Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

BY THE SPRING OF 1907, Dolly had not only overcome the loss of Stanley, whom she believed still lingered around her, but had decided, being a social creature and thinking of Denzil’s welfare, to marry again. The object of her attentions was the Harley Street surgeon Dr. Henry Curtis, whom she had met while accompanying Stanley to the doctor’s office for treatment of gastritis. She found it a pleasant coincidence to discover, in the course of several conversations with Curtis, that he had a great interest in the general field of psychic research; the doctor had attended, in his time, various séances through which he had hoped to contact his late mother. But there was something else: While not a handsome man, and somewhat stout, and rather upright and self-effacing in his demeanor, he seemed the sort of well-heeled gentleman, eleven years younger than she, who, with a practice to keep him busy, would not impinge upon her independence.

IN THOSE DAYS, DOLLY WAS SAD to realize that Samuel and his surviving daughters had become distant figures in her life. It sometimes stunned her to think that she had not seen him in seven years, and while they had exchanged Christmas greetings, much of their correspondence seemed to consist of letters of condolence. Though the familiarity with which they had once written each other had given way to a more formal tone, her affection for Clemens had never faded. Following his political writings, as she received from friends copies of “Mark Twain’s” articles and open letters to the public, she was quite aware of his outspokenness about certain matters, for since Livy’s passing his patience for the insane cruelties of the world had ended; what had been private opinion had become public. She knew that he supported an anticzarist revolution in Russia, that he deplored the partition of China by Western powers, and that he blamed the Boxer Rebellion on the missionary influence there. She also knew that he strongly disapproved of the British war against the Boers in South Africa and had felt ashamed by America’s slaughter of innocent people in the Philippines in the name of bringing them democracy.

Without a doubt he had grieved over the loss of Stanley, but with his friend’s death had come a certain liberation; while he would have never written such a thing on the chance of offending his old friend while he was alive, once Stanley had gone to the peace of his grave (or the constant wanderings of a spirit) Clemens took up his pen and addressed, most caustically, the situation in the Congo by means of a pamphlet entitled King Leopold’s Soliloquy , which was published by the Congo Reform Association in Boston.

One day, Dolly received a copy of the pamphlet from Samuel Clemens himself. With it came a letter.

21 Fifth Avenue

May 2, ’06

Dear Lady Stanley,

Inasmuch as my anti-Leopold pamphlet seems to have gone into the world, I thought you should receive a copy from me if you have not received one already. I wrote it as an American citizen with the intention of simply asking its American readers to realize how misguided and greedy and callous the Belgian king has been in regard to the Congo. Knowing that he was Stanley’s friend, I hope you do not find its contents too upsetting, but by my lights, the greater truth about what has been going on in that region, as reported by various eyewitnesses — and by the greatest witness of all, the camera — is well worth telling.

My previous interest in Africa mainly consisted of curiosity about an unknown region; Stanley’s spoken and written tales about his exploits and the peoples and trials he had encountered have always fascinated me — and I am still tickled by the notion that he took my Huckleberry novel with him during one of his journeys. And of course I have always believed in your late husband’s stance in opposition to the slave trade there; as to his “preaching” about Christianity, I have been neutral, trusting in his faith in the missionaries, whom he knew well. However, I have been not at all convinced that Leopold wanted to accomplish anything except the enrichment of himself and his own small nation through the exploitation of the Congo and its hapless people.

However you may view Leopold, he should be called into strict account for his actions. As you know, such actions were forbidden by the proclamations of the Berlin Conference of 1884, in which Stanley was a participant — the natives were to be protected and their well-being was to be advanced in various ways. But in all this the International African Association has failed miserably — I believe that even Stanley knew this, deep down.

As I know that England is already somewhat outraged by the news that has been consistently coming out, I hope you will understand my intention in publishing this pamphlet, which is to motivate the American people to press our government into doing something about the situation. Whether this will happen I cannot say, but Dolly, I want you to understand that my pamphlet is by no means intended to implicate Stanley in any way. He was a great man — and my friend — and because of that something has been stirred in me that refuses to see the seeds of what your brave husband planted turned into a sham.

I intend that the pamphlet shall go into the hands of every clergyman in America and therefore to their pious congregations, with the hope that our ordinary citizens will move to make our government use a firmer hand in relieving Leopold of his profitable satrapy.

There is not a single word in the pamphlet that would implicate Stanley. His deeds, I believe, will always stand apart and above the tawdry machinations of this world.

With fervent admiration and affection,

Yours always,

S.C.

If Dolly had any regret, it was that she had witnessed Stanley’s misery at hearing his name associated with such reports, for he had lived and breathed and loved Africa. As for the pamphlet itself, she had nearly written to Samuel to verify that his portrait of the indignant king, with whom she had spent some time, was truer than he might realize. Yet there was something that ultimately disturbed her about the photographs. Their inclusion somehow felt offensive to her husband’s legacy.

Still, she was grateful that Clemens had waited until after Stanley’s passing before going public with his long-brewing feelings.

ONCE CLEMENS FINALLY CAME OUT of his deepest mourning, he shed his dark serge suits, with their sagging frock coats, and his stiff black bow ties for snow-white swallow-tailed outfits. An instantly recognizable figure on the streets of Manhattan, he’d walk up and down Fifth Avenue in an “efflorescence of white,” as a local paper described the impression he made on passersby. In his beatific quest to purge the world of imbecilities, he may have wished to present himself as the purest of spirits or as an angel with a flaring shock of whitening hair and lightning-bolt eyebrows; but he may have picked up that manner of dress in Bermuda, where white linen was supremely practical, during one of his journeys to the Caribbean with H. H. Rogers aboard the Kanawha , the same yacht on which he had visited Cuba in 1902. And he may have thought white more hygienic, or he may have simply tired of his mourning, but whatever his reasons, he thereafter rarely appeared in public, save for formal occasions, in anything else.

AFTER LIVY DIED, CLEMENS SUMMERED at a retreat near Mount Monadnock, in Dublin, New Hampshire, where he had hoped the setting would help his daughters recover from their own grief. Poor Clara, who had been closest to her mother, had suffered several nervous breakdowns and spent a year in sanatoriums in New York and Connecticut, and Jean, tossed from a horse in a trolley accident, which could have easily killed her, continued on in ailing health, and bouts of violent hysteria and epilepsy had prompted her own stays at various institutions. And Clemens, despite the fact that he spent many a day fighting depression and wishing himself dead, found that he had risen to new heights in the public’s affections. Steamboats and cigar brands had been named after him, and, as with Stanley in his heyday, he was often approached by strangers on the street who simply wanted to shake his hand or to pose beside him for a photograph. His friends were the most important people in America: Andrew Carnegie, Teddy Roosevelt, and Thomas Edison. Numerous invitations to luncheons and dinners proliferated — the banqueting life, as he called it, taking up many of his days.