“I could not have done better myself,” he said. “Well, let me see what I can do for you. Mr. Speake, the owner of this warehouse, always comes in after nine. Until then, we will have ample time to discuss the nature of his business. Perhaps he will have a use for you.”
We stopped in a restaurant, where, famished, I ate to my heart’s content; and because I was in such a disreputable state we then visited a barbershop, where, at my benefactor’s suggestion—and expense—I was cleaned up, my hair shampooed and trimmed, and my face shaved: Then a Negro boy dusted off my coat, pressed it under an iron, and polished my boots. By the time we returned to the warehouse Mr. Speake was in his office. I do not believe I have ever seen so thin a man outside of a circus or one who used so much hair dye and tonic, for, parted in the middle, his hair glistened like wet coal, and he possessed a nervous twitch, which made his sharp nose seem skittish.
He conducted a short interview with me on the spot, asking if I could add. When I told him I could, he smiled and, winking at his gentleman friend—my benefactor—posed the following question:
“What say you of the following addition: If there are twenty-seven cases of soap at four cents a bar, with ninety-six bars per case, and a markup of one and one-half cents per each—what profit would that yield per case?”
“One dollar and forty-four cents,” I said after a few moments of calculation.
Mr. Speake hired me that day, on a temporary trial basis, for what seemed at the time like the princely sum of five dollars per week. I would be a general assistant in that place, to perform at first many menial tasks until I learned the ropes. But he told me that he would be away for a month or so, traveling upriver with his consignments, and that he hoped to hear good accounts of my work upon his return.
That same evening, after acquainting myself with some of the inventory in the store, since I had no place to go, I was given a cot and a blanket and shown to a storage room in the back. Resting in my cot that night, I had the strange thought that just a few days before I had been in a more or less untenable situation and that my status as a ship’s lackey was changed by the simple possession of my Bible.
NOW, IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED I was put to work alongside the two slaves—Dan and Samuel—preparing all manner of items for shipment. It was my direct superior, Mr. Richardson, who prepared the bills of lading, and it was my responsibility, being able to read, to retrieve such goods from storage. Many of my hours were spent up on a ladder with a slip of paper in hand, sorting through the disorder of the inventory, which seemed quite arbitrarily arranged, in one or another of the three lofts that stretched above the ground floor some one hundred feet along the length of the premises. Cases of wine and brandies and syrups and other groceries were stacked randomly without concern for order: Bottles of Scotch whiskey might be found in three or four different locations; a crate of a certain brand of rye would be sitting under a stack of crated candles or soaps; tins of chewing tobacco would be lost somewhere under a pyramid of English tea tins. The ground floor was no better organized.
“Little boss, why you want to work so hard? Better to leave something for tomorrow,” Dan and Samuel would say.
But in truth I was incapable of lying idle for even a few moments; the disorder of the place disturbed my peace of mind. Even the respectable Mr. Richardson, who filled out the bills of lading, dealt with steamship pursers, and kept the ledger books, had a maddening tendency to throw all our completed invoices into a barrel that he kept behind a counter without much concern for the possibility that they might be needed again. Several times he set me to work sorting through them. On one occasion, when a cotton planter, up in a place called Attakapas, claimed that he had been shorted of certain items, the finding of the original invoices, made out some months before, took—and wasted—several hours that might have otherwise been constructively spent. (My readers may be wondering why I am mentioning such things; but it is because from such disorder I learned the importance of keeping proper records and inventory, a lesson that would serve me well in my future provisioning of my Africa expeditions.) And there was something else: Aside from my tendency toward work, I wanted to reflect well on my benefactor’s faith in me.
I did not know very much about him at the time: I only learned his name, Mr. Henry Stanley, by asking. But it was from the shipment manager, Mr. Richardson, that I ascertained, through conversations with him, the exact nature of Mr. Stanley’s professional life. The brunt of his business was in trading cotton. He would travel upriver by steamship, bargain with cotton planters on behalf of the New Orleans merchants, and offer the planters grocery goods—the necessities that were sold in the most remote outposts and settlements along the Arkansas and Saline Rivers. Loaded up with consignments of everything from coffee to combs, tooth powder to razors, he set out north and returned with huge shipments of cotton, which, processed through his own cotton press, he then sold to the merchants of New Orleans. And sometimes, his route took him to the West Indies, and principally to Havana, Cuba, where Mr. Stanley’s brother, a certain Captain John, had an office in port, those journeys concentrating on the sugar and tobacco trade and Havana cigars, for which, in New Orleans, Mr. Stanley was a noted supplier.
Apparently Mr. Stanley lived well—in a fine house on St. Charles Avenue, and had a wife and, it was said, a commendable education as befitting a proper southern gentleman. As for his relationship with my employer, as he had frequent dealings with him and other merchants along that street, he paid Mr. Speake a small fee to keep him a desk in the back of the store, which he visited from time to time during his days back in that strange city.
DURING MY FIRST WEEKS THERE I got to know the slaves quite well. I would say I knew them better than I did any of the white clerks, for in the many hours that we spent loading up the drays, or when we would take a break and sit in front of the store just watching the processions of passersby and carriages on the street, they spoke kindly of their own families and seemed, on the whole, aware of the fact that even if they were slaves, their jobs in the store, lasting some six days a week, weren’t so bad when compared to the very hard labors of the plantation workers upriver. No Simon Legree, Mr. Speake paid them some small wage so that they might live in their own little sheds, and he allowed them to hire themselves out to other merchants, on their own time. Materially poor, they seemed to derive their happiness out of small pleasures—at lunch Dan liked to play a harmonica, while Samuel stuck a Jew’s harp in his mouth to twang along with him. They treated even a smallish gift of a handful of candies, which the clerks sometimes gave them, like a treasure. They seemed to know every other slave on the street—their lunch hours passed with a litany of “How’re yuh” and greetings to various friends, and all manner of social exchange, such as invitations to dance parties or birthday celebrations. Most of their friends were slaves, like themselves, but the most important black man on the street was a freed Negro—New Orleans had more freed slaves than any other city in the South—a certain Dr. Brown, a thin, well-dressed man of an erect posture and serious bearing, elegant as any physician, who mainly treated the slaves working in that district, as many a white doctor refused to. He’d come down Tchoupitoulas making his calls, politely tipping his hat whenever Dan and Samuel greeted him; upon occasion he nodded at me in a friendly way.
If they lived in fear of any of the clerks, it was Mr. McKinney, who sometimes stood sternly by watching them work, a switch in his hand, as if he were some kind of slave driver; and they always piped down whenever the burly local constable, Mr. McPhearson, passed by, giving them a contemptuous glance.
I had been sleeping in that back room for several weeks, an infelicitous situation, when one evening, as I was helping sweep out the shop, the slave Dan, perhaps feeling sorry for me, told me that he knew of a refined black woman, a certain Mrs. Williams, who ran a decent and clean boardinghouse with cheap rates on St. Thomas Street. And so he arranged to take me there to find a room. At dusk one evening, as I walked beside them al
ong Tchoupitoulas Street, on my way to Mrs. Williams’s, we fell into conversation.
“Where’s that place you say you come from again, Little Boss?” Dan, the more cheerful of the two, asked me.
“A village in north Wales called Denbigh.”
“What’d he say?”
“In north Wales, over in England!”
“Oh, the queen’s country, is that right?”
“They’ve got castles and dragons over there, I hear,” said Samuel. “Don’t they have castles, Mr. John?”
“Denbigh has a castle,” I said. “Put up by a very evil English king, a fellow named Edward Longshanks.”
They howled at both my Welsh accent and the image of a man with such a name.
“You live around here?” I asked Dan.
“Yes, suh, not too far away, in a little shack, behind a slaughterhouse. It’s not much, but it’s a home; my wife, she works, too, as a laundress; and my children work, too, plucking feathers for a chicken farmer.”
Ever curious about the slave’s life, in my ignorance, I asked: “And how did you end up a slave?”
He laughed. “There was no ‘end up.’ My father was brought here as a slave, through Natchez: and I was born so. It’s all I know, suh.”
“And your father, Samuel?”
“My pappy, he died a long time ago. Up in one of the plantations. Me, I was the lucky one, being traded by a planter to Mr. Speake for some two hundred dollars’ worth of dry goods, when I was a boy.”
“’Tis a sad thing, not having a father.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of a whole lot worse, Little Boss; all kinds of families broken up all the time. Little ones never seeing their folks; husbands took from their wives. At least I got my own family—and Mr. Speake said that maybe one day he give us all our freedoms. When he dies, anyway—and I’m sure he’s in no hurry. Anyway, this is Mrs. Williams’s boardinghouse.”
Then, standing on its porch, he called in: “Mrs. Williams, I’m here with the white fella I told you about.”
ENTERING HER BOARDINGHOUSE, I was much taken by Mrs. Williams’s amicable presence. Maternal in her manner, she was apologetic that I would have to make do with the highest and therefore warmest room in her house, in the attic, as all the other rooms were rented. But at one dollar and fifty cents per week, with meals, I found the accommodations more than adequate. The room was small, with an arched ceiling, and had a shuttered window that opened out over the back garden and some magnolia trees—it pleased me that it faced north, for then I would be able to see the moon and stars rise.
Even though she was a Mrs., I never saw her husband around: Perhaps she was widowed—I did not know and never thought to ask her, but in any case she seemed quite self-sufficient. Often as her last act of the day, around ten at night, after she’d served supper and cleared off the dining table, Mrs. Williams took out a money box, and, figuring out her expenses, put a few dollars into a envelope—I supposed to send to relatives. Altogether, aside from liking her, I was very impressed by what she had done with her “free” status in that city known for its commerce in slaves, as her humble prosperity seemed to me further evidence of the equity of American life.
WITHIN A SHORT TIME at the firm, my trial period passed, and I was hired permanently at the rate of twenty-five dollars a month. Evidently my efforts to reorganize the warehouse had impressed Mr. Speake, who day by day began to notice the subtle changes and new order of the place. Shortly my direct dealings with Dan and Samuel ended, which is to say I no longer loaded drays with them. And while I remained just a junior clerk, I had been given, with my promotion, many other duties, including bookkeeping. Few things escaped my attention: if I saw a leaking coffee sack, I sewed it shut myself; or if a bottle of wine shattered on the floor, I thought nothing about mopping it up.
Certain of my fellow clerks began to fear me, or, I should say, they became wary of my alert presence. A few, such as the bookkeeper, Mr. Kennicy, were secret drinkers. He was also disdainful of my friendliness with the slaves. About his drinking addiction I did not care, though some sloppy, miscalculated invoices I attributed to his inebriation. But as to my doings with Dan and Samuel, I thought him clearly wrong. After all, this was America, the land of free speech, of a Constitution that protected personal rights, a country founded on the aspirations of men seeking a society that would be free of the class restrictions of a monarchy like England. The soundness of the slave system itself I did not, in my youthful ignorance of slaves’ sufferings, question: I believed it was part of a greater design, and surely, supernatural reasoning aside, it was of indeterminable practical value to the economy of the South. What I objected to was the unfair treatment of such slaves and the cruelties I had heard were rendered to them. Needless to say, a strained relationship, if not an enmity, existed between me and the bookkeeper, but I was not worried, as Mr. Kennicy, in his pickled state, could do little more than insult me behind my back.
AS I HAD A WAY of quickly forming attachments to a place, my attic room at Mrs. Williams’s became my refuge. With my monthly upkeep at ten dollars or so, out of my surplus of fifteen—minus what I would pay in increments to Mr. Speake for a loan—I put a certain portion, fifteen percent, into the acquisition of books. What I had already read I wanted to expand upon, particularly in the realm of imaginary writings, that of novels and poetry, in which I was greatly wanting. My initial purchase, I remember, was a crumbling copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the opening lines of which—
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe…
—I strongly took as the essential truth of our fleeting existence. Enthralled by my elevation into the poet’s mind, much greater than my own, I spent one entire evening reading that volume by the light of a kerosene lamp from beginning to end, until my eyes ached: I did not care if I felt a little tired in the morning—I had endless amounts of energy then, and no illnesses had laid me low. Besides, I did not like to sleep; or, to put it differently, I did not like the nightmares that often came to me. Nonetheless I had the solace of my books: If some men went after women or became rhapsodic with alcohol, my addictions, I discovered, were to work and to read what I construed as literature.
It wasn’t long, flush with surplus funds, before I acquired other volumes: Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Pope’s translation of Homer, Plutarch’s Lives, and Simplicius on Epictetus, among others: and as I was very ignorant about America, a great many volumes on its history as well. (As a matter of interest to my readers, regarding my future African exploits, I also happened upon a copy of David Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, which I read over a period of several days, little knowing how this man, the so-called apostle of Africa, would later figure in my own life.)
Soon, within that little attic room, my world was contained—I had no need for anything else. During such evenings I forgot myself and became a creature of words. I, who had always learned by mimicry and observation, found myself dreaming of sonnets, couplets, and of great histories of my own.
AT THE END OF THAT first month, Mr. Stanley returned to the warehouse from his travels, and, learning of my contributions to the running of that place, was deeply pleased.
One afternoon, a small crisis—a discrepancy involving some jugs of sweet white Malmsey wine—arose. It was a Saturday. I had overheard Dan speaking about a birthday party for his little girl, to be held at his place the next day.
During his lunch hour, Dan sat in front of the warehouse inviting just about every black man and woman who went by to his party—“It’ll be an all-out joy of joys!” he declared. He even invited me, and I planned on going, along with Mrs. Williams.
The day before I had inspected every single jug of Malmsey wine and judged most of them full: My chalked X on the side marked them so. Nevertheless, several jugs were now appreciably depleted. I had no choice but to
look around. Knowing the slaves’ habits—they tended to linger in the unseen recesses of the upper lofts, where, I already knew, they opened cases of licorices and candies and took a few things now and then—I asked Dan to hold steady a ladder as I climbed up into the lofts to investigate: He seemed somewhat apprehensive at my ascent.
“Why you going up there, Little Boss?” Dan asked. “Ain’t nothing there,” he kept on saying. But once I set my feet down on the floor of that low-ceilinged loft—you had to crouch to go anywhere—I began to look around. It was in a broom closet that I made the unpleasant discovery of one of their lunch buckets, filled to the brim with the sweet wine. I also found a cache of tinned sardines and biscuits and jellies stashed beside it.
“Dan,” I called down to him. “Come here.” And when he climbed up and I showed him the evidence of their theft, I asked: “What could you have been thinking?”
“Mr. Kennicy put us up to it at first. He said, ‘Give me half—you take the other half.’ A lot of Scotch and rye bottles are low, too. I didn’t want to, Mr. John, but I swear, we were put up to it.”
“Well, then,” I asked, “if you were me, what would you do?”
“I don’t know. But I’m asking myself, what’s a few ounces of such and such a cheap wine to a business with so many thousands of things all around? Heck, they’ll make the money anyways—they wouldn’t be doing this otherwise—and Mr. Kennicy, he steals more from this place than any poor Negro ever could.” Then: “Mr. John, what will you do?”
In their defense, I thought to propose that it was a lapse of judgment that provoked such an action. Finally, seeing how frightened and contrite Dan seemed to be, I resolved to drop the matter, but no sooner did I think this than I heard someone else climbing the ladder: It was Mr. Kennicy himself, who, finding the evidence, slapped poor Dan across the face and, calling out into the store, declared: “I’ve found the thief!”
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise Page 3