London Days: A Book of Reminiscences

by Arthur Warren

These men were volunteers. What did they "get out of it", save the dangers they sought, the sport which perhaps they found, such contribution to general and special knowledge as they might make, and their consciousness of duty performed? They are English gentlemen. Two of them are officers in the British Army. Mr. Jephson paid a thousand pounds for the privilege of accompanying the expedition. Captain Nelson left a comfortable home and the luxuries of civilised life for the sole purpose of joining in the rescue of one of Gordon's governors, whom the great soldier's untimely fate had left in a perilous position in the extreme south of the Soudan. These volunteers pledged themselves to be loyal and devoted, and I must confess, assuming that I am a sufficient judge, being naturally jealous of anything that is not downright and real, that they have redeemed their pledge in the noblest and completest manner.

Darkest Africa has been to them a fiery furnace, a crucible, and a question chamber, which they have tried, each of them to the very depths of their natures. They have borne every trial to which they have been subjected with more than Spartan, with old-English fortitude, the fortitude that existed before mawkishness and mock sentiment had made men maudlin. It is for you who hear me now to do your part toward recognising the merits of these young gentlemen, or causing them to be recognised by those who have the power to dispense awards appropriate to noble and thorough and uncalculating performance of duty.

The gossips used to say, as if they took a peculiar pleasure in saying it, that Stanley did not recognise loyalty in others. But if the remarks just quoted were not recognition, and handsome recognition, given, as they were, before the most influential audience that could have been assembled in London, I do not know what recognition could possibly be.

Of all my memories of Stanley, the most amusing relates to the "American Dinner" given in London in his honour. It was not so amusing at the time, because that was a time of mishap and muddle. Apart from the fact that the name of America should be associated, not allied as Mr. Wilson would insist, with a mismanagement which seemed especially determined to prove false the tradition that Americans have a natural and trained capacity for getting things done, the thing was a roaring farce. There was a "Committee", of course, but the Committee had nothing to do with the arrangements. There were forty "Honorary Stewards", but I can vouch for the fact that the honorary stewards had nothing to do with the arrangements. I was one of the forty. The ebullient zeal of one man who undertook to do everything, and who welcomed the responsibility, because he was a friend of Stanley, was responsible for the general wreckage of the elaborate plans which promised a dinner of ceremony and resulted in an informal collation. I have always supposed that the kindly gentleman who undertook the whole thing, and who was really one of the best fellows going, must have paid a good share of the cost of this entertainment to his friend Stanley, and insisted, therefore, upon having his own way, or the members of the Committee must have shirked their duties, which is n't likely, considering who they were.

Well, here was an American dinner to Stanley. There were sixteen speeches, save the mark! And eleven of the speakers were Englishmen. There must have been at least three hundred and fifty men at the dinner, and fully one half of them, possibly more, were not Americans. Not an American dish was served, and the caterers, whoever they were, did not serve the first course until an hour and a half, or something like that, after the dinner should have begun.

There was no one to receive the company. The chairman was there, but most of the guests arrived before he did. There was no reception committee. The honorary stewards had no badges or other marks to distinguish them from anybody else, and no searcher for a guide or for information knew who they were. There was no table plan, no list of guests. Nobody knew where he was to sit, or who would be his neighbours. We heard that the printer's forms had collapsed into horrible "pi" just at the point of going to press. Although, as an "honorary steward", I arrived a quarter of an hour before the time announced, I could find on the premises none of my companion honoraries, nor was any list of them available. I was talking with two or three arrivals when a familiar voice behind me asked: "Are we alone in Africa?"

"It looks like it, Mr. Stanley," said I. "I can't find the huts, or the bones of the feast, or the chief of the tribe. But you have come to the rescue, as usual."

Stanley looked amused. "Where's our friend ——? Have you seen him?" he asked.

I explained what I had heard about the dear fellow's dilemmas, and the little that I understood of them.

"Then we 'll have to work our passage," Stanley said. "Will it be all right if I stand here? I 'll have to meet everybody, I suppose. They won't fear I 'll bite 'em, will they, if there 's no manager to keep me tied up?"