March 23, 2011 • 28 mins
David Livingstone was a missionary working in Africa, and for six years he lost contact with the western world. In this episode, Deblina and Sarah recount the adventures of Livingstone and Henry Stanley, the journalist who found Livingstone in Africa.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Bling Chuck Reboarding, and today
we're gonna start our podcast off with one of the
most famous lines in history. Probably heard it in movies,
(00:22):
TV shows, probably said it yourself. Here it goes Dr Livingstone.
I presume yes, that's the line. Maybe you've even played
like Stanley and Livingston. I think I think I might
have done that when I was a kid. That was
just my first time doing it, right there, really my debut.
How about that. We've we've got it on on tape.
(00:43):
So that line, originally before it was spoken by Dablina,
was spoken by Henry Morton Stanley to Dr David Livingstone
invent one. And that's when this Welsh turned American newspaperman
will explain that transformation. A little later found the famous
Scottish explorer in Africa. They were in this tiny town
(01:06):
called u g g which is now in Tanzania. And um,
it's actually just for a little reference. It might actually
help to pull up a map or something for this podcast,
but just to give you a little bit of a reference.
That's really near the National Park where Jane Goodall worked.
But the really interesting thing about this quote that we
opened up with is that Stanley may have never really
said it in the first place. Livingston doesn't mention it,
(01:28):
and the page where it would have been in Stanley's
journal was actually ripped out. But the two men are
still forever linked by this by what he said. Yeah. Well,
and that's because finding Livingston alive after six years without
contact with the outside world made Stanley into a huge
journalist star, so famous that he was ultimately knighted, and
(01:49):
being found by Stanley, in turn made Livingston even more
of a star than he already was. It kind of
created this myth of Livingston as the the saintly missionary too,
especially when he refuses to leave Africa with Stanley and
go back home to England. Yeah, you really can't talk
about one of them without the other. No, So y'all
are in luck because this is going to be a
(02:11):
dual biography podcast, which happens once in a blue moon.
So we'll go ahead and get started with a question.
How did Dr David Livingstone find himself and Gigi in
the first place. Well, it was largely because of his
difficult Scottish upbringing and strict faith. He was born in
eighteen thirteen and he lived with six siblings in a
(02:32):
single room tenement, so really cramped space. Meager beginnings, and
he worked in a cotton mill at the age of ten,
so so a hard early life. But he's really interested
in bettering himself and pursuing an education, and in his
early twenties he became determined to become a missionary, and
so he started studying away. He worked on Greek and
(02:54):
medicine and theology while he was still working at the
mill part time, which I find pretty pressive. And by
eight thirty eight it really paid off and he was
accepted into the London Missionary Society. And his original intention
was to go be a missionary in China, but the
Opium Wars or the First Opium War was going on
at this time and it wasn't safe for him to
(03:16):
go to China, so instead he wound up in South Africa.
And he had a pretty adventurous life, to say the
least in South Africa. Yes he did. He explored and
traveled further north from South Africa than any other European
had before him. He was also mauled by a lion,
something that stuck with him for the rest of his life.
He had a crooked elbow and had to sight a
(03:38):
gun from the left. Yeah, well, I would think even
if you didn't have a crooked elbow, that would still
stick with you for a while. From that, he also
won a gold medal from the British Royal Geographic Society
after leading an expedition that located Lake Ngami. But his
real hopes for his time in Africa were Christianity, commerce
and civilization. At least that's what he said. Yeah, that
(03:59):
was kind of his his line about what he wanted
to do while he was in Africa. And of course
now it seems pretty Victorian, narrow minded and kind of
silly to think that you, this one man from Scotland
can bring Christianity, commerce and civilization to an entire continent.
But what Livingstone was really hoping to do was to
(04:20):
open up the continent's interior and his his motive for
that was was admirable. It was to try to create
a trade route to the Atlantic that would undercut the
slave trade that was still going on, and it was
it was pretty bad, and he was very disturbed by
it and wanted to figure out some way to to
(04:42):
combat it. Yeah, and if he converted some folks along
the way, more the better. He that was something else
that he wanted to do, but it wasn't. Yeah, I
know very good at that. I'm not very good at
it at all. And according to Stanley and Livingston biographer
Tim Chile, Livingston really only made one convert. This is
truly amazing, and the convert lapsed later, so very unsuccessful
(05:07):
in that respect. It's kind of amazing too when you
hear that figure, which I think just emerged in the
nineteen seventies, because Livingston does have such a reputation as
this amazingly successful missionary and explorer. But anyways, even if
his missionary work didn't prove to be that successful, his
(05:28):
explorations definitely made him a famous and he was especially
famous in the eighteen fifties, which is after he explored
the Zambezi region and named Victoria falls Um there was
Queen Victoria again like popping up in so many episodes.
And after he got back to London from that exploration,
he published Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa and
(05:51):
sold seventy thousand copies. And I mean this is he
was a little bit famous before this, but this made
him into a super star explorer, somebody who would be
mobbed on the streets of London. Yeah. But his next
expedition was much less successful, right, Yeah, Yeah, his wife
actually died, his crew quarreled, and he was recalled in
(06:13):
eighteen sixty three because not much came out of it.
I mean, I think some scientific efforts came out of it,
but not much besides that. Yeah, I mean, hooks were
afraid that he'd died if he stayed out there any longer. Yeah,
So it left him in a really bad spot. He
was getting older and he was pretty weathered from his
earlier travels. As you mentioned the lion, lion mauling, the
lion mauling injuries. Um, we're still hanging around and causing
(06:36):
him problems, and he needed to in illness. You're right,
but he also needed cash one last great adventure, so
maybe one last great adventure would do it, and a
best seller, maybe out of vent sellers. So that's what
he's hoping to do. And so in eighteen sixty four,
Sir Roderick Murchison, who was the head of the Royal
Geographic Society at the time asked Livingston, who was his
(06:58):
old buddy too, to go out on that one last,
one last track and try to find the source of
the nile. So trying to find the nile was apparently
an old explorers game, one that had been going on
for a very long time, perhaps starting with Herodotus in
four sixty b C. But it had been in the
(07:18):
news a lot at this time, you know, in the
past few years, because as recently as eighteen fifty eight,
the explorer Richard Burton another strange name that doesn't quite
fit in that time, had challenged his old buddy John
speak Um, who had claimed that he had found the
river's head at a lake that he named Victoria. So
(07:40):
these two old friends were going to have basically a
an explorer talk off or something, you know, like some
sort of match. I think it was built as a
gladiatorial match actually, Um and they were going to debate
the claims of the Royal Geographic Society. But unfortunately speak
turned up dead the day before from a self inflicted
(08:02):
gunshot wound Um perhaps just overcome by the stress of
this debate. So this was something that was on people's
minds clearly trying to find the source of the nile.
It sounds a little old fashioned now, but it was
a big deal, yeah, and Livingston wasn't one to back
down from a challenge. He accepted and he left August
(08:23):
eight and fully expected to come back in two years time.
But his expedition got off to a bad start right
from the beginning. As we mentioned, his health was not good.
He had to take these roundabout ways to get where
he was trying to go, and he ended up getting
deserted by some of his followers, who after they deserted him,
(08:44):
they cooked up the story that he was in fact dead,
so they were afraid they'd get in trouble, so that
they just said, oh, Livingston died back on the on
the trail. So there's this rumor now that he is dead,
and even though word gets out within a year that
he actually is still alive. He's really lucky to be
so because another deserter stole his medical chest. He decided
(09:07):
to keep going. And I mean, meanwhile, he was pressing
further and further into the interior of the continent and
really didn't have any safety nets in place at all.
So by July eight sixty eight. He was really just
too weak to go on by himself, so he joins
up with some Arab traders, which is a moral dilemma
(09:28):
for him because as we mentioned before, he so opposed
the slave trade. But they helped keep him alive, and
they helped him get to Lake Tanganika in February eighteen
sixty nine. Yeah, and from there he finally makes it
to Niangue, which is located on the Lualaba River, which
is today in western Democratic Republic of Congo. And at
(09:51):
this point it was further west than any European had traveled.
And just to give you a little idea of how
isolated it is, it's about one and miles from the
Atlantic Ocean and about one thousand miles from the Indian Ocean,
so way way out there. Okay, But there's one little
catch about hanging out with these slave traders from Persia
and Arabia and Oman. They know that Livingston is anti
(10:15):
slavery and that their current work isn't very popular around
the world, so they are willing to take care of him,
to give him food and shelter, and to essentially save
his life. I mean, he would have been out of
luck out here on his own, but they won't let
him send any letters home because then everybody will know
from Famous Livingstone exactly where they are, exactly how far
(10:38):
in they've gotten to the interior. So that's why Livingston,
even though he is live and semi well, is lost
to the world. So in eighteen sixty nine, the young
journalist Henry Stanley, now we're on his story a little bit,
he pitches an idea to his editor, James Gordon Bennett Jr.
Of the New York Herald, and he proposed is that
(11:00):
he go to Africa, find Livingstone, dead or alive, and
write about it. Yeah, and it'll be the biggest story
of the year. So Bennett agrees to this, seeing its merits,
and Stanley is off on his most famous adventure. But
he had a pretty wildlife up to that point. He
was well prepared for future wild time. Yeah. In fact,
(11:21):
his name isn't even really Henry Stanley. Yeah. He was
born John Rowlands in eighty one in Wales to Elizabeth Perry,
who I saw described in different sources as a housemaid
or in one case, the prostitute, and John Rowlands, who
was likely the town drunk. So he was raised by
(11:43):
unwilling relatives, you know, this illegitimate child, and spent some
time in the workhouse, and it must have been a
difficult childhood for him. And um, it must have been
pretty tumultuous moving around. But it might not be quite
as Dickensian as he made it out to be. Going
to learn over the course of Stanley's life that he
(12:03):
is prone to exaggerating things or just outright telling lies. Um,
the workhouse was probably not quite as brutal, But at
age fifteen he decided to leave it nevertheless, and he
hops on board a ship bound for New Orleans and
ends up taking the name of this cotton merchant named
Henry Hope Stanley. And this is one of the weirdest
(12:25):
parts of the story in my opinion, again because of
later sketchiness from Stanley from the the News Stanley, we're
not quite sure what their relationship was, because he makes
it out to be like the elder Stanley, Henry Hope
Stanley was a father figure, you know, somebody who pretty
much adopted him and helped him get on his feet.
And um, he took his name sort of as um
(12:47):
an homage to him. But he might have not even
known him or not known him. Well, at least he
could have been a total stranger, right, Yeah, So this
newly made Stanley sets out, however, to American eyes himself.
From this point he picks up an accent. He joins
a Confederate regiment from Arkansas called the Dixie Grays, and
(13:07):
he fights at Shiloh. He is then captured imprisoned at
Fort Douglas and he switches side. So he switches to
the Union Army. He's given the option to either stay
in prison or switched to the Union, and you know,
what the heck because he's a Welshman anyway. So then
he deserts, however, and he heads back to Wales for
a little while. Yeah, And it's interesting because he doesn't
(13:31):
just stay in Wales. I think he's rebuffed by his
mother again. Um. He comes back to the United States
and he spent some time gold prospecting out west, and
then he becomes a journalist and he reports from places
like Turkey, Iowa, and Ethiopia. I know, Iowa doesn't sound
quite as exotic in that list, but at the time definitely, So, yeah,
(13:53):
there were good stories to be told out there. Yeah,
so just this kind of wild roving life. It reminded
me a little bit of um an earlier podcast we
did on the Stars of the wild West. They all
have these lives where they're just all over the world,
crazy things happening. He certainly seems to attract adventure. Yeah,
and at this point he's ready for a new one
(14:14):
and for fame as well, So that's why he approaches
Bennett with the story to find Livingstone. So he gets
his assignment. But after just three months in the African interior,
Stanley is down forty pounds, and he's sick with malaria
and dysent terry, and he's having trouble with his travel companions.
His thoroughbred stallion dies almost immediately. One human travel companion
(14:38):
dies of encephalitis. Another tries to shoot Stanley and then
dies a little bit later. And on his way to Tabora,
which was this big Arab trading town in the interior,
so imagine a place with mansions and um very built up,
Stanley writes his first dispatch to the newspaper. He hadn't
(14:59):
really written much along the way, and he explains himself
in this five thousand word letter saying, essentially, I've been
using all of my strength to stay alive on the trail.
I haven't really had time to write. I hope I'll
be able to write more later if you gentle readers
will be willing to hear it. But he does give
(15:20):
um kind of an ultimatum about finding livingstone. He does.
He says, until I hear more of livingstone or see
the absent old man face to face, I bid you farewell.
But wherever he is, be sure I shall not give
up the chase. If alive, you shall hear what he
has to say. If dead, I will find him and
bring his bones to you. I thought that was pretty
dramatic to not just say bring back his bones, bring
(15:42):
his bones to you. The reader death the subscriber of
this New York newspaper pretty wild. So he is hanging
out into Bora and not hanging out, you know, recovering,
getting his supplies together. But he's gotten word that a
white man has been spotted in Ugigi, which is only
(16:02):
two miles away or so, so that's where he's going
to head. There are a few roadblocks, like tribal wars
actually blocking the charted route, so he's got to beat
this new path through the north and the other issue
is that he's suffering from cerebral malaria and having visions
and delusions, and once he recovers from that, miraculously does
(16:26):
not die from it. He catches smallpox, so pretty sickly himself,
certainly surprisingly sickly to go out looking for this other man. Yeah,
so Stanley is not doing so hot. Meanwhile, in Nionggue,
Livingstone's little rest break thing comes to an end after
some of the traders massacre villagers. So he's out of paper.
(16:51):
All this craziness is going on, He's out of ink.
He's writing on scraps with root dye, but he basically
has no help, so he flees the situation. But he
gets sick again as he does that. He has dysentery
and swollen feet. He heads to Eugigi, about four dred
five hundred miles away, so quite the hike for someone
(17:12):
who's very ill, definitely, but he's hoping that when he
gets to the consulate they'll have sent supplies. But when
he gets there there's not anything yees, so he is
out of luck. He's in Eugiji, which is pretty isolated again,
and his options are essentially to die of starvation and
sickness or to become a beggar on the streets. So
(17:32):
he is mulling over this, this terrible fallen fortunes. And
meanwhile Stanley is pushing through his cerebral malaria and his smallpox.
And he gets about halfway to Eugigi through the uncharted territory,
and by November one, eight seventy one, he finally gets
(17:53):
to the Mala Garassi River, where this is so sad.
A crocodile eats his donkey. So I'm and his stallion's
already died? Is that a guy shoot at him and
now a crocodile eats his donkey? Yeah, I feel like
he's almost right a country song about this. I think
you might have to be an alligator. Right. But by
November ten, he enters Ugig with American flags waving. According
(18:16):
to Livingston, however, it was actually some time between October,
but somewhere in that month time. I think we can
forgive them for getting a little off on their count.
Oh yeah, but you know, Livingstone sees this American caravan
entering the city and thinks that this must be some
really rich traveler, and I wonder what they're doing here,
(18:38):
And when he sees Stanley all clad in white flannel
with a hat, you know, I mean, he looks exactly
how you'd picture a cartoon explorer or something. He thinks
that Stanley is so proper looking that he must be
French despite the American flags, and he actually writes something
later that's that's kind of funny. Essentially, he thinks, I
(19:00):
can't speak French, and how ridiculous is it going to
be if we run into each other and we can't communicate. Fortunately,
though Stanley is this nouveaux American and speaks English, and
they have their famous conversation Dr Livingstone. I presume yes,
I thank god, doctor, I've been permitted to see you.
(19:21):
I feel thankful I'm here to welcome you. So coubling
with emotion. Quite a solemn conversation. Actually, I looked up
a YouTube video of the old movie, and that's exactly
how it goes down, except I guess they have different
reflections on their words. Still pretty pretty low key, though,
you think they'd be maybe really excited to see each
(19:43):
other at last, Yeah, especially after everything they had gone
through to find each other. But regardless, even though their
first meeting may have been underwhelming, they do become very
good friends. Stanley deliver supplies to Livingston, and Livingstone takes
Stanley on some exploring trips around the area. Yeah, they
go tour the lake and they actually go out exploring
together for about a month, with Stanley sort of picking
(20:06):
up tricks from the old explorer. And by the time
that they're back to E. G G again, Stanley still
can't persuade Livingston to come back to England. And it's
it's kind of interesting. Stanley's original plan was to go
confirm Livingstone's status alive or dead, and then immediately head
(20:26):
back to somewhere where he could send off his newspaper report.
It's interesting that he took the time to stall and
to try to persuade Livingston to come back with him.
But Livingstone wants to keep searching for the Nile source.
I mean, he is obsessed with that goal. And so
they part ways. Livingstone is helped out by Stanley, you know,
(20:46):
Stanley gets some supplies and men to go along with him,
and when they part Livingston tells them, you have done
what few men could do, and I am grateful. And
so that's the end of of Bingston. Essentially, he dies
May one eighteen seventy three, and his heart is buried
in Africa and his body is mummified and returned to
(21:08):
England where it's buried in Westminster Abbey. Yeah, and Stanley
heads out. He gets his scoop on May second, eighteen
seventy two. The headline reads Livingstone Safe. And like we
said earlier, I think they run this story for about
a year. They really milk everything they can out of it.
But that famous quote, we've got to address that because
(21:29):
it's pretty unclear if Stanley ever even said it. Yeah,
he swore that he said it. He mentioned it in
two dispatches, but it's not in his journal. Those pages
are torn out. So yeah, so it's possible that by
the time he got back from Africa, the quote, which
had gone ahead of him, was way too big of
a deal for him to back out of. In any way,
(21:50):
we don't know if he said it or not. It's
a pretty well thought out thing to say it is,
And even if it remains a mystery, I don't think
it takes away for the adventure. That just makes a
good account. Definitely. Um So, Stanley, regardless of whether he
said the quote, became incredibly famous, and after Livingston died,
(22:12):
he himself decided to search for the Nile source, sort
of picking up this this old friend's quest, and his
accounts really entranced the public. His his accounts of his
later explorations, but they scandalized the Royal Geographic Society because
he resorts to violence and brutality with native people. He
(22:33):
um has, he shoots people, He hangs several of his quarters,
I think three of them throughout his career for deserting
and um, that's not something that an explorer is supposed
to do, I mean clearly, But the Royal Geographic Society
doesn't think so either. It's it's a different kind of man.
(22:54):
It's not the explorer who comes and observes and um
takes something home. However, a lot of people think that
Stanley may have actually exaggerated this right, I mean a
lot of the violence and the casualties of his expositions,
he might have just been sort of inflating them to
impress his Victorian readers because he wanted to put a
good story out there, which is also disturbing too that
(23:14):
Victorian readers wanted as many murders as possible. But he
was a boaster and it is really hard to tell
with his life what was fact and what was fiction.
But his reputation definitely got worse when he assisted King
Leopold the Second of Belgium in establishing trading posts at
the Congo River, so essentially opening up Congo all the
(23:38):
way up to Stanley Falls and um Stanley Falls, of course,
is a spot that was later called the Interstation by
Joseph Conrad. If any of you have read Heart of Darkness,
you know what kind of atrocities occurred in the Belgian Congo.
It's possibly a subject for a very sad podcast, very
deeply disturbing podcast of the fish quested before. But just
(24:01):
this association with King Leopold the Second in the Belgian
Congo really has forever tainted Stanley's name. I mean, he's
probably best associated with Livingstone, but this comes in next.
He was also damaged by his third and last African
expedition in the late eighteen eighties, and this was due
mainly to the behavior of his rear column. The man
(24:22):
who was left in charge was killed and most famously
Whiskey Air James Jamison bought an eleven year old girl,
sold her to cannibals and watched as she was killed
and eaten, and he drew it. That was the point
of it. But he could document the whole thing very
disturbing and obviously that's even a little too much for
these Victorian readers who like as much blood and violence
(24:45):
as possible. And um, when he comes back to England,
he goes through a career change. Essentially, he gets married,
he adopted a son, and he was re naturalized as
a British citizen and goes on to become an MP
of all things. Um, he has a country state. I mean,
it's just this such a strange life, you know, going
(25:07):
from a workhouse to Africa to a country estate. But
I don't know, I guess that's Henry Stanley for you. Yeah,
very strange ending to kind of a bizarre, adventurous life. Yeah, definitely.
So I mean that's our dual biography. One guy ends
up in a country estate, one guy ends up with
(25:29):
his heart buried in Africa and his mummified body in
Westminster Abbey. Say, that's a pretty pretty exciting end for
for both of them. So I guess that about wraps
up our dual biography of Stanley and Livingstone, and it
brings us to listener mail. So this email is from
(25:51):
any in Kentucky and she wrote, Dear Sarah and Dablina,
I just finished listening to your podcast on the life
of the bad boy Caravaggio. My ba there and I
went to Italy last summer and we caught the Caravaggio exhibit. Well,
it was at the Efisi. You're right. The lighting is
very dramatic. The rooms are quite dark, and when you
combine that with the content of his work, it was
(26:11):
an eerie experience. I actually had to drag my brother
kicking and screaming to the museum, as he is not
the art history enthusiast that I am. But once he
was there and saw the exhibit, he was hooked and
bought a few books on Caravaggio at the gift shop.
While his enthusiasm for history and art was high from
the Effeci, I made him walk around Florence so we
(26:32):
see the baptistry doors and explained about the contest between
among others, to Partee and Drew Lefp. So I thought
that was an interesting story. Always great to hear he
becomes an art history fan. Just the little mood lighting
might be all a take. Yeah, and getting to see
it in person. You know, hearing the stories is one thing,
(26:53):
but getting to actually go out there and see where
the history happened or see the works that we talk
about is really cool. Definitely, um and I thought this
was a note to that. I included this in a
special blog edition of Listener Mail as well, which is
something to start looking out for from the blogs at
our home page at www dot how stu works dot com.
(27:16):
Dublin and I've both been updating them pretty regularly news
stories and recaps of episodes, so maybe you will see
your own comments on the blogs. So if you would
like to show up in a blog or just let
us know what you think of one of our episodes,
you can email us at History Podcast at how stuff
(27:36):
works dot com, or you can visit us on Facebook
or on Twitter at Miston History. And if you would
like to see if your comment ended up in a blog,
you can find out by visiting the blogs module on
our home page. And that's at www dot how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(27:58):
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m
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Bling Chuck Reboarding, and today
we're gonna start our podcast off with one of the
most famous lines in history. Probably heard it in movies,
(00:22):
TV shows, probably said it yourself. Here it goes Dr Livingstone.
I presume yes, that's the line. Maybe you've even played
like Stanley and Livingston. I think I think I might
have done that when I was a kid. That was
just my first time doing it, right there, really my debut.
How about that. We've we've got it on on tape.
(00:43):
So that line, originally before it was spoken by Dablina,
was spoken by Henry Morton Stanley to Dr David Livingstone
invent one. And that's when this Welsh turned American newspaperman
will explain that transformation. A little later found the famous
Scottish explorer in Africa. They were in this tiny town
(01:06):
called u g g which is now in Tanzania. And um,
it's actually just for a little reference. It might actually
help to pull up a map or something for this podcast,
but just to give you a little bit of a reference.
That's really near the National Park where Jane Goodall worked.
But the really interesting thing about this quote that we
opened up with is that Stanley may have never really
said it in the first place. Livingston doesn't mention it,
(01:28):
and the page where it would have been in Stanley's
journal was actually ripped out. But the two men are
still forever linked by this by what he said. Yeah. Well,
and that's because finding Livingston alive after six years without
contact with the outside world made Stanley into a huge
journalist star, so famous that he was ultimately knighted, and
(01:49):
being found by Stanley, in turn made Livingston even more
of a star than he already was. It kind of
created this myth of Livingston as the the saintly missionary too,
especially when he refuses to leave Africa with Stanley and
go back home to England. Yeah, you really can't talk
about one of them without the other. No, So y'all
are in luck because this is going to be a
(02:11):
dual biography podcast, which happens once in a blue moon.
So we'll go ahead and get started with a question.
How did Dr David Livingstone find himself and Gigi in
the first place. Well, it was largely because of his
difficult Scottish upbringing and strict faith. He was born in
eighteen thirteen and he lived with six siblings in a
(02:32):
single room tenement, so really cramped space. Meager beginnings, and
he worked in a cotton mill at the age of ten,
so so a hard early life. But he's really interested
in bettering himself and pursuing an education, and in his
early twenties he became determined to become a missionary, and
so he started studying away. He worked on Greek and
(02:54):
medicine and theology while he was still working at the
mill part time, which I find pretty pressive. And by
eight thirty eight it really paid off and he was
accepted into the London Missionary Society. And his original intention
was to go be a missionary in China, but the
Opium Wars or the First Opium War was going on
at this time and it wasn't safe for him to
(03:16):
go to China, so instead he wound up in South Africa.
And he had a pretty adventurous life, to say the
least in South Africa. Yes he did. He explored and
traveled further north from South Africa than any other European
had before him. He was also mauled by a lion,
something that stuck with him for the rest of his life.
He had a crooked elbow and had to sight a
(03:38):
gun from the left. Yeah, well, I would think even
if you didn't have a crooked elbow, that would still
stick with you for a while. From that, he also
won a gold medal from the British Royal Geographic Society
after leading an expedition that located Lake Ngami. But his
real hopes for his time in Africa were Christianity, commerce
and civilization. At least that's what he said. Yeah, that
(03:59):
was kind of his his line about what he wanted
to do while he was in Africa. And of course
now it seems pretty Victorian, narrow minded and kind of
silly to think that you, this one man from Scotland
can bring Christianity, commerce and civilization to an entire continent.
But what Livingstone was really hoping to do was to
(04:20):
open up the continent's interior and his his motive for
that was was admirable. It was to try to create
a trade route to the Atlantic that would undercut the
slave trade that was still going on, and it was
it was pretty bad, and he was very disturbed by
it and wanted to figure out some way to to
(04:42):
combat it. Yeah, and if he converted some folks along
the way, more the better. He that was something else
that he wanted to do, but it wasn't. Yeah, I
know very good at that. I'm not very good at
it at all. And according to Stanley and Livingston biographer
Tim Chile, Livingston really only made one convert. This is
truly amazing, and the convert lapsed later, so very unsuccessful
(05:07):
in that respect. It's kind of amazing too when you
hear that figure, which I think just emerged in the
nineteen seventies, because Livingston does have such a reputation as
this amazingly successful missionary and explorer. But anyways, even if
his missionary work didn't prove to be that successful, his
(05:28):
explorations definitely made him a famous and he was especially
famous in the eighteen fifties, which is after he explored
the Zambezi region and named Victoria falls Um there was
Queen Victoria again like popping up in so many episodes.
And after he got back to London from that exploration,
he published Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa and
(05:51):
sold seventy thousand copies. And I mean this is he
was a little bit famous before this, but this made
him into a super star explorer, somebody who would be
mobbed on the streets of London. Yeah. But his next
expedition was much less successful, right, Yeah, Yeah, his wife
actually died, his crew quarreled, and he was recalled in
(06:13):
eighteen sixty three because not much came out of it.
I mean, I think some scientific efforts came out of it,
but not much besides that. Yeah, I mean, hooks were
afraid that he'd died if he stayed out there any longer. Yeah,
So it left him in a really bad spot. He
was getting older and he was pretty weathered from his
earlier travels. As you mentioned the lion, lion mauling, the
lion mauling injuries. Um, we're still hanging around and causing
(06:36):
him problems, and he needed to in illness. You're right,
but he also needed cash one last great adventure, so
maybe one last great adventure would do it, and a
best seller, maybe out of vent sellers. So that's what
he's hoping to do. And so in eighteen sixty four,
Sir Roderick Murchison, who was the head of the Royal
Geographic Society at the time asked Livingston, who was his
(06:58):
old buddy too, to go out on that one last,
one last track and try to find the source of
the nile. So trying to find the nile was apparently
an old explorers game, one that had been going on
for a very long time, perhaps starting with Herodotus in
four sixty b C. But it had been in the
(07:18):
news a lot at this time, you know, in the
past few years, because as recently as eighteen fifty eight,
the explorer Richard Burton another strange name that doesn't quite
fit in that time, had challenged his old buddy John
speak Um, who had claimed that he had found the
river's head at a lake that he named Victoria. So
(07:40):
these two old friends were going to have basically a
an explorer talk off or something, you know, like some
sort of match. I think it was built as a
gladiatorial match actually, Um and they were going to debate
the claims of the Royal Geographic Society. But unfortunately speak
turned up dead the day before from a self inflicted
(08:02):
gunshot wound Um perhaps just overcome by the stress of
this debate. So this was something that was on people's
minds clearly trying to find the source of the nile.
It sounds a little old fashioned now, but it was
a big deal, yeah, and Livingston wasn't one to back
down from a challenge. He accepted and he left August
(08:23):
eight and fully expected to come back in two years time.
But his expedition got off to a bad start right
from the beginning. As we mentioned, his health was not good.
He had to take these roundabout ways to get where
he was trying to go, and he ended up getting
deserted by some of his followers, who after they deserted him,
(08:44):
they cooked up the story that he was in fact dead,
so they were afraid they'd get in trouble, so that
they just said, oh, Livingston died back on the on
the trail. So there's this rumor now that he is dead,
and even though word gets out within a year that
he actually is still alive. He's really lucky to be
so because another deserter stole his medical chest. He decided
(09:07):
to keep going. And I mean, meanwhile, he was pressing
further and further into the interior of the continent and
really didn't have any safety nets in place at all.
So by July eight sixty eight. He was really just
too weak to go on by himself, so he joins
up with some Arab traders, which is a moral dilemma
(09:28):
for him because as we mentioned before, he so opposed
the slave trade. But they helped keep him alive, and
they helped him get to Lake Tanganika in February eighteen
sixty nine. Yeah, and from there he finally makes it
to Niangue, which is located on the Lualaba River, which
is today in western Democratic Republic of Congo. And at
(09:51):
this point it was further west than any European had traveled.
And just to give you a little idea of how
isolated it is, it's about one and miles from the
Atlantic Ocean and about one thousand miles from the Indian Ocean,
so way way out there. Okay, But there's one little
catch about hanging out with these slave traders from Persia
and Arabia and Oman. They know that Livingston is anti
(10:15):
slavery and that their current work isn't very popular around
the world, so they are willing to take care of him,
to give him food and shelter, and to essentially save
his life. I mean, he would have been out of
luck out here on his own, but they won't let
him send any letters home because then everybody will know
from Famous Livingstone exactly where they are, exactly how far
(10:38):
in they've gotten to the interior. So that's why Livingston,
even though he is live and semi well, is lost
to the world. So in eighteen sixty nine, the young
journalist Henry Stanley, now we're on his story a little bit,
he pitches an idea to his editor, James Gordon Bennett Jr.
Of the New York Herald, and he proposed is that
(11:00):
he go to Africa, find Livingstone, dead or alive, and
write about it. Yeah, and it'll be the biggest story
of the year. So Bennett agrees to this, seeing its merits,
and Stanley is off on his most famous adventure. But
he had a pretty wildlife up to that point. He
was well prepared for future wild time. Yeah. In fact,
(11:21):
his name isn't even really Henry Stanley. Yeah. He was
born John Rowlands in eighty one in Wales to Elizabeth Perry,
who I saw described in different sources as a housemaid
or in one case, the prostitute, and John Rowlands, who
was likely the town drunk. So he was raised by
(11:43):
unwilling relatives, you know, this illegitimate child, and spent some
time in the workhouse, and it must have been a
difficult childhood for him. And um, it must have been
pretty tumultuous moving around. But it might not be quite
as Dickensian as he made it out to be. Going
to learn over the course of Stanley's life that he
(12:03):
is prone to exaggerating things or just outright telling lies. Um,
the workhouse was probably not quite as brutal, But at
age fifteen he decided to leave it nevertheless, and he
hops on board a ship bound for New Orleans and
ends up taking the name of this cotton merchant named
Henry Hope Stanley. And this is one of the weirdest
(12:25):
parts of the story in my opinion, again because of
later sketchiness from Stanley from the the News Stanley, we're
not quite sure what their relationship was, because he makes
it out to be like the elder Stanley, Henry Hope
Stanley was a father figure, you know, somebody who pretty
much adopted him and helped him get on his feet.
And um, he took his name sort of as um
(12:47):
an homage to him. But he might have not even
known him or not known him. Well, at least he
could have been a total stranger, right, Yeah, So this
newly made Stanley sets out, however, to American eyes himself.
From this point he picks up an accent. He joins
a Confederate regiment from Arkansas called the Dixie Grays, and
(13:07):
he fights at Shiloh. He is then captured imprisoned at
Fort Douglas and he switches side. So he switches to
the Union Army. He's given the option to either stay
in prison or switched to the Union, and you know,
what the heck because he's a Welshman anyway. So then
he deserts, however, and he heads back to Wales for
a little while. Yeah, And it's interesting because he doesn't
(13:31):
just stay in Wales. I think he's rebuffed by his
mother again. Um. He comes back to the United States
and he spent some time gold prospecting out west, and
then he becomes a journalist and he reports from places
like Turkey, Iowa, and Ethiopia. I know, Iowa doesn't sound
quite as exotic in that list, but at the time definitely, So, yeah,
(13:53):
there were good stories to be told out there. Yeah,
so just this kind of wild roving life. It reminded
me a little bit of um an earlier podcast we
did on the Stars of the wild West. They all
have these lives where they're just all over the world,
crazy things happening. He certainly seems to attract adventure. Yeah,
and at this point he's ready for a new one
(14:14):
and for fame as well, So that's why he approaches
Bennett with the story to find Livingstone. So he gets
his assignment. But after just three months in the African interior,
Stanley is down forty pounds, and he's sick with malaria
and dysent terry, and he's having trouble with his travel companions.
His thoroughbred stallion dies almost immediately. One human travel companion
(14:38):
dies of encephalitis. Another tries to shoot Stanley and then
dies a little bit later. And on his way to Tabora,
which was this big Arab trading town in the interior,
so imagine a place with mansions and um very built up,
Stanley writes his first dispatch to the newspaper. He hadn't
(14:59):
really written much along the way, and he explains himself
in this five thousand word letter saying, essentially, I've been
using all of my strength to stay alive on the trail.
I haven't really had time to write. I hope I'll
be able to write more later if you gentle readers
will be willing to hear it. But he does give
(15:20):
um kind of an ultimatum about finding livingstone. He does.
He says, until I hear more of livingstone or see
the absent old man face to face, I bid you farewell.
But wherever he is, be sure I shall not give
up the chase. If alive, you shall hear what he
has to say. If dead, I will find him and
bring his bones to you. I thought that was pretty
dramatic to not just say bring back his bones, bring
(15:42):
his bones to you. The reader death the subscriber of
this New York newspaper pretty wild. So he is hanging
out into Bora and not hanging out, you know, recovering,
getting his supplies together. But he's gotten word that a
white man has been spotted in Ugigi, which is only
(16:02):
two miles away or so, so that's where he's going
to head. There are a few roadblocks, like tribal wars
actually blocking the charted route, so he's got to beat
this new path through the north and the other issue
is that he's suffering from cerebral malaria and having visions
and delusions, and once he recovers from that, miraculously does
(16:26):
not die from it. He catches smallpox, so pretty sickly himself,
certainly surprisingly sickly to go out looking for this other man. Yeah,
so Stanley is not doing so hot. Meanwhile, in Nionggue,
Livingstone's little rest break thing comes to an end after
some of the traders massacre villagers. So he's out of paper.
(16:51):
All this craziness is going on, He's out of ink.
He's writing on scraps with root dye, but he basically
has no help, so he flees the situation. But he
gets sick again as he does that. He has dysentery
and swollen feet. He heads to Eugigi, about four dred
five hundred miles away, so quite the hike for someone
(17:12):
who's very ill, definitely, but he's hoping that when he
gets to the consulate they'll have sent supplies. But when
he gets there there's not anything yees, so he is
out of luck. He's in Eugiji, which is pretty isolated again,
and his options are essentially to die of starvation and
sickness or to become a beggar on the streets. So
(17:32):
he is mulling over this, this terrible fallen fortunes. And
meanwhile Stanley is pushing through his cerebral malaria and his smallpox.
And he gets about halfway to Eugigi through the uncharted territory,
and by November one, eight seventy one, he finally gets
(17:53):
to the Mala Garassi River, where this is so sad.
A crocodile eats his donkey. So I'm and his stallion's
already died? Is that a guy shoot at him and
now a crocodile eats his donkey? Yeah, I feel like
he's almost right a country song about this. I think
you might have to be an alligator. Right. But by
November ten, he enters Ugig with American flags waving. According
(18:16):
to Livingston, however, it was actually some time between October,
but somewhere in that month time. I think we can
forgive them for getting a little off on their count.
Oh yeah, but you know, Livingstone sees this American caravan
entering the city and thinks that this must be some
really rich traveler, and I wonder what they're doing here,
(18:38):
And when he sees Stanley all clad in white flannel
with a hat, you know, I mean, he looks exactly
how you'd picture a cartoon explorer or something. He thinks
that Stanley is so proper looking that he must be
French despite the American flags, and he actually writes something
later that's that's kind of funny. Essentially, he thinks, I
(19:00):
can't speak French, and how ridiculous is it going to
be if we run into each other and we can't communicate. Fortunately,
though Stanley is this nouveaux American and speaks English, and
they have their famous conversation Dr Livingstone. I presume yes,
I thank god, doctor, I've been permitted to see you.
(19:21):
I feel thankful I'm here to welcome you. So coubling
with emotion. Quite a solemn conversation. Actually, I looked up
a YouTube video of the old movie, and that's exactly
how it goes down, except I guess they have different
reflections on their words. Still pretty pretty low key, though,
you think they'd be maybe really excited to see each
(19:43):
other at last, Yeah, especially after everything they had gone
through to find each other. But regardless, even though their
first meeting may have been underwhelming, they do become very
good friends. Stanley deliver supplies to Livingston, and Livingstone takes
Stanley on some exploring trips around the area. Yeah, they
go tour the lake and they actually go out exploring
together for about a month, with Stanley sort of picking
(20:06):
up tricks from the old explorer. And by the time
that they're back to E. G G again, Stanley still
can't persuade Livingston to come back to England. And it's
it's kind of interesting. Stanley's original plan was to go
confirm Livingstone's status alive or dead, and then immediately head
(20:26):
back to somewhere where he could send off his newspaper report.
It's interesting that he took the time to stall and
to try to persuade Livingston to come back with him.
But Livingstone wants to keep searching for the Nile source.
I mean, he is obsessed with that goal. And so
they part ways. Livingstone is helped out by Stanley, you know,
(20:46):
Stanley gets some supplies and men to go along with him,
and when they part Livingston tells them, you have done
what few men could do, and I am grateful. And
so that's the end of of Bingston. Essentially, he dies
May one eighteen seventy three, and his heart is buried
in Africa and his body is mummified and returned to
(21:08):
England where it's buried in Westminster Abbey. Yeah, and Stanley
heads out. He gets his scoop on May second, eighteen
seventy two. The headline reads Livingstone Safe. And like we
said earlier, I think they run this story for about
a year. They really milk everything they can out of it.
But that famous quote, we've got to address that because
(21:29):
it's pretty unclear if Stanley ever even said it. Yeah,
he swore that he said it. He mentioned it in
two dispatches, but it's not in his journal. Those pages
are torn out. So yeah, so it's possible that by
the time he got back from Africa, the quote, which
had gone ahead of him, was way too big of
a deal for him to back out of. In any way,
(21:50):
we don't know if he said it or not. It's
a pretty well thought out thing to say it is,
And even if it remains a mystery, I don't think
it takes away for the adventure. That just makes a
good account. Definitely. Um So, Stanley, regardless of whether he
said the quote, became incredibly famous, and after Livingston died,
(22:12):
he himself decided to search for the Nile source, sort
of picking up this this old friend's quest, and his
accounts really entranced the public. His his accounts of his
later explorations, but they scandalized the Royal Geographic Society because
he resorts to violence and brutality with native people. He
(22:33):
um has, he shoots people, He hangs several of his quarters,
I think three of them throughout his career for deserting
and um, that's not something that an explorer is supposed
to do, I mean clearly, But the Royal Geographic Society
doesn't think so either. It's it's a different kind of man.
(22:54):
It's not the explorer who comes and observes and um
takes something home. However, a lot of people think that
Stanley may have actually exaggerated this right, I mean a
lot of the violence and the casualties of his expositions,
he might have just been sort of inflating them to
impress his Victorian readers because he wanted to put a
good story out there, which is also disturbing too that
(23:14):
Victorian readers wanted as many murders as possible. But he
was a boaster and it is really hard to tell
with his life what was fact and what was fiction.
But his reputation definitely got worse when he assisted King
Leopold the Second of Belgium in establishing trading posts at
the Congo River, so essentially opening up Congo all the
(23:38):
way up to Stanley Falls and um Stanley Falls, of course,
is a spot that was later called the Interstation by
Joseph Conrad. If any of you have read Heart of Darkness,
you know what kind of atrocities occurred in the Belgian Congo.
It's possibly a subject for a very sad podcast, very
deeply disturbing podcast of the fish quested before. But just
(24:01):
this association with King Leopold the Second in the Belgian
Congo really has forever tainted Stanley's name. I mean, he's
probably best associated with Livingstone, but this comes in next.
He was also damaged by his third and last African
expedition in the late eighteen eighties, and this was due
mainly to the behavior of his rear column. The man
(24:22):
who was left in charge was killed and most famously
Whiskey Air James Jamison bought an eleven year old girl,
sold her to cannibals and watched as she was killed
and eaten, and he drew it. That was the point
of it. But he could document the whole thing very
disturbing and obviously that's even a little too much for
these Victorian readers who like as much blood and violence
(24:45):
as possible. And um, when he comes back to England,
he goes through a career change. Essentially, he gets married,
he adopted a son, and he was re naturalized as
a British citizen and goes on to become an MP
of all things. Um, he has a country state. I mean,
it's just this such a strange life, you know, going
(25:07):
from a workhouse to Africa to a country estate. But
I don't know, I guess that's Henry Stanley for you. Yeah,
very strange ending to kind of a bizarre, adventurous life. Yeah, definitely.
So I mean that's our dual biography. One guy ends
up in a country estate, one guy ends up with
(25:29):
his heart buried in Africa and his mummified body in
Westminster Abbey. Say, that's a pretty pretty exciting end for
for both of them. So I guess that about wraps
up our dual biography of Stanley and Livingstone, and it
brings us to listener mail. So this email is from
(25:51):
any in Kentucky and she wrote, Dear Sarah and Dablina,
I just finished listening to your podcast on the life
of the bad boy Caravaggio. My ba there and I
went to Italy last summer and we caught the Caravaggio exhibit. Well,
it was at the Efisi. You're right. The lighting is
very dramatic. The rooms are quite dark, and when you
combine that with the content of his work, it was
(26:11):
an eerie experience. I actually had to drag my brother
kicking and screaming to the museum, as he is not
the art history enthusiast that I am. But once he
was there and saw the exhibit, he was hooked and
bought a few books on Caravaggio at the gift shop.
While his enthusiasm for history and art was high from
the Effeci, I made him walk around Florence so we
(26:32):
see the baptistry doors and explained about the contest between
among others, to Partee and Drew Lefp. So I thought
that was an interesting story. Always great to hear he
becomes an art history fan. Just the little mood lighting
might be all a take. Yeah, and getting to see
it in person. You know, hearing the stories is one thing,
(26:53):
but getting to actually go out there and see where
the history happened or see the works that we talk
about is really cool. Definitely, um and I thought this
was a note to that. I included this in a
special blog edition of Listener Mail as well, which is
something to start looking out for from the blogs at
our home page at www dot how stu works dot com.
(27:16):
Dublin and I've both been updating them pretty regularly news
stories and recaps of episodes, so maybe you will see
your own comments on the blogs. So if you would
like to show up in a blog or just let
us know what you think of one of our episodes,
you can email us at History Podcast at how stuff
(27:36):
works dot com, or you can visit us on Facebook
or on Twitter at Miston History. And if you would
like to see if your comment ended up in a blog,
you can find out by visiting the blogs module on
our home page. And that's at www dot how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(27:58):
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
the upper right corner. Of our homepage. The house Stuff
Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes,
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