FATHER AND MOTHER xxv 



both for his face and his gallant bearing ; not so much that of a 

 sailor, you would have said, as like one of those gentle and 

 graceful soldiers that, to this day, are the most pleasant of 

 Englishmen to see. But though he was in these ways noble, 

 the dunce scholar of Northiam was to the end no genius. Upon 

 all points that a man must understand to be a gentleman, to be 

 upright, gallant, affectionate and dead to self, Captain Jenkin 

 was more knowing than one among a thousand ; outside of that, 

 his mind was very largely blank. He had indeed a simplicity 

 that came near to vacancy ; and in the first forty years of his 

 married life, this want grew more accentuated. In both families 

 imprudent marriages had been the rule ; but neither Jenkin nor 

 Campbell had ever entered into a more unequal union. It was 

 the captain's good looks, we may suppose, that gained for him 

 this elevation ; and in some ways and for many years of his life, 

 he had to pay the penalty. His wife, impatient of his incapacity 

 and surrounded by brilliant friends, used him with a certain con- 

 tempt. She was the managing partner ; the life was hers, not 

 his ; after his retirement they lived much abroad, where the 

 poor captain, who could never learn any language but his own, 

 sat in the corner mumchance ; and even his son, carried away 

 by his bright mother, did not recognise for long the treasures of 

 simple chivalry that lay buried in the heart of his father. Yet 

 it would be an error to regard this marriage as unfortunate. It 

 not only lasted long enough to justify itself in a beautiful and 

 touching epilogue, but it gave to the world the scientific 

 work and what (while time was) were of far greater value, the 

 delightful qualities of Fleeming Jenkin. The Kentish-Welsh 

 family, facile, extravagant, generous to a fault and far from 

 brilliant, had given the father, an extreme example of its 

 humble virtues. On the other side, the wild, cruel, proud and 

 somewhat blackguard stock of the Scotch Campbell- Jackson s had 

 put forth, in the person of the mother, all its force and courage. 

 The marriage fell in evil days. In 1823, the bubble of the 

 Golden Aunt's inheritance had burst. She died holding the 

 hand of the nephew she had so wantonly deceived ; at the last 

 she drew him down and seemed to bless him, surely with some 



