Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (45 page)

News of Stanley’s return to Zanzibar had spread throughout the island and the harbour was awash in celebration as his dhow nosed into port. ‘It was certainly a great sight,’ reported an eyewitness. ‘When the dhow neared Zanzibar, the gun fired and the American colours
were soon visible, proudly flying from the gaff. The beach was lined with people, native and white, who testified their delight by increasing discharges of small arms. The guns in the sultan’s batteries fired repeated salutes. And, in fact, the enthusiasm was something unparalleled. There was certainly never anything seen like it in Zanzibar. The Americans in particular were joyful in the extreme … the English were somewhat chagrined that the Americans had carried off the honours attached to the discovery.’

John Kirk was perhaps the least joyous about Stanley’s arrival. The American had placed him in the middle of a controversy that might ruin his career and forever damage his reputation as a valued friend of Livingstone. When Stanley approached the wary British Consul and asked for his help in expediting the shipment of supplies to Livingstone in Tabora, Kirk immediately refused. ‘I am not going to do anything more for Dr Livingstone,’ he coolly told Stanley.

Stanley pressed Kirk to elaborate, but he merely explained that he was through with being insulted. Knowing that Stanley was eager to race back to England, Kirk told Stanley that if he wished to send new supplies to Livingstone, he would have to stay in Zanzibar long enough to purchase the goods and hire the porters himself.

Stanley did. Three long weeks later, Stanley was done. His last act before leaving Zanzibar on 29 May was to meet with the fifty-seven men who would carry goods inland to Livingstone. Many of them had been with Stanley during his journey into the interior. The moment when they finally went their separate ways was a surprisingly emotional one for Stanley. ‘You are now about to return to Unyanyembe, to the Great Master. You know him,’ Stanley said to the assemblage. He was standing in front of the American Consulate as he spoke. A dhow bobbed at anchor, waiting to load the men and their supplies on board for yet another journey to Africa. ‘He is a good man and has a kind heart. He is different from me; he will not beat you as I have done.’

Then, in a whirl of nostalgia and long-hidden respect, the racist aspect of his character slipped momentarily aside. Stanley paid homage to the men who made his expedition possible. ‘There is one thing more,’ he said in conclusion. ‘I want to shake hands with you all before you go — and we part for ever.’

Stanley wrote later that, ‘they all rushed up, and vigorous shake was interchanged with each man’.

On 29 May, aboard the German ship
Africa
, Stanley finally sailed from Zanzibar, en route to London.

He envisioned a glorious return to England, but it was not to be. In London, even before Stanley sailed, the first seeds of doubt about his accomplishment were being sown. In a 7 May letter to
The Times
, the RGS’s expert on Ethiopia, Charles Beke, publicly professed his scepticism that Stanley had truly found the missing explorer. Less than a week later, at an RGS meeting on 13 May, Sir Henry Rawlinson joined the anti-Stanley chorus, scoffing at the journalist’s supposed accomplishment. ‘It had been generally inferred that Mr Stanley had discovered and relieved Dr Livingstone,’ the Manchester
Guardian
quoted Rawlinson the following day. ‘But if there had been any discovery and relief it was Dr Livingstone who found and succoured Mr Stanley, as the latter was without supplies, whereas Dr Livingstone had large depots and stores at Ujiji, and was in a position to relieve the American on his reaching that place.’

The debate raged through the summer. The RGS and British press lined up to attack his integrity. Thanks to Bennett’s tail-twisting, Stanley had no allies in Britain. On 12 July, Grant altered his allegiance to Stanley, saying to a friend, ‘I see by
The Times
that Stanley has arrived with Livingstone’s son at Aden in Suez — and feel much disappointed young Livingstone has left his father to his fate … no one believes Stanley found Livingstone.’

Sir Henry Rawlinson was proving to have an even sharper tongue, demeaning America and the
Herald
— ‘our transatlantic cousins, among whom the science of advertising has reached a higher stage of development
than in this benighted country’ — while continuing to insist that Livingstone came to Stanley’s aid, instead of it being the other way around. ‘Dr Livingstone,’ he said in late July, ‘indeed, is in clover while Mr Stanley is nearly destitute.’

When Stanley finally arrived on British soil on 1 August, clinging to Livingstone’s journal as proof as he stepped ashore in Dover, the British public was still unswayed. One newspaper, the
Echo
, even argued that the letters were written by a clairvoyant who channelled Livingstone’s words, thoughts and handwriting.

The matter moved towards settlement on 2 August, when Stanley presented Tom Livingstone with his father’s journals. As Oswell had already done, Tom announced the journals authentic. ‘We have not the slightest reason to doubt that this is my father’s journal, and I certify that the letters he has brought home are my father’s letters, and no others.’

Lord Granville wrote a glowing thank-you letter to Stanley that same day. ‘I cannot omit this opportunity of expressing to you my admiration of the qualities which have enabled you to achieve the object of your mission, and to attain a result which has been hailed with so much enthusiasm both in the United States and in this country.’

Despite that official blessing, and the international outpouring of interest, doubt about the journals’ veracity lingered as the contents became public. The primary reason was Livingstone’s writings about the women of Nyangwe. In an era when Victorian sexual mores meant that female masturbation was considered the root of lust (with clitoridectomy a popular remedy), and where it was never discussed that many upper-class men found their sexual satisfaction with prostitutes instead of their wives, Livingstone’s journal entries about African women being beautiful and vivacious — an unthinkable notion at a time when the English still regarded Africans as pagan savages — were considered proof that the journals were forgeries. Such a venerated missionary as Livingstone would never look at a woman — whether African or European — in that manner, it was considered.

Stanley seethed at the abuse, but endured it stoically, even as the truth about his childhood became public, and as Lewis Noe sold his tale of their Turkish imprisonment to the New York
Sun
. Stanley was shocked by the criticisms he was enduring, but felt impotent to speak out about them.

In New York, meanwhile, Bennett let Stanley suffer the slanders and accusations, knowing it would continue to keep Livingstone’s name in the news. Stories about Africa had been appearing in the
Herald
throughout the summer, averaging one every four days. The phrase ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume’ first appeared in print in the 15 July 1872 edition, and soon became world famous. Throughout August, Bennett continued the Livingstone news cycle, focusing his attacks on the RGS for their myopia and anti-American feelings — ironically, the very feelings he had fostered.

Despite Bennett’s taunts, British opinion slowly began turning in Stanley’s favour. On 27 August, Granville wrote a letter that officially endorsed Stanley’s accomplishment — and in a most grandiose fashion. ‘I have great satisfaction in conveying to you, by command of the Queen,’ Granville wrote, ‘her Majesty’s high appreciation of the prudence and zeal which you have displayed in opening a communication with Dr Livingstone, and relieving her Majesty from the anxiety which, in common with her subjects, she had felt in regard of that distinguished traveller.’

Stanley’s transition from scoundrel to saviour was complete on 8 September 1872, when the bastard from Wales was formally introduced to the Queen of England. Sir Henry Rawlinson presented Henry Morton Stanley to Queen Victoria at Dunrobin Castle, making it clear to one and all that Stanley was the true discoverer of David Livingstone. ‘The geographers as a body,’ Rawlinson confided to Stanley, speaking of the RGS, ‘rejoice in the honours you are receiving.’

Stanley’s exploration pedigree reached its fruition in November 1872. He was paid ten thousand US dollars to
write a book about his African travels.
How I Found Livingstone
answered all Stanley’s critics (to the RGS’s earlier proclamation that ‘Livingstone was in clover’, he responded in the book: ‘May I ask, if you believe that … why you sent an expedition out to find him?’). It became an immediate bestseller. Henry Morton Stanley was, after a lifetime of well-intentioned mediocrity, a success.

Henry Morton Stanley, African explorer
© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

Dr David Livingstone, lion in repose
© Bettmann/CORBIS

LIVINGSTONE RESTED IN
Tabora until late August of 1872. The supplies Stanley had arranged reached him earlier in the month, and as Livingstone marched away from the Arab enclave, he led a fully stocked caravan for the first time since 1867. He travelled south-west, away from Mirambo and his ongoing war, around the southernmost tip of Lake Tanganyika, then into the highlands three hundred miles due west of Lake Nyassa to search once again for the Source. Months passed. By January of 1873, the most miserable month of the rainy season, food was again short and his health again began to fail. He was skeletal. A crimson blossom on the seat of his threadbare trousers advertised bleeding haemorrhoids and chronic dysentery, adding humiliation to Livingstone’s discomfort. The venerable Scot stepped off the trail to relieve himself so often his porters knew the curvature of his scrawny buttocks in detail.

Day by day, through means visible and concealed, the continent in which he felt most content whittled the world’s greatest explorer down to a nub. Hundreds of
miles from relief supplies, and with a second rescue a delirious fantasy, Livingstone was fated to die a lonely death and be lowered into an anonymous wilderness grave, like Cook and Franklin before him. For the people back home, there would be curiosity about where his bones were turning to dust, but only for a time. That’s the way it was with exploration. The curiosity would fade as his explorations were surpassed. Over time he would be forgotten. There was no romance in the dying, only the reality that it would be slow and painful. It would almost have been easier if Livingstone’s lion attacker had finished what it started so many years before.

The prudent move would have been to turn east, towards the coast, and try to fall in with an Arab slave caravan heading for Zanzibar. Livingstone could have saved himself that way. The slavers would have food, and maybe even medicine, to fortify him for the six-month trek.

But Livingstone had come to Africa to find the Source of the Nile — he’d promised Murchison — and he was determined not to leave until he had solved mankind’s last great geographical mystery. So instead of turning to the coast, Livingstone led his caravan west into the heart of Africa one last time, gambling he could pinpoint the Source and then flee to Zanzibar before his time ran out. Through his travels and through continuing interviews with local tribes, Livingstone was convinced the legendary Four Fountains of Herodotus were getting closer. Livingstone had already written the telegram he would wire to the Foreign Office. It lay in the watertight tin box holding his journals and letters. The only thing left was filling in the blanks. ‘I have the pleasure of reporting to your Lordship that on the - - - I succeeded in reaching your remarkable fountains …’