Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

WHAT HE, BORN OUT OF WEDLOCK, mainly wanted, beyond the admiration of others, was a modicum of affection from the public — or from anyone. What family he had on his mother’s side were distant cousins and a few aunts and uncles, though he had several half siblings from his mother’s marriage to Robert Jones.

Other persons who claimed to be family only came forward after he had achieved his greatest fame — supposed cousins and long-unheard-of brothers and sisters on his father’s side who sent the most heartfelt notes, bursting with pride over the Rowlands line, and all, in the end, asking him for money. He sometimes received letters from England and America claiming that such and such a person, whom Stanley had never heard of before, was a relation. One missive, from a woman in Colorado, where Stanley had once roamed as a frontier reporter, went so far to say that she had borne his child and was now ready to take her place by his side (an impossibility, unless it was an instance of what the Catholics call immaculate conception, as Stanley wrote her). Another letter came from a certain Joanna Eastaway, who claimed to be his mother:

My dear William Henry [sic]—

How I’ve missed and longed for you all these years… Why it is that I have not been in touch with you is owed to “curious circumstances.” Many years before, I was a wanton and innocent young lady, working in London, where through grave necessity I, having fallen under the spell of hunger, made arrangements with a certain high lord; without spelling out the obvious I must tell you that scandal and threats to my livelihood were pressed upon me, and so with my heart broken I had to convey you, darling infant that you were, into the hands of strangers — the Parry family, who claimed you as their own. That you have suffered all these years, without a mum, weighs heavily upon me, but rest assured I am here to give you all my love — to hold you is my dream.

Sometimes gifts arrived at his flat — cakes, articles of hand-stitched clothing, and books, for which he always remained grateful. From several misguided ladies there arrived notes that amounted to marriage proposals: “To have the great Stanley as the father of my child would be all,” one said. Some ladies sent a photograph, and, in one instance, he received a pair of perfume-doused bloomers. Most correspondents just asked for his autograph. But it was the children he most enjoyed answering, this grave and serious-minded explorer, not only writing back but often embellishing his notes with some outlandish details about Africa, as if to enchant them:

My dear little Tom of Cheshire,

I very much appreciated the note that you took the time to compose for me: Enclosed you will find a photograph of me, so pleased was I by the drawing of you that you sent me. Well done! I imagine you must be a very bright boy, having learned to write at five, you say. That alone tells me — and say this to your lucky parents — that you will always do well in this life. My cap is off to you, young Tom. As for your question—“What are the animals of Africa like?”—I will say this, and I only tell you the truth. In Africa, there is a breed of antelopes who fly; and of the flying creatures there are birds who sing like angels, and there are many very wise and kindly elephants afoot, some over a thousand years old, but youthful in their ways, and these elephants, loving children, will lift them with their trunks onto their backs and take them along on exciting adventures. It is a place that you should certainly see, when it is all the more peaceful and its bad people driven away. This, I assure you, will happen one day.

With my sincerest best wishes,

Your friend, Stanley

He was no less willing to play the kindly uncle for the children he met in the homes of friends or out on their country estates. He took great pains to share with them the amusing things he had seen during his travels, delighting them with his tales of the pygmies of the Ituri Forest. Imitating many an animal’s growl and utterances, he was not above getting on his hands and knees to demonstrate how a lion walked or emulate an elephant’s lumbering gait.

Still, as with most things regarding his life, Stanley had another side, for the man who could be so playful with children had thought nothing about putting his beloved rifle bearer, Kalulu, in neck and ankle chains during their last expedition together. And he was quick with a lash, quick to administer proper justice to those he considered his enemies.

IN THOSE DAYS, before his eventual fall from public esteem, he was a heroic figure to the masses, his popularity such that his image appeared on coffee mugs, on candy boxes, on cigar wrappers, tea tins, and plates. Even on toys: There were Stanley cork-shooting rifles and tops, a children’s marble maze game entitled the Stanley Souvenir, even lead figure sets from Germany with names like Stanley on Safari and Stanley in Darkest Africa. Plays were mounted about his exploits, and for more than a decade, English vaudeville comedians had spun endless skits from his defining moment in Ujiji, the one when he had uttered the words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” (That phrase was so much a part of collective English consciousness that Stanley was often greeted, much to his irritation, the same way.) His face appeared in cartoons in magazines like Punch and in newspaper advertisements. Songs were written about him: “The Stanley March,” “The Stanley Polka,” and “The Source of the Nile Waltz” among them.

“DO YOU NOT KNOW YET that you are furiously famous for your exploits?” said Edwin Arnold one day as he encountered Stanley melancholically roaming through Regent’s Park. Knowing only his bachelor’s solitude, Stanley answered him in this way: “I seem to notice it sometimes, but it is not anything I give weight to: So what if you are temporarily ‘someone’ in the eyes of others? What does that matter if you are never invited openly into someone’s home as a true friend, not as an attraction? Fond as I am of such folks, as much as they seem to love me in one moment, they are shortly gone.”

“Ah,” said Arnold. “If you do feel this way, then something must be done about it.”

Doffing their caps, they parted.

A FEW DAYS LATER, IN June of 1885, a note from Arnold, announcing that he was to give a reading from a new book of verses at the Athenaeum Club, arrived at Stanley’s flat: “Do come, old boy. I think you will much enjoy my new verses, and if I am not mistaken, I believe there will be someone there, a quite gracious lady, whom I would like you to meet.”

At first, he made nothing of the invitation and spent the morning attending to the voluminous correspondence that arrived daily, but Arnold had aroused his curiosity, and eventually, as the day unfolded, Stanley found himself standing before his bedroom mirror in a Harris tweed suit, trimming his mustache and giving his hair a good brushing.

“I should be back by seven or so,” he said to Hoffman.

THE ATHENAEUM CLUB WAS SITUATED in an old neoclassical building at the intersection of Pall Mall and Waterloo Place, the Grecian-style facade of this palatial edifice graced by a statue of Minerva. It was the kind of cultural organization that Stanley secretly admired but felt excluded from, as, in those days, despite his many admirable accomplishments, he was still looked down upon by the lofty sages of the Victorian establishment as a “penny-a-liner” journalist who had been lucky as an explorer.

Just before five in the evening, Stanley entered its premises.