cxiv MEMOIR 



CHAPTER VI 



1869-1885. 



Edinburgh Colleagues Farrago Vita I. The Family Circle Fleeming and 

 his Sons Highland Life The Cruise of the Steain Launch Summer in 

 Styria Kustic Manners II. The Drama Private Theatricals III. Sani- 

 tary Associations The Phonograph IV. Fleeming's Acquaintance with 

 a Student His late Maturity of Mind Religion and Morality His Love 

 of Heroism Taste in Literature V. His Talk His late Popularity- 

 Letter from M. Tr<lat. 



THE remaining external incidents of Fleeming's life, pleasures, 

 honours, fresh interests, new friends, are not such as will bear 

 to be told at any length or in the temporal order. And it is 

 now time to lay narration by, and to look at the man he was 

 and the life he lived, more largely. 



Edin- Edinburgh, which was thenceforth to be his home, is a 



metropolitan small town; where college professors and the 

 lawyers of the Parliament House give the tone, and persons of 

 leisure, attracted by educational advantages, make up much of 

 the bulk of society. Not, therefore, an unlettered place, yet 

 not pedantic, Edinburgh will compare favourably with much 

 larger cities. A hard and disputatious element has been com- 

 mented on by strangers : it would not touch Fleeming, who was 

 himself regarded, even in this metropolis of disputation, as a 

 thorny tablemate. To golf unhappily he did not take, and golf 

 is a cardinal virtue in the city of the winds. Nor did he become 

 an archer of the Queen's Body Guard, which is the Chiltern 

 Hundreds of the distasted golfer. He did not even frequent 

 the Evening Club, where his colleague Tait (in my day) was so 

 punctual and so genial. So that in some ways he stood outside 

 of the lighter and kindlier life of his new home. I should not 

 like to say that he was generally popular ; but there as else- 



