Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

The irony of it all was that he could be quite personable in private conversation with men, possessing as he did a wide range of interesting anecdotes culled from the many lives he had already lived. In one moment, if he cared to, he could, with some fondness, reminisce about his days riding along the Western plains as a dashing reporter for the Missouri Democrat , covering the Indian Wars of 1867 along with the likes of Wild Bill Hickok, icon of the American frontier. He could recall strolling through the bazaars of Cairo with the late General Gordon in the 1870s; or, if one happened to bring up the name of Mark Twain among persons ranging from Queen Victoria to the Prince of Wales, Stanley could speak at length about him, and happily so.

“I have always found him an interesting and amusing character,” he was once quoted as saying.

Because Stanley had a photographic memory — after he read a page of a book, its contents remained with him always — he could be many things to many people. With classicists he could recite by heart passages from Ovid and Catullus in Latin, the bawdier aspects of the latter not escaping him; with literary friends he quoted Byron or Browning or Milton; with geographers he could discuss the intricacies of mapping; with navigators he deliberated the uses of the sextant and the difficulties of taking river “soundings.” Even his medicinal knowledge was deep: He devoured the contents of various medical books so that he would know just what to do when physical disaster afflicted him or one of his native porters. He could draw quite well: Having won prizes for his renderings at St. Asaph’s, he might have followed a career in art in a different life, and he was something of a musician, too, able — like Samuel Clemens — to play the piano and guitar serviceably enough. He was mildly proficient at other instruments as well: Often on his expeditions, he had soothed the gloomy hearts of his native porters and charmed the chieftains he encountered by playing, as he appeared before them in some smart cream-colored outfit, French, English, and Yankee melodies on an accordion (as long as the instrument was not worm-ridden or soaked through with the moisture of the jungle).

Nor did languages elude him. While his own native tongue, Welsh, had slipped with the years into the recesses of memory, he spoke Spanish and French and Arabic fluently, Italian and Portuguese well enough, and German, Russian, and Dutch passably. He could converse in various dialects of the Bantu language and efficiently speak Swahili (to the point that in later years, while under malarial delusions, he would write entire letters in Swahili, regardless of the recipients’ knowledge of the language). Holding forth with much erudition about a wide range of subjects, from Ptolemy to the czar, he could be randy as well, having heard during dozens of voyages the filthiest jokes from the sailors — although he rarely pursued this latter talent, and never in mixed company. To preachers he could talk about the Bible; to astronomers he could talk about the charting of the stars. With such diverse folks he could go on and on and hold his own, but never with women.

That he had no lady companion or a family of his own was among the things he had come to regret during his life of adventure. In any event, he was always bound up with his writing. After each of his expeditions, he always had a massive book to produce and speaking tours that took him from city to city, so he had no sure home in which to lay down roots.

IT WAS ONLY IN THE PREVIOUS YEAR that he had moved into a many-roomed apartment on New Bond Street, where he lived with his manservant, Hoffman, and with Baruti, a former member of the Basoko tribe, whom Stanley had brought back from the Congo on his last expedition with the aim of “civilizing him” as a kind of social experiment. At heart, his hope was to eventually teach the unruly Baruti, whose name meant “gunpowder” in Bantu, how to read and write and feel comfortable in a gentleman’s wardrobe so that he might one day become an upright and sturdy British citizen. To break him in, Stanley had Baruti dress in pantaloons, shirt, and jacket, plus stockings and stiff leather shoes, but this was a mode of apparel for which Baruti, accustomed to a more unencumbered life in the Ituri Forest of the Congo, had little liking. He tended to shed his clothes, and it was not an uncommon sight for visitors to Stanley’s flat to encounter Baruti stripped down to a mere loincloth and climbing over the front parlor’s furniture, couches and sturdy club chairs toppling over in his wake. Stanley’s nonchalance about the aforementioned behavior contributed to his bachelor’s air of distraction.

In his employ was one female: Mrs. Holloway, his cook and housekeeper, who put up endlessly with his attitude that a gentleman should be picked up after. Despite all her efforts, his flat was a disaster of cast-off things. He had four hounds, rescued from the Battersea’s home for unwanted animals, one of whom, a Scottie, had recently given birth to a litter of puppies. To the distress of Mrs. Holloway, these creatures peed upon and otherwise disfigured the fine Persian carpets that were laid out on the floors of every room, a state of affairs to which Stanley was indifferent—“As long as they do not eat up my maps, books, or important papers, let them do as they please. After all, it is not as if they are carrying malaria.” Two parrots chortled happily away in cages that stood in his front parlor.

In general, Stanley could not have cared less about his cluttered, and sometimes chaotic, surroundings, for he had set aside for himself one orderly area for his work — on the floor below the parlor, under one of the windows that looked out onto the traffic of New Bond Street, a humble and orderly space. With an Islamic prayer carpet spread out beneath him, Stanley, replicating the way he made his journal entries in a tent in the African jungle, would sit on a wicker stool about eight inches high and write on a small table just big enough to hold a quire and an ink pot. It was on that table that Stanley composed his lectures and wrote his most important correspondence, the brunt of which was sent to King Léopold, with whom he was in nearly daily contact.

As the king’s handsomely paid consultant for Africa, Stanley spent a large part of his day answering Léopold’s many queries about further enhancements to the organization of the Congo, wherein Stanley, combing over maps and his own journals, would make suggestions as to the possible locations of future river stations and where new roads might be cut through that territory to expedite the trade and fortification in the region.

RECEIVING MUCH MAIL DAILY, Stanley also had notes of a personal nature (but no love letters) to attend to, mostly in polite response to the great number of dinner and luncheon invitations he received from various persons and clubs in London — high society always requesting his presence in those days. He got so many invitations that he accepted only a few, generally considering such outings — save for when he had the opportunity to voice his (preferred) advocacy for greater British involvement in Africa — a waste of time.

Then, too, there was practical correspondence with several people of importance in his life — among them William Mackinnon, head of the British India Steam Navigation Company, and Edwin Arnold, the poet and “old India hand” who was also the editor of the Daily Telegraph .

Though he saw all these gentlemen socially in London, usually at the premises of the Royal Geographical Society in Knightsbridge or at one or another of the famous clubs — the Carlton, the Travellers, the Oxford and Cambridge, the National Liberal Club, and the Garrick — the “public” Stanley, being somewhat formal and privately disposed, was wary about his assignations, for wherever he went, groups of admirers gathered about him, and he, wanting to be left alone, would feel resentful of the way strangers would press him to hold forth about his past journeys—“as if I were an intimate friend.” On the other hand, if he entered a room and people did not turn and notice him instantly, he took it as a personal failing, as if he had been judged and rejected, his mood sinking low. Then he’d sit off in a corner, sulkily, until someone, recognizing him, introduced him around, as “Henry Stanley, the eminent explorer.” And all would be well with the world again.