Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin | Page 9

and the erring one was instantly
discarded. Another married an actor of the name of Adcock, whom (as
I receive the tale) she had seen acting in a barn; but the phrase should
perhaps be regarded rather as a measure of the family annoyance, than
a mirror of the facts. The marriage was not in itself unhappy; Adcock
was a gentleman by birth and made a good husband; the family
reasonably prospered, and one of the daughters married no less a man
than Clarkson Stanfield. But by the father, and the two remaining Miss
Campbells, people of fierce passions and a truly Highland pride, the
derogation was bitterly resented. For long the sisters lived estranged
then, Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Adcock were reconciled for a moment,
only to quarrel the more fiercely; the name of Mrs. Adcock was
proscribed, nor did it again pass her sister's lips, until the morning when
she announced: 'Mary Adcock is dead; I saw her in her shroud last
night.' Second sight was hereditary in the house; and sure enough, as I
have it reported, on that very night Mrs. Adcock had passed away. Thus,
of the four daughters, two had, according to the idiotic notions of their
friends, disgraced themselves in marriage; the others supported the
honour of the family with a better grace, and married West Indian
magnates of whom, I believe, the world has never heard and would not
care to hear: So strange a thing is this hereditary pride. Of Mr. Jackson,
beyond the fact that he was Fleeming's grandfather, I know naught. His
wife, as I have said, was a woman of fierce passions; she would tie her
house slaves to the bed and lash them with her own hand; and her
conduct to her wild and down-going sons, was a mixture of almost
insane self-sacrifice and wholly insane violence of temper. She had
three sons and one daughter. Two of the sons went utterly to ruin, and
reduced their mother to poverty. The third went to India, a slim,
delicate lad, and passed so wholly from the knowledge of his relatives
that he was thought to be long dead. Years later, when his sister was
living in Genoa, a red- bearded man of great strength and stature,
tanned by years in India, and his hands covered with barbaric gems,

entered the room unannounced, as she was playing the piano, lifted her
from her seat, and kissed her. It was her brother, suddenly returned out
of a past that was never very clearly understood, with the rank of
general, many strange gems, many cloudy stories of adventure, and
next his heart, the daguerreotype of an Indian prince with whom he had
mixed blood.
The last of this wild family, the daughter, Henrietta Camilla, became
the wife of the midshipman Charles, and the mother of the subject of
this notice, Fleeming Jenkin. She was a woman of parts and courage.
Not beautiful, she had a far higher gift, the art of seeming so; played
the part of a belle in society, while far lovelier women were left
unattended; and up to old age had much of both the exigency and the
charm that mark that character. She drew naturally, for she had no
training, with unusual skill; and it was from her, and not from the two
naval artists, that Fleeming inherited his eye and hand. She played on
the harp and sang with something beyond the talent of an amateur. At
the age of seventeen, she heard Pasta in Paris; flew up in a fire of
youthful enthusiasm; and the next morning, all alone and without
introduction, found her way into the presence of the PRIMA DONNA
and begged for lessons. Pasta made her sing, kissed her when she had
done, and though she refused to be her mistress, placed her in the hands
of a friend. Nor was this all, for when Pasta returned to Paris, she sent
for the girl (once at least) to test her progress. But Mrs. Jenkin's talents
were not so remarkable as her fortitude and strength of will; and it was
in an art for which she had no natural taste (the art of literature) that she
appeared before the public. Her novels, though they attained and
merited a certain popularity both in France and England, are a measure
only of her courage. They were a task, not a beloved task; they were
written for money in days of poverty, and they served their end. In the
least thing as well as in the greatest, in every province of life as well as
in her novels, she displayed the same capacity of taking infinite pains,
which descended to her son. When she was about forty (as near as her
age was known) she lost her