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In the 1940s, a British district officer in Tabora, in what is now central Tanzania, found the local people still told stories about Livingstone, who had spent six months there before setting out on his last journey.

An old man said, "My father used to say that Livingstone was like a man that had three wives, and yet none of them were women. One was a river. The river they call the Nile. The second was the struggle against slavery. The third, religion."

By the time Livingstone had reached Tabora, his true wife was long dead. But local tradition recognized, with great insight, the conflict between his passion for exploration and the demands of family life. "He was a holy man," the Arab Taboran said. "A little mad, but yet a holy man."

Livingstone's marriage to Mary Moffat in 1845 began as a purely unromantic, utilitarian venture. Livingstone had decided that he needed a wife to help him in his missionary work. Mary, at 23, wanted to have a home of her own and expected to be part of a missionary establishment like that of her parents. At the remote Kuruman mission station, both had a limited choice of marriage partners.

Livingstone was hardly ecstatic about his new bride, describing her as "a plain, common-sense woman, not a romantic. Mine is a matter-of-fact lady, a little, thick, black-haired girl, sturdy and all I want."

In time, however, he grew to love her deeply. He was to write her, "I never show my feelings, but I can say truly, my dearest, that I loved you when I married you and the longer I lived with you, I loved you the better."

After several false starts at starting mission stations, they settled among the BaKwena and began raising a family. Mary expected to stay in one place, as her parents did at Kuruman. But Livingstone loved exploring, and Mary and the children usually followed. The journeys proved to be full of dangers and hardships, including days without water. On the first trek, Mary fell seriously ill and their newborn daughter died.

Upon learning of the second of these expeditions, his mother-in-law wrote in protest, "O Livingstone, what do you mean? Was it not enough that you lost one lovely babe, and scarcely saved the other, while the mother came home threatened with paralysis?"

Livingstone realized his planned journey across Africa would be too rough on Mary and their children, of whom the eldest was six. There were four living children now. So he sent them to Britain, intending that they stay at his parents' home in Scotland. (It is unclear why they did not go to her parents in Kuruman.)

He expected their separation to last two years, and planned for his family to live on his meager missionary salary. He felt the parting from wife and children profoundly, writing, "The act of orphanising my children, which now becomes painfully near, will be like tearing out my bowels, for they will all forget me."

The separation stretched to four-and-a-half years. It proved impracticable for Mary and four children to stay in his parents' little cottage. The families fell out, and Mary led a wandering life with the children, staying in boarding houses. Stress and loneliness led to a drinking problem, which continued until she died. This only compounded her poverty, and when she became seriously ill in 1854, she could not even pay for medical care.

Mary begged her husband to return, but he refused. Instead the reply came back, "Hope you give much of your time to the children. You will be sorry if you don't. Give my love and kisses to them all. … I have nothing worth writing, having no news. I write only because you will be anxious to hear from me."

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