Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

“Even though there were many things that pained me greatly about that institution, there was much there by which I profited. We were taught to read and write. Latin and Greek. Geography and history and mathematics. And at the same time, our religious instruction was thorough. It was the practice of the chaplain to post upon the classroom walls and in other public places sheets bearing passages from the Scriptures, such as which might help our moral education. Bible lessons were given twice a day, and among the many books in the library at St. Asaph’s were included the writings of the eminent theologians of the day. Services were held twice on Sundays, and each dinner began and ended with a communal prayer, to be recited aloud in unison. So strong were the precepts of faith advocated in that place that the sense of a watchful God, aware of one’s every movement and embodied by the stern presences of our guardians, pervaded our thoughts constantly. Of course one had to be humble and pious and never sin, and to this I aspired.”

Then, clearing his throat, he said:

“But one day, a very sad thing happened: I am not so certain that I should tell you, but it seems that I will. While sitting in the communal dining hall one evening, I noticed, among the new inmates, a woman whose face seemed familiar to me. She was tall, like you, with a full head of red hair and a somewhat pretty but hardened face. She had a little girl with her, and as she sat down by one of the tables, it came to me that this woman, remote and aloof from the others, was my mother, fallen on hard times. But as I was uncertain of this, I did not approach her until the schoolmaster himself, Mr. Francis, came over to me and said, ‘John, do you not recognize your own mother?’ I went to her, not knowing what to say. Still I managed a few words—‘Mother? I am your son.’

“In a better world, this lady would have brightened at the sight of me, but in the midst of her own low misfortunes — she had been sent there over some debt — she merely looked at me and said: ‘What is that to me?’ And then she commenced to finish her meal in silence, her daughter, my half sister Emma, by her side. Though I was deeply wounded by her indifference to me, as I would see her passing in the courtyard or in the dining hall, I maintained the dim hope that she would warm to me, but in the weeks she remained there, as a temporary inmate, her coldness was strongly and hurtfully reinforced in my mind at every turn.”

“And did you, Mr. Stanley, see her again?”

“Yes, Miss Tennant, but it was not until some years later.”

Then, shifting in his chair and fishing out a match from his vest pocket to light a cigar, Stanley said, “Miss Tennant, you must forgive me, but it is time for me to go — I am due to meet with Mr. Mackinnon over some important matters.”

“I understand,” she told him. “But please, Mr. Stanley, do come back, and soon.”

He was brooding as he left her that day, angry at himself for having let slip the business of his mother’s coldness; on the other hand, he remembered the pure kindness in Miss Tennant’s eyes, the discerning intelligence and sympathy with which she seemed to regard his sad story. As she led him out, he, feeling duped, did not say much, and while they parted congenially—“Do write me a note and let me know when you can come here again,” she reminded him — he remained solemn. As there had been no meeting with Mackinnon — he’d contrived it as a means to escape, the feeling of being locked in by the truth of his emotions having overwhelmed him — he returned to his flat to attend to some correspondence with King Léopold. And yet as he wrote to Léopold, somewhat disinterestedly, about the equatorial territories east of the Congo, which the king was anxious to annex for himself, Africa could not have been further from his mind. Sheepishly, unable to dwell on the matters at hand, he jotted down a note, which he sent off with Hoffman.

Dear Miss Tennant,

I must thank you for the delightful time we spent in your studio. In truth I do not feel myself to be a proper subject for your artistic contemplation, but I still feel greatly honored. I see I have a few hours free the day after the morrow — on Thursday — and if it would please you, I could come by in the afternoon, at about four, and perhaps afterward we might have supper together, if such an idea is congenial to your schedule.

Yours,

Henry Stanley

THOUGH HE HARDLY KNEW HER, in early July he accompanied her to several functions; within a few days they appeared together as “friends” at luncheons and diplomatic gatherings, among them one at the American consulate for an Independence Day celebration. Wherever she went she dressed in the highest fashion and most elegantly; at times he couldn’t help but imagine what she must look like as she prepared for her outings, but he hadn’t a clue and would probably faint at the sight of her in the mornings, so striking must she be, stepping from her bath, her arms crossed over her pendulous breasts, even if her maid had seen her grow from an infant to a woman. (He imagined the scene: She puts on a pair of bloomers and then a heavily boned corset with its long stays of pink coutil, which her maid tightens, almost to the point that she sometimes gasps, so that her fine figure, with its slim waist and fulsome hips, takes on the shape of an hourglass. Then the stockings are clipped to the corset; and over that she puts on a petticoat, and then a somewhat longer silk skirt over that. Then she puts on a flowered blouse with a high collar; then a fine jacket over it; then her maid gets on her knees to help with her soft leather boots, whose laces she hooks over a series of crisscrossed eyelets; standing before a mirror, she dusts her throat with white powder and finds a hat suitable to the occasion — sometimes a bonnet, sometimes a Parisian concoction of satin and lace and braid, its brim turned upward and smothered in silk flowers — and voilà: She is ready to stun any man. ) He had at this juncture only seen her a few times, but upon occasion, despite his natural disposition against thinking he was part of a couple, he posed with Dorothy for the brigades of photographers, with their apparatus and flashing chemicals.

A week into July he saw her again. Those few days later, he brought along a bouquet of flowers and a box of Belgian chocolates with which to ingratiate himself with her mother, Gertrude. Announced by their butler, he found Gertrude sitting in their parlor, reading by the window light a biography of Voltaire, and though Stanley did his best to present an air of gladness to see her, she was put off by his presence: “I am very thankful for these gifts,” she said. “But you shouldn’t bring such things to me, for we are merely acquaintances, are we not?”

“I am hopeful that it will not always be so.”

She did not respond to that comment, just pointed to a table, saying: “Now, put those things over there.” Then he waited for a simple thank-you, but that was not her way with him. “Now, go: I suppose my daughter’s waiting for you.” Taking his leave, and thinking himself foolish for having gone to the trouble to befriend Dorothy’s mother, he made his way, somewhat gloomily, toward Miss Tennant’s studio, where he found the lady standing behind her easel.

Stanley sat, nervously at first, and passed the first half hour in silence, striking a still pose, his face tilted as if to watch a bird’s nest hiding in the recesses of an oak tree just outside her studio window. But after a while, though he was somewhat tempted to speak again of his mother, he, with so many other things that he might relate, and without knowing that it would lead to his mother’s door, began with a discussion of his relationship to the disease of malaria, as if, mindful of the distant possibility that they might one day grow closer, he wanted Dorothy to know just what she was getting into.