Leopold intimated that following Stanley’s period of rest and recuperation, he would be given the job of Director General of the Congo Free State, operating from Brussels and the Congo itself. Until that time, the King of the Belgians continued to pay Stanley a ‘consultant’s salary’, taking advice as and when it was required.
Stanley kept himself occupied writing his two-volume work, The Congo and the Founding of its Free State. It was written with his usual speed and it appeared in London bookshops in May 1885 – less than one year after his return from Africa. It was not a grand adventure story on the scale of How I Found Livingstone and Through the Dark Continent, but it still sold well thanks to positive reviews and serialisation in newspapers and magazines in Britain and America. It was later translated into twenty languages and dedicated to ‘the generous monarch who so nobly conceived, ably conducted, and munificently sustained the enterprise which has obtained the recognition of all the great powers of the world’.
There was also an opportunity for Stanley to enjoy the apartment he had leased a few years before but had hardly lived in. He was now forty-four, but following the hardships of life in Africa and recurring bouts of gastritis – a legacy of his travels and an illness that would plague him for the rest of his life – he appeared ten years older. A friend described him at this time: ‘The rich, black hair had become tawny and towcoloured, the bright, fresh complexion had become sallow and the skin was pitted almost as if from smallpox, but the eyes were still those of fiery youth and energy.’
Living at the Langham Hotel was comfortable and convenient, but Stanley needed a home of his own, somewhere to store the books, treasures and artefacts he had collected on his travels, a place to write and to entertain friends. The apartment was located at 30 Sackville Street, just off Piccadilly and close to London’s amenities. He decorated it with Congolese knives and fighting axes, native spears, trophies, ornaments, paintings and photographs. He shared the house with a Congolese Basoko boy called Baruti – or ‘Gunpowder’ – who had been brought to England by Stanley’s successor in the Congo, Sir Francis de Winton, ‘with a view to impressing on him the superiority of civilised customs’. The boy found it difficult to adapt to life in London and Sir Francis asked Stanley to care for him in the same way as he had taken Kalulu under his wing years before. Like Kalulu, Baruti was sent to school and was often seen with Stanley on the platform at speaking engagements.
Stanley also employed a valet called William Hoffmann, a seventeen-year-old Londoner with a German father, who had been working as a bag maker when Stanley met him delivering an order to a guest at the Langham Hotel. Shortly after their meeting, Stanley is said to have placed his hands firmly on Hoffmann’s shoulders, stared into his eyes and asked if he would like to come and look after him at his apartment – despite having no experience of domestic work. Hoffmann later said that the offer ‘was too wonderful to be true’.
Whether William Hoffmann was another young man, who, like Lewis Noe, Fred Barker and Frank Pocock, stirred Stanley’s longings for male companions is open to debate. In both adolescence and maturity, Stanley enjoyed the company of younger men, although this is no guarantee that he harboured sexual longings for them.
Dr John Kirk – who for the past three years had been ennobled as Sir John Kirk – was never invited to dine at Sackville Street. He had returned to Britain from Zanzibar to advise the Foreign Office on African colonial issues. Kirk had written to King Leopold praising Stanley’s boldness as an explorer but pointing out that ‘the American’ did not have the trust of Britain’s diplomatic service, intimating he knew too much about Stanley to find a good word to say in his favour. He was bold enough to suggest that Leopold appoint a better class of administrator to manage the Congo stations, in order to make ‘room enough for a rough pioneer like Stanley’.
Kirk’s disparaging remarks, along with others made by former European staff in the Congo, did little to speed Leopold’s decision about how he might use Bula Matari in the future. Strauch informed Stanley that ‘we do not know exactly when we shall need you’ but he would let him know so he would have ample time to prepare. For what? Ample time was something Stanley now had in abundance. His book was written and published, his speaking engagements at an end; for the first time in years he now had time on his hands with few prospects of anything exciting on the horizon.
Although bold in his work as a reporter, explorer and leader of men, Stanley still remained timid in the face of the opposite sex. Polite conversation with women seated next to him at private dinner parties presented few problems, but taking things further was a difficulty. He was afraid to ask a lady out, fearing that she might decline his invitation. The fear of rejection – any kind of rejection – never left him.
Thanks to Edwin Arnold of the Daily Telegraph, romance returned to Stanley’s life in the summer of 1885 while he was doing nothing in particular, still awaiting Leopold’s call. Her name was Dorothy ‘Dolly’ Tennant, the London-born artist daughter of a wealthy landowner from Neath, North Wales, who had died fifteen years previously after serving as Member of Parliament for St Albans. Her mother, Gertrude – ‘Gertie’ – was one of London’s best known grandes dames, a socialite whose exclusive and elegant Georgian home at 2 Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, provided the setting for a salon attended by the cream of Victorian artistic, literary and political society.
Dolly sometimes modelled for artists and had enjoyed their company since childhood. She had studied art in Paris and at the Slade School of Art in London and made a decent living illustrating magazines with pictures of London ragamuffins, chimney sweeps and assorted urchins. Not that Dolly needed to earn a living. Her father had left the family comfortably off with property interests in Wales and the palatial Georgian house in Richmond Terrace which on most evenings hummed with good conversation, music, and the sound of guests enjoying excellent food and wine.
Dolly was a tall, statuesque, handsome woman and, at the age of thirty-four, still unmarried. If she had received marriage proposals by the time she met Stanley, she had certainly turned them all down. There is no evidence to suggest that Dolly was even looking for a husband, even though she moved in a wide social circle in which eminent suitors were available at every turn.
The first meeting between Dolly and Stanley took place at one of Gertie’s dinner parties at Richmond Terrace. The hostess had invited Edward Arnold and requested him to bring along his friend who had written the new Congo book her daughter was currently reading avidly. Other guests that night included William Gladstone and Joseph Chamberlain.
Gertie seated Dolly between Stanley and Gladstone, men with different opinions on every subject under the sun. The dinner party was a lively occasion with polite banter exchanged between the Liberal politician known as ‘the Grand Old Man’ and the brash American explorer. Later that evening, Dolly asked Stanley to sit for her while she painted his portrait. Over several long sessions, with Stanley sitting smoking in a comfortable chair and Dolly at her easel, their friendship grew. Dolly encouraged her new friend to talk about Africa, his vision for its future, and about Livingstone, while in turn he asked her about art and poetry. They had little in common, but there was chemistry between them.
Dolly had read all of Stanley’s books and out of curiosity asked after whom the Lady Alice had been named. Stanley told her the story of Alice Pike, his engagement and her unfaithfulness. Dolly felt sorry for him, sensing the disappointment and loneliness surrounding his fame. Although Stanley had been too timid to declare love for Dolly, he felt ready to propose to her at an early stage in their relationship – but again, fear of rejection raised its head. He confessed to a friend that he was also more than a little afraid of the extrovert Gertie, concerned that she might be part of a marriage ‘package’.
When Stanley became ill again with gastritis in March 1886, Dolly and Gertie were regular visitors at his bedside. He was too ill to travel to Bodelwyddan Churchyard near Denbigh on 3 April to attend his mother’s burial service; Betsey had died the week before aged sixty-three. Local newspapers noted that she had long been the landlady of the Cross Foxes pub at Glascoed, where a fine collection of African curios, including native helmets, spears, shields, war clubs, photographs, books and signed letters from her famous son decorated the walls. A brass plate on her coffin was inscribed with the simple words: ‘Elizabeth Parry – mother of H.M. Stanley the African explorer’. Stanley paid for the funeral and burial expenses and, as usual, paid no attention to the latest articles in Welsh newspapers reminding readers that the man who had found Livingstone and travelled the length of the Congo was really one of their own. He would tell his little secret to Dolly and Gertie in his own time.
When fit enough to travel again, Stanley’s doctor sent him on a tour of European spa towns from where he wrote daily to Dolly, addressing her as ‘My dear Miss Dorothy’, signing his letters ‘most faithfully yours, Henry M. Stanley’. The letters hinted that he missed her and that his pleasure would have been enhanced if she had been present to share the joys of his journey with him.
By June 1886 Stanley had come to terms with the fact that King Leopold was not going to keep his word and appoint him Director General of the Congo Free State. But ‘Bula Matari’ was not concerned. If the call came, he might have been prompted to propose to Dolly and take her along as the Director General’s wife. Her intellect and social skills would have made her an ideal candidate for this role. Instead, he visited Richmond Terrace daily and each time he returned to Sackville Street frustrated that while Dolly had hinted how she felt about him, he had been too afraid to declare his own feelings in case she misconstrued his meaning.
After wrestling with his feelings for hours, he wrote a heartfelt letter to Dolly finally admitting that although he was ‘woefully ignorant of women’s ways’ he was ‘rich only in love of you’. He pleaded with her to ‘end this exasperating doubt of mine’, to reply as soon as possible – and if it was rejection, simply to return the letter. And that is exactly what Dolly did. Her reasons were not recorded. Perhaps she did not relish life as a traveller’s wife spending long periods away from home. Africa was a long way from the comforts of Richmond Terrace, the social scene, her ragamuffins, artist’s palette and the company of her mother. Or perhaps she did not love him.
Stanley was rejected again – this time both by a woman and by a king. He had spent the last year and a half awaiting a summons from Leopold and some indication from Dolly about her feelings towards him. The former was silent and the latter rejected his love. The future without either looked empty.