1875-1885.
Mrs. Jenkin's illness--Captain Jenkin--The golden wedding--Death of
Uncle John--Death of Mr. and Mrs. Austin--Illness and death of the
Captain--Death of Mrs. Jenkin--Effect on Fleeming--Telpherage--The
end.
And now I must resume my narrative for that melancholy business that
concludes all human histories. In January of the year 1875, while
Fleeming's sky was still unclouded, he was reading Smiles. "I read my
engineers' lives steadily," he writes, "but find biographies depressing.
I suspect one reason to be that misfortunes and trials can be
graphically described, but happiness and the causes of happiness either
cannot be or are not. A grand new branch of literature opens to my view:
a drama in which people begin in a poor way and end, after getting
gradually happier, in an ecstasy of enjoyment. The common novel is not
the thing at all. It gives struggle followed by relief. I want each act
to close on a new and triumphant happiness, which has been steadily
growing all the while. This is the real antithesis of tragedy, where
things get blacker and blacker and end in hopeless woe. Smiles has not
grasped my grand idea, and only shows a bitter struggle followed by a
little respite before death. Some feeble critic might say my new idea
was not true to nature. I'm sick of this old-fashioned notion of art.
Hold a mirror up, indeed! Let's paint a picture of how things ought to
be, and hold that up to nature, and perhaps the poor old woman may
repent and mend her ways." The "grand idea" might be possible in art;
not even the ingenuity of nature could so round in the actual life of
any man. And yet it might almost seem to fancy that she had read the
letter and taken the hint; for to Fleeming the cruelties of fate were
strangely blended with tenderness, and when death came, it came harshly
to others, to him not unkindly.
In the autumn of that same year 1875, Fleeming's father and mother were
walking in the garden of their house at Merchiston, when the latter fell
to the ground. It was thought at the time to be a stumble; it was in all
likelihood a premonitory stroke of palsy. From that day there fell upon
her an abiding panic fear; that glib, superficial part of us that speaks
and reasons could allege no cause, science itself could find no mark of
danger, a son's solicitude was laid at rest; but the eyes of the body
saw the approach of a blow, and the consciousness of the body trembled
at its coming. It came in a moment; the brilliant, spirited old lady
leapt from her bed, raving. For about six months this stage of her
disease continued with many painful and many pathetic circumstances; her
husband, who tended her, her son, who was unwearied in his visits,
looked for no change in her condition but the change that comes to all.
"Poor mother," I find Fleeming writing, "I cannot get the tones of her
voice out of my head.... I may have to bear this pain for a long time;
and so I am bearing it and sparing myself whatever pain seems useless.
Mercifully I do sleep, I am so weary that I must sleep." And again
later: "I could do very well if my mind did not revert to my poor
mother's state whenever I stop attending to matters immediately before
me." And the next day: "I can never feel a moment's pleasure without
having my mother's suffering recalled by the very feeling of happiness.
A pretty young face recalls hers by contrast--a careworn face recalls it
by association. I tell you, for I can speak to no one else; but do not
suppose that I wilfully let my mind dwell on sorrow."
In the summer of the next year the frenzy left her; it left her stone
deaf and almost entirely aphasic, but with some remains of her old sense
and courage. Stoutly she set to work with dictionaries, to recover her
lost tongues; and had already made notable progress when a third stroke
scattered her acquisitions. Thenceforth, for nearly ten years, stroke
followed upon stroke, each still further jumbling the threads of her
intelligence, but by degrees so gradual and with such partiality of loss
and of survival, that her precise state was always and to the end a
matter of dispute. She still remembered her friends; she still loved to
learn news of them upon the slate; she still read and marked the list of
the subscription library; she still took an interest in the choice of a
play for the theatricals, and could remember and find parallel passages;
but alongside of these surviving powers, were lapses as remarkable, she
misbehaved like a child, and a servant had to sit with her at table. To
see her so sitting, speaking with the tones of a deaf-mute not always to
the purpose, and to remember what she had been, was a moving appeal to
all who knew her. Such was the pathos of these two old people in their
affliction, that even the reserve of cities was melted and the
neighbours vied in sympathy and kindness. Where so many were more than
usually helpful, it is hard to draw distinctions; but I am directed and
I delight to mention in particular the good Dr. Joseph Bell, Mr. Thomas
and Mr. Archibald Constable, with both their wives, the Rev. Mr.
Belcombe (of whose good heart and taste I do not hear for the first
time--the news had come to me by way of the Infirmary) and their
next-door neighbour, unwearied in service, Miss Hannah Mayne. Nor should
I omit to mention that John Ruffini continued to write to Mrs. Jenkin
till his own death, and the clever lady known to the world as Vernon Lee
until the end: a touching, a becoming attention to what was only the
wreck and survival of their brilliant friend.
But he to whom this affliction brought the greatest change was the
Captain himself. What was bitter in his lot he bore with unshaken
courage; only once, in these ten years of trial, has Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin
seen him weep; for the rest of the time his wife--his commanding officer,
now become his trying child--was served not with patience alone, but with
a lovely happiness of temper. He had belonged all his life to the
ancient, formal, speech-making, compliment-presenting school of courtesy;
the dictates of this code partook in his eyes of the nature of a duty;
and he must now be courteous for two. Partly from a happy illusion,
partly in a tender fraud, he kept his wife before the world as a still
active partner. When he paid a call, he would have her write "with love"
upon a card; or if that (at the moment) was too much, he would go armed
with a bouquet and present it in her name. He even wrote letters for her
to copy and sign: an innocent substitution, which may have caused
surprise to Ruffini or to Vernon Lee, if they ever received, in the hand
of Mrs. Jenkin, the very obvious reflections of her husband. He had
always adored this wife whom he now tended and sought to represent in
correspondence: it was now, if not before, her turn to repay the
compliment; mind enough was left her to perceive his unwearied kindness;
and as her moral qualities seemed to survive quite unimpaired, a childish
love and gratitude were his reward. She would interrupt a conversation to
cross the room and kiss him. If she grew excited (as she did too often)
it was his habit to come behind her chair and pat her shoulder; and then
she would turn round, and clasp his hand in hers, and look from him to
her visitor with a face of pride and love; and it was at such moments
only that the light of humanity revived in her eyes. It was hard for any
stranger, it was impossible for any that loved them, to behold these mute
scenes, to recall the past, and not to weep. But to the Captain, I think
it was all happiness. After these so long years he had found his wife
again; perhaps kinder than ever before; perhaps now on a more equal
footing; certainly, to his eyes, still beautiful. And the call made on
his intelligence had not been made in vain. The merchants of Aux Cayes,
who had seen him tried in some "counter-revolution" in 1845, wrote to the
consul of his "able and decided measures," "his cool, steady judgment and
discernment," with admiration; and of himself, as "a credit and an
ornament to H.M. Naval Service." It is plain he must have sunk in all his
powers, during the years when he was only a figure, and often a dumb
figure, in his wife's drawing-room; but with this new term of service he
brightened visibly. He showed tact and even invention in managing his
wife, guiding or restraining her by the touch, holding family worship so
arranged that she could follow and take part in it. He took (to the
world's surprise) to reading--voyages, biographies, Blair's Sermons, even
(for her letters' sake) a work of Vernon Lee's, which proved, however,
more than he was quite prepared for. He shone more, in his remarkable
way, in society; and twice he had a little holiday to Glenmorven, where,
as may be fancied, he was the delight of the Highlanders. One of his last
pleasures was to arrange his dining-room. Many and many a room (in their
wandering and thriftless existence) had he seen his wife furnish "with
exquisite taste" and perhaps with "considerable luxury": now it was his
turn to be the decorator. On the wall he had an engraving of Lord
Rodney's action, showing the _Prothee_, his father's ship, if the reader
recollects; on either side of this, on brackets, his father's sword, and
his father's telescope, a gift from Admiral Buckner, who had used it
himself during the engagement; higher yet, the head of his grandson's
first stag, portraits of his son and his son's wife, and a couple of old
Windsor jugs from Mrs. Buckner's. But his simple trophy was not yet
complete; a device had to be worked and framed and hung below the
engraving; and for this he applied to his daughter-in-law: "I want you to
work me something, Annie. An anchor at each side--an anchor--stands for
an old sailor, you know--stands for hope, you know--an anchor at each
side, and in the middle THANKFUL." It is not easy, on any system of
punctuation, to represent the Captain's speech. Yet I hope there may
shine out of these facts, even as there shone through his own troubled
utterance, some of the charm of that delightful spirit.
In 1881 the time of the golden wedding came round for that sad and
pretty household. It fell on a Good Friday, and its celebration can
scarcely be recalled without both smiles and tears. The drawing-room was
filled with presents and beautiful bouquets; these, to Fleeming and his
family, the golden bride and bridegroom displayed with unspeakable
pride, she so painfully excited that the guests feared every moment to
see her stricken afresh, he guiding and moderating her with his
customary tact and understanding, and doing the honours of the day with
more than his usual delight. Thence they were brought to the
dining-room, where the Captain's idea of a feast awaited them: tea and
champagne, fruit and toast and childish little luxuries, set forth
pell-mell and pressed at random on the guests. And here he must make a
speech for himself and his wife, praising their destiny, their marriage,
their son, their daughter-in-law, their grandchildren, their manifold
causes of gratitude: surely the most innocent speech, the old, sharp
contemner of his innocence now watching him with eyes of admiration.
Then it was time for the guests to depart; and they went away, bathed,
even to the youngest child, in tears of inseparable sorrow and gladness,
and leaving the golden bride and bridegroom to their own society and
that of the hired nurse.
It was a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the
acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes
consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort a certain
smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle
at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he
pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent visits;
but here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable duties for which
Fleeming lived, and he could not pardon even the suggestion of neglect.
And now, after death had so long visibly but still innocuously hovered
above the family, it began at last to strike, and its blows fell thick
and heavy. The first to go was uncle John Jenkin, taken at last from his
Mexican dwelling and the lost tribes of Israel; and nothing in this
remarkable old gentleman's life became him like the leaving of it. His
sterling, jovial acquiescence in man's destiny was a delight to
Fleeming. "My visit to Stowting has been a very strange but not at all a
painful one," he wrote. "In case you ever wish to make a person die as
he ought to die in a novel," he said to me, "I must tell you all about
my old uncle." He was to see a nearer instance before long; for this
family of Jenkin, if they were not very aptly fitted to live, had the
art of manly dying. Uncle John was but an outsider after all; he had
dropped out of hail of his nephew's way of life and station in society,
and was more like some shrewd, old, humble friend who should have kept a
lodge; yet he led the procession of becoming deaths, and began in the
mind of Fleeming that train of tender and grateful thought which was
like a preparation for his own. Already I find him writing in the plural
of "these impending deaths"; already I find him in quest of consolation.
"There is little pain in store for these wayfarers," he wrote, "and we
have hope--more than hope, trust."
On May 19, 1884, Mr. Austin was taken. He was seventy-eight years of
age, suffered sharply with all his old firmness, and died happy in the
knowledge that he had left his wife well cared for. This had always been
a bosom concern; for the Barrons were long-lived and he believed that
she would long survive him. But their union had been so full and quiet
that Mrs. Austin languished under the separation. In their last years
they would sit all evening in their own drawing-room hand in hand: two
old people who, for all their fundamental differences, had yet grown
together and become all the world in each other's eyes and hearts; and
it was felt to be a kind release when, eight months after, on January
14, 1885, Eliza Barron followed Alfred Austin. "I wish I could save you
from all pain," wrote Fleeming six days later to his sorrowing wife, "I
would if I could--but my way is not God's way; and of this be
assured,--God's way is best."
In the end of the same month Captain Jenkin caught cold and was confined
to bed. He was so unchanged in spirit that at first there seemed no
ground of fear; but his great age began to tell, and presently it was
plain he had a summons. The charm of his sailor's cheerfulness and
ancient courtesy, as he lay dying, is not to be described. There he lay,
singing his old sea-songs; watching the poultry from the window with a
child's delight; scribbling on the slate little messages to his wife,
who lay bedridden in another room; glad to have Psalms read aloud to
him, if they were of a pious strain--checking, with an "I don't think we
need read that, my dear," any that were gloomy or bloody. Fleeming's
wife coming to the house and asking one of the nurses for news of Mrs.
Jenkin, "Madam, I do not know," said the nurse; "for I am really so
carried away by the Captain that I can think of nothing else." One of
the last messages scribbled to his wife, and sent her with a glass of
the champagne that had been ordered for himself, ran, in his most
finished vein of childish madrigal: "The Captain bows to you, my love,
across the table." When the end was near, and it was thought best that
Fleeming should no longer go home, but sleep at Merchiston, he broke his
news to the Captain with some trepidation, knowing that it carried
sentence of death. "Charming, charming--charming arrangement," was the
Captain's only commentary. It was the proper thing for a dying man, of
Captain Jenkin's school of manners, to make some expression of his
spiritual state; nor did he neglect the observance. With his usual
abruptness, "Fleeming," said he, "I suppose you and I feel about all
this as two Christian gentlemen should." A last pleasure was secured for
him. He had been waiting with painful interest for news of Gordon and
Khartoum; and by great good fortune a false report reached him that the
city was relieved, and the men of Sussex (his old neighbours) had been
the first to enter. He sat up in bed and gave three cheers for the
Sussex Regiment. The subsequent correction, if it came in time, was
prudently withheld from the dying man. An hour before midnight on the
5th of February, he passed away: aged eighty-four.
Word of his death was kept from Mrs. Jenkin; and she survived him no
more than nine-and-forty hours. On the day before her death she received
a letter from her old friend Miss Bell of Manchester, knew the hand,
kissed the envelope and laid it on her heart; so that she too died upon
a pleasure. Half an hour after midnight, on the 8th of February, she
fell asleep: it is supposed in her seventy-eighth year.
Thus, in the space of less than ten months, the four seniors of this
family were taken away; but taken with such features of opportunity in
time or pleasant courage in the sufferer, that grief was tempered with a
kind of admiration. The effect on Fleeming was profound. His pious
optimism increased and became touched with something mystic and filial.
"The grave is not good, the approaches to it are terrible," he had
written in the beginning of his mother's illness: he thought so no more,
when he had laid father and mother side by side at Stowting. He had
always loved life; in the brief time that now remained to him he seemed
to be half in love with death. "Grief is no duty," he wrote to Miss
Bell; "it was all too beautiful for grief," he said to me, but the
emotion, call it by what name we please, shook him to his depths; his
wife thought he would have broken his heart when he must demolish the
Captain's trophy in the dining-room, and he seemed thenceforth scarcely
the same man.
These last years were indeed years of an excessive demand upon his
vitality; he was not only worn out with sorrow, he was worn out by hope.
The singular invention to which he gave the name of "Telpherage" had of
late consumed his time, overtaxed his strength, and overheated his
imagination. The words in which he first mentioned his discovery to
me--"I am simply Alnaschar"--were not only descriptive of his state of
mind, they were in a sense prophetic; since, whatever fortune may await
his idea in the future, it was not his to see it bring forth fruit.
Alnaschar he was indeed; beholding about him a world all changed, a
world filled with telpherage wires; and seeing not only himself and
family but all his friends enriched. It was his pleasure, when the
company was floated, to endow those whom he liked with stock; one, at
least, never knew that he was a possible rich man until the grave had
closed over his stealthy benefactor. And however Fleeming chafed among
material and business difficulties, this rainbow vision never faded; and
he, like his father and his mother, may be said to have died upon a
pleasure. But the strain told, and he knew that it was telling. "I am
becoming a fossil," he had written five years before, as a kind of plea
for a holiday visit to his beloved Italy. "Take care! If I am Mr.
Fossil, you will be Mrs. Fossil, and Jack will be Jack Fossil, and all
the boys will be little fossils, and then we shall be a collection."
There was no fear more chimerical for Fleeming; years brought him no
repose; he was as packed with energy, as fiery in hope, as at the first;
weariness, to which he began to be no stranger, distressed, it did not
quiet him. He feared for himself, not without ground, the fate which had
overtaken his mother; others shared the fear. In the changed life now
made for his family, the elders dead, the sons going from home upon
their education, even their tried domestic (Mrs. Alice Dunns) leaving
the house after twenty-two years of service, it was not unnatural that
he should return to dreams of Italy. He and his wife were to go (as he
told me) on "a real honeymoon tour." He had not been alone with his
wife "to speak of," he added, since the birth of his children. But now
he was to enjoy the society of her to whom he wrote, in these last days,
that she was his "Heaven on earth." Now he was to revisit Italy, and see
all the pictures and the buildings and the scenes that he admired so
warmly, and lay aside for a time the irritations of his strenuous
activity. Nor was this all. A trifling operation was to restore his
former lightness of foot; and it was a renovated youth that was to set
forth upon this re-enacted honeymoon.
The operation was performed; it was of a trifling character, it seemed
to go well, no fear was entertained; and his wife was reading aloud to
him as he lay in bed, when she perceived him to wander in his mind. It
is doubtful if he ever recovered a sure grasp upon the things of life;
and he was still unconscious when he passed away, June the 12th, 1885,
in the fifty-third year of his age. He passed; but something in his
gallant vitality had impressed itself upon his friends, and still
impresses. Not from one or two only, but from many, I hear the same tale
of how the imagination refuses to accept our loss, and instinctively
looks for his reappearing, and how memory retains his voice and image
like things of yesterday. Others, the well-beloved too, die and are
progressively forgotten: two years have passed since Fleeming was laid
to rest beside his father, his mother, and his uncle John; and the
thought and the look of our friend still haunts us.
END OF VOL. IX
PRINTED BY
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE,
LONDON, E.C.