Spreading Victorian virtues overseas

Contemporary Review, May, 1995 by Eric Ford

It is interesting to speculate why he became such a devoted supporter of the emigration movement, and, indeed, of other Victorian causes, notably Missions to Seamen and the Volunteer Movement. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that he is a classic example of that Victorian upper class ethos which assumed that there was a God-given duty to serve the less fortunate members of society to the limits of one's abilities and resources.

Certainly there was much in his family background to induce an inbred sense of service. His father, Lucy Henry Kingston, owed his unusual Christian name for a man to a great-uncle, Lucy Knightley MP, of Fawsley, Northamptonshire, where the family had occupied an estate from the year after Agincourt until the family line ended in 1938. Lucy Kingston himself was the son of John Kingston, MP for Lymington, Hampshire and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and Jane Knightley. Young Kingston could therefore claim a distinguished background on the paternal side. His mother also made her contribution to her son's qualities, for Frances Sophia Rooke was the second daughter of the Honourable Sir Giles Rooke, Fellow of Merton and Justice of the Common Pleas.

Maybe the circumstances of his birth and early life may have influenced his subsequent development. The second of eleven children, he was born on 28 February 1814 in Oporto, where his parents were influential members of what was known as the 'English Factory', an exclusive community of ten or twelve companies, mainly involved in the wine trade. Kingston appears to have left Portugal in 1824, to continue his education in England where he attended Eagle House, Brook Green, Hammersmith, where he was thoroughly happy, among schoolfellows who included one of the Disraeli family and a Ricardo, a son or nephew of the distinguished Victorian economist. He spent most of his holidays in Lymington where many of his relatives exerted an important influence on him. They included his maternal grandmother, Lady Rooke, a great-uncle, Admiral Sir Harry Burrard-Neale and many ether members of the Burrard and Rooke families, all linked in one way or another with the Kingstons.

Sailors predominated amongst Kingston's acquaintances in Lymington, but there were other influences too, including an uncle, the Reverend George Rooke, who took him on an excursion to Northumberland, where he was Vicar of the seaside parish of Embleton. This brought the impressionable 18-year-old into contact with both the unpleasant side of the life of ordinary folk (cholera was rife as they drove through Newcastle) and with the fisherfolk and farm workers of the Northumbrian coast, described by Kingston as 'a sturdy, independent, kind-hearted and honest race') and the very class he was later to seek to recruit as potential emigrants.

This completed the formal education of the typical son of a well-to-do Victorian family and now came the choice of a career. After rejecting the navy, army, the church and an academic career, family influence won the day for, as he was to write later, 'At length my father resolved to take me with him to Portugal'. It is not clear whether it was intended for the 19-year-old Kingston to play a part in the family business or, indeed, whether he was ever active in its affairs. Instead, he travelled quite extensively, not only in Portugal but also in Spain, Holland and Northern Germany. He spent a considerable time in England, especially in the capital, where he mixed with what is described as 'the best London society'.

Nor is it clear why he turned to writing, although he kept a journal which was to form the basis of later travel books. His first attempt at a novel did not occur until 1843, when The Circassian Chief appeared, a story based on the struggle for freedom of Circassian tribes against Russia in the Western Caucasus. A second novel, The Prime Minister, followed in 1845 and dealt with the Marquis of Pombal, a notable figure in Portuguese history. To obtain the necessary background material Kingston spent considerable time in Portugal carrying out research and this may also explain the publication of his next book, Lusitanian Sketches of Pen and Pencil, issued three months later.

Though seemingly launched on a career as a writer, and, despite the success of Peter the Whaler (1851), Kingston devoted almost all his very considerable energies to the emigration movement during the decade 1846-1856. Just why he should have espoused this particular cause can only be a matter of conjecture. Emigration had been a topic of live debate in Britain ever since the close of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and must have been discussed in considerable depth in the 'best London society' in which he was a welcome guest during his lengthy stays in the country. The editorship of The Colonial Magazine, which he undertook at this time, must also have involved him in the subject, since it was the Colonies which were inevitably the recipients of the flow of emigrants from the Mother Country.