reception was held a week after the consul’s meeting with the Chief at the oceanfront residence of John Holt. The warehouse on the premises was the largest in the territory. Mr Holt was notorious for being so taciturn that some people joked that his mouth moved only when eating. He didn’t need to speak much. The coin in his pocket couldn’t have purchased him a return ticket when in his youth he sailed from England to begin trading in Fernando Po, and the saga of his ruthless rise from an anonymous shop assistant to the mercantile titan whose fleet steamed palm oil to Liverpool and brought back guns and gin to Africa communicated his ambition eloquently enough to all. The most important of his fellow merchants loathed one another, so Mr Holt had to do more talking than he had in a long while before he could convince them to raise the white flag as a banner to war against Chief Koko, their common enemy.
The crickets were chirping in full chorus when the twenty-seven guests began eating. The welcome dinner was enlivened by the presence of Mary Kingsley, a family friend of the Holts who was passing through town on one of her many journeys. The unapologetic woman explorer had grabbed a centre seat for herself in the stag party of the imperial enterprise, and it was the scale of her achievements that silenced the grumbling that at first dogged her activities. Her most rigid male detractors were won over by her distinction of being the first European woman to reach the peak of Mount Cameroon, but whenever her countrymen congratulated her on the achievement, she curtly replied, I was actually the third Englishman, sir.
Though Mary Kingsley had little liking for sweet potatoes, she didn’t mind them if they were buttered and browned the way Mrs Holt ensured her cooks did. As the guests tucked away the buffet of soursop with mutton and potatoes and bananas baked with rice, Ms Kingsley regaled the table with stories about her recent travels way down south in the Ogowe swamps, a place none of her fellow diners had ever visited. The explorer told them about the sword grass trampled into wide paths by hippo herds. Even the sternest of the merchants laughed when she called those hippos the road-makers of the region. And she went on to talk about the incident in which her canoe would have been upturned by a snapping crocodile, if not for quick-thinking by locals standing on the river bank.
The Bengas and the Krus are considerably superior in intelligence to their Bantu neighbours, Mary Kingsley said. I find it laughable when the ignorant lump the whole bunch together as primitive. But that is not to say that any other race is close in abilities to our Caucasian own, Allah forbid an utterance that untutored from me. And I say this without forgetting the frequency with which our people make shocking fools of themselves along the length of this coast.
Mary Kingsley’s speech was habitually powered by such contrary sensibilities, generating sentences equally discomfiting as reassuring. Some months earlier, confronted with the paradoxes of her tangled position on native rituals, an official at the Colonial Office had thrown up his hands in exasperation and labelled her the Most Dangerous Woman on the Other Side.
After they were done with eating, the merchants relocated to the smoking room. As usual, Mary Kingsley, who would die young while serving as a volunteer nurse in the Second Boer War, went along with the men. Mrs Holt and the other ladies went into the kitchen for tea.
Over cigarettes, the matter of Chief Koko finally came up. We were informed that your meeting with Koko went on for quite a while, one of the merchants said.
You are the representative of Her Majesty, said another merchant. It came as a surprise that you found worthwhile matters to discuss with such a knave.
Henry Hamilton squirmed.
Are you sure the Foreign Office would be delighted with your conduct? asked a third merchant. Jaw-jawing with that native
The crickets were chirping in full chorus when the twenty-seven guests began eating. The welcome dinner was enlivened by the presence of Mary Kingsley, a family friend of the Holts who was passing through town on one of her many journeys. The unapologetic woman explorer had grabbed a centre seat for herself in the stag party of the imperial enterprise, and it was the scale of her achievements that silenced the grumbling that at first dogged her activities. Her most rigid male detractors were won over by her distinction of being the first European woman to reach the peak of Mount Cameroon, but whenever her countrymen congratulated her on the achievement, she curtly replied, I was actually the third Englishman, sir.
Though Mary Kingsley had little liking for sweet potatoes, she didn’t mind them if they were buttered and browned the way Mrs Holt ensured her cooks did. As the guests tucked away the buffet of soursop with mutton and potatoes and bananas baked with rice, Ms Kingsley regaled the table with stories about her recent travels way down south in the Ogowe swamps, a place none of her fellow diners had ever visited. The explorer told them about the sword grass trampled into wide paths by hippo herds. Even the sternest of the merchants laughed when she called those hippos the road-makers of the region. And she went on to talk about the incident in which her canoe would have been upturned by a snapping crocodile, if not for quick-thinking by locals standing on the river bank.
The Bengas and the Krus are considerably superior in intelligence to their Bantu neighbours, Mary Kingsley said. I find it laughable when the ignorant lump the whole bunch together as primitive. But that is not to say that any other race is close in abilities to our Caucasian own, Allah forbid an utterance that untutored from me. And I say this without forgetting the frequency with which our people make shocking fools of themselves along the length of this coast.
Mary Kingsley’s speech was habitually powered by such contrary sensibilities, generating sentences equally discomfiting as reassuring. Some months earlier, confronted with the paradoxes of her tangled position on native rituals, an official at the Colonial Office had thrown up his hands in exasperation and labelled her the Most Dangerous Woman on the Other Side.
After they were done with eating, the merchants relocated to the smoking room. As usual, Mary Kingsley, who would die young while serving as a volunteer nurse in the Second Boer War, went along with the men. Mrs Holt and the other ladies went into the kitchen for tea.
Over cigarettes, the matter of Chief Koko finally came up. We were informed that your meeting with Koko went on for quite a while, one of the merchants said.
You are the representative of Her Majesty, said another merchant. It came as a surprise that you found worthwhile matters to discuss with such a knave.
Henry Hamilton squirmed.
Are you sure the Foreign Office would be delighted with your conduct? asked a third merchant. Jaw-jawing with that native
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