“DO YOU NOT KNOW YET that you are furiously famous for your exploits?” said Edwin Arnold one day as he encountered Stanley melancholically roaming through Regent’s Park. Knowing only his bachelor’s solitude, Stanley answered him in this way: “I seem to notice it sometimes, but it is not anything I give weight to: So what if you are temporarily ‘someone’ in the eyes of others? What does that matter if you are never invited openly into someone’s home as a true friend, not as an attraction? Fond as I am of such folks, as much as they seem to love me in one moment, they are shortly gone.”
“Ah,” said Arnold. “If you do feel this way, then something must be done about it.”
Doffing their caps, they parted.
A FEW DAYS LATER, IN June of 1885, a note from Arnold, announcing that he was to give a reading from a new book of verses at the Athenaeum Club, arrived at Stanley’s flat: “Do come, old boy. I think you will much enjoy my new verses, and if I am not mistaken, I believe there will be someone there, a quite gracious lady, whom I would like you to meet.”
At first, he made nothing of the invitation and spent the morning attending to the voluminous correspondence that arrived daily, but Arnold had aroused his curiosity, and eventually, as the day unfolded, Stanley found himself standing before his bedroom mirror in a Harris tweed suit, trimming his mustache and giving his hair a good brushing.
“I should be back by seven or so,” he said to Hoffman.
THE ATHENAEUM CLUB WAS SITUATED in an old neoclassical building at the intersection of Pall Mall and Waterloo Place, the Grecian-style facade of this palatial edifice graced by a statue of Minerva. It was the kind of cultural organization that Stanley secretly admired but felt excluded from, as, in those days, despite his many admirable accomplishments, he was still looked down upon by the lofty sages of the Victorian establishment as a “penny-a-liner” journalist who had been lucky as an explorer.
Just before five in the evening, Stanley entered its premises.
“And this lady you mentioned, Arnold, is she here yet?” he asked the poet in the hallway outside the main salon.
“Not quite yet, my dear Stanley,” Arnold told him. “But once you are inside, look for the most beautiful woman who comes into the room; I am certain it will be she.”
And so it was that Stanley entered the salon—its frieze, copied from the Parthenon, looming above him—and took a seat toward the front, among an audience of some forty other persons. A few people recognized him, and for a time he signed their programs; but then, as Arnold had assumed, just before the poet took to the podium, a majestic-seeming creature of the female sex came into the salon. Tall and buxom, and with a beaming smile and eyes that were droop-lidded but soulful, and with her auburn hair done up with stylishly frizzled bangs after the fashion of the empress Eugénie of France, she brought into Stanley’s mind a great excitement: This lady, who also took a seat near the front, was one Dorothy Tennant, Stanley would learn.
That afternoon, Arnold, with his pallid face and long white beard reaching below his collars, read from his most recent volume, The Light of Asia, which told the story of the great Buddha.
Once the recitation of those verses ended, with Buddha achieving serene self-knowledge, Miss Tennant had been among the first to approach Arnold at the rostrum. They knew each other well: In his capacity as an editor of the Daily Telegraph he had sometimes retained her services as an illustrator. Her drawings graced the pages of his newspaper, and he had been a frequent guest in her home, where he often recited portions of verses in progress before gatherings of her dinnertime guests. As Stanley saw her standing by Arnold’s side, it gave him pause—and he thought to wait until she had left, as they seemed to be engaged in a spirited conversation about reincarnation. But then Arnold himself, with his massive head and savant’s beard, called Stanley over, and it was then that he made the introduction.
“This enchantment, my dear friend,” he said to Stanley, “is one of the finest illustrators and greatest ladies in London, Miss Dorothy Tennant.” Then: “And this gentleman, Miss Tennant, is the one and only Henry Stanley.”
She wore a velvet French skirt, a floral blouse, a petticoat that seemed a size too small, and a pearl necklace that hung from her collar. About her wrists jangled several bracelets set with odd stones, in the Bohemian mode; on her long and delicate hands were a pair of white gloves. Some three inches taller than the explorer, in her boots of soft black leather, with their two-inch heels, she seemed to tower over him.
“So you are he!” she said. “I cannot begin to tell you the extent of my curiosity about you.” Then: “I should let you know that I have been your admirer for the longest time, since the days you found Livingstone. I have always believed your stories to be true. In fact, Mr. Stanley, your exoneration was of such interest to me that I was among the crowd attending that meeting of the British Association at Brighton in 1872, when the Royal Geographical Society recanted their criticisms and awarded you the medal you justly deserved.”
“Well, now,” he said, his face reddening. “I feel somewhat honored, but barely deserving to hear such words.”
And yes, years later, among the details she would remember about that event in Brighton—where Stanley, once criticized as a fraud and then honored by the Royal Geographical Society, took the stage to make, with much anger and vindictiveness, the speech she would describe as “noble and convincing”—was that in the audience that day was the American writer Samuel Clemens, whom she saw strolling down the aisle and who had traveled from London to see his friend.
AS ARNOLD HAD GONE OFF to meet with his admirers, and tea and crumpets were served for the attendees in one of the club rooms, Stanley, off in a corner with Dorothy Tennant, could only summon up some small talk about his recent visit with King Léopold at his palace at Ostend. But he could have spoken about his shoes, for everything he said seemed to fascinate her. She had read all his books, from his first accounts about finding Dr. Livingstone onward, and she told Stanley that she was looking forward to finishing his latest, the massive two-volume The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State, about his most recent expedition.
“Your books have been by my bedside each night,” she said. “The many hours I have already passed in your company have made me think that I already know you somewhat.”
Such flattery, however, he regarded with suspicion, having the notion that certain members of the aristocracy, when finished with their collecting of country estates, finery, jewelry, and paintings, tended to collect people: Why should this lady, attractive and sincere as she might seem, be any different?
Altogether, for Stanley, it had been a worthwhile encounter, but he made nothing more of it. In parting, they exchanged calling cards, Miss Tennant telling Stanley that they would surely see each other again, that shortly he would receive an invitation to dine at her home on Richmond Terrace.
THAT NIGHT, AS HE SAT UP in the bedroom of his New Bond Street flat, with a few of the Scotties he adopted from the Battersea Home for Animals dozing on one of the carpets by his bedside, his heart beat rapidly. He decided to write a note to his friend William Mackinnon to inquire if he had any insights about Dorothy Tennant—“Is she worth the trouble of knowing? Is she serious or really just another frivolous person?” he asked, but while jotting this missive down, by the light of a gas lamp, he decided that such a query was premature. What did he know of women, anyway? He recalled that the furthest he had advanced by way of expressions of affection was a few kisses in the garden behind Alice Pike’s Fifth Avenue mansion; well, truthfully, it was she who did the kissing, her soft and moist lips pressing against his neck, his cheek, his ears, and then with the warm bloom of her perfume and hair enveloping him, she had kissed his lips—her tongue, like some small creature, entering his mouth with force.
His thoughts drifted again, women and their physical natures confounding him: Why was it that he thought of himself sitting in his tent in the Congo one early evening during his last expedition? As he was
writing in his journal, a young Negress, naked save for a loincloth, entered—the “gift” of the slave trader Tippu Tib, with whom Stanley had had dealings. Why was it that he hardly acknowledged her when she knelt down near him and, with a vacant but somewhat willing expression upon her face, lay back on a mat, lifted her loincloth, spread apart her legs, and awaited him? Why was it that he did not send her away but allowed her to lie there while he made some notes, quickly glancing at her and thinking, “But my God, what a comely and deliciously shaped woman”? Only for a moment did he get carried away and, unable to prevent himself, pass the palm of his hand all along her body. But even then when he was feeling a physical ardency, he refused to give in and finally sent her happily away. “Please tell your master that I am thankful.”
It was the kind of thing that happened to him from time to time: In those wilds, beautiful and nubile women passed from man to man in the way that one would give a book to a friend in England. Although he would always abstain, in such a setting it was not easy. Death traveled with his expeditions, and his native porters, having brought along their wives, would punctuate the loon-cry-filled night with the savage noises of fornications carried out as if there would be no tomorrow. In the end, knowing that with little effort he could have a most beautiful concubine to do with as he pleased, he considered his abstinence a matter of moral fortitude, reading the Bible whenever such temptations came to him.
TRUE TO HER WORD, a few days afterward, as Stanley sat before his writing desk, a summons to her home for a formal dinner arrived at his residence by courier. At first he thought to politely turn her down, as he did with so many other invitations, but his memory of Miss Tennant’s warmth—and forwardness—had given him pause; and so, to test the waters of a potential courtship, he wrote a note of acceptance.
THOUGH HER FATHER HAD BEEN DEAD for many years, she believed that he was ever-present in her life, and nightly she addressed him in her diary.
Dear Father,
I am aflutter with anticipation over the dinner party Mother and I have planned. We have invited, among many interesting individuals, no less a figure than the Prime Minister Gladstone himself, a very brave thing as far as Mother and I are concerned, particularly given the controversy about the death of General Gordon back in January: But I feel astonished to say that we have succeeded, for Gladstone has consented to come. That is all very well, but now I am wondering if I was wise in also inviting another most charming man, Henry Stanley, the explorer, who is known to dislike the prime minister. Oh, dear God, help me, for I wonder if in my eagerness to please and impress Mr. Stanley I have made a mistake in judgment. What will I do should these two formidable men meet and not get along? Yet I am hoping for good things to come of it anyway. Goodnight, my darling.
The Evening Saved by Samuel Clemens
BY THE EVENING OF JUNE 24, in addition to Stanley, the guest list, as organized by Dorothy’s mother, Gertrude, a longtime doyenne of London social life, had, to Stanley’s eventual dismay, grown to include Prime Minister William Gladstone, a man Stanley considered a monomaniac, and his cabinet colleague Joseph Chamberlain, two of the most important and powerful politicians in England, then electioneering for their next terms. Stanley and Gladstone disliked each other. Of a liberal cast of mind, the prime minister held the opinion that Stanley, having done much more harm than good in Africa, was a ruthless and dangerous fool, and he had often said so in public. And for his part, Stanley, aside from being aware of Gladstone’s unkind opinion of him, thought him the worst kind of leader, as he had felt greatly incensed and grieved over the unnecessary loss of his friend General Gordon, the governor of the Sudan, who died some six months before at Khartoum, where he had been besieged by an army of Islamic fanatics and beheaded. This Stanley blamed on Gladstone’s failure to send in the British army to relieve Gordon in a timely fashion.
Which is to say that when Stanley first entered into the grand parlor of the Tennant mansion, on Richmond Terrace, where cocktails and Champagne were being served by servants in livery, he was not in the best of moods, and he was not looking forward to encountering the prime minister. Neither he nor Gladstone spoke to one another, even though at one point during cocktails they were standing nearly back-to-back. Gladstone, tall, aloof, and imperious in bearing, would not even allow Stanley into his sight, and when he happened to turn his stately and very large, high-browed head in Stanley’s direction, the detachment of the prime minister’s expression struck Stanley as being typical of the kind of upper-class haughtiness that he, since boyhood, had always strongly despised. And though he had made no overtures to meet the great politician, refusing to give ground and preferring to make conversation with the shipping magnate William Mackinnon, he considered the prime minister’s behavior a slight.
But all these feelings gave way when Dorothy Tennant, lovely in a silken French dress, joined the gathering. In that instant, as she moved across the crowded room, his annoyance with Gladstone dissipated and his eyes lit warmly at the sight of her, as she had warmed at the sight of him. Her pleasure at seeing Stanley was so evident that her mother, Gertrude, a former beauty and a society snob down to her deepest molecule—the kind of older woman who would fuss over the most handsome men in the room—puzzled over her daughter’s interest in that “long-winded little man.” Upon meeting him Gertrude had not been charmed at all by Stanley or particularly impressed by the legend surrounding his exploits. She thought he looked like a bank clerk and had only reluctantly included Stanley on the invitation list because of his fame and her daughter’s insistence. She ascribed Dorothy’s interest in Stanley to the eccentricity of her artistic spirit, and perhaps because of some vague similarity in appearance between Stanley and her late husband, Charles, whose painted, gold-leaf-framed visage occupied a prominent place in the room. Gertrude, a widow of some twelve years, put Stanley’s presence at the dinner in the same category as certain of Dorothy’s other seemingly capricious, whim-driven acts.
Still careless and carefree at thirty, Gertrude’s “little girl” remained a kind of flighty bohemian aesthete, one for whom, Gertrude hoped, Stanley was nothing more than another street urchin to be painted and cared for—albeit one of great reputation and quite grown up, but still a “common” element brought home and only valuable as an item of fleeting interest.
Despite her mother’s opinions, Dorothy fawned over him. For all the fearlessness that surrounded his legend, she found Stanley a man of vulnerability and, at heart, quite lonely-seeming. Fiercely intelligent, he seemed to know much about the world in all its details (how enchanted would she be to tell him about the little street urchins she loved to paint and to show him her portraits of the beautiful Lady Ashburton, a dear friend whom she had depicted as a living Venus, and of Benoît-Constant Coquelin, the famous French actor, for whom the play Cyrano de Bergerac would later be written). No matter that he was not very tall; he was formidable all the same, and his presence in a room was felt by everyone around him. And there was something else: She liked the difference in their ages, drew comfort from it, as in many ways Stanley, with his hair gray and aged before his time because of his expeditions and the many illnesses attending them, reminded Miss Tennant of her late father, a landed Welshman and former member of Parliament whose passing she had never gotten over. “How wonderfully smart you look tonight, Mr. Stanley,” she said upon seeing him. “I hope you are well—you certainly look so.” Then: “Surely you have made the acquaintance of Prime Minister Gladstone?”
“As he has been busily talking, I did not wish to disturb him.”
“Well, then, if you have not made his acquaintance, you should know that you will be sitting across from him at dinner.”
“I cannot wait for that honor.”
Later, with Dorothy’s arm hooked into his, Stanley made his way out of the parlor into the dining room: There, two long tables, covered by French lace tablecloths and cluttered with plates, stemmed tulip glasses, and bouquets in silver vases, glowed white under two
hanging gaslight chandeliers. Some thirty or so guests were accommodated.
Once the guests were seated, Gertrude addressed the gathering, her “dear exalted company of London’s luminaries.” Reciting the names of each, she gave special mention to a few, among them the dashing painter James McNeill Whistler, the Right Reverend Hughes, vicar of St. Paul’s, then Stanley himself.
“But as illustrious as these guests are, there is none more notable among us than our prime minister, William Gladstone, who has honored us with his attendance.”
As the elderly Gladstone, with his fifty years of public service showing in the many lines on his gaunt and grave face, stood up, bowing, so did the participants of the dinner, clapping and clinking their glasses with their utensils in his honor. Gloomily contemplating his hands, Stanley had been one of the last to get out of his chair. But as he did, Gladstone noticed it, giving Stanley a disdainful sidelong glance; then, asking the gathering to sit, he gave a short speech, in which, among other subjects, he addressed the necessity of establishing an Irish Free State and matters of commerce. Of Africa and his failure to relieve General Gordon at Khartoum some months before, a great national tragedy, he made no mention.
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise Page 19
