Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

  The fact that the Livingstone problem seems likely to cloud Stanley's reputation for many years to come is another of those great ironies afflicting him. In 1187z, Henry had thought it made a better newspaper story to have found a wise and pious old man in the heart of Africa than to have rescued one obsessed with past insults and injuries. Through what he wrote about him, Stanley made the public forget about the deaths and disasters of the Zambezi Expedition, and enabled them to acclaim a British saint. Yet having made the man an icon of goodness, he would never escape from being adversely compared with the mythic figure he had created. `Well may he call his lecture "Through the Dark Continent",' wrote the editor of The Anti-Slavery Reporter in November 1878. `It will be dark for him. He will stand in everlasting contrast to Livingstone, and act as a dark shadow to throw up the brightness of Livingstone's fame.'

  Although it is now (as I write) over three decades since I revealed, in my 11973 biography, that Livingstone's neglected wife became an alcoholic and his eldest son changed his name and left the country, and that he failed spectacularly to be a humane and popular leader of Europeans, the doctor's saintly image marches on. He made a number of serious geographical errors (one of which cost him his life), and he converted only a single African, who lapsed. Then, during his last journey, he failed so comprehensively to discipline his African followers that their crimes would include rape, murder and even slave-dealing. As a consequence, he would be forced to depend on Arab-Swahili slave traders to protect him. Long ago he had fallen out with almost all his colleagues, and even blamed sick and dying missionaries for letting him down. Yet he is still saintly Dr Livingstone to most people. This seems to be his immutable stereotype, just as brash and brutal Stanley seems to be his. Of course, Livingstone had been genuinely godly too, as well as self-sacrificing, brave, enlightened, idealistic, uninterested in money and in fame, a lover of Africans and Africa, and a genius at writing about the continent. Great flaws and great virtues - and was that so utterly different from Stanley's personality?

  Yet Livingstone's fame had been due not so much to what he had done, as to what he had come to represent in moral terms. By praising a man who was said to have died on his knees in Africa while saving the heathen, the British public could feel pride without any nagging guilt over their country's wealth and power. Through him they could enjoy again the sense of moral superiority they had known when Britain had led the fight against the Atlantic slave trade (having once been its leading participant). Yes, he had made people feel good about themselves, and he had been British. So what had Stanley (the Welshman, turned American, turned Englishman) come to represent? The hard man of African travel, the `conquistador', who had taken huge expeditions to Africa because he liked to travel that way, and was somehow responsible for Emin Pasha's shortcomings, and the deaths on the Congo during the 118gos (though he had left in 11884). Who was going to feel good about admiring him?

  The Victorians were hooked on needing to feel virtuous and, in our own way, we are too. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that colonialism had some disastrous consequences: the millions who died in Leopold's Congo, the badly drawn borders causing future conflicts, the German massacre of the Hereros, the Italian genocide in Libya, and British crimes committed while suppressing the Kenyan Mau Mau insurrection. So we virtuously condemn those who did not see these things coming many decades before they actually came to pass. And yet we forget that between the late i88os and 119ro, the various colonial administrations brought to an end large-scale enslavement of Africans; and subsequently, in British and French territories at least, maintained over much of the continent relatively incorrupt government under the rule of law." We also fail to ask ourselves what would have happened if the Arab-Swahili had remained unopposed throughout Africa. Darfur provides a clue.

  Men like Mackinnon and Stanley believed in the moral worth of the new industrial society, having seen for themselves the outlawing of child labour, the advent of compulsory state education, and the way in which an increase in national wealth had brought prosperity to far more people than had once seemed possible. They had not seen Euro pean nations fight two bloody world wars, nor dreamed of anything so terrible as the gas chambers, or the dropping of the atom bomb, nor suspected that technological advances might one day threaten the planet. So Stanley never felt as if European society was morally suspect, or that explorers were culturally arrogant first movers in an exploitative colonial process designed to destroy African customs. He believed he was bringing numerous advantages to the Africans. So European intervention in Africa seemed wholly desirable.

  If he were alive today he would be horrified to learn about Europe's failure to intervene to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. It would have amazed him that the UN has not been given enough troops to end fighting in eastern Congo, which to date has cost 3,000,000 lives. Nor would he have understood why the Sudanese government is not confronted over events in Darfur. He himself had done better in changing something similar. Six of his despatches (including those relaying Livingstone's accounts of the massacre of runaway slaves at Nyangwe) appeared in the press shortly before the House of Commons debated the report of the Select Committee on the East African slave trade, and his journalism played an important part in persuading the British government to opt for total abolition of the seaborne East African trade. Few people alive today can feel as secure as he once did about having made a direct contribution to saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings. The Victorians sent the Royal Navy to end the slave trade on both sides of Africa, and kept up their effort for decades, regardless of the deaths of sailors and the expense. It seems unlikely that, a century hence, present day efforts to help Africa will be thought superior to that sixty-year undertaking.

  Today, a vivid and uniquely adventurous life like Stanley's challenges our ability to be just and objective, both about his story, and about the vices and virtues of his contemporaries' world view. His absence of racism was all the more remarkable for his having lived in the Deep South - as were the many affectionate things he wrote about Africans seventy-five years before state troopers forcibly ended segregation in Little Rock's schools. In the 195os children in America and Europe (and I was one of them) watched Cowboys and Indians fighting each other in film after film of a kind that would rightly be thought outrageous if shown to children today. But in that decade, people were still being hanged for murder in Britain, homosexuals were being persecuted and delinquents were being `birched'. And of course, Stanley's opinions should be judged against the values of the far more violent world of the Victorian workhouse and the American Civil War, a whole century earlier.

  When Henry described his work on the Congo as `a sacred task', 14 he was not being hypocritical. His hopes for Africa undoubtedly turned out to be far too optimistic. But without his optimism and his belief in his mission, he would not have risked his life in Africa for all the years he did, and would never have recorded his greatest achievements. One of his officers wrote in 118 89, on seeing his leader return to camp `ragged and cadaverous': `I never felt so forcibly as now, how much this man was suffering ... He might very well have been living in luxury ... housed in some sumptuous mansion ... I had never before so fully believed in Stanley's unswerving sense of duty.'25 A friend who had known him on the Congo told Dorothy that if only Henry could have been killed in Africa, the government would have sent a punitive expedition to avenge the great Stanley', and he would have been buried in Westminster Abbey beside Livingstone.26 But this is to speculate. Facts, too, can change reputations, and there are more than enough in the mighty family archive in Brussels to make sure that, one day, Henry Morton Stanley will no longer be a scapegoat for the postcolonial guilt of successive generations.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  In September zooz, the late Maurits Wynants invited me to Brussels to begin my work in the Stanley Archive at the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale while the collection was still being catalogued. I therefore remember him with particular grati
tude. But my greatest debt is to Peter Daerden, formerly of the Musee Royal, who while cataloguing the immense archive and compiling the inventory promptly responded to my numerous requests and lines of inquiry when I was in Brussels. Later, he sent to London scores of e-mails, notes and many photocopies, not only of requested documents but of letters and diary entries he felt I should see. My book has benefited immensely from his input. In Wales, the local historian Bob Owen, author of articles about Stanley's origins, answered my queries, undertook investigations on my behalf, and taught me much about Denbigh in Stanley's time. Dr lain Smith of the University of Warwick, whose account of the Emin Pasha Expedition (1972) is still the best, lent me his books on the subject and photocopies of articles in rare periodicals and newspapers. lain Maciver, Head of Manuscripts at the National Library of Scotland, answered many questions, sent photocopies from the library's Livingstone and Stanley collections, and made suggestions for further research in other collections in his care. I owe an equal debt to Alicia Clarke, Director of the Sanford Museum, Florida, who drew my attention not merely to the many Stanley letters at the museum but to letters written to Henry Sanford by Stanley's employees on the Congo, several of whom became friends. Richard Sawyer, the rare books/manuscripts dealer, and his client Russell Train permitted me to see Mr Train's large and varied Africana collection before it was donated to the Smithsonian Library. This collection contains the correspondence of Captain R. H. Nelson, and other unpublished Emin Pasha papers. Margaret Stewart, a granddaughter of Katie Gough Roberts (the first woman to whom Stanley proposed), let me see copies of the dozen unpublished letters written by Stanley to her grandmother. Lady Stanley failed to buy these from Katie when she obtained the rest. These letters were sold at Christie's, London, in 1992. Nathaniel C. Hughes, author of the excellent Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Confederate, answered my queries about Stanley's time in America, as did Lisa Singleton of Tulane University, New Orleans. John Pinfold, librarian at Rhodes House, Oxford, sent me copies of the Pocock papers and letters from John Kirk, Horace Waller and others. Tracey Jean Boisseau, author of a biography of May Sheldon, identified Mrs Sheldon for me in several group photographs and corresponded with me on the subject of Stanley's relations with her. Jane Stanley (widow of H. M. Stanley's adopted grandson) clarified various matters for me, and sent me a photograph of Dorothy's first portrait of Stanley. Haidee Jackson, Curator of Newstead Abbey, arranged for an unknown portrait of Emilia Webb (an early confidante of Stanley) to be photographed. Kevin Matthias, County Archivist of Denbighshire, and Dyfed Roberts searched out details of Stanley's Welsh family, as did Paul F. Mason, Archivist at the Flintshire Record Office. Guy Tillim sent me his evocative photograph of Stanley's fallen statue in Kinshasa. Professor Simon Keynes gave me access to the late Quentin Keynes's unique African collection before its sale at Christie's in April 2004. Dr Michael Brooks (a member of the family of Henry Hope Stanley, who allegedly adopted H. M. Stanley) gave me new factual information.

  My warm thanks to Julian Loose of Faber & Faber for commissioning the book, and to Henry Volans, also of Faber, for his perceptive commentary, which has helped me give Stanley its present shape. My thanks also to the production team at Faber and to Alex Lazarou and Wendy Toole. Jon Jackson, formerly of Gillon Aitken Associates, made useful comments on the whole text. Once again my wife, Joyce, was sympathetic when my research threatened to overwhelm me, and generously forgave me for devoting so much time to the task.

  All the following helped me: Sarah Strong, Archivist, Royal Geographical Society; Pauline Hubner, RGS Picture Department; Professor Gustaaf Janssens, Archivist at the Royal Palace, Brussels; Pierre Dandoy, Diplomatic and African Archive, Brussels; Mathilde Leduc, Musee Royal de 1'Afrique Centrale; Professor Anthony M. Gibbs, Macquarie University, Sydney; Sally Harrower, new Head of Manuscripts, National Library of Scotland; Karen Carruthers, David Livingstone Centre, Blantyre; Rachel M. Rowe, Smuts Librarian in South Asian & Commonwealth Studies, Cambridge University; Lona Jones, Assistant Librarian, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; Andrew Dulley and Sarah Phillips, Archivists, West Glamorgan Archive Service; Julie Snelling, Assistant Archivist, the Royal Archives, Windsor; the staff of the Manuscripts Room, British Library; Sue Mills, Archivist, Regent's Park College, Oxford; Marcelle Graham, Librarian, and Diana Madden, Manuscripts Librarian, the Brenthurst Library, Johannesburg; Dr Tony Trowles, Librarian, Westminster Abbey; Cliff Davies, Archivist, Wadham College, Oxford; Adam C. Greene, Assistant Archivist, Trinity College, Cambridge; Christine Mason, Bodleian Library, Oxford; the staff of the Wellcome Medical Library; Robert W. Mills, Librarian, Royal College of Physicians in Ireland; Mary O'Doherty, Librarian/Archivist, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland; Christine Holgate, Northallerton Library; Bruce Tabb, Assistant Professor, Special Collections Librarian, University of Oregon; Margaret Acton, Librarian, Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, Edinburgh University; J. E. Griffiths, Crewe; Carol Leadenham, Hoover Institution Library, Stanford University; Denison J. Beach, Library Assistant, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Jason D. Stratman, Library Assistant, Missouri Historical Society; Janie C. Morris, Research Librarian, Duke University, North Carolina; staff of the Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library; Dr C. M. Rider, Archivist, Inner Temple, London; Guy Holborn, Librarian, Lincoln's Inn Library, London.

  SOURCES

  MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS CONSULTED

  Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Brussels

  The most important collection of Stanley's papers in the world. Exploration diaries, notebooks, maps, early manuscript drafts of his autobiography, private correspondence to and from his wife, letters from his Welsh family, and from friends including David Livingstone, Edward S. King, E. J. Glave, May Sheldon, Alice Pike, Lewis Noe, Alexander Bruce, Sir William Mackinnon, Edward Marston; correspondence with British and Belgian ministers, with Leopold II, James Gordon Bennett Jr, Edwin Arnold, and with members of his major expeditions, including the diary of William Bonny; also correspondence with his valet, William Hoffman, and his private notes on the EPRE. Dorothy Stanley's diaries and correspondence with friends and family. The Luwel papers contain one of only two extant original treaties that Stanley signed with Congolese chiefs. Scrapbooks, press cuttings, photographs. Inventory has 4z6 pp.

  National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

  Stanley's letters to David Livingstone, to Agnes Livingstone (Bruce), to Alexander L. Bruce, to J. A. Grant, Sir John Kirk, and copies of letters to J. B. Pond. Also Edward Glave to Stanley in 189o, enclosing a statement in Swahili by Saleh bin Osman (trans by Glave). Other letters relating to the EPRE.

  Mackinnon Papers, School of Oriental and African Studies, London

  Stanley's letters to Sir William Mackinnon, important in the colonial history of East Africa and the Congo. Dorothy Stanley's letters to Mackinnon. Complete papers of the EPRE Committee, including letters from Stanley, from expedition members, committee members, politicians, etc.

  Sanford Museum, Sanford, Florida

  The papers of `General' Henry Shelton Sanford, including 48 letters from Stanley, from Leopold II's secretary, Count Borchgrave, from Sir William Mackinnon, and from friends of Stanley who served under him on the Congo: A. B. Swinburne, H. P. Bailey, E. J. Glave, who later worked for Sanford's ivory company. The collection is a key source for the early history of the Congo Free State.

  British Library, London

  Various Add Mss letters including Stanley to J. Bolton, the cartographer, to H. W. Bates, E. M. Parker, T. H. S. Escort, H. Bey, etc., etc. Dorothy Stanley's letters to George Bernard Shaw. RP photocopies of numerous Stanley letters, also microfilm of Stanley's exploration diaries and notebooks (originals in Brussels), and of some correspondence. Livingstone's letters to his daughter Agnes.

  Royal Geographical Society, London

  Letters of Stanley and Dorothy to H. W. Bates, J. S. Keltie, and to Henry Wellcome, including letters concerning Stanley's final illness, funeral and the pur
chase of letters from Mrs Bradshaw (Katie Gough Roberts). Letters from William Hoffman to H. Wellcome, from Stanley to May Sheldon. Photographs, press cuttings.

  Trinity College, Cambridge

  The papers of E W. H. Myers (brother-in-law of Stanley) and his wife Eveleen (nee Tennant), including many letters from Stanley and Dorothy to them both. Also letters from Stanley to their children.

  Rhodes House, Oxford

  The diaries of Edward and Frank Pocock. A 17-page letter about Stanley from Horace Waller to David Livingstone, and other correspondence about Kirk and Stanley; also correspondence of the Anti-Slavery Society.

  Wellcome Library, Euston Road, London

  Papers of Henry S. Wellcome, friend of Stanley and Dorothy, with letters from them both, also from William Hoffman, Mounteney Jephson, and papers concerning May Sheldon. Drafts of Hoffman's book. Newspaper cuttings about Dorothy Tennant/Stanley.

  Cambridge University Library

  An important book-length t/s `Portrait of Stanley' by Gerald Sanger, a close friend of Denzil Stanley, who had shown to Sanger his father's correspondence with Alice Pike, and with Dorothy Tennant before she married Stanley. Also long verbatim quotations from Dorothy's diaries up to the date of her marriage.