William Drysdale, a well-known American reporter making a grand tour of Europe—and who would soon have a memorable encounter with Frederick in Monte Carlo—wrote that
no American negro who reaches London goes away again if he can help it. Here his color does not militate against him in the least, but rather the contrary, because it is something of a novelty. He is received in the best hotels, if his pocket is full enough, in the lodging houses, in the clubs; he can buy the best seats in the theaters, ride in the hansoms—do anything, in short, that he could do if he had the fair skin and rosy cheeks of a London housemaid. He is more of a man here than he can well be at home, because there is no prejudice against him.
Drysdale approved of the way the English treated American blacks. He had also heard numerous lectures from Londoners about the barbarism of lynchings in the South and the general inhumanity of American whites toward blacks. But he got to know the English well enough not to be taken in entirely by their morally superior attitudes. He pointed out that their criticism of American failings
would have more force if one did not find out in a short time the particular brand of darky that the Englishman despises most thoroughly and heartily, and that is the East Indian darky. The low-caste Hindu is a beast in his estimation; a creature to lie outside on the mat, and be kicked and cuffed and fed on rice.
“So we all have our little failings,” he concluded wryly.
After arriving in London, Frederick applied for admission to a school that he remembered as the “Conservatory of Music.” He must have had very little money after paying for the voyage across the Atlantic, because he hoped that he could make arrangements to pay for his tuition and living expenses by working for the school. However, his application was refused. Were it not for the descriptions of how American blacks were treated in London in the 1890s, one might have thought that Frederick was rejected on racial grounds. It was more likely that the school was unwilling to take on a student who wanted to work his way through the program. Or perhaps he was judged to lack sufficient talent, as is suggested by the fact that he did not attempt again to study music in England or in continental Europe. Given the kind of adventurer he had become, he could have tried to enroll elsewhere at a later time if he believed in his own abilities.
He next tried to start his own boardinghouse in Leicester Square. He thus not only shrugged off his failure at the music school but also tried a new way to put down roots in a city that he found attractive. This was, moreover, an endeavor that capitalized on all the experience he had acquired in Chicago and Brooklyn. But whom could Frederick approach in London to borrow the money that he would have needed?
The answer may in fact have been entirely elsewhere. On February 8, 1895, India, who was working as a cook in Louisville, Kentucky, mortgaged the family land in Coahoma County for a two-month loan of $2,000 at an exorbitant interest rate. How she came to be in possession of the land after everything that had happened and why she did this are unknown, but it could have been to get Frederick the money that he needed for his venture in London or to make ends meet as he was trying to set it up. The timing is plausible.
In any event, Frederick overreached himself in London. The plan for the boardinghouse failed, and he had to take a step back into the occupations that he knew best. He first worked in a German restaurant that he remembered as being called “Tube,” and then in a “Mrs. James’ Boarding House.” Shortly thereafter, perhaps in pursuit of a better job, or because of wanderlust, or both, Frederick left England for France.
Frederick’s arrival in Paris can be dated closely. He must have gotten there shortly before July 12, 1895, the day he received a letter of introduction from the American ambassador to France, J. B. Eustis, addressed to the Paris prefect, or chief, of police. Writing in French and using the standard phrases for a letter of this type, the ambassador expressed the hope that the prefect would welcome “Mr. Frederick Bruce Thomas,” who was residing at 23 rue Brey, when he presented himself to be registered. Among the duties of the office of the prefect was making note of foreigners who planned to live in the city.
The distance across the English Channel between Dover and Calais, which was the port of entry for boat trains to Paris, is only thirty miles, and the thrice-daily ferries in 1895 could cover it in less than two hours. Nevertheless, Frederick’s move to France would in some ways be a bigger dislocation than his move to England. However strange the pronunciation and idioms in Great Britain might have sounded to an American at first, the language was still the same, especially for someone whose ears had gotten used to regional variations as different as those of the Deep South, the Midwest, and Brooklyn. But throughout much of the rest of the world in the 1890s, and well into the beginning of the twentieth century, French was the second language of business, government, and culture. A monolingual American arriving in a foreign locale would find few English-speakers outside the major tourist hotels. To live and work in France, or anywhere else on the Continent, Frederick would have to learn French without delay. He had the right temperament to do so: his willingness to leave a familiar world in order to seek new experiences indicates that he was sufficiently confident and extroverted to be a good language student.
Frederick’s need to learn French was especially urgent because his job was once again that of butler or valet, which would require him to communicate quickly and easily with his employers, or, if these were English-speaking, with people outside the household, such as shopkeepers and tradesmen. Judging by the addresses he gave in several documents, his employers were well off: all the addresses are elegant buildings that have survived to this day and are located in fashionable districts of Paris near the Arch of Triumph.
France, like England, was accepting of blacks. In fact, the attitude toward blacks in Paris at this time was even more liberal than in London. The reaction of James Weldon Johnson, a black American writer, composer, and intellectual who first arrived in Paris in 1905, conveys what Frederick may have also felt:
From the day I set foot in France, I became aware of the working of a miracle within me. I became aware of a quick readjustment to life and to environment. I recaptured for the first time since childhood the sense of being just a human being…. I was suddenly free; free from a sense of impending discomfort, insecurity, danger; free from conflict within the Man-Negro dualism and the innumerable maneuvers in thought and behavior that it compels; free from the problem of the many obvious or subtle adjustments to a multitude of bans and taboos; free from special scorn, special tolerance, special condescension, special commiseration; free to be merely a man.
The relative rarity of blacks in Paris made someone like Frederick an appealing object of curiosity and enhanced his chances of being employed. Because the French were far less conscious of class differences than their staid English neighbors, it is likely that he would have found working in Paris more congenial than working in London. In the streets and in the city’s shops, servants were greeted politely as “Mademoiselle” or “Monsieur” even by strangers who knew their actual status. A valet’s wages and hours would also have been better than a waiter’s.