Mary Kingsley made money as a lecturer, but the odd thing was that she was by no means good at the art. She possessed a deep and almost manly voice, but being far too nervous to trust to extemporaneous words, she always read what she had to say, and in her desire to read slowly and to be clear and distinct, she adopted an extraordinary sing-song, something like the prayers of a Methodist parson. This was all very well when she was telling a funny story, as it only heightened its effect, but when one had to listen for an hour and a half to this curious monotone, it became tiring. All who knew her, however, recognised her as a brilliant conversationalist. Sir William Crookes once truly said: “Mary Kingsley on the platform, and Mary Kingsley in the drawing-room, are two entirely different personalities.” This woman who accomplished and dared so much, who braved the climate and the blacks of Africa alone, whose views on West African politics were strongly held and strongly expressed, was the very antithesis of what one would expect from a strong-minded female. She was small and thin, her light hair was parted in the middle, and she wore a hard black velvet band across the head in quite a style of her own, never seen nowadays on anyone except the little girl in the nursery. She had all the angular ways, and much of the determination, of the male, when put to the test, although to look at her one might think a puff of wind would blow her away. Mary Kingsley was the niece of Charles Kingsley, and the daughter of Dr. Henry Kingsley. The woman, who would face a whole tribe of natives alone and unprotected, was in the society of her own people a shrinking, nervous little creature. Indeed, one marvelled and wondered however she kept the strength of will and the physical courage which she displayed on so many notable occasions during her adventurous travels. Once she wrote to me: “MY DEAR MRS. ALEC, “Thank you very much. I will come if I possibly can. I have an uncle ill just now that uses up my time considerably and makes me dull and stupid and unfit for society, but he is on the mend. “It is very good of you to have had me on Friday. I always feel I have no right to go out to dinner. I cannot give dinners back, and I am used only to the trader set connected with West Africa, so that going into good society is going into a different world, whose way of thinking and whose interests are so different that I do not know how to deal with them. If I were only just allowed to listen and look on it would be an immense treat to me. “Ever yours truly, “M. H. KINGSLEY.” An amusing little incident happened at dinner in my house, when I sent her a message down the table, accompanied by a pencil, asking her to sign her name on the tablecloth under that of Paul du Chaillu. She was covered with confusion, and when my husband told her to write it big, as it was difficult otherwise to work it in, she said, with a blush: