“’Scuse me, Sah… but was you goin’ over to de Casiner, Sah?”
“No,” I told him, “not to-night. We are going over to the café.”
“Oh, I begs your parding, Sah,” said he.
“I was only going to say dat dey don’t admit no one to de Casiner in de evenin’ ’cept in evenin’ dress, Sah, an I thought it might be onpresumpterous for you to go to de door an’ not be able to git in. It’s all right in de daytime, Sah; but in de evenin’ dey requires evenin’ dress. ’Scuse me, Sah.”
On another occasion, Frederick was able to explain to Drysdale and the Englishman how one gained entry to the Casino, which was off-limits to the local Monegasques: “You has to apply in persing fer de ticket, Sah…. But it ain’t no trouble ’tall, Sah. All you has to do is to walk in de do’, an’ dey’ll spot you in a minute an’ put you on de right track. Dey has won’ful sharp eyes, Sah.” To be sure, this is a minor comment about a routine event, but it is also an observation made by a man with an eye for detail, a job well done.
Frederick was unusually blunt about his own abilities in comparison with those of his coworkers, especially the native Monegasques. “Dey has to bring in all dere hotel waiters, Sah,” he explains to Drysdale at one point; “dese native dagoes don’t know nothing.”
Frederick’s sense of ease and self-assurance would only have been bolstered by the personal freedom and social acceptance he found in old Europe. His impression that he was better than his fellows at what they all did for a living could have goaded him to seek advancement as well. Indeed, part of Frederick’s reason for moving from country to country and job to job was probably that, in addition to satisfying his curiosity, he was searching for a place where he could put down roots and build a career.
Frederick left Monte Carlo for Italy around mid-March 1898. During the next year, he continued his exploration of Europe and, heading this time in a generally eastward direction, toward Russia, traveled to five new cities—Milan, Venice, Trieste, Vienna, and Budapest. Everywhere he went he followed the same pattern and worked in hotels or restaurants for periods of a few weeks to a few months, or presumably just long enough to have a look around and to earn enough money for the next leg of his trip. Frederick’s ability to find such work in different cities suggests that he had good letters of reference from previous employers as well as a winning way of presenting himself, which was its own best recommendation.
It was in the spring of 1899 that Frederick first got the idea of going to Russia. Although details are scanty, he appears to have been employed as a valet by a rich Russian, perhaps a nobleman, perhaps of very high rank, who planned to take him to St. Petersburg. He may even have accompanied a grand duke (this was the title given to the sons and grandsons of Russian tsars) who had met him in Monte Carlo and took a liking to him. But entering Russia, unlike the six countries in Western and central Europe through which Frederick had traveled thus far, was not routine. The authoritarian Russian Empire required passports. Moreover, no one could enter the country without also having his passport visaed by a Russian official abroad, something that was not entirely automatic. Frederick began the process of securing all the necessary documents in Budapest, and he completed his passport renewal on May 20, 1899.
In his passport application, Frederick listed his occupation as “waiter” and indicated that he was planning to return to the United States within one year. For this passport—in contrast to his Paris application—he gave his home address as Chicago. His disregard for accuracy suggests that whatever he said was simply a way to forestall suspicions that he might have expatriated himself. The only difference in Frederick’s physical description is that he now had a “black moustache” instead of being clean-shaven; he would eventually let it grow to an impressive width. Nothing in the application suggested that Frederick was going to Russia with intentions different from those that had led him to crisscross Europe; in fact, he noted that after visiting Russia he planned to return to France.
Armed with his new passport, Frederick was able to get his required second visa from the Russian consulate in Budapest. However, a visit like this required a brief interview that would have made any black American’s head spin. Unlike most of their counterparts in the United States diplomatic service, the Russian staff would not have cared that Frederick had black skin. If anything, his appearance might have awakened their curiosity because people of African descent were rare in Russia. But their lack of concern over race would have been replaced by a different bias that Frederick had not seen manifested elsewhere in Europe in quite as virulent a form—anti-Semitism. Official Russian government regulations required a consular officer to ascertain if an applicant for a visa was Jewish or not. The purpose of this regulation was to restrict the entry of Jews into Russia and to limit their freedom of movement if they were admitted.
In Frederick’s case, the matter would have been settled easily. But it is hard to believe that he would not have been struck by the question implying that Jews were, in a sense, the “Negroes” of Russia. He could not have been ignorant of anti-Semitism in Europe during the years he had been there, especially in France, where the notorious “Dreyfus affair”—the prosecution of a Jewish officer in the French army on trumped-up charges—raged from 1894 to 1899. But there is a difference between an outburst of hatred that received some popular support and contravened the laws of the land—as was the situation in France—and a system of official Russian laws and widespread public sentiment that recalled the Jim Crow South.
The comparison can be taken only so far. The Jewish population of Russia had never been enslaved. This is something that Russians had reserved for their own Christian peasants, who were liberated only in 1861, just two years before American blacks were emancipated. Also, the Russians liberated their serfs peacefully, by government decree, and without the horrific bloodshed of the American Civil War. Nevertheless, by applying for a Russian visa, Frederick was for the first time seeking to enter a country where his sense of belonging would be very different from what he had experienced in Europe thus far. In contrast to the other countries where he had been accepted more or less like anyone else, in Russia he would explicitly not be a member of a despised and oppressed minority. A black American would have felt this distinction with greater poignancy than most whites of any nationality.
3: Nothing Above Moscow
Crossing the border of the Russian Empire was unlike anything that Frederick had experienced before. Foreigners were suspect, and having their passports visaed abroad was just the beginning. Western European trains could not run on the more widely spaced Russian tracks, which Russia had adopted in part to thwart an enemy’s ability to utilize railroads during an invasion. As a result, all passengers arriving at the frontier had to transfer to Russian trains for the trip farther east. But the stop also gave uniformed officials time to examine travelers’ passports in detail and to search their luggage thoroughly, a process that could sometimes take several hours. Hapless individuals whose papers were not in order were sent back on the same train that had brought them.
The government’s oversight did not end at the border. In every place he stayed, Frederick would have to show his passport to the police, although the hotelkeeper or landlord would usually do this for him. Also, a visitor who had completed his trip to Russia could not just pack up and get on a train; he would have to report his intention to the police and get a certificate from his district superintendent that he had done nothing to prevent his departure. In Frederick’s case, because he would stay in Russia longer than the usual six-month term provided by a visa, he would have to deposit his American passport with the government passport office in exchange for a residence permit that he would then need to renew once a year.