Earlier he had confessed to me that he had, some time back, sent her several gushing notes of a somewhat romantic nature, and that she had responded in kind. Though he doubted that he was ready to take any kind of leap, in the morning he had spent an inordinate amount of time in our hotel room, shaving and trimming his muttonchops and mustache, before putting on his white linen suit and polishing his shoes so that he would appear before her as the image of sartorial splendor.
I should add here that Clemens was, in some ways, a sentimentalist: Among the possessions he had brought along with him on our journey, aside from certain practical items, were a cameo of his mother, a small oval photograph of his departed brother Henry, and, in a pouch, a lock of hair from, as he told me, “a girl I once loved in Hannibal, Missouri.” Such an admission aside, he was otherwise circumspect about his dealings with the female sex, his interest in romantic involvements, so he once told me, limited to occasional flirtations and fleeting infatuations that he viewed as pleasant enough ways to pass the time while spending a few days here and there in various towns. Whatever his ultimate intentions — in this instance, to pay the young lady a “courtesy call”—he was in no rush to become involved.
We turned up sometime past noon, and after an introduction to several other family members, and after answering numerous questions pertaining to the reasons we had come to Havana — Mr. Hatcher had indeed heard of Mr. Stanley, without knowing him — and after a discussion about the prospects of war, we dined in a shuttered salon and were then treated to a performance of Chopin, the pianist being the young lady herself. After this, she and Clemens, in the company of her aunt, sat together for some time on a love seat, Clemens charming her with his stories about the Mississippi. Though I was engaged in conversation with Mr. Hatcher about Arkansas, from where he hailed, I overheard much laughter; then, apparently, they entered into some more serious discussions, for their voices quieted. Finally it was time for us to go, and while Clemens had been quite taken by Miss Hatcher’s personality and was glad to have visited her, in the end, as we later retreated back down into the city proper, he seemed somewhat relieved to have finished following that particular thread of fanciful romantic speculation.
“I like her, Henry,” he told me. “And I’m glad to have seen her again; but she would clearly do better with a practical businessman like her father. You see, Henry, for all her refinements, she doesn’t like to read books, which she finds too troublesome, and that holds no appeal for me. And something else, which I did not know: She is a Catholic, and Mother would never like that.”
Later, around dusk, we visited the Plaza de Armas, where it was congenial to sit on a bench and listen to a military band play waltzes. Clemens remarked: “Life doesn’t get much better, does it, Henry?” Then: “This is a curious land. At one in the afternoon, it’s helclass="underline" at seven in the evening, pure bliss.”
We were planning to head for Matanzas the next evening, but it was my misfortune to come down with a renewed attack of the ague — and so it was that we lost three days. During those nights while I was laid low, Clemens began to frequent a large café just outside the old city walls called the Louvre, a haunt favored by the American shipping fraternity. Which is to say that Union and Confederate sailors and their captains and mates gathered uneasily there, for by that first week in April, 1861, the war seemed inevitable.
In that café, Clemens had found a southern captain whom he wanted me to meet: a surly bear of a man named Captain Bailey, who had a dead eye and had apparently known my father well. And so it was, when I had gotten better, that Clemens took me there. Why Clemens thought it important for me to meet Captain Bailey I cannot say, but shortly we found ourselves sitting across a table from the man, his left eye ghostly dull.
“I understand from your friend here that you are close to Mr. Stanley. Now, before I say my words, I must ask you what you know of him.”
It was a curious question.
“Well, sir — he is an old Georgia gentleman of refinement and education, a former minister who had become a commissions trader; he is a pious widower, with no children of his own. I am his adopted son, or will be, when I find him.”
“That is all well and good that you think this: But here is what I know of him — and I am telling you this, young man, to correct any mistaken notions you have of him.” He finished a glass of rum and filled it again from a bottle.
“I met Mr. Stanley aboard a ship when I was a mate back in the early 1840s; the ship was not from these parts, but had sailed from England. Contrary to what Mr. Stanley may have told you, he is originally from Cheshire, not far from northern Wales. He’d come to Louisiana to make his fortune as a young man in the cotton trade, and in those days, he met his first wife, a Texas girl named Angela: as pretty a woman as one will ever lay eyes on. They opened a boardinghouse on Dorsiere Street in New Orleans — I had stayed there myself upon occasion. It was a clean place, and she was a good cook who ran the boardinghouse efficiently while Mr. Stanley went about his business as a trader. Now, upon his return from one of those trips, it was his misfortune to find the house locked up and deserted on account of the fact that his dear wife had died of the yellow fever in his absence. I think he may have made some Bible studies then — for such tragedies bring all men closer to God — but if he was a minister, it was a profession that… how shall I put it?… facilitated an intimate knowledge of many a widow and neglected wife in the counties of the South through which he’d traveled.
“But even of these activities does a man soon tire, and so it was that Mr. Stanley returned to New Orleans to resume his life as a trader. I knew him — and his brother — well then, for we encountered each other in many a lively saloon; but as it is natural for a man to put down roots, Mr. Stanley wanted to marry again, and his intended was a young woman by the name of Frances Mellor — also English by birth, I should add. I believe it was in 1847 that they were wed, and a happier, more genteel couple one would be hard put to find. The only problem was that Mrs. Stanley was a frail sort of lady, aging quickly beyond her years, and because of some infirmities she could bear no children, and this, alas, did not please Mr. Stanley, who took to traveling far and wide, which is what first brought him and his brother, Captain Stanley, to Cuba. Now, aside from setting up some profitable business relations here, he, away from the wife, availed himself of… how shall I put it?… certain pleasure-making opportunities,” he said, winking with his one good eye. “But not to say that Mr. Stanley is not a gentleman. One could not find a better man than he in New Orleans; and, indeed, he cared enough for the wife to provide for her a small family of sorts — two young girls whom they adopted from an orphanage. They live in St. Louis. Surely you know these things.” Then: “Now, as for Mr. Stanley’s life here on this island, I’ll ask you a question: Aside from business, what would a man find for himself in this place?”
And when I did not answer him, not knowing what to say, he pounded his fist against the table and said: “Freedom, pure and unencumbered, young man.” Then: “As much as you might want to find him, has it occurred to you that Mr. Stanley might not want to be found?”
I had listened to his words with as much patience as I could muster, as Clemens had so kindly thought that this man would be of help to us, but looking at this Captain Bailey and knowing just how low men can sink, I paid him no heed.
“Did you notice how he made no mention of my father’s great knowledge of books?” I mentioned to Clemens afterward. “How can a man speak of him without mentioning it, unless he does not really know him? And who was this captain to tell me that Mr. Stanley had adopted two daughters — what proof has he? I am almost admiring of the flourishes of his invention, Samuel, but I refuse to take them as anything more than that: an invention born of twisted self-amusement.”