The meeting, in late 1871, between Henry Morton Stanley and Dr. David Livingstone in what is now Tanzania, in East Africa, is one of the most famous in history. An episode of the TV soap ER is called Dr Carter, I presume? and an episode of Star Trek is entitled Dr Bashir, I presume? Clare Pettitt's book, although rather repetitive on occasions, due to the way she has subdivided it, enables the reader to get a pretty good idea of the characters, warts and all, of the two main protagonists and the forbidding Dark Continent. She is correct in arguing that it was Stanley who ensured Livingstone would be remembered as more than just yet another European explorer. And explorer, rather than missionary, he was.
The book is very much of its time - the early 21st century. One written just fifteen years later would be different again - the past few years have thrown a wholly negative pall over the deeds and very term Empire. The British version seems to have borne the brunt of the hostility as well, notwithstanding worse behaviour from King Leopold of Belgium and other European powers in the same period and the malign, often more skilfully concealed, 'empires' of the USA/China/Russia of today. Behind the very genuine abhorrence felt about many things that occurred under British suzerainty, one feels the economic imperative of Reparations has jostled to the fore.
By the time Stanley 'found' him, Livingstone had spent most of his adult life in Africa. He made several celebrated journeys across the continent, from coast to coast, and up the Zambezi river. He became obsessed with finding the source of the Nile. He was responsible for setting up the Universities' Mission, which sent graduates as missionaries to Africa and which was disastrous, leading so many to their early deaths. Livingstone's rather callous treatment of his wife Mary (daughter of another missionary, Robert Moffatt) is highlighted by the author: he impregnated her constantly...joked about her as 'the Irish Manufactory'...and then dragged her across African deserts... it is arguable, in fact, that many of Livingstone's 'heroic' characteristics - his near-obsessive drive and an optimism that degenerated into self-deceit - eventually drove his long-suffering wife to alcoholic despair (she had to be given large doses of opium to keep her quiet at night and she died of malaria on the banks of the Zambezi in April 1862), and his firstborn son to desperation and an early death in the American Civil War.
Stanley had been born into poverty in North Wales, growing up in a Workhouse then emigrating as a teenager to America. A variety of jobs led to him becoming a reporter in the Civil War. He was employed by James Bennett of the New York Herald and covered the Abyssinian Campaign of 1862. Later, (with G.A. Henty) he reported on the Ashanti campaign on the Gold Coast in 1873. He attended Livingstone's funeral in 1874; crossed the African continent and discovered the source of the river Congo (1874-7); then worked for King Leopold in the 'Belgian' Congo, which thoroughly besmirched his future reputation. He married, in 1890, and settled in England. He toured America, Australia and New Zealand in the 1890s; became an M.P. for the Liberal Unionists in 1895; visited South Africa in 1897; supported the Boer War; attacked Gladstone's 'peace at any price' foreign policies; was knighted by the Tory government in 1899; and died in London in 1904.
Perhaps the most moving section, entitled 'Faithful to the End', deals with the behaviour of Livingstone's African servants, Wainwright, Susi, Manua Sera and Chuma. They had their master's innards buried under a tree and ensured his well-packed body was transported to Bagamoyo on the East African coast. Susi and Chuma were not invited to the London funeral in Westminster Abbey, but they both visited England - as did Jacob Wainwright - and had their photographs taken, both in African 'costume' and western dress.
Livingstone's story can also be seen as the story of the growing influence of the press (helped by the newly sunk transatlantic cable) in the second half of the 19th century, and the emergence of a modern notion of celebrity. His portrait circulated widely, his lectures drew huge crowds and his publications sold well. When his mummified body was returned to England, his funeral was a national public event of a kind that had not been seen in London since that of the duke of Wellington in 1852. A funeral bust was completed and set up on the front of the newly opened Foreign and Colonial Office building. What is interesting is that while Livingstone could be seen as an establishment figure and a servant of empire, he could also be claimed as a radical and a hero of the people, and in this double-jointedness we can discern the making of his future life as a remarkably pliable and adaptable icon.
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