by Tim Jeal
S Henry Morton Stanley
DS Dorothy Stanley/Tennant
SD Stanley's Diaries I identify by date and only occasionally by extra description. His diaries, journals and field notebooks start in 2866. They sometimes lapse entirely between expeditions (when they are most detailed). He kept a daily diary from his marriage on iz Jul 189o until z9 Dec 19os, three and a half years before his death. His diaries occupy 13 pp of the inventory of the Stanley Papers in the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale.
CD Stanley's Congo Diaries. He devoted four specific volumes to his work on the Congo and his subsequent relations with Leopold II of Belgium and his Ministers.
DD Dorothy Stanley's private diaries
Lii King Leopold II of Belgium
APR Archives du Palais Royal
BL British Library
CFFS The Congo and the Founding of its Free State (18 8 5)
DL David Livingstone
EPRE Emin Pasha Relief Expedition
HIFL How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa (1872)
IDA In Darkest Africa, 2 vols (189o)
KGR Katie Gough Roberts
LLJ Livingstone, D. The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa ed Waller, H. (1874)
MP Mackinnon Papers, SOAS
MS May Sheldon
RGS Royal Geographical Society
S&N Stanley, Richard & Neame, Alan eds The Exploration Diaries of H. M. Stanley (1861)
TDC Through the Dark Continent, z vols (1878)
UL Maurice, Albert H. M. Stanley: Unpublished Letters (1957)
Anstruther Anstruther, I. I Presume: Stanley's Triumph and Disaster (1956)
Ascherson Ascherson, Neal The King Incorporated (1963)
Auto Stanley, Dorothy ed The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1909)
Bartt Barttelot, W. G. The Life of Edmund Musgrave Barttelot (18 go) Bennett Bennett, Norman R. ed Stanley's Despatches to the New York Herald 1871-1877(1970)
Bierman Bierman, John Dark Safari: The Life behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley (1990)
Bonny William Bonny's diaries at Tervuren
Bontinck Bontinck, Francois Aux Origines de l'Etat Independent du Congo (1966)
Emerson Emerson, B. Leopold II of the Belgians: King of Colonialism (1979)
Hall Hall, Richard Stanley: An Adventurer Explored (1974)
Hotten Rowlands, Cadwalader (pseud for John C. Hotten) H. M. Stanley: The Story of his Life (1872)
Hughes Hughes, Nathaniel C., Jr. Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Confederate (2000)
Jeal Jeal, Tim Livingstone (1973)
Jephson Middleton, Dorothy ed The Diaries of A. J. Mounteney Jephson (1969)
McLynn i McLynn, Frank Stanley:The Making of an African Explorer (1989)
McLynn ii McLynn, Frank Stanley: Sorcerer's Apprentice (1gg1)
Newman James, L. Imperial Footprints: Henry Morton Stanley's African Journeys (2004)
Parke Lyons, J. B. Surgeon-Major Parke's African Journey -T887-89(1994)
Smith Smith, lain R. The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition 1886-1890 (1972)
Stairs Roy Maclaren ed African Exploits: The Diaries of William Stairs 1887-1892(1997)
Stengers Chapter by Jean Stengers, `King Leopold and Anglo-French Rivary 1882.-84' in Gifford, P & Louis, W. R. eds France and Britain in Africa (1971)
INTRODUCTION
i Quoted H. A. C. Cairns Prelude to Imperialism, 1965, 3-
z S to Any gentleman 4 Aug 1877, Quentin Keynes Collection sold Christie's 7.04.2.004.
3 This t/s is now in the Cambridge University Library and was previously in the Royal Commonwealth Society Library in London. Portrait of Stanley: Gerald Sanger RCS. Mss 4c99s Cambridge University Library.
4 Frank McLynn Stanley: The Making of an African Explorer, 1989, (McLynn i) 14, 29-30; Frank McLynn Stanley: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, 1991, (McLynn ii) 334; McLynn i 329-30; John Bierman Dark Safari, 1990, 239-
5 McLynn ii 395•
6 Bierman 357.
7 The Henry M. Stanley Archives: Inventory, Brussels 2004, Royal Museum of Central Africa compiled by Peter Daerden and Maurits Wynants.
8 HIFL p io.
9 S to E. Marston 110 Jul 93.
1o Stanley's Congo Diaries (CD) z8 Oct 1881.
1111 H. M. Stanley The Congo and the Founding of its Free State, 11886, z vols, i 248 (CFFS).
1z CD i9 Nov 1881.
13 Richard Stanley and Alan Neame eds The Exploration Diaries of H. M. Stanley, 119611, (S & N) p. 1199 118.07.11877 for quote about `fighting 32 battles on land and water'. In fact by December 1877 Stanley reckoned he had only 32 men able to offer effective resistance with firearms (hardly a number capable of terrorizing whole districts). Chapter 14 of this book for details, esp. 1195-2oz, also notes 11o p. 514 and 37 p. 5115•
14 Richard West Brazza of the Congo, 1972, 84, 121.
15 Gordon to Burton 119 Oct 11877 in Wilkins, Romance of Isabel Lady Burton vol ii p 6611; Richard Burton The Lake Regions of Central Africa, 11860, 3 z8ff.
16 Tim Jeal Livingstone, 1973, 241, O. Chadwick Mackenzie's Grave, 1959, 49•
17 Jeal 3411; Times 117.1111.11877, quoting Cape Argus; D. Stanley ed The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, 1909, 295 (Auto); Stanley's Diaries z5.oz.11874 (SD).
18 Times 17.11.1877, quoting interview in Cape Argus; Auto 295; travellers beating Africans in H. A. C. Cairns Prelude to Imperialism, 1965, 42ff; S&N 193-5
119 CD 115.110.11880.
zo Ronald Segal Islam's Black Slaves, 2000, 56, 154-5, 16o-z, 164, 166-74, 176; Paul Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery, 1983, 137-
211 H. Waller ed The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, 11874, vol i 62-3 (LLJ)
z2 Livingstone to Lord Clarendon 20 Aug 1866 FO 84/1265.
23 Livingstone's Private Journals 1851-53, 11960,, ed I. Schapera 2110.
24 S&N 148 I.oI.1877; S to Strauch 27 Jan 84; H. Waller ed The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, 1874, 2 vols, ii 135; CFFS ii 144-5, CD 27-11-1883-
25 Daniel Liebowitz and Charles Pearson The Last Expedition: Stanley's Mad Journey through the Congo, 2005, 337-
z6 SD Notebook 1877, end pages.
ONE: Dreams of Love and Freedom
i Funeral register, Denbigh: Moses Parry, Castle, zz Jun 1846 R. J. Roberts, Rector. In Auto his age is incorrectly given as 84-
z Evan Pierce MD to Denbighshire Free Press 9 Feb 1889; Bill Wynn Woodhouse Hel Achau 15 1985 Spring 35-44•
3 Memorial scroll to Moses Parry 1866 Denbighshire Local Authority.
4 Auto 7; DS to Lady Hills Johnes 7 Jun 99 Dolaucothi L 9605.
5 Auto 7; handwritten notes in DS's copy of Auto, sold Christie's zooz. Report from the Commissioners in Ed in Wales 1847 vol xxvii Part ii North Wales p 311; Auto 8-9.
6 Cadwalader Rowlands (pseud for John C. Hotten) H. M. Stanley: The Story of his Life, 1872, 37 (Hotten).
7 In S to Katie Gough Roberts (KGR) 22.03.11865, he blamed his uncle Thomas Parry and his wife for `cutting me adrift', implying that his uncle Moses Parry had not. In fact both were to blame. Thomas did not marry until 1851 (1851 Census, information Bob Owen).
8 South Wales Daily News 14 May 1904 Interview with Richard Price; Auto 10.
9 Auto iz.
io Emyr W. Jones Sir Henry M. Stanley: The Enigma, 11989, z9.
i1 Auto 1i; small black leather ledger.
iz Auto 1111.
13 S Early journal 1841-79, 1841-57 in Swahili. The invented beating of Francis in Auto resembles Chapter 13 in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, as was first noted by Richard Hall in 1974. Another model may have been the frontiersman Daniel Boone, who knocked down his teacher before leaving school. Roderick Random - hero of a novel S possessed in later years - also trounced his schoolmaster. But probable plagiarism does not diminish the reality of the anguish that led to the fantasy in the first place.
114 Auto iz.
15 See note 5, Report from the Commissioners; W. Wynne Woodhouse `Elizabeth Parry of
Denbigh, an Extraordinary Woman...' Hel Acbau, Spring 1885, 42.
116 S to KGR 11o Sept 1869.
17 Efficiency award Hall 107, PRO NM1z/i6,4o, Reports Relating to the Education of Pauper Children Vol xlviii p 631 1856; x1v pzo7 1857. Mr Jelinger Symons QC, the inspector whom Stanley had liked as a boy, declared that in the past he had been `very gloomy' about St Asaph Union, but by the mid- 185os the workhouse school was very well conducted.
118 Auto 24-5.
19 Hotten 43.
zo Auto 114-115.
z1 South Wales Daily News 14 May 1904 (SWDN).
zz Hotten 42, 48, 511.
23 S to KGR 15.05.1869.
24 Auto z9.
25 Richard Hall Stanley: An Adventurer Explored, 11974, ioo (Hall); Lewis Noe will be shown photo of Elizabeth Parry by S see note 43 Chapter 3; photograph of Cross Foxes, published in Illustrated Africa z5.o9.1897 6zs photographer D. Hughes St Asaph; Bob Owen collection postcard of same picture. In neither the magazine picture, nor the post card, were the small figures standing in front of the Cross Foxes public house identified as Robert and Elizabeth Jones, circa 1875-
z6 Auto zo.
27 Census 1851.
z8 Owen `Morien' Morgan's notes of an interview with Elizabeth Parry 11886, Cardiff Public Library (Morien's notes); SWDN 14 May 04-
z9 David Davies to S 14 May n.y.
3o Discharge book 13 May 1856.
31 Auto 37-8.
32 Information about children Wynne Woodhouse HelAcbau Spring 1985. John Rowlands had good reason for feeling he was the most hard done by of all Elizabeth Parry's children. His mother and her son Robert (born 1848), and her daughter Elizabeth (born 185o, and died in infancy), would be inmates at the workhouse between Dec 185o and Apr 1851, a mere five months. Emma (born in 1843) was boarded out in Denbigh for several years, but in Jun 1851, soon after her mother was discharged, she was placed in the workhouse with John, and would be left there for five years. John would be an inmate for nine years. This shared experience made him feel closer to Emma than to his other half-siblings.
33 St Hilary's Church, Denbigh, register of baptisms 119 Feb 118411; Evan Pierce letter to Denbighshire Free Press 9 Feb 1889.
34 Morien's notes.
35 Hallio11.
36 Sources on James Horne are Emyr Wynn Jones National Library of Wales Journal 1993 vol z8 `Stanley: The Mystery of the Three Fathers' 127-51; also Bob Owen Hel Acbau No 15 1985 `Stanley's Father, I Presume' esp 23-7Among locals believing that Horne was S's father was a Dr John Lloyd Roberts, who worked in a Denbigh medical practice, where the senior partner, Dr Evan Pierce, had attended Elizabeth Parry at Stanley's birth. Pierce lived in Vale Street, a few houses away from James Horne. Dr Lloyd Roberts became Medical Officer at St Asaph Workhouse, in succession to the MO of Stanley's day. He was married to the daughter of John Parry Jones, who had acted as Horne's solicitor while he lived, and had then acted for Horne's widow. The Lloyd Roberts family was also closely connected to Thomas Evans, who had shared an office in Vale Street with James Horne in the early 1840s, when Horne is alleged to have seduced Elizabeth Parry, then working as a maid in the same street. Dr Lloyd Roberts told his daughter Ruth that James Horne was definitely S's father, and Ruth told the historian Emyr Wynne Jones the same. Her cousin, Rennel Mason - a former Professor of Geography at Oxford - informed her in a letter that his cousin, Frank Evans (grandson of Thomas Evans, who had shared Horne's office), had told him that `Horne was the unacknowledged father of Henry Morton Stanley', and ended, `I accepted it as a fact.' Evidence exists to show that Horne was estranged from his wife for many years before his death in 11848. Elizabeth Parry named two of her sons James - the first died as a child, and her final son she also called James - perhaps in memory of James Horne. Elizabeth's second child, her daughter Emma, was born in April 11843, and the man named as her father in her baptismal entry was John Evans, a tenant farmer, late of Llanrhaeadr, near Denbigh, where James Horne had connections - his wife being the daughter of the lord of the manor. John Rowlands, junior, also lived in this same village during his final decade and was buried there. This Llanrhaeadr link has led one local historian (Bob Owen) to claim that Horne had been the father not only of Elizabeth's first child but perhaps of her second as well. Knowing both Rowlands and Evans personally, it has been argued that Horne, to protect his reputation, paid them to admit to the paternity of John and Emma, respectively. John Rowlands, junior, never saw his supposed son, and there is no evidence that John Evans ever took the slightest interest in Emma. But these men's admissions of paternity would certainly shift interest away from Horne, who was Coroner for the Borough, Town Clerk and an alderman, as well as owning a thriving solicitor's practice.
37 Griffiths family of Garn, Henllan. Mr J. E. Griffiths of Betley, near Crewe, closest living descendant has no paintings.
38 Family `Necrology' document by S, Moses Owen born 1837 died 1864 aged z7; Auto 41.
39 Auto 51; 47-
4o Auto 48-
41 Auto 49; small black ledger notebook.
4z Auto 48.
43 Hotten 51-2..
44 Auto 30.
45 Auto 45-6.
46 S to KGR 01.07.1869.
47 John Rowlands to Thomas Morris early Jun 11858, obtained by DS after publication of Auto.
48 Auto 55-8.
49 Auto 5 8; re streets in Liverpool - John Parkinson, who lived with Morris family was at z6, Rosommon St in 11858-9 in Gore's Liverpool Directory; by 1861, census has them all living at zz, Sherriff St.
5o Auto 58-64.
511 Ian Anstruther I Presume: Stanley's Triumph and Disaster, 11956, 18; Lloyd's records have Harding not Hardinge as in Auto; Auto 67, 70-11.
52 Auto 71-3; 68 and note in DS's personal copy of Auto, see Christie's Catalogue Africa Sale Sep zooz.
TWO: In the Name of the Father
i Auto 1137.
z Unpaginated notes for Auto 95•
3 Auto 86-9.
4 Auto 91-3.
5 Auto go.
6 Auto 97-101; 105-
7 Auto zo5-6 and 112-113 By chance, claimed S, Mrs Stanley's brother-in-law, Captain Stanley, was in town on a visit from Havana where he lived. It was he, said S, who arranged the funeral in Auto, having told young Rowlands to push off since his presence was no longer required.
8 Auto 113-21 In the original m/s of Auto, after the words, supposedly spoken by Mr Stanley, `You are to bear my name Henry Stanley', Stanley added `and in remembrance of my wife, your middle name shall be what hers was before I married her'. The second Mrs Henry Hope Stanley's maiden name was Miller, rather than Morton, and the first Mrs Stanley's maiden name was Foster. Wisely, Stanley's widow cut out this sentence as offering too many hostages to fortune.
9 Auto go.
io Auto 142-6i.
ii Auto Iig.
12 Bierman 27-8, and Newman 5 take the same line about John's relations with Mr Stanley, but Newman perceptively adds that Rowlands probably `simply appropriated' the name. The idea of Rowlands appropriating the name, rather than being given it, is also to be found in a letter sent by him to Thomas Gee, a prominent citizen of Denbigh in 1872-
13 Morien's notes; Western Mail iz May 1889.
14 Hotten 63; SWDN 14.05.1904, quoting S to Thomas Gee, editor of Boner Cymru.
15 E. Kerfyser Henry M. Stanley, 18go; E. A. Macdonald The Story of Stanley, 1892; Ronald Smith Stanley in Africa, 18go.
16 Such as A. A. Schenk (formerly Greg Waring) to S 13.04.1891. Schenck had worked for Speake with Sin 1859. From November 1872 to April 1873, Stanley was in America lecturing about Livingstone. There is no evidence that S ever got in touch with any member of Henry Hope Stanley's family. Indeed, the lack of any letters from any family member argues strongly against any relationship.
17 New Orleans City Directories 1859-61.
18 Auto 1o1, 121.
19 Draft of Auto, quoted E McLynn i 38.
20 McLynn vol i 37.
zi S's New Orleans Notebook 18.10.1
895. S visited the grave at Odd Fellows Rest to find that Speake's remains had been moved to Girod Street Cemetery.
22 DS's annotated t/s of Auto 161.
23 In the notebook containing Stanley's earliest accounts of his time in New Orleans, some of the most important pages are missing. The passage that preceded the one about `father's death' has been torn out and, still more surprisingly, someone has torn out half of the highly memorable page in which John Rowlands meets and asks the man who he claims would one day adopt him: `Do you want a boy?' In the torn manuscript page, Rowlands met `a gentleman of middle age, seated in front of his store reading the morning newspaper. I took him by his sober dark clothes and tall hat to be the proprietor of the store [my emphases].' In Stanley's later manuscript of the Auto, the italicized words read `of No. 3 store' and `of the building'. In other words, in the first Stanley draft the gentleman owned the store, and in the second he owned the building, rather than the store. It seems clear that when Stanley wrote this very first draft of the Auto, he was toying with the idea of airbrushing James Speake out of his story and making Mr Stanley his employer and his adoptive father. But at that time, he had not yet invented a story to explain when and where he had got to know Mr Stanley. As stated above, too many people still alive in New Orleans in the 189os (when Stanley wrote the final version of his early life in that city) would have known about Speake's kindness to John for it to have been safe for Stanley to have omitted the shopkeeper's important role. This problem inspired him to come up with the solution presented in the published book - namely that Mr Stanley, the owner of the building, introduced him to Mr Speake, the humble storekeeper.
24 Meller and Mellor in McLynn and Bierman; but Miller in local New Orleans press obituaries.
25 186o Census. Strange, too, was the failure to mention Joanne, who had been adopted by Mr Stanley's first wife, Mary Ann (nee Foster), who had died in 1846 (New Orleans Notebook 1895). Strangest of all was his claim that Mr Stanley had visited the `Infant Asylum' in the Faubourg St Mary and `had made no choice, from over-fastidiousness', and had therefore remained childless (Auto i2o). In fact, in 1842, Mr Stanley and his first wife visited a private infirmary on South Rampart Street and as a result adopted their daughter, Joanna, whose mother had just died in the infirmary. Mistaken about H. H. Stanley's children, the great explorer would also be incorrect in stating that his supposed benefactor's brother lived in Cuba. I have traced a direct descendant of Henry Hope Stanley's half-brother and heir, James Howard Brooks. Dr Michael Brooks does not believe that Henry Hope's brother, John Stanley, ever lived in Havana. He visited America from time to time, but lived in England with his wife and her daughter by an earlier marriage (Dr Michael Brooks to Tim Jeal 22.01.2003). The real reason for Henry Hope Stanley's fictitious visit to Havana and his fictitious death there would seem to have been the knowledge that no one would ever, given the state of Cuban records, be able in later years to find any proof that he had not died there.
