Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

  Before Henry left Turkey, he had led Ambassador Morris to believe that his `father' was a lawyer at zo, Liberty Street, New York. So, plainly, at this date the best-known cotton magnate in New Orleans had not finally been selected as his adoptive father.' Stanley knew that his mother would be sure to ask numerous questions if he claimed to have been adopted by anyone, and he still doubted whether he was ready to be grilled. The way in which he signed the visitors' book of the Denbigh Castle Bowling Club on 114 December 11866 tells us exactly what he told his relatives to explain his turning up in Wales dressed as a naval officer.

  John Rowlands formerly of this Castle now ensign in the United States Navy in North America belonging to the US ship `Ticonderogo' [sic] now at Constantinople, Turkey, absent on furlough.4

  While in Constantinople, Henry had spotted the USS Ticonderoga - a larger warship than the Minnesota - and had decided that, once in Wales, he would say he was on leave from this vessel. In this way he could talk of having been in Turkey without mentioning his failed expedition. En route to Denbigh he stayed overnight at the Black Lion in Mold, where he hired a carriage and pair, donned his bogus uniform and, in due course, entered the town of his birth in triumph.' Since all he possessed in the world was the remains of the ambassador's loan, he could ill afford to hire carriages and buy presents, but he felt an overwhelming need to be treated respectfully by the people who had once thought so little of him that they had allowed him to rot in the workhouse. His mother might be incapable of love, but if the smallest scintilla of affection remained buried deep within her, he reckoned it would only emerge if lured out by greed for his new-found wealth. As his coach clattered into Denbigh at the start of this tragicomic charade, Stanley knew that he was about to deceive his relations, but his longing to see them humbled by his achievements overruled every other thought.

  No description of any of his meetings with his mother exists, but since Stanley was in Denbigh for at least three and a half weeks, clearly he got on far better with Elizabeth Jones than on his last disastrous visit. She was shuttling to and fro between the Castle Arms, Denbigh, and the Cross Foxes at Bodelwyddan, and Henry saw her in both establishments. Richard Price, who had taken young John to the workhouse, saw him at the Castle Arms with his mother, and in the churchyard visiting his grandfather's grave. Price remarked upon Stanley's naval uniform, which he confused with the blue coat of the Federal army.'

  For a few days before Christmas, Stanley stayed in Vale Street with his uncle Moses and his aunt Kitty - magnanimously forgiving them for having sent him back to St Asaph. While under their roof, he developed a crush on his cousin, Catherine, aged fifteen, whom he later described as attractive and a talented harpist, but `giddy-headed, ignorant' and a gossip.' His greatest triumph was to spend Christmas Day 11866 at the Cross Foxes with his mother, his stepfather, his two halfbrothers, Robert and James William Jones, and with his half-sister, Emma. Although no account of this extraordinary day exists, it can only have been an unforgettable one for him - the very first Christmas he had ever spent with his family. It is known that Stanley was at the Cross Foxes then, because on the z5th, he wrote to Lewis Noe (who had been left with the Morris family in Liverpool) giving his address as Bodelwyddan.8 Noe then wrote back to `Henry Stanley' at the Cross Foxes. Years later, Elizabeth Jones told the Welsh journalist Owen `Morien' Morgan about the arrival of these `Henry Stanley' letters.

  `I told the postman,' said Mrs Jones, `that there was no one of that name here. John overheard me and cried out, "They are for me mother." I went to him with the letters, and asked him seriously, "What have you done, John, that you have been obliged to change your name?" He laughed, and assured me he had done nothing wrong, and it was then he told me about the shopkeeper of New Orleans.'9

  So Stanley had been surprised into telling his mother the adoption story before he was ready" [see this note for evidence of the date]. At least it must have been a relief for Henry to be able to reduce her irritation with him for dropping his Welsh name by saying that he had been `given' it, rather than having chosen it simply because he wanted to. Stanley also told his stepfather that he might only go on calling himself Stanley while he was establishing himself in the world. Jones seemed puzzled, so Henry explained `that he wanted to do his marketing [of himself] before he admitted who he really was'." He then told his mother a fantastic story about being made an officer after swimming 50o yards under fire to get a hawser aboard a Confederate ship and capture her.12 Later, a close friend would say that Stanley's most truly American quality was his `showman's determination to put all his best wares in his window'. Naturally enough, being an illegitimate Welshman was not something he categorized as `best wares'." From now on, Stanley's relations knew that, despite his need to be close to them, he believed his career would be best served by denying his Welsh connections, until he had achieved something. Given the snobberies and prejudices of the age, and his treatment as a child, his point of view is easy to understand.

  Of course, Henry realized that there might be problems ahead. John Hotten confirmed in his book that `at this date [1[866-67] and long afterwards ... John Rowlands and Henry M. Stanley were one and the same person to the good folks of Denbigh',14 so clearly when the `good folks' realized he meant to deny being Welsh entirely, they would resent it. But for now, while Stanley was not yet famous, the double name caused no real difficulty. Who cared if he wanted to call himself Stanley in America, while he remained true to his `real' identity at home in Denbigh? While staying with his mother, he went to the St Asaph workhouse as John Rowlands, wearing his naval uniform. Being such a `successful' former inmate, he applied to the Guardians for permission to entertain the children to a slap-up tea, and gave a pep talk about the excellent education he had received, and how pleased he was that they too were enjoying the same opportunities that had enabled him to become a naval officer. Then, the self-declared ensign was thanked by Captain Leigh Thomas, chairman of the Guardians, and praised for not being `ashamed to acknowledge having been reared in the workhouse after raising himself to the position he now held'. To be esteemed in a place where he had once scarcely existed meant a lot to him, as did fooling the workhouse authorities.''

  Before returning to Liverpool, Henry decided to replace Lewis Noe as his travelling companion. Still needing an admiring youth to bolster him, he urged his workhouse contemporary Thomas Mumford to come to America. When Mumford declined, Stanley tried to persuade the St Asaph Guardians to let him take a senior boy from the workhouse. In the end, the chosen boy's mother refused her permission."

  On 7 January, Stanley booked into a hotel in Liverpool rather than stay with Lewis and the Morris family. Lewis had caused Henry great embarrassment by convincing Tom and Maria Morris that he had treated him cruelly.'' Nevertheless, Henry and Lewis met up the following day and made a temporary truce while visiting a library and a museum.

  According to Lewis, Stanley now told him something of immense significance:

  It was while I was at Liverpool [December 1866 to January 18671 that Stanley spoke to me of Dr Livingstone's explorations in Africa. They seemed to be an object of great interest to him. He expressed a desire to go into Africa himself and said he should aim to do so as a correspondent of the Herald, and thereby make a story and a sensation, and gain both fame and money.'s

  Stanley himself would later attribute the brilliant idea of finding Livingstone to James Gordon Bennett Jr, owner of the New York Herald. But since Stanley's entire career then depended upon his employer's continuing patronage, it seems likely that he `gave' the idea to Bennett to please him. (Nor would he ever wish to admit that the inspiration for finding Livingstone had been due to a desire to make his name rather than to bring succour to the missing man.) Lewis later told various local people in his home village of Sayville that Stanley had `continually talked about Livingstone' in 11866. Certainly, Stanley himself stated that soon after leaving St Asaph workhouse he had read Livingstone's best-seller, Missionary Travels, and been captiva
ted by it."

  It might be objected that Stanley would not have talked about `finding' Livingstone in December 11866, because the explorer had only returned to Africa ten months earlier and was not considered `lost'. But, in fact, just when Stanley and Noe were in Liverpool, articles were published in the British press speculating anxiously about Livingstone's whereabouts.2O And further evidence supports Noe's claim that Stanley originated the century's greatest newspaper coup. Of the two elements in Noe's account of his conversations with Stanley, his mention of the New York Herald would seem far more likely to have been untrue than the references to Stanley's interest in Livingstone. In fact, after leaving Wales and before returning to Liverpool, Stanley went to London for a meeting with the New York Herald's representative in the capital, Colonel Finley Anderson. There could never have been any chance that such an inexperienced young man would be sent to central Africa, but the meeting was positive enough to enable Stanley to re-approach the Herald later, with momentous consequences. So as Henry trudged along the grey streets of Liverpool, with the disenchanted Lewis in tow, it seems all but certain that they discussed the dazzling idea that would make Henry a world celebrity six years later.21 Although Stanley tried hard to patch up his friendship with Noe, he failed, and the two of them returned to America on different ships, never to meet again.

  Early in February 11867, Stanley arrived in St Louis and visited the offices of the Missouri Democrat - the newspaper he had worked for as an occasional correspondent during 118 6 5. After an initial rebuff, he kept calling in and his persistence finally paid off. In late March he was offered a full-time job on the paper at $15 per week and expenses - this was the first regular employment he had had in his life. Never again would he feel the need to resort to fraudulent ways of acquiring money, as in Turkey. The security of a regular income transformed his life. Yet Henry's desire to take risks to achieve fame did not go away, and it seems that his successful charade in Denbigh had boosted his self-confidence. For the present, he sensibly postponed planning ambitious projects until he had honed his skills as a journalist. And now fortune smiled. A day after being taken on, he landed the plum assignment of covering General Winfield Scott Hancock's Indian campaign against the Kiowas and the Comanches. Henry caught up with the general on the Saline River a few days later, on i April.22

  As well as learning the art of writing and filing his copy on time, and finding stories, Stanley would discover much about the origins of racial conflict. White settlers and American Indians were murdering each other, and at first, like many observers, he was disgusted by the Indians' atrocities and sympathized with the settlers. `Are our countrymen to be murdered and scalped without retaliating?' he thun- dered.?3 But even at this early stage, Henry favoured the creation of Indian reservations rather than driving the tribes from the Plains.14 On zr August, he wrote to the Democrat from Sioux City, placing the blame for conflict squarely on the whites:

  Now the great cause of all these troubles - these blazing farms, these mutilated corpses, these scalped and wounded men - will be found in this: that the Indian was an outlaw ranked with the wild beasts. If a white man shot an Indian, what law touched him ...? It was as if he had shot a buffalo ... And the red man, to make matters straight, killed the first white man he came across ... Immediately a cry went up to heaven ... extermination. Thank heaven for radicalism [whose policy is] to draw within the mighty circle of our civilization men of every colour ... all men are free; if the red man will come to us let him come.25

  While Stanley argued that the Indians ought not to be allowed to interfere with the building of railroads and the development of the West, he demanded that the government provide agricultural help for `these wronged children of the soil', enabling them to lead a settled existence, tending flocks and herds.26 On one occasion, Stanley dissuaded General Hancock from burning an Indian village. He quoted the words of Chief Santanta: `I love the land and the buffalo and will not part with any. But I want you to understand also that Kiowas do not want to fight.'27 Henry had come a long way since fighting for the slave-owning South.

  As well as writing about the moral issues, he gave graphic descriptions of events such as the fate of a telegraph repairer after an Indian attack on a train. Blood and horror were expected by his readers.

  People came from all parts to view the gory baldness that had come upon him so suddenly. The man was evidently suffering tortures. He showed a gaping wound in the neck and a bullet hole in the muscle of his right arm. In a pail of water by his side, was his scalp, about nine inches in length and four in width, somewhat resembling a drowned rat, as it floated curled upon the water.-8

  Henry conducted some remarkably modern-sounding interviews. His approach to `Wild Bill' Hickok, the famous scout, was characteristically direct: "`I say, Mr Hickok, how many white men have you killed to your certain knowledge?" After a little deliberation, he replied, "I suppose I have killed considerably over a hundred."' From March through to z ii November 11867, when he wrote his last letter to the Democrat, his stories appeared every few days under the name 'Stanley', or simply `S'.

  But though Henry was a more mature and self-controlled person than the gun-toting young man who had threatened to shoot an army officer near Fort Laramie, he could still lose his temper if insulted. In Omaha, during July and August 11867, Henry fell in love with Annie Ward, a singer and actress. The editor of the Omaha Herald, F. M. MacDonough, known as `Little Mac', published an article making fun of Stanley's romance, because Annie had secretly married someone else, and was also being pursued by another journalist. Annie, it was said, preferred this other journalist to Stanley, who was making a fool of himself by attending all her performances. MacDonough claimed that Annie had kicked from the stage a bouquet given her by Stanley. Annie's few surviving letters to Henry are too pleasant to make this anecdote seem very likely. When `Little Mac' wrote a second article, in which he described Stanley as `a lying, loafing scamp', the insulted man went to the newspaper's office and kicked MacDonough into the street. The editor sued for assault, but though Stanley landed in jail for a few days, he was acquitted by a jury on the grounds that he had delivered `a justifiable chastisement'."

  The year 11867 was a crucial one for Stanley. During it, he not only came of age as a journalist, but the American frontier introduced him to a key concept of imperialism: that the populations of industrialized countries had a right to expand into undeveloped parts of the world. The American West was widely thought of as `a vast body of wealth without proprietors', presenting extraordinary opportunities to the federal government and to adventurous individuals.3° Large parts of Africa would soon be thought of in the same way. While Stanley dis approved of land theft, he sensed that he was witnessing an inevitable process that was operating worldwide. He felt `deep sympathy' for the Indian chiefs, but also believed: `it is useless to blame the white race for moving across the continent ... If we proceed in that manner we shall presently find ourselves blaming the Pilgrim Fathers for landing on Plymouth Rock.'3'

  For Stanley, a formative period was ending. Since 11864, a passionate desire to travel had never left him. In 1867 he gave to a journalist friend a collection of explorers' writings called The Footprints of Travellers." His fascination with Dr Livingstone (which he had confessed to Lewis Noe) persisted. And since no Midwestern newspaper was going to send him on an African assignment, Stanley made up his mind to see whether a New York paper might be willing to oblige. With a scrapbook full of his articles for the Missouri Democrat, and several pieces from the St Louis Republican and the Chicago Tribune, he now fancied his chances in the big league.33

  On 116 December 11867, showing extraordinary self-belief, Henry entered the offices of America's most famous newspaper. At this time, the New York Herald had the largest daily sale of any American newspaper, and its owner, James Gordon Bennett Jr, had one of the highest incomes in the land, placing him alongside Commodore Vanderbilt and William B. Astor. When Stanley stood face to face with this `fierce-
eyed and imperious-looking young man', they were both twenty-six years old. Their starts in life could hardly have been more different, yet Stanley was not cowed by this man with a million dollars a year, and a terrifying reputation. Bennett had a rich man's scorn for ordinary mortals, boasting: `all the brains I want can be picked up any day for twenty-five dollars per week.' Renowned for his brawling and whoring, he would shortly disgrace himself by urinating, when intoxicated, into a drawing room fireplace in his fiancee's New York residence. Far worse were his deliberate campaigns against his own staff. `I want you to remember,' he told an executive, `that I am the only reader of this paper. I am the only one to be pleased.' Men were sent scampering about the earth only to find themselves sacked on their return. Although this was known to Henry, so too was the fact that if a journalist succeeded at the Herald, a well-paid career was guaranteed - elsewhere, if not on the Herald.34

  Stanley had taken a great risk in resigning from the Missouri Democrat with $3,000 of savings, and coming to New York. Since an article had recently been published in The Times establishing that Dr Livingstone was not lost, but travelling purposefully to the west of Lake Tanganyika, Henry could not try to interest Gordon Bennett in his most brilliant idea. Fortunately, he could pitch another African news story. This was the punitive expedition that the British were about to mount against Theodore, Emperor of Ethiopia.