THE LATE PROFESSOR FLEEMING JENKIN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1899, 13 April 1888, Page 31

THE LATE PROFESSOR FLEEMING JENKIN.

Messrs Longman and Co. have just published, in two volumes, a number of papers — literary, scientific, &c— by the. late Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering in Edinburgh University, -with a memoir by Mr Robert Louis Stevenson. Jenkin was living in Paris during the Revolution of 1848, and Mr Stevenson draws largely on his boyish correspondence then with an" Edinburgh friend. It gives at once a picture of the revolution and a portrait of Jenkin at 15. A Stormy Time in Paris. In one of his letters Jenkin says : — "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 ballet through our heads, I never was insulted once I in a revolution, and out all day. Just think, what fun ! So it was at first, till I was fired at yesterday ; but today I was nob 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 gunsmith's 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." Then came the surprise of the insurrection, respecting which he writes to his friend : — "The revolution 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 of it." He found it " not a bit of fun sitting boxed up in 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 the 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." A Cook's Dilemma. A considerable part of the memoir is devoted to extracts from Jenkin's letters on his life's work — descriptive of his telegraph voyages. Hero is a picture of life on board ship, written during the cruise to Pernambuco: — " The ducks have just had their daily souse, and are quacking and gabbling in a mighty way outside the door of the captain's deck cabin, where I write. The cocks are crowing, and new-laid eggs are said to be found in the coops. Four mild oxen have been untethered and allowed to walk along the broad iron decks — a whole drove of sheep seem quite content while licking big lumps of bay salt. Two exceedingly impertinent goats lead the cook a perfect life of misery. They steal round the galley and will nibble the carrots or turnips it his back is turned for one minute : and then he throws something at them and missies them, and they scuttle off laughing impudently, and flick one ear at him from a safe distance. This is the most impudent gesture I ever saw. Winking is nothing to it. The ear normally hangs down behind ; the goat turns sideways to her enemy, by a little knowing cock of the head flicks one ear over one eye and squints from behind it for half a minute, tosses her head back, skips a pace ox two further off, and repeats the manoeuvre. The cook is very fat and cannot run after that goat much." JLlfe in the Highlands. Coming to Mr Stevenson's account of Jenkin's later career, we have this about his life in the Highlands : — " If Fleeming was ac anxious father, he did not suffer his anxiety to prevent the boys from any manly or even dangerous pursuit. Whatever it might occur to them to try, he "would carefully show them how to do it, explain the risks, and then either share the danger himself or, if that were not possible, stan I aside and wait the event with that unhappy courage of the looker-on. He was a good swimmer, and taught them to swim. He thoroughly ■ loved all manly exercises ; and during their holidays, and principally in the Highlands, helped and encouraged them to excel in as many as possible ; to shoot, to fish, to walk, to pull an oar, to hand, reef, and sfceer, and to rui^a steamlaunch. In all of these, and in all parts of Highland life, he shared delightedly. He was well on to 40 when he took once more to shooting ; he was 43 when he killed his first salmon ; but no boy couli have more siugle-mindedly rejoiced in these pursuits. His growing love for the Highland character, perhaps also a sense of the difficulty of the task, led him to take up at 41 the study of jGaelic, in which he made some shadow of progress, but not much ; the fastnesses of that elusive speech retaining to the last their independence. At the house of his friend Mrs Blackburn, who plays the part of a Highland lady as to the manner born, he learned the delightful custom of kitchen dances, which became the rule at his own house, and brought him into yet nearer contact with his neighbours. And thus at 42 he began to learn the reel, a study to which he brought his usual smiling earnestness ; and the steps, diagramatically represented Iby his own band, are before me as I write." Ivove of Heroism. Mr Stevenson says the love of heroism was his friend's rarest quality : — " Far on in middle age, when men began to lie down with the bestial goddesses Comfort and Respectability, the strings of his nature still sounded as high a note as a young man's. He loved the harsh voice of duty as a call to battle. He loved courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave yrord, an ugly virtue j everything that lifts

us above the table where we eat or the bed we sleep upon. This was no touch of the motive-monger or the ascetic. He loved his virtues to be practical, his heroes to be , great eaters of beef; he loved the jovial Heracles, loved the astute Odysseus, not the Robespierres and Wesleys. A fine buoyant sense of life and of man's unequal character ran through all his thoughts. . . . I remember having found much entertainment in Voltaire's ' Saul,' and telling him what seemed to me the drollest touches. He heard me out, as usual when displeased, and then opened fire on me with redhot shot. To belittle a noble story was easy ; it was not literature, it was not art, it was not morality ; there was no substance in such a form of jesting,' there was (in his favourite phrase) 'no nitrogenous food' in such literature. And then he proceeded to show what a fine fellow David was, and what a hard knot he was in and about Bethsheba, so that (the initial wrong committed) honour might well hesitate in the choice of conduct ; and what owls those people were who marvelled because an Eastern tyrant had killed Uriah, instead of marvelling that he had not killed the prophet also. 'Now if Voltaire had helped me to feel that,' said he, 'I could have seen some fun in it.' He loved the comedy which shows a hero human, and yet leaves him a hero, and the laughter which does not lessen love." The Drama. Jenkin was all his life a lover of the play and all that belonged to it. Acting had always a particular power over him. "If I do not cry at the play," he used to say, " I want to have my money back. Even from a poor play with poor actors he could drW pleasure. " Giacometti's • Elizabetta,' " I find him writing, "fetched the house vastly. Poor Queen Elizabeth ! And yet it was a little good." And again, after a night of Salvini: " I do not suppose any one with feelings could sit out ' Othello,' if lago and Desdemona were acted." Salvini was, in his view, the greatest actor he had seen.