Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

  The most disconcerting part of the tour for Stanley was his arrival with his affluent wife at New Orleans, where he had disembarked three decades earlier literally without a cent. On z9 March he wrote in his diary: `Drove to ... St Charles Hotel. Took walk in afternoon with Dolly to Tchoupitoulas St then to Levee. Gazed across the full river ..." James Speake's grocery store, where he had worked, was in Tchoupitoulas Street. Three and a half months before his arrival with Dolly in New Orleans, a piece had appeared in the best-known local paper, the Daily Picayune, linking, for the first time, the rather vaguely described Mr Henry Stanley of New Orleans (long claimed by the explorer as his adoptive father) with an actual and identifiable Henry Stanley, who had lived and worked in the city as a cotton broker. The Picayune's journalist had taken, as his basis for John Rowland's adoption, the account printed in John Hotten's book and had named, as his adopter, Henry Hope Stanley, the only Henry Stanley listed as a cotton broker in the trade directories for the late 1185os and early 1186os. Faced with this actual man and his family, Stanley would never confirm, verbally or in print, that Henry Hope was indeed his Henry Stanley. He knew from the Daily Picayune that Henry Hope was dead, but had to assume that some of his relatives would still be alive.9 So he refused to give interviews in New Orleans, or to talk to anyone whom he had known thirty years earlier. Such people would have been able to recall that he had still been calling himself Rowlands, or Rollins, until the day he actually left New Orleans.'°

  Shortly after the special Pullman car steamed out of New Orleans in March 1891, an old acquaintance gave an interview to another local paper, the Daily States, providing information proving beyond doubt that she had known John Rowlands in the 186os. She said she had recently called at the St Charles Hotel, and had been left waiting for two hours without being permitted to see Mr Stanley." It must have distressed Henry to feel compelled to hide in his room and humiliate this woman. But he could not endure the possibility that his invented adoption - which was currently being presented as a fact in several new biographies - might be exposed as a lie. His right to use the very name he now shared with his wife seemed to depend upon his ability to protect the thirty-year-old fiction. This visit to New Orleans convinced him that, to make possible the autobiography he wanted to write, he would need to return and do enough research to find a suitable Stanley family to claim as his adopters. Ideally, there should be no living family members around to challenge his `recollections'.

  Dolly and Henry returned to England on 23 April 1891, and immediately found themselves seriously at loggerheads over whether he should return to Africa. In early March 1891, Alexander Bruce - Agnes Livingstone's husband and one of Mackinnon's directors - had told Stanley that he would shortly be recommending the Board of the Imperial British East Africa Company to offer him the job of Chief Administrator, if he now felt ready to accept the post."Z Stanley replied confidently that he was ready: `I can keep the whole of East Africa in order from Uganda to the sea.' His experience on the Congo, he went on, made him the ideal man for the job. All that was needed was that the directors tell him his duties without delay." When Mackinnon heard that Stanley would after all work for him, he was delighted and wrote to Bruce about `the extreme desirability of having him [Stanley] for East Africa'.14

  On 27 April, Bruce told Stanley: `I have heard from Mackinnon, who says if you can go to East Africa, he is prepared to give you a perfectly free hand on the lines laid down in your letter to me."5 This, then, was the great moment for which Stanley had waited. Against all odds, the offer he had rejected in the previous October had been repeated at a more propitious time. But when he tried to persuade Dorothy, he found her as opposed as she had been six months earlier. Everyone in the family was aware of how heartbroken she felt. Yet not everyone thought her right to try to force her husband to refuse. Frederick Myers told his wife, Evie, that though he `deeply sympathized with Dolly ... There would not really have been happiness for Stanley in simply being fattened up in RT [Richmond Terrace]. Let him have a few more years of work & duty & fame!"6 But now that the crisis had come, Dolly was determined not to give in. On 11z June, she asked Stanley what answer he had given Sir William, and told him that the company's managing director, George Mackenzie, had come, uninvited, to Richmond Terrace in his absence, asking where he was: `They all make me shiver [George Mackenzie and Sir William Mackinnon]; they are like the harpies described in Virgil, who wheel about over the sea and claw the unhappy sailor to his doom ... but never mind I have you - you are mine."'

  Just at this time, King Leopold declared, with lamentable timing, that he wanted Stanley to go back to Africa. Henry feared that because of the annual retainer paid to him he might have to serve eighteen months on the Congo to escape Leopold's clutches before being able to work for Mackinnon, as he wished to do. Dorothy thought the Congo a worse threat even than East Africa. `Africa haunts me,' she lamented:

  it is so easy for others to advise and spur you on ... Can I say `go' when Zo days away from you seems intolerably long? ... Sometimes I think that you have too much unused energy in you yet - that Africa might appease your spirit - Oh God knows, I cannot say - it seems so terrible to say any word like `go', when I shall want to unsay it tomorrow.' 8

  In America, Dolly had come to the conclusion that, though Henry loved her, he was still utterly `self-sufficient' and that she was `not necessary to him'. So despite her initial success in thwarting Mackinnon, she believed she would remain vulnerable unless she could conceive.

  Oh if only the sweet solution of a child might come - then he would stay and feel the tie, but without a child I am the incomplete wife for him. He would not want anything if he had a child. That would completely & fully satisfy him ... He longs, longs for a child .... [But if he returned to Africa] how remote, how lessened our chances of a child [would be]...'9

  Only a week after returning to England, Stanley began two months of lecturing in Britain - which he had been coerced into by a lecture agent with whom he was in dispute. Dorothy could see looming, at the end of this tour, an Australian lecture series, which was already orga nized and threatened to keep them apart for six months. If Stanley decided to leave for Africa after that, how would they ever produce the child they both longed for? At thirty-six, she might not have many years of fertility left.2O Because she missed Henry, and wanted to be impregnated, Dolly could not `resist rushing off to him for a day or so every week' during his tour. `In this way I joined him at Hull ... Sheffield & Bradford.' Meanwhile the London season had started, and soon after a grand Foreign Office party, Dorothy felt herself on the verge of a breakdown. `After so much travelling I needed complete rest,' she wrote in her diary.21 She was also coping with the terror that if she could not become pregnant, Stanley would inevitably return to Africa.

  During the first week of May she had a minor gynaecological operation, and was told that it had gone successfully.22 Later in May, she again consulted her gynaecologist, Dr William Littleton Webber, who advised her to stay for the whole of June in a clinic at Kissingen, Bavaria, where, through a regime of relaxation, gentle exercise, and avoidance of anxiety, she would make it more likely that her `Great Expectation and deep desire' (as she called it) would come to pass. It was already planned that Stanley should join her in Switzerland in July. She wrote telling him about her plan, and how the doctor believed their efforts to have a child would be crowned with success. From Glasgow, where he was lecturing, Henry wrote sensibly urging her not to pin all her hopes for future happiness on this one objective: `I quite realise the depth & truth of your love and I respond to it with heart & soul ... But we are not always able to govern ourselves, or the circumstances which surround us. We can only strive & hope, and love on, even if every effort is thwarted."' At intervals while she was at Kissingen, Stanley wrote imploring her to abide by Webber's advice and above all to stop worrying. Yet this was difficult, since the separation was alarming her lest he soon stop missing her. `Oh, my dearest,' he replied, `there is no fear, no shadow o
f a possibility of lessening of love ... It is hard to be separated ... but we must abide by the physician's advice.'24

  Henry was torn in opposing directions by his desire to go back to Africa, and his longing for a child. If he accepted Mackinnon's offer, it might mean he would never get Dorothy pregnant. He therefore hoped to manage it in Switzerland, where she would be joining him for three weeks after leaving Kissingen. Stanley arrived on 9 July at the mountain village of Murren with its spectacular views across the valley to the rock faces of the snow-covered Eiger and Jungfrau. Although he was delighted to be with Dolly again, Africa had not left his thoughts. Indeed, he had just been staying with Mackinnon in Scotland discussing his return there." Perhaps after he impregnated Dorothy, she would not mind him going to Africa for a year, say. A lot would depend upon their lovemaking during this brief holiday. The resort was at a higher altitude than he liked, and almost at once he caught a chill, which was not a good start for a man with health problems. But the Kissingen rest cure appeared to have done wonders for his wife. He wrote happily in his diary that `the real honeymoon, so long deferred through illness & lecture tours, has come'.z6 In the day they walked amidst majestic scenery, and in the evening went early to bed.

  After a few days, they were joined by Dolly's sister, Evie, and her eldest son, nine-year-old Leo, with whom Stanley enjoyed snowballing and whom he taught how to throw spears.27 Evie was intrigued by Stanley, viewing him with a critical and supercilious eye. `He is quaint and so strange ... such a mixture of force & weakness, consistency and inconsistency, manliness & childishness ... He has been reading "The Tragic Muse"... Oh, such high flown trash ... and can't read Henry James's clever story, calls it words!' When Evie defended James, `there was a look of disgust on his [Stanley's] face, "Oh! that is your narrow Cambridge want of sentiment & feeling."' `He won't even listen,' complained Evie; `perhaps this doggedness makes him achieve things.'2' In fact Stanley often read intellectually challenging books, and had recently enjoyed a life of Macaulay, and had written to Dolly a withering criticism of Sir Alfred Lyall's `colourless' Warren Hastings." Fred Myers, Evie's intellectual husband, admired Henry, and hoped Leo would `learn much from him ... & get a notion of a hero'.3° However, it surprised Fred when Stanley advised Evie against sending Leo to a tough boarding school. `The happy days of childhood are flying fast,' warned Henry, `& the holidays are so brief & few, and home pictures are so dear when we grow up.'3'

  A reporter - Aubrey Stanhope of the New York Herald - appeared one day in Murren, and came to the Grand Hotel des Alpes, asking for Mr and Mrs Stanley. Once summoned to the couple's sitting room, he announced that he was investigating rumours that the Stanleys had been living apart. Henry refused to discuss his private life, but wrote out a statement denying that there had ever been a separation. He ended: `Our life is one of ever increasing, pure & unalloyed happiness.' Dolly penned a statement attacking `this shameful fabrica- tion'.32 This example of how hard it was for them to escape attention was not the couple's only misfortune in Switzerland.

  An abscess swelled up in Dolly's mouth, distorting her whole face, and becoming so painful that she had to be given morphine injec- tions.33 Then, on an ill-starred morning, a light-hearted Stanley chased after his recently recovered wife, and `affected to wrestle' with her.34 Evie was watching them `frolicking' when, to her dismay, Stanley `slipped & fell heavily, rolling backwards with Dolly on him - he groaning and crying out ... Our terror was lest his spine was injured.' While Dolly cradled her husband's head in her lap, Evie and Leo ran for help.3S Dr Hugh Playfair of King's College, London, who happened to be holidaying in Miirren, appeared with Evie several hours later and diagnosed a break in the left fibula just above the dislocated ankle. Later that day, when Henry had been carried back to the hotel, Playfair and another English doctor reset the leg and strapped it to a board.36 Stanley wrote sadly to his friend Alexander Bruce: `I might have avoided the accident had I remembered I was "stern faced, sombre tempered Stanley"... but in a moment of true joy & innocent delight, I fell and broke my leg and ruptured the ligaments of the ankle. The moral of this is do not give way to friskiness.'37

  Dolly was mortified to have fallen across Stanley's leg, causing the break. It seemed absurd that a man who had not broken as much as a finger in all his years in Africa should have been injured by a tumble in a quiet Alpine meadow. Fearing that the accident would be thought comical and undignified, Dolly wrote to May Sheldon - confident that she would sell her improved version of the story to plenty of newspapers - telling her that Stanley had swung round and slipped when teaching Leo how to throw spears `like a native'. This invention would appear in many newspapers, and even in several biographies."

  For Henry and Dorothy, the incident did more than spoil their holiday. It made it even harder for him to accept Mackinnon's offer, since he could not guarantee a return to full mobility. It also set back his and Dolly's hopes of starting a baby. With his leg encased in plaster, lovemaking - though not impossible - was hampered for weeks, and Henry could not expect to be mobile much before his departure for Australia. Dolly now persuaded him that whatever he might decide to do about Africa in 1892, `we should go together to Australia ... those four months may give us our Heart's Desire - and I shall be with you. That is the great, the principle [sic] thing'.39

  But if no child was conceived, and Stanley still yearned for Africa, what then?

  THIRTY-ONE

  An End to `Noble Objects'

  During Stanley's Antipodean tour, his ship was steaming towards Wellington, New Zealand, when he chanced to meet his old friend William Webb of Newstead Abbey in the smoking room. Webb was travelling with two of his still unmarried daughters, Geraldine and Ethel - the first of whom Stanley had once hoped might be interested in him. He had not seen any of the Webbs since the mid-r88os, and though he knew that Emilia had died in 11889, he had not realized until now that the family had also lost a daughter through illness and their eldest son by his own hand. Years ago Henry had thought the Webbs `one of the happiest [families] in a land full of happy hours'. Meeting them at this low point was a salutary reminder of the vulnerability of everyone and the shortness of life.' At Henry's age, he could expect few second chances. If he returned to Africa it would have to be soon. If not, what else might he do while getting older, with no child to love?

  He was still keen to write his autobiography. But a chance meeting in Australia with the widow and children of David Owen, one of his first cousins, was a straw in the wind telling him just how hard it was going to be to be honest about his life. Because he had been pursued by journalists during this tour, he felt unable to entertain his relatives openly, or even to admit who they were. He felt ashamed of himself, but still could not greet them properly, or even share his memories of working on their family's farm. `Poor cousins,' wrote Stanley in his diary. `I stretch my hands to you all the same, and were we anywhere beyond reach of newspapers my heart would go out to you with all affection.'Z

  In Australia, Dolly confessed to Henry her keen ambition for him to become a Liberal-Unionist MP. Dolly's principal motive was transpar ent. `At the back of my mind was the haunting fear of his returning to the Congo. I thought that, once in Parliament, he would be safely anchored.' (In the preceding October, King Leopold had mentioned that he might have `a big task' for Henry in Africa after he returned from Australia. And although Stanley had not taken this very seriously, Dorothy had been acutely worried.) Knowing that he hated dining out and was very reluctant to join her circle, she also hoped that once in the Commons he would meet influential men and develop a social life of his own.' Though non-committal, Henry himself was not entirely discouraging. At this moment, his prospects struck him as unpromising. His accident the previous summer had stopped him clinching a firm agreement with Mackinnon involving a date for his return to Africa, and since then the tycoon had not renewed the offer. So on 25 April 189 2, a week after returning to England, Dorothy felt safe to ask Alexander Bruce to name some parliamentary
seats that `Stanley could fight with some chance of winning'.4

  For many people whose spouses (of either sex) are determined to have their way, and then nag at them in order to achieve it, the temptation to give in for a quiet life can be overwhelming. Stanley certainly decided at an early stage to offer no active opposition.' His lifelong insecurity was partly responsible. After all, Dorothy was the first woman with whom he had had a lasting relationship, and the thought of going against her wishes, on a matter that was very important to her, alarmed him. Though sometimes exasperated by Dolly, his love for her continued. 'My darling, I kiss your hands, your lips, your hair - & wish you Heaven's blessings in abundance,'6 he wrote at this time. Even so, he refused to take active steps to begin a political career. Knowing this, Dorothy took charge of the now urgent task of reclaiming her husband's British nationality. It frightened her that he might have been abroad too long in the last decade to qualify for naturalization; so, leaving nothing to chance, she went to plead with Mr Henry Matthews, the home secretary. She had - as she put it - `dressed very becomingly', and was soon rewarded with encouraging words.7 Dolly rapidly established that Stanley had spent five years and twenty weeks in Britain during the last twenty years, which was deemed sufficient by Mr Matthews. Everything went through at breakneck speed, and Henry took the oath of allegiance on zo May, receiving his certificate of readmission on the last day of the month.' As a British citizen, he could now become a parliamentary candidate.