The Black Russian Read online

  Paris in the 1890s was seen worldwide as the capital of modern urban civilization—a place where everyone with any pretense to sophistication or social standing longed to be. Frederick’s life there was the last stage of his basic education in the ways of the world. After Paris, with its museums and theaters, monuments and grand boulevards, cafés and fashionable shops, temples to haute cuisine and raucous vaudeville, there was little any other city in Western Europe could offer Frederick that he had not already seen.

  During the next three years, Frederick traveled extensively, working in different cities for months at a time, and returned to Paris twice. This involved crossing multiple borders, and even though most European countries did not require passports from visitors, an official government document could still be useful as identification; it would also provide a traveler with protection in case he got into any kind of trouble. Frederick applied for his first passport in Paris on March 17, 1896. Among the questions he had to answer was how soon he would return to the United States, and he responded “two years.” However, it is not clear if he meant this or if he simply said whatever he thought would help him keep his options open (American passports had to be renewed every two years). It would not have been in his interest to make the embassy staff suspect that he might have left the United States for good. He also began falsifying his past, something he would continue later as well, by giving Louisville, Kentucky, as his birthplace, and Brooklyn as his permanent place of residence. Perhaps his reasons were that India was still living in Louisville and that not all blacks had been slaves there. Naming Brooklyn might also have forestalled offhand comments from the second secretary at the embassy, with whom Frederick dealt and who, like his father the ambassador, was a southerner.

  After Paris, Frederick went first to Brussels and then to Ostend, a popular Belgian resort on the North Sea. There he worked at the Grand Hôtel Fontaine, which, although not particularly expensive, was recommended by Baedeker’s, a respected tourist guide at the time. Unlike most of the other hotels in Ostend, which closed for the cold season, the Grand Hôtel Fontaine remained open all year. However, Frederick left and went on to the south of France.

  The fall of 1896 is probably when he came to the Riviera for the first time, and this is where his expertise and skills were recognized and rewarded in a remarkable way: he became a headwaiter for the season. His employer was a Monsieur G. Morel, the proprietor of the well-known Hôtel des Anglais in Cannes. The hotel, on the northern edge of town, prided itself on having an admirable southern exposure, a beautiful pleasure garden, and a recherché cuisine and cellar, and on providing luxury, comfort, careful service, a lift, hotel baths, telephone, and entertainments such as tennis and billiards. The position of headwaiter in a large establishment like this that catered to a demanding international clientele carried considerable responsibility. It would also have been coveted by experienced, native French waiters. Frederick’s command of English—even though his English was heavily accented—would have been an asset for the hotel’s restaurant because many tourists from Great Britain came to Cannes. But he could not have gotten the job if he did not have command of idiomatic French, which he would have needed to communicate with the management, the waiters, and the rest of the staff. He would also have needed to develop a good understanding of the psychology and cultures of the different classes and nationalities of Europeans with whom he dealt.

  After the Riviera season was over, in the spring of 1897, Frederick returned to Paris, where he worked as a waiter in the Restaurant Cuba on the avenue des Champs-Élysées. He then made an extensive tour of Germany, crossing the country from west to east, and working for short periods in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Leipzig. This zigzagging itinerary shows that he had not yet found a place that suited him entirely and that he was satisfying his curiosity to see other parts of Europe. Like other waiters in Europe, Frederick would have heard much about the strict discipline and perfect service practiced in German restaurants and hotels and might have been interested in sampling this world. But like others before and after him, Frederick probably discovered quickly that German patrons were very difficult to please. From Germany he returned to Paris, and late in 1897 he turned south once more, this time choosing first Nice and then Monte Carlo, the capital of the famous, diminutive principality of Monaco on the Azure Coast, where he would have a memorable encounter with a white American.

  Drysdale, the reporter making a tour of Europe, arrived in Monaco with an English friend during the first week of February 1898, from Nice and other points farther west on the French coast. Already much impressed by the beauty of the countryside they had seen from the train, with picturesque hills on the left and the azure Mediterranean on the right, he emerged from the Monte Carlo train station only to be struck anew by the remarkable beauty of the town. At the center was the Casino, a grand, elegant, and lavishly decorated concoction of cream-colored stone. It stood on one end of a large square occupying the hill that towered over the area, and that was surrounded by what Drysdale described as a “fairyland of flowers and tropical plants as you may dream of sometimes but seldom see.” The extravagant luxury of Monte Carlo’s appearance, and the gorgeously decorated coaches, drivers, and horses that the town’s twenty-five hotels sent to the station to meet the train and attract guests, overcame Drysdale’s reservations and frugality. He and his friend decided to splurge on the Hôtel de Paris, which belonged to the Casino Company and was, as he admitted, “by many degrees the largest and finest and most expensive in the place.” It also faced the Casino, as it does to this day.

  After being escorted by a regally garbed bellman to his handsome rooms facing the sea, Drysdale was in the process of unpacking and preparing to ask a maid for some hot water, in French, when he heard a voice behind him say: “Reckon I better look aftah dis ’Merican gemman.”

  Without looking up, Drysdale guessed who had arrived at his door and felt a wave of relief. After traveling for months through the famous cities of Europe, he was delighted to encounter a friendly black servant from home, someone with whom he could feel “completely at ease,” as he put it, and to whom he could confide all the small cares and worries associated with travel. The various Dutch, German, Belgian, and French hotel “boys” had been perfectly obliging and attentive. But this young black man was a “colored friend and brother,” someone as familiar as if “you had brought him up from the cradle,” someone who, when compared with the Europeans, was “an electric light beside a flickering candle.”

  Drysdale’s affection for Frederick was genuine, even though it was tainted by an unconscious patriarchal racism. Drysdale had been born in Pennsylvania and lived most of his life in New Jersey while he wrote for newspapers in New York City. Nonetheless, his comments about Frederick betray a nostalgia for a romanticized image of the old antebellum South that began to appear among northerners at the end of the nineteenth century, and that centered on the supposedly chivalrous nobility of the planters and their benevolent relations with contented slaves. Drysdale would also have enjoyed being waited on simply because he was a heavy man, and no longer young at forty-six; indeed, he was to die only three years later. Thus, he found it entirely normal to expect that a black man would be an excellent servant; to think of him as a “boy” even though he was in his mid-twenties; to refer to him as “Sambo,” as an “ebon” or “sunburnt angel,” or as a “dusky brother”; and to record his speech in a way that exaggerated its nonwhite, semiliterate pronunciation (despite the fact that Frederick had probably learned to modulate his native accent when dealing with affluent white clients).

  Drysdale also concealed Frederick’s real name and referred to him as “George.” By doing this, he was consistent with how he concealed the names of others he encountered on his travels, including his English friend, presumably out of consideration for their privacy. Nonetheless, his choice of “George” may also have been dictated by the custom American whites had of referring to black servants by “generic” n
ames that denied them their individuality. A striking example of this was porters on Pullman trains, all of whom were black and many of whom were former slaves hired after the Civil War. Passengers called every one of them “George” no matter what their names may have been, and did so automatically and “in honor” of the businessman George M. Pullman, who employed them.

  Drysdale was of course curious about Frederick’s origins and began to quiz him. “I comes from Kaintucky, Sah,” was the reply (Frederick continued to misrepresent his origins). “Been on dis side de watah bout fo’ yeahs, Sah.”

  And why had he come to Europe? “To see the worl’, Sah.”

  Part of Drysdale’s sense of relief when Frederick appeared came from not having to struggle with French any longer. Instead of “de l’eau chaud,” all he had to say now was “bring me a jug of hot water.” By contrast, Frederick spoke French fluently and explained that he had learned it while living in Paris for about three years. He had come to the French Riviera several months earlier for additional language study—except that now he wanted to learn Italian. To his disappointment, he found what little was spoken in Nice to be corrupted with French and Provençal, the old language of the region, so that he had moved to Monaco instead. The Italian there proved to be badly flawed as well, prompting him to make plans to leave for Milan in a few weeks.

  Drysdale had the opportunity to verify Frederick’s ability to speak French on several occasions and was much impressed by how good it actually was. Especially surprising was the cultural transformation that it captured. Although Drysdale said that he found Frederick’s “bluegrass dialect” more musical than the band playing in Monte Carlo’s public park, he also thought that the “negro dialect” Frederick spoke had such a coercive hold on him that he would never be able to speak “real English.” It was therefore a genuine shock for Drysdale to find that Frederick’s black southern accent did not affect his French at all—either when he spoke with Drysdale himself or when he spoke with Frenchmen fresh from Paris.

  Sounds that it seems impossible for him to make clearly in English he makes without difficulty in French. And the effect is very curious in talking with him in both languages. He has had good teachers and speaks excellent Parisian French one minute, and the next minute he says to me in cottonfield English: “Dem boots wet; dey’s not done gwinter shine, Sah.”

  By contrast, Drysdale ruefully acknowledged that his own French was “naturally bad.” In keeping with the practices of the time, it is likely that Frederick’s language studies in Paris consisted less of classroom instruction than of walking and riding around the city in the company of an experienced teacher and repeatedly imitating both the practical, everyday expressions he used and his accompanying manner and gestures.

  The elegance of Frederick’s French was echoed by his worldly manner, which Drysdale described as dignified, gentlemanly, and altogether fine. Frederick was also physically striking. He was a bit taller than average at five feet nine, and good-looking, with rich brown skin and generously proportioned features: high cheekbones, large oval eyes, a prominent nose, and a wide mouth that was quick to break into a captivating smile. He also liked to dress stylishly. Everything about Frederick said that he had transformed himself into a genuine cosmopolitan, one who felt free to travel around Europe as his fancy moved him, and without any concerns about being able to find suitable employment whenever he wanted it.

  After helping Drysdale settle in, and brushing and cleaning his clothes in a way that “no valet in the world can do as well as Sambo when he chooses,” Frederick went to get the hotel register in which all guests were obligated by local law to write their names, home addresses, and occupations. The police checked the registers every day and guests were supposed to make their entries accurately. But Drysdale blithely dismissed this requirement and told Frederick not to bother him with such details and to register him under any name and occupation that he chose.

  Frederick was entirely willing to play with Drysdale’s biography, as he did with his own when it suited him. Frederick’s years of successfully serving clients in half a dozen countries on two continents had made him into an excellent actor and judge of character. He had also gotten to know human nature too well to take entirely seriously all the moral pieties that laws and social norms were meant to reflect. Instead of putting his trust in abstract principles, Frederick invested in private relations; and he could be very generous with his affections.

  Taking the black-covered book to a mantelpiece in the room, Frederick began to write in it with an expression that Drysdale characterized as showing “that he was going through a severe mental struggle,” an implausible description that says more about Drysdale’s racially inflected projections than about what proved to be Frederick’s adroit and ironic flattery. Asking “wheder dat’ll do, Sah,” Frederick handed the book to Drysdale, who sheepishly realized that the valet had “rather turned the tables” on him. He had registered him as “Hon. G. W. Ingram, residence Washington, occupation United States Senator, last stopping place Paris, intended stay in Monaco two weeks, intended destination Cairo, Egypt.”

  To his discomfort, Drysdale realized that he would have to backpedal because “such false pretenses might lead to awkward complications”; moreover, he would have to find some way to retreat gracefully after saying that he did not care what Frederick wrote about him.

  “Has my friend registered yet?” he asked.

  “No, Sah… I’se jest goin’ to his room now, Sah.”

  “Very well, then,” Drysdale told Frederick. “You need not trouble him. This description you have written will answer for him very nicely, and I will put my own name and ‘pedigree’ beneath.”

  Thus it was that Drysdale’s young English friend received what Drysdale, with his rather cumbersome wit, chose to characterize as “the greatest honor of his life”—being transformed “for the moment into an American and a Senator.”

  Like any valet or waiter, Frederick would have wanted to ingratiate himself with his patrons by assuming a deferential mien and manner, both because the job demanded it and because his income from tips depended on it. However, in his subsequent encounters with Drysdale, who spent about a month at the Hôtel de Paris before resuming his leisurely journey along the Mediterranean coast, we also get glimpses of Frederick’s poised self-confidence and of his mastery of local cultural norms, which he understood far better than his patron.

  Frederick’s assurance and sophistication belied the primitivized portrait captured in Drysdale’s articles. When Frederick saw Drysdale and the Englishman crossing the hotel lobby toward the door on the first evening after their arrival, he hastened to intervene to forestall a possible social gaffe.

  “’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.”
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  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.