MARRIED LIFE Ixv 



Yet he was himself a very stern respecter of the hedgerows ; sought 

 safety and found dignity in the obvious path of conduct ; and 

 would palter with no simple and recognised duty of his epoch. 

 Of marriage in particular, of the bond so formed, of the obliga- 

 tions incurred, of the debt men owe to their children, he con- 

 ceived in a truly antique spirit : not to blame others, but to 

 constrain himself. It was not to blame, I repeat, that he held 

 these views ; for others, he could make a large allowance ; and 

 yet he tacitly expected of his friends and his wife a high stan- 

 dard of behaviour. Nor was it always easy to wear the armour 

 of that ideal. 



Acting upon these beliefs ; conceiving that he had indeed ' given 

 himself ' (in the full meaning of these words) for better, for worse ; 

 painfully alive to his defects of temper and deficiency in charm ; 

 resolute to make up for these ; thinking last of himself : Fleeming 

 was in some ways the very man to have made a noble, uphill 

 fight of an unfortunate marriage. In other ways, it is true he 

 was one of the most unfit for such a trial. And it was his 

 beautiful destiny to remain to the last hour the same absolute 

 and romantic lover, who had shown to his new bride the flag- 

 draped vessels in the Mersey. No fate is altogether easy ; but 

 trials are our touchstone, trials overcome our reward ; and it was 

 given to Fleeming to conquer. It was given to him to live for 

 another, not as a task, but till the end as an enchanting plea- 

 sure. ' People may write novels,' he wrote in 1869, i and other 

 people may write poems, but not a man or woman among them 

 can write to say how happy a man may be, who is desperately 

 in love with his wife after ten years of marriage.' And again 

 in 1885, after more than twenty-six years of marriage, and 

 within but five weeks of his death : ' Your first letter from 

 Bournemouth,' he wrote, c gives me heavenly pleasure for which 

 I thank Heaven and you too who are my heaven on earth.' The 

 mind hesitates whether to say that such a man has been more 

 good or more fortunate. 



Any woman (it is the defect of her sex) comes sooner to the 

 stable mind of maturity than any man ; and Jenkin was to the 

 end of a most deliberate growth. In the next chapter, when I 



