VICTORIAN LADY

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 11

VICTORIAN LADY

SPINSTER WHO BEAT LEOPARD Mary Henrietta Kingsley, niece of Charles Kingsley, was one of the most remarkable women of any age —a Victorian gentlewoman who became an African explorer, crossing territory no white foot had trod (says a writer in ‘John o’ London’). Her advent into staid Victorian society was literally an eruption, for when still a child her father’s talk of military engineering so inspired her that she got hold of his store of gunpowder and made a min© in the back garden, driving a tunnel under a large butt of liquid manure. When she sprang her mine the family washing was banging out to dry; it blew the entire butt over sheets, blankets, lacy undergarments. At an age when other little girls played with dolls her favourite pets were fighting cocks. Her taste in literature skipped Uncle Charles’s ‘ Water (Babies ’ and lighted on things like the ‘ English Mechanic ’ and Lockyer’s ‘ Solar Physics.’ In 1886, when she was 24 and her parents moved to Cambridge, she eagerly took up the study of mathematics and other branches of the exact sciences. One would expect a young woman of that calibre to go far. At 30, after the loss of her father and mother, she sailed for West Africa in a cargo boat. The reason—her father had collected data on early religion and law, except that concerning the African tribes, and she wanted to gather additional facts for the book. This prim lady dressed for the bush much as she had dressed in Cambridge, with stout boots and skirt. The skirts saved her from severe injury when she fell into a leopard trap pit. One night in camp she was aroused by a terrific fight between a couple of native dogs and a leopard. The leopard was winning, so she flung a couple of stools at the brute, who thereupon turned on her. She flung again—this time an earthenware water cooler, which broke on his liead. He spat, yowled, and “ went for bush one time.” iVnother time, she released a leopard which had been caught in a native trap. Instead of leaping off. it stalked up, paw by paw, and sniffed at her clothes. Mary was trembling inwardly, knowing that to shriek for help would mean a quick, powerful leap of the great cat, with its steely claws scratching tho life out of her. She looked at it, and, in the accents of Cambridge, exclaimed scornfully but quietly; “Go home, you fool! ” The beast stopped in its tracks, turned tail, and slunk off on silent pads. She did not know it, hut a native belonging to one of the wildest cannibal tribes had silently watched that little drama. He went back to his village with a tale of a miracle: “Tho White Woman speaks, and tho jungle does her bidding.” From that time she became an object of veneration among the natives. On another occasion she found herself alone on a small island with a big hoppopotamus. In terror as to his next move, she •* w'alked up behind the brute and scratched his ear with her parasol. Ho beamed as only a hippopotamus could beam, moved his enormous head from side to side in gratitude, and, after a

few minutes, waddled peacefully into the water.”

Yet, back in England, sbe was terrified of handsome cabs, detested bicycles, and was timidly unhappy > on top of a horse bus. ... In 1900 she went to South Africa, ameliorated the lot of the Boor prisoners at Simon’s Town, and died there,.