BACK TO CIVILIZATION
I must leave it to my readers to try and imagine what my sensations
were as I sailed away from Omdurman on the first stage of my journey to
civilization and liberty. Remembering the reason which I gave my wife,
manager, and friends, when I was begged to abandon my projected journey
into Kordofan, knowing that others knew how I had comported myself
before my captors and Abdullahi, I was conscious that I had nothing
to be ashamed of in the production of a worse than useless saltpetre,
which I could easily have refined—but the real refinement of which I
prevented. Nor was I ashamed of having designed impossible machines for
the manufacture of powder and cartridges, in order to keep out of that
terrible Saier; nor of the wilful destruction of so much good material
for their construction, especially as there were living witnesses to
bear me out. Thinking, therefore, that the small, very small, risk I
ran in the collecting of information to send to the advancing armies
might have been appreciated, I built up on my journey what proved to
be a house of cards to be blown down by |290| a breath as soon as I
reached Cairo. I was much disappointed in the reception awaiting me; so
also was every other released captive, and not a few Mahdists. Perhaps
I am to blame for delaying at Berber for the purpose I have “admitted”
in my chapter “Divorced and Married,” when my arrival had been
announced by a certain train; but I have been punished for this, though
even now I am too uncivilized to feel ashamed of the action, or to
appreciate the justice of the strictures passed upon me in consequence.
When at last I did reach Cairo, it was but to learn that although I had
taken as “jokes” the compliments which I received on my way down, on
the “manufacture of gunpowder with which to kill English soldiers”—on
the “‘damned clever’ design and construction of the forts to oppose the
advance of the gunboats,” on my “smartness in galloping away from the
field when I saw it was all over for Mahdieh, and reaching the prison
just in time to get on my chains again before the Sirdar put in his
appearance”—yet these, and a great many other tales, were implicitly
believed in. Moreover, they had lost nothing in being translated into
the many languages spoken in Cairo, which include every language of
Europe, with a few of the East.
It was heartrending to me, after what I had gone through, to return to
my own flesh and blood to be spurned and shunned as the incarnation
of everything despicable in a man. I, who had defied my captors and
had looked for death, wished for it more now that I was amongst my own
people; but fortunately the persecution I was subjected to, added to my
change of |291| life, caused me to break down completely, and when I
recovered from my delirium it was to find myself in the hands of a few
friends. Do not think that I had worried myself over what was mere idle
gossip; all the charges were made in sincerity, and this owing to the
influential quarters whence they were emanating.
A few days after receiving the generous offer of my publishers, I
was told that I was a prisoner of war, and as such was debarred from
entering into any engagements; moreover, my experiences were said
to be the property of the War Office. Later on, I was told that, in
consideration of the subscriptions raised by a newspaper group in
England for the purpose of effecting my escape some years ago, I was to
write my experiences for the benefit of the subscribers. Then, after
keeping me waiting weeks for a reply, they offered me £100—a sum not
sufficient to pay the guides already in Cairo—and asked me to repay
them the moneys they had lent me while in prison. When in reply to this
offer I pointed out the ruined condition I am in, and offered to repay
the subscribers the monies spent from the money I am to receive for my
book, I was first threatened with an injunction upon the book, and then
with the publication of “interesting” disclosures (?) concerning me.
When H.R.H. Duke Johann Albrecht, the Regent of Mecklenburg,
graciously writes to me himself, instructing me to call at the German
Consul-General’s, in Cairo, for some money sent there to “give me a new
start in life,” I am met, when I do present myself, with accusations of
ingratitude and broken |292| engagements towards people whose names
I had never heard of. However, these people wrote disclaimers to the
_Times_, saying that they knew nothing of the claims made against me in
their names; yet, in spite of the disclaimers, the money was impounded
for about five months in all, and then some claims paid from it, but on
whose account I am still ignorant.
While all these charges are being levelled at me, I am warned that
if I dare contradict anything published formerly concerning myself
or Soudan affairs, certain correspondence will be communicated to
the London Press; yet what am I to do but contradict them wherever I
can find a scrap of evidence to support my contradiction? Surely I
cannot be expected to confirm such reports in the face of the threats
made verbally and in the columns of a newspaper, especially as I and
mine must remain the social outcasts we have been since my release,
until my narrative appears. I am writing more in grief than in anger;
these are all subjects I should have preferred not to mention in my
narrative, and I am touching on them as lightly as is possible, but
as others have chosen to publish them, by keeping silence I should be
doing myself an injustice. My hand or tongue has been forced, therefore
those who have taken the initial action against me must be responsible
for the inevitable result which will follow when, questioned as to the
foregoing by those entitled to ask for the evidence, I hand over for
publication the whole of the correspondence. For the public, having
been led to form opinions about me on the strength of the reports
and explanations printed, have the right to |293| know the whole
truth before pronouncing a second judgment; but my narrative ought
not to be burdened with such a voluminous correspondence. Surely a
kind Providence kept watch over the few documents which I have been
fortunate enough to find after all these years, and which are of such
value to me in substantiating my story.
Amongst the many articles published concerning me, one printed in
the London and Provincial papers on the 5th and 6th of September
last caused me considerable injury in England and Egypt, and, maybe,
irreparable injury in my native country, to which I have appealed
for the rights of citizenship which my capture and long captivity
precluded my returning to claim during 1887. To this appeal I have as
yet received no answer—and little wonder. On the appearance of this
article, some of my countrymen attacked me in no measured terms, and I
was shunned by them as they would shun a pestilence. The communication
made was on the presumable authority of General Hunter, as his
name is mentioned; but so sure am I that he was no more capable of
communicating such a report for publication than he is of turning his
back in the face of an enemy, that I have not so much as written to him
asking his denial. I was advised to allow these reports to accumulate
and circulate, and reply to them _en bloc_ in my narrative, leaving a
deceived public to take up the matter. The article I refer to reads as
follows:―
“Twice had every preparation been made. The relays of camels to take
the exile across the desert were ready. Nothing remained |294| but
for Neufeld to pluck up courage and quit Omdurman. Each time he backed
out at the last moment. At length he confessed the truth, namely, that
he did not care to come away. He had married a black wife. His friends
in Germany were dead or had forgotten him. He would stay where he was.”
Is it not possible to find some one to swear that _more_ than two
attempts were made during those long twelve years to extricate me? I
have in my narrative said all that I know of the visits of any guides
to Omdurman. Having been promised the publication of interesting
documents concerning me, perhaps the proofs of the above will be
forthcoming; let it be proved that on even _one_ occasion relays of
camels were posted to effect my escape, and at the same time let it be
proved that the guide who posted those relays ever came to me.
It is quite possible that there are a sheaf of letters waiting to
be published bearing my signature; and maybe when they are, I shall
learn their contents for the first time. I had to sign many letters
the contents of which I was ignorant of, as is evidenced by the letter
to my manager, and the letter to General Stephenson, in reply to the
one he entrusted me with when I went on my expedition. This letter
was photographed, and a translation is given on p. 338. The reply was
dictated by Abdullahi to his secretary, and handed me to sign. Let the
note, letter, or report, on which my refusal to escape is founded, be
produced, and then see if the date of it does not correspond with the
date of the maturing of one of my many plans for escape. But do not
press me too closely for my reason |295| for writing or giving such a
message. If I gave it I should be committing as great an injustice as
did poor Lupton, when sending back part of the monies sent him by his
friends at Suakin, who were trying to effect his escape, wrote. . . .
Those friends are still living, and as they have not chosen to tell the
world what they did for their countrymen, and how it was that their
schemes fell through, I may not do so—at least, not yet.
If I lied, as I have been told to my face that I did, when I denied
some of the charges made against me, why should more credence be given
me for sincerity in notes refusing to escape than was given to Slatin’s
protestations of loyalty in his letter to the Khaleefa when he escaped?
If during my capture and my long captivity my behaviour was unmanly, or
such as I, a European, ought to be ashamed of, then let the proofs be
at once forthcoming. Do not weary me out and keep the world against me
with threats of coming disclosures; moreover, have I not good reason
to complain of the communication of everything damaging to me while
everything in my favour is suppressed?
The sources of information, reference, and assistance thrown open to
Ohrwalder and Slatin when compiling their experiences have been closed
to me. When Slatin arrived in Cairo, he was handed the statements of
guides reporting his “persistent refusals to escape,” and allowed to
be the first to inform the world of their existence. When I arrive
in Cairo, I find that similar reports concerning me have been given
wide publicity and believed in. Why, I ask, |296| should it have been
believed that the guides’ reports were false in Slatin’s case and
true in mine? and why should I not have been given the opportunity of
first announcing their existence to the world? Perhaps, before I have
completed my narrative, people will come to the conclusion that some
of those privileged to look at all my papers have, for some reason or
another, felt that it was necessary thoroughly to discredit me, so
that, when my story appeared, I should not be believed in; but then,
who could have foreseen that I should ever be so fortunate as to
collect any evidence in support of it?
It has been suggested that maybe I have taken too much to heart the
“tales being told about” me; that they were but gossip. It was no idle
gossip for me. I was persuaded, much against my wish, to attend a hotel
garden-party, my first and last appearance in public in Cairo, for this
was the sequel: One of my few friends connected with the Press there
handed me some cuttings containing the usual inaccuracies and slanders,
and while sitting down in a corridor, my amanuensis at my side taking
notes as I read them over, I heard, “Hello, how is that book of
Neufeld’s getting on?” The speaker, when asked if he knew Neufeld,
blurted out, “Know him—no, nor do I want to know him, considering the
number of English soldiers he has sent to eternity with his gunpowder.
I would not even look at the fellow’s face.” And as my companion
whispered, “This is Neufeld,” I raised my head just in time to see the
representative of a great news agency hurrying through the doorway.
|297| Maybe, on the appearance of this, Reuter’s Cairo Agent may not
be averse to telling me on what or whose authority he made this charge
in my own hearing. The incident for the moment is closed, but if it is
re-opened, it must be re-opened somewhere where highly placed officials
may not be successfully appealed to to go around asking lawyers not to
take up my case. Memo. for that News-Agency representative—“Walls have
ears,” and “Don’t shout till you are out of the wood.”
I trust that when I send up my card to the London correspondent of
the newspaper from whose article I have quoted, he will, instead of
imitating his brother knight of the pen in Cairo, at least receive me,
and examine the originals of the documents inserted in my narrative,
disproving the charges which he was the medium of circulating in
England and on the Continent. Then, if satisfied with their genuineness
in the first place, and in the second place convinced that during my
long captivity I was striving more than any other captive to effect my
escape, he will at least, when next writing to his readers, try to do
what little he can towards repairing the great injury which he did me
in England, though it was without malice, I admit, and then try to have
his error corrected in the German papers. I ask nothing more than this.
Is it too much to ask?
But from the sea of slander and uncharitableness in which I was
struggling, there rose some kindly hands to help me. When pressed by
the War Office to repay the £20 I had borrowed from it on the way |298|
down—with my old guides in Cairo asking me to redeem the receipts they
had for monies lent me while in prison—with the monies kindly sent me
from Berlin to give me a “new start in life” impounded—with the hand
of every one against me, after calling at one bank and being refused,
I went to Mr. Hewett Moxley, an old friend of the Bleichröders, of
Berlin, and now the Director of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Cairo.
Handing him my file of letters and telegrams, I asked if he thought
that they contained sufficient guarantees for my being able eventually
to repay the money which I wished him to advance to me. He left me for
a few moments, and then returned, and as he went over one letter after
the other, my hopes fell, for he remarked that my “guarantees were not
of the very highest order,” and that my “credentials were not of a very
satisfactory nature.” But I knew a few moments later that these were
pithy, maybe sarcastic, remarks upon the letters which he was glancing
through, for while engaged upon these running comments, his clerk was
counting out £150 in gold for my immediate needs, and opening a credit
for a further £250. I thoroughly enjoyed his joke, so different from
those I had so far encountered, for his action was the first kindly one
which I received in civilization.
It was late on a Saturday night when, for the first time, I rose
from my bed of sickness to meet the proprietor of one of those great
English papers, which I had been promised were to hound me. In spite
of the assurances given me, it was with no little nervousness that I
approached him; but instead of |299| the ogre whom I had expected
to meet, I found myself being supported by a kindly spoken English
gentleman, assisted to an easy-chair, and tucked up in rugs. A few
waiters were in attendance, and the “ogre” was blaming himself for
having asked me to call and see him, and begging my forgiveness, as he
did not know that I was so ill. The “ogre” was Sir George Newnes. He
listened patiently to all I had to say, went through my correspondence,
ventured the opinion that certain actions directed against me were
“monstrous,” told me not to believe that the English Press would attack
me without reason, and recommended me, as soon as I was well, to go
ahead with my book and collect every scrap of evidence which I could in
support of my own story. I have followed his advice, but the collecting
of the little evidence which I have got has been no light task, groping
as I was in the darkness of a twelve years’ oblivion.
I must not forget either to acknowledge the handsome treatment which I
have received at the hands of my publishers, who have kept me in funds,
and with extraordinary patience awaited the completion of my narrative;
but the absolute necessity of collecting proofs for what I state, in
face of the threats dangling over my head, accounts for the long delay.
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