The $15 weekly salary from the Missouri Democrat plus freelance fees earned from other newspapers, boosted Stanley’s earnings to $90 per week and he recorded in his journal that ‘by economy and hard work, though now and then foolishly impulsive, I have been able to save three thousands dollars, that is, six hundred pounds’. It was time for the frontier reporter to move on and head for New York, the Mecca of American journalism. In December 1867, he wrote: ‘I ventured . . . to throw up my engagement with the Democrat, proceed to Cincinnati and Chicago, and collect my dues, which were promptly paid to me; and in two cases, especially the Chicago Republican, most handsomely.’ He caught a train to New York with high hopes of landing a staff job on the New York Tribune. The editor was complimentary about Stanley’s work but had no vacancy for ‘such an indefatigable correspondent’ at that time.
Disappointed, Stanley crossed over to the editorial offices of the New York Herald on Broadway and Ann Street ‘and by a spasm of courage’ asked to see the boss, James Gordon Bennett Jr, editor-in-chief and son of the paper’s founder and proprietor, James Gordon Bennett ‘the Elder’. Stanley’s card was passed to Bennett, who recognised the name of the reporter who had sent important dispatches from the frontier ‘and I was invited to his presence. I found myself before a tall, fierce-eyed, and imperious-looking young man [Bennett was aged twenty-seven at the time, a few months younger than Stanley] who said, “Oh, you are the correspondent who has been following Hancock and Sherman lately. Well, I must say your letters and telegrams have kept us very well informed. I wish I could offer you something permanent, for we want active men like you.”’
James Gordon Bennett ‘the Elder’, as he became known after handing the reins of his paper to 25-year-old ‘Junior’ in 1866, was a Scottish-born American who was instrumental in shaping the face of journalism in the United States. Bennett had been destined for the priesthood and attended a Catholic seminary in Scotland before sailing to Canada in 1819. He eventually settled in New York where he became a correspondent for the New York Enquirer and Morning Courier. He was admired for his bold writing style, producing articles on cultural, economic and political topics. His first newspaper, the Globe, was founded in 1832 and the following year he became owner and editor-in-chief of the Pennsylvanian in Philadelphia.
With a start-up capital of $500, he launched a new independent paper called the New York Herald in May 1835. The first four-page edition was written entirely by Bennett, who was aided by two compositors and a printer all working out of a cellar in Wall Street. It sold for 1 cent per copy and became known as ‘the penny paper’.
The New York Herald faced financial problems from the start, competing against established titles in the city. Its offices were burned out twice and Bennett was robbed and threatened by gangsters. He succeeded by industry, persistence, a rapidly growing circulation (it eventually achieved the largest circulation of any newspaper in the United States) and high advertising revenue. Bennett pioneered aggressive news gathering, developing the art of interviews as a reporting technique and covering issues others considered unworthy of their time. In June 1835, the New York Herald was the first American newspaper to carry a Wall Street financial article and to print a vivid, colourful and factual account of the great fire that destroyed a large section of the city later that year. The paper was also first to appoint foreign correspondents, receive copy via telegraph, mail trains and ocean-going steamships, commission more than sixty writers to cover the American Civil War, report on proceedings in the police courts, establish a society section and to feature sporting and artistic events in depth. Bennett also pioneered the use of illustrations in his paper.
Bennett knew what New Yorkers wanted to read in their newspapers and introduced other subjects of which he decided they should also be aware. He turned the New York Herald into the publication with the largest editorial staff, printing more pages than its rivals and the journal for which every American reporter aspired to write. By 1860, the paper was printed on the world’s most technologically advanced presses producing 50,000 copies overnight, in time to be on the breakfast table of every well-informed New Yorker. This self-styled ‘Napoleon of the newspaper’ who – in his words – infused his journal with ‘life, glowing eloquence, philosophy, taste, sentiment, wit and humour’, brought his son into the business to learn about newspapers from the ground floor up with a view to surrendering control on his retirement. At the time the paper was turning in annual profits of over $400,000.
Bennett Jr had been given an expensive foreign education and returned to New York at the outbreak of the Civil War to enlist in the navy. After discharge, he joined the newspaper as his father’s assistant, becoming managing editor in 1866 and taking over as editor on his father’s seventy-first birthday the following year. Bennett Jr was a gifted editor, possessing all his father’s flair for tuning into public taste. He was also extravagant, enjoyed life at New York’s best restaurants, moving in city society and spending large sums on circulation-building promotions. Like all editors, Bennett wanted exclusive stories on his news pages. The first two pages of the New York Herald were given over to classified advertisements, so Bennett’s exclusives were designed to appear from page 3 onwards with new instalments published in prime positions on subsequent days alongside Bennett’s own editorial comment columns.
Legend states that thanks to New York’s vaudeville comedians, Bennett’s unceasing daily news exclusives and exposés introduced a new phrase into American and, later, British popular culture. The punch line to topical jokes cracked by a host of comedians ended with audiences responding loudly with the chant: ‘Oh, Gordon Bennett!’ In time, the phrase crossed the Atlantic, where London’s music hall audiences adapted it to ‘Oh, Gawd!’
Stanley boldly asked Bennett if he might cover a military campaign about to be waged in Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) against an emperor who had imprisoned missionaries and envoys whom the British government was sending armed soldiers to rescue. In Stanley’s opinion, the brave mission promised all the hallmarks of a cracking series of articles for the New York Herald. Bennett, however, had his doubts and said he did not think the story had sufficient interest for American readers. He then asked, ‘On what terms would you go?’
Stanley replied that he would travel either as a staff writer for a moderate salary, or as a freelance receiving higher rates for all material published with the right to syndicate articles to other papers. Bennett was alarmed by this last remark, stating that the New York Herald did not have a policy of sharing news. ‘We would be willing to pay well for exclusive intelligence. Have you ever been abroad before?’, asked the editor. Stanley avoided mentioning he was still a British subject (he would swear an oath of allegiance to the United States in 1885) and a ‘foreigner’ from Wales, admitting only that he had visited Europe several times as well as Asia Minor.
Bennett made Stanley a proposition: cover the assignment on a trial basis, defraying his own expenses, ‘and if your letters are up to standard and your intelligence is early and exclusive, you shall be well paid by the article, or at the rate by which we engage our European specials, and you will be placed on the permanent list’. Stanley agreed and Bennett sent his London representative a cable stating that a new correspondent would be sending his office dispatches from Abyssinia via telegraph. ‘Thus I became what had been the object of my ambition, a regular, I hope, correspondent of the New York Herald,’ Stanley wrote in his journal.
On the morning of 22 December, Stanley transferred £300 from his American bank to the Lombard Street branch of the National Westminster Bank, leaving the remainder in the United States. He received letters of introduction from General Sherman, realising that as both a stranger and ‘an American’ he would need all the help he could muster among English officers on the expedition. Hours later he was on board the steamer Hecla heading out into the Atlantic. First stop was Liverpool and then he took a train to London to draw funds from his bank, boarded another train to Dover for a cross-Channel ferry to the French coast and then travelled overland to Paris.
From his room at the Boulevard de Strasbourg on 1 January 1868, Stanley wrote a note to Lewis Noe: ‘To Brother Lewis – Prince of Boys – & Best of companions. A Happy New Year’s Day to you, Louis & a hundred more of the same sort. In your rejoicings forget not the exiled friend & Brother. Henry.’ Later he travelled south to Marseilles where he boarded a steamer to Alexandria. From there he headed south to Suez, the Red Sea and Abyssinia – his first visit to the hinterland of a place he would later call the ‘Dark Continent’ . . . Africa.