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-cla.s.s 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 Ma.r.s.eillaise 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 Ma.r.s.eilles; 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 auth.o.r.ess, 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 t.i.tle 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 canva.s.sing 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 quant.i.ty" 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. Gla.s.s, 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 bra.s.s 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. Gla.s.s & 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 sh.o.r.e, raised it, and "under-run" or pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.eward 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, a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sing by. Jenkin suffered a little from malaria, but of a different origin. "A number of the SAt.u.r.dAY 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 sh.o.r.e, and one or two lying out at sea. Next day operations were begun on the sh.o.r.e 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 pa.s.sed 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 anch.o.r.ed for the night some distance from the sh.o.r.e, 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, pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 ma.s.s 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ls. 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 p.r.o.ngs. 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 cla.s.s-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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 cla.s.sical 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.sistance, 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 dest.i.tute of verdure; and tufts of thyme, wild mastic, or mint, though they sound well, are not nearly so pretty as gra.s.s. 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 G.o.d, 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 anch.o.r.ed; 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.