On a white marble cross in Eversley churchyard, England, under a spray
of the passion-flower, are the Latin words, "_Amavimus, Amamus,
Amabimus_" (we have loved, we love, we shall love); and above them,
around the cross, "God is love." Those were the words chosen by the
famous preacher and author; and they were the key-note of the life of
one who lived for his people.
Charles Kingsley, the son of a minister, was born at Holne Vicarage,
Devonshire, England, June 12, 1819. Of his father, he wrote in 1865, "He
was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said to possess every
talent except that of using his talents. My mother, on the contrary, had
a quite extraordinary practical and administrative power; and she
combines with it, even at her advanced age (seventy-nine), my father's
passion for knowledge, and the sentiment and fancy of a young girl."
From his father, Charles seems to have inherited his love of art,
natural history, and athletic sports; from his mother, his love of
poetry and romance, and the force and originality which made him a
marked character in his town and nation.
When four years of age, he used to make a pulpit in his nursery, arrange
the chairs for a congregation, and preach as follows, his mother taking
down the words unobserved: "It is not right to fight. Honesty has no
chance against stealing. We must follow God, and not follow the Devil;
for if we follow the Devil, we shall go into that everlasting fire, and
if we follow God, we shall go to heaven." His poems at this time were
remarkable for a child.
He studied and loved nature, and delighted in sunsets, rocks, flowers,
and the wonders of the sea. At Clovelly, whither the rector had moved
his family, Charles found great delight in the study of shells, and in
the company of the warm-hearted fishermen. But for this early
association, it is probable that the beautiful song of the "Three
Fishers" would never have been written.
When the lad was twelve years old he was sent, with his brother Herbert,
to a preparatory school at Clifton, under the Rev. John Knight. Here he
showed an affectionate and gentle nature, only excited to anger when the
servant swept away the precious shells and grasses collected in his
walks on the Downs.
Afterwards he and Herbert were sent to the grammar school at Helston,
which was in charge of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Here he became the intimate friend of Richard Cowley Powles,
afterwards fellow and tutor of Exeter College, Oxford.
Mr. Powles wrote of his friend later, "Of him, more than of most men who
have become famous, it may be said, 'The boy was father of the man.' The
vehement spirit, the adventurous courage, the love of truth, the
impatience of injustice, the quick and tender sympathy, that
distinguished the man's entrance on public life, were all in the boy....
For botany and geology he had an absolute enthusiasm.... He liked
nothing better than to sally out, hammer in hand and his botanical tin
slung round his neck, on some long expedition in quest of new plants,
and to investigate the cliffs within a few miles of Helston, dear to
every geologist."
"In manner," says the Rev. Mr. Coleridge, "he was strikingly courteous,
and thus, with his wide and ready sympathies and bright intelligence,
was popular alike with tutor, schoolfellows, and servants."
Kingsley always regretted that he did not go to school at Rugby, as he
thought nothing "but a public school education would have overcome his
constitutional shyness."
The Kingsley family removed to Chelsea when Charles was seventeen, and
he became a day student at King's College. Two years later, in 1838, he
went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he stood first in classics
and mathematics at the examinations. For his prize he selected a fine
edition of Plato in eleven volumes.
In the summer of 1839, July 6, when he was twenty, he met Fanny,
daughter of Pascoe Grenfell, whom he afterwards married. "That was my
real wedding-day," he said years later. At that time his mind was full
of religious doubt, and he was far from happy. The young lady proved a
most valuable intellectual and spiritual helper; and after two months of
companionship, when he returned to Cambridge, she loaned him many books
and wrote him letters which proved a life-long blessing. Carlyle's
"French Revolution" had a great effect upon his mind, in establishing
his belief in God's righteous government of the world; also Maurice's
"Kingdom of Christ," to which he said he owed more than to any book he
had ever read.
Young Kingsley was at this time robust in health, able to walk from
Cambridge to London, fifty-two miles, starting early and reaching the
latter city at nine P.M. For many years he delighted in a country walk
of twenty or twenty-five miles.
In 1841, after the struggle through which most persons pass before
deciding upon a life-work, he gave himself to the ministry, rather than
to the law, for which his name had been entered at Lincoln's Inn. He
wrote to Fanny, June 12,--
"My birth-night. I have been for the last hour on the seashore, not
dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, and forming determinations
which are to affect my destiny through time and through eternity. Before
the sleeping earth, and the sleepless sea and stars, I have devoted
myself to God; a vow never (if He gives me the faith I pray for) to be
recalled."
After taking honors at Cambridge, and reading for Holy Orders, he began
to write the life of his ideal saint, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, for his
intended wife, if, indeed, he should ever win her.
The curacy of Eversley was offered him, and he accepted it at
twenty-three. The fir-trees on the rectory lawn were a great comfort. He
wrote to Fanny, "Those delicious self-sown firs! Every step I wander
they whisper to me of you, the delicious past melting into the more
delicious future."
But from the opposition of friends the correspondence was broken, and
for a year the hard parish work was carried on alone. In his parting
letter to her he says, urging her to practise music, "Music is such a
vent for the feelings.... Study medicine.... I am studying it.... Make
yourself thoroughly acquainted with the wages, wants, and habits and
prevalent diseases of the poor, wherever you go....
"I have since nine this morning cut wood for an hour; spent an hour and
more in prayer and humiliation ... written six or seven pages of a
difficult part of my essay; taught in the school; thought over many
things while walking; gone round two-thirds of the parish visiting and
doctoring, and written all this." ...
The young curate lived in a thatched cottage, and found a remedy for his
loneliness in hard work. The church services had been neglected, and the
ale-houses were preferred on Sunday to the house of worship. There were
no schools for the children worthy of the name, and the minister had to
be teacher as well as preacher.
Finally the long silence was broken, and Kingsley wrote again to his
Fanny, "I have been making a fool of myself for the last ten minutes,
according to the world's notion of folly; for there have been some
strolling fiddlers under the window, and I have been listening and
crying like a child. Some quick music is so inexpressively mournful. It
seems just like one's own feelings,--exultation and action, with the
remembrance of past sorrow wailing up.... Let us never despise the
wandering minstrel!... And who knows what tender thoughts his own sweet
music stirs within him, though he eat in pot-houses and sleep in barns!"
Again he wrote, looking forward to the home they would some time have
together, "We will hunt out all the texts in the Bible about masters and
servants, to form rules upon them.... Our work must be done by praying
for our people, by preaching to them, ... and by setting them an
example,--an example in every look, word, and motion; in the paying of a
bill, the hiring of a servant, the reproving of a child."
He carried out his Christian principles in his relations with his
employees. At his death all the servants in his house had lived with him
from seventeen to twenty-six years.
Early in 1844 Kingsley, then twenty-five, was married to the woman he
loved, and the curate became the rector at Eversley. The house was damp,
from the rain flooding the rooms on the ground floor, and the land
required much drainage. But the happy husband was full of energy, and
set to work to make the place habitable and attractive.
At once the young preacher established among the laborers a shoe-club,
coal-club, loan-fund, and lending-library. A school for adults was held
at the rectory three nights a week all through the winter; a class in
music; a Sunday-school met there every Sunday morning and afternoon; and
in the outlying districts weekly lectures were held at the cottages for
the aged and feeble. None of the grown-up men and women among the
laborers could read or write, and the minister became their devoted
teacher. He taught them to love the nature he loved,--the flowers,
trees, birds, and ever-changing sky. He visited the poor, the sick, and
the dying, and soon became the idol of his people. He fed their minds as
well as their souls; he knew, as so few really know, the all-important
work which the pastor has committed to his hands. No wonder that London
and England, and America finally, heard of this model preacher, and came
to love him.
The year after his marriage, 1845, was saddened by the death of his
brother, Lieut. Gerald Kingsley, in Torres Straits, on board Her
Majesty's ship Royalist. All the officers and half the crew died of
fever. His brother Herbert had died of heart-disease in 1834, when they
were boys together at school.
The drama of "St. Elizabeth" was now finished; and in 1847 the young
preacher started for London, on a serious mission,--to find a publisher.
He read the poem to his noble friend, Mr. Maurice, who wrote a preface
for it; and to Coleridge, who gave him a commendatory letter to a
publisher. The poem met the usual fate,--declined with thanks.
He wrote his wife, "I am now going to Parker's in the Strand. I am at
once very happy, very lonely, and very anxious. How absence increases
love! It is positively good sometimes to be parted, that one's affection
may become conscious of itself, and proud and humble and thankful
accordingly." ...
Later he wrote to Mr. Powles, "'St. Elizabeth' is in the press, having
been taken off my hands by the heroic magnanimity of Mr. J. Parker, West
Strand, who, though a burnt child, does not dread the fire. No one else
would have it."
Having earned a little money by extra Sunday services at Pennington, he
took his wife and his two small children, Rose and Maurice, for a six
weeks' holiday to the seaside, near the edge of the New Forest. Here,
revelling in the scenery, he wrote several ballads.
When the drama "The Saints' Tragedy" was published, it was fiercely
attacked by the High Church party at Oxford. In Germany it was read and
liked, and Chevalier Bunsen wrote heartily in praise of it.
When Kingsley, now twenty-nine, went for a few weeks to Oxford, to visit
his friend, Mr. Powles, Fellow of Exeter, he received much attention on
account of his book. He wrote to his wife, "They got up a meeting for
me, and the club was crowded with men merely to see poor me, so I found
out afterwards: very lucky that I did not know it during the process of
being trotted out. It is very funny and new.... Froude gets more and
more interesting. We had such a conversation this morning!--the crust is
breaking, and the _man_ coming through that cold, polished shell. My
darling babies! kiss them very much for me."
The parish work at Eversley increased month by month. A writing-class
for girls was held in the empty coach-house, and a cottage school for
infants was begun. He wrote his first article for _Fraser's Magazine_ on
Popery. He preached to his congregation on the topics of the
day,--emigration, and the political and social disturbances of the time.
He was, in fact, what a preacher should be,--a leader of the people.
He accepted the professorship of English literature and composition at
Queen's College, Harley Street, of which Mr. Maurice was president, and
went up to London once a week to lecture. He became the devoted friend
of Thomas Hughes, author of "School Days at Rugby;" of Bishop Stanley of
Norwich and his distinguished son, Dean Stanley, and of many others.
During this year, 1847-48, on account of great distress among the
people, there were riots in London and in other large cities. The troops
were called out under Wellington to disperse the Chartists, who demanded
a "People's Charter" from Parliament, with more rights for the laborers.
Kingsley threw himself heartily into the conflict. He wrote a
conciliatory letter to the "Workmen of England," which was posted up in
London.
"You say that you are wronged. Many of you are wronged, and many besides
yourselves know it. Almost all men who have heads and hearts know
it--above all, the working clergy know it. They go into your houses;
they see the shameful filth and darkness in which you are forced to live
crowded together; they see your children growing up in ignorance and
temptation, for want of fit education; they see intelligent and
well-read men among you, shut out from a freeman's just right of voting;
and they see, too, the noble patience and self-control with which you
have as yet borne these evils. They see it, and God sees it."
And then he urges them "to turn back from the precipice of riot, which
ends in the gulf of universal distrust, stagnation, starvation....
Workers of England, be wise, and then you _must_ be free; for you will
be _fit_ to be free."
For four years, 1848-52, he wrote for three periodicals, _Politics for
the People_, _The Christian Socialist_, and the _Journal of
Association_.
Many friends and relations begged him to desist from fighting the
battles of the people, as such sympathy "was likely to spoil his
prospects in life." But he wrote his wife in reference to this matter,
"I will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out of season. I will
not shun to declare the whole counsel of God.... My path is clear, and I
will follow in it. He who died for me, and who gave me you, shall I not
trust Him through whatsoever new and strange paths He may lead me?"
He always felt "that the party-walls of rank and fashion and money were
but a paper prison of our own making, which we might break through any
moment by a single hearty and kindly feeling."
In the autumn of 1848, while writing "Yeast," a novel which was first
published in _Fraser's Magazine_, doing the work at night, when his
other duties were finished and the house was still, he broke down, and
for months was unable to do more than walk along the seashore and gather
shells, even conversation being too exhausting for him.
Friends came to show their sympathy and fondness for the great-hearted
man--among them Mr. Froude, who met Charlotte, the sister of Mrs.
Kingsley, and married her.
Returning to the work at Eversley, where a low fever had broken out
among the people, and where it was almost impossible to obtain nurses,
Kingsley cared for the sick, watching all night with a laborer's wife,
the mother of a large family, that she might receive nourishment every
half-hour, and soon broke down again, and was obliged to go to
Devonshire.
On his return to Eversley, cholera had once more appeared in England,
and early and late he carried on a crusade against dirt and bad
drainage.
As his means were limited, he usually took two or more pupils to fit
them for the ministry; and now began his "Alton Locke," the
autobiography of a tailor and a poet, in the interest of workingmen.
"God grant," he says in the preface, "that the workmen of the South of
England may bestir themselves ere it be too late, and discover that the
only defence against want is self-restraint." He urges that they
"organize among themselves associations for buying and selling the
necessaries of life, which may enable them to weather the dark season of
high prices and stagnation, which is certain, sooner or later, to follow
in the footsteps of war."
To write this book, he got up at five every morning and worked till
breakfast, devoting the rest of the day to his sermons, his pupils, and
the various schools and societies of his parish. "His habit," says his
wife, in her life of Kingsley, "was thoroughly to master his subject,
whether book or sermon, always out in the open air,--in his garden, on
the moor, or by the side of a lonely trout stream; and never to put pen
to paper till the ideas were clothed in words.... For many years his
writing was all done by his wife, from his dictation, while he paced up
and down the room."
When "Alton Locke" was finished, the old difficulty of finding a
publisher began. Messrs. Parker, who had brought out "Yeast," which had
caused much theological discussion, refused to take another book.
Finally, through the influence of Carlyle, Messrs. Chapman & Hall were
induced to bring it out.
The press, as in the case of "Yeast," was severe on "Alton Locke;" but
brave Thomas Carlyle wrote Kingsley to "pay no attention at all to the
foolish clamor of reviewers, whether laudatory or condemnatory."
Kingsley's correspondence increased day by day. One person wrote about
going over to the Romish Church; another about his atheistic doubts;
another desired to reform his life; and others asked advice on almost
numberless matters.
To an atheist, who was later converted under Kingsley, he wrote, "As for
helping you to Christ, I do not believe I can one inch. I see no hope
but in prayer, in going to Him yourself, in saying, Lord, if Thou art
there, if Thou art at all, if this all be not a lie, fulfil Thy reputed
promises, and give me peace and a sense of forgiveness."
Kingsley would say to his wife, as a letter was answered, or another
chapter of a book finished, "Thank God, one more thing done!--and oh,
how blessed it will be when it is all over, to lie down in that dear
churchyard!" The work of the great world, with all its sorrows, had
tired Kingsley at thirty-two.
"Hypatia," one of the novels which will last for centuries, was begun in
1851. He writes to the Rev. Mr. Maurice in January, "If I do not use my
pen to the uttermost in earning my daily bread, I shall not get through
this year.... My available income is less than £400. I cannot reduce my
charities, and I am driven either to give up my curate or to write; and
either of these alternatives, with the increased parish work, for I have
got either lectures or night school every night in the week, and three
services on Sunday, will demand my whole time."
As to "Hypatia," he writes, "My idea in the romance is to set forth
Christianity as the only really democratic creed, and philosophy, above
all, spiritualism, as the most exclusively aristocratic creed."
In October he writes to a friend, "'Hypatia' grows, little darling, and
I am getting very fond of her."
When the book was published in 1853, two years after it was begun, it
aroused most bitter criticism from a portion of the English Church. But
no adverse criticism could prevent its being read and loved by the
people of two continents. Thirty years later it had gone through
thirteen editions.
Our own Whittier wrote Mrs. Kingsley, after her husband's death, "My
copy of his 'Hypatia' is worn by frequent perusal, and the echoes of his
rare and beautiful lyrics never die out of my memory. But since I have
seen _him_, the man seems greater than the author.... His heart seemed
overcharged with interest in the welfare, physical, moral, and
spiritual, of his race. I was conscious in his presence of the bracing
atmosphere of a noble nature. He seemed to me one of the manliest of
men."
No man could have drawn that masterful picture of the beautiful maid of
Alexandria, philosopher, mathematician, teacher, and leader of her time,
who had not the greatest reverence for woman, and a belief in her
marvellous power. Such a man could never limit the sphere of woman by
any human barriers. He said to a friend that his aim was, in every book
he wrote, to set forth "woman as the teacher, the natural, and therefore
divine, guide, purifier, inspirer of the man."
One learns to love the brilliant Hypatia, as did the monk, Philammon,
and the Jew, Raphael Aben-Ezra, and shudders when she is torn in pieces
about the age of forty by the mob.
The book holds one spell-bound from beginning to end, and many another
copy besides that of Whittier "is worn by frequent perusal."
Mr. C. Kegan Paul, the London publisher, was staying at the home of the
Kingsleys when much of "Hypatia" was written. "I was struck," he says,
speaking of the author, "not only with his power of work, but with the
extraordinary pains he took to be accurate in detail. We spent one whole
day in searching the four folio volumes of Synesius for a fact he
thought was there, and which was found there at last." "When I have done
'Hypatia,'" he writes Mr. Ludlow, "I will write no more novels. I will
write poetry--not as a profession, but I will keep myself for it; and I
do think I shall do something that will live. I feel my strong faculty
is that sense of _form_, which, till I took to poetry, always came out
in drawing, drawing; but poetry is the true sphere, combining painting
and music and history all in one."
"At that time," says a friend, "in his books and pamphlets, and often in
his daily, familiar speech, he was pouring out the whole force of his
eager, passionate heart in wrath and indignation against starvation
wages, stifling workshops, reeking alleys, careless landlords, roofless
and crowded cottages.... No human being but was sure of a patient,
interested hearer in him. I have seen him seat himself, hatless, beside
a tramp on the grass outside of his gate in his eagerness to catch
exactly what he had to say, searching him, as they sat, in his keen,
kindly way with question and look."
About the time of the opening of the Great Exhibition, so dear to the
heart of the noble Prince Albert, Kingsley was asked to preach a sermon
to workingmen in a London church near by, which he did with great
sympathy and tenderness. Just as the blessing was to be pronounced, the
clergyman who had invited Kingsley rose and remarked that it was his
painful duty to say that he believed much of what Mr. Kingsley had said
"was dangerous and untrue."
Kingsley, wounded beyond expression, quietly left the church, and a riot
of the workmen was with difficulty prevented. That night in his sadness
and exhaustion he wrote that immortal song of the "Three Fishers," which
seemed to soothe and rest him.
"Three fishers went sailing out into the west,
Out into the west as the sun went down:
Each thought of the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.
Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
But men must work and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden and waters deep,
And the harbor bar be moaning.
Three corpses lay out on the shining sands,
In the morning gleam as the tide went down;
And the women are weeping and wringing their hands,
For those that will never come back to the town.
For men must work and women must weep,
And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep,
And good-by to the bar and its moaning."
The winter and spring of 1854 were spent at Torquay, Mrs. Kingsley
having become ill from the damp rectory at Eversley. Mr. Kingsley also
had become worn in mind and body from the constant attacks of the
religious press against his supposed liberal views. He and his children
passed happy days along the seashore, gathering specimens to send to the
scientist, Mr. H. P. Gosse, in London, and collecting materials for his
articles in the _North British Review_ on "The Wonders of the Shore."
Before leaving Torquay he made a list of about sixty species of
Mollusks, Annelides, Crustacea, and Polypes found on the shore, nearly
all new to him.
In February he made his first visit to Scotland, to deliver before the
Philosophical Institute at Edinburgh four lectures on the "Schools of
Alexandria." He writes to his wife, "The lecture went off well. I was
dreadfully nervous, and actually cried with fear up in my room
beforehand; but after praying I recovered myself, and got through it
very well, being much cheered and clapped."
When his wife was saddened on account of debts incurred through
illness, Mr. Kingsley cheered her with his brave heart. "To pay them,"
he said, "I have thought, I have written, I have won for us a name
which, please God, may last among the names of English writers.... So
out of evil God brings good; or, rather, out of necessity He brings
strength ... and the meanest actual want may be the means of calling
into actual life the possible but sleeping embryo of the very noblest
faculties."
In the winter of 1851 Kingsley wrote "Brave Words to Brave Soldiers,"
several thousand copies of which were distributed among the suffering
soldiers before Sebastopol in the Crimea; also his novel, "Westward Ho!"
Many letters of appreciation came after the publication of this book. A
naval officer wrote from Hong Kong, "Among the many blessings for which
I have had to thank God this night, the most special has been for the
impressions produced by your noble sermon of 'Westward Ho!' Some months
ago I read it for the first time, then sailed on a long cruise; and now
on returning have read it again with prayer that has been answered, for
God's blessing has gone with it."
Kingsley gave lectures in London before the Working Men's College, and a
series to women interested in laborers. To the latter he said, "Instead
of reproving and fault-finding, encourage. In God's name encourage! They
scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thorn-brakes clumsily enough,
and have many a fall, poor things!"
As to teaching boys, he said, "It will be a boon to your own sex, as
well as to ours, to teach them courtesy, self-restraint, reverence for
physical weakness, admiration of tenderness and gentleness; and it is
one which only a lady can bestow.... There is a latent chivalry, doubt
it not, in the heart of every untutored clod."
In the summer of 1856, when he was thirty-seven, Kingsley spent a happy
vacation with Mr. Thomas Hughes and Mr. Tom Taylor at Snowdon, Wales,
which resulted in the writing of "Two Years Ago."
In June, 1857, Kingsley writes to his friend Thomas Hughes, "Eight and
thirty years old am I this day, Thomas, whereof twenty-two were spent in
pain, in woe, and vanities, and sixteen in very great happiness, such as
few men deserve, and I don't deserve at all.... Well, Tom, God has been
very good to me.... The best work ever I've done has been my plain
parish work."
Diphtheria, then a new disease in England, appeared at Eversley. "Some
might have smiled," says Mrs. Kingsley, at seeing her husband "going in
and out of the cottages with great bottles of gargle under his arm."
The earnest preaching, the lectures, the books and correspondence,
continued. Many guests came now to Eversley,--Harriet Beecher Stowe and
others from America, where his literary work seemed at first more
appreciated than at home; Miss Bremer, the Swedish novelist, who after
she went home sent him Tegnèr's "Frithiof's Saga," with this
inscription: "To the Viking of the New Age, Charles Kingsley, this story
of the Vikings of the Old, from a daughter of the Vikings, his friend
and admirer, Fredrika Bremer."
Dean Stanley came; Max Müller also, and spent the first week of his
married life at the rectory--he had married a beloved niece of
Kingsley's, the G. to whom he wrote the poem,--
"A hasty jest I once let fall."
When Kingsley was forty, he preached for the first time before the Queen
and Prince Albert at Buckingham Palace, and was soon made one of Her
Majesty's chaplains. He preached at the Chapel Royal, St. James's, and
before the Court in the private chapel at Windsor Castle. From this time
onward he received the utmost consideration and appreciation from the
royal household. Having been made Professor of Modern History at
Cambridge, which position he filled admirably for nine years, he was
requested by the Prince Consort to give private lectures to the Prince
of Wales, who had just left Oxford. The Prince came to Mr. Kingsley's
house three times a week, twice with the class, and every Saturday to go
over the week's work alone.
Every now and then Mr. Kingsley, from his ardent nature, broke down from
overwork. Then he would go with his wife to the Isle of Wight to see
Tennyson and his wife, or with James Anthony Froude to Ireland.
Death was beginning to enter the family circle. His father died in the
winter of 1860. He wrote Mr. Maurice, "How every wrong word and deed
toward that good old man, and every sorrow I caused him, rise up in
judgment against one; and how one feels that right-doing does not atone
for wrong-doing."
In the spring Charlotte, Mrs. Kingsley's sister, the wife of Froude, was
laid under the fir-trees in Eversley churchyard. "Her grave," says Mrs.
Kingsley, "was to him during the remainder of his own life a sacred
spot, where he would go almost daily to commune in spirit with the
dead, where flowers were always kept blooming, and where on the Sunday
morning he would himself superintend the decorations,--the cross and
wreaths of choice flowers placed by loving hands upon it." Prince Albert
died in 1861, a great personal loss to Kingsley, as to all England.
In the spring of 1862 "The Water-babies" was written, and dedicated to
his youngest son, Grenville Arthur, then four years old, named after his
godfather, Dean Stanley, and Sir Richard Grenvil, one of the heroes of
"Westward Ho!" from whom Mrs. Kingsley's family claimed descent.
The strange experiences of poor little Tom, the chimney-sweep, after he
left the hard work in the chimneys, under his brutal master, Grimes, to
enjoy the wonders of the sea, as a water-baby, are most amusing and
graphic. The book has always had a great circulation.
Three years after this, Queen Emma of the Hawaiian Islands spent two
days at the Eversley Rectory. She said to Mrs. Kingsley, "It is so
strange to me to be staying with you and to see Mr. Kingsley. My husband
read your husband's 'Water-babies' to our little prince." On her return
she sent to Mr. Kingsley the Prayer Book in Hawaiian, translated by her
husband, King Kamehameha IV.
Kingsley did not forget how hard it had been for an unknown author to
find a publisher. Mr. Charles Henry Bennett, a man of genius, but
struggling with poverty, had illustrated "Pilgrim's Progress," but could
get no one to take it. Kingsley wrote a preface, and Messrs. Longman at
once undertook to bring it out. Thus did the noble man help artist and
author, tramp and sick laborer, seeker after knowledge or after the
comfort of the gospel.
In 1863 Kingsley was made a Fellow of the Geological Society, proposed
by his friend Sir Charles Bunbury, and seconded by Sir Charles Lyell. He
was already a Fellow of the Linnean Society. His name was proposed for
the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford by the Prince of Wales, but was withdrawn
on account of opposition from the extreme High Church party.
He now gave lectures to the boys at Wellington College, to which his son
Maurice had gone, and assisted them in forming a museum; he brought out
a volume of poems and one or two volumes of sermons. No wonder he failed
in health, and was obliged to go to France with Froude, the latter going
on into Spain for historical work.
The labors of the devoted preacher and author increased year after year.
Impressed more than ever with the monotonous life of the English laborer
and his hard-worked wife, Kingsley started Penny Readings for the
people, and village concerts, in which friends from London helped.
He attended the national science meetings; he preached in Westminster
Abbey; he brought out a series of papers for children on natural
science, called "Madam How and Lady Why;" he read sixteen volumes of
Comte's works in preparation for his Cambridge lectures--he had already
given a course on the History of America.
In 1869 he was appointed Canon of Chester. Here he started a class in
botany,--a walk and a field lecture were enjoyed once a week by a
hundred or more persons,--which has resulted in the Chester Natural
History Society, with about six hundred members. He also gave many
geological lectures. "The Soil of the Field," "The Pebbles in the
Street," "The Stones in the Wall," "The Coal in the Fire," "The Lime in
the Mortar," "The Slates on the Roof," were published in a book called
"Town Geology." How broadened would be the minds of many in our
congregations, especially the minds of our young men and women, if more
of our ministers would teach the wonders of the world in which we live!
Kingsley was made President of the Education Section of the Social
Science Congress at Bristol, and one hundred thousand copies of his
valuable inaugural address were distributed. At this Congress he met Dr.
Elizabeth Blackwell from America, and she became a welcome guest at
Eversley. He was an ardent advocate of medical education for women.
He wrote to John Stuart Mill that his "Subjection of Woman" seemed to
him "unanswerable and exhaustive, and certain, from its moderation as
well as from its boldness, to do good service in this good cause." ...
After a journey with his daughter to the West Indies, from which came
his book, "At Last," he returned to his multifarious duties. As
President of the Midland Institute at Birmingham, he spoke on the
Science of Health. As a result, a manufacturer gave £2,500 to found
classes and lectures on Human Physiology and the Science of Health,
believing that physical improvement would be followed by mental and
moral improvement.
In the spring of 1873 Mr. Gladstone, with the sanction of the Queen,
asked Kingsley to become Canon of Westminster. His aged mother, now
eighty-six, who had made her home at Eversley since the death of her
husband, lived long enough to rejoice in his appointment to the Abbey,
and died April 16.
The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed him heartily. "It is a great
sphere," he wrote, "for a man who, like you, knows how to use it."
But those who knew him best had grave fears that he would not long fill
the place. He was urged to make a sea voyage, and with his daughter Rose
started for America in January, 1874, taking with him a few lectures, to
meet his expenses.
They landed Feb. 11, in New York. His daughter wrote home to the anxious
mother, "Before my father set foot on American soil, he had a foretaste
of the cordial welcome and generous hospitality which he experienced
everywhere, without a single exception, throughout the six months he
spent in the United States and Canada. The moment the ship warped into
her dock, a deputation from a literary club came on board, took
possession of us and our baggage."
Mr. Kingsley wrote home Feb. 12, "As for health, this air, as poor
Thackeray said of it, is like champagne. Sea air and mountain air
combined; days already an hour longer than in England, and a blazing hot
sun and blue sky. It is a glorious country, and I don't wonder at the
people being proud of it.... I dine with the Lotus Club on Saturday
night, and then start for Boston with R., to stay with Fields next
week."
He took great interest in Salem and Cambridge. He dined with Longfellow,
whom he greatly admired. "Dear old Whittier called on me, and we had a
most loving and like-minded talk about the other world," he writes home.
"He is an old saint. This morning I have spent chiefly with Asa Gray and
his plants, so that we are in good company."
In New York he met William Cullen Bryant; was entertained by that
considerate and lovely friend to everybody, the late Mrs. Botta; spoke
in the Opera House at Philadelphia to nearly four thousand persons, the
aisles crowded; received cordial welcome from President Grant, and from
the scientific men at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington; talked
with Charles Sumner an hour before he was seized with his fatal illness;
visited Mark Twain at Hartford, Conn.; preached in Baltimore to a large
congregation; stopped on his way West at Niagara, where he longed for
his wife "to sit with him, and simply look on in silence whole days at
the exquisite beauty of form and color."
Then with a party of several English and Americans, in a Pullman car,
Kingsley and his daughter journeyed to California. He preached at Salt
Lake City to a crowded congregation. The scenery everywhere delighted
him. "The flowers," he wrote, "are exquisite, yellow ribs over all the
cliffs, etc., and make one long to jump off the train every five
minutes, while the geology makes one stand aghast; geologizing in
England is child's play to this."
Again he preached in the Yosemite. The Dean of Westminster in the old
Abbey said that Kingsley, "who is able to combine the religious and
scientific aspects of nature better than any man living, is on this very
day, and perhaps at this very hour, preaching in the most beautiful spot
on the face of the earth, where the glories of nature are revealed on
the most gigantic scale,--in that wonderful Californian Valley, to whose
trees the cedars of Lebanon are but as the hyssop that groweth out of
the wall,--where water and forest and sky conjoin to make up, if
anywhere on the globe, an earthly paradise."
Mr. Kingsley was ill of pleurisy for some time in California. He began
to long for home. "I am very homesick," he writes to his wife, "and
counting the days till I can get back to you."
He returned to Eversley in August, and, as there was much sickness,
began at once his self-sacrificing ministrations. He preached his last
sermon in the Abbey Nov. 29, with great fervor. Dec. 3 he and his wife
went to Eversley, where she was taken very ill. When told that there was
no hope for her, he said, "My own death-warrant was signed with those
words."
He cared for her tenderly, and on Dec. 28 was stricken with pneumonia.
He had been warned that he must not leave his room, as a change of
temperature would prove fatal; but one day he sprang out of bed, came to
his wife's room for a few moments, and, taking her hand in his, said,
"This is heaven, don't speak;" but soon a severe fit of coughing came
on: he went back to his bed, and they never met again.
A correspondence was kept up for a few days in pencil, but this became
too painful. Towards the last he said, "No more fighting--no more
fighting," and then he prayed earnestly. Again he murmured, "How
beautiful God is!"
For two days he sent no messages to his wife, thinking that she had gone
before him. He said to the nurse who cared for them both, "I, too, am
come to an end; it is all right--all as it _should be_."
His last words were the Burial Service, "Shut not Thy merciful ears to
our prayers ... suffer us not, at our last hour, from any pains of
death, to fall from Thee." On Jan. 23, 1875, without a struggle, his
life went out.
Dean Stanley telegraphed, "The Abbey is open to the Canon and the Poet;"
but Kingsley had said, "Go where I will in this hard-working world, I
shall take care to get my last sleep in Eversley churchyard;" and under
the fir-trees he was buried.
A great crowd of all classes stood around that open grave, and later,
little children who had loved the "Water-babies" came often and laid
flowers upon the mound.
"Few eyes were dry," says Max Müller, "when he was laid in his own
gravel bed, the old trees which he had planted and cared for waving
their branches to him for the last time.... He will be mourned for,
yearned for, in every place in which he passed some days of his busy
life."
A Memorial Fund was at once raised by friends in England and America.
Eversley church was enlarged and improved; at Chester a prize was
founded in connection with the Natural History Society; a marble bust of
him placed in the Cathedral Chapter-house, and a stall restored in the
Cathedral, which bears his name. In Westminster Abbey a marble bust of
Kingsley, by Mr. Woolner, was unveiled Sept. 23, 1875, with appropriate
services.
Mrs. Kingsley survived her husband sixteen years, dying at Leamington,
Dec. 12, 1891, at the age of seventy-seven.
His daughter Rose, and Mary who married the Rev. William Harrison, are
both authors, the latter using the name "Lucas Malet." Kingsley,
himself, wrote thirty-five volumes.
Charles Kingsley was as lovable in his home-life as he was brilliant and
noble in his public career. Said an intimate friend of him, "To his
wife--so he never shrank from affirming in deep and humble
thankfulness--he owed the whole tenor of his life, all that he had
worth living for. It was true. And his every word and look and gesture
of chivalrous devotion for more than thirty years seemed to show that
the sense of boundless gratitude had become part of his nature, was
never out of the undercurrent of his thoughts."
His son-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Harrison, says, "Home was to him the
sweetest, the fairest, the most romantic thing in life; and there all
that was best and brightest in him shone with steady and purest lustre."
With his children he was like an elder brother. He built them a little
house, where they kept books and toys and tea-things, and where he often
joined them, bringing some rare flower or insect to show them. He was
always cheerful with them and his aged mother. He used to say, "I wonder
if there is so much laughing in any other home in England as in ours."
Corporal punishment was never allowed in his home. "More than half the
lying of children," he said, "is, I believe, the result of fear, and the
fear of punishment."
He was especially tender to animals. "His dog Dandy," says his wife, "a
fine Scotch terrier, was his companion in all his parish walks, attended
at the cottage lectures and school lessons, and was his and the
children's friend for thirteen years. He lies buried under the great
fir-trees on the rectory lawn, with this inscription on his gravestone,
'Fideli Fideles;' and close by, 'Sweep,' a magnificent black retriever,
and 'Victor,' a favorite Teckel given to him by the Queen, with which he
sat up during the two last suffering nights of the little creature's
life."
Cats, too, were his especial delight, a white one and a black. "His love
of animals," says Mrs. Kingsley, "was strengthened by his belief in
their future state--a belief which he held in common with John Wesley
and many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of
natter-jacks (running toads) who lived on from year to year in the same
hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to approach.
He had two little friends in a pair of sand-wasps, who lived in a crack
of the window in his dressing-room, one of which he had saved from
drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out into the sunshine to
dry; and every spring he would look out eagerly for them or their
children, who came out of, or returned to, the same crack."
His guests were one day amused when his little girl opened her hand and
begged him to "look at this _delightful_ worm."
Mr. Harrison tells this characteristic incident. One Sunday morning, in
passing from the altar to the pulpit, he disappeared, and was searching
for something on the ground, which he carried into the vestry. It was
found later that he had discovered a beautiful butterfly, which, being
lame, he feared would be trodden upon. Thus great in all little
humanities was the great preacher of Eversley and Westminster Abbey.