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.