Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

Thereafter they only met occasionally over the years, mainly in England, the two often sitting up until the late hours smoking and drinking beer; but since Stanley was often away in Africa over the next decade and a half, their friendship was mainly conducted by mail.

160 New Bond Street, London

December 20, 1885

Dear Samuel,

I hope this missive finds you in good spirits and good health; since I last wrote to you from Zanzibar, much that is new and much that is not very new has transpired; of my accomplishments in the Congo I will not speak — I know just how wary and contrary in opinion you are about that subject. Thankfully, you and I, going back so many years, can speak of other things, as, dare I say, brothers of different opinions might. If I presume to put you in such a category, please forgive me: But few are the men I respect; even fewer are the men I trust; and you are one of them, having always kept “our little secret” (about our travels together) so faithfully and for so long.

But on to the subject of this letter: What has transpired in my life as of late has occurred in the area of romance, a realm as dangerous and foreign to this long-solitary life as any jungle I have trod. The lady in question, with whom I have been in frequent company over the past months and with whom I have corresponded nearly daily, is one Dorothy Tennant. She is about thirty-five, but well preserved, tall and statuesque, and with the lively attitude and bright spirit of a young girl. She is something of a society dame. A friend to royalty and the artistic set alike, she comes from a Welsh family of wealth and great estates — they have in their household staff eight servants and housekeepers, a head butler, a cook, and a carriage driver — and yet, though she lives in a mansion on Richmond Terrace, on the east end of Whitehall, and has an acquaintance with the Prince of Wales, among other persons of note and fame, Miss Tennant is no ordinary coddled aristocrat; on the contrary, she has an interest in many things that one would not expect of such a personage. Her mother is an old bat, a snob of the old school, with whom I do not particularly get along (and in truth I do not like being in a room with her, as she has the manner of a strict schoolmarm and has not once looked me in the eye when speaking — aloof, I would call her). But she is an aesthetic sort, having once been an artist, and her daughter has followed suit, being a painter of some reputation, trained here at the Slade School and in Paris (she speaks very good French and dresses with impeccable taste). She has, to my eye, a remarkable ability for miniature paintings, no more than a foot high and wide, which she showed me one day: They are little fantasies of a neoclassical theme, set in places like old Greek temples, with all manner of buxom nude maidens (at first I was shocked, I should tell you) and scantily clad nymphs and sprites cavorting about placid Arcadian woods, after the style of the popular Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Her highly developed imagination for such scenes is fueled by her considerable reading of the classical myths.

In the main, however, her most prolific works have depicted common London street children — her “beloved ragamuffins,” she calls them, her métier being the very poorest of the poor: chimney sweeps, flower girls, little beggars whom she finds here and there during her rambles through the city. She brings them back home to her mansion, where they are given a good meal before going into her studio to pose. For their troubles she allows them to play her piano, a great luxury to such children (her piano’s ivories are always smudged with black fingerprints and darkened by soot), and finally she gives them sixpence.

Because you know about my own upbringing, I need not tell you how deeply her benevolent and somewhat maternal attitude toward these poor children touches me. Certainly I do not believe that painting a smiling chimney sweep or a vagabond waif makes any great difference to their lives, but there is some truth to her assertion that such children will be remembered — immortalized, as it were — and perhaps helped because of what she does. (She publishes articles about such children’s poverty in several newspapers.)

Now, as to the details: We met last June at a poetry reading by our mutual friend Edwin Arnold held at the Athenaeum Club, and in the months of July and August, when I had mainly remained in London, I would see her at least twice a week for lunch at first, and always in the company of her mother. But as she wanted to know me better, she devised a means by which we would have some privacy, and so since those months, Samuel, I have been going to her studio to pose for her. She wants to make a “proper portrait” of me — not of the tired and world-weary and solitary Henry Stanley but of the triumphant and virtuous and “very charming” Stanley, or so she has put it. And, as we have begun to know each other a little better, she has even gotten me to talk openly — not about my African exploits (a tiring business to me) but about the ways I came to be, particularly my childhood (of great interest to her, it seems).

But even as I have been hopeful, I have been suspicious of her motivations. I have wondered if I am some glorified vision of a chimney sweep who’s done well, in her eyes, or if I am a simple diversion from the haughty and bloodless folk of her normal acquaintance. My doubts in this regard are further heightened by my still painful memories of past affaires de coeur gone bad. To this day I think about Alice Pike, the young American girl I met here in London before my expedition of 1874 and to whom I thought I had been engaged. During the loneliest and most solemn Christmas I have ever spent, in a place called Ugogo, laid low with fever in a rain-soaked tent, it was the simple idea of being with her one day that kept me from taking my own life. (Samuel, I am describing an extreme state: Have we not talked about life and the sheer abstraction of the idea? However we may feel, have we not asked if our lives really mean much to the world one way or the other?) That I returned from the wild to find that she, a fickle girl, impatient to wait three years, had married someone else — a soft fellow named Barney — left me rather soured on the idea of love.

I do not know if you can understand this, having been wedded to Livy so long, but no matter how I tried to remove from my thoughts the memories of that experience with Alice, the deep wound she inflicted upon me has remained. One day, being forthright and earnest, I related this undeniable fact to Miss Tennant, who seemed, at the mention of that past affair, I am selfishly happy to say, rather jealous of my strong recollection of that woman. Though I have been feeling greatly distracted by her I remain hesitant to commit myself to what may well be another folly and disappointment.

Miss Tennant seems to feel otherwise. Nearly daily, during July and August, I received notes from her: “Come tomorrow”; “Do say you will dine with us”; “Can you arrive at three in the afternoon?” “I have read your latest letter to the London Times and found it most interesting — please, come tomorrow, I must see you so we might discuss it”; and on and on. We have been seen at the theater and attending charity balls together; one of our appearances, at a reception at the US embassy for a July Fourth celebration, created a rouse of unwanted speculation in the newspapers. I have lately heard much gossip about us, implying a possible romance, but we have always regarded each other as friends, and platonically so. While we have often sat on the couch speaking intimately, even holding hands, I have been reluctant to physically express my admiration — and attraction — to her.