Livingstone and Stanley

THE STORY OF SOME OF THE GREATEST AFRICAN EXPLORERS TO HAVE EVER LIVED MIGHT SEEM TO HAVE LITTLE CONNECTION WITH CHAMPAGNE, BUT ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE, AND OFT-QUOTED EXCHANGES IN HUMAN HISTORY DOES HAVE A SPARKLE THAT ALMOST SLIPPED THROUGH TO THE LONG-FORGOTTEN VAULTS OF THE PAST. AUTHOR JOHN BIERMAN, IN HIS WONDERFUL TALE OF HENRY MORTON STANLEY, “DARK SAFARI”, CAPTURES THE MOMENT.

WORDS KEN GARGETT

STANLEY WAS, OF COURSE, THE MAN who tracked down the Scottish missionary, David Livingstone. That may not seem such a feat in today’s world of the internet, 24 hour news, GPS machines and their ilk but back then, a single item of news may have taken months to make its way from darkest Africa. Stanley led an extraordinary life – one of six children, from six different fathers, he was abandoned by his mother when still an infant. He had an abusive childhood, that which would have made Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’ look like a holiday, fled to America at 18 and took the name of his first employer, fought in the American Civil War (he was believed to be the only person to fight for the Confederates, the Union Army and the Union Navy), before becoming a journalist and finding fame as an overseas correspondent.

In 1869, he commenced his search to find the long-missing missionary, though later on he would do much more in Africa. His expedition to Lake Tanganyika took months, as he fought numerous battles with natives; crossed dry-as-dust deserts, tsetse fly infested plains and snow-covered mountain ranges; and battled sickness, death, wild animals, the loss of his beasts of burden, as well as being abandoned by porters.

When he finally found the white-bearded, frail Livingstone, he uttered the immortal words, ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume’, but few know what happened immediately after. The diaries of Livingstone and Stanley reveal that the explorer had brought a bottle of Sillery Champagne with him, to celebrate the moment. They opened it and toasted the moment. Livingstone described it as “a silver goblet full of the exhilarating wine”, while Stanley recorded Livingstone as saying, upon drinking the wine, “you have brought me new life”.

Sillery is one of the Grand Cru villages, but the actual producer of the Champagne remains lost in the mists of time.

What is truly amazing about this story is that the bottle obviously drank beautifully (granted, if you’d been stuck in the wilds of Africa for nearly six years, most things would), and yet it had not been left in a dark, cold cellar, but rather had suffered the most appalling conditions, bounced around in a pack through desert and plains, across rivers, over mountains, all the while in everchanging temperatures. And yet it came up trumps. Perhaps we get carried away with just how Champagne should be coddled. ❧