Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

BY THE TIME HE HAD been informed that he would be given an honorary doctorate in letters by Oxford University, in the spring of 1907, his ardor for the political arena had somewhat abated, for with his dedication had also come endless invitations to speak before various groups on behalf of the Congo Reform Association — travel commitments that he, at his age, found exhausting.

Withdrawing from such duties, save for producing the occasional foreword to a book or pamphlet about Africa at the behest of the American Anti-Imperialist League or the Congo Reform Movement, Clemens continued work on his autobiography. Having no preconceived plan or scheme for the narrative, he began each session in his Fifth Avenue home by simply talking about whatever memories or images happened to come into his head, much as he had done while sitting for Dolly during their portrait sessions. Often he did so while shooting billiards. Meandering to wherever his mind took him, he began, bit by bit, to improvise the long and digressive narrative of his life. No particular event was more important than another, and his method was founded on the premise that anything he spoke about would be later configured into a meaningful sequence. Intending that the book would be published posthumously, he would take liberties with the truth sometimes, especially in the segments regarding his days during the early Civil War and the period of time — only three or so weeks — when he accompanied his friend Stanley to Cuba, a subject he was never to mention to anyone except Dolly. It happened on an afternoon in late June of 1907, when, wearing his newly acquired Oxford robes, he once again sat before her in her studio at Richmond Terrace.

A FEW WEEKS PRIOR to their meeting again, Lady Stanley — having married that past March 21, nearly three years after Stanley’s death — read with delight the news of Clemens’s arrival in England, for his landing at Tilbury aboard the SS Minneapolis on June 8 was met by a considerable crowd of admirers and journalists; harbor bells had rung, and even the stevedores were whistling and cheering as he made his way onto English soil. But that acclamation was just the beginning. As he stood on the dock, waving his derby and umbrella at the crowds, he thought that such attentions had come about from his London publisher’s efforts to make known his return, for he had many events to attend to and publicize; but he had no inkling that his writings against the wrongs of the world — the very same that had been met tepidly by the American public in regard to Africa and other places — were so in tune with the general mood of the English public, who, in any case, already revered him for his books.

Indeed, from the moment he took up residence at Brown’s Hotel in London, Clemens found himself constantly besieged by people. Within a few days of his arrival its lobby had become a second American embassy. While on most ordinary afternoons one would enter the public room and find most of the club chairs and sofas unoccupied — except at four o’clock tea — they were now all filled, and dozens of people were always standing about with books or gifts in hand, anxious to speak to or get a glimpse of the famous man. He received a steady flow of illustrious visitors, and once his address was known, letters poured in from all over England, along with numerous gifts. So great was England’s welcome that the papers were comparing his popularity to that of Charles Dickens at the height of his fame, when he could only get around London anonymously, wearing a theatrical disguise — a false beard, an eye patch, and an oversize top hat pulled low over his brow. Holding court and consenting to many an interview, Clemens only found peace when he lay in bed at the end of his long and busy days.

WITHIN A WEEK he had to engage two additional secretaries to handle his correspondence. For about sixteen hours a day, his assistants went through the mail, reducing the massive influx of letters and requests to the few that Clemens might directly answer. Among them — because he had left instructions that anything from Richmond Terrace should be put aside — was a missive from Lady Stanley.

2 Richmond Terrace

June 12, 1907

Dearest Samuel,

G. Bernard Shaw has told me that he recently made your acquaintance on a platform of the station at Tilbury upon your arrival and that you later spent a few hours with him, James Barrie, and Max Beerbohm at Claridge’s. I imagine that he must have told you about my marriage ceremony, since he was one of the few guests invited. It was an austere affair, and since then Dr. Curtis and I have been living quietly at home. And while I am joyfully embracing my new circumstances, I have been very aware of your presence in London, the papers being full of accounts about your every doing. (Even our little Denzil has been excited!) I know that you are impossibly busy, but here I must remind you of your promise to visit me at Richmond Terrace. I still want to continue painting you and have been savoring the thought of a new session all these years: As always, I would like to present the “Mark Twain” whom I have known and been greatly fond of in all his glory. Can you come here, and soon?

And there is the matter of the manuscript I sent you. As much as I wish to address its curious contents — for Stanley is still always foremost in my mind — you must know that I want to see you and join right hand to right hand. I must see your dear face again. Otherwise you will have no peace, rest, or leisure during your stay in London, and you will end by hating human beings. Please do come and see me before you feel that way, my dear sweet man.

Yours,

Dolly

WHEN HE THOUGHT ABOUT LADY STANLEY, with all his admiration for her as an artist and friend, he never once forgot that she was quite a woman. Tall, buxom, and with a great handsomeness about her Pre-Raphaelite features, she had always seemed the opposite of Livy, who even in her prime, before gauntness and severity arrested her features, had never been a voluptuous beauty.

At night in his hotel, when he was finally alone in his bed, after shooting billiards — the hotel had installed a table exclusively for his use — and exhausting himself to the point where he might finally sleep, he sometimes wondered what drew him originally to a creature who was so frail, for from the day he first met her Livy had never been in robust health and was often ailing. But he remembered looking at her and thinking, “This woman is as elegant and austere as a poem.” And he, loving literature, though he did not know what it was, became enamored enough to marry her.

And yet at his ripe old age, Clemens sometimes thought about Dolly. He had always imagined that her breasts would be full and pendulous, her physical persona forward in a “Western” kind of way. Her femininity had always reminded him of the blunt physicality of the brothel women of the West and New Orleans, the salons of which he, in his youth, with his curiosity about life and youthful vitality, had enthusiastically explored. He found himself, in his old age, sexually curious again.

Though he had never uttered as much as a word about such doings to Livy, long before their honeymoon he had been an experienced lover. If he never told her of these experiences, it was because he had his pious husbandly image to preserve. Before he met her, his favorite consorts had not only come from New Orleans, Denver, or Fort Collins but also, to his chagrin, from many a mining camp and from San Francisco, where he would play cards and drink until the early hours of the morning in the back room of a brothel. As those ladies were friendly and inviting and gentle and accommodating, and prone to kissing a card player’s neck, how could one resist? He’d further amused himself with some Polynesian consorts in the Sandwich Islands, their seedy boudoirs situated in long palm-thatched houses along the beaches. Once, those many years ago—1867—he had nearly gone into a brothel in Jerusalem after a day’s excursion to the holy sites, but by then he had fallen in love with the image of Livy, which her brother, Charles, a fellow passenger on that journey, had shown him in a cameo; she seemed to be purity incarnate. And because he knew that Charles was somewhat aware of his doings, as they and his fellow “pilgrims” kept nearly constant company, he had not only abstained from his curiosity but also swore thereafter to reestablish a vow of chastity, which he mainly kept to during the years of their courtship and never once violated in their many years of marriage.