CHAPTER XXV

FURZE HILL

In the autumn of 1898, Stanley decided to look for a house in the country. We had lived, since our marriage, at 2, Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, close to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey; but though we were near the Thames and St. James’s Park, Stanley naturally felt the need of a more open-air life. We therefore decided to have a country retreat, as well as the home in town. In his Journal, November 1, 1898, he writes:--

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To live at all, I must have open air, and to enjoy the open air, I must move briskly. I but wait to have a little more strength, when I can begin the search for a suitable house, with some land attached. It has long been my wish, and the mere thought of having come to a decision, that it is imperative to possess such a thing, before it is too late, tends towards the improvement of my health.

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Whatever Stanley undertook was thoroughly done. He collected lists of most of the House and Estate-agents, cut out the advertisements of places likely to suit, sorted them according to localities, and then went to work visiting them systematically. In his Journal he writes:--

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Between November 15th and 30th, I have seen twenty places, in Kent, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, and Sussex, but found nothing suitable.

In the photographs and descriptions furnished me by the House-agents, several of them looked quite inviting; but often a mere glance was sufficient to turn me away disgusted. There was not a house which might be said to possess one decent-sized room; those D. saw, she utterly condemned.

December 16th. I have now visited fifty-seven places! Some few I reserved for a second visit with D. At last, I took her to see Furze Hill, Pirbright, Surrey, and, at the first glance, she said it was delightful, and could be made ideal. The more we examined it, the more we liked it; but there was much to improve and renovate. Therefore, as the place pleased me and my wife and her mother, I entered into serious negotiations for the purchase, and by Christmas, I had secured the refusal of it; but as it was let, possession was deferred to the 10th of June, 1899.

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Furze Hill is not more than thirty miles from London, but it is in wild and lovely country, wild and lovely because kept so, by the War Department, for manœuvring grounds. The country around mostly consists of great stretches of furze and heather, which are golden and purple in summer, and rough pine woods. No one can buy land here, or build; and Furze Hill is planted in this beautiful wilderness, just a house, gardens, a few fields, a wood, and a quiet lake, fed by a little stream.

Furze Hill now became a great pleasure and occupation. The purchase of furniture occupied us all the spring and summer of 1899. Stanley’s system and order was shewn in the smallest details. He kept lists and plans, with exact measurements of every room, passage, and cupboard.

On June 10th, he notes in his Journal:--

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I have concluded the purchase and become the owner of Furze Hill; building operations have already begun for the purpose of adding a new wing to the house.

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Stanley also commenced installing an electric lighting plant, and a very complete fire-engine. From the lake, which I called ‘Stanley Pool,’[52] he pumped water to fill great tanks, the engine which drove the dynamo driving both pump and fire engine. On September 4th, he notes, ‘went with D. to our House at Furze Hill. Slept for the first time at our country home.’ He now took an ever-increasing delight in the place. He planned walks, threw bridges across streams, planted trees, built a little farm from his own designs, after reading every recent book on farm-building, and in a very short time transformed the place.

Everything Stanley planned and executed was to last, to be strong, and permanent. He replaced the wooden window-frames by stone; the fences were of the strongest and best description; even the ends of the gate and fence-posts, he had dipped in pitch, and not merely in tar, that the portion in the ground might resist decay. It was his pride and his joy that all should be well done. And so, at last, peace and enjoyment came to Stanley, and he was quietly happy, till the last great trial came. Those who knew him there, will never forget the Stanley who revealed himself in that happy intimacy, those strolls through the woods and fields, those talks on the lawn, when we sat round the tea-table and listened to Stanley, till the dusk fell softly; those wonderful evenings, by the library fire, when he told us stories of Africa with such vivid force, that I never heard him without a racing heart, and quickened breath! No one who ever heard Stanley ‘tell a story’ could possibly forget it! Only the other day, Richard Harding Davis wrote to me, ‘Never shall I forget one late afternoon when Stanley, in the gathering darkness, told us the story of Gordon!’

Stanley, however, was not always to be drawn; sometimes, therefore, I resorted to subterfuge, that I might lure him on. I would begin his stories all wrong, make many mistakes on purpose, knowing his love of accuracy, till he could bear it no longer, and, brushing my halting words aside, he would plunge in, and swing along with the splendid narrative to the end.

We were very happy now! Building, planting, sowing, reaping. We called Furze Hill the ‘Bride,’ and we competed in decking her, and making her gifts. Stanley gave the Bride a fine Broadwood piano, and a billiard table. I gave her a new orchard. Stanley gave her a bathing-house and canoes. I gave her roses.

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One day Stanley told me that a case full of books had just arrived, which we could unpack together in the evening. The case was opened, and I greatly rejoiced at the prospect of book-shelves crammed with thrilling novels, and stories of adventure. Stanley carefully removed the layers of packing-paper, and then commenced handing out ... translations of the Classics, Euripides, Xenophon again, Thucydides, Polybius, Herodotus, Cæsar, Homer; piles of books on architecture, on landscape gardening, on house decoration; books on ancient ships, on modern ship-building. ‘Not a book for me!’ I exclaimed dismally. Next week, another case arrived, and this time all the standard fiction, and many new books, were ranged on shelves awaiting them.

Stanley’s appetite for work in one shape or another was insatiable, and the trouble he took was always a surprise, even to me. Nothing he undertook was done in a half-and-half way. I have now the sheets upon sheets of plans he drew, of the little farm at Furze Hill, every measurement carefully made to scale, and the cost of each item, recorded, on the margin.

And so he was happy, for his joy lay in the doing.

In this year, 1899, Stanley was created G. C. B.

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How little any, but his few intimate friends, knew of Stanley! Others might guess, but they could not realise what of tenderness, gentleness, and emotion, lay behind that, seemingly, impenetrable reserve.

As an instance of the curious ignorance existing regarding the real Stanley, I will tell an anecdote, both laughable and pathetic.

A short time after my marriage, I went to tea with a dear old friend. After talking of many things, my friend suddenly put her hand impressively on mine and said, ‘Would you mind my asking you a question, for, somehow, I cannot help feeling--well--just a little troubled? It may, in some mysterious way, have been deemed expedient; but why--oh, why--did your husband order a little black baby to be flung into the Congo!’ The dear good lady had tears in her eyes, as she adjured me to explain! Indignation at first made me draw away from her, but then the ridiculous absurdity of her story struck me so forcibly, I began to laugh, and the more I laughed, the more pained and bewildered was my friend. ‘You believed that story?’ I asked. ‘You _could_ believe it?’ ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘I was told it, as a fact.’

When I repeated it to Stanley, he smiled and threw out his hand. ‘There, you see now why I am silent and reserved.... Would you have me reply to such a charge?’ And then he told me the story of the little black baby in Central Africa.

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As the expedition advanced, we generally found villages abandoned, scouts having warned the natives of our approach. The villagers, of course, were not very far off, and, as soon as the expedition had passed, they stole back to their huts and plantations. On one occasion, so great had been their haste, a black baby of a few months old was left on the ground, forgotten.

They brought the little thing to me; it was just a gobbet of fat, with large, innocent eyes. Holding the baby, I turned to my officers and said in chaff, ‘Well, boys, what shall we do with it?’ ‘Oh! sir,’ one wag cried, with a merry twinkle in his eye, ‘throw it into the Congo!’ Whereupon they all took up the chorus, ‘Throw it, throw it, throw it into the Congo!’ We were all in high boyish spirits that day!

I should rather have liked to take the baby on with me, and would have done so, had I thought it was abandoned; but I felt sure the mother was not far off, and might, even then, be watching us, with beating heart, from behind a tree. So I ordered a fire to be kindled, as the infant was small and chilly, and I had a sort of cradle-nest scooped out of the earth, beside the fire, so that the little creature could be warm, sheltered, and in no danger of rolling in. I lined the concavity with cotton-cloth, as a gift to the mother; and when we left that encampment, the baby was sleeping as snugly as if with its mother beside it, and I left them a good notion for cradles!

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Many children were born during the march of the Emin Relief Expedition; at one time there were over forty babies in camp! The African mothers well knew that their little ones’ safety lay with ‘Bwana Kuba,’ the ‘Great Master.’

When the expedition emerged from the Great Forest, a report got about that the expedition was shortly to encounter a tribe of cannibals. That night Stanley retired to rest early, and soon fell asleep, for he was very exhausted. In the middle of the night, he was wakened by a vague plaint, the cry, as he thought, of some wild animal. The wail was taken up by others, and soon the air was filled by cat-like miaouls. Greatly puzzled, Stanley sat up, and then he heard slappings and howlings. Thereupon, he arose and strode out, to find forty or so infants, carefully rolled up, and laid round his tent by the anxious mothers! Bula Matari, they said to themselves, would never allow the dreadful cannibals to eat their little ones, so they agreed together that the night-nursery must be as close as possible to the Great Master’s tent! This, however, was forbidden in future, as it made rest impossible.

Now that I am writing of the period of repose and enjoyment which was a kind of Indian summer in Stanley’s life, it may be in place to make a comment on his Introduction to the Autobiography. It was the beginning of a work which was broken off and laid aside many years before his death, so that it never received the stamp of his deliberate and final approval before being given to the world.

The crowning thought of the Introduction may be regarded as the key-note of his character: “I was not sent into the world to be happy nor to search for happiness. I was sent for a special work.”

But the note of melancholy which runs through the Introduction is to be taken as the expression of a transient mood, and not as a characteristic and habitual trait. Such a passing cloud was not unnatural in a man with great capacity for emotion, and an extraordinary range of experience; and who possessed, as Mr. Sidney Low has reminded us, the Cymric temperament, with its alternations of vivid lights and deep shadows.

I have delayed making any remark on the element of higher and various happiness in his life. I have delayed it until this point in the story, that the reader might view it, not as my own special pleading, but in the light of his self-revelation as scattered through the many pages of this record. They show, with a fulness which needs no recapitulation here, how the cruelties of his youth, as well as the hardships and misconstructions of his later years, had as their counterpoise the noble joys of manly action, in its heroic and victorious phases; the alternations of such rest as only toilers know; the ministrations of natural grandeur and beauty, of literature, of congenial society; the pure delights of friendship and of love.

One passage in the Introduction may sound to the reader, as yet unacquainted with the man, like a cry _de profundis_: “Look ... at any walk of life, and answer the question, as to your own soul, Where shall I find Love?”

Later, he has told us something of where he did find it. He found it in the heart of Africa and of David Livingstone. He found it in his company of Zanzibaris, who, after following him through all the terrors of the Dark Continent, offered to leave their newly-recovered home to escort him in safety to his far-distant home. He found it in such comrades as Mackinnon, Parke, Jephson, and especially Bruce (pages 459-60), of whom he exclaims, “I could have been contented on a desert island with Bruce”; in such men as Sir George Grey, and a few others; and in the sanctuary of his home.

Against the sharp incessant blows which early and long rained on a heart hungry for love, he learned to shield himself by an armour which might easily be mistaken for natural hardness; and that armour was toughened under the discipline of the endless work, and grew yet firmer as he braced himself against the slanders of ignorance and malignity. As his Introduction tells us, he grew fastidious in his affections, and few were those he found worthy of full intimacy.

But, at the touch of a congenial nature, the barriers dissolved. He knew in its fulness the joys of the idealist and the lover. And he knew, too, the homely and tranquil pleasures which serve best for “human nature’s daily food.” For in his daily life Stanley was really very happy, in a quiet and quite simple way. He was never gloomy or morose, but exceedingly cheerful when he was well. On the approach of illness he was very silent, and then--I knew!

He was extraordinarily modest, and, in a crowd of people enthusiastic about him, felt like running away. He loved quiet hospitality to a few friends, with Denzil and me to back him; then he was a happy boy. To the very end he found real joy in “the doing.” He did not look beyond home for happiness; Denzil, Furze Hill, his books, his writing, planning “improvements,” filled his cup of happiness--happiness which he had not sought for in life, but accepted simply and thankfully when it came to him.

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