Ground Bazaar. * And the thought
struck him,' Mr. Ewing writes to me, * to ex-
hibit Edison's phonograph, then the very new-
est scientific marvel. The instrument itself wab
not to be purchased — I think no specimen had
then crossed the Atlantic — but a copy of the
Times with an account of it was at hand, and
by the help of this we made a phonograph which
to our great joy talked, and talked, too, with the
purest American accent. It was so good that
a second instrument was got ready forthwith.
Both were shown at the Bazaar : one by Mrs.
Jenkin to people willing to pay half a crown for
a private view and the privilege of hearing their
own voices, while Jenkin, perfervid as usual,
gave half-hourly lectures on the other in an ad-
joining room — I, as his lieutenant, taking turns.
The thing was in its way a little triumph. A
few of the visitors were deaf, and hugged the
belief that they were the victims of a new kind
of fancy-fair swindle. Of the others, many who
came to scoff remained to take raffle tickets ;
and one of the phonographs was finally disposed
of in this way, falling, by a happy freak of the

The Phonograph, 231

ballot-box, into the hands of Sir William Thom-
son.* The other remained in Fleeming's hands,
and was a source of infinite occupation. Once
it was sent to London, ^ to bring back on the
tinfoil the tones of a lady distinguished for clear
vocalisations ; at another time Sir Robert Chris-
tison was brought in to contribute his powerful
bass '; and there scarcely came a visitor about
the house, but he was made the subject of ex-
periment. The visitors, I am afraid, took their
parts lightly : Mr. Hole and I, with unscientific
laughter, commemorating various shades of
Scotch accent, or proposing to * teach the poor
dumb animal to swear.' But Fleeming and Mr.
Ewing, when we butterflies were gone, were la-
boriously ardent. Many thoughts that occu-
pied the later years of my friend were caught
from the small utterance of that toy. Thence
came his inquiries into the roots of articulate
language and the foundations of literary art ;
his papers on vowel sounds, his papers in the
Saturday Review upon the laws of verse, and
many a strange approximation, many a just
note, thrown out in talk and now forgotten. I
pass over dozens of his interests, and dwell on

232 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkiti,

this trifling matter of the phonograph, because
it seems to me that it depicts the man. So, fof
Fleeming, one thing joined into another, the
greater with the less. He cared not where it
was he scratched the surface of the ultimate
mystery — in the child's toy, in the great tragedy,
in the laws of the tempest, or in the properties
of energy or mass — certain that whatever he
touched, it was a part of life — and however he
touched it, there would flow for his happy con-
stitution interest and delight. * All fables have
their morals,' says Thoreau, * but the innocent
enjoy the story.* There is a truth represented
for the imagination in these lines of a noble
poem, where we are told, that in our highest
hours of visionary clearness, we can but

* see the children sport upon the shore
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.*

To this clearness Fleeming had attained ; and
although he heard the voice of the eternal seas
and weighed its message, he was yet able, until
the end of his life, to sport upon these shores
of death and mystery with the gaiety and inno-
cence of children.

Fleeming as a Professor, 233

IV.

It was as a student that I first knew Fleem-
ing, as one of that modest number of young
men who sat under his ministrations in a soul-
chilling class-room at the top of the University
buildings. His presence was against him as a
professor: no one, least of all students, would
have been moved to respect him at first sight :
rather short in stature, markedly plain, boyishly
young in manner, cocking his head like a terrier
with every mark of the most engaging vivacity
and readiness to be pleased, full of words, full
of paradox, a stranger could scarcely fail to look
at him twice, a man thrown with him in a train
could scarcely fail to be engaged by him in talk,
but a student would never regard him as aca-
demical. Yet he had that fibre in him that order
always existed in his class-room. I do not re-
member that he ever addressed me in language ;
at the least sign of unrest, his eye would fall on
me and I was quelled. Such a feat is compara-
tively easy in a small class ; but I have misbe-
haved in smaller classes and under eyes more
Olympian than Fleeming Jenkin's. He was

234 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin,

simply a man from whose reproof one shrank ;
in manner the least buckrammed of mankind, he
had, in serious moments, an extreme dignity of
goodness. So it was that he obtained a power
over the most insubordinate of students, but a
power of which I was myself unconscious. I
was inclined to regard any professor as a joke,
and Fleeming as a particularly good joke, per-
haps the broadest in the vast pleasantry of my
curriculum. I was not able to follow his lec-
tures; I somehow dared not misconduct my-
self, as was my customary solace; and I re-
frained from attending. This brought me at
the end of the session into a relation with my
contemned professor that completely opened
my eyes. During the year, bad student as I
was, he had shown a certain leaning to my so-
ciety ; I had been to his house, he had asked
me to take a humble part in his theatricals ; I
was a master in the art of extracting a certify
cate even at the cannon's mouth ; and I was un-
der no apprehension. But when I approached
Fleeming, I found myself in another world ; he
would have naught of me. * It is quite useless
for you to come to me, Mr. Stevenson. There

A Student's Certificate, 235

may be doubtful cases, there is no doubt about
ycurs. You have simply not attended my class.'
The document was necessary to me for family
considerations ; and presently I stooped to such
pleadings and rose to such adjurations, as made
my ears burn to remember. He was quite un-
moved ; he had no pity for me. — * You are no
fool/ said he, *and you chose your course.* I
showed him that he had misconceived his duty,
that certificates were things of form, attendance
a matter of taste. Two things, he replied, had
been required for graduation, a certain compe-
tency proved in the final trials and a certain pe-
riod of genuine training proved by certificate ;
if he did as I desired, not less than if he gave
me hints for an examination, he was aiding me
to steal a degree. 'You see, Mr. Stevenson,
these are the laws and I am here to apply
them,* said he. I could not say but that this
view was tenable, though it was new to me ; I
changed my attack : it was only for my father's
eye that I required his signature, it need never
go to the Senatus, I had already certificates
enough to justify my year's attendance. * Bring
them to me ; I cannot take your word for that,'

2^6 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin.

said he. * Then I will consider.' The next day
I came charged with my certificates, a humble
assortment. And when he had satisfied him-
self, * Remember,' said he, * that I can promise
nothing, but I will try to find a form of words.'
He did find one, and I am still ashamed when I
think of his shame in giving me that paper. He
made no reproach in speech, but his manner
was the more eloquent ; it told me plainly what
a dirty business we were on ; and I went from
his presence, with my certificate indeed in my
possession, but with no answerable sense of tri-
umph. That was the bitter beginning of my
love for Fleeming ; I never thought lightly of
him afterwards.

Once, and once only, after our friendship was
truly founded, did we come to a considerable
difference. It was, by the rules of poor human-
ity, my fault and his. I had been led to dabble
in society journalism ; and this coming to his
ears, he felt it like a disgrace upon himself. So
far he was exactly in the right ; but he was scarce
happily inspired when he broached the subject
at his own table and before guests who were
strangers to me. It was the sort of error he was

Flee m ing ' s Ta ct. 237

always ready to repent, but always certain to re-
peat ; and on this occasion he spoke so freely
that I soon made an excuse and left the house
with the firm purpose of returning no more.
About a month later, I met him at dinner at a
common friend's. * Now,* said he, on the stairs,
* I engage you — like a lady to dance — for the
end of the evening. You have no right to quarrel
with me and not give me a chance.' I have often
said and thought that Fleeming had no tact ; he
belied the opinion then. I remember perfectly
how, so soon as we could get together, he began
his attack : * You may have grounds of quarrel
with me ; you have none against Mrs. Jenkin ; and
before I say another word, I want you to prom-
ise you will come to her house as usual.' An
interview thus begun could have but one end-
ing: if the quarrel were the fault of both, the
merit of the reconciliation was entirely Fleem-
ing's.

When our intimacy first began, coldly enough,
accidentally enough on his part, he had still
something of the Puritan, something of the in-
human narrowness of the good youth. It fell
from him slowly, year by year, as he continued

238 Memoir of Fleemmg Jen kin.

to rinen, and grow milder, and understand more
generously the mingled characters of men. In
the early days he once read me a bitter lecture ;
and I remember leaving his house in a fine
spring afternoon, with the physical darkness of
despair upon my eyesight. Long after he made
me a formal retractation of the sermon and a
formal apology for the pain he had inflicted ;
Adding drolly, but truly, * You see, at that time
1 was so much younger than you ! ' And yet
even in those days there was much to learn from
him ; and above all his fine spirit of piety, bravely
and trustfully accepting life, and his singular de-
light in the heroic.

His piety was, indeed, a thing of chief im-
portance. His views (as they are called) upon
religious matters varied much ; and he could
never be induced to think them more or less
than views. * All dogma is to me mere form,'
he wrote ; ' dogmas are mere blind struggles to
express the inexpressible. I cannot conceive
that any single proposition whatever in religion
is true in the scientific sense ; and yet all the
while I think the religious view of the world is
the most true view. Try to separate from the

Religion and Morality, 239

mass of their statements that which is common
to Socrates, Isaiah, David, St. Bernard, the
Jansenists, Luther, Mahomet, Bunyan — yes, and
George Eliot : of course you do not believe that
this something could be written down in a set
of propositions like Euclid, neither will you
deny that there is something common and this
something very valuable. ... I shall be sorry
if the boys ever give a moment's thought to the
question of what community they belong to —
I hope they will belong to the great community.'
I should observe that as time went on his con-
formity to the church in which he was born
grew more complete, and his views drew nearer
the conventional. * The longer I live, my dear
Louis,' he wrote but a few months before his
death, *the more convinced I become of a direct
care by God — which is reasonably impossible —
but there it is.' And in his last year he took
the communion.

But at the time when I fell under his influence,
he stood more aloof; and this made him the
more impressive to a youthful atheist. He had
a keen sense of language and its imperial in-
fluence on men; language contained all the

240 Metnoir of F/ecmi?ig Jenkiyi.

great and sou ad metaphysics, he was wont to
say ; and a word once made and generally un-
derstood, he thought a real victory of man and
reason. But he never dreamed it could be ac-
curate, knowing that words stand symbol for
the indefinable. I came to him once with a
problem which had puzzled me out of measure :
what is a cause ? why out of so many innumer-
able millions of conditions, all necessar>', should
one be singled out and ticketed *the cause'?
* You do not understand,* said he. * A cause is
the answer to a question : it designates that
condition which I happen to know and you
happen not to know/ It was thus, with
partial exception of the mathematical, that
he thought of all means of reasoning: they
were in his eyes but means of communica-
tion, so to be understood, so to be judged,
and only so far to be credited. The mathemat-
ical he made, I say, exception of: number and
measure he believed in to the extent of their
significance, but that significance, he was never
weary of reminding you, was slender to the
verge of nonentity. Science was true, because
it told us almost nothing. With a few abstrac-

Trtith and Right, 241

tions it could deal, and deal correctly ; convey-
ing honestly faint truths. Apply its means to
any concrete fact of life, and this high dialect
of the wise became a childish jargon.

Thus the atheistic youth was met at every
turn by a scepticism more complete than his
own, so that the very weapons of the fight were
changed in his grasp to swords of paper. Cer-
tainly the church is not right, he would argue,
but certainly not the anti-church either. Men
are not such fools as to be wholly in the wrong,
nor yet are they so placed as to be ever wholly
in the right. Somewhere, in mid air between
the disputants, like hovering Victory in some
design of a Greek battle, the truth hangs un-
discerned. And in the meanwhile what matter
these uncertainties ? Right is very obvious ; a
great consent of the best of mankind, a loud
voice within us (whether of God, or whether by
inheritance, and in that case still from God),
guide and command us in the path of duty.
He saw life very simple ; he did not love re-
finements ; he was a friend to much confo»'mity
in unessentials. For (he would argue) it is in
this life as it stands about us, that we are given

242 Memoir of F kerning Jen kin,

our problem ; the manners of the day are the
colours of our palette; they condition, they
constrain us ; and a man must be very sure he
is in the right, must (in a favourite phrase of
his) be * either very wise or very vain,' to break
with any general consent in ethics. I remember
taking his advice upon some point of conduct.
* Now,' he said, * how do you suppose Christ
would have advised you ? ' and when I had an-
swered that he would not have counselled me
anything unkind or cowardly, * No,* he said, with
one of his shrewd strokes at the weakness of his
hearer, ' nor anything amusing.' Later in life,
he made less certain in the field of ethics. * The
old story of the knowledge of good and evil is a
very true one,' I find him writing ; only (he goes
on) * the effect of the original dose is much
worn out, leaving Adam's descendants with the
knowledge that there is such a thing — but un-
certain where.' His growing sense of this am-
biguity made him less swift to condemn, but no
less stimulating in counsel. * You grant your-
self certain freedoms. Very well,' he would
say, * I want to see you pay for them some other
way. You positively cannot do this: then there

His Love of Heroism. 243

positively must be something else that you can
do, and I want to see you find that out and do
It.' Fleeming would never suffer you to think
that you were living, if there were not, some-
where in your life, some touch of heroism, to
do or to endure.

This was his rarest quality. Far on in middle
age, when men begin to lie down with the bes-
tial goddesses, Comfort and Respectability, the
strings of his nature still sounded as high a
note as a young man's. He loved the harsh
voice of duty like a call to battle. He loved
courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave word,
an ugly virtue ; everything that lifts us above
the table where we eat or the bed we sleep
upon. This with no touch of the motive-monger
or the ascetic. He loved his virtues to be prac-
tical, his heroes to be great eaters of beef ; he
loved the jovial Heracles, loved the astute
Odysseus; not the Robespierres and Wesleys.
A fine buoyant sense of life and of man's un-
equal character ran through all his thoughts.
He could not tolerate the spirit of the pick-
thank ; being what we are, he wished us to see
others with a generous eye of admiration, not

244 Memoir of Fleeming yenhin,

with the smallness of the seeker after faults. I!
there shone anywhere a virtue, no matter how
incongruously set, it was upon the virtue we
must fix our eyes. I remember having found
much entertainment in Voltaire's Saiil^ and tell-
ing him what seemed to me the drollest touches.
He heard me out, as usual when displeased, and
then opened fire on me with red-hot shot. To
belittle a noble story was easy ; it was not liter-
ature, it was not art, it was not morality ; there
was no sustenance in such a form of jesting,
there was (in his favourite phrase) ' no nitrog-
enous food ' in such literature. And then he
proceeded to show what a fine fellow David
was; and what a hard knot he was in about
Bathsheba, so that (the initial wrong committed)
honour might well hesitate in the choice of con-
duct; and what owls those people were who
marvelled because an Eastern tyrant had killed
Uriah, instead of marvelling that he had not
killed the prophet also. ' Now if Voltaire had
helped me to feel that,' said he, * I could have
seen some fun in it.' He loved the comedy which
shows a hero human, and yet leaves him a hero ,
and the laughter which does not lessen love.

Taste ill Liicjature, 245

It was this taste for what is fine in human-
kind, that ruled his choice in books. These
should all strike a high note, whether brave or
tender, and smack of the open air. The noble
and simple presentation of things noble and
simple, that was the * nitrogenous food ' of
which he spoke so much, which he sought so
eagerly, enjoyed so royally. He wrote to an
author, the first part of whose story he had seen
with sympathy, hoping that it might continue
in the same vein. * That this may be so,' he
wrote, * I long with the longing of David for
the water of Bethlehem. But no man need die
for the water a poet can give, and all can
drink it to the end of time, and their thirst be
quenched and the pool never dry — and the
thirst and the water are both blessed.' It was
in the Greeks particularly that he found this
blessed water ; he loved ' a fresh air ' which he
found 'about the Greek things even in trans-
lations '; he loved their freedom from the mawk-
ish and the rancid. The tale of David in the
Bible, the Odyssey ^ Sophocles, ^schylus, Shake-
speare, Scott ; old Dumas in his chivalrous note ;
Dickens rather than Thackeray, and the Tale oj

246 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

Two Cities out of Dickens : such were some of
his preferences. To Ariosto and Boccaccio he
was always faithful ; Burnt Njal was a late
favourite ; and he found at least a passing en-
tertainment in the Arcadia and the Grarid Cyrus,
George Eliot he outgrew, finding her latterly
only sawdust in the mouth ; but her influence,
while it lasted, was great, and must have gone
some way to form his mind. He was easily set
on edge, however, by didactic writing ; and held
that books should teach no other lesson but
what * real life would teach, were it as vividly
presented.* Again, it was the thing made that
took him, the drama in the book ; to the book
itself, to any merit of the making, he was long
strangely blind. He would prefer the Agamem-
nan in the prose of Mr. Buckley, ay, to Keats.
But he was his mother's son, learning to the
last. He told me one day that literature was
not a trade ; that it was no craft ; that the pro-
fessed author was merely an amateur with a
door-plate. ' Very well,' said I, * the first time
you get a proof, I will demonstrate that it is as
much a trade as bricklaying, and that you do
not know it.' By the very next post, a proof

Fleeming as a Writer, 247

came. I opened it with fear ; for he was indeed,
as the reader will see by these volumes, a for-
midable amateur ; always wrote brightly, be-
cause he always thought trenchantly ; and some-
times wrote brilliantly, as the worst of whistlers
may sometimes stumble on a perfect intonation.
But it was all for the best in the interests of his
education ; and I was able, over that proof, to
give him a quarter of an hour such as Fleeming
loved both to give and to receive. His subse-
quent training passed out of my hands into
those of our common friend, W. E. Henley.
* Henley and I,' he wrote, 'have fairly good
times wigging one another for not doing better.
I wig him because he won't try to write a real
play, and he wigs me because I can't try to
write English.' When I next saw him, he was
full of his new acquisitions. * And yet I have
lost something too,' he said regretfully. * Up
to now Scott seemed to me quite perfect, he
was all I wanted. Since I have been learning
this confounded thing, I took up one of the
novels, and a great deal of it is both careless
and clumsy.'

248 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin.

V.

He spoke four languages with freedom, not
even English with any marked propriety. What
he uttered was not so much well said, as excel-
lently acted : so we may hear every day the in-
expressive language of a poorly-written drama
assume character and colour in the hands of a
good player. No man had more of the vis
comica in private life; he played no character
on the stage, as he could play himself among
his friends. It was one of his special charms ;
now when the voice is silent and the face still,
it makes it impossible to do justice to his power
in conversation. He was a delightful companion
to such as can bear bracing weather ; not to the
very vain ; not to the owlishly wise, who cannot
have their dogmas canvassed ; not to the pain-
fully refined, whose sentiments become articles
of faith. The spirit in which he could write
that he was * much revived by having an oppor-
tunity of abusing Whistler to a knot of his special
admirers,' is a spirit apt to be misconstrued.
He was not a dogmatist, even about Whistler.
* The house is full of pretty things,' he wrote,

His Individuality. 249

when on a visit ; ' but Mrs. 's taste in pretty

things has one very bad fault : it is not my taste.'
And that was the true attitude of his mind ; but
these eternal differences it was his joy to thresh
out and wrangle over by the hour. It was no
wonder if he loved the Greeks ; he was in many
ways a Greek himself ; he should have been a
sophist and met Socrates ; he would have loved
Socrates, and done battle with him staunchly
and manfully owned his defeat ; and the dia-
logue, arranged by Plato, v/ould have shown
even in Plato's gallery. He seemed in talk
aggressive, petulant, full of a singular energy ;
as vain you would have said as a peacock, until
you trod on his toes, and then you saw that he
was at least clear of all the sicklier elements of
vanity. Soundly rang his laugh at any jest
against himself. He wished to be taken, as he
took others, for what was good in him without
dissimulation of the evil, for what was wise in
him without concealment of the childish. He
hated a draped virtue, and despised a wit on its
own defence. And he drew (if I may so express
myself) a human and humorous portrait of him-
aelf with all his defects and qualities, as he thus

250 Memoir of Fleeming Jenki7t,

enjoyed in talk the robust sports of the intelli-
gence ; giving and taking manfully, always with-
out pretence, always with paradox, always with
exuberant pleasure ; speaking wisely of what ho
knev/, foolishly of what he knew not ; a teacher,
a learner, but still combative ; picking holes in
what was said even to the length of captious-
ness, yet aware of all that was said rightly;
jubilant in victory, delighted by defeat : a Greek
sophist, a British schoolboy.

Among the legends of what was once a very
pleasant spot, the old Savile Club, not then di-
vorced from Savile Row, there are many mem-
ories of Fleeming. He was not popular at first,
being known simply as Hlie man who dines here
and goes up to Scotland *; but he grew at last,
I think, the most generally liked of all the mem-
bers. To those who truly knew and loved him,
who had tasted the real sweetness of his nature,
Fleeming's porcupine ways had always been a
matter of keen regret. They introduced him
to their own friends with fear ; sometimes re-
called the step with mortification. It was not
possible to look on with patience while a man
so lovable thwarted love at every step. But

Fleeming's Popularity, 251

the course of time and the ripening of his nature
brought a cure. It was at the Savile that he
first remarked a change ; it soon spread beyond
the walls of the club. Presently I find him
writing: 'Will you kindly explain what has
happened to me ? All my life I have talked a
good deal, with the almost unfailing result of
making people sick of the sound of my tougue.
It appeared to me that I had various things to
say, and I had no malevolent feelings, but never-
theless the result was that expressed above.
Well, lately some change has happened. If I
talk to a person one day, they must have me
the next. Faces light up when they see me. —
"Ah, I say, come here," — " come and dine with
me." It's the most preposterous thing I ever ex-
perienced. It is curiously pleasant. You have
enjoyed it all your life, and therefore cannot
conceive how bewildering a burst of it is for the
first time at forty-nine.' And this late sunshine
of popularity still further softened him. He
v/as a bit of a porcupine to the last, still shed-
ding darts ; or rather he was to the end a bit of a
schoolboy, and must still throw stones : but the
essential toleration that underlay his disputa-

252 Memoir of Fleeming J en kin.

tiousness, and the kindness that made of him a
tender sicknurse and a generous helper, shone
more conspicuously through. A new pleasure
had come to him ; and as with all sound natures,
he was bettered by the pleasure.

I can best show Fleeming in this later stage by
quoting from a vivid and interesting letter of
M. Emile Tr^lat's. Here, admirably expressed,
is how he appeared to a friend of another
nation, whom he encountered only late in life.
M. Tr^lat will pardon me if I correct, even be-
fore I quote him ; but what the Frenchman sup-
posed to flow from some particular bitterness
against France, was only Fleeming's usual ad-
dress. Had M. Tr^lat been Italian, Italy would
have fared as ill ; and yet Italy was Fleeming's
favourite country.

Vous savez comment j'ai connu Fleeming Jenkin !
C'etait en Mai 1878. Nous etions tous deux raembres
du jury de rExposition Universelle. On n'avait rien
fait qui vaille k la premiere stance de notre classe, qui
avait eu lieu le matin. Tout le monde avait parle et
reparle pour ne rien dire. Cela durait depuis huit
heures ; il etait midi. Je demandai la parole pour une
motion d'ordre, et je proposal que la seanca fut levee k
la condition que chaque membre fran9ais emportdt k
dejeuner un jure Stranger. Jenkin applaudit. ' Je vous

M. Trdat's Letter, 253

cmrn(^ne dejeuner,' lui criai-je. 'Je veux bien.' . . .
Nous partimes ; en chemin nous vous rencontrions ; il
vous presente et nous allons dejeuner tous trois aupres
du Trocadero.

Et, depuis ce temps, nous avons et6 de vieux amis.
Non seulement nous passions nos journees au jury, ou
nous ^tions toujours ensemble, c6te-a-c6te. Mais nos
habitudes s'etaient faites telles que, non contents de
dejeuner en face I'un de I'autre, je le ramenais diner
presque tous les jours chez moi. Cela dura une quin-
zaine : puis il fut rappele en Angleterre. Mais il revint,
et nous fimes encore une bonne 6tape de vie intellect-
uelle, morale et philosophique. Je crois qu'il me
rendait dej4 tout ce que j'^prouvais de sympathie et
d'estime, et que je ne fus pas pour rien dans sonretour
k Paris.

Chose singuliere ! nous nous ^tions attaches I'un k
I'autre par les sous-entendus bien plus que par la
matiere de nos conversations. A vrai dire, nous etions
presque toujours en discussion ; et il nous arrivait de
nous rire au nez Tun et I'autre pendant des heures, tant
nous nous etonnions reciproquement de la diversite de
nos points de vue. Je le trouvais si Anglais, et il me
trouvait si Fran9ais ! II etait si franchement revolt^ de
certaines choses qu'il voyait chez nous, et je compre-
nais si mal certaines choses qui se passaient chez vous !
Rien de plus interessant que ces contacts qui etaient
des contrastes, et que ces rencontres d'idees qui etaient
des choses ; rien de si attachant que les 6chappees de
coeurou d'esprit auxquelles ces petits conflits donnaient
k tout moment cours. C'est dans ces conditions que,
pendant son sejour i Paris en 1878, je conduisis un peu
partout mon nouvel ami. Nous allames chez Madame
Edniond Adam, ou il vit passer beaucoup d'hommea

254 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

politiques avec lesquels il causa. Mais c'est chez les
ministres qu'il fut interess6. Le moment etait, d'ail-
leurs, curieux en France. Je me rappelle que, lorsque
je le presentai au Ministre du Commerce, il fit cette
spirituelle repartie : ' C'est la seconde fois que je viens
en France sous la Republique. La premiere fois, c'etait
en 1848, elle s'etait coiffee de travers : je suis bien
heureux de saluer aujourd'hui votre excellence, quand
elle a mis son chapeau droit.' Une fois je le menai
voir couronner la Rosiere de Nanterre. II y suivit les
ceremonies civiles et religieuses ; il y assista au banquet
donne par le Maire ; il y vit notre de Lesseps, auquel il
porta un toast. Le soir, nous revinmes tard a Paris ; il
faisait chaud ; nous etions un peu fatigues ; nous en-
trames dans un des rares cafes encore ouverts. II de-
vint silencieux. — ' N'etes-vous pas content de votre
journee ? ' lui dis-je. — ' O, si ! mais je reflechis, et je me
dis que vous etes un peuple gai — tons ces braves gens
dtaient gais aujourd'hui. C'est une vertu, la gaiete, et
Vous I'avez en France, cette vertu ! ' II me disait cela
melancoliquement ; et c'etait la premiere fois que je lui
entendais faire une louange adressee a la France. . . .
Mais il ne faut pas que vous voyiez la une plainte de
ma part. Je serais un ingrat si je me plaignais ; car
11 me disait souvent : * Quel bon Francais vous faites ! '
Et il m'aimait a cause de cela, quoiqu'il semblat n'aimer
pas la France. C'etait la un trait de son originalite. II
est vrai qu'il s'en tirait en disant que je ne ressemblai
pas a mes compatriotes, ce a quoi il ne connaissait rien !
— Tout cela etait fort curieux; car, moi-meme, je
I'aimais quoiqu'il en eut a mon pays !

En 1879 il amena son fils Austin a Paris. J'attirai
celui-ci. 11 dejeunait avec moi deux fois par semaine.
}e lui montrai ce qu'etait Tintlmite fran^aise en le tu-

M. Trdlat's Letter, 255

toyant paternellement. Cela reserra beau coup nos liens
d'intimite avec Jenkin. . . . Je fis inviter mon ami au
congres de V Association frangaise pour Vavancement des
sciences, qui se tenait k Rheims en 1880. II y vint.
J'eus le plaisir de lui donner la parole dans la section
du genie civil et niilitaire, que je presidais. II y fit une
tres interessante communication, qui me montrait une
fois de plus I'originalite de ses vaes et la surete de sa
science. C'est k Tissue de ce congres que je passai lui
iaire visite 4 Rochefort, ou je le trouvai installe en fa-
mille et ou je presentai pour la premiere fois mes hom-
mages k son eminente compagne. Je le vis la sous un
jour nouveau et touchant pour moi. Madame Jenkin,
qu'il entoirrait si galamment, et ses deux jeunes fils
donnaient encore plus de relief a sa personne. J'em-
portai des quelques heures que je passai k cote de lui
dans ce charmant paysage un souvenir 6mu.

J'etais alle en Angleterre en 1882 sans pouvoir gag-
ner Edimbourg. J y retournai en 1883 avec la com-
mission d'assainissement de la ville de Paris, dont je
faisais partie. Jenkin me rejoignit. Je le fis entendre
par mes collegues ; car il etait fondateur dune societe
de £aiub-it£. II eut un grand succ^s parmi nous.
Mais ce voyage me restera toujours en mr^moire parce
que c'est la que se fixa d 'fenitivement notre forte am-
itie. II m'invita un jour k diner k son club et au mo-
ment de me faire asseoir k cHe de lui, il me retint et
me dit: *Je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder
quelque chose. C'est mon sentiment que nos relations
ne peuvent pas se bien continuer si vous ne me donnez
pas la {>ermission de vous tutoyer. Voulez-vous que
nous nous tutoyions ? ' Je lui pris les mains et je lui dis
qu'une pareille proposition venant d'un Anglais, et d'un
Anglais de sa haute distinction, c'etait une victoire, dont

256 Memoir of Flccming Jenki7i,

je serais tier tout e ma vie. Et nous coramencions k user
de cette nouvelle forme dans nos rapports. Vous savez
avec quelle finesse 11 parlait le frangais : comme il en
connaissait tons les tours, comme il jouait avec ses dif-
ficultes, et meme avec ses petites gamineries. Je crois
qu'il a ete heureux de pratiquer avec moi ce tutoie-
ment, qui ne s'adapte pas ^ I'anglais, et qui est si fran-
cais. Je ne puis vous peindre I'etendue et la vari6t6
de nos conversations de la soiree. Mais ce que je puis
vous dire, c'est que, sous la caresse du tu, ncs id^es se
sont elevees. Nous avions toujours beaucoup ri en-
semble ; mais nous n'avions jamais laisse des banalit6s
s'introduire dans nos ^changes de pensees. Ce soir-U,
notre horizon intellectuel s'est elargie, et nous y avons
pousse des reconnaissances profondes et lointaines.
Apres avoir vivement cause k table, nous avons longue-
ment cause au salon ; et nous nous separions le soir a
Trafalgar Square, apres avoir longe les trottoirs, sta-
tionne aux coins des rues et deux fois rebrouss^ chemin
en nous reconduisant I'un I'autre. II etait pres d'une
heure du matin ! Mais quelle belle passe d'argu menta-
tion, quels beaux echanges de sentiments, quelles fortes
confidences patriotiques nous avions fournies ! J'ai
compris ce soir la que Jenkin ne detestait pas la France,
et je lui serrai fort les mains en Tembrassant. Nous
nous quittions aussi amis qu'on puisse I'etre ; et notre
affection s'etait par lui 6tendue et comprise dans un tu
frangais.

CHAPTER VII.

1875—1885.

Ifrs. Jenkin's Illness— Captain Jenkin— The Golden Wedding-
Death of Uncle John— Death of Mr. and Mrs. Austin — Illness
and Death of the Captain — Death of Mrs. Jenkin — Effect on
Fleeming — Telpherage — The End.

A ND now I must resume my narrative for
-^ ^ that melancholy business that concludes
all human histories. In January of the year
i875> while Fleeming's sky was still unclouded,
he was reading Smiles. ' I read my engineers'
lives steadily,' he writes, ' but find biographies
depressing. I suspect one reason to be that
misfortunes and trials can be graphically de-
scribed, but happiness and the causes of happi-
ness either cannot be or are not. A grand new
branch of literature opens to my view : a drama
in which people begin in a poor way and end,
after getting gradually happier, in an ecstasy of
enjoyment. The common novel is not the thing
at all. It gives struggle followed by relief. I
want each act to close on a new and triumphant

(257)

258 Memoir of Fleeming Je^ikin,

happiness, which has been steadily growing all
the while. This is the real antithesis of tragedy,
where things get blacker and blacker and end in
hopeless woe. Smiles has not grasped my grand
idea, and only shows a bitter struggle followed
by a little respite before death. Some feeble
critic might say my new idea was not true to
nature. I'm sick of this old-fashioned notion of
art. Hold a mirror up, indeed ! Let's paint a
picture of how things ought to be and hold that
up to nature, and perhaps the poor old woman
may repent and mend her ways.' The 'grand
idea ' might be possible in art ; not even the in-
genuity of nature could so round in the actual
life of any man. And yet it might almost seem
to fancy that she had read the letter and taken
the hint ; for to Fleeming the cruelties of fate
were strangely blended with tenderness, and
when death came, it came harshly to others,
to him not unkindly.

In the autumn of that same year 1875, Fleem-
ing's father and mother were walking in the gar-
den of their house at Merchiston, when the lat-
ter fell to the ground. It was thought at the
time to be a stumble ; it was in all likelihood a

Illness of his Mother, 259

premonitory stroke of palsy. From that day,
there fell upon her an abiding panic fear ; that
glib, superficial part of us that speaks and rea-
sons could allege no cause, science itself could
find no mark of danger, a son's solicitude was
laid at rest ; but the eyes of the body saw the
approach of a blow, and the consciousness of
the body trembled at its coming. It came in a
moment ; the brilliant, spirited old lady leapt
from her bed, raving. For about six months,
this stage of her disease continued with many
painful and many pathetic circumstances ; her
husband who tended her, her son who was un-
wearied in his visits, looked for no change in her
condition but the change that comes to all.
* Poor mother,' I find Fleeming writing, * I can-
not get the tones of her voice out of my head.
... I may have to bear this pain for a long
time ; and so I am bearing it and sparing my-
self whatever pain seems useless. Mercifully I
do sleep, I am so weary that I must sleep.*
And again later : * I could do very well, if my
mind did not revert to my poor mother's state
whenever I stop attending to matters immedi-
ately before me.' And the next day : ' I can

26o Memoir of Fleeming J en kin.

never feel a moment's pleasure without having
my mother's suffering recalled by the very feel-
ing of happiness. A pretty, young face recalls
hers by contrast — a careworn face recalls it by
association. I tell you, for I can speak to no
one else ; but do not suppose that I wilfully let
my mind dwell on sorrow.*

In the summer of the next year, the frenzy
left her ; it left her stone deaf and almost en-
tirely aphasic, but with some remains of her old
sense and courage. Stoutly she set to work
with dictionaries, to recover her lost tongues;
and had already made notable progress, when a
third stroke scattered her acquisitions. Thence-
forth, for nearly ten years, stroke followed upon
stroke, each still further jumbling the threads of
her intelligence, but by degrees so gradual and
with such partiality of loss and of survival, that
her precise state was always and to the end a
matter of dispute. She still remembered her
friends ; she still loved to learn news of them
upon the slate ; she still read and marked the
list of the subscription library ; she still took an
interest in the choice of a play for the theatri-
cals, and could remember and find parallel pas-

Kind Friends, 261

sages ; but alongside of these surviving powers,
were lapses as remarkable, she misbehaved like
a child, and a servant had to sit with her at ta-
ble. To see her so sitting, speaking with the
tones of a deaf mute not always to the purpose,
and to remember what she had been, was a mov-
ing appeal to all who knew her. Such was the
pathos of these two old people in their affliction,
that even the reserve of cities was melted and
the neighbours vied in sympathy and kindness.
Where so many were more than usually helpful,
it is hard to draw distinctions; but I am di-
rected and I delight to mention in particular
the good Dr. Joseph Bell, Mr. Thomas, and Mr.
Archibald Constable with both their wives, the
Rev. Mr. Belcombe (of whose good heart and
taste I do not hear for the first time — the news had
come to me by way of the Infirmary), and their
next-door neighbour, unwearied in service, Miss
Hannah Mayne. Nor should I omit to mention
that John Ruffini continued to write to Mrs. Jen-
kin till his own death, and the clever lady known
to the world as Vernon Lee until the end : a
touching, a becoming attention to what was only
the wreck and sur\Mval of their brilliant friend.

262 Memoir of Flee7iimg Je^ikin,

But he to whom this affliction brought the
greatest change was the Captain himself.
What was bitter in his lot, he bore with un-
shaken courage ; only once, in these ten years
of trial, has Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin seen him
weep; for the rest of the time his wife — his
commanding officer, now become his trying
child — was served not with patience alone, but
with a lovely happiness of temper. He had be-
longed all his life to the ancient, formal, speech-
making, compliment-presenting school of cour-
tesy ; the dictates of this code partook in his
eyes of the nature of a duty ; and he must now
be courteous for two. Partly from a happy il-
lusion, partly in a tender fraud, he kept his wife
before the world as a still active partner. When
he paid a call, he would have her write * with
love ' upon a card ; or if that (at the moment)
was too much, he would go armed with a bou-
quet and present it in her name. He even
wrote letters for her to copy and sign : an in-
nocent substitution, which may have caused
surprise to Ruffini or to Vernon Lee, if they
ever received, in the hand of Mrs. Jenkin the
very obvious reflections of her husband. He

Captain J en km, 263

had always adored this wife whom he now
tended and sought to represent in correspond-
ence : it was now, if not before, her turn to re-
pay the compHment ; mind enough was left her
to perceive his unwearied kindness; and as her
moral qualities seemed to survive quite unim-
paired, a childish love and gratitude v/ere his
reward. She would interrupt a conversation to
cross the room and kiss him. If she grew ex-
cited (as she did too often) it was his habit to
come behind her chair and pat her shoulder;
and then she would turn round, and clasp his
hand in hers, and look from him to her visitor
with a face of pride and love ; and it was at such
moments only that the light of humanity re-
vived in her eyes. It was hard for any stranger,
it was impossible for any that loved them, to
behold these mute scenes, to recall the past,
and not to weep. But to the Captain, I think
it was all happiness. After these so long years,
he had found his wife again ; perhaps kinder
than ever before ; perhaps now on a more
equal footing; certainly, to his eyes, still
beautiful. And the call made on his intelli-
gence had not been made in vain. The mer-

264 Memoir of F kerning Jenkin,

chants of Aux Cayes, who had seen him tried
in some * counter-revolution ' in 1845, wrote to
the consul of his ' able and decided measures,*
* his cool, steady judgment and discernment *
with admiration ; and of himself, as * a credit
and an ornament to H. M. Naval Service.* It
is plain he must have sunk in all his powers,
during the years when he was only a figure, and
often a dumb figure, in his wife's drawing-room ;
but with this new term of service, he brightened
visibly. He showed tact and even invention in
managing his wife, guiding or restraining her by
the touch, holding family worship so arranged
that she could follow and take part in it. He
took (to the world's surprise) to reading — voy-
ages, biographies, Blair's Sermons^ even (for her
letter's sake) a work of Vernon Lee*s, which
proved, however, more than he was quite pre-
pared for. He shone more, in his remarkable
way, in society ; and twice he had a little holi-
day to Glenmorven, where, as may be fancied,
he was the delight of the Highlanders. One of
his last pleasures was to arrange his dining-room.
Many and many a room (in their wandering and
thriftless existence) had he seen his wife furnish

Captain J en kin. 265

'with exquisite taste* and perhaps with 'con-
siderable luxury*: now it was his turn to be the
Hccorator. On the wall he had an engraving of
Ldrd Rodney's action, showing the Proth^e, his
father's ship, if the reader recollects; on either
siue of this on brackets, his father's sword, and
his father's telescope, a gift from Admiral Buck-
ner, who had used it himself during the engage-
ment ; higher yet, the head of his grandson's
first stag, portraits of his son and his son's wife,
and a couple of old Windsor jugs from Mrs.
Buckner's. But his simple trophy was not yet
complete ; a device had to be worked and
framed and hung below the engraving; and
for this he applied to his daughter-in-law : * I
want you to work me something, Annie. An
anchor at each side — an anchor — stands for an
old sailor, you know — stands for hope, you
know — ?n anchor at each side, and in the
middle THANKFUL.' It is not easy, on any
system of punctuation, to represent the Cap-
tain's speech. Yet I hope there may shine out
of these facts, even as there shone through his
own troubled utterance, some of the charm of
that delightful spirit.

266 Memoir of Fleeming jfenMn.

In 1881, the time of the golden wedding came
round for that sad and pretty household. It
fell on a Good F'riday, and its celebration can
scarcely be recalled without both smiles and
tears. The drawing-room was filled with pres-
ents and beautiful bouquets ; these, to Fleem-
ing and his family, the golden bride and bride-
groom displayed with unspeakable pride, she so
painfully excited that the guests feared every
moment to see her stricken afresh, he guiding
and moderating her with his customary tact and
understanding, and doing the honours of the
day with more than his usual delight. Thence
they were brought to the dining-room, where
the Captain's idea of a feast awaited them : tea
and champagne, fruit and toast and childish lit-
tle luxuries, set forth pell-mell and pressed at
random on the guests. And here he must
make a speech for himself and his wife, prais-
ing their destiny, their marriage, their son, their
daughter-in-law, their grandchildren, their mani-
fold causes of gratitude: surely the most inno-
cent speech, the old, sharp contemner of his in-
nocence now watching him with eyes of admi-
ration. Then it was time for the guests to

Death of Uncle John. 267

depart ; and they went away, bathed, even to
the youngest child, in tears of inseparable sor-
row and gladness, and leaving the golden bride
and bridegroom to their own society and that
of the hired nurse.

It was a great thing for Fleeming to make,
even thus late, the acquaintance of his father;
but the harrowing pathos of such scenes con-
sumed him. In a life of tense intellectual ef-
fort, a certain smoothness of emotional tenor
were to be desired ; or we burn the candle at
both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that
was being done ; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to re-
strain her husband from too frequent visits ; but
here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable du-
ties for which Fleeming lived, and he could not
pardon even the suggestion of neglect.

And now, after death had so long visibly but
still innocuously hovered above the family, it be-
gan at last to strike and its blows fell thick and
heavy. The first to go was uncle John Jenkin,
taken at last from his Mexican dwelling and the
lost tribes of Israel ; and nothing in this remark-
able old gentleman's life, became him like the
leaving of it. His sterling, jovial acquiescence

268 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

in man's destiny was a delight to Fleeming.
* My visit to Stowting has been a very strange
but not at all a painful one,' he wrote. * In
case you ever wish to make a person die as he
ought to die in a novel,' he said to me, * I must
tell you all about my old uncle.' He was to
see a nearer instance before long ; for this fam-
ily of Jenkin, if they were not very aptly fitted
to live, had the art of manly dying. Uncle
John was but an outsider after all ; he had
dropped out of hail of his nephew's way of life
and station in society, and was more like some
shrewd, old, humble friend who should have
kept a lodge ; yet he led the procession of be-
coming deaths, and began in the mind of Fleem-
ing that train of tender and grateful thought,
which was like a preparation for his own. Al-
ready I find him writing in the plural of * these
impending deaths'; already I find him in quest
of consolation. * There is little pain in store
for these wayfarers,' he wrote, *and we have
hope — more than hope, trust.'

On May 19, 1884, Mr. Austin was taken. He
was seventy-eight years of age, suffered sharply
with all his old firmness, and died happy in the

Death of M7\ and Mrs, Austin, 269

knowledge that he had left his wife well cared
for. This had always been a bosom concern ;
for the Barrons were long-lived and he believed
that she would long survive him. But their
union had been so full and quiet that Mrs. Aus-
tin languished under the separation. In their
last years, they would sit all evening in their
own drawing-room hand in hand : two old peo-
ple who, for all their fundamental differences,
had yet grown together and become all the world
in each other's eyes and hearts ; and it was felt
to be a kind release, when eight months after, on
January 14, 1885, Eliza Barron followed Alfred
Austin. * I wish I could save you from all
pain,' wrote Fleeming six days later to his sor-
rowing wife, ' I would if I could — but my way
is not God's way ; and of this be assured, — God's
way is best.*

In the end of the same month, Captain Jenkin
caught cold and was confined to bed. He was
so unchanged in spirit that at first there seemed
no ground of fear ; but his great age began to
tell, and presently it was plain he had a sum-
mons. The charm of his sailor's cheerfulness
and ancient courtesy, as he lay dying, is not to

270 Memoir of F teeming yenkin.

be described. There he lay, singing his old sea
songs ; watching the poultry from the window
with a child's delight ; scribbling on the slate lit-
tie messages to his wife, who lay bed-ridden in
another room ; glad to have Psalms read aloud
to him, if they were of a pious strain — checking,
with an * I don't think we need read that, my
dear,' any that were gloomy or bloody. Flem-
ing's wife coming to the house and asking one
of the nurses for news of Mrs. Jenkin, * Madam,
I do not know,* said the nurse; 'for I am really
so carried away by the Captain that I can think
of nothing else.' One of the last messages scrib-
bled to his wife and sent her with a glass of the
champagne that had been ordered for himself,
ran, in his most finished vein of childish madri-
gal : * The Captain bows to you, my love, across
the table.' When the end was near and it was
thought best that Fleeming should no longer go
home but sleep at Merchiston, he broke his news
to the Captain with some trepidation, knowing
that it carried sentence of death. * Charming,
charming — charming arrangement,' was the Cap-
tain's only commentary. It was the proper
thing for a dying man, of Captain Jenkin's

Death of his Father and Mother. 271

school of manners, to make some expression
of his spiritual state; nor did he neglect the
observance. With his usual abruptness, ^ Fleem-
ing,' said he, * I suppose you and I feel about all
this as two Christian gentlemen should.* A last
pleasure was secured for him. He had been
waiting with painful interest for news of Gor-
don and Khartoum ; and by great good fortune,
a false report reached him that the city was re-
lieved, and the men of Sussex (his old neigh-
bours) had been the first to enter. He sat up
in bed and gave three cheers for the Sussex regi-
ment. The subsequent correction, if it came in
time, was prudently withheld from the dying
man. An hour before midnight on the fifth
of February, he passed away : aged eighty-four.
Word of his death was kept from Mrs. Jenkin ;
and she survived him no more than nine and
forty hours. On the day before her death, she
received a letter from her old friend Miss Bell of
Manchester, knew the hand, kissed the envelope,
and laid it on her heart ; so that she too died
upon a pleasure. Half an hour after midnight,
on the eighth of February, she fell asleep : it is
supposed in her seventy-eighth year.

272 Memoir of Fleeming yenkin.

Thus, in the space of less than ten months, the
four seniors of this family were taken away ; but
taken with such features of opportunity in time
or pleasant courage in the sufferer, that grief
was tempered with a kind of admiration. The
effect on Fleeming was profound. His pious op-
timism increased and became touched with some-
thing mystic and filial. * The grave is not good,
the approaches to it are terrible,' he had written
in the beginning of his mother's illness : he
thought so no more, when he had laid father
and mother side by side at Stowting. He had
always loved life ; in the brief time that now re-
mained to him, he seemed to be half in love with
death. * Grief is no duty,' he wrote to Miss Bell ;
* it was all too beautiful for grief,* he said to me;
but the emotion, call it by what name we please,
shook him to his depths ; his wife thought he
would have broken his heart when he must de-
molish the Captain's trophy in the dining-room,
and he seemed thenceforth scarcely the same
man.

These last years were indeed years of an ex-
cessive demand upon his vitality ; he was not
only worn out with ^orrgw, he was worn out by

Telpherage, 273

hope. The singular invention to which he gave
the name of telpherage, had of late consumed
his time, overtaxed his strength and overheated
his imagination. The words in which he first
mentioned his discovery to me — ' I am simply
Alnaschar' — were not only descriptive of his
state of mind, they were in a sense prophetic ;
since whatever fortune may await his idea in the
future, it was not his to see it bring forth fruit.
Alnaschar he was indeed ; beholding about him
a world all changed, a world filled with telpher-
age wires ; and seeing not only himself and fam-
ily but all his friends enriched. It was his pleas-
ure, when the company was floated, to endow
those whom he liked with stock ; one, at least,
never knew that he was a possible rich man un-
til the grave had closed over his stealthy bene-
factor. And however Fleeming chafed among
material and business difficulties, this rainbow
vision never faded ; and he, like his father and his
mother, may be said to have died upon a pleas-
ure. But the strain told, and he knew that it
was telling. * I am becoming a fossil,* he had
written five years before, as a kind of plea for a
holiday visit to his beloved Italy. * Take care !

2 74 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin,

If I am Mr. Fossil, you will be Mrs. Fossil, and
Jack will be Jack Fossil, and all the boys will be
little fossils, and then we shall be a collection.
There was no fear more chimerical for Fleem-
ing ; years brought him no repose ; he was as
packed with energy, as fiery in hope, as at the
first ; weariness, to which he began to be no
stranger, distressed, it did not quiet him. He
feared for himself, not without ground, the fate
which had overtaken his mother ; others shared
the fear. In the changed life now made for his
family, the elders dead, the sons going from
home upon their education, even their tried
domestic (Mrs. Alice Dunns) leaving the house
after twenty-two years of service, it was not un-
natural that he should return to dreams of Italy.
He and his wife were to go (as he told me) on

* a real honeymoon tour.' He had not been
alone with his wife * to speak of,' he added,
since the birth of his children. But now he
was to enjoy the society of her to whom he
wrote, in these last days, that she was his

* Heaven on earth.' Now he was to revisit
Italy, and see all the pictures and the build-
ings and the scenes that he admired so warmly,

71ie End. 275

and lay aside for a time the irritations of his
strenuous activity. Nor was this all. A trifling
operation was to restore his former lightness of
foot ; and it was a renovated youth that was to
S2t forth upon this reenacted honeymoon.

The operation was performed; it was of a
trifling character, it seemed to go well, no fear
w^as entertained ; and his wife was reading aloud
to him as he lay in bed, when she perceived him
to wander in his mind. It is doubtful if he ever
recovered a sure grasp upon the things of life ; and
he was still unconscious when he passed away,
June the twelfth, 1885, in the fifty-third year of
his age. He passed ; but something in his gal-
lant vitality had impressed itself upon his friends,
and still impresses. Not from one or two only,
but from many, I hear the same tale of how the
imagination refuses to accept our loss and in-
stinctively looks for his reappearing, and how
memory retains his voice and image like things of
yesterday. Others, the well-beloved too, die and
are progressively forgotten ; two years have pass-
ed since Fleeming was laid to rest beside his fa-
ther, his mother, and his Uncle John ; and the
thought and the look of onr friend still haunt us.

APPENDIX.

I.

Note on the Contributions of Fleeming Jenkin
TO Electrical and Engineering Science. By
Sir William Thomson, F.R.S., LL D., etc., etc.

TN the beginning of the year 1859 my former colleague
(the first British University Professor of Engineer-
ing), Lewis Gordon, at that time deeply engaged in the
then new work of cable making and cable laying, came
to Glasgow to see apparatus for testing submarine
cables and signalling through them, which I had been
preparing for practical use on the first Atlantic cable,
and which had actually done service upon it, during the
six weeks of its successful working between Valencia
and Newfoundland. As soon as he had seen something
of what I had in hand, he said to me, ' I would like to
show this to a young man of remarkable ability, at pres-
ent engaged in our works at Birkenhead.' Fleeming
Jenkin was accordingly telegraphed for, and appeared
next morning in Glasgow. He remained for a week,
spending the whole day in my class-room and labora-
tory, and thus pleasantly began our lifelong acquaint-
ance. I was much struck, not only with his brightness

(377)

2 78 Appendix.

and ability, but with his resolution to understand every-
thing spoken of, to see if possible thoroughly through
every difficult question, and (no if about this !) to slur
over nothing. I soon found that thoroughness of hon-
esty was as strongly engrained in the scientific as in the
moral side of his character.

In the first week of our acquaintance, the electric
telegraph and, particularly, submarine cables, and the
methods, machines, and instruments for laying, test-
ing, and using them, formed naturally the chief subject
of our conversations and discussions ; as it was in fact
the practical object of Jenkin's visit to me in Glasgow ;
but not much of the week had passed before I found
him remarkably interested in science generally, and full
of intelligent eagerness on many particular questions
of dynamics and physics. When he returned from
Glasgow to Birkenhead a correspondence commenced
between us, which was continued without intermission
up to the last days of his life. It commenced with a
well-sustained fire of letters on each side about the
physical qualities of submarine cables, and the prac-
tical results attainable in the way of rapid signalling
through them. Jenkin used excellently the valuable
opportunities for experiment allowed him by Newall,
and his partner Lewis Gordon, at their Birkenhead fac-
tory. Thus he began definite scientific investigation
of the copper resistance of the conductor, and the in-
sulating resistance and specific inductive capacity of its
gutta-percha coating, in the factor}'-, in various stages

Appendix, 279

of manufacture ; and he was the very first to introduce
systematically into practice the grand system of abso-
lute measurement founded in Germany by Gauss and
Weber. The immense value of this step, if only in re-
spect to the electric telegraph, is amply appreciated by
all who remember or who have read something of the
history of submarine telegraphy; but it can scarcely be
known generally how much it is due to Jenkin.

Looking to the article * Telegraph (Electric) ' in the
last volume of the old edition of the ' Encyclopaedia
Britannica,' which was published about the year 1861,
we fmd on record that Jenkins measurements in abso-
lute units of the specific resistance of pure gutta-percha,
and of the gutta-percha with Chatterton's compound
constituting the insulation of the Red Sea cable of 1859,
are given as the only results in the way of absolute
measurements of the electric resistance of an insulat-
ing material which had then been made. These re-
marks are prefaced in the ' Encyclopaedia ' article by
the following statement : ' No telegraphic testing ought
m future to be accepted in any department of tele-
graphic business which has not this definite character ;
although it is only within the last year that convenient
instruments for working, in absolute measure, have
been introduced at all, and the whole system of abso-
lute measure is still almost unknov/n to practical elec-
tricians.'

A particular result of great importance in respect to
testing is referred to as follows in the ' Encyclopaedia

28o Appendix,

article : ' The importance of having results thus stated
in absolute measure is illustrated by the circumstance,
that the writer has been able at once to compare them,
in the manner stated in a preceding paragraph, witli
his own previous deductions from the testings of the
Atlantic cable during its manufacture in 1857. and with
Weber's measurements of the specific resistance of cop-
per/ It has now become universally adapted — first of
all in England ; twenty- two years later by Germany, the
country of its birth ; and by France and Italy, and all
the other countries of Europe and America — practical-
ly the whole scientific world — at the Electrical Con-
gress in Paris in the years 1882 and 1884.

An important paper of thirty quarto pages published
in the ' Transactions of the Royal Society ' for June 19,
1862, under the title ' Experimental Researches on the
Transmission of Electric Signals through submarine
cables, Part I. Laws of Transmission through various
lengths of one cable, by Fleeming Jenkin, Esq., com-
municated by C. Wheatstone, Esq., F.R.S.,' contains an
account of a large part of Jenkin's experimental work
in the Birkenhead factory during the years 1859 and
18&0. This paper is called Part I. Part II. alas never
appeared, but something that it would have included
we can see from the following ominous statement which
I find near the end of Part 1. : * From this value, the
electrostatical capacity per unit of length and the
specific inductive capacity of the dielectric, could be
determined. These points will, however, be more fully

Appendix. 281

treated of in the second part of this paper.' Jenkin
had in fact made a determination at Birkenhead of the
specific inductive capacity of gutta-percha, or of the
gutta-percha and Chatterton's compound constituting
the insulation of the cable, on which he experimented.
This was the veiy first true measurement of the specific
inductive capacity of a dielectric which had been made
after the discovery by Faraday of the existence of th«
property, and his primitive measurement of it for the
three substances, glass, shellac, and sulphur ; and at the
time when Jenkin made his measurements the existence
of specific inductive capacity was either unknown, or
ignored, or denied, by almost all the scientific authori-
ties of the day.

The original determination of the microfarad, brought
out under the auspices of the British Association Com-
mittee on Electrical Standards, is due to experimental
VtTork by Jenkin, described in a paper, ' Experiments on
Capacity,' constituting No. IV. of the appendix to the
Report presented by the Committee to the Dundee
Meeting of 1867. No other determination, so far as I
know, of this important element of electric measure-
ment has hitherto been made ; and it is no small thing
to be proud of in respect to Jenkin'sfame as a scientific
and practical electrician that the microfarad which we
now all use is his.

The British Association unit of electrical resistance,
on v/hich was founded the first practical approximation
to absolute measurement on the system of Gauss and

282 Appendix,

Weber, was largely due to Jenkin's zeal as one of the
originators, and persevering energy as a working mem-
ber, of the first Electrical Standards Committee. The
experimental work of first making practical standards,
founded on the absolute system, which led to the unit
now known as the British Association ohm, was chiefly
performed by Clerk Maxwell and Jenkin. The realisa-
tion of the great practical benefit which has resulted
from the experimental and scientific work of the Com-
mittee is certainly in a large measure due to Jenkin's
zeal and perseverance as secretary, and as editor of the
volume of Collected Reports of the work of the Com-
mittee, which extended over eight years, from 1861 till
1869. The volume of Reports included Jenkin's Cantor
Lectures of January, 1866, * On Submarine Telegraphy.'
through which the practical applications of the scien-
tific principles for which he had worked so devotedly
for eight years became part of general knowledge in the
engineering profession.

Jenkin's scientific activity continued without abate-
ment to the end. For the last two years of his life
he was much occupied with a new mode of electric
locomotion, a very remarkable invention of his own,
to which he gave the name of * Telpherage.' He per-
severed with endless ingenuity in carrying out the
numerous and difficult mechanical arrangements es-
sential to the project, up to the very last days of his
work in life. He had completed almost every detail oi
the realisation of the system which was recently opened

Appendix, 283

foi practical working at Glynde, in Sussex, four months
after his death.

' His book on ' Magnetism and Electricity,' published
as one of Longman's elementary series in 1873, marked
a new departure in the exposition of electricity, as the
first text-book containing a systematic application of
the quantitative methods inaugurated by the British
Association Committee on Electrical Standards. In
1883 the seventh edition was published, after there had
already appeared two foreign editions, one in Italian
and the other in German.

His papers on purely engineering subjects, though
not numerous, are interesting and valuable. Amongst
these may be mentioned the article ' Bridges,' written
by him for the ninth edition of the ' Encyclopaedia
Britannica,' and afterwards republished as a separate
treatise in 1876 ; and a paper ' On the Practical Appli-
cation of Reciprocal Figures to the Calculation of
Strains in Framework,' read before the Royal Society
of Edinburgh, and published in the ' Transactions ' of
that Society in 1869. But perhaps the most important
of all is his paper 'On the Application of Graphic
Methods to the Determination of the Efficiency of
Machinery,' read before the Royal Society of Edin-
burgh, and published in the 'Transactions/ vol. xxviii.
(1876-78), for which he was awarded the Keith Gold
Medal. This paper was a continuation of the subject
treated in ' Reulaux's Mechanism,' and, recognising the
value of that work, suppl ied the elements required to

2 84 Appen dix.

constitute from Reulaux's kinematic system a full
machine receiving energy and doing work.

11.

Note on the work of Fi.eeming Jenkin in con-
nection WITH Sanitary Reform. By Lt. Col.
Alexander Fergusson.

TT was, I believe, during the autumn of 1877 that there
came to Fleeming Jenkin the first inkling of an
idea, not the least m importance of the many that em-
anated from that fertile brain, which, with singular
rapidity, took root, and under his careful fostering ex-
panded into a scheme the fruits of which have been of
the utmost value to his fellow-citizens and others.

The phrase v/hich afterwards suggested itself, and
came into use, ' Healthy houses,' expresses very hap-
pily the drift of this scheme, and the ultimate object
that Jenkin had in view.

In the summer of that year there had been much
talk, and some newspaper correspondence, on the sub-
ject of the unsatisfactory condition of many of the
best houses in Edinburgh as regards their sanitary
state. One gentleman, for example, drew an appalling
picture of a large and expensive house he had bought
in the West-end of Edinburgh, fresh from the builder's
hands. To ascertain precisely what was wrong, and
the steps to be taken to remedy the evils, the effects

Appendix, 285

of which were but too apparent, obviously demanded
the expenditure of much time and careful study on the
part of the intelligent proprietor himself and the pro-
fessional experts he had to call in, and, it is needless
to add, much money. There came also, from the
poorer parts of the town, the cry that in many cases
the houses of our working people were built anyhow
that the dictates of a narrow economy suggested to
the speculative and irresponsible builder. The horrors
of what was called the ' Sandwich system,' amongst
other evils, were brought to light. It is sufficient to
say, generally, that this particular practice of the
builder consists in placing in a block of workmen's
houses, to save space and money, the water cisterns of
one fiat, directly under the sanitary appliances of the
other, and so on to the top of a house of several
storeys. It is easy to conceive the abominations that
must ensue when the leakage of the upper floors be-
gins to penetrate to the drinking water below. The
picture was a hideous one, apart from the well-known
fact that a whole class of diseases is habitually spread
by contaminated water.

In October, 1876, a brisk and interesting discussion
had been carried on in the columns of the Tzjnes at
intervals during the greater part of that month, in
which the same subject, that of the health and sewage
of towns, had been dealt with by several writers well
informed in such matters. Amongst others. Professor
Jenkin himself took part, as did Professor G. F. Arm-

286 Appendix,

strong, who now occupies the chair of Civil Engineer-
ing in Edinburgh. Many of the truths then advanced
had been recently discussed at a meeting of the Brit-
ish Association.

It was while such topics were attracting attention
that Fleeming Jenkin's family were shocked by the sad
intelligence of the loss that friends of theirs had sus-
tained in the deaths of several of their children from
causes that could be traced up to the unsanitary con-
dition of their house. Sympathy took the practical
form of an intense desire that something might be
done to mitigate the chance of such calamities ; and,
I am permitted to say, the result of a home-talk on this
subject was an earnest appeal to the head of the house
to turn his scientific knowledge to account in some
way that should make people's homes more healthy,
and their children's lives more safe. In answer to the
call Jenkin turned his thoughts in this direction. And
the scheme which I shall endeavour briefly to sketch
out was the result.

The obvious remedy for a faulty house is to call in a
skilful expert, architect or engineer, who will doubtless
point out by means of reports and plans what is wrong,
and suggest a remedy ; but, as remarked by Professor
Jenkin, * it has not been the practice for leading en-
gineers to advise individuals about their house ar-
rangements, except where large outlay is in contem-
plation.' A point Df very considerable importance in
such a case as that now supposed.

Appendix, 287

The problem was to ensure to the great body of the
citizens sound professional advice concerning their
houses, such as had hitherto been only obtainable at
great cost — but ' with due regard to economical con-
siderations.'

The advantages of co-operation are patent to all
Everyone can understand how, if a sufficient number
of persons combine, there are few luxuries or advan-
tages that are not within their reach, for a moderate
payment. The. advice of a first-rate engineer regard-
ing a dwell! ng-'house was a palpable advantage ; but
within the reach of comparatively few. One has heard
of a winter in Madeira being prescribed as the cure
for a poor Infirmary sufferer.

Like most good plans Jenkin 's scheme was simple in
the extreme, and consisted in combination and a small
subscription.

'Just,' he says, 'as the leading physician of the day
may give his services to great numbers of poor patients
when these are gathered in a hospital, although he
could not practically visit them in their own houses,
so the simple fact of a number of clients gathered into
a group will enable the leading engineer to give them
the benefit of his advice.'

But it was his opinion that only ' continual super-
vision could secure the householder from danger due
to defects in sanitary appliances.' He had in his eye a
case precisely similar. The following passage in one of
bis first lectures, afterwards repeated frequently, conveys

288 Appe?idzx.

the essence of Professor Jenkin's theory, as well as a
graceful acknowledgment of the source from which
this happy idea was derived : —

'An analogous case occurred to him,' he said, 'in
the "Steam Users' Association," in Lancashire. So
many boilers burst in that district for want of inspec-
tion that an association was formed for having the
boilers under a continual course of inspection. Let a
perfect boiler be bought from a first-rate maker, the
owner has then an apparatus as perfect as it is now
sought to make the sanitary appliances in his house.
But in the course of time the boiler must decay. The
prudent proprietor, therefore, joins the Steam-boiler
Association, which, from time to time, examines his
boiler, and by the tests they apply are able to give an
absolute guarantee against accident. This idea of an
inspection by an association was due,' the lecturer con-
tinued, ' to Sir William Fairbairn, under whom he had
the honour of serving his apprenticeship.' ^ The steam
users were thus absolutely protected from danger; and
the same idea it was sought to apply to the sanitary
system of a house.

To bring together a sufficient number of persons, to
form such a 'group' as had been contemplated, was
the first step to be taken. No time was lost in takmg
it. The idea hitherto roughly blocked out was now
given a more definite form. The original sketch, as

^ See paper read at the Congress of the Soaal Science Assocut-
tion, Edinburgh, October 8, i3So,

Appendix, 289

dictated by Jenkin himself, is before me, and I cannot
do better than transcribe it, seeing it is short and sim-
ple. Several important alterations were afterwards
made by himself in consultation with one or two of his
Provisional Council ; and as experience suggested : —

' The objects of this Association are twofold.

' I. By taking advantage of the principle of co-
operation, to provide its members at moderate cost
with such advice and supervision as shall ensure the
proper sanitary condition of their own dwellings.

' 2. By making use of specially qualified officers to sup
port the inhabitants and local authorities in enforcing
obedience to the provisions of those laws and by-laws
which affect the sanitary condition of the community.

' It IS proposed that an Association with these ob-
jects be formed; and that all residents within the
municipal boundaries of Edinburgh be eligible as
members. That each member of the Association shall
subscribe 07te guinea annually. That in return for the
annual subscription each member shall be entitled to
the following advantages : —

' I. A report by the Engineer of the Association on
the sanitary condition of his dwelling, with specific rec-
ommendations as to the improvement of drainage, ven-
tilation, &c., should this be found necessary.

* 2. The supervision of any alterations in the sanitary
fittings of his dwelling which may be carried out by the
advice, or with the approval, of the officers of the As-
sociation.

290 Appendix,

*3. An annual inspection of his premises by the En-
gineer of the Association, with a report as to their sani-
tary condition.

*4. The right, in consideration of a payment of five
shilHngs, of calHng on the Engineer, and legal adviser ^
of the Association to inspect and report on the exist-
ence of any infraction or supposed infraction of any
law affecting the sanitary condition of the community.

* It is proposed that the Association should be man-
aged by an unpaid Council, to be selected by ballot
from among its members.

* That the following salaried officers be engaged by
the Association ;

' I. One or more acting engineers, who should give
their services exclusively to the Association.

*2. A consulting engineer, who should exercise a
general supervision, and advise both on the general
principles to be followed, and on difficult cases.

' 3. A legal agent, to be engaged on such terms as
the Council shall hereafter think fit.

*4. A permanent secretary.

* It is also proposed that the officers of the Associa-
tion should, with the sanction of the Council, have
power to take legal proceedings against persons who
shall, in their opinion, be guilty of any infraction of
sanitary regulations in force throughout the district;
and generally it is intended that the Association shall

1 It was ultimately agreed not to appoint an officer of this kind till
occasion should arise for his services ; none has been appointed.

Appendix. 291

further and promote all undertakings which, in their
opinion, are calculated to improve the sanitary cDndi
lion of Edinburgh and its immediate neighbourhood.

* In one aspect this Association will be analogous to
the Steam Boiler Users' Association, who co-operate
in the employment of skilled inspectors. In a second
aspect it will be analogous to the Association for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which assists the
community in enforcing obedience to existing laws.'

Towards the end of November, 1877, this paper was
handed about among those who were thought most
likely, from their position and public spirit, to forward
such a scheme, so clearly for the good of the commu-
nity. Nay more, a systematic 'canvass' was set on
foot ; personal application the most direct was made
use of. The thing was new, and its advantages not
perfectly obvious to all at a glance. Everyone who
knows with what enthusiastic earnestness Jenkin
would take hold of, and insist upon, what he felt to
be wholesome and right will understand how he per-
sisted, how he patiently explained, and swept away ob-
jections that were raised. One could not choose but
listen, and understand, and agree.

On the evening of 2nd January, 1878, or, to be more
correct, the morning of the 3rd, two old school-fellows
of his at the Edinburgh Academy walked home with
him from an annual dinner of their ' Class.' All the
way in glowing language he expounded his views of
house inspection, and the protection of health, asking

292 Appendix,

for sympathy. It was most readily given, and they
parted from him with pleasant words of banter re-
garding this vision of his of grafting 'cleanliness*
upon another quality said to be a growth, in some
sort, of this northern land of ours.

But they reckoned hardly sufficiently on the fact
that when Jenkin took a thing of this kind in hand it
must be ; if it lay within the scope of a clear head and
boundless energy.

Having secured a nucleus of well-wishers, the next
step was to enlist the sympathies of the general public.
It was sought to effect this by a series of public lec-
tures. The first of these (one of two) was given on
22nd January under the auspices of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institution. It was apparent to the
shrewd lecturer that in bringing before the people a
scheme like this, where there w^as much that was
novel, it was necessary first of all that his audience
should be aware of the evils to which they were ex-
posed in their own houses, before unfolding a plan for
a remedy. The correspondence already referred to as
having been carried on in the summer of the previous
year had shown how crude were the ideas of many per-
sons well informed, or considered to be so, on this sub-
ject. For example, there are few now-a-days who are
not aware that a drain, to be safe, must have at inter-
vals along its course openings to the upper air, or that
it must be 'ventilated,' as the phrase goes. But at the
time spoken of there were some who went so far as lo

Appendix, 293

question this principle; even to argue against it; call-
ing forth this forcible reply — ' Here is a pretty farce.
You pour out a poison and send it of! on its way to the
sea, and forget that on its way there its very essence
will take wings and fly back into your house up the very
pipes it but recently ran down.' A properly ' trapped *
and ventilated drain was the cure for this.

And the lecturer proceeded to show that in Edin-
burgh, where for the most part house construction is
good and solid, but, as in other towns, the bulk of the
houses were built when the arrangements for internal
sewerage and water supply v/ere very little understood,
many serious errors were made. ' But,' the lecturer
went on to say, * Sanitary Science was now established
on a fairly sound basis, and the germ theory, or theory
of septic ferments, had explained much which used to
be obscure. This theory explained how it was that
families might in certain cases live with fair health for
many years in the midst of great filth, while the dwell-
ers in large and apparently clean mansions were struck
down by fever and diphtheria. The filth which was
found compatible with health was always isolated filth,
and until the germs of some specific disease v/ere in-
troduced, this dirt was merely injurious, not poisonous.
The mansions which were apparently clean and yet
fever-visited were found to be those in which arrange-
ments had been made for the removal of offensive
matter, which arrangements served also to distribute
poison germs from one house to another, from one

294 Appendix,

room to another. These mansions had long suckers
extended from one to another through the common
sewer. Through these suckers, commonly called
** house drains," they imbibed every taint which any
one house in the system could supply. In fact, arrange-
ments were too often made which simply " laid on "
poison to bed-rooms just as gas or water was laid on.
He had known an intelligent person declare that no
harm could come up a certain pipe which ended in
a bed-room, because nothing offensive went down.
That person had never realised the fact that his pipe
joined another pipe, which again joined a sewer, which
again whenever there was an epidemic in the neigh-
bourhood, received innumerable poison germs ; and that,
although nothing more serious than scented soap and
water went down, the germs of typhoid fever might
any day come up.'

Professor Jenkin then proceeded to show how a
house might be absolutely cut off from all contami-
nation from these sources of evil. Then by means of
large diagrams he showed the several systems of pipes
within a house. One system coloured r<?/^ showed the
pipes that received foul matter. A system marked in
blue showed pipes used to ventilate this red system.
The essential conditions of safety in the internal fit-
tings of a house — it was inculcated — v/ere that no air to
be breathed, no water to be drunk, should ever be
contaminated by connection witli red or blue systems.
Then in yellow were shown the pipes which received

Appeiidix, 295

dirty /rater, which was not necessarily foul. Lastly a
white system, which under no circumstances must ever
touch the ' red,' ' blue,' or ' yellow ' systems. Such a
diagram recalled the complicated anatomical drawings
which illustrate the system of arteries and veins in the
human frame. Little wonder, then, that one gentle-
man remarked, in perplexity, that he had not room in
his house for such a mass of pipes ; but they were al-
ready there, with other pipes besides, all carefully hid-
den av/ay, as in the human tenement, with the inevi-
table result — as the preacher of cleanliness and health
declared — ' out of sight, out of mind.'

In plain and forcible language were demonstrated
the ills this product of modern life is heir to ; and the
drastic measures that most of them demand to secure
the reputation of a healthy house. Lastly the for-
mation of an Association to carry out the idea (already
sketched) cheaply, was briefly introduced.

Next morning, January 23rd, was the moment chosen
to lay the scheme formally before the public. In all
the Edinburgh newspapers, along with lengthy reports
of the lecture, appeared, in form of an advertisement,
a statement' of the scheme and its objects, supported

* Briefly stated, the points submitted in this prospectus were these :

1. That the proposed Association was a Society for the benefit of
its members and the community that cannot be used foi any purposes
of profit.

2. The privileges of members include the annual inspection of
their premises, as well as a preliminary report on their condition
with an estimate of the cost of any alterations recommended.

296 Appendix.

by an imposing array of ' Provisional Council.' In due
course several of the Scots newspapers and others,
such as the Biiildifig News, gave leading articles, all of
them directing attention to this new thing, as ' an in-
teresting experiment about to be tried in Edinburgh,'
' what promises to be a very useful sanitary movement,
now being organised, and an example set that may be
worthy of imitation elsewhere,' and so on.

Several of the writers waxed eloquent on the sin-
gular ingenuity of the scheme ; the cheap professional
advice to its adherents, &c. ; and the rare advantages
to be gained by means of co-operation and the tra-
ditional 'one pound one.'

The Provisional Council was absolutely representa-
tive of the community, and included names more than
sufficient to inspire confidence. It included the Lord-
Lieutenant of the county. Lord Rosebery; the Lord
Justice Clerk, Lord Moncrieff ; the Lord Advocate ;
Sir Robert Christison ; several of the Judges of the
Court of Session ; the Presidents of the Colleges of
Physicians, and of Surgeons ; many of the Professors
of the University ; the Bishop of Edinburgh, and the

3. The skilled inspection from time to time of drains and all san-
itary arrangements.

4. No obligation on the part of members to carry out any of the
suggestions made by the engineers of the Association, who merely
give skilled advice when such is desired.

5. The officers of the Association to have no interest in any out-
lay recommended.

6. The Association might be of great service to tlie poorer mem-
bers of the community.

Appendix, 297

Dean; several of the best known of the Clergy of the
Church of Scotland, Established, Free, and of other
branches ; one or two members of Parliament ; more
than one lady (who should have been perhaps men-
tioned earlier on this list) well known for large views
and public spirit ; several well-known country gentle-
men; one or two distinguished civil engineers and
architects ; and many gentlemen of repute for intelli-
gence and business qualities.

Very soon after the second of the promised lectures,
the members of the new Society began to be num-
bered by hundreds. By the 28th of February, 500 sub-
scribers having been enrolled, they were in a position
to hold their first regular meeting under the presidency
of Sir Robert Christison, when a permanent Council
composed of many of those who had from the first
shown an interest in the movement — for example, Pro-
fessor (now Sir Douglas) Maclagan and Lord Dean of
Guild (now Sir James) Gowans, Professor Jenkin him-
self undertaking the duties of Consulting Engineer
— were appointed. And Jenkin was singularly for-
tunate in securing as Secretary the late Captain
Charles Douglas, a worker as earnest as himself. It
was the theory of the originator that the Council,
composed of leading men not necessarily possessed of
engineering knowledge, should 'give a guarantee to
the members that the officials employed should have
been carefully selected, and themselves work under
supervision. Every householder in this town/ he

298 Appendix,

adds, ' knows the names of the gentlemen composing
our Council.'

The new Association was a success alike in town and
country. Without going far into statistics it will be
evident what scope there was, and is, for such opera-
tions when it is stated that last year (1885) 60 per cent.
of the houses inspected in London and its neighbour-
hood were found to have foul air escaping direct into
them, and 81 per cent, had their sanitary appliances in
an unsatisfactory state. Here in Edinburgh things
were little, if any, better ; as for the country houses, the
descriptions of some were simply appalling. As the
new Association continued its operations it became
the role of the Consulting Engineer to note such objec-
tions, hypothetical or real, as were raised against the
working of his scheme. Some of these were ingenious
enough : but all were replied to in order, and satis-
factorily resolved. It was shown, for example, that
'you might have a dinner party in your house on the
day of your inspection '; that the Association worked in
the utmost harmony with the city authorities, and v/ith
the tradesmen usually employed in such business; and
that the officials were as ' confidential ' as regards the
infirmities of a house as any physician consulted by a
patient. The strength of the engineering stall has
been varied from time to time as occasion required ; at
the moment of writing employment is found in Edin-
burgh and country districts in various parts of Scotland
*or five engineers temporarily or permanently engaged.

Appendix, 299

The position Jenkin claimed for the Engineers was a
hie^h one, but not too high : thus he well defined it : —

' In respect of Domestic Sanitation the business of
the Engineer and that of the medical man overlap ; for
while it is the duty of the engineer to learn from the
doctor what conditions are necessary to secure health,
the engineer may, nevertheless, claim in his turn the
privilege of assisting in the warfare against disease by
using his professional skill to determine what mechan-
ical and constructive arrangements are best adapted to
secure these conditions.' '

Flattery in the form of imitation followed in due
course. A branch was established at St. Andrews, and
one of the earliest of similar institutions was founded
at Newport in the United States. Another sprang up
at Wolverhampton. In 1881 two such societies were
announced as having been set on foot in London. And
the Times of April 14th, in a leading article of some
length, drew attention to the special features of the
plan which it was stated had followed close upon a
paper read by Professor Fleeming Jenkin before the
Society of Arts in the preceding month of January.
The adherents included such names as those of Sir
William Gull, Professor Huxley, Professor Burdon
Sanderson, and Sir Joseph Fayrer. The Saturday Re-
view, in January, had already in a characteristic article
enforced the principles of the scheme, and shown how,
for a small annual payment, 'the helpless and hope-
» Healthy Houses^ by Professor Fleeming: Jenkin, p. 54.

300 Appendix,

less condition of the householder at the mercy of the
plumber' might be for ever changed.

The London Association, established on the lines of
the parent society, has been followed by many others
year by year ; amongst these are Bradford, Chelten-
ham, Glasgow, and Liverpool in 1882 ; Bedford, Bright'
on, and Newcastle in 1883; Bath, Cambridge, Cardiff,
Dublin, and Dundee in 1884; and Swansea in 1885; and
while we write the first steps are being taken, with help
from Edinburgh, to establish an association at Mon-
treal ; sixteen Associations.

Almost, it may be said, a bibliography has been
achieved for Fleeming Jenkin's movement.

In 1878 was published Healthy Houses (Edin., David
Douglas), being the substance of the two lectures already
mentioned as having been delivered in Edinburgh with
the intention of laying open the idea of the scheme
then in contemplation, with a third addressed to the
Medico-Chirurgical Society. This book has been long
out of print, and such has been the demand for it that
the American edition ^ is understood to be also out of
print, and unobtainable.

In 1880 was printed (London, Spottiswoode & Co.)
a pamphlet entitled What is the Best Mode of Amend-'
ing the Present Laws with Reference to Existing Build'

* It is perhaps worth mentioning as a curiosity of literature that
the American publishers who produced this book in the States, with*
out consulting the author, aftenvards sent him a handsome cheque,
of course unsolicited by him.

Appendix, 301

ingSt and also of Improving their Sanitary Condition
with due Regard to Economical Considerations ? — the
substance of a paper read by Professor Jenkin at the
Congress of the Social Science Association at Edin-
burgh in October of that year.

The first item of Health Lectures for the People
(Edin., 1 881) consists of a discourse on the 'Care of
the Body ' delivered by Professor Jenkin in the Watt
Institution at Edinburgh, in which the theories of
house sanitation are dwelt on.

House Inspection, reprinted from the Sanitary Record,
was issued in pamphlet form in 1882. And another
small tract, Houses of the Poor; their Sanitary Arrange-
ment, in 1885.

In this connection it may be said that while the idea
formulated by Jenkin has been carried out with a meas-
ure of success that could hardly have been foreseen,
in one point only, it may be noted, has expectation
been somewhat disappointed as regards the good that
these Associations should have effected — and the fact
was constantly deplored by the founder — namely, the
comparative failure as a means of improving the con-
dition of the dwellings of the poorer classes. It was
' hoped that charity and public spirit would have used
the Association to obtain reports on poor tenements,
and to remedy the most glaring evils.' ^

* It is true, handsome tenements for working people have been
built, such as the picturesque group of houses erected -wnth this ob-
ject by a member of the Council of the Edinburgh Sanitary Asso*

302 Appendix,

The good that these associations have effected is not
to be estimated by the numbers of their membership.
They have educated the public on certain points. The
fact that they exist has become generally known, and,
by consequence, persons of all classes are induced to
satisfy themselves of the reasons for the existence of
such institutions, and thus they learn of the evils that
have called them into being.

Builders, burgh engineers, and private individuals in
any way connected with the construction of dwellings
in town or country have been put upon their mettle,
and constrained to keep themselves abreast with the
wholesome truths which the engineering staff of all
these Sanitary Associations are the means of dissem-
inating.

In this way, doubtless, some good may indirectly
nave been done to poorer tenements, though not ex-
actly in the manner contemplated by the founder.

Now, if it be true that Providence helps those who

help themselves, surely a debt of gratitude is due to

him who has placed (as has been attempted to be shown

in this brief narrative) the means of self-help and the

attainment of a palpable benefit within the reach of all

through the working of a simple plan, whose motto

well may be, ' Healthy Houses '; and device a strangled

snake. A. F.

ciation, at Bell's Mills, so well seen from the Dean Bridge, where
every appliance that science can suggest has been made use of. But
for the ordinary houses of the poor the advice of the Association'i
engineers has been but rarely taken advantage ol

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