  After the publication of his narrative there was nothing to detain Park longer in London, while there was much to attract him to Scotland. Accordingly he returned to Foulshiels in the summer of 1799. On the 2nd of August of that year he was married to Miss Anderson. Of the personality of this lady we know little beyond the simple facts that she was tall and handsome, amiable in disposition, with no special mental endowments, and if anything somewhat frivolous and pleasure-loving—characteristics very unlike what we should have expected in the wife of such a man as Park. In personal appearance the young explorer must have been quite a match for his wife. The portrait of him which has come down to us shows a head of noble proportions. The fine brow speaks of his mental powers; the prominent, finely chiselled nose, firm, well-shaped mouth, and powerful jaws, indicate the iron will and marked individuality which he showed himself to possess. No less striking and attractive are the eyes, which look forth so calmly, aglow with truthfulness, self-possession, and confidence. In person he was tall, reaching quite six feet, and exceedingly well proportioned. His whole appearance was prepossessing. It is impossible to say what were Park’s plans for his future life when he took to himself a wife. Probably they were but ill-defined even to himself. It may be safely concluded, however, that he had then no intention of returning to Africa. All the horrors of his recent experiences were still too strongly upon him to make the idea of a new journey welcome. Moreover, the after penalty of those months of starvation and atrocious fare had still to be paid by inveterate dyspepsia and its concomitant evils of gloom and despondency. While under its influence his sleep was much broken, and too often night was made one hideous nightmare by dreams of being back once more in captivity among the Moors of Ludamar, and subjected to the old tortures and indignities. Probably, therefore, when he married, he did so in the belief that there would be no occasion for separation—no likelihood of his ever entering upon any engagements which should make him unable to fulfil his duty to his wife as a loving, ever-present protector and support. At no time does Park ever seem to have been enamoured of his profession, and after the life he had recently led he felt a repugnance to settling down to its uncongenial routine. For the moment, however, he did not feel called upon to come to an immediate decision as to his future work in life. The liberal remuneration which he had received from the African Association, together with the profits of his book, had placed him for the time being in easy circumstances. He could therefore afford to wait to see what might turn up. He had become well known. He had powerful friends. There was accordingly every likelihood that something congenial would be found for At this period his mother was still alive, and the farm was worked by one of his brothers. Most of the family had done well. One sister, as we have already seen, had married Mr. Dickson, who had risen both to moderate affluence and to considerable fame as a botanist. Another had found a husband in a well-to-do farmer in the neighbourhood. His brother Adam had gone through the same course as himself, and had become established as a doctor in Gravesend; while a second brother, Alexander, had been made under-sheriff for the county, the sheriff-principal being Sir Walter Scott. Of this brother Scott himself gives us a sketch in his introduction to the “Lady of the Lake,” when recalling his doubts of the poem’s success:— “I remember that about the same time a friend (Arch. Park) started in to ‘heeze up my hope,’ like the sportsman with his cutty gun in the old song. He was bred a farmer, but a man of powerful understanding, natural good taste, and warm poetical feeling, perfectly competent to supply the wants of an imperfect or irregular education. He was a passionate admirer of field sports, which we often pursued together.” And then Scott goes on to tell how he was in the habit of reading the poem to him to experiment as to the effect produced on one who was “but too favourable a representative of readers at large.” Archibald Park remained in Scott’s employment for many years, and was frequently his companion in his mountain rides. In 1799, the Government made certain proposals to Park relative to his going out in some official capacity to New South Wales. Of this, however, nothing came, The natural consequences of idleness to a man of Park’s personality and past life soon became apparent. With a wife of no particular depth of character and no special mental attainments, however attractive and amiable she might otherwise be, there could be but small absorption of his thoughts. With no other society, and no work to keep him occupied, there could be but one result—restlessness and revolt against the position in which he found himself, and the gradual upgrowth of the old longings and ideas—the irrepressible fever of travel. Coincidently he began to forget the hardships and dangers he had experienced, and as they grew less and less vivid, and gradually dropped into the background of his memory, the fascination of discovery, of travel in strange lands and among strange peoples—the wish to settle the unsolved mystery of the Niger—began anew to assert their power and possess him with ever-growing force. For the time the African Association was resting on their oars as far as prosecuting their work from West Africa was concerned, though in 1798 Horneman had been despatched to penetrate to the Sudan from Egypt. No doubt this was partly due to the enormous difficulties and ever present dangers which Park had described, partly also perhaps on account of the war then being waged with France. In 1800 Goree had been captured, an event which inspired Park to write (July 31, 1800) to Sir Joseph Banks, pointing out its importance in relation to renewed attempts to penetrate the interior of the Continent. After describing his views on the subject, he In 1801 the negotiations with the Government relative to the New South Wales mission were resumed. A visit to London was found necessary for a satisfactory discussion of the matter, and accordingly we find Park in the metropolis in the early spring. How deep and tender was his affection for his winsome wife is shown in a letter written to her during the visit—one of the few glimpses that have come down to us of the more private side of the explorer’s character. The letter is dated March 12th, 1801, and is as follows:—
Again the negotiations with the Government fell through, and there was nothing for it but for Park to return once more to Foulshiels disappointed and discouraged, but possessed more than ever by the fever of unrest—more and more under the influence of the Niger magnet—against which the sole counteracting forces were love for his wife, the dread of being separated from her, and his duty as a husband. It was in this not very suitable mood that he was forced to face the fact that he must no longer depend on the vague hope of finding a congenial opening, but must put his hand to something, however alien to his tastes and aspirations. For a time he thought of taking a farm, but at last reluctantly came to the conclusion that his best course would be to resume his profession as a doctor. An opening presented itself in the neighbouring town of Peebles, where he went to reside in the month of October, occupying a house at the head of the Brygate, while his surgery was a small projecting building—since demolished—east from the first Chambers’ Institute. In a lane behind was his humble laboratory. EXTRACT OF MUNGO PARK’S LETTER TO HIS WIFE. Park threw himself into his work with characteristic energy and thoroughness, and speedily won for himself a fair share of the practice of the town and country. The profits, however, were of the poorest, and the work of the hardest—so much so, indeed, that he once said to Scott he “would rather brave Africa and all its horrors than wear out his life in long and toilsome rides over cold and lonely heaths and gloomy hills, assailed by the wintry tempest, for which the remuneration was hardly enough to keep soul and body together.” On the strength of this reported offhand remark, Ruskin, without troubling to inquire further into the history of the man, has formulated the following indictment. This “terrific” sentence, he says, “signifies, if you look into it, almost total absence of the instinct of personal duty—total absence of belief in the God who chose for him his cottage birthplace and set him his life task beside it; absolute want of interest in his profession, of sense for natural beauty, and of compassion for the noblest poor of his native land. And with these absences there is the clearest evidence of the fatalist of the vices, Avarice—in the exact form in which it was the ruin of Scott himself—the love of money for the sake of worldly position.” Never was more sweeping accusation founded on more slender data. Practically, Park is charged with absence of a belief in God, and of a sense of duty to his fellows, because he finds his profession toilsome and uncongenial. The argument seems to be that the man is an atheist and a sinner against society who is not content to remain in the sphere in which he was born, and in which accordingly his life task is divinely set. Were such a position tenable, it is difficult to see how any progress, either personal or social, would be possible. From it, in the present instance, would naturally follow that Park was as little to be justified in choosing to be a doctor rather than a peasant farmer, as in preferring to be an explorer rather than either. What Ruskin takes exception to, however, is not Park’s choosing a profession, but that the choice once made, he should seek to abandon it. But if it were permissible to him as a youth, ignorant alike of himself, the world, and the profession he was about to enter, to choose, surely it was equally permissible that as a man, with some knowledge of all three, he should withdraw in favour of the work to which he knew himself adapted. The instinct and capacities which fitted him for an explorer were as divinely implanted as his birthplace had been divinely appointed. Moreover, those “noblest poor of his native land,” to whom Ruskin so pathetically refers, were not alone dependent on Park for medical aid—a circumstance which would have lent another colour to his final resolve to forsake them. Doctors there were in plenty, alike able and willing to serve them; but there was but one Mungo Park—but one man, as far as was known, who by his special gifts and wide experience was suited for the peculiar and arduous work of African exploration. Upon him then it devolved, with all the sacrednesss of a divinely appointed mission, as indeed he deemed it, and accepted it accordingly, to the exclusion of all narrower obligations. There still remains the charge of Avarice, based on Park’s simple statement that his “unceasing toil was hardly sufficient to keep soul and body together.” Is then the physician less entitled than say the author Beyond the record of “unceasing toil” little is known of how Park spent the time he was resident in Peebles. The town itself is described as being in those days “quiet as the grave”—a reputation it still maintains, judging from the innuendo in the ironical phrase, “Peebles for pleasure!” To Park, however, the absence of the brighter aspect of life was a small matter. Society had but little attraction for him, and his was the severe Scottish nature which avoided as almost sinful anything bordering upon frivolous pleasure. From all lionising and the silly questioning of the ignorant and the impertinently curious he had a natural shrinking, though at any time delighted to talk of his travels and of matters African with the intelligent and the well-informed. Quiet and seclusion were, however, more to his mind, and were to be enjoyed to the full in the peaceful little town. Such society as he wanted he had in his own domestic circle, beyond which he was happy in the intimacy which sprang up between him and two distinguished residents—Colonel John Murray of Kringaltie and Dr. Adam Ferguson, formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy “One wild night in winter Park lost his way, till discovering a light, he directed his horse towards it, and found himself before a shepherd’s cottage. It so happened that the Doctor arrived there in the nick of time, for the shepherd’s wife was on the point of confinement. He waited till all was safely over, and next morning the shepherd escorted him to where he could see the distant road. Park, noticing his conductor lag behind, asked him the reason, on which the simple or humorous man replied, ‘’Deed, sir, my wife said she was sure you must be an angel, and I think sae tae; so I am just keepin’ ahint to be sure I’ll see you flee up.’” As time went on, Park’s longing to return to Africa grew ever more intense, nourished as it was by hopes from time to time held out to him. Barely, for instance, had he settled down to life in Peebles, when he received a letter from Sir Joseph Banks, acquainting him that in consequence of the Peace (then recently signed with France), the Association intended to revive their project of sending a mission to Africa in order to penetrate to and navigate the Niger. If Government took up the matter, Park would certainly be recommended as the person proper to be employed for carrying it into execution. As with previous projects, however, nothing came of it for the time being, though it continued to be talked about more or less during the next two years. In the autumn of 1803 he was desired by the Colonial |
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