Piazza Barberina No. 6
Primo Piano
Roma Italia
July 8th 1887
My dear friend Frederick Douglass.
I have just received the promised and welcome letter dated July the 2nd. You did not direct it right and therefore it has been detained till to day, although the Postmen know where I am. I hope you will receive this before you sail for America. The above address will find me till I write you to the contrary. It will be useless for me to write to my friends as you will be no longer in England. I write to you by return of the Post, and shall hope to hear again from you just as soon as you are rested after your ocean voyage. Ill as I was from sea sickness, I can never forget the beauty, and at times the awful grandeur of the Atlantic ocean! Broad and deep as it is we will have a chat now and then on paper. Rome is now quite deserted so far as the birds of winter passage are concerned every day since you left the English speaking people have been going out of Rome and the Italians some of them go to the sea, country, et cetera. Rome at this season is quite another place. No one knows Italy till they see it in summer. The beauty heightens with the heat. I do not like the heat, but it does me good.
The lovely Pincio is always beautiful and I often seek a shady nook even at the noon day hour when the fierce sun comes down with intense white heat there is always a cool spot to be found there. The summer months often cure invalids if they can be persuaded to try it, and lead the right kind of life. I have some interesting facts on this point. You know all of my kin took flight some time ago. Mrs. Edmund and her father leave in a few days I believe then I shall be obliged to speak mostly Italian as there will be perhaps in all Rome only two or three persons that I know who speak English. The Italian Parliament closed its session yesterday. The debates have been of unusual interest lately. Please give my kind regards to Mrs Douglass, and with my most cordial regards for yourself I am always most sincerely
Yours
Sarah Remond Pintor.
P.S. I hope you can read this. In summer we have to shut windows and blinds to keep out the heat and one has to add instinct to sight in all they do for many hours of the day as you probably know.
Pintor's reminiscence of her trans-Atlantic voyage went back to early 1859 when she arrived in England for a lecture tour. Douglass arrived a year later and they debated, being in different antislavery camps at the time. Both also tried to obtain passports to visit France. Being black and, thanks to the Dred Scott decision, were deemed unqualified because they were not U.S. citizens. Remond (as she was at the time) decided she would proceed, regardless, and ultimately became an ex-patriate. Much of her family followed her over. She married an Italian, which would be of questionable interracial status in America, but I wonder what that meant in Europe, really. Clearly, she became bi-lingual, she learned and practiced medicine in Florence, and witnessed the unification of Italy. You see all of the elements in this letter. Outside of the United States, she could transcend far more borders than inside.
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| Sarah Remond Pintor |
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Source: Sarah Remond Pintor to Frederick Douglass, Rome, 8 July 1887, General Correspondence, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress. (Start here.)
See also: Sirpa Salenius, An Abolitionist Abroad: Sarah Parker Remond in Comopolitan Europe (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2016).
Photo of Sarah Remond Pintor: Antislavery Collection, Boston Public Library.
Other photos by Leigh Fought, taken during a lovely and long-wished-for vacation to Italy in May 2017.
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