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.