He was a rapid, fluent talker, with excited
utterance at times. Some of his sayings were shrewd and sharp; but he
was sometimes aggressive. 'People admire what is pretty in an ugly
thing,' he used to say 'not the ugly thing.' A lady once said to him she
would never be happy again. 'What does that signify?' cried Jenkin ;
'we are not here to be happy, but to be good.' On a friend remarking
that Salvini's acting in OTHELLO made him want to pray, Jenkin answered,
'That is prayer.'
Though admired and liked by his intimates, Jenkin was never popular with
associates. His manner was hard, rasping, and unsympathetic. 'Whatever
virtues he possessed,' says Mr. Stevenson, 'he could never count on
being civil.' He showed so much courtesy to his wife, however, that a
Styrian peasant who observed it spread a report in the village that Mrs.
Jenkin, a great lady, had married beneath her. At the Saville Club, in
London, he was known as the 'man who dines here and goes up to
Scotland.' Jenkin was conscious of this churlishness, and latterly
improved. 'All my life,' he wrote,'I have talked a good deal, with the
almost unfailing result of making people sick of the sound of my tongue.
It appeared to me that I had various things to say, and I had no
malevolent feelings; but, nevertheless, the result was that expressed
above.
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