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 life-long 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
Français peints par euxmêmes.” . . . 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 he was the classmate of Tait and Clerk
Maxwell, bore away many prizes, and was once unjustly flogged by Rector
Williams. He used to insist that all his bad schoolfellows 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. Honoré; 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 _détour_, 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. . . . Tonight 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.
Everyone 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 12 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
muskets 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 gallopped 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 “_Hôtel 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 were
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 Réforme_!” 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 cartridges 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 seem 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 Français,
the tricolour 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 January 23 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 fenêtres!” 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 their 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 cauldron 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 _employé_ 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 _protégé_, 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 electromagnetism;
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.