He passed; but something in his gallant vitality had impressed itself upon his friends, and still impresses. Not from one or two only, but from many, I hear the same tale of how the imagination refuses to accept our loss and instinctively looks for his reappearing, and how memory retains his voice and image like things of yesterday.
Thus one famous Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, writes of another famous Scot: his friend Fleeming Jenkin.
Stevenson was so moved by his friends life, and early tragic death, that he was moved to write this remarkable memoir.
A world-renowned Scots engineer, Fleeming Jenkin invented telpherage.
Jenkin was also Professor of Engineer at the University of Edinburgh. An electrician, he was also an artist, a dramatist, actor, linguist, critic and lecturer.
In his memoir, Stevenson also reveals a family man who loved his wife and children, loved to write letters to his friends, who loved gardening and croquet. Stevenson portrays a prototype "nerd" who liked to weep at plays.
A window into a different view of Victorian life, Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin is an almost forgotten must-read book by the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped.
