Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

TRUE TO HER WORD, a few days afterward, as Stanley sat before his writing desk, a summons to her home for a formal dinner arrived at his residence by courier. At first he thought to politely turn her down, as he did with so many other invitations, but his memory of Miss Tennant’s warmth — and forwardness — had given him pause; and so, to test the waters of a potential courtship, he wrote a note of acceptance.

THOUGH HER FATHER HAD BEEN DEAD for many years, she believed that he was ever-present in her life, and nightly she addressed him in her diary.

Dear Father,

I am aflutter with anticipation over the dinner party Mother and I have planned. We have invited, among many interesting individuals, no less a figure than the Prime Minister Gladstone himself, a very brave thing as far as Mother and I are concerned, particularly given the controversy about the death of General Gordon back in January: But I feel astonished to say that we have succeeded, for Gladstone has consented to come. That is all very well, but now I am wondering if I was wise in also inviting another most charming man, Henry Stanley, the explorer, who is known to dislike the prime minister. Oh, dear God, help me, for I wonder if in my eagerness to please and impress Mr. Stanley I have made a mistake in judgment. What will I do should these two formidable men meet and not get along? Yet I am hoping for good things to come of it anyway. Goodnight, my darling.

The Evening Saved by Samuel Clemens

BY THE EVENING OF JUNE 24, in addition to Stanley, the guest list, as organized by Dorothy’s mother, Gertrude, a longtime doyenne of London social life, had, to Stanley’s eventual dismay, grown to include Prime Minister William Gladstone, a man Stanley considered a monomaniac, and his cabinet colleague Joseph Chamberlain, two of the most important and powerful politicians in England, then electioneering for their next terms. Stanley and Gladstone disliked each other. Of a liberal cast of mind, the prime minister held the opinion that Stanley, having done much more harm than good in Africa, was a ruthless and dangerous fool, and he had often said so in public. And for his part, Stanley, aside from being aware of Gladstone’s unkind opinion of him, thought him the worst kind of leader, as he had felt greatly incensed and grieved over the unnecessary loss of his friend General Gordon, the governor of the Sudan, who died some six months before at Khartoum, where he had been besieged by an army of Islamic fanatics and beheaded. This Stanley blamed on Gladstone’s failure to send in the British army to relieve Gordon in a timely fashion.

Which is to say that when Stanley first entered into the grand parlor of the Tennant mansion, on Richmond Terrace, where cocktails and Champagne were being served by servants in livery, he was not in the best of moods, and he was not looking forward to encountering the prime minister. Neither he nor Gladstone spoke to one another, even though at one point during cocktails they were standing nearly back-to-back. Gladstone, tall, aloof, and imperious in bearing, would not even allow Stanley into his sight, and when he happened to turn his stately and very large, high-browed head in Stanley’s direction, the detachment of the prime minister’s expression struck Stanley as being typical of the kind of upper-class haughtiness that he, since boyhood, had always strongly despised. And though he had made no overtures to meet the great politician, refusing to give ground and preferring to make conversation with the shipping magnate William Mackinnon, he considered the prime minister’s behavior a slight.

But all these feelings gave way when Dorothy Tennant, lovely in a silken French dress, joined the gathering. In that instant, as she moved across the crowded room, his annoyance with Gladstone dissipated and his eyes lit warmly at the sight of her, as she had warmed at the sight of him. Her pleasure at seeing Stanley was so evident that her mother, Gertrude, a former beauty and a society snob down to her deepest molecule — the kind of older woman who would fuss over the most handsome men in the room — puzzled over her daughter’s interest in that “long-winded little man.” Upon meeting him Gertrude had not been charmed at all by Stanley or particularly impressed by the legend surrounding his exploits. She thought he looked like a bank clerk and had only reluctantly included Stanley on the invitation list because of his fame and her daughter’s insistence. She ascribed Dorothy’s interest in Stanley to the eccentricity of her artistic spirit, and perhaps because of some vague similarity in appearance between Stanley and her late husband, Charles, whose painted, gold-leaf-framed visage occupied a prominent place in the room. Gertrude, a widow of some twelve years, put Stanley’s presence at the dinner in the same category as certain of Dorothy’s other seemingly capricious, whim-driven acts.

Still careless and carefree at thirty, Gertrude’s “little girl” remained a kind of flighty bohemian aesthete, one for whom, Gertrude hoped, Stanley was nothing more than another street urchin to be painted and cared for — albeit one of great reputation and quite grown up, but still a “common” element brought home and only valuable as an item of fleeting interest.

Despite her mother’s opinions, Dorothy fawned over him. For all the fearlessness that surrounded his legend, she found Stanley a man of vulnerability and, at heart, quite lonely-seeming. Fiercely intelligent, he seemed to know much about the world in all its details (how enchanted would she be to tell him about the little street urchins she loved to paint and to show him her portraits of the beautiful Lady Ashburton, a dear friend whom she had depicted as a living Venus, and of Benoît-Constant Coquelin, the famous French actor, for whom the play Cyrano de Bergerac would later be written). No matter that he was not very tall; he was formidable all the same, and his presence in a room was felt by everyone around him. And there was something else: She liked the difference in their ages, drew comfort from it, as in many ways Stanley, with his hair gray and aged before his time because of his expeditions and the many illnesses attending them, reminded Miss Tennant of her late father, a landed Welshman and former member of Parliament whose passing she had never gotten over. “How wonderfully smart you look tonight, Mr. Stanley,” she said upon seeing him. “I hope you are well — you certainly look so.” Then: “Surely you have made the acquaintance of Prime Minister Gladstone?”

“As he has been busily talking, I did not wish to disturb him.”

“Well, then, if you have not made his acquaintance, you should know that you will be sitting across from him at dinner.”

“I cannot wait for that honor.”

Later, with Dorothy’s arm hooked into his, Stanley made his way out of the parlor into the dining room: There, two long tables, covered by French lace tablecloths and cluttered with plates, stemmed tulip glasses, and bouquets in silver vases, glowed white under two hanging gaslight chandeliers. Some thirty or so guests were accommodated.

Once the guests were seated, Gertrude addressed the gathering, her “dear exalted company of London’s luminaries.” Reciting the names of each, she gave special mention to a few, among them the dashing painter James McNeill Whistler, the Right Reverend Hughes, vicar of St. Paul’s, then Stanley himself.

“But as illustrious as these guests are, there is none more notable among us than our prime minister, William Gladstone, who has honored us with his attendance.”