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 
possessed, he could never count on being civil; whatever brave, 
true-hearted qualities he was able to admire in Mrs. Jenkin, 
mildness of demeanour 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 
disposition.  Show Fleeming an active virtue, and he always loved 
it.  He went away from that house struck through with admiration, 
and vowing to himself that his own married life should be upon that 
pattern, his wife (whoever she might be) like Eliza Barron, himself 
such another husband as Alfred Austin.  What is more strange, he 
not only brought away, but left behind 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 candour, 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 vanity ruffled her; his appearance, never 
impressive, was then, by reason of obtrusive boyishness, 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 
almost unheard-of honour of accompanying him to the door, announced 
'That was what young men were like in my time' - she could only 
reply, 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 corrected 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 his 
aspirations began to settle round Miss Austin, he tasted, perhaps 
for the only time in his life, the pangs of diffidence.  There was 
indeed 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 
explore, 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 for the lack of trial; and at length, in the 
autumn of 1857, this boyish-sized, boyish-mannered, and 
superlatively ill-dressed young engineer, entered the house of the 
Austins, with such sinkings 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 
reserved the right to inquire into his character; from neither was 
there a word about his prospects, by neither was his income 
mentioned.  'Are these people,' he wrote, struck with wonder 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 principle of true courtesy; 
so powerful, in this impetuous 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 without 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 bounding 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 Fleeming," in spite of wet, 
cold and wind, clambering 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?'

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 understanding; 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 William 
had been always greatly the most valuable.  Again, I shall not 
readily forget with what emotion he once told me an incident of 
their associated 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.



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


ON Saturday, Feb. 26, 1859, profiting by a holiday of four days, 
Fleeming was married to Miss Austin at Northiam:  a place connected 
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 the 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 employment; - on along the railway, which came in at the same 
gates and which branches down between each vast block - past 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 becomes very strong, as I near the docks where, across the 
ELBA'S decks, a huge vessel is discharging 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 of engineers, doing his inglorious business, as she 
now saw for herself, among unsavoury surroundings.  But when their 
walk brought them within 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.  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 of 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 remark 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 indulgent - 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 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 opportunity 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 obligations 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 
allowance; and yet he tacitly expected of his friends 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 overcome 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 enchanting 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 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 
deliberate 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 went 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 correctly; 
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 behaviour, and really amazed all who 
knew him, is the happiest way I can imagine 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 innate 
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 
his 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 this was how he sought to shelter from his own 
petulance the woman who was to him the symbol 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 married life and of professional 
struggle; and reserving 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 contributed 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 meanwhile for himself Fleeming's manifold engagements:  his 
service on the Committee on Electrical 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 growing 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,  and entered into a general engineering partnership with 
Mr. Forde, a gentleman in a good way of business.  It was a 
fortunate partnership in this, that the parties retained their 
mutual respect unlessened and separated with regret; but men's 
affairs, like men, have their times of sickness, and by one of 
these unaccountable variations, for hard upon ten years the 
business was disappointing and the profits meagre.  'Inditing 
drafts of German railways which will never get made':  it is thus I 
find Fleeming, not without a touch of bitterness, describe his 
occupation.  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 written to Miss Austin a dissuasive picture of the trials of 
poverty, assuring her these were no figments 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 he once prettily 
expressed it, 'to enjoy each day's happiness, as it arises, like 
birds or children.'  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 cottage 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 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 commanding 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 gardening.  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 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 'FECUNDITY, FERTILITY, 
STERILITY, 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 Darwin, 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 Fleeming had been crowned in the capitol 
of reviewing.

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 him 
characteristically writing:  'I cannot say 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 have 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 children:  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 neighbours and 
proved kind friends; in 1867 the Howitts came to Claygate and 
sought the society of 'the two bright, clever young people'; and in 
a house close 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 circumstance of heroism in the LA 
PLATA, Fleeming mourned him sincerely.

I think I shall give the best idea of Fleeming 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. 11. - 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 Protestants 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 encouraged by BOUTS-RIMES I wrote you a copy of 
verses; high time I 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 was more 
to the purpose, 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 naturally 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 brilliance 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 deterioration in your 
absence.  I don't get up when I ought to, I have snoozed in my 
chair after dinner; 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, selfish, 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. 1. - Back at dear Claygate.  Many cuttings 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 certainly 
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 existence, 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 sometimes felt when you were too busy, owing 
to want of servants.

'DEC. 5. - On Sunday I was at Isleworth, chiefly engaged in playing 
with Odden.  We had the most enchanting walk together through the 
brickfields.  It was very muddy, and, as he remarked, 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," 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 we 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 imaginations, there was some kind of peg on which to hang the 
false costumes he created; windmills 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 
woman, she bears no resemblance at all to the damsel of his 
imagination.'

At the time of these letters, the oldest son 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 unconsciously 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 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 superficial.  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 
conceived 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 rose.  The 
business in partnership with Mr. Forde began suddenly to pay well; 
about the same time the patents showed themselves a valuable 
property; and but a little after, Fleeming was appointed to the new 
chair of engineering in the University of Edinburgh.  Thus, almost 
at once, pecuniary embarrassments 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 anxiety 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 here [in London] for 
a while now and then, but not for a lifetime.  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, 1858 TO 1873.



BUT 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 important 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 freedoms, 
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 activity.  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 understand, 
and so attractive that I am half afraid their publication may prove 
harmful, and still further crowd the ranks of a profession already 
overcrowded.  But their most engaging quality is the picture of the 
writer; with his indomitable 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, 
adventure, 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-sickness.  To this 
last enemy, which he never overcame, I have omitted, in my search 
after condensation, 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 18, 1858.

'Well, you should know, Mr. - having a contract to lay down a 
submarine telegraph 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 cable - 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 messages, 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 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 simple idea should take, and have been busy since I 
came here drawing, ordering, and putting up the machinery - 
uninterfered with, thank goodness, 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 active shape, seeing 
the child of to-day's thought working to-morrow in full vigour at 
his appointed task.

'May 12.

'By dint of bribing, bullying, cajoling, and going day by day to 
see the state of things ordered, all my work is very nearly ready 
now; but those who have neglected these precautions are of course 
disappointed.  Five hundred fathoms of chain [were] ordered by - 
some three weeks since, to be ready by the 10th 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 vexation 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.

'To-day was a grand field-day.  I had steam up and tried the engine 
against pressure or resistance.  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 instead 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 
circle 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 suddenly 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.  "Hurrah, 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 
Monday 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 baggage fly 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.  I was getting worn and weary with anxiety and work.  As 
usual I have been delighted with my shipwrights.  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 hardly 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 acknowledging it.

'S. S. ELBA:  May 25.

'My first intentions of a long journal have been fairly frustrated 
by sea-sickness.  On Tuesday 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 collapsed into 
imbecility; and I was heartily thankful towards evening to find 
myself in bed.

'Next morning, I fancied it grew quieter and, as I listened, heard, 
"Let go the anchor," whereon I concluded we had run into Holyhead 
Harbour, as was indeed the case.  All that day we lay in Holyhead, 
but I could neither read nor write 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, fat, old captain 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 off the coast of Portugal.

'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 during 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 nothing 
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 declare 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' 
instructions on that melodious instrument; and if you could hear 
the horrid sounds that come! especially at heavy rolls.  When I 
hint he is not improving, 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.

'11:30 P.M.

'Long past Cape St. Vincent now.  We went within about 400 yards of 
the cliffs and light-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 with 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 appointed another man.  Fancy poor H-having 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 allowed 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 offered 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 favourite 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 confined 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 young A-'s schemes for the 
future.  His highest picture is a commission 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 imagined:  the high, steep banks covered with rich, 
spicy vegetation of which I hardly 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 them, the gummy 
leaves of a cistus stuck to the clothes; and with its small white 
flower and yellow 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 
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 rampart.  I try a sea-egg, 
one of those prickly fellows - 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.