But Livingstone had been receiving other letters too, about Mary’s own behaviour. He was told by several friends that his wife was drinking enough to make her a spectacle occasionally in public. Though this meant no more than being a little unsteady and far too voluble all of a sudden, it was indefensible if true, as he believed it to be. He knew Mary drank alcohol, and he knew that their recent improvement in finances, plus an increase in the attendance at social functions at the same time, had encouraged the habit. After all, even he had succumbed, after a lifetime of abstinence, when fêted in London. His attitude to alcohol was not as rigidly hostile as his own father’s had been – he knew very well the solace it could bring, and had been glad of that bottle of port wine for Mary during Oswell’s birth. Women who endured what the wives of missionaries had to endure valued alcohol. Even prim Emily Moffat, Mary’s sister-in-law, wrote to her father that ‘entre-nous and quite private’ she had been glad of a bottle of port wine herself, and commented: ‘wine is a real godsend, no matter what temperance friends say.’
Temperance friends said rather more to Livingstone in their letters and he felt obliged to take notice. Mary would have to come to him, since he could not leave the expedition to go to her. He was already being blamed for his wife’s behaviour by influential friends like the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, one of the few influential women who had been kind to Mary. She wrote complaining of his neglect of his wife, and he was stung by her letter. Then there was the report from George Rae, the engineer from the Zambesi Expedition whom he had sent back to Scotland to arrange for a new boat to be sent out. Rae, although dour, had a liking for gossip, and chose to insinuate that Mrs Livingstone’s new friend James Stewart was perhaps not all he seemed. Livingstone decided Mary must join him and that Rae should bring her out.
But Mary, almost forty, was not quite so biddable. She no longer obeyed her husband without question, no longer had to be with him at whatever cost. Since her husband had left her, six months pregnant, at the Cape, her maternal duties seemed more important than her marital ones. She had finally realised what her desertion had meant for her children and that in turn allowed her to acknowledge what her husband’s desertion had meant to her. All the misery of their being apart – herself apart from him, herself apart from her children – was supposed to be justified by the great work he was doing. But now she dared, nervously, to query whether his work was so great. She went even further, to the point of wondering how much she believed in God and in the work done in God’s name. Perhaps it was all a waste of time, this missionary life, perhaps there were – the final heresy – more important things to care about, like one’s own family happiness. Even without such philosophical confusion, there were so many practical matters to settle. Who would look after baby Anna, only eighteen months old and needing far more than the basic supervision given to the older children? Who would keep Robert under control?
So she hesitated, and did not go at once with Rae. Her excuse was that Anna was ill (true) and that she could not leave her yet. But then James Stewart informed her that he himself was at last going to the Cape, on the first leg of his proposed trip to the Zambesi, and this influenced her to join her husband, as instructed, after all. With Stewart accompanying her, the voyage would not be so daunting. But it was a hard decision, far harder than it had been to leave Robert, Agnes and Thomas almost four years before. Partly this was because of Anna’s age – she was much younger than Thomas had been – but also partly because of having grown so much closer to all her children. Small children have their own needs but she saw, correctly, that adolescents’ needs (like Robert’s) were much more difficult to identify and satisfy. She worried about her baby Anna, but even more so about Robert, placing little faith in the ability of her sisters-in-law to stand in for her. She herself had not coped successfully with Robert, so how could his two spinster aunts be expected to do so? And she trusted them little more with her youngest, with Anna – they had no experience of babies. The faith she had to place in them, and in all the arrangements she had to make, brought her to the brink of cancelling her departure several times.
But in the end, good wife that she still struggled to be, she went. On 8 July 1861, she sailed with Stewart from Southampton, miserably unhappy and loaded with guilt. Her entire married life had been full of these agonising farewells, but this was quite the worst. From the beginning she was haunted by visions of Anna needing her and it was ‘only with the utmost difficulty’, she wrote to a friend, Mrs Fitch, ‘that I can keep up heart’. But Stewart helped. He was ‘kind and attentive, and will not allow me to mope’. All the same, ‘my dear baby, how my heart yearns for her. I miss her so much.’5 There was nothing Stewart could do about that, except try to distract her. She fretted all the time over whether she was doing the right thing and could only persuade herself that she had had no real choice because she had been ‘ordered’ to join her husband. ‘I received a letter from Livingstone dated 28 March 1861’, she had written to Mrs Fitch earlier. ‘In it he says, “embrace the first opportunity to come out …” So you see the orders have come.’6
Gradually, as the voyage continued and the nightmares lessened (even if they never entirely ceased), she found some pleasure in it, once her usual seasickness was over. The captain was affable, the woman with whom she shared a cabin pleasant, and the weather good. When they landed at Cape Town on 13 August she was gratified to be ‘most cordially welcomed’ by missionary friends whom she hardly knew. She enjoyed showing Stewart around the town, and was of course seen doing this, thereby providing more fuel for gossip. It simply never entered Mary’s innocent head that anyone could imagine she and Stewart were anything except friends; it never entered Stewart’s either, but it was he who first heard the gossip and was outraged enough to pass it on to Mary, telling her that he was accused of being ‘too intimate’ with her. She was so appalled and furious that he recorded she left his company immediately without bidding him good-night. But she was angry rather than mortified and most certainly not cowed by this vulgar scandalmongering. Secure in the knowledge of her own incontestable virtue, she did not break with Stewart. She continued to be his friend, and proved her worth by supporting him in his attempt to go with the Universities Mission party, with whom she herself was to travel, when they sailed for the mouth of the Zambesi via Durban. Unless Stewart was allowed to accompany them, Mary said, she would not go, and if she did not go, there would be an irate Livingstone to face when they got there.
Mary’s relations with this Universities Mission party (inspired, by Livingstone’s example, to follow him) were already strained. She was looked down upon by its members, especially by Bishop Mackenzie’s sister who had come out to Africa to look after him. The bishop had arrived at the mouth of the Zambesi in January, expecting to be taken to the new mission field by Livingstone, but had had to wait three months before going on to the Shire Highlands where nothing was as he had expected. He wanted his sister’s help, and had written asking her to join him, much to Livingstone’s annoyance. Anne Mackenzie was delighted to be asked, believing that, as her brother prophesied, she would be able to set a good example to the African women, of whom he had written: ‘some of them [are] wild and rude, some of them worse.’7 Mary, brought up with African women, could be forgiven for feeling cynical about Miss Mackenzie’s chances of success. This stiff, formidable Scottish lady had made it clear that she shrank from black people and thought herself infinitely superior to them. She did not really approve of her beloved brother’s going among them and becoming a missionary (it was not quite a gentleman’s role). Nor, in other ways apart from racial prejudice, was she suited to journeying up the Zambesi. She found heat enervating, spending days with blinding headaches lying on a sofa, and was terrified of even the most harmless insects. Within the larger party she had her own little ‘household’, made up of a housekeeper, Jessie Lennox, and a maid, Sarah, as well as Katie, a donkey.
From their first meeting – at the house of the Bishop of
Cape Town – she took a dislike to Mary, whom she judged far from being a lady. Miss Mackenzie knew David Livingstone’s background and though his triumphs had lifted him above it, they had not lifted his wife, who looked and spoke like a lower-class woman. Then there were the rumours about her and James Stewart (whom she considered an intruder, trying to compete with her dear brother). Miss Mackenzie had heard all the gossip (from Rae, the engineer, among others) and was disposed to believe it. When finally the party, including Stewart and Mary, left for Durban, the first stage of their voyage to the Zambesi, the rumours grew and in Durban seemed to be confirmed. Mary stayed with her brother Robert, who was a trader there, but still saw a great deal of Stewart, with whom she defiantly went for walks along the beach. This was enough in itself to make Miss Mackenzie’s eyebrows rise, but real damage was done one night when James Stewart was wakened by a servant telling him that Mrs Livingstone was very ill and asking him to come quickly. He went, deduced that Mary was drunk, gave her some laudanum and departed: it was not the first time he had been called in the night and responded – in Cape Town, he had done the same. But he had become tired of these emergencies, and of Mary, true friend though she had proved herself to be to him and his ambitions. He had been sympathetic to her in Glasgow, patient and attentive on the voyage out, but now that she was an embarrassment to him he had become disgusted with these scenes and had concluded that the cause of them, pure and simple, was alcohol.
But the case was neither pure nor simple. He records no details of Mary’s condition, and if a careful examination of her distressed and fevered state was made he did not write it down. No medical notes were kept, and he does not mention any smell of alcohol – he just seems quite certain that, as he told Dr Kirk (who already disliked Mary), ‘she drank freely so as to be utterly besotted at times’. Even if her night ‘illnesses’ were drunken stupors, the reasons for this ‘drinking freely’ were never gone into. The gossip about her and Stewart was enough in itself to drive her to drink. But what Stewart was also afraid of was that Mary had started to take him for granted. She alarmed him by showing signs of becoming dependent on him – he had sensed that in the absence of her husband she was always in need of someone to support and guide her. He was embarrassed not only by her drinking and her leaning upon him but by her habit of expecting him to lend her money. Not well-off himself, he hated to be treated as a money-lender, especially when he was pretty sure where the money was going. The only reason he seems to have put up with it was that Mary was the wife of the man whose approval he was going to need and whose assistance he could not do without. For once in her life, being a famous man’s wife gave Mary a lever, one she reached for desperately and foolishly, but without foreseeing the consequences.
By the time the party embarked for Durban in the dilapidated ship Hetty Ellen, Miss Mackenzie and company were frigid in their attitude towards Mary. She scarcely cared. On the contrary, she knew her hour was coming. In Cape Town, before they set off, she had written to a friend that she was expected by her husband to ‘initiate them in the matter of housekeeping’ – of the sort, that is, which would be needed on the journey to join the bishop and which would be a shock to their refined systems. It quite made her laugh to imagine how Miss Mackenzie, Jessie Lennox and Sarah, and also Mrs Burrup, the new bride of a missionary, would react to the conditions she knew they would have to endure. She was the only one with any experience, the only one unbothered by heat, insects and every other inconvenience the Zambesi would throw at them. And she, not they, was the wife of the leader of the expedition. She would be in her element, and they would be out of theirs.
The nearer the Hetty Ellen drew to the mouth of the Zambesi the more cheerful and excited Mary became. Even James Stewart was touched, and when Mary failed to make out her husband on board the Pioneer he kindly pointed him out, and noted her emotion. Livingstone, he thought, looked ‘a great swell in white trousers’ and was undoubtedly thrilled to see his wife. He felt a little sorry for the couple, unable to enjoy any privacy for their reunion, surrounded as they were by onlookers, and with Livingstone in such demand. Other scribblers were making observations too, Dr Kirk again and now W. C. Devereux, Assistant Paymaster on board the Gorgon, the ship which had been ordered to proceed to assist Livingstone. Devereux was an intelligent young man (only twenty-four), with a keen eye, who was very curious to see Mrs Livingstone. He recorded that she was ‘a motherly-looking lady’ and that her husband seemed very fond of her. He was extremely impressed at how both she and her husband got up at dawn, turning out ‘in easy déshabille’8 to help prepare for the trip up the river, setting such a good example. Neither of them stood on ceremony or pulled rank.
But Kirk had decided that Mary was ‘a coarse, vulgar woman … cut out for rough work … a queer piece of furniture’. The very qualities that the unprejudiced Devereux admired in her (that she was not bothered about her appearance, worked alongside the sailors, was unconcerned about her dignity) Kirk despised. As far as he was concerned, she simply did not know how to behave like a lady, like the wife of a famous man. But he was hard to please, not to say misogynist. His estimation of Miss Mackenzie, though very different, wasn’t much higher. ‘She was unable to place one foot in front of the other’, he recorded. ‘If she decided to shift her position she had to get assistance.’ The only woman in the party Kirk had any time for was Mrs Burrup, but then everyone liked her – she was pretty, cheerful and full of life.
Mary, unaware of Kirk’s criticisms, was at last in excellent spirits. Her husband’s pleasure in their reunion steadied and encouraged her, and she began to think perhaps it had been right to go through the agony of leaving her children to find such happiness with him again. She had told him of the malicious gossip about herself and Stewart which had circulated at the Cape and his attitude had been everything she could have wished – fury that such absurd tales should be repeated at all, sympathy for her hurt feelings, and above all complete and utter faith in her. He couldn’t understand why she should have been so distressed by this nonsense. He himself was not going to give it five seconds of his time, and neither should she. As for Miss Mackenzie, he had not taken to her at all. Her very existence was a nuisance to him, and she for her part thought him ‘abrupt and ungracious’. The sooner he could get rid of her and Mrs Burrup, the better.
But to do that he had to get them up the Zambesi to a point where they could go overland to join their menfolk. First he had to load them, with all the paraphernalia they had brought out for the new mission, on to the already crowded Pioneer which, apart from crew and passengers, was carrying sections of Rae’s portable steamer from Scotland, to be assembled later and used in the higher reaches of the river. There was so little space to fit everything – it was like an impossible jigsaw puzzle – and yet Miss Mackenzie would leave nothing behind. Devereux couldn’t believe how many parcels and packages she wanted transported, most of them containing useless items. Then there were the larger pieces – the mahogany wardrobe for one – which were almost impossible to store away and took so much effort to lift and manoeuvre. If the sailors had not been so willing to help the ladies – ‘our fellows are continually … cheering and doing all they can to assist them’ – nothing would have been managed. As it was, Devereux had grave doubts as to how these ‘delicate creatures’ would survive on the trip. ‘I pity the ladies’, he wrote in his journal, and said that he and others had tried to persuade them to return to the Cape before it was too late. ‘It was cruel’, he concluded, ‘to allow them to come out here …’
Finally, far too heavily laden for the progress it hoped to make, the Pioneer got under way. The boat was low in the water and moved slowly as it negotiated its course between the slimy, muddy banks, densely covered with mangroves. The water itself was evil-looking, the colour of dirty beer, and it was easy to believe there were alligators and dangerous hippos just below the surface. There was nothing much for the women to see, except for the small shanty huts thatched with palmyra leaf
and occasional groups of completely naked natives, a shock to every female eye except Mary’s. Sometimes, the natives came to the ship in canoes and were allowed on board with the fruit they brought to barter. Devereux noted their astonishment at the sight of these white ladies, especially Sarah, the maid, who was considered the most beautiful. In the evening, they all ate together and Livingstone entertained the party with anecdotes of his adventures. Devereux took it upon himself to treat the company to ‘a stiff bowl of punch … which the ladies love and want more of’. It became hotter and hotter – 120° Fahrenheit on 13 February (two weeks after they set off) – and the Livingstones were the only ones not affected. The mosquitoes were vicious, and Miss Mackenzie was bitten so badly and repeatedly that her left eye shut completely. She was heard (by Stewart) frequently enquiring if people died on boats. The nights were disturbed by the constant roars, howls and screeches of animals and nobody got much sleep, not even the Livingstones, accustomed though they were to the noises. They were in a small cabin by themselves, but this was no great privilege since it was even hotter there than on deck. Mary, though, had done her best to make it homely and never complained. She was the only woman on board who seemed relatively comfortable. The others, just as she had known they would, suffered agonies, encased as they were in tight bodices and corsets, their long dresses made even more stifling by the layers of petticoats underneath. They sweated furiously, though ladies were not supposed to do anything so vulgar, and their pale complexions reddened daily, despite the shelter of hats and parasols. Their hair was a particular trial, its sheer weight a curse in the heat, with the need to wind it up into coils or plait it, or somehow get rid of its burning bulk. Even when it was tamed into a bun and lifted off their necks, or pushed into a bonnet, the women still found it a burden, and it was the perfect resting place for insects.
Good Wives Page 9