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[rustave]

Mary Henrietta Kingsley, seated, c.1893. Source: Keeling, Chapter X.
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/explorers/kingsley1.jpg

[*quote*]
The African explorer Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) deliberately cultivated a prim and proper appearance in photographs and public appearances, as if she wanted to deny in her outward form that she had ever done anything more challenging than sit in a parlour. Yet, even in the stiffly posed photograph alongside, she seems to have a far-away look in her eyes. In fact, she had paddled up swamps, braved predators and cannibals, and performed a mountaineering "first": to the right person, someone she knew well, she could call herself a "bushman" (qtd. from a letter in Frank 207). One of her legacies was the discovery of some new species of African fish, such as the Ctenopoma Kingsleyae or Tailspot Ctenopoma. Her larger legacy was to help to demystify the African continent and probably, for all her own fundamentally imperialistic notions, in so doing to hasten the progress of its individual nations towards independence.
[*/quote*]

more
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/explorers/1.html

Full text of Mary Henrietta Kingsley, "Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons", 1897

http://transgallaxys.com/~aktenschrank/FRAUENPOWER/Mary_H_Kingsley_Travels_in_West_Africa_Congo_Français_Corisco_and_Cameroons.txt


Here is a nicer pic:



http://www.victorianweb.org/history/explorers/kingsley1e.jpg

[Photo and link added. worelia]

[worelia]

A tribal crowd or a fearless African hunter on his way through jungle or savannah would have been shocked in disbelief and awe to see Mary Henrietta Kingsley in front of them. And were shocked. There she was! The tough girl walked through African nature just like she would go shopping in London City. If she had worn the usual explorer dress and not the ridiculous outfit of a narrow-minded stubborn British lady, her days would have been done by the cannibals at first sight, I reckon. It was her outfit and the whole make-up that saved her life. Out there in the wilderness she looked like a magician or a priest of some weird cult, someone with hidden powers. Or a real nut. Someone you better be very cautious with. Handle with care. Don't touch!


Simon Bendle wrote a blog-post about an extinct race: "Great British Nutters":

[*quote*]
Great British Nutters
A celebration of the UK's pluckiest adventurers

SIMON BENDLE
Ex-BBC journalist now interested only in yesterday's news. Please find me on my new blog, History Nuts. You can also follow my daily updates on Twitter @historynuts or via the History Nuts Facebook page

MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2008
Mary Kingsley: Friend of Cannibals

“Being human, she must have feared some things, but one never arrived at what they were” – Rudyard Kipling

Mary Kingsley in jungle dress
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE a more unlikely looking explorer than Mary Henrietta Kingsley. Forget pith helmets and safari jackets, the redoubtable Miss Kingsley trooped across Africa dressed like she was off to a Victorian tea party.

Appearances were important, even in the sweltering jungle. It was her firm opinion that a lady had “no right to go about in Africa in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home”. So she dressed in the tropics as she did in London – impeccably.

Her tall, slim frame was always covered from neck to toe by a prim cotton blouse, black shawl and long, black woollen skirt. She wore a corset. And her fair hair was always pinned back and covered by a neat black bonnet tied under her chin with a bow. Feminists suggested Mary try wearing men’s trousers, a more practical alternative in the African rainforest. “I would rather,” she said, “[have] perished on a public scaffold.”
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Read more of the hilarious post:
http://greatbritishnutters.blogspot.com/2008/04/mary-kingsley-friend-of-cannibals.html

http://historynutsblog.blogspot.com


What we consider funny, or ridiculous, or simply mad, for her it was dead-serious. Like for our contemporaries and the madness they live out.