Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

How could we have known, as young men, what life held for us? Two famous budding writers were we: on the one hand there was you, the steamboat pilot Samuel Clemens, whose occasional ditties and observations about river life found their way into the region’s newspapers, and on the other hand there was me, a common sales clerk from New Orleans by way of England whose only jottings were of numerical things, such as would concern the commerce of a riverboat trader like my adoptive father, Henry Stanley. Neither you nor I knew anything about what awaited us in the world of letters, and yet from the beginning, our mutual respect and liking for books brought us together. I can still remember your general amusement at the fact that you found me reading a Bible by the riverboat railing. That you deigned to speak to me, out of a hunger to converse with someone besides bored widows, was the beginning of a friendship.

Of the Bible you have always had your opinions: You have always regarded that “Good Book” as a great mythic fantasy — heartening to human resolve, moralistic, etc., but a tall tale — whereas I, in my innocence, believed in those words deeply. Since then — in the years, nearly forty, that have passed — I have generally come to agree with you: The Bible, in its sweetest and highest-aspiring parts, is wholly inapplicable to actual humanity. By Providence, we human beings simply fall short of the idealized way of living laid out before us. And what is God? You have told me that, at best, you have a general idea that God exists in the world only when “luck” or “destiny” falls in stride with a person’s good fortune and that His absence from most events speaks to His general indifference if not nonexistence. I agree with you insofar as “God” is an impassive veil over our lives. I think He watches us from afar and does not intercede, as most people want Him to: The violent and needless deaths I have witnessed over the years, in regions where life is cheap and as exchangeable as an English pound, have been the proof.

I can tell you these things because, in a way, though we are separated by only a few years — six, as I remember — we have been treading the same ground: That you, Samuel, have managed to draw upon your own resources at this stage in your life to undertake a great tour to ease your debts has left me with an even greater admiration for you. Though you have never been a true soldier of the field, you have a strength of will that would have served you well in war, in spite of all the jokes you make about it. I have often thought, in this regard, that the greatest source of your strength must be and always has been your family — your lovely daughters, Jean, Clara, and Susy, of whom I have cherished memories, and of course your charming wife, Livy (I hope she is not ailing of late). What empowerment and confidence they must give to you, knowing that whatever your travails, at the end of the day you can be joined with them in the blissful and soothing atmosphere of domesticity.

If I have asked, “What is time?” then I must also ask, “What is fame?” To be recognized, applauded, introduced to persons of note, for a few moments; to travel a great distance to spend a mere half an hour at lunch with the queen — what does it add up to?

I have been thinking lately of my great enjoyment of children: Perhaps it is because I did not have much of a happy childhood myself — nothing nearly as sublime or comforting as the things I have read of your own past and the things you have told me about it. I had no paradise such as you did in Hannibal and at your uncle John’s farm. The closest I have come to that kind of happiness has been in the wild and in friendship. Call it an honor to dine with the queen, but one is so blocked up inside from the formality, the protocol. There is honor but little joy in such things: For me, aside from the enjoyment of a few select companions and the company of my own very sweet wife, there is little else until I find myself with one of the cherubs I encounter. Around them, the great explorer becomes a child himself. Lately I count my happiest hours as the ones I have spent acting out the way the creatures of the African jungle move and roar: I was out at Cadogan Gardens not so long ago, entertaining a group of children. I was, for their amusement, pretending to be an African elephant, a lion, and an antelope to teach them about the wonders of nature. The essential integrity and uniqueness of the African “beasties” brought no end of joy — through the children’s laughter and delight in seeing an old, white-haired explorer prancing in a yard, I am drawn back, then, as I get older, as the body fades, to a second childhood, I suppose, for to see the world as children do is to reenter that paradise, a place or state of mind far removed from the sorrows of this world. In that exposure to such unsullied innocence I have found much that is wonderful.

Which is to say, dear Samuel, that Dolly and I have been considering the adoption of a child: As we have come to an age when having children is no longer possible, I have been giving thought to the benefits of looking for a little one — a Welsh child, of course — to call our own.

It is our plan to head up to Denbigh for such a purpose. It would be a lovely thing to make happen.

As I know from Major Pond and Mr. Smythe that you are to shortly to embark on a long world tour, I can only offer you a word of encouragement; but should you need anything I am always here for you.

My best wishes to you and your family — Stanley

STANLEY AND DOLLY spent several months visiting many an orphanage without finding a child appropriate for them — one, as Stanley demanded, who had the “vital spark of intelligence and alertness.” But one day in the spring of 1896, a letter arrived from Denbigh, written by a woman named Mary White, mentioning that she was in guardianship of a thirteen-month-old boy who had been born out of wedlock to a distant cousin on his mother’s side, a disgraced servant in the house of a wealthy man. With no one to assume paternity, and with the mother too poor to support him, the child had been passed along among uninterested relatives until he had come into her care. And so, in Denbigh one afternoon, after making a brief visit to St. Asaph’s, where he donated a trunk’s worth of books to their library, and after wandering through the local cemetery in a daydream about the passage of time, Stanley and Dolly alighted in the rustic hamlet of Corwen, in Denbighshire, where they made their way by carriage to a stone cottage by whose door stood a stout and grandmotherly old woman. Exhausted beyond her years, she wore a frayed cap and a sorry dress and was bent over a washbasin. Behind her, a wicker cradle held a child who was crying. The child was a pink-complexioned, brown-eyed Celtic infant, helpless and more or less destined, without the intercession of Mr. Stanley, to a foundling home or orphanage.

Stanley, for the occasion, had put on a blue frock coat, and as a matter of authority, and to impress the locals — for he had never wanted any of them to forget his accomplishments and rise in the world — he had attached a number of medals to his lapel. Dorothy Tennant wore a fine French dress. The driver opened the carriage doors for them, bowing.

“So,” said Stanley. “Is this the residence of Mary White?”

“It is.”

“I am Henry Stanley. Is this the child of whom you have written?”

“It is.”

“Has he a name?”

“None yet.” Then: “Go ahead — take a look. I believe he is a distant relation of yours.”

With his wife by his side, Stanley stood over the infant, and, as he had done with other infants they had seen, he performed a test. Removing from his pocket a watch and chain, he dangled it before the baby and was pleased to see that the child’s bright eyes followed its motion as it swung from left to right. Stanley then snapped his fingers and saw that the infant reacted quickly to that. He touched the child’s head, with its traces of florid blond hair; then, leaning down to take a closer look, he was pleased to see that the infant seemed to be smiling and was reaching out to him with its little hands. He was thinking that this was a delightful child when Dolly, unable to contain her excitement and pleasure, and who, having always loved children, found the creature, in its innocence and perfection, irresistible, declared: “Oh, what a joy: He even looks like you!”