are also near at hand in T. Africa, Central, as if bringing these men – both friends and enemies – together posthumously. Dr Parke, I would discover from manuscript sources, had also committed murders. Entirely ignorant of this, Stanley liked and trusted him, employing him as his doctor after his return to England in 1890 when Stanley was already a very sick man. Also to be found on these shelves are modern books about the Emin Pasha relief expedition. Iain R. Smith’s book of that title was published in 1972 and has not been bettered. Simon Gray’s play, The Rear Column, is loosely based on the events leading up to Barttelot’s murder and can be found in L. English Drama. It was first performed in London in 1978. T. Congo is several stacks away from T. Africa, Central and contains a first edition of the book by Stanley that he least liked to remember, The Congo and the Founding of its Free State (2 vols., 1885). The title is now conserved in twin grey boxes and will remain a lasting testament to Stanley’s folly in conceding to King Leopold II of Belgium the right to edit the manuscript as he pleased. The impression given throughout is that Stanley agreed with Leopold on everything, whereas he had fought him
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hard on the all-important matter of treaties, only obtaining land from Congolese chiefs by rental agreement, and never by seeking permanent ownership as the King had wished him to do. Stanley had ended the book’s manuscript with a touch of irony: ‘I have no reason to believe that His Majesty was displeased with the results of these long years of bitter labour but I certainly never received any letter conveying his sentiments, and I must therefore leave each reader to form his own conclusions. ’ Leopold deleted this and instead inserted a sycophantic ending in which Stanley rapturously praised the King’s ‘wisdom and moral courage’ . Stanley was cast aside as the King’s chief agent in Africa in 1885 (the year in which the book was published), and within a decade was telling Leopold, in person, that he had no choice but to admit an international commission to investigate atrocities in the Congo. Leopold angrily declined and refused to see Stanley again, demanding to know why, since Britain had never admitted such a body to a disaffected Ireland, he should admit one to the Congo? There is a fascinating small volume a shelf away by Bula N’Zau, Travel and Adventures in the Congo Free State and its Big Game Shooting (1894). This was the
pseudonym of an English ivory trader, H. Bailey. It contains the only detailed word portrait of Anthony Swinburne, whom Stanley had known since he had been a schoolboy at Christ’s Hospital. Swinburne would become one of his most trusted friends in the Congo, eventually being put in charge of Kinshasa, which he established as a major trading station without a shot being fired. Showing great bravery and tact, he prevented the famous French explorer Pierre de Brazza from snatching Kinshasa and the whole southern bank of the Congo by force. Yet Leopold never acknowledged his immense debt to Swinburne and deleted Stanley’s praise for him from his book about the Free State. Leopold had feared that if Swinburne’s low-key heroics were ever made public, the humiliated French might be angry enough to send a military force to take Kinshasa. Swinburne loved the Congolese, spoke the local language fluently and had a Congolese ‘wife’ by whom he had an adored child. After Leopold sacked him from his post at Kinshasa, he worked for an ivory company and died from flesh-eating ulcers when he was little more than 30. Stanley defied Leopold by insisting that Swinburne should be the only person, apart from the King
