“The poor dear man had been suffering from nightmares—as if he already knew what awaited him. He was only forty-seven,” she added, to my surprise. “And he had often spoken of you as his successor.”
I thought about what Mr. Stanley would have done in such circumstances and found myself quoting from the Psalms to soothe her.
“You are very kind,” she said. “God bless my husband’s soul.”
We said some prayers, then she asked me, in the way that grieved persons do, “You do believe in the eternal nature of souls?”
“Of course, ma’am. Surely as Jesus rose, then will he.”
That was hardly a comfort to her, given her sadness, but she was greatly touched and, sitting near me, reached for my hand and held it for a long while. Then, as it was getting late, and just when I was beginning to wonder about what kind of accommodations his widow would offer me that night, she, in tears, led me from that room toward a large salon. Through the door we went; it was then that I saw the defunct Mr. Speake resting, at the far end of that salon, in his coffin.
“I cannot bear to do so myself, but as I do not want to leave the poor man alone, would you, Master Rowlands, sit up with the casket tonight?”
What choice had I?
I passed that night uneasily, and in the morning, I joined the funeral procession, along the streets of the city, to St. Roch’s for his interment.
IT TURNED OUT THAT WITHIN a few weeks Mrs. Speake decided to move to St. Louis to live with some relations, and the firm was put up and sold at auction. A different partnership, headed by a certain Mr. Ellison and Mr. McMillan, became the new owner. Mr. Richardson and several of the other clerks found work elsewhere, but as the partners had heard about my efficient ways and my reputation as a “walking inventory,” I was retained, though, to my discontent, at a lower wage: Far from making me feel that I had a certain future in the warehouse, my new employers made it clear that I was expendable. No one was irreplaceable. Expecting much of me, they doubled my responsibilities: Suddenly I was an inventory man, a bookkeeper, a shipment manager, all at once. My work was so compacted that, despite my youth, I left each evening feeling fairly exhausted.
AFTER I RELATED MY UNPLEASANT situation at the warehouse to Mrs. Stanley, she had written her husband about it, so that he, upon his eventual return, would, on my behalf, and using the weight of his importance in the mercantile district, have a word with these gentlemen, with the aim of improving my circumstance. But it seems that I was to be hounded by bad luck. Not a week after we had spent a most pleasant Sunday, marked by a memorable dinner in the evening, I arrived at her door on St. Charles Avenue to learn from her Irish maid, Margaret, that Mrs. Stanley had herself fallen gravely ill. She had come down with severe dysentery, one of the diseases that, with yellow fever, had proliferated in New Orleans that summer. This great lady had taken to her bed in a state of such dehydration that when I ventured to her bedside, I saw the skeletal form of a sainted woman about to enter into heaven.
By then, Margaret had been tirelessly by her side since Friday and seemed so exhausted that I felt it my duty to offer my assistance. And so it was that I spent that day and night by Mrs. Stanley’s door, alerting Margaret whenever Mrs. Stanley, waking from her sleep, cried out, in a weak voice, for those medicines that would relieve her pain.
That Monday morning I reluctantly took my leave but promised to return within the hour, as I thought to solicit a few days off from the warehouse, a request that did not sit well with Mr. Ellison. Ruddy-skinned, and somewhat obese, he had been eating an apple when I entered his office and barely seemed to care about some “old lady in her last throes.” Perhaps a spirit of independence, entirely new, had been aroused in me by my days in New Orleans, but I found myself telling Mr. Ellison that, indeed, whether he believed me or not, and whether he wanted me to or not, I would be taking time off, and that no job, however important it may seem to those who rank profits over human life, could keep me there.
“Good. Then go and take your Welsh arse out of here. And don’t come back,” he told me bluntly.
SUDDENLY WITHOUT EMPLOYMENT, I RETURNED to Mrs. Stanley’s house and spent the next three days helping in what ways I could.
I have seen death come in many forms in my years, but never has a person appeared so serene before the mysterious prospect awaiting her as did dear Frances. What death is I then did not know: If it enters as a change of light, a slight mist, or a dim sound in the air, I still cannot say, nor will I know until my own time comes. But back then, being so young and never having witnessed the process so closely, I was filled with more fear than pity and an excruciating sense of helplessness. Quietly I sat beside the broad bed in which she rested, in wonderment over how someone I had only known for some few months seemed so important to my well-being. From the salted air of a ship in the mid-Atlantic I had gone into a death room in New Orleans: How strange did that fact seem to me.
When the hour arrived, Margaret and I gathered by her side. When she recognized me, her pupils widened, and she began to whisper.
“Ah, my boy, oh, the pleasant times we’ve had,” she said. “When I am in the sweet peace… please, do not forget my husband; look after him.” Then: “Oh, God bless you, my boy.”
I was holding her hand in my own when that faint pulse stopped beating; her eyes were opened tranquilly wide and fixed upon that distant place.
AT FIRST, I THOUGHT that the funeral arrangements would fall to me, for Mr. Stanley himself, somewhere upriver, had not yet heard of this tragic event, and, in any case, he was at least a week or so away. But it happened that Mr. Stanley’s older brother, Captain John Stanley, had arrived by brig from Havana the previous evening, and coming to that house the next morning, to pay his sister-in-law what he thought would be an ordinary visit, he was grieved to hear the sad news. Looming over me as I explained the situation, he seemed bemused by my presence in that house.
“Who are you, anyway?” he asked me, without so much as a syllable of condolence in his voice. I explained my friendship with his brother and the story of our days, but to this he was indifferent. Yet in my confused and forlorn state, it relieved me to learn that he, of a more forceful personality than my own, had determined to take care of the funeral arrangements himself. Shortly we shook hands, and he saw me out the door.
Three days later, as I was sitting in my attic room in Mrs. Williams’s boardinghouse, bleakly pondering my future, I received a note from Margaret: Mrs. Stanley had been embalmed and shipped upriver in a leaden casket to St. Louis: Mr. Stanley himself, located in Memphis and informed of his wife’s death by telegram, would go there for the funeral.
MY SUBSEQUENT DAYS WERE DEVOTED to a search for work among the other merchant warehouses in the district, but my last employer, Mr. Ellison, had launched a campaign against me and besmirched my name by accusations of indolence. But as I made my way up and down that strip, speaking with one merchant and the other, I learned that there were no jobs available, even if he had not resorted to such chicanery. I even tracked down Mr. Richardson, whom I had counted as a friend, but he was reduced in circumstances on account of his age, and now, as a lowly clerk himself, could be of no help to me. For a period, I mainly lolled around Mrs. Williams’s house reading books—I even managed to finish my Gibbon.
Still, my fortunes changed again. During a dinner at Mrs. Williams’s boardinghouse, I heard about a certain elderly captain on a frigate called the Dido who had fallen ill from drinking the Mississippi river water. He needed an assistant, a sailor told me, willing to contend with the unpleasant nature of a bilious dysentery; I signed on, meeting the poor man as he lay in his bunk: an old fellow, he had the bearded face of a patriarch, his skin saffron-colored, his features haggard and drawn. And yet, worn down as he seemed, he was coming out of the yellow fever; and though my olfactory senses were at first offended by, as Shakespeare would have put it, a “bottom that hath no bottom,” I had dutifully set out to restore to cleanliness both his person and th
e conditions in his cabin. I was on this frigate for a month, the first three weeks of which had been anxiety-provoking, as he, a pious and kindly man, had seemed perpetually close to death.
But one day he was well enough to take the sea air, and as he stood on the poop deck, tottering beside me—I had to hold him up—the fresh breezes seemed to make him feel better.
At the end of that month, when he was fully himself again and had no further need of me, this captain, having ascertained from my demeanor that I was in a lowly state of mind, sought to counsel me. “You have spoken of your friend Mr. Stanley and of his many kindnesses to you. Should you not,” he asked me, “put your life of petty odd jobs behind you and seek him out? If you have been discouraged, think of me: In one moment I was lying about in a filthy state; the next I was on the deck of my frigate taking in the sea air on a bright and sunny day. Take me at my word—seek out your friend and see what will happen. Go to St. Louis.”
AFOOT IN THE CITY AGAIN, I returned to Mr. Stanley’s house on St. Charles Avenue to inquire as to his whereabouts, but no one was at home, Margaret having departed. Back at Mrs. Williams’s, where all my possessions were stored, I had hoped to find some piece of correspondence from Mr. Stanley awaiting me, and, thankfully, a note from him had arrived: It was addressed from the Planters House Hotel in St. Louis and dated November 11, 1859. This is how I recall it:
Dear Master Rowlands,
I have been told of your unflinching kindness during my late wife’s sufferings, may God bless her soul. I have also become aware of certain audacities regarding your tenure with your new employers. Rest assured, stalwart young man, that upon my return to New Orleans I will attend to the resolution of your current discomforts. When that will be I do not know, as we are settling many matters of estate in St. Louis.
With best wishes,
Henry Stanley
SO I RESOLVED TO BOOK PASSAGE to St. Louis, and within a few days I found myself heading north on the Mississippi aboard the Tuscarora. In other places I will mention my enthrallment with such craft; but what I will say now is that my first journey upriver, some nine days long, with its ascent into a port that was nearly as glorious and glutted with ships as New Orleans, and much grander than bustling Liverpool, gave me a further indication as to the enormity and boundless resources of America. St. Louis’s docks bustled with the same commerce as those in New Orleans—everywhere I looked there were steamers unloading great cargoes of cotton and other goods; endless barrels and crates, boasting of the river economy, were laid along the docks.
Once I had descended onto the levee, I made my way, by hired hack, to the Planters House Hotel, where I approached the front desk clerk and presented myself as a “close acquaintance” of Mr. Stanley and inquired as to his whereabouts.
“He’s not here,” I was told. “He left last week on a steamer.”
I could not, at this point, fully absorb the ramifications of that remark.
“He did?” I asked.
“He has gone south, to New Orleans.”
Such a declaration might have alighted upon me with less consequence had I, in my pocket, enough money to book a return passage to New Orleans.
Shortly I took a room in a modest boardinghouse near the harbor to contemplate the means by which I would earn some money. For some ten days I made my way around the major streets of that city, which I did not know, looking for work.
One afternoon, with my frustrations mounting and my funds running perilously low, I happened to make my way down to the riverside, where many flatboats and barges were docked. One of them was loaded up with a massive shipment of timber. The crew was an agreeable lot. Speaking with one of them, I learned that the flatboat was to set out that very evening for New Orleans, and so I sought their boss with the idea of offering my services in exchange for passage downriver.
A few hours later, I returned with my carpetbag, and, dressed in a manner practical for such work, I joined the crew as the flatboat cast off into the current. It took us two weeks to reach New Orleans.
ON THAT VOYAGE, I WELL LEARNED the appeal of the river; the quietude of a flatboat’s passage as opposed to that of a steamship, with its clanging bells and whistles. The churning of the paddle wheel was quite appealing, our slow progress giving one much time to think and observe the motions of the water. Its currents and eddies and whirlpools, its fluvial volatility, were a source of fascination to me: I learned how the river could be calm one moment and stormy the next; I learned of its depths and shallows; the trickiness of navigating its snags and sandbars; the way it turned silver and gold in the sunlight or suddenly resembled gruel under the gray skies; with these transformations I grew familiar.
One thing was certain: No matter how many times we saw a steamboat speeding past us along the river, its chimney sending up billows of thick, pitch-pine-fed smoke, it always seemed a fanciful event—the calm waters suddenly stirring, the captain blowing the horn to let us know of his approach, as if we could possibly have missed it! Long after such steamboats had vanished from view, we could see their courses marked out, far into the distance, by the lingering trails of dark smoke, a long plume of which hung in the air for hours as the boats disappeared down the Mississippi.
IN NEW ORLEANS AGAIN, after the exhilarations and tedium of that journey, I headed straightaway to Mr. Stanley’s home on St. Charles Avenue, and, to my good fortune, found him there, in a receptive and grateful mood toward me. To see him again after so many months uplifted my spirits instantly, for his manner, by way of affections, was more than what it had been before—a consequence, I believe, of hearing stories from his maid about my devotion to his late wife during her last days on this earth. He had been so moved by such tales that, in the clearest way possible, he told me my future would be in his charge from this time onward. Moreover, he declared that he would now directly undertake my development into a man of commerce and instruct me in the ways of his profession.
That night, over supper, we spoke of many things as we never had before, and, with a greater curiosity, he pursued those details of my life that I had been too ashamed to tell him before—mainly, that I had been as good as an orphan, having neither mother nor father to claim as my own. Then Mr. Stanley said that he and his wife had always been childless and, wanting their own, had often visited the infant asylum in New Orleans, but they had been too fastidious and careful to make a choice, something they had come to regret. But now he saw that things could unfold differently in his life—for as a widower, he was lonely and longing for a good companion.
Then Mr. Stanley promised to take me up as his own ward: He would make preparations to adopt me in the future and bestow his name upon me.
That night he clarified for me the details of his life, which I had only known before as hearsay. He had been educated for the ministry as a young man, and for some seven years he had traveled the South as an itinerant preacher, but he had found out, through a deep examination of his conscience, that he felt unsuited to that profession. Commerce, with its social intimacies, held a greater attraction for him. Having succeeded in a number of ventures, he established an office in St. Louis and, with his older brother, one in Havana, Cuba, a land he called beautiful.
It was his wish, once he had made a satisfactory fortune, to sever his city connection and return to the storekeeper’s trade, perhaps in some tranquil outpost upriver, for he saw that there would come a time when he would be weary of travel; but, in the meantime, he said there would be much to teach me, his son.
SHORTLY I MOVED MOST of my books and what other possessions I had from Mrs. Williams’s boardinghouse and took lodging on St. Charles Avenue with my new father. At first he taught me the essentials of gentlemanly grooming: the use of clippers, so that my nails might not grow so long and dirty; how to clean my teeth with tooth powder and a brush, something I had never known before. He also introduced me to the concept of a daily bath, bidding me to make use of the grand wooden tub that he kept for such purposes.
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bsp; “Forget all the nonsense you were raised with,” Mr. Stanley told me. “Cleanliness is what differentiates the gentleman from the common laborer and slave.”
He had guided me further in the selection of clothing and helped me to accrue all manner of stylish suits: He taught me that a well-ironed shirt and well-tied cravat did much by way of making a good impression, especially with businessmen, a necessity if I wanted a life in commerce. Shoes were important, too.
Then, with the outward aspects of my appearance somewhat rectified, and with my habits becoming more fastidious, he turned to what he saw as the essential flaw of my bearing.
“You have many fine characteristics: You are swift of mind, pensive, and courteous; but you are also far too afraid and timid around things and people; it is as if you feel beneath the others you meet. I have noticed on many occasions a certain awkwardness in your social manner; you are often sullen in your private moments and easily defer to the opinions of others, as if you have none of your own. In short, you do not seem like a person who will stand up for himself: In business—and in life—this will not help your dealings, as the merchants you shall meet are men, and as men they only want to deal with men, not boys uncertain of themselves. What you must do, young man, is adopt the mental attitude that you are in every way equal if not superior to those whom you encounter; in the rare cases where this is not true, then you will learn it a useful posture to adopt anyway. Your timidity must be forgotten.”
Then: “Remember that Napoleon himself was as diminutive as you. Think of all he did and all that he nearly succeeded in, and realize that his fall did not come from any lack of ability but from a lack of humility, which is different from timidity. As for your physical demeanor, do not slouch at any time, and when you are speaking to someone, look him directly in the eye: Listen to what he says with the utmost interest, no matter how dull he may be, and interject your opinions only when he has exhausted himself of his own.”