. . . And when the heat of Afric’s sun
Grew quite too enervating,
Some bloodshed with the Maxim gun
Was most exhilarating!
He found the sport a sweet relief,
And nothing if not ‘manly’ –
The ever-joking, mirth-provoking, brandy-soaking robber chief,
The coming Viscount Stanley.
From Funny Folks, a satirical journal, 1890
Stanley returned to Europe with his volunteers, travelling to Brussels where they were afforded a triumphal welcome at the Gare du Midi. A pair of the city’s burgomasters argued over who should be first to greet the heroes of Africa. The station was decorated with the colours of Belgium, the Congo and the United States. VIPs were admitted free while members of the public were charged 2d to stand on the station platform. Stanley’s party, in official carriages, passed through streets full of cheering people. The Belgians had obviously changed their attitude towards their monarch’s dominance of the Congo. Leopold was now ‘the great benefactor of the nation’, and royal, government and geographical hosts in Brussels expressed enthusiasm ‘for the grand Africa’ now ruled over by their king. Stanley was awarded gold and silver medals, the Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold and the Grand Cross of the Congo. The volunteers each received medals from the Royal Brussels Geographical Society.
Leopold and Stanley spent days locked in discussion about the Congo’s commercial prospects and the part Stanley might play in its future. There was talk of him returning to Africa to create and train a Congo army. A large fee was mentioned and Stanley said he would consider the offer, pleading for time to recover from three years of hard work and illness. He returned to England on 26 April 1890, where a special train was waiting to take him to London. Another large crowd of enthusiastic admirers awaited his arrival at Victoria Station.
Stanley had surrendered the lease to his Sackville Street home before leaving for Africa. He stayed in ‘comfortable rooms at DeVere Gardens’ which had been rented and made ready for him by Sir Frances and Lady de Winton. A mountain of letters greeted him on his return – and one of them was addressed in familiar handwriting. It was a short note from Dolly Tennant, addressed to ‘Dear Mr. Stanley’ saying that she would be pleased to see him again, not because he had achieved great things, but because he had returned safely and she had feared she might not see him again. He declined to answer.
On 6 May, Stanley travelled to Windsor Castle to be presented to Queen Victoria for the second time. This time the Queen was more enthusiastic about receiving the ‘determined, ugly little man – with a strong American twang’, whom she had first met eighteen years previously. Her journal records that on this occasion he was ‘the wonderful traveller and explorer, Mr. Stanley, who has been absent for so many years and so long in search of Emin Pasha’. The Queen wanted to offer Stanley an official honour, but first needed to ascertain his true nationality. Was he the American he had always claimed to be, British, or, perhaps, Welsh? The Queen records:
Saw Lord Salisbury afterwards. We spoke of many things, of Stanley, and what he could do, of his not wishing to have an order offered him, etc. . . . After dinner spoke to Mr. Stanley, who said that the part of the country he had explored was very healthy, and would be a splendid place of emigration. Then we went to the White Drawing Room where we were joined by the ladies and gentlemen and Mr Stanley gave us a most interesting lecture.
It is not known if Stanley admitted details of his birth to the Queen,* but he must have confessed to taking American citizenship in 1885 so forcing the withdrawal of the offer of a knighthood, an honour the workhouse boy, Civil War prisoner, frontier reporter, African explorer and ‘breaker of rocks’, would have loved.
The Royal Geographical Society was not slow to honour Stanley. On 5 May 1890, they hired the Royal Albert Hall and filled it to the rafters with thousands of people wanting to witness the world’s best-known explorer receive a special gold medal. Standing under a giant map of the Congo basin, Stanley told an audience of royalty, the peerage, politicians, scientists, writers and ‘all classes of society’ that this was by far the grandest assembly he had ever seen. He kept his audience in raptures as he recounted the story of Emin Pasha’s rescue.
At a subsequent reception, Dolly was one of scores of people lining up to shake Stanley’s hand. She urged him to call on her at Richmond Terrace. He said he would consider it, but made no attempt to get in touch with the lady who had rejected him four years previously.
Dolly wrote again wishing Stanley well and saying goodbye, promising she would avoid going anywhere where they might meet by chance. Stanley sent back a stern reply, telling her how her rejection had wounded him and that he still felt the pain. Despite the offer to avoid Stanley, Dolly turned up at a reception in his honour that same evening. She chose her moment carefully and when there was a suitable gap among the crowd of admirers flocking to his elbow, she planted herself next to him and softly whispered that he if were to propose again, she would accept.
That night she wrote to him, addressing him as ‘Bula Matari’ and admitting that rejecting his proposal had been a mistake, which she had made because she had ‘felt afraid’. She told him that he was a man who knew more about life and love, while she was just a girl, ‘unacquainted with affairs of the heart’. The letter did the trick and days later, an official announcement of their engagement appeared in The Times. They would be married in Westminster Abbey on 12 July 1890.
Thousands flocked to the Victoria Gallery in London’s Regent Street to view the Stanley and Africa Exhibition at which artefacts from the explorer’s own travels were displayed alongside other pieces loaned by Stanley’s volunteers. King Leopold agreed to be the exhibition’s patron and visitors were drawn from all walks of life who had read about Stanley in books and newspapers and now had an opportunity to view spears, shields, knives, axes, paddles, beaded ornaments, stuffed animals, photographs, maps and books brought from the dark continent. The clothes that Stanley had worn when he greeted Livingstone in 1872 were on display together with rifles, revolvers and other equipment. It was the next best thing to actually being in Africa. The official catalogue stated: ‘The collection is intended to illustrate all Africa between the tropics, graphically representing Central African life and scenery, and the development of commerce.’ The centrepiece was a plaster bust of Stanley by Conrad Dressler, mounted on a rectangular plinth and inscribed ‘Stanley Africanus’.
Once again, Stanley’s image was everywhere. Newspapers produced special ‘Stanley numbers’ retelling the story of Emin’s heroic rescue – providing excellent publicity for his forthcoming book. He was given the freedom of several British cities and even became the subject of a children’s boxed game ‘following his journey, players having to negotiate a route via Stanley Pool and the Congo Forest’ before arriving at Lake Albert Nyanza. Minton produced chinaware figures of Stanley wearing his distinctive explorer’s costume and cap while Royal Doulton manufactured a commemorative Emin Pasha Relief Expedition glazed pottery jug inscribed with the motto: ‘Out of darkness into light’, and the names of Stanley’s volunteers. Music and popular songs were composed in his honour – ‘The Stanley March’, ‘Welcome Stanley’, ‘Stanley’s Rescue’, ‘The Source of the Nile Waltz’ and ‘The Banjo March: The Stanley’. Not for the first time was Stanley’s name mentioned in London’s music halls. A favourite joke went:
‘I say, I say, why did Stanley take so long to find Emin Pasha?’
‘I don’t know. Why did it take Stanley so long to find Emin Pasha?’
‘Because there’s no “M” in Pasha!’
The first edition of Stanley’s two-volume In Darkest Africa sold 150,000 copies in its first weeks of publication in June 1890. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch. The African-adventure hungry Victorian public could not read enough of Stanley’s story of the search and rescue of Emin Pasha, encouraging his volunteers to pen their own accounts. Arthur Mounteney Jephson was first off the mark and his book Emin Pasha and the Rebellion at the Equator was published by Sampson Low, Marston, which had produced all of Stanley’s books. Authorship was credited to ‘A.J. Mounteney Jephson with the revision and co-operation of Henry M. Stanley’. Herbert Ward’s version was entitled My Life With Stanley’s Rear Guard, while Lieutenant John Rose Troup’s story was called With Stanley’s Rear Column, James Jameson’s The Story of the Rear Column (edited by his widow using his diaries) and Dr Thomas Parke’s My Personal Experiences in Equatorial Africa. Each account attempted to be impartial, but their leader did not always appear in the best light. The books depicted Stanley as a fair, yet stern and uncompromising expedition commander and they all sold well in British bookshops in 1890–91. William Bonny was the only surviving British member of the expedition not to have kept a diary or published an account of his time in Africa with Stanley.
From the Illustrated London News, 19 July 1890:
The marriage of Miss Dorothy Tennant to Mr. H.M. Stanley was performed on Saturday July 12 in Westminster Abbey in the presence of a large congregation including many persons of high distinction, rank and fashion; but we sincerely regret to add that Mr Stanley was suffering from the effects of an acute attack of illness – gastritis – which had commenced on the preceding Thursday evening. It was considered by his medical attendant – namely Dr. T.H. Parke, army surgeon and one of his comrades in the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition – to be a renewal of the disease which so nearly proved fatal to his life in the African forest, two or three years ago; but they were enabled to subdue its virulence on this occasion in a few hours, permitting Mr Stanley, though in an enfeebled condition, to go through the wedding ceremony which was a matter of public as well as of private interest.
Magnificent floral bouquets sent by Stanley and his volunteers decorated the Abbey nave and others marked Livingstone’s tomb. When Stanley entered at 2 p.m. thousands of onlookers waiting for a glimpse of the bridegroom, saw a 49-year-old white-haired man, looking ten years older, pale, stooped and leaning heavily on a stout stick. He was supported by his best man, the Comte D’Arochue, representing King Leopold. His groomsmen were Stairs, Parke, Jephson, Nelson and Bonny.
The bride arrived accompanied by her brother, Charles Tennant, two bridesmaids and her pageboy nephew. She wore a white satin dress embroidered with pearls, with a bodice and long train of white silk. Round her neck was a diamond necklace presented to her by Sir William Mackinnon from which was suspended a miniature of Queen Victoria surrounded by gems, a gift from Her Majesty. Dolly placed her wedding bouquet on Livingstone’s tomb as she passed by.
Stanley remained seated for much of the ceremony and it was with difficulty that he knelt at the high altar for the blessing. The most arduous part was standing upright and walking out of the Abbey towards the great west door. The going was slow and halfway down the aisle, the bridegroom was seized by stomach cramps and had to sit down. In order not to disappoint the crowds outside, the bride was led out of the Abbey and into her waiting carriage by Sir John Millais, whom the crowd mistook for Stanley. Stanley left in one of the rear carriages, the roaring crowd unaware that the man lying along the back seat, his eyes closed, his face contorted in agony, was the man who had found Livingstone, walked the length of the Congo, rescued Emin Pasha and married Dolly Tennant just moments before.
Gertie organised a fine reception for the couple at Richmond Terrace, but Stanley was too ill to participate and was advised to rest in a quiet room. Later he was able to stand and Mr and Mrs H.M. Stanley left the house in an open carriage in the company of Dr Parke and Jephson to travel to Waterloo Station, where they boarded a train to Melchet Court, near Romsey, Hampshire, which had been offered as a honeymoon destination by way of a wedding gift by Lady Louisa Ashburton, a Tennant family friend. That evening, Stanley managed to write in his journal:
Being sick from a severe attack of gastritis . . . I was too weak to experience anything save a calm delight at the fact that I was married, and that now I shall have a chance to rest. I feel as unimpressed as if I were a child taking its first view of the world . . . it is all so very unreal. During my long bachelorhood, I have often wished that I had but one tiny child to love; but now, unexpectedly as it seems to me, I possess a wife; my own wife – Dorothy Stanley now, Dorothy Tennant this morning.
Later the following week, Dr Parke was able to tell the Illustrated London News that Stanley was ‘free from fever and progressing favourably, quietness being essential to his recovery’. He was said to be enjoying ‘long drives in the New Forest’.
After a month at Melchet Court, the newlyweds visited France, Italy and Switzerland before travelling to Belgium where Stanley introduced his wife to King Leopold at the Chalet Royal residence in Ostend. Stanley took long walks with the King in the palace grounds, while Dolly remained inside fretting that Leopold was trying to tempt her husband back to Africa on a project he would find difficult to resist.
In England, Stanley toured the country collecting honorary doctorates from universities before returning to his new home at Richmond Terrace in October to pack for a long lecture tour of the United States. Dolly, her mother and Jephson, now acting as Stanley’s secretary, joined him on the voyage.
Trouble was waiting in New York. While sailing across the Atlantic, a storm of protest had broken out in England over the fate of the rear column, mainly stirred up by the grieving families of Barttelot and Jameson, distressed by what they had discovered about the deaths of their sons in the pages of In Darkest Africa. The anti-slavery lobby raised its head, questioning Stanley’s use of non-free men, parliamentarians voiced concerns about the ‘little commissions’ Stanley had undertaken for Leopold and Mackinnon while others openly criticised Stanley for cruelty towards natives.
From his hotel bedroom, Stanley fired off letters and telegrams to the newspapers that had printed the accusations. He said he regretted the death of the young volunteers but accused them of failing to follow orders properly. The relatives responded by stating that such young and inexperienced men should never have been left in charge of the rear column and at the mercy of the unscrupulous Tippu-Tib.
In response to the charges that Stanley had employed slaves during the Emin Pasha relief expedition, he commented: ‘I employed English agents at Zanzibar to engage my people and every precaution was taken that no one was enlisted who could not swear he was a freeman. I was only four days in Zanzibar, but, before these men were accepted, they had to re-swear that declaration before the British Consul-General [Colonel Euan Smith] that they were free. The accusations made against me that I employed slaves are, therefore, most disgraceful.’ The fact remains that many Zanzibaris travelling with Stanley on his last great journey across Africa were slaves, an unpalatable truth borne out by Colonel’s Smith’s letter from Zanzibar to Sir Henry Ponsonby on 28 December 1889, stating: ‘It is melancholy to reflect that, as Stanley informs me, when pay day came, and they [the Zanzibaris] were paraded to receive nearly three years’ wages, their Arab owners assembled at the pay office and seized from each the entire sum he received. I am told that the largest proportion of the sum so received went to the Sultan as being the largest slave-owner. . . .’
Addressing the accusation of cruelty, Stanley wrote:
I lay no claim to any exceptional fineness of nature; but I say, beginning life as a rough, ill-educated, impatient man, I have found my schooling in these very African experiences, which are now said by some to be in themselves detrimental to European character. I have learned by actual stress of imminent danger, in the first place, that self-control is more indispensable than gunpowder, and, in second place, that persistent self-control under the provocation of African travel is impossible without real, heartfelt sympathy for the natives with whom one has had to deal. If one regards these natives as mere brutes, then the annoyances that their follies and vices inflict are indeed intolerable. In order to rule them, and to keep one’s life amongst them, it is needful to regard them as children, who require, indeed, different methods of rule from English or American citizens, but who must be ruled in precisely the same spirit, with the same absence of caprice and anger, the same essential respect to our fellow men.
Regarding the ‘little commissions’ Stanley chose to say nothing further than he had openly stated in the pages of In Darkest Africa.
The argument raged for days. The St James’s Gazette came to the conclusion that ‘the expensive and superfluous relief of Emin has brought no advantage either to the rescuers or to the rescued. . . . Although, perhaps, it may have been worthwhile to relieve Emin in order to afford Stanley an opportunity to still further add to his great deeds as an explorer, it was certainly not worthwhile to relieve him for the purpose of presenting the German government with a new and experienced leader of expeditions calculated to open a route to the centre of Africa.’
The Times carried a letter from the Reverend Wilmot Brooke stating that cannibalism had occurred at the Yambuya camp and adding: ‘Eyewitnesses, both English and Arab, have assured me it was a common thing, which they themselves have seen on passing through the camp, to see human hands and feet sticking out of their cooking pots.’ Responding to the charge, Stanley demanded: ‘Who were the English who had seen this curious sight?’ The Reverend Brooke chose not to reply.
Controversy rumbled on as Stanley’s party travelled across the United States and Canada in a special Pullman carriage, named ‘Henry M. Stanley’, containing a kitchen with a cook, a dining car which converted into a dormitory at night, a drawing room with piano, three state bedrooms and a bathroom. Dolly was thrilled with the way her new husband was received ‘by his countrymen’ and Gertie also approved.
In April they returned to England. Stanley had earned a handsome $60,000 for his lectures and netted more when a few days later he took to the road again, lecturing throughout England and Scotland. Dolly remained at Richmond Terrace, joining him at weekends, when she brought letters from their London home. One was an invitation to preside over the Welsh National Eisteddfod – the highest honour extended to any Welshman active in the arts and literature. Dolly urged her husband to accept, if only to bury old ghosts from his past and publicly admit to the world that Wales was the land of his birth. Stanley was not so sure. He still harboured grudges against Wales, its people and the way he felt he had been treated as a child. In a letter to Dolly, he said: ‘I feel that we, the people of Wales generally, and I, are not in such close sympathy as to enable me to say anything sufficiently pleasing to their ears.’
Stanley accepted the Eisteddfod invitation and an earlier one to lecture in Carnarvon, to which eight excursion trains transported people wanting to hear their native son talk about Africa. He told Dolly that ‘crowds of hard-featured, homely creatures, rushed up, the crowd being enormous. . . . As I moved through the crowd, I felt hands touch my coat, then, getting bolder, they rubbed me on the back, stroked my hair, and, finally, thumped me hard, until I felt that the honours were getting so weighty I should die if they continued long. Verily, there were but few thumps between me and death! A flash of fierceness stole over me for a second, and I turned to the crowd; but they all smiled so broadly that, poor, dear, mad, creatures, I forgave them, or, at least, resolved to submit.’
The tour ended in July when Stanley and Dolly left for a holiday in Switzerland, where they walked in meadows, read aloud to each other and retired early as Stanley was still in the African habit of rising early. It was while strolling through a damp meadow in Mürren that the man who had marched across Africa three times, slipped on wet grass and broke his left ankle. He was taken to the hotel in pain, which brought on a malaria attack. He was ordered to remain in bed – and to cancel his Eisteddfod engagement.
On the eve of a lecture tour to Australia and New Zealand, Dolly became agitated when a letter addressed to Stanley, stamped with the official seal of the King of the Belgians, landed on the doormat at Richmond Terrace. She felt her husband was pining for Africa and was afraid that Leopold might offer Stanley a commission that was more attractive than London life, but which might finally wreck his health.
Jephson was asked to accompany Stanley to Leopold’s seaside residence, take care of the ferry tickets, luggage and a myriad other minor details that surrounded the great traveller on the move. Stanley wrote to Dolly: ‘After dinner, the King cautiously approached and sounded me out on the possibility of my resuming duties on the Congo. I pointed to my broken leg (left ankle), for I am still very lame. “Oh,” he said, “not now, but when you return from Australia, sound in health and limb.” “We shall see, Your Majesty,” I said. “I have a big task on hand for you, when you are ready”, were his last words.’
* It is unlikely that Stanley admitted to Queen Victoria that he was a bastard, born in Wales. The Queen recorded the minutest details in her daily journal and would almost certainly have included this snippet of information if it had been offered.