Mrs. F. Jenkin--and of
Fleeming--Appointment to the Chair at Edinburgh.

On Saturday, Feb. 26, 1859, profiting by a holiday of four days,
Fleeming was married to Miss Austin at Northiam; a place connected not
only with his own family but with that of his bride as well. By Tuesday
morning he was at work again, fitting out cableships at Birkenhead. Of
the walk from his lodgings to the works I find a graphic sketch in one
of his letters: "Out over the railway bridge, along a wide road raised
to the level of a ground floor above the land, which, not being built
upon, harbours puddles, ponds, pigs, and Irish hovels;--so to the dock
warehouses, four huge piles of building with no windows, surrounded by a
wall about twelve feet high;--in through the large gates, round which
hang twenty or thirty rusty Irish, playing pitch and toss and waiting
for employment;--on along the railway, which came in at the same gates,
and which branches down between each vast block--past a pilot-engine
butting refractory trucks into their places--on to the last block, [and]
down the branch, sniffing the guano-scented air, and detecting the old
bones. The hartshorn flavour of the guano becomes very strong, as I near
the docks, where, across the _Elba's_ decks, a huge vessel is
discharging her cargo of the brown dust, and where huge vessels have
been discharging that same cargo for the last five months." This was the
walk he took his young wife on the morrow of his return. She had been
used to the society of lawyers and civil servants, moving in that
circle which seems to itself the pivot of the nation, and is in truth
only a clique like another; and Fleeming was to her the nameless
assistant of a nameless firm of engineers, doing his inglorious
business, as she now saw for herself, among unsavoury surroundings. But
when their walk brought them within view of the river, she beheld a
sight to her of the most novel beauty: four great sea-going ships
dressed out with flags. "How lovely!" she cried. "What is it for?" "For
you," said Fleeming. Her surprise was only equalled by her pleasure. But
perhaps, for what we may call private fame, there is no life like that
of the engineer; who is a great man in out-of-the-way places, by the
dockside or on the desert island, or in populous ships, and remains
quite unheard of in the coteries of London. And Fleeming had already
made his mark among the few who had an opportunity of knowing him.

His marriage wa