Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

Upon our arrival, Stanley’s mood, dour in recent weeks, greatly improved: A military band had gathered on the chilly, windblown dock, performing both “God Save the Queen” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As we passed into the customhouse, there was a contingent of press on hand to ask friendly questions, most of them having nothing to do with Africa. But then, for whatever reason, it seemed a funny thing to the local press that Stanley had escorted my mother down the gangplank and across the pier to the customhouse, his elbow locked on her arm while she, with her other hand gesticulating toward his person, seemed to be expressing some strong opinions. Then an argument between them erupted over a trivial matter: I can remember that the stevedores and dock workers found this incident quite funny and began calling out many foolish things. Just then, I had counseled my husband to remember the glory awaiting him, and he resumed escorting my mother with courtesy. But a seed was planted: By the time we had finished our progression to the customhouse, the press had formed the unfair opinion that Stanley was under the sway of a nagging mother-in-law, a motif that would follow us, to his annoyance, in humorous newspaper accounts throughout the land.

WE STAYED AT THE PLAZA HOTEL, just off Central Park, a large suite of rooms at our disposal. Telegrams and notes lay in piles upon the desk of Stanley’s temporary study, including an invitation from Thomas Edison to visit with him at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, one of the few outings that Stanley seemed to genuinely look forward to. Stanley on that occasion also received a great number of telephone calls — among them one from Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald , and one from Mrs. Astor, who had arranged a dinner in her Fifth Avenue mansion in his honor. Thoroughly prepared for the lectures that he would be giving in New York — at the Century Association, the Cooper Union, and in Steinway Hall, among other places, he would address both geographical societies and ordinary audiences on “The Founding of the Congo Free State”—he still felt hard-pressed to make a good impression about his activities there.

With so many engagements, dinners, lectures, and luncheons and such, we were always making our way through the streets of the city by carriage. Stanley found the city barbarically noisy and in a state of disorder: The elevated trains he despised; the many posters and advertisements that were thrown up everywhere, without regard to any aesthetic concern, troubled him as well. He on one occasion took the time to count the telegraph and telephone wires that crisscrossed above the street outside one of our windows — some one hundred and seventy four, he counted: a web of wiring; an ugly scene.

Late one Sunday afternoon, Stanley mentioned, with some delight, that he wanted me to meet someone who was waiting below in a lobby sitting room with Stanley’s American agent, Major Pond. “And who is this?” I asked.

“Come; you will see.”

Descending to the Plaza lobby, Stanley and I found the supremely tall and bearded Major Pond sitting at a banquette in a dark corner of a salon. Beside him was a quite pleasant and genteel, rather angelic-faced woman who immediately smiled upon our approach. Just as Major Pond stood up to greet us, the gentleman by her side struck a match for his cigar, his distinguished face, with its high, curling brows and handlebar mustache, glaring like sculpted stone in that sudden flaring light — like a jack-o’-lantern, perhaps; the very sharp features of his face, with its aquiline nose and deep-set, hawkish eyes flashed brilliantly white and yellow, then faded low into a sudden bluish shadow as the match went out. In that moment I knew that he was none other than Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain, the lady at his side being his wife, Livy.

“Hello, Stanley,” he said. And, looking at me, he added, “And so this is the one and only gracious lady?”

We spent that evening together; throughout I saw in Stanley certain qualities of behavior that I had not seen before. He seemed much relaxed in the company of his friend and quite willing to allow the great man the floor when it came to conversation. In truth, after a week of engagements Stanley was feeling somewhat fatigued, but he also seemed relieved to be hearing about subjects other than Africa, about which he was continually expected to hold forth.

Of that felicitous occasion I can remember asking Mr. Clemens by which name he liked to be addressed.

“Our dear friend Major Pond here treats Mark Twain like a nom de plume, which it is, of course: In his letters, he puts Mark in quotes, even in his salutations to me — which is a professional idiosyncrasy that I have not yet figured out. I don’t mind Mark — I’ve done well by it — yet sometimes it sounds too short by itself, while ‘Mark Twain’ doesn’t: Now, Livy calls me Precious and Youth so often that I have been known to accidentally sign my letters to complete strangers in such a way; whereas Henry here refers to me as both Samuel and Mark, depending upon how biblical his mood is. Personally, if I am feeling lazy, I will use the short form, Mark, to sign my notes; because it has two fewer letters than Samuel it conserves great amounts of minute energies when added up over the years. Now, with you, dear Madame Stanley, I would consider it an honor to be addressed by whatever name you choose to call me, just as long as it’s one of them, so as to avoid future confusion.”

TO HAVE WALKED ARM IN ARM with Mr. Clemens along Fifty-Ninth Street that evening would remain for me a greater honor than would meeting the American president, Benjamin Harrison, and many an illustrious senator at the White House the following week. With a woolen cape slung over his shoulders and a Russian trapper’s bearskin cap upon his head, Mr. Clemens (to this day I cannot think of him as Mark or Samuel), though of medium height (he was by his own account five feet, eight and a half inches tall), seemed taller in his cowboy boots. Passersby recognized him, and even carriage drivers doffed their hats or whistled to greet to him, calling out: “Hello, Mr. Twain!” We made our way along toward the cobblestones by Central Park, a light snow falling. My husband, escorting Livy in the company of Major Pond, following behind us, I inquired of Mr. Clemens just how he and Stanley had met.

“My husband told me that you became acquainted long before you became known as writers. Stanley has never described the exact circumstances, other than that it happened long ago. I don’t understand his reluctance to discuss it.”

“Madame Stanley, among us writers there is a sacred code that prohibits us from revealing too much about certain things.”

Parting congenially after a nightcap at our hotel, I presented Mr. Clemens and his wife a gift of my book London Street Arabs , and we expressed the mutual wish of seeing each other again. I told him that it was my hope that he would have the opportunity to one day meet my mother, who was an admirer of his writings; and perhaps, I had asked him, he would sit for me as a portrait subject, as Stanley had — he said he would.

Later, I mentioned to Stanley my complete enchantment at meeting Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, but when I voiced my curiosity as to why he remained so secretive about his early friendship with Clemens, he was curt in his answer: “Do I have to tell you everything? Cannot a man have his own private thoughts?”

Even when we eventually made our way to the cities of St. Louis and New Orleans, where he had once worked and lived as a young man, he never went into detail about Clemens.