His first venture into public life met with less general favour. The year 1848 saw many upheavals in Europe. On the Continent thrones tottered and fell, republics started up for a moment and faded away. In England it was the year of the Chartist riots, and political and social problems gave plenty of matter for thought. Monster meetings were held in London, which were not free from disorder. The wealthier classes and the Government were alarmed, troops were brought up to London and the Duke of Wellington put in command. Events seemed to point to outbreaks of violence and the starting of a class-war. Frederick Denison Maurice, whom above all men living Kingsley revered, was the leader of a group of men who were greatly stirred by the movement. They saw that more than political reform and political charters were needed; and, while full of sympathy for the working classes, they were not minded to say smooth things and prophesy Utopias in which they had no belief. Filled with the desire to help his fellow-men, indignant at abuses which he had seen with his own eyes, Kingsley came at once to their side. He went to London to see for himself, attended meetings, wrote pamphlets, and seemed to be promoting agitation. The tone in which he wrote can best be seen by a few words from the pamphlet addressed to the 'Workmen of England', which was posted up in London. 'The Charter is not bad, if the men who use it are not bad. But will the Charter make you free? Will it free you from slavery to ten-pound bribes? Slavery to gin and beer? Slavery to every spouter who flatters your self-conceit and stirs up bitterness and headlong rage in you? That I guess is real slavery, to be a slave to one's own stomach, one's pocket, one's own temper.' This is hardly the tone of the agitator as known to us to-day. With his friends Kingsley brought out a periodical, Politics for the People, in which he wrote in the same tone. 'My only quarrel with the Charter is that it does not go far enough in reform.... I think you have fallen into the same mistake as the rich of whom you complain, I mean the mistake of fancying that legislative reform is social reform, or that men's hearts can be changed by Act of Parliament.' He did not limit himself to denouncing such errors. He encouraged the working man to educate himself and to find rational pleasures in life, contributing papers on the National Gallery and bringing out the human interest of the pictures. 'Parson Lot', the nom de guerre which Kingsley adopted, became widely known for warm-hearted exhortations, for practical and sagacious counsels.
Two years later he published Alton Locke, describing the life of a young tailor whose mind and whose fortunes are profoundly influenced by the Chartist movement. From a literary point of view it is far from being his best work; and the critics agreed to belittle it at the time and to pass it over with apology at his death. But it received a warm welcome from others. While it roused the imagination of many young men and set them thinking, the veteran Carlyle could speak of 'the snatches of excellent poetical description, occasional sunbursts of noble insight, everywhere a certain wild intensity which holds the reader fast as by a spell'.
Should any one ask why a rector of a country parish mixed himself up in London agitation, many answers could be given. His help was sought by Maurice, who worked among the London poor. Many of the questions at issue affected also the agricultural labourer. Only one who was giving his life to serve the poor could effectively expose the mistakes of their champions. The upper classes, squires and merchants and politicians, had shut their eyes and missed their chances. So when the ship is on fire, no one blames the chaplain or the ship's doctor for lending a hand with the buckets.[32]
That his efforts in London met with success can be seen from many sources besides the popularity of Alton Locke. He wrote a pamphlet entitled 'Cheap Clothes and Nasty', denouncing the sweaters' shops and supporting the co-operative movement, which was beginning to arise out of the ashes of Chartism. Of this pamphlet a friend told him that he saw three copies on the table in the Guards' Club, and that he heard that captains in the Guards were going to the co-operative shop in Castle Street and buying coats there. A success of a different kind and one more valued by Kingsley himself was the conversion of Thomas Cooper, the popular writer in Socialist magazines, who preached atheistical doctrines weekly to many thousand working men. Kingsley found him to be sincerely honest, spent infinite time in writing him friendly letters, discussing their differences of opinion, and some years later had the joy of inducing him to become an active preacher of the Gospel. But most of the well-to-do people, including the clergy, were prejudiced against Kingsley by his Radical views. On one occasion he had to face a painful scene in a London church, when the vicar who had invited him to preach rose after the sermon and formally protested against the views to which his congregation had been listening. Bishop Blomfield at first sided with the vicar; but in the end he did full justice to the sincerity and charity of Kingsley's views and sanctioned his continuing to preach in the Diocese.
It was his literary successes which helped most to break down the prejudice existing against him in society. Hypatia, published in 1853, had a mixed reception; but Westward Ho! appearing two years later, was universally popular. His eloquence in the pulpit was becoming known to a wider circle, largely owing to officers who came over from Aldershot and Sandhurst to hear him; and early in 1859 he was asked to preach before the Queen and Prince Consort. His appointment as chaplain to the Queen followed before the year was out; and this made a great difference in his position and prospects. What he valued equally was the hearty friendship which he formed with the Prince Consort. They had the same tastes, the same interests, the same serious outlook on life. A year later came a still higher distinction when Kingsley was appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. His history lectures, it is generally agreed, are not of permanent value as a contribution to the knowledge of the subject. With his parish work and other interests he had no time for profound study. But his eloquence and descriptive powers were such as to attract a large class of students, and many can still read with pleasure his lectures on The Roman and the Teuton, in which he was fired by the moral lessons involved in the decay of the Roman empire and the coming of the vigorous young northern races. Apart from his lectures he had made his mark in Cambridge by the friendly relations which he established with many of the undergraduates and the personal influence which he exercised. But he knew better than any one else his shortcomings as an historian, the preparation of his lectures gave him great anxiety and labour, and in 1869 he resigned the office.
The next honour which fell to him was a canonry at Chester, and in 1873, less than two years before his death, he exchanged it for a stall at Westminster. These historic cities with their old buildings and associations attracted him very strongly: preaching in the Abbey was even dangerously exciting to a man of his temperament. But while he gave his services generously during his months of office, as at Chester in founding a Natural History Society, he never deserted his old work and his old parish. Eversley continued to be his home, and during the greater part of each year to engross his thoughts.
Literature, science, and sport were, as we have seen, the three interests which absorbed his leisure hours. A fourth, partaking in some measure of all three, was travel, a hobby which the strenuous pursuit of duty rarely permitted him to indulge. Ill-health or a complete breakdown sometimes sent him away perforce, and it is to this that he chiefly owed his knowledge of other climes. He has left us some fascinating pictures of the south of France, the rocks of Biarritz, the terrace at Pau, the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the golden arches of the Pont du Gard; but the voyages that thrilled him most were those that he took to America, when he sailed the Spanish main in the track of Drake and Raleigh and Richard Grenville. The first journey in 1870 was to the West Indies; the second and longer one took him to New York and Quebec, and across the continent to the Yosemite and San Francisco. This was in 1874, the last year of his life, and he was received everywhere with the utmost respect and goodwill. His name was now famous on both sides of the Atlantic, and the voice of opposition was stilled. The public had changed its attitude to him, but he himself was unchanged. He had the same readiness to gather up new knowledge, and to get into friendly touch with every kind of man, the same reluctance to talk about himself. Only the yearning towards the unseen was growing stronger. The poet Whittier, who met him at Boston, found him unwilling to talk about his own books or even about the new cities which he was visiting, but longing for counsel from his brother poet on the high themes of a future life and the final destiny of the human race.
While he was in California he was taken ill with pleurisy; and when he came back to England he had so serious a relapse in the autumn that he could hardly perform his duties at Westminster. He had never wished for long life, his strength was exhausted, the ardent soul had worn out its sheath. A dangerous illness of his wife's, threatening to leave him solitary, hastened the end. For her sake he fought a while against the pneumonia which set in, but the effort was in vain, and on January 23, in his own room at Eversley, he met his death contented and serene. Twenty years before he had said, 'God forgive me if I am wrong, but I look forward to it with an intense and reverent curiosity'.
These words of his sum up some of his most marked characteristics. Of his 'curiosity' there is no need to say more: all his life he was pursuing eager researches into rocks, flowers, animals, and his fellow-men. 'Intensity' has been picked out by many of his friends as the word which, more than any other, expresses the peculiar quality of his nature. This does not mean a weak excitability. His letters to J. S. Mill on the women-suffrage movement show that this hysterical element, which was often to be found in the women supporting it, was what most he feared. He himself defines it well—'my blessed habit of intensity. I go at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the time being.' This quality, which many great men put into their work, Kingsley put both into his work and into his play-time. Critics will say that he paid for it: it is easy to quote the familiar line: 'Neque semper arcum tendit Apollo.' But Horace is not the poet to whom Charles Kingsley would go for counsel: he would only say that he got full value in both, and that he never regretted the bargain.
But it would be no less true to say that 'Reverence' is the key-note of his character. This fact was impressed on all who saw him take the services in his parish church, and it was an exaltation of reverence which uplifted his congregation and stamped itself on their memories. It is seen, too, in his political views. The Radical Parson, the upholder of Chartism, was in many ways a strong Tory. He had a great belief in the land-owning classes, and an admiration for what remained of the Feudal System. He believed that the old relation between squire and villagers, if each did his duty, worked far better than the modern pretence of Equality and Independence. Like Disraeli, like Ruskin, and like many other men of high imagination, he distrusted the Manchester School and the policy that in the labour market each class should be left to fend for itself. Radical as he was, he defended the House of Lords and the hereditary system. So, too, in Church questions, though he was an anti-Tractarian, he had a great reverence for the Athanasian Creed and in general was a High Churchman. He had none of the fads which we associate with the Radical party. Total abstinence he condemned as a rigid rule, though there was no man more severe in his attitude to drunkenness. He believed that God's gifts were for man's enjoyment, and he set his face against asceticism. He trained his own body to vigorous manhood and he had remarkable self-control; and he wished to help each man to do this for himself and not to be driven to it by what he considered a false system. Logically it may be easy to find contradictions in the views which he expressed at different times; but his life shows an essential unity in aim and practice.