—SAMUEL CLEMENS, IN A LETTER TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, CIRCA 1892
FOR THOSE WHO KNEW NOTHING of their Cuban journey, it was assumed that Twain and Stanley’s first meeting had taken place one evening at the Mercantile Library in St. Louis in 1867. By then, in one of the more satisfying symmetries of their friendship, each had entered into the profession of writing, though by that time, Samuel Clemens, as Mark Twain, was by far the more successful and better known. While the years of the Civil War had found him attempting other occupations—as a miner, as a printer, and as a typesetter—he, with his love for colorful yarns and sharp eye for details, had gravitated to a life as a wandering “cowpoke” journalist. He plied this trade for various Western newspapers—the Missouri Democrat, the Territorial Enterprise out of Virginia City, and the Morning Call in San Francisco, where his colleagues included the likes of Ambrose Bierce and Bret Harte. Aside from a brief period of unemployment (he had been fired from his staff position in San Francisco for reporting too faithfully on the corrupt doings of the local police and other officials), his journey had been altogether easier than Stanley’s, whose route had been far more circuitous and filled with danger.
STANLEY’S OWN CAREER SEEMED TO have started at a Confederate camp at Corinth, Mississippi, as a private with the Sixth Arkansas Volunteer Infantry, under the command of Generals Pierre Beauregard and Albert Sidney Johnston, awaiting deployment into the Battle of Shiloh. Even though he worked as a provisions clerk and was known for his sharp marksmanship on the firing range, he was most valued for his informal role as an amanuensis for the illiterate soldiers of Company E, who were mainly veterans of the Mexican-American War of 1847, Stanley writing, on their behalf, what in many cases would turn out to be farewell letters to loved ones and family.
And so it was that Stanley, wishing to leave some word of his whereabouts, drafted several letters for himself to the only “loved ones” he knew: Thomas and Maria Morris in Liverpool, with whom he was in occasional correspondence. In one missive, he sent his regards and assurances that all was well; in another, he wrote to a young woman he had known at Cypress Bend, expressing some exaggerated feelings of impending glory or doom:
Either I will rise one morning after the coming battle, ablaze with dignity like the sun, or I will perhaps be dead, like a moon dropping into the sea.
And he wrote to his friend Samuel Clemens—whom, at this point, he had not seen or heard from in more than a year—in care of his sister in St. Louis.
March 22, 1862
My dear friend, Samuel—wherever you may be—I imagine you are with your brother Orion somewhere West—I just wished to tell you of my kindly thoughts, regarding our friendship, for the clerk you put up with is now about to go off with his regiment into a very great battle. Should this be the last you ever hear of me, I want to let you know that I am hoping that every good wish you have comes true, and that yours will be a long and happy life. Should we find one another at some distant point in the future—and even if we do not—I have valued your kindness and sage advice. I do miss our conversations about books, and your funny tales as well, the memories of which, in the dreariness of these days, with their incessant drills and pointless mustering of the ranks, has relieved me from the melancholic state I often find myself in. This is nothing more, then, than a simple note of gratitude, and it would be longer, except for the fact that I do not know if you will ever receive it. Should that be the case and you wish to let me know of your doings, a letter addressed to the Confederate camp in Corinth, Mississippi, Company E, Sixth Arkansas Volunteer Infantry, in my name, should suffice to reach me, though by then I may well be in some other unearthly locale.
Henry Stanley
And before he set out with his regiment toward the banks of the Tennessee River to fight against the forces of one General Grant, Stanley, by then much exposed to the florid and heartfelt sentiments of other soldiers toward their families, came to reflect upon the elusive presence of his own. He’d heard from Liverpool that his mother had married a certain Robert Jones, by whom she had several children; they ran a small inn called the Cross Foxes in the village of Glascoed, in Monmouthshire, not far from where he’d been born—that was all he knew.
While sitting under a spreading oak tree in a field at Corinth, Stanley, in a lonely frame of mind, allowed his fertile imagination to take prominence over an awareness of his feeble relations with her. And so he sent this tender note:
Dearest Mother,
Though you have been absent from my life for a very long time, I am writing you with the aim of tearing down the wall that circumstances have put between us; yours has not been an easy life, nor has mine. Fortune, that curious thing, has separated us, and though I believe that, deep down, you truly care for me, I know that you have been struggling long to find your own comfortable place in this world, the distractions of which, to my mind, account for your distance from me, and rightfully so, for what would I have ever been to you but yet another burden in your already burdened state? I have sometimes wondered if you know how to write and read. I imagine that you can—but if you do not, I am trusting that someone will read these words to you, even if I would prefer they be kept private. So if it is a matter of personal shame that has kept you from writing me in the past, please understand, dear Mother, that whatever you should say to me would be received with a happy and open heart by a son who with sincerity holds a great affection for you.
I have been told by cousins Tom and Maria that you were recently married at the St. Asaph’s chapel and that you have two small children by your new husband. This strikes me as a wonderful development, for it speaks to me to your worthiness as a mother, and it is my hope that you will have some maternal affections left over for me. I do not blame you for your lapses—what I have been, as a lowly charge of the state and parish of St. Asaph’s, could never be a source of pride to a woman such as yourself, with her own past bereavements to contend with: I am speaking of the early death of my father, John Rowlands, whom I have never known. But I should let you know that the miserable boy you last saw at St. Asaph’s has since blossomed into a person of promise: If you recall, I have written you before of my journey to America, some scant four years before, and of my brief but educational sojourn as a merchant trader. But of other things, which you do not perhaps know, I will tell you now: My employer and dearest friend in those years was a New Orleans merchant named Henry Stanley, and as he regarded me as closely as he would a son, I have taken his name. I have done so not out of disrespect for the man who had been my Welsh father, but to clear my mind and soul of the lowly state I had once been in; and never have I forgotten that you are my mother, a fact I hold close and dear to my heart.
My life has been spent with some travels: As a clerk in Mr. Stanley’s company I learned much about the region of the American South and its ways; things were going so well I had thought to go into business with Mr. Stanley, as his son and partner, but he, dear Mum, I am afraid to say, died in my company, on a plantation in Cuba, where I had gone to join him in his work. When I returned from that journey to the place where I had made a recent home, a state called Arkansas, I joined a regiment of the Confederate army, my rank being that of a private, but with the promise of further promotions awaiting me, as I have been singled out by certain officers for my very good abilities as a provisions clerk and marksman. There is so much more I would like to tell you, but as my regiment is just now making ready to engage the enemy in the coming days, I have mainly wished to express to you the sentiments of a son who, going to war, regards the dear lady who begot him with many wonderful feelings, despite our long separation.
It is my wish, then, to plant the idea in your mind—and heart—that should I get through all this, I will be looking forward to the day when I will see you and your family in England again, and that you will find me as suitable a son as any fine lady might ever want. Please write me, if you can; but if you cannot, rest assured that I remain your son, always, in this world or in the
next.
With my dearest affections,
Henry Stanley
AT AN EARLY HOUR on the morning of April 6, 1862, a Sunday, just before the sun had begun to rise, while Clemens was still asleep somewhere out West, Stanley’s regiment, bivouacked in a damp and miserable field, had been mustered into battle formation, the Confederate army creeping through the misty gloom of a forest to sweep down and overrun the Union lines, which they had hoped to push into the Tennessee River or slaughter. Equipped with a muzzle-loading rifle, tedious and time-consuming to load, Stanley had been among the troops who, with whoops and rebel yells, had come charging with fixed bayonets in a frantic run out of the woods. Their volleys cut down the Yankees as they, just stirring awake, half-dressed and unarmed, were completely caught by surprise in their encampments; and it seemed as if the many Yankee dead and wounded lying in the field augured for a quick Confederate victory, despite the length of time it took them to load ball and buckshot and paper charges into their muskets. Shortly, however, once the Union forces had been mustered and had formed their own lines, the Confederate advantage was quickly nullified—Confederate soldiers, under a furious fusillade of bullets and shells, fell everywhere around him. Then the Yankee artillery came into play: men and horses were blown to pieces, and many a torn-open gut, entrails exposed, sent swirls of steam into the cool morning air. Taking refuge with some dozen of his fellow soldiers behind the trunk of a fallen tree, Stanley turned to see one of the men he had written a tender letter home for, a young lieutenant, shot between the eyes, his pupils wide open and dreaming—of who knows what: then he saw the soldier known as John Bull, his face blown off, collapsed on the ground. Stanley’s remarkable ability to feel detached from himself in the most troubling of circumstances served him well in those moments, for, later, keeping his calm, he survived to join a line of troops advancing toward a second Yankee encampment. It was while he had been charging across a field, behind enemy lines, that he was knocked over—a piece of shrapnel having hit the buckle of his belt; stunned, but spared mortal injury, he lay quietly for a long time before managing to crawl, exhausted, behind a tree.
Just as it seemed as if all were lost, he heard the command for his regiment to regroup. Night was falling. He ate some rations and tried to sleep—“Oh, Mother; oh, Father,” he muttered to himself again and again—sharing with his fellow soldiers the widespread fear that the Yankees might be upon them come dawn. But by the morning, he had recovered his nerves enough not only to join a line of infantrymen who were ordered to advance toward the Yankee lines in “good order” but also to do so with great valor and enthusiasm, outpacing his fellow soldiers and penetrating so deeply into the enemy campgrounds that soon no gray Confederate uniforms were to be seen. Searching for a place to hide, he ran toward some trees, only to find himself in an exposed clearing, Yankee uniforms everywhere surrounding him: And, just like that, with half a dozen soldiers converging upon him, their pistols drawn, he found himself in ankle chains and taken as a prisoner of war.
He was sent upriver by steamboat to St. Louis, then by rail to Illinois. A few weeks later, he arrived at Camp Douglas, outside of Chicago, the long huts of this federal prison abundant with vermin, its trench latrines overflowing with human ordure, and the men, clustered two and three to a wooden bunk (in dense rows, like small boats), suffering from dysentery or typhus or their own septic wounds, dying in their own filth, their bodies carried away to the death wagons each morning, like “loads of New Zealand mutton,” as he would later write in his journal. Ill himself with a very bad case of dysentery, Stanley, brooding and weary, supposed that sooner or later his would soon be among the bodies carted out of that place.
But in those days, his orderly manner attracted the attention of the Union commanders: His achievements—keeping inventory of the meager food rations that were appropriated for his barracks, a list of which he maintained in neat columns in his careful script (he was, after all, a clerk)—impressed them very much, as did his skills as a marksman. Such officers, thinking that he might be of some use to the Union cause, and reviewing his status as a British national, offered him a way out, which was to enlist as a soldier on the Union side. And while his sympathies for the South were mainly a matter of geography—it had been four years since he had arrived in New Orleans—and because he feared for his own life, he, after some six weeks in that hellish place, took the Union oath of allegiance and signed on with the Illinois Light Artillery. Sent south, to a camp near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, he had a short-lived stint in a blue uniform: Collapsing during a drill, he was deemed unfit for service. For two weeks he lingered in a Union hospital, and, released from his duties, wandered, deathly ill, on foot, traveling some twenty-four miles over the course of a week into peaceful Maryland, where, finding refuge at a farm, he recovered well enough to partake, with some gratitude, in the apple harvest.
(How beautiful that was, so long ago, he thought, to be walking in the shady groves of those trees, a patch of blue to be glimpsed now and then through the briary cross-hatching of branches, as he serenely went about practicing the peaceful activity of picking apples and dropping them into a basket in the spring sun.)
In that time a terrible homesickness for Wales came over him, a longing for the quietude of dulcet vales, and so upon his recovery (and with the help of the kindly family he stayed with) he left for Baltimore, finding work on an oyster schooner in Chesapeake Bay. Later, as a hand on a ship bound for England, he spent a month in the crossing, then walked some forty miles from Liverpool to north Wales to Denbigh. There he sought out the company and welcoming embrace of the mother who had long ago abandoned him: Seeing him in rags, she—Mrs. Robert Jones, née Betsy Parry—put him up for a night, and then sent him away from her door the next morning.
Then followed a year of further travels as a hand on various ships—water, like paper and disease, always playing a part in his life: Girgenti, Italy; Marseille, France; and Athens, Greece, being among his ports of call. On one of his journeys, he was shipwrecked in the seas off Barcelona. October of 1863 found him in New York City, working as a clerk in a legal office on Cedar Street, in lower Manhattan, his employer an alcoholic judge with whom he boarded in Brooklyn. Some six months later, young Stanley, at twenty-three, cooped up in an office and craving further adventure, enlisted again, this time in the Union Navy, as a clerk and admiral’s secretary on the warship Minnesota. It happened that he had been aboard the Minnesota on December 24, 1864, during the Union fleet’s bombardment of Fort Fisher, a Confederate stronghold on the coast of North Carolina, one of the last great naval engagements of the Civil War. Witnessing this conflagration and deciding to write some news dispatches, he later sold several of his descriptions of the battle to notable newspapers, among them the New York Herald. By the following February, bored again and judging the record-keeping facilities of the Union forces haphazard enough to risk taking an unauthorized leave, Stanley shed his uniform and, in the company of a fellow mate, slipped off the war brig as it lay in harbor one night at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, awaiting repairs. For a time he lingered in New York; by May of 1865, hearing much about the frontier lands and thinking that he might become a journalist, he headed west.
On that journey, recalling that Samuel Clemens had once worked at the Missouri Democrat, he turned up at those offices, in St. Louis, and offered his services. At the time he brought along several of the dispatches he had written during the war, and these, along with a mention of his friend Clemens, who had by then, writing under the name Mark Twain, become something of a legend to the Western newspaper community, helped the young Stanley procure a position as an attaché (or freelance stringer).
Leaving St. Louis for the frontier, he, without knowing it at the time, followed in the footsteps of Samuel Clemens, his travels taking him to St. Joseph, then by stagecoach across the Rocky Mountains and onward to San Francisco, California. Eventually, he based himself in Denver, but because his earnings as a journalist were not guaranteed
, he found work as a part-time bookkeeper in Central City, a mining town where he entertained (like Clemens and many others before him) the notion of striking it rich by prospecting for gold. But as money to buy the needed supplies was scarce, he became an employee of the Daily Miners’ Register, not as a journalist but as an apprentice typesetter—as if Samuel Clemens’s own past had come to shadow him. Finding no gold in the hills around that city, he returned to his fledgling skills as a writer, keeping notebooks filled with observations and successfully selling many an article on the doings of the rugged cowboys and miners he encountered on his travels.