An Irishman's Diary

"Doctor Livingstone, I presume?"There is an Irish association with today's sale in London of personal effects of the explorer…

"Doctor Livingstone, I presume?"There is an Irish association with today's sale in London of personal effects of the explorer Henry Morton Stanley. The person who sent Stanley in search of the missing Dr David Livingstone was the newspaper magnate James Gordon Bennett.

It was he who sponsored the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup, the first international motor sport event held in Britain or Ireland, which took place on a circuit at Athy, Co Kildare.

Stanley and Bennett were born in the same year, 1841, but in contrasting circumstances. The son of James Gordon Bennett senior, founder of the New York Herald, and Henrietta Crean, a music teacher from Co Meath, Bennett junior enjoyed a youth of luxury and licence. At 16, he was elected the youngest ever member of the New York Yacht Club.

Stanley was the illegitimate child of Elizabeth Parry of Denbigh, Wales. Named John Rowlands after his father, he spent most of his youth in a workhouse, or being looked after by reluctant relatives. In 1859 he worked his way as a cabin boy from Liverpool to New Orleans, where he assumed the name James Stanley, after a cotton broker who befriended him. "Morton" was added later.

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Search for Livingstone

For the next few years, Stanley worked as a seaman. He fought in the American Civil War and then became a freelance journalist. For the New York Herald, he covered the 1867 British expeditionary force's drive against Tewodros of Abyssinia. His front-line coverage ensured immediate fame and led to Gordon Bennett's commission to lead the 1869 search for Livingstone, who had gone missing on his quest to discover the source of the Nile.

After a succession of adventures, Stanley eventually discovered the hungry and ill explorer by the shores of Lake Tanganyika in 1871. The celebrated greeting - "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" - first appeared in Bennett's New York Herald.

Stanley and Livingstone enjoyed a cordial friendship but the latter refused all supplications to return to England. When Stanley returned to the coast, he dispatched supplies of food and medicine to the explorer and missionary. Worn out by all his travelling, Livingstone died in May 1873. Stanley decided to continue his exploration work, earning a special gold medal from the Royal Geographic Society in 1890.

He then entered politics and sat as Liberal MP for Lambeth North from 1895 until 1900. He died in 1904. Among the items in today's sale are his water-stained map of Africa, his compass and Winchester rifle, many books and photographs and a sextant presented to him by Livingstone's grateful daughter.

Although he lived in luxury, James Gordon Bennett was also very much a man of action. In 1866, he won the world's first transatlantic yacht race for a $90,000 purse from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, to the Isle of Wight in his boat Henrietta. For another wager, he raced a coach and four from Rhode Island to Central Park - stark naked.

Soup kitchen

When his father died in 1872, Bennett took control of the most lucrative newspaper in the US. Though employees feared his autocratic manner, he also had a charitable side. He sponsored a soup kitchen in the New York slums and in 1882 established a fund "for the relief of distress in Ireland".

Tall and handsome, with sharp blue eyes and a bristling moustache, "Jimmy" - as he was known to his few close friends - was much in demand by the ladies. But his engagement to the prominent Baltimore socialite Caroline May came to an unseemly end. He arrived drunk to her New Year's Day 1877 party and relieved himself in the grand piano. Caroline's brother, Frederick, challenged Bennett to a duel, at which both parties missed.

Bennett's family was even more relieved when he agreed to represent the Herald in Paris. But New York's loss was Europe's gain. Gordon Bennett had inherited a keen sense of the newsworthy and he soon proved to be a media innovator. He introduced biotype and daily newspaper weather forecasts to Europe, as well as wireless telegraphy for sending news dispatches.

He enjoyed a lavish lifestyle aboard his Mediterranean-moored yacht Lysistrata. Its complement included two Jersey cows to provide milk "free of germs and adulteration". At the age of 73, he married Baroness de Reuter, widow of a member of the famous news agency family. When he died in France at the age of 77 in 1918, he was nearly bankrupt, having spent almost $40 million on yachts, women, horses and trophies.

Bennett had publicised his Tribune with a series of Arctic and African expedition sponsorships and, though he never drove a car, he realised the publicity potential of motor racing after attending the start of the 1894 Paris-Rouen Trial.

Memorable phrase

Five years later, he offered a handsome trophy for the world's first international motor competition.The inaugural event, held in 1900 from Paris to Lyon, was won by the former French cycling champion Fernand Charron. England's Cecil Edge triumphed in 1902, as a result of which the 1903 competition was held in Ireland.

Like Stanley's quest for Livingstone, the Irish race also bequeathed a memorable phrase to posterity. Overcharging for food and accommodation disappointed many visitors and led to the popular use of "Gordon Bennett" as a synonym for skullduggery and disbelief. One visitor, Baron de Crawhez, complained: "I was charged 110 francs for a meal which was inferior to what would cost one franc in any French hostelry."

Gordon Bennett!