Some Recovered Relics of David Livingstone

Abstract

That the general attitude towards Livingstone in the Victorian age was something much deeper than the homage due to a great ro s show by the way in which an extraordinary number of personal relics?letters, curios, sections of the tree beneath which his heart was buried in Ilala, and much else-? have been reverently preserved in homes all over the country. When it became widely known in about 1928 that the house where Livingstone was born, at Blantyre in Lanarkshire, had been converted into a place of pilgrimage, a steady stream of these household treasures began and the collection now on exhibition there is unsurpassed in the world. Though many of these relics, especially the manuscripts, have a considerable market value (a good Living? stone letter fetches at least ?50), payment has very rarely been suggested and almost every thing has been freely given. A collection of papers and maps recently and unexpectedly handed into the charge of the Blantyre Memorial Trust is, with the exception of that in the archives of the London Missionary Society, the most valuable known to exist. It includes five autograph field-maps of Livingstone's Central African explorations and one of his Trans-African journey (1866-73). The manuscripts include note-books, log books and a great amount of miscellaneous matter. A minor portion concerns the Zambezi expedition (1858-63) and the rest contains all that is known of the final seven-year journey among the Central African river basins (1866-73). It is on these last that Livingstone's third book 'The last journals' was based. The authenticity of this great mass of material was imme? diately apparent; it is all, or nearly all, in the explorer's characteristic handwriting. He used three distinct types of penmanship. The most common is that of a very rapid writer, letters imperfectly formed but in general easily legible; the second, which he uses in his diaries, is the same script but smaller and penned with the neatness almost of copper-plate. In the inscriptions of his maps on the other hand, he uses a type of lettering that has little in common with his usual style. Apart from the maps the chief interest of this collection lies in the large number of pocket note-books (5 xz X 3 xa inches) that contain the day by day records of the last journey. These make clear the Doctor's methods of recording and explain the accuracy and completeness of his observations. It was his invariable custom to carry in his pocket one of these small books and to jot down on the spot, or soon after, everything that caught his eye and interest. These notes are in pencil, blue or black, and to one or two of these books pencils are still attached. The notes are in general rough, not usually more than jottings, with little care shown as to language, but have all the vividness of first impres? sions. The books abound in thumb-nail sketches and small-scale maps. The Missionary was no artist, any more than he was a musician, and the pictures are crude, but they serve excellently the purpose for which they were intended. They illustrate tribal marks, the shapes of trees and plants and occasionally the outline of mountains. Faded leaves and flowers are found pressed here and there.