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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} To the Heart of the Nile Lady Florence Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa by Pat Shipman To the Heart of the Nile: Lady Florence Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa by Pat Shipman. Member-Supported Public Media Serving Central Pennsylvania. Take Note: Heart of the Nile. Take Note: Heart of the Nile. Prepare to embark upon a breathtaking adventure, brimming with hair-raising rescues, impossible quests, danger, discovery, catastrophe, mutiny and uncompromising love-all the more remarkable because every word is true. In her new book, To the Heart of the Nile: Lady Florence Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa, nationally-acclaimed author Pat Shipman chronicles the dramatic lives of two Victorian adventurers a compulsive explorer and the courageous beauty he rescued from a Turkish harem. Shipman is the author of seven books, including The Man Who Found the Missing Link and Taking Wing, which won the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for science. To the Heart of the Nile by Pat Shipman. A woman and her husband defy the odds and travel, though not to Joseph Conrad’s Congo, certainly to the heart of darkness in their exploration of Central Africa. The Quest: discovering the source of the Nile. The Journey: dangerously severe. The Story: ironically regressive. Whether a result of minimal information directly from Florence Baker, the nominal subject of To the Heart of the Nile , or an intentional tool used by author Pat Shipman to reflect the oppression of women in Florence’s time, the work is written in complete yield to Samuel Baker, Florence’s husband and fellow explorer. This story, subtitled Lady Florence Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa does not merely address the gender inequalities of 19th Century Europe, it is actually written much more with Sam’s voice than with Florence’s voice. Expectedly, when Sam Baker bought Florence out of a life of slavery after a harem auction in 1859, their plans to discover the source of the Nile were considered Sam’s plans. Of course, the British consul general regarded Florence’s decision to brave Africa insensible, remarking that if Sam really cared for Florence, “he should order her to go home to England and live with his sisters while he carried out his explorations.” Of course it was Sam’s exploration then. But isn’t it supposed to be Florence’s exploration now, through Shipman’s book? If so, it’s difficult to understand why Sam’s journal is quoted 38 times to Florence’s 20 quotes, why she’s the seamstress but we learn of her work only through Sam, why she teaches him Arabic, but we hear him talk about using it, and why she witnesses the brutal female circumcision of a native woman, but his journal entry describes it. In reality, Florence probably lived an even less oppressed life than many English women of the 19th Century. She certainly lived a less oppressed life than she would have had she been forced into slavery as her fate wanted to dictate. It was not Sam who saw Florence as subservient. He felt the opposite, so much so that he fell in love with her “heart of a lion.” He knew her strength, and he knew they needed to go to Africa, because “in Africa they could be free.” He wanted Florence to be free. With every societal freedom that Africa allowed, the continent retracted with physical suppression. Florence, as a woman of 16 years, dealt with every ailment and physical hardship that Sam and his crew of men suffered through. Afflicted with heat exhaustion, physical exhaustion, frequent fevers, and malnutrition, Florence’s disposition is described through Sam’s nursing as “he rubbed her chest, hoping to strengthen her heartbeat, and the slave women rubbed her hands and feet. Except for omitting occasional choking noises, Florence might have been a corpse.” Not to diminish Oprah Winfrey’s recent journey to Africa, but surely she wasn’t likened to a corpse. Fortunately, we’ve come far enough in gender equality to allow a woman like Oprah to step up and talk about her experience, something Florence herself could never do. So, Pat Shipman tried to do it for her. Unfortunately, she leaves us with the idea that while it was part Florence’s journey, it was mostly Sam’s. The reader is left to question whether Florence’s diary even exists. But it does. Flip back to the note on archives and see that “Anne Baker holds the diaries of Florence Baker.” Perhaps this book serves as fuel for the argument that oppression of any sort bleeds into the contemporary, even when it seems we’ve come so far. Certainly that’s applicable to slavery, racism, ant-Semitism (as seen greatly by the stir over Mel Gibson’s new movie), and gender inequalities. Despite the lack of celebration of Florence, the book does tell a remarkable story, one that might spice up any college history course. It may just be deserving of a new subtitle, like, Sir Samuel Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa . Literary Transgressions. ‘To the Heart of the Nile’ by Pat Shipman. To the Heart of the Nile: Lady Florence Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa by Pat Shipman is a excellent example of why non-historians should not write history books. Or perhaps why non-historians interested in history should confine themselves to writing historical fiction since, apparently, there are people out there who fail to understand some basics of nonfiction. These include, but are not limited to: 1. No dialogue. There is simply no way to verify conversations between historical figures and a biography should not attempt to “recreate” them. 2. No first names. When referring to your subjects, it should be by last name, or first and last to save on confusion when dealing with a family who all have the same last names. 2a. Certainly never, ever use nicknames. 3. Support your statements. Quote your sources whenever possible. Don’t just say so-and-so was much taken with something if there is no evidence to support such a statement. If you’re assuming or imagining, say so . (And then delete the whole sentence, because you really shouldn’t be imagining in a nonfiction book. That’s for novels.) 4. Correctly assess your sources. If there isn’t enough source material to write a book on a topic or person, don’t write it. You should under no circumstances attempt such a book with spotty source material and just fill in the rest with what you imagined probably took place or was felt by your subject. 5. Leave feelings out of it. Both yours and the subject’s. Tell us what happened, postulate on why it happened, discuss the aftermath, but please don’t ever assume to know how everyone felt about it happening. And don’t get carried away by your own feelings on the matter to project onto your topic. I just found reading this book extremely trying, obviously. As just one example of all the above: “Florence and Sam were blissfully happy in Bucharest, though Sam described the city to Min as ‘a mass of filth, the streets everywhere are five inches deep in black mud’ and complained of ‘fleas as big as bantam cocks and bugs as large as turbots.’ The rustic nature of Bucharest did not bother Sam and Florence in the least…they lived in a world of their own.” [49-50] The sources seem to suggest that Florence and Samuel Baker were not blissfully happy nor were they not bothered by Bucharest. In fact, it sounds like they (and really, we’re just talking about Mr. Baker here) found it gross. And exactly what evidence is there to suggest they lived in a world of their own? However, once I set aside my notions of how one should write history (and this effort took me a good chunk of the book), I must admit I learned a few things from this book. Not about Florence or Samuel Baker, really, who came across more as characters from some kind of contemporary romance novel the way Shipman writes of them than actual people, but about the British in the Sudan and the politics of exploring and annexing that area of Africa in the late 19th century. It’s an area of history literally touching my specialty (the British in Egypt proper), but one of which I had only a sketchy understanding. Until Shipman’s book. Shipman, although I think she did a horrible job of writing a biography of Florence Baker—Florence is a largely imagined figure throughout the book, something which I can’t tell is due to a lack of sources or an overpowering fascination with her husband Samuel Baker taking over—actually does a very nice job of neatly and simply laying out the basics of the political situation in the Sudan. Thanks to her, I finally understood the whole Mad Mahdi/Gallant Gordon thing. It’s a slightly obscure piece of history, but one which I’d always wondered about. So, if you can get on board with an anthropologist apologetically writing a history book (she does sort of admit that the book is written in, shall we say, an unorthodox manner in the preface), go for it. But honestly, I don’t think this book is worth the effort of doing so. You can no doubt find a better book about the British in the Sudan and you can certainly find better written biographies.

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