TransAtlantic

by Colum McCann

  IN RATHFARNHAM HE thundered forth. He talked of woman-whippers, man-stealers, cradle-plunderers. Of fleshmongers and swine-drovers. Of sober drunkards, thievers of men. Of limitless indifference, fanatic hatred, thirsty evil. He was in Ireland, he said, to advance universal emancipation, to exact the standard of public morality, to hasten the day of freedom for his three million enslaved brethren. Three million, he said. He held his hands up, as if he cupped every single one of them there, in his palms. We have been despised and maligned long enough. Treated worse than the lowest of low animals. Shackled, burned, branded. Enough of this murderous traffic in blood and bone. Hear the doleful wail of the slave markets. Listen to the clanking chains. Hear them, he said. Come close. Listen. Three million voices!

  After his speech, the Gentleman Usher from Dublin Castle took a hold of his arm and breathed whiskey and amazement into his ear. He had never heard such a speech, such fine words put together. For any man to speak in such a way! It was profound, he said, insightful, weighty beyond anything he had experienced before.

  —You’re a credit to your race, sir. An absolute credit.

  —Is that so?

  —And you did not go to school, sir?

  —No. I did not.

  —And you took no formal lessons?

  —No.

  —And if you’ll forgive me …

  —Yes?

  —How do you possibly explain such eloquence?

  A hard knot cramped Douglass’s chest.

  —Such eloquence?

  —Yes? How is it …

  —You’ll excuse me?

  —Sir?

  —I have to run away.

  Douglass crossed the room, his shoes clicking loudly on the wooden floor, a smile breaking out as he went.

  IN THE AFTERNOONS he caught sight of Lily when she cleaned the upstairs of the house. Just seventeen years old. Her sandy-colored hair. Her eyes ledged with freckles.

  He closed his door, sat to write. He could still see her shape. On the stairs he allowed her to pass. A whiff of tobacco came from her. The world was made ordinary again. He walked quickly down to the drawing room where he sat to read the literary journals to which Webb subscribed, the reams of books, the journals. He could lose himself in them.

  Lily’s footsteps sounded above him. He was glad when they ceased. He went back upstairs to write. His room had been made spotless and the barbells remained undisturbed.

  IN THE BANK on College Green they sent instructions back to Boston to lodge 225 pounds sterling in the accounts of the American Anti-Slavery Society. It amounted to 1,850 dollars. Douglass and Webb emerged in their crisp woolen coats and white linen shirts. There were gulls out over Dublin: as numerous as beggars. In the back of the chanting crowd he saw the young boy with the raw red welts along his neck and face. Hey, Mr. Douglass! the boy screamed, Mr. Douglass, sir!

  He was sure, as the carriage turned the corner by the university, that the boy volleyed out his first name.

  HE HEARD IN the newspapers that O’Connell was due to speak to a giant crowd along the Dublin docks. The tribune of the people. Ireland’s truest son. He had spent his life agitating for Catholic emancipation and parliamentary rule, and had written on abolition, too. Brilliant essays, fervent, impassioned. O’Connell had adventured his life for proper freedom, was known for his speeches, his letters, his rule of law.

  Douglass canceled a tea in Sandymount to get there on time. He arrived along the teeming docks. He could not believe the size of the crowd: as if the whole sponge of Dublin had been squeezed down into a sink. Such a riot of human cutlery. The police herded the crowds along. He lost Webb and pushed his way through, made his way to the stage as O’Connell emerged. The Great Liberator looked portly, tired, out of sorts: he had apparently been so since his release from jail. Still, a giant roar went up. Men and women of Ireland! The din was extraordinary. O’Connell held a speaking trumpet, and when he spoke into it the words shot up out of him, huge, fearsome, brimming. It astounded Douglass, the logic, the rhetoric, the humor.

  O’Connell held the crowd in the well of his outstretched arms. He swayed forth. Slowed down. Pivoted on his heels. Paced the stage. Adjusted his wig. Allowed silences. The speech was relayed by others who stood on tall ladders and passed the word along the dockside.

  —Repeal is Erin’s right and God’s decree!

  —Withersoever we turn, England has reduced our nation to bondage!

  —The employment of force is not our object!

  —Associate, agitate, stand by me!

  The hats went up in the reeking air. The cheers stepping in rhythm along the crowd. Douglass stood, transfixed.

  Afterwards, a huge mob surrounded the Irishman. Douglass forced his way through, excused himself past dozens of pairs of shoulders. O’Connell looked up, knew immediately who he was. They shook hands.

  —An honor, said O’Connell.

  Douglass was taken aback.

  —Mine alone, he said.

  O’Connell’s hand was pulled away. There was so much Douglass wanted to speak of: repeal, pacifism, the position of the Irish clergy in America, the philosophy of agitation. He reached forward to grasp the Irishman’s hand again, but there were already too many bodies between them. He felt himself pushed back, jostled. A man shouted in his ear about temperance. Another wanted his signature for a petition. A woman curtsied in front of him: a smell of filth rolled off her. He turned away. His name rang out at all angles. He felt as if he were spinning in eddies. O’Connell was being guided down off the stage.

  When Douglass turned again, Webb had his arm, said they had an appointment in Abbey Street.

  —Just a moment.

  —I’m afraid we must go, Frederick.

  —But I must talk with him—

  —There’ll be more chances, I assure you.

  —But—

  Douglass caught eyes with O’Connell. They nodded to each other. He watched the Irishman move away. Slumping within his bright green coat. Wiping his handkerchief on his brow. His wig shifting slightly on his head. A slight sadness there. But to have that command, thought Douglass. That charm. That energy. To be able to possess the stage in such an extraordinary way. To stir justice without violence. The way the words seem to enter the very marrow of the people who still hung around the dockside, bits of refuse floating on the water.

  TWO DAYS LATER, in Conciliation Hall, O’Connell brought him on stage and he thrust Douglass’s hand in the air: Here, he said, the black O’Connell! Douglass watched the hats go up into the rafters.

  —Irishmen and Irishwomen …

  He looked out over the tip heap. All muck and adulation. Thank you, he said, for the honor of allowing me to speak with you. He held out his hands and calmed the crowd and spoke to them of slavery and commerce and hypocrisy and the necessity of abolition.

  An energy to him. A fire. He heard the ripple of his words move through the crowd.

  —If you cast one glance upon a single man, he said, you shall cast a glance upon all humanity. A wrong done to one man is a wrong done to all. No power can imprison what is good and right. Abolition shall become the natural thought of the world!

  He paced the stage. Tightened his jacket. It was a different crowd than any he had seen before. A low rumbling amongst them. He allowed a silence. Then punched up his sentences. Stretched his body towards them. Sought their eyes. Still, he could feel a distance. It troubled him. A bead of moisture lay at the base of his throat.

  A shout came up from the rear of the hall. What about England? Would he not denounce England? Wasn’t England the slave master anyway? Was there not wage slavery? Were there not the chains of financial oppression? Was there not an underground railroad that every Irishman would gladly board to get away from the tyranny of England?

  A policeman moved into the back of the crowd, the pointed helmet disappearing. The heckler was soon quieted.

  Douglass allowed a long silence: I believe in Erin’s cause, he said. A wave of nodding
heads crested below him. He had to be judicious, he knew. There were newspaper reporters scribbling down every word. It would lead back to Britain and America. He paused. He lifted his hand. Turned it slightly in the air.

  —What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, he said, yet having its people in shackles? It is etched into the book of fate that freedom shall be universally delivered. The cause of humanity is one the world over.

  A relief poured through him when the crowd applauded. O’Connell walked on stage and raised his hand in the air once more. The black O’Connell! he said again. Douglass took a bow and glanced down to see Webb near the front row, chewing the stem of his eyeglasses.

  AT DINNER ON Dawson Street he sat alongside the Lord Mayor, but leaned his chair back so he could talk with O’Connell.

  Later that evening they strolled together in the garden of the Mansion House, moving solemnly among the pruned winter rosebushes. O’Connell hunched over slightly, with his hands clasped behind his back. He wished, he said, that he could be of more direct help to Douglass and his people. It burdened him terribly to hear that there were many Irishmen among the slave owners in the South. Cowards. Traitors. A discredit to their very heritage. He would not let their shadow fall upon him. They brought a poison with them, a shame on their nation. Their churches should be shunned. They had taken an oath of false supremacy.

  He took Douglass by the shoulders. He had killed a man once, O’Connell said. In a duel in Kildare. Over a point of Catholic pride. Shot him in the stomach. Left a widow behind, a child. It haunted him still. He would not kill again, but he would still die for his true belief: a man could only be free if he lived in the cause of liberty.

  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 Repe
al 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.

  The conversation swerved. They engaged him on matters of democracy, ownership, natural order, Christian imperative. Wine was served on a large silver tray. He politely declined. He wanted to know more about the rumors of underground forces. Some of the faces around him smarted. Perhaps he could be told more of Catholic emancipation? Had they read O’Connell’s fervent denunciations? Was it true that Irish harpists once had their fingernails plucked so they could not play the catgut? Why had the Irish been deprived of their language? Where were the votaries of the poor?

  Webb took him out onto the verandah by the elbow and said: But Frederick, you cannot bite the hand that feeds.

  The stars collandered the Wexford night. He knew Webb was right. There would always have to be an alignment. There were so many sides to every horizon. He could only choose one. No single mind could hold it all at once. Truth, justice, reality, contradiction. Misunderstandings could arise. He had one cause only. He must cleave to it.