Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin

Transcribed from the 1901 Charles Scribner’s Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1901
On the death of Fleeming Jenkin, his family and friends determined to publish a selection of his various papers; by way of introduction, the following pages were drawn up; and the whole, forming two considerable volumes, has been issued in England. In the States, it has not been thought advisable to reproduce the whole; and the memoir appearing alone, shorn of that other matter which was at once its occasion and its justification, so large an account of a man so little known may seem to a stranger out of all proportion. But Jenkin was a man much more remarkable than the mere bulk or merit of his work approves him. It was in the world, in the commerce of friendship, by his brave attitude towards life, by his high moral value and unwearied intellectual effort, that he struck the minds of his contemporaries. His was an individual figure, such as authors delight to draw, and all men to read of, in the pages of a novel. His was a face worth painting for its own sake. If the sitter shall not seem to have justified the portrait, if Jenkin, after his death, shall not continue to make new friends, the fault will be altogether mine.
R. L S.
Saranac, Oct. , 1887.
The Jenkins of Stowting—Fleeming’s grandfather—Mrs. Buckner’s fortune—Fleeming’s father; goes to sea; at St. Helena; meets King Tom; service in the West Indies; end of his career—The Campbell-Jacksons—Fleeming’s mother—Fleeming’s uncle John.
In the reign of Henry VIII., a family of the name of Jenkin, claiming to come from York, and bearing the arms of Jenkin ap Philip of St. Melans, are found reputably settled in the county of Kent. Persons of strong genealogical pinion pass from William Jenkin, Mayor of Folkestone in 1555, to his contemporary ‘John Jenkin, of the Citie of York, Receiver General of the County,’ and thence, by way of Jenkin ap Philip, to the proper summit of any Cambrian pedigree—a prince; ‘Guaith Voeth, Lord of Cardigan,’ the name and style of him. It may suffice, however, for the present, that these Kentish Jenkins must have undoubtedly derived from Wales, and being a stock of some efficiency, they struck root and grew to wealth and consequence in their new home.