Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

Dear Samuel,

The plain fact is this: In another time I would do it, but, old friend, my health prevents me.

I send you my devotion.

STILL, A YEAR LATER, there came yet another invitation from Clemens, and this one, greatly intriguing Stanley, was very hard for him to turn down.

Dear Stanley,

I send you this brief note to mention a leisure cruise of the Caribbean I will be making with my good friend (and financial savior) Henry Rogers in April, to which you are herewith summarily invited. We are planning to head out next month. I mention this because it is our plan to make Cuba a part of our route, and I thought you and I, sailing there, might find it of quite special interest. I am making this journey sans Livy, who is not at all well. (In fact, as I have written to Dolly, I am only allowed to see her for brief periods of time, so I guess I will not be missed if I am gone for some few weeks.) I know you are nailed down to your estate these days, but do let me know if I can tempt you. It would be a nice way to pass the time.

Regards,

Sam

Stanley truly lamented that he could not go; a fall while roaming the estate had badly twisted his ankle, and, in any case, he never knew when he would be visited by an attack of gastritis. He had become afraid to leave the estate, as if it were keeping him alive. And yet it took him several days to make up his mind.

April 1, 1902

Havana, Cuba

Dear Stanley,

A note from Havana — en route to Nassau and New York — to say once more that I wish you had been able to join us. But here I will report my journey. We sailed down to Santiago de Cuba (port city on southeastern tip of island, nestled in a bowl between two mountain ranges), a fine and most ornate place; we spent a day there, and with my very distinguished party were given a first-class tour and taken around to the most interesting sights — the old cathedral, etc., with a side trip to San Juan Hill, where Teddy Roosevelt made his famous charge and where stands the Peace Tree, where US general William Rufus Shafter accepted the Spanish general Toral’s surrender in July of 1898. Aside from a little sun-baked Spanish fortress at the top of the hill, along with some pieces of eighteenth-century ordnance, there wasn’t much to see. Nevertheless, this was the place where the Spaniards defended against the charge made by the Rough Riders. There were many florid trees about — the air perfumed — and yet what most lingered was the sense that the hill was a roadway of death, of lives wasted. Of ghosts. For as the Rough Riders advanced up the hill they were met with a fusillade of bullets from the Spanish trenches around the fort, a slaughter on both sides ensuing. You can feel the dead around you, as you do at places like Gettysburg.

Later, we were hosted at a dinner at our hotel by some of the more distinguished persons of the city: On hand was an admiral who gave a vivid description of the naval battle that had taken place between the US fleet and the Spaniards. To make a long story short, the Spaniards, while trying to escape the Santiago harbor, were trapped between two flanks and bombarded; they lost four hundred men, with many more wounded, while the United States only suffered one casualty — what a score! And so there it is: In the ocean, along the coast east and west of Santiago, lay the husks of numerous Spanish ships, the bones of their men at the bottom of those blue and beautiful waters.

I would have liked to have visited more places — at my age, I don’t think I will ever have the chance again — but, as with everything in my life, I was locked into a schedule of receptions, press interviews, etc. As I was traveling in the company of Mr. Rogers and T. B. Reed, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, the fluff of much of that business fell equally on them, to my relief, though I ended up drinking too much rum, attributable mainly to intermittent periods of boredom and resentment. (You know what I mean.)

Most interesting was our cruise over to Havana. From our yacht, the Kanawha , as we came along the south coast toward Matanzas — remember it? — I could not wait to see that Moorish city’s pearly buildings glowing in the distance, but as we passed its harbor, I saw that much of it had been destroyed. There were ruins everywhere, a result of one of our superior fleet’s bombardments during the war. That depressed me: I nearly came to tears with the unique melancholy that old folks like me get when they see things so dreadfully changed. But then we passed on, along the stretch of coastline toward Havana, with its many coves and beaches and harbors — which you once likened to the snout of a crocodile — and lo and behold, as we approached the city of Havana itself, whatever feelings of melancholy I had were amplified tenfold! For looking out, I saw the mangled, twisted, rusting carcass of the battleship Maine rising out of the water — it was dark and ugly and protruding in so many directions that I was reminded of a dying crab: a strange sight.

Everywhere I looked there was row after row of American battleships along the harborside, and many soldiers and sailors, too: Stanley, the country is occupied 100 percent!

But we had come into port for no more vital mission than to meet with some local officials and then have lunch, so we dined in a mansion in El Cerro — a neighborhood on a hill. Journalists were on hand to interview Mr. Reed, who declared the island “safe and sound.”

Afterward I visited the plaza: I found an English-speaking bookseller there, and when I asked him to recommend a volume of Cuban literature, he came up with a book of poetry called Versos sencillos by one José Martí. It’s a funny thing, Stanley — apparently the poet is considered a very great Cuban patriot, for he died in an early battle against the Spaniards, but as I looked over his poetry, in Spanish , which I will take pains to translate, it occurred to me that I had once met him before, perhaps in New York or Boston, where he was said to have lived for a time.

In any event, old friend, I wish that you had been able to come along. We might have fooled ourselves into thinking we were young again and could have traipsed about Havana like Huck and Tom along those streets, beautiful as ever.

Faithfully,

S. L. Clemens

Furze Hill, April 17, 1903: Another Special Spring Day

STANLEY HAD NOT BEEN FEELING particularly well when he took Denzil for a walk; they had gone out into a meadow to fly a box kite, as there had come some good winds that late morning — the British and American flags Stanley kept on the lawn were flapping gloriously in the breeze — but he should have known better, for just the day before, while coming down the mansion staircase with a drink in hand, on his way to take the hounds out and shoot some birds, he had experienced a bout of giddiness. His face had heated up, and all at once the walls around him suddenly turned a bright red, as if he had been staring into a sunny lake for too long; for a few moments he had to steady himself on the banister. Sitting on the landing, as he looked around the mansion and saw his many possessions, and as he looked through a window at the fields and woods, ever so radiant at dusk, he began laughing, his joy so pure and timeless that, in those moments, he considered himself nearly immortal. One of the servants found him there, and no sooner did he inquire after his master’s well-being than this brief ecstasy passed. Helped up to his feet and insisting that he was perfectly fine, Stanley took a stroll through his gardens. Their loveliness inspired him to believe that he was an especially blessed man and that Providence had, for whatever reason, rewarded his difficult life with that little moment of earthly happiness.