Following Helen Douglass Following Nathaniel Hawthorne

After visiting Egypt in spring 1887, the Douglasses returned to Rome in April. Helen had become friends with Eleanor Lewis (who, I confess, I misidentified as Edmonia Lewis in my book), the niece of watercolorist Adelia Gates, both of whom lived in the Eternal City at the time. 

"We went together to the Capitoline Museum," Helen wrote to her sister, Jennie, "in which is the room described by Hawthorne in the Marble Faun. The dying Gladiator, the original, occupies the middle of the room."

Here is the description from Hawthorne that she references:

It was in that room (the first after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death-swoon.

Around the walls stand the Antinous,

the Amazon,

the Lycian Apollo,

the Juno;

all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which thy lay buried for centuries.

Helen thought "the Faun and an Antinous are most lovely." The faun no longer stands in that room, if it did when she visited, but lies in the next room over.

You can tell it is a faun by its tail.:

I wish she had described what she thought was so lovely about each. The Antinous strikes me as bland, but the red of this faun, his muscular definition, and  his devilish joy make me think, "oh, Helen, you minx!" She likely did not think that way, but her attraction to these two male forms suggests a heterosexual appreciation for a powerful physique. Of course, we already knew that about her given that her husband was renowned for his own, and kept himself physically fit well to his last days.

(My own husband, by the way, thought that the griffin was taken aback by the damage done to Apollo's manhood. The griffin does look as if he is saying, "whoa! Dude! What happened?")

Hawthorne, too, described a statue that was no longer in that room.

Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a snake.

It took me a while to find that sculpture, and I passed more than one of a child playing with a snake, but no dove.

I began to wonder if Hawthorne had invented the piece for art's sake. (I also wondered about Roman parents and the pets that they allowed their children. Perhaps this had something to do with high rates of infant mortality? Or maybe this just taught kids to be tough?)

Finally, in the last room that I entered, across from the Gladiator's room, I found her. She wasn't called "Human Soul," but "Child with Bird and Snake" or something similarly banal. 

You would hardly know she had a snake coiling about her because its head has broken off, but here she is.

After the "Dying Gladiator," Helen and Eleanor wandered through the faun's room, down a long gallery of busts and statues, and further on. "Two rooms of busts there, are most interesting ones," she told Jennie, "containing busts, all ancient, and supposable from life, of philosophers and renowned intellectual men and one of the Emperors. The first is my room...

...and the second is Miss Lewis' room."

The day that I was there, the staff were cleaning the busts in Miss Lewis' room.

In Helen's day, they probably used a feather duster. 

Her attraction to the room of philosophers makes sense, given that her attraction to her husband was also intellectual. Political power seemed to hold little interest for her, but moral and mental force along with the physical charisma captured her attention enough to enter into a daring marriage.

Both Hawthorne and Helen Douglass commented on the view from the room of the "Dying Gladiator," but that is a post for another time.

----------------------------------------------------

Notes:

Quotes from Helen Douglass from Helen Douglass to Jennie Pitts, 25 April 1887, General Correspondence, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.

Quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne from The Marble Faun, or The Romance of the Monte Beni, vol. 1, Chapter 1. (1860)

Online Interview at Black Perspectives

Ibram X. Kendi interviewed me about Women in the World of Frederick Douglass  for his blog series featuring new books in African American history and African Diaspora Studies at Black Perspective. Here is the link: http://www.aaihs.org/the-womans-rights-man-a-new-book-on-women-in-frederick-douglasss-world/

Publicity!

Oxford University Press has shared an excerpt from my introduction here: https://blog.oup.com/2017/05/role-women-life-frederick-douglass/

"Man is by Nature a migratory animal"

From "My Foreign Travels," Douglass's December 15, 1887 speech to a crowd at the AME Metropolitan Church about his European tour.:

Man is by Nature a migratory animal. It does not appear that he was intended to swell 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 dangers to life and limb encountered -- we must admit that this migratory tendency, if original, has lost nothing of its intensity in the transmission.

The tendency to travel had taken Douglass's generation, with the expenses declining and the availability of Baedeker's travel guides removing some of the uncertainty. Cultural enlightenment and polish was within reach of parts of the middle class.

Some of us still yearn to move, to see, to partake of that western culture, of the waves of those who have gone before us as actors and tourists. So we shall! Not breathing bad air on ships, but crammed within airplanes (and in one of the middle seats in the middle sections). Not with dust, smoke and cinders, but other pollutants in new cities, different from those in our own cities. What danger to life and limb? I'd rather not contemplate, but the migratory intensity has been transmitted, if only temporarily.  I shall try to find some of the places that pulled him to Rome, Florence, and Venice.

Douglass pondered that Adam "might perhaps have remained at home, contented and happy with Mr.s Adam in the Garden of Eden until now. But they both seemed to have had a very strong desire for knowledge, and something of a roaming disposition." He traveled with his own Mrs. Adam, the second Mrs. Douglass, Helen. I too shall be traveling with my Mr. Adam, who shall remain nameless, as he wishes. I only mention him to point out that this is not a Douglass-centered visit but a vacation on which I hope to visit the same sites as Douglass. I shall have another person's itinerary to consider, as well. As much as he is willing to oblige my obsession, he is only human. Fortunately, like Douglass's Mrs. Adam, we two -- or we four -- have the same desire for knowledge of the same things.

Until we return!

Dreams Come True!

For some reason, seeing Women in the World of Frederick Douglass in the bookstore made me feel like a real, legitimate author. That's silly, magical thinking, as if all of the writing and researching weren't real and legitimate. As if the last book's researching and writing and appearing in a bookstore wasn't real and legitimate. As if the previous book's research and writing weren't, either. All of that was spectacular! Yet, somehow, seeing it in a commercial bookstore seemed like a crowing achievement. My 11 and 12 and 13 year old selves who fantasized about having a book published and sold in B. Dalton or Walden Books -- the chains in those days -- exploded from deep inside of me and we all whooped and shouted and danced around Barnes and Noble when we saw this book looking back at us from the shelf. One of the saleswomen came over and said, "I just have to know, what is it?"

"I wrote that!"

 And a friend sent me a picture from another store, too.:

And yet another friend sent me a picture from a store in D.C.:

Sometimes, dreams come true!

WSJ Review!!!!

Fergus Bordewich, award-winning author of multiple books such as The First Congress, America's Great Debate, and Bound for Canaan has written a very kind review of Women in the World of Frederick Douglass for this weekend's Wall Street Journal.

Sadly, it is behind a subscriber's firewall, but here is an excerpt:

Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass (1818-95) escaped to freedom with help from the Underground Railroad and eventually rose to become the most famous African-American of his time: a spellbinding orator, a newspaper editor and eventually a political figure in his own right. He was also, it turns out, one of the age's most passionate male feminists, as Leigh Fought shows in "Women in the World of Frederick Douglass," a fresh and surprising account of Douglass's life.

Douglass saw the emancipation of slaves and the empowerment of women as two fronts in the same war for fundamental human justice. His support for feminist goals was more than political pragmatism, argues Ms. Fought, a professor of history at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. Throughout his life, Douglass's relationships with women were complex, varied and often remarkably intense, not to say shocking to many in the mid-19th century.

LA Times Festival of Books: Women Behind the Power

A bit behind here, what with grading and catching upon being behind and so forth. Here is the C-Span video of the LA Times Festival of Books: Women Behind the Power from two weeks ago. It was such a lovely experience, with a fantastic audience and a panel of amazing writers. Blanche Wiesen Cook generously helped me to save myself when I blanked on an answer to a question and then figured out what to say. Also, what can you say about an event in which people flocked to tents to buy books and hear authors speak except that there is hope for the world!

My view of the proceedings.:

LA Times Festival of Books, April 22-23, 2017

Well this is a whole new level: I've been asked to be on the panel "Biography: The Women Behind the Power" at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April. The panel includes Blanche Wiesen Cook of Eleanor Roosevelt biography fame, Lisa Napoli, and Susan Quinn.

I actually met Cook ages ago in 2000, in Houston. She did a book reading at the Brazos Bookstore (I think it was), then joined the Women's Group for dinner at a place in West U. where we all gushed over her. I have a picture somewhere. That was the summer before my internship at the Margaret Sanger Papers at NYU.

This is all so amazing! I've never been to Los Angeles! They want authors to meet in a greenroom before their sessions. They asked if we wanted to do media, as in radio and t.v. They wanted a dang headshot! I joke that I shall return all tan, wearing big sun glasses, and waxed from my eyebrows to my toes.  How much will this count on my 15 minutes of fame?

In any case, my panel is on Saturday, April 22, 2017, at 10:30 am.

Yes, the Book Will be a Thing in the World!

I haven't written on this blog in ages. The situation became one in which I could write the blog or write the book, and the book won. Now, it is actually coming out! Officially, the publication date is May 2017 -- that's this May -- although it should be available in April.

The title is now Women in the World of Frederick Douglass.

You can order through the Oxford University Press website, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble. It's available as a regular book or an e-book.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it!

The Widow Douglass at the National League of Colored Women

Helen Douglass, Frederick's second wife, attempted to carry on the work of her husband. In 1896, she attended the National League of Colored Women's convention in Washington, D.C. The Indianapolis Freeman, a black newspaper, described the meeting as attended by "some of the brainiest women of the race."

They reported this about Douglass:

Mrs. Helen Douglass, widow of the late Frederick Douglass, read a paper. She called particular attention to the [illegible] life of the cities of the Union, and urged that they should unite and bring about a reform in this matter. If the colored women of Washington would unite, she said, they could put an end to living in alleys, and no longer would come from them a steady stream for the workhouse and almshouse.

She spoke of the police court. They ought to find means to keep as many as possible from the place. But there seemed to be a prejudice, and the policeman would pick up a poor old man who sad down weary for a moment in some forbidden place in a park or some thoughtless boy who might pick a magnolia blossom. They would be sent to prison from court the next day. When leniency was to be exercised it was reserved for those who had recklessly taken human life. This was greeted with applause.

Later, Helen invited all of the women up to Cedar Hill on a pilgrimage to view the home of Frederick Douglass. She already had a plan to turn the house into a memorial museum, and these ladies were the key people to court in that regard.

If you've been to the Frederick Douglass National Historic Park in Anacostia, D.C., you have seen that she succeeded.