Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

As the elderly Gladstone, with his fifty years of public service showing in the many lines on his gaunt and grave face, stood up, bowing, so did the participants of the dinner, clapping and clinking their glasses with their utensils in his honor. Gloomily contemplating his hands, Stanley had been one of the last to get out of his chair. But as he did, Gladstone noticed it, giving Stanley a disdainful sidelong glance; then, asking the gathering to sit, he gave a short speech, in which, among other subjects, he addressed the necessity of establishing an Irish Free State and matters of commerce. Of Africa and his failure to relieve General Gordon at Khartoum some months before, a great national tragedy, he made no mention.

Then, with the disharmony between Stanley and Gladstone evident, the dinner proceeded. Soup, salad, roasted goose; legs of lamb, roast beef, and Brussels sprouts; string beans and boiled potatoes.

During this meal, Gladstone, eating little, did not so much as look over at Stanley. And Stanley, normally a voracious eater, hardly touched his plate, his stomach in knots. Worse was the continued silence between them. As much as Dorothy attempted to provoke a lively conversation, Gladstone remained rather uncommunicative, answering most queries with one-or two-word responses. (“And how is your campaign proceeding, sir?” “Well enough.”)

But then Dorothy asked Mr. Stanley if he might not mind making some remarks about his recent expedition, and though Stanley felt somewhat reluctant to do so, he addressed the gathering, somewhat timidly at first. Then, taking a deep breath and sipping from a glass of brandy, he continued:

“Even now, great numbers of managers and officers of the African Association are pouring into that region, their only goal the betterment of its inhabitants. Regardless of what some wayward missionary reports — in singling out a few clashes between natives and Europeans — have unfairly cited as evidence of cruel treatment and a preexisting enmity between native and civilizer, the long view must be taken that it is all for the good of African and European alike.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have no reservations about this enterprise. Not only will those peoples benefit from our presence and the advancements of what our technology and medical knowledge can give them, but in the course of such advances, the Arab slavers will also be stamped out, and along the way, as I have advocated in the region of Uganda, the light of Christianity will flourish there as well. Yet even as I say this, I can only urge those in positions of power in England to carefully consider our own greater involvement there: Why we have not sought after the riches that are awaiting us by way of abundant natural resources and the promise of trade is beyond my grasp to understand. I may have an affiliation with Léopold’s International African Association, but as my heart and loyalties are British, I believe that what is most missing from that scheme is England itself.”

Wishing to impress Miss Tennant, he spoke for another twenty minutes along those lines, to the point that she had regretted asking him to speak. But then, abruptly, looking about the room and somewhat annoyed by the fact that, during his remarks, Gladstone had passed the time by moving a soup spoon from side to side, Stanley decided to make a toast.

“However, I am pleased to be here this evening to be saying a few words; indeed, there are some who have not been so lucky. A year ago, when in my dealings with the association, its president, King Léopold, asked me which man I would choose to govern such a region as the Congo, the name that came instantly to mind was that of a very fine chap, a capable and pious gentleman whose absolute opposition to the slavers and whose strong personal faith and bravery I held in the highest regard: I am speaking of the late General Gordon. And so I say”—and he hoisted a glass of wine—“here’s to the great General Gordon.”

The gathering then followed suit.

As Stanley sat back down, Gladstone’s stony gaze was upon him, and whereas Gladstone had been merely condescending with Stanley before, he now glared at Stanley with pure contempt. It was then that Miss Tennant steered the conversation toward literature, which, in her opinion, most people of refinement would find worthwhile to discuss — a neutral zone. In this she was correct, for she had finally engaged Gladstone’s interest.

A conservative in his tastes, if not in his politics, and religiously inclined — as religious as Stanley — he spoke tenderly about the books of Saint Augustine, which he had hoped to one day translate himself; then of Horace and Ovid. When it came to English authors, he championed Tennyson and Milton, among others, whose writings, in his opinion, spoke well for the legacy of civilized England. (“I almost liked him for that,” Stanley would later write.) Stanley, for his part, held forth on the writers whom he most esteemed. In his opinion, Gibbon and Samuel Butler were remarkable enough, but in the realm of invention, Charles Dickens, so Stanley assessed, still remained the greatest author to come out of England, only bettered perhaps by the Shakespeare of Hamlet . Books such as Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield had always deeply moved him.

“Reading Dickens,” he said that night, while looking over at the apprehensive Dorothy, “I have often thought David Copperfield was very much like me when I was a boy.”

“Dickens was one of Providence’s gifts to England, a very prolific and humane writer,” Gladstone declared. And he was kind enough to concede that he sensed Dickens’s influence on Stanley’s prose style: “Your many exclamations and colorful characterizations of people, rather broadly, in fact, do seem reminiscent of Charles’s work,” he said. “You certainly know how to keep your books moving along at a fast clip.”

“I work very hard at what I do, sir,” Stanley answered, his tensely drawn face turning red. “And I am decisive in what I do.”

With servants pouring liquors, Dorothy Tennant, knowing something of Stanley’s background, then asked, “And whom, Mr. Stanley, do you count among the better American authors?”

“A difficult question to answer, Miss Tennant: I have also very much liked the writings of Benjamin Franklin; his autobiography is remarkable. Of current authors, Emerson comes to mind, and William Dean Howells. But I do have a particular favorite — a writer, who, in my opinion, soars over his contemporaries. In truth I am perhaps biased, for he is a longtime acquaintance. An author who is as well known in England as anyone.”

“And who is this?”

“Samuel Clemens.”

“Mark Twain?”

“Yes, Miss Tennant, Mark Twain.”

“And what is it that you like especially about his work?”

“Well, now,” said Stanley. “He has a great capacity to recall the minutest details; a knack for capricious language, and, I should say, he is one of the few writers besides Dickens who makes me laugh out loud. Though artful design is not his forte, he’s jolly in his choice of language and writes about many remarkable things, with a very sharp journalist’s eye. His Life on the Mississippi is one of the finest books that I have read about that region in America. As one who has traveled that river in my youth, I know what I am speaking of. It is no easy thing to write as Clemens does.” Then: “Even something like his juvenile’s novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has impressed me; his evocation of childhood, in a small town along the Mississippi River, as simply as it is written… it leaves me thinking about the glory and joy of childhoods in general, rare as they may be in some cases. I thought of Wales when I read it: I thought about the farmers I knew…. I can’t exactly describe my feelings about it, but for all my experience in this world, I have been touched by that book and others he has written.”