(A note: In this aplomb, Clemens was distinctly linked to his predecessor in letters, Charles Dickens, whose own stage presence was remarkable. I knew this firsthand, having seen him perform in London when I was a little girl, a fact that I think Stanley somewhat envied. Clemens himself had attended a Dickens lecture years before in New York with his future wife, Livy, or so he had told me at some point: The irony of it is that Clemens, a great performer in his own right and the “American Dickens,” as Stanley has called him, found the performance flat and uninteresting. Dickens “muttered through the whole thing,” Clemens told me.)
But while Stanley believed he had many a devoted admirer, from the highest lord to the most common man, he always felt that Clemens enjoyed the greater measure of the public’s affection and esteem. Still, he never conveyed any sign of being envious around Clemens.
“MY DEAR FRIENDS,” STANLEY SAID before the crowd, which included Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. “I begin by asking, ‘What is literature?’ Our world is founded on deeds, but it is by words that we remember them. But deeds cannot be relived except through words: Written history is but a reminder of things that happened. Even the myths as recounted by Homer and Ovid reflect what we must know.” Here he cleared his throat. “All that has been lost to us is certainly a pity, but what we do have of living vital records we can cherish because someone cared to write them down. What is literature but the record of men’s lives? No less can we cherish the infinite numbers of authors whom we will never know; and yet the effort is vital, worthy of us as civilized persons, for without them the past would be vacant, meaningless, except as a shade we would be vaguely aware of. Imagine now, as we are gathered here, that some many years later—even a hundred or two hundred years later—you and I, each one of us, will be in some way seen again. Even as I stand before you, I am fairly certain that our age and its deeds are being known in the future. We are being read about in the same way that we as children once read of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It is a fact: Years from now someone will be reading about us, of that I have no doubt. But this”—here he coughed—“is no mere matter of tautology; for our lives, once written down, are simultaneous with another time. Our literature is our legacy, and if there is such a thing as ghosts, literature will be the only verifiable version of them.
“There are many dead authors from whom we will never hear. But fortunately there are living authors among us as well. Tonight we have the special privilege of having a very great friend speak before us—a man of letters, of goodwill, of mirth and charm; a man from America, now residing in Berlin: Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain, as he is also known. One of the finest—if not the finest—exemplar of a writer. Surely he will be remembered as most of us will not be. He is a library of wisdom, a pantheon of insight: He is, I am grateful to say, a dear friend of mine, but he is a friend to us all just the same. All of us, fortunate to have been there at the time, can remember his splendid debut in London, in 1872, and I know he will equal if not surpass that early impression tonight. I know not what he will be speaking about, but I know that surely they will be words for the ages. Ladies and gentlemen, the inimitable Mark Twain.”
Clemens looked at Stanley; smiling, they shook hands, and applause followed.
Clemens shifted from foot to foot at the podium.
“To begin with, a writer makes books. In that we are like undertakers; as we put things into places where they will never be touched or changed—a kind of timeless limbo, or heaven, to be a bit more cheerful about it—we are like those Swiss tinkers who fidget around with little gears and make clocks. For each book, whether novel or travelogue, history or memoir, ticks according to its own time: Its gears run perpetually as long as there is someone to wind it up and scan his eyes over its creamy papers. The beauty of it all, as Stanley has pointed out, is that books will last as long as there are men to read them—far longer than any one individual. Shakespeare’s gone, and so is Cervantes, their bones have long since turned to dust, and yet their books bring them back: Even now, as I speak, the youthful Cervantes, a prisoner of the Ottoman Empire after the Battle of Lepanto, sits in a cell in some dank Muslim dungeon in Constantinople, dreaming up Don Quixote. Shakespeare, drinking ale in a tavern in Stratford-upon-Avon, looks up and sees the face of Ophelia in the tavern keeper’s buxom daughter; one idea leads to another; a single expression, a moment, a patch of thoughts, amounting to one splendiferous idea or person. Added up and written down, they become a book.
“What books I make—any of us makes—are expendable in the face of the actual rumblings of history, yet without them, imagine how dull and listless life would be. Think about it—a world without books, with nothing to remind us of how other men thought and lived. I’ve once dreamed of such a world, and the very thought left me so gloomy that I could not speak to anyone for days and was only resuscitated by reading Carlyle’s history of the French Revolution. Books, I then concluded, are my water, my evening and morning meal, my sunlight and garden, and what words spill from my pencil are my gestures of thanks for that fact.
“I could speak of the greatest literature, but because you all know me as a man of simple tastes, and because many of you are gainfully employed artisans of the word, as I am, I thought I would confine myself to my own life, with which I should be familiar by now.”
He shuffled past a few pages.
“Now, I only meant the aforementioned thoughts as a kind of preface, not to put you all to sleep. But about one of my books I will briefly speak—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It took me seven years or so to write, maybe more. I had at the moment of its conception been sitting in my study in Connecticut and daydreaming about Hannibal when in a moment’s flash I saw the story about the adventures of a crafty boy, Huck Finn, and a runaway slave who set off on the Mississippi together, heading north to freedom. Just as a context, the story was set in the late 1840s; at the time I wrote it, though, the Underground Railroad and the Civil War were receding into memory, and slaves, ostensibly freed—I will not discuss the failures of the Reconstruction in the South—were of the past; but I still could not keep myself from telling their story.
“In that book I confined myself to the boys’ life on the Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me and because I knew the slave’s world a little from my youth. Out on my uncle John’s farm near Florida, Missouri, where I spent many a glorious summer, the slaves were my friends. I played with their children, went tramping through the woods with them, heard their songs, and felt bad when one of them cried over some little misfortune. I knew them as part of my uncle’s extended family and was not aware of the low regard in which they were held by the outside world. I knew nothing of their standing in society. But they were slaves. I had no aversion to slavery; I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it. But years later, once I knew that it was wrong, and after a whole unholy war had been fought over the issue, I thought to put my feelings about that mighty subject into a book. Jim—he was based on one of my uncle’s slaves, a fellow I loved and respected. Huck was based on an old friend from Hannibal, Tom Blankenship, a knockabout and young heathen whom I knew well. His pappy was a drunk, and his life was low, which, in my eyes, made him an especially sympathetic fellow.” There was laughter, which Mr. Clemens, scratching his head, did not quite understand.
“Liking Jim, I rooted for him in every part of the tale. They were friends and mutually respectful, as imperfect a pair as they might have been.
“Setting them adrift on a raft, I peopled the river with the confidence men I knew from my days as a pilot on the Mississippi and made a book that I hoped would be seen as an homage to the idea of freedom—and friendship. It sold well in America, but the critics did not like it. Since I used a vernacular kind of language, it confused folks. Some critics found it wanting in ‘literary quality’; some said I was trying to elevate the lowliest subject to some high pinnacle of honor. In several places it was banned, for the coupling of a sassy white boy an
d a befuddled, freedom-craving Negro did not sit well with some. Having poured so many years and my deepest understanding and affection for my subject into the book, I was perplexed. Is it literature? I hope it is.
“You here in England were very kind toward it, which says much about your civility and understanding of words and the idea of the novel as something that should be new. I suffered somewhat at its American reception, but when I ask myself if I would write that very same book now, knowing what I do of its reception, I say yes. But could I? I doubt it. Let me put it this way: Books represent a confluence—of memories, impressions, emotions, and will. They come out of a certain moment, and I am beyond that moment now.
“I did write it, and am proud to say that Huckleberry Finn has traveled far and wide—I’ve been told that both the czarina of Russia and the kaiser have it in their libraries, and I understand that my dear friend Henry Stanley took it with him on his last expedition into the Congo. What an honor (not a blasphemy) that is.
“When I am writing I am not Samuel Clemens but Mark Twain, and through that portal flows everything. I am my books, and I am not. I admire them, and I do not. It was me, and it wasn’t, but I hope the effect on the reader remains the same.”
AFTERWARD WE WENT BACK to Richmond Terrace for dinner. Mother was waiting. She liked Clemens; I do not know if he liked her, though my impression is that he did. But upon our arrival, she was pacing about the foyer outside our dining room, inside of which many guests were gathered. As we walked in, Mother instructed Stanley to put his walking cane aside, then she greeted Mr. Clemens, catching him by the inner foyer as our butler removed his coat. She said, winningly: “Before you go in, you must sign some books of yours that I have purchased as gifts.” She led him into her study: She had some twenty of his books set aside in a pile, and she stood by him, thin and opinioned and adamant as she could be, instructing him over every signature. They fell to talking. Clemens, in speaking of his stopover in London, seemed sincerely enchanted by her company, holding her hand and nodding agreeably as she praised him. Meanwhile, Stanley was pacing irritably about. “Dear lady,” I heard Clemens say, “my mother is gone, but you seem very much the lady she was.” And he made the graceful gesture of kissing the upraised knuckles of her hand. “You seem delightful for your age, my lady,” he added. “Consider me a friend.” Then my mother, who I cannot say was the most emotional of women, stood up and shocked me, kissing Clemens on the face. “Well, then,” she said. “As you are mine, I am yours—a dear, dear friend.” Nearly weightless, buoyant over their exchange, and with a fan in hand, she left Clemens and made her way into our dining room.
The Man Inside His Head
IT WAS MY GOOD FORTUNE that Samuel came to sit for me again that next afternoon. He only had an hour, being kept busy with appointments, mainly with his London publishers. He did, however, seem most happy to spend time with me and made the flattering gesture of bringing two bouquets of roses, one for Mother and one for me.
I had made a few rudimentary oil studies of his most interesting face; while his heavy, ridged brow cast his eyes in perpetual darkness, they were lit with wisdom and intelligence—like Stanley’s. His longish nose and prim mouth, hidden under a reddish, gray-streaked walrus mustache, along with his great head of hair, seemed easy enough to capture; yet the subtle quality I most wanted to convey in my portrait of him was elusive. Clemens, at every moment, seemed to be of two minds, which is to say that while he, with a cigar held in his delicate hand, would speak of one thing, I always had the impression that at the same time he was secretly thinking of another. At first, he was quiet that day, but then, while speaking sincerely about how much he missed his family—so many Atlantic crossings, precipitated by financial concerns, taking him back to the States in those days—I asked him how he, with so many demands on his time, could manage so many things at once: his publishing house, his writings, his financial affairs. In a mood to amuse me, he told me a story about “the little man” in his head.
“Indeed, how I manage so much is a mystery to me, particularly since I aspire to laziness and lolling about, which has not been my destiny of late; I really have no choice, but when I am out and about and faced with numerous decisions, I rely upon a friend of mine, a fellow who is always sitting around on a bench in a railway station, waiting for a train. I call him the little commuter. He is an admirable fellow, brighter than I by far and more sensible, especially when it comes to business matters—and he’s far more tolerant of people: Altogether he is my better and smarter self, though I never imagine that he looks anything like me. He is Everyman, a pleasant, no-nonsense fellow, and he must have an intelligent face, but as he often wears a bowler and as I only see him from a distance, as if I were standing on the far end of a train platform, I have never known what he looks like up close. But he always carries, regardless of the time of the year, an overcoat and a valise: I imagine that he is the editor of a publishing house—a successful one—or perhaps he is an attorney. Occasionally I have seen him open his valise and look over some papers, but what they contain I never know. He often sits, the valise by his side, and always removes his overcoat, setting it down beside him, as he, looking off down the tracks, awaits the train. What this train represents I don’t know—it is possibly just a train—but I sometimes think it has to do with a coming opportunity. Often, when I am in the midst of a conversation, it seems to represent an opportunity for escape. That is to say, Mrs. Stanley, that when I happen to find myself in the midst of a boring conversation, I check in on the little commuter; and as things get duller and duller, and just when I am thinking I would rather be somewhere else, the train comes chugging into the station, sending up trails of smoke and clanging its bells. With that he always stands up, puts on his hat and overcoat, stashes his papers into the valise, and, much relieved, gratefully boards.
“My thoughts go with him. Though I may nod thoughtfully and grin at the person I am entrapped with, I have the solace of thinking about the little commuter—even if he and I are not one and the same, I somehow feel that I can see what he sees—and I drift off, thinking that I am looking out at the passing countryside through the window. But then, once my interest has been newly engaged, my little commuter is back on his bench just like that, awaiting the train again, his valise and overcoat and bowler by his side, as before.
“This little man has seen me through many a drudgery—business meetings, visits to lawyers’ offices, court hearings, and many a tedious reception. As to where the train sometimes goes once it leaves the station, it travels the world. I have, while accompanying this chap, revisited the Sandwich Islands: I have gone to San Francisco, to Venice, and sometimes back to Hannibal. And while I have often enjoyed these travels, I have unfortunately boarded that train many a time, especially during matters of business, when I shouldn’t have.”
“And where is this little man now?” I asked.
“Oh, he is still sitting in the station. He rarely gets on when I’m in your company.”
TWAIN’S SADNESS AND OTHER EVENTS
AS HE HAD PROMISED DOLLY that his days of exploration were over, Stanley became an election campaigner again. Giving speeches in social clubs, pubs, and meeting rooms throughout the North Lambeth district—just across the river, over Westminster Bridge—he never deigned to canvass his constituents door-to-door or to shake a single hand if he could avoid it. However he stood on the issues—regarding Africa or regarding the ongoing debate about whether Ireland should be given home rule (he was against it)—and despite the lackluster nature of his speeches, because of his fame, and because he was running as an “illustrious son of the working class,” he won. The very night his victory was proclaimed—at midnight, by way of a red flare fired over the rooftops of North Lambeth, the sky flushing pink—his wife, Dorothy, dozing on a lounge in the attic of the Liberal Unionist Club, awakened to the cheers of Stanley’s constituents, who, gathered as a great and frenzied crowd below, had carried Stanley into the hall on their shoulders. R
ushing down the stairs, she was on hand to see Stanley, ashen-faced and listless, as his supporters set him down atop a table. In contrast to the jubilance of his constituency, he was neither excited nor happy in his bearing, as he regarded the whole business as a mistake, another burden to contend with. His expression was solemn, and though just a few scant years before he might have attempted to make a stirring speech—as if such fleeting moments of glory were of importance—he simply looked around and, thanking the boozy crowd, bid his constituents good night. No speech, no flowing rivers of appreciation—he just wanted to go home and smoke. His hands were cold, his manner sullen, and when he and Dorothy rode a hansom cab to Richmond Terrace, the subject of his election had already settled in his gut as a most disagreeable thing. En route home, he told Dolly that he did not wish to discuss it. Settled into a chair in his library, he sat alone until the early hours of the morning, smoking Havana cigars—his only movement to dash out a cigar and light a new one. Occasionally he would reach out for some book or other to leaf through it—but he did not speak to anyone for days.
STANLEY TOOK HIS SEAT in the House of Commons in August of 1895. The atmosphere at Parliament he found asphyxiating. To be herded in, like sheep, in the mornings—to sit in an airless, overcrowded room among some three hundred and fifty members, listening to addresses, mainly about the “Irish question,” in which he had no particular interest—was beyond him. Even when issues pertinent to his knowledge about Africa were being debated, he rarely caught the Speaker’s eye: his raised hand, his thumps on the table, and his cane clacking the floor went unnoticed. Worse was the absence of light, which he found depressing, and for a man who had spent endless hours walking in the open air of the wilds, the atmosphere of those chambers, with their closed windows—the Thames stank—was stifling. The river’s bilious and unsanitary miasmas were kept at bay by panes of glass, but the air inside, defined by body smells, colognes, tobacco smoke, and hair tonic, was nearly nauseating. He’d come home at a late hour feeling more exhausted, he’d say, than he had been on his marches.