Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

We made some small talk — I filled them in on my situation, more or less; these teas can be awkward, sort of like being trapped in a corner at a party. One has no choice but to yap and yap. But I must say I was happy to see Stanley doing so well. Of course, neither of us felt like bringing up the goings-on in Africa.

I haven’t felt too happy about the news out of Africa: It is true that Stanley had inadvertently set up for King Léopold a quite unpleasant and cruel colonial regime down there, brutal to the natives. I can’t imagine that Stanley would have done so on purpose. That’s one thing, and I can’t fault the man, though I have to often hold my tongue around him on the subject — that is, until we’ve had a few drinks, and then we come down to the brass tacks of it all. Still, I want to believe him when he tells me, as he has done on occasion, that to bring “civilization” to the wilds is going to be a long process, at some cost to native lives; that even if things might be bad right now, the longer view of history will have proved him and folks like Léopold correct. (Yet I dislike that king!) In any case, it’s not a subject that we care to discuss in public.

After a while Stanley and I left the ladies to have a few drinks in the gentlemen’s bar and billiard room. We were in the middle of a game when a gent, a stringy fellow in a dark, rumpled suit, a porter of some kind who had been sweeping the floor, came over to us — or, more precisely, to Stanley.

“Have I the honor of addressing Mr. Stanley, the great explorer?”

“Yes?”

“Eh, then I should say, it’s a great day for me, and one that I will share with my family for all time to come.” Then: “Is it true, eh, I dunno, without meaning to question your ’complishments, sir — but me cousin, a confectioner on Waterloo Road, seems to think you’ve been quite wrong in the handling of the African savages; I, of course, don’t believe so, but some do. Can you tell me wot I can say to ’im in that regard?”

Stanley bristled: “Cannot you not see that my friend and I are simply shooting billiards?” But as Stanley continued to play, the same fellow stood about, somewhat forlornly, grieved to have offended him.

“I’m so sorry, sir. Myself, I am your admirer. Can you forgive my intrusion?”

“Yes. Now go away!”

“But begging you pardon, again, sir, I was just asking you a civil sort of question. I meant no disturbance.”

“My dear fellow,” Stanley said. “I do not know you; I do not want to know you. And I do not care to begin any form of conversation with you. Is that clear?”

“Ah, then,” he said. “I guess I have been mistaken about you. It wasn’t much that I asked of you, was it?”

Bowing, he left to take his broom again, muttering to himself.

“IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME,” he said to me. “Once I am asked such a thing, I am robbed of time, as surely as flour passes through a sieve.” But then he began to sulk about it. “Samuel, do you think I was unfair to the fellow?”

“A few words to soothe him might have been all right.”

He made no further mention of the incident until later. He had perhaps realized his rudeness or, thinking of his electioneering, had thought about how such a trivial incident could hurt him, but when he saw the same man solemnly polishing some glasses behind the bar, Stanley did the right thing, which was to approach him with a kind word.

“Dear sir, now that I am done with my billiards, to address your earlier query… the situation in Africa, and this information you should share with your relations, is of such a complicated nature that there is no way for me to provide any easy answer, except to say I am absolutely certain that, as surely as you and I are standing here, Providence is seeing to the evolution of better conditions in that place. Whatever falsehoods are bandied about, it is civilization — and by that I mean railroads and hospitals and civil order — that is being established in the Congo. It is for the greater good of all the people there, Europeans and Africans alike, that my efforts have been made.” Then: “Now, how can I be of further service to you?”

The porter stammered some words of thanks, then asked Stanley to sign a piece of paper as an autograph; as Stanley did so he heard a litany of praises, his few phrases having made the right impression.

That afternoon we’d probably had a few more drinks than was necessary, but I had hoped to persuade a relaxed Stanley to publish a book with me. The subject I had seized upon was a journey we had made together to the Antilles as young men, the story of which Stanley, for stubborn reasons of his own, had never wanted to convey. But as so many years had since passed — more than thirty — I found it surprising to see that he had kept the same strong feelings against such a book.

“Why not, Henry?” I said.

“If I should decide to write of this, it will be in my autobiography. Besides, Samuel, it is something that still pains me all these years later. I have not even told Dolly about it.”

I understood, to a certain extent, his desire for privacy, but I could not understand his apparent shame about what had happened in Cuba — and so, for the time being, I dropped the subject but considered it an out-and-out pity.

BACK IN HIS HOTEL ROOM, in an establishment not quite up to the standards of what he was used to, Samuel Clemens drank a warmed whiskey and, putting aside his notebook, went to bed.

Third Fragment from Lady Stanley’s Unpublished Memoir

ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, while Stanley was out at a meeting, Clemens made his way to our home. He brought roses for my mother, and after he had refreshed himself with chilled water — he had been tramping around from office to office, and it was unusually warm in London that day — I brought him to the place where I had set up a row of easels on which I displayed my paintings of street children; the most well known of them he had seen before, and another, Sprites at Sea , had been reproduced widely as a print. The others were reworkings of drawings I had done for the magazines Little Folks and The Quiver . I also had some of my drawings and paintings of Stanley to show Mr. Clemens. It is a funny thing: No matter how often one has looked at and attempted to draw a subject, something always seems to be missing; and yet with Stanley, I felt that I had captured everything about him, even the particular way his brow furrowed when he was having a special thought. But he never smiled.

Clemens was very courteous and generous in his praise of the Stanley portraits. I had made three: one of Stanley standing, one of Stanley sitting with a book open before him, and a more conventional portrait of Stanley contemplating a map of Africa, which the National Gallery liked very much.

“Goodness,” Clemens said pleasantly. “These are all fine. Well done. You’ve even captured the opaqueness of Stanley’s eyes.”

“Opaque? But they are blue and green, like yours.”

“I meant opaque in that they are hard to read: He’s like a sphinx, that husband of yours. He never shows what he has seen or sees, does he?”

“He doesn’t, but he expresses himself in other ways.”

“Oh, but I know that.” Looking about, he asked, “Where do you want me to sit?”