Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

I was standing by the door to my husband’s study to call them in for dinner — for Clemens had agreed to stay — when I heard Stanley saying: “Old friend, do you mind that I show you these things?”

“Mind? I’d rather sit here comfortably with these books than anywhere else in England,” he answered. I felt slightly intrusive as I reminded them that dinner was waiting: I had not seen Stanley quite so enthused about anything in quite a while. “If there are any of my books that you would like for your own,” he declared as we made our way to the dining room, “feel that they are yours to take with you.” I’d never heard Stanley say such a thing before, not with any other visitor. “You are my friend, after all. A brother in letters, if not more.” Then, tenderly, Stanley said: “You know, Samuel, I will never forget some of the things you have done for me.”

THE DINNER — WHAT COULD BE SAID of it? Roasted quail and potatoes with a pottage of vegetables — our usual kind of fare. My husband, enlivened by having shown Clemens his new study, could not restrain himself from describing more of it. It was as if he were a boy rather than an explorer that evening, so happily disposed was he to Clemens’s presence. He’d even gotten up to bring a large framed montage of explorers’ photographs he’d made from the likenesses of Baker, Speke, Burton, and Livingstone. And if Mr. Clemens’s wineglass went empty, Stanley filled it himself; and he loosened his collar and spoke highly of his friend: “Yes, you are the best that America has to offer in letters — there’s no finer writer than you.”

Such kind words, however, seemed to make Clemens uncomfortable, as he kept shifting about in his seat and looking around the room, as if glancing over at our curio cabinet would change the subject. But once Stanley had decided upon a friendship, there was no limit to his capacity for adulation. In any event, cutting Stanley off just as he began to list the many admirable qualities of Clemens’s work, I had thought to broach the subject that Clemens had brought up earlier at Claridge’s: “And may I ask, Mr. Clemens — you mentioned a collaboration between you and my husband. What have you in mind, sir?”

“Well, it certainly wouldn’t be about Africa. I would say it might be something along the lines of a dialogue between two grizzled codgers, talking about the old days on the Mississippi, just before the Civil War: Your husband, in a previous incarnation, madame, plied those waters for several years, as often as I did: In fact, it was on the boiler deck of a riverboat that we met as young men, isn’t that so, Henry?”

“Yes,” Stanley said. “But Sam, surely you have written of it in Life on the Mississippi .”

“I have indeed, but you and I — well, did we not make a journey together that might be somewhat interesting to our readers?” Then, for my sake, he added: “That was before I became Mark Twain and just when Henry became Henry.” But then as my husband’s face began to turn red, as sometimes happened with him in moments of discomfort, Clemens, seeing him so, dropped it. “What I mean, Dorothy, is that Stanley and I could make some kind of book together. My own company would give it a first-class treatment, of course. It’s just something to consider. I understand if you would not want to tie your fortunes to me, as lately I seem to attract disasters, businesswise. But with our names on such a book, whatever it might be about, I am certain that we could sell at least one hundred thousand copies of it by subscription.” Then, gloomily: “On the other hand, I could be wrong.”

“Should I end up winning this election in Lambeth, I doubt I would have the time to give this book you propose the proper care; but then if not — we will see.” Getting up, he said: “Come, Sam, to the billiard room.”

“Just one thing before you gentlemen resume your evening of revels,” I said as they were about to leave. “May I ask you, Mr. Clemens, how long you will be staying here in London?”

“Just a week,” he said. “I’ve got a few talks to give at several clubs and a meeting scheduled with my publisher here. I’ve heard some rattling about a reception with the queen, but I’d rather wriggle out of that one.”

“Would you,” I asked, “have any time to sit for me as a subject? I’ve already got several portraits in the National Gallery and a show coming up at the Royal Academy next year: It would be an honor that would please me greatly.”

“Well, I know how long such portraits take. I haven’t much free time,” he said warily. “I suppose I could give you a few hours. But if you begin it now, I can’t say when I’ll be able to sit for you again.”

“Two hours would be fine for now. Would tomorrow at two be possible?”

He thought on it briefly.

“I can’t tomorrow. But Wednesday, maybe.”

“At two p.m., then,” I said to him. “You’ve made me happy — and you will be pleased with what I do.”

IT WAS ABOUT TEN-THIRTY AT night when Lady Stanley finished writing: Her three hounds had started barking at some disturbance in the yard; she put down her pen to attend to it one evening in 1907.

A Note by Samuel Clemens on Meeting with the Stanleys in London, 1892

ABOUT FOUR, MET WITH HMS (His Majesty Stanley) over at Claridge’s for tea and found the chap cantankerously happy, as he had his new bride along with him, the beautiful and gifted Miss Dorothy Tennant, as she’s known in London; real society dame, a little haughty but not quite the snob, like a lot of the ladies who hang around the queen’s stiff upper-crust circles, the title-crazy dames who never really get around to looking you straight in the eye. But Mrs. Stanley was different. For lack of a better word, I would say that her eyes “sparkled” with friendliness and interest, as brightly as the pearl-studded choker she was wearing around her neck. As a matter of fact, I would say that she was a pretty attractive lady altogether — swan-necked, full-bosomed, with an ingratiatingly full head of lovely hair, which she wore in the coiffure of Empress Eugénie of France. Her first reaction at my approach was to surprise me by kissing my cheek, even when I had a cold. She said: “Oh, Mr. Clemens! A delight! It’s so wonderful to see you again!”

I sat down with Stanley and this gracious lady. With them was Mrs. Stanley’s famous and cranky mother, a grande dame of a bohemian, who still wears the widow’s black — but velvet — and all kinds of outlandish jewelry, including rings that would choke a horse and a cameo of her late husband prominently displayed beneath her goosey neck.

As for Stanley, he was looking well, considering his ailing health and a fall he had taken. He was fairly bronze-skinned; and while he seemed more tranquil, even content, in his matrimonial state, his eyes were unmistakably his own — the eyes of a caged lion, I would say. His mother-in-law seemed to put him on his best behavior, but in certain moments he was his old grim self. How I have often wondered what he was really thinking around me, but like a shrewd card player — even if he didn’t play cards — he remained a good actor, never revealing much about himself, at least in public. But his hair had turned so white, like dove feathers, that I wondered if it had come about from Africa, as he always said, or if it had come about from putting up with his mother-in-law. Though we had a butler standing by our banquette, she kept asking him to pass this and that over to her, as in, “Henry, would you ever so kindly please pass me the cream?” And: “Henry, my son, a few sugar cubes, please.” He seemed to be suppressing a lot of sighs — seemed fidgety, too, around her, as if he would rather be out in the wilds of Africa with the cannibals than having tea and crumpets on a rainy London afternoon. In any case, I had the impression that he was intensely bored by the whole business of dealing with Dame Gertrude, but upon his wife he truly doted. Seems that the domestic life was softening him up a bit: Now and then I caught him just staring at her in admiration, even affection. His transformation left me touched.