Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

by Oscar Hijuelos

  Stanley helped Clemens to dress, which is to say that he picked out his outfit from a closet, a dark frock coat and a pair of Harris Tweed trousers along with a clean white shirt; and although Clemens resisted, so Stanley later told me, he had stood over a washbasin while Stanley shaved him. When he finally emerged from his room, quite improved in his appearance by my husband’s ministrations, we heard him saying: “Just look at me, ladies. It seems that Stanley has half revived a dead man.” Then: “Though it is a hard fact, I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “Look here, Samuel,” Stanley said. “As it’s a beautiful day, why don’t we get out of here for a while? The ladies have packed a picnic. The fresh air will do you good.”

  “I will if you think I should,” he said. “But mind you, you will be picnicking with a somnambulist; a walking ghost. Yes, let us go: Lead me on, and do make sure that the vultures out there leave me alone.”

  BY HIRED CARRIAGE WE PROCEEDED to a meadow a few miles out of town. There we found a congenial place under a spreading elm near a brook, along which there were some good-size rocks on which we might sit. Clemens, stretching his legs and looking around, allowed that it was as pretty a spot as he had ever seen. As we sat to have some bread and cheese, Mother serving us all, I asked Samuel if he was willing to speak about his journey to India as a way of distracting him. “Was there any one place you found especially agreeable?”

  “‘India’ and ‘agreeable’ are not two words I would put together in any sentence,” he said. “But I will allow that there are some pretty interesting places—like Benares. I think we were most impressed with the Taj Mahal at Agra: what gardens, what flowers, what flaming poinciana trees! And all surrounding the vast ivory-white Taj Mahal—a tomb, big as any palace, built by a Mogul emperor grieving for his dead wife, but one did not think of it that way. A majestic place, and so pretty I can remember thinking that Susy would have very much enjoyed seeing it. I don’t know if she would have been up to the hard parts of travel, but Livy, frail as she was, bravely got through the whole business. But now my Susy will never see anything beautiful again. And all because of me.”

  “My friend,” Stanley said, “I know what you are feeling is of the greatest difficulty; but remember that she loved you, and that is the best thing of all.”

  “Oh, yes, she did, certainly she did: And what did she get for it but death?”

  “Why would you even think that, Samuel?” I ventured to ask.

  “Why? I’ll tell you: If I hadn’t let my partner, Charles Webster, run my publishing house into the ground, and if I hadn’t gone deeper into bankruptcy because of that blasted Paige typesetting machine, I would never have had to go on my world tour. And if I hadn’t gone on that tour I would have been with Susy, and she wouldn’t have gotten sick with worry and would be alive today.”

  “Samuel,” my husband said, “you’re thinking irrationally. Calm yourself.”

  “Easy to say, Henry; hard to do. The worst of it for me is that I know how my dear Livy will be sorely affected; she is at sea even as we sit here. What she’ll do when she finally hears the news worries me most of all. If it doesn’t kill her, I’m sure she’ll wish it had.”

  Then: “The hardest thing is that as a family we were on the verge of finding some normalcy again. I finished a new novel, about Joan of Arc—we know how that ended—and my debts were all but paid; it was time for us as a family to go forward. But somehow, even when we settled in town, I had a hunch that things might go wrong—just how wrong I could not have imagined. I’d stay in the house with Livy and Clara until about five, writing—or trying to write. Supper would be at seven, but in the few hours before that I would venture forth into town to have a half and half in the pub: Few knew me, and no one had read my books, but just the same they were awfully friendly.”

  In seeking to change the subject, Mother brought up the writer Gustave Flaubert, whom she had once known in the days of her youth in Paris, but Clemens didn’t seem to hear a single word of what she said, his sad eyes looking off into the distance. So great was his melancholy that Stanley also seemed affected in a way that he was not with others: His hardened soul somehow always softened in the presence of that man. We sat in that place for around an hour or so, and at around four, as I remained with Mother, Clemens and my husband went for a walk along a trail in the woods. Upon their return we accompanied Clemens back to his rented house, where we said our good-byes, Stanley assuring Clemens that should he be needed he would drop everything else to see him. “No need to,” Clemens said. “I’ve gotten accustomed to my bit of purgatory.”

  “Well, we will see you again,” Stanley said. “I hope under better circumstances.”

  “Will there ever be better circumstances?” Clemens asked.

  LATER, ON THE TRAIN BACK to London, I asked my husband what he and Clemens had talked about during their walk in the woods; they had been gone for about half an hour.

  “It was not so much what we spoke about that was interesting,” Stanley told me. “It was what happened. During our walk he spoke mainly of his daughter, as if there had been nothing else in the world: I could not blame him, his tragedy being so recent. I listened, admitting that I would not know what I would feel if something happened to our little Denzil. But as always, our paths diverged on the subject of God and the afterlife, as I tried to offer him the solace that a heavenly reward awaited her. He had no use for such ideas, though he wished that what I said was true for his wife’s sake. He then told me that in the midst of all his misery the only time he felt any relief was during a fleeting dream from the night before, about a blue jay alighting upon his arm. In that dream the delicate little creature had somehow managed to lift him up off the ground into the air—the sensation of floating free from the troubles of the world having greatly pleased him. When I told Clemens that I thought it was a dream about Susy’s spirit, about this he also disagreed. But no sooner had I mentioned it than a blue jay appeared before us on the path, picking around for seeds; and then, strangely enough, it lifted off the ground and alighted briefly on Samuel’s shoulder before taking off again. When I said, ‘Ah, you see, dear Samuel, there is someone listening,’ he allowed that it was a memorable coincidence but left it at that. I suddenly pitied the man as I never had before—even after the passing of the years, his is still a godless world. We continued our walk in silence.”

  From Stanley’s Notebook

  A SMALL STORY: AS WE WALKED in the woods, Samuel told me a dream he’d had—“the only one, besides imagining Joan of Arc burning at the stake,” wherein he had been visited by a blue bird that had given him the magical ability to fly. Knowing a little of dream symbols, I tried to plant the notion in Clemens’s mind that it had been about Susy’s soul, newly released into God’s universe; but just as he began to take it as a more or less pleasant thing, along the trail in front of us we came across a gravely injured creature—a blue bird, in fact, writhing upon the ground, its pellet eyes twitching with helplessness, the sight of which saddened Clemens even more. He nearly wept then, but being a manly sort, he restrained himself. I broke the spell by offering him a cigar, and we made our way back. Later, for Dolly’s sake, I reported the story about the bird differently so as to conform with her optimistic belief that in life there are always happy endings. I disagree, and so does Samuel.

  From Lady Stanley’s Journal, Autumn 1896

  WHEN MR. CLEMENS’S WIFE and daughters arrived in England, they remained in seclusion with him in Guildford for several months, seeing no visitors, not even my husband. “Dear Stanley: I hope you understand this, but ‘life has stopped’ for us for the time being,” Clemens wrote in those days. Of course we understood their difficulties: Stanley himself had made several attempts to bolster Clemens’s spirits by way of sending him parcels of books, and Mother and I, with great concern, saw to it that the family received some baskets of special foods from our better shops—we could do no less. (Mrs. Clemens wrote a note of appreciation.) As to what they mu
st have been feeling in those days I cannot imagine, and as much as we would have liked to help, we naturally respected their need for privacy. But thankfully their stay in Guildford was not a prolonged one, and by early October they had taken up residence here in London, renting a house on Tedworth Square, in Chelsea, though we had yet to see them again.

  THAT CHRISTMAS, DOROTHY, however troubled she may have felt over Clemens’s sufferings, remained her resolutely cheerful and optimistic self. As she did every holiday season, she presided over a campaign to raise funds for charity and spent several mornings visiting the households of her affluent friends to solicit donations—successfully so, for within a fortnight she had raised more than a thousand pounds, a sum that did not include her and Stanley’s own substantial contribution. (These funds she distributed equally among three relief agencies: the Destitute Children’s Dinner Society, the London Orphan Asylum, and the Home for Friendless Young Females of Good Character.) But just as dutifully, she threw a party in mid-December for a gathering of her favorite urchins, those children who had been her subjects: About eight of them, in their Sunday best, turned up at the mansion with their mothers or older sisters to partake of a grand feast that included a roast goose, mince pies and cake, and many other niceties, including a plum pudding into which Dorothy had secreted coins of the realm. To each of these children, from “Little Mary” to “Sad Tim,” she had given a toy—a pennywhistle or a tin drum, a doll or cup game—and each, regardless of sex, received a picture book, gloves, and woolen caps and scarves. For the families themselves there was a basket of tinned jams and biscuits and other sweet viands along with an envelope containing a five-pound note. She served a sweet punch, and with the fireplace blazing and the children in an ecstatic state over the wreaths and holly set out here and there along the mantel, she presided over one of the most satisfying luncheons of her year.

  This fete began just after noon; by two, with many delights having passed their lips, the children had become raucous. It was an affair that Stanley, off in his study, largely ignored, though at one point, while sitting down to work on some correspondence—nearly daily he wrote at least a short note to Clemens, inquiring after his well-being—he, somewhat distracted, decided to look in on the proceedings. When he appeared by the parlor doorway, white-haired, his expression stern, and with the gravity of his commanding bearing pouring forth, the children, in the midst of a happy reverie and playing their toy instruments, at once stopped making their cacophonous music. While he had thought to request that they quiet down, once he saw their little stunned faces, not a one yet ruined by the harshness of the life awaiting them, he simply looked around and mumbled, “Don’t mind me, lads and little misses; just carry on.”

  He pretended to look around in a drawer for a cigar cutter, then sat down in a corner chair for a few minutes, a cigar in hand, taking it all in, with both sadness and joy, such a scene reminding the explorer emeritus (as the RGS referred to him) of what “might once have been” at St. Asaph’s.

  DESPITE THE HAPPY DOMESTICITY around him, he was greatly disturbed by what he had been reading in the newspapers recently about the Congo. The reports were not a constant feature, appearing intermittently, but now and then, as he would sit down at his home on Richmond Terrace to look over the morning dailies, there would be some item relating to alleged colonial atrocities in the region. One such report came by way of an American missionary named Murphy, who, traveling in the region, had testified about the methods used by the Belgians for the harvesting of rubber in order to meet their weekly quotas: “It is collected by force. The soldiers drive the people into the bush. If they will not accede to this forced labor, they are shot down, and their left hands cut off and taken as trophies to the commissaire. These hands are then smoked in small kilns and, thusly preserved, laid out in rows before the commissaire, who counts them to see that the soldiers have not wasted cartridges.”

  Other accounts, including one by a pious Swedish missionary named Sjoblom, claimed that rapes and kidnappings were common events and that entire villages were burned down and their inhabitants either taken into slavery or killed.

  Now and then, while out in public, where people once stopped to shake his hand or ask for his autograph, Stanley would occasionally be approached by persons who wished to take issue with him, if not insult him outright. While strolling along Oxford Street one day with Dolly and his mother-in-law, he was approached by a man who was brazen enough to spit at Stanley’s shoes, and it took great restraint for Stanley not to administer him a beating with his cane—the man ran away in any case and was soon lost in the crowd. Stanley blamed the erosion of his reputation not only on the contradictory reports that had come out about Africa (how was it that some said he was the cruelest man to have trod African soil while others said that he was the kindest, in the mode of Livingstone?) but also on one particular penny pamphlet that was, unfortunately, being widely read in England at the time. It was called Stanley’s Exploits, or, Civilising Africa, and it had been written by one D. J. Nicoll, a socialist; its tone was set by its frontispiece. In it, Stanley is shown in a jungle clearing, his hands clasped in prayer, while behind him, dangling from a tree, hangs an African native.

  As Stanley sat in his study that Christmas of 1896, the very idea that he, after all his efforts in Africa, might be associated with such allegations or that his explorations had in any way led to such things depressed him greatly.

  “No—it cannot possibly be,” he said over and over to himself.

  From Lady Stanley’s Journal, circa 1896

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE at four o’clock, Gladstone came by for a few minutes to greet the family in his gentlemanly manner (he had congratulated Stanley on his election into Parliament and for a change there had been no evident tension between them). Later, William James and his timid but brilliant brother Henry arrived: So did Bram Stoker, Lady Ashburton, the Edwin Arnolds, and the Arthur Conan Doyles.

  Altogether it was a congenial gathering; cocktails were followed by the singing of traditional carols, with Mother at the piano, and all our participants were in a merry state.

  Throughout the evening Stanley, for his part, remained in good spirits, which is to say he did not break into an argument with anyone. He seemed rather subdued, in fact, and Mother and I noticed that he was in a somewhat quiet and introspective mood. I cannot say if some matter of health bothered him (the day before he had taken to his bedroom quite early in the evening, complaining of some discomforts), but it was likely that Clemens’s absence from our celebration disappointed him.

  Later, as we bade farewell to our guests and gave them each a basket of “good cheer”—containing a bottle of fine Champagne and other niceties—Stanley, somewhat restlessly, made it a point to head out with a lantern onto the flagstone road fronting Richmond Terrace to officiate the orderly progress of carriages that were pulling up one by one to receive their passengers. Stanley sent each of our guests off with a cordial farewell. I watched him from our front window—the little man, my darling, despite the chill of the night, in his commanding fashion seeing to their orderly departure.

  As the last carriage left it began to snow, and as the feathery white fell around him I noticed Stanley looking up into the sky. Then he began turning in a circle, his head arched back, spinning slowly around, as would a child, and if I am not mistaken, he was laughing—I thought it a good thing that no other persons were on hand to witness this uncharacteristically eccentric act, but I doubt he would have been twirling around had he known that I was watching him from our window. For a few minutes he continued in this fashion, then he started back toward our door, pausing by the top step to take another look; though he was hatless and wore no overcoat and must have surely been chilled, it was as if he did not want to come inside, much enjoying his exposure to the purity of the elements. But thankfully, his common sense prevailed, and he came back into the house; he was shaking from the cold but made nothing of it and quickly settled into the comfort of our parlor�
�s warmth.

  Mother had gone to bed, so Stanley and I sat alone in front of the fireplace. It having occurred to me that he might have had too much to drink that evening—for every time I had looked at him during dinner he seemed to have yet another glass of brandy in his hand—I asked him if he might want a cup of tea. This he declined, testily, calling in one of our servants to bring him some brandy instead. Then, in a deeply pensive mood, staring into the fire, he loosened his cravat and warmed his brandy with a lit vesta, sipping the drink slowly, his eyes widening. In such moments I always supposed he was remembering some distant place or some moment of great enchantment or grief.

  ON PSYCHICS

  CHRISTMAS DAY, 1896: While the Stanley household bustled with visitors, Stanley himself spent much of that afternoon in an idyll of pride and wonderment as friends came by to look upon their infant, who, like a princeling, lay in his crib under a silken canopy in the parlor. Meanwhile, Clemens and his family sat inside their flat, estranged to any Yuletide cheer—the writer huddled in his study; his wife, Livy, sitting by a window and staring out as a fresh snowfall came drifting down over Tedworth Square. But the loveliness of it all, that whiteness that purified the gutters, turned into slush after a cold rain. They passed the time reading aloud Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Clara practiced scales upon a rented piano, but there was not a single mention of Christmas, their solemnity being so resolute and great. They gave out no presents and had no tree, not even a simple wreath; their only shopping trip in those days yielded, for the females, black ladies’ mourning hats affixed with widow’s veils. Even several of the parcels they’d received from Richmond Terrace they left untouched, waiting until well after the New Year to open them.