My Foreign Travels: Addresses Delivered in Washington, D.C., on December 15, 1887 and December 1887
MY FOREIGN TRAVELS: ADDRESSES DELIVERED IN
WASHINGTON, D.C., ON 15 DECEMBER 1887 AND
DECEMBER 1887
Speech File, reel 16, frames 172-88, 155-71 , FD Papers, DLC. Other texts in Speech File,
reel 13, frame 145, reel 16, frames 196-222, FD Papers, DLC; Washington , 16 December 1887; New York , 24 December 1887.
Douglass presented a formal lecture describing his overseas travels to a “lim-
ited but appreciative audience” at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church in Wash-
ington, D.C., on the evening of 15 December 1887. A correspondent of the
New York reported that: “At times when Mr. Douglass was warmed up to
his subject, he would turn his head and give vent to flights of eloquence which
would do credit to a much earlier period of his oratorical career.” According to
the Washington , the “lecture was a most enjoyable and
instructive one, and Mr. Douglass was warmly congratulated at the close by
many white ladies and gentlemen in the audience.” Newspaper reports indi-
cate that Douglass’s speech on 15 December 1887 outlined only his travels
through Britain and northern France. A second manuscript speech text has
survived that continues the account of Douglass’s journey through southern
France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt, beginning in January 1887 and ending May
1887. No evidence has been uncovered to confirm a specific date or place of
delivery for this second lecture so its manuscript text is reprinted here follow-
ing that of the 15 December 1887 lecture. Douglass later published an account
of his travels, somewhat similar to the second manuscript lecture text, in the
1892 edition of his . Washington , 15 December 1887; Washington , 16 December 1887;
Douglass, , 585-617; Holland, , 363-66.
[Part One]
Ladies and Gentlemen: I trust you do not expect me to give you a full and
complete description of the many interesting things that came under my
observation during my stay abroad, or to fully describe to you my thoughts
and sentiments concerning them. My powers of condensation are only fair
at best, but if they were ten times better than they are, they could hardly be
equal to such a task. To tell the truth, I am this evening somewhat in the
condition of the man who having a house to sell carried around a brick in his
[hat]1Crossed out in typescript text. hand to show its quality. A single lecture is far too limited to do much
more than this.
The first question which confronts a thoughtful man when a journey
abroad is proposed, is, Will it pay? In view of the brief space allotted to
human life, and the many good and useful employments to be found at
home, is it well or wise for a man to be running about, from place to place
and from country to country, instead of making himself useful, and con-
tented and happy at home?
I am by no means sure that I can answer this question affirmatively to
the entire satisfaction of any body. But there is one argument, which, in a
general way, may be employed affirmatively: Man is by Nature a migratory
animal. It does not appear that he was intended to dwell forever in any one
locality. He is a born traveler.
Assuming that he originated in one quarter of the globe only, which is
the orthodox view of creation, I believe his present diffusion over the broad
earth, shows that he must have early developed this migratory tendency:
And when we consider the present passion for travel, the thousands who
strain every nerve and muscle to raise the means to go abroad, the loss of
time and money sustained, the comforts abandoned at home, and the
discomforts borne patiently with abroad, the bad air breathed on ships, the
dust, smoke and Cinders swallowed on railways, the danger to life and limb
encountered—we must admit that this migratory tendency, if original, has
lost nothing of its intensity in the transmission.
No pent up Utica2Douglass adapts a line from Joseph Addison's , act 1, sc. 1. , 4 vols. (London, 1730), 1: 265. contracts our powers, or limits our habitation to any
part of the globe. If one part does not suit our taste, we easily remove to
another; but whether we wish to change our local habitation or not, with
health in our bodies, time on our hands, and money in our pockets, we are
very apt to wander away from home.
Happily or unhappily, I will not say which is the one or the other,
Nature has endowed us with faculties and powers, that favor this active
migratory tendency. We move over the face of the earth pretty much as we
please. All seasons and natural conditions are subject to us—we make it
cool where it is warm, and warm where it is cool, and thus adapt ourselves
to all climates, latitudes, longitudes and altitudes.
But for this fact and man’s roving disposition, he might perhaps have
remained at home, contented and happy with Mrs. Adam in the Garden of
Eden3An allusion to Gen. 1: 1. until now. But they both seemed to have had a very strong desire for
knowledge, and something of a roving disposition. They wanted to know
you know: And by this desire they unfortunately not only got themselves
into trouble. but all their posterity into the same.
There is no denying that there is some connection between knowledge
and traveling, though every one may not find it. The Sacred Writings tell us
that in the latter days men shall go to and fro in the earth and knowledge
shall increase.4A rough paraphrase of Dan. 12: 4. According to our Second Advent friends, we are now in
these latter days of the world’s history.5After the failure of William Miller's prophecy of the Second Coming of Christ in 1844, those of his followers clinging to a premillenial belief organized a number of religious sects. Although they disagreed on various doctrinal points, these adventists all taught that the Bible forecast an imminent return of Christ to earth. Isaac C. Wellcome, (Yarmouth, Me., 1874), 9-11, 602-04, 620-25; Ferm, , 6. Certain it is that there never was
such going to and fro in the earth—never such persistent and daring efforts
to reach the remotest parts of the globe and make them known to mankind
as now. Neither the ice of the Arctic, nor the scorching heats of the Congo,
nor the terrible hardships and frequent deaths of explorers, deter others
from following the same line. May it not be after all, that this love and
pursuit of knowledge. which has caused the world of mankind so much
trouble. will at last be to us the means of deliverance.
But this does not touch the question of the wisdom or folly, the profit or
loss, of the particular kind of traveling in which I, with others, have lately
been indulging. And whatever may be said of the former, there may well
enough be two opinions about the latter, especially when the good results
are measured with the time spent, the money lost, and the energy ex-
hausted.
I have often quoted approvingly the sage remark of the late Ralph
Waldo Emerson, that “the men who made Rome worth going to see, stayed
there,”6Ralph Waldo Emerson offered a number of observations on Rome. Douglass perhaps paraphrases Emerson's comment on Rome in his essay "Boston": “There is great testimony of discriminating persons to the effect that Rome is endowed with the enchanting property of inspiring a longing in men there to live and there to die." , Centenary ed., 12 vols. (1903-04; New York, 1968), 12: 185. and have still more frequently quoted the homely saying that “a
rolling stone gathers no moss”;7Attributed to Publius Syrus, Maxim 524. but neither of these wise sayings contains
the whole truth. Neither Mr. Emerson’s brilliant bit of wisdom, nor the
waste of time, nor the pains and perils of a voyage across the sea, could
keep him always in the classic shades of Concord. His “English Traits" is
one of the best books written by an American tourist.8Douglass read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s (Boston, 1856) while en route to Europe. Helen was also familiar with the book. FD Diary, reel 1, frame 4, FD Papers, DLC; Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, Family Papers File, reel 1, frame 67, FD Papers, DLC. If therefore we slight
his precept in going to Rome, we honor his example.
One word now of the rolling stone argument. If men were stone, and
moss were a remarkably valuable article in the economy of human life, the
argument would be excellent. But happily, there are some things in the
world better than either moss or money. It were better to roll forever than to
be one of the stationary “moss-back”9The term “mossback” was a reference to a breach in the Democratic party of Ohio between older and younger members and came to denote political conservatism or backwardness. It is an allusion to the algae of the moss-back alligator turtle. William A. Craigie and James R. Hulbert, eds., , 4 vols. (Chicago. l938-44), 3: 1549-50; Sylva Clapin, ed., (New York, 1902), 280. family. The presence of moss on any
timber of [whic]h a man may want to make use, is a suspicious circumstance.
It speaks not of soundness, but decay—not of action, but stagna-
tion. It flourishes better on the roofs of old, deserted and dilapidated
mansions, and on the tombstones of the dead, than under the busy feet of
living men. A stone indeed may not gather moss in the act of rolling, but
like the man who goes abroad with his heart alive, his eyes open, and his
mind receptive, it may have its rough sides smoothed and rounded and
made more beautiful. But putting aside these familiar facts, figures and
formulas, it may be seriously argued that traveling abroad is an evil in
itself, after all. That it destroys the love of home and country; that it wastes
the time and unsettles the minds of men, and unfits them for usefulness just
where their influence for good can be made most effective. There may be
some truth in all this, for the best things in the world are precisely those
things capable of the greatest abuse. It is not, however, I think, the fault of
travel, but the fault of the traveler, if evil rather than good results from his
going abroad. For there are few good things or attractions at home that were
not at some time brought or suggested from abroad, and there are few such
thing that may not be so brought. Those who return from Europe despising
everything American, as, unfortunately, some light-headed people do, are
not the criterion by which the value of travel is to be fairly tested. The
sweetest song ever sung of home, the one which has touched more hearts
and stirred the holy sentiment of home love in more souls than any other
ever written, was sung by a man who spent his life abroad, and who died
and was buried in a strange land. In that one song of “home, sweet, home”
he did more for home and home love than millions of men who never went
abroad.10After his triumphant 1809 stage debut in his native New York City, playwright and actor John Howard Payne (1791-1852) lived in London and Paris where his plays or his operas never protected him from chronic debt. “Home Sweet Home," written for his opera (1823) brought him fame but no money. Impoverished, Payne returned to the United States in 1832. After unsuccessfully attempting to establish a literary magazine, he accepted the appointment as U.S. consul at Tunis. Payne died in Tunis shortly after his 1851 reappointment as consul and was there buried until 1883 when his body was moved to the Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck, , 2 vols. (1855; Philadelphia, 1875), 1: 848-52; , 14: 327-29; , 2: 347-48.
One thing is certain, however we may philosophize against it, nothing
will stop a large percentage of mankind from roaming over the world.
Traveling is evidently destined to increase with its ever-increasing facili-
ties. Wealth, discovery and invention will produce this result and change
the manners and customs of the world accordingly. When lightning shall
take the place of steam, as it will do, just as steam has taken the place of
wind, when men shall navigate the air just as freely as they now navigate
the sea, travel will cease to be the exclusive privilege and luxury of the few
and the wealthy. It will be the privilege of the humblest laborer as well.
When all this shall come to pass, he, too, will take his trip around the
world. Things have much improved in this respect already. The time was
when a poor man seldom found means of getting twenty miles from the
smoke of his own chimney, but that day has passed and has passed forever,
and the poor man can now travel far beyond his former limits.
But you want me to say something to you of my own travels, and so I
will. And to begin I must say, not withstanding the reasoning with which I
have treated you, I do not know that I have been greatly benefitted by my
year’s trip abroad, and I may not have much to bring to you after all. I may
possibly be constitutionally unfitted to realize all the advantages which
such a trip as I have taken might realize to others. The fact is the measure
and value of what a man brings from abroad depends largely upon the
amount and value of what he takes from home. If he takes nothing into this
world of travel, it is certain he will carry nothing out of it, and the world
will gain nothing by his staying at home, and will lose nothing by his going
abroad. To be able to appreciate what may be seen and learned in Europe,
one must have seen and learned something in America. “There are tongues
in trees, sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good in
everything,”11Douglass slightly jumbles , act 2, sc. 1, lines 6-7. but what of all this if men have not the wit to see, hear and
appreciate. The gods of the heathen had eyes and saw not, ears, and heard
not.12A paraphrase of Ps. 135: 15-17. Some men go abroad in the same condition. It was said, I believe by
Alexander Von Humbolt,13Baron Friedrich Alexander von Humboldt. of the late Bayard Taylor,14Born in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Bayard Taylor (1825-78) became one of the most prodigious American authors of the nineteenth century producing thirty-six volumes of travel accounts, history, fiction, poetry, and literary criticism as well as numerous short works. Just as travel accounts for the press had financed his first tour of Europe in 1844, he thereafter published books and lectured widely on travels through Europe, Asia, and Africa. Taylor unsuccessfully sought a reputation as a major poet but received some critical acclaim for his English translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. A brief engagement in 1862 as secretary of the United States legation in St. Petersburg preceded his appointment in 1878 as minister to Germany, where he died shortly after arriving. Paul C. Wermuth, (New York, 1973); Richard Cary, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1952); , 6: 40-42; , 9: 314- 15. that he had traveled
further and learned less than any one he had ever known—a criticism I by
no means endorse as to the eminent traveler referred to, but it is quite true
that a man may travel far and learn very little,15The precise source of this quip at Bayard Taylor’s expense is unclear but it is sometimes attributed to Parke Godwin, a New York City journalist. Taylor had visited Alexander von Humboldt at his German home during a tour of Europe in the 1850s. Taylor later reported his conversation with the aged geographer: "‘You have travelled much,. and seen many ruins,' said Humboldt, as he gave me his hand again; ‘Now you have seen one more.'" Douglas Botting, (New York, 1973), 279-80; Wermuth, , 51-52, 59; Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, eds., (New York, 1938), 730-32. and this may be true in
respect of ordinary travelers, myself, perhaps, included. What on earth, for
instance, will a man who knows nothing of the towering genius of William
Shakespeare, who has never explored the great store-house of his wonder-
ful knowledge, gain by visiting Shakespeare’s birthplace, and gazing upon
his statue?16Douglass probably refers to Gerard Johnson's bust of William Shakespeare that is a part of the playwright's memorial monument in Stratford-on-Avon, England. , Murray's Foreign Handbooks (London, 1899), 110-11. Being nothing to them they are nothing to him. The same is
true of the Tower of London, Saint Paul Cathedral,17Construction on St. Paul's Cathedral, the home church of the Anglican bishop of London, began in 1675 and was completed in 1710. The cathedral‘s crypt contains the graves of many of the best-known political, military, and artistic figures of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain. , Murray's Foreign Handbooks (London, 1876), 111-17. Westminster Ab-
bey,18The traditional site for the coronation of British kings and queens, Westminster Abbey is located in western London near the Houses of Parliament. , 94-111. and a thousand other objects of interest to be seen in England and
other countries. Here, at least, the letter kills, and only the spirit gives
life,192 Cor. 3: 6. and proves that we must bring something to these objects to carry
something away from them.
I felt this truth very sensibly in viewing the Tower of London. It was
only as I was able in some degree to associate with it the facts of its history,
the tragic scenes, the thrilling events, the towering ambitions, the shocking
cruelty, the shameless treachery, and the dark and terrible crimes perpe-
trated there in by-gone centuries, and which it still commemorates, that the
Tower of London was anything to me. With this ability, its winding pas-
sages, its impenetrable walls, its iron gates, its gloomy dungeons, its
implements of torture, its beheading blocks, its coats of mail, its ancient
and modern weapons of war, had for me a terrible significance. In viewing
these old and new implements of death, and the gloomy walls that con-
tained them, a whole wilderness of English life will pass before you, and
will make an impression far more vivid, deep and lasting than any you will
gain by reading alone. Strange it struck me, that this ancient barbaric
tower, with all its enginery of terror and death, stained by so many crimes,
should be chosen as the repository of the Crown Jewels. In a large glass
case, shining with gold, sparkling with diamonds, studded with every
variety of precious stones, are the crowns of kings and queens of England.
Why they should be placed in this place of ghastly memories, I do not
know, unless it be to illustrate the motive, object and mainspring of many
of the horrible crimes and the inhuman butcheries that have been there
enacted—for next to religion, nothing has given rise to more envy, ambi-
tion, treachery, cold-blooded crimes and brutal vengeance than the desire
for these crowns, and the thirst for wealth and power represented by such
crowns. These baubles are to-day the things which menace and unsettle the
peace of Europe and make frightful war and bloodshed possible between
peoples who might otherwise remain in peace and friendship forever.
But it is not only what men carry abroad in the way of ability to observe
and comprehend the things to be seen that will determine the quality or
quantity of what they will bring home from abroad. Here, as elsewhere,
there must be motive, purpose and object. The objects for which men go
abroad are various and very many. Some go simply to get away from
unhappy homes, or to whom home has lost its attractions; some go to see
the paintings of the great masters, and to study works of art; some go to
observe the manners and customs of other nations and to acquire knowl-
edge of their institutions and to contrast them with our own; some go
merely for pleasure, and to be able to say of themselves, and to have others
say of them, that they have been abroad.
Objects of this character doubtless had a share in my tour, but I think
one that l have not yet mentioned had more to do with it than all others—
and that was “the sentiment of friendship. I had many friends in England,
Ireland and Scotland that I wanted once more to see. Some of those who,
when I was a stranger, took me in; when I was an exile, sheltered me; when
I was poor, helped me; and when U was a slave, ransomed me. These friends
I made forty-two years ago, and the mighty changes wrought since then in
the condition of the colored people of this country, and in my own condi-
tion created and strengthened in me a desire to see once more, some of the
few that Time had left among the living.
This object was realized only to a limited extent. For only a few who
met me abroad forty-two years ago are now among the living. I did,
however, see some of the children and grand-children of friends that had
passed away. To these my name and my work in the world were known, and
it was good to find in the children a friendship inherited from their par-
ents,—a friendship which had lost nothing of its depth and warmth by the
transmission. The sight of these dear people was more than worth the cost
of the voyage.
In order to have a tolerably clear understanding of the current life of
Europe, I cannot say it is necessary for any American to go abroad. Such
knowledge can be obtained in abundance at home by reading. In all the
great centres of population, wealth, and of commercial and political influ-
ence in Europe, the American press has industrious, able and vigilant
correspondents, and these, by their liberal use of the electric cable, keep us
very well informed of the most important events transpiring there. There is
indeed, scarcely a ripple on the social, intellectual and political life of
Europe which we do not almost instantly know and feel in America.
Not only does it seem useless to make a voyage to Europe for such a
purpose, but useless to presume to enlighten an American audience by
lecturing on the subject, and indeed I may say upon any other subject. The
press is every day narrowing the margin formerly held by the platform, and
is more and more assuming the office of lecturer, teacher and preacher. Our
people are doing more with their eyes and less with their ears than formerly.
They are reading more and hearing less. Thinking more and speaking less.
In respect of intelligence concerning what is transpiring in Europe, we,
in America, have a decided advantage over the people of Europe. We know
all about them. They know little or nothing about us. The English news-
papers, from which they mainly obtain their knowledge, are very one-
sided. They say almost nothing about us, and what they do say redounds
less to our credit than to our shame. They make the repulsive side of
American life glaringly prominent, and the attractive side they allow to
remain in the background. John Bull knows more of our money and misfor-
tunes than either our manners or our morals. Outside of the reports of our
Stock Exchange, in which he is interested to the extreme depths of his
capacious pockets, he reads very little about us, and cares little about us.
His paper tells him of our intense and unbearable heat in summer, and of
our insufferable cold in winter; of our innumerable sun-strokes in the one
season, and our frozen ears and nozes [noses] in the other; of our dreadful
tornadoes, droughts, whirlwinds and earthquakes; of our famines, floods,
fires and fevers; of the use Indians make of tomahawks and scalping-knives
on our Western borders; of the family feuds and daily murders that take
place in Kentucky;20Feuds were endemic in the mountainous eastern section of Kentucky from the years following the Civil War through the second decade of the twentieth century. Stemming from a mix of Civil War-related antagonisms, personal animosities, and political rivalries, these bloody "wars" between families, counties, and political factions gave Kentucky a reputation for lawlessness. Harry M. Caudill, (Boston, 1962), 35- 51; Hambleton Tapp and James C. Klotter, (Frankfort, Ky., 1977), 377-408. of young ladies eloping with their father’s coachmen;
of our increasing divorce cases, and diminishing families; of our corrup-
tions in politics and defalcations in office; of our reckless disregard of life
in our public conveyances; of scores of men, women and children roasted
alive in our sleeping-cars; of fearful epidemic diseases among our horses,
sheep and swine; of our low standard of political morality; of our murders
of Chinamen, lynching of negroes and dynamite explosions; of our toler-
ance of anarchy, and our frequent cases of mob violence;—in fact all the
horrors which happen and which are possible to happen, by fiends, floods,
flames, and famines are carefully reported to a shuddering public. I will not
stop here to describe or characterize this one-sided and unfair treatment of
American affairs by the English press, but I wish to bring out the fact, for it
is a fact, that our papers are much more just and generous in the material,
quality and quantity of European news than is the transatlantic press.
I do not pretend to say that our papers are always just, and that they give
an impartial view of European society; but they do, however, give columns
of what transpires in Europe where the English press gives only paragraphs
of what [transpires]21Crossed out in transcript text. takes place in America, and that we are much better
informed concerning Europe than Europe is concerning America. While,
however, we have large means of information of transatlantic nations and
do not need to cross the sea and endure the horrors of sea-sickness and the
unnumbered privations and discomforts attendant upon such a voyage in
order to add to our stock of European knowledge, nevertheless, personal
presence and actual observation will give a man a far more vivid and
impressive sense of what European life really is, than can be gained by the
most extensive and thoughtful reading of our books and papers at home.
One feature of European life especially impressed me during my recent
tour, and one which could only be realized to the same extent by going to
Europe, and that was the general unrest, and the gloomy forebodings of the
people. Apprehensions of impending disaster seemed to be the normal
condition of the minds of men there and to pervade all classes[, and to
shadow the spirits of men in all the ranks and walks of life].22Crossed out in transcript text. Douglass first altered this passage by making it a separate sentence reading: “It shadowed the spirits of men in all realms and walks of life." He then crossed out the entire passage, with the unintended exception of the word "It." It fills the air,
and meets you at the street corners, in the clubs, and at the breakfast table.
The stranger as well as the citizen is made to feel it. No man seems to be
able to penetrate even the immediate future, [and no man is able]23Crossed out in transcript text. and to
tell what an hour may bring to pass, and thus to silence the doubts and fears
of the people. This unsettled state of things, so prejudicial to the general
prosperity and happiness, has its cause deep down in the structure of
European society, in the nature of its governments, and in the relations
subsisting between its kings, emperors and [between]24Crossed out in transcript text. their subjects. It is
also in that sensitive thing called the balance of power in Europe. These
keep the European cauldron always boiling. For there is no telling when the
vaulting ambition of any one or more of these great potentates may attempt
to break down this balance of power and add to his dominion some one of
the smaller states. There each suspects the other ofhostile purposes. Hence
their vast military display and preparation and hence the ceaseless tramp
and drum-beat of broad battalions—[with]25Crossed out in transcript text. Hence their many officers
shining in silver and gold; hence their [bright]26Crossed out in transcript text. broad swords are kept
bright at their sides, and hence their riding through crowded streets with
warlike speed at all hours of the day and night. Turn where you will you
meet with this martial [display]27Crossed out in transcript text. aspect. What we only saw in this country
during our late war, and which has now disappeared altogether, like the
mist before the sunlight of morning, is the scene of every day life in
Europe. Each of the great powers is armed and arming for some supposed
possible emergency to be produced by the other. You may feel the deep and
dark shadow of this apprehension in their vast and ever-increasing standing
armies. Each great nation is stepping to the utmost verge of its power, and
employing all of its energies, anticipating all its resources, tempting bank-
ruptcy and ruin to maintain its army and match the other national armies in
numbers, strength, training, skill and efficiency. The best mind, muscle
and skill of Europe is thus withdrawn from the peaceful and industrial
walks of life, for this general preparation for human slaughter. Millions are
spent annually in merely testing the value of new inventions for this mutual
destruction. The songs of the angels heard by the shepherds on the plains of
Bethlehem eighteen hundred years ago,28Douglass alludes to the story of the Nativity as related in Luke 2: 8-14. is drowned by the terrible
clangor of war and the preparations for war. The fearful thing is, the power
to set these dreadful engines of death in motion is so remote from the
control of the people who may be destroyed by them. The precious lives of
millions hang and tremble on the breath of three or four men, and perhaps
upon the breath of [only]29Crossed out in transcript text. any one [of] them. Hence the feeling of safety is
impossible. In Europe, bayonets have no right to think, nor ask the reason
why. It is theirs to do or die30Douglass slightly misquotes lines from the second stanza of the poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. , 10 vols. (London, 1884-93), 2: 225. at the bidding of kings and princes. The men
who make the wars. leave to others the hardships and perils of fighting.
Kings and potentates may give themselves little concern about peace or
war; they are safe, but the people who are to suffer sit powerless in the
shadow of impending disaster, and can neither preserve the one nor prevent
the other. I felt this unsettled, this unhappy and helpless condition of the
people every where in Europe.
The advantage in this respect of the American people over those of
Europe, is great, marked and manifest, and can hardly be over-estimated.
Our people have a peaceful outlook upon the world. War with us is a remote
possibility. Our sleep is not troubled by such dreams, and our days are not
vexed by such visions. We need no steel-clad navy to batter down the ships
or cities of other nations, no great standing army to drink up our revenues
and threaten the peace of other nations. Wherever else there may be
danger, here at least, there is safety. Our men and our money, our skill and
our industry, our discovery, our invention, our genius, may all be employed
in the peaceful pursuits of a higher civilization. Our dangers are many and
great, but they are not threatened by foreign foes. From them, if we have
any, we are protected by an army of the billows of two oceans. We are too
remote from the ambitions, rivalries and complications of the Old World to
be involved in their net-works. But little wisdom on the part of our states-
men is required to keep out of them. Our foes if we have any are those of our
own households, but of these I need not speak here. I have alluded to
America in this connection only to show Europe in contrast.
Of course when in England I visited London the largest city in the
world—a city of nearly five millions of people, and of territory too immense
for measurement. It has doubled its population since I saw it two and forty
years ago, and has extended its borders to all the regions which are round
about it, and yet London, that was there when I first saw it, is there still,
and will probably be there many centuries hence. An American comparing
it with our American cities, cannot fail to be impressed with [this]31Crossed out in transcript text. its
stable and permanent character [of this English metropolis].32Crossed out in transcript text.
While there, like all other American tourists, who never get quite
enough of anything having about it the aroma of antiquity, I re-visited
Westminster Abbey. It was no stranger to me. I had often seen it before, but
whoever has seen it once, will want to see it again. Though more than forty
years had passed between this and my former visits, I can say of it as Byron
said of the sea, “Time writes no wrinkles on thy azure brow.”33Douglass quotes Lord Byron's , Canto IV, Stanza 182. Whether it
is because lam growing old, or the old building itself defies the destructive
forces of times, it seemed freer from marks of decay this time than forty
years ago.
Nothing new can be said of this old Abbey. Observation, description
and reflection are already exhausted upon it. All who visit it, speak and
write about it, and those who shall hereafter visit it, will probably do the
same. For while there may be many more ancient and imposing buildings
in the world, there is perhaps not one which speaks so sensibly, so directly
and impressively to whatever of soul one has in him, as this solemn old
Westminster Abbey. It is a striking illustration of man’s ambition on the one
hand, and man’s limitation on the other. It awes the heart by its grandeur,
and charms the eye by its architectural perfection. Its fine Gothic arches are
wonderfully effective. They tower upwards, as if built by the hands of
angels rather than by the hands of men. That they have stood so long and
are now so strong increases this effect. In this and in many other respects
the Abbey is more to an American than to any one in England or Europe.
With us the power of contrast is greater. America is young, England is old,
and the oldness of England makes her new to us. But this is not the chief
element of its power. It is said that music is audible feeling. The interior
architecture of Westminster Abbey is music made visible. Its fine propor-
tions to the eye, are as the concord of sweet sounds to the ear. A receptive
silence is self-induced and settles upon us the moment we enter its solemn
precincts. We look at it as if listening to angel voices.
To realize the full effect of the place, one must look beyond its dull
matter, into the domain of mind and spirit. He must view it in the light of
the thousand years which lie behind it, and the vast and wonderful events,
the roaring revolutions that have rolled and thundered by it, and left it
standing. He must think of the mighty spirit, the towering ambition that
reared it. He must think of the wealth, the labor, the skill and the marvelous
patience it implies in its builders. He must think of the power and resources
of the great Roman church, whose faith and forms have long since departed
from its walls, for it now stands for a worship, unaccepted, if not unknown
to its builders. [For it is now]34Crossed out in typescript text. It is not a church but a sepulcher, [for the
dead rather than]35Crossed out in typescript text. not an altar for the living but a resting place for the
dead. You tread here over the dust of kings, princes and the great men of
England. Its monuments and tablets speak to us of scholars, statesmen,
patriots, poets, philosophers, scientists, and other great workers in the
civilization of mankind. The ambition of England’s great men is at last to
find a resting—place within the sacred walls of Westminster Abbey—and
yet how vain is this ambition. For here, as elsewhere, the lesson is taught
that
“The cloud-capped towers, gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And like the unsubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a wreck behind.”36Douglass makes only a few errors in quoting , act 4, sc. 1, lines 152-56.
Outside of the ceaseless and distressing roar and din of London life,
away from its interminable streets, crowded with all kinds of people, and
with all kinds of vehicles, where one is in constant danger of being knocked
down and trampled to death by prancing steeds and heavy teams, away
from its brilliant stores and splendid palaces, of all which the eye soon
tires, there are two features of England which never fail to please the eye of
an American: One is the remarkable beauty of its landscapes, and the other
is the perfect cultivation of its soil. Whether viewed under the light of a
bright summer sun, which is seldom possible, or in the soft haze and fog
peculiar to the climate, which is almost constant, the effect is always
delightful. I believe it was the poet Cowper who said, “God made the
country, and man made the town.”37Douglass quotes British poet William Cowper's , line 749. Bailey, , 265. And nowhere is the truth and beauty
of this idea more strikingly manifested than in the difference between the
towns and the country of England. England’s towns and cities are studded
with large factories, whose towering chimneys are ceaselessly sending
forth clouds of soot and smoke, which the moist atmosphere, owing to her
insular position, settles on everything below, making clean shirt-bosoms
and clean faces impossible, and what would be beautiful architecture,
dingy and unsightly. But the country is every way different. Here Nature is
not marred, but assisted by the hand of Art, Skill and Industry, and she
supplies us with scenes that charm the eye, soothe the heart and elevate the
spirit. Her hills, valleys and plains are so related as to exclude monotony,
and impress us with a sense of variety as well as beauty. I know of but one
section of our country in which the outlook is similarly pleasing, and that is
the section lying between Philadelphia and Harrisburg; but even in this
comparison England must have the preference. There is something about
her landscapes so soft, so tranquil and restful, that the eye never tires of
them. There is in them a quality of sweetness and peace. You look upon
them as upon the finest pictures. Fertile farms, ample barns, neatly-built
com-stacks and hay-ricks, half-concealed dwellings, umbrageous oaks
and elms, smoothly-mown lawns, far-reaching hedges of holly and
hawthorne, macadamized roads and lanes, substantial bridges, winding
water-courses, often decked with white-winged domestic water-fowl, lots
and fields of richest verdure, stocked with finest breeds of variously col-
ored cattle, go to fill up the picture of these English landscapes. Taste, skill,
industry and economy are visible everywhere. No straggling bush, weed.
or briar is allowed to cumber the ground. The train you travel on passes
between banks carefully walled or sodded, and the smallest available spot
at the humblest R. way station is converted into a garden of flowers.
Nothing is allowed to go to waste. Every foot of earth has a value unknown
to us in our abundance of land and is pressed into the service of man. The
average crop of wheat in England is 46 bushels to the acre—double the
average crop in America. England makes the uttermost parts of the world
contribute to the wealth of her soil. Her ships bring fertilizers from all lands
and over all seas. Considering the little showing her Island makes on the
map of the world, we may laugh at her ostentatious self-esteem and ego-
tism in calling herself by high-sounding names, prefixing [them], as she
does, with the word “great.” She also does this to her railways and her
ships, and many other things, and always calls herself Great Britain. But
no man can travel within [her four]38Crossed out in typescript text. the borders of England without seeing
that she is Great Britain, [is both]39Crossed out in typescript text. great at home and powerful abroad.
But if I shall get anywhere else in my travels this evening, I must quit
the pleasant shores of England and make my way to the continent of
Europe. I am reluctant to leave this beautiful country, though the way out of
it is singularly smoothe and my object point is peculiarly inviting. There is
perhaps no railway ride in England or the world more delightful during
most of the year than the ride from London to Dover—the most direct route
to Paris. England here presents her fairest side to the traveler, and prepares
him for the striking contrast he will observe between the fertility of her own
soil. and the richness and fullness of her verdure. with the thinness and
poverty of the same, [which]40Crossed out in typescript text. he will find across the Channel. France, at
least that part of it over which we traveled in going from Calais to Paris, in
contrast with England, the soil of France is thin and poor indeed. Though
the land is well tilled, vegetation is pale, sickly and feeble. The trees are
few, tall, slender and leafless, and just the reverse of what we see in the
County of Kent on our way to Dover.
Whether the character of the soil has anything to do with other dif-
ferences or not, one thing is certain, their people do show as great a
difference as do their respective soils. It is difficult to realize how two such
great nations could be so contiguous to each other for centuries, between
which there is constant intercourse, and yet borrow so little from each
other, and be so separate and distinct in all their national traits as are the
English and French. The distance between them is only 21 miles, and the
time required to pass from one to the other is only one hour,41The Dover-Calais-Boulogne route included a twenty-five-mile channel passage by steamer that took one hour and forty minutes. , Murray's Foreign Handbooks (London, 1882), 2, 5. yet they are
as opposite in character and manners as if two oceans rolled between them,
or the height of impassible mountains separated them. When in England,
hearing our own language, reading our own books, and observing the
restful English Sundays, I hardly felt myself out of our own country, every
thing was so like home. But a trip of sixty minutes across the Channel
brought over me a very different feeling. I was all at once in a strange land
and among a strange people, and hearing a strange language. The fact is I
was now in France, and if I had not known it from the strange speech and
picturesque costumes about me, I should have known it from the soldier-
like and peremptory manner in which I was commanded, not asked, to
unlock my luggage. I felt it useless to get mad at this, but my impatience at
delay and eagerness to get to Paris, made me for the moment a free-trader,
and to wish an end to all custom-houses and custom-house officers in the
world. But I got well though [through] the hands of these liveried officers
after all. They overhauled my luggage and underhauled it, and handled it
somewhat recklessly and rudely, but happily for me nothing of a dynamite,
contraband, incendiary, or suspicious character was found [to] compro-
mise or delay us, and soon we were whirling away with a speed unknown to
ordinary railroad travel in America, to the great city of Paris—the city of
the dreams and visions of my boyhood—and which then I had not hoped
ever to see. On our way we pass through the quaint old cities of Boulogne
and Amiens, both worth seeing, but we only caught sight of their ancient
walls, steeples and towers, as we passed. In failing to stop a few hours in
them we made a common mistake, and were more expeditious than wise. A
short stop I am told, would have given us a long pleasure, and some
knowledge of two very interesting places. I counsel any one who may be
meditating a tour that way to follow my precept and shun my example.42Douglass possibly combines popular maxims by Samuel Johnson and John Selden: “Example is always more efficacious than precept" and “Do as I say, not as I do." Samuel Johnson, , ed. Bertrand H. Bronson (New York, 1958), 569; Robert Waters. ed., (New York, 1899), 174.
The saying that we should never do to-day what we can put off for to-
morrow,43Douglass inverts the fourth Earl of Chesterfield's “No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day." Chesterfield himself attributes the maxim to “Pensionary DeWitt" in a letter to his son dated 26 December 1749. , ed. Lord Mahon [Charles Stanhope Stanhope], 5 vols. (London, 1845- 53), 1: 392. does not answer in traveling, for in that case you are likely to fail
altogether.
But here we are in Paris. A ride of twelve hours has brought us from the
great metropolis of England to the great metropolis of France.44After a two-hour journey to Dover, passengers choosing the Dover-Calais-Boulogne route to Paris could expect to travel for another ten hours. , 2. We saw
her a long way off before reaching the station. Her brilliant rows of street
lamps streamed into our car windows through the darkness and heightened
expectation and enthusiasm. The very name of Paris starts a thousand
reflections. She is a city of fame, fashion and fancy; a city of taste and
terrors; of heroes and horrors; of beauty, barricades and battles; of varied
and startling vicissitudes—some of them so violent and destructive that we
wonder that she has not perished long ago by her own internal fires; yet
here she stands in all her strength and beauty. She has withstood the
destructive shocks of twelve revolutions in a single century,45Douglass alludes to the many violent changes of government that had occurred in France since the Revolution of 1789. Soon after the time of the tour of the Douglasses through France, that country’s republican government was threatened by public displeasure at the dismissal of ultranationalist General Georges Boulanger as minister of war. Boulanger's political strength grew until the failure of a coup d'etat by his supporters in January 1889. Frederic H. Seager, (Ithaca, NY, 1969), 61-79, 203-10; Hayes, , 44-45, 246-47, 263. and no man
can say that she may not have to pass through another and one more trying
and terrible than those that have gone before, and that not far hence. The
trouble is, though she now has a republic46Douglass refers to France's Third Republic, founded in 1870. for which she has sighed,
aspired and struggled for more than a century; though she is no longer ruled
by either priests or princes; though liberty, equality and fraternity47Douglass gives the English translation of the popular motto of the French revolutionaries of 1789: “Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!" Alan Palmer and Veronica Palmer, (Hassocks, Eng., 1976), 187. are
inscribed upon all her gates, walls and towers; though her splendid gal-
leries of paintings and her gardens of flowers are now the pleasure and the
property of all her citizens; though freedom of speech and of the press are
established in all her borders; though her President and lawmakers are of
her own selection, she still holds explosive elements in her bosom which
may be her destruction. Her weakness lies in the fact that no appeal to her
people is needed to effect a change in her government. A simple vote of her
legislative corps and away goes her republic and in comes the Empire.48Under the Constitution of the Third Republic adopted in 1875, the two branches of the corps législatif or national legislature were the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Among the largest French political factions in the 1870s and 1880s were two groups favoring the restoration of the monarchy under rival wings of the Bourbon family and a third seeking to bring back an empire under the Bonaparte family. Hayes, , 55, 71, 203; Seager, , 5-9.
She has within this legislative corps a body of opportunists who submit to a
republic to-day only in the hope of getting a monarchy to-morrow, and once
let this party get the power, the republic will go down and barricades will
go up, and a scene [will]49Crossed out in typescript text. may be enacted which will startle the world.
Two months of my tour abroad were spent in this city of strange
vicissitudes and vanities; a city of great historical events; of fierce, bloody
and sudden uprisings of the people against organized power and the settled
order of society, whose sworn soldiers will sometimes fraternize with the
people against the government; a city of the hateful Bastille—a prison in
which uncounted numbers of innocent people lingered for years and per-
ished without being allowed trial at the bar of justice, and against its thick
walls of stone and iron gates and bridges the outraged and maddened
populace, determined to stand this house of despotism no longer, in face of
a storm of iron hail and fire dashed themselves to death, but left the ghastly
old prison a heap of ruins:50A mob of Parisians sacked the Bastille on 14 July 1789. A city of moral and social earthquakes; a city
where deeds have been wrought, “which well might shame extremest
hell"51Douglass quotes a line from the fifth stanza of John Greenleaf Whittier's poem “Stanzas for the Times." , 3: 36. and of which far down the ages men will read with a shudder; a city
where, in a single night, 25,000 Protestants were murdered by Roman
Catholics; a city where human heads have fallen by the axe, like trees in the
forest; a city where at times human pity seemed consumed in the fires of
human wrath, and the thirst for human blood knew no limit.
One of the first objects that attracted my attention as I walked the
streets of Paris, was the old church of Saint Germain, l'Auxer-rois. It spoke
to me of the hollow marriage, I might say the horrible marriage of Henry
of Navarre with Margaret de Valois, which was no marriage but a fraud; it
spoke to me of that ghastly night of treachery, bigotry, superstition and
madness, when horrors were heaped on horrors’ head, when 25.000 souls
were by treachery and murder hurried into eternity;52The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre occurred on 24 August 1572. Henry (1553-1610), king of Navarre, later Henry IV, king of France, had married Marguerite de Valois (1553-1615) on 18 August 1572. The marriage, arranged by Marguerite's mother, the queen mother Catherine de Medicis, had been proclaimed a means of reconciling hostilities between French Catholics and Protestants. By the order of French king Charles IX, royal forces massacred about four thousand Huguenot or Protestant gentry, visiting Paris to celebrate the wedding. The signal for commencement for the slaughter was the ringing of the bell at the Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. , 167; Marvin R. O'Connell, (New York, 1974), 170-71. for it was from the
tower of this old church, that the tocsin was sounded for this dance of
death.
In front of the Louvre, the grandest gallery of antiquities and of art in
Europe, the resort of the talent & genius of all nations, where the history of
ancient and modern art, and in some sense the history of civilization itself
may be read and studied; where there are acres of statuary, miles of pic-
tures, and countless objects of antiquity gathered from all the great coun-
tries of the East, stands this old church of Saint Germain—a perpetual
reminder of that dreadful night of sham marriage, treachery and death. I
never passed it without stopping to scan its dark walls and towers once
more, and think of it as a warning against religious bigotry, intolerance and
cruelty. When one looks around him in Paris, to-day with its splendid
mansions. its far-reaching streets and boulevards, its cheerful industries
and peaceful people, it is hard to think that it was ever the theatre of
tragedies, which have shocked, astonished and amazed the world, I, as it
has].53Crossed out in transcript text. [A]nd yet if one looks deep enough into French character, and
indeed I may say into human nature, he may see such possibilities and
worse, not only in Paris, but among ourselves, wherever pride, prejudice
and bigotry obtain control over the hearts and minds of men. No man who
takes a peep into the dark deeds, for the beginning of which the tocsin was
sounded from the old tower of Saint Germain, on that dreadful night, can
wish a return of the days of such faith and fanaticism.
You have all heard and read of the religious observance or rather non-
religious observance of Sunday in Paris. I have also heard and read of it,
but not until I saw it for myself could I have ever realized the shock it would
give the religious sensibilities of an American to walk through the streets of
Paris on Sunday. There is some religious notice taken of it, I admit. A few
of the stores are closed, and a few Protestant churches have their Sunday
religious service, but the people at large work or play, attend church or
theatre, promenade the streets or public gardens, drink wine and beer in
front of the brilliantly decorated cafes—in fact make of it a secular holiday,
like our Fourth of July, or Christmas, except our drunkenness and fire-
crackers. I spent many Sundays in Paris, but do not remember of meeting
with a single drunken or disorderly person on any one of them. Of course I
do not attribute this temperance to the disregard of the religious idea we
attach to Sunday, but to the French character. The French people are
naturally a temperate people. They are economical in all things, except in
the matter of display. They eat without gluttony, drink without drunken-
ness, and amuse themselves at very little expense of time and money.
Some of the signs on the stores struck me as a little odd. On one sign
you may read in large letters, “To my Mother,” on another, “To the Infant
Jesus,” on another, “To the Good Devil.” No one seems shocked by these
signs or in any way disturbed by them.
After repeatedly viewing, and with ever-increasing wonder and admi-
ration, the vast collections of art and antiquities of the Louvre54Originally the site of a hunting-seat and then a castle of early French kings along the Seine River in central Paris, the Louvre is a collection of buildings begun by King Francis I in the sixteenth century and added to by his successors to form a palace enclosing a large square courtyard. Napoleon I completed a gallery to connect the Louvre with the Tuileries palace and converted the former into a national museum. In Douglass's time, the Louvre was world famous for its collections of paintings, sculpture, and ancient and medieval artifacts. , 206-32. and
Luxemborg;55Constructed in the early 17th century by Marie de Medicis after a Florentine model, the Luxembourg palace housed various members of the royal family until the Revolution of 1789, and governmental offices thereafter. In 1818, a portion of the palace became the site of a museum dedicated to displaying works of living French artists. , 232-36. after scanning the curiosities of the old Musee Cluny—a struc-
ture of Roman origin; 56Douglass refers to the museum in the Hôtel de Cluny which is said to be built upon the ruins of a palace constructed by the Roman emperor Constantine around 300 A.D. , 128. after wandering through the gloomy labyrinths of
the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette made her last prayer before
going to the scaffold, and where Robespierre was imprisoned and from
which he was dragged to execution;57Both Marie Antoinette (1755-93), queen of France, and the revolutionary leader Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758-94) experienced confinement in the Conciergerie of the Palais de Justice prior to their executions. , 265. after the Hotel de Ville58Completed in 1628 as the principal office building for the Parisian city government, the Hotel de Ville was the scene of mass demonstrations during the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830. , 182-83.—the
centre of revolutionary tragedies, the mere recital of which chills the blood
and makes the heart sick; after the Place of the Bastille, where the French
people made their first successful resistance to organized power and op-
pression; after Pere le Chaise, the last resting-place of the great dead of
France, and where are the tombs of Abilarde and Heloise—the paths to
which are visibly marked by the foot-prints of many pilgrims;59A reference to the French philosopher and theologian Pierre Abailard (l079- 1142) and his famous love affair with the abbess Heloise (c. 1100-1164) whom he married. Heloise was originally buried alongside him at the oratory of the Paraclete. Their bodies were transferred several times over the centuries until they were brought to the cemetery of Pere Lachaise in 1817. Leif Grane, Peter Abelard: , trans. Frederick Crowley and Christine Crowley (1964; New York, 1970); Joseph Thomas, , 5th ed. (Philadelphia. 1930), 33. after Saint
Cloud60Louis XVI purchased an estate at the village of Saint Cloud on the eastern outskirts of Paris. Napoleon I and later French monarchs made it one of their principal residences. , 314-30. and Versailles61Begun by Louis XIII, the Versailles palace, located on the western outskirts of Paris, became the favorite residence of French kings from 1681 until the Revolution of 1789. , 314-30.—once the pride and possession of French royal-
ty, but now happily the property of the people; after the Pantheon, whose
lofty dome is one of the finest architectural features of the great city, and
under which are the remains of Victor Hugo,62Modeled on domed Italian churches such as St. Peter's in Rome but constructed on a smaller scale in the 1760s, the Pantheon or the Church of St. Genevieve alternated between uses as a Roman Catholic church and a civic shrine and burial place for illustrious French citizens, including Victor Hugo. , 268-69. the poet, patriot, and
philanthropist—a man whose great heart was broad enough to take in the
whole world, and who, in my estimation, ranks among the greatest of the
human race—for all races, kindreds, tongues and people found shelter in
his noble heart; after the Hotel des Invalides, and visiting the tomb of
Napoleon—the most elaborate and splendid mausoleum in the world;63A home and hospital for aged and disabled soldiers since the reign of Louis IV, the Hotel des Invalides in Douglass’s time also housed a chapel, a military museum, and the tomb of Napoleon I. , 189-95. the
Madleine,—a type of Grecian architectural beauty;64Construction on La Madeleine, a vast church modeled after classical Grecian temples, had begun in 1764 but was not completed until 1842 on account of the many political disruptions of that era. It was a fashionably attended church during the time of the visit of the Douglasses to the city. , 237-38. the Place de la Con-
cord,65A large square near the Tuileries Palace. Place de la Concorde had been the site of the principal public executions during the French Revolution. It is also the site of the famous Obelisk of Luxor brought to the city from Egypt in l836. , 136-40. Les Jarden des Plantes,66Les Jardins des Plantes features large botanical gardens, zoological quarters, and natural history museums. , 197-201. the Tuileries,67The principal residence of French kings and emperors in Paris since the sixteenth century, the bulk of Tuileries palace had been destroyed by the Commune of 1871 and the ruins removed by the time of the visit of the Douglasses. , 309-11. the Place Vendome,68A square featuring a Roman-style column erected by Napoleon I to commemorate his victorious campaigns of 1805. , 313-14. the
Arc de Triomphe,69Ordered constructed on the western end of the Champs-Élysées by Napoleon I in 1806 to celebrate the victories of his imperial armies but not completed until the reign of Louis Phillipe in 1836, the Arc de Triomphe de L‘Étoile, at a height of 161 feet, was the largest triumphal arch in the world. , 81-82. St. Denis—a structure of the seventh century, and
formerly the burial-place of kings and princes,70The first church at the abbey of St. Denis is popularly believed to have been built by King Dagobert I around 630 A.D. The original buildings are no longer extant and their precise location is unknown. Thirty-five kings and queens of France have been buried there. Sumner McKnight Crosby, (New Haven, Conn, 1942), 2-3, 67; , 146. after exploring the aisles
and crypts of Notre Dame,71On the Île de la Cité in the Seine River, the existing building of the Notre Dame Cathedral dates back to the twelfth century. , 253-55. and of more old churches than I have time to
mention and which speak to us of the dead past, I turn to the living present;
from France dead, to France living; for it was now my privilege and
pleasure to see with my own eyes the assembled wisdom of France in the
shape of its lawmakers, its Senate and its Corps Legislative, both bodies
composed of the choice and master spirits of the French Republic, as it
stands to-day; and a finer appearing body of lawmakers l have never seen
anywhere inside or outside of America.
It is not an easy matter for spectators to get into the halls of French
legislation. for Republican though she is, France is still too near the Empire
in point of time to have fully shaken off the fetters of imperial customs and
the despotic suspicions [and dread of the people].72Crossed out in typescript text. The way to these
legislatures is sinuous and circumlocutory. There is no such open and
confiding manner of reaching the Chamber of Deputies as we have to our
Congress, and no such accommodation when reached, as to space, as in our
House and Senate. The chambers are the old ones used in the days of the
Empire and were intended to accommodate few outside the members. In
England the case is the same. But in both countries I was fortunate in
having influential friends who easily secured for me the required tickets of
admission. I was especially impressed with the gentlemanly bearing of the
members of the French Senate. Every man of them was attired in an elegant
evening suit, and were as courteous to each other apparently, as if they were
in the drawing-rooms of an evening party. I had the pleasure of an introduc-
tion to several of these senators, and one of them was Victor Schelcher,73Educated at the College Louis le Grand, Paris-born Victor Schoelcher (1804-93) developed an interest in nonwestern music and a special regard for the music of George Frederick Handel that culminated with his (London,1857). During the Revolution of 1848, he headed a committee of the provisional government that initiated the destruction of slavery in all French colonies. Schoelcher's republican politics prompted his exile to Great Britain during the Second Empire. He returned to France in 1870 where the following year he won election to the Assemblée Nationale and then became a life senator in 1875. In his later years, Schoelcher wrote a biography of Francois Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture. Douglass prepared an introduction for an English-language edition of this book but it was never published. Frederick Douglass to Theodore Stanton, 25 November l886, Theodore Stanton Papers, NjR; Speech File, reel 19, frames 699-753, FD Papers, DLC; New York , 23 April 1903; Herbert Ingram Priestley, (New York, 1938), 68-69; Stanley Sadie, ed., , 20 vols. (London, 1980), 16: 700; Thomas, , 2147.
the statesman to whom the slaves of the French Colonies owed their eman-
cipation in 1848. After Louis Phillippe was driven from Paris—for kings
never go till they are driven—in that grand upheaval, when the thrones of
Europe were shaken and crowns were falling, Victor Schelcher—then
Secretary under M. Arago74Born in the French town of Estagel, physicist and statesman Dominique Francois Jean Arago (1786- 1853) attended the École Polytechnique where he later became professor of analytical geometry. In 1830 Arago became director of the Royal Observatory and permanent secretary of the Academie des Sciences and won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. In the provisional government following the Revolution of 1848, he held the posts of minister of the navy and army and president of the Executive Committee. William L. Langer, (New York. 1969), 332, 593; Gillispie, , 1: 200-03; Thomas, , 158-59.—seized the first hours of the Provisional
Government of France to urge upon M. Arago the emancipation of all the
slaves in the French colonies, and it was done. I was several times made
welcome to the house of this remarkable and philanthropic statesman. He
is now over eighty years old, but his mind is as clear. his heart is as warm,
and his life is as active as a man’s of sixty. His library shows what manner
of man he is, and what he considers the best service he has been able to
render the world during his long life. For his library is ornamented with
broken chairs, fetters, and iron-pronged collars as they were worn by
slaves in the French colonies. There are to be seen on his walls many
testimonials of gratitude sent to him by the emancipated slaves. I was glad
to see these testimonials of gratitude. They came from grateful hearts,
those who knew how to appreciate benefactors and who do not search for
bad motives for good actions. nor good motives for bad actions—a thing
which has come to be too fashionable among a certain class of colored
leaders in America.
Paris, I believe, can boast of having now the largest library in the
world. It is called the National Bibliotheque.75Originally the library of the French monarchs, the Bibliothèque Nationale was established in a permanent location on Rue Richelieu in Paris in 1724. In the 1880s it possessed approximately 2.5 million books, 2.2 million engravings and portraits, and 300,000 maps., 93-97. I was made welcome to one
of its desks, and to any volumes I might want to consult and copy from
while I was there. Hundreds of readers were ranged around the vast read-
ing-room, engaged in reading and writing. I need not say I there felt the
freedom of France and myself a man among men. In looking around in this
wilderness of books, gathered from all the world and printed in all lan-
guages, I was tempted to ask if any word of mine was to be found there. In a
few minutes—it was a marvel how they could lay hands on it so soon—
there was laid before me the book of my bondage and my freedom, and a
little tract containing a letter of mine written in 1846 in reply to one by Dr.
Samuel Hanson Cox.76The letters by Cox and Douglass are reprinted in (New York, 1846).
The bearing of the laboring men and women on the streets of Paris was
very much like that of the same class in America, and contradicted in some
measure what I had imagined to be the native politeness of the French.
There was a look about these people which said, Paris is ours, we are a
power, and we are as good as you are, and in fact we are a little better if you
happen to be pretty well dressed. For one, I did not feel like stopping to
controvert any element of this pretension. I am told that this feature of
street life in Paris has become more visible since the Empire was sup-
planted by the Republic. As an American, myself only a few years from
slavery, I could but rejoice at the sense of human dignity and the manly self-
assertion of these people, though I do think they might be a little more
polite on the street in its manifestation, without loss of self-respect.
But the hackmen! or the coaches! These are a decided feature of the
street life of Paris. The hackmen, with their glazed hats, water-proof capes
and storm-beaten faces, out in all weather, day and night, smoking their
cigars, making their whips crack over the backs of their over-driven horses,
like the report of a revolver—these men like the rag-pickers and fish-
women of Paris are a class by themselves. At first I thought them brutally
cruel to their horses, and was distressed by the resounding crack of their
whips; but I found that the sharp crack [of their whips]77Crossed out in typescript text. was more for the
ears of their horses than for their backs—that in fact the horses seldom felt
the lash, and that here was a case where the bark was worse than the bite. I
was quite amazed by the discernment of these coachmen. They could pick
out one man in a thousand without sign, who might happen to want to ride.
Their skill in threading their way through a crowd of vehicles without
touching on either side, was a marvel. In one respect they are more consid-
erate of the comfort of their horses than we are: They drive them without
the check-rein, and without blinders, giving them the freedom of their
heads and the use of their eyes. It did not seem that they in any way abused
their freedom. On the contrary they seemed more docile than our horses are
with their checks and blinders.
The absense of color prejudice.
I hardly need repeat here a fact so well known, and one which I have so
often had occasion to state elsewhere, that I met in Paris no manifestation
against men on account of race or color. I am not bound to account for this,
but I think it is in part because the negro has never been seen there as a
degraded slave, but often as a gentleman and a scholar, for men hate those
whom they injure. Perhaps also , the absence of race prejudice may in some
measure be due to the presence and prevalence of the Roman Catholic
religion. For whatever may be its other faults and defects, the Roman
Catholic church welcomes to its altar and communion men of all races and
colors, and would contradict its assumption of being the universal church if
it did otherwise. But whatever may be the explanation, the fact is as stated.
There are many negroes in Paris. They come there from the French colonies,
and are students at the College of France.78Founded in 1530 and located near the Sorbonne, the College of France was not connected with any university but served as a home for free public lectures on all learned disciplines. , 133. They are often met with
on the streets with white students of the same college. At the house of Pere
Hyacinthe,79Born in Orleans, France, Charles Loyson (1827-1912) took the name Hyacinthe before entering the Carmelite Order of monks. A capable preacher and teacher, doctrinal conflicts over papal infallibility and related issues led to his excommunication from the Catholic Church. After his marriage in 1872, he briefly joined the Old Catholic Church in Geneva as a curate. Hyacinthe quit that group in 1874 and went to Paris where, in 1879, he founded the Gallican Church. Ferm, , 454; Thomas, , 1139. the famous French preacher and dissenter from some of the
dogmas of the Roman Catholic church, I had the pleasure to meet one of
these black students, M. Janvier,80Spelled “Jannier” in the original typescript. Douglass later altered the spelling of the name of this individual whose identity has not been discovered. a man perfectly black and one who
shows no traces of Caucasian blood. Pere Hyacinthe told me that this
young man surpassed all his fellow-students, and carried off all the prizes.
He struck me as being in every respect a highly cultivated gentleman. In the
vestibule of the Theatre of France,81Constructed in 1787, the Théâtre Français or Comédie-Française produced both classic and modern works and contained statues and portraits of many great French writers. , 302-03. the most fashionable theatre of Paris,
there may be seen marble busts of eminent French writers, and among them
you may see the bushy head and African features of Alexander Dumas.
One of the finest monuments in Paris and in the most aristocratic part of it is
that of the same great writer. Such facts speak volumes for the civilization
of the French and the French metropolis.
During my stay in Paris I frequently attended religious service at a little
church in the Rue de Raras and heard Pere Hyacinthe preach. It was a great
treat to hear this man. My knowledge of French was much too limited to
understand all his words, but I certainly comprehended the noble spirit of
the man, and was deeply impressed by his character and preaching. He is
admitted to be the most eloquent preacher in Paris. He does not assert that
he is a protestant in the broad sense of the term; on the contrary he calls
himself an Old Catholic and worships according to the ancient customs of
the church. He differs from Catholics of the present day in that he contends
for Congregational Church government, for a Bible open to all, and the
right of a priest to marry. Having broken some physical chains in my time to
gain larger liberty, I had a very strong sympathy with Pere Hyacinthe—a
man who had abandoned high position and in face of poverty and ostracism,
dared to break away from spiritual bondage, and to stand alone in
the world. He is not only a man of great eloquence and mental power, but a
man of deep and earnest religious convictions. His church in the Rue de
Raras is small, but is usually very well attended. In this country such a
church as his would receive much better support. Catholics in Paris are
opposed to him because he has gone too far from the Roman Catholic
church and the Protestants withhold from him their support because he does
not come quite near enough to them, so he is between two stools, and may
after all fail to establish a church on his present basis. He will either have to
recede or advance—such at least is the judgment of many who are friendly
to him, and who have well studied his peculiar position among the religious
forces of France.
I very much regret that the limits of this lecture do not permit me to stay
any longer in the beautiful city of Paris. I should like to tell you more of its
character and the manner of its life; of its magnificence and its misery; of its
glory and its shame; of its broad, brilliant and airy streets and boulevards,
where elegantly dressed people walk and ride in splendor, in its new part;
and of its narrow, dark and ill-ventilated alleys and closes, where its
common people live, labor and die, in seemingly contented poverty in the
old part;—a poverty which may, however, at any moment develop disease,
pestilence, disorder and distraction. The contrast between the two sections
of the great city is extreme and striking, and no one has seen Paris who has
not seen the old as well as the new.
The great natural feature of Paris—the main source of its life, health
and happiness—is the Seine. It is more than the Arno to Pesa and Florence,
more than the Tiber to Rome, more than the Grand Canal to Venice—for it
is full of life and activity. A trip upon its sparkling waters on one of its
sharp, slender, swift-going little steamers is one of the most delightful to be
made in a lifetime, for upon no other river can such a city as Paris be seen.
You may start on your trip from Les Jardin des Plants, and make your
way to Saint Cloud or the Troccadero,82Named for a Spanish fortress captured by French troops in 1823, the Trocadéro palace and park along the Seine River in western Paris was prepared for the Paris Exhibition of 1878. , 307-08. you ride between firmly and
smoothly built walls on either side of the swift-moving river—your speed
when going with the current is like an arrow from the bow—you glide
under a series of great bridges, masterpieces of masonry, built to stand a
thousand years—some of them adorned with colossal statues. Away you
go touching here and there to take on and let off passengers with magical
quickness, and off again—down by solemn old Notre Dame, with her grim
old walls and lofty towers, down by Ile Saint Louis, the home of the poet
Theodore Tilton,83Theodore Tilton resided in an Avenue Kleber apartment located on the Île Saint Louis in the Seine River in central Paris. New York , 26 May 1901; , 185. down by the old Chattley Theatre, open on all days of
the week Sunday included,84Probably the Théâtre du Chatelet. , 304. down by the Conciergerie—full of historical
associations, down by the Hotel de Ville, the centre of revolutions, de-
stroyed by the Commune, re-built by the Republic,85Douglass refers to the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871, which attempted to assume the municipal governance of the city in opposition to the provisional government of the Third Republic established after the fall of Napoleon III in September 1870. During the fighting in May, when the government militarily crushed this amalgamation of radical factions, several buildings were set aflame by the Communards including the Hotel de Ville, which was subsequently rebuilt. Edward S. Mason, (New York, 1930), 280; , 182-83. down by the Tuil-
eries, where royalty once disported itself, down by Le Place de la Concord,
where twenty-eight hundred citizens were beheaded—down by Hotel des
Invalides, with its gorgeous tomb of Napoleon,—down by the Pantheon,
with its dome touching the blue, over-hanging sky,—down by the un-
counted objects of interest on both sides, till you reach the ruins of the
palace and the beautiful grounds of Saint Cloud, once the delight of the
Emperor and Empress, but now the pleasure-ground of the people.
The Seine is the great highway of the people of Paris. All classes avail
themselves of it, but it is especially the highway of the common people. To
them it is literally a thing of beauty and a joy forever.86Douglass slightly misquotes the first line of John Keats's . Garrod, , 55. One of the most
cheerful sights to be seen in Paris is the multitudes of these people making
their way from their cheerless homes in over-crowded streets, alleys and
closes, to the bright, pure water thoroughfare where they may ride miles in
the fresh air and sunlight for a few sous. Take this trip on any fine day in
summer or winter and you will say you never had one more health-giving
and delightful.
In conclusion—I very much regret that the lateness of the hour and the
tax already imposed upon your time and patience will compel me to omit
the most interesting part of my tour, namely—Egypt, Italy and Greece. I
would especially like to say something about Egypt, as I have credited with
some views of the people of that country which differ widely from those
held by my friends generally. I went to Egypt partly to discover the truth, so
far as the truth can be discovered by seeing the present population, as to
what kind of people were ancient Egyptains. I had read in ethnological
works that the people who built the Pyramids were of the white race, and
had heard it affirmed on the other hand, that they were veritable negroes. I
should have been glad to have found the first statement entirely contra-
dicted, and the latter one entirely confirmed, for though a great ancestry
does not prove greatness in their descendents, it does imply the possibility
of greatness, and I wanted this confirmation for the benefit of the colored
people of this country in their contest against popular prejudice.
Do you ask me what was the result of my observation? I will tell you;
laying aside all prepossessions and wishes in the premises, I am compelled
to confess that I found neither assertion true to the full extent to which it
was made. If the Copts87Douglass apparently equates all Egyptians with members of the small native Coptic Church which came into existence as a result of its separation from the main Christian church following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. Ferm, , 204. are the descendents of the ancient Egyptians, and
may be taken as fair types of them, they were neither Caucasian nor negro,
neither black nor white. Those who condemn me for stating facts should
remember that I do not make them.