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,[26] 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,[27] 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 inter-domestic
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 puppet-show 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 play-hour,
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 any one 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."
"_July 7th._--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 on to forty when he took once more to shooting, he was forty-three
when he killed his first salmon, but no boy could have more
single-mindedly rejoiced in these pursuits. His growing love for the
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
at 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 Schuetzen-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 Graefin_" 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 schoen_." Joseph's
cousin, Walpurga Moser, to an orchestra of clarionet and zither, taught
the family the country dances, the Steierisch and the Laendler, 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 grey 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. "Glacometti'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 Barren, and from Enfield of the "Speaker." The
theatre was one of Edward Barren'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 arm-chair, 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 had
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 those infinitesimal improvements which are so much
in art and for the artist. Our first Greek play had been costumed by the
professional costumier, with unforgettable 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[28] 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?"
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." 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 vocalisation"; 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
Scottish 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 those 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 buckramed 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 make 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 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
pickthank; 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 "Sauel," 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 humankind 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, 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 shone 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 without 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
sick-nurse 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 proposal que la seance fut
levee a la condition que chaque membre francais _emportat_ a dejeuner
un jure etranger. Jenkin applaudit. "Je vous emmene 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 trouvait 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 allames 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, au
quel il porta un toast. Le soir, nous revinmes tard a Paris; il
faisait chaud; nous etions un peu fatigues; nous entrames 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, quoi qu'il semblat n'aimer 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 eut 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 resserra
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. Il y fit une tres interessante
communication, qui me montrait une fois de plus l'originalite de ses
vues et la surete 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 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 voyage me restera toujours
en memoire parce que c'est la que se fixa definitivement 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
intellectuel s'est elargi, 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 trottoirs, stationne aux coins
des rues et deux fois rebrousse chemin 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Robert Lawson Tait (1845-1899).--ED.
[27] William Young Sellar (1825-1890).--ED.
[28] Not reprinted in this edition.--ED.