Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

  No record survives to identify these ladies, but during his week in the French capital, Stanley met two of King's favourite Americans: Eli Lemon Sheldon, a banker originally from Kansas, and his journalist wife, May French Sheldon, from a well-to-do southern family. The Sheldons divided their time between London, Paris and New York, always staying in the best hotels, or in service flats. When Stanley met Mrs Sheldon, she was a vivacious and broadminded woman of thirtyfour. Despite her husband's high income, May often worked as a freelance journalist. At present, she was translating Salammbo, Flaubert's erotic historical epic set in Carthage during its death throes. Mrs Sheldon would later write her own novels and run a publishing house. Her friends, who often stayed with her, were journalists, writers and musicians, like the well-known American soprano and concert promoter Emma Thursby, and the playwright Anna Dickinson.4

  Stanley had never met a modern woman like May. He was enchanted by her insistence on talking to him frankly, rather than with the feminine wiles of an Alice Pike. `After the first few minutes of strangeness have gone, she soon lets you know that chaff won't do.'' It was a revelation to find that conversations with women did not have to be limited to social trivia. He soon loved talking to the clever but down-to-earth Mrs Sheldon, whose mother had been a doctor and had passed on much medical knowledge to her.' May had travelled widely as a child, and her adventurous nature and cosmopolitan opinions appealed to Stanley as the reverse of the smug, stay-at-home insularity he had most detested about the Welsh and the English. Since Edward King was also a great traveller - and, like May, possessed many talents, as journalist, poet, novelist, and expert on all things Parisian - Stanley found his stay with his old friend the most enjoyable for years. All that changed on r z November.

  On that evening, which was scheduled to be his last in Paris, he dined with King and the Sheldons at the Hotel de Londres. His three friends were all very conscious of his imminent departure, and of the dangers awaiting him in Africa. During the meal, Stanley was wracked by stomach and chest pains so agonizing that he thought he was dying. Smelling salts were brought, and windows thrown open, before the sick man was helped from the room. A doctor was called, who gave him a morphine injection, having debated with May Sheldon whether his patient was suffering from a heart attack, contractions of the pyloric sphincter, or inflammation of the stomach walls. Stanley sus pected he had been poisoned by some fanatical admirer of de Brazza, or by a Dutch or Portuguese trader who hated the AIC. A month earlier he had received an anonymous threat of just that. Written in French, this odious note had been mailed from Amsterdam.7 But recalling the similarity of the pains he had suffered at Manyanga, he accepted his doctor's diagnosis of damage to his stomach's lining by quinine and other medicines. As the morphine took effect, Stanley announced to his friends that he meant to catch the Madrid express at eight that evening, as planned!

  His unshakeable determination to return to Africa, whatever the cost, shocked May Sheldon but also thrilled her. She was witnessing true heroism, she was sure. The following day she sent a note to Madrid, expressing her dismay that he had travelled without a doctor, and describing `the pain it causes your friends to know you suffer away from their tender care'. She also told him that because of his importance to Africa's development, he had `a solemn duty' to look after his health.' Edward King wrote saying he was as worried as Mrs Sheldon, and that they wanted him back in Paris." The public at large never appreciated the great bravery required to return again and again to Africa, especially when enduring the agony of acute gastritis. But Stanley's closest friends, who had just seen what his dedication cost him in terms of suffering, would be his passionate supporters for life. To modern eyes, Henry's insistence on returning when gravely ill seems to emphasize the danger-seeking, masochistic, component in his character. He himself would have argued that deteriorating conditions on the Congo made an early return imperative. His pain continued in the train, only being made tolerable by regular injections of morphine administered by his valet, Walter Illingworth. At sea it comforted him to think that if he lived to see Europe again, he would at least be able to confide in a sympathetic and worldlywise woman.

  On zo December 118 8 z, Stanley's steam launch edged up to the landing-place at Vivi, and he was informed that the two Germans, Otto Lindner and Dr Peschuel-Loesche, who had been chosen by Leopold to run this vitally important station had just quit their posts, leaving the place in chaos. Another royal appointment, Lieutenant Branconnier, the chief of Leopoldville Station, was holidaying at the coast. Meanwhile, the chief of Isangila had returned to Europe without permission; the En Avant's vital steam valve had been stolen by some wreckers and, for no known reason an engineer was working as a clerk at Vivi while two of the expedition's precious steamers were lying in pieces." Though enraged, Stanley concentrated on equipping Captain J. G. Elliott - one of the new intake of British officers - for his expedition to the Kwilu-Niadi basin, and succeeded in getting him on the road by 113 January with seventy Wangwana." He also despatched Lieutenant Hanssens from Manyanga towards the upper Niadi, and sent Lieutenant Van de Velde to take possession of the mouth of the Kwilu. By these three rapid moves, de Brazza would be separated from his `Makoko concessions' by an immense wedge of land.

  Meanwhile, Stanley marched for the Pool en route for the Upper Congo, arriving at Leopoldville on zi March. He was appalled to see grass and weeds growing on the paths, and not a single paw-paw in the gardens, just the fronds of scattered bananas and several acres of cassava. All the buildings were dilapidated, and when Stanley examined the stores he found only Boo or so brass rods, barely enough to buy food for the station's eleven Europeans and ziz Wangwana for three days. Branconnier had used almost his entire supply to buy ivory, flouting Stanley's cardinal rule to keep at least four months' rods in reserve. Branconnier had recently been obliged to beg food from the Baptist missionaries, who had hitherto owed their survival to Stanley's generosity with his resources. Even the goods Stanley had hoped to take to the Upper Congo for his new stations, including crockery, cutlery, pots and pans and trade goods, had been sold by Branconnier for food and ivory." Almost the last straw for Henry was to be told that a few days ago a young and totally inexperienced Austrian officer had been allowed to go out on the Congo in an overloaded canoe, in full dress uniform and helmet, without a word being said to stop him. Within an hour his canoe had capsized and he had drowned.14

  Stanley sacked Branconnier, and was promptly warned by him that Colonel Strauch had put a clause in his contract ruling out dismissal. Henry told Strauch exactly what he thought of Branconnier's disgraceful contract, and then wrote demanding of the king: `Do you not want me to succeed? Then recall me - that is certainly the easiest way - and one that would be readily obeyed at this juncture ... I would rather beg my bread than be a passive spectator of indolence and incapacity and of men coolly sitting down indifferent to this drama on the Congo."' The unfairness of Leopold's support for useless men like Branconnier was underlined for Stanley by the injustice of fate. Two recently arrived Belgians, to whom he had taken an immediate liking, Lieutenants Grang and Parfoury, had just died, while incompetent officers lived on. His good-natured valet, Walter Illingworth, also succumbed. `These sad deaths make one pause and ponder over the incertitude of life here. Youth is no protection, a brave and hopeful heart is no shield ... Death levels his dart and the youthful, the brave and the strong are gone from amongst us."6 As if this were not enough, another recently arrived officer, called Luksic, shot himself through the heart.'7

  The worst legacy of Branconnier's rule at Leopoldville was a deterioration of relations with surrounding chiefs." Stanley sent Dualla, his chief diplomat, to Kinshasa for five days in early April to try to repair the damage. In the same week, a young Englishman, Harry Hamilton Johnston, reappeared having been travelling on the Congo with Stanley's help since January. Before that, he had been exploring in Angola. Despite Stanley's uncertainties about the sex of this small, effeminately spoken, twenty-seven-yea
r-old, he was charmed by his intelligence - taking on trust, despite his lack of references, that Johnston really was employed by the Graphic as a journalist and artist, and had not been sent out by the British Foreign Office to spy on him. Later, Harry would prove that he was no Dick Heaton, as Stanley put it, by catching venereal disease from the whores of Vivi - for which delinquency the normally censorious Stanley forgave him at once, merely remarking that he now knew `why African travellers are so sternly virtu- ous'.19 His high opinion of Harry was not misplaced. The young man would turn out to be a dauntless traveller, and a future high-ranking British administrator in Africa.

  In late April 11883, after a spell upriver, Johnston arrived at Kinshasa in time to see Stanley `seated on his camp chair, his pipe in his mouth', conducting a negotiation with Chief Nchuvila and his heir, Bankwa. Johnston's account of this historic event confirms Stanley's peaceful mode of treaty-making. He described Stanley sitting `benignly chatting and smoking with native chiefs', and sensed `the great influence he possesses ... [which] tends towards peace wherever his fame has reached'. Johnston heard Bankwa argue against allowing Stanley to build a station for a young Belgian officer, Lieutenant Alphonse Vangele. `Today,' said Bankwa, `they will send one white man here, but next year twenty more will come, and because we have given land to one we must do so to all the others, and so, soon Kinshasa will belong to the white man as Kintamo [Leopoldville] does already.' Johnston conceded that there was a lot of truth in this, although Bankwa had made no allowance for `the material advantages that would accrue to the people of Kinshasa from the settlement of civilization in its midst'.

  In the end Stanley - who throughout had been `looking at his most chief-like with his resolute face and grey hair and sword of state at his side' - was `given permission to occupy land and build a station'. If sovereignty and the permanent surrender of land had ever been demanded, Johnston would have mentioned it, but he did not. Stanley's only objective was to plant a station that was accepted by all the local chiefs and villagers as being of advantage to them."O In fact, because of Bankwa's powerfully expressed objections, Stanley decided against concluding a treaty, and withdrew Vangele and his men. Kinshasa would not be occupied for the present. When a more propitious moment came to try again, he meant to give the sensitive job to his friend, Swinburne, whose understanding of Africans was unparalleled.

  British hostility to the International Association (as Leopold's AIC was generally known) had long distressed Stanley, and he saw Johnston's presence as an opportunity to influence British official opinion, since when the young man returned to England he would inevitably be summoned to the Foreign Office for a grilling. Stanley hated the Portuguese for their covert slave trading, and was dismayed that Britain favoured Portugal as the future custodian of the Congo and denigrated the AIC. Soon after Johnston left the Congo, Stanley wrote warning him that a renewal of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance would `deliver these people [on the Congo] into the hands of the Portuguese ... soul and body to Hell and slavery. To avoid the imputation of being false and faithless [Johnston should urge Britain] ... to proclaim a Protectorate over the Congo ... You can write, and that well. Set to work."'

  Unfortunately for Stanley, Johnston did not represent these views as his own when disseminating them, as Stanley had intended, but made Henry's letter public in Britain in a way that disastrously eroded Leopold's confidence in his Chief Agent. The French would now be more convinced than ever that Stanley's true aim was to create a British colony on the Congo. Stanley's letter to Johnston had, in reality, only been aimed at getting the British government to see that the AIC was a better bulwark against the French than was Portugal. Leopold did not see it that way, and coming after the events in Paris, this letter to Harry Johnston confirmed his suspicion that Stanley was becoming a liability.

  Sadly for Stanley, Johnston had arrived on the Congo at the very time when Vivi and Leopoldville had been in chaos, which persuaded the young traveller to tell the Foreign Office that the AIC lacked the ability to administer the Congo, confirming FO officials in their preference for Portugal.22 Harry Johnston's behaviour saddened Stanley since he felt they might otherwise have become close friends. `It is about time I stopped in my search for the perfect man,' he confided in a revealing letter, after confessing that almost everyone he had ever trusted `had ventured to say something unkind the minute I turned my back ... Yet deep down within me lay the sympathy which I would have freely shown had it been solicited."3

  Henry was back at Stanley Pool from Bolobo, early in July, when he learned, as he told Strauch on 8 July, that `Kinshasa [Chief Nchuvila] had finally succumbed & signed the treaty and we are now in possession of the long desired land'.14 Stanley had been absent when this important treaty was signed, and the negotiation had been conducted by E. Massey Stewart, one of Sir Frederick Goldsmid's negotiators. A copy of it (though not the original) is preserved in the archives of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The chiefs pledged themselves `to remain under the patronage and protection of the Comite d'Etudes du Haut Congo, and to adopt the flag of the Comite as a sign to all men that we are allies and friends for ever with the employees and friends of the Comite'; also, `no stranger, European or African shall obtain any privilege to build, sow, plant, cut timber or grass in our district from us.' Sovereignty was not demanded and no traders were barred, except they could not build or settle on this particular ground, or claim it. This treaty of `patronage and protection' would have met with Stanley's approval, since it did not remove power from the chiefs or take their land. 2.5

  On 116 July, Stanley sent Swinburne with seven Haussas (Africans from the Gold Coast) to Kinshasa, convinced that Dualla was right in thinking that the gentle Swinburne would win everyone over because he would `smile even though he was about to be cut up to little pieces'. Dualla's comical tone should not mislead one into underestimating the risk Swinburne ran of being murdered, when agreeing to go and live at Kinshasa with the volatile Bankwa.26 But where Branconnier, Valcke and Vangele had failed, Swinburne would not. The importance of the Kinshasa Treaty lay in the fact that de Brazza had just returned to Africa with twelve fields guns, twenty-seven French sailors from Algeria, and numerous muskets for a native militia. Yet because he first chose to dispute possession of the Kwilu-Niadi basin with Elliott, who had already established an unassailable advantage there, Stanley was given time to win the race on the Upper Congo. Even so, he distributed twelve Krupp guns among his various stations .17

  In September Stanley transported a new arrival, Edward Glave, to Lukolela on the Upper Congo, where this tall, strong nineteen-yearold was to be station chief. Coming from a large and impoverished Yorkshire family, recently removed to north London, where he had been a warehouseman, Edward was exactly the type Stanley liked best: the determined youth from a disadvantaged background - not unlike Swinburne, or the Danish sailor Christophersen, or himself, of course. Glave had been captivated by the map of Africa in his boyhood classroom, with the estuaries marked boldly, but the rivers 'dribbling away in lines of hesitating dots'. Direct experience of the dots did nothing to lessen his enthusiasm." Stanley was soon declaring: `I rather like this young fellow. He is very intelligent, speaks well & writes a good letter & gives straightforward manly answers.'29 Ten years later, only Glave's early death would prevent him from becoming an ideal grown-up son to his former boss. The two men travelled together on the steamer En Avant in September 11883, and Glave has left a vivid portrait of their trip. In the evening when they camped on the bank, and the Wangwana were cutting wood for the next day's fuel, Stanley would talk about earlier journeys.

  I remember [wrote Glave] - one particular occasion, when the rising moon threw long ripples across the purple waters of the Congo - Stanley, dressed in his campaigning costume of brown jacket and knickerbockers, with his broad-crowned peak cap pushed off his forehead, seated on a log, smoking his briar pipe by the camp-fire whose ruddy flames lighted up the characteristic lines of that manly face ... The top of his l
ittle cabin formed his writing table ... and his quarters were so full with bales of cloth, scientific instruments, paper, arms, and ammunition ... that there was only just room to crawl into his bunk ...

  The crew slept ashore on mats by the fire where they cooked for themselves. Breakfast for all was baked manioc root and tea, with stewed goat or fowl and rice for lunch and dinner. `Stanley stood aft and directed the steering ... we were generally under steam about nine hours a day, as we could not carry wood for much more than that time.' At every village, dug-outs would be launched and amazement shown as the paddlers approached the `buata-meyar', or fire canoe. Drums were beaten, alerting other villages to this unusual event. Yet Stanley's earlier visits and palavers meant there was no hostility. At Glave's village of Lukolela, the medicine man had put it about that the white man who was coming to live with them was `a hideous form of life, half lion, half buffalo, and was possessed of the blood-thirsty habit of slaughtering and devouring human beings'. A council of head men approached Stanley and asked very seriously whether he had such a creature on board. As a fever-stricken Glave staggered on deck `the whole crowd broke out into roars of good humoured laughter'. When Stanley returned to Lukolela four months later, Glave had built a house, set up huts for his workers, and planted vegetables. He had also made his own furniture, and become an excellent shot. Best of all, he was on very good terms with the local people.3° This immensely resourceful man had given Stanley a glimpse of his own adventurous younger self. Sadly, the pleasure of this meeting was succeeded by a nightmare.

  Stanley's orders were to head upriver, with three steamers, past Equatorville - his most easterly station, 4 112 miles above Stanley Pool, and then steam on for a further boo miles to Stanley Falls. His aim was to make `verbal treaties with the more populous settlements on either bank' and to found a station at the Falls, as commanded by Leopold.31 Two hundred miles from Stanley Falls, he decided to explore a major tributary, the Aruwimi, where he learned from the Soko tribe that Sudanese slave traders had come down this river with guns and, after killing a number of people, taken away many women and children.32