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Failed twice. Escaped Maryland at twenty years of age. Became a man of letters. He was here now to convince the people of Britain and Ireland to help crush slavery through peaceful moral persuasion.
    He was well-practiced—he had spent more than three years giving speeches in America—but these were respectable men of God and empire, in a new land altogether. The obligation of distance. The necessity to say precisely what he meant. To clarify without condescending.
    The nerves unbuttoned the length of his spine. His hands grew clammy. His heart hammered. He did not want to pander. Nor did he want to obscure. He was, he knew, not the first black man to land in Ireland to lecture. Remond had been here before him. Equiano, too. The Irish abolitionists were known for their fervor. They came from the land of O’Connell, after all. The Great Liberator. There was, he’d been told, a hunger for justice. They would open themselves to him.
    The guests watched as if a carriage was galloping along, but mightsuddenly overturn in front of their eyes. A bead of sweat rolled down between his shoulder blades. He found himself faltering. He rounded his fist, coughed into it, dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief. He had made himself free, he said, but remained property. Merchandise. Chattel. A commodity in law. At any moment he could be returned to his
master
. The word itself was vicious. He wanted to smash it, ruin it.
Massah
. He could be whipped, his wife defiled, his children bartered. There were still churches in America that supported the system of ownership: an indelible stain on the Christian mind. Even in Massachusetts he was still chased down the street, beaten, spat upon.
    He was there, he said, to raise just a single hat, but eventually that hat would raise the heavens. He would go forth as a slave no more.
    —Bravo, called an elderly man.
    A tentative round of applause rang out. A young cleric rushed forward to shake Douglass’s hand.
    —Hear, hear.
    The approval sallied around the room. The maid in the black dress lowered her eyes to the ground. After tea and biscuits in the living room, Douglass shook hands with the men, politely excused himself. The women were gathered in the library. He knocked at the door, entered cautiously, bent slightly at the waist, bid them good night. He heard them murmuring as he moved away.
    Webb guided him up the curving staircase by the light of a glass-fluted candle. Their shadows spread haphazard against the wainscoting. A washbasin. A writing table. A chamber pot. A bed with a brass frame. He opened his trunk and took out an engraving of his wife and children, set it alongside the bed.
    —It’s an honor to have you in my house, said Webb from the door.
    Douglass leaned across to blow out the candle. He could hardly sleep. The sea was still moving in him.
    IN THE MORNING Webb drove him around in a horse and carriage. He wanted to show him the city. Douglass sat alongside him, up front, on the wooden boards, exposed to the weather.
    Webb was short, thin, narrow, proud. He used the whip judiciously.
    At first, the streets were clean and leisurely. They passed a tall gray church. A row of small neat shops. The canals ran straight and true. The doorways were brightly painted. They doubled back and went into the city, past the university, the Houses of Parliament, along the quays, towards the Customs House. Farther along, the city began to change. The streets narrowed. The potholes deepened. Soon the filth was staggering. Douglass had never seen anything quite like it, even in Boston. Piles of human waste slushed down the gutter. It sloshed its way into fetid puddles. Men lay collapsed by the railings of rooming houses. Women walked in rags, less than rags: as rags. Children ran barefoot. Specimens of ancient ruin glared out of windowsills. Windows were dusty and broken. Rats darted in the alleyways. The carcass of a donkey was left bloated in the courtyard of a tenement. Dogs went forth,