Part 2 (1/2)

In this picture of the lad at the piano, there is soirlish He was indeed his ether feave her son a womanly delicacy in morals, to a man's taste-to his own taste in later life-too finely spun, and perhaps ed hi-room interests But in other points her influence was ht him to make of the least of these accoh life Immersed as she was in the day'sLiberals, she handed on to hi kindness for Italy, and a loyalty, like that of ard to men or measures This attitude of ic; but I see noas learned froht eyes of his mother and to the sound of the cannonades of 1848 To some of her defects, besides, she made him heir Kind as was the bond that united her to her son, kind and even pretty, she was scarce a wo as she did to shi+ne; careless as she was of doraces She probably rejoiced to see the boy grow up in soenerous, excessive, enthusiastic, external; catching at ideas, brandishi+ng theht, but always fiery; ready at fifteen to correct a consul, ready at fifty to explain to any artist his own art

The defects and advantages of such a training were obvious in Fleehness was not that of the patient scholar, but of an untrained woman with fits of passionate study; he had learned too iven indeed by cherished lips; and precocious as he was in the use of the tools of the e of life and of hi was now co forn surroundings, and under the influence of an ireat refine sense of duty, , 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 18511858

Return to England-Flee at Fairbairn's-Experience in a Strike-Dr Bell and Greek Architecture-The Gaskells-Fleeage and Sir W

Thomson

IN 1851, the year of Aunt Anna's death, the fa was entered in Fairbairn's works as an apprentice From the palaces and Alps, the Mole, the blue Mediterranean, the huht theatres of Genoa, he fell-and he was sharply conscious of the fall-to the diland 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 faality, only lamented that it should be needful; and Mrs Jenkin, as always coood deal dressed' But at this tione further A holiday tour of a fortnight, Flee 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 froreatcoat, and learned on railway journeys to supply the place of one rappings of old newspaper

Froorously in a moleskin suit and infernally dirty' The as not new to him, for he had already passed so no ithout interest Whatever a ed to know and do also 'I never learned anything,' he wrote, 'not even standing on my head, but I found a use for it' In the spare hours of his first telegraph voyage, to give an instance of his greed of knowledge, he ation, every rope in the shi+p and how to handle her on any occasion'; and once when he was shown a young lady's holiday collection of seaweeds, he must cry out, 'It showed me my eyes had been idle' Nor was his the case of the mere literary ss In him, to do and to do well, was even a dearer a done well, any craft, despatch, or finish, delighted and inspired him I remember him with a twopenny japanese box of three drawers, so exactly fitted that, when one was driven home, the others started from their places; the whole spirit of japan, he told me, was pictured in that box; that plain piece of carpentry was as much inspired by the spirit of perfection as the happiest drawing or the finest bronze; and he who could not enjoy it in the one was not fully able to enjoy it in the others Thus, too, he found in Leonardo's engineering and anatos a perpetual feast; and of the for indeed annoyed Flee more than the attempt to separate the fine arts from the arts of handicraft; any definition or theory that failed to bring these two together, according to him, had missed the point; and the essence of the pleasure received lay in seeing things well done Other qualities must be added; he was the last to deny that; but this, of perfect craft, was at the bottom of all And on the other hand, a nail ill-driven, a joint ill-fitted, a tracing clu to which a man had set his hand and not set it aptly, er With such a character, he would feel but little drudgery at Fairbairn's

There would be so daily to be done, slovenliness to be avoided, and a higher mark of skill to be attained; he would chip and file, as he had practiced scales, impatient of his own imperfection, but resolute to learn

And there was another spring of delight For he was now e creations of man's brain, to some so abhorrent, to him of an interest so inexhaustible: in which iron, water, and fire are made to serve as slaves, noith a tread more powerful than an elephant's, and noith a touch more precise and dainty than a pianist's The taste for machinery was one that I could never share with him, and he had a certain bitter pity for my weakness Once when I had proved, for the hundredth time, the depth of this defect, he looked at me askance 'And the best of the joke,' said he, 'is that he thinks hiineer against brute forces and with inert allies, was nobly poetic Habit never dulled in hireatness of the aims and obstacles of his profession Habit only sharpened his inventor's gusto in contrivance, in triumphant artifice, in the Odyssean subtleties, by which wires are taught to speak, and iron hands to weave, and the slender shi+p to brave and to outstrip the tereat results alone are ad in particular, rather the infinite device and sleight of hand that made them possible

A notion was current at the time that, in such a shop as Fairbairn's, a pupil would never be popular unless he drank with the work, ould do none of these things, they accepted as a friend and companion; and this was the subject of reers till to-day He thought it one of the advantages of his profession to be brought into a close relation with the working classes; and for the skilled artisan he had a great estee his company, his virtues, and his taste in soard them, like a platform speaker, in a lump He drew, on the other hand, broad distinctions; and it was his profound sense of the difference between one working man and another that led him to devote so much time, in later days, to the furtherance of technical education In 1852 he had occasion to see both men and masters at their worst, in the excitement of a strike; and very foolishly (after their custo with a fair show of justice on either side, the masters stultified their cause by obstinate ie 'On Wednesday last,' writes Flee, 'about three thousand banded round Fairbairn's door at 6 o'clock: irls, the lowest of the low in a very low place Orders came that no one was to leave the works; but the men inside (knobsticks, as they are called) were precious hungry and thought they would venture Two of my companions and myself went out with the very first, and had the full benefit of every possible groan and bad language' But the police cleared a lane through the crowd, the pupils were suffered to escape unhurt, and only the knobsticks followed ho enjoyed, as we , that fine thrill of expectant valour hich he had sallied forth into the mob 'I never before felt myself so decidedly somebody, instead of nobody,' he wrote

Outside as inside the works, he was 'pretty merry and well to do,'

zealous in study, welco-kindness to his hts a ith Dr Bell, 'working away at certain geo the Greek architectural proportions': a business after Flee's heart, for he was never so pleased as when he could marry his two devotions, art and science This was besides, in all likelihood, the beginning of that love and intireatest, froedy) down to the details of Grecian tailoring, which he used to express in his familiar phrase: 'The Greeks were the boys' Dr Bell-the son of George Joseph, the nephew of Sir Charles, and though he uished talents of his race-had hit upon the singular fact that certain geoave the proportions of the Doric order Flee, under Dr Bell's direction, applied the saain found the proportions accurately given Nuiven to the world, perhaps because of the dissensions that arose between the authors For Dr Bell believed that 'these intersections were in soonistic forces at work'; but his pupil and helper, with characteristic trenchancy, brushed aside this eoht be said) of setting out the work, purely empirical and in no way connected with any laws of either force or beauty' 'Many a hard and pleasant fight we had over it,' wrote Jenkin, in later years; 'and impertinent as it uonistic forces in the Doric order; in Fleeh; and the Bobadil of these affairs with Dr Bell was still, like the corrector of Italian consuls, 'a great child in everything but inforht be seen with a family of children; and with these, there was no word of the Greek orders; with these Fleehts people to troop into the playroo, and soathered quietly about him as he amused them with his pencil

In another Manchester family, whose name will be fa was a frequent visitor To Mrs

Gaskell, he would often bring his new ideas, a process that many of his later friends will understand and, in their own cases, reles,' forcing thehts and to explain their prepossessions; and I hear from Miss Gaskell that they used to wonder how he could throw all the ardour of his character into the smallest matters, and to admire his unselfish devotion to his parents Of one of these wrangles, I have found a recorddown his doctrine that the end justifies the ht 'to boast of your six lar or to steal a knife to prevent a irlish loyalty to what is current, had rejected the heresy with indignation Froes-at-ar had no sooner left the house than he fell into delighted admiration of the spirit of his adversaries From that it was but a step to ask hi in their heads'; for even the falsest for opinion) reposed upon some truth, just as he could 'not even allow that people ad' And before he sat down to write his letter, he thought he had hit upon the explanation 'I fancy the true idea,' he wrote, 'is that you must never do yourself or anyone else a moral injury-make any , as he would have loved to point out, fro

But this perfervid disputant was not always out of key with his audience

One whoain be happy 'What does that signify?' cried Fleeood' And the words (as his hearer writes tolife

Fro passed to a railway survey in Switzerland, and thence again to Mr Penn's at Greenwich, where he was engaged as draughtsman There in 1856, we find hiines for innun' Froht, he worked in a crowded office aenerally low personal and not witty,'

pelted with oranges and apples, regaled with dirty stories, and seeking to suit hi to be as little like his were hard by, 'across a dirty green and through some half-built streets of two-storied houses'; he had Carlyle and the poets, engineering and mathematics, to study by himself in such spare ti and not so young, hom he liked to correspond But not all of these could compensate for the absence of that ure in his life, for sorry surroundings, unsuitable society, and work that leaned to the enerally visit some friends in town and seereen seeet back

Luckily I am fond of my profession, or I could not stand this life' It is a question incontinued to stand it without loss 'We are not here to be happy, but to be good,' quoth the young philosopher; but noJenkin There is a time of life besides when apart frohbours and still fewer to the had arrived, later than common and even worse provided The letter from which I have quoted is the last of his correspondence with Frank Scott, and his last confidential letter to one of his own sex 'If you consider it rightly,'

he wrote long after, 'you will find the want of correspondence no such strange want innoble in the h not burnished by daily use' It is well said; but the last letter to Frank Scott is scarcely of a noble rown his old self, yet not made acquaintance with the new This letter from a busy youth of three and twenty, breathes of seventeen: the sickening alternations of conceit and shame, the expense of hope _in vacuo_, the lack of friends, the longing after love; the whole world of egois, a voluntary Atlas

With Fleely severe The very day before this (to me) distasteful letter, he had written to Miss Bell of Manchester in a sweeter strain; I do not quote the one, I quote the other; fair things are the best 'I keep ht to see mamma' (as then on a visit to London) 'if not kept too late at the works; and have singing lessons once oletto_”; and think and talk about you; and listen to old at her touch, she's a fairy and notill I have a picture in inal is Stowting Even you don't know half how good s too, which I must not mention She teaches ood I begin to understand that mamma would find useful occupation and create beauty at the bottoenerous-hearted woh neither mother nor son could be called beautiful, they enerous, ardent wo son sitting at her side in one of his rare hours of pleasure, half-beguiled, half-aoes ho is once more burthened with debt, and the noisy coery once reen seems all the dirtier or if Atlas must resume his load

But in healthy natures, this ti passes quickly of itself, and is easily alleviated by fresh interests; and already, in the letter to Frank Scott, there are tords of hope: his friends in London, his love for his profession The lastto pass into a new sphere, where all his faculties were to be tried and exercised, and his life to be filled with interest and effort But it was not left to engineering: another and more influential aim was to be set before him He must, in any case, have fallen in love; in any case, his love would have ruled his life; and the question of choice was, for the descendant of two such fa of paraenerous, devoted as he was, the son of the wild Jacksons and the facile Jenkins ht have been led far astray By one of those partialities that fillwas directed well Or are we to say that by a e, as by a crucialat least reason may discern: that a man but partly chooses, he also partly forms, his help-mate; and he must in part deserve her, or the treasure is but won for achanced if you will (and indeed all these opportunities are as 'random as blind man's buff') upon a as worthy of hie to wait and labour for his prize, and the tenderness and chivalry that are required to keep such prizes precious Upon this point he has himself written well, as usual with fervent opti in his head

'Love,' he wrote, 'is not an intuition of the person most suitable to us, most required by us; of the person hom life flowers and bears fruit If this were so, the chances of ourthat person would be small indeed; our intuition would often fail; the blindness of love would then be fatal as it is proverbial No, love works differently, and in its blindness lies its strength Man and woly desires to be loved, each opens to the other that heart of ideal aspirations which they have often hid till then; each, thus knowing the ideal of the other, tries to fulfil that ideal, each partially succeeds The greater the love, the greater the success; the nobler the idea of each, the more durable, the more beautiful the effect Meanwhile the blindness of each to the other's defects enables the transformation to proceed [unobserved,] so that when the veil is withdrawn (if it ever is, and this I do not know) neither knows that any change has occurred in the person whom they loved Do not fear, therefore I do not tell you that your friend will not change, but as I am sure that her choice cannot be that of a e will be a safe and a good one Do not fear that anything you love will vanish, heother introductions in London, Flee had presented a letter from Mrs Gaskell to the Alfred Austins This was a fa est and least known of the Austins, had been a beautiful golden-haired child, petted and kept out of the way of both sport and study by a partial mother Bred an attorney, he had (like both his brothers) changed his way of life, and was called to the bar when past thirty A Commission of Enquiry into the state of the poor in Dorsetshi+re gave hi his true talents; and he was appointed a Poor Law Inspector, first at Worcester, next at Manchester, where he had to deal with the potato faration of the 'forties, and finally in London, where he again distinguished hi an epidemic of cholera He was then advanced to the Permanent Secretaryshi+p of Her Majesty's Office of Works and Public Buildings; a position which he filled with perfect competence, but with an extreme of modesty; and on his retirement, in 1868, he was made a Companion of the Bath While apprentice to a Norwich attorney, Alfred Austin was a frequent visitor in the house of Mr