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You could view it as the opening scene of a movie: Long shot. Night. Deep dark jungle. A growl issues from somewhere in the bush, the screech of a bird. Now a figure in white appears, alone, running swiftly along a narrow path. It's a child, surely. No, it's a woman, a small woman. She is barefoot, we see now, and she is wearing—. Wait a minute! Goodness gracious, what is she wearing? It looks like a petticoat, or a chemise—some Victorian women's undergarment, maybe, whatever it is called. But as she emerges into a spot of moonlight, we note that her hairdo is very un-Victorian: carroty red, cropped short like a boy's. This is no proper lady. In fact, she is shouting, addressing the jungle with a rough Scots burr. Now she seems to be praying, though it sounds more like an order than a plea. Then suddenly she begins to sing, belting out a hymn at the top of her voice, as she runs and runs and runs.
Who is this peculiar person? Mary Mitchell Slessor, of course, Scottish Presbyterian missionary to southeastern Nigeria, and we are not the first to wonder if she has lost her mind.
The scene above is caricatured, but only a little. It represents a reality that has intrigued mission biographers for almost a century, as well as the temptation to hyperbolize that same reality. It is safe to conclude that aside from David Livingstone, no Protestant missionary has been more celebrated, more romanticized, more critiqued and mythologized than Mary Slessor, in print (over three dozen biographies and scholarly studies in a quick count, though there are more), in film, in music, and on stage. With a term of service that began in 1876, she was honored in the British Isles long before her death in 1915, while in the "field" her ministry was sought, even begged for, a privilege few missionaries have enjoyed the world over. In Scotland, her face adorns the ten-pound note, and in a Dundee museum her adventures are pictured in a stained glass window. In Nigeria, where she was trusted with the role of Vice Consul, a local judge for Pax Britannica, her name is everywhere—on a hospital, a chapel, a women's shelter, a school, a road. In 1956, Queen Elizabeth II placed a wreath on her grave.
In spite of this, historian Andrew Walls has been claiming for years that no complete and fully responsible record of her life has been produced. Now veteran journalist Jeanette Hardage has confronted that gap, and Walls, in his foreword to the book, claims it to be "the best biography so far produced." Hardage declares her intention early on, to avoid "unwarranted assumptions," and to guarantee documentation. Anyone familiar with the many retellings of Slessor's story knows what a tricky self-assignment that must have been, but Hardage has given us not only an admirably complete and researched document but a palpable world to live in as we read.
She might have added that she has opted not to wrap up a significant life within an imposed premise. The danger in that choice, of course, is that without a thesis readers can become lost in chronology. Hardage seems well aware of this. There is no posturing in her claims. She was "drawn to Mary Slessor," she states in her introduction, "because of her faith, her certainty that she was where God wanted her to be, her desire to … be a witness of the good news," and because of "her love for the people among whom she lived." If that sounds too facile, we need to keep in mind that to Slessor herself it would sound exactly right. To give her a prophetic vision, or make her a sounding board for the political and theological future of Africa, would be to turn her into something she was not.
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