Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

In her crimson velvet dress and pearl earrings, Lady Stanley helped him along; an observer who did not know them would have thought that Dolly was escorting her elderly father. White-haired and eyes bloodshot, Stanley had lost a great deal of weight: His skin had thinned so that it had a nearly transparent quality, and his evening suit hung loosely on him. He seemed more like a bird-boned child than an intrepid explorer — in fact, making his way slowly down the hallway, he was bemused by the thought that such a small passage was as exhausting as any he had ever made in Africa. To rely upon anyone, including his dear wife, embarrassed him, but whenever he tried to make his way alone, he tottered as if he would fall. Eventually they made their way into the dining room, their guests standing up and applauding him: From guest to guest he went, whispering a few words of thanks to each, then taking a seat between Gertrude and Dolly. He sat in silence, barely picking at the various plates put before him and preferring to sip at the brandy while taking in the conversations around him. As it was Christmas, Stanley, however great his indisposition, rose to say a few words — his last before any gathering in that mansion.

“To count the blessings of my life: First there is my family, who has bestowed upon me the healing love of angels. From them, despite my waning powers, I have regained the celestial spark of trust and affection; it is especially so with my boy, Denzil, who in reminding this old man of the purity and joys of youth, with all its innocence, has made me feel like quite a wealthy man. And all of you, in your friendship with me and my wife, have made me happy as well: It is to you — to us, to the season — that I raise this toast. May God bless you in all your days. And, yes, Merry Christmas.”

That’s when someone stood up and said, “Long live Stanley!”

AFTER THAT LAST “PUBLIC” DECLARATION, Stanley and his family withdrew into nearly complete isolation: Stanley did not once leave the confines of the mansion until April, when he departed London for Furze Hill, in the last spring of his life. There, in the company of his wife and son, he calmly approached his waning days; Dorothy, reading aloud to him, rarely left his side. The change in setting had, at first, a salutary affect, and for two of the most peaceful and happy weeks of their lives, he seemed to be regaining his strength. His spirits were raised, books and the good memories they brought him all but obliterating the sad aftertaste of the Africa controversies. Given that he appeared to be slowly improving, death was seemingly kept at bay.

But that same April, he, Dolly, Denzil, and Gertrude went out for a carriage ride; a piercing chill came abruptly over Stanley, who, despite the blankets in which he’d been wrapped, began to shiver, and by the time they returned to the estate, he was feverish, his lungs congested so badly that he could only breathe sitting up in bed. The good doctor from Pirbright diagnosed a case of pleurisy. Were he younger and his system not compromised by years of illnesses, he might have had some chance of recovery, but for ten days he struggled just to open his eyes. Up until then Dolly had maintained some hope, but one evening as she sat beside him, she had a premonition of his death — a black shadow passed quickly across the room behind her; she had just caught a fleeting glimpse of it — and with that she turned to her husband and embraced him dearly, as if to do so would ward off death itself: “Now, what is this?” he asked her.

“I will never leave you alone again, I promise you.”

And she didn’t, believing that somehow her love would protect him.

By then, however, he was preparing himself for what he called the final liberation, and as he wished to pass his last days in his first true home he asked to be taken back to London. He was too ill to contend with the train, and was thus transported back to Richmond Terrace by a private ambulance, his world, at last, reduced to the confines of his bedroom, where he was to take comfort again in his love of literature and family. Often he slept, but awake one evening, he sat up and said to Dolly:

“Where will you put me?” Then: “When I am gone?”

“Stanley,” she told him, “I want to be near you, but they will put your body in Westminster Abbey, next to Livingstone’s.”

He told her, “Yes, it would be right to do so,” but then, even as he said so, there was doubt in his eyes. “Will they?”

From Lady Stanley’s Journal

MY DARLING IS SINKING, slowly and painlessly. His dear mind wanders gently at times, and his eyes look far away.

FOR ANOTHER TWO WEEKS he lingered, lost to the world. He’d gotten over his pleurisy by then, could breathe more or less normally, but everything else he had suffered from had taken its cumulative toll: His body was simply giving out. Often he thought, “I am looking forward to the very great rest.” Sometimes he would look across the room, as if seeing some invisible being standing there; in one instance, Livingstone himself came up from the underworld to tell him, “Come, now, Stanley; it won’t be so bad.” He even fancied seeing his own Welsh father in tattered rags, with a bottle of ale in hand, sitting beside his nurse in the corner of the room, trying to gather himself to say a proper few words to his son. “When will he speak?” he’d ask himself. His father, a dark-haired man with thick hands and a bristled face, ever so timid, in the way of drunks, finally spoke up one afternoon: “You may not think much of me, but I have ever been proud to see you done so good in the world.” Others came to tell him that he had done right: Even his mother, dressed in the very fineries he’d once bought her in Paris, told Stanley: “I may not have been much of a mother to you, Johnny, but I was your mother, and in the end result, making you who you were, I didn’t do so badly, did I?”

Through this process, Stanley was surprised by how peaceful he had begun to feel. Lethargic, unable to leave his bed, he slowly slipped away, his days and nights spent dreaming. Mainly he liked to think about the way life would go in the household even without him; he liked to imagine Dolly sitting before her dressing-room mirror each morning, brushing out her hair, or bathing with a scrub brush in hand, the door always left slightly ajar, as if she wanted him to look in and see her naked body. He would miss the sheer joy of looking in at her in her studio, as she pensively and serenely contemplated a drawing. Would that wonderful sensation be transferred to some other life? he wondered.

If he had any great regrets, they came down to the sad prospect of never seeing his son again, for when he contemplated an afterlife, it was a shadowy zone where souls wandered in darkness, longing for the world, much as the Greeks of his boyhood readings had imagined. Yet in Denzil he saw pure light. In giving him what he, an abandoned child, had never received — the best of his affections — Stanley felt renewed. In fact, no greater pleasure came to him than when, while resting in his bed, he would feel the atmosphere of his sickroom changing, the ever so slight weight falling on the mattress, and his one good hand, his right, feeling upon its knuckles many soft and moist kisses — Stanley opening his eyes and seeing the gentle manner in which his son was trying to awaken him.

“It’s me,” he’d say. “Are you happy, Father?”

“Always, when I see you.”

And then a whole new ritual would begin, Stanley slowly shifting his body to the side in his bed to make room: “Come lie beside me.” Denzil’s lithe and nearly weightless body with all its warmth snuggling close to him, his hand laid tenderly across the right side of Stanley’s face, the boy asking all kinds of questions: “When will you get up, Father?” and “Can you read something to me?”