At about ten o'clock the bell was rung, the servants came in, prayers were said, and the ladies (Mrs. Kingsley and their daughter's governess) bid us good-night. Then to Mr. Kingsley's study, where the rest of the evening was spent—from half-past ten to half-past twelve—the pipe went on, and the talk—a continuous flow. Quakerism was a subject. George Fox, Kingsley said, was his admiration: he read his Journal constantly—thought him one of the most remarkable men that age produced. He liked his hostility to Calvinism. "How little that fellow Macaulay," he said, "could understand Quakerism! A man needs to have been in Inferno himself to know what the Quakers meant in what they said and did." He referred me to an article of his on Jacob Boehme and the mystic writers, in which he had given his views in regard to Fox.
We talked about his parish work: he found it, he said, a great help to him, adding emphatically that his other labor was secondary to this. He had trained himself not to be annoyed by his people calling on him when he was writing. If he was to be their priest, he must see them when it suited them to come; and he had become able if called off from his writing to go on again the moment he was alone. I asked him when he wrote. He said in the morning almost always: sometimes, when much pushed, he had written for an hour in the evening, but he always had to correct largely the next morning work thus done. Daily exercise, riding, hunting, together with parish work, were necessary to keep him in a condition for writing: he aimed to keep himself in rude health. I asked whether Alton Locke had been written in that room. "Yes," he said—"from four to eight in the mornings; and a young man was staying with me at the time with whom every day I used to ride, or perhaps hunt, when my task of writing was done."
A fine copy of St. Augustine attracted my attention on his shelves—five volumes folio bound in vellum. "Ah," he said, "that is a treasure I must show you;" and taking down a volume he turned to the fly-leaf, where were the words "Charles Kingsley from Thomas Carlyle," and above them "Thomas Carlyle from John Sterling." One could understand that Carlyle had thus handed on the book, notwithstanding its sacred associations, knowing that to Kingsley it would have a threefold value. My eye caught also a relic of curious interest—a fragment from one of the vessels of the Spanish Armada. It lay on the mantelpiece: I could well understand Kingsley's pleasure in possessing it.
At the breakfast-table the next morning we had much talk in regard to American writers. Kingsley admitted Emerson's high merit, but thought him too fragmentary a writer and thinker to have enduring fame. He had meant that this should be implied as his opinion in the title he gave to Phaethon—"Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers"—a book he had written in direct opposition to what he understood to be the general teaching of Emerson. I remarked upon the great beauty of some of Emerson's later writings and the marvelous clearness of insight which was shown in his English Traits. Kingsley acquiesced in this, but referred to some American poetry, so called, which Emerson had lately edited, and in his preface had out-Heroded Herod. Kingsley said the poems were the production of a coarse, sensual mind. His reference, of course, was to Walt Whitman, and I had no defence to make. Of Lowell, Mr. Kingsley spoke very highly: his Fable for Critics was worthy of Rabelais. Mr. Froude, who is Kingsley's brother-in-law, had first made him acquainted with Lowell's poetry. Hawthorne's style he thought was exquisite: there was scarcely any modern writing equal to it. Of all his books he preferred the Blithedale Romance.
We talked of Mr. Froude, whom Kingsley spoke of as his dearest friend: he thought Froude sincerely regretted ever having written the Nemesis of Faith. Mr. Helps, author of Friends in Council, he spoke of as his near neighbor there in Hampshire, and his intimate friend. Mr. Charles Reade he knew, and I think he said he was also a neighbor: his Christie Johnston he thought showed high original power. Mrs. Gaskell we talked of, whose Life of Charlotte Bronté had just then been published: Mr. Kingsley thought it extremely interesting and "slightly slanderous." He told me of the author of Tom Brown's School-days, a copy of which, fresh from the publishers, was lying on his table. Mr. Hughes is now so well known to us I need only mention that Mr. Kingsley spoke of him as an old pupil of Arnold's and a spiritual child of Maurice. He spoke most warmly of him, and offered me a letter of introduction to him. I could not avail myself of this, having so little time to remain in London.
I must mention, as showing further Mr. Kingsley's state of mind toward Maurice, that he had named his son after him. He spoke of the boy as being intended for the army: the family, he said, had been soldiers for generations. "That is the profession England will need for the next five-and-twenty years." Of Forster he said, "What a pity he had not been put in the army at the age of eighteen!—he would have been a general now. England has need of such men." I note this as showing the curious apprehension of war which he, an Englishman, felt eighteen years ago, and which he expressed to me, an American. How little either of us thought of the struggle which men of English blood were to engage in in three years from that time! How little I could dream that one of the decisive battles of the world was so soon to be fought in my own State, Pennsylvania!
Our morning was spent in all this varied talk, walking partly on the lawn, partly in the study. His pipe was still his companion. He seemed to need to walk incessantly, such was his nervous activity of temperament. He asked me if it annoyed me for him to walk so much up and down his study. The slight impediment in his speech one forgot as one listened to the flow of his discourse. He talked a volume while I was with him, and what he said often rose to eloquence. There was humor too in it, of which I can give no example, for it was fine and delicate. But what most impressed me was his perfect simplicity of character. He talked of his wife with the strongest affection—wished I could remain longer with them, if only to know her better. Nothing could be more tender than his manner toward her. He went for her when we were in the study, and the last half hour of my stay she sat with us. She is one of five sisters who are all married to eminent men.
It occurs to me to note, as among my last recollections of our talk, that I spoke of Spurgeon, whom I had heard in London a short time before, and was very favorably impressed with. I could not but commend his simple, strong Saxon speech, the charm of his rich full voice, and above all the earnest aim which I thought was manifest in all he uttered. Mr. Kingsley said he was glad to hear this, for he had been told of occasional irreverences of Spurgeon's, and of his giving way now and then to a disposition to make a joke of things. Not that he objected altogether to humor in sermons: he had his own temptations in this way. "One must either weep at the follies of men or laugh at them," he added. I told him Mr. Maurice had spoken to me of Mr. Spurgeon as no doubt an important influence for good in the land, and he said this was on the whole his own opinion. He told me, however, of teaching of quite another character, addressed to people of cultivation mainly, and to him peculiarly acceptable. His reference was to Robertson's Sermons: he showed me the volume—the first series —just then published. The mention of this book perhaps led to a reference by Mr. Kingsley to the Unitarians of New England, of whom he spoke very kindly, adding, in effect, that their error was but a natural rebound from Calvinism, that dreary perversion of God's boundless love.
But I had now to say good-bye to these new friends, who had come to seem old friends, so full and cordial had been their hospitality, and so much had we found to talk of in the quickly-passing hours of my visit. Mr. Kingsley drove me three miles on my way to Winchfield. His talk with me was interspersed with cheery and friendly words to his horse, with whom he seemed to be on very intimate terms. "Come and see us again," he said as we parted: "the second visit, you know, is always the best."
ELLIS YARNALL.