"Arctic Renaissance man", Matthew Henson, an unknown hero

I had never heard of Matthew Henson before he was featured in Lessons in Manliness.  I also didn't know what a miserable man Robert Peary was. 

Robert Peary’s hunger for the Pole, and for fame, was insatiable. He made 7 grueling Arctic expeditions between 1886 and 1909. The only man who accompanied him on each of those expeditions was Matthew Henson. Together they faced the harshest of Arctic challenges and together they planted the American flag at the Pole.
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But Peary, who author Fergus Fleming called “the most unpleasant man in the annals of polar exploration,” had no interest in sharing the glory of the accomplishment with any other man, especially a black man. Years before his quest for the Pole commenced, Peary had written to his mother, “I must be the peer or superior of those about me to be comfortable.”
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Crestfallen that he had to share the glory of the moment with 4 Eskimos and a black man, Peary immediately ceased to speak to Henson, the man who had saved his life on a previous expedition and had remained absolutely loyal to him for 22 years when every other member of the expeditions had left because of Peary’s insufferable personality and demands. Unwilling to share the resulting fame, Peary forbade Henson to write, lecture, or grant interviews about the expedition. Henson had used his own camera to take 100 pictures on the trip and used his own money to develop them. Peary asked to borrow these pictures and then never gave them back.

Booker T. Washington, a Henson admirer, summed it up well:

“During the twenty-three years in which he was the companion of the explorer he not only had time and opportunity to perfect himself in his knowledge of the books, but he acquired a good practical knowledge of everything that was a necessary part of the daily life in the ice-bound wilderness of polar exploration. He was at times a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a cook. He was thoroughly acquainted with the life, customs, and the language of the Esquimos. He himself built the sledges with which the journey to the Pole was successfully completed. He could not merely drive a dog-team or skin a musk-ox with the skill of a native, but he was something of a navigator as well. In this way Mr. Henson made himself not only the most trusted but the most useful member of the expedition.”