No idea, but thanks for the ref. I'll check it out.
I think Speke is a bit like Robert Falcon Scott and the race to the South Pole, in that Speke was such a poster child for the British explorer of the time that the unfair adulation for what he was expected to do overshadowed what he did, for better and for worse.
There is no dispute that Speke was physically very strong and brave, and had a major role in the discovery of the Nile, but it was unfair and inaccurate of him to claim sole credit. The discovery of the two major sources of the Nile was a protracted journey made by many people. That Speke sorta-kinda-maybe set foot on the actual shore of Lake Victoria doesn't make him the White Nile's one and only discoverer, even if he'd had the means to prove the lake was what he claimed.
As well, some of the things he did on the controversial follow-up expedition without Burton rightly brought censure on him, even at the time. And these were things (like the sexual exploitation of women he received as gifts from a local chieftain) he himself candidly admitted afterward with no apparent sense that it was wrong.
Also, though this was not remarkable for his class and time, his reputation has not aged well due to his intellectual myopia and unquestioned scientific racism, as well as his obsessive shooting of wildlife on his expeditions. Nor was he in any way, shape or form anything approaching the literary genius Burton was. Burton was hardly perfect. Still, he did a lot more than Speke, but got much less credit in his lifetime due to being from the "wrong" background and having too wild a personality for the repressed and highly competitive upper class Victorian society.
However, his reputation has survived better for a reason. Burton would have been famous even if he'd never gone in search of the White Nile, whereas Speke probably shouldn't be quite as famous as he is for its discovery.
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