They talked gravely about the situation in America, about Garrison, Chapman, the presidency of Polk, the prospect of secession.
There was something encyclopedic about O’Connell, yet Douglass could sense in the great man a hidden exhaustion. As if the very questions he carried were too heavy to hold and they had eased their way into his flesh, lodged themselves in his body, bound him down.
He felt O’Connell’s arm upon his and he could hear the labored breathing in the silence between steps. A thin man stalked the far side of the garden, tapping at a timepiece that hung down from his waistcoat.
O’Connell sent the man away, but Douglass thought he recognized, for the first time ever, the small defeat of fame.
It is said that history is on the side of reason, but this outcome is by no means guaranteed. Obviously, the suffering of the past will never fully be redeemed by a future of universal happiness, if indeed such a thing is obtainable. The evil of slavery is a constant ineradicable reality, but slavery itself shall be banished! The truth cannot be deferred. The moment of truth is now!
THE CARRIAGE WAS ready: it was October, time to bring his lecture tour south. His clothes were brushed. His writing papers were wrapped in oilskin. Webb had the servants feed and water the horses. Douglass bent down to pick up the traveling trunk himself. New books, new clothes, his barbells.
— What in the world have you got in here? asked Webb.
— Books.
— Let me, said Webb.
Douglass grabbed for the trunk himself.
— Looks rather heavy, Old Boy.
He tried to fake ease. He could feel a hard pull of muscle along his back. He saw Webb smirk ever so slightly. Webb called for the driver, John Creely. He was a small man, sparely built, with the emaciated face of a serious drinker. Together the three men lifted the trunk high onto the ledge at the back of the carriage, tied it with rope.
Douglass wished he had not brought his barbells. A rash decision. He feared that Webb would deem him vain.
In their familiarity, they had developed a dislike for each other. There was a bombast to Webb, thought Douglass. He was intolerant, easy to offend, devout to righteousness. He had been annoyed when he got the bill from the tailor. He had taken the cost of the waistcoat out of Douglass’s earnings for his books. A stinginess to him. He felt Webb watching him much of the time, waiting for him to stumble. He was afraid that he might become a specimen. Pinned. Observed. Dissected. Douglass hated to be called Old Boy. It brought him back to fields, to whips, to spiked anklets, to barnfights. And there was the money — Webb was collecting it to donate it to the cause back in America. Each night he asked Douglass if he had received any private donations. It rankled him. He emptied his pockets with exaggerated formality, yanked the cloth tongues out, shook them.
— See, he said, just a poor slave.
Still, Douglass was not unaware of his own shortcomings. He found himself curt at times, quick to judge, imprudent. He needed to learn tolerance. He was aware that Webb didn’t want financial gain, and it was true that Webb seemed apologetic for the slightly rancorous tone he sometimes took with the black man.
They tightened the rope on the trunk. The servants came out to bid him good-bye. Lily blushed a little when he came to shake her hand. She whispered that it had been an extraordinary honor to meet him. She hoped one day that she would meet him again.
He heard a cough behind him.
— Only so much light left in the day, Old Boy, said Webb.
He shook their hands one more time. The servants had never seen anything like it from a guest before. They remained watching until the carriage disappeared beyond the college, down the length of Great Brunswick Street.
THERE WERE RUMORS of a potato blight, but the land outside the city seemed healthy, green, robust. Near Greystones they stopped on a hill to watch the magnificent play of light on the last of Dublin Bay. There were rainbows in the distance, iridescent over the dulse-strewn strand.
WEBB AND HE took turns sitting up on the boards, up front with Creely. The land was stunning. The hedges in bloom. The gallop of streams. When it rained they sat in the carriage, opposite each other, reading. Occasionally they leaned across to tap one another on the knee, read a passage aloud. Douglass was rereading the speeches of O’Connell. He was amazed by the agility of the mind. The nod towards the universal. He wondered if he would get another chance to meet the man, to spend proper time with him, to apprentice his own ideas with the Great Liberator.
The carriage bounced along rutted roads. It was only slightly faster than a stagecoach or jaunting car. Douglass was surprised to learn that there were as yet no railroads south of Wicklow.
The afternoons spread in a great rush of yellow across the hills. Shutters in the sky, opening and closing suddenly. A swinging brightness and then a darkness again. There was some raw innocence about the land.
When he sat up front, on the boards, crowds came out of their houses just to look at him. They clapped his shoulder, shook his hand, blessed him with the sign of the cross. They tried to tell him stories of landlords, of absentees, of English atrocities, of loved ones far away, but Webb was impatient to get along, they had a schedule to keep, lectures to give.
Small children ran after the carriage, often for a mile down the road, until they seemed to seep down, brittle, into the landscape.
WICKLOW, ARKLOW, ENNISCORTHY: he charted the names in his diary. It struck him that there truly was a suggestion of hunger over the land. In the boardinghouses at night the owners apologized for the lack of potato.
IN WEXFORD HE stood on the top stairway of the Assembly Hall. He was hidden from view, but he could see down the staircase to the next floor where a table was set up; his poster on the wall, rippling in a small breeze.
It was the local gentry who came to see him. They were finely dressed, curious, patient. They sat quietly in their chairs, removed their scarves, and waited for him. His words stirred them—Hear hear! they shouted, Bravo! — and after his speech they made out promissory notes, said they would organize bazaars, fetes, cake sales, send the money across the Atlantic.
But when Douglass stepped out into the street he felt a sharpness move along his skin. The streets were thronged with the poor Irish, the Catholics. An energy of doom to them. There was talk of Repeal Rooms, clandestine debates. Houses being burned. Whenever he moved amongst them he was disturbed and thrilled both. The papists were given to laughter, revelry, high sadness, their own clichés. A street performer danced in the bell-tipped lappets of a clown’s outfit. Children went along the street hawking ballad sheets. Women sparked clay pipes. He wanted to stop in the streets and deliver an impromptu word, but his hosts moved him along. When he glanced back over his shoulder, he felt he was looking into a ditch that was only half-dug.
He was driven down a long laneway of majestic oak trees towards a huge mansion. Candles in the windows. Servants in white gloves. He had begun to notice that he was surrounded mostly by English accents. Magistrates. Landlords. They were melodic and well informed, but when he asked of the hunger that he had seen in the streets they said there was always a hunger in Ireland. She was a country that liked to be hurt. The Irish heaped coals of fire upon their own heads. They were unable to extinguish the fire. They were dependent, as always, on others. They had no notions of self-reliance. They burned and then poured the empty buckets down upon themselves. It had always been so.