Charles Kingsley was born at Holne Vicarage, under the brow of Dartmore,
in 1819; but his family removed almost immediately into Nottinghamshire,
although he always felt himself to be, and called himself, a Devonshire
man. Of his parents he himself gives account as follows:--
"We are but the _disjecta membra_ of a most remarkable pair of
parents. Our talent, such as it is, is altogether hereditary. My
father 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."
The product of the union of such characters could hardly be otherwise
than unique; and we see in Charles Kingsley a man of powerful
nature,--strong, aggressive, administrative,--but at the same time
deeply poetical, and tender almost to weakness. We find in him a union
of the intensest sympathy with the weak and helpless, and a
comprehension of the flaws and defects which make up their character,
which seems at times merciless and almost heartless. We find in him
remarkable combative power, united to a desire to use that power purely
and simply for the defence and protection of those who are unable to
protect and help themselves. We find a man who can deal heaviest blows,
who loves the excitement of a battle, and never shuns an occasion for a
fight in behalf of humanity, but who was so sensitive to an unfair
thrust from an opponent that his life was permanently embittered by the
injustice and malignity of literary and political critics of the
opposing party. In short, he united a royal aggressiveness shaped and
guided entirely by his Christian principles, and a tenderness and
sensitiveness such as are rarely found in so strong and fearless a man.
In childhood he is described as strong and active, but not expert at any
games; while he bore pain wonderfully well, and excelled in all feats
that required nerve and daring. He was well prepared when he went to
Cambridge, and obtained a scholarship at Magdalen the first year. He
disliked the prescribed course intensely, and sometimes neglected his
work and gave himself up to wild sport in the fens, which then presented
much of the bleak picturesqueness which he has immortalized in his prose
idyls. He was very popular, but not very sociable, and lived then, as
afterwards, a most strenuous life. On July 6, 1839, while visiting in
Oxfordshire, he met his future wife, Fanny, the daughter of Pascoe
Grenfell and Georgiana St. Leger his wife. Circumstances seemed to give
the lover very little hope, and in intervals of recklessness Kingsley
often dreamed and talked of going to America and joining the wild
hunters on the prairies. Had he done so, what bits of strong and
striking description should we not have had! Few writers have the
photographic accuracy of Kingsley, united to so vivid an imagination;
consequently his pictures are all of striking quality. Look at this
characteristic bit, when Amyas and his friends walk to the cliffs of
Lundy:--
"As they approached, a raven, who sat upon the topmost stone, black
against the bright blue sky, flapped lazily away, and sunk down
the abysses of the cliff, as if he had scented the corpses beneath
the surge. Below them from the gull-rock rose a thousand birds, and
filled the air with sound; the choughs cackled, the hacklets
wailed, the great black-backs laughed querulous defiance at the
intruders, and a single falcon with an angry bark darted out
beneath their feet, and hung poised high aloft, watching the
sea-fowl which swung slowly round and round below."
In all his books we have these glowing pictures of the natural world,
intense, graven in as it were with a burin, and colored with tropical
magnificence.
Soon after taking orders Charles Kingsley was given the living of
Eversley, which he retained to the end of his life. His work there was
full of hardship; but he was young and strong, and had a superabundant
energy which no toil daunted. Eversley was a democratic parish of "heth
croppers," and there were few gentry within its borders. These peasants
were hereditary poachers on Windsor Forest and other preserves in the
neighborhood, and possessed one and all with a spirit of almost lawless
independence. But it was one of Kingsley's most amiable characteristics
through life to be able to make friends of uncultivated people without
any painful effort of condescension. He visited these poor people of his
parish constantly, until he knew every person intimately, and could
speak to each with a knowledge of his inmost needs; and their needs, in
most cases, were of a very earthly and commonplace kind.
"What is the use," he would say, "of my talking to a lot of hungry
paupers about heaven? Sir, as my clerk said to me yesterday, there is a
weight on their hearts, and they care for no hope and no change, for
they know they can be no worse off than they are." But he did better for
them than to preach far-away sermons above their comprehension. "If a
man or woman were suffering or dying, he would go to them five or six
times a day,--and night as well as day,--for his own heart's sake as
well as for their soul's sake." And he won the respect of these people
for the Church which they had long neglected, and which had ceased to
stand for anything to them, until, "when he announced the first
confirmation, and invited all who wished to take advantage of it to come
to the rectory on a certain evening for instruction, the stud groom from
Sir John Cope's, a respectable man of five-and-thirty, was among the
first to come, bringing a message from the whips and stablemen to say
that they had all been confirmed once, but if Mr. Kingsley wished it
they would all be happy to come again." This was at a time when England
was in a really dangerous state of tumult and discontent, and when the
Church, through the heartlessness and folly of its leaders, had lost
almost all hold upon the people. Is there not in it a hint to the
unsuccessful preachers of our time?
In a few years he had raised the whole parish of Eversley to a higher
level, and had set his mark upon every individual soul in his keeping.
And after he had been appointed to the canonry of Westminster, and was
called to preach to immense congregations there, he felt the burden of
these new souls, as he had felt that of his more humble charge. He felt
that he was personally called to speak some vital word to every soul
within his hearing, and the strain upon him was great, as he realized
how difficult a thing this was to do in these later days. He expressed
his sense of this responsibility in his characteristic way. "Whenever,"
he said, "I walk along the choir to the pulpit I wish myself dead; and
whenever I walk back I wish myself more dead." But though his sense of
failure was great, it is certain that those noble sermons in the grand
abbey left their ineffaceable mark upon some of that multitude of young
men who crowded the north and south transepts of the abbey, and stood
there for two hours through a long musical service, that they might hear
Kingsley when he spoke; for he spoke with characteristic power and
eloquence, moving all by his earnestness and evident sincerity. "If you
want to be stirred to the very depths of your heart," said one of the
minor canons to Canon Farrar, "come to the abbey and hear Canon
Kingsley." And when he preached, as he often did, to classes of college
boys, even the youngest, they always found something pertinent to their
own cases in what he said.
He had married in the early days of Eversley the one woman he ever
loved, and the marriage was one of peculiar happiness, so that his home
life was always of the brightest. A family of beautiful children sprung
up around him, and in his peculiar fondness for pets he always had dogs
about him that were scarcely less dear than his children. He mourned the
death of one after another of his favorites, until, when the last one
died, he said he would have no more,--the pang of parting with them was
too keen.
The influence of his books as they came along one after
another--"Yeast," "Alton Locke," "Hypatia," "Westward Ho," "Two Years
Ago"--was of a stimulating, even of an exciting, nature, particularly
that of the earlier ones. Like nearly all men of genius, when young he
was a radical, and upon the publication of his first books the
conservatives all took up arms against him. In review after review, all
learning, all sincerity, all merit was denied him. He bore up under a
storm of obloquy and misrepresentation. This simply because he had shown
some of the sufferings of the poor,--given some vivid pictures of life
in England as it was in those days, before the repeal of the Corn Laws
had mitigated a little the sufferings of the dependent masses; and had
expressed some human sympathy with all this fruitless pain, and a manly
indignation at some forms of atrocious wrong. But there was nothing in
his teaching of the people which should have given offence to the
veriest conservative. The main burden of it was that "workingmen must
emancipate themselves from the tyranny of their own vices before they
could be emancipated from the tyranny of bad social arrangements; that
they must cultivate the higher elements of a common humanity in
themselves before they could obtain their share in the heritage of
national civilization. He discouraged every approach to illegality or
violence, and during the riots of that exciting time worked as hard as
the Duke of Wellington to keep the peace." But the Philistines of that
day looked upon it as crime in a beneficed clergyman to enter into
friendly intercourse for any purpose whatever with revolutionists, as
they called the agitators, who were engaged in what seem to us now to
have been great reforms. They denounced him for a Chartist, a name which
he proudly owned, although he never went the lengths of the real leaders
in that movement; and owning, as his enemies did, all the powerful
papers and reviews, they systematically belittled his work and
prejudiced the minds of many people against him to his dying day.
This misinterpretation of his work and misinterpretation of his motives
was a keen grief to him throughout life. He never became hardened to
such attacks, and they afflicted him to the end. "'Hypatia,'" he once
said, "was written with my heart's blood, and was received, as I
expected, with curses from many of the very churchmen whom I was trying
to warn and save." But he was more than repaid for this
misinterpretation and persecution by the orthodox and conservative
classes, by seeing the efforts he had put forth--some of them, at
least--crowned with considerable success even in his lifetime; while he
was conscious of having sown much seed that would ultimately take root
in reform. He never faltered, although he grew very weak and discouraged
at times. He writes thus to a friend:--
"Pray for me; I could lie down and die sometimes. A poor fool of a
fellow, and yet feeling thrust upon an sorts of great and
unspeakable paths, instead of being left in peace to classify
butterflies and catch trout."
Long before his death he saw the condition of the English poor very
materially modified. Bad as things are in England to-day, they are much
better than in the days when Charles Kingsley began his labors.
He was accused of growing conservative in later life, and doubtless he
did so, as it is natural that man should do; but he had witnessed great
improvement during his life, and perhaps felt that the forces which had
been called into play needed guiding and directing now, rather than
further stimulation. But, like all dreamers, he was obliged to bid
farewell to many of his dreams for the good of his fellow-men as he grew
older. There was intense sadness to him in this, and Kingsley during all
his later life was a very sad man. Striving to be cheery and helpful, as
he had ever been, there was yet in his face the look of a defeated
man,--the look of a man upon whom life had palled, and who had scarcely
hope enough left to carry him through to the end. There was remarkable
pathos in many of his sermons, and ineffable sadness in many of his
letters. Doubtless much of this was due to overwork, for he had
overworked himself systematically for many years, and could not escape
the consequences. He paid the penalty in flagging spirits and a growing
weariness of life. During the journey in America, near the close of his
life, there was but a forced interest where once the feeling would have
been real and keen; and we find him once writing like this:--
"As I ride I jog myself and say, 'You stupid fellow, wake up! Do
you see that? and that? Do you know where you are?' And my other
self answers, 'Don't bother, I have seen so much I can't take in
any more; and I don't care about it at all. I longed to get here. I
have been more than satisfied with being here, and now I long to
get back again.'"