In southern Nyasaland we came across a story illustrating the bloody-minded side of Livingstone. The DC of Chikwansa and his wife were enjoying their teenagers being at home for the school holidays. She was a qualified nurse which added to the benefits he brought as a magistrate, with staff for road development, agricultural extension offi-cers, primary school building programmes and all the usual activities associated with being of service to Africa. The ADC to the local chief Kasis was a young Englishman called Tony Hammond who was also a historian. He had come across three descendants of the Makalolo bear-ers who had been with Livingstone.
We went to meet them. All three had finely bred features and were focused, unlike the locals who were rather plain. Their grandfathers had outraged Dr Livingstone a hundred years before. They had gone hunting, but on a Sunday, the Holy Sabbath, when the missionary doctor was holding a service. They came back with a zebra they had shot for the pot. He summoned them to appear before him. He said they had violated the Sabbath. They were no longer worthy of serving him. There was no question of forgiveness. They had to go. Yes, go: all the way back to their homes in Basutoland (now Lesotho) a thousand miles away. Since the good doctor was in his own opinion fair-minded he gave each of them a rifle and ammunition for their protection.
So they left him and started walking. They headed south. However, once over the nearest hill they sat down. In keeping with African tradi-tion towards travellers they were made welcome and offered water and things to eat. They found the local girls attractive. The feeling was mutual. They decided to stay, much prized for their firearms. Their descendants are still proud of their Zulu background. Livingstone could from time to time be a misery.
The upshot of Livingstone’s Zambezi exploration was mainly in the great response to his graphically illustrated book. The effects were immeasurable, though any thoughts he had once had of finding a navi-gable means to cross the whole of central Africa had to be cast aside.
His third and final journey found him much further north on the east bank of Lake Tanganyika. There he was sought by the Welsh born Stanley, sent by the New York Herald Tribune, who found him at Ujiji on 10 November 1871. Stanley’s astonished words: ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
In addition to his treating the heathen for their health and trying to convert them to Christianity, he became caught up in the craze among his contemporaries for discovering the source of the Nile. This had captured the imagination of several great explorers, the English Sir Richard Burton, John Speke, and Samuel Baker. Even though Speke had gone a second time to Lake Victoria in 1860 and followed the Nile flowing out of it all the way to the Sudan, Livingstone was convinced that so mighty a river must have a source further removed from the sea. He returned to Lake Bangweulu in early 1873. He became so weak in that swampland that he could no longer ride a donkey. He was so thin that only two bearers were needed to carry him, slung in a hammock from a single pole.
The village where he died was in north-eastern Northern Rhodesia. We started that journey from the site of Kariba Dam, under construc-tion, for the world’s largest man-made lake. Africans had said that the spirit of the Zambezi River would cause catastrophic destruction for the whole undertaking. They were nearly right. In the winter of 1957 the most terrible floods on record tore through the coffer dam. It was being built to surround the main structure of conjoined giant thirty-square-foot piles of reinforced concrete set to rise several hundred feet. That was unprecedented and then again a year later Mother Nature gave a repeat performance. For the two to occur concurrently defied the rhythms of nature. When we were there in 130-degree heat we wandered along the base of that fantastic project, and explored the machine halls being hewn from the escarpments for the provision of immense hydro-electric power.
We left there at five past seven on Tuesday 23 September for a drive of 560 miles up the North-East Trunk Road, of well-impounded earth. We were to meet Dr Livingstone’s grandson at his home in Lubwa. He was also a Scottish missionary doctor, Dr David Livingstone-Wilson. His hospital was spick and span, supported by charity but I was so exhausted by the drive I made no entry in my diary about any discussion.
Next day we went to stay with a 75-year-old Sir Stewart Gore-Brown at Shiwa Ngandu. He had built a three-storeyed Italian-style palazzo of homemade brick, round a big courtyard with arches and flowerbeds. He had bought the land at the end of the First World War and made a fortune from lime oil. Then the citrus became blighted and he changed over to timber. He showed us the village he had built for his staff, accompanied by his manservant Henry who was a cut above them. He had taken Henry to London, fully suited and Homburg-hatted, just like himself.
Sir Stewart described how to reach the place where Livingstone had died: Chitambo’s village. The rains there at that time would have only just ended so the place would have been swampy. With us in September it was dry.
In his book The Way to Ilala Professor Frank Debenham wrote: ‘To my mind the most moving incident in the story of the last few days is one which brings vividly before us the desperate hope of this indomitable man, that the end of his search [for the source of the Nile] was near, a search which had now, for him, almost taken on the guise of a Quest for the Holy Grail.’
Livingstone had asked the elders of Chitambo’s village whether they knew of a hill which was the source of four rivers. They knew nothing of it. There his spirit gave out. He died, discovered by his bearers on his knees in an attitude of prayer at his bunk bed. The Zulus cut out his heart and buried it there, in Chitambo’s village, for it to remain in Africa. The spot is marked with a fifteen foot high memorial plinth with a large Cross on top and a plaque which reads:
THIS MONUMENT
OCCUPIES THE SPOT
WHERE FORMERLY STOOD THE TREE
AT THE FOOT OF WHICH
LIVINGSTONE’S HEART WAS BURIED
BY HIS FAITHFUL NATIVE FOLLOWERS.
ON THE TRUNK WAS CARVED
THE FOLLOWING INSCRIPTION
‘DR LIVINGSTONE MAY 1, 1873’.
His Zulu bearers carried his body all the way to the shore. With devotion such as that it is a pity we have no record of their names. His coffin was shipped back to England and buried in the central aisle of Westminster Abbey. Only one grave has a more exalted position: that of the Unknown Warrior. The brass lettering set in the black granite of Livingstone’s grave reads:
BROUGHT BY FAITHFUL HANDS,
OVER LAND AND SEA,
HERE RESTS
DAVID LIVINGSTONE.
MISSIONARY,
TRAVELLER,
PHILANTHROPIST.
BORN MARCH 19, 1813
AT BLANTYRE LANARKSHIRE.
DIED 1, 1873
AT CHITAMBO’S VILLAGE, ILALA.
FOR 30 YEARS HIS LIFE WAS SPENT
IN AN UNWEARIED EFFORT
TO EVANGELIZE THE NATIVE RACES,
TO EXPLORE THE UNDISCOVERED SECRETS,
TO ABOLISH THE DESOLATING SLAVE TRADE
OF CENTRAL AFRICA,
WHERE WITH HIS LAST WORDS HE WROTE,
“ALL I CAN ADD IN MY SOLITUDE IS,
MAY HEAVEN’s RICH BLESSING COME DOWN
ON EVERY ONE, AMERICAN, ENGLISH, OR TURK,
WHO WILL HELP TO HEAL
THIS OPEN SORE OF THE WORLD”.
Six
My final year at Oxford I shared a flat with an American Rhodes Scholar, Lance Farrer, from Princeton University, at 1 Crick Road, towards North Oxford. Philosophy, politics and economics I enjoyed to the full. The tutorials were lively and challenging.
My special subject was economic development in Third World coun-tries. Roy Harrod thought this a good choice because I had actually had some experience of developing countries, almost a calling in that direc-tion. The trouble was that neither he, nor my other economics tutor, had been to such places, to experience life in the bush, in villages, to take the pulse of the population at large. Their algorithms and graphs and charts tabulating theories were irrelevant, in my view. It
is impossi-ble to compare the prospects for advancement of the educated Chinese of Singapore with any country in sub-Saharan Africa. But that was the flavour of the age, applying uniform mathematics to disparate peoples.
A prime example of such academic fatuity was the MIT man at the very top of academe, Walt Rostow. Norman Stone wrote about him fifty or so years later in The Atlantic and Its Enemies, page 211, show-ing how experience has altered our approach. He describes Rostow as an extremely interesting man who wrote a characteristic book, now seeming rather naïve: The Stages of Economic Growth. It identified a moment of industrial take-off, when countries saved enough of their GDP to foster investment and thence an industrial revolution, and development economics went ahead, with the assumption that squeez-ing the peasants would mean investment for big industry. Roy Harrod referred me to many learned journals with expositions of similar nonsense, a few of them by himself.
When it came to the Finals Exams my heartfelt opposition did me no good at all, causing me to get a third class degree instead of the second everyone expected me to get. Roy Harrod wrote sympathetically to me, knowing how I felt, but it was clear that my emotion had taken over. Philosophy and politics and other bits of economics I enjoyed to the full, and the tutorials with Oscar Wood, the historian Robert Blake and others were lively and challenging. There was a place for me in the Christ Church First Eight so I grabbed the opportunity even if I was only rowing in the sharp end at two.
Most Saturday nights and Sundays I spent at Notley with Larry and Vivien. Their marriage was pulling itself to pieces. Her problems with manic depression were bewildering and tragic, yet between times her company and her beauty were spellbinding as ever, and he was at such moments desperately in love with her and torn by it. At other times she would invite guests he didn’t like and then embarrass all of us, lecturing him about various trumped up failings of his, on and on, whining ‘Larry Boy, you’re not truthful.’
There was nothing anybody could do for them. If I stayed around too long it would irritate them. They were becoming a danger to them-selves and each other. I felt that their final bust-up, which was only a matter of time, would break my heart if I were there, and that the best thing would be to get the hell out of it. I thought I would undertake a journey the like of which I would never be able to do later in life. I chose South-East Asia, rather than India because the people looked happier and cleaner. Alone this time, so that I would get to know the local people rather than any travelling companion. ‘One’s company’ as Peter Fleming wrote. It would deepen my understanding of developing countries.
My plan was to spend a year in South-East Asia, six months in People’s China and then, after becoming immersed in the Orient, slowly head westwards, from Siberia and across the immensity of Russia, hoping to recognise each stage of the approaching advent of Europe. Mao’s China and the Soviet Union were the trickiest when it came to introductions.
Our Russian friend Moussiah Soskin was most helpful. He had organised the Soviet jockeys’ participation in the Grand National at Aintree. He introduced me to the head of the Soviet Trade Delegation, Mr Kamensky and his wife. I took them to Stratford to see Larry in Coriolanusand spend the weekend at Notley. Then my mother and I had them for dinner. For companionship we invited Dickie and Sheila Attenborough. He was already a well-known film star and my mother was chairman of the Welfare Committee of the Actors’ Charitable Trust which he headed. He arrived on time and parked his sleek Rolls-Royce right outside our garden gate. Then a large and crude Soviet barouche grumbled to a halt behind it.
Dinner went well. Dickie sat next to the puddingy Mrs Kamensky. Her husband sat beside Sheila and paid a most charming compliment to her beauty. She sweetly said that she was not actually looking her best; she had had a baby only three weeks before. He bowed his head so low, below her breasts, that he was within kissing distance of her slim tummy. We were all delighted, especially Mrs Kamensky whose bosoms were generous enough to feed an army. Dickie immersed us with his own left-wing views of the world and there were no problems.
Over coffee we discussed the Soviet exhibition of paintings at the National Gallery: Soviet realism depicting daily tasks. Mr Kamensky agreed that they were unimaginative. I asked him to come and see a large abstract painting in my bedroom. It was called ‘The Visitation’, by Raymond Hitchcock. He was intrigued and asked me to explain it. I said it represented the Holy Virgin as a tower of thickly applied white, confronted by the Angel Gabriel as an upright rectangle of shimmering gold, and between them the glowing yellow and scarlet of the Holy Spirit being communicated to the Mother of God. He said it was hardly suitable for Soviet workers. I said, and he responded to my introduc-tory smile, that I had never had a Soviet worker in my bedroom. As he left he gave us a bottle of Sovietskoye Shampanskoye. We tried it a few days later. Parts of it were clear.
Next week he gave me some important leads in the Chinese Embassy and wrote to his opposite number in Peking, describing my hope of spending some days in the glorious people’s communes and sharing with them their way of life. He wrote in Russian of my being the son of Laurence Olivier, ‘husband of Vivien Li’. Moussiah Soskin gave me an introduction to the largest landowner in the Soviet Union, maybe even the world. He owned hundreds of square miles in Siberia and had the title ‘Master of the Forest’. So I set about learning Russian, listening to audio discs and having lessons.
The preceding winter my mother and I had met Faubion Bowers at the first night party after Arnold Wesker’s play Roots. It was the first time we had seen Joan Plowright in a leading role and we were most impressed. We had seen her in the John Osborne play where Larry had triumphed as the Entertainer and she had taken over the part of his daughter from Dorothy Tutin. Faubion was married to Santha Rama Rau, author and playwright, resplendent in a sari and daughter of the Indian Ambassador to Washington. He was an American hybrid of European and Cherokee, once a concert pianist, and a linguistic genius who had been official interpreter in Japan for General MacArthur. Faubion and Santha had travelled in Asia together writing their books. His was a masterpiece called Theatre in the East: from India, through South-East Asia to China and Japan. He said that if I wanted to meet any of the many people he wrote of, all I had to do was say that he had recommended it. His introduction to Tom Benitez in the Philippines was of tremendous help. With that family behind me he said I could meet anyone in South-East Asia, from Presidents down.
The week before I left for Manila Larry joined me and my mother for dinner at 31 Queen’s Grove. I said how impressed I had been by the Wesker play, in particular with Joan Plowright. He agreed, in a curi-ously disengaged way. We immediately sensed that there was more behind his distant though positive appraisal of her acting. Then he dived into the subject which most concerned him. Vivien and he could never, ever live together again. They had hurt each other too much. The repeated returns of her manic depression for fourteen years was killing both of them. The effect of the mental sickness was to make her hate, really hate, the thing she most loved: him. And to judge by her manifes-tation of hatred she must, on that score, have loved him to excess. Specialists were advising that if they carried on together, one or other, or both of them, would end up dead.
I knew this was coming and had dreaded it for years. The irreconcil-able horror had now reached its peak. One of the reasons for my faraway travel plan was in all sincerity to get away from that and I told him so. He was strongly opposed. He admired my spirit of adventure but deplored every other aspect. How would I survive? Who would look after me? Why the hell should someone not take some unknown advantage of me. It was an unconscionable waste of time. My mother, on the other hand, supported me as she had from the start. She had always quoted Somerset Maugham in The Summing Up, where he wrote that the best thing an aspiring writer could do was to cut all family restraints and see the world. ‘Oh to be twenty-three’, which I was, and my mother had always hoped I would be a writer.
Larry was nothing like as well read as she and had
to give ground to her intellect: one of the problems of their marriage, I suspect. In fact he used to complain that the only reading he could do was ‘bad plays’, on the hunt for his next production. Well it was a beastly conversation, upsetting, and made far worse by his news about Vivien. I could not accept that his love for her was over and done with and said so. He said that of all the people in all the world I was the one more than anyone else who had so often witnessed the irremediable situation they faced. That was that. As for my Asian aspirations, he had no comment other than to say it would be extremely risky and a waste of everything I had been educated for.
One of my problems was that I still did not know what I wanted to do. With independence forthcoming all over Africa it was obvious that I could not join the Colonial Service. To work as a civil servant in the Overseas Development ‘Ministry’ would have driven me mad. I was artistic but with no talent identified that was worth anything. I had to find a suitable way of working in the developing countries. Before anything else I wanted to learn more about the world. I went on at some length. I can’t say that he took his leave of us with any paternal feeling. The last thing my mother said to him was: ‘You have forgotten what it is like to be young. Go on. Go home to the next play. That’s all you understand or care about: the end of the second act.’
My first letter home was written on board the Cambodge, to my mother. It ended: ‘I have been so very happy during the last few months with you. I have so loved sharing my excitement with you. You have been loving and imaginative. I so hope that we shall keep the friends we have made during this time, particularly Faubion and Santha.’
So Who's Your Mother Page 10
