EP 03 - Dr Livingstone, I presume?

Dr Livingstone, I presume?

- Episode 03 -

The Lion and the Tartan Jacket

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#75 The Lion and the Tartan Jacket

Wed 12 October 2022

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'How to survive a lion attack' by Marikio Muchiri, Kenya.
Livingstone was mauled by a lion in Southern Africa before his exploring days had even got going. His arm was rendered practically useless

The public loved Livingstone's rugged, long-suffering determination and heart

Missionary Travels was published in November 1857. This was no ordinary story from a missionary in Africa, and with help from his main promoter (president of the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Roderick Murchison) it had been accepted by a mainstream publisher, John Murray.

When the editor tried to ‘improve’ the prose, however, Livingstone resisted. Hadn’t he already proven to be an excellent speaker full of amusing anecdotes? Hadn’t Murchison described him as a ‘lion’ of a public speaker – a crowd puller? Livingstone’s view was that people would like his own simple, even slightly plodding style, which he described as ‘manly’ and ‘forcible’. And he was right.

His attraction for the general public was not so much what he may or may not have achieved: it was his rugged, long-suffering determination and heart.

The most famous passage is when Livingstone is attacked by the lion. He has gone out to hunt it because it was attacking the local people’s cattle.

'Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though quite conscious of all that was happening.

It was like what patients partially under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the operation, but feel not the knife…. This peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the carnivores; and if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening the pain of death.’

The Victoria Falls, of the Leeambye or Zambesi River Called by the Natives Mosioatunya (Smoke that Thunders), Missionary Travels, 1857 Copyright National Library of Scotland

Livingstone characteristically dismissed danger

Whilst Livingstone was being mauled by a lion – shaken like ‘a terrier dog does a rat’ - two Africans in his party came to his rescue. The lion attacked them both in turn before finally succumbing to the bullets Livingstone had fired into it.

In his popular book Missionary Travels – a very personal mix of far-away adventure and science – he writes, ‘I had on a tartan jacket on the occasion, and I believe that it wiped off all the virus from the teeth that pierced the flesh, for my two companions in this affray have both suffered from the peculiar pains [that follow a lion attack] while I have escaped with only the inconvenience of a false joint in my limb.'

Livingstone is being modest about the inconvenience of his injuries. He had to set the broken arm himself (after all he was a doctor). But it was never much use again.

The next paragraph is characteristic of the doctor's insatiable curiosity and open-mindedness about science. 'The man whose shoulder was wounded showed me his wound actually burst forth afresh on the same month of the following year. This curious point deserves the attention of inquirers.’

#75 The Lion and the Tartan Jacket
Ep 3 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'
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Tragically, Livingstone's 'constitution of an ox' led him to believe that central Africa was suitable for Victorian Briton missionaries and their families. It was not.

Livingstone's key promoter and supporter was geologist Sir Roderick Murchison, photo taken by Camille Silvy in 1860 (Smithsonian). His wife Charlotte, who introduced Murchison to geology, features in the inaccurate film Ammonite

We would not know about Livingstone if Murchison had not promoted his 'lion' to boost RGS funds and fame

After just over a year in England, Livingstone and Murchison had raised a vast sum from the government and private donations to mount another expedition.

This time Livingstone would prove to the satisfaction of all, including the fusty chums at the Royal Geographical Society, that the Zambezi river (running from the centre of Africa, east to the coast) was suitable for transporting coffee and cotton and other crops to be grown by the Africans themselves.

After all it was this that would free the Africans from their increasing dependence on the slave trade – ‘the bitter fountain of African misery.’

Actually, Murchison wanted Livingstone to prove his theory that the centre of Africa was effectively a large bowl, dotted with lakes from which the great rivers flowed to the coast.

On 13 February 1858, Murchison organised what he called the ‘Livingstone Festival’, an enormous farewell banquet at the Freemason’s Tavern in London.

In his speech Murchison described Mrs Livingstone’s courage in bringing up their five children, and mentioned that she would be joining the new expedition, there was ‘loud and rapturous cheering.’

He looked forward to an expedition that would discover copper and gold. He revealed that the Queen herself had granted Livingstone a private audience earlier that day and wished him God speed.

The assembled company again burst into loud cheers. The explorer modestly replied that, if he did nothing but help end slavery, the expedition would be a success.

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Watercolour painting of Dr Livingstone's Medicine Chest used by him on his last journey, 1940 © Council for World Mission

'Livingstone leaps to any conclusion he may wish to see adopted' - a missionary bishop taken in by Missionary Travels

Before setting off on the ill-fated Zambezi expedition on 10 March 1858, Livingstone had proposed to establish two missions in the African interior. True to form he had the intention of leading neither.

To do this he had leaned on his former employers, the London Missionary Society (LMS), to send a mission to his beloved Kololo people who’d funded both of his previous expeditions. The LMS missionaries now set off from Cape Town for Sekeletu’s kingdom on the Barotse plains (in what is now Zambia). They reached the Kololo but they all quickly died of fever.

A second mission was sent by the new (Anglo-Catholic) Universities Mission to Central Africa which had been founded after a celebrated lecture by Livingstone at Cambridge.

They sent their first mission (which surprisingly included a bishop) to a site in Malawi that had been recommended by Livingstone. But this was no more the ‘healthy highlands’ the explorer had promised than the lands of the Kololo had been. They and their families also died from disease and hunger.

Unlike Livingstone, who had the constitution of an ox, ordinary people from Victorian Britain had no protection against Africa’s cocktail of fevers.

Livingstone’s quinine recipe ‘cure for malaria’ – written out on 26 November 1860 – hadn’t worked for the missionaries, nor would it work for his wife Mary who died in 1862 leaving six children in Scotland without a parent.

Nonetheless it was distributed around the Royal Navy and went on being manufactured in tablet form as ‘Livingstone’s Rousers’ by the chemists Burroughs-Wellcome until the 1920s.

#Livingstone #VictoriaFalls #HenryMortonStanley #WalimaKalusa #ThomasFowellBuxton #exploration #slavetrade #MissionaryTravels #LondonMissionarySociety #royalgeographicalsociety

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