Henry Kingsley | Biography

Henry Kingsley wrote some very bad novels, and his life appears to have been similarly disorganized. There are, however, occasional flashes of good writing in some of his earlier books, written before the scandals of his life caught up with him. The subject matter of his novels has a certain topical interest.

Henry Kingsley was born in the Northamptonshire village of Barnack, where his father was clergyman, although in the same year the family moved to Clovelly, Devonshire. In 1836 Charles Kingsley, Sr., was presented with the living of St. Luke's Church, Chelsea; Devonshire and Chelsea figure prominently in Henry Kingsley's novels. Kingsley's elder brothers, Charles and George, achieved considerable fame in public life, the former as a novelist and political thinker, the latter as a traveler and scientist; but Henry was always considered a bit of a failure, with his novels the one redeeming feature of his life. After going to school at King's College, London, he went to Worcester College, Oxford, in 1850. Here he was popular and athletic, once winning a bet that he could row a mile, ride a mile, and run a mile within fifteen minutes; but he left Oxford without a degree in 1853 and traveled to the Australian goldfields with some fellow students.

In Australia he was unsuccessful and for some time lost contact with his family, returning suddenly in 1858 to discover that his eldest brother, Charles, was a famous clergyman and novelist. Fired by his example, Henry turned his Australian experiences to good account in The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn (1859). The novel was well received and is indeed full of vigorous incident as well as original descriptions of Australian scenery; but there are also unnecessary digressions and a surfeit of manly men and plucky women. The villain, George Hawker, a desperate character with some redeeming features, is more interesting than the protagonists.

Kingsley's next novel, Ravenshoe (1861), is probably his best, although it is curiously little known. Charles Ravenshoe of Ravenshoe in Devonshire, at the moment of his triumphal rowing for Oxford in the boat race, is informed that his father, Densil, is dying. He reaches home to discover that Densil is dead and was not really his father at all. There had been a substitution at birth between Charles and his groom, William Horton, who accordingly takes Charles's place as heir to his older brother Cuthbert Ravenshoe; Charles Horton joins the army and takes part in the charge of the Light Brigade. After Cuthbert Ravenshoe dies, it turns out that Charles is the real heir after all since his father, James Horton--supposedly an illegitimate brother of Densil Ravenshoe--is really Densil's legitimate elder brother. Charles is discovered in poor health in an East End slum by his friend John Marston, who is in love with Mary Corby, who, in turn, had long been in love with Charles, whom she eventually marries in spite of his changed appearance. He had previously been recognized by Lord Ascot (previously known as Lord Weller), who had been left the fortune of Lord Saltire, which had been destined for Charles. The final clue, which solves all difficulties--the marriage certificate of James Horton's mother--is supplied by Ellen Ravenshoe, Charles's real sister, who has rather improbably (and in Victorian eyes shockingly) been the mistress of Lord Weller and of Charles's employer before he joined the army, Lieutenant Hanby, but has subsequently become a nun.

This bald summary of the plot of Ravenshoe draws attention to its improbabilities but not to its strengths. Kingsley could certainly write a vivid chapter: the boat race, Balaclava, and Derby Day are all convincingly described. Although Charles Ravenshoe is a little too good to be true, the heroism of characters ready to sacrifice themselves for his interest is certainly moving. Except toward the end of the novel there are none of the digressions which mar The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn and Kingsley's later works. There is some hostility to Catholicism reminiscent of Charles Kingsley: Charles Ravenshoe's disinheritance is part of a plot by Father Mackworth, a sinister Roman priest, to keep the Ravenshoe estate in the hands of the Catholics, as Charles is a Protestant. Apart from this, the novel has little serious preaching in it.

Austin Elliott (1863) was written in the same year and tells how Austin is sent to prison for taking part in a duel in which his friend Lord Charles Barty was shot by the villainous Captain Hertford, but is eventually released and marries Eleanor Hilton. As in almost all his novels, Kingsley introduces characters who appear to promise much but are never developed. Thus, early on in the work Austin appears to fall in love with a Miss Cecil, but rather tamely she marries a peer and vanishes from the action. Another fault is conspicuous in the novel: dark hints of impending tragedy are given so often that the eventual death of Lord Charles Barty comes almost as an anticlimax. The historical background is uninteresting: it is difficult to believe that Lord Charles and Austin are really concerned about the repeal of the Corn Laws. The best bits of the book involve Austin in prison, although one does not believe he will stay there long any more than one believed Charles Ravenshoe would vanish permanently. It may be possible to trace behind both episodes some autobiographical influence arising from Kingsley's period of disgrace in Australia.

In 1864 Kingsley married his second cousin Sarah Haselwood, a governess, and went to live at Wargrave near Henley on Thames. Sarah suffered from poor health with frequent miscarriages. They moved to London, then to Sussex; their financial position was always precarious. Novels followed thick and fast, but it is difficult to be enthusiastic about works which multiply the faults of the earlier novels. The Hillyars and the Burtons (1865) is quite interesting for clues to Kingsley's biography, as the two families of aristocratic Hillyars and plebeian Burtons migrate between Chelsea and Australia; but Kingsley is not good at bridging the gap between high and low life, although he seems painfully anxious to do so. Silcote of Silcotes (1867) is more incoherent, with less excuse, and was dismissed by critics as a series of rubbishy love stories whose characters are puppets as active as fleas. The plot is, indeed, improbable, involving, among other things, Italian revolutionaries.

In 1869 Kingsley went to Edinburgh to edit the Daily Review, a Free Church paper. The venture was not a success: his prolixity as a novelist did not make him a good journalist. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, he obtained permission to act as war correspondent; he was present at the battle of Sedan, using the experience to write the children's novel Valentin (1872). By this time he was in grave financial difficulties. His later novels are almost unreadable; Oakshott Castle (1873) is full of preposterous melodrama and ludicrous characters such as the hero, Lord Oakshott, although it has occasional good scenes (for example, the shipwreck) which are almost as impressive as those in Ravenshoe. (The Prince of Wales appears in this novel.) Clement Shorter, in a biographical summary at the beginning of his edition of the collected novels (1894-1895) says unkindly that it is impossible to conceive of a worse novel written by an author of distinction than Kingsley's The Grange Garden (1876). By the time this book was published Kingsley was fatally ill with cancer, and he died in May 1876.

In spite of his uncharitable conclusion, Shorter's essay and his edition were essentially works of rehabilitation; and indeed he claimed that when time had softened the memory of the man's unsuccessful life, "The public interest in Henry Kingsley will be stronger than in his now more famous brother." Such has not proved to be the case. A few of the better novels, such as Ravenshoe, were reprinted as World Classics or in the Everyman series in the first part of the twentieth century, and there was one attempt in 1931 to vindicate his memory. But in the latter part of this century, while Charles Kingsley has been given a certain amount of attention for his eccentric but modern religious and social views, Henry Kingsley has been totally ignored. A modest revival of interest in Ravenshoe and parts of the Australian novels would not be out of place.