A Little of the Wolf-Vein (1854)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN A LITTLE OF THE WOLF-VEIN (1854) The year 1853 had been an especially difficult one. Church work, schools and lectures pressed heavily on Kingsley’s time. The last instalments of Hypatia were published in April in Fraser’s Magazine and the book version was seen through the press later that year. Illness among his parishioners required constant visiting. Then there were private worries. Fanny was laid up with a cold after a bad mis- carriage in September. She needed a change from the damp Eversley setting again, and the doctor advised her to spend the winter in the mild south-Devon climate. As the Froudes were living at Babbacombe at Torbay, they were asked to find lodgings. Fanny moved with the children to Torquay while Charles remained alone in Eversley to settle his affairs. Debts were growing daily and he bore the separa- tion from his family badly. His letters betray impatience with Fanny’s constant demands for money. He finally managed to follow them at the end of December, having obtained leave from the bishop to absent himself from his parish for six months, although it remained difficult and costly to find curates. Moreover, Fanny’s cures were expensive and often Kingsley had to travel back to Eversley during the weekends to attend to the Sunday services. Although the idea of settling in Devon was cheering, he left Eversley with a heavy heart. Prospects of advancement in his clerical career looked bleak, debts were pressing on him, and his idealistic plans for his parish would come to nothing now that he was leaving it for who knew how long. Eversley “is like a grave [. .] & the grave, too, of so many hopes of what the parish might have been,” he wrote to Fanny.1 The good thing of leaving Eversley, though, was that it also offered much wanted rest to Charles. He now had spare time on his hands, and used it well. Torquay, originally a Channel Fleet port, had rapidly grown into a fashionable sea-side resort for the rich. At the beginning of the 1 CK to FK, undated, BL-62554 f.36r. a little of the wolf-vein (1854) 351 century the Napoleonic wars and the blockade of the French ports had made it difficult for the rich to go abroad and the south Devon coast with its mild climate and invigorating sea air was discovered to be a suitable alternative for the wealthy invalid in which to spend the winter months. The 1848 railway to Torquay had opened the West and in 1850 it boasted about 2,000 lodgings for visitors while the number of inhabitants had grown over the years to more than 11,000. The Kingsleys lodged at Livermead, a fashionable house near the sea front, originally built in 1820 by the Reverend Roger Mallock for his guests, but considerably enlarged by the mid-fifties. Mrs Kingsley hoped that her husband’s presence in Torquay would lead to invi- tations to preach in its churches, so that he could impress some of the wealthy and influential church-going families staying there for the winter and find the favour which was necessary for preferment to a more lucrative parish than Eversley. But “all parties in the Church stood aloof from him as a suspected person; and the attacks of the religious press [. .] had so alarmed the clergy of Torquay, High Church and Evangelical, that all pulpit doors were closed against the author of ‘Alton Locke’, ‘Yeast’, and ‘Hypatia’.”2 In a private letter to her sister, Fanny exclaimed that the situation was the doing of the old-fashioned High Churchman Bishop of Exeter, Henry Phillpotts, who disapproved of Kingsley’s religious views and objected to his preaching in his diocese—“hanging is too good for him,” she concluded.3 In defence of her husband’s religious opinions she added in her biography: Once only he was asked to preach in the parish church for a char- ity, and once at St. John’s, in a Lenten week-day service, when he surprised the congregation, a High Church one, by his reverent and orthodox views on the Holy Eucharist.4 Thus Kingsley was left with plenty of time on his hands in Torquay. While Mrs Kingsley stayed indoors to convalesce of the sofa, he and the children went combing the coast for natural treasures. Torbay offered good possibilities for a naturalist. Philip Henry Gosse, an amateur zoologist and populariser of science who was much respected 2 LML i.404. 3 FK to unidentified sister, undated, Chitty (1974) 166. 4 LML i.404..

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