A Stout Heart and a Stey Brae

il The outward show is nothing, it is the inward purpose that counts. ¹¹ (Captain Scott.)

LL this time China was the goal of

David’s ambition. To him it was the Land of Mystery and Adventure. His father was secretly very proud of David he wished he could possibly afford to send him to the university. But “ the piecer ” had now been promoted to the rank of “ a spinner ” and thought he might be able to pay his way at Glasgow University if he worked for half the year at Blantyre. Those were the days—before “ Carnegie Scholarships ”—when many Scottish boys came up to Edinburgh or Glasgow straight from the plough and returned to it again when term was over. In many a little out-of-the-way street they burnt the midnight oil over Science or Medicine, living mostly on porridge, with an occasional herring for dinner. Many famous names, too, may we count amongst them.

One winter morning, in 1836, David and his father walked through the snow to Glasgow, and after long search discovered a room in Rotten Row for two shillings a week. There

A STOUT HEART 30 Neil Livingstone left his son and walked back to Blantyre. Rotten Row was not like its aristocratic namesake; its surroundings were depressing in the extreme. But David, feeling desperately lonely after his father left him, wrote home that night that he was going to put “ a stout heart to a stey brae,” and “ either mak’ a spune or spoil a horn.” For the benefit of the English reader that may be translated as meaning that David “meant to get there”! To make a doctor out of a cotton spinner might be as ticklish a business as cutting a fine horn spoon out of the rough: one is as liable to break it as to make it. But the future Doctor Livingstone did not intend to be broken.

Four months later and David was home again for Easter, to be received with some awe on the part of Charlie and a great deal of pride by his father and mother. It might be “ the vacation,” but it was not to be a holiday for this undergraduate. Off must come his grand Glasgow coat next morning and back again must he go to the mill. Then when he had earned enough there for his next term’s fees David returned to the university. He was obliged, of course, to attend Divinity lectures, and had to work very hard in the Greek class; but it was in the medical schools that he found his real bent. Livingstone threw himself into this part of his work with enthusiasm, and loved every detail of it. In Professor Graham’s class he struck 40 A STOUT HEART up a friendship with the assistant lecturer. Young was a mechanical genius, and his room was like a carpenter’s shop. The two young men spent hours together at the turning lathe, and David learnt there one of the most useful gifts for a missionary—how to make his own tools and to use them. Three other men, who afterwards made a name for themselves in the world, were generally to be found with Livingstone in Young’s rooms—Lyon Playfair, the inventor James Thomson, and his brother, Sir William, the great electrician. A galvanic battery was a novelty in those days, and the electric appliances which these enthusiasts set up in James Young’s den were a constant delight to Livingstone. Young’s one great feat was the process he invented for purifying petroleum for lamps, and David, who loved giving everyone a nickname, dubbed him “ Sir Paraffin Young.”

Livingstone’s next move was to write to the London Missionary Society, which he hoped would send him out to China. In due course the directors sent for him, and David travelled up to London. In the dull London lodgings where he put up was a man of his own age, named Moore, and to their huge surprise they found they were actually bent on the same errand. They both “passed the Board,” and then “did” London together. They went one day to Westminster Abbey and read the great

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names on the tombs of Britain’s famous men. The last thing in the world that either of them could have imagined was that the name of Livingstone would be inscribed there too.

Joseph Moore gave a picture of David Livingstone as he first met him in the London lodgings. “ There was,” said he, “ an indescribable charm about him, which, with all his rather ungainly ways and by no means winning face, attracted almost everyone. He won those who came near him by a kind of spell.” That little “ snap-shot ” of Moore’s evidently hits off his friend at that period to the life. David’s strong, square features and honest, steel-blue eyes could hardly be described as “ winning.” “ Sulky ” was the word chosen to describe Livingstone’s face by an old Blantyre workman who remembered him. Some of the grimness that made his Highland ancestors such “ dour ” fighters was often expressed in young Livingstone’s look. But that made his smile, when it did come, all the more attractive; and as a Scotsman would say, David was a man one could “ lippen to ” at the very first sight. No man was ever more astonishingly like his name—the stone was roughhewn, uncompromising; but it was alive.

Most of Livingstone’s biographers have insisted far too much upon the “ dour ” side of his character. And that was perhaps the impression one might possibly have had of him 42 A STOUT HEART as he appeared on public occasions or on a platform. He hated appearing on platforms, and often plainly showed it. The ordinary portraits of Livingstone generally wear a stern, uncompromising look, with a hint of patient endurance about the eyes. But that was not Livingstone as his friends knew him, nor does it give one a true impression of him, especially in later years of his life. As young Livingstone saw more of the world and of men—particularly of men of the stamp of Oswell or Webb something perhaps of a “ defensive attitude,” natural in a man who has had to make his own way in the world, left him, and his friends found in him the gayest and most companionable of men. His life-long friends, the Webbs of Newstead Abbey, whose beautiful house was like a second home to Livingstone, always said that there was no really good portrait of Livingstone to be had; for they all made him appear so grim. The picture they liked best was a crayon drawing, by J. B. Harrison, at Newstead, which is certainly a very happy likeness of their guest, but does not show the sunburnt face in quite its true colouring. In her charming book Mrs Fraser (formerly Miss Webb of Newstead) declares that in her opinion no portrait of David Livingstone ever showed him half as well as his wax image at the celebrated Madame Tussaud’s! And from that pleasant “ double ” of the great traveller one

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may still judge how often his other portraits maligned him.

Stanley once tried to describe Livingstone’s laugh, which came so suddenly and unexpectedly and was so contagious. “ It was a laugh of the whole man from head to heel,” he says; “ if he told a story his face was so lit up by the sly fun it contained that I was sure it was worth listening to.”

Livingstone and Moore soon heard their fate; they were accepted by the Society, and were to be sent to Essex to be coached by a clergyman at Chipping Ongar. The Reverend Richard Cecil found them rooms in the little country town and the young men went every day to his house to study Greek and Hebrew. Livingstone astonished Mr Cecil more by his extraordinary powers as a walker than as theological student. Poor Moore found to his cost, as Charlie had done, that this fellow was tireless. One day he fairly beat his own record by walking to and fro from London in twentyone hours. Ongar was twenty-seven miles from town; but Livingstone started at 3 a.m., had time to do some business in London, and set out in good time for the return journey. Near Edmonton he found a woman lying on the road unconscious. She had been thrown out of a trap. Livingstone at once administered first aid, fetched the local doctor, and again set out for Ongar. At Stanford Rivers he lost

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his way in the darkness, and had to climb a sign-post to read the direction by starlight. But finally at midnight that Saturday he reached home, as Moore says, “ as white as a sheet,” and so ready for bed that he “ slept the clock round.”

Isaac Taylor, afterwards a Yorkshire rector, and a well-known writer, knew Livingstone at Ongar, and often found to his cost what a walker his friend was. “ I remember his step,” said Taylor, “ the characteristic forward tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast nor slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently meant—getting there.”

One thing Livingstone rather dreaded, and that was the thought of having to preach when he became a missionary. Preaching was never very much in his line, and yet, of course, he knew he would have to do it. Mr Cecil thought that it would be good for him to begin at once, and sent him one Sunday to take a little village service. Moore went too, and afterwards described his sensations. Poor David had prepared some practical remarks on Unselfishness, and read out his text in a very deliberate manner, but then—his sermon had fled! “ Midnight darkness came upon him,” and he abruptly said: “ Friends, I have forgotten all I had to say,” and hurried out of the building.

When Livingstone first arrived in South Africa he wrote Moore a very characteristic

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letter, in which he reminded him of this unlucky episode. “ I am no good at preaching,” he wrote, “ and some of them said if they knew I was to preach again they would not enter the chapel. But,” he slyly adds, “ the truth which I uttered seemed to plague very much the person who supplies the missionaries with wagons and oxen (they were bad ones) ”! No doubt the scoundrels would have preferred a vague theological discourse to the very straight speaking David Livingstone gave them from the pulpit. To David himself religion was quite a practical thing, with refreshingly little that was theoretical about it. One of the finest things ever said about him was that remark of Sir Henry Stanley, that “ Livingstone’s religion made him the most companionable of men and indulgent of masters—a man whose society is pleasurable to a degree.” Who could wish for a better testimonial?

With great lack of humour, when Mr Cecil sent in his report to the London Missionary Board he felt bound to tell them about David’s failure as a preacher. Acting on this, the directors voted against his acceptance as a missionary. But, fortunately, one of them pleaded for David, and he was given another term at Ongar. Years afterwards he and Moore were much delighted to discover that even great people sometimes forget their speeches. They had gone to Exeter Hall to hear Prince Albert 46 A STOUT HEART deliver his maiden speech on the great Niger Expedition, and watched him balance his notes on the broad, curly brim of his top hat. Unluckily the cheers of the audience blew the paper right into the hat, and his Royal Highness for some moments was as nonplussed as David had been at Ongar.

The directors finally offered Livingstone a post in the West Indies. It was not a medical appointment, and Livingstone begged them to send him somewhere as a doctor. The Opium War in China had just broken out, so the country where he had always longed to go was closed to the missionary. India was not thought a suitable country for him. The directors probably thought the intellectual Hindu would demand good sermons! So, finally, their choice fell upon Africa. No doubt about it, as the old words go, we all have “ a path ordained for us to walk in.” Livingstone realised himself, when he looked back upon it all, that he was “ meant ” to go to Africa.

Before taking his medical degree he “ walked the hospitals ” in London, and Sir Risdon Bennett and Professor Owen gave him many useful “ tips ” on tropical diseases and other matters. When the examination came off, Livingstone had, as he characteristically describes it, “ a slight difference of opinion ” with the examiner on the subject of the uses of a stethoscope. Consequently they gave him as

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stiff a time as they could. But he pulled through in spite of them, and in November, 1840, the old folks at Blantyre saw David once more. It was only a very flying visit he could pay them. He had to leave Glasgow docks the next day, so he had but a single night in the old home. One of his sisters remembers how David suggested they should sit up all night, they had so much to tell one another. But his mother would not hear of this, and packed them off to bed in the old way.

Next morning they were up at five and made coffee. David read the 121st and 135th psalms they all had a prayer together, and then father and son set out to walk to Glasgow. On the Broomielaw, by the ships, David said good-bye to his father and then went on board the ship for Liverpool. Neil Livingstone never saw his son again.