A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary

W >> W. P. Livingstone >> Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary




She had been deeply interested In the great World's Missionary
Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, and had contrasted it with State
diplomacy and dreadnoughts, but was disappointed that so little
practical result had followed. "After all," she said, "it is not
committees and organisations from without that is to bring the revival,
and to send the Gospel to the heathen at home and abroad, but the
living spirit of God working from within the heart."

All this made her more than ever convinced of the value of her own
policy. She believed in the roughest methods for a raw country like
Nigeria. Too much civilisation and concentration was bad, both for the
work and the natives. There should be, she thought, an office of
itinerating or travelling missionary permanently attached to the
Mission. It would have its drawbacks, as, she recognised, all pioneer
work had, but it would also pay well. She was not sure whether the
missionaries did right in remaining closely to their stations, and
believed that short regular expeditions into the interior would not
only keep them in better health, but give them a closer knowledge of
the people. Not much teaching could be given in this way, but their
confidence would be won, and the way would be prepared for further
advance. Her hope lay in women workers; they made better pioneers than
men, and as they were under no suspicion of being connected with the
Government, their presence was unobjectionable to the natives. They
could move into new spheres and do the spade-work; enter the homes, win
a hearing, guide the people in quiet ways, and live a simple and
natural life amongst them. When confidence had been secured, men
missionaries could enter and train and develop, and build up
congregations in the ordinary manner.

Even then she did not see why elaborate churches should be erected. She
was always so afraid to put anything forward save Christ, that she was
quite satisfied with her little "mud kirks." The raw heathen knew
nothing of the Church as white people understood it. To give them a
costly building was to give them a foreign thing in which they would
worship a foreign God. To let them worship in an environment of their
own setting meant, she believed, a more real apprehension of spiritual
truth. The money they were trained to give, she would spend, not on
buildings so much as on pioneer work among the tribes.

So, too, with the Mission houses. She thought these should be as simple
as possible, and semi-native in style; such, she believed, to be the
driest and most healthy. In any case disease could come into a house
costing £200, as into one costing £20, and "there was such a thing as
God's providence." Still, she recognised the importance of preserving
the health of newcomers, and admitted that her ideas might not apply to
them. "It would be wrong," she said, "to insist on mud-huts for a
nervous or æsthetic person."

It was much the same feeling that ran through her objection to the
natives suddenly transforming themselves into Europeans. Her views in
this respect differed a good deal from those of her co-workers. One
Sunday, after a special service, a number of women who had arrayed
themselves in cheap European finery, boots and stockings and all,
called upon her. She sat on a chair, her back to them, and merely threw
them an occasional word with an angry jerk of her head. They were very
upset, and at last one of them ventured to ask what was the matter.
"Matter!" she exclaimed, and then spoke to them in a way which brought
them all back in the afternoon clothed more appropriately.

On all these questions she thought simply and naturally, and not in
terms of scientific theory and over-elaborated system. She believed
that the world was burdened and paralysed by conventional methods. But
she did not undervalue the æsthetic side of existence. "So many think
that we missionaries live a sort of glorified glamour of a life, and
have no right to think of any of the little refinements and elegancies
which rest and sooth tired and overstrained nerves--certainly
coarseness and ugliness do not help the Christian life, and ugly things
are not as a rule cheaper than beautiful ones." Her conviction was that
a woman worth her salt could make any kind of house beautiful. At the
same time she believed--and proved it in her own life--that the spirit-
filled woman was to a great extent independent of all accessories.

What always vexed her was to think of thousands of girls at home living
a purposeless life, spending their time in fashionable wintering-
places, and undergoing the strenuous toil of conventional amusement.
"Why," she asked, "could they not come out here and stay a month or six
months doing light work, helping with the children, cheering the staff?
What a wealth of interest it would introduce into their lives!" She
declared it would be better than stoning windows, for she had no
patience with the policy of the women who sought in blind destruction
the solution of political and social evils. "I'm for votes for women,
but I would prove my right to it by keeping law and helping others to
keep it. God-like motherhood is the finest sphere for women, and the
way to the redemption of the world."

Many a clarion call she sent to her sisters across the waters:

"Don't grow up a nervous old maid! Gird yourself for the battle outside
somewhere, and keep your heart young. Give up your whole being to
create music everywhere, in the light places and in the dark places,
and your life will make melody. I'm a witness to the perfect joy and
satisfaction of a single life--with a tail of human tag-rag hanging on.
It is rare! It is as exhilarating as an aeroplane or a dirigible or
whatever they are that are always trying to get up and are always
coming down!... Mine has been such a joyous service," she wrote again.
"God has been good to me, letting me serve Him in this humble way. I
cannot thank Him enough for the honour He conferred upon me when He
sent me to the Dark Continent."

Over and over again she put this idea of foreign service before her
friends at home. Some were afraid of a rush of cranks who would not
obey rules and so forth. She laughed the idea to scorn. "I wish I could
believe in a crush--but there are sensible men and women enough in the
Church who would be as law-abiding here as at home."




XVII. LOVE-LETTEBS

During the course of her career Miss Slessor wrote numberless letters,
many of them productions of six, ten, twelve, and fourteen pages,
closely penned in spidery writing, which she called her "hieroglyphic
style." She had the gift, which more women than men possess, of
expressing her ideas on paper in as affluent and graceful a way as in
conversation. Her letters indeed were long monologues, the spontaneous
outpouring of an active and clever mind. She sat down and talked
vivaciously of everything about her, not of public affairs, because she
knew people at home would not understand about these, but of her
children, the natives, her journeys, her ailments, the services, the
palavers, all as simply and naturally and as fully as if she were
addressing an interested listener. But it was essential that her
correspondent should be in sympathy with her. She could never write a
formal letter; she could not even compose a business letter in the
ordinary way. Neither could she write to order, nor give an official
report of her work. The prospect of appearing in print paralysed her.
It was always the heart and not the mind of her correspondent that she
addressed. What appeared from time to time in the _Record_ and in the
_Women's Missionary Magazine_, were mainly extracts from private
letters, and they derived all their charm and colour from the fact that
they were meant for friends who loved and understood her. In the same
way she would be chilled by receiving a coldly expressed letter. "I
wish you hadn't said _Dear Madam_," she told a lady at home. "I'm just
an insignificant, wee, auld wifey that you would never address in that
way if you knew me. I'll put the _Madam_ aside, and drag up my chair
close to you and the girls you write for, and we'll have a chat by the
fireside."

She could not help writing; it was the main outlet for her loving
nature, so much repressed in the loneliness of the bush. Had she not
possessed so big and so ardent a heart, she would have written less.
Into her letters she poured all the wealth of her affection; they were
in the real sense love-letters; and her magic gift of sympathy made
them always prized by the recipients. She had no home people of her
own, and she pressed her nearest friends to make her "one of the
family." "If," she would say, "you would let me share in any
disappointments or troubles, I would feel more worthy of your love--I
will tell you some of mine as a counter-irritant!" Many followed her
behest with good result. "I'm cross this morning," wrote a young
missionary at the beginning of a long letter, "and I know it is all my
own fault, but I am sure that writing to you will put me in a better
temper. When things go wrong, there is nothing like a talk with you....
Now I must stop, the letter has worked the cure." Her letters of
counsel to her colleagues when they were in difficulties with their
work were helpful and inspiring to the highest degree. On occasions of
trial or sorrow she always knew the right word to say. How delicately,
for instance, would she try to take the edge off the grief of bereaved
friends by describing the arrival of the spirit in heaven, and the glad
welcome that would be got there from those who had gone before. "Heaven
is just a meeting and a homing of our real selves. God will never make
us into new personalities. Everlasting life--take that word _life_ and
turn it over and over and press it and try to measure it, and see what
it will yield. It is a magnificent idea which comprises everything that
heart can yearn after." On another occasion she wrote, "I do not like
that petition in the Prayer Book, _From sudden death, good Lord deliver
us_. I never could pray it. It is surely far better to see Him at once
without pain of parting or physical debility. Why should we not be like
the apostle in his confident outburst of praise and assurance, 'For I
am persuaded...'?" Again: "Don't talk about the cold hand of death--it
is the hand of Christ."

It was not surprising that her correspondence became greater at last
than she could manage. The pile of unanswered communications was like a
millstone round her neck, and in these latter days she began to violate
an old rule and snatch time from the hours of night. Headings such as
"10 P.M.," "Midnight," "8.45 A.M.," became frequent, yet she would give
love's full measure to every correspondent, and there was seldom sign
of undue strain. "If my pen is in a hurry," she would say, "my heart is
not." When she was ill and unable to write, she would simply lie in bed
and speak to her Father about it all.

There was a number of friends to whom she wrote regularly, and whose
relations to her may be judged from the manner in which they began
their letters. "My lady of Grace," "My beloved missionary," "Dearest
sister," were some of the phrases used. But her nature demanded at
least one confidante to whom she could lay bare her inmost thoughts.
She needed a safety-valve, a city of refuge, a heart and mind with whom
there would be no reservations, and Providence provided her with a kind
of confessor from whom she obtained all the understanding and sympathy
and love she craved for. This was Miss Adam, who, while occasionally
differing from her in minor matters of policy, never, during the
fifteen years of their friendship, once failed her. What she was to the
lonely missionary no one can know. Mary said she knew without being
told what was in her heart, and "how sweet," she added, "it is to be
understood and have love reading between the lines." Month by month she
sent to Bowden the intimate story of her doings, her troubles, hopes,
and fears, and joys, and received in return wise and tender counsel and
encouragement and practical help. She kept the letters under her pillow
and read and reread them.

Never self-centred or self-sufficient, she depended upon the letters
that came from home to a greater extent than many of her friends
suspected. She needed the inflow of love into her own life, and she
valued the letters that brought her cheer and stimulus and inspiration.
Once she was travelling on foot, and had four miles of hill-road to go,
and was feeling very weary and depressed at the magnitude of the work
and her own weakness, when a letter was handed to her. It was the only
one by that mail, but it was enough. She sat down, and in the quiet of
the bush she opened it, and as she read all the tiredness fled, the
heat was forgotten, the road was easy, and she went blithely up the
hill.

Outside the circle of her friends many people wrote to her from
Scotland, and some from England, Canada, and America. Boys and girls
whom she had never seen sent her letters telling her of their cats and
dogs, of football, and lessons and school. With her replies sometimes
went a snake skin, a brass tray, a miniature paddle, or other curio.
But it was the letter, rather than the gift, that was enjoyed. As one
girl wrote; "You are away out helping the poor black kiddies and
people, and just as busy doing good as possible, and yet you've time to
send a letter home to a little Scottish girl, a letter fragrant with
everything lovely and good, that makes one try harder than ever to do
right, and that fills one's heart with beautiful helpful thoughts."

To her own bairns, wherever they were, she wrote letters full of
household news and gentle advice. To Dan at the Institute she wrote
regularly--very pleased she was when she heard he had been at lectures
on bacteria and understood them!--and when Alice and Maggie were
inmates of the Edgerley Memorial School she kept in the closest touch
with them. Here is a specimen of her letters, written chiefly in Efik,
and addressed apparently to Alice:

MY PRECIOUS CHILDREN--I am thinking a lot about you, for you will soon
be losing our dear Miss Young; and while I am sorry for myself I am
sorrier for you and Calabar. How are you all? and have you been good?
and are you all trying to serve and please Jesus your Lord? Whitie has
gone to sleep. She has been making sand and yöñö-ing my bedroom, the
bit that you did not finish. Janie has yöñö-d the high bits, so Whitie
is very tired. Janie has gone to stay all night with the twin-mother
and her baby in the town where Effiom used to live long ago. One baby
was dead, but she is keeping the other, and the chief says, "Ma, you
are our mother, but what you have done will be the death of us." But I
tell them just to die.

The mother almost died. One child was born dead, and Janie and I stayed
all night there. Mary is at Ikot Ekpene. We saw her as we passed in the
motor. The whole town came to-day and put splendid beams in the
verandah both in front and behind, swept all behind, and put on a
corrugated iron roof, did the porch and various other things, and the
safe.

Good-bye. Are you well? We are well, through God's goodness. Are you
coming soon for holidays? My heart is hungry to see you and to touch
your hands. Greetings to Ma Fuller. Greet Ma Wilkie and Mr. Wilkie for
me. Greet each other. All we greet you. With much love to Maggie, Dan,
Asuquö,--I am, in all my prayers, your mother,
M. Slessor.


The girls and Dan also wrote regularly to her in Efik--such letters as
this:

I am pleased to send this little letter to you. Are you well? I am
fairly well through the goodness of God. Why have you delayed to send
us a letter? Perhaps you are too busy to write, but we are coming home
in a fortnight. If you hear we are on the way come quickly out when you
hear the voices of the people from the beach, because you know it will
be us. Greet Whitie, Janie, Annie and all, and accept greeting from
your loving child
MAGGIE.


After her death there was found at Use a bundle of papers, evidently
much treasured, labelled "My children's letters."




XVIII. A LONELY FIGURE

She returned to Use, but only remained long enough to arrange for the
material for the house at Odoro Ikpe. Of the special difficulties that
would beset her on this occasion, she was quite aware. The timber
supply on the ground was scarce, transport would be expensive, there
was no local skilled labour, and she was unable to work with her own
hands, while it was not easy to procure carriers and other work-people,
since the Government, with the consent of the chiefs, were taking
batches of men from each village for the coalfields and railway, a
measure she approved, as it prevented the worst elements in the
community drifting there. But nothing ever discouraged her, and she
returned at the end of April and embarked once more, and for the last
time, on building operations.

Friends kept tempting her to come to Scotland. Her friend Miss Young
was now Mrs. Arnot, wife of the Rev. David Arnot, M.A., Blairgowrie,
and from her came a pressing invitation to make her home at the manse.
"I will meet you at Liverpool," Mrs. Arnot wrote, "and bring you
straight here, where you will rest and be nursed back to health again."
It was proposed that Alice should come with her, and be left at
Blairgowrie while Mary visited her friends. She was delighted, and
wrote gaily that when she did come she "would not be a week-end visitor
or a tea visitor, but a barnacle. It is, however, all too alluring. One
only thing can overtop it, and that is duty as put into my hands by my
King." Then she paints a picture of the piles of timber and corrugated
iron about her for the building of a house, "for the happy and
privileged man or woman who shall take up the work of salvage," and of
Ikpe waiting patiently, and the towns surrendering on all sides, and
adds, "Put yourself in my place, and with an accession of strength
given since I camped up here, how could you do other than I have done?
I verily thought to be with the Macgregors, but this came and the
strength has come with it, and there must be no more moving till the
house is up, when I hope and pray some one will come to it. What a
glorious privilege it all is! I can't think why God has so highly
honoured and trusted me."

She entered on a period of toil and tribulation which proved to be one
of the most trying and exacting in her life. The house itself was a
simple matter. Large posts were inserted in the ground, and split
bamboos were placed between; cross pieces were tied on with strips of
the oil-palm tree, and then clay was prepared and pounded in. But fifty
men and lads were employed, and she had never handled so lazy, so
greedy, so inefficient a gang. Compelled to supervise them constantly,
she often had to sit in the fierce sunshine for eight hours at a time;
then with face unwashed and morning wrapper still on she would go and
conduct school. If she went to Ikpe for a day, all the work done
required to be gone over again. Sometimes she lost all patience, and
resorted to a little "muscular Christianity," which caused huge
amusement, but always had the desired effect. But she was very
philosophical over it. "It is all part of the heathen character, and,
as Mrs. Anderson used to say, 'Well, Daddy, if they were Christians
there would have been no need for you and me here.'" Jean often became
very wroth, and demanded of the people if "Ma" was not to obtain time
to eat, and if they wanted to kill her?

Annie and her husband had been placed at Nkanga, and Jean now managed
the household affairs. The faithful girl had her own difficulties in
the way of catering, for on account of the isolation money frequently
ran done, and she could not obtain the commonest necessities to feed
her "Ma." An empty purse always worried Mary, but it was a special
trial to her independent and sensitive spirit at this period, for she
was in debt to the skilled carpenter who had been engaged, and to the
labourers, and was compelled to undergo the humiliation of borrowing.
On one occasion she obtained a loan of 5s. from one of her rare
visitors, a Government doctor, a Scot and a Presbyterian, who was
investigating tropical diseases, and who, finding her in the Rest
House, had contentedly settled down with his microscopes in the Court
House shed. After working all day in the bush he spent many evenings
with her, and she was much impressed by his upright character, and his
kindness and courtesy to the natives, and said matters would be very
different in Africa if all civil and military men were of the same
stamp. The only other two visitors she had at this time were Mr. Bowes,
the printer at Duke Town, and Mr. Hart, the accountant, the latter
bringing her all the money she needed.

By the end of July the house was roughly built, and she was able to
mount up to the top rooms by means of a "hen" ladder, and there on the
loose, unsteady boards she sat tending her last motherless baby, and
feeling uplifted into a new and restful atmosphere. A pathetic picture
she made, sitting gazing over the wide African plain. She had never
been more isolated, never felt more alone.

So lonely 'twas, that God Himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

She was without assistance, her body was broken and pitifully weak, and
yet with dauntless spirit and quenchless faith she looked hopefully to
the future, when those infant stations about her would be occupied by
consecrated men and women.




XIX. When the Great War Came

Into the African bush, the home of many things that white men cannot
understand, there was stealing a troubled sense of mystery. The air was
electric with expectation and alarm. Impalpable influences seemed
fighting the feeble old woman on the lonely hill-top. She was worried
by transport difficulties. What the causes were she did not know, but
the material did not come, and as she was paying the carpenter a high
wage she was compelled to dismiss him. What work there was to do she
attempted to accomplish with her own thin, worn hands.

In the early days of August the natives began to whisper to each other
strange stories about fighting going on in the big white world beyond
the seas. News came from Calabar that the European firms had ceased to
buy produce: canoes which went down river for rice and kerosene,
returned again with their cargoes of nuts and oil. She wondered what
was happening. Then excited natives came to her in a panic, with tales
of a mad Europe and of Britain fighting Germany. She pooh-poohed the
rumours and outwardly appeared calm and unafraid in order to reassure
them, but the silence and the suspense were unbearable. On the 13th she
received letters and heard of the outbreak of the war. All the
possibilities involved in that tremendous event came crowding upon her
mind, the immense suffering and sorrow, and, not least to her, the
peril to Calabar. Nigeria was conterminous with the Cameroons, and she
knew the Germans well enough to anticipate trouble. The cost of
articles, too, she realised, would go up, and as she had little food in
the house she at once sent to the market for supplies. Already prices
were doubled. Her kerosene oil gave out, and she had to resort to
lighted firewood to read at prayers.

She went on bravely with the routine duties of the station--Dan, who
was now with her, helping in the school--but she longed impatiently
for news, "Oh, for a telegram," she would cry, "even a boy bawling in
the street!" The officer at Ikot Ekpene, knowing her anxiety, sent over
the latest intelligence, but she half suspected that he kept back the
worst. The worst came in her first war mail which arrived when she was
sitting superintending operations at the house. She read why Britain
had entered the conflict and exclaimed, "Thank God! our nation is not
the aggressor." Then came the story of the invasion of Belgium and the
reverses of the Allies. Shocked and sad she essayed to rise, but was
unable to move. The girls ran to her aid and lifted her up, but she
could not stand. Exerting her will-power and praying for strength she
directed the girls to carry her over to the Rest House and put her to
bed. Ague came on, and in half an hour she was in a raging fever which
lasted, with scarcely an interval, for a fortnight. She struggled on
amidst increasing difficulties and worries, the horrors of the war with
her night and day. Her old enemy, diarrhoea, returned, and she steadily
weakened and seemed entering the valley of the shadow. She did not fear
death, but the thought of passing away alone in the bush troubled her,
for her skull might be seized and be worshipped as a powerful juju by
the people.

At last she lay in a stupor as if beyond help. It was a scene which
suggested the final act in Dr. Livingstone's life. The girls were
crying. The church lads stood alarmed and awed. Then they raised her in
her camp-bed and marched with her the five miles to Ikpe. Next morning
they lifted the bed into a canoe and placed her under a tarpaulin and
paddled her down the Creek. They landed at Okopedi beach, where she lay
in the roadway in the moonlight, scarcely breathing. The agent of a
trading-house brought restoratives and sent for Dr. Wood, then at Itu,
who accompanied her to Use and waited the night as he feared she would
not recover. All through the hours her mind was occupied with the war
and the soldiers in the trenches.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.