Chapter III: Foreword: Mary Kingsley

“Mary Kingsley—the heir and sustainer of a great name, one of
the ablest of that remarkable band of wandering writers, men
and women, who are the eyes and ears of our nascent Empire,
who are bringing home to England, that weary Titan, her tasks,
her faults, her problems—Mary Kingsley has gone from us.”—Mrs.
HUMPHRY WARD.

Those who had the honour of knowing Mary Kingsley, and corresponding with her on West African affairs, who have studied her writings and her speeches, who realise all that this “good woman with a gigantic intellect” might have done for the Empire in West Africa had she lived, can with difficulty reconcile themselves to the inscrutable decree of Providence which robbed us of her presence. One of her greatest admirers to whom I was expressing the other day much the same feeling, expressed a different view. “Miss Kingsley’s work was done”—he said in effect—“she was the pioneer, she showed the way. That was her allotted task: the fruit of her labours will come in due season.” It may be so. Indeed, when we think of what Mary Kingsley accomplished in the few short years which she devoted to West Africa, the thought arises whether there is not an element of unconscious selfishness in the desire that she might have been spared. The nature of the work she had undertaken, the intense fervour with which she devoted herself body and soul to preaching the morals it was given her to inculcate, the utter brain weariness which at times she was fain to admit—no mortal being could have endured for very long so perpetual a mental and physical strain. It was a passing heavy load for a weak woman of indifferent health to bear, and in death Mary Kingsley has perhaps achieved a greater triumph, a success more striking and profound, than living on she would have attained. Death has had the effect of rapidly fertilising the seeds she sowed, and from her ashes have sprung forces gathering daily in power which, united in a common aim, are taking up her burden and carrying it along the path she pointed out, assured that every year will bring fresh helpers, be the obstacles ever so great. _La verité est en marche_, and although the spirit of the hour is not precisely favourable to that patient investigation of West African problems which affords the only guarantee of political and administrative success, the phase is but a fleeting one, and when the present fashionable policy of force and hurry is found by practical tests to be even more sterile in useful results than the apathy which preceded it, the main truths Mary Kingsley taught will appeal to thinking men with an eloquence all the greater for having been temporarily obscured.

On the personal aspect of Mary Kingsley’s character one would fain dwell at length. Few women, I believe, have inspired all sorts and conditions of men with so intense a respect, so wondering an admiration. Few women are able, as Mary Kingsley was able, to draw forth, by the magic of her earnest personality, the best in a man. She was so unassuming, so unaffected, such a womanly woman in every sense of the word, that it appeared almost incredible she should have grasped the essentialities of West African politics with such comprehensiveness and scientific perception; mastered, as no one had done before—in the sense, at any rate, of being able to impart the knowledge to the world—the intricacies of native custom and native law, or have affronted the physical perils she made so light of. Eminent politicians and administrators, distinguished men of letters, world-renowned scientists, commercial magnates, were regular visitors at her modest residence, and one and all drew from her inexhaustible store. The least of those to whom she extended the privilege of her friendship were always welcome, and never failed to leave her presence without feeling that her words of sympathy and encouragement were a fresh incentive to push onward, never losing hope and fortified against disappointment. The truest, kindest, staunchest friend that ever breathed—such was Mary Kingsley; and we who knew her, and have lost her, know also that something has gone out of our lives which can never be replaced. In a passage of singular beauty, Mrs. Alice Stopford Green thus closes a tribute[1] to the dead friend whose work she herself is doing so much to carry on: “She laid her armour down when she asked to be carried out to the unfathomable Ocean, alone in death as she had been alone in life, going out with her last wish from the bitter strife of men to the immensities where she sought the will of God.”