Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

National Book Critics Circle Award This revelatory biography of the famed adventurer is "commanding, definitive . . . an unalloyed triumph" (The Washington Post Book World).
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Henry Morton Stanley, so the tale goes, was a cruel imperialist who connived with King Leopold II of Belgium in horrific crimes against the people of the Congo. He also conducted the most legendary celebrity interview in history, opening with, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" But these perceptions are not quite true, Tim Jeal shows in this grand and colorful biography. With unprecedented access to previously closed Stanley family archives, Jeal reveals the amazing extent to which Stanley's public career and intimate life have been misunderstood and undervalued. Jeal recovers the reality of Stanley's life—a life of almost impossible extremes—in this moving story of tragedy, adventure, disappointment, and success.
Few have started life as disadvantaged as Stanley. Rejected by both parents and consigned to a Welsh workhouse, he emigrated to America as a penniless eighteen-year-old. Jeal vividly re-creates Stanley's rise as a reporter, his friendships and romantic relationships, and his life-changing decision to assume an American identity. Stanley's epic but unfairly forgotten African journeys are thrillingly described, establishing the explorer as the greatest to set foot on the continent. Few biographies can claim so thoroughly to reappraise a reputation; few portray a more extraordinary historical figure.
"There have been many biographies of Stanley, but Jeal's is the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable." —Paul Theroux, The New York Times Book Review

Genres: Biography, History, Africa, Nonfiction, Travel, Adventure, Biography Memoir

591 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 8, 2007

About the author

Tim Jeal (born 27 January 1945) is the author of acclaimed biographies of Livingstone and Baden-Powell. His memoir, Swimming with My Father, was published by Faber in 2004 and was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. He is also a novelist and a former winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

He was John Rowlands, a Welsh workhouse bastard, rejected by his mother and father, lowest of the low, poorest of the poor. And yet, when he got married – finally, at the age of 49 – it was in Westminster Abbey by a bishop in the presence of the prime minister Mr Gladstone and the painters Sir John Millais and Sir Frederick Leighton and a fragrant potpourri of dukes & peers of the realm.
These days people have careers, but in them days, people could invent themselves completely. There were no rules.

When he left the workhouse at age 17, he was unwanted by any relative and packed off to Liverpool and got work as a delivery boy. During one job he took provisions to an American ship and the captain took a liking to him, as they say, and offered him a job as cabin boy. And so in February 1859 he pitched up in New Orleans, and jumped ship. Scuffled around, got delivery jobs, picked himself a new name, ended up a storekeeper in Cypress Bend, near little Rock, Arkansas, which is where the American Civil War caught up with him in 1861, and he joined the 6th Arkansas Infantry on 26 July who were also known as the Dixie Grays.

Captured (not killed, lucky for him, but he was a lucky bastard) at the Battle of Shiloh, and taken to Camp Douglas, near Chicago, where along with all the other prisoners, an offer was made, that they switch sides. This was standard in those days, I don’t think this is done anymore. So he enrolled in the Artillery Service of the Union. At this point he began to claim to be an American, because he’d had to swear allegiance to the American government. Got dysentery, left behind in a hospital in Harper’s Ferry on 22 June. Listed as a deserter on 31 August and never went back to his regiment.

Walked to Sharpsburg, collapsed, a good Samaritan paid his train fair to Baltimore, and he shipped to Liverpool as a deckhand. Went to see his mother in Denbigh, she rejected him again as a worthless ne’er do well. Shipped back to New York, began clerking in Brooklyn. Decided to join the Army for a second time. 19 July 1864, enlisted for 3 years in the navy, assuming they wouldn’t find out about his army desertion. Got ship’s clerk. February 1865 at Portsmouth New Hampshire – deserted again. Hearing of the Colorado gold rush, sallied forth to St Louis and blagged his way into an occasional job with a newspaper, the Mississippi Democrat.

You get the idea. Like a lot of people, he was a great improviser. He stumbled crazily from one notion to another and finally came upon his DESTINY.

In 1868 there was a war which broke out between Great Britain and the Empire of Abyssinia, Ethiopia as was, because of a mislaid letter, which caused Emperor Theodore to take umbrage.



Stanley had talked his way into the offices of the New York Herald, biggest American paper of the time, and, promising to pay his own expenses, got the job of war correspondent for this ridiculous enterprise, where the elephant British Army was plodding off to swat the Ethiopan gnat. In the event, the British lost 40 soldiers and hundreds of Ethiopians were killed (precise numbers as usual not available). The Emperor committed suicide. All this because of a mislaid letter.

But the good news was that the Herald liked Stanley’s dispatches. So the next thing was that he got his Big Idea. Which was : to be the man who found Dr Livingstone, who had been lost in Darkest Africa ™.
These white explorers had to think big. They had to travel with a party of around 250 people minimum. This was because they had to be a traveling bank (the currency was cloth, beads and wire) because they had to buy food all the time. So you needed many guys to carry all this stuff and other guys to be the protection. The guys had to carry the stuff because in Africa mostly you can’t use pack animals because of the tsetse tsetse fly which kills horses and donkeys. Also, there were no roads, only single tracks, and only sometimes. There was no satnav, no Google earth, no maps at all. Instead there were compasses and many unpleasant surprises including people who didn't want you to be there at all.

Signing up for one of these expeditions was a poor career move. About 25 to 35% of them died. Next time a Victorian explorer comes around sweet-talking you just say no. So many of them died on these expeditions! Death by disease (dysentery, dengue, cholera, all sorts of fever); by drowning; by being speared by hostile natives, by snake.

So this fake-American Welsh upstart found Dr Livingstone, and became a big celebrity & best-selling author, and then went back for Expedition No 2 which was to find the source of the Nile and figure out the other big river in the Congo called the Congo. They were so crazy for the source of the Nile in those days. I myself would not get up out of my Barcalounger to see the source of the Nile if it was found at the bottom of my garden, but it takes all sorts to make a world. On Expedition No 2 Stanley nearly died about 19 times, but he had the constitution of The Hulk even though he was petite.

It was now he got the reputation of being a big racist bastard who liked to encourage the blacks by shooting them. He gave himself this reputation by bigging up various exploits in his newspaper dispatches, and naively not realizing that if you did shoot a few natives and flog a few others, you’d best not to mention it, like all the other explorers, who flogged and shot much more but discreetly didn’t mention it.

Then King Leopold of Belgium decided Stanley was the very patsy he was looking for to make happen his dream of personally owning the Congo and creating the horror the horror ™ which Heart of Darkness and then Apocalypse Now were later based on. This King was thinking big. Stanley was hired to populate the Congo River with viable bases where white people could stay armed to the teeth and basically take over. So this was expedition No 3.

Stanley’s heart was in the right place, strangely. He was of the opinion that the Congo needed to be tamed to kill off the slave trade, which was a flourishing enterprise throughout the whole area. In fact King Leopold was maybe the greatest con artist the world has seen, and also one of the greatest gamblers, because when he started his whole Congo thing, there was no obvious way to make money from it. No gold, no diamonds. However, in 1887 a Scottish vet had an idea to make his little son’s tricycle riding a more pleasant experience and fitted air filled rubber whatchamacallits round the wheels. In doing so he invented

PNEUMATIC TYRES

His name was John Boyd Dunlop and his invention sparked off the Great Victorian Bicycling Craze



and immediately made the Congo a fantastically valuable place because rubber trees grew there all over the place.

So slavery wasn’t abolished in the Congo at all, it was made compulsory. Anyway, all that hadn’t happened yet when Stanley embarked on his last, most horrible expedition. It’s really hard to describe why he even went, it’s beyond our modern understanding. It was a rescue attempt. Some random guy called Emin Pasha… no, I haven’t the patience. It makes no sense. But anyway, guns & ammo had to be got to this guy, all of England was in a state of teeth gnashing angst until Emin Pasha had more guns & ammo to kill more native Sudanese people. There’s no logic.

This last expedition was a total catastrophe – it was a big one, and started with 708 people , and went from one side of Africa to the other side in three years, and of the 708 only 210 survived. And yet it was considered a heroic triumph.

This book gets into the grotesque twisted heart of white imperialism and it’s unflinching. But no one should be thinking that the Victorians had no qualms about any of this. From a contemporary review of one of Stanley's books :

The mounting of an expedition with aims and methods which almost necessitated the cruelties and slaughters that were incident to it… it seems better to remain in armchairs and pass resolutions than wantonly to embark on perilous enterprises which can only be carried out by means that degrade Englishmen

This story is amazing, a masterclass in tangled morality. Lives cannot be lived like this any more. Stanley preferred living with black people in Africa than the dimity drawing rooms of Bloomsbury yet he shot, flogged and hung black people, and was unembarrassed about it. He was not a bad man but through him many bad things happened. This is a great biography all about the inevitable evil and the evil inevitability of imperialism. The sorrow and the pity of it is breathtaking.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

With source material that was unavailable to earlier biographers, Tim Jeal has written a surprisingly sympathetic, exhaustive biography of the great explorer. In fact, it may be the definitive study that will never be surpassed.

The subtitle is not hyperbole. Stanley's life does seem impossible and he was Africa's greatest explorer. Most people know him as the journalist who searched for and found Dr. David Livingstone in central Africa. But there was more -- much more -- to the intrepid explorer. He later led an expedition that traversed the continent from the east coast to the west coast. He topped that by heading an expedition that reversed that hazardous journey by crossing the continent from the west coast to the east coast.

Greatest Africa explorer? That is an understatement. He may well have been the greatest land explorer ever, even surpassing Lewis and Clark and other noted explorers. Hard to believe? Read the book. It made a believer out of me.

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reputation of Henry Stanley has suffered because of his involvement as an agent of King Leopold and his participation in opening the Congo to Imperialist land-grabbing resulting in horrible crimes against the population. The author attempts to rectify the situation with this biography. It is an in-depth and scholarly work based on information from Stanley's personal papers and diarys that were previously unavailable to Stanley's other biographers. The author, however,tries too hard to justify some of Stanley's activities and psychoanalyzes the explorer to a fault. Although Stanley probably does not deserve what history has dealt him, he was not without fault in his treatment of the indigenous population in Africa. He was a man obsessed with fame and a fervid desire to be accepted and let nothing stand in his way to those goals.
I found the book interesting but found the apologist tone disconcerting. If you are interested in the early explorations into the heart of Africa, it gives insight into the unbelievable hardships faced by Stanley and his men and his bravery against almost impossible odds. But be warned that a great deal of the book is dedicated to whitewashing Stanley's reputation.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhilarating look at the explorer Stanley. He is indeed an individual who overcame adversity – he was born in poverty, abandoned to an orphanage and successfully re-invented himself in the U.S. (where he changed his name)! He then became the famous explorer we all know - think of the immortal expression – ‘Dr. Livingstone I presume’.

As the author points out Stanley was constantly trying to prove himself. In the U.S. he fought on both sides of the Civil War. He was also given to exaggeration.

The book is most gripping when Stanley explores Africa in three audacious expeditions. The author also judges Stanley in terms on the 19th century. It must be remembered through-out these journeys that Stanley was often alone with an African crew to help him. The trust between him and his African team was mutual. The climate, the terrain and some of the inhabitants encountered on these expeditions were adversarial. At times it was truly a journey into the ‘Heart of Darkness’ with starvation, cannibals, and disease. Stanley had malaria several times. Most of his European companions died during the explorations, many succumbed shortly after. Stanley must have had a remarkable physical constitution to have withstood three expeditions.

Where most Europeans after Stanley disdained Africa and exploited Africans – the author (I feel) successfully defends Stanley against these accusations.

Stanley was a man driven to live life to the fullest. Tim Jeal portrays this exuberant personality with zest and humanity. It is indeed sad that towards the end of his life – this man who crisscrossed Africa on foot became paralyzed and bed-ridden.

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Henry Morton Stanley, most famous for the line, “Dr. Livingston, I presume” can arguably be said to have been the greatest land explorer/adventurer who ever lived. He led numerous expeditions through central Africa in the 1870s/80s building much of the world’s knowledge of “The Lost Continent”, including the ultimate source of the Nile. He was the first to circumnavigate Lake Victoria (in a small boat with only 11 men), proving that it was a single body of water, not several. Similarly he led expeditions to Lake Tanganyika, and mapped much of the Congo and the central African watershed. The list goes on and on. And yet today, this man is often reviled and considered responsible for much of the moral catastrophes that followed his era in Africa.

This book covers Stanley’s complete life, but the author’s primary purpose is to exonerate Stanley from as much of the negativity surrounding his life as possible. Through detailed research he does a thorough job of that and the reader is left with the impression that Stanley suffers from one of the worst and most undeserved reputations that history has to offer. Rather than contributing to the advancement of the slavery industry, he did his best to fight it. Simply by being Belgian King Leopold’s representative in Africa taints Stanley with the same stink. So to fight this image is not an easy task for the author, especially given Stanley’s actual fraudulent early life and later purposeful misstatements in his published work. In fact, even the phrase, “Dr. Livingston, I presume” appears likely to have been crafted afterwards when Stanley wrote of the experience and wanted a memorable line. He also lied about his origins, his lineage, even his country of birth. Born as John Rowlands, he stole his name from an American family and near the end of his life had to search grave yards in Louisiana to find a different “Stanley” family to claim as his ancestry in order to protect his secret. Given all of this, it is indeed a difficult task to exonerate him from what others claimed was his behavior and moral approach to African exploration. And yet, I think the author succeeds.

For me, one of the most interesting things about reading a biography is to see how an individual changed through their life; where they came from and how they ended up where they did. Here was a man who was born to a poor Welsh family who didn’t want anything to do with him, made his way to America, fought for the South in the Battle of Shiloh, was captured, imprisoned as a POW and then agreed to change sides and fight for the North because that was the best path at the time. He worked the Colorado gold fields and then became a war correspondent. This is what finally launched him on his career of exploration, cajoling his newspaper to fund his first trip to Africa so he could report back on the trip. In later life he even served, reluctantly as a Member of Parliament and was ultimately knighted which was quite a feat considering he had once renounced all claim to British citizenship. His is an amazing journey and quite a good story. If it had been written as a fictional novel, it would be turned down for being too unbelievable.

Overall I thought the book was good but not great. It is extremely detailed, almost too much so. While it is truly amazing how many times Stanley survives various diseases and near-death experiences, it grows tedious to read of the hundreds of deaths of his expedition leaders, etc. The simple fact is that Stanley led so many important expeditions (and survived them) that they all tend to merge together. Also, the author sometimes struggled to keep his own vanity out of the material. He could not resist referring to his own previous work on a Livingston biography and noting that he was the first to discover and publish certain aspects from that effort, emphasizing how he had corrected the record from other biographers.

I would still recommend this for those that like detailed historical biographies, especially for those like me who can’t get enough of that cavalier idea of exploring and discovering new frontiers.

[Martin Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book with considerable skepticism, having most recently encountered Stanley in Adam Hochschild's KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST—as excoriating and chilling an indictment of the Scramble for Africa and European imperialism as one could encounter. Jeal had a mountain to climb to convince me that Stanley, while a man of his time, was certainly no less and in many ways considerably more honorable than his critics or contemporaries or the man he revered, David Livingstone, in his treatment of Africans and his vision for the continent as a whole. Jeal also convinced me that although we should not forget the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade, and Britain's central role in it, the internal and Arabic slave trades were also barbaric and disastrous for the continent, and that Stanley and others were committed to ending it for altruistic reasons.

Jeal makes an important point at the end of the book. It's hard, subsequent to the collapse of empire, Freud, two world wars, and even (although he doesn't mention it) Lytton Strachey's EMINENT VICTORIANS, not to view the great explorers of the nineteenth century as either tools of corrupt states, troubled racists and/or dilettantes, or bigoted and clueless fools who drew the maps that led to the arbitrary borders that have brought so much turmoil to Africa. Jeal wants us not only to re-imagine these men in the context of their times, but to rediscover the idealism of exploration and the force of character, discipline, moral strength, and physical courage it took to perform the Herculean feats these men achieved—as well as the mental and physical price that many of them paid.

Fair enough, one might say; but, it seems reasonable to ask, to what end? Whether intentionally or not, Africa in the minds of Westerners is still imagined as a place for exploitation or self-discovery, of mystery and majesty or poverty and violence: in other words, a canvas upon which the outside world can paint itself rather than a vibrant cluster of dynamic societies seeking self-definition and independence. Jeal has performed a valuable service in making us question whether we've become too self-satisfied in our condemnation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism. Whether he protests too much, however, in this revisionist biography I'll leave to other readers of this admirable book to decide.

One final point: Jeal's biography is exhaustive and at times exhausting—and the maps came in very handy. My one complaint is about the (UK version of the) book, which I read. It should have been 6 x 9 inches in size, with more generous margins; the font should have been bigger, and whoever chose a typeface whose italics slanted so exaggeratedly should no longer be trusted with typesetting. The book could have read much more easily without these structural issues.

[Morgan Scorpion · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm finding this really hard going. Stanley seems to have been an extraordinary man, and to have had thrilling adventures, but this writer just sucks all the life out of it. I will try and finish it, but only because I'm interested in Stanley himself.

A year later -I just couldn't finish it. Every time the writer related an interesting event in Stanley's life, he then went on to convince us it didn't happen. How can anyone make exploring Africa boring?

Later still - I tried, I really tried. Then, I gave up. Anyone recomend another life of Stanley?

[Foster · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only lasted through 1/4 of Jeal's book (I stopped right after Stanley "found" Livingstone). While the title is accurate - the circumstances of Stanley's life are amazingly unlikely - this account is written too academically to be enjoyable. Jeal spends far too much ink defending his sources and disputing the findings of other authors. These digressions from the actual story, sometimes three pages long on their own, are far too distracting. I look forward to reading someone else's teling of the Stanley story.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. A major work on a man much more complex than he was perhaps remembered. And perhaps not as evil, pompous or racist as he was largely seen. Jeal has delivered what is probably the definitive biography, with access to all Stanley's official and private letters that were only really released by the family in time for Jeal to access.

This is a fascinating, readable, but also rigorously researched book. Jeal delves into Stanley's upbringing in a Welsh workhouse as effectively an abandoned child, who never received any affection from his mother, even in later life when reasonably successful, and only by remaining family as liggers when he did achieve renown. Jeal posits the psychological impact this had on him shaped the rest of his life, not least with his emigration to the US, and seeking to present himself as a success by fabricating adoption by a successful businessman (Stanley of course). His inability to maintain his lie, and the tensions this brought him throughout his life are convincingly used as probably explanations underpinning his character.

The narrative history through his famous explorations into Africa, including the meeting with Livingstone, is well written, fast paced and convincingly conveys the truly astonishing accomplishments he made in getting such distances across hostile terrain. Some of his actions are (very) rightly condemned, others, understood, if not excused. Stanely's crime during his lifetime was to admit what he did, where others covered up the violence of their 'explorations'. The natives (who undoubtedly were terrifically ungrateful to be 'found', the cads!) were in fear of slave raids, distrustful of foreigners, but also genuinely cannibals and other hostile weird and wonderful types were scattered throughout. If you wanted to explore, it would be unpleasant, and usually fatal for a large proportion of the party

Ironically, given Stanley's definitive role in the foundation of the Congo and Leopold's annexation and horrific looting, Jeal's research presents Stanley in a more sympathetic light - he was nowhere near as racist as the vast, (vast) majority of his contemporaries, genuinely values his African travelling party (many of whom accompanied him on multiple trips) and was appalled by the Belgian and other colonial types racism and treatment of the natives. Some of the letters show this clearly, but he was (mis)guided by feelings of loyalty to his fellow whites and officers, even when they had quite literally gone insane.
The rescue of Emin Pascha adds a little more 'boys own' reading, underpinned by the complexity of his home life. The later chapters with his marriage, European base and deeply unhappy time as an MP having been railroaded by his wife bring out the more melancholy latter years he had, particularly as his health declined. Jeal is an excellent biographer, with accessible, yet deeply researched chapters. Excellent.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dr Livingstone, I presume?" That, in a nutshell, sums up almost everything I knew about Henry Morton Stanley - he was an American journalist who set out to discover the missing Dr Livingstone in the wilds of Africa. This this is almost all most people know of him does him a grave disservice. In his day Stanley was probably the greatest explorer alive, renowned not just for his discovery of the missing Dr Livingstone whilst on assignment for a New York newspaper, but for charting the wilds of East Africa and the Congo, confirming the truth about the source of the Nile, his rescue mission of Emin Pasha, his role in the creation of the Congo Free State for King Leopold of Belgium.

Much of what we know to be 'true' of Stanley is in reality very far from the truth. For a start, his real name wasn't Henry Morton Stanley and he wasn't American. That two such basic facts can have been subject to so much confusion over the years only serves to highlight how much the real Stanley has been shadowed by his undeserved reputation in his role as the 'dark shadow' to the saintly Dr Livingstone. That Livingstone was very far from saintly and that Stanley himself played a large part in the creation of the Livingstone legend, only serves to deepen the irony. In effect, as Jeal argues, Stanley has come to be 'a scapegoat for the post-colonial guilt of successive generations'.

In his day Stanley genuinely believed that bringing European trade and civilisation to Africa would benefit all who lived there, that European colonies could serve to enhance and enrich the lives of the African tribes and that colonisation was the only way to destroy the Arab-Swahili slave trade that was devastating so much of East Africa at the time. That much of his explorations only served to pave the way for the atrocities of Leopold's Belgian Congo is surely something the man himself would have been horrified at.

This was a truly excellent biography of a man I knew almost nothing about. Jeal writes with real flair and verve, and Stanley as a character fairly springs off the page. I could hardly put this book down. Jeal had the benefit of access to many of Stanley's personal papers that have been unavailable to previous biographers, and I would feel no hesitation at all therefore in declaring that this will become the definitive book on Henry Morton Stanley.

[Andrew Conry-Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim Jeal's biography of the explorer Henry Morton Stanley is amazing. I don't know if Jeal would appreciate this comparison, but Stanley is like the Forrest Gump of the mid-1800s. The man keeps popping up in momentous historical events (for instance, he fought on both sides of the American Civil War).

Jeal offers a balanced, sympathetic view of a complicated man; one who was both bold and timid, cruel and generous. In Jeal's hands, the life of H.M. Stanley is almost like a Dickens novel. Stanley was a man of formidable will, endurance, and resourcefulness, but was made weak, even pathetic, by his craving for acceptance and renown. This is a masterful biography of a deeply fascinating person who lived an extraordinary life.

[Roy Kenagy]

NYT review by Paul Theroux: http://nyti.ms/vxH18u

“'We went into the heart of Africa self-invited — therein lies our fault,' Stanley confided to his diary. The words are quoted in this magnificent new life of the man, by Tim Jeal, a biography that has many echoes for our own time."

"There have been many biographies of Stanley, but Jeal’s is the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable and exhaustive, profiting from his access to an immense new trove of Stanley material."

[Unwisely · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt really badly about this book. Since I didn't finish the non-fiction history I had out, I made an effort on this one...and still didn't manage to finish it. It's not that Stanley didn't have an interesting story, but the book wasn't gripping. At all. Had I had a long stretch (say, on a plane) with nothing else, or maybe even if I was still commuting in the vanpool, I might have finished it, but...no.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a pretty disappointing read. Jeal had unprecedented access to Stanley's papers and has an excellent command of the period, yet he works so hard to redeem Stanley's reputation that he loses sight of the big picture. Entertaining, but far from enlightening.

[Richard Wu · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a certain contingent of children in my elementary school who, when the librarians were explaining the Dewey Decimal System, raised their hands upon hearing the word “Biography.” The librarians had asked us about our preferred genres, and I couldn’t possibly fathom what these individuals (mostly girls, in my small New York suburb) found fascinating about people – real people – who died long ago. Superior, clearly, were works that explained the stars and planets with colorful illustrations. If not those, then science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and cartoons; even in whelp form I intuited the inherent dullness of this world. “The universe is expanding,” says Alvy Singer (I was that kid).

As you might predict from the previous paragraph: “He’s now going to recant his words and describe how he got to where he is today, reading what would you know, a biography.” I will have you know that I simply won’t be giving you the satisfaction. But you may ponder the irony of the slice of life I just cut, which is, so to speak, biographical.

It is a fact that this biography is the first I’ll have read in God knows; you won’t find a single bio in my reviews-to-date here, at least, and my memory indeed cannot recall the last instance in which it had absorbed a portrait of the once-living. Maybe it was never. [On rereading this review I discovered that I’ve read Alan Watts’ autobiography, which is not a biography per se, so you can shove right on off now, tut tut.]

Of further note is the fact that I acquired this book nearly two years ago now, along with a bunch of others I had perhaps the intentions of reading but neither time nor willpower: an aspirational purchase, but alas, tsundoku fuel. Endlessly lured by ideas I found more interesting in the moment, I left Jeal’s tale to collect dust on the shelf. Since then my thinking has shifted a few planes; Stanley wasn’t relevant to me anymore.

But it is precisely its irrelevance which now brings me to open it. One heuristic of mine that hasn’t changed is the seeking-out of that which is not relevant, born out of my paranoid aversion to the confirmation bias I see parasitizing so many of my friends, and the desires of my past and present selves differ significantly enough that the two might well be different characters altogether. As such, his recommendation is my now-reading, and I’m all too excited to begin.

The first thing you will notice about this book, upon its arrival in the mail, is its cool 570-page heft. Given its 6-inch width and 9-inch length, quite above average when contrasted with your conventional paperback, this work imposes upon the reader by sheer means of physical fact that he has his work cut out for him. The font, which appears to be 11-point Times New Roman, subsequently occupies 39 lines on each page, so you will be disappointed in expecting anything other than – if not a slog, if not a grind, if not a challenge – a significant devotion of your time.

I would love to see the average age of the person who buys this book – I’m sure Amazon has the data – because it isn’t something I expect my contemporaries to be indulging in, and the more iconoclastic I can be, the better. Let’s say I read at the reasonable pace of three minutes per page; 475 consist the Introduction’s beginning to the Afterword’s end. This totals to 1,475 minutes, or 23.75 hours – nearly a full rotation. If the average movie is two hours long, I could’ve watched twelve.

Nevertheless I did read through the whole thing, which meant I consciously chose to spend my time with Mr. Stanley in lieu of the virtually infinite other options at my disposal, including, in addition to the aforementioned movies, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Vimeo, Amazon Video, or carving miniature wooden Buddha statues to atone for my past vampiric tendencies. Make of that what you will.

More impressive than this feat of poring through, word by word, is the feat of writing the work in the first place. Tim Jeal has committed a titanic amount of time and effort into visiting museums, obtaining access then digging through archives, interviewing academics, curators, and living relations to the various figures, corroborating, arranging facts, selecting which to include and exclude, categorizing and outlining themes, tying everything together into a compelling narrative, and finally going through edit after draft after revision to polish it into the 3.5 pounds you hold in your hands and the 13 pounds that left them in exchange… I counted a total of 204 books cited in Jeal’s bibliography, some of them in several volumes, like the five in Franz Stuhlmann’s Die tagebücher von Dr Emin Pascha.

More impressive still is the “impossible” life of Africa’s greatest explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, née John Rowlands. As much as I’d like to believe I pluck books out of thin air, effortlessly dodging recommendation algorithms like George Clooney dodging invisible laser beams in Ocean’s Eleven’s casino escape scene, this is unfortunately, sadly, regrettably not the case. At some point in my life I must’ve learned something about Stanley the character, enough to provoke my curiosity. If not his debatable heroism then perhaps the sheer feats of Victorian bravado – the likes of which I find more foreign than even the accomplishments of Elon Musk. Who was Stanley? And why?

Heart of Darkness no doubt played a part too. Stylewise, it was far from my favorite in the pantheon of high school literature, but I find myself drawn again and again to the themes of African exploration and exploitation. I’ve seen Apocalypse Now. I meticulously research the cacao varietals and flavor notes of my single-origin dark chocolate bars. And now I’ve read Jeal’s biography. There must be something peculiar, something mystical, about the African land which draws me to it, although I’ve never stepped foot on the continent; something about the confluence of environmental factors – the searing heat, the torrid downpours, the swamp miasmas, the barren sands – which force certain adaptations upon both those native to it and those who seek to conquer it. As humanity, Eden may be questioned as the garden of our mythological origin, but Africa is unquestionably the terrace of our biological origin.

What motivated Jeal to write this? It appears to be something as simple as access to a collection of letters unavailable to all previous biographers. With vivid brio he dissects the inaccuracies of past biographies, so that we may appreciate the increased erudition he brings to bear while resigning his predecessors to the lands of the wrong. From this we must deduce that history is necessarily revisionist; there is no “final accounting.”

If a single motif pervades the work, it is: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” and Jeal focuses on the “good intentions” part of the proverb, using new evidence to paint a new portrait of a man largely damned by history, deducing a coherent and, where possible, fatal logic in the decisions and turning points of the explorer’s life; Schopenhauer said something along the lines of, “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”

More importantly, what was Jeal actually trying to achieve? Stanley’s last thought occurred on his deathbed over a century ago. I’m sure his ghost in hell or heaven would be pleased at his fellow Englishman’s gargantuan effort to exonerate him – if it existed (which it doesn’t). Furthermore, the fallout of African colonization has long since settled, and a renewed understanding of one of its pioneers will do nothing to change the chaotic situation on the ground today. At best this is the result of an old man’s idle curiosity – Jeal was 63 when his book was published in 2007 and Stanley was 63 when he died in 1904 (synchronicity much, Mr. Jung?) – best for its readers’ idle entertainment. At 24, I am far too young to be idle, so at best for me this amounted to three full 8-hour days’ worth of procrastination.

Procrastinating is fun though, I won’t deny that, and Jeal does tell a good story. I’m not a masochist, which means if I don’t like the food on my plate, I won’t finish eating it, and if I don’t like what I’m reading, I don’t finish reading it; sunk cost fallacy destroys lives, look it up. The reason Jeal loses a star is due to his habit, albeit a rare one, of interpreting motives where the evidence only allows for speculation. The reader should be allowed to develop his own subtexts in these cases, rather than have them inserted into his mind by the author.

Favorite Quotes
“People who are shut up in institutions often have fantasies of escape and freedom, of climbing over walls, living in woods, and walking for days towards far horizons.” [p.23]

“In January 1870 Stanley had discussed the purpose of human life with the rich and sybaritic American consul in Cairo, Mr. G.C. Taylor. Taylor had argued that, since man was fated to be ‘dust like the beasts’, a life of idealism and self-sacrifice made less sense than a life of pleasure-seeking. Stanley had disagreed. Even if life could be proved purposeless, he told Taylor, it would still matter to him personally: ‘for my own spirit’s satisfaction … It is in my nature to toil, as it is in the other’s nature to enjoy.’” [p.121]

“The sensitivity of the early twenty-first-century observer to racial questions makes judging the actions of nineteenth-century explorers with objectivity and fairness extremely difficult. Men coming from a society in which public hangings had only recently been abolished – and where floggings in the armed services, and beatings in workhouses and schools, were ferocious – were bound to have few inhibitions about using a whip on their porters.” [p.223]

“This incident confirmed his growing conviction that fame was useless to him. It not only made his relatives more grasping, but brought threatening letters, and numerous invitations from strangers. Most days Henry would get thirty or more letters from people he had never heard of. Since he hated being stared at in the street, he felt obliged to take expensive hackney cabs everywhere.” [p.146]

“Indispensable to all politicians is the ability to brush off insults and not take them personally, so that yesterday’s enemy can become tomorrow’s friend, and no falling out need be final. For a man of Stanley’s sensitivities, tactical friendships, and all forms of dissembling, were impossible. Being used to exercise command rather than negotiate alliances, he lacked the easy manner and clubbable smiles with which politicians mask naked ambition.” [p.425]

Another reviewer: "Stanley is like the Forrest Gump of the mid-1800s."

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb, revelatory biography that reveals Stanley as more than the originator of one history's most banal statements of the obvious but as an extraordinary man. I don't say he is a man we would or should find admirable but there are not many stories of 19th century examples of Welsh workhouse bastards who, rejected by both mother and father, grew up amongst the lowest of the low, poorest of the poor and yet nearly half-a-century later when married in Westminster Abbey it was the prime minister Mr Gladstone, the painters Sir John Millais and Sir Frederick Leighton and numerous dukes & peers of the realm. Come-to-think-of-it there are not many 20th or 21st century stories to match it.

Tim Jeal's splendid biography reveals that everything that we thought we knew about Stanley, including how he got his name, is wrong, an elaborate fiction created by Stanley. Even his reputation for brutality against Africans was monstrously magnified by Stanley because he wanted to create the sort of impression he thought he should make - hard, masterful, the 'white' man, the imperialist, the man the Victorian establishment wanted him to be.

I would never argue that Stanley, as a participant, in the opening up of Africa to colonisation, is not a deeply problematic or flawed figure. But compared to his employers such as Leopold II of Belgium or any of the other crowned monsters of the 19th century who still parade across European streets and squares atop their bronze steeds he is an innocent, or at least a more attractive figure. He is always going to be an untouchable 21st century readers are so complacent in our hypocritical attention to the motes in the eyes of others that we don't see that we are the continuing heirs to monsters like Leopold II because we still benefit from the exploitation they began.

Poor old Stanley never intended or probably realised what horrors he had created. He didn't even realise that he was painting himself as a monster. No one can interested in the history of Europe's long sordid 19th century involvement in the despoilment of Africa can avoid reading this book.

[Charles · Rating 1 out of 5]

Years ago I engaged Tim Jeal in a blog conversation about his book. He made it abundantly clear he was not about to let pesky facts get between him and his hero-worship of Stanley. As previously mentioned, Jeal whitewashes the extent of Stanley's service to King Leopold. In fact, Stanley was Leopold's point man; after he personally negotiated the treaties with African tribes, he attended the Conference of Berlin in 1884, by order of Leopold, and on his payroll, to successfully persuade the world powers to grant Leopold sovereignty over the Congo, by pretending their mission was humanitarian - knowing full well that Leopold's real goal was to create a slave-state.

Jeal's defence of Stanley's murder of African civilian porters for deserting - "unless discipline could be restored, the entire expedition would disintegrate and starve in the bush" - is even more unfathomable when one considers the fact, well known to Jeal, that while Stanley was fighting in the American Civil War at an earlier stage of his career, he had himself deserted, TWICE - once from each side!

At the point when Stanley decided it was his prerogative to sacrifice his workers' lives for the success of his mission, the men became his de facto slaves. Stanley understood that: in his diaries during that period, he wrote "these men make me regard myself every day as only a grade higher than a miserable slave-driver."

Jeal's colonial mentality renders him incapable of understanding this. Jeal defends the hangings as 'necessary in order to maintain discipline”, as if it was a military mission as opposed to a commercial venture. He disingenuously explains that "Stanley grew up in an era when soldiers could be hanged or shot for mutiny." But these were CIVILIAN porters, teenage boys who decided the revised assignment - a new more dangerous route had been decided on - was foolhardy and chose to leave - not "soldiers" who willingly consent to risk their lives for the success of the mission.

I was struck by how Tim Jeal appeared to have the same disregard for black lives as his subject demonstrated.

[Abdullah Almuslem · Rating 4 out of 5]

So… Where do I begin with this book? This was one of the thickest, hardest, and longest books I ever read.

I first stumbled on Stanely few years ago, when I read his book ( How I found Livingstone), which I really liked… Then later I read his epic book (In Darkest Africa) which impressed me further-although this was a terrible and frightening epic story..

By reading these two books I got the impression that Stanley is a very tough, in some cases racist , hard explorer who has no tolerance for the weak. Perhaps, an evil person in many cases! So, before reading this book, I already knew a lot about Stanely life and a lot of things that came up in this book were not a surprise to me !

Stanley, born in 1841, had one of the most adventures life anyone can ever think of. He experienced poverty in childhood, American Civil war (in both sides), imprisonment, Indian Wars, army desertion, Turkey troubles, Journalism in Europe… then his first crazy expedition to find Livingstone in Africa (in which he succeed), His tasks in exploring the Congo, His stations building in the Congo, then his three years and the most controversial of all of his expeditions to save Emin Pasha from the Mahdist. He's known as one of the boldest Africa explorers in history.

Indeed, his exploration through the dark continent led him to engage in many wars with the natives. He sometimes caused agony to the tribes he passed by and the lands he explored… He encountered cannibalism, hostility, slave traders, poisonous arrows, and terrible diseases. I don't think I ever read or heard of person who managed to get through such events without falling to his death.. but Stanley survived them all… Many Europeans died with him in his various expedition but not him ! In His Last expedition to save Emin Paha, more than 400 people from his followers (mostly African) perished. This led him to become superstation about the Ituri forest which he crossed (in Congo today) which it probably laid down on him a curse to this date . He said once about it: "Evil hangs over this forest as pall over the dead … it is a region accursed for crimes…whoever enters within its circle become subject to divine wrath"… and crimes indeed what he would see in this forest !

I don't need to judge Stanley as many books were written about him, and the readers can judge for themselves… This book investigate thoroughly the life of Henry Stanely, which is in my opinion is a tragic life-evil in some cases- from the beginning to the end…

It was a tough read but given my interest in the guy I found it an interesting book.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, well-researched, well-written, very detailed biography of the great African explorer who went by many names in his early life but eventually came to be known as Henry Morton Stanley. Start the long introduction but bail out when the author explains why his biography is better than previous ones. Kudos to the author for his new research that makes him more sympathetic to Stanley but this would have been better in an appendix as we're raring to dive into the life of this extraordinary adventurer. And what a life! Stung by the introduction, don't get scared at the seemingly obsessive attention to how Stanley kept changing his name in the early chapters and accept how determined the young man was to shed his unhappy background and reinvent himself.

If you're reading this thorough biography for the adventures (which were not just in Africa) you might find yourself skimming the sections on Stanley's family, later relationships with women and controversies in England but nonetheless they all serve to help understand the man's drive to explore. And what exciting, horrifying explorations they were, fighting fever-causing diseases, thick jungle, starvation, warring tribes, Arab-Swahili slave trader depredations, white egos and brutality, Tsetse flies, thefts, even cannibals and other native brutality. This is when the author shines, letting you experience the expeditions with firsthand letter and diary references, although the brutality can occasionally overwhelm. Conditions were so miserable in every expedition, one marvels that they succeeded. Then again, one wonders if one can call them successes. Even today as I write, Rwandan tribes are invading the Congo yet again.

I found this book reviewing someone's books on goodreads, so whoever that was, thank you!

[Chris Wharton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this more out of interest in its historical setting—late 19th-century Central and East Africa as European colonizers were arriving—rather than an interest in Stanley himself. Having read a fair amount of fiction and nonfiction in recent years with the same setting, I found it filled in a lot of background in generally readable fashion. Stanley himself was born John Rowland, poor and illegitimate in Wales and abandoned to the child workhouse, before migrating alone to America, where he created a new identity (and fought for both sides in the Civil War). He struggled to conceal this past after later becoming a hero of Britain for his discovery of the “presumed” (which he probably never said) Dr. Livingstone in 1871 and leading two more multiyear transcontinental expeditions serving Belgian and British interests. Later in life (and posthumously), his reputation suffered from his early connection with Belgium’s King Leopold (severed before Leopold’s true colors were revealed in the Congo’s heart of darkness) and from decisions and compromises forced by conditions or encounters with hostile tribes and Arab slavers (who continued to thrive in Africa long after the Atlantic slave trade ended). Citing newly disclosed primary sources, Jeal maintains that Stanley was generally benevolent and humane to native employees on his expeditions and sought peaceful and mutually productive relations with native populations, often in extreme conditions of hunger, disease, and violence that killed many, both native and European. Much of the book reads as a defense of Stanley.

[Peter Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, my attempt here is to review this work without spoilers, for to do so would be to likely detract from what is a very comprehensive and well referenced 475 page work.

I will allow myself one potential one though, and that is to say that the whole of the subjects private correspondence and personal papers were not made publicly available until 2002, at which time due to his previous works, the author was granted access to the still in progress cataloging of the then complete set of artifacts.

I disclose this as it is a fact that weighs heavily throughout the work and, in this reader’s opinion, would have been best know at the commencement and not at the completion of the work. Knowing up front would have, for me, added to my understanding of the author’s stance on the subject and led to less questions of how he arrived at the stances, opinions and statements that he does to both the subject and to previous biographers of Stanley.

So, who, how and what was Henry Stanley. Those are spoilers I will not reference, suffice to say that he is presented as an outstanding explorer and complex individual of whom little is currently recognized or was know at the time the work was written.

The work itself is bordering on brilliant in delivery, context, references and engaging writing style. Within this reader emotions, thoughts, contemplation, education and understanding were all tapped. I have completed the book with an appreciation of both the subject and the author for making loud and clear his stance on exploits and the man who was Henry Stanley.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stanley as he should be remembered

This isn't a light read. It took me months to finish it. At times it was uncomfortable reading. But it wasn't Stanley's treatment of his bearers or African tribesmen and women that I had difficulty with. It was the illness, hunger and arduous conditions that I could only read a bit at a time. With the ease of modern travel it's easy to forget that there was a time when only the native people knew anything about the African interior.

Tim Jeal uses Stanley's original papers to tell Stanley's life story as nobody else has done. Access to the papers was granted by the Belgian Musée Royal for the first time in 2004. Using these papers and other records, Jeal goes back to Stanley's childhood in a workhouse. He covers his time in America, including the adoption of the name Henry Morton Stanley and fighting in the Civil War. A lot of the book is devoted to Stanley's time in Africa, both searching for Livingstone and exploring the Congo for King Leopold of Belgium, who turns out to be one of the villains in this book.

Stanley has attracted a lot of criticism for atrocities committed in Africa, both during his expeditions and later. He wasn't responsible for any of them. He fired on natives only when he had to, and was against the use of excessive punishment. He should not be condemned for the actions of others that took place when he wasn't there.

As a long overdue biography of a great explorer, this ought to get five stars. It loses one because it took me so long to read it. Definitely not a page-turner for me.

[Mary Rude · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting book about a fascinating man. Stanley was a writer and an explorer, doggedly determined to the point of being pathological. He tromped through thousands of miles in Africa, the first to map the lakes and rivers of central Africa, despite the deaths of many others in his expeditions, and nearly dying himself so, so many times in the process. I've read other books about Stanley, but Jeal was the first biographer to have access to all of his personal papers, and having this insight, plus his use of the person letters and diaries of the other people in Stanley's orbit, really changes the story. Jeal is definitely pro-Stanley, which is fine for me, since I am too, but he perhaps strives too hard to rehabilitate him and his life's achievements, and sometimes will even directly attack what he views as prior unfair characterizations of Stanley and his actions. I did get the feeling that the author felt Stanley could do no wrong, and he seemed to share in his widow's anger that he wasn't allowed to be buried at Westminster Abbey. So there's a bias to this book, but it's nonetheless a wonderfully detailed and exciting account of an incredible life.

[Kate Millin-Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult read as it includes detailed descriptions of white people exploring in Africa, including Stanley. But also because he was a naive man who was so keen to be liked and admired who was not sensible in what and how much he shared. He comes out of the book as an excellent journalist and a man who admired and was loved by many of the African people who were employed in his expeditions - many of whom worked with him more than once. He had a difficult childhood and never got over his feeling of being inadequate but he still achieved great things. His legacy has been marred by now he way he shared his experiences, and members of the press and intelligentsia who judged him without fully understanding what he did and why he did it as he did.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A genuinely fantastic piece of scholarly research done with care, attention to detail and excellent writing.
Jeal comes down very firmly on Stanley's side, arguing his perceived shortcomings are due to Stanley's urge to look tough, bold and decisive and contrast with other explorers' attempts to downplay the suffering that occurs on their journeys. Its impossible to argue with the volume of research done by Jeal and I am forced to accept his conclusions that Stanley was a good man who did the best he could. Another biographer who wishes to disagree will have to do their research very well in order to overturn this masterful work

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

More of a hagiography than a biography, but very well done. The affect of Stanley’s traumatic childhood on his entire life is very much front and center. The author acknowledges his desertions and his sometimes brutal behavior, though he definitely downplays them. Uses tons of primary sources to demonstrate how Stanley was often his own worst enemy, trying to burnish his reputation by presenting himself as having killed and exerted control more than was actually the case. The items about his relationship with his son were particularly touching, leaving me to wonder how he fared when Stanley died

[Chandrashekar Gangaraju · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book for its sympathetic portrayal of this amazing human being. The lengths Stanley and his family went to hide facts about his childhood and also the reasons, that a Welsh boy abandoned by his family could achieve all that he did and volunteered to go to Africa and did so much, is amazing, almost unbelievable. I still don't understand why people like him wanted to go on an adventure with all the pain and the risk of death.

I had been influenced by some articles and did not have a good opinion of him but I am glad I read this well written book. I felt very sorry for him and for he suffered so much and even in death we have treated him unfairly.

[Eddie Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

What we know about Stanley's life was truly unbelievable. This man who walked across and charted the depths of unknown Africa came from the humblest and most unfortunate of beginnings. In the end the author does make a convincing case and closing argument that Stanley can't be reasonably held responsible for the entirety of colonialism's horrors or even his parties' crimes. In fact, the colonial scramble for Africa was put in motion by many participants and interests, and Stanley was merely the most prolific of the era's figures.

The author's writing does seem dull in parts, but overall this was very well done.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim Jeal has outdone himself with the amount of research he has done for this book. There have been many books written about Henry Morton Stanley but this book was based on Jeal's research of Stanley's personal papers, which were not available until 2002. The book documents Stanley's life from birth to death and extensively discusses his explorations of Africa, his love of the African people and his desire to bring commerce to Africa. Stanley was a remarkable man who never received the credit he deserved for his accomplishments. The book is well written and held my interest to the end.

[Riet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een interessante biografie van Stanley, de Afrika ontdekkingsreiziger. Ik had al veel over hem gelezen in andere boeken over Afrika en daarin kwam hij er niet zo goed vanaf. Deze schrijver corrigeert veel van die meningen. Of dat terecht is kan ik niet beoordelen. Het is een boeiend boek, maar wel af en toe wat saai gechreven. Wel is voor de zoveelste keer duidelikj, dat en de Europeanen en de Arabieren in dat continent veel voor goed hebben vernield.