THE CAMPBELL-JACKSONS xxiii 



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, Fleem- 

 became the wife of the midshipman Charles, and the mother of Bother 

 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 



