Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

I asked to see Señor Stanley.

As she made her way into the house, we dismounted, and another slave of about twenty or so, with a most agreeable smile, took our horses away to a trough. Soon at the veranda railing appeared a well-dressed white gentleman of about fifty. In his right hand he was holding a pearl-handled revolver.

“You are Mr. Davis, I presume?” I asked, and he answered: “I am. And who are you?”

“This is Mr. Samuel Clemens, sir. And I am Henry Stanley, Mr. Henry Hope Stanley’s son. We’ve journeyed here from New Orleans.”

“Ah, he has spoken of you. Forgive the gun — we sometimes have interlopers in these parts. Come, and I will take you to him.”

We followed Mr. Davis inside and found that the interior of this plantation house was much larger than we had assumed from its facade. For when we entered, we were standing in a parlor some forty feet deep, its ceilings, some twenty feet above us, supported by immense cedar beams. There was a dining room directly adjoining it, all its windows shuttered against the light, and behind that were several other rooms off a hallway lined with potted flowers that led to an inner courtyard in the Spanish style, which was a garden at whose center was a trickling fountain, like one would find in a cloister. Off this honeycomb was an old family chapel, dim, with dark stone walls and an immense statue of an angel looming over a small altar, surely a place for prayers and meditation.

Mr. Davis then led us down an interior hallway to Mr. Stanley’s chamber; as we waited, I heard some words — Mr. Davis saying: “Henry, someone is here to see you.” I entered, Clemens behind me, and found Mr. Stanley resting in bed, two young female slaves attending to him, a book on his lap and a weariness about his person that I did not remember from before. At first he did not seem to know me, but when I called out to him—“Father?”—he took another look, no doubt confused by my appearance, for I was still drawn and terribly thin from my bouts with the Arkansas ague. But as soon as he recognized my familiar and friendly face, then brimming over with many emotions, his spirit suddenly brightened, as if he were a man come back from the dead.

“Is it you, Henry?” he asked. “My God, it is!” Of course he was surprised to see me in Cuba. “You’ve come so far. How could I have imagined that it could be so?”

To convey the magnitude of this moment is beyond my powers; but at once, I rushed forward and gave him an embrace, repeating the words, “Oh, Father; my father.” My forwardness surprised him, and he, gently patting me on the back and sitting up, said, “Now, Henry, be calm. Now that you are here, all will be well again.” Then: “Tell me of your journey.”

I related my travels from Arkansas and my good fortune of having a friend like Samuel Clemens to accompany me and that I had been driven to find him for reasons of concern for his well-being.

“To learn that someone cares so much for me,” he declared, “does my soul much good; your devotion touches me greatly.”

Taking in the scene of our reunion, and seeing my need for privacy in such a moment, Clemens went off with Mr. Davis to have a drink and discuss plantation life there. My father instructed a female slave to bring us refreshments. When I then asked my father why I had not heard from him, his answer was forthright and earnest.

“If you have found me resting in my bed during the hours of siesta, it is for a good reason,” Mr. Stanley told me. “For you see, I was gravely ill for several months, and my strength never completely returned: At best I am good for some six or seven hours a day, and then I am left greatly fatigued. This is because of my brother’s illness. When I arrived in Havana this November past, I found my brother in a sorry state with the yellow fever; enormous and hearty and fearless of spirit as he had been, my brother could not defend against his final calling, and early one morning, while I attended to him in his little house by the sea, he said some last few words and expired, his body, by his request, laid to rest in the waters. That he died was in and of itself a great blow to my spirit. But what my brother had — the yellow fever — I soon contracted; and it brought me close to death. My survival I owed to God. Upon my recovery, in a weakened state, I traveled across the island to settle up some accounts, but through all my journeys, I could barely maintain my interest in such things, so greatly despondent and dispirited was I by the recent turn of events.”

Indeed he seemed to have been aged by his troubles: His black beard had become streaked with white, and many lines, as would come from weeping, had accrued around his intelligent eyes.

“I came here in late February, to see my friend and partner in this enterprise, Mr. Davis. I was not completely well and still hindered by weaknesses, but once I arrived, my heart so weary, I found that I was much calmed by the beauty of these surroundings. I began to succumb to its many soothing qualities, and I decided to give my life here a chance — what remains of it, anyway. And as there was work to do here, I set myself to those tasks and thereby began to forget my troubles — but never have I forgotten you. Once I had settled things here, I had planned to visit New Orleans, and then it was my intention to find you in Arkansas and bring you back here, if you would have so liked. Yet because of the coming war, I knew that it would not have been the best of times to journey there, and so I have remained.”

“But why could you not have written to me? It would have relieved me greatly.”

“When I heard that you had come down with the ague, some months ago, I was ready to advise you to leave that place. But then my own pressing matters overwhelmed me, and, in any case, knowing Mr. Altschul as an honorable man, I feared not for your safety.

“And there’s something else you must understand, Henry. At my age — I am pressing fifty-eight — the wild rush to get things done quickly does not seem so important. As the days go by more swiftly than in earlier years, it is easy to watch slip by two or three months — for they come now as weeks used to. In other words, my boy, what with my obligations here and the restful nature of these surroundings, I have slowed down considerably, and my mental resources are not what they were even a year ago: Surely you must understand.”

THEN, AS I WAS SOMEWHAT vexed by certain things I had heard about him, I said: “Not so long ago in Havana, my friend Clemens struck up an acquaintance with a man who claimed to have known you — a certain Captain Bailey, whom I met one night at a saloon called the Louvre. Do you know of such a person?”

“Yes, for some years.”

“Well, he told me of some matters regarding you that, I am certain, are wrong.”

“What kind of matters?” Mr. Stanley asked.

“He told me that you are originally from Cheshire in England.”

“A fantasy. We had met on a ship out of England. I had been visiting some distant relatives there, that’s all. What have I of any accent, other than southern? Why would I pretend to be something I am not?”

“Then he said that you were married once before you met your late wife.”

“Yes, that is so. Her name was Angela. She died of the fever. As did Frances, and Mr. Speake, and my own brother — as I almost did. What of it?”

“He also said that during your ministry you exercised a bachelor’s whims to excess.”

He laughed.

“Bailey said that? It figures. You see, Captain Bailey is not the most virtuous of men. And as with such men, he, whatever his reasons, takes pleasure in spreading rumors about the righteous. Why he would choose to tell you this I cannot say. But that is not the truth.”