From Lady Stanley’s Journal, Autumn 1896
WHEN MR. CLEMENS’S WIFE and daughters arrived in England, they remained in seclusion with him in Guildford for several months, seeing no visitors, not even my husband. “Dear Stanley: I hope you understand this, but ‘life has stopped’ for us for the time being,” Clemens wrote in those days. Of course we understood their difficulties: Stanley himself had made several attempts to bolster Clemens’s spirits by way of sending him parcels of books, and Mother and I, with great concern, saw to it that the family received some baskets of special foods from our better shops — we could do no less. (Mrs. Clemens wrote a note of appreciation.) As to what they must have been feeling in those days I cannot imagine, and as much as we would have liked to help, we naturally respected their need for privacy. But thankfully their stay in Guildford was not a prolonged one, and by early October they had taken up residence here in London, renting a house on Tedworth Square, in Chelsea, though we had yet to see them again.
THAT CHRISTMAS, DOROTHY, however troubled she may have felt over Clemens’s sufferings, remained her resolutely cheerful and optimistic self. As she did every holiday season, she presided over a campaign to raise funds for charity and spent several mornings visiting the households of her affluent friends to solicit donations — successfully so, for within a fortnight she had raised more than a thousand pounds, a sum that did not include her and Stanley’s own substantial contribution. (These funds she distributed equally among three relief agencies: the Destitute Children’s Dinner Society, the London Orphan Asylum, and the Home for Friendless Young Females of Good Character.) But just as dutifully, she threw a party in mid-December for a gathering of her favorite urchins, those children who had been her subjects: About eight of them, in their Sunday best, turned up at the mansion with their mothers or older sisters to partake of a grand feast that included a roast goose, mince pies and cake, and many other niceties, including a plum pudding into which Dorothy had secreted coins of the realm. To each of these children, from “Little Mary” to “Sad Tim,” she had given a toy — a pennywhistle or a tin drum, a doll or cup game — and each, regardless of sex, received a picture book, gloves, and woolen caps and scarves. For the families themselves there was a basket of tinned jams and biscuits and other sweet viands along with an envelope containing a five-pound note. She served a sweet punch, and with the fireplace blazing and the children in an ecstatic state over the wreaths and holly set out here and there along the mantel, she presided over one of the most satisfying luncheons of her year.
This fete began just after noon; by two, with many delights having passed their lips, the children had become raucous. It was an affair that Stanley, off in his study, largely ignored, though at one point, while sitting down to work on some correspondence — nearly daily he wrote at least a short note to Clemens, inquiring after his well-being — he, somewhat distracted, decided to look in on the proceedings. When he appeared by the parlor doorway, white-haired, his expression stern, and with the gravity of his commanding bearing pouring forth, the children, in the midst of a happy reverie and playing their toy instruments, at once stopped making their cacophonous music. While he had thought to request that they quiet down, once he saw their little stunned faces, not a one yet ruined by the harshness of the life awaiting them, he simply looked around and mumbled, “Don’t mind me, lads and little misses; just carry on.”
He pretended to look around in a drawer for a cigar cutter, then sat down in a corner chair for a few minutes, a cigar in hand, taking it all in, with both sadness and joy, such a scene reminding the explorer emeritus (as the RGS referred to him) of what “might once have been” at St. Asaph’s.
DESPITE THE HAPPY DOMESTICITY around him, he was greatly disturbed by what he had been reading in the newspapers recently about the Congo. The reports were not a constant feature, appearing intermittently, but now and then, as he would sit down at his home on Richmond Terrace to look over the morning dailies, there would be some item relating to alleged colonial atrocities in the region. One such report came by way of an American missionary named Murphy, who, traveling in the region, had testified about the methods used by the Belgians for the harvesting of rubber in order to meet their weekly quotas: “It is collected by force. The soldiers drive the people into the bush. If they will not accede to this forced labor, they are shot down, and their left hands cut off and taken as trophies to the commissaire. These hands are then smoked in small kilns and, thusly preserved, laid out in rows before the commissaire, who counts them to see that the soldiers have not wasted cartridges.”
Other accounts, including one by a pious Swedish missionary named Sjoblom, claimed that rapes and kidnappings were common events and that entire villages were burned down and their inhabitants either taken into slavery or killed.
Now and then, while out in public, where people once stopped to shake his hand or ask for his autograph, Stanley would occasionally be approached by persons who wished to take issue with him, if not insult him outright. While strolling along Oxford Street one day with Dolly and his mother-in-law, he was approached by a man who was brazen enough to spit at Stanley’s shoes, and it took great restraint for Stanley not to administer him a beating with his cane — the man ran away in any case and was soon lost in the crowd. Stanley blamed the erosion of his reputation not only on the contradictory reports that had come out about Africa (how was it that some said he was the cruelest man to have trod African soil while others said that he was the kindest, in the mode of Livingstone?) but also on one particular penny pamphlet that was, unfortunately, being widely read in England at the time. It was called Stanley’s Exploits, or, Civilising Africa, and it had been written by one D. J. Nicoll, a socialist; its tone was set by its frontispiece. In it, Stanley is shown in a jungle clearing, his hands clasped in prayer, while behind him, dangling from a tree, hangs an African native.
As Stanley sat in his study that Christmas of 1896, the very idea that he, after all his efforts in Africa, might be associated with such allegations or that his explorations had in any way led to such things depressed him greatly.
“No — it cannot possibly be,” he said over and over to himself.
From Lady Stanley’s Journal, circa 1896
ON CHRISTMAS EVE at four o’clock, Gladstone came by for a few minutes to greet the family in his gentlemanly manner (he had congratulated Stanley on his election into Parliament and for a change there had been no evident tension between them). Later, William James and his timid but brilliant brother Henry arrived: So did Bram Stoker, Lady Ashburton, the Edwin Arnolds, and the Arthur Conan Doyles.
Altogether it was a congenial gathering; cocktails were followed by the singing of traditional carols, with Mother at the piano, and all our participants were in a merry state.
Throughout the evening Stanley, for his part, remained in good spirits, which is to say he did not break into an argument with anyone. He seemed rather subdued, in fact, and Mother and I noticed that he was in a somewhat quiet and introspective mood. I cannot say if some matter of health bothered him (the day before he had taken to his bedroom quite early in the evening, complaining of some discomforts), but it was likely that Clemens’s absence from our celebration disappointed him.
Later, as we bade farewell to our guests and gave them each a basket of “good cheer”—containing a bottle of fine Champagne and other niceties — Stanley, somewhat restlessly, made it a point to head out with a lantern onto the flagstone road fronting Richmond Terrace to officiate the orderly progress of carriages that were pulling up one by one to receive their passengers. Stanley sent each of our guests off with a cordial farewell. I watched him from our front window — the little man, my darling, despite the chill of the night, in his commanding fashion seeing to their orderly departure.