Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

Then, as he faltered for words, and as Gladstone looked at his vest-pocket watch, Stanley added, “His books have the warmth of life. A warmth that moves me deeply.”

“Would you not say, then, Mr. Stanley,” the prime minister asked, “that he is the closest thing the Americans have to a Charles Dickens?”

“I would.”

“Ah — so I see that we’ve finally agreed on something,” the prime minister answered. “I have met this Mark Twain on several occasions and have found him a congenial sort. Were it that all writers could be so affably disposed.”

With the evening thus salvaged from disaster by literature, Stanley was making his way out from the dining room when Miss Tennant followed him to the door. After thanking him for coming, she said, “Mr. Stanley, if you do not already know, I am a portrait painter.”

“I know that.”

“And as such, I would be very honored — and delighted — if you would come into my home again to sit for me as a subject. Can you?”

“Well, Miss Tennant, as much as I am touched, my schedule is very full. Can it not be done with some photographs? I can have several delivered to you, if you like.”

“No,” she said. “I would prefer that you sit for me.”

Then, as she smiled in a lovely way: “Oh, please, Mr. Stanley, whatever you are doing, surely you will have a free afternoon. Please say that you will.”

This he agreed to eventually do — and that is how things began between them.

THERE CAME THE DAY in early July when Stanley found himself lingering for some time before the entranceway of the Tennant mansion, a sign beside the door saying: VISITORS WELCOMED HERE. Beforehand, he had walked up and down the streets of Whitehall for half an hour, debating with himself as to whether he should or shouldn’t finally keep his assignation with Miss Tennant, and he had nearly changed his mind when Dorothy, seeing him from her front window, opened the door and cheerfully called him in. Over her dress was tied a painter’s smock; her hair was up, her fingers smudged with paint, as she was still in the midst of a session with some of her urchin children.

“Do come in — and forgive my appearance, Mr. Stanley. Come now, into my studio.” And so it was that she led Stanley down a long hallway, with which he would become well familiar, to a room at the far end of the house on the first floor, which she had nicknamed the birdcage and where her delightful subjects, the little street children of London, fluttered about, lively and as happy as sparrows. With some trepidation—“I do not intend to disturb your labors; I can come back another day,” he told her — he followed her into the studio. In it were numerous cabinets, barrels of ragged clothes, a bucket of soot, and all kinds of props: a baby carriage, a cradle, a milk churn, baskets, a large mirror, a wooden rocking horse, and two very small chairs. Two children, a boy and girl, costumed as common urchins in rags, were attempting to play her upright piano, their soot-covered hands banging wildly at its keys; a third child, a boy, pounded at a snare drum; another hit a spoon on a triangle. This little orchestra played to their heart’s content, making a cacophonous racket, which, however, did not bother Miss Tennant in the slightest. Leading Stanley to her easel, on which sat one of her “urchin paintings” in progress, she smiled serenely and said, “Come and look, Mr. Stanley. What do you think?”

On a small canvas was a nicely detailed rendering of a chimney sweep playing with his friends; the studio fireplace before which her subjects posed had turned into a dingy alley and brick wall somewhere in London.

“Most interesting,” Stanley said. “Most charming.”

Stanley, with his serious manner, brought the children’s revelry to an abrupt halt: The leader of this small gang, putting down his drumstick, asked Miss Tennant, “Are we done now, ma’am?”

“Yes, you can go for today,” she told him, placing sixpence into his palm. “But I will see you and your friends tomorrow, yes?”

Once the children had gone, escorted by a butler out the door, Miss Tennant, tending to several brushes with turpentine, begged Stanley’s forgiveness for her state of dress, adding: “But I did want you to see me as I often am.”

Then she proceeded to show him the numerous sketches she had made of her “beloved ragamuffins,” mostly charcoal and pencil drawings that she kept in a large portfolio: a little girl watching her baby brother in a cradle; a boy standing outside a café window holding a violin and bow in hand, as if wishing he had enough money for a meal. One drawing after the other, depicting the life of poor London waifs.

“I get my ideas for these scenes from my ramblings around the city. I find some of my children around St. Paul’s, or down by the embankments of the Thames. You will notice that poor though they may be, each child is truly happy.”

Stanley, who had spent nine years in a workhouse with such poor children and who did not remember them as happy, asked, “And how so?”

“Happy in that they are children, unspoiled by things. You see, I believe that all children, regardless of their circumstances, are more contented than what most people are led to believe — that even an impoverished childhood holds out many delights and joys. The way they are depicted in our newspapers — as thin, pale, and sickly guttersnipes with sunken eyes and hopeless spirits — goes against everything I have observed of them, living, as all children cannot help but do, in the utter bliss and sunshine of those precious years.”

“If you ask me, that’s a matter of opinion, Miss Tennant.” Then: “But have you not wanted children of your own?”

“Oh, sir, I have,” she told him. “But I have somehow managed without them.” Then: “Is it so that you genuinely like these drawings?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then I hope you will be happy with the portrait I will make of you.”

“Are we to begin today?”

“If you would like. But first, let us have some lunch.”

COMING TO HER STUDIO to pose for her, he got to know her slightly then. Her way of thinking, mostly capricious, seemed intent upon avoiding the obvious; a kind of contrary manner of putting things was her method, or a natural irony. She was very pleasant company, he thought; she let him smoke to his heart’s content and seemed such a gentle kind of lady that naturally his innermost thoughts poured forth. The first two times he sat for her, he mainly talked about Africa, but then, by and by, he started to tell her more about his past, a line he rarely crossed with strangers.

“AS I SAID, MISS TENNANT, my father died when I was three, but I know he was a butcher because I have some very early recollection of being laid faceup on a counter of his shop and seeing all these swine heads staring down at me, and I can remember a smell of clotted blood that was most strong, enough to seem thick as mud in my nostrils. At that tender age I was left no better off than an orphan. As my own mother, one Betsy Parry, was otherwise occupied in London, struggling to earn a living, I was given over to the guardianship of my maternal grandfather, Moses Parry. Now, Miss Tennant, with him you would have a proper subject to paint. He was a farmer, a huge man with enormous hands, capable of easily lifting a heavy stone off the ground, of plowing a field without a mule. He lived in a whitewashed cottage near Denbigh Castle, at the center of town: I can remember that behind the cottage, at the far end of a long garden, stood a shed in which the old man slaughtered calves and split their carcasses in two before taking them to market. This I had often watched him doing; he showed me the slaughter so that I would know where the meat we ate came from. It is a smell, of blood drying on the ground, that remains with me to this day. Now, though he was a gruffly tempered and blunt fellow, he had a caring side to him, and he would sit me down on his lap and teach me how to write the letters of the alphabet on a board of slate. And he’d take me to a Wesleyan church each Sunday so that I might know something about piety, an important thing.