Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary

by W. P. Livingstone

XXIII. "ECCENTRICITIES," SPADE-WORK, AND DAY-DREAMS

Does it seem as if we were watching the career of a woman of hard, self-reliant, and masculine character, capable of living by herself and preferring it, and unconscious of the natural weakness of her sex? In reality Mary was a winsome soul, womanly in all her ways, tremulous with feeling and sympathy, loving love and companionship, and not unacquainted with nervousness and fear.

When people saw, or heard of her, toiling with her hands they were apt to imagine that she possessed a constitution of iron, never realising that her life was one long martyrdom. She was seldom free from illness and pain. Whether her methods of life were partly responsible for this cannot be stated. In any case, she seemed able to do things that would have proved fatal to other people. She never used mosquito-netting, which is considered to be indispensable for the security of health in the tropics. She never wore a hat, which seems a miracle to those who know the strength of the sun in these regions. Her hair she kept cut close, partly because it was a cleanlier fashion, and partly because it was less trouble to look after. Shoes and stockings, also, she never wore, although jiggers and snakes and poisonous plants were common in the bush pathways. Mr. James Lindsay, who was the engineer of the Mission at this time, says, "I walked many miles with her through the bush, and only once did I know her to be troubled with her feet. She had been to Duke Town, attending Presbytery, and made some small concession to the conventions by wearing a pair of knitted woollen slippers. On returning to Okoyong through the bush, small twigs and sticks penetrated the wool and pricked her feet. With an expression of disgust she took the slippers off and threw them into the bush. That was the only time I saw her other than barefoot." She never boiled or filtered the water she drank, two precautions which Europeans do not omit without suffering. She ate native food, and was not particular when meals were served. Breakfast might be at seven one morning and at ten the next; dinner might be an hour or two late; but this was, of course, mainly due to the constant calls upon her time, for she was often afoot most of the night, and her days were frequently taken up with long palavers.

These habits, so seemingly eccentric to people lapped In the civilised order of things, grown naturally out of the circumstances into which she had been forced In pursuit of the task she had set herself. She had deliberately given up everything for her Master, and she accepted all the consequences that the renunciation, involved. What she did was for Him and as she was not her own and had taken Him at His word and believed that He would care for her if she kept in line with His will, she went forward without fear, knowing that she might, through inadvertence, incur suffering, but willing to bear it for His sake and His cause. Her faith devotion led her into strange situations, and these shaped the character of her outward life and habits. She shed many conventions, simply because it was necessary in order to carry out the will of Christ. She knew there were some people like the official who saw her pushing a canoe down to the river and preferred not to know her; but she was always sustained by the knowledge that she was acting in her Master's spirit. She found in her New Testament that He ignored the opinion of the world, and she was never afraid to follow where He led. "What," says Mr. Lindsay, "she lost in outward respectability she more than gained in mobility and usefulness. She kept herself untrammelled in the matter of dress that she might be ready for any emergency. In of a sudden call in the night to some distant village where twin children had been thrown out or a bloody quarrel was imminent, she was literally ready to leave at a moment's notice." The one thing essential to her was her work, and anything that hampered her freedom of action was dropped.

Not that she was thoughtlessly reckless of her health. She frequently wrote about the need of conserving her strength, and stated that she was taking all due care. She apologised for reading her Bible in bed on Sunday mornings; it gave her a rest, she said, before she began her day's work. As her Sunday began at 5.30 A.M. and ended at 7 P.M., and during the greater part of that time she was walking, preaching, and teaching, she might well allow herself the indulgence. It may be noted that she sometimes misplaced Sunday. "I lost it a fortnight ago," she wrote, "and kept it on a Saturday. Never mind, God would hear all the prayers and answer them all the same." On another occasion she was discovered on a Sunday on the roof of the house executing repairs, thinking it was Monday.

Mr. Ovens relates that once when he went up on a Monday to do some work he found her holding a service. She was glad to see him; "but what," said she, "is Duke Town coming to when its carpenter travels on the Sabbath Day?"

"Sabbath Day!" he echoed. "It's Monday."

"Monday! why, I thought it was Sabbath. Well, we'll have to keep it as
Sabbath now."

"Na, na," he replied, "it's no Sabbath wi' me. I canna afford two
Sabbaths in a week."

"Ah, we must though," she said; adding in a whisper, "I was whitewashing the rooms yesterday."

Realising that he must "save her face," he took part in the service and started his work next morning.

In one of Mr. Goldie's letters to a friend at this time there is a delightful touch. "I am at Okoyong," he wrote, "and am not sure of the date."

Her womanly sympathy and tenderness were never better exhibited than in her relations with her dark sisters about her. She entered into their lives as few have been able to do. She treated them as human beings, saw the romance and tragedy in their patient lives, wept over their trials, and rejoiced in their joys. There was one little idyll of harem life which she liked to tell.

Some slave-dealers arrived at Ekenge, and among their "bargains" was a young and handsome girl, whom Edem bought for one of his chief men. Ma Erne, who heard of the transaction but paid no attention to it, had a respectable slave-woman at one of her farms whom she ordered to come and live in her own yard. The woman obeyed somewhat unwillingly, and in the village began to grumble to others about her enforced removal. The new slave-girl was cooking her master's food when she heard the voice. As she listened memories were stirred within her and she ran out and gazed at the woman, then went nearer and stared closely into her face. The woman demanded what she was looking at. The girl screamed and caught her round the neck and uttered a word in a strange language. It was the name of the woman, who, in turn, stared at the girl. When the latter called out her own name the two embraced and held each other in a grip of iron. The daughter had found a mother who had been stolen many years before. Both went into the yard and sat on the ground discussing their experiences and receiving the warm congratulations of the other women in the village.

There was trouble at the time in the district, and Mary had occasion to see Ma Eme after midnight. She found the two sitting beside some burning logs, with Ma Eme on the other side, all three talking over the mystery of life and its pain and parting and sorrow. She squatted down beside them, and gradually the girl told her story. How she had prayed to the great God for some one to capture her so that she might have a chance of finding her mother when the traders went to Calabar. She believed that among the crowds at Duke Town she would see her face, and when they left there she almost lost hope.

But "Ma" craved the companionship of her kind, and she enjoyed going down to Duke Town to the various meetings, and seeing the ladies of the Mission. She would not leave the children behind, and as the whole family would descend unexpectedly on a member of the Mission staff, some embarrassing situations occurred. One missionary, a bachelor, was preparing to turn in about 10 P.M. when he heard people crowding up the stairs of the verandahs and a babel of voices. It was "Ma" and all her boys and girls and babies come to lodge with him for a week. Fortunately he knew his guests, and, as he surmised, they were content with the floor. When the household grew, and she could not leave the children so often, she would sometimes walk with them to Adiabo on the Calabar River, taking provisions with her, and there, halfway, would meet and picnic with the Calabar lady agents.

It was about this time that the sense of her loneliness grew upon her to such, an extent that she could not sleep at nights, "I feel dreadfully lonely," she wrote, "and want a helper, and I have made up my mind to ask the Committee at next meeting for a companion." But when she went to Duke Town and realised the depleted state of the Mission caused by illness and death, and the manner in which the staff was overworked, she could not find the heart to prefer her request, and instead she thanked God for being able to hold on. She added her appeal to the other requests for workers that were so constantly sent home then, and her idea of the kind of woman most suited for the Calabar field is of interest:

… Consecrated, affectionate women who are not afraid of work or of filth of any kind, moral or material. Women who can nurse a baby or teach a child to wash and comb as well as to read and write, women who can tactfully smooth over a roughness and for Christ's sake bear a snub, and take any place which may open. Women who can take everything to Jesus and there get strength to smile and persevere and pull on under any circumstances. If they can play Beethoven and paint and draw and speak French and German so much the better, but we can want all these latter accomplishments if they have only a loving heart, willing hands, and common sense. Surely such women are not out of our reach. There are thousands of them in our churches, and our home churches have no monopoly of privilege in choosing to keep them. Spare us a few. Induce them to come forward. If there be the call from the Holy Spirit do not let mere accomplishments be a sine qua non. Help them to come forward. Take them to your own homes and let them have the benefit of all the conversation and refinement and beauty which fill these, and so gently lead them out of their timidity and accustom them to society that they may meet out in the world, and hand them on to us. Up in a station like mine they want to teach the first principles of everything, and they need to help in times of trouble in the home or in the town palaver. They will not need fine English, for there is none to admire it. No one knows other than native languages, and I would gladly hail any warm-hearted woman from any sphere if she would come to me. I cannot pretend to work this station: the school work is simply a scramble at the thing, mostly by the girls of the house. I can't overtake it. It is because I am not doing it efficiently that I am grieved.

On her visits to Calabar she was an object of much interest. One who knew her then says: "She had the power of attracting young men, and she had great influence with them. Whether they were in Mission work, or traders, or government men, they were sure to be attracted by her vigorous character and by the large-hearted, understanding way she would talk to them or listen to their talk of their work or other interests. She loved to stir them to do great things."

It was sometimes remarked by visitors that her surroundings had not the spick-and-span appearance which usually characterises a Scottish Mission station. She had, nevertheless, a real appreciation of order and beauty, and liked to have everything clean and tidy about her. How to accomplish this was her daily problem, and perhaps only those who have lived in tropical lands can understand the position. The difficulty there is not how to make things grow, but how to prevent them growing. She waged as fierce and incessant a war with vegetation as she did with man, but it proved too much for her strength. "I think," she wrote, "if I left alone some of the outdoor work, even it the place did go to bush and dirt, I would not be so tired, and I could do more otherwise. But I can't help it. I must put my hands in wherever there is work to be done." The task had not become easier for her, for the new trade with Calabar had brought about a demand for Okoyong yams, and the people were so busy planting at their farms that she was unable to hire labour. The bush would creep up swiftly and stealthily to the edge of the dwellings and become a covering for beasts of prey, and, then she and her girls would sally out and cut it down and burn it and dig out the roots. And in its place would be planted corn and cocos and yams and other products, the children each having a plot to tend. A private pathway to the spring which she had constructed in order that the girls might not mix with the village women and hear their talk had also to be kept clear. It was hard work in the hot sunshine, and she and her bairns literally watered the soil with their perspiration. But no tears were shed at the work save those caused by merry jokes and laughter. She often surveyed the scene with pride, revelling in the wild beauty of form and colour, the brilliancy of the flowering trees, the tender green of the yams on their supports, the starry jasmine with its keen perfume. She loved flowers, and taught her scholars to bring them to school. They had never been conscious of these before, and the fact that they began to appreciate them was, she considered, a step forward in their educational development.

Often she longed for the power to bring out thousands of the slum people from the cities at home to enjoy the open life, and to work the rich lands. Not that she used the word "slum"; it seemed to reflect on the poor, many of whom she regarded as the heroes and heroines of God; in her humility she believed that many of them would have been far ahead of her if they had had the same advantages. One of her day-dreams was to inherit a fortune and to spend it all on the poor. "If only"— but she would check herself and say, "Mary Slessor! as if God does not know what to give and how to give it, and as if He did not love and think for all these poor creatures who are so mercilessly pushed aside in the race of life."