1833-1851
Birth and childhood--Edinburgh--Frankfort-on-the-Main--Paris--The
Revolution of 1848--The Insurrection--Flight to Italy--Sympathy with
Italy--The insurrection in Genoa--A Student in Genoa--The lad and his
mother.
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin (Fleeming, pronounced _Flemming_, to his
friends and family) was born in a Government building on the coast of
Kent, near Dungeness, where his father was serving at the time in the
Coastguard, on March 25, 1833, and named after Admiral Fleeming, one of
his father's protectors in the navy.
His childhood was vagrant like his life. Once he was left in the care of
his grandmother Jackson, while Mrs. Jenkin sailed in her husband's ship
and stayed a year at the Havannah. The tragic woman was besides from
time to time a member of the family; she was in distress of mind and
reduced in fortune by the misconduct of her sons; her destitution and
solitude made it a recurring duty to receive her, her violence
continually enforced fresh separations. In her passion of a disappointed
mother, she was a fit object of pity; but her grandson, who heard her
load his own mother with cruel insults and reproaches, conceived for her
an indignant and impatient hatred, for which he blamed himself in later
life. It is strange from this point of view to see his childish letters
to Mrs. Jackson; and to think that a man, distinguished above all by
stubborn truthfulness, should have been brought up to such
dissimulation. But this is of course unavoidable in life; it did no harm
to Jenkin; and whether he got harm or benefit from a so early
acquaintance with violent and hateful scenes, is more than I can guess.
The experience, at least, was formative; and in judging his character it
should not be forgotten. But Mrs. Jackson was not the only stranger in
their gates; the Captain's sister, Aunt Anna Jenkin, lived with them
until her death; she had all the Jenkin beauty of countenance, though
she was unhappily deformed in body and of frail health; and she even
excelled her gentle and ineffectual family in all amiable qualities. So
that each of the two races from which Fleeming sprang, had an outpost by
his very cradle; the one he instinctively loved, the other hated; and
the lifelong war in his members had begun thus early by a victory for
what was best.
We can trace the family from one country place to another in the south
of Scotland; where the child learned his taste for sport by riding home
the pony from the moors. Before he was nine he could write such a
passage as this about a Hallowe'en observance: "I pulled a
middling-sized cabbage-runt with a pretty sum of gold about it. No
witches would run after me when I was sowing my hempseed this year; my
nuts blazed away together very comfortably to the end of their lives,
and when mamma put hers in, which were meant for herself and papa, they
blazed away in the like manner." Before he was ten he could write, with
a really irritating precocity, that he had been "making some pictures
from a book called 'Les Francais peints par eux-memes.' ... It is full
of pictures of all classes, with a description of each in French. The
pictures are a little caricatured, but not much." Doubtless this was
only an echo from his mother, but it shows the atmosphere in which he
breathed. It must have been a good change for this art critic to be the
playmate of Mary Macdonald, their gardener's daughter at Barjarg, and to
sup with her family on potatoes and milk; and Fleeming himself attached
some value to this early and friendly experience of another class.
His education, in the formal sense, began at Jedburgh. Thence he went to
the Edinburgh Academy, where Clerk Maxwell was his senior and Tait his
classmate; bore away many prizes; and was once unjustly flogged by
Rector Williams. He used to insist that all his bad school-fellows had
died early, a belief amusingly characteristic of the man's consistent
optimism. In 1846 the mother and son proceeded to Frankfort-on-the-Main,
where they were soon joined by the father, now reduced to inaction and
to play something like third fiddle in his narrow household. The
emancipation of the slaves had deprived them of their last resource
beyond the half-pay of a captain; and life abroad was not only desirable
for the sake of Fleeming's education, it was almost enforced by reasons
of economy. But it was, no doubt, somewhat hard upon the Captain.
Certainly that perennial boy found a companion in his son; they were
both active and eager, both willing to be amused, both young, if not in
years, then in character. They went out together on excursions and
sketched old castles, sitting side by side; they had an angry rivalry in
walking, doubtless equally sincere upon both sides; and indeed we may
say that Fleeming was exceptionally favoured, and that no boy had ever a
companion more innocent, engaging, gay, and airy. But although in this
case it would be easy to exaggerate its import, yet, in the Jenkin
family also, the tragedy of the generations was proceeding, and the
child was growing out of his father's knowledge. His artistic aptitude
was of a different order. Already he had his quick sight of many sides
of life; he already overflowed with distinctions and generalisations,
contrasting the dramatic art and national character of England, Germany,
Italy, and France. If he were dull he would write stories and poems. "I
have written," he says at thirteen, "a very long story in heroic
measure, 300 lines, and another Scotch story and innumerable bits of
poetry"; and at the same age he had not only a keen feeling for scenery,
but could do something with his pen to call it up. I feel I do always
less than justice to the delightful memory of Captain Jenkin; but with a
lad of this character, cutting the teeth of his intelligence, he was
sure to fall into the background.
The family removed in 1847 to Paris, where Fleeming was put to school
under one Deluc. There he learned French, and (if the Captain is right)
first began to show a taste for mathematics. But a far more important
teacher than Deluc was at hand; the year 1848, so momentous for Europe,
was momentous also for Fleeming's character. The family politics were
Liberal; Mrs. Jenkin, generous before all things, was sure to be upon the
side of exiles; and in the house of a Paris friend of hers, Mrs.
Turner--already known to fame as Shelley's Cornelia de Boinville--Fleeming
saw and heard such men as Manin, Gioberti, and the Ruffinis. He was thus
prepared to sympathise with revolution; and when the hour came, and he
found himself in the midst of stirring and influential events, the lad's
whole character was moved. He corresponded at that time with a young
Edinburgh friend, one Frank Scott; and I am here going to draw somewhat
largely on this boyish correspondence. It gives us at once a picture of
the Revolution and a portrait of Jenkin at fifteen; not so different (his
friends will think) from the Jenkin of the end--boyish, simple,
opinionated, delighting in action, delighting before all things in any
generous sentiment.
_"February 23, 1848._
"When at 7 o'clock to-day I went out, I met a large band going round
the streets, calling on the inhabitants to illuminate their houses,
and bearing torches. This was all very good fun, and everybody was
delighted; but as they stopped rather long and were rather turbulent
in the Place de la Madeleine, near where we live" [in the Rue
Caumartin] "a squadron of dragoons came up, formed, and charged at a
hand-gallop. This was a very pretty sight; the crowd was not too
thick, so they easily got away; and the dragoons only gave blows with
the back of the sword, which hurt but did not wound. I was as close to
them as I am now to the other side of the table; it was rather
impressive, however. At the second charge they rode on the pavement
and knocked the torches out of the fellows' hands; rather a shame,
too--wouldn't be stood in England...."
[At] "ten minutes to ten.... I went a long way along the Boulevards,
passing by the office of Foreign Affairs, where Guizot lives, and
where to-night there were about a thousand troops protecting him from
the fury of the populace. After this was passed, the number of the
people thickened, till about half a mile further on, I met a troop of
vagabonds, the wildest vagabonds in the world--Paris vagabonds, well
armed, having probably broken into gunsmiths' shops and taken the guns
and swords. They were about a hundred. These were followed by about a
thousand (I am rather diminishing than exaggerating numbers all
through), indifferently armed with rusty sabres, sticks, etc. An
uncountable troop of gentlemen, workmen, shopkeepers' wives (Paris
women dare anything), ladies'-maids, common women--in fact, a crowd of
all classes, though by far the greater number were of the
better-dressed class--followed. Indeed, it was a splendid sight: the
mob in front chanting the 'Marseillaise,' the national war-hymn, grave
and powerful, sweetened by the night air--though night in these
splendid streets was turned into day, every window was filled with
lamps, dim torches were tossing in the crowd, ... for Guizot has late
this night given in his resignation, and this was an improvised
illumination.
"I and my father had turned with the crowd, and were close behind the
second troop of vagabonds. Joy was on every face. I remarked to papa
that 'I would not have missed the scene for anything, I might never
see such a splendid one,' when _plong_ went one shot--every face went
pale--_r-r-r-r-r_ went the whole detachment, [and] the whole crowd of
gentlemen and ladies turned and cut. Such a scene!--ladies, gentlemen,
and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud, not shot but tripped up; and
those that went down could not rise, they were trampled over.... I ran
a short time straight on and did not fall, then turned down a side
street, ran fifty yards and felt tolerably safe; looked for papa, did
not see him; so walked on quickly, giving the news as I went." [It
appears, from another letter, the boy was the first to carry word of
the firing to the Rue St. Honore; and that his news wherever he
brought it was received with hurrahs. It was an odd entrance upon life
for a little English lad, thus to play the part of rumour in such a
crisis of the history of France.]
"But now a new fear came over me. I had little doubt but my papa was
safe, but my fear was that he should arrive at home before me and tell
the story; in that case I knew my mamma would go half mad with fright,
so on I went as quick as possible. I heard no more discharges. When I
got half way home, I found my way blocked up by troops. That way or
the Boulevards I must pass. In the Boulevards they were fighting, and
I was afraid all other passages might be blocked up ... and I should
have to sleep in a hotel in that case, and then my mamma--however,
after a long _detour_, I found a passage and ran home, and in our
street joined papa.
"... I'll tell you to-morrow the other facts gathered from newspapers
and papa.... To-night I have given you what I have seen with my own
eyes an hour ago, and began trembling with excitement and fear. If I
have been too long on this one subject, it is because it is yet before
my eyes.
"_Monday, 24._
"It was that fire raised the people. There was fighting all through
the night in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, on the Boulevards where
they had been shot at, and at the Porte St. Denis. At ten o'clock they
resigned the house of the Minister of Foreign Affairs (where the
disastrous volley was fired) to the people, who immediately took
possession of it. I went to school but [was] hardly there when the row
in that quarter commenced. Barricades began to be fixed. Every one was
very grave now; the _externes_ went away, but no one came to fetch me,
so I had to stay. No lessons could go on. A troop of armed men took
possession of the barricades, so it was supposed I should have to
sleep there. The revolters came and asked for arms, but Deluc
(head-master) is a National Guard, and he said he had only his own and
he wanted them; but he said he would not fire on them. Then they asked
for wine, which he gave them. They took good care not to get drunk,
knowing they would not be able to fight. They were very polite, and
behaved extremely well.
"About twelve o'clock a servant came for a boy who lived near me,
[and] Deluc thought it best to send me with him. We heard a good deal
of firing near, but did not come across any of the parties. As we
approached the railway, the barricades were no longer formed of
palings, planks, or stones; but they had got all the omnibuses as they
passed, sent the horses and passengers about their business, and
turned them over. A double row of overturned coaches made a capital
barricade, with a few paving-stones.
"When I got home I found to my astonishment that in our fighting
quarter it was much quieter. Mamma had just been out seeing the troops
in the Place de la Concorde, when suddenly the Municipal Guard, now
fairly exasperated, prevented the National Guard from proceeding, and
fired at them; the National Guard had come with their musquets not
loaded, but at length returned the fire. Mamma saw the National Guard
fire. The Municipal Guard were round the corner. She was delighted,
for she saw no person killed, though many of the Municipals were....
"I immediately went out with my papa (mamma had just come back with
him) and went to the Place de la Concorde. There was an enormous
quantity of troops in the Place. Suddenly the gates of the gardens of
the Tuileries opened: we rushed forward, out galloped an enormous
number of cuirassiers, in the middle of which were a couple of low
carriages, said first to contain the Count de Paris and the Duchess of
Orleans, but afterwards they said it was the King and Queen; and then
I heard he had abdicated. I returned and gave the news.
"Went out again up the Boulevards. The house of the Minister of
Foreign Affairs was filled with people and '_Hotel du Peuple_' written
on it; the Boulevards were barricaded with fine old trees that were
cut down and stretched all across the road. We went through a great
many little streets, all strongly barricaded, and sentinels of the
people at the principal of them. The streets are very unquiet, filled
with armed men and women, for the troops had followed the ex-King to
Neuilly and left Paris in the power of the people. We met the captain
of the Third Legion of the National Guard (who had principally
protected the people) badly wounded by a Municipal Guard, stretched on
a litter. He was in possession of his senses. He was surrounded by a
troop of men crying, 'Our brave captain--we have him yet--he's not
dead! _Vive la Reforme!_' This cry was responded to by all, and every
one saluted him as he passed. I do not know if he was mortally
wounded. That Third Legion has behaved splendidly.
"I then returned, and shortly afterwards went out again to the garden
of the Tuileries. They were given up to the people and the palace was
being sacked. The people were firing blank cartridge to testify their
joy, and they had a cannon on the top of the palace. It was a sight to
see a palace sacked, and armed vagabonds firing out of the windows,
and throwing shirts, papers, and dresses of all kinds out of the
windows. They are not rogues, these French; they are not stealing,
burning, or doing much harm. In the Tuileries they have dressed up
some of the statues, broken some, and stolen nothing but queer
dresses. I say, Frank, you must not hate the French; hate the Germans
if you like. The French laugh at us a little and call out _Goddam_ in
the streets; but to-day, in civil war, when they might have put a
bullet through our heads, I never was insulted once.
"At present we have a provisional Government, consisting of Odion
[_sic_] Barrot, Lamartine, Marast, and some others; among them a
common workman, but very intelligent. This is a triumph of
liberty--rather!
"Now, then, Frank, what do you think of it? I in a revolution and out
all day. Just think, what fun! So it was at first, till I was fired at
yesterday; but to-day I was not frightened, but it turned me sick at
heart, I don't know why. There has been no great bloodshed, [though] I
certainly have seen men's blood several times. But there's something
shocking to see a whole armed populace, though not furious, for not
one single shop has been broken open, except the gunsmiths' shops, and
most of the arms will probably be taken back again. For the French
have no cupidity in their nature; they don't like to steal--it is not
in their nature. I shall send this letter in a day or two, when I am
sure the post will go again. I know I have been a long time writing,
but I hope you will find the matter of this letter interesting, as
coming from a person resident on the spot; though probably you don't
take much interest in the French, but I can think, write, and speak on
no other subject.
"_Feb. 25._
"There is no more fighting, the people have conquered; but the
barricades are still kept up, and the people are in arms, more than
ever fearing some new act of treachery on the part of the ex-King. The
fight where I was was the principal cause of the Revolution. I was in
little danger from the shot, for there was an immense crowd in front
of me, though quite within gunshot. [By another letter, a hundred
yards from the troops.] I wished I had stopped there.
"The Paris streets are filled with the most extraordinary crowds of
men, women, and children, ladies and gentlemen. Every person joyful.
The bands of armed men are perfectly polite. Mamma and aunt to-day
walked through armed crowds alone, that were firing blank cartridges
in all directions. Every person made way with the greatest politeness,
and one common man with a blouse, coming by accident against her,
immediately stopped to beg her pardon in the politest manner. There
are few drunken men. The Tuileries is still being run over by the
people; they only broke two things, a bust of Louis Philippe and one
of Marshal Bugeaud, who fired on the people....
"I have been out all day again to-day, and precious tired I am. The
Republican party seems the strongest, and are going about with red
ribbons in their button-holes....
"The title of 'Mister' is abandoned: they say nothing but 'Citizen,'
and the people are shaking hands amazingly. They have got to the top
of the public monuments, and, mingling with bronze or stone statues,
five or six make a sort of _tableau vivant_, the top man holding up
the red flag of the Republic; and right well they do it, and very
picturesque they look. I think I shall put this letter in the post
to-morrow as we got a letter to-night.
(_On Envelope._)
"M. Lamartine has now by his eloquence conquered the whole armed crowd
of citizens threatening to kill him if he did not immediately proclaim
the Republic and red flag. He said he could not yield to the citizens
of Paris alone, that the whole country must be consulted, that he
chose the tricolour, for it had followed and accompanied the triumphs
of France all over the world, and that the red flag had only been
dipped in the blood of the citizens. For sixty hours he has been
quieting the people: he is at the head of everything. Don't be
prejudiced, Frank, by what you see in the papers. The French have
acted nobly, splendidly; there has been no brutality, plundering, or
stealing.... I did not like the French before; but in this respect
they are the finest people in the world. I am so glad to have been
here."
And there one could wish to stop with this apotheosis of liberty and
order read with the generous enthusiasm of a boy; but as the reader
knows, it was but the first act of the piece. The letters, vivid as they
are, written as they were by a hand trembling with fear and excitement,
yet do injustice, in their boyishness of tone, to the profound effect
produced. At the sound of these songs and shot of cannon, the boy's mind
awoke. He dated his own appreciation of the art of acting from the day
when he saw and heard Rachel recite the "Marseillaise" at the Francais,
the tricolor in her arms. What is still more strange, he had been up to
then invincibly indifferent to music, insomuch that he could not
distinguish "God save the Queen" from "Bonnie Dundee"; and now, to the
chanting of the mob, he amazed his family by learning and singing
"Mourir pour la Patrie." But the letters, though they prepare the mind
for no such revolution in the boy's tastes and feelings, are yet full of
entertaining traits. Let the reader note Fleeming's eagerness to
influence his friend Frank, an incipient Tory (no less) as further
history displayed; his unconscious indifference to his father and
devotion to his mother, betrayed in so many significant expressions and
omissions; the sense of dignity of this diminutive "person resident on
the spot," who was so happy as to escape insult; and the strange picture
of the household--father, mother, son, and even poor Aunt Anna--all day
in the streets in the thick of this rough business, and the boy packed
off alone to school in a distant quarter on the very morrow of the
massacre.
They had all the gift of enjoying life's texture as it comes: they were
all born optimists. The name of liberty was honoured in that family, its
spirit also, but within stringent limits; and some of the foreign
friends of Mrs. Jenkin were, as I have said, men distinguished on the
Liberal side. Like Wordsworth, they beheld
"France standing on the top of golden hours
And human nature seeming born again."
At once, by temper and belief, they were formed to find their element in
such a decent and whiggish convulsion, spectacular in its course,
moderate in its purpose. For them,
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven."
And I cannot but smile when I think that (again like Wordsworth) they
should have so specially disliked the consequence.
It came upon them by surprise. Liberal friends of the precise right
shade of colour had assured them, in Mrs. Turner's drawing-room, that
all was for the best; and they rose on February 28 without fear. About
the middle of the day they heard the sound of musketry, and the next
morning they were wakened by the cannonade. The French, who had behaved
so "splendidly," pausing, at the voice of Lamartine, just where
judicious Liberals could have desired--the French, who had "no cupidity
in their nature," were now about to play a variation on the theme
rebellion. The Jenkins took refuge in the house of Mrs. Turner, the
house of the false prophets, "Anna going with Mrs. Turner, that she
might be prevented speaking English, Fleeming, Miss H., and I" (it is
the mother who writes) "walking together. As we reached the Rue de
Clichy the report of the cannon sounded close to our ears and made our
hearts sick, I assure you. The fighting was at the barrier Rochechouart,
a few streets off. All Saturday and Sunday we were a prey to great
alarm, there came so many reports that the insurgents were getting the
upper hand. One could tell the state of affairs from the extreme quiet
or the sudden hum in the street. When the news was bad, all the houses
closed and the people disappeared; when better, the doors half opened
and you heard the sound of men again. From the upper windows we could
see each discharge from the Bastille--I mean the smoke rising--and also
the flames and smoke from the Boulevard la Chapelle. We were four
ladies, and only Fleeming by way of a man, and difficulty enough we had
to keep him from joining the National Guards--his pride and spirit were
both fired. You cannot picture to yourself the multitudes of soldiers,
guards, and armed men of all sorts we watched--not close to the window,
however, for such havoc had been made among them by the firing from the
windows, that as the battalions marched by, they cried, '_Fermez vos
fenetres!_' and it was very painful to watch their looks of anxiety and
suspicion as they marched by."
"The Revolution," writes Fleeming to Frank Scott, "was quite delightful:
getting popped at, and run at by horses, and giving sous for the wounded
into little boxes guarded by the raggedest, picturesquest,
delightfullest sentinels; but the insurrection! ugh, I shudder to think
at [_sic_] it." He found it "not a bit of fun sitting boxed up in the
house four days almost.... I was the only _gentleman_ to four ladies,
and didn't they keep me in order! I did not dare to show my face at a
window, for fear of catching a stray ball or being forced to enter the
National Guard; [for] they would have it I was a man full grown, French,
and every way fit to fight. And my mamma was as bad as any of them; she
that told me I was a coward last time if I stayed in the house a quarter
of an hour! But I drew, examined the pistols, of which I found lots with
caps, powder, and ball, while sometimes murderous intentions of killing
a dozen insurgents and dying violently overpowered by numbers...." We may
drop this sentence here: under the conduct of its boyish writer, it was
to reach no legitimate end.
Four days of such a discipline had cured the family of Paris; the same
year Fleeming was to write, in answer apparently to a question of Frank
Scott's, "I could find no national game in France but revolutions"; and
the witticism was justified in their experience. On the first possible
day they applied for passports, and were advised to take the road to
Geneva. It appears it was scarce safe to leave Paris for England.
Charles Reade, with keen dramatic gusto, had just smuggled himself out
of that city in the bottom of a cab. English gold had been found on the
insurgents, the name of England was in evil odour; and it was thus--for
strategic reasons, so to speak--that Fleeming found himself on the way
to that Italy where he was to complete his education, and for which he
cherished to the end a special kindness.
It was in Genoa they settled; partly for the sake of the Captain, who
might there find naval comrades; partly because of the Ruffinis, who had
been friends of Mrs. Jenkin in their time of exile, and were now
considerable men at home; partly, in fine, with hopes that Fleeming
might attend the University; in preparation for which he was put at once
to school. It was the year of Novara; Mazzini was in Rome; the dry bones
of Italy were moving; and for people of alert and liberal sympathies the
time was inspiriting. What with exiles turned Ministers of State,
Universities thrown open to Protestants, Fleeming himself the first
Protestant student in Genoa, and thus, as his mother writes, "a living
instance of the progress of liberal ideas"--it was little wonder if the
enthusiastic young woman and the clever boy were heart and soul upon the
side of Italy. It should not be forgotten that they were both on their
first visit to that country; the mother still "child enough" to be
delighted when she saw "real monks"; and both mother and son thrilling
with the first sight of snowy Alps, the blue Mediterranean, and the
crowded port and the palaces of Genoa. Nor was their zeal without
knowledge. Ruffini, deputy for Genoa, and soon to be head of the
University, was at their side; and by means of him the family appear to
have had access to much Italian society. To the end, Fleeming professed
his admiration of the Piedmontese, and his unalterable confidence in the
future of Italy under their conduct; for Victor Emanuel, Cavour, the
first La Marmora and Garibaldi, he had varying degrees of sympathy and
praise: perhaps highest for the King, whose good sense and temper
filled him with respect--perhaps least for Garibaldi, whom he loved but
yet mistrusted.
But this is to look forward; these were the days not of Victor Emanuel
but of Charles Albert; and it was on Charles Albert that mother and son
had now fixed their eyes as on the sword-bearer of Italy. On Fleeming's
sixteenth birthday, they were, the mother writes, "in great anxiety for
news from the army. You can have no idea what it is to live in a country
where such a struggle is going on. The interest is one that absorbs all
others. We eat, drink, and sleep to the noise of drums and musketry. You
would enjoy and almost admire Fleeming's enthusiasm and earnestness--and
courage, I may say--for we are among the small minority of English who
side with the Italians. The other day, at dinner at the Consul's, boy as
he is, and in spite of my admonitions, Fleeming defended the Italian
cause, and so well that he 'tripped up the heels of his adversary'
simply from being well-informed on the subject and honest. He is as true
as steel, and for no one will he bend right or left.... Do not fancy him
a Bobadil," she adds, "he is only a very true, candid boy. I am so glad
he remains in all respects but information a great child."
If this letter is correctly dated, the cause was already lost, and the
King had already abdicated when these lines were written. No sooner did
the news reach Genoa, than there began "tumultuous movements"; and the
Jenkins received hints it would be wise to leave the city. But they had
friends and interests; even the Captain had English officers to keep him
company, for Lord Hardwicke's ship, the _Vengeance_, lay in port; and
supposing the danger to be real, I cannot but suspect the whole family
of a divided purpose, prudence being possibly weaker than curiosity.
Stay, at least, they did, and thus rounded their experience of the
revolutionary year. On Sunday, April 1, Fleeming and the Captain went
for a ramble beyond the walls, leaving Aunt Anna and Mrs. Jenkin to
walk on the bastions with some friends. On the way back, this party
turned aside to rest in the Church of the Madonna delle Grazie. "We had
remarked," writes Mrs. Jenkin, "the entire absence of sentinels on the
ramparts, and how the cannons were left in solitary state; and I had
just remarked 'How quiet everything is!' when suddenly we heard the
drums begin to beat, and distant shouts. _Accustomed as we are_ to
revolutions, we never thought of being frightened." For all that, they
resumed their return home. On the way they saw men running and
vociferating, but nothing to indicate a general disturbance, until, near
the Duke's palace, they came upon and passed a shouting mob dragging
along with it three cannon. It had scarcely passed before they heard "a
rushing sound"; one of the gentlemen thrust back the party of ladies
under a shed, and the mob passed again. A fine-looking young man was in
their hands; and Mrs. Jenkin saw him with his mouth open as if he sought
to speak, saw him tossed from one to another like a ball, and then saw
him no more. "He was dead a few instants after, but the crowd hid that
terror from us. My knees shook under me and my sight left me." With this
street tragedy the curtain rose upon the second revolution.
The attack on Spirito Santo and the capitulation and departure of the
troops speedily followed. Genoa was in the hands of the Republicans, and
now came a time when the English residents were in a position to pay
some return for hospitality received. Nor were they backward. Our Consul
(the same who had the benefit of correction from Fleeming) carried the
Intendente on board the _Vengeance_, escorting him through the streets,
getting along with him on board a shore boat, and when the insurgents
levelled their muskets, standing up and naming himself "_Console
Inglese_." A friend of the Jenkins, Captain Glynne, had a more painful,
if a less dramatic part. One Colonel Nosozzo had been killed (I read)
while trying to prevent his own artillery from firing on the mob; but
in that hell's caldron of a distracted city, there were no distinctions
made, and the Colonel's widow was hunted for her life. In her grief and
peril, the Glynnes received and hid her; Captain Glynne sought and found
her husband's body among the slain, saved it for two days, brought the
widow a lock of the dead man's hair; but at last, the mob still strictly
searching, seems to have abandoned the body, and conveyed his guest on
board the _Vengeance_. The Jenkins also had their refugees, the family
of an _employe_ threatened by a decree. "You should have seen me making
a Union Jack to nail over our door," writes Mrs. Jenkin. "I never worked
so fast in my life. Monday and Tuesday," she continues, "were tolerably
quiet, our hearts beating fast in the hope of La Marmora's approach, the
streets barricaded, and none but foreigners and women allowed to leave
the city." On Wednesday, La Marmora came indeed, but in the ugly form of
a bombardment; and that evening the Jenkins sat without lights about
their drawing-room window, "watching the huge red flashes of the cannon"
from the Brigato and La Specula forts, and hearkening, not without some
awful pleasure, to the thunder of the cannonade.
Lord Hardwicke intervened between the rebels and La Marmora; and there
followed a troubled armistice, filled with the voice of panic. Now the
_Vengeance_ was known to be cleared for action; now it was rumoured that
the galley-slaves were to be let loose upon the town, and now that the
troops would enter it by storm. Crowds, trusting in the Union Jack over
the Jenkins' door, came to beg them to receive their linen and other
valuables; nor could their instances be refused; and in the midst of all
this bustle and alarm, piles of goods must be examined and long
inventories made. At last the Captain decided things had gone too far.
He himself apparently remained to watch over the linen; but at five
o'clock on the Sunday morning, Aunt Anna, Fleeming, and his mother were
rowed in a pour of rain on board an English merchantman, to suffer
"nine mortal hours of agonising suspense." With the end of that time
peace was restored. On Tuesday morning officers with white flags
appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched
in, two hundred men sleeping on the ground floor of the Jenkins' house,
thirty thousand in all entering the city, but without disturbance, old
La Marmora being a commander of a Roman sternness.
With the return of quiet, and the reopening of the Universities, we
behold a new character, Signor Flaminio: the professors, it appears,
made no attempt upon the Jenkin; and thus readily italianised the
Fleeming. He came well recommended; for their friend Ruffini was then,
or soon after, raised to be the head of the University; and the
professors were very kind and attentive, possibly to Ruffini's
_protege_, perhaps also to the first Protestant student. It was no joke
for Signor Flaminio at first; certificates had to be got from Paris and
from Rector Williams; the classics must be furbished up at home that he
might follow Latin lectures; examinations bristled in the path, the
entrance examination with Latin and English essay, and oral trials (much
softened for the foreigner) in Horace, Tacitus, and Cicero, and the
first University examination only three months later, in Italian
eloquence, no less, and other wider subjects. On one point the first
Protestant student was moved to thank his stars: that there was no Greek
required for the degree. Little did he think, as he set down his
gratitude, how much, in later life and among cribs and dictionaries, he
was to lament this circumstance; nor how much of that later life he was
to spend acquiring, with infinite toil, a shadow of what he might then
have got with ease, and fully. But if his Genoese education was in this
particular imperfect, he was fortunate in the branches that more
immediately touched on his career. The physical laboratory was the best
mounted in Italy. Bancalari, the professor of natural philosophy, was
famous in his day; by what seems even an odd coincidence, he went deeply
into electro-magnetism; and it was principally in that subject that
Signor Flaminio, questioned in Latin and answering in Italian, passed
his Master of Arts degree with first-class honours. That he had secured
the notice of his teachers one circumstance sufficiently proves. A
philosophical society was started under the presidency of Mamiani, "one
of the examiners and one of the leaders of the Moderate party"; and out
of five promising students brought forward by the professors to attend
the sittings and present essays, Signor Flaminio was one. I cannot find
that he ever read an essay; and indeed I think his hands were otherwise
too full. He found his fellow-students "not such a bad set of chaps,"
and preferred the Piedmontese before the Genoese; but I suspect he mixed
not very freely with either. Not only were his days filled with
University work, but his spare hours were fully dedicated to the arts
under the eye of a beloved task-mistress. He worked hard and well in the
art school, where he obtained a silver medal "for a couple of legs the
size of life drawn from one of Raphael's cartoons." His holidays were
spent in sketching; his evenings, when they were free, at the theatre.
Here at the opera he discovered besides a taste for a new art, the art
of music; and it was, he wrote, "as if he had found out a heaven on
earth." "I am so anxious that whatever he professes to know, he should
really perfectly possess," his mother wrote, "that I spare no pains";
neither to him nor to myself, she might have added. And so when he
begged to be allowed to learn the piano, she started him with
characteristic barbarity on the scales; and heard in consequence
"heart-rending groans" and saw "anguished claspings of hands" as he lost
his way among their arid intricacies.
In this picture of the lad at the piano there is something, for the
period, girlish. He was indeed his mother's boy; and it was fortunate
his mother was not altogether feminine. She gave her son a womanly
delicacy in morals, to a man's taste--to his own taste in later
life--too finely spun, and perhaps more elegant than healthful. She
encouraged him besides in drawing-room interests. But in other points
her influence was manlike. Filled with the spirit of thoroughness, she
taught him to make of the least of these accomplishments a virile task;
and the teaching lasted him through life. Immersed as she was in the
day's movements, and buzzed about by leading Liberals, she handed on to
him her creed in politics: an enduring kindness for Italy, and a
loyalty, like that of many clever women, to the Liberal party with but
small regard to men or measures. This attitude of mind used often to
disappoint me in a man so fond of logic; but I see now how it was
learned from the bright eyes of his mother, and to the sound of the
cannonades of 1848. To some of her defects, besides, she made him heir.
Kind as was the bond that united her to her son, kind, and even pretty,
she was scarce a woman to adorn a home; loving as she did to shine;
careless as she was of domestic, studious of public graces. She probably
rejoiced to see the boy grow up in somewhat of the image of herself,
generous, excessive, enthusiastic, external; catching at ideas,
brandishing them when caught; fiery for the right, but always fiery;
ready at fifteen to correct a consul, ready at fifty to explain to any
artist his own art.
The defects and advantages of such a training were obvious in Fleeming
throughout life. His thoroughness was not that of the patient scholar,
but of an untrained woman with fits of passionate study; he had learned
too much from dogma, given indeed by cherished lips; and precocious as
he was in the use of the tools of the mind, he was truly backward in
knowledge of life and of himself. Such as it was at least, his home and
school training was now complete; and you are to conceive the lad as
being formed in a household of meagre revenue, among foreign
surroundings, and under the influence of an imperious drawing-room
queen; from whom he learned a great refinement of morals, a strong sense
of duty, much forwardness of bearing, all manner of studious and
artistic interests, and many ready-made opinions which he embraced with
a son's and a disciple's loyalty.