Books: The Explorer

THE MAN WHO PRESUMED (334 pp.)—Byron Farwell—Holt ($5).

The notorious words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” have perhaps aroused more merriment than any other phrase coined by man. But so far no one has suggested a better way of greeting a hypersensitive Scots clergyman who had found himself a perfect hideout in darkest Africa and did not particularly want to be disturbed by civilization’s emissary. The wonder is that so plain a man as Henry Morton Stanley should have been able to coin so Chesterfieldian a mode of address. U.S. Author Byron Farwell’s detailed new biography (which follows by half a year another able but less complete account, Ian Anstruther’s Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?) brings sympathy, respect and humor to the career of a man whose fame was far more secure than his identity. For Stanley’s place and loyalties—even his name—were uncertain. He seemed forever divided between Britain and the U.S., between the U.S. North and South, between Africa and European civilization, between the role of observer and the role of principal performer.

Dickensian Childhood. The extraordinary history begins in the Welsh town of Denbigh, where, on Jan. 28, 1841, one Elizabeth Parry gave birth to an illegitimate son. He was baptized John Rowlands (“as this was believed to be the name of his father”) and soon deserted by his shamefaced mother. At the age of six the child was thrown into the St. Asaph Union Workhouse, where he learned to know the sort of “parish charity with a vengeance” that fills many of Charles Dickens’ grimmest pages. At 15, John at last took the Dickensian way out: he flogged the workhouse tyrant into insensibility, climbed over the wall and fled.

The flight led him all the way to the U.S. (he crossed as a cabin boy). In New Orleans, walking down a street in search of work, he ran into the kindly looking, middle-aged man who changed both his name and his life. Henry Morton Stanley was a well-to-do trader, happily married but childless—as Dickens would have wanted him to be. Henry Stanley took pity on young John and found him well-paid work in a New Orleans store. Touched by John’s devotion, the trader addressed the boy solemnly: “I promise to take you for my son and to fit you for a mercantile career, and in the future you are to bear my name, Henry Stanley.” Dipping his finger in a basin of water, old Stanley made the sign of the cross on the boy’s forehead.

Jungle Meeting. But a new name did not erase the marks of a brutal upbringing or fix young Stanley’s place in the world. When the Civil War broke out, young Stanley enlisted in the Confederate army, was taken prisoner at Shiloh. In prison he heard the arguments of Union partisans for the first time; impressed by the arguments (or, possibly, merely depressed by prison life), he became a Union artilleryman, was soon discharged as unfit. After an unhappy visit to Wales, Stanley found that his foster father had died without legalizing his adoption. Once again homeless and parentless, he became “ship’s writer” (i.e., yeoman) of the U.S.S. Minnesota, made his entry into journalism by reporting the Union’s land and sea attacks on Fort Fisher for various Northern papers. Stanley was still only 24 when he deserted from the Navy and became a roving reporter, wandering the world from Turkey to Utah, reporting Indian wars, an Anglo-Abyssinian war, insurrections in Crete and Spain. He was a tough, experienced reporter of 28 when James Gordon Bennett Jr. summoned him to Paris and gave him the gist of his famous assignment in two words: “Find Livingstone.”

The famed British explorer-missionary had been rumored dead and all the world hoped for reassuring news. With 192 men and six tons of equipment, following mostly an ancient caravan trail, Stanley proceeded a thousand miles into Central Africa with no worse troubles than minor mutinies, desertions, illness and sporadic hunger. After 232 days of trekking, a passing caravan reported the presence of an old white man in the nearby village of Ujiji: it could only be Livingstone. Pressing on, Stanley unfurled the Stars & Stripes, fired a volley from his muskets, and swooped down on Ujiji dressed impeccably in a freshly chalked sun helmet, a new flannel suit and waxed Wellington boots.

After Stanley got off his famous line, the missionary smiled, lifted his cap slightly, and admitted that he was indeed Dr. Livingstone. “I thank God, Doctor, I have been permitted to see you,” continued Stanley. “I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you,” replied Livingstone. Stanley still did not dare confess his professional identity. Not until next day did he say nervously: “You have heard of the New York Herald?” Replied the good doctor cheerfully: “Oh, who hasn’t heard of that despicable newspaper?”

Full-Time Explorer. In the end, Livingstone was grateful for the “disinterested kindness of Mr. Bennett” in sending Stanley to his aid. While Livingstone continued his explorations, Stanley returned to Europe in 1872 with the big news. “Honored, feted, talked about,” Stanley was also assaulted as “a ridiculous and clumsy pretender [who] had not been to Africa at all.” Nonetheless, he became such a lion that Editor Bennett never forgave him. “Who was Stanley before I found him?” he bellowed. But Bennett was too good a businessman to fire Stanley. As a rival newspaper said: “There is but one Herald and Stanley is its profit.”

The U.S. and Britain began to fight over his identity. The Herald (of Caernarvon, Wales) proudly claimed him as a Welshman. The Herald (of New York City) declared that he was born in Missouri. Stanley had no wish to confess his Welsh illegitimacy, but even less to tell the world that he was a Confederate soldier turned Unionist and a deserter from the Navy to boot. He made Britain his base, left others to fight out the problem of who he was.

The German Pasha. In finding Livingstone, Stanley may have found himself. He became a full-time explorer. The rest of The Man Who Presumed tells the fabulous schoolboy stories of Stanley’s later explorations of Equatorial Africa—stirring tales of hardship and struggle, replete with flying spears, poisoned arrows, and many a gentle rebuke from Stanley’s elephant gun. Before Stanley died peacefully in bed in 1904, he seemed compelled again and again to try to re-enact his first and greatest triumph. He was a one-man missing-persons bureau when he went after Emin Pasha (real name: Eduard Schnitzer), German-born governor of a British-controlled province in the Sudan. The Pasha had been trapped in the interior during the Mahdi’s uprising, was even more reluctant to be found than Dr. Livingstone. Stanley set out with an expedition that included eight white officers, 795 natives and cases of Stanley’s favorite Madeira and champagne. After a harrowing six months’ trek during which several of the natives were eaten by cannibals (presumably washed down by some of the Madeira), the expedition narrowly missed the missing Pasha, went on for eight more months.

When they finally caught up with Schnitzer Pasha, the rescuers were in far worse shape than the rescued. The Pasha reluctantly accompanied Stanley back to civilization, fell on his head during the welcoming ceremonies, and hurried back into the interior, where he was murdered. Stanley dismissed him as a “nearsighted, faithless, ungrateful little man”; even fairer judges must note that the Pasha was slow-witted enough to miss a pretty neat line of dialogue. As the great explorer-journalist stepped out of his tent amid rifle salutes, the Pasha unforgivably failed to say: “Mr. Stanley, I presume?”