Personal reminiscences of Henry IrvingStoker, Bram
General
Personal reminiscences of Henry Irving
Stoker, Bram
Actors -- Great Britain -- Biography; Irving, Henry, Sir, 1838-1905
I shall never forget that description which he gave us of the reaching
that furthest point on Lake Leopold II. that white men had ever reached.
He wrote of it all afterwards in his book on the Congo, though the
incident which he then described differed slightly from the account in
his book produced three years afterwards. No written words could convey
the picturesque convincing force of that quiet utterance, with the
searching still eyes to add to its power. How as the little steamer drew
in shore the natives had rushed in clustering masses ready to do battle.
How one nimble giant had leaped far out on an isolated rock that just
showed its top above the still water, and poised thereon for an instant
had hurled a spear with such force and skill that it passed the limit
they had fixed as the furthest that a missile could reach them and where
they held the boat in safety. How he himself had peremptorily checked in
a whisper one beside him who was preparing to shoot, and he himself took
a gun and fired high in the air just to show the savages that he too had
power and greater power than their own should they choose to use it.
How, awed by the sound and by the steamer, the natives made signs of
obeisance, whereupon he brought the boat close to the rock whence the
warrior had launched his spear and laid thereon offerings of beads and
coloured stuffs and implements of steel, saying as he prepared to move
away:
“We shall come again!”
Then he told of the wonder of the savages; their reverence; their
complete submission! How the canoe moved away in that glory of wonder
which would in time grow to a legend, and then to a belief that some day
white Gods who brought gifts would come to them bringing unknown good.
It was an idyll of peace; a lesson in beneficent pioneering; a page of
the great book of England’s wise kindliness in the civilisation of the
savage which has yet been written but in part. We all sat spell-bound.
There was no “doubting Thomas” then. I think, one and all, we held high
regard and affection for the man who spoke.
Then encouraged by the reception of his words—and after all it was a
noble audience, in kind if not in quantity, for any man to speak to—he
went on at Irving’s request to re-tell to us the story of his finding
Livingstone. Here he did not object to any direct questioning, even when
one man asked him if the report was exact of his taking off his helmet
and bowing when he met the lost explorer with the memorable address:
“Dr. Livingstone, I believe?”
He laughed quietly as he answered affirmatively—a strange thing to see
in that dark, still face, where toil and danger and horror had set their
seals. But it seemed to light up the man from within and show a new and
quite different side to his character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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