Torquay, Devon ([1848?])

Charles Kingsley: his letters and memories of his life. Edited by his wife. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1883. p. 155. The winter and spring of 1854 were passed at Torquay, on account of his wife's health. The place had its one peculiar charm for him, not only from its rich fauna and flora, but from its historical associations. Torbay gave him his first inspiration for "Westward Ho!"This was the first rest he had enjoyed for very long, from sermon writing and parish work, and the quiet peaceful Sundays were most congenial to him. For at this time, and for some years to come, all parties in the Church stood aloof from him as a suspected person; and the attacks of the religious press, perhaps happily for him, 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." Settled at Livermead, he and his children spent bright hours together daily on the shore, of which he thus speaks: "Wanderings among rock and pool, mixed up with holiest passages of friendship and of love, and the intercommunion of equal minds and sympathetic hearts, and of the laugh of children drinking in health from every breeze and instruction in every step, running ever and anon with proud delight to add their little treasure to their father's stock; and happy evenings spent over the microscope and the vase, in examining, arranging, preserving, and noting down in the diary the wonders and the labours of the happy busy day […][Text may be taken from a different source or edition than that listed as the source by Somers Cocks.]

Steel l.engr vign

62x95mm

Rock & Co. ; no. 908