by Tim Jeal
He has, I should say, a rich vein of tenderness underlying the surface of will and masterfulness, I see it when he talks of little children, of poor unhappy slaves, and of any helpless oppressed beings. His admiration of nature, his keen sense of the dramatic, gives a richness, warmth and depth to his nature, which people would not read in him at first.46
In mid-February, Dolly was disappointed to find that Henry did not share her literary tastes. She had sent him two of her favourite books: Henry James's Daisy Miller and Mrs Gaskell's Cranford. In some ways Daisy, the rich young American girl, with her European hotel life, her naivety and her passion for dating, was not unlike Alice Pike. But, despite this, her fate did not interest Henry, any more than did Mrs Gaskell's small-town lives. Stanley expressed his dislike of both books with withering honesty. In fairness, male admirers of Cranford have never been numerous, and Dolly would have been wiser to have tried something by Balzac, or by her mother's beloved Flaubert. (Indeed, Henry loved Flaubert's Salammbo when he read it in May Sheldon's translation.) 47
Now, Stanley fell ill with intermittent fever and was in bed for several weeks. Visiting him in his flat, Dolly `felt so sorry to see the ebullient, strong, courageous Stanley gentle and helpless as a little child'.48 Henry's doctors insisted that he spend three months in the south of France recuperating. So at the beginning of March, he set out for Nice, escorted by Mackinnon, who was distraught about him. A relapse on the train forced a return to London and a deferment of departure. Henry did not tell Dorothy how ill he was, but to May Sheldon he confessed he was suffering not only from gastritis, but from `bad African fever' too. `Whether sea air, exercise, quinine &c will ever give me another lease of life I don't know.'49 His recovery came more swiftly than he had expected.
When he reached Nice, Stanley received a telegram from William Hoffman - the young German who had been his manservant for six months - telling him that his mother, Elizabeth Jones, had died the day before, in Bodelwyddan. He had last seen her exactly two years earlier, after a much longer gap. To stop any journalist tracking him down and asking awkward questions, Stanley instructed Hoffman to say nothing to anyone except that his master was somewhere in France, and that he had no idea when he would return. He wrote out the words of a telegram that Hoffman was to send to John Owen, his favourite cousin. `Am directed to say your friend is exceedingly grieved to hear of the death telegraphed ... Had a slight relapse from fatigue of travel. Hoffman.'5° At least he would not now need to hide his only living parent from Dolly.
It was early April when Dolly wrote again, and her friend Mr Gladstone was once more in ro, Downing Street, after a General Election victory.'' She told Stanley that although `a Liberal to the very core', she was starting to turn against Home Rule for Ireland, and had been discussing matters with Mr Chamberlain. By the time Stanley replied, he was in Rome. Despite Dorothy's reservations about Home Rule, he penned a furious attack on Gladstone for trading on his record as a great reformer in order to sell his `treacherous' policy to the people. Having battered the Grand Old Man for four pages, he added a dull Roman travelogue. Given Dolly's personal fondness for Gladstone, Henry had been very unwise to mount a personal attack. She replied more in sorrow than in anger.
Gladstone's achievements, his experience, and his age, entitle him to our very great respect; you deny him title to that respect when you venture to say he is only thinking of himself, and thereby imply that he would imperil the country from sentiments of the most abject vanity ... Gladstone I know is possessed with a deep, fervent, religious conviction that what he proposes for Ireland is just and right.'-"
If ever there was a letter that should not have been argued with, this was it. Yet Stanley replied from Paris with four densely written pages of self-justification. Dorothy must have found his terrier-like desire to win a dispute that should never have started deeply disturbing.53
William Mackinnon came over to Paris to talk to Henry about the state of negotiations for the Congo railway concession, and to plan tactics for a projected meeting with Leopold. Stanley mentioned his anxieties about Dolly to his friend, and this was probably why the tycoon decided to ask the Tennants to come on a summer cruise of the Hebrides, which he was planning for sixty guests on one of his ships.54 On his return to London, Henry's invitations to Richmond Terrace were less frequent than before, but in late July he was going to be with Dolly for ten whole days on board ship. Surely this would be long enough to repair their recent differences?
Neither Henry nor Dolly ever wrote about the cruise, but for Stanley it must have lived up to expectations, since two weeks after it ended, on 16 August 1886, he wrote a letter of proposal. He had arrived, he told Dolly, at a point when almost for his sanity's sake he needed to know her feelings toward him.
You have dropped phrases in my hearing which have induced me to think that possibly I did not love in vain; if I had misconstrued them the punishment is mine ... It is one of the charms of your manner that one departs from your presence with the idea that only he, and he alone, is to be addressed thus ... [For] one like myself, ignorant and unacquainted with these captivating arts, and doubtful of their real meaning, this wonderfully gracious, beaming manner you have, has often sent me home half demented. Nevertheless ... I restrained myself, lest by giving expression to the ardour that possessed me, I should ... give offence to one I had learned to esteem, admire and love with all my heart and soul ... Thus I went to you and came away, visit after visit, always perplexing and doubting ...
One reason for his doubting, he explained, was her wealth and social position.
You are in need of nothing. I cannot advantage you in anything, therein I am poor, helpless, trembling. I am only rich in love of you, filled with admiration for your royal beauty ... Nevertheless bear without offence this declaration of mine, and tell me honestly, candidly, to put an end to this exasperating doubt of mine .... I have no other remedy than to appeal to you for the simple `yes' or `no' ...
Henry told her that he might any day be sent by King Leopold to the Upper Congo.
Should he do so, you can imagine my torments while in this state of suspense regarding the wish of my heart. In the ordinary sense of the word I am not rich, but I have sufficient to satisfy moderate tastes, without making further effort. Labour, however, is healthful and pleasant ... If my love is unacceptable to you, merely close this letter in another envelope and return it to me. But if, as I dare scarcely hope, you have penetrated my secret passion before now and have already weighed your answer to me, I pray you delay not the blessed word which will make me the happiest man in all the world ... Yours most devotedly, Henry M. Stanley.55
Given his previous disappointments, it would have been strange if Stanley had written a short and self-confident appeal. Though touchingly honest, as when he described returning home `half demented', and as being `poor, helpless, trembling', the letter's weakness lay in its author's failure to tackle any of his and Dolly's more obvious differences: in age, artistic taste, social habits, political inclination, and attitudes to nature and urban living. Nor did Stanley make any attempt to say whether he wanted to go back to Africa - and if so, for how long. But even if he had done, probably she would have turned him down. Her letter of rejection has not survived, though he would later describe it as being written with `ruthless cruelty'. His humble background seems to have played a part.
I saw in my imagination you standing indignant, outraged at the "base born churl" etc., daring to approach your queenliness with such preposterous protestations etc. I seemed to hear your storm of reproaches for my audacity and insolence etc. that I shrank into nothingness before you and the devout love was crushed, just as a rose flower too violently clutched would lose its brightness.s6
Whether Dolly had ever loved Stanley is very hard to say. Maybe the necessary physical attraction was simply not there for her, and this turned out to be more important than whether or not he meant to return to Africa, or what kind of books he liked. Blood-shot eyes, short, thick
legs and an awkward physical manner could have been Stanley's undoing, rather than his humble background. And yet she had admired the manliness of his chin and lips, and the powerful shape of his head. At the age of thirty - with other men still interested - she was not yet desperate enough to feel she must marry the best of the men currently available. Clearly she had given Stanley misleading signs - very likely because of her addiction to exceptional men. She confessed to this trait in her diary: `The fact is many people, gifted, remarkable, original people intoxicate me. I feel a kind of exaltation in their company, and I feel compelled to expand and glow and roar like a furnace when the blast is applied; I forget myself completely and delight to be rid of myself.' In such exaltation, Dolly had treated Stanley with an enthusiasm that had sent him home `half demented'.57
Stanley told her that, if she refused him, her rejection would send him `away to exile once more'. A month before meeting Dolly in late July 11885, Stanley had written a bitter letter to Henry Sanford lamenting the king's inconsiderate failure to send him back to Africa. If no one but a Belgian could be appointed Governor-General, that was fine by him, he told Sanford. All the king needed to do was tell him the truth and he could resign and do other things. Similarly, there would be no problem over the railway if he and Mackinnon were simply treated with honesty." But during his wooing of Dorothy, his pleas to courtiers like Sanford, and to the king himself, had all but ceased. Now, just days after being rejected, Stanley wrote to `General' Sanford for the first time in a year.
His letter pulses with his desperation to be sent back to Africa as soon as possible. This time, he said, he did not expect to be GovernorGeneral, but merely `to supervise and develop the Upper Congo ... assuming command over all river & land routes'. Failing this, he suggested, could not `His Majesty utilise my services by giving me an exploring mission ... Possibly something advantageous to the state could be found - at least the boundaries north, north east & east could be located.'S9 As if knowing that nothing would come of this approach, a mere five days later Stanley signed up with Major James B. Pond - America's most famous lecture agent, whom he had met ear her that summer - promising to visit the US at the end of November for two months, giving six lectures a week up to a total of fifty." These would begin on 27 November, after he had first delivered thirty-three similar talks in England and Wales. He would cover the Livingstone expedition, the charting of the Congo, and the foundation of the Congo Free State. Thus Stanley began his fightback against misery and humiliation, ending what he called `my long imprisonment in my London rooms'.`
Dorothy's rejection of him made the blow he suffered on i z September seem even worse. On that day he learned that Leopold had decided to give the railway concession not to his and Mackinnon's syndicate, but to a more recently formed Belgian one. After all the encouragement the king had given him, Henry could hardly believe it." To have been able to take charge of all operations connected with this vital railway would have been some compensation for other disappointments. But now this too would be in other hands. Stanley wrote bitterly to Mackinnon:
I have been living, ever since my book left my hands last year, in a fool's paradise. That woman entrapped me with her gush, & her fulsome adulations, her knickknacks inscribed with a `Remember me,' her sweet scented notes written with a certain literary touch ... On leaving her presence, I was buoyed up with some letter or despatch from Brussels which kept me on the stretch of anticipation always. `We do not know exactly when we shall need you, but we shall let you know, my dear Mr Stanley,' so I lived, constantly happy, hoping ... Nearly 16 months of my life have been lost through these artful people. You can imagine then what cause I have to remember your kindness which looms up through this period more brightly since it is the only brightness in an otherwise gloomy time.;
True to form, it would be William Mackinnon, who would put to him, a mere six weeks later, a proposition that would send him back to Africa in a blaze of publicity, ultimately winning him greater fame than any he had known, yet also - through no fault of his honorary father - causing him the greatest distress of his life.
TWENTY-TWO
Why rescue Emin Pasha?
Emin Pasha
In July 11884, six months before General Gordon met his violent end at Khartoum, Stanley had accurately predicted that the British government's decision to send the general back to the Sudan would end in tragedy.' It would have amazed him, at the time of his prescient warning, if he had been told that Gordon - whom he had mistrusted in life - would in death provide him with a life-changing challenge. But when Gordon declined to evacuate the British and Egyptian garrisons from Sudan, as ordered, and was speared to death as a result of defending Khartoum instead, his downfall created a crisis far to the south that did indeed change Henry's life.
On z9 October, Charles Allen, the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, published a letter in The Times, which he had received the day before from Emin Pasha, the last of Gordon's provincial governors still alive and at liberty. Emin, it seemed, was maintaining some sort of government in Sudan's southernmost province of Equatoria, despite the steady encroachment of the fundamentalists from the north. The Pasha's letter was dated 3 r December 118 8 5 - eleven months after Cordon's death.
Ever since the month of May, 1883 [wrote Emin] we have been cut off from all communication with the world. Forgotten and abandoned by the [Egyptian] government, we have been compelled to make a virtue of necessity ... I do not know how to describe to you the admirable devotion of my black troops throughout a long war .... Deprived of the most necessary things, for a long time without any pay, my men fought valiantly, and when at last hunger weakened them, when, after nineteen days of incredible privation and sufferings, their strength was exhausted, and when the last torn leather of the last boot had been eaten, then they cut a way through the midst of their enemies and succeeded in saving themselves .2
In a similar letter, this time to his friend Dr R.W. Felkin, an Edinburgh doctor and former missionary, and published in The Scotsman on 6 November 11886, Emin declared that, although betrayed by the Egyptian and British governments, he intended `to hold this country as long as possible'.'
Leading articles appeared in British newspapers insisting that a relief expedition be sent to save him. Lord Wolseley had arrived too late to relieve Gordon, and now a howl went up lest the same fate should befall brave Emin Pasha - though who Emin was, and whether his administration in Equatoria had ever been effective, were not matters examined in the press.4
So who was Emin Pasha? Stanley - like the public at large - had no idea that the Pasha was no dauntless Briton, but had been born Eduard Schnitzer, to Lutheran parents in the Prussian province of Silesia. In 11864, aged twenty-four, this bearded and bespectacled German had qualified as a doctor in Berlin, but having failed on a bureaucratic technicality to be granted a government licence to practise, he settled in Albania - then a Turkish province - where he set up as a doctor. A brilliant linguist, he soon added Albanian and Turkish to the five other languages he already spoke. He was a first-rate pianist and chess player, and also excelled as a botanist and ornithologist. In 11 870 Emin joined the staff of Ismail Hakki Pasha, Governor of northern Albania, and served with him till his death three years later. During this time he had an affair with the Pasha's wife, and after she became a widow lived with her as if she were his own spouse. In 11875, he ran out of money and took Madame Hakki, her four children, and six slave girls to stay with his parents in Germany. While there - realizing he could not support ten people indefinitely - he abandoned Madame Hakki, and fled the country. He would not contact his family again for fourteen years.
In December 1187 5, Emin arrived in Khartoum, where he set up in practice once more. This was how General Gordon - the GovernorGeneral of the Sudan - came to employ him as a provincial medical officer. By this time Emin was using a Turkish name and represented himself as an Arab by birth. All this was part of a conscious effort to distance himself from Germany, the nation he felt had
rejected him. In 11878, Gordon appointed Emin his Governor of Equatoria. This, then, was the unknown history of the extraordinary person, whom the British press now demanded should be rescued.
And what was the threat he was thought to be facing in 11886? Five years earlier, Muhammad Ahmad, the son of a boat builder from Dongola in the northern Sudan, had declared himself the Mahdi (the Expected One) and launched a jihad against the Khedive of Egypt and all his Turkish and Egyptian soldiers in the Sudan. When Britain became the de facto governing power in Egypt in 1188z, her servants also became candidates for holy slaughter by the Mahdi's rapidly growing army. In November 11883, 11z,ooo Egyptian soldiers were massacred by the Mahdi's force at Kordofan. Darfur and Bahr-alGhazal were overrun next. Then, in January 11885, Khartoum itself had followed, leaving Emin as the Khedive's only functioning representative in Sudan. In the deep south of Equatoria, close to Buganda, the Islamic faith was less entrenched, so Emin felt that by moving towards Lake Albert he might yet place himself beyond the Mahdi's reach.' In this new region, the main line of communication with the outside world was not up the Nile, but eastwards to Zanzibar. This was the supply line used by missionaries in Buganda. Their inspira tional Scottish leader, Alexander Mackay, now became Emin's friend and adviser.'
