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Arthur Jermy Mounteney Jephson

Brentwood, England, 1858 - 1908, Sunninghill, England

BiographyLC name authority record no.: n84075212
LC Heading: Mounteney-Jephson, A. J. (Arthur Jermy), 1858-1908
9/21/2017 I.S.

Jephson, Arthur Jermy Mounteney (1858–1908), traveller in Africa, born at Hutton rectory, Brentwood, Essex, on 8 October 1858, was the tenth of the twelve children of John Mounteney Jephson, vicar of Childerditch, Essex, and Ellen, daughter of Isaac Jermy, the recorder of Norwich, of Stanfield Hill, Norfolk. He was educated at Tonbridge School (1869–74) and followed his eldest brother on to the training ship, HMS Worcester (1874–6), and thence into the merchant navy. In 1880 he joined the Antrim regiment of the Royal Irish Rifles, but resigned his commission in 1884. For two years he lived a life of ease, under the patronage of Helene, comtesse de Noailles, at her homes in Eastbourne and Hyères, in the south of France. In 1886 the comtesse's donation of £1000 to support the Emin Pasha relief expedition secured him a place on its staff, under Henry Morton Stanley. Leaving Europe in January 1887, the expedition travelled up the Congo River, with Jephson being given special responsibility for the transport of a steel boat, The Advance. Having left the ill-fated rear column at Yambuya on 28 June, Jephson accompanied Stanley and William Stairs on the difficult journey eastwards through dense forest, a march so arduous that, according to his diary, he felt at times as if he were ‘drinking in malaria’; they finally reached Lake Albert in December. Jephson was the first officer to meet Emin and, at Stanley's instruction, undertook a tour with the pasha through his equatorial provinces, seeking to encourage Emin's soldiers to return with the expedition to Egypt, via Zanzibar. However, Emin's authority over his garrisons was much weaker than had been supposed, and both Jephson and Emin were temporarily imprisoned by rebel officers at Dufilé in August 1888. It was only with the renewed threat from Mahdist forces in the north that Emin recovered his position. Eventually Jephson succeeded in evacuating Emin and his party to Kavalli, where they rejoined Stanley in February 1889. Jephson returned to England in 1890 and published an account of his part in the expedition, which was translated into both German and French, and he was subsequently engaged in lecture tours in Britain and the United States. The recriminations which accompanied the publication of conflicting accounts of the expedition by or on behalf of its officers were concerned more with the conduct of its leader and the fate of the rear column than with the part played by Jephson himself, and his public reputation was if anything enhanced by the ensuing controversy. He was awarded a medal by the Royal Geographical Society and a diploma by the Brussels Geographical Society in 1890, and was appointed a queen's messenger in 1895.

Jephson's expedition diaries, which were published in 1969, confirm in graphic detail the extent of the violence and suffering that accompanied the Emin Pasha relief expedition. As he had no previous experience of either tropical travel or warfare, his very survival was something of an accomplishment. His friendship with Stanley, whom he accompanied on the latter's honeymoon in Switzerland in 1890, lasted until Stanley's death in 1904. Jephson was married in the same year on 8 June to Anna, daughter of Addison Head of San Francisco, after an association of more than twelve years; they had one son. Jephson died on 22 October 1908 at Sandridge House, Sunninghill, Ascot, and he was buried at Sunninghill.

Felix Driver
Sources

GJ, 32 (1908), 630 · M. D. Jephson, An Anglo-Irish miscellany: some records of the Jephsons of Mallow (1964) · The diary of A. J. Mounteney Jephson: Emin Pasha relief expedition, 1887–1889, ed. D. Middleton, Hakluyt Society, extra ser., 40 (1969) · A. M. Jephson, Emin Pasha and the rebellion at the equator (1890) · I. R. Smith, The Emin Pasha relief expedition, 1886–1890 (1972)
Archives

priv. coll., Mallow Castle, co. Cork, Éire :: RGS, Stanley MSS · SOAS, Mackinnon MSS · U. Nott., Willoughby MSS

Likenesses

photograph, NPG [see illus.] · photographs, repro. in Jephson, Anglo-Irish miscellany · photographs, RGS · photographs, repro. in Jephson, Emin Pasha and the rebellion · photographs, repro. in Middleton, ed., The diary of A. J. Mounteney Jephson (1969)
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Felix Driver, ‘Jephson, Arthur Jermy Mounteney (1858–1908)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2113/view/article/34182, accessed 8 Aug 2013]

Arthur Jermy Mounteney Jephson (1858–1908): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34182

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated8/7/24

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