Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

How he wished he could get out of that chair.

He read quite a bit then — Dickens, Blake, Gibbon — his son often by his side, playing with some puppies on the lawn. With the sun suddenly emerging from behind a cloud and filling the world with light, his son would come with some drawings in hand to show him: “This is Mother”—as a hen. “This is you, Daddy”—as a lion. Day after day went by in this fashion, and he always lamented the coming of night: Even if the mansion was a most comfortable and homey place by then, the world’s darkness distressed him, as the night could only bring him sorrow.

His farmhands often came to pay their respects to him and to see how the old man was doing. One of his builders came by to tell Stanley that he was naming his new house Bula Matari, and one of his housekeepers, having given birth to a little boy, tried to cheer her employer by christening her son Henry. The local vicar, Lamb, and his wife came to visit weekly. And certain friends from London ventured out — Henry Wellcome, H. G. Wells, Edward Marston, and dear old Edwin Arnold.

Often he would simply sit looking out into the woods in a daydream of his past. Once, while drifting into sleep, he conjured a riverboat on the lawn, and, looking up beyond its various decks, he saw Samuel Clemens as a young man in the pilothouse. Samuel was considerate enough to wave and gesture for him to come up and take the wheel, the Mississippi waiting. Then he had a dream of being on the Congo River, along one of its tranquil stretches, its serpentine course drifting past verdant tracts of jungle, friendly Africans clustering on its banks, clacking sticks to get his attention, and holding up baskets of food they wished to barter for lengths of merikani cloth and coils of wire and beads — ah, yes, it was not all bloody hell. Somehow he grew sad to think that some of the Africans might end up slaves: He saw them being herded off by the Arabs, transported in chains through the jungle, their robes dropping off of them; then, just as suddenly, the Congo would turn into the Mississippi, and he would see these same natives on riverboats as the vessels, their great horns blowing, would come into the port of New Orleans or Natchez or Memphis — the two rivers, the Congo and the Mississippi, merging as one in his mind. Along the way the native Africans were turned into the niggers of the South, the sorrowful and beautiful souls he had once known—“At least, in my small way, I have perhaps spared some of their predecessors from a similar fate.” And then, just then, he might hear a voice and open his eyes to see that it was all an illusion, a great sadness coming over him as he realized that he was confined to a chair.

The view from Mount Craig, the African highlands, a stampede of zebras and antelopes in the distance, and much more came to him during such enforced idylls.

DAILY, WITH THE HELP of his nurse and a servant, he attempted to stand up, his legs and coordination having gone out from under him. Giving such exercises his all, by September he could, with considerable effort, walk short distances — down a hallway, across a room, from one end of the veranda to the other — but only with a cane and the assistance of Dolly, the only one to ever hold him closely, to help him along. Sometimes, in order to keep up the strength of his one good hand — his right — he would spend hours kneading a small rubber ball (his left hand was never strong again). And while he consoled himself with the fact that he was making some progress, many a dark thought entered his mind, and so it was that against his doctor’s orders he’d bribe one of his servants to bring him a glass of whiskey or some other strong spirits.

The Carriage Ride

THAT WINTER, back at Richmond Terrace, Stanley, in wishing to settle matters for the future, made up a final will (his fifteenth), leaving most of his estate to Lady Stanley and Denzil. Many of his geographical books, maps, and travel notebooks he left to the RGS; informally, he prevailed upon Dolly, who did not care for such talk, to send, upon his demise, certain items to friends — especially Samuel Clemens, for whom Stanley had set aside a very old edition of the Twelve Caesars, which Clemens had once admired while visiting him, and a vest-pocket watch and gold chain, the inner case inscribed BULA MATARI so that his old friend would perhaps remember the man known as Stanley. Much else of what he possessed he left to Lady Stanley to keep or dispose of as she pleased, though he expressed the hope that she would “take care of and cherish” his collection of Mark Twain books, in particular his copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .

Although he was not at all prone to speaking about the future, on some days, when he could slowly amble about the mansion and settle into his study, he spent many an hour searching through old papers, as if to see whether there were overlooked portions of narrative that might be easily be put together for a new book. On one such afternoon he came across the forgotten fragments of his autobiography that described his journey to Cuba from years before; with his memories of that distressing and disappointing time reawakened — and with his own uncertainty about just how much of the tale was true — he was tempted to throw the sheaves into the fire, and yet, because they contained some happy bits of portraiture about the young Samuel Clemens, he could not bring himself to destroy them. Thinking that his illness was affecting his judgment, he decided to put them aside for the time being, stashing them in his cabinet for future contemplation; these, however, he never returned to, and the pages were to remain undiscovered until years later, when Lady Stanley found them.

FOR DOLLY’S PART, in attempting to maintain some semblance of normalcy among her friends — Stanley’s illness being something she would not rather mention — she remained the ever-buoyant grande dame of social occasions, often attending fetes around the city and having acquaintances over to the mansion for lunch. Both she and Stanley were acting a role: Even when Stanley knew his demise was just a matter of time, he would speak of future trips — to Switzerland, to Paris, and to Florence, as Samuel Clemens had in recent times moved to a villa outside that city. Stanley spoke of traveling there “as soon as I am better, if Livy is well enough.” And Dolly never failed, when seeing him, to remark, “You look well; better than yesterday.” Or to convey some glad tidings: “My astrologer says that once we have gotten through this rough patch with your health, better days await you.” Bent upon cheerfulness, and trusting that she was allied to a great number of benevolent spirits, she never lost her hopefulness. “You will get better, my love: Think of yourself six months before, barely able to move, and think of yourself now. Yes, you will get better.”

He wanted to believe this was so: As a stroke had so suddenly befallen him, he still held out the hope that one night, as he slept, the malady would be suddenly lifted by God “in the twinkling of an eye.” Yet he would hear no talk about religion or an afterlife, dismissing them as subjects of pure conjecture.

“I’ll find out, soon enough, won’t I?” he told her one evening.

THAT DECEMBER, as Stanley had grown fond of Christmas, and for the sake of their child, Dolly decided to hold a dinner as of old. The first visitors arrived around seven; by eight the parlor was crowded, with Lady Stanley and her mother greeting everyone, and as dinner approached and their company retired, one by one, into the dining room, Stanley rested in his bed. Rising up the winding staircase and down the hall into Stanley’s room were the murmur of voices, clinking glasses, and toasts—“To England!”—and laughter and piano music as well as the clamor of servants coming and going from the kitchen and pantry into the dining hall. Stanley was moaning and feeling sad when Dolly, tapping at his door, told him, “Come and meet our guests, my darling.”