FOR THOSE WHO KNEW NOTHING of their Cuban journey, it was assumed that Twain and Stanley’s first meeting had taken place one evening at the Mercantile Library in St. Louis in 1867. By then, in one of the more satisfying symmetries of their friendship, each had entered into the profession of writing, though by that time, Samuel Clemens, as Mark Twain, was by far the more successful and better known. While the years of the Civil War had found him attempting other occupations — as a miner, as a printer, and as a typesetter — he, with his love for colorful yarns and sharp eye for details, had gravitated to a life as a wandering “cowpoke” journalist. He plied this trade for various Western newspapers — the Missouri Democrat, the Territorial Enterprise out of Virginia City, and the Morning Call in San Francisco, where his colleagues included the likes of Ambrose Bierce and Bret Harte. Aside from a brief period of unemployment (he had been fired from his staff position in San Francisco for reporting too faithfully on the corrupt doings of the local police and other officials), his journey had been altogether easier than Stanley’s, whose route had been far more circuitous and filled with danger.
STANLEY’S OWN CAREER SEEMED TO have started at a Confederate camp at Corinth, Mississippi, as a private with the Sixth Arkansas Volunteer Infantry, under the command of Generals Pierre Beauregard and Albert Sidney Johnston, awaiting deployment into the Battle of Shiloh. Even though he worked as a provisions clerk and was known for his sharp marksmanship on the firing range, he was most valued for his informal role as an amanuensis for the illiterate soldiers of Company E, who were mainly veterans of the Mexican-American War of 1847, Stanley writing, on their behalf, what in many cases would turn out to be farewell letters to loved ones and family.
And so it was that Stanley, wishing to leave some word of his whereabouts, drafted several letters for himself to the only “loved ones” he knew: Thomas and Maria Morris in Liverpool, with whom he was in occasional correspondence. In one missive, he sent his regards and assurances that all was well; in another, he wrote to a young woman he had known at Cypress Bend, expressing some exaggerated feelings of impending glory or doom:
Either I will rise one morning after the coming battle, ablaze with dignity like the sun, or I will perhaps be dead, like a moon dropping into the sea.
And he wrote to his friend Samuel Clemens — whom, at this point, he had not seen or heard from in more than a year — in care of his sister in St. Louis.
March 22, 1862
My dear friend, Samuel — wherever you may be — I imagine you are with your brother Orion somewhere West — I just wished to tell you of my kindly thoughts, regarding our friendship, for the clerk you put up with is now about to go off with his regiment into a very great battle. Should this be the last you ever hear of me, I want to let you know that I am hoping that every good wish you have comes true, and that yours will be a long and happy life. Should we find one another at some distant point in the future — and even if we do not — I have valued your kindness and sage advice. I do miss our conversations about books, and your funny tales as well, the memories of which, in the dreariness of these days, with their incessant drills and pointless mustering of the ranks, has relieved me from the melancholic state I often find myself in. This is nothing more, then, than a simple note of gratitude, and it would be longer, except for the fact that I do not know if you will ever receive it. Should that be the case and you wish to let me know of your doings, a letter addressed to the Confederate camp in Corinth, Mississippi, Company E, Sixth Arkansas Volunteer Infantry, in my name, should suffice to reach me, though by then I may well be in some other unearthly locale.
Henry Stanley
And before he set out with his regiment toward the banks of the Tennessee River to fight against the forces of one General Grant, Stanley, by then much exposed to the florid and heartfelt sentiments of other soldiers toward their families, came to reflect upon the elusive presence of his own. He’d heard from Liverpool that his mother had married a certain Robert Jones, by whom she had several children; they ran a small inn called the Cross Foxes in the village of Glascoed, in Monmouthshire, not far from where he’d been born — that was all he knew.
While sitting under a spreading oak tree in a field at Corinth, Stanley, in a lonely frame of mind, allowed his fertile imagination to take prominence over an awareness of his feeble relations with her. And so he sent this tender note:
Dearest Mother,
Though you have been absent from my life for a very long time, I am writing you with the aim of tearing down the wall that circumstances have put between us; yours has not been an easy life, nor has mine. Fortune, that curious thing, has separated us, and though I believe that, deep down, you truly care for me, I know that you have been struggling long to find your own comfortable place in this world, the distractions of which, to my mind, account for your distance from me, and rightfully so, for what would I have ever been to you but yet another burden in your already burdened state? I have sometimes wondered if you know how to write and read. I imagine that you can — but if you do not, I am trusting that someone will read these words to you, even if I would prefer they be kept private. So if it is a matter of personal shame that has kept you from writing me in the past, please understand, dear Mother, that whatever you should say to me would be received with a happy and open heart by a son who with sincerity holds a great affection for you.
I have been told by cousins Tom and Maria that you were recently married at the St. Asaph’s chapel and that you have two small children by your new husband. This strikes me as a wonderful development, for it speaks to me to your worthiness as a mother, and it is my hope that you will have some maternal affections left over for me. I do not blame you for your lapses — what I have been, as a lowly charge of the state and parish of St. Asaph’s, could never be a source of pride to a woman such as yourself, with her own past bereavements to contend with: I am speaking of the early death of my father, John Rowlands, whom I have never known. But I should let you know that the miserable boy you last saw at St. Asaph’s has since blossomed into a person of promise: If you recall, I have written you before of my journey to America, some scant four years before, and of my brief but educational sojourn as a merchant trader. But of other things, which you do not perhaps know, I will tell you now: My employer and dearest friend in those years was a New Orleans merchant named Henry Stanley, and as he regarded me as closely as he would a son, I have taken his name. I have done so not out of disrespect for the man who had been my Welsh father, but to clear my mind and soul of the lowly state I had once been in; and never have I forgotten that you are my mother, a fact I hold close and dear to my heart.
My life has been spent with some travels: As a clerk in Mr. Stanley’s company I learned much about the region of the American South and its ways; things were going so well I had thought to go into business with Mr. Stanley, as his son and partner, but he, dear Mum, I am afraid to say, died in my company, on a plantation in Cuba, where I had gone to join him in his work. When I returned from that journey to the place where I had made a recent home, a state called Arkansas, I joined a regiment of the Confederate army, my rank being that of a private, but with the promise of further promotions awaiting me, as I have been singled out by certain officers for my very good abilities as a provisions clerk and marksman. There is so much more I would like to tell you, but as my regiment is just now making ready to engage the enemy in the coming days, I have mainly wished to express to you the sentiments of a son who, going to war, regards the dear lady who begot him with many wonderful feelings, despite our long separation.