sSOPtt Ste Sie) ae aad € 7 ve 7 - .. er rae aS = : _ aoe R : } a ¢ 7 4 : , Gs, gat A y . m4 @ “s , : a> -_ Me teaets oS 8 6s 6 Jair es ae NOTES ON SPORT“ AND TRAVEL NOTES ON PeokR! AND TRAVEL BY GEORGE HENRY KINGSLEY M.D., F.L.S., ETc. WITH A MEMOIR HIS DAUGHTER MARY H. KINGSLEY London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1900 All rights reserved Ten owh © , by o PREPAC E IN publishing these notes connected with my father’s life, I fear I am undertaking too great a responsibility. This feeling does not arise from any distrust of the truth in this book, but from the fact that my father had a handwriting beautiful to look upon, but ex- ceedingly difficult to decipher ; and when this hand- writing dealt with either Canadian or Polynesian place-names, a stronger form of intellect than my own was required to comprehend exactly what was meant by a capital letter and a terminal letter and in between what might be either a succession of m’s, n’s, or e’s, or, for the matter of that, w’s, or a selection of such things, or in fact any mortal letters that kept on the level line. I am, however, thankful to say I found that stronger intellect in Dr. J. W. Gregory, who, armed with a knowledge of geography, could tell what the place-name was likely to be; and I am deeply grateful for his generously given help in this matter and in the matter of scientific names, though vi Preface I beg he may not be held responsible for any errors there may herein be found in either—these must be put down to imperfections in the text. I am also - indebted to Miss Toulmin Smith for her kind re- vision of the proofs and for suggestions which her long friendship with my father made most valuable. I am also indebted to Messrs. Macmillan for having agreed, after my fathers death in 1892, to publish a small memorial volume of his papers. My father, as will be seen in these papers, had never been any assistance from a business standpoint to the house of Macmillan, but his friendship with Alexander Macmillan and with Robert Bowes—of Macmillan and Bowes, Cambridge—was a long and unbroken one. The Publishers felt that a Memoir was needed to introduce this volume, as my father was so much less known to the literary public than his brothers Charles and Henry. It was originally hoped that the late Earl of Pembroke might contribute such an introduction, but this idea was unhappily frus- trated by his illness and death. After some delay, I reluctantly undertook the completion of the task, regretting it was not in an abler hand, but thankful that much of it has been. M. H. KINGSLEY, N Oo CONTENTS MEMOIR . CONCERNING KINGSLEYS IN GENERAL, AND GEORGE HENRY KINGSLEY IN PARTICULAR CONCERNING THE VARIOUS WAYS AND PLACES IN WHICH THE DOCTOR SPENT HIS TIME FROM 1850 TO 1862 CONCERNING A HURRICANE— THE SOUTHERN SEAS AND FISHING THEREIN LETTERS OF GEORGE KINGSLEY TO HIS WIFE, CONCERNING ISLANDS IN THE SOUTHERN SEAS CONCERNING MOOSE CALLING AND CANADIAN FORESTS AND FISHING . HUNTING IN THE UNITED STATES GEORGE KINGSLEY’S LATER YEARS AND DEATH NOTES ON SPORT AND TRAVEL . A GOSSIP ON A SUTHERLAND HILL-SIDE ON CERTAIN DELUSIONS OF THE NORTH BRITONS . MUSINGS ON MANNING’S ‘OLD NEW ZEALAND’ My Loc on H.M.S. S7. GEORGE PAGE 4! 58 89 148 190 209 295 323 358 Vili Contents ‘AMONG THE SHARKS AND WHALES’ THE LAST SALMON BEFORE CLOSE TIME . SUBGLACIAL ANGLING TROUT-TICKLING . A GERMAN FIRST OF SEPTEMBER . CHAMOIS-HUNTING PAGE 4II 441 455. 465 469 494 GEORGE HENRY KINGSLEY M.D., F.L.S., Erc. BY HIS DAUGHTER MARY H. KINGSLEY I CONCERNING KINGSLEYS IN GENERAL, AND GEORGE HENRY KINGSLEY IN PARTICULAR FAMILIES are like nations in a way. They have their periods characterised by an outbreak of intellectual brilliancy, and those periods in between wherein they merely get on with their normal intellectual power. With some nations the intel- lectually brilliant generations follow each other more closely than those of other nations. France, for example, is a quicker flowerer than Germany: it depends on the nature of the stock, and I merely mention it in order to point out what happened in the old English family of the Kingsleys in its last generation but one. It flowered, had in its way its Elizabethan period. As a family I think one may safely say—being a member of it oneself—that it has not been given to exhausting itself with rapidly successive outbreaks of intellectual brilliancy. It has gone on frequently B 2 Concerning Kingsleys in General I for century after century hunting, fishing, fighting in an English gentlemanly kind of way; then it has turned out some one who was generally valuable, and settled down again. Money-making has, so far, never been its strong point; money-keeping still less so. Whenever it has had a generation that has had opportunities in this direction, and could have passed on wealth to the next generation, it has not done so: it has raised a regiment and gone to the wars and had an enjoyable time of it, according to Kingsley ideas. Or, if there were not an attractive war handy, it has flung its money away more foolishly by far, trying to establish its claim to an earldom, which it believes it ought to have, because its traditions tell it is descended from Robin Hood. It is possible that if this family goes on down through the ages, in some far away time it may develop a generation excelling in the fine arts, or music, or sound business capacity. Now and again a Kingsley shows symptoms of excellence in poetry and painting to a promising degree. Of music, as far as record goes, it has shown no such symptom. The rank and file of us have a difficulty in distinguishing between ‘God save the Queen’ and ‘ Rule Britannia,’ One member of the family only has been known to possess a taste for figures, which, after a 600 years’, more or less, authentic record, and a legendary past behind that of indefinite extent, is not an encouraging percentage. However, I will neither I Concerning Four Brothers of that Ilk 3 dwell on our future nor our remote past, but turn to our intellectual outbreak in the last generation but one. Charles Kingsley was the greatest of the three Kingsley brothers, and shed honour on his name and credit on his nation for all time. Henry had possibly the greater literary gift; George was the most typical Kingsley, at the best, of all three, and was a brother very dear to the great Canon, who was not only a Kingsley, but a great man among humanity at large. The affection between Charles and George was never dimmed, although ‘ George’s awful temper’ was an accepted fact in the family. Still the Canon understood this brother of his, and, understanding, loved him. They were more of an age than Henry, and both remembered that other brother of theirs, Gerald, to whom as boys they had looked up as to a superior being—to wit, an officer in the Royal Navy. Gerald’s fate was a tragic one. He served on Her Majesty’s ship Pzgue in the bombardment of St. Jean d’Acre, and seemed to have before him a most brilliant future. But in 1844 he met with a ghastly death in the Gulf of Carpentaria on board a disease-stricken gunboat, the Royalist. There she lay with her wretched crew roasting, rotting, and pining in her day after day, never heard of, nor hearing of, a living soul outside for a year and a half. The commander died, half the crew died, the officers died, and so on, till in the month of May no officer was left except Gerald 4 Concerning Kingsleys in General I Kingsley, who stuck to his post and kept the ship, as ordered, at her station. On the 17th of September he died, and one Parkinson, the boat- swain, then took charge and kept the pennant flying on the Royalist, and wisely took her to Singapore, though with difficulty——mast-sprung, under-handed, leaky as she was. I have often heard tell of the dreadful blow this death of Gerald was to all at home in Chelsea. Mr. Kingsley, the father, was at that time Rector of St. Luke’s there, and used regularly of an afternoon to go and read the papers at a public library. One day, as he went in as calmly as usual, he heard a gentleman say: ‘ Dread- ful bad business this about the Royalist—every single - officer on board her dead—those who did not die of fever were eaten by cannibals.’ Old Mr. Kingsley, strong man as he was, fainted, for Gerald was the joy and the hope of the house in those days; and Gerald was never forgotten by either of the brothers, neither by him who grew up to be its greatest honour, nor by that other who tempted so often a similar fate. Of Charles Kingsley I need not speak further here; his life has been admirably written by his devoted wife, and is almost a classic in the English language. Henry, the younger brother, was consider- ably junior to Charles and George; between him and George came a sister, the late Mrs. Chanter of Ilfracombe, the only daughter of the house in that generation. Tradition has it that this daughter of I Flenry Kingsley 5 the house, with the assistance, or at the instigation, of George, wheeled Henry, when an infant, in a garden barrow into a pond and abandoned him there, from motives of jealousy: no harm, however, was done, owing to the gardener, under Providence, having a need of that barrow. Chastisement was administered where deserved, and Henry Kingsley grew up, and in due course went to Oxford, render- ing his career there mainly remarkable by mad pranks and distinction in the domain of athletics. He was like his own creation Charles Ravenshoe. His buoyant animal spirits and vivacious tempera- ment compelled him to take part in all the reckless, joyous life round him, and his ability made him a leader therein. When the gold-digging fever was raging Henry went to Australia. It is needless to remark that he did not make a fortune there, but in the course of five years as a stock-rider, miner, and mounted policeman, he saw things Australian at large as they were in those days. Then he returned to England, tenderly nursed his father through his last illness, made his name in literature by his two great novels Geoffrey Hamlyn and Ravenshoe, plunged into a literary career and journalism as a profession, married his cousin Miss MHaslewood, and in 1870 went, with his love of adventure unabated, and joined the German army as war correspondent. Henry Kingsley won no prizes at Oxford save silver cups; he found no fortune in Australia ; all his life long he seemed to those who 6 Concerning Kingsleys tn General i loved him, as all did who had even the slightest personal acquaintance with him, to squander alike brilliant talents and brilliant opportunities without attaining happiness. Yet he wrote Geoffrey Hamlyn and Ravenshoe ; in these two great novels, and in all his subsequent writings, the current of action is less impetuous than in the works of Charles Kingsley, and they contain no description of scenery that can vie with the glowing word pictures of Westward Ho ! They appear to owe their wonderful charm to the perfectly genuine, unaffected sentiment which they display, to the bright stream of genial humour which runs through almost every page of them, and to the fact that the mind of their writer seems ever to be © imbued with the idea that the cords of sympathy by which man is bound to his fellow-man can never be completely torn asunder. But that Henry Kingsley had in him the bold, adventurous spirit of his race is proved by his record, and that he also loved Nature not less deeply than his brother Charles is proved by his paintings: paintings almost unknown outside his family, but which, though they are the works of an amateur, are yet so beautiful that they could only have been made by a man who looked on the beauty of the external world with the eye of a worshipper. Charles Kingsley loved Nature so keenly that he was forced to sing and paint in words her charms, but not enough to make him sacrifice to this love his duty to the toilers in the city and his work asa parson. Henry loved Nature so keenly 1 Flenry Kingsley 7 that he could paint her charms on canvas, and could turn to memories of her and give scenes he had seen in words that once heard were never forgotten. Who that heard him tell how the purple autumn crocuses bloomed among the dead men and _ horses of the battle-fields of Alsace and Lorraine ever forgot it, or forgot the black snakes in the black night in Australia—snakes that you did not see, but heard. He did not seem capable of writing these things down except in his earlier books, but he felt them vividly enough. Unfortunately, the wretched health which descended on him while still a young man, and which led to his premature death, kept him away from following Nature, but he loved her throughout his life. George Kingsley, however, loved Nature so utterly that life without her unspoiled companionship was intolerable to him. Always before him there was gleaming ‘that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever’; and always ‘his heart the purpose held to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars.’ To gain but half of what his heart desired to gain, George Kingsley gave away all hope of fortune or renown, and deemed that by that bargain he had made himself the winner in the game of life. Taken all in all, George was certainly the happiest of the three brothers. Many a time Charles 1 See ‘Eyre, the South Australian Explorer,’ by H. Kingsley, Macmillan’s Magazine, November and December 1865. 8 Concerning Kingsleys tn General 1 Kingsley, wearied by the splendid fight he was fighting in England, thought lovingly on the lands of which his brother George wrote to him; while all the honours Charles Kingsley won gave to George Kingsley, away in the wild regions of the world, a pleasure greater even than they brought to their recipient. Not that envy of any man could come into George Kingsley’s heart, unless it were the man who had an extra good chance of being killed by a grizzly bear of superior size, or who had caught an extra-sized salmon. I now turn from the inter-relationship in feeling between the brothers, and attempt to tell you what manner of man George Kingsley was, and what manner of life he led. No one who ever knew George Kingsley, though it were only as a mere casual acquaintance, is likely to forget him; for in his character there were united many qualities which are very rarely found together in the same individual. They are indeed sometimes regarded as being positively incompatible with each other. And this strange, almost bizarre, ‘many mindedness,’ together with a delicate tact, a great power of expression, and a quick insight into the thoughts of others, made him, on the one hand, seem perfectly at home in whatever phase of society he might happen to be, yet always distinguished him, on the other, from those with whom he was at any time associated. There was something wonder- fully attractive even in the appearance of this lithe, 1 George Kingsley 9 square-shouldered man. MHis strong, mobile face was sunburnt and weather-beaten like the face of a sailor ; his fearless, brilliant gray eyes looked right into the hearts of those who spoke with him; his whole form was alert and instinct with the warm, passionate spirit of life ; and his conversation, ranging easily through every subject from philosophy to fishing, full of dry humour and flashing with brilliant wit and trenchant repartee, had a charm which was absolutely irresistible. In a few quiet sentences he could give more facts, suggest more ideas, than many a man could give in a laboured monologue of an hour’s duration. He knew books only less well than he knew men, men only less well than he knew Nature; while he was gifted with the power to make those around him realise, and that without the slightest sign of effort on his part to impress or astonish, that he had really looked upon the strange scenes he described, and played his part in the wild places and conditions he so casually referred to. Many-minded, truly, was George Kingsley: loving the lore of the old Hebrew mystics, loving the glorious, manly poetry of the great Elizabethan dramatists, loving science, loving the company of his fellow-men; but beyond all else, loving to be in the wild heart of Nature, far away from the clamour and turmoil of crowded cities, listening to the lore of forests or the voices of the sea. He was born on the 14th of February 1826, at 10 Concerning Kingsleys in General I Barnack Rectory, in Northamptonshire ; and during his boyhood, which was spent partly at Clovelly and partly at Chelsea, he was surrounded by influences which were singularly well fitted to develop the temperament with which he was endowed. The strong, manly character of his father, a parson who won the hearts of the stalwart Devonshire fishermen, because he feared no danger, and could manage a boat, shoot a herring-net, and haul a seine as one of themselves ; the deep, poetic feeling of his mother ; the life of romantic, and often tragic, incidents which they and their children led in the loveliest of all English coast villages, has been charmingly de- scribed by Mrs. Charles Kingsley in the Memoirs of her husband; and many of the scenes in Henry Kingsley’s Hzllyers and the Burtons, are laid in the Chelsea of sixty years ago. He has pictured in delightful detail the quaint streets and byways, the interior of the old church, with the stone effigies of the Lawrences and the Dacres and the black marble monument of Sir Thomas More ; and also—what was then one of the most striking features of the district —that vast gloomy mansion? whose floors ‘ had been trodden often enough by the statesmen and dandies of Queen Elizabeth’s court, and most certainly by the stately woman herself, towering above the squalid modern houses around it ‘with its tall, overhanging, high-pitched roof and great dormer window,—the 1 This building, which had once been the palace of the Earls of Essex, was demolished in 1842. I Chelsea tn window of the haunted attic from which Jim Burton, the blacksmith’s son, could look down into the Rectory garden, and see the long walk of pollard limes, the giant acacias, and a little glimpse of lawn between the boughs.’ He has told us also in that book of the misery, the squalor, and the vice which existed in the many dirty lanes and poverty-stricken courts and alleys by which that peaceful old walled garden was encompassed. The rector and his wife laboured most steadfastly to bring light into these dark places, giving away considerable sums of money in charity, establishing clubs and ragged schools, and going among the most abominable scenes of filth, wretched- ness, and indecency, to visit the poor and read the Bible to them. They were busy from morning till night, the house full of district visitors and parish councillors. But the rector’s sons? There they were—‘ dreamers dreaming greatly in the man-stifled town’; and in the Rectory library they found good food for dreamers—books which roused within them the spirit of adventure, and held their minds in thrall with the glamour of strange lands. There, at their leisure, they could pore over venerable treatises on natural history, embellished with fantastical illustra- tions dating from that happy age when the artistic imagination wandered free in a paradise that was untainted by the presence of that serpent Scientific accuracy: records relating to the West Indian islands and the golden Spanish Main; books that had been collected by their mother’s ancestors, who i2 Concerning Kingsleys in General 1 were for generations planters in Barbados and Demerara. Histories of the globe, and lordly folios, on whose maps full many a sturdy coast-line dwindled into dots—full many a line of dots went stumbling on to perish at the feet of pregnant nothingness. Volume on volume of famous voyagers—Dampier, Rogers, Shelrocke, Byron, Cook, and grand old Esquemeling—the Froissart of the Buccaneers—and respectable Captain Charles Johnson, deeply interested and very properly shocked at ‘the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pyrates. Truly ‘to the southwards many wondrous isles, many strange fishes, many monstrous Patagones withdrew their senses. And dearer, perhaps, than these to the boys were the journals of old General Kingsley, who had served as an aide-de-camp at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and whose regiment had fought with desperate valour in the rose-gardens of Minden, and of their grand- father Nathaniel Lucas, who had seen the Count de Grasse surrender his sword to Rodney on the deck of the Formidable after the action off the island of St. Lucia on the 12th of April 1792, and had witnessed from afar the awful irruption of the soufrzere of St. Vincent in 1812, and who was the friend of many of the leading men of learning and science of his time. If it be true that Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, it is true that Westward Ho! was made in that Rectory library. Don Quixote never lingered more lovingly over the fascinating pages of Felzccano de Sylva than George Kingsley I Wandering in Germany 13 and his brothers lingered over the pages of these enchanting books; never recalled with more en- thusiasm the brave deeds of Bernardo del Carpro and Rinaldo de Montalban than they recalled Anson’s capture of the Manilla galleon, and Mor- gan’s march on Panama. George Kingsley’s desire to travel only grew stronger and stronger in the gloomy atmosphere of Chelsea. Amid the moors and the combes of the beautiful West Country, he had spent his childhood in an actual world that was at least half suited to his nature. Taken from this and placed in a dismal London suburb, as Chelsea was then, he was forced to build for himself an ideal world of his own, longing passionately the while for the coming of the days when something like that world would stand around him in firm reality. While he was a schoolboy this desire to roam had, of course, to remain unsatisfied, though during the holidays he might breathe once more the air of his beloved Devon, catch trout in the Taw, the Torridge, and the Lynn, and go out now and again in the herring-boats with his old friends the Clovelly fishermen. But as time went on George Kingsley decided to follow medicine as a profession, and then as soon as ever the term’s work was over at the hos- pital, he shouldered a knapsack, thrust a sketch-book into his pocket, and was off for a long ramble in Germany or Switzerland or Austria, through the Rhineland or through the Thiiringen Wald, the 14 Concerning Kingsleys in General I Bohmerwald and the Erz-Gebirge, through the Swiss or the Tyrolean Alps, and once through Bohemia and Moravia, and far away into the Carpathian mountains. He wandered ever by himself, alone. There might be sunshine or there might be rain; the roads might be heavy with mire or hidden with swirls of dust ; there might be no roads—it mattered not to him, so he were free, with German beer and a German bed at the end of a long day’s tramp, or a draught of water and a dry rock under the lee of a mountain crag, or a hay-loft and sour wine, it mattered not: all that mattered was being free. When he was tired of the glory of cloudland, forest, and mountain, he could dwell in a palace of dreams ; and when he was tired of dreaming he could match the rhythm of his footfalls to the rhythm of a song :— ‘Wenn’s kaum in Osten glihte, Der Welt noch still und weit ; Da weht rechts durch’s Gemiithe, Die schéne Bliithenzeit !’1 as the words of an old Wanderslied runs scribbled down on a leaf in one of his old sketch-books. His wonderful power of adapting himself to his surroundings, his genial nature, and his love of sport, made it easy for him to win a way into the hearts of the good-natured peasants with whom he spent his time. He could listen with rapt attention to the poems of a German schoolmaster, comparing them to every effort of the Teutonic lyre from Anne 1 « Reiselied,” by Joseph Freiherr v, Eichendorff. I Wanderings in Central Europe 15 Mariechen up to Bekrantz mit Laub. He could talk about guns with the foresters ; he could crack jokes with the Herr Wirth and flirt with his rosy- cheeked daughters; and doubtless, even in those immature days, he put into practice his favourite precept for travellers, and also for men who stay at home: “ Always make love to the old ladies.” Many and marvellous to behold were the trophies he brought home, to a home not always grateful, that he won at Scheiben-Scheissen—jovial assemblies where men shot for prizes and drank good beer all the day long, and then danced, with occasional very frequent intervals for Sause und Brause, all the night long to the music of the village band. Fish he caught when- ever and wherever there were fish to be caught ; and in one of his subsequent articles he tells how he joined an hilarious shooting party, and bowled over a couple of roe, and felt his brow burn, for the first and last time, with the brand of vulpicide in the beech woods of the Eifel; and in another how he nearly broke his neck, but brought down his chamois in the Wildgrad Kogle, Those days that he spent in wandering through the mountains and the forests of Central Europe, when for the first time he tasted the wine of perfect freedom, were assuredly among the happiest days of his whole life. In after years his mother used to be fond of telling her grandchildren how another lady and herself had been extremely terrified, when they were once walking together in the vicinity of Dresden, 16 Concerning Kingsleys in General I by the sudden appearance, round a bend in the road, of a ragged, resolute, ruffian-looking young vagabond, who, fixing his wild gray eyes on them, and uttering an exclamation which they interpreted as a menace, had approached them with, as they had thought, the’ intention of peremptorily demanding alms ; and howa close inspection had revealed that he was none other than her own son George, returning literally from Bohemia, with his clothes in tatters, the remnants of his boots tied together with pieces of string, and his face burnt as brown as a gipsy’s, radiant with his freedom and his joy at seeing her again. It seems strange at first sight that such a man should have chosen the medical profession. The atmosphere of the hospital ward and the sick-room seems to go ill with his other tastes; but his choice represented that part of his many-minded- ness that loved science, and his gentle and kindly desire to do good, and his fighting, sporting instinct : it gave him chances of fighting death and evil, and he was very fond and very proud of his profession, as in a way he always showed by using the xom de plume of ‘The Doctor,’ In his medical-student days he applied himself with such zeal to his work that he was senior prize- man for anatomy in session 1842-43 at St. George’s Hospital, and passed his examination as Doctor of Medicine at Edinburgh University in 1847, when he was only twenty years of age. Certainly he had no reason to complain that the I Parts mm 1848 17 first years of his*life as a Doctor of Medicine were dull ; for, in the winter after he had passed, he went to Paris further to carry on his beloved study of anatomy ; Paris, in those days, being considered the best place for this, owing to the greater supply of bodies to be had there. During the following spring he was in the midst of the turbulence and disorder which drove Louis Philippe from the throne of France. Unfortunately, George Kingsley kept no regular written diary of these times. He would often talk of them, fixing on the minds of his listeners visions that remain there like the memories of pictures seen long ago—a room in the hotel in the Rue Basse du Rampart, with its floor strewn with the wounded ; a woman dipping her finger in the blood of a camarade, and scrawling @ mort Guzzot on the wall; a solitary chasseur, a bronzed veteran of the old school, mounted on a great horse, grim, silent, vicious, slashing his way through a yelling crowd, his sword leaping down right and left, left and right, like a white flame in the pale, mad face. Of course, George Kingsley was not a man who could stand calmly by while other men were fighting. Esquemeling says that the buccaneers who followed the fortunes of that desperate ruffian Lolonois deemed it to be ‘a matter of most admirable security to expose themselves to the hugest dangers that might possibly occur” George Kingsley, in the days of his youth, was quite of that way of thinking. Moreover, his mind was, at Cc 18 Concerning Kingsleys in General 1 that period of his life, very deeply imbued with the liberal sentiments which were then rousing the enthusiasm of half the young men in Europe. Remain a quiet spectator of the fierce conflict round him he could not. The only reward, how- ever, that he received for his devotion to the goddess of Liberty was a musket-ball in the biceps of his left arm, received when he was engaged in assisting fellow-worshippers in the service of taking up paving-stones and so on to build a barricade. We all know the dictum of a famous statesman that ‘not to be a Radical before the age of 30 is a sign of a hard heart, but that to be one after is the sign of a soft head’ If George Kingsley’s heart was politically extremely soft before 30, his head certainly grew to a corresponding degree of political hardness afterwards. To many of the people who knew him only in his later life, when he would often speak with a bitter cynicism with regard to all questions of political reform, the statement that he once lent his aid to the building of an altar to the unknown goddess in the streets of Paris would have been a surprise. His furious denunciations of Radicalism were simply highly amusing to those who knew of his early leanings that way, and knew his undying spirit of intolerance of oppression in any form. But it was, after all, with him as with others :— «“‘ Forward” rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one. Let us hush this cry of “Forward” till ten thousand years have gone.’ 1 Tom Thurnall 19 Cynical George Kingsley certainly appeared at times, but his incisive manner of speaking made him appear far more cynical than he really was. Writing from Heidelberg to an intimate friend of his, very shortly after these experiences in Paris, he said, with a frank avowal somewhat unusual to him: ‘I have been a lonely man all my life, living within myself and only using the external world as a means of getting shreds and patches of colour with which to deck my dream palace; but I have always had an intense longing for sympathy from my brother men— a sympathy which I have never received, probably from my own fault, except from my own brothers in the flesh. So strong has been this feeling, that when in the extreme solitude and isolation of foreign travel I have often smoked a cigar for the pleasure of asking a fellow human being for a light, and of experiencing the sensation of brotherhood and sympathy produced by the ready kindness of the French or German man who granted my request, and took his leave with a bow and a kindly word which seemed to raise the trivial accommodation to the might of a real kindness,’ His heart always filled with compassion at the sight of those who were suffering. Every one who has read Two Years Ago will remember the cholera- stricken town of Aberalva, and the young doctor who rejoiced in having ‘a good stand-up fight with an old enemy. When Charles Kingsley was writing thus of the labours of Tom Thurnall in 20 Concerning Kingsleys in General 1 combating the pestilence in 1854, he was thinking of the work his brother George had done during the earlier outbreak in 1849. In the autumn of 1849 George Kingsley was staying with his cousin Dr. Robert Wills (afterwards Colonel Wills of Plas Bellin) in Flintshire ; when the cholera invaded the district Dr. Wills and George Kingsley devoted themselves with tireless energy to the service of the poor people in Flint, Northop, and the surrounding villages. Only the other day there was found an old letter from Morgan Davies, minister of St. Mark’s, Northop, in which that gentleman, as the representative of his congregation, thanks Dr. George Kingsley for ‘the great bene- volence which he exercised towards the poor by his constant and wholly gratuitous attendance upon them by night and by day, when they were suffering that fearful malady.’ And, as Charles Kingsley says when chronicling his brother’s deeds in the shape of Tom Thurnall, ‘he just thought nothing about death and danger at all—always smiling, always cheerful, always busy, yet never in a hurry, he went up and down seemingly ubiquitous. Sleep he got when he could, and food as often as he could... the only person in the town who seemed to grow healthier and actually happier as the work went on,’ Another passage in Two Years Ago, descriptive of the career of that self-willed and adventurous young doctor was strangely prophetic of the future of his prototype George Kingsley. ‘Stay drudging I Tom Thurnall 21 in London, says his biographer, ‘he would not; settle down in a country practice he would not. He vanished into infinite space, and was heard of by occasional letters dated from the Rocky Mountains [where he did shoot a grizzly bear], the Spanish West Indies, Otaheite, Singapore, the Falkland Islands, and all manner of unexpected places’ The novel was published in 1857, but George Kingsley’s wanderings, if we except those Continental rambles, were not to commence until five years later. II CONCERNING THE VARIOUS WAYS AND PLACES AN») WHICH. GHE. DOCTCGE SPENT HIS TIME FROM 1850 TO 1862 IN 1850 George Kingsley became private physician to the first Marquis of Aylesbury, and he afterwards attended in a similar capacity the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Sutherland, and the first and second Earls of Ellesmere. He was then in possession of all the enthusiasm and vigour of his early manhood, mind and muscle alike rejoiced in activity, and he devoted his leisure not merely to shooting, salmon- fishing, and deer-stalking, sports that he followed with the keenness of the born hunter, but also to literature and scientific research. Undoubtedly during the twelve years of this period, from 1850 to 1862, the powers of his intellect and the diversity of his interests in life were more vividly displayed than at any subsequent time, and the work that he did seemed to promise for him in the future a career of great brilliancy and distinction—a promise which, unfortunately, was never entirely fulfilled. His love 11 Literary Ambitions 25 of natural history led him into the company of many of the most eminent scientific men of his day. In 1856 he was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society, for his investigations into the structure of some of the lower forms of animal life; and he was a fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society from the date of its foundation. German literature had for him always an intense charm; in 1857 he amused himself by making a translation of four of the Novellen of Paul Heyse, which were published under the title of Hour Phases of Love, and he also commenced a translation of the poems and prose works of Heinrich Heine, for whom he ever had a great admiration. Charles Kingsley was then at the very zenith of his reputation as a writer of romance.