National Poetry Month: "Beyond the Fog," by Langston Hughes

BEYOND THE FOG
To Perry Jones, young pioneer of the air

Beyond the fog
There is no mist at all:
Only the great heart of God
Where children never fall.

Beyond the fog no mortal flight,
No mortal danger there:
Only ever-shining space
And vast eternal air.

So do not grieve for one who soars
On everlasting wings
Into the heart of sun and stars
And all immortal things.

O, let there be not mist of tears---
But only eyes of joy
To follow ever the spirit flight
Of this immortal boy.

---Langston Hughes

Kansas City, Missouri

March 16, 1932

What does this have to do with Frederick Douglass? Thomas Perry Jones was his grandson. Jones's parents were Dr. Thomas A. Jones and Rosabella M. Sprague. Rosabella Sprague was the daughter of Nathan Sprague and Rosetta Douglass. Rosetta Douglass was the daughter of Anna Murray and Fredrick Douglass.

According to a biographical sketch written in his memory, the name Perry came from the Perry Sanitarium where his father worked and he was born. Maybe that was coincidence because Perry was also the name of Frederick Douglass's brother, whom Rosetta met when he lived with the Douglasses for a time in Rochester after the Civil War. The memorial oddly did not make the connection between his mother and his great-grandfather.

What of all of the imagery of flight in the poem? Hughes did not simply invoke a metaphor. Perry Jones was a pilot, one of the few black pilots of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in 1911, he came into flight about a decade after the earliest pioneers like Bessie Coleman. A crash in 1931 cut short his career and his life.


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Source: Jones, Thomas Perry, “Beyond the Fog” by Langston Hughes,Box 28-4, Folder 100, Frederick Douglass Collection, Manuscripts Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

Frederick Douglass Hall

In my research yesterday, I came across this letter, dated 4 May 1934:

My dear Friends:
It was pleasant to receive your telegram expressing appreciation of the University’s action in naming its new classroom building after your distinguished grandfather. We are sorry that the notice reached you too late for your attendance. I am happy to report to you that the dedication was well attended, that many eminent persons were present, including six members of the Douglass family. For your full information, I am sending you, herewith, a copy of the University’s news release of the occasion.
With cordial regards and best wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
Mordecai W. Johnson

What building had been named after Frederick Douglass, might you ask? This one:

The Frederick Douglass Memorial building on Howard University campus, right across the quadrangle from the library in which I was sitting while reading that letter and in front of which I ate lunch (because the Moorland-Spingarn closes for lunch) all week.

Now, I find that I absolutely must locate (wherein "absolutely must" means "it would be cool, but not really necessary except for fun") "L'ouverture Terrace" in Takoma Park. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, Frederick Douglass's daughter, had a home there in the 1890s. Since I have worked in Takoma Park for the past 4 years, finding her home might be rather interesting. If the same house is standing, then I might be able to ascertain the style of living enjoyed by her family at that point in time. Her husband, after all, was supposed to have been a former slave and had to struggle for survival (and respect) in the aftermath of Emancipation and the rise of Jim Crow. That's a story that I'm still trying to tease out.

The "dear Friends" to whom this letter was addressed, Hattie B. Sprague, Fredericka Douglass Perry, and Rosabelle Sprague Jones, were three of Rosetta and Nathan's five children.

Douglass and "Johnny Come Down to Hilo"

In one of the three versions of Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry's reminiscences about her grandfather, Frederick Douglass, she wrote about one of the games that Douglass played with the grandchildren when they were young. He would lead them into the dining room at Cedar Hill to the music of his violin, then teach them "songs of the rollicking slave urchins he had learned as a slave boy." She transcribed two of them, and one of them seemed surprisingly familiar to me, hearkening back to my days at Mystic Seaport:

Oh John Low! Johnny went down the hi-lo!
Oh John Low! Johnny went down the hi-lo!
Went down the hi-lo to get some gin,
Johnny went down the hi lo!
Drank so much he tumbled in,
Johnnie went down the hi-lo!

This actually sounds very much like an old sea shanty, work song, that has been transcribed this way:

Never seen the like since I been born
An Arkansas farmer with his sea boots on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

I got gal across the sea
She's a Badian beauty and she says to me…
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

Sally's in the garden picking peas
The hair on her head hanging down to her knees
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

My wife she died in Tennessee
And they sent her jawbone back to me
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man 

I put that jawbone on the fence
And I ain't heard nothing but the jawbone since
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

So hand me down my riding cane
I'm off to see Ms. Sarah Jane
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man
Wake her, shake her
Wake that gal with the blue dress on
Johnny come down to Hilo, poor old man

Of course, you have to rearrange Perry's lyrics, remembered approximately fifty years later, to:

Went down the hi-lo to get some gin,
Drank so much he tumbled in,
Johnny went down the hi-lo!Oh John Low!
Johnny went down the hi-lo!Oh John Low!

This was a work song that that could go on and on as long as the leader, who set the pace, could make up verses or as long as the task took. It has an upbeat rhythm and was good for fast moving jobs. So, the song wasn't so much a "slave urchin" song as it was a maritime working class song. The musicologist at Mystic Seaport said that it can be traced to the south, most specifically the Mississippi River, but such things did not stay in one place very long on the water, and white Marylanders did much nefarious slave trading down that way.

I imagine that Douglass learned this song on the docks and in the shipyards in Baltimore. His de facto master there owned and worked in shipyards; and before Douglass himself learned the caulking trade, he himself lived on and roamed the streets down by the wharves in Fells Point.

Douglass's daughter, Rosetta, mother of Fredericka, however, did not appreciate this song and looked on in "great disgust." For Douglass, this was one of the few things that he brought from slavery, and he actually seemed to have loved all music, regardless of its origins. For Rosetta, however, this song (even if the "shake her" part were omitted) was undignified, with shameful and low-class connections from which she seemed to have wanted to distance herself. For the grandchildren, it was a rollicking song taught to them by their grandfather and they, two generations removed from slavery, saw no degradation in it.

For your enjoyment, and to illustrate the song, here is a video of shantymen Fisherman's Friends singing:



I'd be curious to know if the other song that Perry transcribed sounds familiar to anyone:

Oh Suckey Susan lend me a string
Oh lend me a string to tie my shoe,
A cotton string – it will not do,
A cotton string is like miss Lou (an aunt of ours)
A cotton string will break in two
A cotton string – a cotton string –
Oh do, oh do, oh do Mr. Babcock do!

Source: Box 28-4, Folder 88: Sprague, Rosetta Douglass, Notebook 1886, Frederick Douglass Collection, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Founders' Library, Howard Univeristy, Washington, D.C.

Second Funniest Thing Found In the Garrison Family Papers

In the Garrison Family Papers at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, I found a special issue of the British journal Anti-Caste.  This issue had been published in the spring of 1895 in memorial to Frederick Douglass, who had died in February. In this issue,  the editor, Catherine Impey, reprinted "Extracts from the Editor's Diary of a Visit to 'Cedar Hill,'" the visit in question having taken place in September 1892.

At one point in her week long visit, Impey described an excursion to the Art Gallery with Douglass; his wife, Helen Douglass; Helen's sister, Eva Pitts; Helen's friend, Miss Foy; and Douglass's granddaughters, Annie and Estella Sprague. "F.Douglass and six ladies," Impey parenthetically reported. Parenthetically, I am  surprised that she did not include an exclamation mark. Furthermore, on the way to the Art Gallery, they met with two other women, "a Mrs. Lee and her daughter, from Chicago (coloured)." Now, the party consisted of F. Douglass and eight ladies.

Understand that, in 1892, Douglass was 74 years old. Yet, he still had the physique to command this description from Impey as she, from her guest room window,  saw him strolling in the yard below. "What a grand majestic figure it is," she wrote. "Fine features, with a crown of white hair like the Egyptian monarchs of old." The magnetism of his youth was still present as he aged.

Yet, what struck me in this description, as in other indications of his life from the earliest accounts, including his own, was that he was surrounded by women and seemed most at ease among them. The only men who appear in this description of Impey's week at Cedar Hill were the carriage driver and Douglass's grandson, Joseph Douglass,who only appear to escort ladies off-stage. He is most jovial,  most relaxed, and most compliant around the ladies, and I am wondering why. Could this be his conservative or patriarchal streak? They are not a threat to him and generally in service (or thrall) to him; but is there something else there, something that carries me into the realm of "psychohistory"?

Seems It Actually Was a Wig

I found an original print (but not the negative) of Anna Douglass's portrait:

The Frederick Douglass Collection at the Moorland-Spingarn Center of Howard University has a lovely series of photographs, including the carte de visite of this image. Looking closely at Anna's hairline in the image (which is much easier when the object is actually in your hand), you can see that the part of her hair rests just a fraction above her scalp and does not meet her forehead. Is her hair braided underneath, or cut close? Was she balding? In the actual photo, you can see that the material of her dress is overlaid with lace, and she seems to have a watch chain fixed near her lapel. So, how did this hairstyle fit into her presentation of herself?

Also, the image is not as early as I expected. She appears so young in this picture that I had assumed that it was taken in the 1840s. Of course, I was also assuming it was a daguerreotype. The carte de visite in the collection at Howard was dated 1874. 

The collection also contains and amazing photo album filled with pictures of Douglass children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I must have spent the entire afternoon absorbed in the images. One photo showed a very young Rosetta Douglass at maybe 10 years old, with two little ponytails. Another showed a very angry and equally terrified girl of about 1 who, as the images in the album advanced, grew into a lithe young woman and mother of a baby in a later photo. They were one of Rosetta's daughters and grandchild.

The archivists have identified another photo as Nathan Sprague, Rosetta's husband. I have not encountered any other photos of him with the possible exception of a photograph of the Douglass home on A Street in Washington, D.C., which shows two men standing in the yard, one presumably Douglass and the other supposedly Sprague. The features of both are unclear.

I first thought the portrait was of Jermain Loguen (who had a daughter, Amelia, who married Lewis Douglass, Frederick's son), who had a similarly square jaw, but the type of print and the age of the sitter suggested a younger man. Then, I saw the portraits of Rosetta's daughters. They look nothing like her and everything like this man. Also, when I got home and pulled up a picture of Loguen, I realized that they look very little alike except for a strong jawline.

Another portrait included four of Rosetta's daughters and one of her granddaughters with what appeared to be an interracial couple identified only as Mr. and Mrs. Bruce. He was too young to have been Blanche K. Bruce. The picture looks like it was taken in the parlor at Cedar Hill.

Several unidentified women appeared in the album. I wondered if one of the portraits of a white lady in a hoop skirt was Julia Griffiths.

In any case, I shall turn to their collections for several of the images for the book.

1880 Census, Nellie Grant, and the Douglass Granddaughters

As I read through Radical Passions to find references to Anna Douglass -- "Border State" to the fabulously caustic Ottilia Assing -- I came across a reference to "Nellie Grant." "I am very sorry about your difficulties with Nellie Grant," she writes, "as much as on your account as on her own, since she will hardly be treated as tenderly by any other owner as she has been treated by you." Never one to edit herself or to let an opportunity to express her opinion pass by, she added, "I apprehended some mischief from the first, although I could not tell which, since you got her through Nathan, who will always take even greater advantage of you than of anybody else, because he knows that he can do so with impunity." (361) Nathan, by the way, was Douglass's son-in-law, married to his daughter, Rosetta. He has been, shall we say, much maligned.

Obviously, this couldn't be Nellie Grant, the daughter of Ulysses S. Grant, president at the time. The note for Nellie Grant says, "Douglass had taken into his already crowded household a needy young woman." Assing uses some strange language if that is true. Why would she use the term "owner" to a former slave in the aftermath of emancipation? Did people refer to good hospitality as "treated tenderly"? Didn't they usually say something like "cordial" or "kind"? Maybe this is one of those things that happen with non-native speakers of a language? Assing, after all, spoke German first.

Since Christopher Lohman's main source for the notes is Maria Diedrich's Love Across the Color Lines, I took a look. No mention; but then, people are always making these sorts of sweeping statements, and Douglass did take into his household people like Harriet Bailey (aka Harriet Adams, Mrs. Perry F. Adams, Ruth Adams, Ruth Cox -- but she's another story all wrapped up in revise and resubmit territory) and Louisa Sprague and his brother Perry Downs and Julia Griffiths and Assing herself.

Notice how they are predominantly women?

In any case, wondering more about this, I took a look at the 1880 Census for Washington, D.C. There was Douglass: F.W. (for Frederick Washington), his wife Anna, and his three granddaughters, Annie and Hattie Sprague and Julia Douglass. Louisa Sprague is also listed as his granddaughter, but at age 29, she was more likely Nathan's sister. "Granddaughter" might have been an easier way to explain the relationship in one word to the census taker. Next door lived Perry Downs and Kitty Barret, Douglass's siblings, and Perry Downs's nephew H.F. Wilson, along with Martha Wilson, identified as a servant in the column for her relationship to the head of household. What we have here, then, is a complex family arrangement. What we don't have here is anyone named Nellie Grant.

Then, I wondered why Rosetta Sprague's children were living with their grandparents. So, I went to find Nathan Sprague's household. There they were: Nathan, his wife Rosetta D., and their six children, Annie R, Harriette B, Estelle J., Fredericka D., Herbert D, and Rosa M. (ranging in age from 3 to 15, incidentally), along with Maria Pongee, a black servant.  The Douglasses were recorded on June 1, 1880, and the Spragues on the 12th. Were Hattie and Annie visiting grandma and grandpa on the day the census taker showed up and just ended up in the records as living there?

Meanwhile, what about that Nellie Grant? I browsed back through Ottilia's letters. The letter mentioning her, cited above, was written in April 1879. The previous December, Assing had written this at the end of a letter: "My Maca [her dog] sends his best thanks to Mrs. Douglass for the walnuts and is passionately fond of them. He was silent all the time I was absent and has been talking charmingly from the moment I came back. He is convinced that I belong to him exclusively; what do you think of it? My love to my fourlegged good daughter, Rock and Nellie Grant!" (349)

Is Nellie Grant, perhaps, a hound?