by Tim Jeal
At this depressing time, he kept in touch with several men who had served him on the Congo in the early i 88os. One of them, Edward Glave, would give a sharp focus to his interest in Africa, and even console him for his own inability to return there. Glave became of special interest to Stanley because he had turned out to be a practical idealist with a Livingstonian determination to expose the slave trade and other evil-doing in the interior. In the late 1188os, when King Leopold was dismissing all his non-Belgian officers, Glave - along with other enterprising `foreign' station chiefs, like Anthony Swinburne and Roger Casement - had joined Henry Sanford's ivory company. He served until Leopold squeezed out all international competition, prior to creating state monopolies in the early r 89os.49
Edward J. Glave
In 118go, Glave had visited the United States for several months to lecture about the Congo, and in December had met up with Stanley, then on his own extended American tour. That was when Glave had done secretarial work for Henry and had helped him by swearing that Ward's favourable remarks about Barttelot had not reflected his true opinions. s° In May 1891 Stanley had helped Glave raise funds to explore Alaska, and a year later wrote an introduction to his book, Six Years of Adventure in Congoland. Then, in November 18gz, just when Stanley's own hopes of returning to the `Dark Continent' had been dashed, Glave electrified him by announcing that he meant to return to Africa for `a big & noble object'.
His admiration became warmer still when the young man explained that he had been inspired by a piece that Stanley had recently written for Harper's Magazine, entitled `Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa'." In it, Henry had named a new generation of brutal slavers - Karema, Kibruga, Kilonga-Longa, Kibongo and Tippu's Tip's son, Sefu, and nephews Rashid and Nasur-bin-Suliman - who were extending their operations beyond Tippu's furthest limits, importing ever more gunpowder. Believing that similar press exposes offered the only way to bring about European intervention, Glave was delighted when, with Stanley's help, he persuaded the editor of America's Century Magazine to pay him £r,zoo to travel across Africa to discover more facts about the slave trade and publish them to the world." Well aware that this exceedingly dangerous mission was one that David Livingstone would have loved to attempt, Henry entertained Glave at Richmond Terrace and gave him practical advice. Glave's plan was to repeat the first third of Livingstone's final journey, travelling via the Rovuma to the southern end of Lake Nyasa, and thence to Lake Bang- weolu where the doctor had died, and thereafter northwards through Manyema to the Lualaba and the Upper Congo, and so, eventually, to the Pool and the Atlantic.S3 Even without the task of exposing the slave traders, his journey would have been an epic of exploration. Glave sailed from the port of London on z5 June 11893, and Stanley
said a solemn farewell to him in his cabin. Both men knew there was a distinct possibility that they would never meet again. A few days earlier Glave had written promising to do his `very utmost to deserve your [Stanley's] approval'.-54 Facing his own mundane and unwanted electoral battle, Stanley was struck by this brave young man's mission as a shining example of the self-sacrificing heights to which individual human beings could sometimes rise when a great cause beckoned. He received his first letter from his protege in the late summer of 11894. Writing from near Lake Nyasa, Glave praised the British authorities in Nyasaland - which had become a protectorate in 18911 - for destroying the slavers' strongholds and cutting off slave dhows on the lake with their two steamships. But with only three officers, zoo Sikhs and a native levy of a similar size, the British (led by Stanley's former friend Harry Johnston) were struggling to stop gunpowder coming in from the port of Kilwa in Arab-Swahili caravans.55
On z6 November, Glave wrote the last letter Stanley would receive from him. By now, he was on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. He had just visited Lake Bangweulu where he had managed `to discover the actual tree under which the heart of Dr Livingstone was buried' - a feat that many travellers had unsuccessfully attempted in the twenty-one years since Susi, Chuma and their companions had buried their master's heart and carried away with them the rest of his body. Ahead of Glave lay the towns of Kabambare, Kasongo, RibaRiba and, further downstream on the Congo, Stanley Falls, Equator and Lukolela, where he had once been station chief. At most of these places he would see sights, and hear accounts of atrocities, that would lead him to write a fearsome denunciation of the Belgians and the brutal way in which they were exploiting their vast colony and its inhabitants. These accounts would not be published until 11897, and in the meantime Glave succumbed to fever at Matadi on r z May 11895, tragically close to the sea. Lawson Forfeitt, a missionary who was with Glave when he died, told Stanley that he had been conscious to within an hour of his death; and he had showed Forfeitt a letter from Stanley, which he had always carried with him.
Glave left clear instructions to send his papers and photographic plates to Century Magazine.s6 (The immense international row that Glave's damning revelations about Belgian brutality would cause will be dealt with later.) In May 1189 5, his only article yet published in Century Magazine was one about finding Livingstone's tree; a photograph of the young man standing beside it appeared next to the text. His finding of the exact spot where Livingstone died became, in Stanley's mind, another bond between them. In the October issue, the magazine's editor wrote of the dead man as being `cast in a mould of gentleness and heroism, of generosity and justice and unselfishness'.17
Ten years earlier, a disillusioned Stanley had written revealingly to the charismatic Harry Johnston, `It is about time I stopped in this search for the perfect man.'s' In Edward Glave, he had finally found perfection, he believed. From a working-class family, Glave came very close to duplicating Stanley's own rise to distinction through dedication alone. 51 Glave had even seemed to possess the goodness that Stanley had attributed to Livingstone. Because he himself had been driven by a consuming need to succeed, Henry had been drawn to the modest Glave, with his indifference to fame and riches. When Edward Glave died, Henry was campaigning in North Lambeth and hating it, and the news of his friend's fate crushed him.
With no child of his own blood in prospect, Glave had become an honorary son to Stanley. Unlike Jephson and Stairs (his favourites for a while), Glave had never disappointed. Henry's misery over his loss emerges most powerfully in a letter to Glave's brother-in-law, William J. Davy, who had served on the Congo during Stanley's years as Chief Agent, and had come with Stanley to say goodbye to Glave when his ship had sailed in 11893:
My dear Friend,
I am so terribly upset by your sad news, that I can scarcely trust myself to write ... [about] one who had become very dear to me and whom I admired more than I can tell you - he was in every respect so loveable ... I feel it all so deeply that I have at present no interest in the future whatever. My ambitions depended so much on him indirectly, and he too was so interested in my doings, that I feel suddenly I have become quite alone ... You remember on board ... how he made you all go out of his cabin while he said goodbye to me alone ... I can't think of it all without crying ... It is so dreadful to think of him having none of his own people with him at the last, and that he should be lying out there so far away ... Do not think me selfish if I ask you to write ... the slightest smallest detail will be of wonderful interest to me as you will easily understand ... One day I should hope to see you all again - I could not bear it just at present ... I must tell you candidly that I had more respect, admiration & love for him than for any other man I have ever met ... He was, as I said before, my ideal ...i6o
Certainly Stanley had never been so much affected by a death. Though the general election campaign was at its height, he insisted that Dolly stop electioneering and write a letter of condolence to enclose with his to Glave's mother." In grieving for his friend, Stanley was also grieving for the many young men whose deaths he had witnessed during the past two decades and been too hard-pressed, or too traumatized, to mourn at the time.
In the 118gos there was a further softe
ning in his character and his more spiritual side appeared. He loved to escape from London for days at a time and stay on the coast to walk and find peace. Eighteen months earlier, he had spent a solitary week at Cromer, walking on the endless Norfolk sands, which reminded him of Africa. With the `deep, solemn, continuous' sound of the waves in his ears, came `a rapturous upswing of joy' to his `very finger tips'. He found himself scooping up round pebbles from `the glorious floor of sand' and then amazed himself `by bursting into song' on the deserted beach. `Fancy - years and years ago I think I last sang ... but something of my real old self was in me still - such is civilized man - he enters a groove and exit is there none until solitariness discovers that the boy lay hidden under a thick kernel of civilized custom.'62 The `groove' Stanley had `entered' was British politics. If Edward Glave had only survived, he would have become a public figure, directing the eyes of the world to Africa's suffering. With such an ally, Stanley could have joined the battle that had long obsessed him. Glave had been as determined as he was to separate the slavers from essential supplies, such as arms and gunpowder. If his young protege had lived, Henry might even have been inspired to attack the Congo Free State - `a noble object' indeed.
Two months after Glave's death, Henry was elected to represent North Lambeth, and his undesired victory seemed to spell finis to all other hopes." At the moment of victory by 405 votes, Stanley was swung up onto the shoulders of his supporters and carried to a table to cries of `Speech! Speech!'. But when put down, he merely said `with a steady look: "Gentlemen, I thank you, and now good-night!"' In a homebound carriage with Dorothy, he did not speak at all.64 The next day, he wrote his wife a deeply ironic letter: `I beg you will kindly accept this expression of my esteem for the personal service you have done me & the patriotic zeal you have so conspicuously displayed on behalf of the country. With the warmest grateful sentiments, I beg to remain yours most faithfully..."' There would be no other thanks for her work, ever. By the year's end, he would be suffering a prolonged attack of gastritis that by mid-1896 would leave him looking fifteen years older than his fifty-five years. And life as a Member of Parliament turned out to be every bit as bad as he had expected. Since the ventilation system of the chamber did not work, a fresh-air lover like Stanley suffered more than most. `I have had a frontal headache for quite ten days now and the sap seems quite gone out of me ... When 50o people have sat in it for ro hours, air is worse than that of a swamp. 16
It distressed him very much that, thanks to Parliament, he might never have the time or health to get to grips with his autobiography. If he died before making progress, he told Dolly: `how little after all you would know of me - how still less the world outside ... The inner existence, the ME - what does anyone know of ... ? I am the best evidence for myself ... Up to the moment of death we should strive to leave behind us something ...' And all the time he was wasting his life in the House or making fatuous speeches. `I can never make up for this lost time. But I will stop, or I must rage. 117
The press did not respond kindly to Stanley's maiden speech. His subject was foreign policy and East Africa.
Mr Henry M.Stanley burst upon an astonished house on Wednesday. No fewer than three times did the famous African explorer intervene in debate. He made not one but three maiden speeches ... There is generally a certain movement of surprise when this small man, with snow-white hair, snow-white moustache, and an expression of supreme Oriental tranquillity, is pointed out as the world famed traveller ... Whether Mr Stanley will be as successful as a legislator, as he has been in so many other walks of life, is open to question.68
A journalist friend summarized the reasons why, in his opinion, the explorer would never make any impression on the House: `He has little sympathy with parliamentary manners and ways of thought, and has entered on the new world too late to fall in with them. 69 This prophecy would be fulfilled - mainly because of Stanley's continuing lack of interest.
Some time in 11894, Henry had pleaded with Dorothy to agree to adopt a child. She had refused. But by the autumn of 1895 he had at last persuaded her how very deeply he longed to adopt, and thus brought about a change of heart.7° Without the hope of one day raising a child, Stanley's life would have felt bleak indeed. Then towards the end of the year, a son of one of his first cousins died, leaving a widow, who was too poor to support her six-month-old son - at least this was the story that Henry would later tell close friends. Dorothy supplied confirmatory details for her closest confidantes, telling them that the boy's father had died in an accident and that his mother had needed to work in order to support herself - hence Henry's providential offer to adopt and the widow's acceptance. However, despite what Stanley and his wife told their friends, it is almost certain that the boy was really the illegitimate grandson of Stanley's half-sister Emma. So why did Henry hide the truth? Mainly to spare the boy the stigma of illegitimacy as he grew up. Even Dorothy seems to have been told the cousin version by him. It appears that Stanley concealed the child's birth details from her because fearing that if he had admitted the real reason for adopting, she might have rejected this particular child. So instead he had justified an adoption by telling her that the boy's lawfully married father had recently died leaving no money. Henry had also known that his wife would find it more palatable to adopt the great-nephew of a cousin than the great-grandson of his (Stanley's) mother, whom Dorothy had always thought a monster for abandoning him7' [see this note for full evidence of the boy's identity].
Stanley was in bed, suffering from severe gastritis, on the day the thirteen-month-old boy was first brought to his house. `One day in July,' wrote Dorothy, `I was told that there was a baby with a lady downstairs - and sure enough there was this little relative - a wee delicate featured beautiful little boy with a finely shaped head, and eyes beaming with intelligence - grey eyes and soft brown curly hair ... Well! I just carried him up to Stanley, who was too weak to sit up; and I sat the boy down beside him. They looked at each other and then Stanley said, "We will keep him forever - he is ours. 1172
Given Stanley's resentment of Wales and his Welsh family for the unhappiness he had endured as a boy, it might be thought that the adoption of the child of a close Welsh relative had only been the fortuitous result of an unwanted pregnancy. But though in one sense it was, Stanley's attitude to his family had never simply been characterized by hurt and anger. Always there had been an ache of sympathy for their poverty and lack of privilege. The way he had taken his mother and his half-sister Emma to London in 11868, and to Paris and London in 11869, had been extraordinarily forgiving. He had also paid for them to stay in good hotels, and bought them many new clothes.71 But perhaps the most touching fact about his love for his undeserving family lies in his admiration for a book that has all the wish-fulfilling appeal of a typical best-seller, but a lot more besides. Dolly could have learned much about Henry if she had only agreed to look at `that best of romances ... which I have never been able to persuade you to read'. This was Lew Wallace's epic of ancient Rome, Ben Hur - the story of a man who had been unjustly sent to the galleys and then adopted by a senator whose life he had saved in a sea battle. After becoming the greatest charioteer in the Roman Empire, Ben Hur tried to find his mother and sister - also victims of injustice. Eventually, he found them in a valley where lepers were forced to live in isolation. Ignoring the stigma and the danger, he had the courage to bring them to his home. The parallels with Stanley's life - invented and real - were remarkable. Stanley had been unjustly `sentenced' to confinement in a workhouse. He had worked in ships, and claimed to have been adopted, before becoming an empire's greatest explorer. He too, when famous, had risked going to see his mother and sister, whose `disease' was not leprosy but social inferiority.74 When Stanley had lectured in Wales in 118911, he had been touched at Caernarvon when people called on God to help his work: `I need prayers,' he told Dolly, `and their blessings were precious.'7' His interest in his Welsh family became much greater during the 118gos.
In November
11893, he had sent his trusted valet, W. J. Hawkes, to try to find out more about his immediate family, including the state of health of Robert Jones junior, his forty-four-year-old half-brother, who had been bedridden for a decade. Without divulging who he was, Hawkes visited the Cross Foxes pub at Bodelwyddan, where Stanley had once been turned away by his mother. She had died seven years previously, but Hawkes found Stanley's aged stepfather, Robert Jones, and his half-brother, Robert Jones junior, and Robert junior's wife, Catherine (nee Parry), and their daughter, Catherine Elizabeth, who was nineteen and very pretty.
Hawkes saw for himself that Stanley's brother, Robert, was blind, bedridden and unable to turn in bed, or even feed himself. For many years he had suffered from acute rheumatism of the joints and inflammation of the heart. He was in pain all the time, and wept when Hawkes talked to him. Pleas for financial help had regularly been sent to Henry by his half-brother and by his sister-in-law, Catherine Jones, and he invariably responded with money - although on one occasion he sent a water bed. Hawkes brought back a photograph of Catherine Elizabeth, his master's niece, and Stanley was moved on noting a strong resemblance to his younger self in this girl's face. Also at the Cross Foxes had been James W. Jones, Stanley's youngest half-brother, to whom he had sent gifts of clothes when he was a boy.
The poverty and ill-health of his closest relatives caused Stanley considerable distress when he heard of it from Hawkes.'6 But unlike the lepers in Ben Hur, the Jones family would not be invited to Richmond Terrace; nor would Stanley go to Wales to visit them. Childhood memories still caused him shame and distress. But while his inability to accept his past did not bode well for his autobiography, it never tempted him to sever all ties with his relations. Against this background it can easily be seen why - when the opportunity had unexpectedly presented itself - he had eagerly adopted a child from within his own family.