Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer Read online

  The dynamics between the twenty-three-year-old ship's writer and the much younger Noe were not homosexual as has been suggested.39 Stanley's day-to-day family, in so far as he had ever had one, had consisted of his young friends at the workhouse, rather than his relations. At St Asaph, as head boy, he had enjoyed power and kudos among the boys, which had helped him believe in himself. Without support from parents or relatives, this desire to be admired by boys and young men would continue into his adult life as essential underpinning for his selfesteem. There would also be an imaginative and creative component in his attachment to youth and youthful interests.

  Like many boys his age, Lewis was a natural escapist who enjoyed stories of the Wild West and far-flung colonial outposts. Stanley loved these stories too, and ever since his confinement in the workhouse had entertained fantasies of escape into exotic regions. Lewis Noe would often see Henry reading `adventures and foreign travels'. One of his favourite authors was Thomas Mayne Reid, the prolific writer of boys' adventures that were set in every part of the globe. And Stanley could communicate his excitement. `He was full of aspirations for adventure,' wrote Noe, `and told marvellous tales of foreign countries, and he urged that when we should leave the service, I should accompany him on a proposed tour in southern Europe. Being of a romantic turn of mind, I was pleased at the suggestion.'4° Lewis's grasp of world geography is probably to blame for his supposing that the region Stanley wanted to travel through was southern Europe, when he (Stanley) always referred to it as Asia Minor, and sometimes as the Levant. But poor geographer though Noe was, Stanley's friendship with the young American enabled him to make the imaginative leap required to place him on the road to becoming an African explorer.

  It is scarcely conceivable that Stanley's omnivorous reading would not have included the three most famous travel books of the period, all set in the general region he wished to visit: Alexander W. Kinglake's classic Eothen or Traces of Travel brought back from the East (1844), W. G. Palgrave's A Year's journey through Central and Eastern Arabia in 1862-1863, and Richard E Burton's Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah (11853). In these books about Middle Eastern travel, their authors had recorded adventures of varying degrees of danger. Inevitably, it occurred to Henry that if he could complete a comparable journey, he too might manage to write a best-seller about it. As a famous travel author, he would surely be able to win his mother's heart by giving her rare foreign carpets and silverwork. In most well-known travel books, the author was a romantic hero, often dressing like the local people in order to understand them better, or disguising himself, as Burton had done, for a secret objective. Stanley had himself photographed in Arab dress a few years later, plainly influenced by such books. With Livingstone, Burton and Speke all writing about their travels, African exploration was in a league of its own for generating admiration; but the Levant had the advantage of being cheaper and easier to reach, and a lot less dangerous.

  In February 11865, in order to expedite his travels with Lewis, Stanley suggested that they should both desert from the navy. This was another of those extraordinary, spontaneous decisions that would change the direction of Henry's life. Incredibly, he and Lewis were undeterred by the fear of a possible death sentence or a term of imprisonment. Stanley was a skilful copyist, so he had little trouble creating bogus passes for the two of them, complete with Commodore Lanman's faultlessly forged signature. They would desert, he decided, when the Minnesota had her next re-fit at Portsmouth Navy Yard, New Hampshire. Henry bought civilian clothes from some carpenters working on the ship. These garments he and Noe put on under their naval uniforms, which they meant to discard as soon as they had safely left the dockyard. Everything went to plan on Henry's chosen day, 11o February 11865. Their passes were not challenged by the sentries at the dockyard gate, and this unlikely duo mingled unnoticed with the local citizens on their way out of town.41

  There followed a chaotic year during which Henry turned his back on safe employment and, despite acts of dishonesty and violence and numerous failures of judgement, launched himself on the uncertain path that within four years would bring him within sight of the greatest adventures the age had to offer. By wielding a Svengali-like influence over the admiring younger man, and persuading him to do things he would never have dreamed of doing if left to himself, Stanley could feel powerful. For the next year and a half, as if he was addicted, Henry's passion for adventure overwhelmed almost every practical and moral consideration.

  On arriving in New York, although he was a recent deserter and ought to have feared being traced, Stanley accepted employment once again from Mr Hughes, whose drinking was no better than it had been in 11863. When Noe failed to find work, Stanley suggested another way to earn the money they needed for their life-changing Middle Eastern travels. The Union's military authorities were offering a bounty to anyone recruiting a volunteer. So, if Lewis were to enlist in the army, Henry could collect the bounty; and if he later deserted, and then re-enlisted in another unit, there would be another bounty to be collected. And of course the brilliant planner and penman would assist with passes, civilian clothes and anything else required. Unfortunately, without warning, Lewis told his father that he had deserted from the navy. His horrified parents begged him to join the army at once under an assumed name so he would not be caught and hanged. The boy did as they asked. He had no problem choosing a false surname, since Stanley had already suggested Lewis Morton as the name under which he should make his first attempt at `bounty-jumping'. (Morton was not yet settled as Stanley's middle name.)

  Henry was enraged when told that Lewis had joined the army. How could they go travelling now? He ordered him to desert at once, but Lewis refused; so their Levantine journey would clearly have to wait. Fortunately, at this frustrating moment, Henry heard about major finds in the Colorado goldfields. Out West, he might make enough money to pay for Noe's travel expenses as well as his own. So Henry gave up his clerical job and left for the Rocky Mountains. Stanley left `Judge' Hughes at just the right time. Days later, the lawyer jumped from a fifth-floor office window, and broke his neck on the sidewalk.42

  On the eve of his departure for a life dedicated to risk-taking, Stanley, at twenty-four, was a changed man from the eighteen-year-old who had arrived in America six years earlier. The biddable and obedient workhouse boy had survived the Battle of Shiloh in the physical sense, but the absence of all morality during those years of conflict had left its mark on him. Henry's changing sides at Camp Douglas had been a matter of self-preservation, but his enlistment in the Federal navy had been entirely different: almost a demonstration of thinking himself above, or at least outside, the framework of rules by which ordinary people lived their lives. Yet Stanley would probably have been shocked if anyone had accused him of undermining Noe's sense of right and wrong. In all his letters to Lewis he called him his `friend and brother', and was plainly eager to ingratiate himself with the boy's sister and his father, and to correspond with both. His old longing to be part of a close-knit family - and the Noes appeared to be just that - persisted. And though, in Henry's eyes, Lewis had disappointed by failing to be guided by him, `brother Henry' still needed Lewis's unquestioning loyalty.

  As a mark of especial `brotherly' favour, Stanley had shown Lewis a photograph of his mother, declaring that `he was the only person he had ever shown it to'.43 That he had a mother who had rejected him at birth was the most intimate revelation Stanley could make. Although Henry would soon meet a new protege, he still thought of Noe as his special confidant and ideal brother, and would not forget him when the time came to mount his full-scale dress rehearsal as an explorer.

  FOUR

  An Accident-prone Apprenticeship

  In early May 118 6 5, Stanley travelled to St Louis and managed to get himself taken on by the editor of the Missouri Democrat as an `attache' (an occasional correspondent) reporting from the Colorado diggings.' But part-time journalism was never going to earn him enough money for his foreign
travels, so he also worked as a bookkeeper and a printer in Central City - once described as `the richest square mile on earth' - and then tried his hand at prospecting in the goldfields, without any success. After moving to Black Hawk City, Henry secured a well-paid job in a smelting works, where he made friends with another young journalist, William Harlow Cook - like himself supplementing his income by labouring.' In Lewis Noe's absence, Cook became the essential admiring youth. Ideal for this role because so naive, Cook was enraptured when his new friend challenged a bullying engineer to a fight to the death after being insulted by him. The engineer took one look at Stanley's hand on his revolver, and begged forgiveness on his knees.

  Henry's experience of gun-law conditions in Arkansas was definitely useful in this new environment. His inscrutable expression also made people think twice before tangling with him.' Henry was already Cook's hero when he suggested, out of the blue, that they navigate the Platte River together in a flat-bottomed boat. Cook agreed without hesitation. While nailing together the planks of their simple craft, Stanley mentioned his temporarily postponed trip to Asia Minor, and suggested that Cook come along. Little imagining where this might lead, he accepted.

  By the time they launched their home-made craft at Denver, Stanley had confided that after Turkey they would travel on east through Armenia, Georgia, Bokhara and Kashmir. Then they would `write a great book of adventure'. At this point, Henry dropped in the fact that they would be travelling with his `half-brother', Lewis Noe. Having to share Stanley was not something Cook had anticipated, but though disliking the idea, he kept his reservations to himself.4

  The Platte River was not the Congo - even so, it was full of snags, eddies and shallows, and Indians lurked along its banks. Their plan to float down the river for boo miles in a home-made boat was downright foolhardy, and the acolyte's faith in his charismatic leader was about to be severely tested. Even so, Cook - though he had no means of knowing it - was sharing the very first geographical adventure of a man destined to be the greatest explorer of the century.

  The Platte was a fast-flowing river, and on their sixth night afloat they hit a submerged log and capsized. By swimming to the shore and then running along the bank, Henry managed to grab the boat in some shallows and drag it ashore; but the guns and ammunition, which they had intended to take to Turkey, were flung into the water and lost. Soon afterwards, they were stopped by an officer with orders to track down deserters from nearby Fort Laramie. On the point of being arrested on suspicion of desertion, Stanley drew his revolver. Having few men with him, the officer backed down and the two desperadoes continued their journey unmolested. Near the end of their trip they capsized again. Henry, who was asleep at the time, was thrown from the boat, while Cook clung to the hull and managed to right the vessel. Cook then floated on, as Stanley hurried overland, hoping to intercept the boat downstream. But he kept arriving just too late at various hoped-for points of rendezvous. In the end, with no sign of his hero, Cook left their battered craft at Omaha, Nebraska, and Henry only caught up with him at his parents' house in St Louis.'

  Undaunted by this fiasco, Stanley lost no time in leaving for New York, with Cook in tow. Arriving at Sayville, Long Island, where Noe's parents lived, Henry feared they might still be angry enough with him over his role in Lewis's desertion to stop their son going to Turkey. But Henry's `winning manners, and gentlemanly bearing' charmed the Noes into treating that incident as an isolated aberration. Now Stanley promised to give Lewis `the polish that could best be obtained by intercourse with the world', and declared that `diamonds, rubies ... and rich India shawls' could all be bought cheaply in 'Central Asia'.' As a schoolmistress, Lewis's sister might have been expected to challenge these absurdly optimistic predictions. But she raised no objections - perhaps finding Henry attractive. (He noted in his diary that she had `voluptuous lips, and dark glittering eyes'.)'

  Stanley's trip to `Asia Minor', as he usually described it, is of interest because it would be the only land expedition he attempted, as leader of his own party, before finding fame as Livingstone's discoverer. Being badly planned and starved of money, the expedition got off to a terrible start. Henry alienated Lewis Noe by forcing him to work his passage in the fruit ship that took the three of them from Boston to Smyrna (now Izmir), the main port of western Turkey. Stanley and Cook did not, for they had saved money from their wages at the smelting works. But the guns and clothes lost on the Platte River could not adequately be replaced, and in Turkey, Stanley could only afford to buy two horses. Thus Noe found himself walking, and deeply resenting Cook for usurping him as Henry's principal companion.

  Really, Stanley was fonder of Noe, but, as Cook rightly observed, Henry brooded on slights, and Lewis rarely stopped irritating him. Lewis had started with a massive black mark earned by having refused to desert from the army at Henry's bidding. This explains why Stanley favoured Cook from the outset. Consumed by rage and jealousy, when two days inland, Noe set fire to some bushes to scare the sleeping Cook. He succeeded beyond his expectations. The fire spread, out of control, and the enraged peasants persuaded the local police to take Stanley and Cook into custody. By the time Henry had talked his way to freedom, Lewis had fled to Smyrna under no illusions about how angry his `brother' was going to be when he caught him. Indeed, Henry treated the youth to what Lewis called a sadistic flogging, but which Stanley himself described as no more than `a few strokes of a switch'.

  Three hundred miles inland, at a village called Chihissar, a controversial incident occurred. According to Noe (who came to hate Henry before the trip was over), Stanley tried to murder a Turk in order to steal his horses. Henry would claim that the Turk had made obscene overtures to Noe, and he (Stanley) had then slashed at him with his sword to defend his young friend. Stanley's diary confirms that the Turk had been sexually drawn to Noe when they were riding together in a group. But Henry may have used his disgust as a pretext to attack and attempt to rob the man. If he had really been contemplating murder, he would surreptitiously have loaded a gun in advance to be able to shoot the Turk without risking a hand-to-hand tussle with a man used to fighting with swords and daggers. But Henry had made no such preparation. (After his hands had been badly cut in the fight, and he was desperate to end it, he failed to lay hands on a single loaded gun among the weapons he had brought with him.) When the Turk ran off, Stanley undoubtedly took his horses, but this was dictated by the need to escape, since the man seemed certain to return with a gang of his friends - as indeed he did.

  Within hours, Stanley, Noe and Cook were surrounded on a hilltop, and though possessing `the best Sharp's fliers and Colt's revolvers', decided not to offer resistance to ten well-armed Turks.' The three were then robbed of everything they possessed, before being dragged to the nearest village where Stanley and Cook were beaten, trussed up like chickens, and left in the open overnight. Lewis, meanwhile, was raped at knifepoint by several men. Luckily for the American trio, the local Cadi, or magistrate, heard of their plight and arranged for them to be conveyed to the nearest prison to await trial before him.

  At this point Stanley acted like a born leader, as even Lewis acknowledged.'° With a fine show of injured innocence, he pulled the rug out from under his accusers by persuading the Cadi that they had been the robbers, and that he had only acted in self-defence. The Cadi believed this when items belonging to the Americans were found under the Turks' clothing. Released from prison on 2-7 September, Stanley's remaining weeks in Turkey were occupied with giving evidence during the trial of the Turks, and claiming compensation from the Turkish government. His claim was for $z,ooo, and he eventually settled for $r,zoo, although he and the others had spent nowhere near that amount on their horses, guns, cooking pots and other impedimenta that had been stolen." Noe would claim in 11872- that Stanley had refused to give him any part of a £r5o loan handed over by Edward J.Morris, the American Ambassador in Constantinople, after the robbery. In fact, Noe signed a receipt stating that he had received from Stanley £2-7 a
nd 93 piastres (about four dollars), say £2-8 in all. Henry noted in his diary that he paid Cook £59 and himself a few pounds more, so Noe had good reason (especially since he had suffered most at the hands of the Turks) to feel angry about the distribution, though not to deny that it took place.12

  While Cook stayed on in Turkey for the later stages of the trial, Stanley and Noe sailed from Constantinople for Marseilles, en route to Liverpool via Paris and London. The date was 9 November, and they were not on speaking terms. Watching the city's domes and minarets falling astern, Henry knew that his first attempt at a land expedition had been an unmitigated disaster. Nothing had been achieved, and he had fallen out with the member of his expedition to whom he had once been closest. Yet despite failing so badly, one promising omen had been noted: the man whose name would soon be a byword for decisive action had not let down his companions at the most dangerous moment of the whole misbegotten enterprise. At one stage he and Cook had been hoisted into a tree with lariats round their necks, as if about to be hanged. But, instead of collapsing under pressure, Stanley had turned the tables on the Turks with ice-cool nerve by convincing the Cadi that he and his companions were victims, not aggressors. Years of imprisonment in a verminous Turkish jail had been avoided, and Henry's ability to retrieve a situation when absolute disaster seemed certain had been exercised for the first time.

  FIVE

  War Correspondent

  Long before Stanley reached Liverpool, he knew that his stay in Britain would be brief. America still offered him, he believed, a better chance of making a living, but this did not make his imminent journey to Wales any less important to him. To guarantee success there, he had taken the precaution of visiting a tailor in Constantinople and had spent part of Ambassador Morris's loan in purchasing a made-tomeasure naval officer's uniform. In this spurious outfit, Henry intended to present himself to his mother and to pretend that after various acts of heroism he had been made an American naval officer. As the sharp-eyed US ambassador had noticed when Stanley had worn the coat in his presence, the buttons were Turkish rather than American.' But Henry was confident that no one in Wales would know the difference. All that mattered was that his mother should be impressed. Before sailing, he had himself photographed in this uniform and meant to give all his relations carte de visite prints before he left Wales.' But should he write his new name or his real one on the back?