He might have had a future as a statesman had he the patience for the consuming intricacies of parliamentary procedures, but it all bored him: Further, he felt himself a loner, and he found the clubbishness of the house’s members, who separated themselves along class lines, irritating. Prone to the nostalgia of a man who thought his best years were behind him, and missing his adventures, he often felt that his life was over.
YET DOLLY SEEMED CONTENT, and, all in all, during those rare moments when Stanley had a few hours to do as he pleased, which was to sit in his study and read, the enterprise of matrimony seemed to him reasonable enough. Dolly, however spoiled she had been in life, seemed to truly care for him; on many an afternoon, that thought alone was enough to assuage his occasionally bitter feelings of containment and the sense that the domestic life he’d always longed for was nothing more than a prison.
He rarely wrote anything that he considered important—countless notes relating to social engagements; a few letters to the newspapers (but mainly his old fire and indignation had left him); lectures he would give here and there about Africa—but in those years, with his original glory faded and with his reputation somewhat eroded by increasing reports about native abuse in the Congo, he did so as a relic of the past, the specter of greatness having faded from the public’s perception of him. Even his attempts at writing his autobiography stalled: Relegating the pages he had once written during his tour of the States and Australia to the bottom of a trunk, Stanley managed, during several bouts of concentrated writing at quiet seaside resorts, to produce the portion of manuscript relating to his youthful years through the Civil War that would serve as the official version of those years. But once he had reached that point, wherein he much enjoyed the process of describing just how Henry Morton Stanley came to be, it was as if he could write no more on the subject, his will to do so sapped by emotions he found unbearable.
At fifty-five, as much as he tried to, he could never forget that, once upon a time, he had been an unwanted child, a lowly sort loved by no one. With each new line he wrote, that awareness came back to him: That he still felt himself an “orphan” rankled him. It was an illusion, of course—all men end up being orphaned by death—but as he ruminated over the fact that his life had been spent in the servitude of others and in the pursuit of “empty glory,” he searched his mind for the single thing that might make him happy—to give someone what he had wanted himself: a father.
HERE FOLLOWS A LETTER Stanley wrote to Samuel Clemens at that time of his ruminations: Clemens, then staying at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, was about to embark on a worldwide tour to pay off his debts; Stanley had helped Clemens with arrangements for the Australian leg of his journey by introducing him, by mail, to his own promoter in that country, Carlyle Greenwood Smythe.
June 12, 1895
Dear Samuel,
It seems our correspondences as of late have had much to do with business and the details of tours and lectures.
I am, as you may deduce, a little weary from my post-Africa life. I am now declining, without a doubt, in vitality: My marriage has been the best of it, but in other ways, Samuel, I have been feeling restless. It’s not that I do not enjoy the company of people, but there is so much small talk and so little time for the important things that I have been feeling robbed: If I were an hourglass, I would be one for whom most of the sands have run out. Time—what is it but a measure of mutually agreed-upon units marking our passage through the world? I have little doubt that the endlessness of it all, or our illusion of its endlessness, is just a psychological device that we humans employ to keep ourselves sane. How else can one bear the quickening of the gap between the dawn of one’s consciousness in infancy with the indifferent and rushing present?
At least in the days when we met, back before the pleasant illusion that was the South crumbled and became what it is today, before the romantic caprice that said slavery was a noble thing as long as it was conducted equitably and with concern for the slaves’ “human comforts”—as long as “civilization” flourished splendidly—you and I could enjoy our youth. Remember then, Samuel, how lovely the Mississippi once looked to us? It was not so much the actual physical nature of the river itself, lovely as it was—with its luminous moons at night, the shredded violet skies at dusk, the scent of marsh flowers and burning campfires wafting over the waters—as the aspect of the river unfolding endlessly before us, a symbol of our own endless-seeming youth.
How could we have known, as young men, what life held for us? Two famous budding writers were we: on the one hand there was you, the steamboat pilot Samuel Clemens, whose occasional ditties and observations about river life found their way into the region’s newspapers, and on the other hand there was me, a common sales clerk from New Orleans by way of England whose only jottings were of numerical things, such as would concern the commerce of a riverboat trader like my adoptive father, Henry Stanley. Neither you nor I knew anything about what awaited us in the world of letters, and yet from the beginning, our mutual respect and liking for books brought us together. I can still remember your general amusement at the fact that you found me reading a Bible by the riverboat railing. That you deigned to speak to me, out of a hunger to converse with someone besides bored widows, was the beginning of a friendship.
Of the Bible you have always had your opinions: You have always regarded that “Good Book” as a great mythic fantasy—heartening to human resolve, moralistic, etc., but a tall tale—whereas I, in my innocence, believed in those words deeply. Since then—in the years, nearly forty, that have passed—I have generally come to agree with you: The Bible, in its sweetest and highest-aspiring parts, is wholly inapplicable to actual humanity. By Providence, we human beings simply fall short of the idealized way of living laid out before us. And what is God? You have told me that, at best, you have a general idea that God exists in the world only when “luck” or “destiny” falls in stride with a person’s good fortune and that His absence from most events speaks to His general indifference if not nonexistence. I agree with you insofar as “God” is an impassive veil over our lives. I think He watches us from afar and does not intercede, as most people want Him to: The violent and needless deaths I have witnessed over the years, in regions where life is cheap and as exchangeable as an English pound, have been the proof.
I can tell you these things because, in a way, though we are separated by only a few years—six, as I remember—we have been treading the same ground: That you, Samuel, have managed to draw upon your own resources at this stage in your life to undertake a great tour to ease your debts has left me with an even greater admiration for you. Though you have never been a true soldier of the field, you have a strength of will that would have served you well in war, in spite of all the jokes you make about it. I have often thought, in this regard, that the greatest source of your strength must be and always has been your family—your lovely daughters, Jean, Clara, and Susy, of whom I have cherished memories, and of course your charming wife, Livy (I hope she is not ailing of late). What empowerment and confidence they must give to you, knowing that whatever your travails, at the end of the day you can be joined with them in the blissful and soothing atmosphere of domesticity.
If I have asked, “What is time?” then I must also ask, “What is fame?” To be recognized, applauded, introduced to persons of note, for a few moments; to travel a great distance to spend a mere half an hour at lunch with the queen—what does it add up to?
I have been thinking lately of my great enjoyment of children: Perhaps it is because I did not have much of a happy childhood myself—nothing nearly as sublime or comforting as the things I have read of your own past and the things you have told me about it. I had no paradise such as you did in Hannibal and at your uncle John’s farm. The closest I have come to that kind of happiness has been in the wild and in friendship. Call it an honor to dine with the queen, but one is so blocked up inside from the formality, the protocol. There is honor but little joy in such thin
gs: For me, aside from the enjoyment of a few select companions and the company of my own very sweet wife, there is little else until I find myself with one of the cherubs I encounter. Around them, the great explorer becomes a child himself. Lately I count my happiest hours as the ones I have spent acting out the way the creatures of the African jungle move and roar: I was out at Cadogan Gardens not so long ago, entertaining a group of children. I was, for their amusement, pretending to be an African elephant, a lion, and an antelope to teach them about the wonders of nature. The essential integrity and uniqueness of the African “beasties” brought no end of joy—through the children’s laughter and delight in seeing an old, white-haired explorer prancing in a yard, I am drawn back, then, as I get older, as the body fades, to a second childhood, I suppose, for to see the world as children do is to reenter that paradise, a place or state of mind far removed from the sorrows of this world. In that exposure to such unsullied innocence I have found much that is wonderful.
Which is to say, dear Samuel, that Dolly and I have been considering the adoption of a child: As we have come to an age when having children is no longer possible, I have been giving thought to the benefits of looking for a little one—a Welsh child, of course—to call our own.
It is our plan to head up to Denbigh for such a purpose. It would be a lovely thing to make happen.
As I know from Major Pond and Mr. Smythe that you are to shortly to embark on a long world tour, I can only offer you a word of encouragement; but should you need anything I am always here for you.
My best wishes to you and your family—Stanley
STANLEY AND DOLLY spent several months visiting many an orphanage without finding a child appropriate for them—one, as Stanley demanded, who had the “vital spark of intelligence and alertness.” But one day in the spring of 1896, a letter arrived from Denbigh, written by a woman named Mary White, mentioning that she was in guardianship of a thirteen-month-old boy who had been born out of wedlock to a distant cousin on his mother’s side, a disgraced servant in the house of a wealthy man. With no one to assume paternity, and with the mother too poor to support him, the child had been passed along among uninterested relatives until he had come into her care. And so, in Denbigh one afternoon, after making a brief visit to St. Asaph’s, where he donated a trunk’s worth of books to their library, and after wandering through the local cemetery in a daydream about the passage of time, Stanley and Dolly alighted in the rustic hamlet of Corwen, in Denbighshire, where they made their way by carriage to a stone cottage by whose door stood a stout and grandmotherly old woman. Exhausted beyond her years, she wore a frayed cap and a sorry dress and was bent over a washbasin. Behind her, a wicker cradle held a child who was crying. The child was a pink-complexioned, brown-eyed Celtic infant, helpless and more or less destined, without the intercession of Mr. Stanley, to a foundling home or orphanage.
Stanley, for the occasion, had put on a blue frock coat, and as a matter of authority, and to impress the locals—for he had never wanted any of them to forget his accomplishments and rise in the world—he had attached a number of medals to his lapel. Dorothy Tennant wore a fine French dress. The driver opened the carriage doors for them, bowing.
“So,” said Stanley. “Is this the residence of Mary White?”
“It is.”
“I am Henry Stanley. Is this the child of whom you have written?”
“It is.”
“Has he a name?”
“None yet.” Then: “Go ahead—take a look. I believe he is a distant relation of yours.”
With his wife by his side, Stanley stood over the infant, and, as he had done with other infants they had seen, he performed a test. Removing from his pocket a watch and chain, he dangled it before the baby and was pleased to see that the child’s bright eyes followed its motion as it swung from left to right. Stanley then snapped his fingers and saw that the infant reacted quickly to that. He touched the child’s head, with its traces of florid blond hair; then, leaning down to take a closer look, he was pleased to see that the infant seemed to be smiling and was reaching out to him with its little hands. He was thinking that this was a delightful child when Dolly, unable to contain her excitement and pleasure, and who, having always loved children, found the creature, in its innocence and perfection, irresistible, declared: “Oh, what a joy: He even looks like you!”
It was not long, then, after conferring privately with his wife that Stanley told Mrs. White that they would be most interested in assuming possession and care of the child.
“Are you saying then, sir, that you want him?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Then if you do, would you be willing to pay me something for having looked after him so well?”
“How much?” Stanley asked.
“I think ten pounds would cover it. I’ve had him for four months, after all.”
This Stanley paid her on the spot: Other considerations, involving legal matters and fees, were resolved with alacrity because of Stanley’s great standing in Wales. Within a few days, after a visit to Carnarvon, they came away with the papers of adoption and the infant himself.
DURING THE TRAIN RIDE SOUTH from Wales, Dolly held the baby closely: All her affection for children, which she had previously expressed in her paintings of London street urchins, multiplied, and her maternal side blossomed. Her journey was spent kissing the baby’s face: Stanley, for his part, could not have been more attentive. He often sat back, beside his wife, thinking about the fact that he, as an abandoned waif, never knew where he really came from and never felt that anyone really cared: But this child would have a different fate. All around them, the countryside was rushing by—the incredible sun glaring through the treetops cast a shadow in the shape of a lunar crescent upon the compartment’s wooden walls. The baby looked at it, enthralled, and Stanley remarked, “How alert! He’ll be a good soldier one day!” Later, as the train jostled along, and as his wife swaddled the baby in her arms, Henry Stanley made it a point to dangle before the child’s large brown eyes a key. And as he did so, he said: “You are now my son.”
All at once, it seemed that the horrors of life, the petty nuisances and myriad responsibilities that had made his days an unending progression of work and fretful concerns, fell away. It was if the child’s presence had created for Stanley a new world; as if emanating from that innocence came a sanctuary of sweet and reassuring emotions.
FROM HIS LAST MISSION IN AFRICA, Stanley had carried back a vial of water taken from Lake Albert, and with this water he had the child baptized. The name he chose for the child, Denzil, a variation of Dennis, was traced back to some distant ancestor of Dolly’s who had been one of Cromwell’s captains. Stanley gave the boy his own invented middle name, Morton, and a nursery was set up in the house on Richmond Terrace. A nanny was brought in, and the explorer himself, moved to excitement, set out to add his touches to that cheerful, sunlit room: Besides some scenes of fairy tales—colored lithographs by the elf artist Richard Doyle (uncle of Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of the famed Sherlock Holmes and a family friend)—and several drawings by Dorothy, Stanley put up over the crib a framed map of Africa, so that in infancy the boy would grow up familiar with his adoptive father’s accomplishments.
Then Stanley wrote to his friend: “Dear Samuel—When you are done with your touring you and the Mrs. must come to see the enchantment that has entered into this old soldier’s life.”
From Lady Stanley’s Journal, 1896
IT WAS LATE JULY when Samuel Clemens arrived in England from South Africa with his wife, Livy, and daughter Clara. He had finished the last leg of his yearlong world tour, undertaken to pay off his considerable debts. We had been kept informed of his itinerary by Mr. Smythe, Stanley’s own Australian agent, who had booked Clemens’s antipodean lectures, but in addition, every so often there arrived in the mail letters from the weary traveler and cartes de visite from various exotic locales. Clemens had set out the year before from Vancouver, bound for Australia and
New Zealand, then he had traveled onward to India and Ceylon and other points of interest. His plans were to settle in England for a few months before proceeding home, and, to that end, he had come to London to find an appropriate house to rent. Shortly he would be joined by his two other daughters, Susy and Jean, from America—and a much-belated reunion would ensue.
“What is hardest,” he had written my husband from Agra, India, “are not the bugs and snakes and the incessant heat of this dusty land, nor is it my own persistent colds and carbuncles, and it is not even the misery of the poverty that exists everywhere and spills onto the steps of the most opulent maharaja’s palace; rather, my dear Stanley, it is the powerful loneliness that I feel when thinking about my daughters and how this separation must weigh upon them—particularly Susy, my eldest and most sensitive one, who, I know, was none too happy that we were going away for so long. It’s my dream to put my debts to bed for good and abandon this nomad’s life, and I look forward to a normal and civilized family existence back home in Hartford. I, for one, cannot wait for my burden to be lifted again; I hope that will be the case when I come back through England, in the spring or summer—the sooner the better.”
The first week of August, we were therefore pleased to hear from Clemens by way of a telegram conveying the news that he, Livy, and Clara were in London for a few days; straightaway Stanley went to the Langham Hotel to find Clemens somewhat indisposed in bed.