Part 20

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."