Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

The doctor had come to my bedside, administering to me some grains of quinine, so that within another six hours, around noon the next day, I had an appetite and was ravenously hungry. Within another day I went back to my duties in the shop, but then, as a week or so passed, I was suddenly overcome with the same sequence of symptoms. It was during my second convalescence that the doctor told me that I should expect such things to happen again, and the ague did return, at regular intervals, for as long as I remained in Cypress Bend and for some time thereafter.

HAVING BEEN THUS AFFLICTED, I wrote to Mr. Stanley in Havana, relating the particulars of my illness and my general dissatisfaction with my situation. And yet when I had finished writing down my complaints, I struck a more congenial tone, putting forth my continuing devotion to and affection for my father, my most hidden hope being that Mr. Stanley would instruct me to leave that place and resume my mercantile pursuits by his side in Havana.

But as the weeks passed I heard nothing from him, and though this had become a matter of concern to me, and even as fevers seemed to come back every ten days or so, I resolved to await his final word.

UNFORTUNATELY, MY PERSONAL DISTRESS had come at a time of mounting national disharmonies. During those months, as I lingered with my recurring illnesses in Cypress Bend, the issue of slavery versus abolition had boiled over, and war talk had become prevalent among the planters. Then it had become a fact. By March of 1861, a number of Southern states, among them Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, had formed a government separate from the Union, its newly appointed president being one Jefferson Davis. Several of these states had seized federal arsenals, forts, and men-of-war. Even the fortresses below New Orleans had been commandeered by Louisiana. The whole thing, Dan Goree — a planter — said, had come to a head the past November with the election of Abraham Lincoln, who’d promised, upon taking office, to free all the slaves, whereupon the planters and therefore the economy of the South would be ruined.

In the meantime, the local inhabitants of Cypress Bend, expecting that Arkansas would soon be joining the other states, had begun to form their own militias.

My first thoughts, upon hearing such news, had been to wonder how commerce would be affected by a war. Most river traffic would be disrupted, and, in any event, many of our provisions, ordered from Northern cities such as Cincinnati and Chicago, would be cut off. It was already being said that many a steamboat had been either requisitioned by Southern forces or was being held in port. Travelers coming into Cypress Bend from the big port towns told us that fewer steamboats were coming up-and downriver. Somehow I felt consoled by believing that this emergency had affected communications with foreign places such as Cuba: I reasoned that somewhere downriver there was a parcel of mail sitting in a postal warehouse and that a new letter from my father, reporting that all was well with him, awaited me: Yet on one of those days, in March, when I finally received a piece of correspondence, it was from Samuel Clemens. This is as I remember it:

Dear Henry,

These days I am knocking about New Orleans, mainly playing chess and games of whist in the pilots’ association rooms and winning more than losing; I have also had the opportunity of showing my mother around the city — but, truth be told, with all the war talk in the air, I am a little weary about my future as a steamboat pilot. When I hear the debates about the North versus the South, mainly over the central concern of slavery, I think it seems hardly worth it to go to war over such a thing. But it now seems inevitable. I go all which ways: My older brother, Orion, whom I told you about, is a dignified man who has always been an abolitionist and has his own strong opinion on the subject. He believes the Yankees are in the right. Then I talk to a plantation man who is on the verge of tears about losing his beloved (and profit-making) slaves — and his livelihood — and I am of another opinion. I go back and forth on the subject constantly: Mainly I, and the rest of my cohorts on the river, are afraid of being forced at gunpoint to pilot a ship for the Yankees — all the pilots are wary of that; I am not a Confederate or a Yankee yet. Most of us are cooling our heels and staying put: I do not want to be conscripted by either side—

In the meantime, I have decided to linger a bit in New Orleans, until the war fever has played out.

Yours fondly,

Samuel Clemens

I CANNOT SAY WHETHER IT was that letter from Samuel Clemens or the ague that prompted me to leave the store and head downriver to New Orleans, but by then, I reasoned that I might not be able to escape Cypress Bend at all once a war broke out. Approaching Mr. Altschul about the situation, I stated my case, and he, being aware of my distracted state of mind in regard to Mr. Stanley, allowed me some six weeks to attend to my business. Although I abhorred the mistreatment of the slaves, wanting to prove myself a good Southerner and American I had thought to eventually join up with one of the local militias upon my return. To become a soldier, fighting for a glorious cause, seemed a romantic idea filled with promise of adventure — and besides, to not do so would have marked me as a coward with a “yellow streak” among the locals.

And so I signed up with a local brigade, with the proviso that I would begin my duty within a few months’ time.

Adrift Again

IT TOOK ME TEN DAYS to go downriver to New Orleans: Of the possessions I carried with me in a carpetbag was a Colt six-shooter, my Bible, and some quinine tablets and calomel potion that the doctor had given me in the event that my fever should return. Of my fineries I packed a suit, a pair of boots, a gentleman’s toilet kit, a watch and chain, various undergarments and kerchiefs, and some fifty dollars in two gold eagles that Mr. Altschul had paid me; these I kept in a money belt with some other funds I’d saved and was covetous to protect.

When Louisiana left the Union in January (the twenty-sixth), New Orleans itself had begun its conversion toward military preparations. Along the levee I saw that a recruitment stand for the Louisiana auxiliaries had been set up in front of one of the wharves, and a great number of young men, many of them laid-off sailors from ships that had been stopped in harbor and requisitioned as transport boats, were waiting in lines to sign up, their patriotic fervor aroused by an old officer, dressed splendidly in epaulets and a plumed hat, who held forth in a fine baritone, saying, “Now is the time for brave young men to show their valor.” His words were accompanied by a nearby band that had struck up “Dixie,” and a festive atmosphere prevailed. Later, in several clothing-shop windows, I saw fine military uniforms on display; and Tchoupitoulas Street itself was busy in a different way from before: Military officers were coming in and out of the grocers’ warehouses and making arrangements for such provisions as were needed for training camps upstate. Here and there banners saying SECESSION NOW and SLAVERY FOREVER were hanging in shopwindows and draped over balconies.

The slaves I saw here and there, off in their labors, seemed more quietly disposed than before I left, a sheepish spirit attending them, as if they’d felt some blame for the coming war.

Since Mr. Stanley’s whereabouts and condition were foremost in my mind, I made my way to the house on St. Charles Avenue to see if, by some chance, he had returned, sound and well: Mr. Stanley, I was told, had continued to pay for his lodging for several months, but then his payments stopped coming the past December. His former quarters, the delightful rooms where I had spent many happy moments, had been rented out to a family. And had he left any kind of word? None, I was told by the owner. Naturally, I was disappointed to hear such news — or lack of it — and in a disconsolate state I repaired to Mrs. Williams’s boardinghouse in the hope of finding a room.