“Once we reached Limonar by train, we were helped by a French Haitian planter named Mr. Bertrand, who put us up for the night and rented us some horses, and we rode out through a beautiful and rigorous track of mysterious jungle and encountered an escaped slave there. That is all true. And indeed we met Mr. Davis on the plantation-house porch and were shortly led inside, where the reunion between father and son took place. At first we were treated grandly, and the elder Mr. Stanley could not have been more kind to his namesake. Often he called him ‘my dear protégé’ and said things that would ingratiate himself to Stanley, praising his abilities to high heaven. But from the beginning he made it clear to Stanley that he was only a visitor and could expect his hospitality for no more than a week or so, though we were given the run of the place.
“In fact, Dolly, during our days there, Mr. Stanley did his best to make himself scarce. I had the feeling that he really wanted no part of Henry and certainly had no intention of adopting him. I further imagine that he believed Stanley had come all that way only to lay claim to his estate.
“It wasn’t long before the elder Mr. Stanley began to consider Henry’s presence more than just a nuisance: My guess is that when he sent Stanley up into the backwaters of Arkansas he never expected—or particularly wanted—to see him again.
“In any event, Dolly, Stanley’s depiction of their wonderfully earnest and close relationship, suddenly dismantled by fate, was a fantasy, as was his depiction of Mr. Stanley’s death.”
“He didn’t die?” Dolly asked.
“No! The picaresque episode in which Stanley described our party being waylaid by bandits and his father being shot through the neck was another of his inventions. The elder Mr. Stanley was never wounded, never lingered for days with fever from infection, never died; there was no funeral, no lead coffin to ship back to New Orleans. We did go out riding one day to visit a plantation, on a ‘farewell’ tour of that wild region that Mr. Davis had initiated, as we were obviously growing bored by our confinement on the mill. Indeed, we did set out along a narrow trail and were accosted by bandits. Those details were as Stanley recorded them. Our progress was halted by some of the most grisly and menacing fellows I have ever seen. They surrounded us and demanded a watch and whatever monies we had. But once Mr. Stanley and Mr. Davis produced their pistols and some shots were exchanged—not a single bullet hitting its mark, on account of the rearing horses—we began to gallop away, back toward the mill and safety. I can remember hanging on to my horse for dear life, Dolly! The bandits, for which that region was known, scattered into the woods. Only the elder Mr. Stanley suffered an injury, and a minor one at that. For as we retreated along the narrow trail, with gunshots sounding behind us, Mr. Stanley’s horse threw him from his saddle roughly to the ground, and his left shoulder was badly dislocated as a result.
“Once back in the main house and laid out on a settee, Mr. Stanley was in considerable pain, although nowhere near the brink of death. But his infirmity inspired our young Henry to attend to him as if he were an angel sent from heaven, for once he had been carried into his bedchamber to recover, Stanley, for the next few days, never left his side, much to the man’s discomfort. If the truth be told, Mr. Stanley already had two comely female slaves to look after him—women with whom, I noticed, he retired to his bedchamber each evening. A few times I had seen them gently washing his hair and beard as he bent over a tub of water in his inner courtyard: I had seen one fanning him as he rested in a hammock on his front lawn, the other standing by, smiling, with a whisk broom to swat away the flies. I remember them just standing alongside him while he, as Stanley dutifully recorded, seemed to be working on a memoir of some kind. In other words, Dolly, Mr. Stanley was no sainted man: He had his concubines and all the rum he would ever want to drink. Yet as he lay in his bed, there he was confronted with Stanley, sitting beside him, with a Bible in hand, reading from it aloud.”
He sipped more whiskey.
“To extricate his namesake from his side became Mr. Stanley’s greatest preoccupation. A few mornings later, we awoke to find Mr. Davis waiting for us in the parlor. He was affable, friendly. And then, calling us ‘young lads,’ he announced that it was Mr. Stanley’s wish that we vacate the house—no good reason was given. We were then shown a hut near the stables, with a palm-thatched roof and no outhouse, which we were to stay in before we would leave. ‘It is Mr. Stanley’s wish,’ he said. And that was when I told Stanley that it was time for us to go, but he insisted that we stay until certain matters were settled. He was so intent upon getting his way that Stanley took the liberty of drafting a letter stating the elder Mr. Stanley’s intention to adopt him, a bit of madness given the man’s obvious indifference to the subject. That night, he visited Mr. Stanley in his room. I was out in the main hall playing cards with Mr. Davis, who, being a good sort, was caught in the middle of the whole affair. I’d gotten to know him well enough to learn that he had barely any awareness of a special relationship between Stanley and his so-called adoptive father; he only knew that they had once worked together, but that was all. In the meantime, Stanley, pressing his point, had it out with the older man, who had been drinking heavily. Distinctly we could hear Stanley saying, ‘But you are my father!’ and just as distinctly we could hear the elder Mr. Stanley’s answer: ‘I’m not, nor ever will be! Now, get out of my sight!’
“Later Stanley came out with the letter—unsigned, of course; and even when his father could not have made it more clear that he wasn’t wanted, he still held out hope. His thickheadedness was mind-boggling to me. ‘Cut your losses,’ I told him. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ At his insistence, we remained a few more days, but by that point, we were not even allowed back in to the plantation house. Even when I made good use of my time, getting to know the Cuban slaves and the run of the plantation somewhat, after a while, it was more than I could take. And so I told Stanley that I would be heading back to Havana with or without him. One morning, without so much as a proper good-bye, we gathered up our gear and rode dejectedly through the woods to Limonar, solemn as any souls could be, neither Stanley nor I saying much to one another, the whole business having been a great waste of our time.
“Back in Havana, we learned about the bombing of Fort Sumter, and by and by we sailed to New Orleans, where we parted ways.”
“So his father’s death was a fabrication?”
“Yes, it was. For whatever his reasons, Stanley wanted to kill him off. And if you recall, Dolly, in this account Stanley had him buried under a banyan tree—do you know whose heart was buried under such a tree in Africa? Livingstone’s. I remember that from Stanley’s accounts.”
“But why would he have even bothered to write it?”
“Who can say? Maybe he had convinced himself that it was true, or he wanted to convince others that it was true; maybe it was the way malaria played with his memory. But Dolly, your husband surely knew better. In fact, not only did Mr. Stanley not die in Cuba, he also returned some years later to New Orleans—I suppose after having had his fill of that life. I know this because I ran into him one afternoon along Royal Street. It was about 1877 or so, when I was in New Orleans on a lecture tour. By then he was still a looming but slightly hobbled old man. I approached him and said, ‘Mr. Stanley, do you remember me?—Samuel Clemens; I once visited you with your namesake in Cuba.’ In the midst of apparent senility he claimed that while he had indeed spent a few years in Cuba during the war, he had no recollection of me and Stanley going there. ‘But surely you must be aware of your namesake’s great fame as an African explorer?’ I asked. To that he professed ignorance as well; but as I read a glimmer of recognition in his eyes, I am sure that he did.”
“And you are certain it was he?”
“Yes, he admitted that he was Mr. Henry Hope Stanley, as I addressed him, but otherwise he claimed to have never seen me before. In fact—and get this, Dolly—he went on to say that he had been living for many years on a small plantation outside New Orleans with his
wife, the one who supposedly died of yellow fever in Stanley’s account. In other words, Dolly, your late husband killed them both off, when they in fact lived on for some years afterward.”
“Dear me,” Dolly said. “But why would Stanley do that?”
Clemens tugged upon the bristles of his mustache.
“That’s a chin-scratcher, Dolly, but my guess is that he just wanted the story of his life told in a certain way. But who can blame him? Why would an orphan whose future was to be as glorious as Stanley’s wish to do otherwise? And whom does it hurt? Certainly not the elder Mr. Stanley, who lived to see his name associated with your husband’s great explorations.
“That your husband chose to take that name for himself struck me as a greater mystery, considering the way he was treated in the end. What an honor to a man who disowned him! Why he did so I cannot imagine. Once, when Stanley and I were sitting up late drinking, I asked him, ‘Why did you take that name?’ And he—frankly, in his cups—looked at me and said: ‘Which one of us is not the product of circumstance? When I first heard that name it rang to me of accomplishment and gravitas; it signified progress and a commitment to betterment. And of all the names I considered for myself, it sounded like a name I would like.’ Then he elaborated: ‘My original name, John Rowlands, never rang true, nor did the provincialism of my Welsh roots. I wanted to be a man of the world,’ he told me.”
Dolly looked over her canvas and asked, “But Samuel, do you think his autobiography is a lie? What should I say about Cuba and your travels there?”
“Henry never wanted it mentioned. Especially after we’d become well-known writers.”
Another sip of whiskey; Dolly behind the easel, laying brush to canvas.
“Knowing your husband as I did, Dolly, I would say he just could not stand the failure of it. After writing so admiringly of Mr. Stanley in his autobiography, why wouldn’t he reduce that miserable affront so long ago to just a few lines—‘He later died in Cuba,’ as you told me? I don’t blame him—writers blur the facts all the time.”
“But shouldn’t I mention that he knew you back then?”
“It’s up to you, Dolly: Naturally, I would be flattered. If you care to, you could write a note to the effect that he and I once met in New Orleans in those days; but what it would add to the story of his life I cannot say. For my part, I once promised him to never write of that episode, and I haven’t. Perhaps it is best to leave it alone. Who knows? Maybe one day some enterprising fellow will come across the details of our lives and try to make something of them; but as for me, I will keep my promise to Stanley.”
LADY STANLEY HAD BEEN PAINTING Samuel Clemens, a visage she most wanted to have remembered by posterity. With his many sharp features, he was a perfect subject—flaring eyebrows, a shock of white hair, a stony and regal face; the sharp, slightly crooked nose; the intense eyes, their lids drooping like a hawk’s. For all the years she had spent contemplating his face, and for all the renderings that would eventually be judged excellent, she, looking him over, as he sat before her one afternoon in 1907, realized that this would probably be the last time he would ever grace her studio.
“All that you have said to me I will consider, Samuel, but I will leave Stanley’s account as he wished it to be. The pity, I think, is that neither you nor he ever wrote about one another.”
“We didn’t. Maybe I will one day.”
Samuel Clemens never did, and what was written about their friendship came by way of some brief mentions in the memoirs of Major Pond and Stanley’s manservant Hoffman as well as a few newspaper articles referring to appearances Stanley and Clemens made together. But a few days after he left Dolly’s company, Clemens appeared before an audience at the famous Savage Club in London, where he spoke of the fact that Stanley had taken one of his books with him to Africa; though he lamented Stanley’s passing greatly, that was the last mention he ever publicly made of him.
ON THE AFTERNOON WHEN HE PARTED from Dolly, Samuel Clemens moved slowly, his limbs, his body weighed down with age and drink. Occasionally, as he would pause along the hallway to look at some photograph or portrait of Stanley, he would pass his hand over it, as if to bid him farewell. And when Dolly escorted him from the mansion, where, by the curb, Lady Stanley’s chauffeur and Daimler motorcar awaited him, Clemens looked at her tenderly and said, “As you must know, at my age this will definitely be my last visit to England. In another world, I might come back again and again, but for now, I think this will be it.” Then, taking her white-gloved hand in his, he added: “I hope you did not mind my disclosures about Stanley,” at which Dolly smiled and shook her head slightly. And with that he embraced her, the scent of his soap, tobacco, and whiskey rising into her nostrils: It was the only time he had ever been so demonstrative with her, but it only lasted for a moment.
“Lest I get teary-eyed, I better go now, Dolly.”
With that Clemens climbed into the Daimler’s backseat and, to the driver in his top hat and duster, said: “To Brown’s Hotel, if you will.”
As the motorcar pulled out into the curving flagstone driveway and Clemens waved to her, Lady Stanley, in those moments, was overcome with a melancholy that stayed with her for some days.
WHEN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY of Sir Henry Morton Stanley was published in 1909, five years after his death, its only reference to Stanley’s friendship with Clemens came by way of a footnote that Dolly had added to a chapter entitled “I Find a Father,” about his years on the Mississippi. Occurring on page 246, it read:
“During such riverboat journeys with the merchant trader, Stanley made the acquaintance of a young pilot named Samuel Clemens—later the famous Mark Twain—with whom he remained a good and steadfast friend for the rest of his life.—D.S.”
The book was received tepidly by a public whose interest in Africa and the great explorers of the Victorian age had long since waned. Though its sales were disappointing, Dolly remained most proud of her efforts, for at long last, the noble and selfless Stanley with whom she had first fallen in love would be known to all. In her enthusiasm she had taken the trouble to have several special editions printed on handmade paper with elaborate morocco bindings—ten in all. One went to the Royal Geographical Society, another to the royal family. One was sent to Samuel Clemens at his new home in Redding, Connecticut.
With it, she attached a note:
Dear Samuel,
Well, here it is—a book for the ages! I do hope you understand its omissions, but when you see how I have inscribed it, I hope you will do so with the understanding that Stanley was by my shoulder as I wrote it.
With sincerest love,
Dolly
A frothy shaving brush in hand, Clemens was in his new house—Stormfield—when his housekeeper handed him a parcel from England. In it was one of the special editions of the aforementioned book. The inscription read:
To my dear friend Samuel,
Here is my life, contained in some few pages. And tendered to you with love and admiration.
Henry Morton Stanley
In those moments, reading it, Clemens was amused that Dolly had taken the liberty of signing Stanley’s own name, her script exactly as his own, including the florid underswirls that Stanley had always used in his better days.
Well, in a nutshell, he thought, that is the spiritualist in Dolly; later, he wrote her a long note of appreciation.
From Lady Stanley’s Journal, April 22, 1910—A Variation on a Letter to Her Long-Dead Father
Dearest Henry,
This morning’s papers—Friday’s—have been filled with the sad news of Samuel Clemens’s passing last night. When I learned of it, I was sitting in our dining room at breakfast. At first I could not accept the news and threw the paper down. Denzil, in from Eton and sitting beside me, retrieved the paper in his gentlemanly manner and asked, “Mother, why are you so upset?” But all I could do was lower my head and weep as privately and discreetly as possible. But in seeing that his “uncle Mark” was gone, Denzil
withdrew into the privacy of his room. Then Mother came in, and, seeing my distraught state, also read the news; she, too, lamented the death of that great light, calling him “a dear young man.” (But she did not weep.)
Once I cleared my mind of the immediate shock, I clearly saw his circumstances. According to the accounts, he had retreated to the freeing pastures of his home in Redding, Connecticut, at twenty-two minutes past six last night. With him were his loved ones—his daughter Clara, her husband, Ossip, and several others. He went peacefully, from heart failure, and among the effects by his bedside was the same wedding gift he once sent us—a copy of Carlyle’s book on the French Revolution. Though his passing grieves me, I remain confident that he has not only found his peace but is also now standing by your side.
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