It was while serving on the Minnesota that Stanley became friends with a fifteen-year-old enlisted sailor from Sayville, Long Island, called Lewis Noe who joined the warship as a messenger at Hampton Road, Vermont in June 1864. Lewis Noe entered Stanley’s life as his young and impressionable admirer. Stanley developed an infatuation for the boy. He kept a photograph of Noe in his collection for the remainder of his life and the name of his younger friend would crop up in a significant way nearly a decade later – and finally following Stanley’s death.
In an interview with the New York Sun eight years afterwards, Noe described Stanley as ‘full of aspirations for adventure, told marvellous tales of foreign countries and he urged that when we should leave the service I should accompany him on a proposed tour in Southern Europe. Being of a romantic turn of mind, I was pleased at the suggestion.’
Stanley had been planning his return to Europe for some time. He wanted to visit famous sites from classic literature and anticipated exciting adventures along the way which he would turn into articles to sell to the same newspapers that had published his Fort Fisher copy. The problem was that Stanley still had seven months of his navy contract to run and was impatient to move on. The only way to leave the service was to desert – and Lewis Noe intended to join the adventure.
They planned their desertion carefully. The Minnesota was scheduled to enter the navy dockyard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for repairs in February 1865. Noe claimed that Stanley forged passes carrying the Commodore’s signature and permitting the sailors to pass through the shipyard’s main gate. Once outside, they swapped uniforms for civilian clothes paid for in advance from workmen at the yard.
Stanley and Noe jumped ship on 10 February 1865 and set off for New York where Noe returned to his family in Long Island – who immediately dispatched him back to the city with orders to return to his ship. In New York he met Stanley who warned the boy that ‘disgrace and punishment waited me if I should go back’.
Noe claimed that Stanley had devised a plan by which Lewis would sign up for the army, give his ‘bounty money’ – a joining fee – to Stanley, desert, re-enlist with another unit and hand that money to Stanley and so on until they had sufficient funds for a passage to Europe. Noe declined, stating that Stanley ‘was angry at me for my refusal, and finding that neither persuasion nor scolding would swerve me from my resolution, he set to work to procure employment. . . . His pleasing address, engaging manners, neat penmanship, and with all, his intelligent conversation and air of confidence enabled him to get a position, I believe in a law office.’
Following employment on a Long Island farm, Noe eventually enlisted as a private in the 8th New York Mounted Volunteers under the name of Lewis Morton. He remained with the unit until the close of the war when he was discharged. Meanwhile, Stanley was making enquiries about what had happened to his young companion, calling on Noe’s parents who informed him that their son was back in uniform.
Hungry for adventure, Stanley was not prepared to wait for Noe to reappear. He boarded a westbound train heading towards frontier towns, Indian camps and Mormon settlements in Missouri, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska. Along the way he knocked on the doors of city, town and county newspaper editors offering his services as a freelance reporter. With press clippings from the battle for Fort Fisher as his only credentials, he nevertheless managed to pick up occasional commissions. When not pursuing writing assignments, he landed other jobs at a printing works and a gold mine to fund his travels.
It was in Mohawk City in the spring of 1866 that Stanley met a fellow freelance reporter called Harlow Cook who, like himself, yearned to travel outside America. Their first meeting was an auspicious one and demonstrates the self-confidence and high principles Stanley had discovered within himself in early maturity. Cook recalled: ‘[Stanley] had made himself notorious, and shown his character, by making a man twice his size kneel and ask his pardon for something said reflecting on his character. He was the hottest blooded man I ever saw. He never stopped for consequences. He put a pistol to the man’s head, and said, “Retract, d––n you”, and the big fellow flipped down and retracted.’
Together, Stanley and Cook planned to use their meagre earnings to undertake an extraordinary epic journey to Asia Minor, an expedition unheard of by ordinary Americans during the 1860s – particularly travellers planning to visit this little-known region with limited funds. The expedition would travel by ship from Boston to Smyrna (Izmir) in the Turkish Aegean and overland in the footsteps of Marco Polo to Constantinople, some six centuries after Marco’s own journey in search of Kublai Khan. They would cross into Armenia, visit Yerevan and push onwards to Tblisi, cross the Caucasus and traverse the Caspian Sea before ending up on Marco’s famous Silk Route to Bukhara, Samarkand – and who knows where after that? An ambitious onward journey into India, Tibet and China was certainly discussed along with a route that would eventually take them around the world.
The expedition would be expensive, but Stanley had been careful with his earnings. He had begun to keep an occasional journal and recorded: ‘I have practised a rigid economy, punished my appetites, and, little by little, the sums acquired through this abstinence began to impart a sense of security, and gave an independence to my bearing which, however I might strive to conceal it, betrayed that I was delivered from the dependent state.’
The third person accompanying them on their adventure was to be Lewis Noe, acting as their ‘attendant’. Along the route, Stanley and Cook planned to gather material for their articles and a book they would write about their experiences and encounters. First they had to get out of their frontier backwater and return to civilisation. Deciding that their great journey might as well begin there and then, they floated down the mighty Platte river in a flat-bottom raft of their own construction.
In Denver they purchased wood, tools and rope and within a few hours had constructed a flimsy craft that would carry them down the rapids. It was 6 May 1866 and melting mountain snow had swollen the river into a raging torrent passing through Indian territory. They attempted to talk each other out of the seemingly foolhardy exploit, but arrived at the conclusion that if they were unable to travel down the Platte river, they would certainly be unable to face the challenges of Asia.
Fuelled by apprehension and adrenalin in equal measure, Stanley and Cook lashed down their provisions, loaded the rifles that would protect them from any savage Indians they might encounter along the banks and pushed their raft to the water’s edge. Curious onlookers told them they were mad to undertake so patently suicidal a mission. Others said that several unsuccessful attempts to follow the river had already been made. Previous rafters had given up but those who continued had all met disaster when underwater rocks smashed craft to matchwood, projecting passengers into the raging current.
The farewell party helped push the raft and its intrepid two-man crew into the water and it shot off around a bend in the river. It turned over twice, but the rafting reporters managed to catch it, drag it to the shore, dry their supplies and relaunch the raft back into the raging waters.
At one of the drying-out posts they met an army patrol seeking deserters from Fort Laramie. The soldiers arrested both men and marched them to the fort for questioning. Cook recalled how they were escorted to the colonel’s office, where Stanley immediately turned on his heel and walked back towards the door. The colonel threatened to put him under arrest and Stanley told him to go ahead ‘if you have men enough to take me’. Stanley and Cook walked out without a backwards glance and resumed their hazardous journey. They arrived in St Louis soaking wet – but alive – five days later, where they caught a train to New York to rendezvous with Lewis Noe.
Cook was far from impressed with Noe, whom he later described as ‘a weak, dish-water kind of a boy . . . no backbone to him, no character at all’. According to Cook, Noe was ‘a chit of a boy and with no signs of a man about him. Stanley was young, but manly, and easily 50 years ahead of Noe in everything.’ Cook said that Noe was taken along to act as ‘our servant’; Noe would later state that Stanley introduced him to Cook as ‘his half brother. . . . This part I was compelled to play on our travels abroad, whenever Stanley’s caprice suggested it.’
Stanley visited Noe’s parents and urged them to allow their son to take part in the adventure. Noe admitted that he longed for adventure and heard Stanley tell his parents that
he desired to educate me and give me the polish that could be obtained by intercourse with the world. He told of diamonds, and rubies, and precious stones, and rich India shawls and other fabrics in Central Asia, the real value of which the natives knew scarce anything, which could be procured for us for insignificant sums of money, and could be sold at enormous profit. He professed to have acquired abundant means in Colorado, and was willing to pay all my expenses for the pleasure of my companionship. My parents were in humble circumstances, and naturally they desired to promote the welfare of their son and they gave their consent.
By 10 July 1866 Stanley, Cook and Noe were in Boston where they boarded the barque E.H. Yarrington for the long voyage to Turkey. Once on board, Noe claims he was ‘a little surprised, after the rose coloured prospects Stanley had held out to me, when he expressed a wish for me to work my passage on the vessel, for which he stated he had made arrangements. . . . My faith was so unbounded in his wisdom, his integrity and love for me, that I readily acquiesced. With my previous experience, I was enabled to make myself serviceable on the voyage.’ For his part, Cook later confirmed that the trio part-worked their Atlantic passage, stating: ‘Stanley and Noe understood the ship, and I wanted to. So we would turn in and help once in a while for the sport of it.’
At Smyrna, Noe was in for another shock when he found ‘the exchequer of the expedition was not of the large proportions I had supposed from Stanley’s representation. . . . With what little means he and Mr. Cook had, they purchased a couple of sorry horses, a few cheap cooking utensils and other things to make up the meagre outfit. This being accomplished, the whole amount of money left did not exceed the value of $5 in gold.’ Noe recalled that he had been expecting a ‘finely equipped Arab horse’ of his own but ‘was compelled to trudge along on foot’ while Stanley and Cook rode the horses.
On their second day out of Smyrna, Noe decided to play a prank on Cook who was sitting dozing in the sunshine next to a bunch of dry bushes. To Stanley’s amusement, Noe crept up and set the bush alight. The fire soon spread, bringing a group of excitable local people to the scene with their policeman. Noe ran off in the direction of Smyrna, but Stanley and Cook were arrested and taken to a guardhouse. Hours later they were released and Stanley returned to Smyrna to find Noe, where the boy said that Stanley’s ‘flattering words and professions of love reassured me, and I consented to go with him again’.
Noe found that instead of being a travelling companion he was to be ‘a beggar and a slave’ for a remorseless master. His duties were to perform any menial service Stanley and Cook directed, to cook and steal. Stanley instructed Noe: ‘Remember you are here to do my bidding. If I tell you to cut a man’s throat, you do it.’
When Noe attempted to escape, he was taken into a pomegranate forest by Stanley, his shirt ripped from his back, tied to a tree and
on my bare skin, he scourged me with a whip which he cut from trees and on which he left the sharp knots, until the blood ran from my wounds. . . . Each blow caused the most excruciating agony, which continued for hours. While he was tying me he looked significantly at his revolver, which was lying on the ground, and said he wished me to understand that I was in his power. Before he commenced his whipping, he asked me if I knew what he was going to do. I told him I did not. Said he, ‘I am going to give you the d——dest thrashing you ever had.’ I then asked what I had done to deserve a whipping. He said that ‘whipping does boys good, whether they have done anything or not.’ . . . When he had concluded, he comforted me by saying: ‘I think you are a good boy, just the one I want for a companion. We will let the matter drop, for I am satisfied.’
Did Stanley derive sexual satisfaction from taking a whip to his young companion? Noe’s remarks were made several years after the event when Henry Morton Stanley’s name was on the lips of every newspaper reader and Noe was seeking a profitable way of discrediting his former friend. By that time, Stanley’s accounts of his African travels had made numerous references to using the whip to deter native porters from deserting his caravan. Some critics observed that while the whip was a good deterrent, Stanley’s overuse of it on the shoulders and backs of half-naked native bearers was not always necessary. Did he derive masochistic gratification from inflicting pain? Was Stanley a repressed homosexual, something as bad, perhaps worse, than being born a bastard in Victorian England?
The travellers were in need of fresh horses 300 miles further into their journey. Noe recalled a plan hatched by Stanley to hijack an approaching Turk riding one horse and leading another by its reins. Cook had been lagging behind and was not party to what happened next.
Stanley, who had learned some of the local language from a phrase book, engaged the Turk in conversation. Pointing in Noe’s direction, he asked the Turk if he wanted to buy a girl dressed in boy’s clothing. As the Turk began groping Noe, Stanley raised his sabre and struck it over his head. The Turk was wearing a fez made from thick pasteboard, which stopped the sabre’s force. He began struggling for his life and reached for a knife, which he attempted to stick into Stanley’s heart. ‘Shoot him, Lewis – shoot him, or he’ll kill me!’ Stanley yelled and Noe, fearing he would be left at the mercy of the Turk, levelled his rifle and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Whoever had last used the weapon had failed to reload it, forcing Noe to club the Turk across the back of the head with its stock.
The Turk escaped up a nearby hill. His knife had cut the inside of one of Stanley’s hands and the wound needed medical attention. Stanley and Noe jumped on the Turk’s horses just as Cook appeared riding one of the party’s original animals. They rode their animals into the ground, only stopping once they considered themselves out of danger.
By this time the Turk had rounded up a force from his village and set out to retrieve his horses. The three travellers were easily located sitting around a smoking campfire and were overpowered. The Turks tied them up and marched them to their village, where they were held prisoner and beaten. On the first night of their imprisonment, Noe was taken out by three of the Turks and gang raped.
The travellers were moved to a larger town where they were thrown into jail and charged with highway robbery. When they appeared before a local court, Stanley asserted that their Turkish captors had robbed the companions of everything they owned – clothes, blankets, weapons, papers and ‘a great deal of money’. The presiding magistrate ordered the Turks to be searched and, sure enough, some of their property was found hidden in their garments. Stanley and company were freed without charge – and the Turks arrested.
Stanley turned the episode into a story for Turkey’s English language paper for expatriates, and it was published in the Levant Herald on 17 October. The paper also syndicated the piece to other newspapers in the United States and England:
OUTRAGE ON AMERICAN TRAVELLERS IN TURKEY
When about seven hours from Afuna Karahissar on 18 September, en route for Tiflis and Tibet, via Erzeroum from Smyrna, I and my two companions, Mr. Cook of Illinois and a youth of New York, were attacked by a band of robbers, hailing from the village of Chihissar, headed by a fellow named Achmet of Karahissar and robbed of all our money, valuables and clothing to the tune of about 80,000 piastres . . . after robbing us, they conveyed us as prisoners in triumph to Chihissar, accusing us of being robbers, which brought down on our devoted heads unparalleled abuse from the villagers; the women pelted us with stones; the children spat at us; the men belaboured us unmercifully with sticks, clubs and fire tongs. Not comprehending in the least what direction affairs had taken, I must say, for myself, that I was plunged into a state of stupefaction, not unmingled with rage as to how and why we were thus treated. We had instantly acquiesced in all their demands, and were as docile as lambs in their hands, and though when attacked we were armed with the best Sharpe’s rifles and Colt revolvers, we had offered no resistance. When night arrived, they bound us with cords drawn so tight around our necks that it nearly produced a strangulation, in which suffering condition they allowed us to remain 12 hours. (A passage here occurs relating to the treatment of the boy.) No explanations that they can render can gloss over the wanton cruelty and malignant treatment to which we had been subjected. Next, two of them conveyed us, bound with the most daring effrontery imaginable, to a small town called Rashikeui with a statement that we were robbers, where of course, we, powerless to explain the mystery which hung over us, were treated as prisoners, accompanied by the most cruel abuse; chains were hung around our necks, like garlands, for the night. . . . We were sent to Afiuna-Karahissar, where we received the benefit of an interpreter, in the person of Mr. Poloso, agent of the Ottoman bank at that place, who acquitted himself very creditably in that capacity; the fruits of which that we were immediately freed from ‘endurance vile’. . . . All the robbers were arrested and will be tried according to law. The American minister at Constantinople has demanded full repayment of the money stolen, the public trial of the prisoners, and the exaction of the full penalty of the law upon the ruffians who assaulted the boy.
The trio made their way to Constantinople to do as tens of thousands of distressed tourists far from home have done ever since – throw themselves at the mercy of their embassy. Unannounced, they turned up at the doors of the American Embassy demanding to see the American Consul-General and enlist his aid.
The Consul-General was out of town and Stanley was sent to the residence of his deputy, Edwin Joy Morris. According to Morris, Stanley arrived wearing ‘neither shirt nor stockings and he showed other evidences of great suffering’. The American diplomat had read Stanley’s article in the Levant Herald and later stated that he had ‘lost no time in taking the necessary steps . . . for the protection and relief of my countrymen’.
Morris and Stanley returned to the embassy where Noe and Cook were waiting. Morris described their condition as ‘most miserable – if ever the condition of men presented the traces of cruel treatment, theirs did’. He advanced Stanley a loan to procure an outfit for himself and his companions, handing over a cheque for £150. Morris failed to ask Stanley for security for the loan, offering it as charity, trusting it would be repaid in the future. But Stanley offered security ‘in the name of his father’, who he said was a lawyer living at 20 Liberty Street, New York who would settle the sum. After Stanley had left Turkey, notice came from New York that no such person lived at that address.
Using the diplomat’s money, Stanley purchased conventional clothes for Noe and Cook and, according to Morris, for himself ‘a kind of semi-navy officer’s coat and vest, with gold lace on the sleeves, and Turkish buttons’ stamped with the Turkish crescent and star. Wearing his new outfit, Stanley paid a call at Abdullah Frères’ studio – ‘photographers to his Imperial Majesty the Sultan’ – and commissioned a three-quarter length carte de visite photograph of himself casually leaning on a low pillar and looking for all the world like a high-ranking naval officer on shore leave.
The US Navy battleship Ticonderoga was docked at Constantinople on a goodwill visit at the time and Stanley had seen officers from the ship wearing their uniforms as they browsed through the bazaars. His new uniform could have passed as American naval issue, providing admirers did not examine its buttons too closely. Stanley could see that a uniform gave those wearing it an assurance of dignity and bearing of the kind he did not innately possess. It was different in cut and style to the rough uniform he had worn with the Dixie Greys and he knew it would work wonders for his reputation when he was spotted wearing it in the streets of Constantinople, New York – or Denbigh.
Stanley and Noe were allowed to leave Turkey, while Cook remained to conclude the legal action against the Turks. Cook was happy to see the back of Noe, whom he described as ‘the whining little pup’, and later collected the 80,000 Turkish piastres the expedition party falsely claimed had been stolen from them. Instead of pressing ahead in the footsteps of Marco Polo, Stanley and Noe announced their intention to return to America. No ships were scheduled to leave Smyrna for American ports at that juncture – but a steamer was departing for Marseilles, from where they could easily sail onwards to Liverpool and work their passage across the Atlantic, putting the whole unfortunate Turkish misadventure behind them.