A Labyrinth of Kingdoms

by Steve Kemper

  By contrast, London’s high officials and scientists welcomed him with warm praise. Lord Palmerston, head of the Foreign Office when the mission left Britain, was now prime minister. He and his replacement at the FO, Lord Clarendon, were delighted by Barth’s achievements. “I am happy to repeat to you what I have already expressed to you verbally,” wrote Lord Clarendon, “the high sense which I entertain of the zeal and ability which you have shown in prosecuting the enquiries in Central Africa on which you have been engaged, and of the fortitude, perseverance, and sound judgment which have enabled you to overcome the many dangers and difficulties with which you have had to contend in the course of your valorous enterprise.”

  Less than two weeks after returning, Barth sent a long letter to Clarendon asking the government to express its appreciation in cash. He needed money to pay his expenses while he wrote his account, and money to pay for the many detailed maps and illustrations he wanted to include. He made his case with stiff pride and faint grievance.

  “I take first the liberty to observe,” he began, “that an enterprising man, who under takes difficult & dangerous things, does it as well for his honor and reputation as for ameliorating & improving his position in society.” He had joined the mission enthusiastically, he noted, “though I had in the beginning to subject myself to the direction of Mr. Richardson.” He had also “sacrificed” his own money for the mission, since the funding provided by government, especially for the two scientific members, had been “rather a little scanty & precarious.” After assuming the mission’s leadership, he had “done what was possible for a mortal man.” He therefore hoped that “Her Majesty’s Government will be pleased to confer upon me that measure of distinctionary & pecuniary remuneration, which my services may be considered to deserve.” The tortured wording suggests how uncomfortable Barth was when asking for money for himself.

  He also hoped the FO agreed that his journals belonged to him and could be published without the government’s objection. Having felt the shifting diplomatic winds, he assured Clarendon that he would not comment on France’s ambitions in the western Sahara. Nevertheless, as promised to his friend, he enclosed a letter from Sheikh al-Bakkay asking the British government to stop the French from advancing farther south.

  He also enclosed treaties, written in Arabic, made with Sheikh Umar of Bornu, the sultans of Gwandu and Sokoto, and two Tuareg chiefs. All of them pledged to protect British merchants. Barth sent a letter from Umar asking “the Sovereign Lady of the English realm” to send gifts: “In the first place, two nice guns, for campaigning. Also, some wonderful cannon balls with some drum instruments, and a large striking clock (or with alarum). Also, some fire instruments, such as brass lamps and candlesticks, and such like. Also a tent. That is all. Also a nice sword, which I described to Abdu-el-Kerim.” Umar offered to send his son to Tripoli to take delivery.

  Clarendon responded a few days later. Yes, the journals were Barth’s property. Clarendon hoped that their invaluable scientific contents would reach the public soon. As for remuneration, Clarendon wanted to consult with Chevalier Bunsen and others. He also had splendid news: because of Barth’s extraordinary feats and service, Queen Victoria had decided to award him a Companionship of the Bath, one of the crown’s highest honors, rarely given to a foreigner. Burton, Speke, and Baker, among other famous British explorers, never received it.

  Bunsen, now retired in Heidelberg, suggested that the British government pay Barth £600 per year for the journey’s five-and-a-half-year duration, and reimburse his personal expenses. The Treasury lowered this to £500 for four-and-a-half years, dating from the time of Richardson’s death. Treasury also agreed to give Barth £1,000 upon completion of the first three volumes of his book, and up to another £1,000 upon completion of the last two, on condition that he provide the government fifty copies. A British publisher offered Barth £500, a German publisher £750.

  All these terms were agreeable to Barth. With his finances settled, he expected to write in peace. But first he wanted a real homecoming. He left on October 1 for Germany.

  “WHEN WE ARRIVED at the gate of his father’s house,” remembered Barth’s servant Dorugu, “he opened the carriage and ran into the house. You could hear a lot of noise in the house.” Barth hadn’t seen his father, mother, and siblings for six years. For part of that time they thought he was dead, and they had buried him in absentia. No wonder his return to Hamburg was noisy. Gustav von Schubert, his brother-in-law and intimate friend, described how nearly six years in Africa had changed him:

  His intellectual interaction had been completely restricted to and reliant upon the Arab world, which had a lasting effect upon him. He had taken on the serious, honorable, withdrawn, proud, almost haughty demeanor of the sons of the desert. His bold yet thoughtful spirit had proven itself in even the most complex and difficult circumstances—no wonder, then, that he returned with even greater self-confidence than before. His inborn mistrust had also grown to alarming levels, however, since he had had to remain on his guard at all times in those surroundings. Everywhere he went, he sensed deliberate and calculated attempts being made to exploit him. He had to reacclimatize himself to many aspects of European culture, which was not without its share of difficult and painful experiences for him, especially in the beginning.

  How different he seemed, however, when among the family he had gone without for so long—so full of tenderness for parents and siblings! The hard man did not mark the moment of their reunion with any great outpouring of emotion, but over time the peaceful and loving company of his family gave him more and more joy. He remained this way until the end of his days: hard and gruff on the outside, but with a warm and loving inner disposition.

  Barth hired a tailor to make warm clothes for Dorugu and Abbega, who were stunned by the cold. He took them with him to visit Overweg’s father, and told the Africans, “That is the man whose son gave you your freedom.” He also entertained them with a trip to the circus.

  Von Humboldt, bursting with pride about Barth’s achievements, arranged a lunch for the explorer with Frederick Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia, at the summer palace, Sanssouci. Carl Ritter, Barth’s other old mentor, came as well. Frederick offered to help subsidize the German edition of Barth’s book. The Prussian government also awarded him a pension of about £140 per year (raised after two years to about £200, to run until 1861).

  In subsequent weeks various groups feted and honored Barth. Hamburg gave him a gold medal. The courts of Württemberg, Weimar, and Sardinia presented decorations. The University of Jena gave him an honorary doctorate. Academic societies sent honors. On October 13 he addressed the Geographical Society of Berlin and received an ovation. He was offered a professorship of geography for one semester for £225. Von Humboldt and Ritter were working to secure him a permanent position.

  Chevalier Bunsen had other ideas. When Barth visited him in Heidelberg, he advised leaving Germany for England. German universities paid paltry salaries and demanded heavy teaching loads, Bunsen warned, which would leave little time for much else. In England, Barth could make more money for less work and still have plenty of time for travel—which Bunsen correctly suspected was more attractive to Barth than teaching. Staying in Prussia, argued the old diplomat, also would alienate the British government and public, which now resented Germany because of the Crimean War. Though hesitant, Barth decided to take Bunsen’s advice.

  While Barth was visiting his parents, he got a letter from Dr. Norton Shaw, a well-known geographer who was secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS). Shaw invited Barth to dine with some members of the society before his speaking engagement there in mid-November. Barth immediately responded that the letter surprised him because he had not agreed to speak and did not intend to address any scientific society until after he published his journal. He evidently meant no British group, since he had addressed Berlin’s Geographical Society two weeks earlier.

  “My narrative having been published in extenso,” Barth
continued, “it will be seen, what has been achieved really and what has been presumed to have been achieved, though at least what I myself have ever presumed I do not know.”

  This cryptic remark and its sarcastic presumed had a history. Barth hinted at it in his last sentence to Shaw, assuring the secretary that he felt a strong obligation to “the Scientific public” and to the “eminent Statesmen” who had entrusted him, “although a foreign gentleman,” with the mission. He pointedly left out the Royal Geographical Society.

  The problems began while Barth was still in Africa. During the mission’s early years, he sent his dispatches first to Bunsen, who passed them on to the Foreign Office and to Barth’s scientific colleagues in Berlin. This irritated the FO and the Royal Geographical Society, which regularly complained that some of Barth’s dispatches were appearing in Germany before the RGS received them. By the time Barth learned of the FO’s disapproval, some suspicions about his loyalties had already taken root.

  These were worsened by the overenthusiasm of a superb German cartographer named Augustus Petermann, who became closely associated with the mission. Petermann worked at the London Observatory and was indirectly responsible for Barth’s appointment—Bunsen learned about Richardson’s proposed expedition through Petermann. Whenever Barth sent maps back to Europe, the FO hired Petermann to turn them into finished works of cartography. (His maps are one of the glories of Travels and Discoveries.) All this was fine, but Petermann also sent his maps to German publications along with information from Barth’s journal.

  This didn’t sit well with the FO or the RGS. “Of course it is Mr. Petermann’s object,” wrote Undersecretary Addington in December 1853, “to make himself, for his own profit, and also for his own glory, the historiographer of all the discoveries of Barth and Overweg: but that is not our object, or intention… . Drs. Barth and Overweg were members of Richardson’s expedition, paid by us, and traveling at our expense,” he continued, and any public announcements about the expedition should come from the Royal Geographical Society, “which properly speaking is our natural medium of partial geographical communications.” Addington pointed a blaming finger: “The Chevalier Bunsen has always looked upon us as the mere paymasters of the expedition, while the fruits belong to Germany. This is a mistake.”

  The long delays between dispatches from Barth also fed British suspicions, especially within the RGS, that Barth was giving everything to the Germans. The RGS contributed neither funds nor expertise to the expedition, but because of its eminence and influential members, it felt entitled to be the first to review Barth’s reports.

  The society’s secretary, Dr. Norton Shaw, was particularly antagonistic. In January 1854 he published an article about an RGS meeting at which Barth and Overweg were the butt of criticisms and crude jokes. Shaw wrote that “it might be presumed”—the word that nettled Barth—“that their labours would have been placed at the disposal of the English Government, and the results would have been accessible to English geographers and other promoters among our countrymen. But this has not been the case … the information respecting this expedition seems to be of a private character, if we may judge from the manner it is dealt with and the closeness with which it is preserved from English geographers.”

  If anyone doubted that Shaw’s barbs were aimed at the scientists’ nationality, he turned explicit: “In connection with Lake Chad and other African names, it may be observed that the Germans are adopting various ways of spelling them, because they find it difficult to say ‘cheese.’ ”

  Petermann responded with a nine-page open letter that called Shaw’s report “scurrilous and offensive.” The cheesy comment, he said, was especially shameful from a representative of the RGS.

  Shaw was not only unbowed; he attacked. In June 1855 he again complained to the Foreign Office that the Germans, in particular Bunsen and Petermann, were still conspiring to keep Barth’s geographical information from the British. The FO investigated and satisfied itself that Shaw was wrong, but Shaw wrote at least two more accusatory letters that summer before Barth reached London.

  Shaw’s insinuations may have been encouraged by the society’s president, Francis Egerton, the earl of Ellesmere (for whom the Arctic island is named). In his Anniversary Address in May 1855, Ellesmere reported that Barth had moved from Timbuktu to Kano, and had met Vogel. Then he started inserting needles. He said that Barth hadn’t sent much information back, so judgment must be postponed about “the importance of the geographical data presumed to have been accumulated during his prolonged absence.” Ellesmere’s “presumed” was probably another thorn that irked the thin-skinned Barth, who detected an insinuation that he might have spent his “prolonged absence” dallying in Africa instead of using his chronometer.

  Some of Ellesmere’s other remarks must have grated as well. He noted that Barth had recently sent a map of the Niger between Gao and Say, but undercut this compliment by complaining that Barth hadn’t provided any data used to construct the map, or data for any of maps he had sent. And Ellesmere couldn’t resist adding that this part of the Niger was “first traversed by Mungo Park.” Barth probably wondered, with reason, so what? Park had floated down the river and died without contributing anything to science’s knowledge of it. Barth had sent back the first detailed map of an unknown section of the great river. Ellesmere’s remark carried shades of the churlish British rejection of René Caillié’s claim to Timbuktu, since a Brit had gotten there first.

  Ellesmere also complained that many of Barth’s maps had not been seen by the RGS because they evidently were in Germany—another falsehood. He “hoped” that Barth would return with “the explanations that are necessary to establish the value of his arduous, protracted, and hazardous labours.”

  This tone and attitude must have put Barth’s teeth on edge. On top of all this, soon after Barth’s homecoming in Germany, several British newspapers ran stories criticizing him for excessive spending in Africa. After all his deprivations and penury there, the accusation infuriated him. He was convinced that detractors within the RGS had planted the articles, though the culprit may have been Corporal Church, who had his own reasons for resenting Barth.

  When Barth felt wronged, especially in matters of honor and integrity, he never held his tongue, and sometimes planted his foot on it. The patience and compromise he exercised in Africa disappeared when he got back to Europe. His indomitable temperament served him superbly in difficult places but sometimes offended polite European society.

  “If in England,” he said during his address to the Geographical Society in Berlin, “a few mean-minded individuals, seeking to exploit national enmity under the guise of scholarly questions, have given vent to their feelings in contemptible utterances against the leadership of an English expedition by a German, such an attack must urge me all the more to present as quickly as possible my achievements before the English public in order to justify myself as well as the respected English statesmen, above all Lord Palmerston, who honoured Germans with their trust.”

  Soon after this, and before reports of it appeared in the British press, Shaw’s invitation to address the RGS arrived. In his agitated state Barth felt that the society had presumed far too much, and he was in no mood to yield to it, despite its considerable influence. It would be two-and-a-half years before he addressed the Geographical Society.

  “I absolutely agree with your response to Mr. N. Shaw,” wrote Bunsen to Barth. “Your answer is one worthy of a man and of a German. The Geographic Society has no special claim on you, and N. Shaw is not our friend. Yet I hope all the more that you will not delay your arrival in England any longer than the end of the month,” advised Bunsen. “Otherwise you will make it difficult for the English ministry to do everything for you that it wants to. You travelled in the name of the English government as their representative, and you can’t damage this relationship with England and the English populace under any circumstance. Don’t let yourself challenge politics!”

  At t
he end of November 1855, Barth returned to London to begin writing his opus. He settled into a small house with a garden in St. John’s Wood near Regent’s Park. He hoped to work undisturbed. Almost immediately, the calm shattered on several fronts.

  THAT OLD FOX G. B. Gagliuffi, British vice-consul in Murzuk and merchant extraordinaire, had recently been on leave in London. He evidently met with his boss the foreign secretary, Lord Clarendon. According to a letter written December 7, 1855, and marked “Confidential,” Gagliuffi told Clarendon that Barth “had availed himself of the means placed at his disposal by H. M. Govt. during that service, to promote German commercial interests in preference to British.” Though deeply skeptical of this charge, which violated common sense and contradicted all the commercial treaties Barth had gotten on Britain’s behalf, the Foreign Office duly investigated.

  Gagliuffi’s motive was revenge. He had been sending doleful letters to the FO claiming that he had spent a small fortune outfitting the expedition and hadn’t been repaid for his noble sacrifice. The FO had rejected his claims, partly because of letters written by Barth. The explorer had taken Gagliuffi’s measure in Murzuk, and though he liked the man and acknowledged his hard work for the mission, he also noted his tendency to do well for himself at every opportunity, which included gouging the expedition. For instance, Barth warned the FO that Gagliuffi seriously inflated the value of the merchandise he provided. When Gagliuffi learned of Barth’s caveats, he tried to besmirch him at the FO by appealing to British resentment of Germans. The FO sent Gagliuffi’s correspondence about reimbursements to Barth, and asked for a response. The FO evidently omitted Gagliuffi’s accusation about promoting German interests, which would have incensed Barth.

  His return letter on December 11 was fair, calm, and clear. “There cannot be the least doubt,” he wrote, that Gagliuffi had been instrumental in opening Central Africa to British trade and had given crucial assistance to the expedition. His financial grievances, however, lacked merit. Barth explained that when he took over the expedition’s finances after Richardson’s death, he discovered that Richardson had agreed to crippling terms for a loan from an Arab merchant named Sfaksi—an interest rate of 100 percent, plus other provisos that could swell the original debt from 636 dollars to nearly 3,000. In 1852 in Kukawa, Barth bargained Sfaksi down to 1,700 dollars—still a handsome return, as Barth pointed out. But Sfaksi’s partner wanted the entire usurious amount. That partner was Gagliuffi. But the debt had been cleared, wrote Barth, and the FO owed Gagliuffi nothing except gratitude for his fine service as vice-consul—which, Barth graciously suggested, “is well worth a generous consideration from H. M.’s Government.” Gagliuffi’s claims and his accusation against Barth don’t appear again in the official records.