'S. S. ELBA, somewhere not far from Bona:  Oct. 19.

'Yesterday [after three previous days of useless 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 continue 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 disappointments, 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 imagine, 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 submarine 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 breaking grapnels.  It was always an hour or more before 
we could get the grapnel down again.  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 trepidation.  Was it the cable? was there any 
weight on? it was evidently too small.  Imagine my dismay when the 
cable did come up, but hanging loosely, thus

[Picture]

instead of taut, thus

[Picture]

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 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 signal 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, however, 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 Spartivento to see what had 
happened there.  I fear my men are ill.  The night was lovely, 
perfectly 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 Genois 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 
outgrown.  But one or two more fragments from his correspondence 
may be taken, and first this brief sketch of the laying of the 
Norderney cable; 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 arranged 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 lifted suddenly and away we went with perfect 
weather, 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 Reuter.  Moreover the buoys 
to guide us in our course were not placed, and the captain had very 
vague ideas about keeping 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.  Everything 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 1st.  
But when we got to Norderney, we found the CAROLINE with shore end 
lying apparently aground, and could not understand her signals; so 
we had to anchor suddenly 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 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 poultice, 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.  Reuter 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 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 message 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 University 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.

'JUNE 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 
singing or swearing, no confusion or bustle on deck - nobody 
apparently aware that they had anything 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 
decidedly 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 4.20 at Brest.  We leave probably to-morrow 
morning.

'JULY 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. 
. . . Yesterday 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 WM. CORY, our pioneer, and a little 
dancing boat, the GULNARE, 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 
roaring whistle calls up the distant answering notes all around us.  
Shall we, or shall we not find the buoy?

'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 charming 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 
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 everyone 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 morning 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 29. - 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 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 WILL 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 
impudently, 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 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.

'PERNAMBUCO, AUG. 1. - We landed here yesterday, 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 stern, and then taking a rope in one hand, swing into 
the launch at the moment 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 luncheon on board on Sunday; but the launch being rather 
heavily laden, behaved worse than usual, and some green seas stove 
in the President'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 - FARRAGO VITAE - I. The Family Circle - 
Fleeming and his Sons - Highland Life - The Cruise of the Steam 
Launch - Summer in Styria - Rustic Manners - II. The Drama - 
Private Theatricals - III. Sanitary Associations - The Phonograph - 
IV. Fleeming's Acquaintance with a Student - His late Maturity of 
Mind - Religion and Morality - His Love of Heroism - Taste in 
Literature - V. His Talk - His late Popularity - Letter from M. 
Trelat.


THE remaining external incidents of Fleeming'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 college professors and the lawyers of the 
Parliament House give the tone, and persons of leisure, attracted 
by educational advantages, make up much of the bulk of society.  
Not, therefore, an unlettered place, yet not pedantic, Edinburgh 
will compare favourably with much larger cities.  A hard and 
disputatious element has been commented 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 frequent 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 unintellectual, 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.  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 university work, its 
delightful scenery, and its skating in the winter, was thenceforth 
his base of operations.  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; 
reading, writing, publishing, founding sanitary associations, 
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 particular 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 chapter:  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 purpose.  It was this that lent such unusual interest to 
his society, so that no friend of his can forget that figure of 
Fleeming coming 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, Fleeming's family, to three 
generations, was united:  Mr. and Mrs. Austin at Hailes, Captain 
and Mrs. Jenkin in the suburb of Merchiston, Fleeming himself in 
the city.  It is not every family that could risk with safety such 
close interdomestic 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 gentlemen 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 terrace at Hailes, conversing by the hour.  What 
they talked of is still a mystery to those who knew them; 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 Fleeming'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 
obligations, 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 representative of a 
child!'  Not that dogs were despised; 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) feels the loss and looks visibly for the 
reappearance of his master; and Martin, the cat, Fleeming has 
himself immortalised, to the delight of Mr. Swinburne, in the 
columns of the SPECTATOR.  Indeed there was nothing in which men 
take interest, in which he took not some; and yet always 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 the progress of the three boys, this advertisement 
would appear in their little manuscript paper:- 'Notice:  The 
Professor of Engineering in the University of Edinburgh intends at 
the close of the scholastic year to hold examinations in the 
following subjects:  (1)  For boys in the fourth class of the 
Academy - Geometry and Algebra; (2)  For boys at Mr. Henderson's 
school - Dictation and Recitation; (3)  For boys taught exclusively 
by their mothers - Arithmetic 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 attempted, 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 final trial 'in 
the big bath' 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 waiting 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. 15TH, 1875. - Frewen contemplates suspending soap bubbles by 
silk threads for experimental purposes.  I don't think he will 
manage that.  Bernard' [the youngest] 'volunteered to blow the 
bubbles with enthusiasm.'

'JAN. 17TH. - 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 discomfited, 
he laughs a sort of little silver-whistle giggle, which is trying 
to the unhappy blunderer.'

'MAY 9TH. - Frewen is deep in parachutes.  I beg him not to drop 
from the top landing in one of his own making.'

'JUNE 6TH, 1876. - Frewen's crank axle is a failure just at present 
- but he bears up.'

'JUNE 14TH. - The boys enjoy their riding.  It gets them whole 
funds of adventures.  One of their caps falling off is matter for 
delightful reminiscences; 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 
riding 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 18TH. - 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 27TH. - I do not see what I could do without Austin.  He 
talks so pleasantly and is so truly good all through.'

'JUNE 27TH. - 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. 18TH, 1877. - We all feel very lonely without you.  Frewen 
had to come up and sit in my 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. 19TH. - 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.  Whatever 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 with 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 encouraged them to 
excel in as many as possible:  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 onto 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 Highland character, perhaps also a sense of the difficulty 
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 
fastnesses 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, diagrammatically represented by his own hand, are before me 
as I write.

It was in 1879 that a new feature was added to the Highland life:  
a steam launch, called the PURGLE, 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 which 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 afternoon, with sheets of rain, it 
was found impossible to beat to sea; and very much in the situation 
of castaways upon an unknown coast, the party landed at the mouth 
of Gruinard river.  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 PURGLE; 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 
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 pinnacle, 
looking down into the PURGLE 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 unceasing 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. Jenkin, so violent 
was the commotion of the boat, held on with both 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 Fleeming 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 nothing 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 conditions.

One year, instead of the Highlands, Alt Aussee, in the Steiermark, 
was chosen for the holidays; and the place, the people, and the 
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 Schutzen-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 BAUER,' 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 GRAFIN' 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 unconvinced, avowed it was 'GAR SCHON.'  
Joseph's cousin, Walpurga Moser, to an orchestra of clarionet and 
zither, taught the family the country 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 Walpurga Moser.

There ran a principle through all these holiday pleasures.  In 
Styria as in the Highlands, the same course was followed:  Fleeming 
threw himself as fully as he could into the life and occupations of 
the native people, studying everywhere their dances and their 
language, and conforming, 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 gentlemen, 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 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 supported, 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 numerous people who can read a play:  a knack, the fruit of 
much knowledge and some imagination, comparable to that of reading 
score.  Few men better understood the artificial principles on 
which a play is good or bad; few more unaffectedly enjoyed a piece 
of any merit of construction.  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; and was, perhaps first of all, moved by the desire 
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 succeeded; but I must 
own myself no fit judge.  Fleeming and I were teacher and taught as 
to the principles, disputatious rivals in the practice, 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 Elizabeth!  
And yet it was a little good.'  And again, after a night of 
Salvini:  'I do not suppose any one with feelings could sit out 
OTHELLO, if Iago 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 Fleeming.  W. B. Hole and I, in a fine 
enthusiasm 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 ACADEMY 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 ignorance; it was not of 
myself that I was thinking, but of the difficulties of my trade 
which I had not well mastered.  Another unalloyed dramatic 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.  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 Barron'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 Barron 
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 literature.  From this, in a 
direct line, we can deduce the charades at Claygate; and after 
money came, in the Edinburgh days, that private theatre 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, Professor Lewis Campbell, Mr. Charles 
Baxter, and many more - made a charming society for themselves 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 TRACHINIAE, showed true stage talent.  As for Mrs. Jenkin, 
it was for her the rest of us existed and were forgiven; her powers 
were an endless spring of pride and pleasure to her husband; he 
spent hours hearing and schooling her in private; and when it came 
to the performance, though there was perhaps no one in the audience 
more critical, none was more moved than Fleeming.  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 illusion in a leading 
part, we were always sure at least of a long and an exciting 
holiday in mirthful 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; 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 Fleeming, 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 rehearsal, growing hourly paler, Triplet 
growing hourly less meritorious.  And though the return 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 subsequent 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, Racine, Shakespeare, Aristophanes in 
Hookham Frere's translation, Sophocles and AEschylus in Lewis 
Campbell's, such were some of the authors whom he introduced to his 
public.  In putting these upon the stage, he found a thousand 
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 
costumer, with unforgetable results of comicality and indecorum:  
the second, the TRACHINIAE, of Sophocles, he took in hand himself, 
and a delightful task he made of it.  His study was then in 
antiquarian books, where he found confusion, 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:  
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-manager'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 performance 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 
culprits (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 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 
standard 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 benefiting poorer men as with his 
labours for technical 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 Fergusson, which tells fully the 
nature of the sanitary work and of Fleeming's part and success in 
it.  It will be enough to say here that it was a scheme of 
protection against the blundering of builders and the dishonesty of 
plumbers.  Started with an eye rather to the houses of the 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 sensitively feel - the 
death of a whole family of children.  Yet it was 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 
wrote about the joy of electrical experiment.  'What shall I 
compare them to?  A new song? - a Greek play?'  Delight attended 
the exercise 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 all would 
practise it; that for an end unquestionably 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 manhood, '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 discussions.  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 transmigratory forces of imagination.  I undertook to 
describe to him three persons irredeemably 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 described, 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 trying to understand people?'