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Fleeming and I were teacher and taught as to the principles, disputatious rivals in the practice, of dramatic writing. Acting had always, ever since Rachel and the "Marseillaise," a particular power on him. "If I do not cry at the play," he used to say, "I want to have my money back." Even from a poor play with poor actors he could draw pleasure.
They lead to final refusal. Nothing saved Fleeming from that fate, but one circumstance that cannot be counted upon the hearty favour of the mother, and one gift that is inimitable and that never failed him throughout life, the gift of a nature essentially noble and outspoken. A happy and high-minded anger flashed through his despair: it won for him his wife.
'Inditing drafts of German railways which will never get made': it is thus I find Fleeming, not without a touch of bitterness, describe his occupation. Even the patents hung fire at first. There was no salary to rely on; children were coming and growing up; the prospect was often anxious.
And yet it might almost seem to fancy that she had read the letter and taken the hint; for to Fleeming the cruelties of fate were strangely blended with tenderness, and when death came, it came harshly to others, to him not unkindly. In the autumn of that same year 1875, Fleeming's father and mother were walking in the garden of their house at Merchiston, when the latter fell to the ground.
'I wish I could save you from all pain, wrote Fleeming six days later to his sorrowing wife, 'I would if I could but my way is not God's way; and of this be assured, God's way is best. In the end of the same month, Captain Jenkin caught cold and was confined to bed.
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.
Varley in many ingenious patents, his growing credit with engineers and men of science; and he is to bear in mind that of all this activity and acquist of reputation, the immediate profit was scanty. Soon after his marriage, Fleeming had left the service of Messrs. Liddell & Gordon, and entered into a general engineering partnership with Mr. Forde, a gentleman in a good way of business.
From such passages-at-arms, many retire mortified and ruffled; but Fleeming had no sooner left the house than he fell into delighted admiration of the spirit of his adversaries.
This first visit to the Austins took place in 1855; and it seems it was some time before Fleeming began to know his mind; and yet longer ere he ventured to show it. The corrected quantity, to those who knew him well, will seem to have played its part; he was the man always to reflect over a correction and to admire the castigator.
This morning I laid the cable down to Fort Genois in style; and now we are picking up odds and ends of cable between the different breaks, and getting our buoys on board, &c. To-morrow I expect to leave for Spartivento. And now I am quite at an end of journal keeping; diaries and diary letters being things of youth which Fleeming had at length outgrown.
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