Year: 1872

The Livingstone Letters and tho Charge


OF Fraua Against stanley-A Weak
Case In Court. rsr-ra


We republish in the HERALD to-day our
fac-simile of the letter of DR.. David Living
stone, the great African explorer, and by its
side the fac-simile Of two letters from Henry M.
Stanley, the discoverer Of Livingstone, to
Louis h Noe, Q young man who appears to be
ambitious Of catching the reflection of STAN
ley's popularity by turning informer against
him in the matter of some alleged misdeeds in


which he pretends that the two were associates
years ago. We are indebted for the use of the


Stanley letters to the courtesy of the Sun, which


enterprising paper has enlisted in the investi-
| cation of the genuineness of our Livingstone
| correspondence with the zeal of q crusader and


the skill of an experienced detective. These
letters, we are told by the Sum- dispose of ''the


boldest and most reckless impostor who ever


traded in human confidence and rashly
attempted to deceive the entire world !" for


the similarity between the handwritings is
accepted by our sharp sighted contemporary
as complete, and as establishing almost
beyond doubt the fact that they were all


written by the same person. These premises
being granted, the conclusion is irresistible
that Stanley wrote the letter purporting to be
Livingstone's letter, since it is, Of course, i'm
possible to suppose that DR.. Livingstone could
have written the two letters purporting to be


Stanley's letters. 1t is also evident that if the


HERALD letter bearing Livingstone's signature


was written by Stanley it lisa forgery, and, as o
consequence, all the letters brought from Africa
by Stanley and passed of as the letters Of the
explorer are forgeries, including those ad-
dressed to the English Foreign Office, to the
London Geographical Society and to the
brother and sister Of the absent Doctor. To
follow out the case to its conclusion, the Liv-
ingstone letters having been concocted and
written by Stanley, that remarkable persons
whole account of his journey into Africa is a
romance and his story Of meeting with Living
stone at all is, as the Sun says, ''the most
gigantic hoax ever attempted on the credulity
of man. 1t is gratifying, however, to know
that the HERALD is exonerated by 'all
intelligent persons from any share whatever





nifcent imposition and that this "distin-
guished journal is to be set down only as the
victim of the fraud ''along with the public Of
two hemispheres."


But we are not disposed to suffer judgment
to 60 by default in this case, even though we
are to be let off on such liberal terms. As the
Sun has brought its action in the High Court
of Public Opinion before jury upon whose
intelligence and impartiality we con rely, we
propose to try the cause on its merits; our
desire being to elicit the truth and secure an
honest verdict in accordance with the facts
only, but the HERALD expedition, the African
discoveries, the Livingstone letters, Stanley
and all. We are aware that we might avail
ourselves of many of the technicalities of the
law to nonsuit the plaintiff in the case; that
we might question his standing in Court, pick
legal flaws in his complaint and impeach the
character of his witness. We prefer to meet
his charges boldly, and to dispose of them by
unassailable evidence. In the first place we
deny that there is enough similarity in the
handwriting of the letters published in the
HERALD to-day to cause every person who
examines them to be Impressed with the
opinion that every word and every line of
all these are the work of the same hand,
and that this hand is Stanley's own" On the
contrary, we contend that there is no greater |
similarity between them than may be found |
between the handwritings Of most men who |
use round, upright characters. An expert |
will readily discover marked differences in the
two styles, some of which are pointed out in
an article elsewhere in to-day's HERALD
Livingstone's writing has about it settled
uniformity of character of which Stanley's
is altogether deficient. Every ''b' formed by
Livingstone commences with loop to the
left This seems to be an invariable rule with
him, and it is not found in Stanleys letters at
ALL Livingstones writing is the same
in it's STYLE from the first word
to the last, never varying, while
Stanleys constantly varies, even in the short
specimens put in proof by the plaintiff The
ingenuity of the engraver in giving to
Stanley's writing heavy uplines, which do not
exist in the original, has impaired to
the letters, on first sight, a superficial
appearance of similarity, which is lost on a
close inspection. But, supposing the hand
writing of Stanley to really bear '.most
startling resemblance to that of Livingstone;
supposing the two Noe-Stanley letters to be
word for word and letter for letter the exact
counterpart Of Livingstone's, so that they
could not be distinguished apart, and what do
we find? Stanley's first letter to Noe singu-
larly bears no date, but we are enabled to fix
about the time it was written. It alludes to
the writer being with Hancock's command
''hunting Indians" and this must have been
in the Winter of 1866 or the early Spring of