“Homeward Bound”
“ The honours awaiting you at home would be enough to make a score of heads dizzy; but I have no fear of their affecting your upper storey.” (Dr Moffat to Livingstone.)
O N board the Frolic Livingstone felt
himself at home in everything except —his mother tongue! He had been speaking native languages for over sixteen years, and for the last three years had hardly spoken a word of English. He could not help laughing at his own predicament amongst the British officers, actually fumbling for words in his own native language. One of his faithful followers, Sekwebu, came with him on the ship. Livingstone had at first refused to take him, and said: “ Sekwebu, if you come to a cold country like mine you will die.” “ That is nothing,” said Sekwebu staunchly; “let me die at your feet.” The poor fellow did die, and that long before he ever sighted the shores of England. The terrors of the sea and the unusual life unhinged his mind, and one day he threw himself overboard.
After a short stay at Mauritius Livingstone sailed up the Red Sea on the Canadia, had
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rather a narrow escape from shipwreck in the Mediterranean, crossed the Continent from Marseilles, and on 12th December 1856 stepped ashore on the soil of old England.
The last three years had been a terrible time of anxiety for his wife. None of his letters had reached her. She never felt really at home in England at the best of times, and longed to be sharing her husband’s dangers and adventures.
When he came home no one was more astonished than he was to find what a great man he had become. He wanted to creep off unobserved to Scotland with his wife; but London would not let him hide his head in that fashion. Livingstone was the lion of the season, and he had to consent to be lionised. The Prince Consort sent for him; the principal cities gave him their “ freedom ” in gold and silver caskets the Geographical Society presented him with its gold medal. His wonderful journeys had seized the imagination of his countrymen, and no one spoke of anything but Africa. It seemed clear that he had made a present to this country of the richest region of the world; and when it dawned upon people that millions of square miles, marked “ desert ” and “ unknown ” on their maps, were really a new and splendid field for commerce, it seemed like a new page out of The Arabian Nights. The scientific world, too, was enthusiastic over
An
Onslaught
of
Masai
Warriors
This
fierce
tribe
would,
with
no
apparent
reason
except
the
desire
for
change,
migrate
from
one locality
to
another,
in
their
progress bursting
through
the
confines
of
their
neighbours’
lands,
raiding
the
crops,
slaying the
men,
capturing
women
and
children,
and
leaving behind them a grim track of death and desolation.
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Livingstone’s achievements. It seemed astonishing that he should have not only “ discovered ” these new regions, but should also have been able to set it all down so exactly on the map. The Astronomer Royal said that no other traveller in history had ever done what Livingstone did. “ You could go to any point across the entire continent along Livingstone’s track,” said he, “ and feel certain of your position.”
Livingstone himself hated all the fuss made over him, though he was grateful for the kindness people showed him. In society the great African traveller was often a very shy and reserved man. When he could be prevailed upon to speak or lecture, he put on a rather forbidding aspect, and made little of his exploits and adventures. There was something, however, in his strong, rough-hewn features that caught the imagination of his audience, and they lionised him the more. It was especially trying for him to be recognised in the London streets, as he always was when he ventured out of doors. One day in Regent Street, when people began to crowd about the familiar figure, poor Livingstone made wildly for a cab and escaped his admirers.
Even in church he sought the darkest corner, but was sooner or later recognised. In one church the preacher saw the Doctor under the gallery, and to Livingstone’s horror made reference to the great explorer. Some men
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would have enjoyed it all immensely; others would have put on a “ bearish ” manner to avoid being lionised. But Livingstone somehow remained entirely unspoilt; his sense of humour and a most genuine humility saved him from ever pretending to be anything but his own simple-minded self.
It is in his writings that we can best “ see ” the real Livingstone. No wonder his first book was such an immense success. He always said himself that he couldn’t write a bit; and one is grateful that he couldn’t, if “ writing ” meant literary flourishes. As a matter of fact, his delightful books are so simple and natural, and one can feel the charm of the man who wrote them so vividly in every line of them, that one can only say: “If this is not ‘ writing,’ what is? ”
In the case of one of his books, The Zambesi and its Tributaries, he persuaded his friend Oswell to correct the proofs, and some of his letters to his friend on this subject are very amusing. He was afraid of falling into the rather Scottish habit of using a long word where a short one would do as well. In one letter to Oswell he wrote: “I don’t like the longnebbed words. ... You had to investigate, a capital word. Professor Owen had to note, a capitaller! Anything that the natives of this country (England) won’t understand—the stoopids—you will do me an immense good by throwing light on.”
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In some other cases, however, Oswell suggested that perhaps a slightly more conventional phrase than Livingstone’s would be an improvement; and a pathetic note from our author arrived: “I can alter ‘ striped pigs ’ and say another thing quite as true—namely, * reverting to original wild pig of India! 5 What is its proper name—Borus Indicus, or Pigus abominationibus? ”
In another letter he confesses that in one description he had become tied up hopelessly. “ I tried with might and main to make the sentence plainer about planting a stake in the ground—and could not! It made me quite nervous. At last I dashed in, ‘ Let anyone try to stick a pole in the ground by successive jerks, and he will find how difficult it is to poke it into one spot ’!! It bamboozles me fairly! ”
Livingstone was careful to call his first book Missionary Travels. That was the way in which he always looked upon all his African explorations. People in those days did not always quite see that. Livingstone puzzled certain good people very much. Their idea of a missionary was taken from imaginary pictures of a man in a long clerical coat preaching to natives under palm-trees, or, as Livingstone put it, “a dumpy kind of man with a Bible under his arm! ” They did not think this bluff, capable explorer looked at all like a missionary. Neither did he talk like one.
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For instance, Livingstone had said when he was at Carlisle: “I feel that I am serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men, or taking an astronomical observation.” They did not see that all his work and travels had but one aim in them—to make a highway through Africa. Lord Clarendon just hit the nail on the head when he called it 44 God’s Highway.” One only has to look at a missionary map of Africa to-day to realise what a true description that is, and what Livingstone’s pioneering has meant to Africa.
When Livingstone was at home he always refused to lecture for money. He could have made quite a fortune if he had chosen to accept all the offers that were made to him. For one lecture— at the Athenaeum— he did accept thirty guineas; but he gave it to his old friends the cotton-spinners to start a men’s club and coffee-house. Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, and two of the Scottish universities all gave him honorary degrees, and he was made a Fellow of a number of learned societies. He enjoyed his visits to Oxford and Cambridge, and the undergraduates gave him a most tremendous ovation. His last words to them were: 44 1 go back to Africa to try and make an open path for commerce and Christianity; do you carry out the work which I have begun. I leave it to you.” We shall see what that led to a little later.
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The Prime Minister held a special reception in Livingstone’s honour, and Prince Albert promised to get him the King of Portugal’s help when he returned to Africa. Before he left England Queen Victoria gave him a private interview at Buckingham Palace, and was greatly struck by Livingstone’s personality. He went to the Palace in a black coat and blue trousers, and the peaked cap which one always associates with Livingstone. He made the Queen laugh heartily when he told her how the natives used to ask him whether he had seen his great white chieftainess, and if she were wealthy. When he replied that she was very wealthy, they asked how many cows she had.
The Queen’s Government made Livingstone British Consul for the Zambesi country, and asked him to head an expedition to that part of Africa. So the great traveller made preparations for leaving England on a very different scale to those he had made seventeen years before, when he sailed for Cape Town, an utterly unknown missionary. He was to take with him a paddle steamer for the River Zambesi, and the expedition party was to include a naval commander, a doctor, a mining geologist, an artist, a ship engineer and a secretary. The doctor was John Kirk, who afterwards became so famous; and the secretary was his brother, Charles Livingstone, his old playmate in the far-away Blantyre days.
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Before leaving he was given a banquet in London at which there were about three hundred and fifty well-known men to bid him good luck on his expedition. Among them were the Duke of Argyll and the Iron Duke himself, and his friend, Sir Roderick Impey Murchison. Sir Roderick in his speech said that “ after receiving all the honour which the universities and cities of our country could shower upon him, he is still the same honest, true-hearted David Livingstone as when he issued from the wilds of Africa.”
None of these great banquets touched Livingstone so much as the welcome given him by his own little native place at Blantyre. All the workpeople turned out to cheer him, and he told them about many of his adventures of which grand London audiences had not heard anything. It would have been a proud day for his old father; but Neil Livingstone had died some time before the return of his famous son.
The Livingstone children had to stay behind at school near London, but their mother and father thought that little Oswell might safely be taken to Africa. So one day in March, 1858, the party went on board the Pearl, and was joined by the other members of the Livingstone Expedition. The new steamboat for the Zambesi had, of course, to be taken on board in sections. Livingstone called her after his
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wife, the Ma Robert, and her crew was to be a native one from Sierra Leone.
When Livingstone left England he was quite certain that people at home would not forget his great challenge—to send a mission to Central Africa. He had roused people thoroughly by his terrible revelations of the slave trade, and men like Bishop Wilberforce and Lord Brougham had undertaken “ to see the thing through,” and never to rest till something was done. Men at the universities had been especially stirred by Livingstone’s message, and during the next few years a mission was organised at Oxford and Cambridge to send out men to the Zambesi country. This mission was to be called the Universities’ Mission, and its leader was to be a man who had been already working in South Africa, Archdeacon Mackenzie. Charles Frederick Mackenzie was a Scotsman, and a man after Livingstone’s own heart. He was overjoyed when he heard that the Church of England was to send out a man of that type and he shrewdly added that he was glad the mission was to have a bishop at its head, for his experiences of missionaries showed him that they needed one.
Everything seemed bright and encouraging as the Pearl bore Livingstone and his fellowadventurers on their way back to Africa.