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Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson
page 58 of 184 (31%)
ill brook his observation of my increasing debility of mind.' This
chosen companion of William Taylor must himself have been no
ordinary man; and he was the friend besides of Borrow, whom I find
him helping in his Latin. But he had no desire for popular
distinction, lived privately, married a daughter of Dr. Enfield of
Enfield's SPEAKER, and devoted his time to the education of his
family, in a deliberate and scholarly fashion, and with certain
traits of stoicism, that would surprise a modern. From these
children we must single out his youngest daughter, Eliza, who
learned under his care to be a sound Latin, an elegant Grecian, and
to suppress emotion without outward sign after the manner of the
Godwin school. This was the more notable, as the girl really
derived from the Enfields; whose high-flown romantic temper, I wish
I could find space to illustrate. She was but seven years old,
when Alfred Austin remarked and fell in love with her; and the
union thus early prepared was singularly full. Where the husband
and wife differed, and they did so on momentous subjects, they
differed with perfect temper and content; and in the conduct of
life, and in depth and durability of love, they were at one. Each
full of high spirits, each practised something of the same
repression: no sharp word was uttered in their house. The same
point of honour ruled them, a guest was sacred and stood within the
pale from criticism. It was a house, besides, of unusual
intellectual tension. Mrs. Austin remembered, in the early days of
the marriage, the three brothers, John, Charles, and Alfred,
marching to and fro, each with his hands behind his back, and
'reasoning high' till morning; and how, like Dr. Johnson, they
would cheer their speculations with as many as fifteen cups of tea.
And though, before the date of Fleeming's visit, the brothers were
separated, Charles long ago retired from the world at Brandeston,
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