The late Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering in Edinburgh
University, was remarkable for the versatility of his talent. Known to
the world as the inventor of Telpherage, he was an electrician and cable
engineer of the first rank, a lucid lecturer, and a good linguist, a
skilful critic, a writer and actor of plays, and a clever sketcher. In
popular parlance, Jenkin was a dab at everything.
His father, Captain Charles Jenkin, R.N., was the second son of Mr.
Charles Jenkin, of Stowting Court, himself a naval officer, who had
taken part in the actions with De Grasse. Stowting Court, a small estate
some six miles north of Hythe, had been in the family since the year
1633, and was held of the Crown by the feudal service of six men and a
constable to defend the sea-way at Sandgate. Certain Jenkins had settled
in Kent during the reign of Henry VIII., and claimed to have come from
Yorkshire. They bore the arms of Jenkin ap Phillip of St. Melans, who
traced his descent from 'Guaith Voeth,' Lord of Cardigan.
While cruising in the West Indies, carrying specie, or chasing
buccaneers and slavers, Charles Jenkin, junior, was introduced to the
family of a fellow midshipman, son of Mr. Jackson, Custos Rotulorum of
Kingston, Jamaica, and fell in love with Henrietta Camilla, the youngest
daughter. Mr. Jackson came of a Yorkshire stock, said to be of Scottish
origin, and Susan, his wife, was a daughter of [Sir] Colin Campbell,
a Greenock merchant, who inherited but never assumed the baronetcy of
Auchinbreck. [According to BURKE'S PEERAGE (1889), the title went to
another branch.]
Charles Jenkin, senior, died in 1831, leaving his estate so heavily
encumbered, through extravagance and high living, that only the
mill-farm was saved for John, the heir, an easy-going, unpractical
man, with a turn for abortive devices. His brother Charles married soon
afterwards, and with the help of his wife's money bought in most of
Stowting Court, which, however, yielded him no income until late in
life. Charles was a useful officer and an amiable gentleman; but lacking
energy and talent, he never rose above the grade of Commander, and was
superseded after forty-five years of service. He is represented as a
brave, single-minded, and affectionate sailor, who on one occasion saved
several men from suffocation by a burning cargo at the risk of his own
life. Henrietta Camilla Jackson, his wife, was a woman of a strong and
energetic character. Without beauty of countenance, she possessed the
art of pleasing, and in default of genius she was endowed with a variety
of gifts. She played the harp, sang, and sketched with native art. At
seventeen, on hearing Pasta sing in Paris, she sought out the artist
and solicited lessons. Pasta, on hearing her sing, encouraged her, and
recommended a teacher. She wrote novels, which, however, failed to
make their mark. At forty, on losing her voice, she took to playing the
piano, practising eight hours a day; and when she was over sixty she
began the study of Hebrew.
The only child of this union was Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin,
generally called Fleeming Jenkin, after Admiral Fleeming, one of his
father's patrons. He was born on March 25, 1833, in a building of
the Government near Dungeness, his father at that time being on the
coast-guard service. His versatility was evidently derived from his
mother, who, owing to her husband's frequent absence at sea and his
weaker character, had the principal share in the boy's earlier training.
Jenkin was fortunate in having an excellent education. His mother took
him to the south of Scotland, where, chiefly at Barjarg, she taught
him drawing among other things, and allowed him to ride his pony on the
moors. He went to school at Jedburgh, and afterwards to the Edinburgh
Academy, where he carried off many prizes. Among his schoolfellows were
Clerk Maxwell and Peter Guthrie Tait, the friends of his maturer life.
On the retirement of his father the family removed to Frankfort in 1847,
partly from motives of economy and partly for the boy's instruction.
Here Fleeming and his father spent a pleasant time together, sketching
old castles, and observing the customs of the peasantry. Fleeming was
precocious, and at thirteen had finished a romance of three hundred
lines in heroic measure, a Scotch novel, and innumerable poetical
fragments, none of which are now extant. He learned German in Frankfort;
and on the family migrating to Paris the following year, he studied
French and mathematics under a certain M. Deluc. While here, Fleeming
witnessed the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, and heard the first
shot. In a letter written to an old schoolfellow while the sound still
rang in his ears, and his hand trembled with excitement, he gives a
boyish account of the circumstances. The family were living in the Rue
Caumartin, and on the evening of February 23 he and his father were
taking a walk along the boulevards, which were illuminated for joy at
the resignation of M. Guizot. They passed the residence of the Foreign
Minister, which was guarded with troops, and further on encountered a
band of rioters marching along the street with torches, and singing the
Marseillaise. After them came a rabble of men and women of all sorts,
rich and poor, some of them armed with sticks and sabres. They turned
back with these, the boy delighted with the spectacle, 'I remarked to
papa' (he writes),'I would not have missed the scene for anything. I
might never see such a splendid one; when PONG went one shot. Every face
went pale: R--R--R--R--R went the whole detachment [of troops], 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.'
Next day, while with his father in the Place de la Concorde, which was
filled with troops, the gates of the Tuileries Garden were suddenly
flung open, and out galloped a troop of cuirassiers, in the midst
of whom was an open carriage containing the king and queen, who had
abdicated. Then came the sacking of the Tuileries, the people mounting
a cannon on the roof, and firing blank cartridges to testify their joy.
'It was a sight to see a palace sacked' (wrote the boy), 'and armed
vagabonds firing out of the windows, and throwing shirts, papers, and
dresses of all kinds out.... They are not rogues, the French; they are
not stealing, burning, or doing much harm.' [MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN,
by R. L. Stevenson.]
The Revolution obliged the Jenkins to leave Paris, and they proceeded to
Genoa, where they experienced another, and Mrs. Jenkin, with her son
and sister-in-law, had to seek the protection of a British vessel in the
harbour, leaving their house stored with the property of their friends,
and guarded by the Union Jack and Captain Jenkin.
At Genoa, Fleeming attended the University, and was its first Protestant
student. Professor Bancalari was the professor of natural philosophy,
and lectured on electro-magnetism, his physical laboratory being the
best in Italy. Jenkin took the degree of M.A. with first-class honours,
his special subject having been electro-magnetism. The questions in the
examinations were put in Latin, and answered in Italian. Fleeming also
attended an Art school in the city, and gained a silver medal for a
drawing from one of Raphael's cartoons. His holidays were spent in
sketching, and his evenings in learning to play the piano; or, when
permissible, at the theatre or opera-house; for ever since hearing
Rachel recite the Marseillaise at the Theatre Francaise, he had
conceived a taste for acting.
In 1850 Fleeming spent some time in a Genoese locomotive shop under Mr.
Philip Taylor, of Marseilles; but on the death of his Aunt Anna, who
lived with them, Captain Jenkin took his family to England, and settled
in Manchester, where the lad, in 1851, was apprenticed to mechanical
engineering at the works of Messrs. Fairbairn, and from half-past eight
in the morning till six at night had, as he says, 'to file and chip
vigorously, in a moleskin suit, and infernally dirty.' At home he
pursued his studies, and was for a time engaged with Dr. Bell in
working out a geometrical method of arriving at the proportions of Greek
architecture. His stay amidst the smoke and bustle of Manchester, though
in striking contrast to his life in Genoa, was on the whole agreeable.
He liked his work, had the good spirits of youth, and made some pleasant
friends, one of them the authoress, Mrs. Gaskell. Even as a boy he was
disputatious, and his mother tells of his having overcome a Consul at
Genoa in a political discussion when he was only sixteen, 'simply from
being well-informed on the subject, and honest. He is as true as steel,'
she writes, 'and for no one will he bend right or left... Do not fancy
him a Bobadil; he is only a very true, candid boy. I am so glad he
remains in all respects but information a great child.'
On leaving Fairbairn's he was engaged for a time on a survey for the
proposed Lukmanier Railway, in Switzerland, and in 1856 he entered the
engineering works of Mr. Penn, at Greenwich, as a draughtsman, and was
occupied on the plans of a vessel designed for the Crimean war. He did
not care for his berth, and complained of its late hours, his rough
comrades, with whom he had to be 'as little like himself as possible,'
and his humble lodgings, 'across a dirty green and through some
half-built streets of two-storied houses.... Luckily,' he adds, 'I
am fond of my profession, or I could not stand this life.' There was
probably no real hardship in his present situation, and thousands of
young engineers go through the like experience at the outset of their
career without a murmur,' and even with enjoyment; but Jenkin had
been his mother's pet until then, with a girl's delicate training, and
probably felt the change from home more keenly on that account. At
night he read engineering and mathematics, or Carlyle and the poets, and
cheered his drooping spirits with frequent trips to London to see his
mother.
Another social pleasure was his visits to the house of Mr. Alfred
Austin, a barrister, who became permanent secretary to Her Majesty's
Office of Works and Public Buildings, and retired in 1868 with the title
of C.B. His wife, Eliza Barron, was the youngest daughter of Mr.
E. Barron, a gentleman of Norwich, the son of a rich saddler, or
leather-seller, in the Borough, who, when a child, had been patted on
the head, in his father's shop, by Dr. Johnson, while canvassing for Mr.
Thrale. Jenkin had been introduced to the Austins by a letter from Mrs.
Gaskell, and was charmed with the atmosphere of their choice home, where
intellectual conversation was happily united with kind and courteous
manners, without any pretence or affectation. 'Each of the Austins,'
says Mr. Stevenson, in his memoir of Jenkin, to which we are much
indebted, 'was full of high spirits; each practised something of the
same repression; no sharp word was uttered in the house. The same point
of honour ruled them: a guest was sacred, and stood within the pale from
criticism.' In short, the Austins were truly hospitable and cultured,
not merely so in form and appearance. It was a rare privilege and
preservative for a solitary young man in Jenkin's position to have the
entry into such elevating society, and he appreciated his good fortune.
Annie Austin, their only child, had been highly educated, and knew Greek
among other things. Though Jenkin loved and admired her parents, he did
not at first care for Annie, who, on her part, thought him vain, and
by no means good-looking. Mr. Stevenson hints that she vanquished his
stubborn heart by correcting a 'false quantity' of his one day, for he
was the man to reflect over a correction, and 'admire the castigator.'
Be this as it may, Jenkin by degrees fell deeply in love with her.
He was poor and nameless, and this made him diffident; but the liking of
her parents for him gave him hope. Moreover, he had entered the service
of Messrs. Liddell and Gordon, who were engaged in the new work of
submarine telegraphy, which satisfied his aspirations, and promised him
a successful career. With this new-born confidence in his future, he
solicited the Austins for leave to court their daughter, and it was not
withheld. Mrs. Austin consented freely, and Mr. Austin only reserved
the right to inquire into his character. Neither of them mentioned his
income or prospects, and Jenkin, overcome by their disinterestedness,
exclaimed in one of his letters, 'Are these people the same as other
people?' Thus permitted, he addressed himself to Annie, and was nearly
rejected for his pains. Miss Austin seems to have resented his courtship
of her parents first; but the mother's favour, and his own spirited
behaviour, saved him, and won her consent.
Then followed one of the happiest epochs in Jenkin's life. After leaving
Penn's he worked at railway engineering for a time under Messrs. Liddell
and Gordon; and, in 1857, became engineer to Messrs. R. S. Newall & Co.,
of Gateshead, who shared the work of making the first Atlantic cable
with Messrs. Glass, Elliott & Co., of Greenwich. Jenkin was busy
designing and fitting up machinery for cableships, and making electrical
experiments. 'I am half crazy with work,' he wrote to his betrothed;
'I like it though: it's like a good ball, the excitement carries you
through.' Again he wrote, 'My profession gives me all the excitement and
interest I ever hope for.'... 'I am at the works till ten, and sometimes
till eleven. But I have a nice office to sit in, with a fire to myself,
and bright brass scientific instruments all round me, and books to read,
and experiments to make, and enjoy myself amazingly. I find the study of
electricity so entertaining that I am apt to neglect my other
work.'... 'What shall I compare them to,' he writes of some electrical
experiments, 'a new song? or a Greek play?' In the spring of 1855 he
was fitting out the s.s. Elba, at Birkenhead, for his first telegraph
cruise. It appears that in 1855 Mr. Henry Brett attempted to lay a
cable across the Mediterranean between Cape Spartivento, in the south
of Sardinia, and a point near Bona, on the coast of Algeria. It was
a gutta-percha cable of six wires or conductors, and manufactured by
Messrs. Glass & Elliott, of Greenwich--a firm which afterwards combined
with the Gutta-Percha Company, and became the existing Telegraph
Construction and Maintenance Company. Mr. Brett laid the cable from the
Result, a sailing ship in tow, instead of a more manageable steamer;
and, meeting with 600 fathoms of water when twenty-five miles from land,
the cable ran out so fast that a tangled skein came up out of the hold,
and the line had to be severed. Having only 150 miles on board to span
the whole distance of 140 miles, he grappled the lost cable near the
shore, raised it, and 'under-run' or passed it over the ship, for some
twenty miles, then cut it, leaving the seaward end on the bottom. He
then spliced the ship's cable to the shoreward end and resumed his
paying-out; but after seventy miles in all were laid, another rapid rush
of cable took place, and Mr. Brett was obliged to cut and abandon the
line.
Another attempt was made the following year, but with no better
success. Mr. Brett then tried to lay a three-wire cable from the steamer
Dutchman, but owing to the deep water--in some places 1500 fathoms--its
egress was so rapid, that when he came to a few miles from Galita, his
destination on the Algerian coast, he had not enough cable to reach the
land. He therefore telegraphed to London for more cable to be made and
sent out, while the ship remained there holding to the end. For five
days he succeeded in doing so, sending and receiving messages; but heavy
weather came on, and the cable parted, having, it is said, been chafed
through by rubbing on the bottom. After that Mr. Brett went home.
It was to recover the lost cable of these expeditions that the Elba was
got ready for sea. Jenkin had fitted her out the year before for laying
the Cagliari to Malta and Corfu cables; but on this occasion she was
better equipped. She had a new machine for picking up the cable, and
a sheave or pulley at the bows for it to run over, both designed by
Jenkin, together with a variety of wooden buoys, ropes, and chains. Mr.
Liddell, assisted by Mr. F. C. Webb and Fleeming Jenkin, were in charge
of the expedition. The latter had nothing to do with the electrical
work, his care being the deck machinery for raising the cable; but
it entailed a good deal of responsibility, which was flattering and
agreeable to a young man of his parts.
'I own I like responsibility,' he wrote to Miss Austin, while fitting
up the vessel; 'it flatters one; and then, your father might say, I have
more to gain than lose. Moreover, I do like this bloodless, painless
combat with wood and iron, forcing the stubborn rascals to do my will,
licking the clumsy cubs into an active shape, seeing the child of
to-day's thought working to-morrow in full vigour at his appointed
task.' Another letter, dated May 17, gives a picture of the start. 'Not
a sailor will join us till the last moment; and then, just as the ship
forges ahead through the narrow pass, beds and baggage fly on board, the
men, half tipsy, clutch at the rigging, the captain swears, the women
scream and sob, the crowd cheer and laugh, while one or two pretty
little girls stand still and cry outright, regardless of all eyes.'
The Elba arrived at Bona on June 3, and Jenkin landed at Fort Genova,
on Cape Hamrah, where some Arabs were building a land line. 'It was
a strange scene,' he writes, 'far more novel than I had imagined; the
high, steep bank covered with rich, spicy vegetation, of which I hardly
knew one plant. The dwarf palm, with fan-like leaves, growing about two
feet high, forms the staple verdure.' After dining in Fort Genova, he
had nothing to do but watch the sailors ordering the Arabs about under
the 'generic term "Johnny."' He began to tire of the scene, although,
as he confesses, he had willingly paid more money for less strange and
lovely sights. Jenkin was not a dreamer; he disliked being idle, and if
he had had a pencil he would have amused himself in sketching what he
saw. That his eyes were busy is evident from the particulars given
in his letter, where he notes the yellow thistles and 'Scotch-looking
gowans' which grow there, along with the cistus and the fig-tree.
They left Bona on June 5, and, after calling at Cagliari and Chia,
arrived at Cape Spartivento on the morning of June 8. The coast here
is a low range of heathy hills, with brilliant green bushes and marshy
pools. Mr. Webb remarks that its reputation for fever was so bad as to
cause Italian men-of-war to sheer off in passing by. Jenkin suffered
a little from malaria, but of a different origin. 'A number of the
SATURDAY REVIEW here,' he writes; 'it reads so hot and feverish, so
tomb-like and unhealthy, in the midst of dear Nature's hills and sea,
with good wholesome work to do.'
There were several pieces of submerged cable to lift, two with their
ends on shore, and one or two lying out at sea. Next day operations
were begun on the shore end, which had become buried under the sand, and
could not be raised without grappling. After attempts to free the cable
from the sand in small boats, the Elba came up to help, and anchored
in shallow water about sunset. Curiously enough, the anchor happened to
hook, and so discover the cable, which was thereupon grappled, cut, and
the sea end brought on board over the bow sheave. After being passed six
times round the picking-up drum it was led into the hold, and the
Elba slowly forged ahead, hauling in the cable from the bottom as she
proceeded. At half-past nine she anchored for the night some distance
from the shore, and at three next morning resumed her picking up. 'With
a small delay for one or two improvements I had seen to be necessary
last night,' writes Jenkin, 'the engine started, and since that time I
do not think there has been half an hour's stoppage. A rope to splice, a
block to change, a wheel to oil, an old rusted anchor to disengage from
the cable, which brought it up--these have been our only obstructions.
Sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty revolutions at
last my little engine tears away. The even black rope comes straight
out of the blue, heaving water, passes slowly round an open-hearted,
good-tempered-looking pulley, five feet in diameter, aft past a vicious
nipper, to bring all up should anything go wrong, through a gentle guide
on to a huge bluff drum, who wraps him round his body, and says, "Come
you must," as plain as drum can speak; the chattering pauls say, "I've
got him, I've got him; he can't come back," whilst black cable, much
slacker and easier in mind and body, is taken by a slim V-pulley
and passed down into the huge hold, where half a dozen men put him
comfortably to bed after his exertion in rising from his long bath.
'I am very glad I am here, for my machines are my own children, and I
look on their little failings with a parent's eye, and lead them into
the path of duty with gentleness and firmness. I am naturally in good
spirits, but keep very quiet, for misfortunes may arise at any instant;
moreover, to-morrow my paying-out apparatus will be wanted should all
go well, and that will be another nervous operation. Fifteen miles are
safely in, but no one knows better than I do that nothing is done till
all is done.'
JUNE 11.--'It would amuse you to see how cool (in head) and jolly
everybody is. A testy word now and then shows the nerves are strained
a little, but every one laughs and makes his little jokes as if it were
all in fun....I enjoy it very much.'
JUNE 13, SUNDAY.--'It now (at 10.30) blows a pretty stiff gale, and the
sea has also risen, and the Elba's bows rise and fall about nine feet.
We make twelve pitches to the minute, and the poor cable must feel very
sea-sick by this time. We are quite unable to do anything, and continue
riding at anchor in one thousand fathoms, the engines going constantly,
so as to keep the ship's bows close up to the cable, which by this means
hangs nearly vertical, and sustains no strain but that caused by its own
weight and the pitching of the vessel. We were all up at four, but the
weather entirely forbade work for to-day; so some went to bed, and
most lay down, making up our lee-way, as we nautically term our loss of
sleep. I must say Liddell is a fine fellow, and keeps his patience and
his temper wonderfully; and yet how he does fret and fume about trifles
at home!'
JUNE 16.--'By some odd chance a TIMES of June 7 has found its way on
board through the agency of a wretched old peasant who watches the end
of the line here. A long account of breakages in the Atlantic trial
trip. To-night we grapple for the heavy cable, eight tons to the mile. I
long to have a tug at him; he may puzzle me; and though misfortunes,
or rather difficulties, are a bore at the time, life, when working with
cables, is tame without them.--2 p.m. Hurrah! he is hooked--the big
fellow--almost at the first cast. He hangs under our bows, looking so
huge and imposing that I could find it in my heart to be afraid of him.'
JUNE 17.--'We went to a little bay called Chia, where a fresh-water
stream falls into the sea, and took in water. This is rather a long
operation, so I went up the valley with Mr. Liddell. The coast here
consists of rocky mountains 800 to 1000 feet high, covered with shrubs
of a brilliant green. On landing, our first amusement was watching the
hundreds of large fish who lazily swam in shoals about the river. The
big canes on the further side hold numberless tortoises, we are told,
but see none, for just now they prefer taking a siesta. A little further
on, and what is this with large pink flowers in such abundance?--the
oleander in full flower! At first I fear to pluck them, thinking they
must be cultivated and valuable; but soon the banks show a long line of
thick tall shrubs, one mass of glorious pink and green, set there in a
little valley, whose rocks gleam out blue and purple colours, such
as pre-Raphaelites only dare attempt, shining out hard and weird-like
amongst the clumps of castor-oil plants, cistus, arbor-vitae, and many
other evergreens, whose names, alas! I know not; the cistus is brown
now, the rest all deep and brilliant green. Large herds of cattle
browse on the baked deposit at the foot of these large crags. One or
two half-savage herdsmen in sheepskin kilts, etc., ask for cigars;
partridges whirr up on either side of us; pigeons coo and nightingales
sing amongst the blooming oleander. We get six sheep, and many fowls
too, from the priest of the small village, and then run back to
Spartivento and make preparations for the morning.'
JUNE 18.--'The short length (of the big-cable) we have picked up was
covered at places with beautiful sprays of coral, twisted and twined
with shells of those small fairy animals we saw in the aquarium at
home. Poor little things! they died at once, with their little bells and
delicate bright tints.'
JUNE 19.--'Hour after hour I stand on the fore-castle-head picking off
little specimens of polypi and coral, or lie on the saloon deck reading
back numbers of the TIMES, till something hitches, and then all is
hurly-burly once more. There are awnings all along the ship, and a most
ancient and fish-like smell (from the decaying polypi) beneath.'
JUNE 22.--'Yesterday the cable was often a lovely sight, coming out of
the water one large incrustation of delicate net-like corals and long
white curling shells. No portion of the dirty black wire was visible;
instead we had a garland of soft pink, with little scarlet sprays and
white enamel intermixed. All was fragile, however, and could hardly
be secured in safety; and inexorable iron crushed the tender leaves to
atoms.'
JUNE 24.--'The whole day spent in dredging, without success. This
operation consists in allowing the ship to drift slowly across the line
where you expect the cable to be, while at the end of a long rope,
fast either to the bow or stern, a grapnel drags along the ground. The
grapnel is a small anchor, made like four pot-hooks tied back to back.
When the rope gets taut the ship is stopped and the grapnel hauled up to
the surface in the hopes of finding the cable on its prongs. I am much
discontented with myself for idly lounging about and reading WESTWARD
HO! for the second time instead of taking to electricity or picking up
nautical information.'
During the latter part of the work much of the cable was found to be
looped and twisted into 'kinks' from having been so slackly laid, and
two immense tangled skeins were raised on board, one by means of the
mast-head and fore-yard tackle. Photographs of this ravelled cable
were for a long time exhibited as a curiosity in the windows of Messrs.
Newall & Co's. shop in the Strand, where we remember to have seen them.
By July 5 the whole of the six-wire cable had been recovered, and a
portion of the three-wire cable, the rest being abandoned as unfit
for use, owing to its twisted condition. Their work was over, but an
unfortunate accident marred its conclusion. On the evening of the 2nd
the first mate, while on the water unshackling a buoy, was struck in
the back by a fluke of the ship's anchor as she drifted, and so severely
injured that he lay for many weeks at Cagliari. Jenkin's knowledge of
languages made him useful as an interpreter; but in mentioning this
incident to Miss Austin, he writes, 'For no fortune would I be a doctor
to witness these scenes continually. Pain is a terrible thing.'
In the beginning of 1859 he made the acquaintance of Sir William
Thomson, his future friend and partner. Mr. Lewis Gordon, of Messrs. R.
S. Newall & Co., afterwards the earliest professor of engineering in a
British University, was then in Glasgow seeing Sir William's instruments
for testing and signalling on the first Atlantic cable during the six
weeks of its working. Mr. Gordon said he should like to show them to 'a
young man of remarkable ability,' engaged at their Birkenhead Works, and
Jenkin, being telegraphed for, arrived next morning, and spent a week
in Glasgow, mostly in Sir William's class-room and laboratory at the old
college. Sir William tells us that he was struck not only with Jenkin's
brightness and ability, but with his resolution to understand everything
spoken of; to see, if possible, thoroughly into every difficult
question, and to slur over nothing. 'I soon found,' he remarks, 'that
thoroughness of honesty was as strongly engrained in the scientific
as in the moral side of his character.' Their talk was chiefly on
the electric telegraph; but Jenkin was eager, too, on the subject of
physics. After staying a week he returned to the factory; but he began
experiments, and corresponded briskly with Sir William about cable
work. That great electrician, indeed, seems to have infected his visitor
during their brief contact with the magnetic force of his personality
and enthusiasm.
The year was propitious, and, in addition to this friend, Fortune about
the same time bestowed a still better gift on Jenkin. On Saturday,
February 26, during a four days' leave, he was married to Miss Austin
at Northiam, returning to his work the following Tuesday. This was the
great event of his life; he was strongly attached to his wife, and his
letters reveal a warmth of affection, a chivalry of sentiment, and
even a romance of expression, which a casual observer would never have
suspected in him. Jenkin seemed to the outside world a man without a
heart, and yet we find him saying in the year 1869, 'People may write
novels, and other people may write poems, but not a man or woman among
them can say how happy a man can be who is desperately in love with his
wife after ten years of marriage.' Five weeks before his death he
wrote to her, 'Your first letter from Bournemouth gives me heavenly
pleasure--for which I thank Heaven and you, too, who are my heaven on
earth.'
During the summer he enjoyed another telegraph cruise in the
Mediterranean, a sea which for its classical memories, its lovely
climate, and diversified scenes, is by far the most interesting in the
world. This time the Elba was to lay a cable from the Greek islands of
Syra and Candia to Egypt. Cable-laying is a pleasant mode of travel.
Many of those on board the ship are friends and comrades in former
expeditions, and all are engaged in the same venture. Some have seen a
good deal of the world, both in and out of the beaten track; they have
curious 'yarns to spin,' and useful hints or scraps of worldly wisdom to
bestow. The voyage out is like a holiday excursion, for it is only
the laying that is arduous, and even that is lightened by excitement.
Glimpses are got of hide-away spots, where the cable is landed, perhaps.
on the verge of the primeval forest or near the port of a modern city,
or by the site of some ruined monument of the past. The very magic of
the craft and its benefit to the world are a source of pleasure to the
engineer, who is generally made much of in the distant parts he has come
to join. No doubt there are hardships to be borne, sea-sickness, broken
rest, and anxiety about the work--for cables are apt suddenly to fail,
and the ocean is treacherous; but with all its drawbacks this happy
mixture of changing travel and profitable labour is very attractive,
especially to a young man.
The following extracts from letters to his wife will illustrate the
nature of the work, and also give an idea of Jenkin's clear and graphic
style of correspondence:--May 14.--'Syra is semi-eastern. The pavement,
huge shapeless blocks sloping to a central gutter; from this base
two-storeyed houses, sometimes plaster, many-coloured, sometimes
rough-hewn marble, rise, dirty and ill-finished, to straight, plain,
flat roofs; shops guiltless of windows, with signs in Greek letters;
dogs, Greeks in blue, baggy, Zouave breeches and a fez, a few
narghilehs, and a sprinkling of the ordinary continental shop-boys.
In the evening I tried one more walk in Syra with A----, but in
vain endeavoured to amuse myself or to spend money, the first effort
resulting in singing DOODAH to a passing Greek or two, the second in
spending--no, in making A---- spend--threepence on coffee for three.'
Canea Bay, in Candia (or Crete), which they reached on May 16, appeared
to Jenkin one of the loveliest sights that man could witness.
May 23.--'I spent the day at the little station where the cable was
landed, which has apparently been first a Venetian monastery and then
a Turkish mosque. At any rate the big dome is very cool, and the little
ones hold batteries capitally. A handsome young Bashi-Bazouk guards it,
and a still handsomer mountaineer is the servant; so I draw them and the
monastery and the hill till I'm black in the face with heat, and come on
board to hear the Canea cable is still bad.'
May 23.--'We arrived in the morning at the east end of Candia, and had a
glorious scramble over the mountains, which seem built of adamant.
Time has worn away the softer portions of the rock, only leaving sharp,
jagged edges of steel; sea eagles soaring above our heads--old tanks,
ruins, and desolation at our feet. The ancient Arsinoe stood here: a
few blocks of marble with the cross attest the presence of Venetian
Christians; but now--the desolation of desolations. Mr. Liddell and I
separated from the rest, and when we had found a sure bay for the cable,
had a tremendous lively scramble back to the boat. These are the bits of
our life which I enjoy; which have some poetry, some grandeur in them.
May 29.-'Yesterday we ran round to the new harbour (of Alexandria),
landed the shore end of the cable close to Cleopatra's Bath, and made a
very satisfactory start about one in the afternoon. We had scarcely
gone 200 yards when I noticed that the cable ceased to run out, and I
wondered why the ship had stopped.'
The Elba had run her nose on a sandbank. After trying to force her over
it, an anchor was put out astern and the rope wound by a steam winch,
while the engines were backed; but all in vain. At length a small
Turkish steamer, the consort of the Elba, came to her assistance, and by
means of a hawser helped to tug her off: The pilot again ran her aground
soon after, but she was delivered by the same means without much damage.
When two-thirds of this cable was laid the line snapped in deep water,
and had to be recovered. On Saturday, June 4, they arrived at Syra,
where they had to perform four days' quarantine, during which, however,
they started repairing the Canea cable.
Bad weather coming on, they took shelter in Siphano, of which Jenkin
writes: 'These isles of Greece are sad, interesting places. They are
not really barren all over, but they are quite destitute of verdure; and
tufts of thyme, wild mastic, or mint, though they sound well, are not
nearly so pretty as grass. Many little churches, glittering white, dot
the islands; most of them, I believe, abandoned during the whole year
with the exception of one day sacred to their patron saint. The villages
are mean; but the inhabitants do not look wretched, and the men are
capital sailors. There is something in this Greek race yet; they will
become a powerful Levantine nation in the course of time.'
In 1861 Jenkin left the service of Newall & Co., and entered into
partnership with Mr. H. C. Forde, who had acted as engineer under
the British Government for the Malta-Alexandria cable, and was now
practising as a civil engineer. For several years after this business
was bad, and with a young family coming, it was an anxious time for him;
but he seems to have borne his troubles lightly. Mr. Stevenson says
it was his principle 'to enjoy each day's happiness as it arises, like
birds and children.'
In 1863 his first son was born, and the family removed to a cottage at
Claygate, near Esher. Though ill and poor at this period, he kept up
his self-confidence. 'The country,' he wrote to his wife, 'will give us,
please God, health and strength. I will love and cherish you more than
ever. You shall go where you wish, you shall receive whom you wish, and
as for money, you shall have that too. I cannot be mistaken. I have now
measured myself with many men. I do not feel weak. I do not feel that I
shall fail. In many things I have succeeded, and I will in this.... And
meanwhile, the time of waiting, which, please Heaven, shall not be so
long, shall also not be so bitter. Well, well, I promise much, and do
not know at this moment how you and the dear child are. If he is but
better, courage, my girl, for I see light.'
He took to gardening, without a natural liking for it, and soon became
an ardent expert. He wrote reviews, and lectured, or amused himself in
playing charades, and reading poetry. Clerk Maxwell, and Mr. Ricketts,
who was lost in the La Plata, were among his visitors. During October,
1860, he superintended the repairs of the Bona-Spartivento cable,
revisiting Chia and Cagliari, then full of Garibaldi's troops. The
cable, which had been broken by the anchors of coral fishers, was
grapnelled with difficulty. 'What rocks we did hook!' writes Jenkin. 'No
sooner was the grapnel down than the ship was anchored; and then came
such a business: ship's engines going, deck engine thundering, belt
slipping, tear of breaking ropes; actually breaking grapnels. It was
always an hour or more before we could get the grapnels down again.'
In 1865, on the birth of his second son, Mrs. Jenkin was very ill,
and Jenkin, after running two miles for a doctor, knelt by her bedside
during the night in a draught, not wishing to withdraw his hand from
hers. Never robust, he suffered much from flying rheumatism and sciatica
ever afterwards. It nearly disabled him while laying the Lowestoft
to Norderney cable for Mr. Reuter, in 1866. This line was designed by
Messrs. Forde & Jenkin, manufactured by Messrs. W. T. Henley & Co., and
laid by the Caroline and William Cory. Miss Clara Volkman, a niece of
Mr. Reuter, sent the first message, Mr. C. F, Varley holding her hand.
In 1866 Jenkin was appointed to the professorship of Engineering in
University College, London. Two years later his prospects suddenly
improved; the partnership began to pay, and he was selected to fill the
Chair of Engineering, which had been newly established, in Edinburgh
University. What he thought of the change may be gathered from a letter
to his wife: 'With you in the garden (at Claygate), with Austin in the
coach-house, with pretty songs in the little low white room, with the
moonlight in the dear room upstairs--ah! it was perfect; but the long
walk, wondering, pondering, fearing, scheming, and the dusty jolting
railway, and the horrid fusty office, with its endless disappointments,
they are well gone. It is well enough to fight, and scheme, and bustle
about in the eager crowd here (in London) for awhile now and then; but
not for a lifetime. What I have now is just perfect. Study for winter,
action for summer, lovely country for recreation, a pleasant town for
talk.'
The liberality of the Scotch universities allowed him to continue his
private enterprises, and the summer holiday was long enough to make a
trip round the globe.
The following June he was on board the Great Eastern while she laid the
French Atlantic cable from Brest to St. Pierre. Among his shipmates
were Sir William Thomson, Sir James Anderson, C. F. Varley, Mr. Latimer
Clark, and Willoughby Smith. Jenkin's sketches of Clark and Varley are
particularly happy. At St. Pierre, where they arrived in a fog, which
lifted to show their consort, the William Cory, straight ahead, and the
Gulnare signalling a welcome, Jenkin made the curious observation
that the whole island was electrified by the battery at the telegraph
station.
Jenkin's position at Edinburgh led to a partnership in cable work with
Sir William Thomson, for whom he always had a love and admiration.
Jenkin's clear, practical, and business-like abilities were doubtless
an advantage to Sir William, relieving him of routine, and sparing
his great abilities for higher work. In 1870 the siphon recorder, for
tracing a cablegram in ink, instead of merely flashing it by the moving
ray of the mirror galvanometer, was introduced on long cables, and
became a source of profit to Jenkin and Varley as well as to Sir
William, its inventor.
In 1873 Thomson and Jenkin were engineers for the Western and Brazilian
cable. It was manufactured by Messrs. Hooper & Co., of Millwall, and the
wire was coated with india-rubber, then a new insulator. The Hooper left
Plymouth in June, and after touching at Madeira, where Sir William was
up 'sounding with his special toy' (the pianoforte wire) 'at half-past
three in the morning,' they reached Pernambuco by the beginning of
August, and laid a cable to Para.
During the next two years the Brazilian system was connected to the
West Indies and the River Plate; but Jenkin was not present on the
expeditions. While engaged in this work, the ill-fated La Plata, bound
with cable from Messrs. Siemens Brothers to Monte Video, perished in
a cyclone off Cape Ushant, with the loss of nearly all her crew. The
Mackay-Bennett Atlantic cables were also laid under their charge.
As a professor Jenkin's appearance was against him; but he was a clear,
fluent speaker, and a successful teacher. Of medium height, and very
plain, his manner was youthful, and alert, but unimposing. Nevertheless,
his class was always in good order, for his eye instantly lighted on any
unruly member, and his reproof was keen.
His experimental work was not strikingly original. At Birkenhead he made
some accurate measurements of the electrical properties of materials
used in submarine cables. Sir William Thomson says he was the first to
apply the absolute methods of measurement introduced by Gauss and Weber.
He also investigated there the laws of electric signals in submarine
cables. As Secretary to the British Association Committee on Electrical
Standards he played a leading part in providing electricians with
practical standards of measurement. His Cantor lectures on submarine
cables, and his treatise on ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM, published
in 1873, were notable works at the time, and contained the latest
development of their subjects. He was associated with Sir William
Thomson in an ingenious 'curb-key' for sending signals automatically
through a long cable; but although tried, it was not adopted. His most
important invention was Telpherage, a means of transporting goods and
passengers to a distance by electric panniers supported on a wire or
conductor, which supplied them with electricity. It was first patented
in 1882, and Jenkin spent his last years on this work, expecting great
results from it; but ere the first public line was opened for traffic at
Glynde, in Sussex, he was dead.
In mechanical engineering his graphical methods of calculating strains
in bridges, and determining the efficiency of mechanism, are of much
value. The latter, which is based on Reulaux's prior work, procured him
the honour of the Keith Gold Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Another successful work of his was the founding of the Sanitary
Protection Association, for the supervision of houses with regard to
health.
In his leisure hours Jenkin wrote papers on a wide variety of subjects.
To the question, 'Is one man's gain another man's loss?' he answered
'Not in every case.' He attacked Darwin's theory of development, and
showed its inadequacy, especially in demanding more time than the
physicist could grant for the age of the habitable world. Darwin himself
confessed that some of his arguments were convincing; and Munro, the
scholar, complimented him for his paper on Lucretius and the Atomic
Theory.' In 1878 he constructed a phonograph from the newspaper reports
of this new invention, and lectured on it at a bazaar in Edinburgh,
then employed it to study the nature of vowel and consonantal sounds. An
interesting paper on Rhythm in English Verse,' was also published by him
in the SATURDAY REVIEW for 1883.
He was clever with his pencil, and could seize a likeness with
astonishing rapidity. He has been known while on a cable expedition to
stop a peasant woman in a shop for a few minutes and sketch her on the
spot. His artistic side also shows itself in a paper on 'Artist and
Critic,' in which he defines the difference between the mechanical and
fine arts. 'In mechanical arts,' he says, 'the craftsman uses his skill
to produce something useful, but (except in the rare case when he is at
liberty to choose what he shall produce) his sole merit lies in skill.
In the fine arts the student uses skill to produce something beautiful.
He is free to choose what that something shall be, and the layman claims
that he may and must judge the artist chiefly by the value in beauty of
the thing done. Artistic skill contributes to beauty, or it would not be
skill; but beauty is the result of many elements, and the nobler the art
the lower is the rank which skill takes among them.'
A clear and matter-of-fact thinker, Jenkin was an equally clear and
graphic writer. He read the best literature, preferring, among other
things, the story of David, the ODYSSEY, the ARCADIA, the saga of Burnt
Njal, and the GRAND CYRUS. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ariosto,
Boccaccio, Scott, Dumas, Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, were
some of his favourite authors. He once began a review of George Eliot's
biography, but left it unfinished. Latterly he had ceased to admire
her work as much as before. He was a rapid, fluent talker, with excited
utterance at times. Some of his sayings were shrewd and sharp; but
he was sometimes aggressive. 'People admire what is pretty in an ugly
thing,' he used to say 'not the ugly thing.' A lady once said to him she
would never be happy again. 'What does that signify?' cried Jenkin; 'we
are not here to be happy, but to be good.' On a friend remarking that
Salvini's acting in OTHELLO made him want to pray, Jenkin answered,
'That is prayer.'
Though admired and liked by his intimates, Jenkin was never popular with
associates. His manner was hard, rasping, and unsympathetic. 'Whatever
virtues he possessed,' says Mr. Stevenson, 'he could never count on
being civil.' He showed so much courtesy to his wife, however, that a
Styrian peasant who observed it spread a report in the village that Mrs.
Jenkin, a great lady, had married beneath her. At the Saville Club,
in London, he was known as the 'man who dines here and goes up to
Scotland.' Jenkin was conscious of this churlishness, and latterly
improved. 'All my life,' he wrote,'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.'
Jenkin was a good father, joining in his children's play as well as
directing their studies. The boys used to wait outside his office
for him at the close of business hours; and a story is told of little
Frewen, the second son, entering in to him one day, while he was at
work, and holding out a toy crane he was making, with the request, 'Papa
you might finiss windin' this for me, I'm so very busy to-day.' He was
fond of animals too, and his dog Plate regularly accompanied him to the
University. But, as he used to say, 'It's a cold home where a dog is the
only representative of a child.'
In summer his holidays were usually spent in the Highlands, where Jenkin
learned to love the Highland character and ways of life. He was a
good shot, rode and swam well, and taught his boys athletic exercises,
boating, salmon fishing, and such like. He learned to dance a Highland
reel, and began the study of Gaelic; but that speech proved too
stubborn, craggy, and impregnable even for Jenkin. Once he took his
family to Alt Aussee, in the Stiermark, Styria, where he hunted chamois,
won a prize for shooting at the Schutzen-fest, learned the dialect of
the country, sketched the neighbourhood, and danced the STEIERISCH and
LANDLER with the peasants. He never seemed to be happy unless he was
doing, and what he did was well done.
Above all, he was clear-headed and practical, mastering many things;
no dreamer, but an active, business man. Had he confined himself to
engineering he might have adorned his profession more, for he liked and
fitted it; but with his impulses on other lines repressed, he might have
been less happy. Moreover, he was one who believed, with the sage, that
all good work is profitable, having its value, if only in exercise and
skill.
His own parents and those of his wife had come to live in Edinburgh;
but he lost them all within ten months of each other. Jenkin had showed
great devotion to them in their illnesses, and was worn out with grief
and watching. His telpherage, too, had given him considerable anxiety to
perfect; and his mother's illness, which affected her mind, had caused
himself to fear.
He was meditating a holiday to Italy with his wife in order to
recuperate, and had a trifling operation performed on his foot, which
resulted, it is believed, in blood poisoning. There seemed to be no
danger, and his wife was reading aloud to him as he lay in bed, when his
intellect began to wander. It is doubtful whether he regained his senses
before he died, on June 12, 1885.
At one period of his life Jenkin was a Freethinker, holding, as Mr.
Stevenson says, all dogmas as 'mere blind struggles to express the
inexpressible.' Nevertheless, as time went on he came back to a belief
in Christianity. 'The longer I live,' he wrote, 'the more convinced
I become of a direct care by God--which is reasonably impossible--but
there it is.' In his last year he took the Communion.