In the year 1878, he took a passionate fancy for the phonograph:
it was a toy after his heart, a toy that touched the skirts of
life, art, and science, a toy prolific of problems and theories.
Something fell to be done for a University Cricket Ground Bazaar.
'And the thought struck him,' Mr. Ewing writes to me, 'to exhibit
Edison's phonograph, then the very newest scientific marvel. The
instrument itself was not to be purchased - I think no specimen had
then crossed the Atlantic - but a copy of the TIMES with an account
of it was at hand, and by the help of this we made a phonograph
which to our great joy talked, and talked, too, with the purest
American accent. It was so good that a second instrument was got
ready forthwith. Both were shown at the Bazaar: one by Mrs.
Jenkin to people willing to pay half a crown for a private view and
the privilege of hearing their own voices, while Jenkin, perfervid
as usual, gave half-hourly lectures on the other in an adjoining
room - I, as his lieutenant, taking turns. The thing was in its
way a little triumph. A few of the visitors were deaf, and hugged
the belief that they were the victims of a new kind of fancy-fair
swindle. Of the others, many who came to scoff remained to take
raffle tickets; and one of the phonographs was finally disposed of
in this way, falling, by a happy freak of the ballot-box, into the
hands of Sir William Thomson.' The other remained in Fleeming's
hands, and was a source of infinite occupation. Once it was sent
to London, 'to bring back on the tinfoil the tones of a lady
distinguished for clear vocalisations; at another time Sir Robert
Christison was brought in to contribute his powerful bass'; and
there scarcely came a visitor about the house, but he was made the
subject of experiment. The visitors, I am afraid, took their parts
lightly: Mr. Hole and I, with unscientific laughter, commemorating
various shades of Scotch accent, or proposing to 'teach the poor
dumb animal to swear.' But Fleeming and Mr. Ewing, when we
butterflies were gone, were laboriously ardent. Many thoughts that
occupied the later years of my friend were caught from the small
utterance of that toy. Thence came his inquiries into the roots of
articulate language and the foundations of literary art; his papers
on vowel sounds, his papers in the SATURDAY REVIEW upon the laws of
verse, and many a strange approximation, many a just note, thrown
out in talk and now forgotten. I pass over dozens of his
interests, and dwell on this trifling matter of the phonograph,
because it seems to me that it depicts the man. So, for Fleeming,
one thing joined into another, the greater with the less. He cared
not where it was he scratched the surface of the ultimate mystery -
in the child's toy, in the great tragedy, in the laws of the
tempest, or in the properties of energy or mass - certain that
whatever he touched, it was a part of life - and however he touched
it, there would flow for his happy constitution interest and
delight. 'All fables have their morals,' says Thoreau, 'but the
innocent enjoy the story.' There is a truth represented for the
imagination in these lines of a noble poem, where we are told, that
in our highest hours of visionary clearness, we can but
'see the children sport upon the shore
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.'
To this clearness Fleeming had attained; and although he heard the
voice of the eternal seas and weighed its message, he was yet able,
until the end of his life, to sport upon these shores of death and
mystery with the gaiety and innocence of children.
IV.
It was as a student that I first knew Fleeming, as one of that
modest number of young men who sat under his ministrations in a
soul-chilling class-room at the top of the University buildings.
His presence was against him as a professor: no one, least of all
students, would have been moved to respect him at first sight:
rather short in stature, markedly plain, boyishly young in manner,
cocking his head like a terrier with every mark of the most
engaging vivacity and readiness to be pleased, full of words, full
of paradox, a stranger could scarcely fail to look at him twice, a
man thrown with him in a train could scarcely fail to be engaged by
him in talk, but a student would never regard him as academical.
Yet he had that fibre in him that order always existed in his
class-room. I do not remember that he ever addressed me in
language; at the least sign of unrest, his eye would fall on me and
I was quelled. Such a feat is comparatively easy in a small class;
but I have misbehaved in smaller classes and under eyes more
Olympian than Fleeming Jenkin's. He was simply a man from whose
reproof one shrank; in manner the least buckrammed of mankind, he
had, in serious moments, an extreme dignity of goodness. So it was
that he obtained a power over the most insubordinate of students,
but a power of which I was myself unconscious. I was inclined to
regard any professor as a joke, and Fleeming as a particularly good
joke, perhaps the broadest in the vast pleasantry of my curriculum.
I was not able to follow his lectures; I somehow dared not
misconduct myself, as was my customary solace; and I refrained from
attending. This brought me at the end of the session into a
relation with my contemned professor that completely opened my
eyes. During the year, bad student as I was, he had shown a
certain leaning to my society; I had been to his house, he had
asked me to take a humble part in his theatricals; I was a master
in the art of extracting a certificate even at the cannon's mouth;
and I was under no apprehension. But when I approached Fleeming, I
found myself in another world; he would have naught of me. 'It is
quite useless for YOU to come to me, Mr. Stevenson. There may be
doubtful cases, there is no doubt about yours. You have simply NOT
attended my class.' The document was necessary to me for family
considerations; and presently I stooped to such pleadings and rose
to such adjurations, as made my ears burn to remember. He was
quite unmoved; he had no pity for me. - 'You are no fool,' said he,
'and you chose your course.' I showed him that he had misconceived
his duty, that certificates were things of form, attendance a
matter of taste. Two things, he replied, had been required for
graduation, a certain competency proved in the final trials and a
certain period of genuine training proved by certificate; if he did
as I desired, not less than if he gave me hints for an examination,
he was aiding me to steal a degree. 'You see, Mr. Stevenson, these
are the laws and I am here to apply them,' said he. I could not
say but that this view was tenable, though it was new to me; I
changed my attack: it was only for my father's eye that I required
his signature, it need never go to the Senatus, I had already
certificates enough to justify my year's attendance. 'Bring them
to me; I cannot take your word for that,' said he. 'Then I will
consider.' The next day I came charged with my certificates, a
humble assortment. And when he had satisfied himself, 'Remember,'
said he, 'that I can promise nothing, but I will try to find a form
of words.' He did find one, and I am still ashamed when I think of
his shame in giving me that paper. He made no reproach in speech,
but his manner was the more eloquent; it told me plainly what a
dirty business we were on; and I went from his presence, with my
certificate indeed in my possession, but with no answerable sense
of triumph. That was the bitter beginning of my love for Fleeming;
I never thought lightly of him afterwards.
Once, and once only, after our friendship was truly founded, did we
come to a considerable difference. It was, by the rules of poor
humanity, my fault and his. I had been led to dabble in society
journalism; and this coming to his ears, he felt it like a disgrace
upon himself. So far he was exactly in the right; but he was
scarce happily inspired when he broached the subject at his own
table and before guests who were strangers to me. It was the sort
of error he was always ready to repent, but always certain to
repeat; and on this occasion he spoke so freely that I soon made an
excuse and left the house with the firm purpose of returning no
more. About a month later, I met him at dinner at a common
friend's. 'Now,' said he, on the stairs, 'I engage you - like a
lady to dance - for the end of the evening. You have no right to
quarrel with me and not give me a chance.' I have often said and
thought that Fleeming had no tact; he belied the opinion then. I
remember perfectly how, so soon as we could get together, he began
his attack: 'You may have grounds of quarrel with me; you have
none against Mrs. Jenkin; and before I say another word, I want you
to promise you will come to HER house as usual.' An interview thus
begun could have but one ending: if the quarrel were the fault of
both, the merit of the reconciliation was entirely Fleeming's.
When our intimacy first began, coldly enough, accidentally enough
on his part, he had still something of the Puritan, something of
the inhuman narrowness of the good youth. It fell from him slowly,
year by year, as he continued to ripen, and grow milder, and
understand more generously the mingled characters of men. In the
early days he once read me a bitter lecture; and I remember leaving
his house in a fine spring afternoon, with the physical darkness of
despair upon my eyesight. Long after he made me a formal
retractation of the sermon and a formal apology for the pain he had
inflicted; adding drolly, but truly, 'You see, at that time I was
so much younger than you!' And yet even in those days there was
much to learn from him; and above all his fine spirit of piety,
bravely and trustfully accepting life, and his singular delight in
the heroic.
His piety was, indeed, a thing of chief importance. His views (as
they are called) upon religious matters varied much; and he could
never be induced to think them more or less than views. 'All dogma
is to me mere form,' he wrote; 'dogmas are mere blind struggles to
express the inexpressible. I cannot conceive that any single
proposition whatever in religion is true in the scientific sense;
and yet all the while I think the religious view of the world is
the most true view. Try to separate from the mass of their
statements that which is common to Socrates, Isaiah, David, St.
Bernard, the Jansenists, Luther, Mahomet, Bunyan - yes, and George
Eliot: of course you do not believe that this something could be
written down in a set of propositions like Euclid, neither will you
deny that there is something common and this something very
valuable. . . . I shall be sorry if the boys ever give a moment's
thought to the question of what community they belong to - I hope
they will belong to the great community.' I should observe that as
time went on his conformity to the church in which he was born grew
more complete, and his views drew nearer the conventional. 'The
longer I live, my dear Louis,' he wrote but a few months before his
death, 'the more convinced I become of a direct care by God - which
is reasonably impossible - but there it is.' And in his last year
he took the communion.
But at the time when I fell under his influence, he stood more
aloof; and this made him the more impressive to a youthful atheist.
He had a keen sense of language and its imperial influence on men;
language contained all the great and sound metaphysics, he was wont
to say; and a word once made and generally understood, he thought a
real victory of man and reason. But he never dreamed it could be
accurate, knowing that words stand symbol for the indefinable. I
came to him once with a problem which had puzzled me out of
measure: what is a cause? why out of so many innumerable millions
of conditions, all necessary, should one be singled out and
ticketed 'the cause'? 'You do not understand,' said he. 'A cause
is the answer to a question: it designates that condition which I
happen to know and you happen not to know.' It was thus, with
partial exception of the mathematical, that he thought of all means
of reasoning: they were in his eyes but means of communication, so
to be understood, so to be judged, and only so far to be credited.
The mathematical he made, I say, exception of: number and measure
he believed in to the extent of their significance, but that
significance, he was never weary of reminding you, was slender to
the verge of nonentity. Science was true, because it told us
almost nothing. With a few abstractions it could deal, and deal
correctly; conveying honestly faint truths. Apply its means to any
concrete fact of life, and this high dialect of the wise became a
childish jargon.
Thus the atheistic youth was met at every turn by a scepticism more
complete than his own, so that the very weapons of the fight were
changed in his grasp to swords of paper. Certainly the church is
not right, he would argue, but certainly not the anti-church
either. Men are not such fools as to be wholly in the wrong, nor
yet are they so placed as to be ever wholly in the right.
Somewhere, in mid air between the disputants, like hovering Victory
in some design of a Greek battle, the truth hangs undiscerned. And
in the meanwhile what matter these uncertainties? Right is very
obvious; a great consent of the best of mankind, a loud voice
within us (whether of God, or whether by inheritance, and in that
case still from God), guide and command us in the path of duty. He
saw life very simple; he did not love refinements; he was a friend
to much conformity in unessentials. For (he would argue) it is in
this life as it stands about us, that we are given our problem; the
manners of the day are the colours of our palette; they condition,
they constrain us; and a man must be very sure he is in the right,
must (in a favourite phrase of his) be 'either very wise or very
vain,' to break with any general consent in ethics. I remember
taking his advice upon some point of conduct. 'Now,' he said, 'how
do you suppose Christ would have advised you?' and when I had
answered that he would not have counselled me anything unkind or
cowardly, 'No,' he said, with one of his shrewd strokes at the
weakness of his hearer, 'nor anything amusing.' Later in life, he
made less certain in the field of ethics. 'The old story of the
knowledge of good and evil is a very true one,' I find him writing;
only (he goes on) 'the effect of the original dose is much worn
out, leaving Adam's descendants with the knowledge that there is
such a thing - but uncertain where.' His growing sense of this
ambiguity made him less swift to condemn, but no less stimulating
in counsel. 'You grant yourself certain freedoms. Very well,' he
would say, 'I want to see you pay for them some other way. You
positively cannot do this: then there positively must be something
else that you can do, and I want to see you find that out and do
it.' Fleeming would never suffer you to think that you were
living, if there were not, somewhere in your life, some touch of
heroism, to do or to endure.
This was his rarest quality. Far on in middle age, when men begin
to lie down with the bestial goddesses, Comfort and Respectability,
the strings of his nature still sounded as high a note as a young
man's. He loved the harsh voice of duty like a call to battle. He
loved courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave word, an ugly
virtue; everything that lifts us above the table where we eat or
the bed we sleep upon. This with no touch of the motive-monger or
the ascetic. He loved his virtues to be practical, his heroes to
be great eaters of beef; he loved the jovial Heracles, loved the
astute Odysseus; not the Robespierres and Wesleys. A fine buoyant
sense of life and of man's unequal character ran through all his
thoughts. He could not tolerate the spirit of the pick-thank;
being what we are, he wished us to see others with a generous eye
of admiration, not with the smallness of the seeker after faults.
If there shone anywhere a virtue, no matter how incongruously set,
it was upon the virtue we must fix our eyes. I remember having
found much entertainment in Voltaire's SAUL, and telling him what
seemed to me the drollest touches. He heard me out, as usual when
displeased, and then opened fire on me with red-hot shot. To
belittle a noble story was easy; it was not literature, it was not
art, it was not morality; there was no sustenance in such a form of
jesting, there was (in his favourite phrase) 'no nitrogenous food'
in such literature. And then he proceeded to show what a fine
fellow David was; and what a hard knot he was in about Bathsheba,
so that (the initial wrong committed) honour might well hesitate in
the choice of conduct; and what owls those people were who
marvelled because an Eastern tyrant had killed Uriah, instead of
marvelling that he had not killed the prophet also. 'Now if
Voltaire had helped me to feel that,' said he, 'I could have seen
some fun in it.' He loved the comedy which shows a hero human, and
yet leaves him a hero, and the laughter which does not lessen love.
It was this taste for what is fine in human-kind, that ruled his
choice in books. These should all strike a high note, whether
brave or tender, and smack of the open air. The noble and simple
presentation of things noble and simple, that was the 'nitrogenous
food' of which he spoke so much, which he sought so eagerly,
enjoyed so royally. He wrote to an author, the first part of whose
story he had seen with sympathy, hoping that it might continue in
the same vein. 'That this may be so,' he wrote, 'I long with the
longing of David for the water of Bethlehem. But no man need die
for the water a poet can give, and all can drink it to the end of
time, and their thirst be quenched and the pool never dry - and the
thirst and the water are both blessed.' It was in the Greeks
particularly that he found this blessed water; he loved 'a fresh
air' which he found 'about the Greek things even in translations';
he loved their freedom from the mawkish and the rancid. The tale
of David in the Bible, the ODYSSEY, Sophocles, AEschylus,
Shakespeare, Scott; old Dumas in his chivalrous note; Dickens
rather than Thackeray, and the TALE OF TWO CITIES out of Dickens:
such were some of his preferences. To Ariosto and Boccaccio he was
always faithful; BURNT NJAL was a late favourite; and he found at
least a passing entertainment in the ARCADIA and the GRAND CYRUS.
George Eliot he outgrew, finding her latterly only sawdust in the
mouth; but her influence, while it lasted, was great, and must have
gone some way to form his mind. He was easily set on edge,
however, by didactic writing; and held that books should teach no
other lesson but what 'real life would teach, were it as vividly
presented.' Again, it was the thing made that took him, the drama
in the book; to the book itself, to any merit of the making, he was
long strangely blind. He would prefer the AGAMEMNON in the prose
of Mr. Buckley, ay, to Keats. But he was his mother's son,
learning to the last. He told me one day that literature was not a
trade; that it was no craft; that the professed author was merely
an amateur with a door-plate. 'Very well,' said I, 'the first time
you get a proof, I will demonstrate that it is as much a trade as
bricklaying, and that you do not know it.' By the very next post,
a proof came. I opened it with fear; for he was indeed, as the
reader will see by these volumes, a formidable amateur; always
wrote brightly, because he always thought trenchantly; and
sometimes wrote brilliantly, as the worst of whistlers may
sometimes stumble on a perfect intonation. But it was all for the
best in the interests of his education; and I was able, over that
proof, to give him a quarter of an hour such as Fleeming loved both
to give and to receive. His subsequent training passed out of my
hands into those of our common friend, W. E. Henley. 'Henley and
I,' he wrote, 'have fairly good times wigging one another for not
doing better. I wig him because he won't try to write a real play,
and he wigs me because I can't try to write English.' When I next
saw him, he was full of his new acquisitions. 'And yet I have lost
something too,' he said regretfully. 'Up to now Scott seemed to me
quite perfect, he was all I wanted. Since I have been learning
this confounded thing, I took up one of the novels, and a great
deal of it is both careless and clumsy.'
V.
He spoke four languages with freedom, not even English with any
marked propriety. What he uttered was not so much well said, as
excellently acted: so we may hear every day the inexpressive
language of a poorly-written drama assume character and colour in
the hands of a good player. No man had more of the VIS COMICA in
private life; he played no character on the stage, as he could play
himself among his friends. It was one of his special charms; now
when the voice is silent and the face still, it makes it impossible
to do justice to his power in conversation. He was a delightful
companion to such as can bear bracing weather; not to the very
vain; not to the owlishly wise, who cannot have their dogmas
canvassed; not to the painfully refined, whose sentiments become
articles of faith. The spirit in which he could write that he was
'much revived by having an opportunity of abusing Whistler to a
knot of his special admirers,' is a spirit apt to be misconstrued.
He was not a dogmatist, even about Whistler. 'The house is full of
pretty things,' he wrote, when on a visit; 'but Mrs. -'s taste in
pretty things has one very bad fault: it is not my taste.' And
that was the true attitude of his mind; but these eternal
differences it was his joy to thresh out and wrangle over by the
hour. It was no wonder if he loved the Greeks; he was in many ways
a Greek himself; he should have been a sophist and met Socrates; he
would have loved Socrates, and done battle with him staunchly and
manfully owned his defeat; and the dialogue, arranged by Plato,
would have shown even in Plato's gallery. He seemed in talk
aggressive, petulant, full of a singular energy; as vain you would
have said as a peacock, until you trod on his toes, and then you
saw that he was at least clear of all the sicklier elements of
vanity. Soundly rang his laugh at any jest against himself. He
wished to be taken, as he took others, for what was good in him
without dissimulation of the evil, for what was wise in him without
concealment of the childish. He hated a draped virtue, and
despised a wit on its own defence. And he drew (if I may so
express myself) a human and humorous portrait of himself with all
his defects and qualities, as he thus enjoyed in talk the robust
sports of the intelligence; giving and taking manfully, always
without pretence, always with paradox, always with exuberant
pleasure; speaking wisely of what he knew, foolishly of what he
knew not; a teacher, a learner, but still combative; picking holes
in what was said even to the length of captiousness, yet aware of
all that was said rightly; jubilant in victory, delighted by
defeat: a Greek sophist, a British schoolboy.
Among the legends of what was once a very pleasant spot, the old
Savile Club, not then divorced from Savile Row, there are many
memories of Fleeming. He was not popular at first, being known
simply as 'the man who dines here and goes up to Scotland'; but he
grew at last, I think, the most generally liked of all the members.
To those who truly knew and loved him, who had tasted the real
sweetness of his nature, Fleeming's porcupine ways had always been
a matter of keen regret. They introduced him to their own friends
with fear; sometimes recalled the step with mortification. It was
not possible to look on with patience while a man so lovable
thwarted love at every step. But the course of time and the
ripening of his nature brought a cure. It was at the Savile that
he first remarked a change; it soon spread beyond the walls of the
club. Presently I find him writing: 'Will you kindly explain what
has happened to me? All my life I have talked a good deal, with
the almost unfailing result of making people sick of the sound of
my tongue. It appeared to me that I had various things to say, and
I had no malevolent feelings, but nevertheless the result was that
expressed above. Well, lately some change has happened. If I talk
to a person one day, they must have me the next. Faces light up
when they see me. - "Ah, I say, come here," - "come and dine with
me." It's the most preposterous thing I ever experienced. It is
curiously pleasant. You have enjoyed it all your life, and
therefore cannot conceive how bewildering a burst of it is for the
first time at forty-nine.' And this late sunshine of popularity
still further softened him. He was a bit of a porcupine to the
last, still shedding darts; or rather he was to the end a bit of a
schoolboy, and must still throw stones, but the essential
toleration that underlay his disputatiousness, and the kindness
that made of him a tender sicknurse and a generous helper, shone
more conspicuously through. A new pleasure had come to him; and as
with all sound natures, he was bettered by the pleasure.
I can best show Fleeming in this later stage by quoting from a
vivid and interesting letter of M. Emile Trelat's. Here, admirably
expressed, is how he appeared to a friend of another nation, whom
he encountered only late in life. M. Trelat will pardon me if I
correct, even before I quote him; but what the Frenchman supposed
to flow from some particular bitterness against France, was only
Fleeming's usual address. Had M. Trelat been Italian, Italy would
have fared as ill; and yet Italy was Fleeming's favourite country.
Vous savez comment j'ai connu Fleeming Jenkin! C'etait en Mai
1878. Nous etions tous deux membres du jury de l'Exposition
Universelle. On n'avait rien fait qui vaille a la premiere seance
de notre classe, qui avait eu lieu le matin. Tout le monde avait
parle et reparle pour ne rien dire. Cela durait depuis huit
heures; il etait midi. Je demandai la parole pour une motion
d'ordre, et je proposai que la seance fut levee a la condition que
chaque membre francais, EMPORTAT a dejeuner un jure etranger.
Jenkin applaudit. 'Je vous emimene dejeuner,' lui criai-je. 'Je
veux bien.' . . . Nous partimes; en chemin nous vous rencontrions;
il vous presente et nous allons dejeuner tous trois aupres du
Trocadero.
Et, depuis ce temps, nous avons ete de vieux amis. Non seulement
nous passions nos journees au jury, ou nous etions toujours
ensemble, cote-a-cote. Mais nos habitudes s'etaient faites telles
que, non contents de dejeuner en face l'un de l'autre, je le
ramenais diner presque tous les jours chez moi. Cela dura une
quinzaine: puis il fut rappele en Angleterre. Mais il revint, et
nous fimes encore une bonne etape de vie intellectuelle, morale et
philosophique. Je crois qu'il me rendait deja tout ce que
j'eprouvais de sympathie et d'estime, et que je ne fus pas pour
rien dans son retour a Paris.
Chose singuliere! nous nous etions attaches l'un a l'autre par les
sous-entendus bien plus que par la matiere de nos conversations. A
vrai dire, nous etions presque toujours en discussion; et il nous
arrivait de nous rire au nez l'un et l'autre pendant des heures,
tant nous nous etonnions reciproquement de la diversite de nos
points de vue. Je le trouvais si Anglais, et il me trouvais si
Francais! Il etait si franchement revolte de certaines choses
qu'il voyait chez nous, et je comprenais si mal certaines choses
qui se passaient chez vous! Rien de plus interessant que ces
contacts qui etaient des contrastes, et que ces rencontres d'idees
qui etaient des choses; rien de si attachant que les echappees de
coeur ou d'esprit auxquelles ces petits conflits donnaient a tout
moment cours. C'est dans ces conditions que, pendant son sejour a
Paris en 1878, je conduisis un peu partout mon nouvel ami. Nous
allЖ’mes chez Madame Edmond Adam, ou il vit passer beaucoup d'hommes
politiques avec lesquels il causa. Mais c'est chez les ministres
qu'il fut interesse. Le moment etait, d'ailleurs, curieux en
France. Je me rappelle que, lorsque je le presentai au Ministre du
Commerce, il fit cette spirituelle repartie: 'C'est la seconde
fois que je viens en France sous la Republique. La premiere fois,
c'etait en 1848, elle s'etait coiffee de travers: je suis bien
heureux de saluer aujourd'hui votre excellence, quand elle a mis
son chapeau droit.' Une fois je le menai voir couronner la Rosiere
de Nanterre. Il y suivit les ceremonies civiles et religieuses; il
y assista au banquet donne par le Maire; il y vit notre de Lesseps,
auquel il porta un toast. Le soir, nous revinmes tard a Paris; il
faisait chaud; nous etions un peu fatigues; nous entrЖ’mes dans un
des rares cafes encore ouverts. Il devint silencieux. - 'N'etes-
vous pas content de votre journee?' lui dis-je. - 'O, si! mais je
reflechis, et je me dis que vous etes un peuple gai - tous ces
braves gens etaient gais aujourd'hui. C'est une vertu, la gaiete,
et vous l'avez en France, cette vertu!' Il me disait cela
melancoliquement; et c'etait la premiere fois que je lui entendais
faire une louange adressee a la France. . . . Mais il ne faut pas
que vous voyiez la une plainte de ma part. Je serais un ingrat si
je me plaignais; car il me disait souvent: 'Quel bon Francais vous
faites!' Et il m'aimait a cause de cela, quoiqu'il semblЖ’t
n'ainier pas la France. C'etait la un trait de son originalite.
Il est vrai qu'il s'en tirait en disant que je ne ressemblai pas a
mes compatriotes, ce a quoi il ne connaissait rien! - Tout cela
etait fort curieux; car, moi-meme, je l'aimais quoiqu'il en e–t a
mon pays!
En 1879 il amena son fils Austin a Paris. J'attirai celui-ci. Il
dejeunait avec moi deux fois par semaine. Je lui montrai ce
qu'etait l'intimite francaise en le tutoyant paternellement. Cela
reserra beaucoup nos liens d'intimite avec Jenkin. . . . Je fis
inviter mon ami au congres de l'ASSOCIATION FRANCAISE POUR
L'AVANCEMENT DES SCIENCES, qui se tenait a Rheims en 1880. Il y
vint. J'eus le plaisir de lui donner la parole dans la section du
genie civil et militaire, que je presidais. II y fit une tres
interessante communication, qui me montrait une fois de plus
l'originalite de ses vaes et la s–rete de sa science. C'est a
l'issue de ce congres que je passai lui faire visite a Rochefort,
ou je le trouvai installe en famille et ou je presentai pour la
premiere fois mes hommages a son eminente compagne. Je le vis la
sous un jour nouveau et touchant pour moi. Madame Jenkin, qu'il
entourait si galamment, et ses deux jeunes fils donnaient encore
plus de relief a sa personne. J'emportai des quelques heures que
je passai a cote de lui dans ce charmant paysage un souvenir emu.
J'etais alle en Angleterre en 1882 sans pouvoir gagner Edimbourg.
J'y retournai en 1883 avec la commission d'assainissement de la
ville de Paris, dont je faisais partie. Jenkin me rejoignit. Je
le fis entendre par mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d'une
societe de salubrite. Il eut un grand succes parmi nous. Mais ce
voyaye me restera toujours en memoire parce que c'est la que se
fixa defenitivement notre forte amitie. Il m'invita un jour a
diner a son club et au moment de me faire asseoir a cote de lui, il
me retint et me dit: 'Je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder
quelque chose. C'est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent
pas se bien continuer si vous ne me donnez pas la permission de
vous tutoyer. Voulez-vous que nous nous tutoyions?' Je lui pris
les mains et je lui dis qu'une pareille proposition venant d'un
Anglais, et d'un Anglais de sa haute distinction, c'etait une
victoire, dont je serais fier toute ma vie. Et nous commencions a
user de cette nouvelle forme dans nos rapports. Vous savez avec
quelle finesse il parlait le francais: comme il en connaissait
tous les tours, comme il jouait avec ses difficultes, et meme avec
ses petites gamineries. Je crois qu'il a ete heureux de pratiquer
avec moi ce tutoiement, qui ne s'adapte pas a l'anglais, et qui est
si francais. Je ne puis vous peindre l'etendue et la variete de
nos conversations de la soiree. Mais ce que je puis vous dire,
c'est que, sous la caresse du TU, nos idees se sont elevees. Nous
avions toujours beaucoup ri ensemble; mais nous n'avions jamais
laisse des banalites s'introduire dans nos echanges de pensees. Ce
soir-la, notre horizon intellectual s'est elargie, et nous y avons
pousse des reconnaissances profondes et lointaines. Apres avoir
vivement cause a table, nous avons longuement cause au salon; et
nous nous separions le soir a Trafalgar Square, apres avoir longe
les trotters, stationne aux coins des rues et deux fois rebrousse
chemie en nous reconduisant l'un l'autre. Il etait pres d'une
heure du matin! Mais quelle belle passe d'argumentation, quels
beaux echanges de sentiments, quelles fortes confidences
patriotiques nous avions fournies! J'ai compris ce soir la que
Jenkin ne detestait pas la France, et je lui serrai fort les mains
en l'embrassant. Nous nous quittions aussi amis qu'on puisse
l'etre; et notre affection s'etait par lui etendue et comprise dans
un TU francais.
CHAPTER VII. 1875-1885.
Mr Jenkin's Illness - Captain Jenkin - The Golden Wedding - Death
of Uncle John - Death of Mr. and Mrs. Austin - Illness and Death of
the Captain - Death of Mrs. Jenkin - Effect on Fleeming -
Telpherage - The End.
AND now I must resume my narrative for that melancholy business
that concludes all human histories. In January of the year 1875,
while Fleeming's sky was still unclouded, he was reading Smiles.
'I read my engineers' lives steadily,' he writes, 'but find
biographies depressing. I suspect one reason to be that
misfortunes and trials can be graphically described, but happiness
and the causes of happiness either cannot be or are not. A grand
new branch of literature opens to my view: a drama in which people
begin in a poor way and end, after getting gradually happier, in an
ecstasy of enjoyment. The common novel is not the thing at all.
It gives struggle followed by relief. I want each act to close on
a new and triumphant happiness, which has been steadily growing all
the while. This is the real antithesis of tragedy, where things
get blacker and blacker and end in hopeless woe. Smiles has not
grasped my grand idea, and only shows a bitter struggle followed by
a little respite before death. Some feeble critic might say my new
idea was not true to nature. I'm sick of this old-fashioned notion
of art. Hold a mirror up, indeed! Let's paint a picture of how
things ought to be and hold that up to nature, and perhaps the poor
old woman may repent and mend her ways.' The 'grand idea' might be
possible in art; not even the ingenuity of nature could so round in
the actual life of any man. And yet it might almost seem to fancy
that she had read the letter and taken the hint; for to Fleeming
the cruelties of fate were strangely blended with tenderness, and
when death came, it came harshly to others, to him not unkindly.
In the autumn of that same year 1875, Fleeming's father and mother
were walking in the garden of their house at Merchiston, when the
latter fell to the ground. It was thought at the time to be a
stumble; it was in all likelihood a premonitory stroke of palsy.
From that day, there fell upon her an abiding panic fear; that
glib, superficial part of us that speaks and reasons could allege
no cause, science itself could find no mark of danger, a son's
solicitude was laid at rest; but the eyes of the body saw the
approach of a blow, and the consciousness of the body trembled at
its coming. It came in a moment; the brilliant, spirited old lady
leapt from her bed, raving. For about six months, this stage of
her disease continued with many painful and many pathetic
circumstances; her husband who tended her, her son who was
unwearied in his visits, looked for no change in her condition but
the change that comes to all. 'Poor mother,' I find Fleeming
writing, 'I cannot get the tones of her voice out of my head. . . I
may have to bear this pain for a long time; and so I am bearing it
and sparing myself whatever pain seems useless. Mercifully I do
sleep, I am so weary that I must sleep.' And again later: 'I
could do very well, if my mind did not revert to my poor mother's
state whenever I stop attending to matters immediately before me.'
And the next day: 'I can never feel a moment's pleasure without
having my mother's suffering recalled by the very feeling of
happiness. A pretty, young face recalls hers by contrast - a
careworn face recalls it by association. I tell you, for I can
speak to no one else; but do not suppose that I wilfully let my
mind dwell on sorrow.'
In the summer of the next year, the frenzy left her; it left her
stone deaf and almost entirely aphasic, but with some remains of
her old sense and courage. Stoutly she set to work with
dictionaries, to recover her lost tongues; and had already made
notable progress, when a third stroke scattered her acquisitions.
Thenceforth, for nearly ten years, stroke followed upon stroke,
each still further jumbling the threads of her intelligence, but by
degrees so gradual and with such partiality of loss and of
survival, that her precise state was always and to the end a matter
of dispute. She still remembered her friends; she still loved to
learn news of them upon the slate; she still read and marked the
list of the subscription library; she still took an interest in the
choice of a play for the theatricals, and could remember and find
parallel passages; but alongside of these surviving powers, were
lapses as remarkable, she misbehaved like a child, and a servant
had to sit with her at table. To see her so sitting, speaking with
the tones of a deaf mute not always to the purpose, and to remember
what she had been, was a moving appeal to all who knew her. Such
was the pathos of these two old people in their affliction, that
even the reserve of cities was melted and the neighbours vied in
sympathy and kindness. Where so many were more than usually
helpful, it is hard to draw distinctions; but I am directed and I
delight to mention in particular the good Dr. Joseph Bell, Mr.
Thomas, and Mr. Archibald Constable with both their wives, the Rev.
Mr. Belcombe (of whose good heart and taste I do not hear for the
first time - the news had come to me by way of the Infirmary), and
their next-door neighbour, unwearied in service, Miss Hannah Mayne.
Nor should I omit to mention that John Ruffini continued to write
to Mrs. Jenkin till his own death, and the clever lady known to the
world as Vernon Lee until the end: a touching, a becoming
attention to what was only the wreck and survival of their
brilliant friend.
But he to whom this affliction brought the greatest change was the
Captain himself. What was bitter in his lot, he bore with unshaken
courage; only once, in these ten years of trial, has Mrs. Fleeming
Jenkin seen him weep; for the rest of the time his wife - his
commanding officer, now become his trying child - was served not
with patience alone, but with a lovely happiness of temper. He had
belonged all his life to the ancient, formal, speechmaking,
compliment-presenting school of courtesy; the dictates of this code
partook in his eyes of the nature of a duty; and he must now be
courteous for two. Partly from a happy illusion, partly in a
tender fraud, he kept his wife before the world as a still active
partner. When he paid a call, he would have her write 'with love'
upon a card; or if that (at the moment) was too much, he would go
armed with a bouquet and present it in her name. He even wrote
letters for her to copy and sign: an innocent substitution, which
may have caused surprise to Ruffini or to Vernon Lee, if they ever
received, in the hand of Mrs. Jenkin the very obvious reflections
of her husband. He had always adored this wife whom he now tended
and sought to represent in correspondence: it was now, if not
before, her turn to repay the compliment; mind enough was left her
to perceive his unwearied kindness; and as her moral qualities
seemed to survive quite unimpaired, a childish love and gratitude
were his reward. She would interrupt a conversation to cross the
room and kiss him. If she grew excited (as she did too often) it
was his habit to come behind her chair and pat her shoulder; and
then she would turn round, and clasp his hand in hers, and look
from him to her visitor with a face of pride and love; and it was
at such moments only that the light of humanity revived in her
eyes. It was hard for any stranger, it was impossible for any that
loved them, to behold these mute scenes, to recall the past, and
not to weep. But to the Captain, I think it was all happiness.
After these so long years, he had found his wife again; perhaps
kinder than ever before; perhaps now on a more equal footing;
certainly, to his eyes, still beautiful. And the call made on his
intelligence had not been made in vain. The merchants of Aux
Cayes, who had seen him tried in some 'counter-revolution' in 1845,
wrote to the consul of his 'able and decided measures,' 'his cool,
steady judgment and discernment' with admiration; and of himself,
as 'a credit and an ornament to H. M. Naval Service.' It is plain
he must have sunk in all his powers, during the years when he was
only a figure, and often a dumb figure, in his wife's drawing-room;
but with this new term of service, he brightened visibly. He
showed tact and even invention in managing his wife, guiding or
restraining her by the touch, holding family worship so arranged
that she could follow and take part in it. He took (to the world's
surprise) to reading - voyages, biographies, Blair's SERMONS, even
(for her letter's sake) a work of Vernon Lee's, which proved,
however, more than he was quite prepared for. He shone more, in
his remarkable way, in society; and twice he had a little holiday
to Glenmorven, where, as may be fancied, he was the delight of the
Highlanders. One of his last pleasures was to arrange his dining-
room. Many and many a room (in their wandering and thriftless
existence) had he seen his wife furnish with exquisite taste, and
perhaps with 'considerable luxury': now it was his turn to be the
decorator. On the wall he had an engraving of Lord Rodney's
action, showing the PROTHEE, his father's ship, if the reader
recollects; on either side of this on brackets, his father's sword,
and his father's telescope, a gift from Admiral Buckner, who had
used it himself during the engagement; higher yet, the head of his
grandson's first stag, portraits of his son and his son's wife, and
a couple of old Windsor jugs from Mrs. Buckner's. But his simple
trophy was not yet complete; a device had to be worked and framed
and hung below the engraving; and for this he applied to his
daughter-in-law: 'I want you to work me something, Annie. An
anchor at each side - an anchor - stands for an old sailor, you
know - stands for hope, you know - an anchor at each side, and in
the middle THANKFUL.' It is not easy, on any system of
punctuation, to represent the Captain's speech. Yet I hope there
may shine out of these facts, even as there shone through his own
troubled utterance, some of the charm of that delightful spirit.
In 1881, the time of the golden wedding came round for that sad and
pretty household. It fell on a Good Friday, and its celebration
can scarcely be recalled without both smiles and tears. The
drawing-room was filled with presents and beautiful bouquets;
these, to Fleeming and his family, the golden bride and bridegroom
displayed with unspeakable pride, she so painfully excited that the
guests feared every moment to see her stricken afresh, he guiding
and moderating her with his customary tact and understanding, and
doing the honours of the day with more than his usual delight.
Thence they were brought to the dining-room, where the Captain's
idea of a feast awaited them: tea and champagne, fruit and toast
and childish little luxuries, set forth pell-mell and pressed at
random on the guests. And here he must make a speech for himself
and his wife, praising their destiny, their marriage, their son,
their daughter-in-law, their grandchildren, their manifold causes
of gratitude: surely the most innocent speech, the old, sharp
contemner of his innocence now watching him with eyes of
admiration. Then it was time for the guests to depart; and they
went away, bathed, even to the youngest child, in tears of
inseparable sorrow and gladness, and leaving the golden bride and
bridegroom to their own society and that of the hired nurse.
It was a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the
acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes
consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort, a certain
smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the
candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being
done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too
frequent visits; but here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable
duties for which Fleeming lived, and he could not pardon even the
suggestion of neglect.
And now, after death had so long visibly but still innocuously
hovered above the family, it began at last to strike and its blows
fell thick and heavy. The first to go was uncle John Jenkin, taken
at last from his Mexican dwelling and the lost tribes of Israel;
and nothing in this remarkable old gentleman's life, became him
like the leaving of it. His sterling, jovial acquiescence in man's
destiny was a delight to Fleeming. 'My visit to Stowting has been
a very strange but not at all a painful one,' he wrote. 'In case
you ever wish to make a person die as he ought to die in a novel,'
he said to me, 'I must tell you all about my old uncle.' He was to
see a nearer instance before long; for this family of Jenkin, if
they were not very aptly fitted to live, had the art of manly
dying. Uncle John was but an outsider after all; he had dropped
out of hail of his nephew's way of life and station in society, and
was more like some shrewd, old, humble friend who should have kept
a lodge; yet he led the procession of becoming deaths, and began in
the mind of Fleeming that train of tender and grateful thought,
which was like a preparation for his own. Already I find him
writing in the plural of 'these impending deaths'; already I find
him in quest of consolation. 'There is little pain in store for
these wayfarers,' he wrote, 'and we have hope - more than hope,
trust.'
On May 19, 1884, Mr. Austin was taken. He was seventy-eight years
of age, suffered sharply with all his old firmness, and died happy
in the knowledge that he had left his wife well cared for. This
had always been a bosom concern; for the Barrons were long-lived
and he believed that she would long survive him. But their union
had been so full and quiet that Mrs. Austin languished under the
separation. In their last years, they would sit all evening in
their own drawing-room hand in hand: two old people who, for all
their fundamental differences, had yet grown together and become
all the world in each other's eyes and hearts; and it was felt to
be a kind release, when eight months after, on January 14, 1885,
Eliza Barron followed Alfred Austin. 'I wish I could save you from
all pain,' wrote Fleeming six days later to his sorrowing wife, 'I
would if I could - but my way is not God's way; and of this be
assured, - God's way is best.'
In the end of the same month, Captain Jenkin caught cold and was
confined to bed. He was so unchanged in spirit that at first there
seemed no ground of fear; but his great age began to tell, and
presently it was plain he had a summons. The charm of his sailor's
cheerfulness and ancient courtesy, as he lay dying, is not to be
described. There he lay, singing his old sea songs; watching the
poultry from the window with a child's delight; scribbling on the
slate little messages to his wife, who lay bed-ridden in another
room; glad to have Psalms read aloud to him, if they were of a
pious strain - checking, with an 'I don't think we need read that,
my dear,' any that were gloomy or bloody. Fleeming's wife coming
to the house and asking one of the nurses for news of Mrs. Jenkin,
'Madam, I do not know,' said the nurse; 'for I am really so carried
away by the Captain that I can think of nothing else.' One of the
last messages scribbled to his wife and sent her with a glass of
the champagne that had been ordered for himself, ran, in his most
finished vein of childish madrigal: 'The Captain bows to you, my
love, across the table.' When the end was near and it was thought
best that Fleeming should no longer go home but sleep at
Merchiston, he broke his news to the Captain with some trepidation,
knowing that it carried sentence of death. 'Charming, charming -
charming arrangement,' was the Captain's only commentary. It was
the proper thing for a dying man, of Captain Jenkin's school of
manners, to make some expression of his spiritual state; nor did he
neglect the observance. With his usual abruptness, 'Fleeming,'
said he, 'I suppose you and I feel about all this as two Christian
gentlemen should.' A last pleasure was secured for him. He had
been waiting with painful interest for news of Gordon and Khartoum;
and by great good fortune, a false report reached him that the city
was relieved, and the men of Sussex (his old neighbours) had been
the first to enter. He sat up in bed and gave three cheers for the
Sussex regiment. The subsequent correction, if it came in time,
was prudently withheld from the dying man. An hour before midnight
on the fifth of February, he passed away: aged eighty-four.
