The Extemporaneous Elopement of the Adventurous Abolitionist

n                      The truth is stranger thannfiction. For example, consider the story of Sir Samuel White Baker. He was bornninto a wealthy commercial family in June 1821, was privately educated andngraduated as civil engineer, after which he was employed building bridges andnrailways on the banks of the Danube and the shore of the Black Sea. 

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nIn 1843, henmarried Henrietta Martin and his brother, John, married her sister, Eliza, in andouble marriage. The four emigrated together to Mauritius, where they oversawnthe family plantation, before Samuel and Henrietta moved to Ceylon, where theynfounded a settlement. After twelve years of marriage Henrietta died fromntyphoid fever, and Samuel arranged for his four daughters to be raised by hisnunmarried sister, Mary, (two sons and another daughter had died in childhood).nOn a visit to Scotland, he became friends with Maharajah Duleep Singh, the lastnMaharajah of the Sikh Empire and presenter, in questionable circumstances, ofnthe Koh-I-noor diamond to Queen Victoria. The Queen and Prince Albert werengreat friends of the Maharajah; she was godmother to several of his childrennand presented him with a substantial pension. In 1858, the Maharajah and Bakernwent on a hunting trip to central Europe and the Balkans, and the followingnyear, at Vidin, (now in Bulgaria, then part of the Ottoman Empire), the twonattended a slave auction. 

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nOn the stand was a young, blonde, white girl andnBaker instantly fell in love with her. She was Florenz Barbara Maria Szasz,nsaid to have been born in 1841, although it is more likely she was born inn1845, a member of an aristocratic Transylvanian family who had been caught onnthe wrong side in the 1848 Hungarian revolution. Her family had been killednbefore her eyes and she was taken into slavery from a refugee camp, to become anharem girl. The Ottoman Pasha of Vidin bought the girl as an intended concubinenbut Baker had other plans for her. He bribed her guards and spirited her awaynto Romania, where they were supposedly married (the Victorian age of consentnwas 12) and where he completed his previous engineering work, before returningnto England. 

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nIn 1861, Baker and Florence (as she was now called) departed fornAfrica, when he was forty and she was sixteen, intending to travel south fromnCairo to the source of the Nile, and to meet the expedition, somewhere in thenarea of Lake Victoria, of John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant, who werentravelling north from Zanzibar. By now, Samuel and Florence were inseparable;nshe wore to same uniform as designed by him, carried pistols in her belt, rodenhorses, mules and camels, and spoke English, Hungarian, Romanian, German,nTurkish and Arabic. 

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nIn 1862, the Bakers arrived in Khartoum, “A morenmiserable, filthy, and unhealthy spot can hardly be imagined,” where theynwere astonished at the depths of Turkish corruption, mismanagement andnbarbarity. 

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nIn his The Albert N’yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, andnExplorations of the Nile Sources (1866), Baker describes in detail thenhorrors of the trade in slaves and ivory carried out by the Sudanese, and thenproblems encountered by travellers at the hands of the Turkish administrators.nIn December 1862, they departed in three ships to sail the White Nile fromnKhartoum and discover its source. 

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nThey arrived at the trading post of Gondokoron(‘a perfect hell’), where his crew, led by an Arab, Eesur, threatened tonmutiny but Baker bribed them with a roast ox. Soon after, Speke and Grantnarrived and informed him that whilst they had been at Lake Victoria, they hadninformation from a local chief that another, as yet unexplored, lake also fednits waters into the Nile. Speke wrote detailed information in Baker’s journal,nof which chiefs to visit, which languages were spoken and where game could benfound, and at the end of February Speke and Grant took charge of Baker’s boatsnand returned to England, via Egypt and Khartoum. 

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nBaker’s forward progress wasnhalted when his Sudanese bearers again mutinied and were disarmed at gunpointnand the threat was made that if he moved south, he would be attacked by thenslave traders, who suspected him of espionage. After prolonged negotiations, antiny party of the Bakers and seventeen men departed in February 1864. 

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nTheirnjourney was beset by difficulties, hardships and dangers but the Bakersnendured, until they arrived on the shores of Lake Albert, which Samuelnmistakenly thought supplied a far greater feed to the White Nile (it is onlynabout 15% of the whole, the far greater majority coming from Lake Victoria). Inna return journey of even greater perils, the Bakers eventually arrived back innEngland in October 1865. 

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nHe was awarded a Victoria Gold Medal by the RoyalnGeographical Society and Samuel and Florence were ‘officially’ married; he wasnknighted the following year. Queen Victoria refused to meet Lady Baker, as shenand Samuel had not been married during their travels, in spite of assurancesnfrom many people tha she was a perfect lady. In 1869, Samuel accompanied thenQueen’s son, Bertie (the future Edward VII) on a visit to Egypt, and the mennbecame firm friends. 

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nLater in that year, the Khedive Isma’il Pasha (thenMagnificent) requested Baker to take an armed force of Egyptian troops into thenequatorial region of the Nile, in a bid to eradicate slave trading, raisingnBaker to the rank of Major-General in the Ottoman army and giving him the titlenof Pasha. With the establishment of the territory of Equitoria, the Khedivenappointed Baker as the Governor-General for four years, at the astonishingnsalary of £10,000 per year. Throughout all the adventures, battles and hazardsnof these years, Florence was firmly by Samuel’s side. 

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nAfter his appointment hadnbeen fulfilled, Samuel was succeeded by Colonel Charles George Gordon (later,nthe famous General Gordon of Khartoum), and Baker spent much of his later lifenon safari, hunting big game in countries across the world, and writing severalnexcellent books.

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nSamuel White Baker was every bitnas remarkable as any of the Victorian explorers – Livingstone, Stanley, Burton,nSpeke, Grant, Park and the rest, but he is not as generally well-known as them,npossibly because of his ‘unusual’ relationship with Florence (and his place innpolite society was compromised further when his brother, Valentine, was foundnguilty of raping a woman in a railway carriage). 

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nHe deserves to be better knownnas an explorer, naturalist, anthropologist, engineer, writer, geographer and,nespecially, as an abolitionist. His hatred of the slave trade was obviously anpersonal concern, considering the potential fate of Florence in Vidin, but itnalso shines through in the humanity of his writing. 

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nHe died, as a result of anheart attack, in 1896, aged 71. Florence died twenty-three years later, inn1916, aged 74.

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