For a whole month before this letter was written, poor Mary had been sleeping under the baobab-tree at Shupanga!
In Livingstone's letter to Mrs. Moffat he gives the details of her illness, and pours his heart out in the same affectionate terms as in his Journal. He dwells on the many unhappy causes of delay which had detained them near the mouth of the river, contrary to all his wishes and arrangements. He is concerned that her deafness (through quinine) and comatose condition before her death prevented her from giving him the indications he would have desired respecting her state of mind in the view of eternity.
"I look," he says, "to her previous experience and life for comfort, and thank God for his mercy that we have it.... A good wife and mother was she. God have pity on the children--she was so much beloved by them.... She was much respected by all the officers of the 'Gorgon,'--they would do anything for her. When they met this vessel at Mozambique, Captain Wilson offered his cabin in that fine large vessel, but she insisted rather that Miss Mackenzie and Mrs. Burrup should go.... I enjoyed her society during the three months we were together. It was the Lord who gave and He has taken away. I wish to say--Blessed be his name. I regret, as there always are regrets after our loved ones are gone, that the slander which, unfortunately, reached her ears from missionary gossips and others had an influence on me in allowing her to come, before we were fairly on Lake Nyassa. A doctor of divinity said, when her devotion to her family was praised: 'Oh, she is no good, she is here because her husband cannot live with her,' The last day will tell another tale."
To his daughter Agnes he writes, after the account of her death: "... Dear Nannie, she often thought of you, and when once, from the violence of the disease, she was delirious, she called out, 'See! Agnes is falling down a precipice,' May our Heavenly Saviour, who must be your Father and Guide, preserve you from falling into the gulf of sin over the precipice of temptation.... Dear Agnes, I feel alone in the world now, and what will the poor dear baby do without her mamma? She often spoke of her, and sometimes burst into a flood of tears, just as I now do in taking up and arranging the things left by my beloved partner of eighteen years.... I bow to the Divine hand that chastens me. God grant that I may learn the lesson He means to teach! All she told you to do she now enforces, as if beckoning from heaven. Nannie, dear, meet her there. Don't lose the crown of joy she now wears, and the Lord be gracious to you in all things. You will now need to act more and more from a feeling of responsibility to Jesus, seeing He has taken away one of your guardians. A right straightforward woman was she. No crooked way ever hers, and she could act with decision and energy when required. I pity you on receiving this, but it is the Lord.--Your sorrowing and lonely father."
Letters of the like tenor were written to every intimate friend. It was a relief to his heart to pour itself out in praise of her who was gone, and in some cases, when he had told all about the death, he returns to speak of her life. A letter to Sir Roderick Murchison gives all the particulars of the illness and its termination. Then he thinks of the good and gentle Lady Murchison,--"la spirituelle Lady Murchison," as Humboldt called her,--and writes to her: "It will somewhat ease my aching heart to tell you about my dear departed Mary Moffat, the faithful companion of eighteen years." He tells of her birth at Griqua Town in 1821, her education in England, their marriage and their love. "At Kolobeng, she managed all the household affairs by native servants of her own training, made bread, butter, and all the clothes of the family; taught her children most carefully; kept also an infant and sewing school--by far the most popular and best attended we had. It was a fine sight to see her day by day walking a quarter of a mile to the town, no matter how broiling hot the sun, to impart instruction to the heathen Bakwains. Ma-Robert's name is known through all that country, and 1800 miles beyond.... A brave, good woman was she. All my hopes of giving her one day a quiet home, for which we both had many a sore longing, are now dashed to the ground. She is, I trust, through divine mercy, in peace in the home of the blest.... She spoke feelingly of your kindness to her, and also of the kind reception she received from Miss Burdett Coutts. Please give that lady and Mrs. Brown the sad intelligence of her death."
The reply of Mrs. Moffat to her son-in-law's letter was touching and beautiful. "I do thank you for the detail you have given us of the circumstances of the last days and hours of our lamented and beloved Mary, our first-born, over whom our fond hearts first beat with parental affection!" She recounts the mercies that were mingled with the trial--though Mary could not be called eminently pious, she had the root of the matter in her, and though the voyage of her life had been a trying and stormy one, she had not become a wreck. God had remembered her; had given her during her last year the counsels of faithful men--referring to her kind friend and valued counselor, the Rev. Professor Kirk, of Edinburgh, and the Rev. Dr. Stewart, of Lovedale--and, at last, the great privilege of dying in the arms of her husband. "As for the cruel scandal that seems to have hurt you both so much, those who said it did not know you as a couple. In all our intercourse with you, we never had a doubt as to your being comfortable together. I know there are some maudlin ladies who insinuate, when a man leaves his family frequently, no matter how noble is his object, that he is not comfortable at home. But we can afford to smile at this, and say, 'The Day will declare it.'...
"Now my dear Livingstone, I must conclude by assuring you of the tender interest we shall ever feel in your operations. It is not only as the husband of our departed Mary and the father of her children, but as one who has laid himself out for the emancipation of this poor wretched continent, and for opening new doors of entrance for the heralds of salvation (not that I would not have preferred your remaining in your former capacity). I nevertheless rejoice in what you are allowed to accomplish. We look anxiously for more news of you, and my heart bounded when I saw your letters the other day, thinking they were new. May our gracious God and Father comfort your sorrowful heart.--Believe me ever your affectionate mother, "MARY MOFFAT."