When Grover Cleveland was elected President, white and black alike sat back complacently, jubilantly waiting for the Democratic President to “kick out” the Recorder of Deeds. Douglass himself did not expect anything else. His adherence to the Republican party was well known. He was a “staunch Republican” who had made no secret of his abhorrence of a Democratic administration. With his wife he paid his formal respects at the inauguration reception, but they did not linger in the parlors. He was surprised when, upon returning home a few evenings later, he was handed a large engraved card inviting Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Douglass to the Executive Mansion.
“He was a robust, manly man,” Douglass said of Cleveland, “one who had the courage to act upon his convictions.... He never failed, while I held office under him, to invite myself and wife to his grand receptions, and we never failed to attend them. Surrounded by distinguished men and women from all parts of the country and by diplomatic representatives from all parts of the world, and under the gaze of late slaveholders, there was nothing in the bearing of Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland toward Mrs. Douglass and myself less cordial and courteous than that extended to the other ladies and gentlemen present.”[31]
Within the course of the next two years Washington and the country recovered some equanimity so far as Douglass was concerned. But it is doubtful if anybody forgot.
Now Douglass decided on the fulfillment of a long-cherished desire. They sailed for Europe.
“Don’t come back until you’ve really seen the world,” Ingersoll urged them. “Take plenty of time. You’ll be richly repaid.”
They stayed away nearly two years. Douglass revisited England and Ireland and Scotland. He missed the people with whom he had worked in the old days, but their children received him royally. The two sisters, Anna and Ellen Richardson, who forty-five years before had written to Thomas Auld offering to buy his “runaway slave,” were still living. Helen kissed their withered cheeks and breathed her thanks. They set up housekeeping in Paris, watched the ships sail from Marseilles, and climbed the old amphitheater in Arles. In Genoa Douglass was drawn, more than to anything else, to Paganini’s violin exhibited in the museum. This was Douglass’ favorite instrument. He had even learned to play it a little.
“We’ll buy a violin while we’re here,” Helen promised. “It won’t be Paganini’s, but we’ll get an instrument.”
“Well, it won’t sound like Paganini’s, either!” Under the Italian sunshine that was enough to make them laugh. Pisa and then Rome, Naples and Pompeii, Sicily.
Then eagerly they turned toward the rising sun—Egypt, the Suez Canal, Libyan deserts, the Nile flowing through Africa.
Douglass’ heart beat fast. Sandy’s face came before him—Sandy and the bit of African dust he had held in his hand so long ago. Perhaps strength had flowed into him from that dust.