After dinner, a sleep of quietude — a welcome change from the incessant clamor of New York. In the morning, after breakfast, he drove us to the station; shortly we arrived back in New York, where I rejoined my husband and his colleague Dr. Parke. A few days later, we embarked on our tour.
THEY WENT FROM NEW YORK to many cities on the East Coast, then they came back for a banquet at the New York Press Club; then they went to Chicago (on February 14), then on to California (Los Angeles) on March 21. On Sunday, March 29, Stanley reached New Orleans after a thirty-two-year absence.
From Stanley’s Journal, circa 1893, Relating How He Later Came to Write about His Early Days with Samuel Clemens
HAVING JOURNEYED TO NEW ORLEANS by private train in early 1891 as part of an itinerary of some one hundred engagements across the United States, with several stops in Canada, I had not expected how touched I would be by those distant yet familiar surroundings. The tour itself had, to that point, been a matter of fulfilling an obligation. Though I was still exhausted from my recent Africa travels and would have been content to stay home with my new bride in England, I had undertaken this tour to make amends to my American agent, Major Pond. Four years earlier, in the autumn of 1886, while lecturing in the northeast — after having attracted some very good press notices, a result of successful engagements in Hartford and Boston, where I had been introduced to my audiences by old friend Samuel Clemens — I was soon flooded with offers from all parts of the country; so many, in fact, that Major Pond was kept quite busy in his New York office making adjustments to my schedule day by day. By that mid-December of 1886, just as the offers continued to pour in and I had completed my eleventh lecture, in Amherst, with some eighty-nine more to come — as per my original contract with Major Pond — a telegram from William Mackinnon arrived at my hotel. It was an urgent summons to England, advising me to drop everything and move forward with the final preparations for an armed expedition to relieve the Emin Pasha, governor of the southernmost province of Equatoria, then under siege by the forces of the Mahdi in a stronghold near Lake Albert, his life being in imminent danger.
As it had been a condition of my original agreement with Mr. Pond that I could cancel my tour at any time given such an emergency, I quickly booked passage back to Southampton — to Mr. Pond’s heartbreak, but not without having first given him my word that I would later return to complete my contractual obligations should I survive the ordeal that awaited me.
So it was that after four years of rigorous travel I found myself in the limelight again. It was no easy thing for me to face the public at that time (or any time), for though my return from Africa had been at first received with great jubilation, some rather severe and startling attacks on the nature of my command had begun to appear in the press within a few months. One particular aspect of my account in In Darkest Africa—in regard to the cruel and irrational behavior of the officer commanding my rear column, the late Major Barttelot, who was responsible for many unnecessary native deaths — had come under question. His family, rushing to the dead man’s defense, and naturally wishing to restore his good name, had launched a campaign to discredit my reputation and abilities. Joining them were others, principally Lieutenant Troup, who not only made claims against my moral character but also reported on the unsavory activities of certain of my other officers. Altogether, though I ultimately made a successful case in my defense, it remained an ordeal, for I had to spend countless hours, in England and in America, submitting myself to long and tedious interviews with journalists, answering every kind of inquiry, and living under magnified scrutiny, as if I were in court and under indictment for a crime.
Thankfully, on this journey I was accompanied by my new wife, Dorothy, the pearl of my days, whose sunny temperament and joy for life remained a solace to me. My mother-in-law, Gertrude Tennant, and her nephew, Hamilton Aide, and one of my old (and most loyal) Africa hands, Lieutenant Arthur J. M. Jephson, comprised the rest of my party. Our private train cars featured all the amenities of a fine hotel, and as we crossed the country, I had the use of a small office and writing desk on which to make improvements to my lectures as needed. Because I had always experienced some unease before audiences and remained wary about going over certain distasteful details in regard to my recent expedition, I was plagued all along by a great reticence. (I worried, mostly, about being boring.) Here my clever wife’s input was invaluable to me. It was her idea that I somewhat broaden the scope of my talks so as to include the story of my encounters with the Pygmies of the forest and other remarkable, somewhat pleasant discoveries. My lecture, which had at first been advertised in New York as “The Relief of Emin Pasha,” became “The March through the Magical Forest,” a change that, according to Major Pond, much invigorated box-office receipts. (We did many thousands of dollars’ worth of business at each venue.) No amount of what I said could begin to capture my experiences, but I tried to put my listeners into my shoes: It was exhausting, to say the least, but I was applauded everywhere I went.
Since I had given over most of my spare time to the refining of my talks, I mainly left sightseeing to my wife and her mother. Dolly could at least use that opportunity to take in something of my adoptive country and meet some of our many friends. In New York, that chaotic metropolis (a city planner’s nightmare was my impression), I had the pleasure of introducing her to Samuel Clemens for the first time — he liked her immediately, I am happy to say, and one evening they attended a Buffalo Bill rodeo show together. And Clemens — that is, Mark Twain — was also on hand during some of the lectures I gave in Hartford, his hometown, and in Boston. It was joyous to me that they got on so well.
On one of those afternoons in Boston, after a fine snowfall, Dolly and Clemens, along with his youngest daughter, Jean, went out for several hours of sleigh riding. Upon their return, my wife was rosy-cheeked and ecstatically happy. “Oh, Bula Matari, come and have a ride and breathe the most delicious air under heaven!” she said to me in her endearing way. Clemens, smiling, his hat of Russian fur and his long coat still dripping with particles of snow, joined in: “Yes, Bula,” he told me. “Your winter chariot awaits.” But having my duties, I excused myself and returned to work; besides, I liked the idea of Clemens befriending my wife. She was, after all, quickly becoming my “better half” and an asset to me socially, and I knew that Clemens would have a more congenial time with her than he would with me, so preoccupied was I about saving my energies for my nightly performances.
NOW, BY THE TIME WE ARRIVED in New Orleans, in March, I was somewhat ready for a diversion beyond the endless dinners and fetes in my honor, which I, being cautious around strangers, would have been happy to avoid. Nevertheless I gave lectures in the elegant salons and society halls of the city. Playing up my “Southern roots” for the crowds, I spiced my stew of African tales with frequent mentions of having worn the Confederate uniform and participated in the Battle of Shiloh, though I had since become better known for “other things.” I spoke of Southern bravery and resolve during that war and ventured the notion that if I had remained cool in some very dangerous situations in Africa and other locales, I owed it to those earlier formative experiences. But while speaking of these things, my life before the Civil War began to come back to me, having lain dormant under a multitude of other memories; and so, breaking from my normal routine, I decided to spend a morning with my wife and her mother, sightseeing around the city.