He served in the Confederate Army, contributed to several journals, and in the year 1867 began his connection with the New York Herald. As its special correspondent he accompanied Lord Napier’s Abyssinian Expedition, and the first news of the fall of Magdala was conveyed to this country by his paper. He next went to Spain for the Herald, and he was in Madrid in October, 1869, when he received the peremptory telegram “Come to Paris on important business.” He immediately complied, and there received from Mr. Bennett, junior, the laconic instruction and valediction, “Find Livingstone! Good-night, and God be with you.”
In January, 1871, Stanley reached Zanzibar, and two months later marched into the heart of Africa.
It was on the 10th of November that he “found” Livingstone at Ujiji. Well, indeed, as Stanley himself admitted, was he repaid for all the dangers he encountered on his journey when he grasped the hand of the grey-haired old missionary—aged by climate and exposure—whose whereabouts he had been sent to discover.
We placed in the Exhibition portrait models not only of Stanley, attired in a facsimile of the explorer’s suit worn by him on the occasion of the historic meeting, but also one of Dr. Livingstone himself. Probably many more persons have gazed upon the figure of Livingstone in the Exhibition than ever paid a pilgrimage to see his final resting-place in Westminster Abbey.
Together with the model of Stanley was placed a figure of his boy, Kalulu, concerning whom the explorer wrote a book in 1873 (My Kalulu).
NAPOLEON III.
The death of Napoleon III in the January of this year was associated with one of the most impressive tableaux in the long history of Madame Tussaud’s. The Emperor was represented as lying in state, and I find myself still wondering as to the identity of a tall, stately lady, dressed in black and wearing a thick veil, who came to the Exhibition on several occasions, bringing a bunch of violets which she placed on the steps of the catafalque, after having obtained a vase containing water in which to put the flowers.