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Darwin’s Other Bulldog: Charles Kingsley and the Popularisation of Evolution in Victorian England

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Abstract

The nineteenth-century Anglican Priest Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) was a significant populariser of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Kingsley was successful in this regard because he developed such diverse connections throughout his career. In the 1840s he associated with Chartists and radical journalists; in the 1850s and 1860s he moved freely in scientific circles and was elected Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1856 and Fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1863. In 1859 he was appointed Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. In 1860 the Prince Consort was willing and able to secure Kingsley appointment as the Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University and he subsequently became tutor to the Prince of Wales. Thereafter he was frequently invited into high Victorian Society. A friend of ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ Thomas Huxley, of the eminent geologist Charles Lyell and a correspondent of Darwin, at every turn he sought to promote Darwin’s ideas as theologically orthodox, a life-long campaign in which he was eminently successful.

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Notes

  1. For the full list of recipients with brief biographical sketch of each see (Burkhardt et al. 1993: Appendix III:554–570).

  2. Thomas Huxley to Frederick Dyster, September 9, 1860, Huxley Papers, Imperial College, London, [hereafter “HP”] 15.117.

  3. Thomas Huxley to Frederick Dyster, September 9, 1860, HP 15.117.

  4. Darwin later also wrote to John Stevens Henslow confirming that Kingsley was the author (Burkhardt et al. 1993: 444–445).

  5. In a letter to Murray Darwin had clearly indicated his intention to add an insertion to the second addition that would read “The only passages of the least importance added, are (p. ) on fossil birds,—on (p. ) nascent organs in contradistinction with rudimentary organs, - and lastly (p. ) an extract on the theological bearing of the views advocated in this work.” This last, a reference to Kingsley’s views (Burkhardt et al. 1991: 410–411).

  6. Subsequent to this account of the 1860 debate not only have the details of the British Association meeting been called into question, but so too have the results. There also remains debate as to Huxley’s role, and some question as to whether the Bishop was quite as convincingly routed as Leonard Huxley’s account suggests (Lucas 1979; Gilley and Loades 1981; Morrell and Thackray 1981; Burkhardt et al. 1993: 270; Hesketh 2009).

    Also, the “warfare hypothesis” between science and religion, to which the above account has been pivotal has now long been out of favour with historians (J.H. Brooke 1991; Moore 1981; Livingstone 1987; Bowler 2007). Correspondingly, Huxley’s battles have been re-cast as strategic efforts to carve out a professional identity and a political niche for the “man of science” in mid-Victorian Britain (White 2003; Desmond 1997; Lynch 2002; Browne 2002).

  7. For an extensive bibliography of works on and by Kingsley see the Boston College Libraries’ website: Charles Kingsley: The Twentieth Century Critical Heritage, available at https://www2.bc.edu/~rappleb/kingsley/kingsleyhome.html.

  8. For Darwin’s detailed reply to Kingsley see Burkhardt et al. (2005: 297–301).

  9. In fact Argyll had not overlooked sexual selection, as Kingsley suggests, he had rejected it as “beside the question”. Argyll thought sexual selection inadequate to explain the extent of the difference between the comparatively dull female and the wide variety among the “fantastically decorated” males. See Argyll ([1867]: 137).

  10. There were significant differences between Gray and Kingsley. Most notably in that Kingsley clearly embraced the contingency at the heart of Darwinian selection, where Gray, a Calvinist, believed that evolutionary outcomes were preordained. This is the subject of ongoing research that I am engaged in with John Beatty. On Gray see the essay by T. Russell Hunter in this volume.

  11. Desmond and Moore (1994), Annan (1955), Collini (2006) and Desmond (1992).

  12. Notable women include Marian Evans (George Eliot); Mrs. Gaskill; and Harriet Martineau, amongst others.

  13. Charles Kingsley to Thomas Huxley, 4th August (1862, HP, 19, 207, 19).

  14. British Library Add. 28510 f.315.

  15. Chitty (1975: 130–133), Maurice F. (1884: II, 78–80) and Pope-Hennessey (1949: 118).

  16. Macmillan’s publishing company was founded in 1843 by the two brothers Daniel and Alexander Macmillan. Devout Christians, they published the theological work of Frederick Maurice, even though they did so at a financial loss. Through Maurice they met Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, publishing Westward Ho! And Glaucus in 1855 and Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days in 1857 (Morgan 1944: 35; Anderson and Rose 1991: 178–195). Westward Ho! was Kingsley’s first novel for Macmillans and Macmillans first novel. It appeared as a ‘three-decker’, that is, in three separately bound volumes, as was the standard format of the day, made popular by the success of Scott’s Waverley novels. The standard price for a three-decker was a guinea and a half, or, 31 shillings and sixpence, a price for this format that persisted even into the late 1880s, when the ‘three decker’ fell to the single volume novel (Griest 1970; Feather 2006: 123–124). This was the price at which Westward Ho! first appeared in March of 1855. The edition ran to 1,250 copies, for which Kingsley was paid £300.00 followed quickly in May by £250 for a second edition of 750 copies. Somewhat against the grain of the publishing trade, which, largely capitulated to the preference of Edward Mudie’s circulating library for the three volume work, in 1857 Macmillan produced a single volume third edition with a print run of 6000 copies, for which Kingsley received a further £300. After 1873, author and publisher came to a new arrangement of a 10 percent royalty fee on further sales. Such was Macmillans’ confidence in Kingsley’s ability to sell, that they assured Mrs. Kingsley that they would publish Two Years Ago in sufficient numbers to guarantee him £1000 on publication (Morgan 1944: 47). Such was the success of Westward Ho! that a substantial hotel was built on the North Devon coast of the same name, hoping to cater to increasingly popular seaside tourism, which Kingsley had also had a role in promoting. The town which grew up around the hotel took the same name.

  17. Between 1814 and 1850 literacy rates expanded across the middle and upper classes. Upper class readership increased among the upper class from 75 to 90% during this time and from 25 to 75% among the middle class. The middle class grew rapidly as well throughout the century, which makes the figures for middle class literacy even more significant. What figures there are for working class literacy suggest a literacy rate of approximately 20%, although figures are difficult to evaluate, since there was no assessment of working class education until the last decades of the nineteenth century. After 1850 the expansion of lending libraries, the railway network, and later in the century, of cheaper production methods, combined with a conscious attempt on the part of publishers to cater to new reading markets drove the cost of books down (Altick 1957: 294–317).

  18. What it meant to be a gentleman was contested throughout this period. Originally indicative of landownership, title and inherited wealth, the new class of successful industrialists, of whom the Wedgwoods were a classic example, were new money. As E.P. Thompson has long since pointed out, in many ways they sought to mimic the lifestyle of the aristocracy, buying extensive estates, and buying or marrying into title. As Annan suggests, this novel lower middle class of intellectuals and pen-pushers asserted a new definition of what it meant to be a gentleman based on education, honesty and personal integrity—the latter two criteria, of course, were common to all (Thompson 1965). In light of Thompson’s work it is relevant that Kingsley’s wife’s father, Pascoe Grenfell who was an industrialist and MP, married the daughter of the first Viscount Doneraile as his second wife (Vance 2009).

  19. Sedgwick, Wilberforce and Whewell all rode. Wilberforce was a particularly keen huntsman, and Whewell an accomplished athlete. On Huxley as naval surgeon see (Desmond 1997); Huxley and Kingsley did not meet in person until 1855 (L. Huxley 1913: I:177; Klaver 2006: 477–478). In the wake of Kingsley’s tenure as Regius Professor of History at Cambridge it is evident that ‘muscular Christianity’ had a strong hold over many of the Colleges at the University, even as religious tests were dropped after 1871. According to C.N.L. Brooke (1993: 30–39) this was especially evident in the rowing colleges, not only Magdalene College, but Jesus College. See also C.N.L. Brooke (1988).

  20. Herbert Spencer gives an account of Chapman’s soirées and several of the attendees he met there (Spencer 1904a: I:347–348).

  21. John Murray was a traditionally conservative publishing house, and he was responsible too for the Quarterly Review which retained its conservative politics even as Murray published Samuel Smiles’s Self Help (1859), incidentally, on the same day as Darwin’s Origin. Murray was a staunch defender of religious morals, and refused Kingsley’s Saint’s Tragedy as well as Martineau’s Eastern Life on this score. However, like the other publishers considered here, he hosted large social gatherings, both at his offices on Albermarle Street and at his home in Wimbledon (Zachs et al. 2004).

  22. Lewes also discussed evolution explicitly in the pages of the Westminster drawing analogies between the breeding of dogs, poultry, and horses (Lewes 1856a, b, c, d). As Secord points out, the tenth edition of Vestiges was ghost edited by Carpenter, who also became one of Kingsley’s close friends. Harris (2010) notes that Kingsley and Spencer met in this period. It is notable that Kingsley included an explicitly evolutionary dream sequence in Alton Locke which owes a lot to the contemporary evolutionary take on embryological recapitulation which had been popularized by Vestiges, it was not until after the publication of Origin that Kingsley was prepared to publically declare himself for evolution.

  23. Given the wording of Kingsley’s sermon, and the prevailing political climate, it is easy to see why this was the common interpretation of his words. Notably, “Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood” is the title of the last chapter of Alton Locke.

  24. Smiles’s Self Help was essentially a liberal rather than a radical tract, Smiles urging his readers that “character is the anti-septic of society” (Matthew 2009).

  25. Carlyle (1843), Baldwin (1934), Haley (1978) and Rosen (1994).

  26. In Kingsley’s Letters and Memories, edited by his wife, this is mis-transcribed “scientist”.

  27. Several dates have been suggested by Kingsley’s biographers for his election to the Linnean Society of London; however, Society records indicate that he was elected 6 December 1856. I am grateful to Claire Inman, Communications Manager for the Linnean Society of London for ascertaining this point.

  28. Charles Kingsley to Frederick Maurice 1863, BL Add Ms. 41297.

  29. Blackwoods Magazine, 77, 476 (June 1855), pp. 625–643, on 628.

  30. (Lewes 1856b, c, d; 1857a, b, c, d, e, f; 1858). Klaver notes that this was in part because he felt there was nothing original in Kingsley’s work, but primarily because he was envious of the sales of Glaucus, writing to his publisher to this effect (Klaver 2006: 369).

  31. Charles Kingsley to Thomas Henry Huxley, 7 December 1859, HP, 19. 160.

  32. Charles Kingsley to Thomas Henry Huxley, 18 July 1862, HP, 19, 205.

  33. Again I am grateful to Clare Inman for this information. Kingsley was elected to the Society on 6th December 1856 and his nomination bears the signatures of William Yarrell, Thomas Bell (President), Joseph D. Hooker, Lovel Reeve, and Edward Rigby. See Linnean (2005), 21, No. 2.

  34. Richard D. Beards, “Introduction”, Water Babies, London, Penguin (2008), p. xii. Horace G. Hutchinson, Life of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury, London: MacMillan & Co. 1914, pp. 90–98 For an account of Kingsley’s first meeting with Darwin see Charles Kingsley to John Lubbock, May 27 1867 (Hutchinson 1914: 91–92; Clark 1984: 137).

  35. Although Alberti has suggested that the terms ‘soirée’ and ‘conversazione’ might be used interchangeably, it is useful to draw a distinction between these different, although related phenomena. I reserve soirée to refer to the Society gatherings at the country estates, such as those that frequently took place at The Grange. The term ‘conversazione’ I shall reserve for this much more urban and bourgeois cultural phenomenon hosted by scientific societies, scientific or civic institutions, gentlemen’s clubs, either on their own premises, in town halls or other civic buildings, or, on occasion, at Universities. It is of note that the majority of local societies, as well as the subtitle of Huxley’s Reader stressed art and literature along with science, each as complementary aspects of bourgeois cultural capital. With this in mind too Kingsley’s place among those that we historians have, by reason of our own specialization, tended to emphasize as ‘men of science’ might raise fewer eye-brows.

  36. Kingsley was formally elected Fellow of the Geological Society of London, having been nominated by Bunbury and seconded by Lyell at the May 20th meeting of the Society in 1863. “Annual General Meeting, Feb 19, 1864, Report of the Council”, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, XXV, I, London: Longmans Green (1864, pp. i–xxix, on p. xi).

  37. Bunbury was a baronet, a Whig and a staunch Anglican. He married the geologist Leonard Horner’s second daughter, Frances, in 1844. Lyell had married Horner’s eldest daughter, Mary, in 1832.

  38. Klaver notes that in fact Kingsley asked the Prince to secure the appointment for him, citing Kingsley’s letter to his wife in evidence: “To decline a thing after having asked for it would offend the Prince deeply” (Klaver 2006: 484). This is indicative of the level of intimacy that Kingsley enjoyed in his contact with the Prince Consort.

  39. Kingsley was aided in the selection of these students by William Whewell, Master of Trinity College.

  40. Klaver notes that Kingsley’s offer to write a preface for Charles Henry Bennett’s illustrated edition of Pilgrim’s Progress was sufficient for Longmans publishing house to reconsider their initial refusal to take the work (Klaver 2006: 483).

  41. Chadwick has made clear that contrary to the opinion of some of Kingsley’s biographers, the original objections to Kingsley’s appointment had nothing to do with his qualification (or lack of it) for the post as an historian, rather, he argues that Kingsley was in fact eminently qualified. Opposition was entirely to do with his radical political associations and his slandering of the university in Alton Locke (Chadwick 1975: 311); Vance (2009) suggests that his inaugural lecture was a success, this in contrast to C.N.L. Brooke (1993), who argues that Kingsley’s lecture exposed his weakness as an historian. Herbert Spencer recalled that it was “severely criticised, if I remember rightly, when the address was originally published” (Spencer 1904b: 37).

  42. Burkhardt et al. (2005: 477–479), Crilly (2009) and Hutchins (2009).

  43. Also see Darwin’s reply (Burkhardt et al. 2005: 297–301). Kingsley had forgotten the author and title, Darwin suggested it must have been Hutton’s paper.

  44. Yorke attained the rank of Admiral in 1863.

  45. Darwin and Hooker need not have been concerned, as Huxley later proved himself to be the most amiable company in conversation. Spencer Walpole was only one who recalled ‘the singular charm of his conversation, which was founded on knowledge, enlarged by memory, and brightened by humour’ (Huxley L. 1913: II:296).

  46. Also see George Cruikshank’s cartoons from 1845 (Secord 2000: 179). On being cut, Alfred Russel Wallace, for example, recounts his own experience of offending his hostess at Stratton Street, Lady Burdett-Coutts, by stating his opinion too freely, and as a result “was never invited again” (Wallace 1905: II:51–52). Barabara and Hensleigh Wedgwood note that such a standard was also defining of the middle class dinner-party set, where “Throughout dinner, the well-dressed guests, both men and women, were expected to be clever, agreeable, and au courant with art, literature, politics, science and theology… those who did not measure up conversationally failed to survive socially” (Wedgwood & Wedgwood 1980: 275).

  47. Secord (2007) notes the increasing importance of celebrity as well as accomplishment at the soirée.

  48. Secord (2000: 155–190) especially 187, Secord (2007: 147) and Rushing (1990).

  49. Thomas Huxley to Frederick Dyster, 29 February 1860, HP, 15. 110. On Maria Elizabeth Tollemache, Lady Ailsbury, see Gibbs (1910: I:64), especially note (e): “For nearly 60 years the ‘evergreen Maria Marchioness’, sprightly, gay and universally popular, was a constant frequenter of London parties and country race courses, and was to be seen in Hyde Park with flaxen hair (or wig), driving two ponies, generally preceded by two outriders.” The family seat was Tottenham House in Savernake Forest, near. Marlborough, but following her husband’s death in 1856 it seems she spent more time in rooms reserved for her in Windsor Castle.

  50. Kingsley had been inspired by Maurice’s Kingdom of Christ [1842], which appealed for a broad church unity, see Maurice (1958).

  51. As Klaver points out the views of the author of the accompanying text to the 1872 Vanity Fair caricature of Kingsley could equally have been written of Kingsley in 1859: “Time and opinions move so fast that it is difficult to recall the period, though it is really so recent, when the Rev. Charles Kingsley, sometime author of “Alton Locke” and now Chaplain to the Queen… was one of the most daring and advanced revolutionists of his cloth.”

  52. William Bingham Baring, and the second Lady Asburton, Louisa Caroline Stuart Mackenzie. Lady Harriet, the first Lady Ashburton, died in 1857, Baring married Louisa Caroline in 1858.

  53. For instance, of the Grange under the first Lady Ashburton see: Jane Carlyle to Mrs. Russell, 29 December 1848, “we staid 6 weeks at a fine place called The Grange, belonging to Lord Ashburton. The visit was anything but a retirement; for in London we should not have seen half so many people, - the house being filled with company the whole time” (Carlyle 1893: 250). For Louisa Caroline’s role as a patron of the arts and a socialite see the Asburton Papers which are in the process of being made available online at: http://www.nls.uk/catalogues/online/cnmi/inventories/acc11388.pdf.

  54. At the Ashburton’s it seems likely that Kingsley was one of the more scientifically informed men present. Specific study of the particular venues, hosts and guests at the various Society gatherings, however, would be revealing.

  55. Argyll had hitherto confessed himself unconvinced by Darwin’s use of pigeon breeding as a satisfactory metaphor for selection in nature, both in his 1860 Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in private conversation with Charles Lyell (Burkhardt et al. 1997: 64 n. 4).

  56. Richard Monkton Milnes was one of the unnamed guests present, Charles Kingsley to Thomas Henry Huxley, 20 February (1862, Imperial College, 19, 203–204). The following year Milnes was made 1st Baron Houghton, and became a very influential figure among the literary set. Like Kingsley, he too was interested in theology and education.

  57. Argyll had also expressed scepticism on this point both in his 1860 Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in private conversation with Charles Lyell (Burkhardt et al. 1997: 64, n. 4).

  58. Kingsley had once deferred to his Bishop on the order of service, abandoning his long established habit of prayer prior to his sermon (Kingsley F. 1901: II:103). Kingsley admired much of the Duke’s argument, but with reservations. See Kingsley’s correspondence with Darwin on the matter below.

  59. Charles Kingsley to Thomas Henry Huxley, 20 February (1862, HP, 19, 203–204).

  60. The height of the Season dated from May to July (Davidoff 1973). Manners was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and prominent statesman. In the 1840s he had also been a prominent voice in the Young England movement. Cairns, appointed Solicitor General and Knighted in 1858 was, like Kingsley concerned with child welfare, being a keen supporter of Barnardo, as well as a keen sportsman, once claiming that he only practiced law so as to afford to keep Hunters.

  61. For more on Kingsley’s unorthodox and passionate views on sex see Chitty (1975).

  62. A genus of brachiopods which includes many living and some fossil species.

  63. Charles Kingsley to Thomas Huxley, 18th July (1862, HP, 19, 205. 19).

  64. Charles Kingsley to Thomas Huxley, 4th August (1862, HP, 19, 207, 19).

  65. Charles Kingsley to Thomas Huxley, 26 September (1860, HP, 19, 186–187).

  66. See Burkhardt et al. (1997: 449–451) for Huxley’s account, plus notes. Also Browne (2002: 156–160). Owen’s papers, both delivered on October 3rd to Section D, were, “On the zoological significance of the cerebral and pedial characters of man,” and “On the characters of the Aye–Aye, as a test of the Lamarckian and Darwinian hypotheses of the transmutation and origin of species.”

  67. See Huxley’s dinner invitation, Huxley Papers, 31: 121, and the draft constitution, Huxley Papers, 31: 120.

  68. Newton had witnessed Huxley’s demonstration of the hippocampus minor, and while clearly convinced he thought that Huxley and Flower had been savage to Owen (Wollaston 1921). Invitations to dine with the “thorough” were quickly printed; the cost of the dinner was 12 s. 6d. See HP 31.121.

  69. HP 31:120.

  70. See also George Eliot’s letters to Sara Sophia Hennell, 26 November 1862 and 9 March 1863, in Haight (1955: IV:66 & 78).

  71. It is notable that the “Thorough” was mooted as name for what became the “X”, however, as Herbert Spencer recalled, “the historical associations negatived it” (Spencer 1904a, b: II:134).

  72. Kingsley wrote a short skit in the style of Lord Dundreary which is reproduced in Kingsley F. (1901: III:145–148).

  73. Which is quite bizarre, of course, given that Owen seriously hinted at common ancestry in his famous essay “On the Nature of Limbs” in which, as Ron Amundson notes, Owen forged a middle ground in the ongoing debate over the relative merits of form and function in comparative anatomy (Amundson 2007: xxxi); see also Rupke (2009) who refutes the caricature of Owen as merely a dogmatic anti-evolutionist.

  74. For Kingsley’s friendship with Howson see Martin (1958: 19, n. 3).

  75. On the history of the Reader, see John Francis Byrne. “The Reader: A Review of Literature, Science, and the Arts, 1863–1867”, Ph.D. Thesis, Northwestern University, 1964.

  76. J. A. Froude, Kingsley’s brother in law was the editor, and was travelling in Spain researching his multi-volume History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada.

  77. John Willis Clark (1833–1910) was a Fellow of Trinity College and in 1866 had been appointed superintendant of the museum of zoology and secretary to the museum and lecture rooms syndicate. He was a talented systematist (James and Pickles 2004).

  78. This essay has recently been reprinted in Hale and Smith (2011)

  79. I have been unable to discover which conversazione Kingsley was referring too, or the subject on which he spoke. However, the text of Kingsley’s Presidential Address to the Devonshire Association was indeed completed in time to appear in their Transactions: (Kingsley 1871). The Hon. General Secretary for 1871 was Reverend W. Harpley, MA, FCPS, of Clayhanger, near Tiverton. I am grateful to Geoff Bulley, registrar of the Devonshire Association for this information.

  80. Strick (2000: 112–114) briefly discusses this solution to the problems presented by the harsh realities of Darwinian nature. He notes that Frederick Barnard, President of Columbia College in New York, was also troubled by the amount of death in nature and the problems it caused for natural theology, and ultimately found the sort of consilience offered by Kingsley wanting. Kingsley was untroubled by death in the natural world, convinced that it was everlasting life in the supernatural world that mattered.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Beatty with whom I continue to have fruitful discussions about Kingsley’s theology, his science, and Water Babies, I am grateful too to the archivists at Imperial College London for their prompt and enthusiastic help in my research. Note: for the readers convenience when quoting or citing Kingsley’s correspondence I give the references to the Letters and Memories published by Kingsley’s wife. In instances where her text differs from the manuscript letter, or is only partially reproduced, I have given the reference to the British Library mss collection; the Darwin Correspondence; or the Huxley Papers.

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Hale, P.J. Darwin’s Other Bulldog: Charles Kingsley and the Popularisation of Evolution in Victorian England. Sci & Educ 21, 977–1013 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-011-9414-8

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