Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

by Oscar Hijuelos

  “‘Do you not recognize me? I am your son, John,’ I pleaded, but she closed the door on me quickly and sent me away. Having no place to go, I lingered for a time, until her husband, an earnest-seeming sort of man, came out to tell me that she was in a particularly bad way, since one of their children, a boy, had recently died of meningitis; but it was Mr. Jones who invited me in for the night. I was given a meal and a bed, and while my mother’s husband treated me with the greatest of courtesy, I could see that my mother, with her own brood of children to contend with, had neither the time nor the patience to deal with my misfortunes. ‘We barely get along as it is,’ she told me. ‘You are welcome here for the night, but in the morning you must go,’ she added. Shortly, with some very great agitation, I forlornly lay down in a bed, a great feeling of dejection having entered my mind.”

  At this point, Dorothy Tennant, looking up from her canvas, asked, “What did you do?”

  Stanley, thinking seriously upon this comment, then said, “I decided to become Stanley, for good, if you must know. If there was any one moment when I decided to put my past completely aside, that was it. If I was already known as Henry Stanley in America, I resolved to become Henry Stanley in Wales.”

  “FOUR YEARS WOULD PASS before I would see her again. By then I had become a journalist in the American West and had taken up further travels. I was on my way back to America from Turkey when I decided to make a visit to Denbigh by coach from Manchester. By then I had some money in my pocket. Surely an observer who had seen my pathetic self in earlier days would have noticed the marked improvement in my circumstances. I was well groomed and smartly dressed in a naval officer’s uniform and brand-new shoes. This time, when I knocked on her door, I am happy to say that I made a much better impression on her. The dear lady was so taken by my distinguished manner and the evidence of my progress in life that she invited me to spend the night with her family—even insisted that I do so—instead of staying in a room in their inn. Ah, but I made her proud then: As she was very pleased by my air of success, she invited some of her neighbors to hear me speak of my adventures in the Civil War and of my recent travels. Afterward she cooked me a good stew, and for that night, at least, I found that I had a little family: my half sister Emma, Mr. Jones, and two of my mother’s little children. Altogether I had a most congenial time with her, and though we were far from close, Miss Tennant, I was deeply pleased by the advances I had made upon her by way of our relations.”

  What he did not tell Miss Tennant was the despair he felt when they were sitting together in a room and his mother, holding his hand and patting it nervously, began to go on and on about his newfound virtues: “Here I am with such a distinguished type of gentleman, my old boy John,” she had said. “What, then, can you give me, now? Have you any money for your dear mum?” Her prattle in that regard continued until he fished out from his pocket a pound note, which he gave her, and only then did she seem happy. “Now, then, this is more the way a darling son should be with his mum.” Before stuffing it down the front of her dress, she kissed the bill, adding, “And may it always be so, my boy.”

  “Thereafter, Miss Tennant,” Stanley continued, “our relations only improved, I am proud to say, for I have visited Denbigh and her family on a number of occasions since then. But best, Miss Tennant, was the delicious spring—it was 1869—when I had the opportunity to take my mother and my half sister Emma on holiday in Paris. It was in those days, Miss Tennant, that whatever differences there had existed between us—mainly innocent misunderstandings—fell away forever.”

  Curious, Miss Tennant then asked: “Does she call you John or Henry?”

  “Henry, Miss Tennant.” Then, more sadly: “I have not seen her in some time. She has not been well. Perhaps one day you would like to meet her. I could bring her here one day so that you might paint her—what do you think?”

  “For the time being, I am perfectly content with you as my subject, dear Stanley. Now, hold still for a moment.”

  WHEN SHE WAS DONE for the day, Miss Tennant put down her brush and began to clean it with turpentine, appraising, as she did so, the fine portrait of Stanley that she was making. It was on that afternoon that she detected a speck of something on Stanley’s face, and as he got up she said, “You have something here,” and, standing before him, as she touched his cheek with her fingers, she suddenly engaged him in a kiss.

  “Oh, Mr. Stanley, do trust me,” and she kissed him again. Why she, a lady of great beauty and many other male acquaintances to choose from, was doing so remained beyond his comprehension, but just as he began to feel that, however forward her sudden expression of affection was, he should reciprocate—just then, as he allowed his hand to fall upon her hip, to pull her closer, it was his bad luck that Gertrude happened into the room. “My God,” she cried. “How dare you!” she called out to Stanley. “Now, please leave this house.” She said other things that upset him, and as he went down the steps he heard mother and daughter shouting at one another, the veil of gentility between them lifted.

  Out on the sidewalk, a bobby strolled by and saluted Stanley with a tip of his hat, then engaged him in a brief conversation (the usual questions about Africa), and while Stanley attempted to provide quick and satisfying answers, another part of him felt he would be better served to quickly leave the scene of his humiliation. Later that night he was somewhat distracted at a dinner he attended in the company of Mackinnon and Sir Alfred Lyall, and he drank more than his usual “ration”—that was how he categorized such things—of Champagne and brandy.

  “You seem a bit low,” Mackinnon said to Stanley. “Is there something troubling you?”

  “Not at all,” he answered. “Just work, nothing but work: I will be better in the morning.”

  AS FOR DOROTHY, her evening was spent in silence with her mother, Miss Tennant not saying a word during their dinner together. By then Gertrude had offered some words she thought would soothe her daughter’s angered heart: “Now, now, dear daughter, I am only thinking of your own good. Why you seem taken with that charmless explorer is beyond my comprehension; can you fault me for that?”

  “You are just jealous of my youth!” was her daughter’s answer.

  The irony of it all was that her mother, when in her twenties, had been said to have been a former lover of Gustave Flaubert and, therefore, no stranger to the intricacies of romantic intrigues: Why, then, did she apply another standard to her daughter? In the days that followed her intrusion into the studio, Gertrude tried to convince her daughter that hers had been a natural, motherly response, but Dorothy, whose romantic life to that point had consisted of polite outings with wealthy and rather characterless young men who viewed her as beautiful but eccentric, was determined to never speak to her again. A week passed; several obligations regarding luncheons and dinners bound them together; but throughout Dorothy maintained her silence with her mother. Finally, one night in early August of 1885, when they were turning in to bed, her mother told her:

  “My precious love, if it means so much for you to have this Mr. Stanley in your life, than so it will be. Do invite him here again, and I promise that I will be a warmer and more inviting person toward him in the future.”

  With those words, Dorothy, feeling somewhat triumphant, said: “Thank you, Mother; I will.”

  THEREAFTER, IN AUGUST, Stanley and Miss Tennant were seen in constant company; many were the trips they made to bookstores to browse among the titles; many were the restaurants they dined in. Looking over the restaurant menu at the Hotel Chatham, Miss Tennant ordered a dish called Poularde à la Stanley aux truffes and ate it slowly, with an amused smile on her face, her eyes rarely leaving his gaze. She struck Stanley as being wonderfully happy in that time and always elegant, if not sometimes flighty of nature. (“To see the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, we must appear in the exhibition room at exactly 5:45 p.m. tomorrow, when the sun is in its descent and when the light as the ancient Greeks saw it falls precisely on them, illuminating them
before our eyes, as they were meant to be seen. Do not be late.”) Among her closest companions whom he met in those days was one Frederic Myers, her sister Eveleen’s husband, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Though he struck Stanley as “somewhat touched in the head,” the explorer accompanied Dorothy to his various lectures. All the while he was somewhat concerned with her dreams about “other worlds.” When she told him one day, “No matter how dreary life may seem to be, there is a more glorious and beautiful world awaiting,” he realized that she was still, despite her age, something of a child. And yet he was enchanted by her, and in her absence he thought tenderly of her.

  She was of a generally good temperament in Stanley’s company, and it was a rare thing for her to show impatience with his timidity; rarer still were the occasions when she felt hurt by him. But during one of their lunches at her home, he had, in an attempt at an even greater sincerity, related to her the story of his former infatuation with Alice Pike: The image of the explorer racked by fever in his tent, or treading through the densest of terrains and thinking about her each day for three years, or riding in the portable boat he had named after her on various lakes and rivers—wherein daily he had not only been consumed by his longing for her but had also, to speak symbolically, entered Alice, in the form of a boat—stunned Dorothy. There he was, looking off into the distance, still speaking about her after a decade had passed and of “a hole in my heart that has yet to be filled,” all the while mumbling about the ways she had fooled him and spoiled his trust of women, perhaps forever.

  “I cannot begin to express the damage done to my sense of self-esteem over the way she jilted me, Miss Tennant,” he confessed. “A man more sensible and experienced in matters of the heart would have no doubt moved on by now, but you see, Miss Tennant, I am not to easily forget such things: I am afraid it has left me in a bit of a shell these days still.” Then: “I hope I have not offended you by mentioning her, Miss Tennant.”

  “You’ve only left me feeling a little jealous and regretful that I had not the chance to know you in those days.”

  It happened that her mother had come in from the parlor: Gertrude had been reading in one of the papers about the life of General Gordon, a pious bachelor, like Stanley, who died at Khartoum without ever having experienced the comforts of love.

  “A most interesting thing about Gordon,” she cheerfully said. “Seems that in his youth he once had some kind of love affair that ended badly; and as he’d never gotten over it, the rest of his life was spent in a lonely way: What could he have been thinking?”

  Stanley had then looked over at Dorothy, their eyes meeting in mutual recognition of the relevance of her mother’s comment.

  How I wish Alice had died while Stanley had gone to Africa, because then he could still remember her with love and would not be so mistrusting of the world. I feel so sorry for him, not only because of Alice but also because of the terrible loneliness that he is too stubborn to let go of… It is a funny thing, then, is it not, Father, to learn so much about someone whom, not so long before, one did not know and to wish to help and care for that person, as if it were the most important thing in the world?

  Good night, and sleep well.

  ONLY ONCE DID SHE SEEM SAD. They were walking in Regent’s Park, arm in arm, at dusk, several of Stanley’s Scotties on a leash before him.

  “What troubles you? You’ve been very quiet.”

  “Do you remember the first time you came to see me at Richmond Terrace? There were three or four children there, one of them a boy named William, the chimney sweep.”

  “I do.”

  “A few mornings ago a boy came knocking at our door; it was one of his little friends come to tell me that William had drowned in the Thames.”

  “That is sad.”

  “To the boy who brought me that news I gave some coins, for his family: But the fact remains that the innocent child is dead.”

  They proceeded along in silence, then Stanley, knowing her mind somewhat, said: “Though he is gone, he has surely gone to a better place.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Stanley; I sincerely hope it is so.”

  They were heading out of the park when Dolly suddenly swooned and fell into Stanley’s arms. The explorer gently sat her down on a bench. “Forgive me, my dear,” she said. “I have not eaten for the two days since hearing about poor William.”

  “Well, then, let us get you something to eat.”

  And then, regaining her composure, her dizziness having left her, she said: “Would you be sad if I were to suddenly die?”

  “That is a strange question, Dolly. But yes, I would be; very much so.”

  And with that answer she smiled happily. “Ah, then I know that you do care for me; and I promise that I will live a long life, so as to always be by your side.”

  At Madame Tussaud’s: The Story of Kalulu

  ON ANOTHER AFTERNOON, while strolling in London with Dorothy, Stanley asked her if she had ever visited Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, and, as she had never done so, such a touristy attraction having escaped her attention, they made their way to Marylebone Road to see its exhibition rooms. Here and there were displayed the wax effigies of many a famous personage: Henry VIII, Napoléon Bonaparte, George III, among some several dozen others, including Livingstone himself, who was depicted seated at a desk with a Bible open before him. But the exhibit Stanley most wanted her to see, just across from Admiral Nelson, was of himself, with the wax effigy of his young rifle bearer, Kalulu, striding behind him. Stanley’s Winchester repeater was balanced on his shoulders.

  “Now, Dolly, of all the manifestations of my fame, this display of myself as I once was, and of my dear boy Kalulu, has always struck me as the strangest; while I am very flattered to be included with so many other historical personages, I get a strong feeling of my own mortality, for there is something morbid about being included among the images of so many dead people. When I have visited this place in the past, mainly to look at Kalulu, of whom I was most fond, I get the strangest impression that one day, after I am long dead, visitors will be standing in this very spot, wondering about this version of myself, Henry Morton Stanley; it is akin to the very same sensation I get when sitting down in my parlor to write. The thought comes to mind that sometime, far into the future, when my books will be but dusty remnants of the past on some library shelf, my own life will be observed from afar, perhaps even written about, by some person whom I will have never met. Altogether, it is rather sobering to me.”

  “And is that why you brought me here?”

  “Well, Dolly, not really. I wanted you to get a good look at Kalulu, whom you see here as he once was: a most cheerful and good-spirited lad, of whom I will speak if you want me to.”

  Shortly they were sitting on a bench, where Stanley began his narrative.

  “I was on the march to find Livingstone in the spring of 1871, and heading toward Ujiji, when my expedition stopped at the town of Tabora, an Arab slave-trading center. Such African-Arab towns, stretching west into the interior from Bagamoyo at points along the slave-trading route, were refuges from the surrounding wilds, the Arabs having their mosques, their caravansaries, bustling markets, and their own villas and pleasure gardens with harems. Such outposts of Islamic civilization were marred only by the gross indecency by which these traders earned their livelihoods. There, in a souk, I met with an Arab merchant, and sitting cross-legged on a carpet opposite him, smoking a musky tobacco through the tube of a narghile, I spent several hours in congenial negotiations with him. By giving him several repeating rifles in exchange for some food supplies that would be vital to my expedition, I made such a good impression on the trader that he, in gratitude for my honest dealings, made me the gift of one of his slave boys, Kalulu. And this boy, an orphan with a winning smile, could not have been more affable or obedient in nature. His cheerfulness alone consoled me greatly, and as I much enjoyed his spirit and the boyishness with which he approached our adventure, I made him my rifle
bearer. Kalulu, as you see him here, was always by my side or walking a few steps behind me.

  “It was Kalulu who accompanied me and Dr. Livingstone on our explorations of Lake Tanganyika, and Kalulu who nursed me when I fell ill from fever. Such a good and cheerful boy was he, Miss Tennant, that when it was time for me to head back to Zanzibar, I could not bear the idea of leaving the little fellow behind. So I brought him back with me to London, where I had taken up residence at the Hotel Chatham. In Africa, we had mainly spoken Arabic, which I had studied and learned in my travels in the Middle East, or Swahili, but by the time we had arrived in London I had taught him to speak rudimentary English.

  “I took him everywhere with me, to every banquet and luncheon in my honor, and often into the houses of some very important persons. I took him to the far reaches of England and even to America when I went there on tour. In fact, he made such a lasting impression on Samuel Clemens that years later, he named a character after Kalulu in one of his tales, ‘The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance.’”

  But then there came over Stanley’s expression a certain sadness: Though he rarely wept when such feelings of loss came to him, his face grew tense and solemn, and a slight mistiness entered his eyes.

  “I was so taken with him, Miss Tennant, that in the months after finishing my memoir of that first expedition—How I Found Livingstone—I put my mind to writing a children’s novel with which I’d hoped to please Kalulu: It was an African tale set in the wilder climes of Zanzibar, a story that I could not wait for him to read. I called it My Kalulu, Prince, King, and Slave: A Story of Central Africa. I held him in such high esteem that when David Livingstone died in 1873 and his body had been brought back to England for his funeral at Westminster, I insisted that Kalulu, of whom Livingstone was fond, be among the pallbearers, a most distinguished group of explorers. Walking directly behind me, as he always had in Africa, Kalulu, in a smart dark suit, comported himself with great dignity and serious bearing. I was very proud of him that day, Miss Tennant, as I would be until he met his end.