Send you away? No, Lowell, no. That phrase, indeed, is scarce well chosen. We're glad, of course, to have you go More like a brother than a cousin; True, we must "speed the parting guest," If such a guest from us must sever; But what we all should like the best Would be to keep you here forever.

You've won our hearts; your words, your ways, Are what we like. Without desiring To sicken you with fulsome praise, We think you've seen no signs of tiring. Of graceful speech, of pleasant lore, How much to you the English mind owes! We're sad to think we'll see no more Of you—save through your Study Windows.

Well, well, the best of friends must part; That's commonplace, like Gray, but true, sir. Commend us to the Yankee heart; If you can come again, why, do, sir. What Biglow calls our "English sarse," Is not all tarts and bitters, is it? Farewell!—if from us you must pass, But try, do try, another visit!

After his return from England, Mr. Lowell did comparatively little literary work. Some years before this, he had married the lady who was educating his only daughter. He now spent the most of his time at Elmwood among his books and in the society of his friends. In 1888 a volume of his later poems appeared, bearing the title of "Heartsease and Rue." About the same time "Democracy," a collection of the addresses which he had delivered in England, was published. But neither of these volumes added materially to his fame.

On the twelfth of August, 1891, the famous poet, essayist, and man of affairs died. He was nearly seventy-three years of age.

* * * * *

[NOTE.—The thanks of the publishers are due Messrs. Harper & Brothers for permission to use extracts from "Letters of James Russell Lowell, edited by Charles Eliot Norton," and to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for permission to use extracts from the Poetical Works of Lowell.]



THE STORY OF BAYARD TAYLOR



BAYARD TAYLOR



CHAPTER I

HIS BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD

Bayard Taylor was born in the country village of Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania, Jan. 11, 1825, "the year when the first locomotive successfully performed its trial trip. I am, therefore," he says, "just as old as the railroad." He was descended from Robert Taylor, a rich Friend, or Quaker, who had come to Pennsylvania with William Penn in 1681, and settled near Brandywine Creek. Bayard's grandfather married a Lutheran of pure German blood, and on that account was expelled from the Society of Friends, which at that time had very strict rules regarding the marriage of its members. Although the family still used the peculiar speech of the Quakers, and clung to the Quaker principles of peace and order, none of them ever returned to the society.

When Bayard was four years old, the family moved to a farm about a mile from the village. There they lived, until, years afterward, the successful traveler and poet bought an estate near by and built a magnificent house upon it, into which he received his father and mother and brothers and sisters, with that open-hearted generosity and hospitality which was so much a part of his nature.

He was the fourth child of his parents; but the three older children had died in infancy, and he remained as the eldest of the family.

Chester County, Pennsylvania, has always been a rich farming region, peopled by solid, well-to-do farmers, many of whom are Quakers. Here the northern elms toss their arms to the southern cypresses, as the poet has it; the two climates seem to meet and mingle, in a sort of calm, neutral zone, and the vegetation of the North is united with the vegetation of the South, to produce a peculiar richness and variety.

In such surroundings the boy grew up, a farmer's lad, and learned that love of nature which was a part of his being till the day he died. "The child," says he, "that has tumbled into a newly plowed furrow never forgets the smell of the fresh earth.... Almost my first recollection is of a swamp, into which I went barelegged at morning, and out of which I came, when driven by hunger, with long stockings of black mud, and a mask of the same. If the child was missed from the house, the first thing that suggested itself was to climb upon a mound which overlooked the swamp. Somewhere among the tufts of rushes and the bladed leaves of the calamus, a little brown ball was sure to be seen moving, now dipping out of sight, now rising again, like a bit of drift on the rippling green. It was my head. The treasures I there collected were black terrapins with orange spots, baby frogs the size of a chestnut, thrush's eggs, and stems of purple phlox."

He loved his home with a passionate intensity; but he also had yearnings for the unknown world beyond the horizon. "I remember," says he, "as distinctly as if it were yesterday the first time this passion was gratified. Looking out of the garret window, on a bright May morning, I discovered a row of slats which had been nailed over the shingles for the convenience of the carpenters in roofing the house, and had not been removed. Here was, at least, a chance to reach the comb of the steep roof, and take my first look abroad into the world! Not without some trepidation I ventured out, and was soon seated astride of the sharp ridge. Unknown forests, new fields and houses, appeared to my triumphant view. The prospect, though it did not extend more than four miles in any direction, was boundless. Away in the northwest, glimmering through the trees, was a white object, probably the front of a distant barn; but I shouted to the astonished servant girl, who had just discovered me from the garden below, 'I see the Falls of Niagara!'"

He was a sensitive child and had a horror of dirty hands, "and," says he, "my first employments—picking stones and weeding corn—were rather a torture to this superfine taste." In his mother, however, he had a friend who understood and protected him. So his life on the farm was as happy as it well could be, in spite of its roughness. He himself has described it with a zest which no one else could lend it. "Almost every field had its walnut tree, melons were planted among the corn, and the meadow which lay between never exhausted its store of wonders. Besides, there were eggs to hide at Easter; cherries and strawberries in May; fruit all summer; fishing parties by torchlight; lobelia and sumac to be gathered, dried and sold for pocket money; and in the fall, chestnuts, persimmons, wild grapes, cider, and the grand butchering after frost came, so that all the pleasures I knew were incidental to a farmer's life. The books I read came from the village library, and the task of helping to 'fodder' on the dark winter evenings was lightened by the anticipation of sitting down to 'Gibbon's Rome' or 'Thaddeus of Warsaw' afterwards."

He was fond of reading, and especially fond of poetry, and his wife in her biography says: "In the evening after he had gone to bed, his mother would hear him repeating poem after poem to his brother, who slept in the same room with him."



CHAPTER II

SCHOOL LIFE

Bayard had the advantage of regular attendance at the country schools near his father's home, with two or three years at the local academy; but his father could not afford to send him to college. He enjoyed his school life, and in after years wrote to one of his early Quaker teachers thus:

"I have never forgotten the days I spent in the little log schoolhouse and the chestnut grove behind it, and I have always thought that some of the poetry I then copied from thy manuscript books has kept an influence over all my life since. There was one verse in particular which has cheered and encouraged me a thousand times when prospects seemed rather gloomy. It ran thus:

'O, why should we seek to anticipate sorrow By throwing the flowers of the present away, And gathering the dark-rolling, cloudy to-morrow To darken the generous sun of to-day?'

Thou seest I have good reason to remember those old times, and to be grateful to thee for encouraging instead of checking the first developments of my mind."

You may easily guess from this letter that Bayard's school life was very sedate and Quakerish. Nearly all the people in Kennett Square were Quakers, and though Bayard's father and mother were not, they had all the Quaker habits. Among other things, he was taught the wickedness of all kinds of swearing. His mother "talked so earnestly on this point that his mind became full of it; his observation and imagination were centered upon oaths, until at last he was so fascinated that he became filled with an uncontrollable desire to swear. So he went out into a field, beyond hearing, and there delivered himself of all the oaths he had ever heard or could invent, and in as loud a voice as possible." After this he felt quite satisfied to swear no more.

When Bayard was about twelve years old, his father was elected sheriff of the county and went to live at West Chester for three years. The young lad was sent to Bolmar's Academy at that place; and when the family went back to the farm he was sent to the academy at Unionville, three or four miles from his home. Here, at the age of sixteen, he finished his regular schooling. During the last two years he studied Latin and French, and during the last year Spanish. His Latin and French he continued by private study for three years longer.

He now went back to work on the farm for a season, and, as he says, "first felt the delight and refreshment of labor in the open air. I was then able to take the plow handle, and I still remember the pride I felt when my furrows were pronounced even and well turned. Although it was already decided that I should not make farming the business of my life, I thrust into my plans a slender wedge of hope that I might one day own a bit of ground, for the luxury of having, if not the profit of cultivating, it. The aroma of the sweet soil had tinctured my blood; the black mud of the swamp still stuck to my feet."

After a few weeks of farm life he was apprenticed to a printer in West Chester for a term of four years.



CHAPTER III

HIS FIRST POEM

It is the will and the spirit that makes every life seem happy or the reverse. If Bayard Taylor had remained a farmer in Kennett Square all his life, he would not have looked back on his early experiences with so much pleasure as he did. Indeed, we may safely say that he would not have liked his life so well at the time had it not been for his buoyant and hopeful nature, which made him feel that he was destined for higher and better things, for a world beyond the horizon.

Already he was a poet, with all a poet's aspirations and eagerness. A year before he left the academy his first printed poem appeared in the Saturday Evening Post of Philadelphia. It is not wonderful as poetry. Yet we read it with interest, because it shows so plainly the earnest and ambitious, yet cheerful, nature of the boy. He did not merely sit and hope; he was determined to win his way. It is entitled, "Soliloquy of a Young Poet."

A dream!—a fleeting dream! Childhood has passed, with all its joy and song, And my life's frail bark on youth's impetuous stream Is swiftly borne along.

High hopes spring up within; Hopes of the future—thoughts of glory—fame, Which prompt my mind to toil, and bid me win That dream—a deathless name.

* * * * *

I know it all is vain, That earthly honors ever must decay, That all the laurels bought by toil and pain Must pass with earth away.

But still my spirit high, Longing for fame won by the immortal mind— On fancy's pinion fain would scale the sky, And leave dull earth behind.

Yes, I would write my name With the star's burning ray on heaven's broad scroll, That I might still the restless thirst for fame Which fills my soul.

Bayard Taylor was not a great genius, and he did not succeed in winning quite all of that high fame for which he struggled throughout his life. He never expected to have earth's blessings showered upon him without working for them; and the fact that he failed somewhat in his highest ambition—to be a far-famed poet—makes his life seem nearer to our own. We call him a great man because he did well what came to him to do, working hard all his life. In this we can all follow his example.



CHAPTER IV

SELF-EDUCATION AND AMBITION

"The Village Record" (to the proprietor of which Bayard was apprenticed) was printed upon an old-fashioned hand press, and it was the business of the apprentices to set the type, help make up the paper, pull the forms, and send the weekly issues off to the subscribers.

The mechanical work was soon learned, and the young apprentice found considerable time for reading. He now began that work of self-education which he carried on through his whole life. Already, before he left the academy, he had become acquainted with the works of Charles Dickens, and had secured the great man's autograph. "I went to the Academy," says he, "where I received a letter that had come on Saturday. It was from Hartford; I knew instantly it was from Dickens. It was double, and sealed neatly with a seal bearing the initials C.D. In the inside was a sheet of satin notepaper, on which was written, 'Faithfully yours, Charles Dickens, City Hotel, Hartford, Feb. 10, 1842'; and below, 'with the compliments of Mr. Dickens.' I can long recollect the thrill of pleasure I experienced on seeing the autograph of one whose writings I so ardently admired, and to whom, in spirit, I felt myself attached; and it was not without a feeling of ambition that I looked upon it that as he, a humble clerk, had risen to be the guest of a mighty nation, so I, a humble pedagogue [he was then pupil teacher at the Academy], might by unremitted and arduous intellectual and moral exertion become a light, a star, among the names of my country. May it be!"

When he went to work at West Chester his reading was chiefly poetry and travel. The result of his "fireside travels" we shall soon see. The way in which he read poetry may be gathered from the following extract from a letter to one of his comrades:

"By the way, what do you think of Bryant as a poet, and especially of 'Thanatopsis? For my part, my admiration knows no bounds. There is an all-pervading love of nature, a calm and quiet but still deep sense of everything beautiful. And then the high and lofty feeling which mingles with the whole! It seems to me when I read his poetry that our hearts are united, and that I can feel every throb of his answered back by mine. This is what makes a poet immortal. There are but few who make me feel so thrillingly their glowing thoughts as Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell (all Americans, you know), and these I love. It is strange, the sway a master mind has over those who have felt his power."

Another poet of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer was Tennyson. He had read a criticism by Poe. "I still remember," he wrote afterward, "the eagerness with which as a boy of seventeen, after reading his paper, I sought for the volume; and I remember also the strange sense of mental dazzle and bewilderment I experienced on the first perusal of it. I can only compare it to the first sight of a sunlit landscape through a prism; every object has a rainbow outline. One is fascinated to look again and again, though the eyes ache."

He contributed several poems to the Saturday Evening Post, and then wrote to Rufus W. Griswold, who, besides being connected with the Post, was the editor of Graham's Magazine, the leading literary periodical at that time. Those of us who know the life of Poe remember Griswold as the man who pretended to be his friend, but who after Poe's death wrote his life, filling it with all the scandalous falsehoods he could hear of or invent. To Bayard Taylor, however, he seems to have been a helpful friend.

"I have met with strange things since I wrote last," writes Taylor to a school friend in March, 1843. "Last November I wrote to Mr. Griswold, sending a poem to be inserted in the Post. However, I said that it was my highest ambition to appear in Grahams Magazine. Some time ago I got an answer. He said he had read my lines 'To the Brandywine,' which appeared in the Post, with much pleasure, and would have put them in the magazine if he had seen them in time. He said the poem I sent him would appear in April in the magazine, and requested me to contribute often and to call on him when I came to town. I never was more surprised in my life."

He went to Philadelphia the next autumn, and consulted Griswold regarding a poetic romance he had written—about a thousand lines in length—and Griswold advised him to publish it in a volume with other poems. He wrote to a friend to inquire how much the printing and binding would cost, and finding that the expense would not be very great, he concluded to ask his friends to subscribe for the volume. When he had received enough subscriptions to pay the cost of publication, he brought the volume out. It was entitled "Ximena; or, The Battle of the Sierra Morena, and Other Poems. By James Bayard Taylor." (The James was added by mistake by Griswold.) It was dedicated "To Rufus W. Griswold, as an expression of gratitude for the kind encouragement he has shown the author."

The poems contained in this volume were never republished in after years. The book was fairly successful, and was distinctly a step upward; but it did not fill the young writer with undue conceit. In writing to a friend of his ambition at this time, he says: "It is useless to deny that I have cherished hopes of occupying at some future day a respectable station among our country's poets. I believe all poets are possessed in a greater or less degree of ambition; it is inseparable from the nature of poetry. And though I may be mistaken, I think this ambition is never given without a mind of sufficient power to sustain it, and to achieve its lofty object. Although I am desirous of the world's honors, yet with all the sincerity I possess I declare that my highest hope is to do good; to raise the hopes of the desponding; to soothe the sorrows of the afflicted. I believe that poetry owns as its true sphere the happiness of mankind."

What could be nobler and more sensible than that! Even his earliest poetry has in it no false, slipshod sentiment. Its subject is nature and heroic incident, and is indeed a faithful attempt to carry out the aim so well stated above. Some have doubted whether Bayard Taylor really had the power which he says he thinks is given to all who have the ambition which he felt. But none can fail to admire the spirit in which he worked, and to feel satisfied with the results, whatever they may be.



CHAPTER V

A TRAVELER AT NINETEEN

It was not as a poet, however, that Bayard Taylor was to win his first fame. At the age of nineteen, when he had but half completed his four years' term of apprenticeship, he made up his mind to go to Europe. He had no money; but that did not appear to him an insurmountable obstacle. He thought he could work his way by writing letters for the newspapers. So he went up to Philadelphia and visited all the editors. For three days he went about; but all in vain. The editors gave him little encouragement. He was on the point of going home, but with no thought of giving up his project.

At last two different editors offered him each fifty dollars in advance for twelve letters, and the proprietor of Graham's Magazine paid him forty dollars for some poems. So he went back to Kennett Square the jubilant possessor of a hundred and forty dollars.

He succeeded in buying his release from the articles of apprenticeship, and immediately prepared to set out on foot for New York, where he and two others were to take ship for England. That was the beginning of a career of travel which lasted many years, and brought him both fame and money.

In a delightful essay on "The First Journey I Ever Made," he says that while other great travelers have felt in childhood an inborn propensity to go out into the world to see the regions beyond, he had the intensest desire to climb upward—so that without shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the practical form of wishing to climb a mountain. By great economy he saved up fifteen dollars, and with a companion who had twenty-seven dollars (enormous wealth!) he set out for a walking tour to the Catskills, with the hope of going even so far as the Connecticut valley.

No doubt the feelings he experienced in setting out on that excursion, at the end of his first year as an apprentice, would apply equally well to the greater journey he was to attempt a year later.

"The steamboat from Philadelphia deposited me at Bordentown, on the forenoon of a warm, clear day. I buckled on my knapsack, inquired the road to Amboy, and struck off, resolutely, with the feelings of an explorer on the threshold of great discoveries. The sun shone brightly, the woods were green, and the meadows were gay with phlox and buttercups. Walking was the natural impulse of the muscles; and the glorious visions which the next few days would unfold to me, drew me onward with a powerful fascination. Thus, mile after mile went by; and early in the afternoon I reached Hightstown, very hot and hungry, and a little footsore. Twenty-five cents only had been expended thus far—and was I now to dine for half a dollar? The thought was banished as rapidly as it came, and six cakes, of remarkable toughness and heaviness, put an effectual stop to any further promptings of appetite that day.

"The miles now became longer, and the rosy color of my anticipations faded a little. The sandy level of the country fatigued my eyes; the only novel objects I had yet discovered were the sweep-poles of the wells....The hot afternoon was drawing to a close, and I was wearily looking out for Spotswood, when a little incident occurred, the memory of which has ever since been as refreshing to me as the act in itself was at the time.

"I stopped to get a drink from a well in front of a neat little farmhouse. While I was awkwardly preparing to let down the bucket, a kind, sweet voice suddenly said: 'Let me do it for you.' I looked up, and saw before me a girl of sixteen, with blue eyes, wavy auburn hair, and slender form—not strikingly handsome, but with a shy, pretty face, which blushed the least bit in the world, as she met my gaze.

"Without waiting for my answer, she seized the pole and soon drew up the dripping bucket, which she placed upon the curb. 'I will get you a glass,' she then said, and darted into the house—reappearing presently with a tumbler in one hand and a plate of crisp tea-cakes in the other. She stood beside me while I drank, and then extended the plate with a gesture more inviting than any words would have been. I had had enough of cake for one day; but I took one, nevertheless, and put a second in my pocket, at her kind persuasion.

"This was the first of many kindnesses which I have experienced from strangers all over the wide world; and there are few, if any, which I shall remember longer.

"At sunset I had walked about twenty-two miles, and had taken to the railroad track by way of change, when I came upon a freight train, which had stopped on account of some slight accident.

"'Where are you going?' inquired the engineer.

"'To Amboy.'

"'Take you there for a quarter!'

"It was too tempting; so I climbed upon the tender and rested my weary legs, while the pines and drifted sands flew by us an hour or more— and I had crossed New Jersey!"

This little description may be taken as a type of the way in which he traveled and the way in which he described his travels—a way that almost immediately made him famous, and caused the public to call for volume after volume from his pen.



CHAPTER VI

TWO YEARS IN EUROPE FOR FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS

A journey to Europe was not the common thing in those days that it has since become, and no American had then thought of tramping over historic scenes with little or no money. So this journey, projected and carried out by Bayard Taylor, was really an original and daring undertaking. It was all the more remarkable from the fact that the people of the community where he had been born and brought up had scarcely ever gone farther from their homesteads than Philadelphia.

In New York he visited all the editors with an introduction from Nathaniel P. Willis; but none of them gave him any encouragement, except Horace Greeley, the famous editor of the Tribune. Here is Bayard Taylor's own description of the interview: "When I first called upon this gentleman, whose friendship it is now my pride to claim, he addressed me with that honest bluntness which is habitual to him: 'I am sick of descriptive letters, and will have no more of them. But I should like some sketches of German life and society, after you have been there and know something about it. If the letters are good, you shall be paid for them, but don't write until you know something.' This I faithfully promised, and kept my promise so well that I am afraid the eighteen letters which I afterward sent from Germany, and which were published in the Tribune, were dull in proportion as they were wise."

The journey was indeed to Taylor a serious thing. "It did not and does not seem like a pleasure excursion," he writes; "it is a duty, a necessity."

On the 1st of July, 1844, Taylor and his two companions embarked on the ship "Oxford," bound for Liverpool. They had taken a second-cabin passage, the second cabin being a small place amidships, flanked with bales of cotton and fitted with temporary and rough planks. They paid ten dollars each for the passage, but were obliged to find their own bedding and provisions. These latter the ship's cook would prepare for them for a small compensation. All expenses included, they found they could reach Liverpool for twenty-four dollars apiece.

At last they were actually afloat. "As the blue hills of Neversink faded away, and sank with the sun behind the ocean, and I felt the first swells of the Atlantic," he writes, "and the premonitions of seasickness, my heart failed me for the first and last time. The irrevocable step was taken; there was no possibility of retreat, and a vague sense of doubt and alarm possessed me. Had I known anything of the world, this feeling would have been more than momentary; but to my ignorance and enthusiasm all things seemed possible, and the thoughtless and happy confidence of youth soon returned."

The experiences of the next two years he has also told briefly and tersely. "After landing in Liverpool," he says, "I spent three weeks in a walk through Scotland and the north of England, and then traveled through Belgium, and up the Rhine to Heidelberg, where I arrived in September, 1844. The winter of 1844-45 I spent in Frankfurt on the Main [in the family in which N.P. Willis's brother Richard was boarding], and by May I was so good a German that I was often not suspected of being a foreigner. I started off again on foot, a knapsack on my back, and visited the Brocken, Leipsic, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich, returning to Frankfurt in July. A further walk over the Alps and through Northern Italy took me to Florence, where I spent four months learning Italian. Thence I wandered, still on foot, to Rome and Civita Vecchia, where I bought a ticket as deck-passenger to Marseilles, and then tramped on to Paris through the cold winter rains. I arrived there in February, 1846, and returned to America after a stay of three months in Paris and London. I had been abroad two years, and had supported myself entirely during the whole time by my literary correspondence. The remuneration which I received was in all $500, and only by continual economy and occasional self-denial was I able to carry out my plan. I saw almost nothing of intelligent European society; my wanderings led me among the common people. But literature and art were nevertheless open to me, and a new day had dawned in my life."



CHAPTER VII

THE HARDSHIP OF TRAMP TRAVEL

Making a journey without money, without knowing the language of the people, and without any experience in travel is not at all the sort of thing it seems to one who has not gone through its toils, but only sees the glow and glamour of success. We cannot pass on without giving some of the details of commonplace hardship which Bayard Taylor endured on this first European journey.

Taylor knew a little book French, but neither he nor either of his companions could speak it or understand it when spoken, and they knew nothing at all of German. When they reached Frankfurt they tried to inquire the way to the house of the American consul. At first they were not at all able to make themselves understood; but finally they found a man who could speak a little French and who told them that the consul resided in "Bellevue" street. It was in reality "Shone Aussicht," which is the German for beautiful view, as Bellevue is the French. But the young travelers knew nothing of this. They went in search of "Bellevue" street, and though they wandered over the greater part of the town and suburbs, they did not find it. At last they decided to try all the streets which had a beautiful view, and in this way soon found the consul's house.

Not only did they have very little money in any case, but they were frequently obliged to wait months for remittances. While in Italy, Taylor's funds ran so low, and he became so discouraged, that he gave up going to Greece, as he had at first planned. He was expecting a draft for a hundred dollars; but that would barely pay his debts. "My clothes," he writes to one of his companions, "are as bad as yours were when you got to Heidelberg, nearly dropping from me; and I cannot get them mended. What is worse, they must last till I get to Paris." Later he speaks of spending three dollars for a pair of trousers, as those he wore would not hold together any longer. In despair, he exclaims, "It is really a horrible condition. If there ever were any young men who made the tour of Europe under such difficulties and embarrassments as we, I should like to see them."

But all this only urged him to greater efforts. "I tell you what, Frank," he writes almost in his next letter, "I am getting a real rage in me to carve out my own fortune, and not a poor one, either. Sometimes I almost desire that difficulties should be thrown in my way, for the sake of the additional strength gained in surmounting them."

These words were written from Italy; but yet harder things were in store for him. "I reached London for the second time about the middle of March, 1846," he writes in his paper on "A Young Author's Life in London," "after a dismal walk through Normandy and a stormy passage across the Channel. I stood upon London Bridge, in the raw mist and the falling twilight, with a franc and a half in my pocket, and deliberated what I should do. Weak from sea-sickness, hungry, chilled, and without a single acquaintance in the great city, my situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive. Successful authors in their libraries, sitting in cushioned chairs and dipping their pens into silver inkstands, may write about money with a beautiful scorn, and chant the praise of Poverty—the 'good goddess of Poverty,' as George Sand, making 50,000 francs a year, enthusiastically terms her;—but there is no condition in which the Real is so utterly at variance with the Ideal, as to be actually out of money, and hungry, with nothing to pawn and no friend to borrow from. Have you ever known it, my friend? If not, I could wish that you might have the experience for twenty-four hours, only once in your life."

On this occasion Bayard Taylor went to a chop-house where he could get a wretched bed for a shilling. The next morning he took a sixpenny breakfast, and started out to look for work. By good fortune he met Putnam, the American publisher, who lent him a sovereign (five dollars) and gave him work that would enable him to earn his living until he could get money from America for his return passage.



CHAPTER VIII

HIS FIRST LOVE AND GREATEST SORROW

At the very first school which Bayard Taylor attended there was a little Quaker girl who would whisper with a blush to her teacher, "May I sit beside Bayard?" Her name was Mary Agnew. As schoolmates and neighbors the two children grew up together; and in time Bayard began to confide to his diary his dream of happiness with her. Toward this object, all his thoughts and plans were gradually directed.

Mary Agnew's father did not countenance this neighbor lover, however, and when Bayard set out for Europe he was not allowed to write to her. He sent messages through his mother, and occasionally heard from the young girl in the same way. On his return, however, he grew more bold, and soon became openly engaged to her. The romance is a sadly beautiful one; for this fair girl who was his inspiration during the years of his hardest struggles, finally fell into a decline and died just as he was beginning to earn the money that would have made them happy together.

"I remember him," says a neighbor, speaking of the two at this time, "as a bright, blushing, diffident youth, just entering manhood; and with him I always associate that gentle and beautiful girl, with matchless eyes, who inspired many of his early lyrics, and whose death filled the nest of love with snow."

Mary Agnew reminds us of Poe's beautiful Virginia Clemm, his "Annabel Lee." Grace Greenwood wrote of her as "a dark-eyed young girl with the rose yet unblighted on cheek and lip, with soft brown, wavy hair, which, when blown by the wind, looked like the hair oft given to angels by the old masters, producing a sort of halo-like effect about a lovely head."

And Taylor at this time was evidently her match in looks as well as spirit. A German friend describes him thus: "He was a tall, slender, blooming young man, the very image of youthful beauty and purity. His intellectual head was surrounded by dark hair; the glance of his eyes was so modest, and yet so clear and lucid, that you seemed to look right into his heart."

On his return from Europe, young Taylor found that his letters to the newspapers had attracted some attention, perhaps largely owing to the fact that one who was almost a boy had made the journey on foot, with little or no money. At the same time he had told his story in a simple, straightforward way, which proved him to be a good reporter. Friends advised him to gather the letters into a volume, which he did under the title, "Views Afoot; or Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff." Within a year six editions were sold, and the sale continued large for a number of years.

Yet this success, quick as it was, did not solve all his difficulties at once. He was anxious to earn a good living as soon as possible, that he might marry Mary Agnew. After looking the field over, he and a friend bought a weekly paper published in Phoenixville, a lively manufacturing town in the same county as his home. This, with the aid of his friend, he edited and managed for a year. He not only failed to make money, but accumulated debts which he was three years in paying off. At the same time he found that he could no longer endure a narrow country life. He tried to give his paper a literary tone; but the people did not want a literary paper. They cared more for local news and gossip, which he hated.

The old ambition and aspiration to be and to do something really worth doing was still uppermost with him. In a letter to Mary Agnew he says: "Sometimes I feel as if there were a Providence watching over me, and as if an unseen and uncontrollable hand guided my actions. I have often dim, vague forebodings that an eventful destiny is in store for me; that I have vast duties yet to accomplish, and a wider sphere of action than that which I now occupy. These thoughts may be vain; they spring only from the ceaseless impulses of an upward-aspiring spirit; but if they are real, and to be fulfilled, I shall the more need thy love and the gladness of thy dear presence."

He wrote to his friends in New York about getting work there, but they did not encourage him much. Horace Greeley bluntly advised him to stay where he was. The editor of the Literary World, however, offered him employment at five dollars a week. He thereupon sold out his interest in his country paper at a loss, and went to try his fortunes in New York. Before he had been there many weeks, Horace Greeley offered him a position on the Tribune at twelve dollars a week. The connection thus begun lasted for the rest of his life. It was as the Tribunes correspondent that he traveled all over the world. He was soon able to buy stock in the Tribune company, and this was the foundation of his future fortune.

He had many literary and other distinguished friends in New York. And during these first few years he worked very hard indeed, hoping soon to earn enough money to provide for Mary Agnew. In 1850, after three years in New York, he was able to set the date of their marriage. But it was postponed from time to time on account of her illness. At last he knew that she could never be well again; yet in any case he wished the marriage ceremony performed. They were accordingly married October 24, 1850; and two months later she was dead.



CHAPTER IX

"THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAVELER"

It had been Bayard Taylor's boyhood ambition to become a great poet; but it seemed as if fate meant him for a great traveler. He was sorry that this was so: yet he was fond of travel, and never refused any opportunity to visit other lands. In 1849, when the California gold fever was at its height, he was sent by the Tribune to the Pacific Coast.

"I went," he says, "by way of the Isthmus of Panama—the route had just been opened—reached San Francisco in August, and spent five months in the midst of the rough, half-savage life of a new country. I lived almost entirely in the open air, sleeping on the ground with my saddle for a pillow, and sharing the hardships of the gold diggers, without taking part in their labors."

On his return he gathered his letters into a volume entitled "Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire: comprising a voyage to California, via Panama; Life in San Francisco and Monterey; Pictures of the Gold Region, and Experiences of Mexican Travel."

He now began to feel the strength and confidence of success; his brain was seething with new ideas, and he felt as if he could do that which would realize the destiny of which he had dreamed. But sorrow was already at his door. His hopes were for the time broken and thrown back by the death of Mary Agnew.

In the summer of 1851 he found himself worn out and depressed. His health was shattered and his mind was overpowered. But a change and rest were at hand. The editors of the Tribune suggested his going to Egypt and the Holy Land. In the autumn he set out, and spent the winter in ascending the Nile to Khartoum. He even went up the White Nile to the country of the Shillooks, a region then scarcely known to white men.

Bayard Taylor fancied that he had two natures, one a southern nature and one a northern nature. Of course the northern nature was his regular and ordinary one. In one of his later journeys, when he had entered Spain from France and was sitting down to a breakfast of red mullet and oranges fresh from the trees, "straightway," he says, "I took off my northern nature as a garment, folded it and packed it neatly away in my knapsack, and took out in its stead the light, beribboned and bespangled southern nature, which I had not worn for eight or nine years."

He donned this southern nature for the first time on his trip to California by way of Panama. Horace Greeley especially commended his letter from Panama. But it was during his journey in Egypt that he became most saturated with the south, and composed his "Poems of the Orient"—perhaps the best he ever wrote. He had not been in Alexandria a day and a half before he wrote to his mother that he had never known such a delicious climate. "The very air is a luxury to breathe," he said. "I am going to don the red cap and sash," he wrote from Cairo, "and sport a saber at my side. To-day I had my hair all cut within a quarter of an inch of the skin, and when I look in the glass I see a strange individual. Think of me as having no hair, a long beard, and a copper-colored face." So much like a native did he become that when he entered the bank in Constantinople for his letters and money, they addressed him in Turkish.

He made the journey up the Nile on a boat with a wealthy German landowner, a Mr. Bufleb, who became to him like a brother, though he was nearly twice the age of Taylor. Some years later the young man married Mrs. Bufleb's niece.

When he reached Constantinople he received a letter from the managers of the Tribune suggesting that he go across Asia to Hong-Kong, China, and join the expedition of Commodore Perry to Japan. As the expedition would not reach Hong-Kong for some months, however, he had time to visit his German friend and go on to London. From London he returned through Spain and went by way of the Suez, Bombay, and Calcutta to China, stopping on the way to view the Himalayas.

Commodore Perry made the young journalist "master's mate," and gave him a place on the flagship. This was necessary, because no one not a member of the navy was allowed to accompany the expedition.

There is not space to detail the wonderful sights he saw or the interesting experiences he had. He reached New York, December 20, 1853, after an absence of more than two years, and found that in his absence he had become almost famous. His letters in the Tribune had been read all over the country, and everybody wanted to know more of the "great American traveler."

He at once prepared for the press three books. They were "A Journey to Central Africa; or, Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the Nile "; "The Land of the Saracens; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain"; and "A Visit to India, China, and Japan in the Year 1853."

He had hundreds of calls to lecture; and thereafter for several years he made lecturing his principal business. From his books and his lectures he received large sums of money, so that before he was thirty he had accumulated a modest fortune.

In 1856 Bayard Taylor took his two sisters and his youngest brother to Europe. He left them in Germany, while he himself carried out a plan long in his mind, of visiting northern Sweden and Lapland in winter. The following summer he visited Norway, and later published the results of these journeys in "Northern Travel."

While in Germany, after his trip to Sweden, he became engaged to Marie Hansen, daughter of Prof. Peter A. Hansen, the noted astronomer and founder of Erfurt Observatory. They were married in the following autumn, October 27, 1857.

He now hurried home with his wife and prepared to build a house and lay out the country estate which he called Cedarcroft. The land had belonged to one of his ancestors, and he was very proud of his fine country house; but he found it a rather expensive enjoyment.



CHAPTER X

HIS POETRY

We have seen how in youth Bayard Taylor conceived the ambition to be known as one of his country's great poets. He saw his books of travel sell by the hundred thousand; but while this brought him money and notoriety, he clung still to his poetry. He even felt annoyed when he heard himself spoken of as "the great American traveler" instead of the great American poet. The truth is, he had not been able to give to poetry the time or energy he could have wished; and he afterwards worked with desperate energy to recover those lost poetic opportunities.

Yet in his busiest days he was always writing verses, which in the minds of excellent judges are the best he ever did. From time to time he published volumes of poetry, and with certain of his intimate friends he always maintained himself on the footing of a poet.

We remember the publication of his first volume, entitled "Ximena," which he never cared to reprint in his collected works. During his first European trip he wrote a great deal. Some of his shorter poems he afterwards published under the title "Rhymes of Travel." The fate of a longer poem we must hear in his own words.

"I had in my knapsack," he says, "a manuscript poem of some twelve hundred lines, called 'The Liberated Titan,'—the idea of which I fancied to be something entirely new in literature. Perhaps it was. I did not doubt for a moment that any London publisher would gladly accept it, and I imagined that its appearance would create not a little sensation. Mr. Murray gave the poem to his literary adviser, who kept it about a month, and then returned it with a polite message. I was advised to try Moxon; but, by this time, I had sobered down considerably, and did not wish to risk a second rejection.

"I therefore solaced myself by reading the immortal poem at night, in my bare chamber, looking occasionally down into the graveyard, and thinking of mute, inglorious Miltons.

"The curious reader may ask how I escaped the catastrophe of publishing the poem at last. That is a piece of good fortune for which I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford. We were fellow-passengers on board the same ship to America, a few weeks later, and I had sufficient confidence in his taste to show him the poem. His verdict was charitable; but he asserted that no poem of that length should be given to the world before it had received the most thorough study and finish—and exacted from me a promise not to publish it within a year. At the end of that time I renewed the promise to myself for a thousand years."

Of other poems written at that time he thought better. In the preface to his volume he says of them,—"They are faithful records of my feelings at the time, often noted down hastily by the wayside, and aspiring to no higher place than the memory of some pilgrim who may, under like circumstances, look upon the same scenes. An ivy leaf from a tower where a hero of old history may have dwelt, or the simplest weed growing over the dust that once held a great soul, is reverently kept for memories it inherited through the chance fortune of the wind-sown seed; and I would fain hope that these rhymes may bear with them a like simple claim to reception, from those who have given me their company through the story of my wanderings."

Soon after he went to New York he began a series of Californian ballads, which were published anonymously in the Literary World, and attracted considerable attention. They appeared before he had made his trip to California; but while on that trip he wrote still others. At the same time he began several more ambitious poems, among them "Hylas," and just before he set out for Egypt he had another volume of poems ready for the press. It was entitled "A Book of Romances, Lyrics and Songs," and was published in Boston just after he set out on his Eastern journey. But while his volumes of travel sold edition after edition his volumes of verse scarcely paid expenses.

The previous year, however,—1850,—he had had a bit of success which caused him no end of annoyance. Jenny Lind had been brought to America to sing, and her manager had offered a prize of $200 for the best song that might be written for her. "Bayard Taylor came to me one afternoon early in September," says Mr. R.H. Stoddard, "and confided to me the fact that he was to be declared the winner of this perilous prize, and that he foresaw a row. They will say it was given to me because Putnam, who is my publisher, is one of the committee, and because Ripley, who is my associate on the Tribune, is another.'"

Mr. Stoddard kindly suggested to him that if he feared the results, he might substitute his (Stoddard's) name for the real one, and take the money while Stoddard got the abuse. He did not choose to do this, however, and the indignation of the seven or eight hundred disappointed contributors was unbounded. Taylor bore their abuse well enough, but he was heartily ashamed of the reputation which the poem brought him.



CHAPTER XI

"POEMS OF THE ORIENT"

During the months he spent in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, Bayard Taylor wrote his "Poems of the Orient," of which Mr. Stoddard says, "I thought, and I think so still when I read these spirited and picturesque poems, that Bayard Taylor had captured the poetic secret of the East as no English-writing poet but Byron had. He knew the East as no one can possibly know it from books."

Certainly these poems of the East have a haunting ring that can never be forgotten. What more stirring than this Bedouin love song!

From the desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind

In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand, And the midnight hears my cry: I love thee, I love but thee, With a love that shall not die, Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!

Or what more grand and affectionate than this from "Hassan to his Mare":

Come, my beauty! come, my desert darling! On my shoulder lay thy glossy head! Fear not, though the barley-sack be empty, Here's the half of Hassan's scanty bread.

Thou shalt have thy share of dates, my beauty! And thou know'st my water-skin is free; Drink and welcome, for the wells are distant, And my strength and safety lie in thee.

Bend thy forehead now, to take my kisses! Lift in love thy dark and splendid eye: Thou art glad when Hassan mounts the saddle,— Thou art proud he owns thee: so am I.

Let the Sultan bring his boasted horses, Prancing with their diamond-studded reins; They, my darling, shall not match thy fleetness When they course with thee the desert plains!

Let the Sultan bring his famous horses, Let him bring his golden swords to me,— Bring his slaves, his eunuchs, and his harem; He would offer them in vain for thee.

We have seen Damascus, O my beauty! And the splendor of the Pashas there: What's their pomp and riches? Why, I would not Take them for a handful of thy hair!

Another stirring poem of the East is "Tyre."

The wild and windy morning is lit with lurid fire; The thundering surf of ocean beats on the rocks of Tyre,— Beats on the fallen columns and round the headlands roars, And hurls its foamy volume along the hollow shores, And calls with hungry clamor, that speaks its long desire: "Where are the ships of Tarshish, the mighty ships of Tyre?"

In his "L'Envoi" at the end of these poems, Bayard Taylor gives us a hint of his meaning when he spoke of his "southern nature" as distinguished from his "northern nature."

I found, among those Children of the Sun, The cipher of my nature,—the release Of baffled powers, which else had never won That free fulfillment, whose reward is peace.

For not to any race or any clime Is the complete sphere of life revealed; He who would make his own that round sublime, Must pitch his tent on many a distant field.

Upon his home a dawning lustre beams, But through the world he walks to open day, Gathering from every land the prismal gleams, Which, when united, form the perfect ray.



CHAPTER XII

BAYARD TAYLOR'S FRIENDSHIPS

A biography of Bayard Taylor would not be complete without some account of his friendships. He was always on the best of terms with all living beings, and this subtle attraction of his nature was an important part of his greatness.

In "Views Afoot" he tells of a charming little incident which is enough in itself to make us love the man. It occurred in Florence, Italy, where he was a stranger, a foreigner; and this makes the incident in itself seem the more wonderful. "I know of nothing," he writes, "that has given me a more sweet and tender delight than the greeting of a little child, who, leaving his noisy playmates, ran across the street to me, and taking my hand, which he could barely clasp in both his soft little ones, looked up in my face with an expression so winning and affectionate that I loved him at once."

We recall the girl with the tea-cakes whom he met on his first journey while tramping across New Jersey. There was also something of human love and fellowship in his familiarity with wild animals in Egypt. In a free, joyous letter to his betrothed, Mary Agnew, he tells a curious incident of a similar kind, which occurred while he was editing the paper at Phoenixville. "On Sunday," says he, "I took [Schiller's] 'Don Carlos' with me in our boat, and rowed myself out of sight of the village into the solitude of the autumn woods. The sky was blue and bright as that of Eden, and the bright trees waved over me like gorgeous banners from the hilltops. I sat on a sunny slope and read for hours; it was a rare enjoyment! As I moved to rise I found a snake, which had crept up to me for warmth, and was coiled up quietly under my arm. I was somewhat startled, but the reptile slid noiselessly away, and I could not harm it."

A pretty story is told of Taylor by one who called on him when he was on one of his lecture tours. He was a stranger in the house of strangers, and no doubt as much a stranger to the cat as to any of the people; but it did not take him long to slip into easy intercourse with men or animals. "I had listened for some time to his intelligent descriptions, enunciated with extreme modesty in the modulated tones of his pleasing voice, when Tom, a large Maltese cat, entered the room. At Mr. Taylor's invitation Tom approached him, and as he stroked the fur of the handsome cat, a sort of magnetism seemed to be imparted to the family pet, for he rolled over at the feet of his new-made friend, and seemed delighted with the beginning of the interview. In the most natural manner possible, Mr. Taylor slid off, as it were, from the sofa on which he had been sitting, and assumed the position of a Turk on the rug before the sofa, playing with delighted Tom in the most buoyant manner, still continuing his conversation, but changing the subject, for the nonce, to that of cats, and narrating many stories respecting the weird and wise conduct of these animals, which are at once loved and feared by the human race."

He even felt a sort of personal tenderness for the old trees on his place at Kennett. He said that friends were telling him to cut this tree and cut that. To him this would have been almost a sacrilege. The trees seemed to depend on him for protection, and they should have it. Writing from this country home which he had built, he says, "The birds know me already, and I have learned to imitate the partridge and rain-dove, so that I can lure them to me."

And Bayard Taylor was the accepted friend of nearly all the distinguished men of letters of his time. He knew Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes in Boston, and even in his early years, when he first went to New York to work, he was able to pay them such flying visits as he describes in the following to Mary Agnew: "Reached Boston Sunday morning, galloped out to Cambridge, and spent the evening with Lowell; went on Monday to the pine woods of Abingdon to report Webster's speech, and dispatched it to the Tribune; got up early on Tuesday and galloped to Brookline to see Colonel Perkins; then off in the cars to Amesbury, and rambled over the Merrimac hills with Whittier; then Wednesday morning to Lynn, where I stopped a while at Helen Irving's; back in the afternoon to Cambridge, where I smoked a cigar with Lowell, and then stayed all night at Longfellow's."

In New York his enjoyment of his friends, whom he met often and familiarly, was of the keenest. Says Mr. R. H. Stoddard, "I recall many nights which Bayard Taylor spent in our rooms.... Great was our merriment; for if we did not always sink the shop, we kept it solely for our own amusement. Fitz-James O'Brien was a frequent guest, and an eager partaker of our merriment, which sometimes resolved itself into the writing of burlesque poems. We sat around a table, and whenever the whim seized us, we each wrote down themes on little pieces of paper, and putting them into a hat or box we drew out one at random, and then scribbled away for dear life. We put no restriction upon ourselves: we could be grave or gay, or idiotic even; but we must be rapid, for half the fun was in noting who first sang out, 'Finished!'"

The reader will remember Taylor's joy when a boy at receiving the autograph of Dickens. The time was coming when he should be on terms almost of intimacy with all the leading poets and writers of London. "I spent two days with Tennyson in June," he writes to a literary friend in 1857, "and you take my word for it, he is a noble fellow, every inch of him. He is as tall as I am, with a head which Read capitally calls that of a dilapidated Jove, long black hair, splendid dark eyes, and a full mustache and beard. The portraits don't look a bit like him; they are handsomer, perhaps, but haven't half the splendid character of his face. We smoked many a pipe together, and talked of poetry, religion, politics, and geology.... Our intercourse was most cordial and unrestrained, and he asked me, at parting, to be sure and visit him every time I came to England."

A similar tale might be told of his relations with Thackeray and a score of others.

But an account of his friendships would not be complete without a reference to Mr. Bufleb, whom he met on his journey up the Nile. Taylor writes to his mother from Nubia: "I want to speak of the friend from whom I have just parted, because I am very much moved by his kindness, and the knowledge may be grateful to you. His friendship for me is something wonderful, and it seems like a special Providence that in Egypt, where I anticipated the want of all near sympathy and kindness, I should find it in such abundant measure. He is a man of totally different experience from myself: accustomed all his life to wealth, to luxury, and to the exercise of authority. He was even prejudiced against America and the Americans, and he confessed to me that he was by nature stubborn and selfish. Yet few persons have ever placed such unbounded confidence in me, or treated me with such devotion and generosity.... For two days before our parting he could scarcely eat or sleep, and when the time drew near he was so pale and agitated that I almost feared to leave him. I have rarely been so moved as when I saw a strong, proud man exhibit such an attachment for me.... I told him all my history, and showed him the portrait I have with me [that of Mary Agnew]. He went out of the cabin after looking at it, and when he returned I saw that he had been weeping."

Surely, there must have been something peculiarly noble and sweet in Bayard Taylor's nature to have drawn to him so powerfully a man of another nation and another race. The friendship was lasting, and Taylor spent many happy weeks at Mr. Bufleb's home in Gotha, Germany. The latter even bought a little house and garden adjoining his own estate, which was for the special use of his friend, and he closes the letter which describes it by saying: "You see how I have written to you, my dear Taylor. In spite of our long separation and remoteness from each other, your heart I know could never tell you of any change in my feelings and thoughts. On the contrary, this rapport which we enjoy has for me a profound meaning; whilst you were dedicating your glorious work on Central Africa to me, I was setting in order for you the most cherished part of my possessions."



CHAPTER XIII

LAST YEARS

With the building of Cedarcroft, and the publication of his "Poet's Journal," Bayard Taylor's fame and fortune reached their height. The Civil War was now on the point of breaking out. He entered into the Northern cause with ardor, and even sold a share of Tribune stock to raise a thousand dollars with which to fit out his brother Frederick and provide arms for his neighbors to defend their homes.

But the war put an end to his lectures, and cut off other sources of his income. In 1862 he was appointed secretary of legation at the court of St. Petersburg, and not long after was left there as charge d'affaires. The cause of the Union had received some heavy reverses, and France had invited England and Russia to join her in intervening between the combatants. But, perhaps owing to Bayard Taylor's diplomatic skill, Russia refused to take part in such an enterprise without the express desire of the United States.

About this time, also, Taylor began to write a series of novels, in the hope of bettering his fortunes thereby. The books brought him some reputation, but to-day "Hannah Thurston" and "John Godfrey's Fortunes" are seldom read.

A more important undertaking was his translation of "Faust," which was accepted abroad as a monument of his scholarship, and remains to-day one of the best translations into English of the great Goethe's most famous work.

Other books of travel were written and published, and various fresh volumes of poems. During this period of his life he produced most of his longer descriptive and philosophic poems, such as "The Picture of St. John," "Lars," and "Prince Deukalion"; but his songs and ballads have proved more popular than these, though he threw into them all his energy and ambition.

On July 4, 1876, he delivered his stately National Ode at the Philadelphia Centennial, and the same year he returned to his desk at the Tribune office. But failing health compelled him to give up this drudgery, and in the following year he was nominated United States minister to Berlin. A grand banquet at which Bryant presided was given him in New York, on April 4, the eve of his departure; but before the year was finished he died in Berlin—December 19, 1878.