MISSMARY KINGSLEY.
THE loss that the nation has suffered by the death of Miss Mary Kingsley is much greater than is generally under- stood. People talk as if we had merely lost a striking,
sympathetic, and original personality, and a clear-eyed investigator of native customs and beliefs. In reality, we have lost what is far more precious,—a woman capable of seeing essential facts and of understanding the political conditions existing in some of the obscurest and most difficult regions of the Empire. Remarkable from many and very different points of view, Mary Kingsley was in our belief most remarkable for her sane and statesmanlike views on African questions. She had already thrown a great deal of light upon the affairs of West Africa and the local administra- tive problems, and had she lived we doubt not that she would have made a real and most valuable contribution to our know- ledge of the South African problem. Her strength lay in her ability to see through sham and humbug and "tall talk" of all kinds, and yet not become cynical or disillusioned. No one was less taken in than she by the cant of Jingoism, and yet she remained always a firm Imperialist, with an almost unbounded belief in the power of English-speaking men to take up Imperialist responsibilities and carry them through successfully. She was against hasty and ill-considered expansion and " rushes " of annexation, but she believed implicitly in the capacity of the race to govern subject peoples. But, though she was always preaching caution and discretion in the march of Empire, it was impossible to frighten her as to the general ability of the nation to cope with its work. At a time when men are inclined to run into the extreme of Little Englandism on the one hand, and to dread all Imperial responsibility, and on the .other to plunge into a wild and fanatic Imperialism without reason and without method, she held an even balance, and brought a most valuable corrective. The same good sense and level-headedness were displayed in her views of the native question. While feeling a deep Sympathy for all natives, and anxiously desiring their welfare, she was entirely free from any exaggerated notions as to the perfectibility of the negro, and did not in the least desire to favour schemes for treating black men as if they were white. In fact, her main contention was always that you must not try to raise the negroes by giving them votes and representative institutions and the like, but by studying them and finding out the form of government which suited them best. She desired as far as possible to keep the blacks and whites apart, each within their own polity. For example, the present writer remembers talking to her on the native question in South Africa just before she left England, and asking her whether she thought it would be possible to maintain a system of native reserves on a very large scale, like Basutoland, where, under Imperial officers, the natives could live their own lives unmixed with the whites, but whence the young men could issue for work in the mines or on the farms or elsewhere. To such a solution of the problem she most strongly incline 1, and instanced examples from tle West Coast which supported such a plan. On the whole, she trusted to an enlightened and just separation of the black community from the white for the protection of the natives, much more than to any plan of giving them votes or a legal status equal to that of the white man. Put in its widest form, her plea in regard to the. treatment of the native races was for justice and knowledge against emotionalism. She nowhere dealt better with this aspect of the question than in a most able and timely letter which she contributed to the Spectator of last January (January 13th, 1900), entitled by us "Miss Mary Kingsley on Efficiency and Empire." A part of this letter is so striking and so exactly representative of the working of her mind, that we need make no apology for quoting it at length :—
" Our commercial expansion in the days of Elizabeth was marked by an intense love of knowledge of the minor details. If
you turn back and read your Dampier or any of that school of Imperialism, you will find chronicled all manner of domestic details about the strange countries and peoples they came in con- tact with. Our colonial, or emigrant, expansion of the age of Victoria, either to the Americas or to A.ustralia, has been marked by no such love of detailed knowledge; in its place there is emotionalism. The reason for this is obvious, but it has produced
tiresome results. A back-wave of this emotionalism gave us the Indian Mutiny, but our Indian Empire, being a direct descendant
of our older Imperialism, survived, and has returned to its earlier
tradition. In other regions, however, emotionalism has had fuller play, and has been regarded as a substitute for detailed know- ledge. I sincerely hope among the many good things this South African affair will surely give us, one will be the recognition that emotionalism is sitting at our council board in a place that should be occupied by knowledge. I beg you will not misunder- stand me, and think that by emotionalism I mean either true religion or true human sympathy. That emotionalism I so deeply detest and distrust is windy-headed brag and self -satisfied ignorance. 'I did not know' would have been no safe excuse to offer to Sir Francis Drake for a disastrous enterprise'. This' emotionalism has not spread dangerously yet among us. It is the nearest thing an Englishman can have to hysterics, and his constitution is not naturally inclined to them, but when he has them they are no use to him. They cannot help him to spread abroad his power, his religion, his justice, or his commerce. Yet undoubtedly he has, of late years, chosen this emotionalism for his counsellor in place of his Elizabethan counsellor, detailed knowledge, and this emotionalism has poisoned many of his noblest enterprises, has cost him much blood and money and heartache, and it has, above all things in the way of harm, made him suffer that grievous delusion, 'the end justifies the means.' I sincerely hope, now that it has had a showy breakdown, he will depose it, and replace that counsellor who so greatly helped to give him world-power, and that will so greatly help him to both keep and expand it. The lesson detailed knowledge teaches is hard and dry. It says : Learn things as they are and keep your given word ; let it cost you what it may, be just. Emotienalism says : Mean well, be merciful and generous ; forgetting that mercy and generosity are only compromises made towards the attainment of justice, not in themselves justice, that perfect thing by which alone an Empire can endure and prosper, and which is attainable by honourable-minded Englishmen by know- ledge of the facts of the case."
There is the epitome of Mary ICingsley's Imperial creed. It is a great plea for justice in the highest and widest sense. The late Mr. Pater somewhere defined justice as "a higher knowledge through love." That was the kind of justice Mary Kingsley wanted to see recognised as the foundation of our- Empire, and that was why she asked always for facts and abhorred emotionalism, the bastard brother of love.
Before we leave the subject of Mary Kingsley and the debt the Empire owes to her, we must say a word as to the fascina- tion of her personality. She was without doubt one of the most attractive of human beings. Her almost pathetic shyness was enough to destroy all notion of egoism, or pride, or pompousness, or vanity, but not enough to make her un- sympathetic; while an interest in all subjects worth being interested in which never flagged, and an unfailing sense of humour which was never hard or unkind, made Mary Kingsley a delightful companion. But Mary Kingsley had beyond all this an intellect which it is no exaggeration to say was of the first class, and she bad also a wealth of adventurous experience which belongs to few men, and to no other woman, of this generation.
Of the more personal side of Mary Kingsley's loss the present writer will not speak, except to say that those who had the happiness to call her friend knew that she was a friend in the true and not the conventional sense of the word. All that we care to deal with here is the loss suffered by the nation and the Empire, and that, as we have tried to show, is a great one. We can ill spare those who have width of mind as well as special knowledge in regard to our Imperial affairs, and Mary Kingsley had both in the highest degree.
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