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."
Cats, too, were his especial delight, a white one and a black. "His love
of animals," says Mrs. Kingsley, "was strengthened by his belief in
their future state--a belief which he held in common with John Wesley
and many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of
natter-jacks (running toads) who lived on from year to year in the same
hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to approach.
He had two little friends in a pair of sand-wasps, who lived in a crack
of the window in his dressing-room, one of which he had saved from
drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out into the sunshine to
dry; and every spring he would look out eagerly for them or their
children, who came out of, or returned to, the same crack."
His guests were one day amused when his little girl opened her hand and
begged him to "look at this _delightful_ worm."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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