Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin | Page 3

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Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson Scanned and
proofed by David Price [email protected]

Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

ON the death of Fleeming Jenkin, his family and friends determined to
publish a selection of his various papers; by way of introduction, the
following pages were drawn up; and the whole, forming two
considerable volumes, has been issued in England. In the States, it has
not been thought advisable to reproduce the whole; and the memoir
appearing alone, shorn of that other matter which was at once its
occasion and its justification, so large an account of a man so little
known may seem to a stranger out of all proportion. But Jenkin was a
man much more remarkable than the mere bulk or merit of his work
approves him. It was in the world, in the commerce of friendship, by
his brave attitude towards life, by his high moral value and unwearied
intellectual effort, that he struck the minds of his contemporaries. His
was an individual figure, such as authors delight to draw, and all men
to read of, in the pages of a novel. His was a face worth painting for its
own sake. If the sitter shall not seem to have justified the portrait, if
Jenkin, after his death, shall not continue to make new friends, the fault
will be altogether mine.
R. L S.
SARANAC, OCT., 1887.

CHAPTER I
.

The Jenkins of Stowting - Fleeming's grandfather - Mrs. Buckner's
fortune - Fleeming's father; goes to sea; at St. Helena; meets King Tom;
service in the West Indies; end of his career - The Campbell- Jacksons -
Fleeming's mother - Fleeming's uncle John.
IN the reign of Henry VIII., a family of the name of Jenkin, claiming to
come from York, and bearing the arms of Jenkin ap Philip of St.
Melans, are found reputably settled in the county of Kent. Persons of
strong genealogical pinion pass from William Jenkin, Mayor of
Folkestone in 1555, to his contemporary 'John Jenkin, of the Citie of
York, Receiver General of the County,' and thence, by way of Jenkin
ap Philip, to the proper summit of any Cambrian pedigree - a prince;
'Guaith Voeth, Lord of Cardigan,' the name and style of him. It may
suffice, however, for the present, that these Kentish Jenkins must have
undoubtedly derived from Wales, and being a stock of some efficiency,
they struck root and grew to wealth and consequence in their new
home.
Of their consequence we have proof enough in the fact that not only
was William Jenkin (as already mentioned) Mayor of Folkestone in
1555, but no less than twenty-three times in the succeeding century and
a half, a Jenkin (William, Thomas, Henry, or Robert) sat in the same
place of humble honour. Of their wealth we know that in the reign of
Charles I., Thomas Jenkin of Eythorne was more than once in the
market buying land, and notably, in 1633, acquired the manor of
Stowting Court. This was an estate of some 320 acres, six miles from
Hythe, in the Bailiwick and Hundred of Stowting, and the Lathe of
Shipway, held of the Crown IN CAPITE by the service of six men and
a constable to defend the passage of the sea at Sandgate. It had a
chequered history before it fell into the hands of Thomas of Eythorne,
having been sold and given from one to another - to the Archbishop, to
Heringods, to the Burghershes, to Pavelys, Trivets, Cliffords, Wenlocks,
Beauchamps, Nevilles, Kempes, and Clarkes: a piece of Kentish
ground condemned to see new faces and to be no man's home. But from
1633 onward it became the anchor of the Jenkin family in Kent; and

though passed on from brother to brother, held in shares between uncle
and nephew, burthened by debts and jointures, and at least once sold
and bought in again, it remains to this day in the hands of the direct line.
It is