Editing Fleeming Jenkin (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Plaque to Fleeming Jenkin, King's Buildings, Edinburgh.jpg|thumb|330px|Plaque to Fleeming Jenkin, King's Buildings, Edinburgh]]

===Background and childhood===
Generally called Fleeming Jenkin, named after [[Charles Elphinstone Fleeming|Admiral Fleeming]], one of his father's patrons, he was born to an old and eccentric family in a government building near [[Dungeness (headland)|Dungeness]], [[Kent]], England. His father, Captain Charles Jenkin, was at that time being in the coast-guard service.<ref name="rls" /> His mother, [[Henrietta Camilla Jenkin|Henrietta Camilla (Cora) Jenkin (born Jackson)]] was a published author.<ref>[[s:Jenkin, Henrietta Camilla (DNB00)|Henrietta Jenkin]], Wikisource</ref> His mother was responsible for Jenkin's education. She took him to the south of Scotland, where, chiefly at [[Barjarg Tower|Barjarg]], she taught him drawing and allowed him to ride his pony on the moors.{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}} He went to school at [[Jedburgh]], [[Scottish Borders|Borders]], and afterwards to the [[Edinburgh Academy]], where he won many prizes. Among his school fellows were [[James Clerk Maxwell]] and [[Peter Guthrie Tait]].<ref name="rls">Robert Louis Stevenson, [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/698/698-h/698-h.htm Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin], (1901), New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, Chapter II. 1833–1851.</ref>

On his father's retirement in 1847, the family moved to [[Frankfurt]], partly from motives of economy and partly for the boy's education. Here Jenkin and his father spent a pleasant time together, sketching old castles, and observing the customs of the peasantry. At thirteen, Jenkin had produced a [[romanticism|romance]] of three hundred lines in [[heroic couplet]]s, a novel, and a large number of poems, none of which are now extant. He learned German in Frankfurt and, on the family migrating to Paris the following year, he studied French and mathematics under a M. Deluc. While there, Jenkin witnessed the outbreak of the [[The Revolutions of 1848 in France|Revolution of 1848]] and heard the first shot, describing the action in [[s:Fleeming Jenkin account of the 1848 Revolution in Paris|a letter written to an old schoolfellow]].

The Jenkins left Paris, and went to [[Genoa]], where they experienced [[The Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states|another revolution]], and Mrs. Jenkin, with her son and sister-in-law, had to seek the protection of a British vessel in the harbour, leaving their house stored with the property of their friends, and guarded by Captain Jenkin. At Genoa, Jenkin attended the [[University of Genoa]], being its first [[Protestant]] student. Father Bancalari, the professor of [[natural philosophy]], lectured on [[electromagnetism]], his physical laboratory being the best in Italy. Jenkin took the degree of M.A. with first-class honours, his special subject having been electromagnetism. The questions in the examinations were in Latin, and had to be answered in Italian. Fleeming also attended an art school in the city, and gained a silver medal for a drawing from one of [[Raffaello Santi|Raphael]]'s [[cartoon]]s. His holidays were spent in sketching, and his evenings in learning to play the piano or, when permissible, at the theatre or opera-house. He had conceived a taste for acting. He attended the University of Edinburgh in 1851.<ref name="rls"/>

===Training as engineer and artist===
In 1850, Jenkin spent some time in a Genoese locomotive shop under [[Philip Taylor (civil engineer)|Philip Taylor]] of Marseille but on the death of his Aunt Anna, who lived with them, Captain Jenkin took his family back to England, and settled in Manchester, where the young man, in 1851, was apprenticed to mechanical engineering at the works of [[William Fairbairn]], and from half-past eight in the morning until six at night had, as he says, "to file and chip vigorously, in a moleskin suit, and infernally dirty.<ref name=munro/>{{rp|page 47}}

"At home he pursued his studies, and was for a time engaged with Dr. Bell in working out a geometrical method of arriving at the proportions of [[Architecture of Ancient Greece|Ancient Greek architecture]]. His stay in Manchester, though in striking contrast to his life in Genoa, was agreeable. He liked his work, had the good spirits of youth, and made some pleasant friends, one of them the author, [[Elizabeth Gaskell]]. He was argumentative, and his mother tells of his having overcome a consul at Genoa in a political discussion when he was only sixteen 'simply from being well-informed on the subject, and honest. He is as true as steel,' she writes, 'and for no one will he bend right or left... Do not fancy him a Bobadil; he is only a very true, candid boy. I am so glad he remains in all respects but information a great child.'"<ref name=munro>{{cite book | author=Munro, J. | url=http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=979 | title=Heroes of the Telegraph | year=1891 | publisher=The Religious Tract Society | location=London | isbn=978-0-585-00791-5 }}</ref>{{rp|¶ 11}}

"On leaving Fairbairn's he was engaged for a time on a survey for the proposed Lukmanier Railway in Switzerland, and in 1856 he entered Penn's engineering works at Greenwich as a draughtsman, being occupied on the plans of a vessel designed for the [[Crimean War]]. He complained about the late hours, his rough comrades, and his humble lodgings, 'across a dirty green and through some half-built streets of two-storied houses.... Luckily, he adds, 'I am fond of my profession, or I could not stand this life.' Jenkin had been his mother's pet until then, and felt the change from home more keenly for that reason. At night he read engineering and mathematics, or [[Thomas Carlyle]] and the poets, and cheered his drooping spirits with frequent trips to London to see his mother."<ref name=munro/>{{rp|¶ 12}}

"Another social pleasure was his visits to the house of Alfred Austin, a barrister, who became permanent secretary to Her Majesty's Office of Works and Public Buildings, and retired in 1868 with the title of [[Order of the Bath|CB]]. His wife, Eliza Barron, was the youngest daughter of a gentleman of Norwich who, when a child, had been patted on the head, in his father's shop, by Dr [[Samuel Johnson]], while canvassing for Mr. Thrale. Jenkin had been introduced to the Austins by a letter from Mrs. Gaskell, and was charmed with the atmosphere of their choice home, where intellectual conversation was happily united with kind and courteous manners, without any pretence or affectation. "Each of the Austins," says Stevenson in his memoir of Jenkin, "was full of high spirits; each practised something of the same repression; no sharp word was uttered in the house." The Austins were truly hospitable and cultured, not merely so in form and appearance. It was a rare privilege and preservative for a solitary young man in Jenkin's position to have the entry into such elevating society and he appreciated his good fortune."<ref name=munro/>{{rp|¶ 13}}

"Annie Austin, their only child, had been highly educated and knew Greek among other things. Though Jenkin loved and admired her parents he did not at first care for Annie. Stevenson hints that she vanquished him by correcting a "false quantity" of his one day; he was the man to reflect over a correction, and "admire the castigator." Jenkin was poor but the liking of her parents for him gave him hope. He had entered the service of Messrs. Liddell and Gordon who were engaged in the new work of submarine telegraphy, which satisfied his aspirations, and promised him a successful career. He therefore asked the Austins for leave to court their daughter. Mrs. Austin consented freely, and Mr. Austin only reserved the right to inquire into his character. Jenkin, overcome by their disinterestedness, exclaimed in one of his letters "Are these people the same as other people?" Miss Austin seems to have resented his courtship of her parents first but the mother's favour and his own spirited behaviour saved him and won her consent."<ref name=munro/>{{rp|¶¶ 14,15}}

After leaving Penn's, Jenkin became a railroad engineer under Liddell and Gordon, and, in 1857, became engineer to [[R.S. Newall and Company]] of Gateshead who shared the work of making the first Atlantic cable with [[Glass, Elliott & Co.]] of Greenwich. Jenkin was busy designing and fitting up machinery for cableships, and making electrical experiments. "I am half crazy with work," he wrote to his fiancée; "I like it though: it's like a good ball, the excitement carries you through." He wrote, "My profession gives me all the excitement and interest I ever hope for...I am at the works till ten, and sometimes till eleven. But I have a nice office to sit in, with a fire to myself, and bright brass scientific instruments all round me, and books to read, and experiments to make, and enjoy myself amazingly. I find the study of electricity so entertaining that I am apt to neglect my other work... What shall I compare them to," he writes of some electrical experiments, "a new song? or a Greek play?"<ref name=munro/>{{rp|¶ 16}}