Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

“I’ll take the hardy over the beautiful,” he had thought.

He could have died a hundred times save for his fortitude. There was a big difference between stepping down on a thistle and thereby cutting the sole of your foot while hiking in Wales and doing the same in Africa. He remembered a minor “cut” he’d gotten in the jungle, the sharp tip of a reed having gone through the sole of his boot. Within a few hours the skin around the wound had swollen and turned a livid pink; within a day it became black and blue. The following morning it had begun to seep pus, and he fell into a fever for days — but even that had been easier to bear than Miss Tennant’s rejection of him. No wonder he was sometimes so foul of mood and enraged during his last expedition; no wonder some of his porters had come to fear him.

“What is love, anyway?” he asked himself over and over again.

STANLEY BEGAN A HALF DOZEN different letters to her before sending her this:

Dear Miss Tennant,

In all truth I have wondered if the sea change of your feelings toward me has to do with my fame, and I have not found it easy to forget your past rejection of me. I have treated even the lowest Pygmy better than you treated me, but I will admit that your claims to have prayed for my forgiveness — and love, if that is so — have moved me from a settled indifference to what might happen between us to a greater and more profound sympathy for the enterprise; and while I have yet to become completely convinced of your good intentions, I will make an attempt to reach that faith. But be warned: I do not find it a paltry matter.

And he went on for page after page, as if on a forced march of his emotions, until he had filled eighteen such pages: “If this is some piracy of your emotions to trick me again, then do not answer this; if you are sincere, I will be willing.”

He was, after all, feeling that he would not live forever.

FROM SAMUEL CLEMENS to William Dean Howells:

June 25, 1890

Hartford, Connecticut

Dear Howells,

A curious thing: You remember meeting Henry Morton Stanley a few years back? The poor fellow had been going through a rather sticky and disappointing romance with a London society dame who had put him through the wringer. It put him in such a bad way that he had forsworn contact with the feminine universe until further notice; but lo and behold, I have just received an invitation to attend their wedding ceremony, to be held in the hallowed halls of Westminster in a few weeks’ time; apparently Stanley, back from his Africa travels, experienced a change of heart — just one of those things, I suppose, that will happen to a man when he’s cooped up in the wilds and malarial. Bemused as I am by the whole business, I wish that brave Hercules all the good luck in the world. Much as Livy and I would like to attend, and as curious as I am about attending a wedding at Westminster, we won’t be going. (Among other things, Livy is under the weather and has been told that she needs a few months to recover from a recent heart ailment.) But I do wish the boy the best, and I am sure to meet the lady who snared him sooner or later.

From Lady Stanley’s Unpublished Memoir, circa 1907

ON THE AFTERNOON of July 12, 1890, when I wed Henry Morton Stanley in Westminster Abbey, most everyone of importance in London — including the Prince of Wales and Gladstone himself — turned up for our ceremony. (Of the five thousand requests for seats, only one-third of them could be honored.) Along the rainy streets outside the abbey a great crowd of well-wishers gathered to view the procession of dignitaries entering the sacristy, a flank of bobbies and mounted Life Guards keeping clear a path into the square as carriage after carriage veered into sight of the abbey doors. I’m told that within that gathering were pennywhistle musicians and jugglers; vendors hawked apples and taffy candies, as well as souvenir pamphlets and pins and postcards featuring pictures of Stanley and me and commemorating our union.

At about one-thirty, when I disembarked from my carriage in the company of my mother and brother, Gertrude and Charles Coombe Tennant, I alighted into a crowd of well-wishers, the ladies and young girls among them oohing and aahing over the nature of my wedding gown and train. It was a costume whose specifics I had dreamed about and made sketches of in my studio. My petticoat, bodice, and skirt were of white satin and trimmed with lace and silk cording, their edges decorated with garlands of orange blossoms and pearls; my bodice’s high collar, in the Medici style, was similarly embroidered with pearls. I wore a tulle veil fastened to my hair with diamond stars, above which sat a crown of orange blossoms held in place by an aigrette, also of diamonds (a gift from Stanley). My shoes were of silver leather with diamond buckles. These were complemented by a long diamond necklace, a gift from Sir William Mackinnon, shipping magnate and head of the Imperial British East Africa Company, who helped to finance Stanley’s last expedition. From it hung a brooch consisting of thirty-eight diamonds that had been arranged around a cameo of our good Queen Victoria (a gift, appropriately so, from Her Majesty).

During the days preceding our wedding, Henry had been laid low in his New Bond Street flat, unable to stir from his bed. He had fallen fiercely ill from a bout of chronic gastritis. Though he had continued on in great pain and was pale and feverish on the morning of our wedding, Stanley, fretful of missing out on what he had described to me in one of his daily letters as “the occasion of his greatest hope and promise in life,” roused himself from his bed and, hobbling, managed to bathe, shave, sit for a proper haircut, and dress. His valet, Hoffman, and Dr. Parke assisted him into a fine ensemble that included a silk top hat and dark frock coat, to whose lapel he affixed a white carnation.

By the time he came by carriage into the square, buoyed by the jubilation of the crowd, who greeted him with whistles and applause and shouts of joy—“Long live Stanley!”—he was barely able to walk without a cane, but with his usual fortitude and resilience he summoned enough strength to get out of the carriage unassisted.

With a pipe organ playing and a choir singing, I made my entrance into the abbey shortly after my husband’s arrival, a relief coming over me at the sight of him fidgeting with a pair of white kidskin gloves, for until a few moments before, we had wondered if Stanley would make it at all.

With my brother by my side, and with my two bridesmaids, bouquets of white roses in hand and jasmine wreaths upon their heads, leading the way, and with my two plumed squires carrying my lustrous train following at a distance of some twenty paces, I proceeded toward the altar into a realm that felt sanctified, supernatural, and protective. In the towering nave of Westminster, its stained-glass windows glorious with light, candles and lanterns aglow, in my trembling hands I carried a bouquet of white jasmine, gardenias, roses, and pancratium lilies.

When I joined Stanley by the altar, he was pale, his rheumy eyes betraying to me the gravity of his illness, his face drawn and his hair turned completely white. But he still managed to greet me with a slight smile and a nod of his head, and there was strength in his hand when he took hold of my mine. I can remember looking at Stanley and asking him, in a whisper, “Are you certain in your heart about this?” At that point he took a deep breath and stood straight, saying firmly, “Yes.”