The Toothless Lion
Over the course of my drive to Ithaca, I listened to an audio book called River of the Gods by Candice Millard. It is the story of the search for the headwaters of the Nile River in the mid-Nineteenth Century. It was a fascinating book that focused on two explorers I had never heard of before. The main protagonist was Captain Richard Burton and his assistant and nemesis was John Speke. We have all heard about the travails of Dr. Livingston and Mr. Stanley, but its unclear to me how many people have ever heard of Burton and Speke. They were both British officers of either or both the British Army and/or the East India Company, which seemed to hold special quasi-agency status for England in those days. Much of the interior of Africa was unmapped and unexplored in those days, so this was during a time of not insignificant hardship in wandering through the Dark Continent.
One of my favorite movies is Out of Africa, but that was set in the early Twentieth Century when Africa was a much tamer place by far. Coincidentally and as I have recently written about, I am also reading Eyelids of Morning about the scientific investigation of the crocodile population on Lake Rudolf (now called Lake Turkana) in Kenya. In the lakes region of East Africa, Lake Rudolf is a smallish body of water compared to the places being explored by Burton and Speke. Their time was spent more on Lake Malawi, Lake Tanganyika, Lake Kivu and Lake Victoria (renamed such from its indigenous name of Lake Duholuo by Speke). There are many aspects of this story that I found interesting.
To begin with, Captain Richard Burton was an amazing and versatile man. He spoke twenty-nine languages, including Arabic, various Indian and African languages as well as a wide range of European languages. He was a soldier by training and fought in the Crimean War and went on to be an honored explorer for the Royal Geographical Society and eventually a diplomat for the Foreign Office in and around Africa. His most notable achievements were his work as a man of letters, writing a number of books about his travels through Africa and the Western United States (he met with Brigham Young in Utah, among others). His language skills caused him to also be the translator of such notable works as The Kama Sutra and 1001 Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights. Nothing the man did was without controversy. He was largely shunned by polite English society, while being secretly admired for his accomplishments. He was an atheist who spent a great deal of time studying religion and writing about sexual habits in an almost anthropological way.
As an explorer, he was a task-master of an expedition leader and had more than his share of battles and illnesses. He once took a native spear through the jaw, which left him with a nasty facial scar. His bouts of fever and every imaginable tropical disease seem to consume a great deal of his exploration time, along with scrounging for money from the various English patrons who supported his explorations. He was a great defender of the native or indigenous people he encountered and wrote extensively and positively about their characteristics. This contrasted him to his subordinate, Captain John Speke, who was high-born and endowed with a strong sense of white English superiority, not to mention a great deal of arrogance that made him challenge Burton at every turn. Speke, by contrast to Burton was not so much a linguist and writer and was always put-upon when it came time to properly chronicle his travels and deal with uncooperative natives. Explorers of the Mid-Nineteenth Century had to be Renaissance Men with strong language, sporting and communication capabilities. Burton was the model of that without all the societal polish and Speke was inadequate in most of that while being very prone towards feeling like he was above the fray at all times.
Burton struggled with health and financial issues for his whole life and died just short of completing his last Magnum Opus, The Perfumed Garden. Speke on the other hand, after arrogantly defying Burton’s leadership and accomplishments, came to his own sad conclusion by having his own health issues and frustrations (as well as a fall from grace with the Royal Geographical Society) and finally literally “fell on his own sword” when he allowed his own gun to shoot him fatally in the chest. Neither man seemed to have an easy or happy life while they did blaze many new trails into the heart of the African continent. Burton was eventually elevated to a much higher status than Speke in the annals of English history, but not without its moments of contradiction.
Both men were lions in the realm of mid-nineteenth Century explorers. They were the kings of this specialized African jungle. And yet, the nature of the tasks and the nature of life in the lane that they chose to travel in were such that in their older age, they both became somewhat toothless lions and mere shadows of their former selves. Such is the way of the world. All lions lose their strength and eventually the jackals prevail.
I finished that audio book yesterday and arrived in Ithaca last night. This morning, I woke up and walked around my beloved property here in Ithaca that I have shepherded over the last twenty-five years. I have paid the price over that time to renovate and refurbish this house and grounds and to maintain it for both my family’s enjoyment and for use by my friends at the business school. This morning I was greatly disturbed by what I found here. While I have been paying my rent on a timely basis this year, the University Real Estate Department has decidedly not honored its obligation to get the things fixed and repaired that should have been taken care of last Fall (and would have been if I still controlled the property). The porch rails and stair rails off the porch as well as the fence are in great disrepair. They are literally fallen down. I am beside myself that for my and my family’s last use of this property over the next month, we will be living in a house that is falling down around our ears. This is not the way that I wanted this to end. I have let the University know of my displeasure and the response today has been to blame it on the long winter and the supply chain issues that the world faces. In other words, they don’t really give a shit about what they agreed and how I may feel about this. Their offer to me has been that I can terminate the lease whenever I want. That is as close to telling me that they are happy to be rid of me.
I was a lion of Cornell. My name is engraved in stone on the McGraw Terrace along with the other Foremost Benefactors and Builders of the University, the schools highest donor designation (bestowed on me in 2000). My face is in bronze relief on the wall at Sage Hall in what is called the Hall of Honor, which I share with only fifteen others since the founding of the business school 75 years ago. I am sent the various scholarships and endowment reports for all the gifts I have given to the University over the years. But fix a handrail as promised on my family abode and who the hell do I think I am? I am today, the toothless lion of Cornell, not the first or last, but certainly the poster child for that in 2022.