Amongst the many articles published concerning me, one printed in the London and Provincial papers on the 5th and 6th of September last caused me considerable injury in England and Egypt, and, maybe, irreparable injury in my native country, to which I have appealed for the rights of citizenship which my capture and long captivity precluded my returning to claim during 1887. To this appeal I have as yet received no answer—and little wonder. On the appearance of this article, some of my countrymen attacked me in no measured terms, and I was shunned by them as they would shun a pestilence. The communication made was on the presumable authority of General Hunter, as his name is mentioned; but so sure am I that he was no more capable of communicating such a report for publication than he is of turning his back in the face of an enemy, that I have not so much as written to him asking his denial. I was advised to allow these reports to accumulate and circulate, and reply to them en bloc in my narrative, leaving a deceived public to take up the matter. The article I refer to reads as follows:—
“Twice had every preparation been made. The relays of camels to take the exile across the desert were ready. Nothing remained |294| but for Neufeld to pluck up courage and quit Omdurman. Each time he backed out at the last moment. At length he confessed the truth, namely, that he did not care to come away. He had married a black wife. His friends in Germany were dead or had forgotten him. He would stay where he was.”
Is it not possible to find some one to swear that more than two attempts were made during those long twelve years to extricate me? I have in my narrative said all that I know of the visits of any guides to Omdurman. Having been promised the publication of interesting documents concerning me, perhaps the proofs of the above will be forthcoming; let it be proved that on even one occasion relays of camels were posted to effect my escape, and at the same time let it be proved that the guide who posted those relays ever came to me.
It is quite possible that there are a sheaf of letters waiting to be published bearing my signature; and maybe when they are, I shall learn their contents for the first time. I had to sign many letters the contents of which I was ignorant of, as is evidenced by the letter to my manager, and the letter to General Stephenson, in reply to the one he entrusted me with when I went on my expedition. This letter was photographed, and a translation is given on p. [338]. The reply was dictated by Abdullahi to his secretary, and handed me to sign. Let the note, letter, or report, on which my refusal to escape is founded, be produced, and then see if the date of it does not correspond with the date of the maturing of one of my many plans for escape. But do not press me too closely for my reason |295| for writing or giving such a message. If I gave it I should be committing as great an injustice as did poor Lupton, when sending back part of the monies sent him by his friends at Suakin, who were trying to effect his escape, wrote. . . . Those friends are still living, and as they have not chosen to tell the world what they did for their countrymen, and how it was that their schemes fell through, I may not do so—at least, not yet.
If I lied, as I have been told to my face that I did, when I denied some of the charges made against me, why should more credence be given me for sincerity in notes refusing to escape than was given to Slatin’s protestations of loyalty in his letter to the Khaleefa when he escaped? If during my capture and my long captivity my behaviour was unmanly, or such as I, a European, ought to be ashamed of, then let the proofs be at once forthcoming. Do not weary me out and keep the world against me with threats of coming disclosures; moreover, have I not good reason to complain of the communication of everything damaging to me while everything in my favour is suppressed?
The sources of information, reference, and assistance thrown open to Ohrwalder and Slatin when compiling their experiences have been closed to me. When Slatin arrived in Cairo, he was handed the statements of guides reporting his “persistent refusals to escape,” and allowed to be the first to inform the world of their existence. When I arrive in Cairo, I find that similar reports concerning me have been given wide publicity and believed in. Why, I ask, |296| should it have been believed that the guides’ reports were false in Slatin’s case and true in mine? and why should I not have been given the opportunity of first announcing their existence to the world? Perhaps, before I have completed my narrative, people will come to the conclusion that some of those privileged to look at all my papers have, for some reason or another, felt that it was necessary thoroughly to discredit me, so that, when my story appeared, I should not be believed in; but then, who could have foreseen that I should ever be so fortunate as to collect any evidence in support of it?
It has been suggested that maybe I have taken too much to heart the “tales being told about” me; that they were but gossip. It was no idle gossip for me. I was persuaded, much against my wish, to attend a hotel garden-party, my first and last appearance in public in Cairo, for this was the sequel: One of my few friends connected with the Press there handed me some cuttings containing the usual inaccuracies and slanders, and while sitting down in a corridor, my amanuensis at my side taking notes as I read them over, I heard, “Hello, how is that book of Neufeld’s getting on?” The speaker, when asked if he knew Neufeld, blurted out, “Know him—no, nor do I want to know him, considering the number of English soldiers he has sent to eternity with his gunpowder. I would not even look at the fellow’s face.” And as my companion whispered, “This is Neufeld,” I raised my head just in time to see the representative of a great news agency hurrying through the doorway. |297| Maybe, on the appearance of this, Reuter’s Cairo Agent may not be averse to telling me on what or whose authority he made this charge in my own hearing. The incident for the moment is closed, but if it is re-opened, it must be re-opened somewhere where highly placed officials may not be successfully appealed to to go around asking lawyers not to take up my case. Memo. for that News-Agency representative—“Walls have ears,” and “Don’t shout till you are out of the wood.”
I trust that when I send up my card to the London correspondent of the newspaper from whose article I have quoted, he will, instead of imitating his brother knight of the pen in Cairo, at least receive me, and examine the originals of the documents inserted in my narrative, disproving the charges which he was the medium of circulating in England and on the Continent. Then, if satisfied with their genuineness in the first place, and in the second place convinced that during my long captivity I was striving more than any other captive to effect my escape, he will at least, when next writing to his readers, try to do what little he can towards repairing the great injury which he did me in England, though it was without malice, I admit, and then try to have his error corrected in the German papers. I ask nothing more than this. Is it too much to ask?
But from the sea of slander and uncharitableness in which I was struggling, there rose some kindly hands to help me. When pressed by the War Office to repay the £20 I had borrowed from it on the way |298| down—with my old guides in Cairo asking me to redeem the receipts they had for monies lent me while in prison—with the monies kindly sent me from Berlin to give me a “new start in life” impounded—with the hand of every one against me, after calling at one bank and being refused, I went to Mr. Hewett Moxley, an old friend of the Bleichröders, of Berlin, and now the Director of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Cairo. Handing him my file of letters and telegrams, I asked if he thought that they contained sufficient guarantees for my being able eventually to repay the money which I wished him to advance to me. He left me for a few moments, and then returned, and as he went over one letter after the other, my hopes fell, for he remarked that my “guarantees were not of the very highest order,” and that my “credentials were not of a very satisfactory nature.” But I knew a few moments later that these were pithy, maybe sarcastic, remarks upon the letters which he was glancing through, for while engaged upon these running comments, his clerk was counting out £150 in gold for my immediate needs, and opening a credit for a further £250. I thoroughly enjoyed his joke, so different from those I had so far encountered, for his action was the first kindly one which I received in civilization.
It was late on a Saturday night when, for the first time, I rose from my bed of sickness to meet the proprietor of one of those great English papers, which I had been promised were to hound me. In spite of the assurances given me, it was with no little nervousness that I approached him; but instead of |299| the ogre whom I had expected to meet, I found myself being supported by a kindly spoken English gentleman, assisted to an easy-chair, and tucked up in rugs. A few waiters were in attendance, and the “ogre” was blaming himself for having asked me to call and see him, and begging my forgiveness, as he did not know that I was so ill. The “ogre” was Sir George Newnes. He listened patiently to all I had to say, went through my correspondence, ventured the opinion that certain actions directed against me were “monstrous,” told me not to believe that the English Press would attack me without reason, and recommended me, as soon as I was well, to go ahead with my book and collect every scrap of evidence which I could in support of my own story. I have followed his advice, but the collecting of the little evidence which I have got has been no light task, groping as I was in the darkness of a twelve years’ oblivion.