In 2002 the BBC asked viewers and listeners to name 100 men and women from history and contemporary life whom they considered to be the ‘Greatest Britons’. Over thirty thousand people voted in the poll in which Sir Winston Churchill emerged as the figure the majority wanted as the top of their personality pops. Marie Stopes came in at 100th position; others nominated included Ernest Shackleton (11), Queen Elizabeth II (24), David Beckham (33), Captain Scott (54), Cliff Richard (56), J.R.R. Tolkien (92) and Dr David Livingstone (98).
Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) did not rate a mention. The man whom The Times identified on his death in 1904 as ‘one of the greatest pioneer explorers and one of the most striking figures of the nineteenth century’ had been confined to history’s ‘B’ list during the last half of the twentieth century, making him an unsuitable candidate for inclusion in a table of the 100 most popular Britons. By 2002 there were insufficient numbers in Britain who were aware of Stanley and his achievements to vote him into their hall of fame.
The centenary of Stanley’s death (in 2004) is a good time to reassess the life and accomplishments of this complex, controversial and most private of men; a man whose name will forever be associated with African exploration and the subsequent fever for colonisation of the land he named ‘the dark continent’. It was his direct and indirect achievements that resulted in Africa’s subdivision among European powers and inspired the ‘Scramble for Africa’.
For most of his life, Henry Morton Stanley attempted to conceal his true identity and background. When challenged with the truth, he lied. It was only in later years when he had mellowed in appearance and manner that he agreed to confront ghosts from his past and begin drafting his memoirs. Even then, Stanley often felt a need to be economical with the truth, embellish facts or fail to mention people and events if they threatened to get in the way of his story.
Stanley died before completing his memoirs and it was left to his widow, a sensitive and capable woman, to finish the job using her husband’s unpublished journals and notes. By the time they appeared in 1909, shady figures from Stanley’s earlier life had begun to re-emerge, suggesting to Lady Stanley that they possessed evidence damaging to her late husband’s heroic reputation. Miraculously, each was in a position to part company with their evidence, written or otherwise – providing Lady Stanley was prepared to buy the material and their silence. The possibility that her husband’s reputation might be tarnished filled her with horror – and she succumbed to the blackmail. As a result, Stanley’s memoirs are heavily edited and names and identities of important characters and incidents are omitted.
Stanley set out to present an honest account of his life. The ageing former explorer stated:
There is no reason now for withholding the history of my early years, nothing to prevent my stating every fact about myself. I am now declining in vitality. My hard life in Africa, many fevers, many privations, much physical and mental suffering, bring me close to the period of infirmities. . . . Without fear of consequences, or danger to my pride and reserve, I can lay bare all circumstances which have attended me from the dawn of consciousness to this present period of indifference. . . .
Who, then, was Henry Morton Stanley, the man who admitted: ‘I was not sent into the world to be happy, nor to search for happiness. I was sent for special work’? Why did he live his life as a lie, denying his true identity and the fact that he was a poor Welsh boy, born a bastard, brought up in a workhouse, and tell the world he was an American? Who was this soldier who fought on both sides during the Civil War, this roving newspaper correspondent on the American frontier, this adventurer who walked across Africa searching for an elderly and broken Scottish missionary and, when he found him, enquired: ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
From what and from whom was he running when he marched from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic to complete Livingstone’s work, follow the mighty Congo River to the sea and claim a slice of Africa the size of Western Europe for a land-hungry European monarch? And why was he prepared to lead a daring rescue mission to relieve a mysterious and reluctant colonial official and his people from annihilation in equatorial Africa?
Stanley made a broad and deep mark on his generation. One hundred years after his death is not only a good time to re-evaluate his life and achievements but also, perhaps, to rehabilitate his reputation in a fair and objective way. To do this, it is necessary to go back to his earliest beginnings. . . .