The life of Livingstone has been indifferently told if the personality of the man has not appeared in these pages. But the reader will welcome a few personal details that could not well find a place in previous chapters. The portrait of Livingstone is well known. It is a strong, rugged face, rather heavy and severe in its general effect, with a thick dark moustache, a broad mouth and full chin—the whole lightened, however, by the honest kindly eyes and the suggestion of humour about the lips. When he was a young man it would appear that his hair was almost black, but it became lighter in colour later, and the lock of it in possession of one of his relatives is distinctly brown. He is himself our authority for saying that his{230} beard was reddish in colour; and it must be remembered that in this respect all our pictures are at fault. Not one of them shows us a bearded African traveller; yet, except on his visits to England, he always wore a beard. Stanley’s first impression was of the grey-bearded man whom he found at Ujiji. Later on he noted that his hair had still a “brownish colour,” but that his beard and moustache were “very grey.” Stanley also paid a tribute to the brightness of his eyes, which he says were hazel. They appear to have been grey with a bluish tinge. Livingstone himself comments on the astonishment of the natives at his red beard and blue eyes. From that reference one might imagine that he had the appearance of a Viking or Scandinavian; but the fact is that his eyes were really more grey than blue, and that his hair was a very dark brown, while his beard was more distinctively Scotch and “sandy.”

In height he always appeared quite short when in contact with tall companions. But he was about average height, say five feet{231} six inches; certainly not more. He had the broad chest and shoulders of a man specially built to endure exceptional fatigue; but otherwise he always created the impression of a short and spare man. That he inherited an iron constitution is evident from the mere narrative of his travels and privations. One of the things that most vividly impressed Stanley was how swiftly the man he found so worn and thin and haggard threw off the burden of the years, recovered his old buoyancy of spirit and physical efficiency, and took upon him the appearance of one who was ten years younger than his actual age.

He was in some ways a fastidious person. He was scrupulously neat in his manner of dress. Even on his travels, when making his way through swamp and jungle, the one luxury he most prized was a change of raiment; and his torn clothes would be mended to the best of his ability. Stanley found him “dressed in a red shirt, with a crimson joho, with a gold band round his cap, an old tweed pair of pants, and shoes{232} looking the worse for wear.” The wonder is he had anything left that was fit to be seen, and the new apparel that came to him was hailed with genuine exclamations of delight. He set great store on an example to the natives of simplicity and neatness. This characteristic also comes out in other ways. His diaries are done with wonderful care and precision. His handwriting was not naturally good, but it is admirably legible.

Every entry in his diary bears upon it the marks of method and neatness, while the scientific observations are set forth with a clearness which won the highest praise from those best competent to give it. Nothing was slurred over. There is no sign of hurry or of the exhaustion of patience. Similarly, there is a notable absence of all embroidery. The language is throughout austerely plain and truthful. Everything is in keeping with his essential character of a man who hated the vulgarity of useless or tawdry rhetoric, and held always by the refinement of simplicity. From many anecdotes related of him it is clear that not only his writing but{233} his private and public speech were affected by his taste in this respect. A letter is extant in which he counselled his children to speak English because it was “prettier” than Scotch. He was doubtless thinking of the somewhat coarse Scotch accent prevalent in Glasgow and the neighbourhood, where his youth was spent. Strangers who met him were uniformly impressed by the softness and gentleness of his speech. His voice was deep; and if sometimes in public it took on a harsh sound, this was undoubtedly due to the difficulty of public utterance, which he never mastered. His addresses to great audiences in England were always delivered in a slow, hesitating, and rather laboured fashion. For one thing, he grew so accustomed to thinking and speaking in the native languages of Africa that his own tongue became strange to him. But, apart from that, he was never a fluent speaker; public address was an ordeal to him, and he had a Puritan disposition towards restraint and reserve, combined with a scientific predilection for exact statement. The impression he left{234} upon his audience, however, was always powerful. Every one who heard him testifies that the man triumphed where the orator was most to seek.

When he once became sufficiently at home with any one to conquer his natural reserve, he was excellent company, for he had a large fund of humour, and the gift of Teufelsdr?ckian laughter—“a laugh of the whole man from heel to head.” He was especially devoted to children. One of my correspondents remembers him most vividly with a child on each knee telling them lion stories; and another recalls his own boyhood, and days of sickness in bed brightened by a visit from Livingstone, who showed him the marks of the lion’s teeth in his arm, and entertained him with some of his adventures. The atmosphere that he most detested was the atmosphere of flattery. There is a fine story about him which illustrates this. He had been invited out to dinner, and had fallen to the lot of a society lady who was injudicious enough to indulge in some very highly coloured compliments on his achieve{235}ments. Suddenly Livingstone left the table, and was afterwards discovered sitting in a room in the dark. He explained that he could not endure to be praised to his face, and that he would not sit and listen to it. One who knew him intimately told me of a lecture delivered in one of our great northern towns. Two local orators introduced the proceedings with speeches magnifying Livingstone’s achievements. When he rose to his feet he had an overwhelming reception, but, turning straight to a large map, he said in a singularly cold, hard voice: “If you want to know the truth about the river system of Central Africa, be good enough to look at this map,” and plunged into his subject without a word of reference to anything that had been said about himself. He was the least vain and most unspoiled of any man who was ever lionised by the British public; the secret of which was undoubtedly ............