Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Douglass returned to Great Britain with his wife in September 1886, this time as part of a grand tour of Europe and beyond. He reflects on the places he saw and especially the people he met there more than 40 years earlier. These are the melancholy reflections of age, for the “places are there, but the people are gone” (473). Two very notable exceptions were Miss Ellen Richardson and Mrs. Anna Richardson, who once raised money to purchase Douglass’s freedom in America. This brief chapter sets the stage for much lengthier and more detailed recollections in Chapter 9.

Douglass fills this chapter with observations and reflections upon his journey from Paris to Egypt, highlighted by a trip to Rome.

Between Paris and Rome, Douglass and his wife visit Fontainebleau, one-time hunting retreat for kings and nobles; Avignon, “once the scene of pontifical magnificence” (479); Arles, an ancient town boasting an amphitheater reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum; Marseilles, site of the Chateau D’If, made notorious by Alexander Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo; Genoa, known throughout the Western world as Columbus’s birthplace; and Pisa, with its famous learning tower.

The Douglasses arrive in Rome in the middle of the night and unfortunately “landed in the new part of the city” (485), which looks and sounds like any other.