Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

  At Matadi, the fleet of five steamboats that Léopold had earlier promised to Stanley for the expedition’s transport upriver turned out to be useless rotting hulks in total disrepair. Instead of commencing their journey by water, Stanley’s column marched uphill for twenty-eight days, along the very road Stanley had built seven years before, toward the Congo plateau.

  At first, the column set off in good order: At the lead was a tall Sudanese soldier carrying a banner—not a Union Jack or the flag of Belgium, but the standard of a New York City yacht club to which Stanley’s former employer, Gordon Bennett, belonged. Behind him was Stanley himself, dressed in a Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and a peaked hat with a sun flap hanging off its back, riding a mule with silver-plated strappings along its side. Following Stanley were Baruti, dressed in white, wearing a turban, and carrying his rifle, and Hoffman, in safari garb; then a contingent of Somali soldiers followed by a hundred porters. Behind them was Tippu Tib, wearing long, flowing white Arab robes and carrying a scimitar, its handle encrusted in jewels, aloft on his shoulders, and his harem, wearing colored robes; their faces were half hidden by veils.

  Despite its initial glorious appearance, the expedition was beset with problems of discipline from the beginning. Aside from certain old “faithfuls” from Stanley’s last expedition, the hurriedly recruited corps of porters and guards proved to be an unruly lot, prone to desertion, pilfering, and a reluctance to take orders. Within a few weeks of their march, the expedition began to suffer the ravages of malaria and dysentery. By the time the column had reached the first way station of Léopoldville, eleven of his porters had died, twenty-six were too ill to go farther, and twenty had deserted.

  When they finally reached Yambuya, on the banks of the Aruwimi River, Stanley left Major Barttelot, his second in command, with a large body of men—his “rear column”—to wait for supplies from Léopoldville, while the remainder of his expedition went on. On June 28, 1887, with several of his officers—Jephson, Stairs, Nelson, and Parke—and his servants Hoffman and Baruti by his side, along with three hundred and eighty of his ablest men, Stanley set out, due east, into the vast Ituri Forest, a dark and dank realm the size of France, so dense with trees that light rarely penetrated to the ground. As they followed the course of the river, the sound of the cataracts was deafening; but to travel within the forest itself was daunting in a different way, often deathly silent and always gloomy, “like being inside a long-abandoned and very dark cathedral,” he later wrote. He would ultimately call it the “region of horrors.”

  From Stanley’s journal:

  Camp near the Lenda River, incessant roar of the cataracts maddening: from the soft and viscous topsoil, worms and slugs oozing out of the loamy mud under the worn soles of our boots, the earth smelling of elephant, simian, and antelope dung; from the trunks of rotting trees, swarms of stinging red ants in livid streams in every direction, like lines of fire… black ants, too, crawling up our boots, supping on our spoons, swimming in our thin broths, teeming over our plates and into every open box, every blanket, even crawling onto the pages of my books. Pismires—tiny insects with scissors-like mandibles—cutting into the soft flesh of one’s neck; and bees small as gnats and able to pass through the eyes of needles, stinging, biting, attacking with the ferocity of black wasps, so voracious in their appetites that they stripped the hair off my mule’s legs. Such little creatures going for the eyes, ears, and nostrils, my skin covered with swelling sores, as if I’d fallen again and again onto a nettle patch; venomous hornets tormenting us as well… and wasps, their baggy nests hanging everywhere off the trees, exploding like darts through the air and attacking man and animal alike at the slightest provocation—a footfall, a voice, the striking of a match… tiger slugs crawling up over my stockings and wriggling onto my skin, a stinging slime left in their wake; green centipedes with beady eyes falling out of the trees… and butterflies, too—appearing abruptly in swarms from the east, dropping down in sheets from the trees, and so densely gathered they are an obstruction to one’s movement; to pass them is like parting a curtain, a cloud of them, in a blizzard of fluttering wings, the creatures alighting upon our faces.

  Then:

  The Ituri again, clack-clack in the trees; around me, in the netting of lianas and creeping vines that crosshatch the woods, and off the branches of the surrounding trees, femurs and rib cages, spines and clavicles—human bones of every variety—hanging everywhere, like clock pendulums or Chinese wind chimes. Worse is the undergrowth, for with every step, I feel the ground beneath my feet oozing with blood, the syrupy mud rising up onto my boots with every step. The leather of my shoes coming apart like soaked, mealy bread… such disagreeable things I ascribe to bad digestion and a very severe headache before turning into bed….

  Or:

  On the trail came across a dying native, his head cracked open by a rifle butt, the side of an eyeball visible through a split in the forehead of the skull, his smooth belly expanding ever so slightly with his last breaths—the oddity of it all, not a drop of blood issuing from the gaping wound, as if the blood had been stopped like mud in his veins… had no choice but to discharge my pistol into his head, to put the poor fellow out of his misery, the crack of the gun, the body writhing for a final moment… a nightmare, to be sure.

  And his journals go on and on: with opinions about his officers, reports of the dead and wounded, and counts of deserters in his caravan.

  WITHIN THE HUNDREDS OF PAGES of his journals, there exist these scant references to Huckleberry Finn:

  September 20, 1887

  My eyes are slowly going bad… have been reading Clemens’s novel again, in my tent, before sleep; some parts I have found less than what he is capable of, some of it strictly picaresque, but some parts profoundly moving. I particularly find Jim to my liking and not unlike my good-natured man Uledi… The river of freedom is an idea I enjoy, but an illusion, no doubt, especially given the reality of the river that exists in this place. A river of death… But I find that just thinking about the Mississippi and my old life does wonders for my spirit, even when I know it is just a made-up story.

  October 8, 1887

  On a reconnoitering excursion across the black lake of [illegible] when, because of a heavy and sudden fog, we could not see far into the darkness or take our bearings by the stars, I had no choice but to light a torch, even though that light might well have brought a hail of poison arrows from the shore toward our canoe. But I had no torch, so I asked Hoffman to hand me my knapsack, wherein were contained several books, including the Bible and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as I had thought to burn one of them for light—but which one? Though it troubled me to use the Bible, I could not bear the thought of tearing to pieces and making ashes out of Clemens’s gift to me, so putting it aside and begging Providence’s forgiveness, and bearing in mind that I had another Bible back in camp, I ripped from my Bible’s binding clumps of its pages, which I put to a lucifer match, its sudden glare giving us a sense of where we were in relation to the shore, which we shortly could make out was to our right. We were fortunate to find some of our party (Lieutenant Stairs and well-armed Somalis) awaiting us there, for seeing our light, they set afire some of their own torches, and we were saved.

  IN A PHOTOGRAPH taken in a Cairo studio, circa January of 1890, Stanley is posed with the surviving four officers of his expedition (Jephson, Stairs, Nelson, and Parke) against the painted backdrop of an African plain, potted palms surrounding them. These gentlemen—in their dapper, high-collared white Victorian shirts and walrus mustaches—are either seated, canes and bowler hats set on their laps, or standing, at ease, looking bemusedly into the camera, as if they had still not gotten reaccustomed to the trappings of normal modernity. Stanley, his face gaunt and his expression weary, seems by far the eldest; with his hair turned completely white, he could have been an uncle posing with his nephews or a schoolmaster with his teachers instead of an intrepid explorer who’d just turned forty-nine.

/>   Dearest Samuel,

  How are you, my old friend? As for me, I fear the best years of my life are gone, and now, at fifty, whatever glories might await me, my personal circumstances remain as solitary as before, but with the difference that I am now feeling my age—Africa will do that to a man.

  I mention this because it is you who tried to dissuade me from undertaking the whole business during my last visit with you in Connecticut, in the winter of ’86. As we talked about Africa one night, you doubted the value of the mission, calling it an excuse for “wholesale colonization” of the region, and as you, dear Samuel, by the example of your happy home life, made me think heavily about the prospect of spending endless months in the wilderness without the ordinary comforts of domesticity, I nearly changed my mind. But the eyes of my peers were upon me, and besides, I did not think the mission would be as difficult as it turned out to be.

  As you may recall, certain extenuating emotional circumstances were at work on my spirit at the time—I am speaking of my misbegotten attachment to Dorothy Tennant, the London society dame whose initial romantic attentions had been a great surprise to me. To have been lulled into a dream of love, only to be rejected, perhaps clouded my judgment at a crucial moment: In the end, I welcomed the distraction and am still convinced that I was the best man for the job. I expect that all the parties who had diligently persuaded me to do so—King Léopold of Belgium and Mr. Mackinnon—have been quite satisfied with the results, for central equatorial Africa is now better known and will be portioned off, to mutual satisfactions, among the Europeans, and the strange and mercurial pasha was brought to safety.

  And remember how much of Europe was in an uproar over the fate of one Eduard Schnitzer, or the Emin Pasha, as was his title after the khedive of Egypt elevated him? A bookish and quite brilliant man, a linguist and naturalist assigned to the governorship of Equatoria, he had been stranded with a contingent of Sudanese forces in a garrison near the Albert Nyanza—Lake Albert—and apparently surrounded by the forces of the Mahdi, bent on his extinction. As you know, nothing had been heard from him in several years, and in Europe there was the fear that he would surely suffer the same fate as did my old friend Gordon of Khartoum—which was to be hacked to pieces by Islamic swords. As you know, I was “retired” from explorations and missions, etc., having grown weary of such challenges. Nevertheless, it was during the second week of my American tour—as it happened, I was visiting with you in Hartford on that leg (and a most pleasant one it was) of the tour arranged by Major Pond—when I received the summons to lead the expedition. Both King Léopold of Belgium and shipping magnate William Mackinnon, of the British India Steam Navigation Company, had been after me for some time to undertake that journey, and though I had my reservations, my sense of civility and duty prevailed. Once the funds, some twenty thousand pounds or so, were raised by subscription and I received the summons, it was a matter of honor and integrity that compelled me to accept the assignment.

  No doubt there will be much talk about the loss of life and the necessary measures we had to take in subduing hostile villages to ensure our survival, but in the end, given the sheer magnitude of my accomplishment—tracking through a previously unknown region the size of France to rescue the pasha and recording the geographical discoveries that resulted—I can take some pride. In addition, I hope to break up the slave trade of Africa; and eventually to expose villagers in the Congo to a more modern and enlightened state of existence. Rarely can any man (or men) lay claim to have actually entered into Dante’s dark wood, as I can now: For one hundred and sixty days, we marched through the immense Ituri Forest without ever seeing a bit of greensward the size of a cottage chamber floor. Nothing but endless miles and miles of forest, and never as much as a patch of sunlight, the gloom of being in such a godless place so great that, indeed, the small emotional troubles that come to a man in the discharge of ordinary life seemed hardly of consequence; even one’s own name in such conditions hardly matters, only survival. My dear friend, to say that it was like a dream, and often like a bad one, is no understatement.

  However malevolent were the conditions throughout (of which I will not further elaborate), I had the consolation of my books: my Bible, my atlases, and your own The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which you had given me back in ’86, during our most agreeable visit in Hartford. I began to read it aboard ship en route from America to England that winter, when I had been called for this mission. Then I read it again in the New Year, on my way from England to Alexandria en route to Cairo—so much of my time otherwise was preoccupied by preparations for the expedition. Thereafter, once the expedition had set out by ship from Zanzibar—easterly around Cape Horn to the mouth of the Congo and onward up by steamboats along the Aruwimi River to the edge of known lands—I began it again as a matter of comfort to me. Through the many months afterward, on many a night, I would remove that book from its protective oilcloth wrappings, for soft paper rots quickly in the dampness of the climate, and light a kerosene lamp by which to read under the mosquito netting (it was impossible to read anything during the day; aside from the heat, there were so many insects about that to open a book, smelling to them of delicious ink and nutritious pulp, would be to attract these famished creatures in great numbers, for they loved the taste of the pages of books). As I reread portions of that novel, your evocation of the Mississippi and thereabouts provoked in me a flood of pleasant reminiscences about our own youthful days in the American South: Or, I should say, it reminded me of the times, so long ago, when we first recognized each other as friends—and lifelong friends at that.

  Well, as I am one of the few living Europeans who have been to such a place, I am hoping that you will be amused to know that Huckleberry Finn and his good friend Jim traveled to the land of the Negroes with me. I liked your portrait of Jim, I should add: The scene where he cries (chapter 23) while describing how he had once beaten his little daughter for not speaking to him, then realized she was a deaf mute, remains among my favorites—why I cannot say. As for Huck Finn—that he, like me, was practically an orphan made him a most sympathetic character, and I found his desire to escape from the “civilizing influence” into the freedoms of the river a quite intriguing and amusing idea. As you know, to bring the “civilizing influence” into Africa has been one of my goals, though my own experience, based on what I have seen and on the moral unfitness of the many men now operating in the region, finds me, like Huckleberry, longing for the purer world of the wilds.

  As a parting thought, a line from Browning in which I took much comfort during the expedition:

  I count life just a stuff

  To try the soul’s strength on.

  Yours,

  H. M. Stanley

  HIS RETURN

  HAVING COME BACK FROM AFRICA by way of Alexandria, in April of 1889, Stanley set out from the port city of Brindisi by rail along the Italian countryside to Rome. His progress was met in every little town along the way by ecstatic crowds who, thronging around him, greeted him as though he were a new Caesar. At each stop, the train would pause for about twenty minutes, Stanley, somewhat bronzed from the sun, appeared at the aft and waved at the crowds. In the piazzas of many towns, festivals were held in his honor, and he found himself, however briefly, stepping down into the midst of elaborate celebrations to shake hands and pose for photographs and receive laurels and medals. Along the way he had heard that mothers were naming their newly born babies “Enrico” after him.

  In one town, fragrant with wisteria and potted flowers, as Stanley stepped off the train for a few minutes, he found a rotund and affable majordomo pointing out his young daughter in the crowd, all sincerity and good will, asking: “Vuole sposare a mia figlia?”—“Would you like my daughter as your bride?” He turned a livid red, bowed, and, in a state of agitation, walked away.

  For all his glory, sleep did not come easily to him; having no use for such pithy emotions as guilt, and not feeling any blame for having performed the necessary tas
k of burning down two hundred and twenty-six African villages on his marches (“reduced” is the term he used to refer to such events), and in general equating any inkling of shame with weakness, he, in full control of his emotions—save for rage, impatience, and envy (among others)—found himself vexed over the capricious and troubling thoughts that would come to him in those moments preceding his sleep, and during sleep itself, when he felt very much alone in the world, only Stanley and God existed in the room.

  BY THE TIME HE RETURNED to England, in June of 1889, after triumphant processions in Rome, Paris, and Brussels—where Léopold bestowed upon him the Grand Cross of the Order of Léopold and the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown—he found that his recent exploits, above all others, had not only made him more famous than ever before but had also enhanced his standing with the aging Queen Victoria, who invited Stanley to dinner at Windsor Castle so that she could hear his stories.

  The great dame was far more receptive to me than she was on my previous visits. Something in the outpouring of congratulations from all over Europe and the universal publicity—which reflected well on the “English goodwill” accrued by my adventure—seemed to dispose Her Royalness well toward me. I was received in her private quarters, where she showed me some of her drawings of persons and landscapes (not a bad artist, for an amateur) and asked me if I would be disposed to a knighthood; but for many a reason, I had to defer the honor until some other time, mainly (and I could not tell her so without offense) because of my status as an American citizen, which was conferred on me during my trip to the United States in 1885. As she would not have understood the practical reasons for it, involving copyright protection in the United States, I informed the queen that I was not yet worthy of such an honor. Though it did not sit well with her, I am told that, after I held forth on the difficulties of the Emin Pasha expedition before a gathered assembly at Windsor Castle, she was greatly pleased and considered me a “wonderful traveler and explorer.” It had been a help, I think, that I named several geographical sites after her.