Mar 29, 2018 - Sale 2471

Sale 2471 - Lot 185

Price Realized: $ 37,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
(DOUGLASS, FREDERICK.) Griffiths, Julia and T. Powis. Farewell Song of Frederick Douglass, on Quitting England for America --the Land of his Birth. Lithographed title page and 5 pages of music, bound in a volume with 16 other largely unremarkable songs. Folio, 13 1/4 x 10 inches, contemporary 1/2 calf, quite worn, with detached front board gilt-stamped with name of Francis A. Williams; contents variously worn, Douglass music foxed, partially cropped inscription to Miss Frances Williams on title. London: Duff & Hodgson, [1847]
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Additional Details

This piece was composed upon the departure of Frederick Douglass from his two-year exile in England. The title page features a portrait of the young Douglass by British artist William Behnes (1815-1864). The music was composed by Julia Griffiths, who later followed Douglass to the United States and assisted with his newspaper, the North Star. She also edited "Autographs for Freedom," two collections of anti-slavery pieces, published in 1853 and 1854. Her younger brother Powis wrote the words, which serve as a sort of anti-national anthem. The chorus reads "Farewell to the land of the free / Farewell to the land of the brave / Alas! that my country should be America, land of the slave," and the first of four verses reads "What of the Negro's despis'd and degraded / And scorn and reproach are heap'd on his head / Perish the thought that would leave him unaided / American soil shall be that which I tread."
The song is mentioned in Picturing Frederick Douglass, page 242, and the pose has some resemblance to a circa 1847 daguerreotype (plate 4). The lyrics were also published in a July 1847 issue of the Leicester Mercury, and there may be other copies of the song with music somewhere, but we have been unable to trace any. We trace no complete copies of this song at auction, though Swann did offer a detached title page in our 1 March 2012 sale, which hammered at $7500. We find no copies in OCLC. The 200th birthday of Frederick Douglass is being celebrated this year.