Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1890 — STANLEY’S LOVE STORY. [ARTICLE]

STANLEY’S LOVE STORY.

Miss Tennant Rejected the Explorer Once Because He Dyed His Hair. Cable Special. There has been a great deal of romancing about Stanley’s engagement to Dorothy Tennant. The news was sprung as a great surprise on Saturday morning. Newspaper men had to scramble about in a lively manner to ascertain the facts about the engagement. Tne few people who claimed to possess the secret clothed the affair, with all the romance possible. To-day I learned the exact facts. Stanley met Miss Tennant with a party on the ' Duke of Westminister’s yacht a tew weeks before he started for Africa to rescue Emin. He was introduced to her by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Stanley was much impressed with Miss Tennant and sought occasions to jontinue the friendship. A few days before he started for Africa he proposed marriage. Much, to his surprise he was rejected. To the Baroness and one or two other intimate friends Stanley did not hesitate to denounce Miss Tennant’s conduct in encouraging him to the point of proposal and then jilting him. To one or two friends who ventured to talk to her on the subject Miss Tennant said she could not stand a man who- dyed his hair. ‘lt is a well-known fact that while in America, and while here, before he started for Africa the last time, Stanley always dyed his hair. Photographs taken of him just before starting show his hair to be jet black. During his last African visit he discarded dyes altogether, and is now content to let his hair remain as white as snow.

The stories about Stanley sending impassioned love letters from the heart of Africa to his anxious fiance through the Emin relief committee in London is all bosh. Stanley went away a rejected suitor. When homeward bound, he arrived at Brindisi, Miss Tennant was not there to meet him, as surely she would have been if she had been betrothed to him. Nor did she meet him in Paris or Brussels. From Brussels, Stanley wired to two intimate friends in London to meet him at Ostend and lunch on the boat with him while crossing to Dover- These friends were Mrs. French Sheldon, of New York, and Harry Welcome, who is getting up the American dinner to Stanley in London. Miss Tennant was not there. Among the party to meet Stanley at Dover was the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. During the journey up she contrived to let Stanley know that if be still loved Dorothy Tennant, and would ask her again to marry him, this time he would not be refused. The result was that Stanley drove at once from the Victoria Station to the home of the Baroness, where Miss Tennant was waiting to meet him. Whether Stanley asked her again there and then to lie his wife I cannot iearn. But he did so"' very soon afterwards. This is the true story of the engagement, which is still the subject of the greatest gossip. No date has been fixed for the wedding, but it will probably be early in July.