Traveler, geographer, zoologist, astronomer, missionary, physician, and mercantile director, did ever man sustain so many characters at once? Or did ever man perform the duties of each with such painstaking accuracy and so great success?
As soon as he could tear himself from his first engagements, he ran down to Hamilton to see his mother, children, and other relatives. His father's empty chair deeply affected him. "The first evening," writes one of his sisters, "he asked all about his illness and death. One of us remarking that after he knew he was dying his spirits seemed to rise, David burst into tears. At family worship that evening he said with deep feeling--'We bless thee, O Lord, for our parents; we give thee thanks for the dead who has died in the Lord.'"
At first Livingstone thought that his stay in this country could be only for three or four months, as he was eager to be at Quilimane before the unhealthy season set in, and thus fulfill his promise to return to his Makololo at Tette. But on receiving an assurance from the Portuguese Government (which, however, was never fulfilled by them) that his men would be looked after, he made up his mind for a somewhat longer stay. But it could not be called rest. As soon as he could settle down he had to set to work with a book. So long before as May, 1856, Sir Roderick Murchison had written to him that "Mr. John Murray, the great publisher, is most anxious to induce you to put together all your data, and to make a good book," adding his own strong advice to comply with the request. If he ever doubted the propriety of writing the book, the doubt must have vanished, not only in view of the unequaled interest excited by the subject, but also of the readiness of unprincipled adventurers, and even some respectable publishers, to circulate narratives often mythical and quite unauthorized.
The early part of the year 1857 was mainly occupied with the labor of writing. For this he had materials in the Journals which he had kept so carefully; but the business of selection and supplementing was laborious, and the task of arrangement and transcription very irksome. In fact, this task tried the patience of Livingstone more than any which he had yet undertaken, and he used to say that he would rather cross Africa than write another book. His experience of book-making increased his respect for authors and authoresses a hundred-fold!
We are not, however, inclined to think that this trial was due to the cause which Livingstone assigned,--his want of experience, and want of command over the English tongue. He was by no means an inexperienced writer. He had written large volumes of Journals, memoirs for the Geographical Society, articles on African Missions, letters for the Missionary Society, and private letters without end, each usually as long as a pamphlet. He was master of a clear, simple, idiomatic style, well fitted to record the incidents of a journey--sometimes poetical in its vivid pictures, often brightening into humor, and sometimes deepening into pathos. Viewing it page by page, the style of the Missionary Travels is admirable, the chief defect being want of perspective; the book is more a collection of pieces than an organized whole: a fault inevitable, perhaps, in some measure, from its nature, but aggravated, as we believe, by the haste and pressure under which it had to be written. In his earlier private letters, Livingstone, in his single-hearted desire to rouse the world on the subject of Africa, used to regret that he could not write in such a way as to command general attention: had he been master of the flowing periods of the Edinburgh Review, he thought he could have done much more good. In point of fact, if he had had the pen of Samuel Johnson, or the tongue of Edmund Burke, he would not have made the impression he did. His simple style and plain speech were eminently in harmony with his truthful, unexaggerating nature, and showed that he neither wrote nor spoke for effect, but simply to utter truth. What made his work of composition irksome was, on the one hand, the fear that he was not doing it well, and on the other, the necessity of doing it quickly. He had always a dread that his English was not up to the critical mark, and yet he was obliged to hurry on, and leave the English as it dropped from his pen. He had no time to plan, to shape, to organize; the architectural talent could not be brought into play. Add to this that he had been so accustomed to open-air life and physical exercise, that the close air and sedentary attitude of the study must have been exceedingly irksome; so that it is hardly less wonderful that his health stood the confinement of book-making in England, than that it survived the tear and wear, labor and sorrow, of all his journeys in Africa.
An extract from a letter to Mr. Maclear, on the eve of his beginning his book (21st January, 1857), will show how his thoughts were running:
"I begin to-morrow to write my book, and as I have a large party of men (110) waiting for me at Tette, and I promised to join them in April next, you will see I shall have enough to do to get over my work here before the end of the month.... Many thanks for all the kind things you said at the Cape Town meeting. Here they laud me till I shut my eyes, for only trying to do my duty. They ought to vote thanks to the Boers who set me free to discover the fine new country. They were determined to shut the country, and I was determined to open it. They boasted to the Portuguese that they had expelled two missionaries, and outwitted themselves rather. I got the gold medal, as you predicted, and the freedom of the town of Hamilton, which insures me protection from the payment of jail fees if put in prison!"
In writing his book, he sometimes worked in the house of a friend, but generally in a London or suburban lodging, often with his children about him, and all their noise; for, as in the Blantyre mill, he could abstract his attention from sounds of whatever kind, and go on calmly with his work. Busy though he was, this must have been one of the happiest times in his life. Some of his children still remember his walks and romps with them in the Barnet woods, near which they lived part of the time--how he would suddenly plunge into the ferny thicket, and set them looking for him, as people looked for him afterward when he disappeared in Africa, coming out all at once at some unexpected corner of the thicket. One of his greatest troubles was the penny post. People used to ask him the most frivolous questions. At first he struggled to answer them, but in a few weeks he had to give this up in despair. The simplicity of his heart is seen in the childlike joy with which he welcomes the early products of the spring. He writes to Mr. Maclear that, one day at Professor Owen's, they had "seen daisies, primroses, hawthorns, and robin-redbreasts. Does not Mrs. Maclear envy us? It was so pleasant."
But a better idea of his mode of life at home will be conveyed by the notes of some of the friends with whom he stayed. For that purpose, we resume the recollections of Dr. Risdon Bennett:
"On returning to England, after his first great journey of discovery, he and Mrs. Livingstone stayed in my house for some time, and I had frequent conversations with him on subjects connected with his African life, especially on such as related to natural history and medicine, on which he had gathered a fund of information. His observation of malarious diseases, and the methods of treatment adopted by both the natives and Europeans, had led him to form very definite and decided views, especially in reference to the use of purgatives, preliminary to, and in conjunction with, quinine and other acknowledged febrifuge medicines. He had, while staying with me, one of those febrile attacks to which persons who have once suffered from malarious disease are so liable, and I could not fail to remark his sensible observations thereon, and his judicious management of his sickness. He had a great natural predilection for medical science, and always took great interest in all that related to the profession. I endeavored to persuade him to commit to writing the results of his medical observations and experience among the natives of Africa, but he was too much occupied with the preparation of his Journal for the press to enable him to do this. Moreover, as he often said, writing was a great drudgery to him. He, however, attended with me the meetings of some of the medical societies, and gave some verbal accounts of his medical experience which greatly interested his audience. His remarks on climates, food, and customs of the natives, in reference to the origin and spread of disease, evinced the same acuteness of observation which characterized all the records of his life. He specially commented on the absence of consumption and all forms of tubercular disease among the natives, and connected this with their constant exposure and out-of-door life.
"After leaving my house he had lodgings in Chelsea, and used frequently to come and spend the Sunday afternoon with my family, often bringing his sister, who was staying with him, and his two elder children. It was beautiful to observe how thoroughly he enjoyed domestic life and the society of children, how strong was his attachment to his own family after his long and frequent separations from them, and how entirely he had retained his simplicity of character.
"Like so many of his countrymen, he had a keen sense of humor, which frequently came into play when relating his many adventures and hardships. On the latter he never dilated in the way of complaint, and he had little sympathy with, or respect for, those travelers who did so. Nor was he apt to say much on direct religious topics, or on the results of his missionary efforts as a Christian teacher. He had unbounded confidence in the influence of Christian character and principles, and gave many illustrations of the effect produced on the minds and conduct of the benighted and savage tribes with whom he was brought into contact by his own unvarying uprightness of conduct and self-denying labor. The fatherly character of God, his never-failing goodness and mercy, and the infinite love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and efficacy of his atoning sacrifice, appeared to be the topics on which he loved chiefly to dwell. The all-pervading deadly evils of slavery, and the atrocities of the slave-trade, never failed to excite his righteous indignation. If ever he was betrayed into unmeasured language, it was when referring to these topics, or when speaking of the injurious influence exerted on the native mind by the cruel and unprincipled conduct of wicked and selfish traders. His love for Africa, and confidence in the steady dawn of brighter days for its oppressed races, were unbounded."