Tonight dined with Stanley at the Langham hotel, where we are both staying, and while I was happy to see that Stanley, with his hair let down, was quite affable and full of wonderful travel stories, once the subject of the conference came up, he became as bitter as any man. “Why should I, a person with a miserable, unfortunate past, have to bow down before people who have wined and eaten to the full all their lives? They have no idea what it took for someone like me to have lifted himself from poverty. I have no interest in humoring such fools.”
While I then tried to convince him otherwise, he at one point looked at me in such a way as to suggest that such sentiments would never leave him. Fortunately, while sitting up late and drinking beer, the felicitous effects of imbibing cheered him up, and we were together until nearly four in Stanley’s suite, reminiscing about the past. I am glad to say that the old Stanley I knew turned up again that night, pleasant and very interesting. We only gave up when we ran out of beer and tobacco. We then made a date to visit some antiquarian bookshops the next day.
IN FACT, THEY VISITED WESTMINSTER Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral together, then went out to see Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s old haunt, and made a brief stop at Oxford to look at the library. Three days of travel that neither recorded.
Thereafter they only met occasionally over the years, mainly in England, the two often sitting up until the late hours smoking and drinking beer; but since Stanley was often away in Africa over the next decade and a half, their friendship was mainly conducted by mail.
STANLEY IN LOVE
160 New Bond Street, London
December 20, 1885
Dear Samuel,
I hope this missive finds you in good spirits and good health; since I last wrote to you from Zanzibar, much that is new and much that is not very new has transpired; of my accomplishments in the Congo I will not speak—I know just how wary and contrary in opinion you are about that subject. Thankfully, you and I, going back so many years, can speak of other things, as, dare I say, brothers of different opinions might. If I presume to put you in such a category, please forgive me: But few are the men I respect; even fewer are the men I trust; and you are one of them, having always kept “our little secret” (about our travels together) so faithfully and for so long.
But on to the subject of this letter: What has transpired in my life as of late has occurred in the area of romance, a realm as dangerous and foreign to this long-solitary life as any jungle I have trod. The lady in question, with whom I have been in frequent company over the past months and with whom I have corresponded nearly daily, is one Dorothy Tennant. She is about thirty-five, but well preserved, tall and statuesque, and with the lively attitude and bright spirit of a young girl. She is something of a society dame. A friend to royalty and the artistic set alike, she comes from a Welsh family of wealth and great estates—they have in their household staff eight servants and housekeepers, a head butler, a cook, and a carriage driver—and yet, though she lives in a mansion on Richmond Terrace, on the east end of Whitehall, and has an acquaintance with the Prince of Wales, among other persons of note and fame, Miss Tennant is no ordinary coddled aristocrat; on the contrary, she has an interest in many things that one would not expect of such a personage. Her mother is an old bat, a snob of the old school, with whom I do not particularly get along (and in truth I do not like being in a room with her, as she has the manner of a strict schoolmarm and has not once looked me in the eye when speaking—aloof, I would call her). But she is an aesthetic sort, having once been an artist, and her daughter has followed suit, being a painter of some reputation, trained here at the Slade School and in Paris (she speaks very good French and dresses with impeccable taste). She has, to my eye, a remarkable ability for miniature paintings, no more than a foot high and wide, which she showed me one day: They are little fantasies of a neoclassical theme, set in places like old Greek temples, with all manner of buxom nude maidens (at first I was shocked, I should tell you) and scantily clad nymphs and sprites cavorting about placid Arcadian woods, after the style of the popular Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Her highly developed imagination for such scenes is fueled by her considerable reading of the classical myths.
In the main, however, her most prolific works have depicted common London street children—her “beloved ragamuffins,” she calls them, her métier being the very poorest of the poor: chimney sweeps, flower girls, little beggars whom she finds here and there during her rambles through the city. She brings them back home to her mansion, where they are given a good meal before going into her studio to pose. For their troubles she allows them to play her piano, a great luxury to such children (her piano’s ivories are always smudged with black fingerprints and darkened by soot), and finally she gives them sixpence.
Because you know about my own upbringing, I need not tell you how deeply her benevolent and somewhat maternal attitude toward these poor children touches me. Certainly I do not believe that painting a smiling chimney sweep or a vagabond waif makes any great difference to their lives, but there is some truth to her assertion that such children will be remembered—immortalized, as it were—and perhaps helped because of what she does. (She publishes articles about such children’s poverty in several newspapers.)
Now, as to the details: We met last June at a poetry reading by our mutual friend Edwin Arnold held at the Athenaeum Club, and in the months of July and August, when I had mainly remained in London, I would see her at least twice a week for lunch at first, and always in the company of her mother. But as she wanted to know me better, she devised a means by which we would have some privacy, and so since those months, Samuel, I have been going to her studio to pose for her. She wants to make a “proper portrait” of me—not of the tired and world-weary and solitary Henry Stanley but of the triumphant and virtuous and “very charming” Stanley, or so she has put it. And, as we have begun to know each other a little better, she has even gotten me to talk openly—not about my African exploits (a tiring business to me) but about the ways I came to be, particularly my childhood (of great interest to her, it seems).
But even as I have been hopeful, I have been suspicious of her motivations. I have wondered if I am some glorified vision of a chimney sweep who’s done well, in her eyes, or if I am a simple diversion from the haughty and bloodless folk of her normal acquaintance. My doubts in this regard are further heightened by my still painful memories of past affaires de coeur gone bad. To this day I think about Alice Pike, the young American girl I met here in London before my expedition of 1874 and to whom I thought I had been engaged. During the loneliest and most solemn Christmas I have ever spent, in a place called Ugogo, laid low with fever in a rain-soaked tent, it was the simple idea of being with her one day that kept me from taking my own life. (Samuel, I am describing an extreme state: Have we not talked about life and the sheer abstraction of the idea? However we may feel, have we not asked if our lives really mean much to the world one way or the other?) That I returned from the wild to find that she, a fickle girl, impatient to wait three years, had married someone else—a soft fellow named Barney—left me rather soured on the idea of love.
I do not know if you can understand this, having been wedded to Livy so long, but no matter how I tried to remove from my thoughts the memories of that experience with Alice, the deep wound she inflicted upon me has remained. One day, being forthright and earnest, I related this undeniable fact to Miss Tennant, who seemed, at the mention of that past affair, I am selfishly happy to say, rather jealous of my strong recollection of that woman. Though I have been feeling greatly distracted by her I remain hesitant to commit myself to what may well be another folly and disappointment.
Miss Tennant seems to feel otherwise. Nearly daily, during July and August, I received notes from her: “Come tomorrow”; “Do say you will dine with us”; “Can you arrive at three in the afternoon?” “I have read your latest letter to the London Times and found it most interesting—please, come tomorrow, I must see you so we might discus
s it”; and on and on. We have been seen at the theater and attending charity balls together; one of our appearances, at a reception at the US embassy for a July Fourth celebration, created a rouse of unwanted speculation in the newspapers. I have lately heard much gossip about us, implying a possible romance, but we have always regarded each other as friends, and platonically so. While we have often sat on the couch speaking intimately, even holding hands, I have been reluctant to physically express my admiration—and attraction—to her.
Only once have we crossed that line, in July—as a gentleman, I did not initiate it. We had finished one of the painting sessions. She had been cleaning a brush with turpentine when, as I was about to take my leave, she told me, “Mr. Stanley, you have something on your cheek.” What kind of speck it might have been I cannot say, but she touched my face to remove it, and then, quite forwardly, she suddenly chose to kiss me. It was an innocent enough act, lasting no more than a few moments—but it was one that, to an observer, would have seemed more than it was. Certainly it appeared so to her mother, who had happened into the studio at that very moment.
I mention this because shortly thereafter, I learned that mother (of whom I am very wary) and daughter were to suddenly embark on a two-month tour of Europe; and though Miss Tennant later told me that this journey had been planned for quite a long time (I had heard nothing of it before), I am convinced that her mother quickly contrived it to keep Miss Tennant and me apart. (In my gut, I believe her mother thinks I am not good enough for her.)
So we did not see one another for two months. Miss Tennant and her mother left in August for a grand tour of Europe and other places in England that lasted until early November. In that time, we wrote one another constantly, looking forward in anticipation to the very day when we would see each other again. Over those months, for all the busyness of my life, and even during a thankfully brief and mild bout of my recurring malaria (early September), in which I had a very strange dream about Miss Tennant coming to my New Bond Street flat as the goddess Demeter (whom I have always thought she resembles anyway), I had begun to wonder if I should be so bold as to find a means to broach the subject of matrimony with her. (When I mentioned this to King Léopold, he, true to his rakish form, told me: “Why not, Monsieur Stanley? After all, if you get bored with her, you can always find yourself a mistress.”)
We took up again upon her return, and, to her mother’s unhappiness, there came to us a renewed sense of purpose about our courtship. But the fly in the ointment remains: Her mother exerts so great a control and hold over her daughter’s life (Miss Tennant has confided in me that she sleeps in the same bedroom with her at night) that her dislike for me and what I seem to represent—i.e., a lowly born person of nonaristocratic pedigree—does not bode well for my future with her daughter, and for that reason alone, I am somewhat afraid of her. Though we have not yet spoken of marriage, and I remain wary of her mother’s interference, I am bracing myself to propose, to what outcome I do not know. Still, I am afraid of a possible rejection. Perhaps I am being a fool to say this, but I feel that to propose and be refused would be my death. What, old companion, do you, with your great success in domestic matters, advise?
As for my immediate future, I seem to spend month upon month cooling my heels while awaiting a new assignment in Africa, though what it might entail I have no idea. King Léopold, whom I know you do not care for, has been promising me the directorship of the Congo Free State, though he has been agonizingly slow in making the appointment. Further, I have heard some rumblings in regard to my involvement as a possible commander of an expedition to bring supplies and armed men to one Emin Pasha, General Gordon’s successor and governor of Equatoria in the southern Sudan; he is holed up in a stronghold in the Lake Albert region, besieged by the forces of the Mahdists, those same Islamic fanatics who had cut off General Gordon’s head at Khartoum. It is being said that I am the most qualified man in Europe to lead such a mission—though if the truth be told, Samuel, I am getting tired of such exertions and would now prefer a quieter and more tranquil existence.
I go on too long. It’s now snowing here in London: I imagine it could well be so in Connecticut—it is that time of year; Christmas is not far off. May yours go well—for I always keep good wishes for you and your family close to my heart.
Most faithfully yours,
Henry M. Stanley
January 2, 1886
Farmington Avenue
Hartford, Connecticut
Dear Stanley,
I received your welcome letter on Christmas Eve, and to be truthful, as I am always happy to hear from you, I was doubly delighted by news of this promising lady in your life, no matter how difficult the mother situation may appear to be. From your description of her, it seems to me that you have come across the rare creature who combines intelligence, grace, abilities, and a good heart—my own Livy, putting up with me endlessly, is also of that category. (Let me remind you that when I first courted Livy, her parents wanted nothing to do with me.) But as for your reluctance, stemming from past disappointments—the Alice episodes, of which you reminded me (you had written to me about her before)—my God, dear Stanley, what could you have expected from such a child of seventeen? And you should ask yourself if you, as a man of the world, would have been able to put up with the supercilious prattling of a young spoiled society dame for very long. What by way of intellectual fulfillment would she have brought you? Or what assistance, of any kind, to the constant process of your writing? Seems to me that you were spared an interminable boredom with that one. As for Miss Tennant—though I am not a lonely hearts columnist—I say that you should exercise more patience and less suspicion, as you are of an age and position in this world where you should not be scrounging around for companionship of the female kind.
As for me and my family, we, including nine cats, remain happily intact, and have in recent weeks, around the holidays, been mainly at home entertaining numerous visitors, among them my old friends Dean Howells and the Reverend Twichell, who as a preacher continues to try to put me on the righteous (ergo, God-believing, prayerful) path. We had a fairly grand Christmas tree, a New Hampshire fir, burning with candles in our salon (until the tree dried up), but happily the house did not burn down and all of us are in one piece, though the usual ailments (rheumatism, mainly) bother Livy and me.
By the way, Stanley, I’ve been asked by my lecture representative and friend Major J. B. Pond if you would have any interest in meeting with him at some point in London; he has plans to travel there this summer with Henry Beecher and seems to have an interest in bringing you back to your old digs in the States for some kind of tour, given that you are so much a household word over here. Should you make your way across the Atlantic, you will have, as always, a friendly room and bed, and a cat or two, awaiting your comfort in my home.
Forge onward, great explorer! Be not afraid! (Especially of the mother, for it is in their makeup to be contrary to the men who come along to steal their little girls away.)
Livy and the girls send you their best.
Yours,
Sam Clemens
London, 1885
AS STANLEY WOULD CONFESS to his old friend, when it came to matters of the heart and dealings with the gentler sex, his past was littered with rejections. Though he could not walk down a London street without passersby stopping to shake his hand or stroll along Piccadilly without coming across a tourist shopwindow that sold brass Stanley busts or plates bearing his image, and though he knew himself to be something of a hero to the people of England (and to Americans, too), he remained a solitary bachelor whose best companions, as he would say, were books, dogs, and the abstract ideal that he called the “freedom of the wilds.” For all the many honors he received over a decade and a half in recognition of his three arduous missions to Africa, the simple caress of a woman’s hand across his brow eluded him.
He had at this point in his life changed the face of Africa, his mark having been made through various e
xplorations into previously unknown regions: Among his most notable achievements were the circumnavigation of Lakes Tanganyika, Victoria, and Albert and the discovery of the location of the Mountains of the Moon. He followed the course of three of central Africa’s greatest rivers, the mysterious Lualaba, the Aruwimi, and, most epically, the treacherous Congo, the second-longest river in the world. He was the first man to have navigated and mapped that body of water from its source at Lake Tanganyika to its outflow on the Atlantic Ocean.
Such a summary cannot even begin to convey the extent of what Stanley and his men suffered on those journeys—countless attacks by natives, episodes of starvation, various mutinies, and repeated bouts of malaria, contracted in the leech-, crocodile-, and snake-infested swamps through which his expeditions often waded. An endless purgatorial darkness, too, had he endured, spending months at a time forging a path through the great and lightless forests of the Congo (a woods the size of France and Spain combined). Stanley’s sometimes harsh discipline, his relentless drive, his extraordinary luck (“the Providence of God,” he called it), and his stoicism in the face of physical pain and adversity made such feats possible.
Of course, he had been changed greatly by his travels. While he had looked like a lad of fifteen during the Civil War, Stanley was, at forty-four, somewhat prematurely aged; he resembled a man in his late fifties. His hair was gray, his pockmarked face, tightened by years of exposure to the tropical sun and an addiction to tobacco—thank you, Samuel Clemens—was lined with wrinkles, and his gray-blue eyes were often slightly yellow from jaundice. By then his formerly trusting countenance had been overtaken by a somewhat stern and solemn air, his gaze regarding the world with suspicion. Beset by episodic bouts of sudden illness, he passed through life awakening each morning without knowing if, by nightfall, he might be doubled over in agony from the torments of his chronic gastritis or, worse, find himself enduring the fevers, chills, and waking hallucinations of malaria, which by his own count had already struck him more than one hundred times. Never taking any imposition upon his health lightly, for he felt that he had a ticking bomb of blood-and bowel-feasting parasites inside him, he was most wary about cleanliness, rarely shaking hands without a glove; and when it came to food, he would only eat in the finest and most well-scrubbed establishments, for he knew that once he got sick, he would lose days, if not weeks or months, of his life.
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise Page 17
