Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

While sitting under a spreading oak tree in a field at Corinth, Stanley, in a lonely frame of mind, allowed his fertile imagination to take prominence over an awareness of his feeble relations with her. And so he sent this tender note:

Dearest Mother,

Though you have been absent from my life for a very long time, I am writing you with the aim of tearing down the wall that circumstances have put between us; yours has not been an easy life, nor has mine. Fortune, that curious thing, has separated us, and though I believe that, deep down, you truly care for me, I know that you have been struggling long to find your own comfortable place in this world, the distractions of which, to my mind, account for your distance from me, and rightfully so, for what would I have ever been to you but yet another burden in your already burdened state? I have sometimes wondered if you know how to write and read. I imagine that you can — but if you do not, I am trusting that someone will read these words to you, even if I would prefer they be kept private. So if it is a matter of personal shame that has kept you from writing me in the past, please understand, dear Mother, that whatever you should say to me would be received with a happy and open heart by a son who with sincerity holds a great affection for you.

I have been told by cousins Tom and Maria that you were recently married at the St. Asaph’s chapel and that you have two small children by your new husband. This strikes me as a wonderful development, for it speaks to me to your worthiness as a mother, and it is my hope that you will have some maternal affections left over for me. I do not blame you for your lapses — what I have been, as a lowly charge of the state and parish of St. Asaph’s, could never be a source of pride to a woman such as yourself, with her own past bereavements to contend with: I am speaking of the early death of my father, John Rowlands, whom I have never known. But I should let you know that the miserable boy you last saw at St. Asaph’s has since blossomed into a person of promise: If you recall, I have written you before of my journey to America, some scant four years before, and of my brief but educational sojourn as a merchant trader. But of other things, which you do not perhaps know, I will tell you now: My employer and dearest friend in those years was a New Orleans merchant named Henry Stanley, and as he regarded me as closely as he would a son, I have taken his name. I have done so not out of disrespect for the man who had been my Welsh father, but to clear my mind and soul of the lowly state I had once been in; and never have I forgotten that you are my mother, a fact I hold close and dear to my heart.

My life has been spent with some travels: As a clerk in Mr. Stanley’s company I learned much about the region of the American South and its ways; things were going so well I had thought to go into business with Mr. Stanley, as his son and partner, but he, dear Mum, I am afraid to say, died in my company, on a plantation in Cuba, where I had gone to join him in his work. When I returned from that journey to the place where I had made a recent home, a state called Arkansas, I joined a regiment of the Confederate army, my rank being that of a private, but with the promise of further promotions awaiting me, as I have been singled out by certain officers for my very good abilities as a provisions clerk and marksman. There is so much more I would like to tell you, but as my regiment is just now making ready to engage the enemy in the coming days, I have mainly wished to express to you the sentiments of a son who, going to war, regards the dear lady who begot him with many wonderful feelings, despite our long separation.

It is my wish, then, to plant the idea in your mind — and heart — that should I get through all this, I will be looking forward to the day when I will see you and your family in England again, and that you will find me as suitable a son as any fine lady might ever want. Please write me, if you can; but if you cannot, rest assured that I remain your son, always, in this world or in the next.

With my dearest affections,

Henry Stanley

AT AN EARLY HOUR on the morning of April 6, 1862, a Sunday, just before the sun had begun to rise, while Clemens was still asleep somewhere out West, Stanley’s regiment, bivouacked in a damp and miserable field, had been mustered into battle formation, the Confederate army creeping through the misty gloom of a forest to sweep down and overrun the Union lines, which they had hoped to push into the Tennessee River or slaughter. Equipped with a muzzle-loading rifle, tedious and time-consuming to load, Stanley had been among the troops who, with whoops and rebel yells, had come charging with fixed bayonets in a frantic run out of the woods. Their volleys cut down the Yankees as they, just stirring awake, half-dressed and unarmed, were completely caught by surprise in their encampments; and it seemed as if the many Yankee dead and wounded lying in the field augured for a quick Confederate victory, despite the length of time it took them to load ball and buckshot and paper charges into their muskets. Shortly, however, once the Union forces had been mustered and had formed their own lines, the Confederate advantage was quickly nullified — Confederate soldiers, under a furious fusillade of bullets and shells, fell everywhere around him. Then the Yankee artillery came into play: men and horses were blown to pieces, and many a torn-open gut, entrails exposed, sent swirls of steam into the cool morning air. Taking refuge with some dozen of his fellow soldiers behind the trunk of a fallen tree, Stanley turned to see one of the men he had written a tender letter home for, a young lieutenant, shot between the eyes, his pupils wide open and dreaming — of who knows what: then he saw the soldier known as John Bull, his face blown off, collapsed on the ground. Stanley’s remarkable ability to feel detached from himself in the most troubling of circumstances served him well in those moments, for, later, keeping his calm, he survived to join a line of troops advancing toward a second Yankee encampment. It was while he had been charging across a field, behind enemy lines, that he was knocked over — a piece of shrapnel having hit the buckle of his belt; stunned, but spared mortal injury, he lay quietly for a long time before managing to crawl, exhausted, behind a tree.

Just as it seemed as if all were lost, he heard the command for his regiment to regroup. Night was falling. He ate some rations and tried to sleep—“Oh, Mother; oh, Father,” he muttered to himself again and again — sharing with his fellow soldiers the widespread fear that the Yankees might be upon them come dawn. But by the morning, he had recovered his nerves enough not only to join a line of infantrymen who were ordered to advance toward the Yankee lines in “good order” but also to do so with great valor and enthusiasm, outpacing his fellow soldiers and penetrating so deeply into the enemy campgrounds that soon no gray Confederate uniforms were to be seen. Searching for a place to hide, he ran toward some trees, only to find himself in an exposed clearing, Yankee uniforms everywhere surrounding him: And, just like that, with half a dozen soldiers converging upon him, their pistols drawn, he found himself in ankle chains and taken as a prisoner of war.

He was sent upriver by steamboat to St. Louis, then by rail to Illinois. A few weeks later, he arrived at Camp Douglas, outside of Chicago, the long huts of this federal prison abundant with vermin, its trench latrines overflowing with human ordure, and the men, clustered two and three to a wooden bunk (in dense rows, like small boats), suffering from dysentery or typhus or their own septic wounds, dying in their own filth, their bodies carried away to the death wagons each morning, like “loads of New Zealand mutton,” as he would later write in his journal. Ill himself with a very bad case of dysentery, Stanley, brooding and weary, supposed that sooner or later his would soon be among the bodies carted out of that place.