“But when we first knew each other, you were different.”
“Yes, I would say so: But I was then an innocent to the world — we both were.”
“Now, tell me, Stanley, do you really believe in God?”
“Ah, that great subject. Before addressing it, let me fill your glass.” Then: “Cheers!”
“But do you believe it, Stanley?”
“To be truthful, Samuel, even as we sit here, I do. And do not. Which is to say that even at the highest-pitched moments of belief, it has sometimes slipped away from me. And yet I have still always aligned myself with the faith, I suppose because of a few encounters with truly devout men. My father, Mr. Stanley, was one of them, as you know, but even his influence faded gradually with the passing years. How could it not when I have seen so much carnage? But then, as such things have a way of working themselves out, just when my faith was at its lowest ebb and I was as cynical and selfish as any man can be, it was my destiny to know Dr. Livingstone. If you have read my book about him—”
“I have, Henry.”
“Then you will know of the profound change in my person that transpired. But here is the twist: While in his company, I saw that even the most pious of men, like Livingstone, can have a side that seems contradictory to the usual expressions of belief in a Christian God.”
“How so?”
“A little bit of history for you: In all his years of wandering through central Africa, Livingstone’s survival often depended upon his honoring of local tribal customs, becoming a ‘blood brother’ with chieftains, which I did many times myself. But Livingstone, it has been said, also took concubines among the native women. The queens of these tribes thought him possessed of special powers because he was a white man and would, as the Bible might say, ‘lie down with him.’ This was considered a special honor, and he, to stay in their good graces, could not refuse it. But if these rumors are true, he had no problem with this practice. For Livingstone would have put such sensate activities as… well, to put it bluntly, copulation into the same category as eating and digestion — a bodily affair, to say the least, one kept separate from the effort to bring Christ’s teachings to the savages.
“In that way, Livingstone was of two minds, but his religious side was so great and inspiring that after I had gone slogging through the swamps and jungles to reach him, and had despaired so often that in my malarial states I thought God a bit of a myth, it was his faith that revived my own.
“Mind you, he was an endlessly restless man — a foot tapper, like me, even when he tried to sit still — how else could he have trekked through uncharted regions for so many years? That energy and his appetites were one side of him; the other, the religious, was absolutely serene. He hung on to his faith even after watching his wife die of malaria in Africa just a few months after she had arrived to join him in his missionary work. One would think he would have resented the idea of a God then, but he did not. And when he died, after years of solitude in some desolate village in the Congo, he was found pitched face forward to the ground, his hands held in an attitude of prayer.
“Now, dear Samuel,” Stanley continued. “If he was an undeniably great man — a much greater man than I — who am I to dismiss his final opinion? And so it is that even when I have little faith, his influence changes my mind.”
“Do you suppose he was praying to clear himself for Judgment Day?”
“Possibly.”
“And the afterlife, Stanley?”
“Ah, now, I know you don’t believe in it. As for me, when I am in my cups, I will say there is one. But in my everyday waking life, I don’t imagine it exists, although I really don’t care — at heart, as much as I have come to love certain human beings, I think the human race so despicable that I almost welcome the idea of having no more dealings with it.”
“I am with you on that.”
“But who is to say?” said Stanley, filling Clemens’s glass with more Champagne. “What I most often believe, dear friend, is that what awaits me will be a merciful darkness.”
“That cheers me up,” Clemens said. “As you and I are sitting here on this beautiful morning, another sacred day commemorating the hearsay about the risen Christ, I remain as skeptical as I have ever been, much as I have tried lately to put on a good face about all that business for Livy. Simply put, I am a reluctant atheist, and as much as I wish it were otherwise, it is so.”
ON HIS NIGHTS BY HIMSELF, a terrible loneliness overwhelmed Clemens. Restlessly he would think about Susy and his beloved Livy, then of his remaining daughters — his little family. Clara had not accompanied him to London because he had insisted that she make the journey with Isabel Lyon, his secretary, whom she had come to dislike; Jean was then in a sanatorium, and in any case her doctors seemed to believe that, as with Livy, Clemens, in his moodiness, would only aggravate her symptoms of hysteria and epilepsy. Mainly he brooded about death and reflected unwittingly upon the passing of old friends, Stanley among them.
AS FOR STANLEY and the general subject of sex, Clemens remembered asking him once about the wilds of Africa and whether he had ever consorted with any women there. He recalled an evening in 1900, when Stanley, mumbling, had said, “Yes, I suppose I have.” At first he was guarded, but after some questions, and with Samuel filling Stanley’s glass with brandy again and again, the great explorer elaborated: “As much as I would not like to admit it, in my early middle age, I have lain with African voluptuaries. Mainly in Zanzibar. But what I say to you, Samuel, should not be known. As beautiful as these women were sometimes, I was as a shepherd would be with his flock: I attended to them as briskly as possible.” (At that, Clemens laughed.) But then Stanley added, “These were only occasional events undertaken at moments of great boredom and torpor. I do not regret them, nor do I particularly remember them.”
And had he ever lain with Lady Stanley? This, of course, he could never ask. Clemens imagined not, for in those years, when Stanley’s luck with the female sex seemed to finally have changed, he had often been sick; but to imagine what Dolly might have been like intrigued Clemens. Sometimes, as he shot his billiards in the middle of the night, he saw her stretched out naked in a chair, like La maja desnuda—her Rubensesque form a pure enchantment. Of course, he was too old to linger long on such thoughts, but for a few moments, he envied Stanley for having found such a vivacious specimen of good health for a wife.
But all in all, as much as his mind drifted, he wished that Livy were still alive to ease his passage through those lonely nights and to share in his glory.
Often he drank until he began to miss his shots and could barely see across the room.
June 14, 1907
Dear Lady Stanley,
First of all, forgive the tardiness of this reply. And yes, I absolutely intend to visit you, but as I am like a fish in a barrel and up to my neck in engagements, our reunion must wait until after the Oxford ceremonies, to be held, as you know, on the 26th, at the Sheldonian Theatre: Will you be coming? I hope so. Otherwise, why do we not set aside the afternoon of the 28th? I promise to clean off the slate of my engagements.
I did meet Mr. Shaw — a poised, wonderful, self-effacing sort of fellow, whom I would gladly count as one of my friends. He spoke highly of you and Stanley and said that your wedding to Dr. Curtis was indeed a quiet affair. A question: Is it true that Mr. Shaw wrote a play about you? He claimed to have done so in Candida, which I have not seen. If this is so, I cannot wait to see it.