s was not that of the patient scholar,
but of an untrained woman with fits of passionate study; he had learned
too much from dogma, given indeed by cherished lips; and precocious as
he was in the use of the tools of the mind, he was truly backward in
knowledge of life and of himself. Such as it was at least, his home and
school training was now complete; and you are to conceive the lad as
being formed in a household of meagre revenue, among foreign
surroundings, and under the influence of an imperious drawing-room
queen; from whom he learned a great refinement of morals, a strong sense
of duty, much forwardness of bearing, all manner of studious and
artistic interests, and many ready-made opinions which he embraced with
a son's and a disciple's loyalty.

CHAPTER III

1851-1858

Return to England--Fleeming at Fairbairn's--Experience in a
strike--Dr. Bell and Greek architecture--The Gaskells--Fleeming at
Greenwich--The Austins--Fleeming and the Austins--His
engagement--Fleeming and Sir W. Thomson.

In 1851, the year of Aunt Anna's death, the family left Genoa and came
to Manchester, where Fleeming was entered in Fairbairn's works as an
apprentice. From the palaces and Alps, the Mole, the blue Mediterranean,
the humming lanes and the bright theatres of Genoa, he fell--and he was
sharply conscious of the fall--to the dim skies and the foul ways of
Manchester. England he found on his return "a horrid place," and there
is no doubt the family found it a dear one. The story of the Jenkin
finances is not easy to follow. The family, I am told, did not practise
frugality, only lamented that it should be needful; and Mrs. Jenkin, who
was always complaining of those "dreadful bills," was "always a good
deal dressed." But at this time of the return to England, things must
have gone further. A holiday tour of a fortnight Fleeming feared would
be beyond what he could afford, and he only projected it "to have a
castle in the air." And there were actual pinches. Fresh from a warmer
sun, he was obliged to go without a greatcoat, and learned on railway
journeys to supply the place of one with wrappings of old newspaper.

From half-past eight till six, he must "file and chip vigorously in a
moleskin suit and infernally dirty." The work was not new to him, for he
had already passed some time in a Genoese shop; and to Fleeming no work
was without interest. Whatever a man can do or know, he longed to know
and do a