FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO LYDIA DENNETT¹Lydia Neal Dennett (1798-1881) was born in Eliot, York County, Maine, and was raised as a Quaker. She married Oliver W. Dennett (?–1852), and they resided in a house on Spring Street in Portland, Maine. Lydia and Oliver Dennett were active in the antislavery movement, and their home was a popular stop on the Underground Railroad. Oliver was elected a vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society under William Lloyd Garrison in 1851. Lydia was considered an excellent conversationalist, storyteller, speaker, and entertainer. She and her husband became friends with William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and many other abolitionists, and frequently entertained them in their home. ., 7 June 1844, 17 May 1850; Concord (N.H.) , 9 June 1881; Helen Coffin Beedy, (Portland, 1895), 239–241.

Rochester[, N.Y.] 17 April 1857.

MY DEAR MRS DENNETT.

You Said to me when I was leaving your house,²Since Douglass visited the Dennett residence while on a speaking tour in the summer of 1842, itis possible that he made an additional visit when he came to Portland to speak about the decision at Central Hall on 30 March 1857. An account of Douglass’s speech was published in the Portland and reprinted in . , 24 April 1857; San Francisco , 5 May 1886; , ser. 1, 3:xxvii. after a good break fast, and a pleasant interview with the frank and spirited Miss Charlotte Thomas,³Born and raised in Portland, Maine, Charlotte Julia Thomas (c. 1822–1920) was the daughter of Elias and Elizabeth Widgery Thomas, wealthy antislavery activists. The Thomas home was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, and Charlotte’s mother was known to entertain and collaborate with the activists William Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, and Wendell Phillips. Charlotte shared her mother’s enthusiasm for activism, participating in the antislavery movement as well as the Maine Woman Suffrage Association. An accomplished entertainer, Charlotte was particularly fond of drama and the opera, and kept a literary salon that included, among others, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Newspaper accounts indicate that she donated an original oil painting of Longfellow by C. A. Cole to the Maine State Building in 1940. 1880 U.S. Census, Maine, Cumberland County, 303; Bangor , 25 September 1885, 1 January 1890, 5 May 1893; Beedy, , 236–39. “.” Well, I am writing to you. The request So kindly made, was now the less grateful to my ear, because it is one which it is often my privilege to be the recipient of. I have many Such requests made of me in my Journeyings among the Children of men, but poor mortal that I am, with hands full and head full of public pressing matters, I have fallen far short of responding to this very amiable and most friendly requests. I sometimes Satisfy my conscience for failing of this duty by asSuming, that I am merely asked to write by way of harmless compliment, and it is therefore, of little or no consequence whether I respond or no. In ninety nine cases out of every hundred this assumption is doubtless well founded. You, my Dear friend, must consider your self the “” not the
“”! Ask Charlotte if she hears that. But in asking me to write, you very Sagely Selected the Subject of the wished for letter. You want to know something of my family—my wife and children. I confess that you have given me a “” subject to discourse upon, You could not have given me a theme more fruitful, and yet for the soul of me (if black men of African descent have Souls) I do not know where to begin. Suppose I begin with the wife. I am sad to Say that she is by no means well—and if I should write down all her complaints there would be no room even to put my name at the bottom—although the world will have it that I am actually at the bottom of it all. She has the face I was going to use terms scarcely up to the standard of modern elegance) neuralegia.⁴Pain associated with a damaged nerve. She has a great deal to do, but little time to do it in, and withal much to try her patience and all her other very many vertues. You have doubtless in your experience, met with many excellent wives and mothers, who have been in very much the Same condition in which my wife is. She has Suffered in every—member except one—she still Seems able to use with great ease and fluency her powers of speech—and by the time I am at home a week or two longer, I shall have pretty fully learned in how many points there is need of improvement in my temper and disposition as a husband, and father, the head of a family! Amid all the vicissitudes however, I am happy to Say that my wife gives me an excellent loaf of bread,—and keeps a neat house, and has moments of marked Amiability, of all which good things, I do not fail to take due advantage. I cannot Say much for my children. I cannot be expected (with my known good taste) to praise them)—and with my natural partiality—any criticisms of mine would be of little value. I can only say they are human—with a certain degree of human nature about them—enough to make them as bad as other childrens and capable, I trust of being as good. I am doing my best to give them a plain, practical English education, a thing of value all the more, perhaps, because I never had any of any Sort. I am trying to teach them to work—and eat bread that comes by earnest Labour and I have some hope of Success in this, & not in much more than this.—My Dear friend Lydia, I do not write letters in these days of speed—I cannot take the time—and you must accept this note for the present—I was more than glad to See you when in Portland and Shall be most happy to meet you again. Please make my regards to Miss Thomas—and also—to the kind young Lady in your family.

I am Dear friend Very truly yours

FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Pichard-Whittier Letters, MH-H.