Requests from the American Consul in Zanzibar to honour huge loans taken out by Stanley in the name of the New York Herald began arriving on James Gordon Bennett’s desk before Stanley’s dispatches. Bennett ignored them all. The fact that Stanley had been instructed to take as much money as was needed to find Livingstone had conveniently been forgotten. Instead, Bennett demanded to know from editorial staff what his reporter thought he was playing at, allowing months to pass without sending word of his progress. Nobody in the newsroom could answer the question.
It must have crossed Bennett’s mind that Stanley had duped him and run off with large sums of money borrowed in the newspaper’s name. He may have imagined that Stanley was living in the lap of luxury somewhere in the sun and if his competitors got to hear of it, Bennett would never again be able to show his face inside the fashionable New York clubs he loved to frequent.
Stanley had kept in touch with his editor as best he could. Because no direct telegraphic services were available from Zanzibar, communications had to be written and sent via ship to Bombay or Suez before being transmitted to London and on to New York. But Bennett judged the worth of his correspondents by the frequency of their dispatches and ability to get copy to him from the world’s remotest regions. He was not interested in how hostile the terrain might be or how far a reporter might find himself from a telegraph station – Bennett wanted copy quickly even if the correspondent had to swim up waterfalls, run barefoot across burning deserts or dig a hole through the earth’s crust. He wanted it fast and first.
Bennett was accustomed to receiving regular dispatches from Stanley as he made his way through assignments the editor had given him from his Paris hotel suite. When Stanley’s communications dried up and there was silence, Bennett imagined the worst. Stanley had either jumped ship, joined a rival news organisation, absconded with a box full of money – or was dead.
It had been over three months since Stanley’s short dispatch announcing ‘receipt of positive intelligence of the safety of Dr. Livingstone’ had arrived. Everyone at the New York Herald was now holding their collective breath for Stanley’s next dispatch, having no idea of whether it might appear the following day, week, month – or year. Desperate to keep the scoop alive and the Herald’s role in the discovery prominent, Bennett reprinted a letter from Dr John Kirk that had already appeared in a British newspaper. Published on 11 December 1871, it mentioned that war between Mirambo, warlord chief of the Ruga-Ruga and Unyanyembe’s Arabs had caused the road from Unyanyembe to Ujiji to be closed and that ‘Mr. Stanley, an American gentleman’ (the first time he had been identified by his name in the paper) had sent word to the American Consul that Livingstone might try to find his way back to civilisation via an alternative route. Kirk’s letter provided no new information, but was enough to remind readers that the New York Herald still played an important part in the story.
Finally, on 21 December, a member of Bennett’s news staff burst into the editor’s office to announce that a long dispatch had arrived from Africa. They pored over the contents and read how the reporter had undertaken the business of recruiting and equipping his caravan and begun his march towards Ujiji. He described the trials and tribulations of trading with native tribes, horrors of the Makata swamp, sickness and desertions encountered on the journey and reports from fellow travellers about Livingstone. Bennett discarded editorial copy originally scheduled for page 3 and gave it over entirely to Stanley’s dispatch, which he published in full the following day.
Bennett was ecstatic. This was just the exclusive the New York Herald needed in the run-up to Christmas and he ordered editorial staff to prepare follow-up pieces designed to keep the story alive until receipt of Stanley’s next dispatch – whenever that might be. Stanley was, once again, the golden boy of American journalism and there was no further newsroom talk of him absconding with Bennett’s money, working for a rival or failing to communicate with his boss. Instead, he was held up as a shining example of a loyal reporter who kept his eye on only one thing – the story.
The next day’s paper included a tribute to ‘our experienced Oriental traveller charged with the bold enterprise of an expedition into the heart of Eastern Equatorial Africa in search of Dr. Livingstone’. It added that an African expedition was something new in modern journalism and in this, as in other great achievements of ‘the third estate’, the credit of the first bold adventure in the cause of humanity, civilisation and science belonged to the New York Herald. It praised Stanley (but not by name), as ‘a traveller of varied and extensive experience in whom we were satisfied was the very man to detail on the perilous search in the wild of Africa for Dr. Livingstone’. The editorial rounded on the British government as
too slow and too penurious in its feeble attempts on behalf of Dr. Livingstone. From what our representative in this African journey has already accomplished with his small force we are sure that a properly equipped exploring expedition of five hundred men from the British government could traverse without difficulty the whole breadth of Equatorial Africa from sea to sea. . . . It may be months before we hear again from our courageous African traveller, but we are strong in the hope not only shall we hear from him again, but that we shall hear of the complete success of this great undertaking, both in regard to Dr. Livingstone and the outlet of Lake Tanganyika. And so, from year to year, we gather in the bounteous harvest for our readers ‘from the rivers to the ends of the earth’.
Bennett then sat back and permitted competitors across America to trumpet their praise for the New York Herald, which he reproduced in his own newspaper:
The New York Herald has just given another evidence of journalistic enterprise that throws in the shade any of its former great achievements – Trenton Gazette (New Jersey)
It will put to shame the British government and the enterprise of British people that an American newspaper should be left to organise and carry out an expedition into the heart of Africa, to ascertain the whereabouts of the celebrated Dr. Livingstone – New Bedford Standard (Mass.)
The most extraordinary enterprise ever dreamed of is that which the New York Herald has undertaken in fitting out an expedition to penetrate the interior regions of Africa, where Dr. Livingstone is supposed to be detained by the natives, either to rescue the great explorer if possible, or clear up the mystery of his fate. . . . If the expedition should succeed in bringing back Dr. Livingstone, or determining the fact of his death if he has perished, the tremendous celebrity that it will give to the Herald will no doubt be worth all the cost – Buffalo Express
One of the most remarkable journalistic enterprises the world has known – Cincinnati Enquirer
There seems to be no limit to the wonderful activity of the Herald in gathering news. It spares no pains or expense and overcomes the greatest obstacles – Indianapolis News
To control public opinion has, hitherto, been the mission of the press, but now we have the great newspaper of America entering a new field of enterprise, that commercial and geographical facts may be ascertained and defined. The Herald stands aloof from the press of the country. It defies men, parties, news associations and political combinations – and now supplants governments and enters upon a task as novel as its conception was daring and original – Memphis Beagle
The latest marvel is in the newspaper world, and the organising and equipping at an enormous outlay by a single newspaper establishment, an expedition to search out in the interests of science and humanity, the great African explorer Dr. Livingstone. The honour of creating this epoch belongs to a leading American journal – the New York Herald. It is nothing new in the history of this remarkable paper, for a gigantic journalistic idea to be developed and carried out, but of its later masterstrokes none is so positively startling in the idealistic breadth and grandeur than its Livingstone expedition, under the command of the gifted and courageous Stanley. It is the crowning point of the Herald’s enterprise. Had Livingstone been an American, the world would have marvelled at the expeditionary idea; but being a British subject, we are lost in admiration at the sweeping spirit of liberality made in the matter. . . . A fitting motto for the Herald’s Livingstone search expedition is found in the last words of [Sir Walter Scott’s] Marmion – ‘On Stanley, On!’ – Newark Journal
Covered in embarrassment ‘because bold American enterprise had succeeded in doing something British interests should have achieved two years before’, the Royal Geographical Society announced in January 1872 that it was sending an expedition of its own to rescue Livingstone.
The Society stated that while Stanley had sent back positive news about Livingstone, the war between Mirambo’s mercenaries and Arabs at Unyanyembe had obviously rendered it impossible for his expedition to reach Ujiji. The Society had, therefore, approached Her Majesty’s Treasury for funds, promising to match pound for pound any sum donated by the government, stating that Livingstone’s achievements belonged to the nation, which must now do its bit to bring the missionary-traveller safely home. It took the Treasury two weeks to respond: ‘My Lords are of the opinion that the direction of the expedition is too doubtful to warrant the expense.’ So the Society called for public subscriptions and £1,700 was raised with a promise of £1,500 more.
Daily Telegraph readers were told that Britain’s ‘national honour is at stake’ and that expedition members handpicked to sail to Africa, walk halfway across the continent and rescue Livingstone included Lieutenant Llewellyn Dawson, RN, a naval officer with experience in China, Lieutenant William Henn, RN, Oswald Livingstone, the doctor’s twenty-year-old son and Charles New, a missionary from Mombasa with knowledge of local native languages. They sailed from Southampton to Zanzibar on the steamer Aydos – just as Stanley and Livingstone were walking back together in the direction of Unyanyembe, where Stanley planned to equip the doctor with fresh supplies. The Telegraph added:
An American newspaper shamed the British people into this effort, not by high-sounding editorial verbiage, but by quiet and effective action. Actions do, indeed, speak louder than words, as is herein so thoroughly demonstrated by our contemporary’s active triumph. If nothing more than is already known should come of the Herald’s expedition, enough has already been accomplished to command for our contemporary the proudest position yet achieved by any newspaper in what is called ‘the fourth estate’, but which is fast becoming the first. All honour to the journal whose founder and proprietor is justly entitled to be called the father of American journalism – and that means of the world. What the venerable Morse has accomplished for the electric telegraph, the white-haired septuagenarian Bennett has for a newspaper press.
In a lighter vein, and with tongue firmly in cheek, a letter published in the New York Herald on 5 May 1872 asked,
Sir – can’t you ‘let up’ a little, on Livingstone? Has he any relatives ‘on’ the Herald that expect to become his heirs? Do you really wish to ‘discover’ him? Take my advice. Let the doctor alone (and if alive, he’ll come home like Little Bo Peep), that is, if taking another view of the case, he hasn’t gone off on the tail of a comet to see a running match on the Milky Way Race Track; in which case, with its usual enterprise, the Herald will have to establish an observatory to ‘discover’ him. Yours truly in the interest of Science . . . (author not identified!).
And from The Times, London, 14 May 1872:
The RGS met on this date. . . . The organisation is ‘very embarrassed’ that they have not announced the discovery of Livingstone. There was good reason to believe that Mr. Stanley and Dr. Livingstone would meet at the beginning of the year, most probably on Lake Tanganyika. There was, however, one point upon which it might be well to set the public right. It has been generally inferred from the intelligence that Mr. Stanley had discovered and relieved Dr. Livingstone; but if there had been any discovery and relief it was Dr. Livingstone who had discovered and relieved Mr. Stanley. Dr. Livingstone, indeed, is in clover while Mr. Stanley is nearly destitute. It was known that he was without supplies and must have undergone much hardship and privation before he had reached Ujiji . . . where Dr. Livingstone had large stores and he was consequently in a position to assist Mr. Stanley on reaching that place. The President said he did not by any means desire to undervalue the exertions of Mr. Stanley and he thought it highly creditable to him to have penetrated so far and to have accomplished such a journey. He hoped that the expedition, which had left England, would discover and relieve them both and enable them to continue and complete their explorations. . . . He wished to say that never from the commencement since they had heard from Dr. Livingstone, had the council of the Geographic Society given countenance to the suspicion that Dr. Livingstone was no more. Dr. Livingstone was so well known in that part of Africa that if anything untoward had happened to him, intelligence would have reached the coast with great rapidity.
In June, pages of the New York Herald suddenly appeared with heavy black borders in solemn tribute to James Gordon Bennett ‘the Elder’, the paper’s founder, editor and proprietor, who had died, aged seventy-seven, after an illness. Bennett Jr used the opportunity to divert reader’s attention from the fact that nothing new had been received from Stanley since September. For days afterwards, the paper’s pages were filled with tributes from the great, the good and rival newspapers. As the old man was buried in New York’s Greenwood Cemetery, his large fortune passed into the hands of his son.
On 14 June 1872, the New York Herald informed its readers:
Mr. Oswald Livingstone, son of the explorer, writing from Zanzibar in the later days of April last, says: ‘A caravan has arrived from Unyanyembe and we have seen some of the leading men who say that Stanley has reached Ujiji where he has met my father who has received the supplies sent up to him. There are no letters from them at this moment. I am inclined to think that some supplies have reached Ujiji and there is little doubt that Stanley has left.
On the eve of American Independence Day 1872, the New York Herald was again reflective – and desperate to receive another dispatch from Stanley. The article, headlined ‘Review of the Progress of Geographical Discovery’, likened Stanley and Livingstone to Ulysses, Ptolemy, Marco Polo, Bartholomeu Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Cortez, Pizarro, Magellan, Captain Cook, Sebastian Cabot, Sir John Franklin, General Freemont, Burke and Wills, ‘names with which we are all enthusiastically familiar along with their toil, suffering, courage and perseverance. . . . We can regard the wonderful triumph of Stanley, the Herald’s explorer, in his successful search for Livingstone, as a splendid triumph for the whole of the American press. Henceforth, the great discoveries of the world, scientific and geographical, are to be heralded not by the slow and ineffectual reams of books and through the ordinary agencies of publication, but by the press of the land.’
By now, Stanley was on his way back to the coast, but his dispatch announcing his meeting with Livingstone had still to appear in the outside world. Actual news of his return to Zanzibar preceded his remaining dispatches. On 4 July 1872 the New York Herald published a special report from London:
Copious information regarding the safety of Dr. Livingstone and the success of his explorations in equatorial Africa, is the great sensation of the day. The Herald’s dispatches have been quoted in all evening papers published in the city and large placards have been copiously posted in every quarter of London calling to attention news of the great explorer. These are surrounded by citizens who discuss the Herald’s feat. Leading London publishers have thronged the London Bureau of the New York Herald in Fleet Street. They profess the greatest anxiety to get into communication with the Commander of the Herald’s expedition. Their intentions are to anticipate the American publishers by bidding for a record of his experiences outside that which he will furnish exclusively to the Herald. Competition is keen between representatives of book publications here and they are prepared to offer large sums. Several of the best artists of illustrated journals have also called with the objective of securing a likeness of Mr. Stanley and to bid for the publication in their sheets of any sketches he may have made on the road to Ujiji and return to the sea coast. Next to Livingstone and Stanley, Mirambo . . . is among the prime favourites for pencil engrave treatment. It may be judged from the foregoing evidences how high the excitement runs among the entire people of Great Britain. The glorious news has been flushed far and wide and is the subject of universal and admiring comment on the Herald’s great success.
On the same day the London News published a letter which no one was expecting:
From R.O. Abergele – Your paper of the 18th instance states that Mr. Stanley, the representative of the New York Herald, which has proceeded to Africa in search of Dr. Livingstone is a Mr. John Thomas, a native of Denbigh, whose mother, at the present time, keeps a public house in St. Asaph. May I beg of you to correct the above statement in your next impression? Mr. Stanley’s proper name is John Rowlands and his mother, at the present time, keeps a public house called The Castle Arms close to St. Hilary’s Church, Denbigh, and not a house at St. Asaph as above stated. His grandfather on the paternal side was the late Mr. John Rowlands and on the maternal side, the late Mr. Moses Parry. Yours obediently.
An eagle-eyed reporter on the Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald was soon on the story and reported:
Mr. Stanley, by discovering the hero of Africa, has himself become the hero of the hour. The discoverer of the ‘African lion’ has himself been lionised as no man ever was in this country perhaps since Livingstone himself paid us a visit a few years ago. All heroes move in a halo of mystery, so does Mr. Stanley. He has cleared up the Livingstone mystery only to create a Stanley mystery. To the geographers he is a sore puzzle and to the genealogists he seems to be no less a puzzle . . . he has left a deeper mystery still to hang over two important things – the source of the Nile and his own origin, especially the latter. What country has had the honour of giving him birth? This is the vexed question that has been asked again and again and to which no satisfactory answer has yet been given. ‘He is a Welshman.’ ‘No, he is an American.’ ‘Denbigh is his native town.’ ‘No, Missouri, and not Wales, is his birthplace.’ These are the conflicting replies that have been given to the puzzling question. Livingstone was lost to the world for years and the great question used to be ‘Who will find him for us?’ Stanley gloriously answered the question. Now Stanley’s nationality is lost, and the great question for some time has been ‘Who will find it for us?’
Catching the spirit of the intrepid traveller, a reporter went out in search of Stanley’s ‘lost’ nationality and, to settle the question, located Stanley’s mother at the Cross Foxes Inn, where he asked her to confirm or deny her relationship with Stanley. She replied, ‘that she was, and that it would be impossible for her to deny it, even if she wished’ that Henry Morton Stanley was her son, reported the journalist. Betsy produced four photographs of her famous son, taken at different times in America, Asia and Africa plus books he had sent as presents inscribed ‘from Henry Morton Stanley’.
Betsy enjoyed the attention she was receiving from the reporter and confirmed that Stanley’s real name was John Rowlands, now thirty-two years old, who had gone to New Orleans fifteen years before. She revealed that he was employed there by a gentleman ‘and it was after him that he adopted the name of Stanley’. She spoke of his job as ‘a special correspondent’ for the Missouri Democrat, of his work for the New York Herald and how he visited his proud mother whenever he was back in the country. There was no mention of Stanley’s ‘real’ father or why Betsy had allowed her boy to spend his formative years in the local workhouse. ‘We were also told that there is no question but that he will in due time come out and declare that he is a native of Wales’, the paper proudly announced.