Looking for Mrs Livingstone

Looking for Mrs Livingstone, by Julie Davidson. Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 2012. xxxii +272 pp. ISBN 9780715209646. £24.99.Julie Davidson has written a travel book, motivated by the desire to follow in the footsteps of Mary Moffat Livingstone, daughter and sister of famous missionaries and wife of one whose name resounds still today in both Africa and most of the rest of the world. The author's own Scottish connections are underscored by the inclusion of an 'Introduction' by Alexander McCall Smith. Over the course of three journeys into South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, and Mozambique, travelling in the company of European and African guides, the author sought out traces of the areas Mary Livingstone traversed, lived in, and was finally buried in. Her European and African informants shared with her a deep interest in locating these places, in part to include them as tourist sites along a 'heritage trail' and in part because their own lives felt touched by Mary and her missionary-explorer husband. Davidson turned to the standard archival sources for Livingstone as well as secondary works about the man and his wife.The works Davidson consulted ensure that, on the whole, she follows her trails with some knowledgeable guidance, for as she admits she is not herself a scholar. Indeed, she makes a minor error referring to 'Henry' Burton (p.63), not a mistake anyone familiar with African history would have made. As Davidson acknowledges, finding Mrs Livingstone is severely constrained by the fact that very little of Mary's thoughts, in the form of letters or other documents, survive. Yet Davidson does come to some conclusions about Mary Livingstone's life worth noting. For example, she finds her story to be one of "a woman who became a casualty of her husband's own curiosity and restlessness" (p.xxiii). In other words, Davidson looks at Mrs Livingstone's life from the perspective of Mary Livingstone.Davidson's book is worth reading, especially for those who, not having first- hand knowledge themselves, can enjoy her detailed descriptions of travel and life today in this region of Africa. In terms of 'Looking for Mrs Livingstone', therefore, the book is a success. In terms of finding the flesh and blood woman, however, for the reasons already noted, the author is less successful, but she makes a real contribution to that quest.Those who have read the letters and journals of David Livingstone, and read what others, contemporary to him and since, have had to say about him, will agree that there are aspects of Mary's life, emotional and physical, that Davidson helpfully explores. Perhaps her most telling insight is to depict Mary's personality in terms of her South African missionary upbringing by a very competent (if a little overbearing) mother and the satisfactions Mary takes from her African life with David Livingstone, despite its real hardships. …