In the autumn of 1898, Stanley decided to look for a country house where Dolly, Denzil and Gertie could flee from the London smog and enjoy the open-air life Stanley loved so much. They would retain the Richmond Terrace property, which belonged to Dolly’s mother, and use it on social visits to the city. Stanley now planned the life of a country landowner, in a quiet place where he hoped to complete his memoirs, work on which had stopped during his four years as a Member of Parliament.
Stanley collected property information from scores of estate agents and he and Dolly visited twenty different houses in Kent, Buckinghamshire and Sussex over a two-week period in November. None was suitable. By mid-December they had viewed fifty-seven properties but only one merited a second viewing, Furze Hill, a 70-acre estate with a lake in the Surrey village of Pirbright, 30 miles from London on a direct railway line to Waterloo and situated in rolling green countryside and woodlands. Dolly thought it delightful and an ideal country home for family and visiting friends. ‘The more we examined it, the more we liked it,’ wrote Stanley, ‘but there was much to improve and renovate. Therefore, as the place pleased me and my wife and her mother, I entered into serious negotiation for the purchase and by Christmas, I had secured the refusal of it; but as it was let, possession was deferred to June, 1899.’
On 17 April of that year, the boy born John Rowlands – bastard, and known to the world as Henry Morton Stanley and ‘Bula Matari’ – was made a Knight of the Grand Cross of Bath in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
Furze Hill now gave newly ennobled Sir Henry energy and passion and he spent his days designing an extra wing to the house, installing electric lighting, a ‘bathing house’, improving grounds and garden, purchasing furniture for its many rooms – and a complete fire engine. He carefully measured every room, planning the move to Pirbright with the same precision he had used to plan his African expeditions. The move revitalised Stanley and put a fresh spring into his step. On 4 September, he recorded: ‘We went with D. to our house at Furze Hill. Slept for the first time in our country home.’ Dolly wrote: ‘He now took an ever-increasing delight in the place. He planned walks, threw bridges across streams (one of which he named the Congo), planted trees, built a little farm from his own designs after reading every recent book on farm building and in very short time transformed the place.’
Everything was designed and built to last. He replaced wooden window frames with stone, fences were ‘strongest and of the best description; even the ends of the gate and fence posts, he dipped in pitch and not merely in tar, that the portion in the ground might resist decay. It was his pride and joy that all should be well done.’ Stanley bought a Broadwood piano, canoes for the lake and full-size billiard table – ‘We could neither of us play, but he said, “I want those who come to stay here, to enjoy themselves”,’ Dolly recalled. An orchard was planned and scores of rose bushes planted in the garden. Together they purchased books for their library: classics and books about travel for him, popular novels and volumes on art for her. He stocked the storeroom cellars with food ‘as for an expedition, or to stand a siege. There were great canisters of rice, tapioca, flour enough for a garrison, soap, cheese, groceries of all kinds, everything we could possibly require, and each jar and tin was neatly ticketed in his handwriting, besides careful lists written in a store book, so that I might know at a glance, the goodly contents of the room.’
This period marked the Indian summer of Stanley’s life. At last, peace and enjoyment were his and he was quietly happy – something new to the man who had written: ‘I was not sent into the world to be happy nor to search for happiness. I was sent for special work.’
By 1903, Stanley had supervised the rebuilding of Furze Hill. Dolly and Denzil had still to move in, although Stanley spent most of his time there overseeing building work. It was in March of that year that he complained of momentary attacks of giddiness. It made Dolly uneasy and she insisted on accompanying him whenever possible. She recalled: ‘Just before Easter, we were walking near the Athenaeum Club, when he swayed and caught my arm. My anxiety, though still vague, oppressed me and I was very unwilling to let him go alone to Furze Hill; but he insisted, as he said there were yet a few “finishing touches to be put” before we came down for Easter. Great was my relief when we were summoned to Furze Hill; everything was ready at last!’
On the night of 17 April, Stanley woke in pain. He had suffered a stroke, lost the power of speech, and his body was paralysed down the left side. A doctor was called who made him comfortable. Despite falling in and out of consciousness, Stanley insisted on being shaved.
He lay immobile for months, calm, uncomplaining; the very embodiment of proud independence, now weak and helpless as a child. His health allowed him to sit in the garden in an invalid chair where he received occasional visitors. His friend, Henry Wellcome, came every week to spend the day with him. By September he could stand and walk a few steps, his speech had returned but anything too complicated fatigued him.
In April 1904 an attack of pleurisy knocked him down again and Dolly summoned an ambulance-carriage to take him back to Richmond Terrace. That same evening he asked Dolly: ‘Where will you put me?’ Seeing that she did not understand, he added: ‘When I am – gone?’ She replied: ‘Stanley, I want to be near you; but they will put your body in Westminster Abbey.’ He said: ‘Yes, where we were married; they will put me beside Livingstone – because it is right to do so.’
A few days later he bade farewell to Dolly: ‘Goodbye dear, I am going very soon, I have – done.’ Denzil came into the room and he stroked the boy’s cheek. ‘Father, are you happy?’ asked the boy. ‘Always, when I see you, dear,’ he replied.
On the night of 8 May 1904, Stanley’s mind was wandering. He said: ‘I have done all my work – I have – circumnavigated.’ And then with a passionate, longing cry: ‘Oh, I want to be free! I want to go – into the woods – to be free!’ Towards dawn he turned to Dolly at his bedside and said: ‘I want – I want – to go home.’
As Big Ben struck 4 a.m. he opened his eyes and asked: ‘What’s that?’ Dolly told him that it was four o’clock. ‘Four o’clock,’ he slowly repeated. ‘How strange! So that is Time!’ And two hours later, as Big Ben was alerting Londoners that it would soon be time to get out of bed, Sir Henry Morton Stanley died. He was sixty-three.
The public had no idea that Stanley was seriously ill. He said that if his condition became known, ‘people will remember me as an invalid’. The world was shocked when an official announcement issued through the Central News Agency informed newspaper readers that
the great explorer had been in poor health for some time, but during the last fortnight his condition became gradually worse and despite the unremitting attention of two doctors and two male nurses and the devoted nursing of Lady Stanley, all hope of his recovery was abandoned soon after midnight. In addition to pleurisy Sir Henry’s chances of recovery were complicated by an old disease of the heart. He was kept alive for some hours by frequent administrations of brandy and champagne. . . . Hundreds of people, ranging in rank from working men to MPs and members of the House of Lords, made anxious inquiries at Richmond Terrace on Monday night on his illness becoming known. Though unable to speak, he was conscious to the last and was able to recognise those around him.
Stanley’s body was conveyed to Westminster Abbey and the coffin lay before the same altar where he and Dolly had been married fourteen years earlier. Dolly issued another statement through the Central News Agency: ‘Lady Stanley wishes it to be known that Sir Henry would have liked to be buried in Westminster Abbey, near Livingstone. There is a general desire, shared by the daughter and grandson of Dr. Livingstone that Sir Henry should rest beside Dr. Livingstone in Westminster Abbey and it may be taken for granted that that will be so.’ But the Reverend Joseph Armitage Robinson, Dean of Westminster, had other ideas. While permitting the funeral to take place at the Abbey, he refused to allow Stanley to take his final resting place next to Livingstone, ‘because this was a man with blood on his hands’.
A large and distinguished congregation attended the funeral. Both King Edward VIII and Leopold, King of the Belgians sent representatives and the rest of the Abbey was filled with ambassadors, MPs, British and foreign government ministers, representatives from geographical and missionary societies, colleagues, friends, newspapermen and hundreds of Stanley’s everyday admirers who had applied for tickets. Dr Kirk sent regrets that he was unable to attend ‘as I have made arrangements elsewhere’. James Gordon Bennett, now based in Paris, was also absent.
Stanley’s oak coffin travelled from Richmond Terrace in an open carriage-hearse pulled by four plumed black horses. Hundreds lined the streets, hats off in respectful sign of mourning. Dolly and her mother led the mourners, along with little Denzil, now aged eight, wearing a black sailor suit. Pallbearers included Livingstone Bruce, the doctor’s grandson, Henry Wellcome and a frail-looking Arthur Mounteney Jephson, now the only officer of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition still alive. As the coffin was carried towards the altar, pallbearers paused for one minute at Livingstone’s tomb.
Following the funeral, the coffin was carried on a special train to Brookwood Station in Surrey, from where it was taken to Pirbright churchyard, a short distance from Furze Hill. Weeks later a giant granite monolith, weighing 6 tons and measuring 6ft high by 4ft wide was brought from Dartmoor and erected over his final resting place. Its presence in the churchyard is impressive and easy to locate. The inscription on its face is simple:
Henry Morton Stanley
Bula Matari
1841–1904
Africa