CHAPTER VI.
FLEEMING JENKIN.
The late Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering in Edinburgh University, was remarkable for the versatility of his talent. Known to the world as the inventor of Telpherage, he was an electrician and cable engineer of the first rank, a lucid lecturer, and a good linguist, a skilful critic, a writer and actor of plays, and a clever sketcher. In popular parlance, Jenkin was a dab at everything.
His father, Captain Charles Jenkin, R.N., was the second son of Mr. Charles Jenkin, of Stowting Court, himself a naval officer, who had taken part in the actions with De Grasse. Stowting Court, a small estate some six miles north of Hythe, had been in the family since the year 1633, and was held of the Crown by the feudal service of six men and a constable to defend the sea-way at Sandgate. Certain Jenkins had settled in Kent during the reign of Henry VIII., and claimed to have come from Yorkshire. They bore the arms of Jenkin ap Phillip of St. Melans, who traced his descent from 'Guaith Voeth,' Lord of Cardigan.
While cruising in the West Indies, carrying specie, or chasing buccaneers and slavers, Charles Jenkin, junior, was introduced to the family of a fellow midshipman, son of Mr. Jackson, Custos Rotulorum of Kingston, Jamaica, and fell in love with Henrietta Camilla, the youngest daughter. Mr. Jackson came
