1812-1875
[Sidenote: Caroline Fox’s _Journals and Letters_.]
“Torquay, _January 30th_.--Charles Kingsley called, but we missed him.
“_February 3d._--We paid him and his wife a very happy call; he
fraternising at once, and stuttering pleasant and discriminating things
concerning F. D. Maurice, Coleridge and others. He looks sunburnt with
dredging all the morning, has a piercing eye under an overhanging brow,
and his voice is most melodious and his pronunciation exquisite. He is
strangely attractive.”--1854.
[Sidenote: _The Galaxy_, 1872.]
“I was present at a meeting not long since where Mr. Kingsley was
one of the principal speakers. The meeting was held in London, the
audience was a peculiarly Cockney audience, and Charles Kingsley is
personally little known to the public of the metropolis. Therefore
when he began to speak there was quite a little thrill of wonder and
something like incredulity through the listening benches. Could that,
people near me asked, really be Charles Kingsley, the novelist, the
poet, the scholar, the aristocrat, the gentleman, the pulpit-orator,
the ‘soldier--priest,’ the apostle of muscular Christianity? Yes,
that was indeed he. Rather tall, very angular, surprisingly awkward,
with thin staggering legs, a hatchet face adorned with scraggy gray
whiskers, a faculty for falling into the most ungainly attitudes, and
making the most hideous contortions of visage and frame; with a rough
provincial accent and an uncouth way of speaking which would be set
down for absurd caricature on the boards of a comic theatre. Such was
the appearance which the author of _Glaucus_ and _Hypatia_ presented to
his startled audience. Since Brougham’s time nothing so ungainly, odd,
and ludicrous had been displayed upon an English platform. Needless to
say, Charles Kingsley has not the eloquence of Brougham. But he has a
robust and energetic plain-speaking which soon struck home to the heart
of the meeting. He conquered his audience. Those who at first could
hardly keep from laughing, those who, not knowing the speaker, wondered
whether he was not mad or in liquor, those who heartily disliked his
general principles and his public attitude, were alike won over, long
before he had finished, by his bluff and blunt earnestness and his
transparent sincerity.”
[Sidenote: _Fraser’s Magazine_, 1877.]
“For nine years the portrait of Kingsley, close to that of John Parker,
has looked down from the wall of the room in which I write. It is a
large photograph, taken, while he was on a visit to the house, by an
amateur of extraordinary ability, the late Dr. Adamson of St. Andrews.
It is the best and most lifelike portrait of Kingsley known to me.
It has the stern expression, which came partly of the effort, never
quite ceasing, to express himself through that characteristic stammer
which quite left him in public speaking, and which in private added
to the effect of his wonderful talk. Photography caught him easily.
Those who look at the portrait prefixed to Volume I. of the _Life_
see the man as he lived. Mr. Woolner’s bust, shown at the beginning
of Volume II., shows him aged and shrunken, not more than he was but
more than he ought to have been; and the removal of all hair from the
face is a marked difference from the fact in life; yet the likeness is
perfect too. That somewhat severe face belied one of the kindest hearts
that ever beat: yet the handsome and chivalrous features unworthily
expressed one of the truest, bravest, and noblest of souls. Kingsley
could not have done a mean or false thing: by his make it was as
impossible as that water should run uphill.”