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LIFE AND LETTERS OF
BAYARD TAYLOR
EDITED BY
MARIE HAN SEN-TAYLOR
AND
HORACE. E. SCUDDER
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
B O S TO N
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
@Ibe ſiiuergite 19tegg, Tambridge
1884

Copyright, 1884,
By MARIE LIANSEN-TAYLOR,
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co
From humble home-lays to the heights of thought
Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure.
J. G. WHITTIER, Bayard Taylor.
Dear is the Minstrel, yet the Man is more.
Goethe Ode.
PREFACE.
IT is six years since Bayard Taylor died,
and if it had been thought necessary only to
satisfy a passing curiosity concerning him the
delay in publishing his memoirs would have
been unwise. But if a volume had been
brought out within a few months of his death,
it must have failed to present any full and in-
telligible interpretation of a career which was
frequently misunderstood through superficial
acquaintance with it. The delay in the ap-
pearance of this work has enabled the editors
to gather a larger number of letters, to ar-
range them, and to supply such connecting
links and slight comment as seemed necessary
to a clear and comprehensive narrative. It
has been their aim to let the poet tell his own
story so far as is possible, and above all to fol-
low the clew which his own confession affords.
No man’s life can be truthfully written which
does not take very close account of the ideal
2792OL
wi PREFA CE.
which the man has kept before himself; and
fortunately for the reader, Bayard Taylor re-
peatedly discloses in unmistakable language
the dominant idea of his life. By keeping
that in mind one easily brings the various
turns of an apparently changeable life into
an order which explains every movement.
Thanks are due to the several correspond-
ents of Bayard Taylor, who have generously
contributed the letters which they held. These
letters leave but few gaps to be filled. Per-
haps, if those which could not be secured had
been accessible, they would have added noth-
ing material; yet the reader will share the re-
gret of the editors that the letters written to
Mr. Putnam had been destroyed by fire, and
that the absence of Mr. Howells from the coun-
try made it impracticable to obtain those which
Bayard Taylor wrote to the former editor of
the “Atlantic Monthly.”
CONTENTS OF WOLUME I.
-O-
CHAPTER I.
- PAGE
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER II.
FIRST VENTURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
CHAPTER III.
VIEWS, AFOOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
CHAPTER IV.
EDITOR OF A CountRY NEWSPAPER . . . . . . . 72
CHAPTER. W.
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK . . . . . . . . . . ; 91
CHAPTER VI.
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK . . . . . . . . . 108
CHAPTER VII.
ELDORADo AND HYLAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
CHAPTER VIII.
MARY AGNEW TAYLOR . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
CHAPTER IX.
A BOOK OF ROMANCES, LYRICS, AND SONGs . . . . 200
viii CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
CHAPTER X.
TRAVELS IN THE EAST . . . . . . . . . . & © º
CHAPTER XI.
THE FARTHER EAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
CHAPTER XII.
FRUIT AND FLOWER of TRAVEL . . . . . . . . 263
CHAPTER, XIII. -
CLEARING-AWAY WoRK . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
CHAPTER XIV.
NORTHERN TRAVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .319
- CHAPTER XV.
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT . . . . . . . . . .343
CHAPTER XVI.
THE POET's Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . .366
CHAPTER XVII.
THE RUSSIAN MISSION . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PoRTRAIT OF BAYARD TAYLOR. From a photograph by
Gutekunst . . . . . . º . Frontispiece
CEDARCROFT FROM THE AVENUE. Vignette from a photo-
graph . . . . . . . . . . . . Title-page
BAYARD TAYLOR's EARLY Home. After a sketch by A.
Lowrie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PoRTRAIT OF BAYARD TAYLOR. Engraved on Steel by F.
T. Stuart, from a daguerreotype taken in 1851 . . . . 91
THE HOUSE IN THE GARDEN AT GOTHA. After a sketch
by Bayard Taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . .319
º º 53 º º: -: º, rººs + º-
º tº:
† ſº §ºãº tº:
**
sº Taylor's Early Home.
CHAPTER I.
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE.
1825–1841.
Scarce from the void of shadows taken,
We hail thine opening eyelids, boy
Be welcome to the world ! Awaken
To strength and beauty, and to joy!
The Two Greetings.
CHESTER COUNTY, in Pennsylvania, is a rich farm-
ing country, and the traveler who visits it for the first
time is at once impressed by the air of solid comfort
which prevails, and by the signs of an old, long-settled
region. The gently rolling land is occasionally inter-
rupted by steep hills and low-lying valleys, but for the
most part the eye travels over cultivated fields and
patches of woodland, various in leaf and form. The
oak and chestnut and cedar flourish in large, rich
growth; the box forgets its stunted life; and there are
VOL. I. I *

2 BA YARD TA YLOR.
the tulip-tree and magnolia, while hedges of osage-
orange run by the side of the road. The northern and
Southern climes meet on common ground ; and if one
comes from the north, he is reminded that nature has
kinder moods than he has been wont to know. The
autumn lingers, and the spring hastens, while the
water-courses which wind through the broad valleys
keep a constant green in the grassy meadows.
The generous farms are ordered from old, substan-
tial houses, which have been occupied by successive
generations of the same family. The names of Penn's
associates, to whom deeds of land were made, are often
the names of present landholders, and the very houses
which the first settlers built may yet be seen on some
homesteads. There has been little change in the char-
acter of the community, except as it has been modi-
fied by time.
Fifty years ago there was much the same comfort-
able prosperity as to-day, but then people rode their
horses or drove their carts, where now they keep their
carriages, and they had few of the luxuries or graces
which wealth brings. Their lives were simple and
primitive, and they rarely traveled farther than to
Wilmington or Philadelphia market. They belonged
for the most part to the Society of Friends, and held
to a somewhat rigorous code of manners, but the
doctrines of the Friends found expression in a posi-
tive adhesion to all forms of protest against tyranny.
The position which the region holds upon the border
of the two sections of the Union made it the refuge
of the slave, and one of the most important stations of
the Underground Railway was here. In the days of
ferment before the war for the Union, and during the
years of the war, famous gatherings were held here, at
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 3
which the champions of human rights and individual
creeds from all parts of the country met for confer-
ence, and were generously entertained by the hospita-
ble farmers. Whittier has sung the praises of one of
these families in his verses, “The Golden Wedding of
Longwood,” and as he sings the vision of that country
and its people rises before him : —
Again before me with your names, fair Chester's landscape
Comes,
Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded
homes.
The Smooth shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green
and soft,
Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.
This country and its people formed indeed a large
part of the material from which the poet, born and
bred among these scenes, built his imaginative pic-
tures. As one passes over the road leading from
Longwood to Cedarcroft he comes to a wooded knoll,
where once stood a mighty pin-oak. Here Bayard
Taylor rested in fancy, and looked over a familiar
landscape. “Yonder,” he wrote, –
Yonder, a mile away, I see the roofs of the village, –
See the crouching front of the meeting-house of the Quakers,
Oddly conjoined with the whittled Presbyterian steeple.
Right and left are the homes of the slow, conservative farmers,
Loyal people and true, but now that the battles are over
Zealous for Temperance, Peace, and the Right of Suffrage for
Women.
Orderly, moral are they, -at least in the sense of suppression;
Given to preaching of rules, inflexible outlines of duty;
Seeing the sternness of life, but alas ! overlooking its graces.
Nay, but let me be just ; nor speak with the alien language
Born of my blood; for cradled among them, I know them and
love them. -
4 BAYARD TA YLOR.
Was it my fault if a strain of the distant and dead generations
Rose in my being, renewed, and made me other than these
are 21
The whittled Presbyterian steeple is gone, but the
physical and the moral landscape have suffered little
change since the lines were written, as the view then
was substantially what it might have been fifty years
before. The village thus seen was Kennett Square,
and here, January 11, 1825, Bayard Taylor was born,
the fourth child of his parents, but then their only
one, the three earlier having died in infancy. He was
born in a two-story house, not now standing, at the
corner of State and South Union streets. His father
and mother, Joseph and Rebecca [Way] Taylor, both
survive him. In an autobiographic sketch which he
gave to a German magazine, he says of his ancestry
and birth : —
“Robert Taylor, a rich Quaker, who came to Penn-
sylvania in 1681, with William Penn, settled near the
Brandywine Creek, and part of the land which his
eldest son inherited from him is in my possession [at
Cedarcroft). His descendants clung to the soil with
a Saxon tenacity. I have not, thus far, followed my
family-tree beyond Robert; but if I should discover
that Bishop Jeremy Taylor sprang from the same
stock, I should be prouder of him than of a possible
descent from Tudor or Plantagenet. I suspect that
Joseph Taylor, the friend of Shakespeare and the
first interpreter of Hamlet, was one of my ancestors,
for the family has preserved his name. My grand-
father, who had married a Lutheran of pure German
blood, was excommunicated by his brother Quakers,
and none of his children ever returned to the Society.
1 Home Pastorals, August,
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 5
I was born the 11th of January, 1825, the year when
the first locomotive successfully performed its trial
trip ; I am therefore just as old as the railroad.”
His grandmothers, both on his father's and moth-
er's side, were of South German descent. His father's
mother knew hardly any English, but always spoke
with her children the curious patois known as Penn-
sylvania Dutch. His mother's family was from the
English Mendenhalls, a name which was used by the
poet in “Lars.” The name of Bayard was from James
A. Bayard, the Delaware senator of that day, and was
given by the parents of the boy out of admiration for
their neighbor. It was the senator's surname only
which was taken. “As a boy of sixteen or seven-
teen,” Bayard Taylor once wrote, “I sometimes at-
tached J. (never James) to my name, foolishly think-
ing it would look better. When my first volume of
poems came out, Rufus Griswold, my first literary
friend, put James Bayard Taylor on the title-page,
and the small private edition was printed before I
could correct it. The matter was an annoyance to me
then, and it has been ever since. I felt bound to re-
tain the J., however, until I was twenty-one and be-
came legally responsible for my signature. Then I
dropped it instantly, and have never since used any-
thing else than my original and only true name.”
When Bayard was four years old, the family moved
to the farm, a mile distant from Kennett Square,
where they continued to live until the building of
Cedarcroft, hard by, gave a home to those of the fam-
ily who had not left the homestead. It was about this
farm that his earliest recollections gathered. “The
child,” he says, “that has tumbled into a newly
ploughed furrow never forgets the smell of the fresh
6 BA YARD TA YLOR.
earth. He thrives upon it as the butcher's boy thrives
upon the steam of blood, but a healthier apple-red
comes into his cheeks, and his growing muscle is sub-
dued in more innocent pastimes. Almost my first rec-
ollection is of a swamp, into which I went bare-legged
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 the 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 ter-
rapins with orange spots, baby frogs the size of a
chestnut, thrush's eggs, and stems of purple phlox.” "
His nature took deep root in the soil of the home-
stead, but even in childhood there were signs of the
larger desire which made his youth restless and his
manhood full of aspiration. “In looking back to my
childhood,” he writes in another place, “I can recall
. . . the intensest desire to climb upward, so that
without shifting the circle of my horizon I could yet
extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. I
envied every bird that sat swinging upon the topmost
bough of the great century-old cherry-tree; the
weather-cock 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. . . . I remember as distinctly
as if it were yesterday the first time this passion was
gratified. Looking out of the garret window, on a
1. At IIome and Abroad, ii. 2.
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 7
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 last, 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 outside 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 discov-
ered me from the garden below, “I see the Falls of
Niagara !’” +
Of the outside world, two or three great facts made
a lodgment early in his mind. He remembered hear-
ing of the battle of Navarino, and of the deaths in the
same year of Goethe and Sir Walter Scott. He was
seven years old then. He had been taught to read by
his mother when he was four, and not impossibly
Scott's death was fixed in his mind by Scott's poetry,
for poetry had great power over him from his child-
hood. The education which he received at home and
under the impulse of his own nature took precedence
of the more formal culture of school-life. Especially
was he indebted to his mother, who understood well
the refinement of his nature. Like other boys in the
neighborhood, he was called upon to help in the work
of the farm. He used to tell of the misery which he
endured when he went to the mill on horseback, to
bring back heavy meal-bags, which would persist in
1. At Home and Abroad, i. 1, 2.
8 BAYARD TA YLOR.
slipping off, to his dismay; for he would have to stand
by his horse and wait the chance of some one passing
by to help him and his bags up again. “I had a con-
stitutional horror,” he says, “ of dirty hands, and my
first employments — picking stones and weeding corn
— were rather a torture to this superfine taste.” He
had beautifully-shaped hands, a very tender, fair skin,
and sensitive nerves, – an equipment not the most
adapted to rough farm work, but not always taken
into account by those who regarded a boy as a “hand.”
His mother shielded him so far as she could without
interference; she devised indoor occupation for him,
and engaged him about tasks which a hearty boy
would be likely to accept only as they saved him from
more disagreeable duties. Thus she would set him to
rocking the baby to sleep in the cradle, which he would
do while he read busily. One day she came into the
room, when the baby was crying lustily, and a vigor-
ous rocking was going on, to find Bayard absorbed in
his book, and rocking himself furiously in his chair, in
the vain imagination that he was doing his work faith-
fully. º
Reading had charms for him from the earliest years,
and he showed a great aptitude for committing poetry
to memory. 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.
His out-door life, for all that, was a free and hearty
one. When he spoke of his shrinking from the re-
pulsive work of the farm, he added: “But almost
every field had its walnut-tree, and many of the last
year's nuts retained their flavor in the spring ; melons
were planted among the corn, and the meadow which
lay between never exhausted its store of wonders.
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 9
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 gath-
ered, 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
afterward.”
For, after all, the boy always came back to his
books, as offering the completest satisfaction, and the
eagerness with which he read is measured by the hold
which his memory kept of those early readings. Years
afterward, when on his travels, a poem which he had
learned, or a book from the library which he had
read, came back to him as he visited in person places
which he had known in imagination. “Before reach-
ing the city” (of Barcelona), he writes,” “I had
caught a glimpse, far up the valley of the Llobregat,
of a high, curiously serrated mountain, and that old
book of the “Wonders of the World’ (now, alas !
driven from the library of childhood) opened its pages
and showed its rough wood-cuts, in memory, to tell me
what the mountain was. How many times has that
wonderful book been the chief charm of my travels,
causing me to forget Sulpicius on the AEgean Sea,
Byron in Italy, and Humboldt in Mexico!” “Before
my twelfth year,” he says, in a slight autobiographic
sketch, “I had devoured the contents of the circu-
lating library in our little town, as well as Cooper's
1 By- Ways of Europe, pp. 159, 160.
10 BA YARD TA YLOR.
novels and the histories of Gibbon, Robertson, and
Hume.” The few books which he owned were bought
with money which he earned from the sale of nuts he
gathered.
Poetry and travel were his chief delight in reading.
The former drove him into “desperate attempts at im-
itation; ” the latter fed his eager desire for a wider
range of life. At the outset of his first book of
travels, he recalls this early passion : “An enthusias-
tic desire of visiting the Old World haunted me from
early childhood. I cherished a presentiment, amount-
ing to positive belief, that I should one day behold
the scenes among which my fancy had so long wan-
dered. When a boy of ten years, I read Willis's ‘Pen-
cillings by the Way,” as they appeared from week to
week in the country newspaper, and the contemplation
of those charming pictures of scenery and society
filled me with a thousand dreams and aspirations. I
wandered along the shores of the Mediterranean,
while hoeing corn or tending cattle in my father's
fields; the geography of Europe and the East was at
my tongue’s end, and the confidence with which I
spoke of going to London and Paris and Rome often
subjected me to the ridicule of my school-fellows.””
The education which he received at home and from
his own choice of reading was supplemented by a reg-
ular schooling during his youth. When he had been
taught to read, he was sent to a school kept by Ruth
Ann Chambers. His way thither was through a
lonely meadow on his father's farm, and a piece of
woodland. It was a way not without its trials for a
sensitive little boy of six. One day a tree was blown
down in a gale, and a servant-girl of his father's barely
1 Views Afoot, p. 17.
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 11
escaped being crushed by its fall. So ominous an
event lent terror to the woods, and a day or two after-
ward, when the wind rose again, the boy shrank from
the swaying trees, and went home, telling his mother
that there was no school, - the first and only “story,”
she says, that he ever told her. She found him up-
stairs, that day, lying on the floor, with a large map
spread before him, upon which he was making imag-
inary journeys.
His school was a delight to him, for he was fortu-
nate in the care which he met there. “I have never
forgotten,” he once wrote to his old teacher, “the days
I spent in the little log school-house 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 en-
couraged 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 in-
stead of checking the first developments of my mind.”
The Quaker form of this letter was one into which
the writer easily fell when he was addressing old
Quaker friends; for while his family was not formally
in the Society of Friends, they adhered generally to
the principles of the Society. His mother, although
brought up in the Lutheran faith, became attached to
the Quakers early in life, and taught her children the
fundamental doctrines of the Society, as well as nat-
12 BA YARD TA YLOR.
urally adopted the manners and ways which prevailed
in the region. Especially she aimed to inculcate that
spirit of peace and quiet which was the possession of
the Quakers, and a conformity to the doctrine which
made all swearing, whether judicial or profane, to be
evil. She talked so earnestly on this last point that
Bayard's mind became full of it; his observation and
imagination were centred upon oaths, until at last he
was so fascinated that he became filled with an un-
controllable 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. The discharge was satis-
factory, and his mind returned to its customary occu-
pation.
Another teacher in his boyhood was a Quaker, Sam-
uel Martin, who taught in a little stone building on the
road leading to Toughkenamon. Friend Martin, who
was a lover of nature, found the boy one after his own
heart, and they took long walks together, when the
teacher answered the pupil’s questions, and helped him
to a fuller knowledge of tree and plant and flower and
stone. Bayard’s early acquaintance with nature was
both minute and general. He collected industriously
and formed a cabinet, but he also had a poet's eye for
field and cloud, as he had an ear for melody, lying
awake at night to hear the rhythm of the rain upon the
house-top. With an ardent love of color and form,
his artistic nature, before he knew his true vocation,
readily turned to drawing and painting, and he was
busy with attempts which were crudely successful. He
was self-taught, and though later in life he took a few
lessons, the sketches which he made of landscape and
figure came to be the pastime of a poet whose true ex-
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 13
pression was through another form. He looked back,
perhaps a little wistfully, at a road which always had
a great attraction for him, and in the maturer thought
which recalled his youth dwelt with passionate ear-
nestness upon this early phase of his experience. Thus,
with the liberty afforded by a half-autobiographic,
half-imaginative poem, he writes in “The Picture of
St. John,” when dedicating the work to the artists: —
Because no other dream my childhood knew
Than your bright Goddess sends, – that earliest
Her face I saw, and from her bounteous breast,
All others dry, the earliest nurture drew ;
And since the hope, so lovely, was not true,
To write my life in colors, – win a place
Among your ranks, though humble, yet with grace
That might accord me brotherhood with you :
Because the dream, thus cherished, gave my life
Its first faint sense of beauty, and became,
Even when the growing years to other strife
Led forth my feet, a shy, secluded flame :
And ye received me, when our pathways met
As one long parted, but of kindred fate;
And in one heaven our kindred stars are set ;
To you, my Brethren, this be dedicate 1
And though Some sportive nymph the channel turned,
And led to other fields mine infant rill,
The sense of fancied destination still
Leaps in its waves, and will not be unlearned.
I charge not Fate with having done me wrong ;
Much hath she granted, though so much was spurned ;
But leave the keys of Color, silent long,
And pour my being through the stops of Song
The poetic passion itself was quite as early present
with him, and the boy's books show picture and poem
following each other indifferently. The form of the
14 BA YARD TA YLOR.
poetry is curiously anticipatory of some of his greatest
successes, for already, when twelve years old, he was
writing ballads and songs with an ease of movement
and even a stir of action which show how native to
him was that gift which he used so abundantly. The
earliest efforts in poetry are necessarily more or less
imitative, and it was inevitable that the poets whom
he read should find an echo in his verse.
“Poetry,” he writes in his autobiographic sketch,
“had great power over me from my childhood; and
to-day the poems live in my memory which I read at
the age of seven or eight years, and which drove me
to desperate attempts at imitation. From my twelfth
year I wrote continually, - poems, novels, or historical
essays, but principally poems. I read Ovid and Ra-
cine in the original; Milton, Scott, Byron, and Words-
worth, as well as all the other American and English
authors I could lay hands on.”
The themes on which he wrote were foreign and
chivalric, for with his poetic temperament the large
life seemed always to be outside of the valley in which
he lived. He was forever making ideal journeys, and
jotting down imaginary incidents in the East, which
was especially the land of his dreams. It was this
quick imagination rather than philological zeal which
stimulated him in the study of languages, and the ap-
titude which he showed in his travels for acquiring the
speech of the people among whom he chanced to be
had early illustration. “I never could see,” he says,
“a book written in a foreign language without the
most ardent desire to read it. I remember that I
came across a copy of Wieland’s “Oberon,' and as at
that time I knew nothing of German it took me sev-
eral days to understand the first verse. . . . At four-
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 15
teen years I began the study of Latin and French,
and at fifteen of Spanish. As my father was a farmer,
and had inherited only a small part of the original
land-grant, he could not send me to college; until my
sixteenth year, however, I received as good instruc-
tion as our country schools could then afford. At this
age my schooling stopped, but I continued my Latin
and French three years longer.”
A curious illustration of this almost instinctive ap-
propriation of language occurs in one of Bayard’s
sketches of travel. “I had decided,” he says, “to de-
vote my second day to an excursion to the mountain
paradise of Walldemosa, and sallied forth early to seek
the means of conveyance. Up to this time I had
been worried — tortured, I may say, without exagger-
ation —by desperate efforts to recover the Spanish
tongue, which I had not spoken for fourteen years.
I still had the sense of possessing it, but in some old
drawer of memory, the lock of which had rusted and
would not obey the key. Like Mrs. Dombey with her
pain, I felt as if there were Spanish words somewhere
in the room, but I could not positively say that I had
them, - a sensation which, as everybody knows, is far
worse than absolute ignorance. I had taken a car-
riage for Walldemosa, after a long talk with the pro-
prietor, a most agreeable fellow, when I suddenly
stopped, and exclaimed to myself, ‘You are talking
Spanish, did you know it?’ It was even so; as much
of the language as I ever knew was suddenly and un-
accountably restored to me. On my return to the
• Four Nations' I was still further surprised to find
myself repeating songs without the failure of a line
or word, which I had learned from a Mexican as a
school-boy, and had not thought of for twenty years.
16 BAYARD TA YLOR.
The unused drawer had somehow been unlocked or
broken open while I slept.” "
In 1837 Mr. Joseph Taylor was elected sheriff of
the county, and removed with his family to West
Chester, where he remained for three years. During
that time Bayard went to Bolmar's Academy in West
Chester, but shortly before the family returned to the
farm at Kennett he was sent to the academy at Union-
ville, where he finished his formal schooling in 1842.
The academy building is now occupied by one of the
higher grades of the public schools of the town, but
forty years ago it was a boarding-school and School
preparatory for college, to which the young people re-
sorted from the country about.
Here, knowing that he was to have no higher Scho-
lastic training, he gave himself studiously to work,
and during the last part of his stay was employed also
as a teacher. Unionville was only three or four miles
from his home, and there his vacations were spent,
while the society of his old friends frequently drew
him from the precincts of the academy to Kennett
Square. Indeed, his return from West Chester,
where he had lived in a small country town, to the
rural life of Kennett brought a sense of new joy in
all the aspects of nature. He was no longer an unwill-
ing boy, shrinking from the coarse labor of the farm;
he was springing into manhood, and the keen delight
in physical life, the response to outward beauty, and
the eagerness of an expanding intellect made the time
one of exhilaration and anticipation. “When I re-
turned to the homestead as a youth,” he writes, “I
first felt the delight and the refreshment of labor in
the open air. I was then able to take the plough-
1. By - Ways of Europe, p. 184.
SURRounDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 17
handle, and I still remember the pride I felt when my
furrows were pronounced even and well turned. Al-
though 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.”
At Unionville he naturally fell more into letter-
writing, and though his letters were boyish produc-
tions they indicated the turn which his mind was tak-
ing, and that restlessness which was so early developed
in him. The school at Unionville was not very satis-
fying to one who craved a fuller knowledge of the
world, and the master was too easy-going and indiffer-
ent for a boy who set his hopes and wishes high. Dr.
Franklin Taylor, an older cousin, was at this time in
Rennett Square, after a term of study in a New
Hampshire academy, and fired Bayard’s mind with a
desire for the same opportunities. A letter which
Bayard wrote to his mother not only shows his eager-
ness, but gives a glimpse of the primitive country life
in America forty years ago : —
TO HIS MOTHER.
UNIONVILLE, March 18, 1840.
. . Having now completed astronomy, I am principally
studying the languages, and have made such proficiency in
French that I am able to read Voltaire in his native language.
Don't be frightened. It is not the atheistical works of Voltaire,
but his tragedies, which are among the best works in the French
language. I am also studying Latin, and am making great prog-
ress in it. I thought, as I had but a few weeks more to stay, I
would turn my attention to languages, which I had somewhat
neglected during the winter. When I was at Kennett Square I
VOI. I. 2
18 RAYARD TA YLOR.
visited Franklin Taylor, as he wished to have some talk with
me. He is going back again to the East in the spring. He is
much pleased with the schools of New England, which he says
are superior in every respect to those of this State. The teach-
ers are better and more experienced men, the opportunities of
learning are greater, and the price of boarding and tuition is not
much more than half the sum it is here. He says while he was
there it only cost him $1.25 a week, which in a year, added to
the price of tuition, would only make $97.00; and with the ex-
penses of going and coming, clothing, books, etc., would not be
any more than what Jonathan Gause charges for a year, if as
much. If a person be economical, he says he can live there for
very little; and in the vacation (one or two weeks), which hap-
pens in August, the scholars form into companies and travel,
principally on foot, through Vermont and New Hampshire, and
they thus have an opportunity of viewing the most romantic and
sublime scenery in New England, Lake Champlain, Lake George,
White and Green Mountains, etc., etc., which afford a fine field
for the labors of the artist; and if I get a box of the Craeta
Laevis, you will see the hills and rocks of New England glow-
ing upon paper, with all the beauties they in reality possess. He
also says it is the finest place in the world for mineralizing.
Every scholar, almost, has a large box filled with minerals; and
as for botany, it affords an inexhaustible field for the pursuit of
that study. Another great advantage is, the scholars study in
separate rooms, and only meet when they recite in classes, which
is a great benefit, for a person can study much more in solitude
than amid the bustle and confusion of a school-room. Hence I
think I could not do better or learn more than by going there.
And if father is going to take me, it would be a fine opportunity
for him to see some of the Eastern States; and if I do go, when
he comes for me you must accompany him, and thus have a
chance of viewing New York, Boston, Albany, Hartford, New
Haven, Lowell,” etc., etc.
Truly New England seemed as far away to the
young Pennsylvanian, and was almost as much of a
foreign country, as Germany now is to a collegian. He
did not come under the influence of New England in
1 A species of crayon then in use.
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 19
these school-days. He remained in a society which
was peculiarly susceptible to certain vagaries and en-
thusiasms then beginning to excite men's minds. It
was the period when discoveries in magnetism had set
the world agog with notions of a new force in nature,
and there was a disposition to seek for new coinci-
dences in physical and spiritual life. The Quaker,
with his openness to spiritual influences and his con-
fidence in the authority of the individual, was ready to
experiment and be experimented on. Bayard heard
lectures on animal magnetism and took part in the il-
lustrations, which not only attended the public lec-
tures but were a part of the social entertainments of
the neighborhood. He had an exuberance of physical
life, and possessed an organism which was very highly
strung, so that he displayed considerable success in
his mesmeric exercises. Phrenology also found a
ready audience among a people who were accustomed
to emphasize the individual, and to give a spiritual in-
terpretation to physical phenomena.
Then the Quaker, with his historical belief in human
equality, was very hospitable to the new doctrines re-
garding freedom which were stirring men. To Ken-
nett Square came lecturers on Anti-Slavery and the
Rights of Women, and found a responsive audience.
The questions involved were debated in the clubs and
made the subject of social discussion. Bayard heard
what was said, but it is interesting to note from his
diaries and letters how little active part he himself
took in these matters. Literature, in some form, held
him more tenaciously. He went here and there in his
social mood, but he came back to his books and his
own writing with increased ardor.
Something of the fire which burned within him may
20 BA YARD TA YLOR.
be discovered from the warmth with which he en-
tered in his diary his emotions upon receiving a reply
to a request which he had made of Charles Dickens,
then in this country, for his autograph. “I went to
the Academy,” he says, “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 note-paper, 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 ad-
mired, 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, an humble clerk, had risen
to be the guest of a mighty nation, so I, an humble
pedagogue, might by unremitted and arduous intellec-
tual and moral exertion become a light, a star, among
the names of my country. May it be l’’
There was a village debating society at Kennett
Square, and Bayard's diaries and letters show him fre-
quently going to the village to take part in the discus-
sions and readings. “The first essay I ever wrote,”
is his memorandum on a school-boy composition, “On
the Art of Painting,” which he read before the Ken-
nett Literary Circle in December, 1838; and in 1840
an account sent to his father of a visit made to the
battle-field on the Brandywine was printed in the West
Chester “Register,” much to the concern of the young
writer, who was painfully impressed by the number of
printer's errors which had crept in. In 1841 was
printed in the “Saturday Evening Post” of Philadel- .
SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE. 21
phia the first of the poems which emerged from the
seclusion of the young poet's blank-books. It is en-
titled “Soliloquy of a Young Poet; ” and while it is
neither better nor worse than many of the poems
which he was then writing, it has an interest as a
record of the dreams which were making the life
about him seem poor and thin.
A dream l—a fleeting dream 1
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. -
When morning's golden glow
Beams on the eastern sky; in twilight's shade :
When the pale moon lights up the world below—
In all her pomp arrayed :
By light of evening's star
Which looketh down with an unslumbering eye ;
Like a lone watcher, gazing from afar, -
Its station in the sky.
When in the sultry noon
The wearied songsters seek the cooling Till ;
At morn, at eve, by light of midnight moon,
They haunt me still. -
Around my youthful soul
Their adamantine chains are firmly cast :
Yes, they have bound me in their stern control,
Which e'er shall last.
I know it all is vain ;
That earthly honors ever must decay,
22 JBA YARD TA YLOR.
That all the laurels bought by toil and pain
Must pass, with earth, away.
But still my spirit high
Longing for fame won by th’ 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.
Another dream, which he committed shyly and with
hesitation to his diary, and to the one bosom friend of
his early days, was coming to exercise a very potent in-
fluence over him. When he was a child at Ruth Ann
Chambers's school, Mary Agnew, who also went there,
whispered with a blush to the teacher, “May I sit be-
side Bayard?” They had been school-mates also at
Samuel Martin's, and neighbors always. Now his
work, his plans, and his thoughts took on a new color
which deepened in tone, month by month.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST VENTURES.
1842–1844.
And with impassioned exultation,
I reveled in the rage of Song !
* L’Envoi (to “Rhymes of Travel ”).
WHEN Bayard Taylor's schooling drew near its
close he began to cast about for a livelihood. There
was some thought of his going to Philadelphia to study
engraving, and he had evidently the possibility in his
mind that he might be a painter. The work which he
did in teaching at the Unionville Academy during the
last part of his course there was ill paid and irksome
to him. He disliked the rough manners of the place;
he hated to whip the boys, and made the punishment
as perfunctory as possible. Even a whipping may
become a slight passport to fame, and one of Bay-
ard’s pupils enjoys now a tardy pride in having been
whipped by a poet.
Still, when he came back to his father’s farm in the
early summer of 1842, he made an effort to obtain a
school, as the nearest means of support. He did not
succeed, and after a few weeks of farm life he was
apprenticed for a term of four years to Henry E.
Evans, a printer in West Chester, and publisher of
the “Village Record.” For one who could not be
made a farmer, had no liking for teaching, and showed
a genuine fondness for books and writing, the most
24 BA YARD TA YLOR.
direct training was plainly to be had in the printing
office. The “Village Record ” was printed upon the
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; the young apprentice was tall and strong,
and he found leisure for the pursuits which had already
become the business of his life. There was a circu-
lating library in the town book-store, and every noon
and evening Bayard resorted to it for his books, de-
vouring especially poetry. It is noticeable how quick
he was to discern the soul of poetry without the aid
of special introductions. Nothing shows the poetic
mind more clearly than a generous and catholic taste,
which is independent of fame and reputation. A mu-
sical verse, a fine image, were not lost upon him be-
cause he came upon them in the corner of a country
newspaper; and while he had an ardent admiration for
great poets, he gave them his love for what they had
achieved in poetry, and not merely for the rank which
they held. Nevertheless, there was mingled with his
interest in poets and poetry a genuine patriotic ardor.
With all his eagerness to know foreign life and scenes,
there was none of that half-impatient sense of Amer-
ican crudity which a nearer acquaintance with cities
and men might have given him. To him in his coun-
try village the nation to which he belonged was a glo-
rious one, and the poets in it who had published books
were admitted at once into the fellowship of literature
with a simple confidence in the democracy of the re-
public of letters.
“By the way,” he writes to a comrade at this time,
“what do you think of Bryant as a poet, and espe-
FIRST VENTURES. 25
cially of “Thanatopsis’ 2 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 ev-
erything beautiful. And then the high and lofty feel-
ing 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. I felt the greatest
sorrow at the death of Channing; as much so, per-
haps, as if he were a near and dear friend. But you
must be tired of this; when I get started on this sub-
ject I cannot break off; I would only advise you to
read “Thanatopsis’ over again and again, for you can-
not feel it in its true beauty at first.”
The critical hints of contemporary poetry which he
came upon in the journals of the day were seldom of
much service, but he was helped now and then by such
penetrating criticism as that by Poe, for example, on
Tennyson, to which he referred when himself publish-
ing an article on the English poet, many years after-
ward. “I still remember,” he says, “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 bewilder-
ment 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 rainbowed out-
line. One is fascinated to look again and again,
though the eyes ache.” "
1 Essays and Notes, “Tennyson,” p. 14.
26 B.A. YA R D TA YLOR.
The period during which he worked for Mr. Evans
was one of great productiveness, and though few of
the poems then written were ever published except in
newspapers, and none were retained by him in his col-
lective works, it was undoubtedly a time when his fac-
ulty for composition was very active, when he was
gaining confidence in his powers and was forming his
style. One of his poems, the longest which he under-
took at this time, had been begun at Unionville. At
first he gave it the name of “Rosalie,” and his diary
contains frequent references to his progress in the
poem. He had published several poems in the “Sat-
urday Evening Post” of Philadelphia, with which
Mr. Rufus W. Griswold, also editor of “Graham's
Magazine,” was connected, and out of the correspond-
ence with Mr. Griswold there came the first literary
friendship which the young poet formed. When writ-
ing in March, 1843, to a school friend, he speaks with
a shy and happy pride of the little opening which he
had made : —
“I have met with strange things since I wrote last.
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 ‘Gra-
ham's 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 ap-
pear 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.”
Mr. Griswold was one of the literary magnates in
that thin but promising period of our literature. He
FIRST VENTURES. 27
was editor of the leading literary magazine, he had
edited “Poets and Poetry of America,” and if his di-
mensions have shrunk in the course of time he was
then an important personage, whose advice and help
were sought and valued. To Bayard Taylor he was a
serviceable friend just when the young author desired
introduction to the larger world of literature, and he
helped him to the publication of his first volume of
VēI'Sé.
“I called on Griswold when down,” he writes to a
friend, October 10, 1843, “and had an interview with
him. He had part of a Romance in poetry [“Rosalie,”
re-named “Ximena”] which I have been writing,
and strongly advised me to publish it with my other
poems in a volume. I have it nearly done, – about
a thousand lines; I have not concluded whether to do
so or not, but a few of my friends to whom I men-
tioned it urged me to follow his advice. I confess
my inclination prompts me to do so, but it may not be
altogether prudent. However, I place great confidence
in his judgment and the judgment of my friends. I
wish I could show it to you, for I can depend on your
honest and candid opinion, and you are considerable
of a critic in such matters. But what I want to know
is this: what would be the cost of printing five hun-
dred copies, of about eighty pages duodecimo (I be-
lieve), something like Whittier's ‘Lays of my Home,’
including binding, etc., all expenses. You can per-
haps give me some idea. If I publish it, it will not
be before March next.” *
The answer which he received was so far encourag-
ing that he wrote again to the same friend, December
26: “The price was less than I expected, and I find
I can readily raise enough subscribers to pay the ex-
28 JBA YARD TA YLOR.
pense of publication. I have therefore fully concluded
to issue the volume, in pursuance of which object I
shall visit Philadelphia in two or three weeks. I sup-
pose the work could be printed and bound in a week,
and I intend to have everything correct, so that the
proof need not be sent up. My principal motive for
publishing it is to gain a small sum towards defraying
the expenses of preparing for my voyage to the West
Indies. I also wish to obtain the critical judgment of
some of the best literary characters, which can be ob-
tained in no other way. I do not dread condemna-
tion, for if I have to bear it I would rather do it now
than at a future time, for errors would now be attrib-
uted to youth and inexperience which would then have
no excuse. I have no expectation of figuring in the
literary world now, nor would I wish it; my object is
not to attempt to create a ‘sensation.’”
“I am still distrustful of my abilities,” he wrote to
another young friend, “though when I contrast this
time with just three years ago, when my first article
was published, I see much cause for encouragement.
I have thought much since of Griswold's offer, and
am much more inclined to follow his advice, though
my mother is opposed to it.” The young poet had his
way, as most young poets do, and his friends of his
own age were ready with their encouragement; but it
helps one, in reckoning the influences which were about
Bayard’s early life, to find his mother and one of her
friends, who was always a wise counselor of Bayard,
earnestly debating the wisdom of publishing “Xi-
mena,” and engaged in special criticism of the poem.
“The boy is quite spirited on our hands,” writes the
friend to Mrs. Taylor, “but notwithstanding he dis-
plays so much decision in opposition to old women's
FIRST VENTURES. 29
opinions, let us not withhold them. ‘Experience
teacheth knowledge,’ and those hateful words, “I told
you so, sometimes contain meaning drawn from expe-
rience. Bayard has frankly committed himself into
our clutches, and as old women, in common parlance,
are only permitted their tongues, the broom, and the
tongs as weapons of offense or defense, he must expect
to be assailed by the first mentioned, at least, of these
war implements.
“But, seriously, I am decidedly opposed to publish-
ing the poem; though nothing serious would likely
arise from it, he might, perhaps, be disappointed in a
ready sale of the remaining portion. I would like to
know how much fact there is in the tale, or whether,
as a whole, it may be taken as the invention of a fer-
tile imagination. The plot is more finished than I
thought when I spoke with thee: the heroes fall in
love, pass through difficulty, and are married, which
generally closes a romance. In my humble opinion, if
Bayard will continue to cultivate his talent without in-
dulging an anxiety to reap immediate pecuniary ad-
vantage from it, he will be able to produce that which
will ‘create a sensation' without his wishing it. I hope
his principal desire to write is prompted by the pleas-
ure it affords him, for this will insure success. Fame
is but an empty bubble, but the author of a well-writ-
ten poem, which with the beauty of its poetic diction
diffuses a love or admiration for the higher attributes
which govern human actions, is a benefactor to his
race.” Then follows a detailed criticism of “Ximena,”
shrewd and discriminating, with a due admixture of
pride in her young friend.
It was a trial to Bayard to be compelled to ask sub-
scriptions for his forthcoming volume, but there was
30 BA YA RD TA YLOR.
no other way, and by his own solicitations and those of
his friends enough subscribers were obtained to secure
the publication, and early in February, 1844, appeared
“Yimena ; or, the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and
other Poems. By James Bayard Taylor. “I am a
youthful traveler in the way.” Henry Kirke White.
Philadelphia: Herman Hooker, 178 Chestnut Street,
MDCCCXLIV.” It was dedicated “To Rufus W.
Griswold, as an expression of gratitude for the kind
encouragement he has shown the author.”
None of the fifteen poems contained in this little
volume were ever after included by the author in any
edition of his writings. They form a faint prelude to
the fuller and stronger verse which he was to write,
and are chiefly interesting for the indication which
they give of an early mastery of form, and for the ab-
sence of any reference to the love which, at the time
they were written, held so large a place in his thought.
Either through timidity or reserve he does not seem to
have made his verse to half reveal a secret which he
cherished, but he used the inspiration of nature and
heroism and patriotism, besides putting into his poetry
some of that serious contemplation of life which be-
longs inevitably to the young poet. The salt with
which the poetry is savored is the glow and fervor of
an ardent mind, and it was this rather than any fine
art in his verse which won him friends among those to
whom the little volume was an introduction.
It is clear that the author himself had no immoder-
ate delight in the book, or unreasonable expectation
from its publication. He delivered his manuscript to
Mr. Griswold, and saw nothing of it again until the
printed sheets were placed in his hands. When it
was bound, he supplied his subscribers and sent a few
FIRST VENTURES. 31
copies to the press and to the men of letters whose
judgment he desired. The book served its purpose.
It brought him a little money and a few pleasant let-
ters, but chiefly it gave him a new confidence and
quickened the impulses which had been working in his
nature. A volume of poems published by a young
man of nineteen was a rarer thing then than it is now,
and the publication conferred a certain distinction
upon the author. Whatever his rank, he was among
the poets, and though he did not at all overestimate
the poetic value of his volume, he could not help hav-
ing a consciousness which was much more than a se-
cret sense of how others looked upon him; it was a
sense of having taken a step forward.
“It is useless to deny,” he writes to a friend with
whom he was consulting about the publication of
“Yimena,” “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 a share
of the world’s honors, yet with all the sincerity I pos-
sess I declare that my highest ambition 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. Its use,
as Channing says, “is to lift the mind out of the
beaten, dusty, weary walks of life, to raise it into a
purer element, and to breathe into it a more profound
and generous emotion.” Several secondary considera-
tions also impel me on. I wish to win a name that
32 BA YARD TA YLOR.
the person who shall be chosen to share with me the
toils of life will not be ashamed to own, and because I
know it will gladden the hearts of my parents. Hence
it has always been my greatest care to let no line go
before the public that could have an evil influence,
but to endeavor as much as possible to exalt and en-
noble the soul. How far I have succeeded it is not
for me to judge.”
Bayard's letters and diaries during the two years
of his apprenticeship disclose a growing impatience of
the limitations of his life, an uncontrollable restless-
ness, and a keen sense of his need of larger opportuni-
ties. The work of the printing-office, when once mas-
tered, became drudgery; the associations among which
he moved were distasteful; he found relief in the so-
ciety of friends at Kennett Square and in his poetry,
but he was constantly planning an escape from his un-
congenial circumstance. It was not hard work which
wore upon him, but the repression of all that he cared
for ; and so intolerable had his situation become that
in looking back upon it afterward he saw very clearly
that his breaking away from it was his only chance of
health and spirit.
“As the poetic element in my nature,” he writes in
the autobiographic sketch from which we have already
quoted, “was predominant, and felt itself hemmed in
on all sides by the entire want of sympathy and en-
couragement, I determined to procure better opportu-
nities for education. I hungrily read all European
works of travel, and my imagination clothed foreign
countries with a splendid atmosphere of poetry and
art. I felt as if I were sitting in an exhausted re-
ceiver, while the air which should nourish my spiritual
life could only be found in distant lands. My desire
FIRST VENTURES. 33
to visit Europe grew with the difficulties that stood
in my path. The two continents were much farther
apart then than now ; in our quiet community the un-
dertaking seemed gigantic, and my enthusiasm on the
subject was considered little short of madness.”
He had already taken one short journey in his own
country, in the first year of his apprenticeship, a half-
humorous account of which he gives in the paper
“The First Journey I ever Made.” It carried him
as far as the Catskills, for his ambition had long been
to see veritable mountains, and he closes his narrative
with the words, “This was my first moderate essay,
at the age of eighteen. And I advise all callow youths
who think it an easy matter to tramp over the whole
world to make a similar trial trip, and get their en-
gines into good working order before fairly putting
out to sea.” He never allowed his own engines to get
rusty, for, while negotiating for the publication of
“Yimena,” he used to make the journey to and from
Philadelphia, a distance of thirty miles, on foot.
His first purpose, in publishing his volume of poems,
was to secure money enough to carry him to the West
Indies, but all other desires became absorbed in the one
passion for travel and study in Europe. His cousin,
Frank Taylor, was about to go abroad, and urged Bay-
ard to accompany him. The obstacles in the way
seemed insurmountable. As he says, such a journey
was a far more serious undertaking then than now ;
his parents were opposed to it, he had two years more
of his apprenticeship to serve, and neither he nor his
friends had money. He wrote to various people who
could advise him as to the expense of the journey, and
all the answers which he received named sums which
1. At Home and Abroad, i. 1–13.
VOL. I. 3
34 B.A. YA RD TA YLOR.
were prohibitory. The books which volunteered sim-
ilar information were equally discouraging, but How-
itt’s “Rural Life in Germany ” gave shape to certain
vague ideas which he had, and convinced him that it
was possible to make the journey on foot, after cross-
ing the Atlantic, at much less expense than others
had estimated.
He has given in the introductory chapter of “Views
Afoot” a lively account of the difficulties which he
encountered, but the greatest difficulty of all he could
not there record, for it was too personal in its charac-
ter. He was bound to his home by the strongest ties
of affection, and his sensitive nature was racked by
the struggle which took place when he was drawn out
into the larger world by half-understood aspirations,
and held back by the appeals to his affection and
sense of duty. He had a friend who possessed his full-
est confidence, and the circumstance of that friend's
loss of a mother drew out Bayard’s sympathy, which
passed naturally, before the letter was done, into a
passionate expression of his own troubles.
“When I left you last and went on alone toward
this place, I experienced as severe a mental struggle
as I ever felt. It is one of those few which happen
in the life of almost every one. It seemed to be an
era in my life when I must decide on my after-destiny;
it was a crisis, which I seemed instinctively to feel
was either to carry me on to that station in the hearts
of men which is my highest ambition, or to condemn
me to a life of obscurity and spiritlessness. I know
how much my parents felt, how opposed they were
to my going to Europe; for though they did not say
so, I could plainly see, and I knew by my mother's
1 See edition of 1855, and subsequent ones.
FIRST VENTURES. 35
voice the anxiety with which she looked upon it, and
the opposition of many of my friends, my absence
from Mary; on the other hand, the aspirations of my
childhood, the dream of my youth. Italy and Greece
the wild enthusiasm with which I should tread those
lands, and view the shrines ‘where young Romance
and Love like sister pilgrims turn; the glorious emo-
tions of my soul, and the inspiration I should draw
from them, which I now partly feel. How my heart
leaps at the sound of
‘Woods that wave on Delphi's steep,
Isles that gem the Ægean deep.”
The isles of Greece hallowed by Homer and Milton
and Byron My words are cold and tame compared
with my burning thoughts. But I wander. The strug-
gle within me was very great. In spite of all my en-
deavors, tears, which I had not shed for years, rushed
to my eyes, and I wept like a child. My feelings had
been too highly wrought up. I could not bear to give
my parents pain, and it almost seemed to me like re-
linquishing life to relinquish my glorious dream of
the Old World. Then, my love! John, I thank God
I have such a friend as you, who can feel and compre-
hend emotions which it would be painful for me to
bear “in silence and alone.’ I sat down by the road-
side, for it was then dark, and looking to heaven
through my blinding tears fervently prayed for
strength of spirit to sustain me in my conflict with
the world. And the struggle in my breast ceased,
and I felt that the path which was to lead me onward
and upward was that which was the desire of my soul.
I have since written to my mother, and feel almost
certain that she will be satisfied to let me go. But
36 BAYARD TAYLOR.
wou, - would it be hoping too much to think of you
accompanying us? It is in your power, and it will be
worth a thousand times the trouble it will cost you, to
accompany us. Think of the Rhine, the Alps, the
Apennines, the Coliseum, Vesuvius, Paestum, the Par-
thenon and Acropolis, Parnassus, Delphi, Corinth,
and Marathon I cannot paint too strongly the ad-
vantages and enjoyments of such a tour, but will you
not go 7 Frank is a glorious companion for traveling,
and how much it would add to the enjoyment of travel
to go together l But I am hardly in the mood for
writing thus, and will leave the remainder of my per-
Suasions till I see you. Perhaps some that I have
Written may seem foolish even to you; not foolish, but
wild, visionary. It may be so, but if it is I would
rather be visionary than sober and wise.” 1
His resolution did not fail him. He succeeded in
obtaining the consent of his parents, and in buying
from Mr. Evans the remainder of his apprenticeship
time. It only remained now to procure the necessary
* The friend to whom Bayard Taylor wrote was John B. Phil-
lips, and many of his most confidential letters in early life were
addressed to him. Mr. Phillips was a native of Kennett, studied
medicine in Paris, and afterwards settled in St. Paul, Minnesota,
..where he passed the rest of his life in the practice of his profes-
sion and in the office of State Commissioner of Statistics. He
was a man of strong character and of marked literary tastes, as
his translations from Heine and other German poets as well as
his own sonnets show. He had a singular experience once in be-
ing seized at Basel on account of his resemblance to Mazzini. It
was only after the intervention of the United States Minister,
Mr. Jay, that he was released, and the Swiss government was
compelled to pay two thousand francs damages. When Dr. Phil-
lips died, at the age of fifty-six, April 27, 1877, Bayard Taylor
wrote in the “New York Tribune” an obituary notice of his
friend.
FIRST VENTURES. 37
money for the journey. His plan was to make ar-
rangements with editors to supply them with letters
from Europe, and to secure enough money in advance
to get well started, after which he would rely upon
further letters, and at a pinch upon his skill as a com-
positor. “Two weeks before the day fixed upon for
leaving home,” he writes, “I had secured no employ-
ment, and did not possess a dollar toward my outfit.
I then went to Philadelphia, and spent two or three
days in calling upon all the principal editors and pub-
lishers of the city, but I seemed doomed to be unsuc-
cessful. At last, when I was about to return home,
not in despair, but in a state of wonder as to where
my funds would come from (for I felt certain they
would come), Mr. Patterson, at that time publisher of
the “Saturday Evening Post, offered me fifty dollars
in advance for twelve letters, with the promise of con-
tinuing the engagement if the letters should be satis-
factory. The Hon. Joseph R. Chandler, editor of the
“ United States Gazette, then made me a similar offer.
It is needless to say that I instantly and joyfully ac-
cepted both, and thus found myself in possession of
one hundred dollars. Mr. George R. Graham also
paid me liberally for some manuscript poems, and I
returned home in triumph, with a fund of one hundred
and forty dollars, which at that time seemed sufficient
to carry me to the end of the world.”
His companions in the enterprise were his cousin,
Frank Taylor, and a young townsman, Barclay Pen-
nock. In his sketch of “A Night Walk,” Bayard
Taylor has given an entertaining account of the jour-
ney by boat and on foot which he and his cousin took
to Washington in search of passports. In their sim-
1. At IIome and Abroad, i. 14.
38 BA YARD TA YLOR.
plicity they knew no other way than to go to the capi-
tal, present_themselves to the member of Congress
from their *istrict, and by him to be taken to the
Secretary of State. At the end of June, 1844, they
said their farewells at home, and went to New York to
take passage for England. “Yimena ’’ had been the
means of introduction to Mr. N. P. Willis, who was
one of the most popular and influential men of letters
in America, and Bayard Taylor as soon as he reached
New York called upon him.
“He gave me,” he says, “a note of recommendation,
with which I visited the editors of the leading journals,
but failed to make any further engagements, except
a conditional one with Horace Greeley, of the “New
York Tribune.’ When I first called upon this gen-
tleman, 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 let-
ters 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 Ger-
many, and which were published in the “Tribune,’
were dull in proportion as they were wise. Mr.
Willis also gave me letters to some printers of his ac-
quaintance in London, thinking they might be useful
in case I should be compelled to resort to my handi-
craft.”
The friendliness of Mr. Willis was the best gift
which the young traveler could carry with him. He
had just passed through a severe ordeal in breaking
FIRST VENTURES. 39
away from his home and early associations; he was
going into the wider world of which he had dreamed,
and he was going not for adventure, but with an ardent
poetic spirit, seeking enlargement of his life in prep-
aration for a literary vocation, and it was very much
to him that one so successful as Willis should take
him by the hand and bid him Godspeed. The impres-
sion which Willis made upon him and his own sensa-
tion at leaving America may be learned from a letter
which he wrote the night before he sailed to J. B.
Phillips : —
“I have just returned from bidding Willis farewell,
and feel nearly as much regret as on leaving home;
for I never met with one in my life who has won my
regard and esteem in so short a time. . . . I will not
say anything about leaving home, because I believe I
was in a perfectly unnatural state; I cannot describe
it to you now, but it was about as if your feelings,
conscience, and everything else had suddenly been con-
verted into adamant or limestone; for you have some
experience in that line. However, we got to Philadel-
phia safely, and were occupied the next day and a half
with business; I was too busy to be sorry if I wanted
to be. But I did not want to. It did not and does
not seem like a pleasure excursion; it is a duty, a
necessity. I had but little time with Griswold, but
found him obliging as ever. He is going to publish a
new edition of “Poets and Poetry of America’ next
fall, and says he will give me a place among the num-
ber. He offered his services in whatever manner I
might wish. . . . I will talk a little more about
Willis. Griswold intended giving me a letter of in-
troduction, but had no time. I called at his house,
and on telling my name he knew me instantly. On
40 BA YARD TA YLOR.
apologizing for calling without a letter, he said it was
unnecessary, as we knew each other already, and began
conversing as familiarly as if we had been old friends.
He commended my plan of going very highly, and
gave me a very flattering letter of recommendation
to the New York editors, but they appear to be sup-
plied, and a letter to his brother, Richard S. Willis,
in Frankfurt, Germany. He did many other kind-
nesses for me, which I shall not soon forget. I have
been at his house three or four times, and when, this
afternoon, he gave me his parting ‘God bless you,' I
felt as if I had left a true friend. I have not time now
to give you much of his conversation, but it is daguerre-
otyped on my memory. He looks very much like the
portrait in ‘ Graham's Magazine,’ but not quite so
young, although at times, when he becomes animated,
you would not take him to be more than twenty-four ;
dresses with neatness and the most perfect taste, and
has the very beau ideal of a study, -you can conceive
of nothing more elegant. In fact, his poetry is visible
in everything around him.”
It was the 1st of July, 1844, when the three trav-
elers left New York in the ship Oxford, bound for
Liverpool. They took a second-cabin passage, the
Second cabin being a small place amidships, flanked
with bales of cotton and fitted with temporary berths
of rough planks. “We paid ten dollars apiece for
the passage,” writes Bayard, “with the privilege of
finding our own bedding and provisions. At a ware-
house of ships' stores on Pine Street wharf we found
everything that we needed, and received great assist-
ance from the salesman, who calculated with perfect
honesty and exactness what articles we should need,
and what quantity of each. In our inexperience we
FIRST VENTURES. 41
should probably have gone to sea but half supplied.
The ship's cook, for a small compensation, undertook
to prepare our provisions, thus relieving us from one
of the most disagreeable necessities of a second-class
passage. On Summing up our expenses we were grat-
ified to find that we should reach Liverpool at a cost
of twenty-four dollars apiece. . . . As the blue hills
of Neversink faded away, and sank with the sun be-
hind the ocean, and I first felt the swells of the At-
lantic and the premonitions of sea-sickness, 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 then 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.”"
1 Views Afoot, pp. 22, 23.
CHAPTER III.
VIEWS AFOOT.
1844–1846.
People can’t see that if I had not been a poet I should never have had such
Success as a traveler. — Letter to R. EI. Stoddard.
And, nor with gold nor knowledge weighted, I
Set forth, and o'er the green Bavarian land,
A happy wanderer, fared: the hour was nigh
When, in the home of Art, my feet should stand
Where Time and Power have kissed the Painter's hand
The Picture of St. John.
THE Bayard Taylor who thus left his home to see
the world was a slim, upright youth, with rich dark-
brown flowing hair, lustrous dark-brown eyes, and an
expression which was half of eagerness, half of melan-
choly. The warmth with which he held to his home
associations was more than the simple emotion of one
who had never left his home, for change of scene and
wider experience had no power to lessen it. The ex-
hilaration which he felt as he trod the deck of the ship
which was bearing him to newer lands was accompa-
nied by a wistful backward glance, and in his travels
there needed but a touch of some home instinct to
move him to passionate expression. Yet the impulse
which had driven him abroad came from a clear sense
of the needs of his nature, and he gave himself to the
appropriation of foreign life with unabating ardor, and
with a consciousness of an enlargement of his power.
On the shores of Loch Achray he wrote: —
VIEWS A FOOT. 43
I turn me from the glorious scene
Of mountains blue and forests green,
With braes and crystal lakes between —
My thoughts are far away;
The hills are crossed, the wave is passed,
A lingering glance on home is cast—
The ties that bind the spirit fast
Are proof against decay.
But I shall gain a deeper thought
Of what within the soul is wrought —
A lesson full of feeling fraught,
Riches, but not of earth ;
And hail with joy whate'er may still
In human hearts the voice of ill —
The soul with nobler longings fill
And give a purer birth.
The two years which Bayard Taylor spent in travel
and study were his university education. It was a ne-
cessity with him to acquire knowledge rather through
the medium of experience and observation than by the
authority of others. In speaking of the printed results
of his early journeys, he has said, “It is the work of
a boy who was trying to learn something, but with a
very faint idea of the proper method or discipline;
who had an immense capacity for wonder and enjoy-
ment, but not much power as yet to discriminate be-
tween the important and the trivial, the true and the
false.” In looking back upon the period he was per-
haps more sensible of his immaturity of judgment than
of the freshness and spontaneity of his expression; but
although he deprecated the importance which people
continued to attach to his venture, he never overlooked
the significance which it had in the development of his
powers.
44 B.A. YA RD TA YLOR.
The book which gathers the observations and expe-
rience of these two years remains as a full record. His
own free outline in his autobiographic sketch will
serve to place the external life quickly before the read-
er's mind. “I knew absolutely nothing of the world,
not even at home, but the ignorance of youth is its
courage. After landing in Liverpool with two friends
who were in a similar condition, 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 1844–45 I spent in Frankfurt on the Main,
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, Leipzig, 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 for two years, and had supported my-
self 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.”
VIEWS A FOOT. 45
The engagements which he had made with various
newspapers determined the character of his literary
work during these two years. He began by commit-
ting the details of observation and reflection to his
note-books and fuller journal, sometimes sketching
scenes and figures, and then making a free transcript
for the professional letters upon which he relied to meet
the expense of his journey. Gradually he fell into the
way of making these letters independent of his private
journal. He had, in truth, three audiences before
whom he was constantly appearing: the public, his
family, and himself. He wrote to the newspapers
with an ingenuousness which drew his readers to him,
but, after all, he did not take them into his confidence
so thoroughly as they might suppose. With the read-
iness gained by constant practice, he wrote rapidly and
effectively of the new impressions made upon him as
he passed from one place to another, or encountered
successive phases of life at Frankfurt or Florence; but
with the increase of freedom in thus reporting his
daily life, he was able to withdraw himself more com-
pletely into the seclusion of his own thought when
writing in his journal. Even at the outset the printed
description of his travels is very reserved beside the
freedom and abandon which he displays in his private
diaries, and, in comparing the two records, one may
often get a closer view of the ardent youth, even when
he is occupied chiefly with external things. Thus, in
his diary, near the end of his Atlantic voyage, he
makes the entry : —
“Morning of the 25". — Hurrah for land, for it Is
within sight, though the heavy fog prevents us from
seeing it. But we are in lat. 56°, or off the Hebrides,
and but thirty miles from shore. The southwest
46 BAYARD TA YLOR.
ge
wind comes to us strongly freighted with the ‘meadow
freshness of the Irish bogs.’ And it is indeed a pleas-
ant smell, recalling many a pleasant hour of wander-
ing by streams, and hunting wild flowers in thickets,
and wading marshes for water-lilies. Land-birds have
come near us, as if to cheer us for our long journeying
over the pathless water, and repay us by their presence
for the deprivation of a sight of their home. Oh! if
the mist could rise up like a veil from the ocean, and
show us Ben Lomond, standing blue in the dim dis-
tance, the first herald of the romantic land we ap-
proach ! Now that we are so near the Old World, I
feel a kind of fear, that I cannot at first realize my
situation. I have so long and ardently wished to visit
the scenes hallowed by the spirit of many a mighty
bard, or consecrated by noble deeds of the men of
former times, or marked by acts of tyranny or crime,
and standing as silent but eloquent lessons, bequeathed
to us by antiquity, that now, when I shall behold them,
I fear I cannot reconcile the real with the ideal. The
anticipation has been so like reality that the reality
may seem as dream-like and vague. I can scarcely
think I am 3,500 miles from home; although I see the
ocean around me, it appears as if just behind the
western horizon lay my native land.
“Friday, July 26, 1844. — This morning, like a
glorious vision, the Old World dawned upon my view
At sunrise, when we rose, just under the golden flood
of light that streamed through the morning clouds, lay
afar off and indistinct the crags of an island, with top
of a light-house visible at one extremity. While we
gazed, a storm, which was gathering along the horizon,
seemed to be discharging its wrath upon the waters;
and when it had rolled somewhat to the northward, we
VIEWS A FOOT. 47
beheld, its outline almost invisible, so completely was
it blended in hue with the veiling cloud, a lofty moun-
tain, looming up blue and shadowy as the landscape of
a dream. While I was looking at it, we had drawn
nearer to the island, which began to present a beauti-
ful and interesting appearance. The dim and soft out-
line it wore at first was broken into a range of crags,
with lofty precipices jutting out to the sea, and sloping
off inland. As we passed to the north side, the white
wall of the light-house shone against the dim hills be-
hind, and the cliffs near to us were of the most airy
and ethereal hue. In front was a range of breakers,
marked by a line of foam along the coast; the whole
scene was so new and picturesque that I felt all the
enthusiasm which such a scene is calculated to excite.
It appears to be Tory Island, on the northern coast of
Ireland; we are now going direct toward Scotland,
which we shall see this afternoon. The island has dis-
appeared behind us, but I have secured two sketches
of it as a memento of my first view of the Old World.
Southward of us stretches the long range of hills,
forming the headlands of the Irish coast; the wind is
fair, the sunshine bright, and my spirits in a most joy-
ous mood. It was worth all the troubles and miseries
of a long voyage to see the island in the golden light
of morn, with its airy cliffs and white walls gleaming
in the sunshine, and feel all the glorious excitement of
viewing this herald of new scenes and new delight,
this gate to the romance and poesy of a glorious
clime !”
When he had passed through the first excitement of
the Old World and had settled himself to regular work,
his diary becomes more completely the repository of
thoughts and emotions which he could not commit even
48 BAYARD TAYLOR.
to his most intimate friends at home; indeed, it no
doubt served as a safety-valve to an overcharged sensi-
bility. Meanwhile, besides these two forms of expres-
sion, and the poems which fell as the more ripened
form of his sentiment, he wrote many letters to his
family and circle of friends at Kennett Square. These
letters, penned in delicate characters upon square
sheets, every available inch of which was cultivated,
were passed from hand to hand and jealously treas-
ured. Looking at them now, with their yellow hue,
frayed edges, and folds weak through repeated hand-
ling, one can imagine the meaning which they held at
the time to writer and receivers. They are crowded
with incidents and with minute details of the personal
life of the traveler in connection with the people with
whom he associated, and they overflow with eager
questions regarding affairs at home, comments on
home news, and messages to one and another. They
brought back letters which reproduce the life at Ken-
nett Square, the good-natured envy of the younger.
members and the affectionate solicitude of the older
ones, who see in the boy away from home one who is
exposed to new and perilous experience of life. The
creed which was held with such firmness and loyalty
in the little Pennsylvania village was applied with
earnestness and undoubting sincerity to the conscience
of the wanderer. Thus the ties between the traveler
and his home were never consciously loosened.
The most important step which Bayard Taylor took
was in his resolution to be domesticated in Germany
during the first winter, and there make himself famil-
iar with the German language, and so much of its lit-
erature as time would permit. He had already shown
something of that facility in acquiring language which
VIEWS A FOOT. 49
was to be so marked a characteristic of his intellectual
disposition. He reached his results by a directness
which corresponded with the attitude of his mind to-
ward all subjects upon which he fixed his attention.
The magnetism, to call it by a convenient term, which
made him friendly at once with those who had common
cause with him, was only another manifestation of a
nature which appropriated external things, not by slow
analysis, but by quick apprehension.
He describes in “Views Afoot ” his life in Frank-
furt in the family of Herr Schenck-Rinck, and with
the companionship of Mr. Richard Storrs Willis, who
was then studying music there. It was the fact of
Mr. Willis's presence that determined him to make
selection of the place and family, and the change from
Kennett Square to Frankfurt was one which had a
positive influence upon him. He had been too short
a time on the way to gather much from the people
whom he had passed in his journey, but now he was
established in a new home which afforded many con-
trasts to the one which he had left. A pure moral at-
mosphere pervaded both, but there the likeness ceased.
The tendency at Kennett was to restraint and repres-
sion of feeling, issuing often in a real impoverishment,
and having the outward appearance of inhospitality.
Bayard Taylor had suffered from this, and it was the
desire to escape into a freer air which had so much to
do with his determination to travel. Now he found
himself in a society where the impulses to the dem-
onstration of feeling were obeyed with an unchecked
spontaneity. What to many Americans would have
been a violation of the conventions of emotion was to
him a surprise, a relief, and a great pleasure. Most
persons of English training are rendered uneasy by
VOL. I. 4
50 BA YARD TA YLOR.
German effusiveness, but his native sensibility re-
sponded to it with sincere thankfulness. -
So sympathetic a nature could scarcely resist the
impression thus made upon it, and while there resulted
a catholicity of temper, which had always been latent
in him, he was at first drawn into an excess of senti-
mentality, which was stimulated by his absence from
home and by the half-home life now granted to him.
It finds frequent expression in his letters and diaries,
and shows itself in the poems which he then wrote but
did not print. The reader of “Views Afoot ” will
have observed how much he was attracted by what
struck him as the poetic side of German life, as in-
stanced in the celebration of Christmas. g
His appearance as he entered the Frankfurt life is
shown in a paper of reminiscence which Herr Schenck-
Rinck published after Bayard Taylor's death: “The
young travelers reached Heidelberg in September
[1844], where Taylor's cousin remained to continue his
studies, whilst the former, in company with Barclay
Pennock, after hurriedly admiring the splendid situ-
ation of the famous college-town, wandered along the
beautiful Bergstrasse toward Frankfurt. Here they
searched with some difficulty for Richard S. Willis,
who was studying the science of harmony, under
Schnyder von Wartensee. Willis was living in the
house of the writer, and so it happened that when we
were all gathered in the family circle, on the evening
of the 1st of October, Taylor and Pennock were sud-
denly announced. I shall never forget the first sight
of Taylor. He was a tall, slender, blooming young
man, the very image of youthful beauty and purity.
His intellectual head was surrounded by dark, curly
hair; the glance of his eyes was so modest, and yet so
TVIEWS AFOOT. 51
clear and lucid, that you seemed to look right into his
heart.”"
Bayard Taylor's own appreciation of his German
friends appears in frequent references to the hospi-
table family with whom he lived, especially in letters
to his mother; to her also he writes of the quickening
of which he and his companions were conscious.
“One can know nothing of a country from the out-
side. What a world of traveler's prejudices have I
read, and did I not now know better, what a strange
idea would I not have of Germany And yet they
say one can learn anything from books just as well
as by traveling. We could not have learned in two
years, in fact we never could have learned to feel
as we now do, though it is but six months since we
left home. The principal advantage it has been to us
I could scarcely make you understand, since it is only
evident to ourselves as yet. I mean its effect on the
mind, which has been as surprising as it is sudden.
Thought seems to have taken a sudden growth, fetters
of which we were not before aware have been broken,
and we are continually surprised in what a broader
light many subjects are presenting themselves.”
The very enlargement which this experience had
given to his mind had its effect in making him ready
to extend his horizon. The Frankfurt life, with all
its revelation of German nature, was somewhat re-
stricted. Kennett had been one station from which
to look out on the world, and he who left it was able
to see a little farther than they who stayed behind.
Frankfurt was another such station. As Bayard Tay-
lor went deeper into German literature and became
more familiar with the life of the country, he felt that
1 Didaskalia. Frankfurt, April 6, 1879.
52 BA YARD TA YLOR.
while he had not exhausted the society in which he had
been living, there lay outside of it a larger Germany,
and beyond with its art was Italy. So, when spring
came, he closed his books, and took his staff again.
“Six months,” he says in his diary, “in a small city
in a stranger-land is enough to make one tired, even
though he has friends there who have made him a
home. The Alps and Italy are before us, and who
would linger longer than the season allowed in a place
so near? Not I, no, - we must be off. I feel op-
pressed, cramped, confined, - hinaus ins Freie /*
None the less, to break away again from a home
life and take leave of friends was no light thing with
him, and brought back a stronger desire to be through
with his wanderings and back in America; and when, a
few weeks later, he bade a final farewell to his Frank-
furt friends, he committed to his diary the regretful
thoughts which possessed him. “How often,” he
writes, “will the old bridge, with its view up the
Main over the houses of Oberrad to the far moun-
tains of the Odenwald, rise freshly and distinctly in
my memory when I shall have been long absent from
them How often shall I hear in fancy, as I do now
in reality, the heavy tread of passers-by on the rough
pavement below, and the deep bell of the Cathedral
chiming the swift hours with a hollow tone that seems
to warn me how I employ them | Yes, even this old
room with its bare walls, little table and chairs, which
I have thought and studied in so long that it seems
difficult to think and study anywhere else, will crowd
out of the memory images of many a loftier scene. If
I only preserve for the future the hope and the trust
which have cheered and sustained me here through
the sorrow of absence and the anxiety of uncertain
VIIB WS AFOOT. 53
toil, it will be well. And there has been many a
pleasant hour here, too. I have rushed many a time
in at the door, wild with delight at a letter from
home, and sat here at the window and read over and
over again those dear messages, till my heart was
warm with the words of kindness, and I looked up,
half expecting to see faces full of affection beaming
upon me. Willis has often sat on the sofa behind me,
while we have talked away many an hour in friendly
converse and the chords of his guitar and the touch-
ing, feeling swell of his song seem still to fall on the
air with a soft vibration, as if their echoes had not
yet died away. The watch ticks hollow on the stand,
and there is only now and then a footfall in the street
to break the deep silence.”
In Italy, and especially in Florence, where he made
his longest stay, Bayard Taylor came into a world of
beauty in art and nature, and the transition from the
limited life he had led into this generous sphere was a
change from winter to summer. Heretofore he had
satisfied his love of beauty chiefly through the reading
of poetry, where Keats had stood for the most sensuous
form, and by a close acquaintance with the simple na-
ture in which he had been bred, but he had a latent
passion for the exuberance of a warmer clime. There
was an Orientalism in nature which he early discov-
ered, even before he was brought into familiar knowl-
edge of the actual East. Thus he used to greet the
first dandelion of the year with delight; it was to him
a symbol of the ascendency of the sun; and in the
early fall he welcomed the pale pink flower of the
centaury plant, and its spicy odor with its faint sug-
gestion of the East. His diary is laden with minute
descriptions of glorious scenery, which was the feast of
54 BA YARD TA YLOR.
his eyes as he trudged over the Alps into the valleys
of Northern Italy, and now he was to kindle at those
objects which have made Italy the material in which
the artistic imagination works, – the cities, the men
and women, and the treasures which mark the tri-
umphs of plastic and pictorial art. It was with a
vivid recollection of these first impressions that he af.
terward wrote : —
On, -on, through broadening vale and brightening sun
I walked, and hoary in their old repose
The olives twinkled : many a terrace rose,
With marbles crowned and jasmine overrun,
And orchards where the ivory silk-worm spun.
On leafy palms outspread, its pulpy fruit
The fig-tree held ; and last, the charm to close,
A dark-eyed shepherd piped a reedy flute.
My heart beat loud: I walked as in a dream
Where simplest actions, touched with marvel, seem
Enchanted yet familiar : for I knew
The orchards, terraces, and breathing flowers,
The tree from Adam's garden, and the blue
Sweet sky behind the light aerial towers;
And that young faun that piped, had piped before, —
I knew my home : the exile now was o'er | 1
He set down with frankness his impressions of pic-
tures, glad when he found them confirmed by those
of men trained in criticism, and modest in holding
to his own opinions when they were not thus sus-
tained ; but he was a student, and wrote himself down
so. His slight proficiency in the use of the pencil
enabled him to keep many notes which were of value
to himself, and he carried into the churches and gal-
leries an artistic perception which grew firmer by
IIS62.
1 The Picture of St. John, I. xvii., xviii.
VIEWS A FOOT. 55
He won the friendship of Powers, the sculptor, while
in Florence, and through his kindness made the ac-
quaintance of Americans and Englishmen. He de-
scribes himself, in one of his letters home, as mincing
along on tip-toe in the muddy streets of Florence, with
his hands in his pockets, sometimes exciting attention
with his student beaver and length of hair, which had
not been cut for six months; he had not at all the air
of a man of the world, but he had then, as later, an
ingenuous bearing and a winning personality which
drew men, women, and children to him, and made
him, unconventional and unsophisticated as he was,
welcome in all circles which he entered. A slight in-
cident which he narrates gives a charming illustration
of the subtle power of attraction which he possessed:
“I know of nothing 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.” "
With all his eagerness to see men of note, he was
shy of making advances; when the opportunity did
come, he accepted it with freedom and an ease which
was born of native simplicity. Mendelssohn he sought,
and Freiligrath, but he found a special charm in the
English and American society at Florence. The pleas-
ure which he had in the work of Mr. Powers was
heightened by the friendliness with which he was re-
ceived into the sculptor's family. He wrote some lines
upon Mr. Powers's daughter, then a child, and also
upon the sculptor's Eve, which impressed his imagina-
1 Views Afoot, chapter xxix.
56 BA YARD TA YLOR,
tion strongly. It was in response to this poem that
Mr. Powers wrote to him: —
HIRAM POWERS TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
FLORENCE, October 9, 1845.
I have received from our mutual friend, Mr. T , the
charming verses composed by you upon my statue of Eve, and
I regret that Providence, so liberal to you in beautiful thoughts
and refined expression, has denied me the power, even in plain
prose, of conveying to you my sense of the high compliment
which you have paid to my work. I cannot flatter myself that
it deserves such praise, and I suspect that your young and vigor-
ous imagination dreamed of the charms of the real mistress of
Eden rather than realized them in my marble. The true poet
sheds his own light and heat upon objects around him, thus mak-
ing things cold and inanimate in themselves warm and beaming
with borrowed life, and to him they are often indebted for that
immortality which otherwise they had never obtained.
Mind remains immortal while matter perishes, and who shall
say that your verses may not remain the only record of my statue
of Eve long after it has returned in fragments to the earth from
which it was taken 2 With many thanks for your beautiful com-
pliment and your good-will, believe me, my dear sir, most sin-
cerely yours, - HIRAM POWERS.
While in Florence Bayard Taylor was separated
from his cousin, who had returned to Germany to con-
tinue his studies there, and he wrote him several let-
ters in which he passed quickly from one incident to
another, sketching his plans for the future, retailing
bits of home gossip which he had received, and con-
fiding the story of his financial difficulties and escapes.
It is from these letters that the following extracts are
made :-
BAYARD TAYLOR TO FRANKLIN TAYLOR.
FLORENCE, October 26, 1845.
... Perhaps you would like to know what we have been doing
since you left. Well, there have been manifold incidents. We
got back the next morning after leaving you at Siena, after stuff-
WIE WS A FOOT. 57
ing ourselves “considerably” with the splendid grapes the pretty
peasant girls gave us. At the expiration of the month we kept
the same rooms, T taking them with us, as we found we
could do no better. We have changed our living so as only to
eat twice a day, on account of the expense, and we get along
very well this way by dining at three. Some time after you left,
I wrote a poem on Powers' Eve, and sent it round to him by
T He was very much pleased with it, and invited me to
visit him. I have now become quite well acquainted with him,
and go there often. He has a sweet wife and three or four chil-
dren. You remember those English children whom we saw in
the Boboli Gardens, and admired because they spoke Italian so
beautifully 2 — those are his. I have made friends of them, and
like them very much. Powers is a very interesting man, and full
of genius. He has the greatest fund of comical stories I ever
heard, and tells them in such an inimitable manner that we are
kept in a roar. He borrowed and read “Ximena,” and sent me,
besides, a most beautiful note in reply to the poem, as well as of
fering me the use of his library.
At his house I met Kellogg, an American painter of very
great talent, who has been traveling in Greece, Egypt, Syria,
Asia Minor, and Turkey. I have been to his studio, and looked
over some hundreds of sketches which he brought back. He
was at Thebes, was thirty days on and around Mount Sinai, and
spent nine months in Constantinople. He has set me half crazy
to travel there, but I cannot. He showed me a splendid diamond
cup, given him by Riza Pacha, Grand Vizier to the Sultan, for
painting his portrait, and a snuff-box of gold and agate, a present
from Sir Stratford Canning. He paints splendidly. I have been
two or three times at Browns. They are very agreeable people.
Richard A. Locke, author of the “Moon Hoax,” has just arrived
here from Graefenberg, and Browns promised to take us in to
see his family soon. I have not seen Greenough yet, but shall
visit his studio before leaving. Besides this, I have met with
Mr. Mozier and wife, Mr. Cameron and wife, Thomas B. Ashton,
of Philadelphia, and one or two other Americans. Ives has some
very fine things in his studio, - I think he is a genius. I have
become very well acquainted with him, and like him much better
than at first. I must tell you that Bryant was here three or four
days, but I did not get to see him. I did not wish to call on him
directly, but went to the galleries, hoping to meet him. The
58 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Academy of Arts was open a week, and there were some very
fine pictures in them. . . .
I have entirely finished the Giant, and made another copy,
with many revisions and corrections. T thinks it is a mag-
nificent thing, and, indeed, I begin to think something can be
made of it. I am, however, going to copy it over once again, and
make still greater improvements. I am at a great loss to find a
fitting name for it, and have given it, ad interim, the title “Be-
fore Chaos : the Tale of a Hunter.” ". How would it answer 2
Beside this, I have written a long poem, - a story of the fall of
Poland, called “Vittoria Saminski.” It is about four hundred
lines in length, and I wrote it in three evenings. I wish I could
show it to you, and get your critical opinion of it. I have deter-
mined, if it is at all possible, to have these two poems and the
legend of Hamburg published in London together in one volume.
Besides, having found, contrary to expectation, that the letters
about Italy (of which I have finished twelve) are the best I have
yet written, I have also concluded (always with the proviso, if it
can be done) to republish all the letters on Europe together in
the cheap form in America after my return, under the title of
“A Walk through Europe.” Don't you think the title would
take 2 I have heard from home that some of my letters are rais-
ing desires in the minds of some persons “which cannot easily be
gratified.” The three wise men of Kennett have given the exam-
ple, and all of “young America” will soon be rushing across the
Atlantic. To further this design, as well as carry out my friends’
wishes and my own, I have determined to work my way to
Greece. B. and I think by walking from Naples to Otranto,
across the instep of the boot, we can sail across the strait to
Corfu, and then swim to Albania, just opposite. If I get a hun-
dred dollars and the money you send lasts us till we leave here,
I am certain of being able to do it, as the amount we owe Schenck
can be left till we get to Paris, where Barclay has ordered money
to be sent. Sanders is also going to Greece to travel on foot, but
he will not leave till January, whereas we want to start from
here at least by the 1st of December. I must reach London early
in March, for I want to stay there two months at least. . . .
We are getting along pretty well in Italian. I have finished
Silvio Pellico, and am now reading the “Decamerone” of Boccac-
1 The poem was finally named The Liberated Titan: an Oregon Hun-
ter's Story, and its fortune will be told later.
VIEWS A FOOT. 59
cio. I have also commenced the letters on Germany for the
“New York Tribune.” I shall work like a horse while we stay
here, for there will be no other resting-place of any length be-
fore we get to Paris, or perhaps London, for me.
November 3, 1845.
I was much surprised by your letter this morning, as you may
Suppose, for it was as unpleasant as unexpected. I begin to get
heartily tired of traveling in this manner, and after reading
your letter, together with the pleasant epistle contained in it, I
almost determined to put off for Rome and then to Paris and
London without delay, as soon as the money shall arrive ; that
is, to make no stay at Paris, and go to work in London in some
way to make enough money to pay my passage home. I am
willing to leave the last of April, or sooner, if we go in a sailing
packet. That will be in less than six months, so I think we can
rough it that much longer. But really it is very disagreeable to
be so circumstanced. Mother wrote me that sent you a
hundred dollars to Heidelberg the beginning of August. It must
be there somewhere. Have you made particular inquiries at the
post-office 2 If I were you, I would get a German — one who is
acquainted with some of the men — to go and ransack the house
from top to bottom. It appears from Schenck's letter that he
received and forwarded my letter home, so that the money will
certainly come some time this month ; and I want you, when it
does, to send on the draft immediately, that we may not be de-
tained here over the month. Even if they send me a hundred
dollars, it will hardly be enough to pay our debts here and take
us to Rome and Paris, so we want you to send us some besides, as
soon as you get it. T is very obliging, but I know he is be-
ginning to run low himself; and I told him at first I could pay
him as soon as you got to Heidelberg, so that I am very anxious
to do it. It is really a horrible condition. If there ever were
any young men who made the tour of Europe under such difficul-
ties and embarrassments as we I would like to see them.
As you may suppose, we sympathize fully with your miseries
on the back trip, and it made me shudder to read your ascent of
St. Bernard. I could scarcely keep from laughing, however, in
figuring to myself your arrival in Heidelberg. I fancied Frau
Doctor jumping up and exclaiming, “Ach, der Taylor der Tay-
lor l’’ while you, dilapidated and dusty, would reply, “Ja, aber
60 BA YARD TA YLOR.
mein Gott, in welchem Zustand /* I had read the whole letter
over to Barclay and T before I found out at the end that
you did not want anybody to see it. However, it made little dif-
ference, as the latter knows already some of the difficulties we
have had. When I wrote you a few days ago, I was determined
to go to Greece some way or other; but I think now, sooner than
fall any more into such situations as the present, I shall have to
give it up. I am going to try every method in London to make
a little money, and I think I can succeed. We had better go to
Boston than Philadelphia. It will be much preferable, and
twenty dollars cheaper in the first cabin. I want, of course, to
go in the first cabin, and I think we can manage it so as to do
so. I have been thinking, too, that when you go from Heidel-
berg to Paris it would be better to go to Frankfurt and get our
trunks, etc., than by way of Cologne and Brussels. By this way
you could reach Paris in three days at a very little cost. When
I next visit Europe (which I hope to do some time), I will take
money enough along at first to last the whole time. The having
to wait for remittances is a great bore. I cannot remain in any
kind of satisfaction till I get some, and I shall be very anxious
until that comes from America. It ought to reach Heidelberg,
at farthest, about the 21st or 22d of this month. We could then
get it by the 1st of December here. If your letter has miscar-
ried, I shall fear for its safety. However, it has always hap-
pened thus far that the money has come just in the nick of
time, and I think Providence will favor us this time also. I in-
close Schenck’s letter in this to save postage, and I will tell him
to send his answer to you, that you may put it in one of yours,
as every letter costs between three and four pauls, and we have
to count every grazio. My clothes are nearly 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. I must close, so as to send this off to-day. Give
my regards to all there, and tell the Germans I am coming back
to see them before many years. I think you are very right in de-
voting all your time to study. Let balls, museums, and kneipps
all go to the old Harry, and you lose nothing by it.
November 14, 1845.
I seize a half hour before going to dinner, and before the
mail closes, to write you a note. I thought this morning my re-
TVIE WS A FOOT. 61
mittance might probably get to Heidelberg about the 20th or
21st, and I want you, if it is at all possible, to send us with it
about forty dollars, and I will tell you the reason. It will cost
us here till the first of November, paying all expenses, about
fifty dollars; so you see, how are we to get to Paris if we have
only a hundred dollars ? And to stay here longer waiting for
more would be a great loss of time and money. We could not
go from here to Paris for less than two hundred francs apiece,
as we would be much longer on the trip than you were ; and per-
haps more would be required. I must get to London by the first
of March, or sooner, and I don’t want to remain longer in Flor-
ence than the first of December. If your money does not come
as soon as mine, could you not borrow that much, as it would be
much better than that we should be forced to stay here a month
longer, spending all the time. Your money has certainly been
sent ; they have most likely directed the letter poste restante, and
therefore it has not been delivered. Make all inquiries. We
are quite unpleasantly situated here. T is very kind ; but
we have run him out of money once, and before he could get
more from Leghorn he had to borrow himself. Besides, I was
obliged to get a new pair of pants for three dollars, as the oth-
ers literally dropped in pieces from me. I go to no theatre, or
anywhere else, and we all make as little do as possible. But you
see if they send even a hundred dollars it would be too little to
get to Paris with. Besides, there will be money awaiting us
there, and if you could borrow it for two months, and your own
money did not come, we could send at least a part. If by chance
the remittance comes, and you send it before this reaches you,
you might send again immediately afterwards. I would start
now if I had the money, as the time is favorable, and I want to
get to Paris as soon as possible. I must go to work. I am tired
of running out so often, and it would be horrible to wait long.
You had better ask frequently at the office, — perhaps for my
name too. I have no time to write more.
December 8, 1845.
. . . I was surprised throughout by the contents of your let-
ter, and to the latter part I scarcely know what to answer. I
don’t know how it is, but I feel a much greater energy and de-
termination to accomplish something than ever I did, and I am
rather strengthened than disheartened by the difficulties which at
62 BA YARD TA YLOR.
present surround me. As you say it is impossible to get any
money at this time, and I cannot wait till I write to Dennett and
get an answer, I must try to borrow fifty dollars here somehow
or other. I preferred getting it at Heidelberg, because it could
so much easier be paid back again. I think Powers will lend it
willingly, if he can spare so much ; if not, perhaps Mr. Mozier, a
rich Cincinnatian, who has a great talent for sculpture. He told
me he would make my bust if I would stay long enough. I shall
make endeavors anyhow, and as soon as I can get the money for
the draft (about ten days) will start for Rome. I shall go by
way of Naples, because the French steamers are so much cheaper
that it would not cost me any more. I could not go by way of
Heidelberg, however pleasant it might be, as it would take much
longer, and the walk through Switzerland would be awful in the
dead of winter. I want to get to Paris by the last of January,
and to London before the first of March.
I shall write immediately to Dennett, and tell him my desire
of publishing the poem. Powers is going to get a letter for me
from Mrs. Trollope (who is here now) to her publisher, and I think
Mr. Mason, an English artist who is now in Rome, will perhaps
give me another. I shall need all the reinforcements I can get.
I have now gone over the poem for the third time with the great-
est possible care, and it is fast approaching the state in which I
can do nothing more for it. I have finished twelve letters about
Germany, on all subjects except Philosophy, on which I wish you
to write a letter to make the series complete ; that is, a descrip-
tion of the different systems, with their influence on society, —
about five pages, the way you generally write. I want you to have
it ready by the time I get to Paris, as I shall send the whole set
from there. I have brought the letters in the “Post” up to this
time, including ten letters about Florence and its “Umgebun-
gen.” Mother writes that the letters are thought more interest-
ing than ever. By the way, I have received still another from
home, with no particular news, except that they are anxious to see
us all back again. . . . I tell you what, Frank, 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. However, all will come out right
before long. I think there are better fortunes in store for us.
So hurrah and don’t give up !
VIE WS A FOOT. 63
December 19, 1845.
You must not expect more than a few lines from me at this
time, as I am confounded with the distracting preparations for
leaving. We start to-morrow early, and I have got to pack up
my things to-night. We have made out at last to raise enough
of money to get off, by borrowing fifty dollars of Powers. My
remittance was nearly all swallowed up in the expenses we had
incurred, and, as it is, we shall be hard enough pushed to get to
Paris. Powers has been very, very kind to me (as, indeed, all the
Americans), and, although he has little enough money himself,
lent me the sum with the greatest willingness. He mentioned me
to Mrs. Trollope, and she promised to give him a letter for me
to some publisher. Then he showed her my lines on his Eve.
He said she read the first stanza, and then exclaimed, “Very
good l’” Then the second, which brought out the exclamation,
“Beautiful l’” The third was “Charming ! delightful l’” And
so her admiration waxed with every stanza, so that it is fortu-
nate there were only five, otherwise she might have been carried
away. She concluded with expressing the greatest interest and
a desire to see me, so yesterday evening Powers took me to her
house. I was very agreeably disappointed in her appearance.
She seems like a woman of kind heart and, I should judge, of
high talents. She will give me letters to her brother and Mur-
ray the publisher. I have become acquainted with Richard Ad-
ams Locke, author of the “Moon Hoax,” etc. I have strong
hopes of being able to do something with my poem in London.
Rome was the farthest limit of his journey, and
here he was distracted between the sights which held
him and the longing which he had to visit Greece.
After vainly seeking ways and means of extending his
journey, he resigned himself to the inevitable, and
wrote in his journal:—
“I have spent much toil and privation to reach here,
and now after two weeks’ rambling and musing among
the mighty relics of past glory, I turn my face home-
wards. The thrilling hope I had cherished during my
whole pilgrimage, that of climbing Parnassus and
drinking from Castaly, under the blue heaven of
64 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Greece (both far easier than the steep hill and hidden
fount of poesy which I have only seen afar off), to sigh
for fallen art beneath the broken friezes of the Par-
thenon, to look on the isles of Homer and of Sappho,
and perhaps sit in sadness beneath the hoary olive-trees
of Gethsemane, the most awfully sacred spot on earth,
must be given up, unwillingly and sorrowfully though
it be. These glorious anticipations, among the bright-
est that ever blessed my boyhood, are slowly wrung
from me by the stern hand of necessity. Even Naples,
the lovely Parthenopè, where the Mantuan bard sleeps
on the sunny shore by the bluest of summer seas, with
the disinterred Pompeii beyond and Paestum amid its
roses, on the lonely Calabrian plain, – even this, al-
most within sight of the cross of St. Peter's, is barred
from me. I have now been rambling for more than a
year and a half over the Old World, and the voices of
home are beginning to call me back, but it is hard to
be compelled to turn in the very midst of those scenes
which we visit for their poetry alone, and be cut off
from a world of glorious memories. But one must
learn to make sacrifices. Farewell, then, since it must
be l’”
The journey to London by way of Marseilles and
Paris was one of toil and disagreeable adventure. It
has left its records in his published descriptions; but
his diaries show him as more eager to get through with
it than disposed to make much of it. There were many
perplexities in the money affairs of the travelers, which
rendered this part of the journey one of continual an-
noyance, for their poverty compelled them to measures
which brought them little return in poetry. At Paris
Bayard Taylor left Barclay Pennock and went on
alone to London.
WIE WS AFOOT. 65
Both in his letters to journals at the time, and in a
later paper upon “A Young Author's Life in London,” 1
he has given an entertaining account of his six weeks'
stay in London, where he essayed to put in practice
the plan which he had held in reserve of working at his
trade of journeyman printer, and failed because the
rules of the English trade forbade his employment.
He was at his wit’s end for means of support when
Mr. Putnam, the publisher, who then had an agency in
London, came to his rescue, and he kept himself in
bed and board till the arrival of funds from America
enabled him to take his return passage. During this
stay in London he added to his literary acquaintance,
and made one or two unsuccessful attempts to dispose
of manuscript poems, according to the hopes which he
had entertained in his letters to his cousin.
“I had in my knapsack,” he relates, “a manuscript
poem of some twelve hundred lines, called ‘The Liber-
ated Titan,’ — the idea of which I fancied to be some-
thing entirely new in literature. Perhaps it was. I
did not doubt, for a moment, that any London pub-
lisher 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 catas-
trophe of publishing the poem at last. That is a piece
1. At IIome and Abroad, i. 35–48.
WOL. I. 5
66 BAYARD TA YLOR.
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 pub-
lish it within a year. At the end of that time I re-
newed the promise to myself for a thousand years.”
The little glimpse which Bayard Taylor had of
English literary society fired his own zeal for author-
ship and quickened his consciousness of fellowship
with the masters of literature, while it left him dissat-
isfied with the little which he had so far done. The
poem which he had written on Powers's Eve brought
him an introduction to Lockhart, and he was invited
by that gentleman, who was then editor of the “Quar-
terly Review,” to a breakfast at which he met Mr.
Murray, the publisher, and Bernard Barton, Lamb's
friend, the Quaker poet. “When I returned to the
chop-house that night,” he says, “to pore over my own
despised poems, it was with a savage bitterness of
spirit which I had never before felt. My day's walk
had been from Olympus to Hades and the banks of
Lethe’s river.”
A mood like this was transient. It was with hope
and confidence that he turned away from the Old
World and set his face toward America. His travels
and study and casual acquaintance with men of note
had broadened his mental horizon without inducing
any permanent self-distrust, and above all without giv-
ing him a mere surface admiration of foreign culture, a
kind of admiration which is pretty Surely accompanied
TVIEWS AFOOT. 67
by a shame of home. It may be said that the judg-
ment of a young countryman who had gone straight
from a rural village to Europe and remained there for
two years was not to be reckoned as final or mature,
but it is more to the point to note that he never
through life lost that faith in his country which found
expression now in crude form. He had an exhilaration
of mind as he anticipated his return to a home where
he could draw a longer and freer breath, and upon his
homeward passage he wrote some lines which were
printed in the first edition of “Views Afoot,” but
omitted by the author from the revised edition. He
was quite right in dropping them out of the book, for
they have little value as literature, but they still have
a worth to us from their biographic interest; the fer-
vor of feeling, thus overflowing into verse, is a very
considerable element in his nature.
Country and home !
Ah! not the charm of silver-tongued romance,
Born of the feudal time, nor whatsoe'er
Of dying glory fills the golden realms
Of perished song, where heaven-descended Art
Still boasts her later triumphs, can compare
With that one thought of liberty inherited—
Of free life giv'n by fathers who were free,
And to be left to children freer still !
That pride and consciousness of manhood, caught
From boyish musings on the holy graves
Of hero-martyrs, and from every form
Which virgin Nature, mighty and unchained,
Takes in an empire not less proudly so—
Inspired in mountain airs, untainted yet
By thousand generations’ breathing—felt
Like a near presence in the awful depths
Of unhewn forests, and upon the steep
Where giant rivers take their maddening plunge—
Has grown impatient of the stifling damps
68 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Which hover close on Europe's shackled soil.
Content to tread awhile the holy steps
Of Art and Genius, sacred through all time,
The spirit breathed that dull, oppressive air —
Which, freighted with its tyrant clouds, o'erweighs
The upward throb of many a nation’s soul—
Amid those olden memories, felt the thrall
But kept the birthright of its freer home.
The first of June saw the young travelers in New
York bay, and without delay they made their way to
Philadelphia, and thence by schooner to Wilmington,
which was within twelve miles of home. They had
seen Europe on foot and meant to close their journey
in the same way. “Now came the realization of a
plan,” writes Bayard, “we had talked over a hundred
times, to keep up our spirits when the weather was
gloomy, or the journey lay through some waste of bar-
ren country. Our knapsacks, which had been laid
down in Paris, were again taken up, slouched German
hats substituted for our modern black cylinders, belt
and blouse donned, and the pilgrim staff grasped for
the rest of our journey. But it was part of our plan,
that we should not reach home till after nightfall; we
could not think of seeing any one we knew before
those who were nearest to us; and so it was necessary
to wait a few hours before starting.
“The time came; that walk of three or four hours
seemed longer than many a day's tramp of thirty
miles, but every step of the way was familiar ground.
The people we met stared, laughed, or looked suspi-
ciously after us, but we were quite insensible to any
observation. We only counted the fields, measured
the distance from hill to hill, and watched the gradual
decline of the broad, bright sun. It went down at last,
and our homes were not far off. When the twilight
VIEWS A FOOT. 69
grew deeper, we parted, each one of us thinking what
an experience lay between that moment and the next
morning. I took to the fields, plunged into a sea of
dewy clover, and made for a light which began to
glimmer as it grew darker. When I reached it, and
looked with the most painful excitement through the
window on the unsuspecting group within, there was
not one face missing.”"
Bayard Taylor found that a larger circle than that
of his home was ready to welcome him. His letters
to the “Tribune,” “Saturday Evening Post,” and
“ United States Gazette,” had been widely read. Let-
ters from Europe were more of a novelty then than
they are now, and the circumstances under which the
writer saw the Old World gave a special interest to the
narrative. He was at once strongly advised to collect
the letters into a book, and went to New York in the
fall to oversee the printing. Mr. Willis furnished a
brief preface containing a letter from the author which
recounts the origin of the book, and an arrangement
for its publication was made with Messrs. Wiley &
Putnam. The following letter from Bayard Taylor
to his friend, J. B. Phillips, was written while he was
thus detained in New York : —
“When I say I have been busy, I must explain my-
self by telling you that, in addition to reading the
proof, as fast as the chapters are printed, I am entirely
revising the whole work. I see much to strike out and
much to alter every time I review it, and although this
is not a work about the reputation of which I care
much, still I want it to go before the world in a decent
garb. . . . The printers have been delayed with my
book in the commencement, so I shall probably have
1 Views Afoot, p. 494.
70 BAYARD TA YLOR.
to stay here a week longer than I expected. I have
made a bargain with Wiley, - not as good, perhaps,
as an established author could make, but still a fair
beginning, one hundred dollars for every thousand
copies sold, under the condition, of course, that it pays
expenses; if not, I get nothing. Willis is going to
give me the preface in a few days. We have a title
which will, I think, be striking and attractive. It
is: “Views Afoot; or, a Pedestrian's Observations of
People and Places in Europe.” The first part did not
please me at first, but since it has become familiar, I
like it very well.”
The book was published under the title: “Views
Afoot; or, Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff.
By J. Bayard Taylor, with a preface by N. P. Willis.
New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1846.” It was dedi-
cated to his traveling companion, Frank Taylor.
“Views Afoot ” had an immediate and considerable
success. The exact figures of its sale are wanting, but
in the course of the year six editions were sold; in Au-
gust, 1848, the author added to the eighth edition a
chapter containing some practical information for pe-
destrians, in answer to many letters which he had
received from young men who wished to follow his
example. In 1855 twelve more editions had been sold,
and the author took the opportunity afforded by the re-
printing of the work in a new form to give it a care-
ful revision, and to supply an introductory chapter,
in which he told, with some particularity, the history
of the venture.
“Perhaps the want of development which the book
betrays makes it attractive to those passing through
the same phase of mental growth. I cannot otherwise
account for its continued vitality.” This is the au-
VIEWS AFOOT. 71
thor's explanation of what was, to him, a somewhat
disturbing fact. In his latest preface to the work, he
quotes from his preface to the eighth edition: “At the
time the foregoing preface was written, I did not ven-
ture to anticipate that the work would become per-
manently popular. It had fulfilled the object of its
publication, and I should have been satisfied had it
then gradually passed away from the remembrance of
the reading public.” In his own mind he dismissed
the book as soon as it was published; he retained the
experience upon which it was based, and valued the
travel and study for their influence upon his own edu-
cation; it was apart from his expectation or wish that
this crude record should stand as a piece of literature,
and he was disposed to resent the reputation which it
brought him as factitious and unworthy. For all that,
he could not put upon paper the observations and re-
flections of a young poet, transported from the seclu-
sion of a little American village to the treasure-house
of Europe, without infusing into the narrative some-
thing of poetic fervor. He wrote with reserve, but he
did not wholly hide himself, and while, with his ma-
turer judgment, he was aware of the crudity of his
first prose work, the general esteem in which it has
been held has not been altogether without reference to
its poetic character.
CHAPTER IV.
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER.
1846–1847.
Our nobler fate is to be forever seeking and forever unsatisfied.
Lecture on Ancient Egypt.
I pause. In might the thronging Thoughts arise :
Hopes unfulfilled and glory yet afar,
Vague, restless longings, that would seek the skies,
And back in flame come like a falling star.
Upward.
BAYARD TAYLOR's return to his home meant much
more than could appear to the reader of “Views
Afoot.” During his absence in Europe the only in-
tercourse which he could have with Mary Agnew was
an indirect one. Her parents had steadily refused to
countenance the young lover, and no letters passed be-
tween the two. Bayard had made his mother his con-
fidante, and more than once sent an inclosure to
Mary, or a postscript to the letter which went the
rounds of the neighborhood; he urged his mother to
bring about an exchange of letters, but she counseled
patience and encouraged him to hope. His diary is
full of passionate expressions, and his journey, despite
its importance to him, became at times, intolerable.
It may be guessed that a love which grew thus in
silence became at length confident enough to sweep
away all obstructions, and not long after the traveler's
return, his engagement with Mary Agnew became an
open one. Of Mary Agnew herself it is difficult to
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER, 73
write with composure. Through the medium of Bay-
ard Taylor's romantic prose and verse, the tender rec-
ollection of those living who knew her then, and the
still depth of her own singularly beautiful letters, one
recovers the image of a fair spirit housed in a frail,
exquisite body. Edwin Brosius, a Kennett neighbor,
speaking of the two at this time, says: —
“I remember him 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.’” Grace
Greenwood, recalling her presence, once wrote of her
to Bayard, “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 often given to angels by the old masters,
producing a sort of halo-like effect about a lovely
head.”
She was not so much the inspiration of special po-
ems addressed to her, as she was the guiding star to
Bayard Taylor's passion and thought. It was no mere
poetic commonplace which made his early verses in-
sensibly turn to her, however their movement may
have been first directed, and the plans which he laid
for the course of his life all had immediate reference to
Mary. The ambition which he possessed in no slight
degree to make himself a name and place in literature
was kindled by the thought of sharing his reputation
with her, and the tumultuous discharge of his hopes
and fears through the pages of his diary is witness to
the ardor with which he mingles the thought of the
happiness of the home for which he labored with the
aspiration for enduring expression of his poetic genius.
74 BA YARD TA YLOR.
It is interesting to note how early he sketched for
himself a sheltered place of poetic labor in the Ken-
nett fields, a dream which never ceased to animate
him. -
Since he did not from this time live at his father’s
home, and could only occasionally visit it, a correspond-
ence was begun with Mary Agnew which offers the
best means of knowing Bayard Taylor's mind in these
years of struggle. Not only did he disclose his plans
and describe his daily life, but he wrote freely of spir-
itual experience, trusting her with a knowledge which
can only be given where there is perfect faith and
perfect response. If there remained no letter from
Mary Agnew, much could be learned of her nature
from the strain in which Bayard Taylor addressed her;
fortunately her letters do remain, and passages from
them permit one to penetrate the clear spirit of the
writer. The Quaker phraseology used by both adds to
the ear unaccustomed to it a quaint affectionateness,
and when one compares Bayard’s letters to Mary with
the almost ungovernable temper of his diary, written
at the same time, it is noticeable what power she had
in giving him serener moods and rendering his own
thought clear and fluent.
His first letter to her, written while he was in New
York, preparing “Views Afoot” for the press, re-
counts his experience in settling the details of the
book. “I am going over the letters again,” he writes,
“making as many alterations the second time as the
first. You will hardly know them in their new garb,
especially when the odd title is added, which N. P.
Willis and I together invented. I know not how you
will like it (I did not much at first), and I wish I
could ask you before the book is printed. . . . It is a
EDITOR OF A country NEWSPAPER, 75
somewhat singular name, but it is necessary to call it
by some title that will attract attention. I dislike to
use any artifice, however small, to bring anything of
mine into notice, but I find an author must look to his
own interests in some degree, and not trust too much
to the public. I had considerable amusement in find-
ing a name. Willis recommended me to do as he
had done, when he published his ‘Pencillings by the
Way,' that is, to write a dozen titles, and let some
common, uneducated person choose one for me. I
tried it, but after all could not be satisfied with it, and
asked his assistance, so by splicing and altering, we
made one at last.” -
Shortly after “Views Afoot” was published, Bay-
ard Taylor made a visit to Boston, partly to see friends
there whom he had known only by correspondence,
and by their published writings, and partly because his
mind was full of schemes for literary occupation, and
he hoped there to get some new light. Mr. James T.
Fields, in some pleasant reminiscences, gives the im-
pression which the young author made upon him and
his friends.
“No one could possibly look upon the manly young
fellow at that time without loving him. He was tall
. and slight, with the bloom of youth mantling a face
full of eager, joyous expectation. Health of that
buoyant nature which betokens delight in existence
was visible in every feature of the youthful traveler.
“The fresh air lodged within his cheek
As light within a cloud.’
“We all flocked about him like a swarm of broth-
ers, heartily welcoming him to Boston. When we
told him how charmed we all were with his travels,
76 BAYARD TA YLOR.
he blushed like a girl, and tears filled his sensitive
eyes. “It is one of the most absorbingly interesting
books I ever read l’ cried one of our number, height-
ening the remark with an expletive Savoring more of
strength than of early piety. Taylor looked up, full
of happiness at the opinion so earnestly expressed,
and asked, with that simple naïveté which always be-
longed to his character, “Do you really think so?
Well, I am so glad l’
“Then we began to lay out plans for a week's holi-
day with him ; to-morrow we would go to such a place
down the harbor; next day to another point of inter-
est; after that we would all assemble at a Supper party
in his honor, at Parker's (at that time a subterranean
eating-house in Court Street); and following that
festivity we would take him to see old Booth in ‘Rich-
ard.' We went on filling up the seven days with our
designs upon him, when he protested, with an explo-
sive shout of laughter, that he must be back again in
New York the next day. Then we showered warm
exhortations upon him to postpone his exit, but he as-
sured us that go back he must, for he had promised
to do so. Well, then, if that were the case, and we
saw by his countenance that he meant what he said,
we must adjourn at once to ‘Webster's,” a famous
beefsteak house in those ancient days, and, as Whipple
facetiously remarked, quoting the old ballad: —
*Put a stake in his inside
Where four cross-roads did meet.”
“So thitherward we rollicked along into Washing-
ton Street, and performed that pleasant duty, Taylor
all the while brimming over with radiant spirits, his
young heart already illumined with the delight of
recognition and praise.
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER. 77
“In the afternoon we handed him over to Longfel-
low, whom he was anxious to meet, and who gave him
such a welcome as he never forgot. In one of the
last conversations I had with Taylor, a few weeks be-
fore he sailed for the Embassy, he said, with deep
feeling: “From the first, Longfellow has been to me
the truest and most affectionate friend that ever man
had. He always gives me courage to go on, and never
fails to lift me forward into hopeful regions whenever
I meet him. He is the dearest soul in the world, and
my love for him is unbounded.’” "
Perhaps when he said that he had in remembrance
a cordial letter which Longfellow sent him on Christ-
mas Day, 1846, upon receipt of a copy of “Views
Afoot,” in which he writes: “The last chapter fills
me with great wonder. How could you accomplish so
much, with such slight help and appliances 2 It shows
a strength of will—the central fire of all great deeds
and words — that must lead you far in whatever you
undertake.”
In his anxiety to undertake some occupation which
would give him a fixed income, and thus enable him
to marry, he determined upon establishing a weekly
newspaper in Chester County. He knew the place
and the people; he had had sufficient practical train-
ing, and he fancied that he could use the journal as
practice-ground for higher literary work. A friend,
Mr. Frederic E. Foster, joined him, and after first
proposing to settle in the shire town of West Chester,
they learned of a better opportunity, as they thought,
in Phoenixville, a manufacturing town in the same
county. The following letter from Bayard Taylor to
Dr. I. A. Pennypacker, of Phoenixville, explains the
situation in which he found himself: —
1 New York Tribune, December 24, 1878.
78 BA YARD TA YLOR.
TO I. A. PENNYPACKER,
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., November 27, 1846.
I received a letter this morning from John H. Brinton, Esq.,
in which he mentions his having been at Phoenixville last Satur-
day, and states you desire that F. E. Foster and myself should
locate the new paper, we contemplate starting, at that place in-
stead of West Chester.
Ever since my return home I have designed publishing a
paper in Chester County, and the advantages of mails, advertis-
ing, as well as my previous residence and extensive acquaintance,
led me to fix upon West Chester as the place where it would
succeed to the best advantage. I decided on this in direct oppo-
sition to the wishes of my friends here, who are exceedingly
anxious that I should set up a press among them. But the place
is as yet too small, and, notwithstanding the general intelligence
of the neighborhood, the patronage would necessarily be too
limited to support such a paper as I should wish to publish.
This objection, however, does not apply to Phoenixville, which
also possesses nearly the same advantages, in regard to mails,
advertising, etc., as West Chester. When Mr. Foster first men-
tioned to me his wish of purchasing the “Phoenix Gazette,” if it
could be obtained, I had already mentioned my design and made
preparations for issuing the Prospectus of the “Chester County
Chronicle,” and I knew then little of the advantages of Phoenix-
ville (as I have not been there for nine years, when it was a vil-
lage of five hundred inhabitants), so that my original plan still
seemed preferable, and Mr. Foster concluded to unite with me.
Mr. Brinton's representations, however, are such that I think
if the present paper could be had at a reasonable price (as I un-
derstand that the printing materials are not of very great value),
and we were certain of liberal support, — equal to what we
might reasonably expect in West Chester, — Mr. Foster and my-
self would be willing to combine the “Chronicle “ and “Ga-
zette,” and add the subscribers we shall obtain for the former to
the established list of the latter. I speak, however, only for my-
self, as he is still in West Chester.
I feel exceedingly desirous to remain in the county, and am
not very particular as to the location, so that I obtain a certain
and permanent subsistence. I remember that the neighborhood
of Phoenixville is extremely beautiful, and have no doubt we
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER. 79
should both find everything there to make a residence agreeable.
If, as Mr. Brinton suggests, the circulation could be increased to
a thousand within a year, the paper would be certain to succeed
and prosper. As the advertising is always proportionate to the
extent of the circulation, that would also become profitable, in
such a case.
The “Chronicle,” as we intend publishing it, will be larger
than the present “Gazette,” and printed in better style, at two
dollars per annum. Would the increase in price (although we
should render a full equivalent for it) cause any reduction in the
number attached to the “Gazette ”? A good country paper can-
not well be supported for less, and we wish, if possible, to make
our paper equal to any country press in the State.
We have facilities, through acquaintance with the principal
editors in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, for obtaining a
far better exchange list than any of the present West Chester
papers, and we can also, through the German, French, and Eng-
lish Gazettes, make our own selections from foreign news, with-
out depending on other papers for them. If our manner of con-
ducting it should be as successful as we hope, I presume the
limits of its circulation would, after a time, become greatly ex-
tended.
I should esteem it a favor, if you would write and give me
some information as to the prospects. As we are both young
and just starting in business, we desire to have certain founda-
tions to build upon. I should like to know what is the actual
number of subscribers to the “Gazette,” and for what sum it
could probably be obtained ? However, as to the latter query,
it does not matter at present, as if circumstances are favorable,
one or both of us will visit Phoenixville shortly.
I have taken the liberty of thus addressing you, since you
manifest such an interest in the establishment of a paper in your
town, and were kind enough to express a wish that we should
take charge of it.
. The result was that the two young men bought the
Phoenixville “Gazette,” and changing its name, issued
on Tuesday, December 29, 1846, the first number of the
Phoenixville “Pioneer.” Bayard Taylor pleased him-
self by leading off with a poem upon “The Phoenix”
80 - BA YARD TA YLOR.
which he had translated from Freiligrath, for at the
time he was considering the possibility of publishing
a volume of translations from this poet, whom he had
met in Germany. In the same number he copied
Bryant’s “O Mother of a Mighty Race,” which had
just appeared in “Graham's Magazine.” The propri-
etors expressed the belief that since the two neighbor-
ing counties of Chester and Montgomery could en-
courage seven political papers, they would sustain one
devoted to literature and news.
The venture was begun with hope and confidence,
and was, in Bayard’s mind, a practical answer to those
of his friends who took leave to doubt his ability to
support himself in any literary vocation. He relied,
it may be said, a little too much upon the wisdom of
others in the matter; he wrote at the time to Mr.
Fields: “Any employment, however hard, is better
than uncertain dependence on the pen alone; although
I have as yet had little experience, I have seen enough
to convince me that it is a sad fate to wear out one's
brain for bread.” Yet he was to refute this fallacy
by a longer experience, and confirm the better truth
that one’s judgment of one's own powers is often of
more value than the commonplaces of worldly wisdom.
However, he plunged into this occupation, eager only
to prove himself a good man of business, who could
make his Pegasus work faithfully at the treadmill.
Phoenixville is but thirty miles from Kennett Square,
and Bayard Taylor was able to make hurried visits in
the least busy part of the week, but his intercourse
with Mary Agnew was still under many restrictions,
and thus the year which he spent in editing a country
newspaper was a year also when he was constantly
contending with untoward fate. To add to his other
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER. 81
sources of trouble, the frailty of Mary’s constitution
began to betray itself in pulmonary attacks, which
gained insidiously upon her strength.
TO MARY AGNEW.
& PHOENIXVILLE, December 24, 1846.
. . . I have every day new proofs of the truth of my pre-
sentiment, — the spiritual monitor which informs of the future.
In Philadelphia I called one morning at Graham's office. Just
before entering the door, I thought involuntarily of T. B. Read,
the poet and painter (thou hast, perhaps, seen something of his),
and on going im I saw in the back part of the room a pale
young man, with tender blue eyes and a dreamy expression of
countenance. I knew at once this was Read, although I had
never seen him. I went up, and we were introduced, when the
first words he said were : “The minute you entered the door I
knew you, although I had never seen you !” Now, was not this
strange 2 We were soon well acquainted, after this spiritual
recognition.
Again, I had determined to go to Phoenixville on Thursday
morning, but on awaking my feeling was so strong against it
that I knew not what to do. I could think of no reason for
staying, yet I could not bear the idea of going. I therefore con-
cluded to be intentionally too late for the cars, and behold ! about
the hour when I should have been at the depot there came two
important letters from N. P. Willis 1 and Fields of Boston.
Immediately afterwards I went down the street, and as it snowed
very hard I went into the State House for shelter, when in the
same moment our journeyman from Phoenixville entered the
other door and informed me that as the office could not be had
for a day or two there was no use in my going until Saturday
morning. I am glad of all these things, because they seem to
show that all this employment and commingling with the com-
mon affairs of the world need not dim the clear vision of the
spirit. Now, if I laugh at thy dreams thou canst laugh at my
presentiments. The world would, no doubt, pronounce us both
mad, but we enjoy this spiritual intelligence in secret, and thank
God for it. . . .
1 With reference to possible employment on the Iſome Journal.
WOL. I. 6
82 BAYARD TA YLOR.
Notwithstanding this is a manufacturing place, there is a great
deal of poetry about it. The scenery is beautiful, and the mills
and furnaces, which are in operation all night, make a grand ap-
pearance with their columns and clouds of red flame, and ter-
races above terraces, burning through the darkness like Milton's
Council Hall of Pandemonium. The sound of the forges, ring-
ing out through the livelong night, keeps me constantly in a fit-
ting spirit to work and think and struggle. . . .
Prior NIXVILLE, January 24, 1847.
. . . Sometimes I feel as if there were a Providence watch-
ing over me, and as if an unseen and uncontrollable hand guided
my actions. I have often dim, vague forebodings that an event-
ful 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 may 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. For wherever our paths
may lead, – over what high and untrodden summits, or through
what quiet and flowery valleys, – they are one. I have told
thee that existence would not be endurable without thee ; I feel,
further, that thy aid will be necessary to work out the destinies
of the future. . .
Our prospects are still very encouraging. We get papers
every day wanting to exchange with us. I am cheerful and con-
fident, and bid thee good-night, with a blessing.
I send thee a little lay of mine from the “Home Journal,”
addressed to a happy German peasant girl.
A little more than a month of trial in Phoenixville,
in spite of the general encouragement received, suf-
ficed to arouse very strong doubts in Bayard Taylor's
mind whether the course which he had followed was
likely to bring him the result for which he was look-
ing, and if it did not bring him that, it was intolera-
ble. An enigmatical letter from Willis was enough to
set his mind in a whirl, just when the zeal with which
he had engaged in an uncongenial business had begun
to suffer a reaction.
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER. 83
N. P. WILLIS TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
“Howie Journ AL,” January 22, 1847.
Please write to me at Washington (inclosed to Hon. Jos.
Grinnell, M. C.) an account of your business arrangements at
Phoenixville, what your views for the future are, what you would
rather do, whether you wish to set up a paper, or get printing
materials, whether you are engaged to be married, or wish to
be ; what you think your probable future under present cir-
cumstances, and how you would alter the view if you had means.
Trust me, and do this frankly, and I will tell you a good reason
for [it] by and by.
“I am lost in tantalizing conjectures about Willis's
letter,” writes Bayard in his journal. “He must still
think of employment as assistant in the “Home Jour-
nal’ office, and if I could get a good salary, and it
would not be considered a fresh instance of instability
of purpose, by some who cannot trust me, I would
like it much better than my present post. What a
vague, wild crowd of thoughts his last question called
up ! How I would change my future if I had means?
How * Ah, I could not tell him how ; it would have
been too “visionary.’ I would study like a slave ; I
would go into the world of authors and write ; Mary
and I would go to Europe together, and Greece would
not be missed this time ; and — then we would build
a beautiful homestead in Kennett, where life would
grow to me like a sweet dream of poetry, for I would
have no golden threads snapped, no fast-ripening fan-
cies trodden under foot, by contact with coarse and
jarring natures. I would work ceaselessly and untir-
ing, for the poor and needy in spirit; I would speak
for the silent soul and for the heart which has not yet
found an utterance. Oh, I would do much, or try to
do much. This was only a question, however ; it is
84 BA YARD TA YLOR.
doubtless best for me to persevere in my own labor
here.”
The explanation of Willis's letter came in a second,
which inclosed one received by Willis from Colonel
Thomas Handasyd Perkins, of Boston.
T. H. PERKINS TO N. P. WILLIS.
BoSTON, January 15, 1847.
I have just finished the perusal of a book under the title of
“Views Afoot” with more pleasure than I have derived from
books of travel of more pretension. Connected with your name,
as appears by the preface, I am induced to trouble you with this
letter. I see from what he says of himself, Mr. Taylor cannot
be more than twenty-three years of age at this time. I think
there is much in the character of the writer of the book which
entitles him to patronage, and to this end I would ask, if a sum
could not be raised to put him upon good ground in his profes-
sional calling. I should be willing to aid in an object of this
sort, should I learn from you that he intends pursuing the print-
ing business. It would be as well, perhaps, not to mention the
subject until you have made up your mind as to necessities of
the case. If he has means of setting himself to work, perhaps
the best thing would be to leave him upon his own resources.
When I hear from you I will decide upon what I will do. The
calls upon those who have means are many and pressing at this
season, but this I think may be considered an extraordinary case,
and requires corresponding exertion.
Mr. Willis seized upon this generous, but cautious,
tentative offer, with characteristic hopefulness. Here
was a Maecenas in Boston; there was a struggling
poet in Phoenixville, and it was his mission to bring
the two together. So in the most sanguine mood he
wrote to both.
N. P. WILLIS TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, January 28, 1847.
Your frank and ready reply is almost what I want, but as I
cannot get at all I wish to know without telling you my secret,
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER. 85
I inclose you what is at the bottom of it. The writer, Colonel
Perkins, is the Boston prince of millionaires, the founder and
endower of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and a man whose whole
life is one history of noble benevolence. He wants to lend you
capital if it will do you good. It is an extraordinary and roman-
tic event in your life, and I congratulate — her who loves you !
I wrote to him a letter of three close pages, from the rough
draft of which I copy you one or two passages.
“Always acquainted as I have been with the unusual and un-
varying nobleness of your employment of wealth, the bringing
home an instance of it to my personal influencing made me
feel deeply the responsibility of aiding or diverting a stream
so sacred. I am not prepared even now to give a decided
opinion. Taylor is as pure in his character as a girl of six-
teen, and as full of energy, endurance, and resource as more
irregularly impetuous and passionate men. Nothing could cor-
rupt him, and nothing could prevent his being prosperous, or so
I think. He has gone to his native county, and is engaged in
editing the Phoenixville ‘ Pioneer.' . . . He thought of pro-
curing editorial employment in New York city, but his mind,
as I told him, was too well worth keeping separate to venture
upon the subservient employment of sub-editing, and it was bet-
ter for him to have a country paper all to himself for less profit,
than to merge himself in another man's mind and purposes.
Whether a capital, which would enable him to start for himself and
wse his first fresh energies in the large sphere which he will ulti-
nately fill, is advisable to urge the obtaining, you can better de-
cide. I presume that he will never return to mechanical em-
ployment except as master-printer and editor, his pen is so much
more profitable. But the possession of one or two thousand dol-
lars would probably have induced him to, etc., etc., etc. His
practical genius is of a very high order, and I esteem him, in
every way, an uncommon man.”
You see now, my dear Taylor, that I throw the responsibility
of responding to this noble proposal entirely on yourself. That
you will not let it hurt you, I am sure. So think it over, and
write to me (without naming Colonel Perkins or his offer) an
answer to my previous query as to how you would better your con-
dition if you could. I shall not write to him till I hear freely
from you, but I suppose it lies within your power to receive from
one to five thousand dollars from him with liberty to repay it
86 BA YARD TA YLOR.
when you are able, and not before, and upon showing good pros-
pect as to its benefiting your plans for the future.
A word to the wise is enough, and so I need not scribble more
to you. This is a page of romance which a man may well be
proud to have for his biographer. Please offer Mrs. Willis's and
my friendship to your appreciatress and true friend.
The rapidity with which Willis built the air castle
in which his friend was to live had most likely an in-
spiriting effect on Bayard, but the letters which he
wrote to Willis are unfortunately missing. It can
only be gathered from Willis's excuses for Colonel
Perkins's silence : “The fact is, the old gentleman is
getting very infirm,” “I suppose the old man’s mem-
ory is giving way with his years,” that Bayard Taylor
frankly made his situation known, but that the circum-
stances were very different from what Colonel Perkins
at first supposed. It is one thing to help on a young
mechanic with capital, and another to set up a poet, or
to lend money for any such dubious scheme as Willis
airily hinted at. The good-will of Colonel Perkins,
however, was clearly manifest when, a year later, he
came forward with a loan when Bayard was struggling
under an unjust debt.
This will-o'-the-wisp which Willis had lighted
danced long enough before Bayard Taylor's eyes to
tease him with a possible escape into brighter scenes,
but, tied as he was to Phoenixville, he made a vigorous
effort to get the best possible out of the town in which
he was living. With a few of the more enterprising
people he formed a literary association, and he made
himself a buoyant and hearty companion at the houses
of the better educated people, but he had made a some-
what unfortunate choice of a place in which to try his
experiment. The town was one which had sprung up
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER. 87
rapidly under the stimulus of mills, which had drawn
a class of workmen who were not likely to take any
interest in a paper with aims like the “Pioneer ; ”
the country people were conservative farmers, who
looked with dislike upon the busy village, and were
slow to accept a new journal. He struggled on, how-
ever, making the paper as good as his materials would
allow, and introducing such incongruous elements as
literary letters from London, written by his friend the
bookseller, Mr. Dennett, and poems and translations
from his own portfolio. He was in vigorous physical
condition, and walked off his restlessness and dissatis-
faction in long rambles over the hills.
Meanwhile the larger world outside found its way
into his seclusion with words of cheer. The journals
brought frequent notices of his book, and letters from
his literary friends at home and abroad reminded him
that he had not been forgotten, and encouraged him
by intimating that he was recognized as an author
with ability to help others. Mary Howitt wrote to
thank him for “Views Afoot,” which she had praised
highly in her journal, and to ask his influence in
America to create public opinion in favor of her and
her husband's venture. Eliza Leslie, for whom he had
a high regard, sent one of those letters which make a
young author's heart glow with pleasure.
ELIZA, LESLIE TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
February 18, 1847.
The extreme illness of my sister, Mrs. Carey, has hitherto pre-
vented me from an early acknowledgment of the receipt of your
delightful book, which, for the same reason, I was unable to enjoy
the pleasure of reading when it first came to hand. All my
friends concur in my opinion of it. My brother, Major Leslie, of
the army, has made it the subject of a letter to his family (who
88 BAYARD TA YLOR.
remain at New York while he is on duty in the South), and he
enjoins them to get a copy and read it forthwith. I bought one
the other day to send to my brother Charles in London.
I hope you have been liberally remunerated by Wiley &
Putnam. If not, you will be able to command your own terms
with other publishers for your next work, this having become at
once deservedly popular.
I hear you are publishing a weekly paper. You will please to
send it to my address. I inclose the amount of a year's sub-
scription. When you visit Philadelphia I shall always be glad to
See you.
Miss Leslie was then sixty years old, and her inter-
est in Bayard Taylor was keenly appreciated. Years
afterward, when writing a personal sketch of the Leslie
family, he recurred to this little act of kindness and
said: “It was a country paper, devoted to local news,
and could have no possible interest for her, — but she
doubtless conjectured, as was true, that I was endeav-
oring to establish myself in business, and that every
paid subscription was a real assistance. I have heard
that she made enemies by her frankness, and her scorn
of all dissimulation: she reserved her tact for the exer-
cise of her kindness.” " s
Mrs. Hale, then editor of “Godey's Lady's Book,”
begged him to send her a short article for the “Opal,”
one of the holiday gift books then in fashion, and the
receptacle of many of the poems and short sketches
which were the foundation of long-lived fame. Fred-
eric Gerstaecker wrote to ask his interest in one of the
American novels which he was writing, and a long
and charming letter came from the old Quaker poet,
Bernard Barton, who took so kind an interest in him
when he was in London. Some of its passages were
pondered well by the receiver, who was then thinking
1 At Iſome and Abroad, ii. 407.
EDITOR OF A COUNTRY NEWSPAPER. 89
more of how he should get out of his paper than how
he should conduct himself in it.
BERNARD BARTON TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
WooDERIDGE, Fourth Month 17, 1847.
. . . And so thou art editor, proprietor, and printer of a paper
in conjunction with some fellow-laborer. Marry !’t is an onerous
and toilsome post, but it may be, when honorably discharged, an
honorable and useful one. But in so far as I can see into the
workings of that monster leviathan, the Press, in our country, a
man had need be clean-handed and stout-hearted who shall en-
gage in it. But I am a poor provincial recluse, and much would
fret me to fiddle-strings which many make light of. I only wish
it may leave thee leisure to cultivate poetry, touching the which
I have my fears; but thou wilt find how the thing shall work.
The happiest life, as it seems to me, is that which enables him
who leads it to find his own enjoyments in himself and his home,
and at the same time allows him to do somewhat towards adding
to the innocent enjoyment of his fellow-creatures. This is per-
haps best effected by authorship; but the cases are perhaps com-
paratively rare in which this is a lucrative occupation, unless he
who follows it have some auxiliary avocation which may help to
bring grist to the mill, or by his position and connections in soci-
ety have a tolerable chance of an indulgent hearing and fair play.
The circumstance of my being a Quaker, and the lucky chance
of my being a clerk in a bank, have between them kept me from
starving in my vocation ; but I am by no means certain I should
not have been better off, in a worldly sense, had I never penned
couplet or stanza. Very few are eminently successful, in a worldly
point of view, but by undivided attention to some one given ob-
ject. But to a certain extent it is possible to provide what is posi-
tively necessary for our needful wants, and to find stolen inter-
vals of leisure to throw our mites into that treasury of true
knowledge whereby our age and generation may be in some small
degree helped to be wiser, happier, and better. We cannot, of a
truth, serve God and Mammon, — that is, we cannot make both
the objects of our heart's devotion, for this would involve the
vain attempt to combine the present enjoyments of a Dives with
the reversionary expectancies of a Lazarus; but by controlling
our desires and moderating our expectations, by neither coveting
90 BA YARD TA YLOR.
wealth nor being ashamed of poverty, we may rub and drive on
tolerably, and do somewhat to cultivate and cherish the sources of
true happiness in ourselves, and open them up to our fellow-crea-
tures. All this, my dear Taylor, I jot down hastily for thee to
make what thou canst of in entering on a field of honorable labor
from which I am about retiring, somewhat in the character of a
wounded and disabled veteran halt and maimed, and bearing
many an inward scar, but tolerably heart-whole.
Thine ever affectionately, BERNARD BARTON.
Let me hear from thee as often as thou canst. My frequency
of scribble depends on thine.
All these messages and the thoughts which they ex-
cited were made over quickly to Mary Agnew, whose
letters show the gentle pride which she took in her
lover.
*
Sºº-
Sº
Sº
§
§
-



CHAPTER V.
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK.
1847.
But as the Rose will lend its excellence
To the unlovely earth in which it grows,
Until the sweet earth says, “I serve the Rose,”
So, penetrant with her was every sense.
The Picture of St. John.
MARY AGNEW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
March 1, 1847.
. . . Far dearer than life thou art to me, and the tie that
binds me to thee lies deep within my being, too strong ever to
be broken by the trials of this world. I shudder when I think
of such a thing as being separated from thee ; I could not live,
for our souls have grown too long together to be parted without
a struggle too hard to be borne. Why need I think of it 2 for
it can never be. Already are our destinies marvelously en-
twined, and will still continue to be, for thou art my heart's only
idol. If what I have written should make thee sad I deeply
regret it, yet I confide in thee with my whole soul; and to whom
else can I pour forth the fears that cross my path in the every-
day walk of life.
I had indulged high and bright hopes of having a long talk
with thee during thy last visit, but I was again to be disap-
pointed. Our time with each other was very limited, but I
must not murmur, for something tells me that I ought to be
thankful for the time I had, and glad that the blessed means of
writing is allowed me, for the time is not far in the past when I
was debarred from this small privilege. It may have been for
the best, for we know not but that every trial and difficulty has
united us more closely, and still tends to work out our universal
good. . . .
92 BAYARD TA YLOR.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
PHOENIXVILLE, March 11, 1847.
I am here alone to-night ; they have all gone to the meeting
of the Literary Society. I could not go; I am deeply sad and
cast down in spirit, and must relieve the painful fullness of my
feelings by communion with thee. Notwithstanding for several
days past I have had unhappy presentiments, I was surprised
and grieved to hear of thy sickness to-day. I knew this morn-
ing I would hear from thee, but as the time drew nigh when the
letter should arrive, my heart seemed to sink within me with a
sense of deep foreboding. I am still suffering under strong
anxiety, and shall be until I hear from thee again. Would to
Heaven we could be always near each other Were I but al-
lowed to sit by thy side, and try to cheer thy weary hours of ill-
ness, I could better bear it, and I think thou, too, wouldst be
happier. . . .
I have a thousand, things to say, and yet I cannot say them,
for too much thinking. Do not expect me to be very cheerful
this time, yet when thou art well again I will try to recover my
lost spirits. I find that in the midst of all this toil and strug-
gling which I am now going through a strong will is fast grow-
ing into existence, — a will which will do all and dare all. I am
determined to conquer penury and care, and keep, withal, that
love of the pure and the beautiful which is the soul of true po-
etry. This determined spirit, combined with the enthusiasm of
my nature, has helped to accomplish all which I have yet done,
and will achieve still greater results.
I cannot be with thee on Saturday, much as I desire the hap-
piness of seeing thee again, and relieving my feelings with a long
conversation. But thou wilt write again after receiving this, for
I shall be anxious and uneasy till I hear from thee. I do not
know certainly when I can go home. We are unusually busy,
and our affairs are so arranged at present that neither of us can
well leave. But I shall try to go in about two weeks; in that
time, perhaps, the buds will be swelling, and the grass growing
green on the hillsides and in the fresh meadows. I long for
spring ; my hopes seem to brighten in its balmy air, and, what is
better, I can visit thee more frequently. . . . §
I am very well bodily, -indeed, Dr. P
tells me I have a
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK. 93
constitution equal to a horse. I would freely part with some of
my health to hasten thy recovery ; but it is a commodity which
we cannot give away, though we may easily use it. There,
thou seest I am growing cheerful again, for I do not want to
leave the lightest shadow of my own sadness on thy heart.
Pray, be as happy as thou canst; enjoy whatever sunshine the
present offers thee, and trust in God for the future.
I have said but little, yet I must close. It is growing late ;
I am alone and undisturbed ; and now, dearest Mary (when
shall I call thee by a fonder name 7), good-night, and take with
thee the prayers of thine forever. -
MARY AGNEW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
March 14, 1847.
I hasten to relieve thy sadness and dispel the shadow from thy
brow (if such is in my power). . . . Hannah kindly offered to
write to thee for me, but I thought perhaps it would cause thee
less anxiety if I wrote myself; and I now find that I have done
the very thing I tried to avoid. But something tells me it was
right that thou shouldst know the real state of the case, and if I
had not told thee I would not have been true to thee, and it is
far from my wish to conceal a thought or feeling from thee, –
thou that hast loved me so nobly and devotedly through many
days of sorrow and anxiety.
I hope that thou art cheerful, this bright morning, that has
been welcomed by the songs of many a joyous bird. As I look
out at the window, everything seems so bright and happy that
some of the brightness has passed into my soul, and I have bid
my spirit go to thee and whisper words of joy and comfort to
thee, which thou canst understand, but no one else knows their
meaning; and I feel even now while I write that thou art again
cheerful. Is it not so 2
I am fast gaining strength. Every day dawns but to find me
growing stronger and better, and I hope in a few days to be
able to resume my accustomed duties. I have been cheerful all
the time, for I feel that after this I will be better than I have
been for some time. Thou knowest I have not been very well
all winter, and that I hope that I may recover from this attack
but to enjoy the blessing of health more than I have done lately.
There is nothing now that I so much pray for as health. If I
94 JBA YA R D TA YLOR.
were free from pain I could then be as light-hearted and joyous
as others, whose prospects are not so bright and happy ; for am
I not transcendently happy while I have thee to confide in 2
I can say, and say truly, that
“Woman's peace
Ne'er on a breast so tender and So true
Reposed before.”
Even if we are sick and in pain there are many things from
which we can derive comfort and pleasure. I have lain here in
this room, and listened to the glad songs of the bluebird, the
lark, and the robin, that welcomed the coming of spring, that
season that I have so longed for, as bringing me renewed health
and anticipated joy. Kind friends have visited me, coming with
their friendly words of hope and comfort, and bringing me
beautiful bunches of flowers, on which I could gaze and watch
them unfolding their many beauties. Here is a beautiful bunch
of rosebuds before me now, that Annie G brought me.
Would that I could send thee one, to look as fresh and pretty as
it does now. I have here, too, the pure white snowdrop, that
blooms regardless of the coldness of the breeze that kisses it.
Would that I could send thee one of them, too. But the flowers
and roses will soon be blooming again, and then thou wilt come
and receive them from my own hand. . . .
Try and be cheerful again ; in a few days I will be well. I
am well now, but not yet strong. Let me caution thee again
not to labor too hard, for even the constitution of a “horse ’’
may be broken by too much exertion. What a shame to com-
pare thy constitution to a horse ; if it is as strong as that we
have still more cause to be thankful. . . .
Thou wilt write to me soon, thy letters are so precious ; and
now, dearest Bayard, again accept the blessing of thy thankful
MARY.
IBAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
Prio:NIxv.1LLE, March 14, 1847.
. . . I am beginning to think, dear Mary, that the trials we
have had in the beginning of our attachment have been all for
the best. We have deeply proved (to others—could we ever
doubt ourselves 2) the sincerity of our feelings, and the life-
strong bond which unites us; and we can much more confidently
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK. 95
hope for a happy future, than if the past had been all sunshine.
Nevertheless, I am glad that the past is past, and am eager for
the future to become the present. Everything that I see, or
hear, or read, seems to remind me in some way of thee, and of
the happiness which ought to be ours. I lose myself often in
day-dreams of our future home. Dost thou not build castles
sometimes, in which we are the reigning lords, and from which
our warden, Love, drives back all hostile Cares, who have no true
title to the domain 2 I take care, however, to build no castles
which may not be realized ; and any of them will make us blest.
If it were better, I could most cheerfully give up my hopes of a
higher field of action, and sit myself down contented here, or
anywhere, with thee. So that, in eight or ten years I shall earn
enough to build us a beautiful little homestead in dear old Ken-
nett, among our friends, where I can study and write in the
sweetest retirement ; Provided that (as the laws express them-
selves), we have first fulfilled our promised pilgrimage to Eu-
rope and the East. Now all this may be done, may it not ?
And in the confidence that we can do it, let us do right and trust
in God, and all will be well. I am not sad or dejected now ; the
feeling has gone like a mist from my spirit, leaving a clear blue
sky, in which shines ever an “unsetting sun.” . . .
I am really glad that thou art pleased with my poetry. One
word from thee is dearer to me than the cold praise of all the
critics in the land. But the critics, too, have been kind. The
London “Athenaeum ” notices very favorably, for the “Literary
World,” in New York, copied part of it. Peabody, of Boston,
wrote an article about it (which I have not seen) for the “North
American Review ; ” and last, though not least, Mrs. Sarah J.
Hale wrote me a very kind letter, accompanied with a number
of the “Lady's Book,” which contained a most flattering notice.
She says (in the “Book”) : “He has won himself a place in
the hearts of his countrymen. Bright eyes will watch his name
in the periodicals, and fair hands will turn over his pages. It
will now be easy for him to climb the “slippery steep,'” etc.,
etc., -all very pleasant, no doubt. I merely mention it, that
thou mayst see how well I am succeeding. Bernard Barton has
sent me from England a beautiful copy of his poems.
I write this from our new house. We have been here a week,
and like it very well. But still it is not a home. The magic
which hallows home is wanting. They say to me : “Get mar-
96 - BA YARD TA YLOR.
ried at once, you will do much better,” etc. And indeed I wish
I could follow their advice. So I tell them, and some undertake
to assist me in the choice of a companion | Of course, I indig-
nantly decline their services.
It is quite late, and growing extremely cold; I must therefore
stop scrawling. If thou canst read these pot-hooks without dif-
ficulty, I shall be surprised. . . .
PHOENIXVILLE, June 29, 1847.
. . . Think of it, Mary, months have passed since we could
have an hour or two to ourselves. Each time of my return home
have I looked forward to, in the hope that it would afford me
that happiness, and thou, too, hast longed for the consolation
of such a communion. Perhaps we shall have to wait weeks
longer. Still, it is much to see thee now and then, and to receive
such dear messages from thee when absent. . . .
I know the trials to which thou art at times subjected, on my
account, and feel deeply the unhappiness they must cause thee.
But do not think that anything which may be said to me causes
unkind or unpleasant feelings ; I look upon it as occasioned by
an unhappy foreboding which, at times, makes us all somewhat
disposed to forget the light by which we are surrounded. And
the uniform and generous kindness of thy father towards me
encourages me to hope that by honorable exertion and strict ad-
herence to right thought and right action, I may win the confi-
dence and esteem of all who hold thee dear. I would that they
might see our destinies united, without the least anxiety for thee.
Do not doubt that thou wilt find warm hearts ready to welcome
thee in my home, as a daughter and sister. . . .
I am learning patience from thy calm, enduring spirit. When
thou sayest thou canst wait for years until our hour of union shall
come, I know thou art but preparing thyself to encounter any
destiny which might retard this fondly anticipated time. I grow
at times impatient and full of “unrest” in picturing the possibil-
ity of such a delay, for I think if the world were as it should be
we would have been united long ere this. Yet I can bear the
thought of two or three years’ weary waiting with more calm-
ness, and the secret hope that a shorter period will terminate our
probation. We are now children no longer. Thou art a woman,
and every way fitted for a woman's part in the drama of exist-
ence. I am a man in years and experience, if not too full of folly
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK. 97
and nonsense at times to be one. It only remains, then, for my
situation here to become rather more than self-supporting, and
for all our friends (relatives, I should say) who have authority in
the matter to give their consent. When the first requisite is
fairly obtained, I think there will be little difficulty about the
other ; and all this may be brought about in a shorter time than
we now anticipate. At all events, I feel comfort in the thought
that Time now flies so fast, and that sooner or later he will bring
us the hour. And then he may go fast or slow, the world may
be good or evil, the sanctuary of home and hearts will be always
the abode of happiness.
Summer is here in all her glory. Her scarf is loosened on the
hills, and all the wide landscape is flecked with gold. A blue,
smoky haze fills the air, and the heat grows stifling and oppres-
sive. To-night the sun went down like a great round drop of
blood, and it will be after midnight before the waning moon shall
“go up amid the eternal stars.” It is now near the witching hour
of night, and the dull, Sultry atmosphere overpowers me. I must
leave this to be finished in the morning. Visit me, if thou canst,
in dreams, and I will dream to return the visit.
Morning. My dreams were not of thee, but I had an inspiring
vision. I thought old Ludwig Uhland sat beside me, leaning his
silver head on my shoulder, and repeated some of his beautiful
German ballads. It was a singular thought, but perhaps had a
mysterious connection with my waking reflections; for I was
turning over in my mind the resolution to write no more poetry,
and give my imagination no license to wander, until my business
should be fixed and secure. And I was wondering whether such
a determination would destroy forever the “divine faculty.” But
there is no fear of it, I believe. A flower which has been planted
by Nature, and cherished by years of thought, cannot die from
such a slight neglect. The end is at hand, – almost at the be-
ginning of my talk with thee. I shall see thee again the end of
next week, but write, if thou canst, before that time. Thy let-
ters give me a world of joy. I hope it will not be long before I
shall see thee here, and show thee my familiar haunts.
MARY AGNEW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
July 31, 1847.
This is a beautiful evening to close my twentieth birthday, but
I am too weak to enjoy it. I can scarcely sit up, and am not al-
VOL. I. 7
98 BA YARD TA YLOR.
lowed to write ; for this reason I have taken a small sheet, and
probably shall not fill it, and yet feel as if I had so much for ut-
terance, so many things to pour trustfully into thy loving, gener-
ous heart. But do not be alarmed when thee reads the beginning
of this. It is only a general debility, brought on by so much dis-
ease and anxiety. Doctor says when I get well I may be better
than ever I was, but I must be very careful. It will require
many sacrifices, but I can easily give up present pleasure for fu-
ture benefit. Thy last loved letter is open before me. With
what unspeakable joy I received it ; for I had felt dull and sad,
and this came to me as a comfort and a joy, - as those dear mis-
sives ever do, that breathe to me of the gentleness and nobleness
of thy pure, lofty soul. Lying before me, too, is thy pictured
image, the little frame yet fragrant with the perfume and beauty
of the many summer flowers that I have lain upon it in the cher-
ished love of my heart. Such was my pleasure day after day
when I was well, and now I have two loved locks of hair that lay
within it, that I have cherished long and wondered if I would be
allowed to smooth it when it should be “silvered o'er with years.”
But whither am I wandering 2 Thou wilt see by the mistakes,
writing, and other things, that I am not fit to write a letter; but
I wanted that thee should get a few lines, for it seems so long
since I have written, though I have so much wished to, and I
feared that thou mightst censure me, – and oh dear Bayard, I
could not for a moment bear that such should be the case. Yet
it is my daily fear that I may have done something to cause thee
many a saddening thought. . . . Thou wilt be home next Satur-
day. I shall be strong again then, I hope. Come here as early
as thou canst Saturday evening. I want to have some time with
thee.
When Bayard Taylor went to establish himself in a
small country community, he did not take into account
that indomitable desire for growth and for the highest
development which possessed him, and which the cir-
cumstances of his life as editor of a country newspaper
could serve only by presenting obstacles to be over-
come. He went away to New York and the Catskills
for a short Summer vacation, and the glimpse which he
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK. 99
had again of New York life suggested such contrasts
that he returned to Phoenixville with his mind made
up to go to the city, if it were possible, and support
himself by literary work. He missed seeing Willis,
and so wrote to him for advice after his return to
Phoenixville, where he was suddenly called by death in
his partner's family.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
PHOENIXVILLE, August 29, 1847.
Thou wilt be surprised, and perhaps disappointed, to receive
a letter from this place instead of my promised visit. I heard in
New York, after writing to thee, of the illness of Mr. R. N. Fos-
ter, and on reaching Philadelphia, Thursday last, heard that Fred
had been written for, since his father's life was despaired of.
This obliged me to come here immediately, and, as may be sup-
posed, I found my presence much needed, - so much so, that I
found it quite impossible to leave, even if yesterday’s rain had
permitted my going to Kennett. . . .
I have no time now to tell how many old friends I met and
new ones found. There is so much to be done for the paper that
I must stop this pleasant talk with thee, and go to the actuals
and indispensables. But I can safely promise a good stock of in-
teresting gossip when we meet. Shall I not hear from thee be-
fore the end of the week 2
MARY AGNEW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
. . . How lonely I felt after thee left us that night. I went
directly to my room, leaned my head out of the window, and
drank in the silent, saddening beauty of the night. But a short
time, and I heard the mournful car whistle that told me thou
wouldst soon be many miles from me. But it was a joy to
think that distance could not separate us, – that the light of
thy love and faithfulness was ever shining round me like a halo.
. . . It was a beautiful day [a return home from Wilmington].
I thought I never saw the woods look so brilliant. I wondered
where thou wert, and oh how I wished thou wert with me. This
is my favorite season. The solemn sadness of the time seems to
suit my spirit better than the light joyousness of the spring, hºn
gº • * * *
* * tº tº
* • * * • * * *
:
•
ſº
e
©
e tº & © tº
100 BA YARD TA YLOR.
everything is waking to life and beauty; but next spring will
find me waking to health and strength, – at least, I hope so. It
would be a new life, – yes, it would be new to me to pass one
day without pain. But I will be well, and then, dear Bayard,
what joy awaits us; for it falls on thee as well as me. I have
much, very much to say, but it is late at night, and I must send
this to the office in the morning, so I must close with the hope of
getting a letter soon, and having a long, long talk with thee
when thee again comes home. . . . And now I bid thee a fervent
good-night, and shall go to my pillow to be visited with dreams
of thee; and may the guardian of thy sleep send pleasant ones of
IOle.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO JOHN B. PHILLIPS.
PIICENIxvillE, September 8, 1847.
. . . It is now nearly ten o’clock, and I am sitting at the table
(you know where it is) surrounded with books, papers, and man-
uscripts. My room is beginning to look like an author's labora-
tory. The windows, mantel, table, and even floor are covered
with ancient and modern, native and foreign literature, and one
window is entirely taken up with the books given me in New
York. Among others, I have the works of Hood, Tupper, Leigh
Hunt, Hawthorne, Mrs. Kirkland, etc., besides all of Goethe and
Schiller in fifteen magnificent German volumes. This, as you
will readily conceive, is a good winter's work. But I have com-
menced it with ardor, and by employing every moment of leisure
time I hope to be well acquainted with them all before long.
Putnam, who, by the bye, is one of the very best fellows in the
world, gave me the greater part of them. He has returned to
America to live, as you are perhaps already aware. I spent two
evenings with him on Staten Island.
I was exceedingly fortunate in New York in making delight-
ful literary acquaintances, – such as C. F. Hoffman, Mrs. Kirk-
land, Mr. and Mrs. Seba Smith, Bryant, Page and Powell, the
painters, G. P. Morris, Balmanno, etc. I called on the first of
these without an introduction, but was most cordially received,
and spent a delightful evening with him and Page. I afterwards
took him, with Griswold and Seba Smith (Jack Downing), to see
the Greek Slave, and in the evening Hoffman went with me to
Brooklyn to the Smiths, where we stayed till eleven o’clock, pass-
iºg:;he. fine imost delightfully. I also spent an evening with
tº tº ... *s.” * @
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK. 101
Mrs Kirkland, who is, to my mind, possessor of more genius than
any woman in America. She is a most noble character, and every
one in New York esteems her. Bryant is her most intimate friend,
and she gave me a deep insight into his character. Bryant I found
calm and cold, as I had expected, but having the stamp of greatness
in his countenance. Ifelt a kind of pride in having been previously
known to all these persons. They did not look upon me as a
stranger, and, though but an embryo author, it gave me the key
to their sympathies. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this
week's visit. Nothing could be more refreshing to the mind than
the converse of such gifted spirits after a year spent among Phoe-
nixville ignorance and dullness. Willis was unfortunately not in
the city. . . .
N. P. WILLIS TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
NEw York, September 19, 1847.
Mrs. Kirkland had told me of your visit to New York before I
received your letter, and expressed herself highly pleased to have
seen you. I am sorry I was not here. We arrived on Tuesday
for the winter.
Touching the subject of your letter, I have, on-the-whole-
imously, wondered at your policy of preference for country edit-
ing ; but as I did not particularly know what were your pros-
pects and reasons, I did not venture to pronounce it unwise. I
should divide into equal thirds the desirableness of a business
for you and me : 1. Profit enough to support a family. 2. Gen-
ial and congenial society. 3. Chances for making renown, or
rather for securing appreciation. Two of these would make a
majority which would outweigh the remaining third. You can
apply this yard-stick to your paper at Phoenixville for yourself.
If you conclude to come to New York, I think you had better
make your engagements by correspondence, editing your paper
meantime. It will give you the advantage of seeming to have
a resource if refused. Write to every paper and everybody.
Be willing to go in at a small hole, like a lean rat, trusting to
increase so much that you cannot be got out without destroying
what took you in. This is fair play, where the property of an
establishment is made by your underpaid industry. The town
is full of five-dollar-a-week men, but they don't stand at all in
your way. Your book has made you a name which would give
your union to any paper great value, and, as a practical printer,
102 BA YARD TA YLOR.
also, you are a most desirable partner for a man with capital, who
wants the influence and occupation of a paper. You are a man,
however, to whom half a hint is a sermon, and so I say no more
on that point.
As to society you would find New York delightful. It is, as
yet, without any acknowledged upper circle, and therefore you
may pick your society untrammeled, and enjoy it as the undis-
puted best. The first year you would (chances are) obtain
merely a livelihood. The second year you might marry and
begin to thrive. I will be on the lookout for a place for you to
put your foot.
We expect Richard every day. I hope you will be here to
meet him, and chat over Germany around my table.
God bless you. With my promised best respect to your bien-
aimée, tell her from me that in a “worldly point of view” you
are an excellent match. She knows, of course, that there is no
love like the love of genius.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
PHOENIXVILLE, October 15, 1847.
I still adhere to the determination of changing my situation
as soon as possible. All my reason seems to point out this path
as the best. If I can get a good place I have little fears as to
further success and advancement. I confess, too, that I think
we would be happier there than here, — at least for a few years.
I am almost satisfied that I could make a very good living by
writing alone, but to attempt it would be unwise. I can at least
very materially increase my income in that way. Authorship
is now beginning to be profitable. I may be born on the verge
of a better era, and so help reap the harvest of future years. At
least, I have made a very auspicious commencement for an
American writer. God grant me continued strength, for I have
appointed myself a great work to do before I die.
I have been studying Schiller lately, and find rich stores of
encouragement in his life and poetry. On Sunday I took his
“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 1
As I moved to rise I found a snake, which had crept up to me
PEMO VAL TO NEW YORK. 103
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. Jumping into the boat again, I let it float
with the current, and read till it grew dark and chilly.
This would be called a long letter, but I have said very little,
and I must now close, as usual, at midnight. Fred has not re-
turned yet, and I am overwhelmed with work. His brother is a
little better, but very low. Thou wilt read this, I suppose, on
Saturday night, and on a week from then I hope to be with thee.
Write whenever thou canst, — too often thou canst never write.
Bayard Taylor followed Willis's advice to open ne-
gotiations with New York editors while continuing his
business at Phoenixville, and wrote to Mr. Greeley, R.
W. Griswold, Charles Fenno Hoffman, and W. C. Bry-
ant. The characteristic replies of these gentlemen
give a good indication both of the esteem in which
they held their correspondent and of the very meagre
resources which literary life in New York at that time
could command.
HORACE GREELEY TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
NEw York, October 11, 1847.
MY FRIEND TAYLOR, - I know nothing at present wherewith
to tempt you toward this city. We are in the vortex of literary
and miscellaneous adventure. All the aspiring talent and con-
ceit of our own country and of Europe confront and crowd on
our pavements, and every newspaper or other periodical estab-
lishment is crowded with assistants and weighed down with
promises. My own judgment is that you will do ill in leaving
work secure and ready to your hands to hunt work in any of the
unbealthy crowds congregated on the sea-coast. But judge of
this for yourself. It seems to me that two or three years' ex-
perience in a country village will better qualify you for a depart-
ment in a city paper ; that, as to study, time is everything, and
that is very scarce with anybody’s hirelings in this city; and that
should you evince high qualities in your present position they
will be noted, and your services requested elsewhere. Life is
very hurried and fretful in a great city.
Yours, HORACE GREELEY.
104 BA YARD TA YLOR.
R. W. GRISWOLD TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
NEw York, October 24, 1847.
MY DEAR TAYLOR, - I am very much delighted at the pros-
pect of having you in New York. I have been making some
inquiries down town this morning, but without success, though I
have no doubt, with your abilities and experience, enough will be
found to do after a little while.
Meantime, enough to “pay your board” awaits you on my
“Biographie’ in the form of translations of articles from the
new “Conversations Lexikon,” if you will undertake them. I
certainly will do all I can very gladly, and am so sanguine that
I have no hesitation in bidding you come at once.
I live in my shop here at the University, and rarely go out
now but to get my meals at the New York Hotel, or to visit the
printing-office.
My brother has just told me of a first-rate boarding-house,
equal to that I have left, in Bond Street, for half the price.
I scribble this very hastily, for I wish to send it down to the
post-office by the boy who is “waiting for copy.”
Yours most sincerely,
RUFUs W. GRISwold.
CHARLES FENNO IHOFFMAN TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
OFFICE LITERARY World, October 30, 1847.
MY DEAR SIR, -Your letter of the 19th interested me much.
I like your idea of “coming up to the capital,” as did the wor-
thies of literature in Johnson's time. Griswold tells me he has
written you offering something to do. I wish I could offer you
a certain and permanent engagement upon this paper ; perhaps
we may hereafter. Meanwhile, if an engagement for the months
of November and December of five dollars a week upon the
miscellaneous department of the “Literary World,” or for one
review a week, will advance your object, I pray you to consider
it settled. I write in great haste, with business and business
people pressing, so you must not gauge my interest in your
plans by this brief note from Yours hurriedly,
C. F. HoFFMAN.
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK. 105
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
NEw York, November 30, 1847.
DEAR SIR, -You must have thought me uncivil in not answer-
ing your letter earlier. The truth was, I did not know what to
advise, and day after day went over, till I was ashamed to look
at the date of your letter to see how many had elapsed.
With regard to your coming to New York, there is no doubt
that a residence here, to one whose character and habits are
formed, like yours, is of great advantage in point of intellectual
improvement. The intellect is incited to greater exertions, is in-
vigorated by collision with other intellects, and finds more abun-
dant aliment ; but they who live by their pens here do not, I
believe, find it a very easy life in general. Either they are very
laboriously occupied, for the most part without a very liberal
compensation, or find occupation uncertain and its rewards
Scanty.
The greater number of them, I believe, write for the maga-
zines, a thing of which you have some experience. When they
have acquired some reputation, they often venture upon a vol-
ume ; you have experience in that way, too. The newspaper
press furnishes the steadiest income, but its places are few and
always full, and there is a crowd of competitors ready for casual
vacancies. I know of none such at present.
Such is an outline of the literary chart of New York. If you
conclude to try its navigation, I shall be happy to render you
any service in my power. Yours truly,
W. C. BRYANT.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
November 12, 1847.
I thought I would make up my deficiency a week or two ago,
and write a long letter, but the “pressure of business” confines
me to this sheet of note-paper. And indeed, I can scarcely steal
time enough to say more than that I am enjoying good health
and good spirits, notwithstanding many little difficulties and vex-
ations. I received another letter from Hoffman yesterday, re-
peating his offer and urging me to come. Of course I replied,
accepting it, and promising to come on as soon as possible. I
fear I shall have to dispose of the “Pioneer’ at considerable
106 IBA YARD TA YLOR.
loss, but I will endeavor soon to make it up in New York. It is,
however, to say the least, very vexatious and annoying to throw
away a year's work for nothing, at this time of life. Thou canst,
doubtless, appreciate the feeling with which I regard this disap-
pointment. I have lost none of my hope and confidence, but I
feel impatient about it, and sometimes almost — angry. But
then I recur to my philosophy, which is, never to let myself be
troubled about what is done and can’t be helped, and I find that a
little calm reasoning soon restores my equanimity.
I think we have both learned a good deal of patience and self-
denial, which may do us good service amid the trials which may
meet us in after-life. There is much sunshine in the world;
even as I write, a ray of it shot into my heart, and I am glad and
happy; it was the thought of our union, haply not very distant in
the future. I have a stock of gladness in my spirit, which will
keep me always hopeful and buoyant, and I thank God for this.
Be thou hopeful, too, for “why should we seek to anticipate
sadness,” etc. 2 -
But I must close, for it is bright morning, and my presence is
wanted in the office. I write now that thou mayest receive it to-
morrow night. All my spare time, which is not much, has been
employed on a lecture for to-morrow night.
In writing, several years afterward, of his experi-
ment at Phoenixville, Bayard Taylor says: “I soon
discovered that the paper which I wished to publish
would not satisfy the demands of my subscribers. I
could not make my pen serve the petty local interests,
which alone they cared for; as I wished to remain
neutral in politics, I offended both parties; when I
endeavored to illustrate higher literary points of view,
my orthodoxy in religious things was called in ques-
tion. At last, after wasting a year in the thankless
business, I gave it up in despair, and went to New
York, weighed down with a debt, the paying of which
cost me the earnings of the next three years.”
He had no positive engagement in New York ex-
cept that offered by Mr. Hoffman, but shortly after he
REMOVAL TO NE W YORK. 107
reached the city he added to this an engagement to
teach a class in literature in Miss Green’s school for
young ladies, three to four hours a week for four dol-
lars, “which is good pay,” he writes, “and will do
much to help me along.” So, with the certainty of
nine dollars a week, he embarked hopefully upon the
current of a literary life in New York. It was a week
before Christmas when he arrived, and on Christmas
Day he wrote to Mary Agnew : —
“The happiest and merriest heart be thine to-day !
The very soul of all Christmas enjoyment make sun-
shine around thee! And amid all the kind wishes
thou wilt receive from loving friends, forget not that
my fondest, most fervent blessing goes to thee from
the depths of my heart. Chide me not that, in ab-
sence, I feel cheerful and happy. I have been among
friends to-day, among those who knew me ; the gay
crowds of this busy city seemed familiar and home-
like, and there was needed but the one dear presence
to make me indeed contented. Here is my sphere of
action; it may be my place of sorrow and suffering,
but always of happiness while I have thee.”
CHAPTER VI.
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK.
1848–1849.
In midnight streets
And haunted attics flattered by the chime
Of silver words, and, fed by faith sublime,
I Shelley's mantle wore, you that of Keats.
Sommet to R. H. S.
THE strongest motive which prompted Bayard Tay-
lor to come to New York and try his fortune in litera-
ture was the hope that he could thus sooner maintain
himself and marry; but with this hope was a desire
to study, to find himself in more congenial society,
and to come closer to the movement of men. Ardently
as he loved nature, he was at a time of life when his
vigorous, stirring mind sought activity and the com-
panionship of men and women of high thought and
aims; he wished to plunge into swifter currents, and
to find room for freer energy. The period which he
spent at Phoenixville was commonplace enough so far
as his external life was concerned, but it was witness
to a mental and spiritual travail which showed itself
in the varying moods of his letters and diaries, and
left him with a sense of new life and power. Phys-
ically he was conscious of abounding health, and he
felt the stirring within him of an intellectual spirit
which prophesied a larger expression.
In his novel “John Godfrey's Fortunes,” the hero
is made to say, “I belong to that small class of men
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 109
whose natures are not developed by a steady, grad-
ual process of growth, but advance by sudden and
seemingly arbitrary bounds, divided by intervals dur-
ing which their faculties remain almost stationary.”
Such a statement does more to identify an author with
his creation than any merely external likeness, and it
is not to be wondered at that John Godfrey should be
taken as a literary study of Bayard Taylor, since this
periodic development of nature was characteristic of
his own judgment of himself. At any rate, in this
removal to New York we are able to see not only an
outward change of fortune and experience, but the be-
ginning of a rapid maturity of intellect. It was very
much to him that he could note in his diary at the be-
ginning of the year, “I have laid the spirits which
tormented me in a poetical grave ; and it is enough
to say, at this chilly hour, that I am now stronger
and more resolute than then [a year ago], sustained
by a firmer trust and encouraged by a more cheerful
philosophy.” The difference in his circumstances ap-
pears plainly enough in his New Year's letter to his
betrothed.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, New Year's Day, 1848.
The blessings of the opening year be upon thee, dearest Mary!
be with thee to-night, if my heart's wish can be answered ! Al-
though I have passed the day among friends, I have been
lonely in my absence from thee; and I have felt it the more,
since every pleasant scene but made me wish for thy presence.
It would have been charming to thee; indeed, thou art not aware
how much thou art losing — for a while, only; for it will soon, I
hope, be in my power to unlock for thee the door to this social
world.
January 2. I could do little else yesterday than give thee a
New Year's wish, and to-night I shall only have time to say
110 JBA YARD TA YLOR.
where I have been, and what doing, as it is past midnight.
Willis invited me to supper at his house, and I went with T. B.
and Mary Read. We found there Anne Lynch, Grace Green-
wood, Mrs. E. F. Ellet, Healy, the artist, and Joseph Clarke,
Grace's brother. Afterwards came General Morris, Parke God-
win and his wife, who is Bryant’s daughter, and the veritable
Sam Lover. And such a night as we have passed — a feast of
reason and flow of soul, so full of songs, stories, and sparkling
conversation that we have each and all (I make no doubt) laid
by its memory to be preserved among the choicest events of our
lives. Last night I attended Anne Lynch’s conversazione, and
met Grace, Willis, Morris, Read, Healy, Griswold, Mrs. Ellet,
Mr. Gillespie, and Kate and Mary Sedgwick. We had a dance
and most delightful conversation, together with recitals. Grace
repeated her “Ariadne,” Read his “Bards,” and Kate Sedgwick
Miss Barrett’s “Bertha in the Lane.” On Thursday I went to a
fancy ball in the character of Goethe's Faust, Read as a Tyro-
lese minstrel, and his wife as Titania. Mrs. Anne S. Stephens
was there as Madge Wildfire, Lieutenant May as Ivanhoe, and
Saroni, the composer, as an Italian cavalier. But I will be bet-
ter able to tell thee of all these delightful festivals when we
meet, in a few days from now. I shall, I hope, see thee on Fri-
day night; it is an age till then. For once, I am obliged to send
thee but a short and meagre letter.
NEw Yorº, January 23, 1848.
I write to thee while the Sunday chimes are ringing in my ear;
and could my heart be other than calm and peaceful and
blessed ? Yes, peaceful even while the load of absence lies
heavily upon it, and no one is near to charm away the weary sen-
sation of loneliness. Out upon all complaining ! Why, what have
I, with the warm blood of twenty-three stirring in my veins, –
with strength, passion, and opportunity for action, — to do with
sighing and lamentation ? There will be time enough for that
when the warm feeling is chilled, the living thought palsied, and
the strong will unnerved. Now is the time to make myself what
I am expected to become ; and although those who expect most
strive most to hold me back from the upward track, I am deter-
mined not to cheat my own ideal. Therefore, forward | Act,
study, work, complain not This is the lesson I have been re-
peating to myself day by day, - I will become the sculptor of
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 111
my own mind's statue. There are times, it is true, when the
heart must sink ; when it lies down by the wayside, Sorrowing
and overtasked ; but the earth itself lends it vigor, and they are
deceived who deem that its energies are at rest forever. I have
been weak and cowardly ; I have shrunk from the rough en-
counter with worldly natures, and longed for some poetic Elys-
ium where I might sing and dream ; but with God’s help I
shall hereafter keep clear of this morbid and unmanly feeling.
It will require time and resolution and the experience of pain
to familiarize myself with the world as it is, – to expect and
meet unmoved the thousand jarrings which pride and feeling
have to endure. But the tenderest frame may in time slumber
soundly on a bed of rock, and I do not despair of in time steel-
ing myself to “brunt the fight.” Nor would I lament the ne-
cessity of this education of the soul. It is the only thing which
can develop the latent power within me, the true Bayard, whom
few (but thou best of all) have ever known, -the future knight,
as I earnestly trust, sans peur et sans reproche, to which I am now
but an humble squire. Thou canst aid me in this, my own Mary,
and to thee I look for words of encouragement and of reproof
when I stray from the stern purpose. This has been a faithful
confession, spoken as if to my own guardian angel (and indeed,
is it not ?), and I pray thee record it on the leaves of our united
destiny.
But enough of serious talk for one letter | Thou wilt think
me a graceless Troubadour, to write so much of my own sober
philosophy instead of the happy homage of the heart, in which
gallant knights acknowledge their fealty. And abundance of
this could I not render ? Is not thy love an ever-present bless-
ing? Were I able to say all which passes through my heart in
this moment, I fear I should weary thee with the expression of
my grateful joy! But thou knowest well how we can repeat for-
ever our happiest emotions, without exhausting their power.
“Wave after wave breaks on the shore,
But the sea is deep as it was before.”
And when I tell thee that the sea of my soul throbs away in end-
less waves of love and tenderness to thee, need I bid thee always
listen to its chime 2 No ; thine own spirit, like the pure sky,
bends protectingly above it, and thou canst see how it mirrors
the depth of thy affection.
112 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Have no fears about my health, dear Mary; I am almost en-
tirely well, and two or three days of this charming weather will
complete the cure. I hope thou, too, wilt feel the cheering in-
fluence of sunshine which reminds us of coming spring. Thy
health should claim thy care far more than mine. I am natu-
rally strong and vigorous ; and nothing but a neglect, which I
shall hereafter guard against, occasioned my illness. I spent last
evening with Willis, and mentioned in the course of conversation
my idea of the Swedish trip. He discouraged it, and perhaps
with reason ; but I shall do nothing rashly, and there will be
time enough to decide before I shall be able to go at all. I
passed four or five most delightful hours with him and Mrs.
Willis, and can now be myself to them, such valued and familiar
friends they have become. They will be thine also, erelong.
We had a very agreeable soirée here two or three nights ago, and
the unreserved social feeling which prevailed rendered it very
pleasant to me. I am growing better acquainted with my fellow-
boarders, and they with me. This makes it seem more home-
like. Hoffman, who has been boarding here for seven years, is
treated as one of the family; indeed, I find that he has as many
friends as any man in New York, and every one who knows him
admires him. I esteem it very fortunate for me that I am con-
nected with him, however slightly.
With the new life came fresh impulses to poetry.
The first of the poems written in this year appears to
be “The Angel of the Soul,” in blank verse, pub-
lished in his next collection of poems, but omitted in
later collections. It has an interest from its large ab-
stract quality, from the brooding of the mind upon
elemental nature, and the effort to force from the ele-
ments an answer to the questions which the soul hardly
formulates, yet feels as the instinct of its immortality.
Silence hath conquered thee, imperial Night !
Thou sitt'st alone within her void, cold halls,
Thy solemn brow uplifted, and thy soul
Paining the space with dumb and mighty thought.
So the poem begins, and the poet imagines his own
LITERARY LIFE IN NE IV YORK. 113
soul going down the untrodden paths of night to the
“dim verge of being.” There its prayer is heard, and
it enters the winged multitude of spirits, calling to its
guardian angel: —
White through my cradled dreams thy pinions waved,
Lost Angel of the Soul | Thy presence led
The babe's faint gropings through the glimmering dark
And into Being's conscious dawn. Thy hand
Held mine in childhood, and thy beaming cheek
Lay close, like some fond playmate's, to mine own.
Thou hast been with me, when the midnight dew
Clung damp upon my brow, and the broad fields
Stretched far and dim beneath the ghostly moon ;
When the dark, awful woods were silent near,
And with imploring hands toward the stars
Clasped in mute yearning, I have questioned Heaven
For the lost language of the Book of Life.
Come back he cries to this guardian angel;
From the founts
Of thine exhaustless light, make clear the road
Through toil and darkness into God’s repose.
It is quite likely that the poet, when selecting from
his earlier poems those which he wished to retain,
threw this one out for its somewhat vague, inarticulate
breathing, its lack of definite form, and its slight con-
fusion of personality and image. The poem belongs
to a stage of poetic growth which has had some nota-
! ble illustrations. The profoundest poets have been
early impressed with this weight of life, and have
sought to change the “too, too solid’ earth into va-
pors, in the vain attempt after something more final
and imperishable than the concrete world. The “Pau-
line * of Robert Browning, most dramatic of poets,
represents this stage, and still more emphatically the
VOL. I. 8
114 BA YARD TA YLOR.
“Alastor” of Shelley, who so dominated Browning's
mind when he wrote “Pauline.” Bayard Taylor had
not, at this time, read Shelley, and when he read
“Alastor,” a few months later, he recognized in fuller,
more elaborate form the phase of spiritual passion
which had been his own. g
Had he remained in a country life, it is possible
that he would have been longer in receiving an im-
pulse from the vital energy of the world of action, but
as “The Angel of the Soul’ was, in a measure, retro-
spective, the midnight fantasy of a dreaming poet, it
was followed almost immediately by a series of poems
which are intimately connected with his daily life.
Mr. Greeley, who had discouraged his coming to New
York, now that he was there offered him a situation
on the “Tribune,” and at once he was thrown into the
current of a busy world. The office of a daily news-
paper was then, as now, the meeting-point of many
currents of human life, and here, where his duties
compelled him to take daily surveys of the country,
the poet was brought into quickening contact with the
adventure and romance of the West. He succeeded
Mr. Oliver Johnson in the miscellaneous and literary
department. The humorous description of John God-
frey's labor in “condensing the miscellaneous” gives,
with a touch of exaggeration, a picture of his first oc-
cupation ; but with the new stimulus came the Cali-
fornian ballads, spirited and swinging in metre, in
which there is the eagerness of a young fellow who
has leapt into the saddle. There came, also, a busier
social life, and a vividness of sensation which is com-
municated both to poetry and to letters. He was
quick to avail himself of the advantages afforded by
the city for study and introduction to the domain of
LITERARY LIFE IN WE W YORK. 115
literature and art. Thirty years later, writing of
R. H. Dana, Senior, he said, “In 1848 I heard his
course of lectures on “Old English Literature’ in New
York, and was thereby led to the study of the Ballads,
the Dramatists, and Wordsworth.”
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, January 29, 1848.
Was I not right in my resolution ? I have passed a happy
week in carrying it out. The mere determination to face diffi-
culties diminishes their number, and in the good-will with which
we undertake a work is the work half dome. And to-day, to
crown the sum of my good fortune, came Greeley, and of his
own unsolicited accord offered me a situation as assistant editor,
with a salary of $625 a year ($12 a week), and a prospect of
its being soon raised to $800. This is a glorious chance. The
duties of the place involve the severe discipline which I need,
and it is a certain stepping-stone to something better. I shall be
bound as to days, but still considerable time will be left each day
for other studies. I cannot cease congratulating myself on the
happy turn in my crooked pathway. I shall have possession of
the seat formerly held by Oliver Johnson, who has just left.
I have just returned from two hours at Anne Lynch's. I found
there Kate and Mary Sedgwick, Darley the artist, Dubourjal,
ditto, and several highly intellectual people. I was enchanted
with a portfolio of outline drawings by Darley, illustrating “Mar-
garet.” They are to be published. On the spur of the moment
we formed a quadrille, and as Darley did n’t know the figures,
and there were only three couple, there was no end to the sport
we had. Anne Lynch is a perfect jewel of a woman. She is go-
ing to have a grand valentine party on the coming 14th, and
showed me a list of the invited lions. Among them are Halleck,
Bryant, Willis, Morris, Hoffman, Parke Godwin, Lanman, Tuck-
erman, Dr. Dewey, Page, Inman, Darley, Healy, Durand, Mrs.
Kirkland, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. Smith, Miss Sedgwick, Mrs.
Osgood, Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. Hewitt, and a host of others. What a
constellation Would that thou, too, wert here to shine amongst
them 1 Miss L. made me promise to write a number of valen-
times, and this is the list she allotted to me: Mrs. Godwin, Miss
Kate Sedgwick, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Seba Smith, Hoffman, and
116 B.A. Y.A.R.D TA YLOR,
Willis. I shall be kept busy in hammering out stanzas up to the
eventful day, and I intend dipping into some book of metre for
a variety in that line, at least. But I must pause, for it is the
cold midnight, though my heart is warm and full of sunshine, –
of light that streams in its fullness to thee. My good-night bless-
ing on thy slumbers now, dear Mary 1 . . .
My heart has been dancing all morning to its own music, think-
ing of my many blessings. Again I repeat the determination of
my last letter, and depend on thee to keep me strong in it.
By the way, I must tell thee of a wicked little scheme of mine.
There have been so many remarks on my reference in my poems
to love or to the beloved one, that I have concluded to puzzle
these curious critics. I wrote last summer a poem embodying
the very essence of despair, – of hopeless, scorned love, of in-
tense, fathomless spiritual misery. It was written as an experi-
ment, without any particular object, — one of those whims to
which all poets are subjected, and which I doubt whether thou
canst entirely understand. I mentioned this to Hoffman, who
was delighted with the idea, and promised to preface it by a
few lines, which should excite the greatest possible curiosity with
regard to it. But tell me in thy next letter what is thy opinion
with regard to the plan. I should like to have it before publishing
the article. I will commence in this week’s “Literary World”
the publication of a series of “Picturesque Ballads of Califor-
nia,” written as if they were translated from the Spanish by a
gentleman of St. Louis. The first, called “El Canelo,” I think will
please thee. We are going to have them noticed in other papers,
as they will help greatly to bring the “Literary World” into bet-
ter circulation. I am delighted with the idea of writing for once
behind the curtain. I shall hear unprejudiced comments on the
ballads, and I shall myself be able to write them with far more
ease and spirit, by the throwing off of my own self-consciousness.
Please hold this secret. I will send thee the ballads as they ap-
pear. I send with this letter a “Home Journal,” containing a
magnificent story by Willis, and some references to myself. I
would ask thee to read Willis's, particularly. It is wonderful in
its way.
I inclose one or two of my rhymed longings to thee, and will
send the rest when I next write. Two or three have been printed.
Now, Mary, dearest, let me soon hear from thee, for I depend
much on thy encouraging letters.
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 117
MARY AGNEW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
February 2, 1848.
. . . For a week past I have been happy. I marveled at my
own light-heartedness, but now I know the reason. It was be-
cause thou, too, wert happy, because fortune had been kind to
thee. But I fear that thou wilt have too much to do when this
new duty is added to the others, – that thy mind will often feel
wearied and overtasked. Would that I could do something to
assist thee, but I cannot. I can only congratulate thee on the
happy prospect that lies before thee, – yes, and before me, too.
I see bright and beautiful visions gleaming in the future, and I
fervently thank God as I press thy loved letters to my heart.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, February 6, 1848.
. . . “Blessed Sabbath bells l’” They chime in ever with my
visions of home and of thee. I have taken the quiet Sabbath
morning for my brief converse with thee, and perhaps at this hour
thou art thinking of me. I feel as if it were so. I seem to see
thee looking out on the bare trees and frozen earth, lying still
and bleak under the faint winter sunshine, and wandering in
thought to the busy city about me. I know the weight of ab-
sence must at times lie heavy on thy heart. Thou hast not the
incessant round of occupation to chain thy thoughts from every-
thing else through four fifths of the day which falls to my lot
here, which at least prevents me from dwelling long upon any-
thing but the labor before me ; for, as thou sayst, nothing can
wholly banish for a moment the thought of thee. This labor,
which I still enjoy, as it will secure me the happiness of my life,
causes the weeks to pass away quickly, and by keeping me active
and occupied prevents entirely any tendency to dejection or de-
spondency. We are happiest at work, and especially when we
are working for those we love. I look forward to an encouraging
letter from thee very soon. Thy little note reached me on Thurs-
day, just as I was beginning to feel anxious about thee, – fearing
lest thy health should have again failed. I expect, however,
there is another on the way by this time. If wishing could avail
anything, thou wouldst have been here last night. There was a
solemn celebration to the memory of Mendelssohn, given by all
118 BA YARD TA YLOR.
the musical societies and artists of New York. It was at Castle
Garden, which was crowded with upwards of ten thousand peo-
ple. There was an orchestra of one hundred instruments, and a
chorus of three hundred singers. The effect was almost incon-
ceivable. I was at Anne Lynch's on Friday night. She is get-
ting ready an illustrated edition of her poems. Willis is not well,
but is not seriously afflicted. I have become acquainted with
the painter Frankenstein, who showed me a great many very
fine pictures. -
I have no doubt that in a few months, if I should succeed in
picking up some correspondence with other papers, and learn the
art of telegraphing news (or, rather, preparing them for the tel-
egraph), I shall make $25 or $30 a week readily. This would
support us at once, and enable us to terminate the pains of ab-
sence. . . . Greeley told me yesterday that he would give any
man who could manage the news department of the “Tribune”
as well as he wished $1,500 a year. If I can attain this, my for-
tune is made. At any rate, even with my present income, I can
be free from all debt by next winter, and so well established as
to be certain of the future. So cheer up, and keep cheered, dear
Mary, for I think I have “taken at the flood” that tide in the
affairs of men which Shakespeare tells of.
February 13, 1848.
I was much grieved to hear of thy illness, the more so as I
had hoped and fully trusted thy sufferings had reached their
measure. It is, indeed, disheartening to me to think of all which
thou must endure, and I cannot avoid the impression that this
would not be so wert thou with me. At least, if a cheerful and
happy spirit is any preventive of physical suffering, I would
strive to make thine always so. I hope thou art well again by
the time this shall reach thee. I hope to be with thee again the
end of next week, and to find thee better and happier than ever.
I will then have much to say to thee; many pleasant and cheer-
ing circumstances to relate. I have been working pretty hard
for the past week, but it is very pleasant, and I think I shall suc-
ceed to the satisfaction of my employers. At least I have de-
termined to aim at complete success, and have all hope of reach-
ing my aim. It is an excellent post for one's reputation as an
editor; “a good perch to fly from,” as Willis said last night.
Poor man he is very sick, having been kept to his bed two
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 119
weeks with rheumatic pleurisy. His eyes are swelled so as to
blind him, and he cannot move without great torture. His faith-
ful Nelly, however, keeps him cheerful and hoping. I was at
Anne Lynch's last night, and had a delightful talk with Mrs.
Ripley (wife of the “Harbinger”) and niece of Dana, the poet;
the Sedgwicks were there and Darley. Herman Melville will
be there to-morrow night, and I am obliged to write a valentine
for him.
I had the misfortune to be deeply intoxicated yesterday — with
Tennyson's new poem, “The Princess,” which I shall bring to
thee when I return home. I dare not keep it with me. For the
future, for a long time at least, I dare not read Tennyson. His
poetry would be the death of mine, and, indeed, a pervadence of
his spirit would ruin me for the great purposes of life. His in-
tense perception of beauty haunts me for days, and I cannot
drive it from me.
Thou wilt see the Californian ballad in the next “Tribune.”
I have another to write to-day, or to-night. My hands are full ;
my mind is kept constantly employed. This is as it should be,
and I feel that I am beginning to learn something. I seem to
have turned over a new leaf of life, and I shall write a better
story upon it than the blotted pages I have left behind. I have
been misled in some respects by false reasoning ; a little rough
experience has cured me. Do thou too be firm of heart, and
shrink not from the great world; but rather take thy destined
place in it with the consciousness that it belongs to thee by right.
My pen will run into this strain, do what I may to stop it.
But when I shall substitute voices for letters, and fond glances
for written vows, thou wilt be at liberty to put an end to all such
metaphysical converse. As Tennyson says in “The Princess,”
we will then be sº
“A two-celled heart, beating with one full stroke
Life.”
Thou wilt hear from me again before I come, and write to me
soon, for I am anxious to hear from thee.
NEw York, February 23, 1848.
I am a sad truant this week about writing, but rather a truant
through necessity than choice. My time has been more than
usually engaged, and as Sunday was my working day I have
been delayed until now. However, it is still not too late to re-
120 BAYARD TA YLOR.
ceive an answer to this before I can expect to see thee. I am
coming home the last of next week, certainly in about nine or
ten days from now. I hope to find thee quite well by that time.
How quickly the winter has slipped away ! It will be spring
next week, in name if not in weather. We have had nothing
but Italian days for the last month. . . . Well, the grand valen-
tine party came off at last, and a very pleasant one it was.
Nearly all the author-tribe were there, but several other lions of
a different class, among whom were Rossiter, Cushman, Darley,
and Dubourjal, artists; General Gaines and Captain Reid, of the
army, Biscaccianti, and others. I became acquainted with Her-
man Melville's sister and with Mrs. Mary E. Hewitt, the poet-
ess, – a lovely woman. It fell to my lot to read a part of the
valentines. I received four : one from Grace, one from Mrs.
Osgood, and two from unknowns. By the bye, I have had quite
a valentine quarrel. Mrs. Osgood’s was directed “to the Bay-
ard-dear,” and not suspecting in the least that she was the au-
thor I showed it to her, telling her to observe the horrid pun /
I was punished for it next day, in the shape of a scolding valen-
tine, through which I discovered the author. I instantly wrote
a poetic apology, which called back a most charming answer and
restored me to her good graces. Last Saturday I was again at
A. C. L.'s, and met with Dr. Nichol, the astronomer, and Head-
ley. . . . Last night I spent an hour or two at Embury's, in
Brooklyn, a most delightful place, and somewhat exclusive.
Mrs. Embury is an uncommon woman, and has more of the true
poetic element in her nature than many who have won higher
names. Thou hast probably seen ere this the Californian ballad
in the “Tribune;” I have another written, called the “The Fight
of Paso del Mar,” full of blood and fury. . . .
MARY AGNew To BAYARD TAYLOR.
March 6, 1848.
. . . I want to tell thee not to be anxious about my health. I
have been so sorry that I told thee my fears on Saturday, but I
was concerned and worried, and felt depressed; and was it not
natural that I should impart it to thee, who art ever ready to re-
ceive and cherish my every hope and fear 7 I have for so long
prayed to be well and strong, and this continued pain and weak-
ness will weigh heavily upon my spirits at times. Yet I hope and
think I will in a short time be well. I have had a long talk with
LITERARY LIFE IN NE W YORK. 121
“Doctor,” and he says I will, so thou seest thy fears were not
well-founded; we often suffer, both mentally and physically, from
ignorance, and such has been my case. It is indeed gratifying
and joyous to know that I shall be healthy. Then let me wait
patiently and hopefully till “Time, the great revealer of all
things,” brings about this happy change. I depend much on the
genial influence of the opening spring, and on thy words of en-
couragement and hope. I have felt so much better since I have
seen thee looking so bright, so beautiful, and happy. I would
fain have had a longer time with thee, for thoughts and feelings
crowd upon my heart for utterance ; but I do not complain, for
the few hours that I did spend with thee float gorgeously before
me now through the light of the golden clouds of happiness. Here,
beside my paper, lies the beautiful little flower thee brought me,
as sweet and almost as fresh as when it came. The fragrance that
it sends forth reminds me so vividly of thee, and oh, how dearly
do I cherish it ! Long, long will I keep it after its leaves are
dried and withered, for it is a gift from thee. Thou knowest I
spoke of “teaching.” I have given up all thought of it, and have
my mind centred on studying, which is much more to my taste,
and will combine the same object, — that of being occupied. Thou
hast kindly offered to bring me a German grammar, for which I
cannot express my thanks, and, with thy assistance, perhaps I will
be able to make some progress. . . .
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, March 12, 1848.
I know not how I may be qualified in mood of mind and feel-
ing to write to thee now, for I have just laid aside a poem of
deep philosophical character, and am still surrounded and per-
vaded with the thought, which it was necessary to create in much
intensity in order to be equal to the subject. But this is my most
leisure day, and as a week has elapsed since we parted I cannot
delay longer in writing, and therefore receiving something from
thee in return ; trusting that any occasional obscurity, from the
impossibility to divest myself at once of the poem, will be par-
doned. I am in very good spirits, poetically, physically, and
mentally.
And for the reasons thereof, in addition to what thou knowest
already, which would tend to make me cheerful and happy, let
me mention further cause for rejoicing. Within the week, since
122 BA YARD TA YLOR,
my return, I have received four additional situations ! Mrs.
Kirkland is very anxious for me to edit the “Union Magazine”
while she is in Europe, and the “Christian Inquirer,” a Unitarian
paper. Graham has engaged me to write some reviews for him
now and them. And to-day a letter came from Harry Peterson,
asking me to be the New York correspondent of the “Post”
Think of that I Was I not right in following the impulse which
brought me here ? I have accepted the offer of the “Union
Magazine,” as well as Graham’s and Harry Peterson's, and only
hesitate in reference to the “Christian Inquirer,” for fear I
shall not have time to attend to it ; but as there is not much
labor necessary, I think I shall accept it. So, thou seest, not
only fame is coming in, but money. As Mrs. Kirkland will be
absent only six or seven months, I can easily endure the addi-
tional labor for that length of time — and the experience it will
afford me will be of great value. By devoting a little more
time to amusements, now and then, I can readily support the
necessary activity of mind. The only disadvantage is, I shall be
tied more strictly to New York than now, but still I shall en-
deavor to give a day to Kennett often through the summer ;
and I know thou wouldst rather have short visits from me, and
the prospect of my being soon honorably and firmly established
in the world, than longer ones and less success. I hope now to
be soon in a fair way to earn an income sufficient for our needs,
and furnishing somewhat beside for the “latter days.” Again
I ask, “Was I not right in coming here 2 ” -
For once, I have written thee a business letter. But thy re-
venge is easy : write me one in answer. And if thou art not
familiar with stocks and dividends, fill it with accounts of bar-
gaining for groceries or the diplomacy of dry-goods. Thou
mayst rejoice at this evidence of my capability for encountering
the realities of life, for poetry alone is a weak staff to lean
on. We will keep it for the sanctuary of our own hearts, the
quiet fireside of the feelings, and to the cold and calculating
herd appear cold and calculating, too. But if I follow the run
of my thoughts, they will certainly beguile me back into poetry.
So I must hunt up a few more facts.
Willis is worse again. I was there yesterday. Afterwards,
took tea with Mrs. Kirkland, and had a delightful chat; then
went to the house of Murdoch, the tragedian, and heard him
read a new tragedy to a company of literary gentlemen. Captain
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 123
Morgan, of our good old ship Victoria, called on me yesterday,
and we had a real jolly talk. I was delighted to see him again.
He told me he had read “Views,” in the house of the painter
Leslie, at London. zº
I have seen Henry Clay, and wept (nearly) on seeing the
magnificent funeral pageant of Adams. It was wonderful.
Didst thou ever look on two hundred thousand people at once 2
I have been writing as fast as my fingers can fly, this (Mon-
day, now) morning, and must conclude with the expression of
my most fervent and faithful love,
NEw York, April 5, 1848.
It is several days since I have had leisure for an uninterrupted
half-hour's talk with thee, and I am not sure that I shall be
allowed to say a great deal this morning. But even a few words
seem like a relief and refreshment to me, after delving so long
among wagon-loads of newspapers, and simmering the few
thoughts I have in my pate over the slow fire which the publish-
ers kindle for authors. But they are by no means exhausted ;
indeed, they grow constantly, and I am on the slow, though sure,
progress to better and stronger habits of thinking. I rejoice
that thou art so cheerful and confident and bold of spirit. I
find that there is nothing but courage and self-denial will accom-
plish much in the world ; and this tossing about, during early
life, but wins us the greater reward hereafter. That lofty, calm
philosophy and heroic dignity of character which we admire so
much in those who have passed the troubled morning was never
attained without severe experience. I comfort myself with this
reflection, whenever comfort is needed, which is not often, in my
present situation. I am succeeding very well, and will probably
soon have the entire charge of the assistant editorship. I am
fast becoming hardened to the work, though at present laboring
under a severe cold, which is not very pleasant. But as I caught
it in the service of liberty and France, I am content to bear it.
We had one of the most sublime meetings I ever beheld, on
Monday. One hundred thousand people — French, Italians,
Swiss, Poles, Irish, Scotch, Spanish — all united in one grand na-
tional congress, as it were, to rejoice over the freedom of France.
I was on the stand with the French and Italian speakers. The
banners of all nations hung above us, and were waved to the
grand chorus of the Marseillaise, sung by thousands ! Our own
124 BAYARD TA YLOR.
banner was over my head, and sometimes, when the wind blew,
I was wrapped in its folds. I clasped them in my arms, and
thrilled with patriotic excitement to think that under their pro-
tection alone, on the wide earth, could such a scene have been
presented. I never beheld such enthusiasm as was manifested
on the occasion.
The papers have come from the post-office, and I must to
work. I shall see thee in about four weeks. Read and his
wife and Grace Greenwood (most probably) will accompany me
to Kennett, to spend four or five days. We will have a glorious
romping time of it. It will be the bright May season, and thou
wilt be quite well then. Pray write soon. Thy letters are very
cheering to me.
MARY AGNEW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
May 28, 1848.
. . . For a few days past I have been delighted, reading
“Consuelo.” I forget whether thou hast read it or not. If not,
there is yet a great pleasure for thee in the future. How I have
wished that we might read it and drink in its deep joys together
Perhaps we can, some time. It seems to me that I have drunk
from a well never touched before. The draught has been very
sweet to me, almost intoxicating. My head has been filled with
her trials and her purity, and I have wandered about, hardly
knowing what I did. There is a deep vein of spirituality run-
ning through it, like clear silver, that you can plainly see and fol-
low, leaving the dross behind, though there is not much of that.
I could talk a long time about this book, for it has taken a deep
hold, but I forbear, lest I weary thee. My prejudices of the
author have flown away before it like mist before a morning Sun,
and I feel how wrong it was for me to judge of genius merely
from the perusal of one work, one of her earlier works, “Indi-
ana ; ” and it was the first voice, as it were, of a wronged and in-
jured woman.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, May 31, 1848.
I begin this note in the office, surrounded by three or four ed-
itors, and half buried in the last news from Europe. I shall
most probably, therefore, be obliged to break off writing at the
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 125
bottom of the first page. (No sooner said than done; here I
am stopped for a quarter of an hour already.) (Second inter-
ruption of half an hour.) . . .
I was out some twenty miles at sea on Saturday, and was
enraptured by the bright sky, fresh breeze, and dazzling blue
of the waves. We had music on board the whole time, and sail-
ing among hundreds of white-sailed vessels, outward bound,
we seemed going on a triumphal voyage to conquer another
world. . . .
I have much, very, very much, to say, but, as thou seest,
am in the hands of the Philistines, and cannot. I shall look for
another letter from thee to-morrow. Would to Heaven I could
drop down in Kennett for an hour or two these delicious even-
ings I am shut up in these brick walls, and, like Sterne's star-
ling, “I can’t get out.” N'importe: I shall have my holiday,
after a while. I think it would do me good if I could turn sav-
age for about two weeks every year. It would keep all these icy
customs from freezing around me. I have already proved one
thing : that is that I shall have little difficulty hereafter in mak-
ing my way through the world, and I believe people will allow
me more liberty than they generally give to individuals. How-
ever, this is no time to give way to self-reflections. Suffice it to
say that I have every reason to be happy, and am determined to
be so. So I pray thee, don’t have the least trouble or concern on
my account. I hope to get to Kennett towards the end of June,
but only for a day or two.
I have prospect of another engagement soon, but not very
OneI’OUIS. *
If thou hast not already written, shall I not hear from thee
soon 2
While Bayard Taylor was on a visit to Kennett, one
of the owners of “Graham's Magazine” went to New
York to propose to him to become editor of the mag-
azine, which was then, though the fact was not gen-
erally known, in a somewhat involved condition. Bay-
ard Taylor himself knew it only as a prosperous mag-
azine, having as high a position in literature as any
in the country, and he regarded the offer, therefore,
as an exceptionally advantageous one.
126 BAYARD TA YLOR.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEW YORK, Friday, 2 p. m., July 21.
I hardly know what to make of the joy I felt last Monday. I
knew not why there should be sunshine in my veins, and the
very rapture of a lark about my heart, when thou wert ill and
sad. The bright, sparkling morning, the freedom of the green
fields and greener woods to my city eyes (wall-eyes?), and the
exciting motion of my horse would not account for it. But it is
now explained. Just at that time, one of the owners of “Gra-
ham's Magazine” was on his way to New York, to propose to me
to become the permanent editor of that periodical; and so anxious
was he about the matter that he waited till I came on. He offers
me the situation at a thousand dollars a year, promise of increase
in a year or two, and perfect liberty to write for any other period-
ical. I will have a fine office to myself, and the work will only
occupy three to four hours daily. I have consulted with Greeley
and Willis, my friends and Mentors, who, although so different in
their ideas of literary life, advise me to go. I have just about
concluded to accept it. If the matter is favorably settled, I shall
move to Philadelphia in about two months. I shall be very near
to thee, which will be a great satisfaction. To be sure, I shall
miss the splendid field of New York life, but I shall have a com-
fortable, quiet home, and shall make money moderately and se-
curely.
I have no time to write more this afternoon. Please do not
mention the subject till it is a little more fully developed.
To HIS MOTHER.
NEw York, July 31, 1848.
I have arranged matters with Patterson, and shall move myself
and “traps” to Philadelphia on the 1st of October next. The ar-
rangements are: the situation is to be permanent ; I am to have
four hundred dollars for the first six months, to be followed by a
thousand dollars a year, and a prospective increase ; in addition
to which I am to contribute an article monthly, receiving extra
pay, and with perfect liberty to write for any other paper or mag-
azine. This, with the returns from my book, etc., will secure me
at once about fifteen hundred dollars a year. . . . I have again
been applied to, to become editor of a proposed illustrated paper,
but such a bird in hand is worth a hundred in the bush.
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 127
Please don’t say anything about this yet awhile. I would
rather it should be first mentioned in the magazine, and Patter-
son will probably do so in the September number. I desired
him to postpone the time of my going till October, that I might
finish my engagement with Mrs. Kirkland.
A month later, the business affairs of “Graham's
Magazine,” which had been in a snarl, were adjusted
upon a basis which overthrew the proposed arrange-
ment, and Bayard Taylor held only a nominal editor-
ship, which did not require him to leave New York,
and meant only a little more frequent contribution.
The decision brought a momentary disappointment,
but life in New York had already become dear to him,
and his pursuits were too engrossing to leave him in
doubt of ultimate success. His village friends were
not so well satisfied at his alienation in occupation
and thought. In the positiveness with which they
held their convictions, they very naturally felt a re-
sponsibility for a young man who had been brought
up amongst them, while he did not feel a correspond-
ing sense of obligation and accountability. They fol-
lowed him with reproof and warning, for they held
him recreant to the principles which ruled among them.
They measured all life by the standards of their com-
munity, and regarded a departure from these stand-
ards as necessarily a departure from uprightness. It
was impossible that Bayard Taylor should not feel this
keenly ; it was equally impossible that he should be
governed by the judicial conscience of his neighbors.
BAY ARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
Friday, August 11, 1848.
I was rejoiced, enraptured, with thy letter, and look to the
future with unmingled hope and joy. I have been very closely
128 BA YARD TA YLOR.
employed for the last two weeks in getting out the September
number of the “Union Magazine” and the new preface and chap-
ter for “Views Afoot,” or I should have written to thee on Sun-
day. I shall make up for it, however, next Sunday, when I shall
be less driven by business. . . . Lowell has been here a week; I
saw him for about two hours, and liked him very much. I met
with Washington Irving two days ago; he is a glorious old man,
full of kind, genial feelings, and most delightful in his conver-
sation. How shall I leave this mighty New York 2 I cannot
think it will be a final departure. Something tells me that a
great part of my destiny shall still be worked out here. It is
almost the only place in this country where the mind can grow
without restriction. Philadelphia is merely an immense provin-
cial town ; here is the metropolis of a continent
I went last night on a steamboat excursion to a grove at the
southern point of Staten Island. The moonlight on the pine
woods was delicious ; I walked along through its secluded walks,
and wondered if the pure light looked into thine eyes as it did
into mine.
Grace Greenwood has been here for a day, on her way to the
West. She sends much love to all in Kennett, and particularly
to thee, whom she seems to regard very highly. She spent two
days at Whittier's, and brought me an invitation from him to go
to Amesbury. As I think of visiting Boston for two or three
days, about the 25th, I shall certainly accept it.
NEw York, Friday night, August 18, 1848.
I have come up to my room an hour before midnight to-night,
and it is so still and cool a night that I cannot yet go to rest. I
am in an earnest mood, -serious, perhaps, but not sad. Walk-
ing homeward through the cloudy darkness, I have been ponder-
ing over the problem of Life, – wondering what unseen steeps
are yet to be climbed, what new and widening experiences to be
endured. I am growing so much accustomed to consider earth
as only a part—a small part — of my destiny, so ready to look
before and after, and to judge of thoughts and deeds by that more
sublime metewand, that I fear I sometimes forget what is due to
the opinions of my fellow-men. But let me leave this at the out-
set, and think but of our lives, in this condition of being. . . .
I should find it difficult to explain to any one but those who
LITERARY LIFE IN NE W YORK. 129
do know me truly how I am changed. In the continual struggle
after what is good and true, I have learned self-dependence of
thought; I will not suffer any one to control my own free judg-
ment, though a sympathy of feeling is always grateful beyond
words. The true, the exalted, faculty of thought can brook no
trammels, and it is now far easier to me to bear the remon-
strances or even the pity of those who think I have fallen away
from the good path than to feel the degradation of having been
unfaithful to myself. I believe thou wilt at once comprehend
this. -
There is a tyranny of public sentiment in Kennett, which, hav-
ing a moral guise and springing from earnest and sincere aims,
is very hard to combat ; but it is tyrannical. My friend John
feels this now ; he has learned it after many years; and we both
feel the same irresistible spirit of independence. The glow and
energy of youth seem to have come upon me all at once. I have
the strongest impressions of physical life. I could go into battle
with an animal exultation, or dash on a steed of the prairies
over some wilderness, or stand on the verge of a crag, when
“storm and rain are on the mountains.” These desires are but
the overflow of energy, which follows the growth of my new
freedom. I wrote to John, who could understand me thoroughly,
for I almost doubted myself. I am thankful now for that bold,
defying spirit; I shall need it in the world. Perhaps thou wilt
comprehend all this ; at least, thou wilt know me better, since I
have told thee. I feel like a child, walking hand in hand with
its little playmate, through the darkness, knowing that some
good power is around it, though unseen ; and like a child I could
sit down with my head upon my breast, and weep such few in-
tense tears as it is given to men to weep. I cannot take my
thought from thee; but the midnight is long since past, and may
I not carry thine image into the land of dreams? Good-night !
I know the angels are near thee.
TO JOHN B. PHILLIPS.
NEw York, September 11, 1848.
It is half an hour past midnight, and I have been working
since nine o'clock this morning. I wish I could finish this letter
to night, for I am now in the mood, with silence all around me,
and a pure, delicious moon looking in the open window. I have
VOL. I. 9
}
130 PA YARD TA YLOR.
much, very much, to say to you, - much that I can only say to
you; but after all, I don’t see how it is to be done, till our waver-
ing orbits shall run together. I am just recovering from three
days’ misanthropy, - all in the nerves, not a bit in the heart 1–
but I don't regret it, as it has brought out of me the most glori-
ous poem God ever put into my brain. I need some kind of
communion, and if I can’t get it from you I must give it to you.
Were you here, I would say with Keats, whose spirit is now sit-
ting at the other side of the table : –
t{ on, for a draught of vintage that has been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvéd earth !”
There goes the last quarter to one I Would to Heaven this
most luminous, divine, and mysterious night might keep its radi-
ant arch stationary in the heavens till we could meet ! I have
great need of your soul's sympathy. I want you to tell me what
I am growing to. I am not the same man who came here last
winter. These transition states, you know, are awfully disturb-
ing and perplexing; and though I feel in which direction I am
shifting, I should like to see whether the tide has the same flow
to your eyes. I always thought that, in the main, you could read
me pretty well.
To-night I have thanked God for one thing, and shall do so all
nights henceforth, – the knowledge that I have not smothered
the poetic feeling, not even weakened a spiritual nerve, by this
life of toil, this perpetual struggle with the Little and the Earthly.
It is purer and brighter than ever, and I know that I can keep it.
so. Is it not a divine joy 2 For we have to bear so much pain,
even in the fairest worldly experience, that life would be indeed
black and hopeless, if this were gone. — But there is the stroke
of one. I am sleepy and weary, and so, good-night ! . . .
I have written quite a number of poems lately, and desire
very much that you should see them. I will give you the titles:
“The Tulip - Tree, a Summer Lyric ; ” “A Requiem in the
North ; ” “Earth-Life; ” “Steyermark; ” “Songs of Light and
Shadow ; ” and last and greatest, an “Ode to Shelley.” You
know how full were my last letters to you of the sensation of
strong animal life. Though the feeling remains, it is somewhat
calmer, but while it lasted, in a sudden fit of disgust at people
who talk about “soul-life” and the “spirit's mission,” when they
have not even a soul that the lowest order of an angel would give
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 131
a job to do, I wrote “Earth-Life,” which I copy for you in the
furious and imperfect state in which it was written. I have
not touched it since, but no matter. If you let it carry you on
with a rush, as it ought to do, you will not see the gaps and
chasms. . . .
This, however, is the exalted and the heroic of earthly life.
There is nothing in it that our cold-blooded friends would not
allow, except the wine. I shall publish it soon, and let them say
their say. It is truth ; I feel it in my soul; and I should be un-
worthy the mantle of song to murder my conceptions for any
one. No, by Heaven ' I shall trust to myself hereafter, and say
what I am impelled to, as it is given me. But let me write you
the other ; you know Shelley and love him, but scarcely so much
as I do. I have read him this summer for the first time, and
found many of my best thoughts forestalled by his utterance.
His “Alastor,” in the commencement, is born of the very feeling
which inspired my “Angel of the Soul,” but I had never seen
it, when that was written. Read this at night, when your blood
is warm and your soul locked up from everything outside, and
you will think with me that there is an odor of immortality
about it.
The reference in this letter to the spirit of Keats
and the tone of the whole letter bring one into a
half revelation of one side of Bayard Taylor's life at
this time, which fortunately has been very pleasantly
disclosed in some reminiscences by Mr. Richard Henry
Stoddard. General literary life in New York was of
two sorts: one satirized by Bayard Taylor in the Fri-
day evening receptions of Adeliza Choate, in “John
Godfrey's Fortunes; ” the other hinted at in his letters
when he speaks of Mrs. Botta's, then Miss Lynch's
house, where he was a welcome guest. It is to her,
undoubtedly, that he refers in “John Godfrey's For-
tunes,” when he says: —
“I had been fortunate enough to obtain entrance to
the literary soirées of another lady, whom I will not
name, but whose tact, true refinement of character, and
132 BAYARD TAYLOR.
admirable culture drew around her all that was best
in letters and in the arts. In her salons I saw the
possessors of honored and illustrious names; I heard
books and pictures discussed with the calm discrimi-
nation of intelligent criticism; the petty vanities and
jealousies I had hitherto encountered might still exist,
but they had no voice; and I soon perceived the differ-
ence between those who aspire and those who achieve.”
But beside these general literary associations, there
was a more intimate one existing between Bayard
Taylor and a few others who, like him, were giving
themselves to poetry and art with ardor and hopeful-
ness. Mr. Stoddard was the chief of these, and Mr.
Boker and Mr. Read, both living in Philadelphia,
were welcome visitors. The story of this coterie is
best told by Mr. Stoddard : —
“I met Bayard Taylor first in 1848. We were
both young men, for we were born in the same year,
1825, he in January and I in July, and we both had
one thing in common, — a love of poetry and a belief
that we were poets. We may have doubted some
things, but that supreme thing we did not and would
not doubt. It was a consolation to me and a glory to
him. I was familiar with his writings before he could
have been with mine, and, knowing something of his
history from the newspapers, I was prepared to like
him, if we should ever meet. . . . I have before me
now a vision of him in his young manhood, – tall,
erect, active-looking, and manly, with an aquiline nose,
bright, loving eyes, and the dark, ringleted hair with
which we endow, in ideal, the head of poets. There
was a kindness and a courtesy in his greeting which
went straight to my heart, and assured me that I had
found a friend. . . .
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 133
“Bayard Taylor and I met at night generally, for
neither could call the day his own; he had his work
to do on the “Tribune,’ and I had mine to do in a foun-
dry. Apart from politics, his was the cleaner of the
two, but not the less laborious, I am sure. He wrote
fifteen hours a day, he told me, scribbling book notices,
leaders, foreign news, reports, – turning his hand and
pen to everything that went to the making of a news-
paper thirty years ago. There was but one night in
the week when he could do what he pleased, and that
was Saturday night, which we always spent together
when he was in town. I looked forward to it as a
school-boy looks forward to a holiday, and was happy
when it came. I have forgotten where his rooms were,
but as near as I can recollect they were in a boarding-
house on Murray Street, not far from Broadway. They
were sky parlors, as the saying is, for he liked a good
outlook; and besides, they suited his purse, which was
not plethoric with shekels. In the first of these rooms,
which was set apart for his books, there was a little
table, at which he wrote late into the night, resting his
soul with poetry after the prosaic labors of the day.
It was poetry which had made us friends, and we never
spent a night together without talking about it, and
without reading the poems we had written since our
last meeting. If the Muses had favored me, I brought
their favors with me, and mouthed them out in inno-
cent audacity. I thought well of my attempts, no
doubt, but never in my wildest moments did I dream
of comparing myself with him. He had an imagina-
tion which surpassed mine, a command of the fervors
and splendors of language, and an intuitive knowl-
edge of rhetoric and of Sonorous harmonies of rhythm.
I have been looking over his poetical works, and I find
134 B.A. YARD TA YLOR.
that there are but few of his early poems which I did
not read, or which he did not read to me, in manu-
script. His mind was so fertile and his execution so
rapid that he generally had one or more new poems to
show me when we met. I sit with him now in thought,
and hear him read the ‘Metempsychosis of the Pine,’
“Hylas, ‘Kubleh, and ‘Ariel in the Cloven Pine.’
The last impressed me so deeply that I wrote a com-
panion piece, in which I tried to embody the personal-
ity of Caliban.
“The conversation and the poetic practice of Bayard
Taylor were the only intellectual stimulant I had, and
if I wrote better than I had done previous to making
his acquaintance I felt that it was largely due to him.
There was an enthusiasm about him which was conta-
gious. We were a help to each other, and we were a
hindrance, also, I can see now, for we admired too in-
discriminately and criticised too tenderly. My favorite
poet was Keats, and his was Shelley, and we pretended
to believe that the souls of these poets had returned to
earth in our bodies. My worship of my master was
restricted to a silent imitation of his diction; my com-
rade's worship of his master took the form of an “Ode
to Shelley, which I thought, and still think, the no-
blest poem that his immortal genius had inspired. It
is followed in the volume before me by an airy lyric on
‘Sicilian Wine,” which was written out of his head,
as the children say; for he had no Sicilian wine, nor,
indeed, wine of any other vintage.”"
The “Ode to Shelley,” though written in 1848,
was for some reason not included in the volume upon
which Bayard Taylor was engaged in the fall of this
year. It was while in the midst of these absorbing oc-
cupations that he took a hasty holiday in Boston.
1 The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1879.
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 135
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEW YORK, October 13, 1848.
It is too bad to send thee such an apology for a letter, when it
has been so long since my last. But I have been like Noah's
raven for ten days past, — not a resting-place for the sole of my
foot. Last week I was driven and pressed by work almost to
fever-heat, and when on Saturday there was a chance of escape
for a few days I jumped at once on board a boat, reached Bos-
ton Sunday morning, galloped out to Cambridge, and spent the
evening with Lowell ; went on Monday to the pine woods of
Abington 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 Čigar with
Lowell, and then stayed all night at Longfellow's ; Thursday
morning to Boston, where I visited some twenty places and peo-
ple, and came away in the afternoon to Fall River; took the
steamboat, saw Newport under a flood of crystal moonlight,
walked the deck, looking over the glittering Sound, wishing for
thee; at sunrise looked into the whirlpools of Hell Gate ; and now
I am back at my post, full of health, spirits, strength, happiness,
and poetic inspiration. I am now ready for another six months’
siege, and my heart is filled with kindly recollections of kind
friends. I half hoped I might find a letter from thee awaiting
me, but I could hardly expect my own remissness deserving of
such good fortune. I have a great deal to say of my trip, but find
it impossible to begin in such short space and with such a short
allowance of time. I find that I am better known in Boston than
even in New York, and have more readers, if not more friends,
there. We will go there together after a while, and thou shalt
know them, too. . .
But seriously, my dear Mary, I am overflowing with happy
spirits, and write rather to “give an account of myself” than to
say anything in particular. I shall make use of the quiet Sabbath
to talk with thee, not face to face, but heart to heart. Write
soon, and believe me, wandering or fixed, a planet that moves
ever nearer the circle of thy love.
136 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Aer
. . . When I was in Cambridge I spent a night with Longfel-
low ; we sat together talking till long past midnight, and I found
him all, and more than all, I had looked for, – not only a man of
genuine poetic mind, but of a great and generous heart. We
understood each other at once, and I cannot describe my joy at
this. I know we shall always be friends. Young Boker, author
of the tragedy of “Calaynos,” a most remarkable work, is here
on a visit, and spent several hours to-night with me. He is an-
other hero, - a most noble, glorious mortal He is one of our
band, and is, I think, destined to high renown as an author. He
is nearly my own age, perhaps a year or two older, and he has
lived through the same sensations, fought the same fight, and
now stands up with the same defiant spirit. . . .
TO EIIS MOTHER.
. . . I have not written for two reasons : first, for three or
four weeks I was bound hand and foot to work, and then as soon
as I was relieved Iran off to Boston and was absent five or six
days, rambling along the New England coast. . . . I rode out to
Brookline to see Colonel Perkins. The old man was very kind
and pleasant, and remembered his letters perfectly, which I
hardly expected, seeing that he must be more than eighty years
old. . . . Richard Willis reached here on Saturday, after six
and a half years’ absence. We met as we parted, with a hearty
German embrace, and I have been delighted with the music he
brings with him. He will probably make his home in New York.
I have made many most delightful and valuable friends lately :
Strakosch, the pianist, and Herz ; Maretzek, a Polish composer;
Boker, a new American poet, and a number of other true and
glorious spirits. The glimpses I have of them now and then keep
me happy and cheerful, and able to do a great deal without diffi-
culty. The volume of poems will be published in three weeks.
Putnam has got out the ninth edition of “Views,” and it is sell-
ing well. I find that everybody in Boston has read or is read-
ing it.
The new edition of “Views Afoot.” was prefaced by
an engraving from a portrait painted by T. B. Read
in the summer. The traveler is represented in a
belted blouse, with a staff in his hand, while in the
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 137
background snow mountains are just visible. The
same picture was used as a frontispiece to the volume
of poems published in December, which bears the title,
“Rhymes of Travel, Ballads, and Poems. By Bayard
Taylor, author of “Views Afoot,” etc. New York:
George P. Putnam, 1848.” The book is inscribed to
“John B. Phillips, of Bohemia Manor, Md., in token of
early friendship unbroken and early confidence unbe-
trayed.” Under the subdivisions, Rhymes of Travel,
Picturesque Ballads of California, Life-Tones, Miscel-
laneous Poems, are included forty-four poems, of which
twenty-four were afterward retained by the poet when
revising his collected poems. In his address of “The
Author to the Reader,” he says: —
“This volume—the first poetical venture to which
I have intrusted a hope of success, for the sake of
Poetry alone—seems to require a few words of intro-
duction. In collecting the effusions of four or five
years for publication in a form which has the sem-
blance of permanence, however much it may lack the
necessary vital spirit, I have been aware of the great
inequality of merit among the poems chosen. The
Rhymes of Travel, which give expression to thoughts
and emotions inspired by my journey in Europe, are
the earliest I have thought proper to include. 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 the 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 the memories it inherited through
the chance fortune of the wind-sown seed; and I
138 BA YARD TA YLOR.
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.
“In the Californian Ballads I have attempted to
give a poetical expression to the rude but heroic physi-
cal life of the vast desert and mountain region stretch-
ing from the Cordilleras of New Mexico to the Pacific.
This country, in the sublime desolation of its sandy
plains and stony mountains, streaked here and there
with valleys of almost tropical verdure, and the peculiar
character of its semi-civilized people, seemed to afford
a field in which the vigorous spirit of the old ballad
might be transplanted, to revive and flourish with a
new and sturdy growth. The favor with which some
of these ballads have been noticed, on their anony-
mous publication in the “Literary World,’ encourages
me to hope that I have been partly successful. I am
conscious, at least, that they were written with no de-
liberate purpose to seek a new field for poetic effort,
but from that impulse which made their expression a
necessity and a joy.”
It will be seen that these ballads were not conse-
quent upon the California fever, but scarcely had the
volume appeared before the news of the discovery of
gold came, and the author of the ballads was himself
swept into the current of excitement.
EAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
Monday, 2 p.m., December 11, 1848.
The foreign news, the gold fever, my book, and my city items
leave me but a small space to be with thee. I hope to hear from
thee to-morrow. I am writing this at the office, or I should send
the letter I had written to thee. Well, never mind; I shall send
it off to-morrow. I have just forwarded a dispatch to , ad-
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 139
vising him to go to California if he can. I hope he will be able
to go for a year or two. I feel strongly tempted, but am doing
too well here to leave. If this were not the case, I would go at
once. The gold fever here is worse than the cholera ; everybody
has it, even the gravest and the wisest. Rufus Griswold is
going, Osgood, the publisher of the “Union Magazine,” and I
don’t know who else. I could easily go if I wanted, but the
“Tribune” is my California just now. I console myself with
thinking that I can go overland in five or six years, and write a
few California ballads on the spot, and come back with a new
book, without having spent much time or run any risk. Thou
wilt allow me this for my forbearance, wilt thou not ? At any
rate, I hold on to the Norway plan: this must be ; it is a part of
my destiny.
But don’t think me much excited. I can’t help feeling a little
of the spirit which is in our atmosphere. These are great times,
certainly. The crusades were nothing in comparison. I am
very well, and want to hear from thee very, very much. Keep
cheerful and happy, for then I will be so.
JAMES T. FIELDS TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
BOSTON, December 26, 1848.
Putnam has sent us" a few copies of your poems, and I can-
not help writing a hasty line to say how grandly the ballads
swell and tramp along, and how fine the other poems seem in
this dress. Why, Bayard, man, you have done the thing in get-
ting out this book. Your prefatory remarks I like hugely.
George Lunt, to whom I handed the open book a few hours ago
in the store, told me he had read and re-read your ballads over
and over again, and knew not the hand that penned the lines.
You have a capital reputation now in poetry, and must be
careful of your muse. A good beginning is everything. I stand
at a desk where I can gauge a man's depth in the public read-
ing estimation, and I know no youngster who stands dearer than
J. B. T., doffing the J. I am dreadfully busy just now, but look
for my printed praises in some one of our Boston papers before
the week is out. I am determined Whipple shall do you up
brown, and that you shall ride in a showy coach made from the
1 Mr. Fields was then with the publishers and booksellers, W. D. Tick-
nor and Company.
140 BA YARD TA YLOR.
profits of Boston copies sold in our digging. Don't go to Cali-
fornia, but stick to the gold of old Pactolus and gather in the
dust.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, January 8, 1849.
A thousand thanks and at least fifty happy New Years for
your kind and most welcome note. I am an ungrateful wretch
not to have answered it sooner, even by a line. But you know
something of the martyrdom of a daily paper, and will judge me
charitably.
I am delighted that you like the book. I confess I do feel a
little solicitude about its reception, for if there is no poetry in it
there is none in me, nor ever will be.
It has had several good notices already, and I believe will be
successful as far as the reputation goes ; the sale is another
thing. I sent copies to Boston two or three days ago, which I
suppose you have received ere this, - one to Longfellow, whose
judgment I value highly. . . .
Drop me a line whenever you can. I was delighted to find
that the Californian Ballads had been so favored in their incog-
nito. I think they are my best inflictions.
Yours, till death do us part,
BAYARD TAYLOR, without the J.
The beginning of 1849 found Bayard Taylor in
high spirits. The ninth edition of “Views Afoot ”
had been published, five hundred copies of his volume
of poems had been sold, and with some outside help
he had been able to buy into the “Tribune,” thus lay-
ing the foundation of his pecuniary fortune. His re-
lations with the editor of that paper had become very
friendly, and Mr. Greeley, always ready to render his
associates their due, as he expected honest recognition
of his own work, wrote at this time from Washington,
where he was serving as Representative in Congress:–
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 141
HORACE GREEI.EY TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, January 13, 1849.
FRIEND BAYARD,--I have hardly a minute before the mail
starts, but I must not defer to thank you for your article on Pope
Pius IX, in the “Tribune” the other day. (I presume it was
yours.) It was very well done indeed ; I could hardly have
suited myself better. I wish you would resolve henceforth to
write one such article per week, and sign your own initials or
some distinctive mark at the bottom. I want everybody con-
nected with the “Tribune” to become known to the public (in
some unobtrusive way) as doing what he does, so that in case of
my death or incapacity it may not be fancied that the paper is to
die or essentially suffer. A presumption of that sort will be al-
most as mischievous as the reality. Write me some time.
Yours, HORACE GREELEY.
With Willis, Griswold, L. G. Clark, and a large
party of other invited guests, Bayard Taylor made a
trip over the Erie Railroad on the first train which
crossed the Cascade Ravine bridge, then a wonder in
railway engineering. The journey in the depth of
winter stirred his imagination, and while he had no
wish to break in upon the occupation by which he was
nearing the goal of his desires, he felt his blood leap
at the thought of what might yet be before him — and
Mary Agnew, with whom he always shared these im-
pulses and thoughts.
IBAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, Saturday night, February 3, 1849.
Again I must make my pen a substitute for my presence, —
a poor substitute, but one which gives temporary relief to me.
I intended to have devoted this whole evening to writing various
undone tasks, but the temptation of a little social intercourse
after a week of labor was too enticing, and after six hours spent
at Willis's, Anne Lynch's, and with some German musical
friends, I come back (after midnight) to talk a while with thee,
142 B.A. YARD TA YLOR.
and then go to speak with thee in dreams. Thy letter came to-
day, and I need not say how welcome it was. In answer to all
our disappointments, I know no better comfort than to remind
thee that six months only of thy bond remain, and in seven we
will doubtless be one.
The old enthusiasm is coming back to me, and the knowledge
that I do feel it again is a rapture. For two months I have been
an actuality, - working, thinking of work, and planning work
for the future; now the excitement and the glow have returned,
and I am again in the creative mood. Canst thou comprehend
this variable atmosphere of the poetic soul, - its changes from
heat to cold, from fog to dazzling sunshine 2 I was reminded
of my own change to-day by a friend, a foreigner, who accused
me of having been cold towards him, and supposed he had
offended me. I know not how I may seem at times, but if I
ever appear gloomy or moody in thy sight, pray think it is the
fault of my poetical wits, not of my love. It is late, and my
room is cold. I must close, but will finish this to-morrow. . . .
Monday night.
. . . I cannot help thinking we do wrong to be very solicitous
about the safety of the absent beloved. We are led and pro-
tected when we know it not. When I am absent from thee,
now or in the future, dear Mary, take courage from this. There
may be, at some future date, necessity for such absence ; I hope
there will not, but sometimes I feel an undefined shadowing of
it. I place my life in God's hands, knowing that he will not
claim it until it is best so ; and this saves me much unhappiness.
Dost thou feel this passion for change, for new and exciting
experience, for release from common cares and common duties 2
Dost thou share with me this intense and almost (at times)
heart-breaking longing for the delicious twilight of Italy, the
shadow of Oriental palms, the clear snow-peaks and sounding
forests of Norway? It is with me an unfailing source of joy
and the wildest poetic enthusiasm. I am willing to work here
in my traces, steadily and patiently, four years, if I can but
spend the fifth in some rare and glorious quarter of the world,
where I can give myself up to art and beauty. And, thank
Heaven, I shall soon be able to do this. With my present situa-
tion and prospects, it is no longer an impossibility. I am hard-
ening my muscles for years of labor, but it will be done cheer-
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 143
fully and steadily, for its severest periods will be gladdened by
thy presence and sympathy; and these blessed oases of inspira-
tion and repose will keep my soul perpetually young in its sensa-
tion of joy. Life in all its extent is a glory and a majesty. If I
were free to make my selfish choice of existence, I would spend
my days in the open air, – on horseback or on the waters, or
climbing mountains with those I love. But this is impossible ;
yet the fullness of life which gives strength and glow to the
frame, buoyancy and brightness to the feelings, and happiness to
every condition of being, may be partly attained. I must pre-
serve it, even at the expense of poetry. The affections of a
heart which pulsates with the breeze and the billows are always
warm and generous. I would sooner die than have this high
spirit stagnate within me. Constant intellectual labor makes one
physically weak, nervous, and morbidly sensitive; but this is ea-
sily remedied, and I do not fear it so much as that dull, gloomy
apathy of mind which I have noticed in so many others. . . .
Monday night, March 5, 1849.
Again in my little lonely room, after midnight. It is cold, in
spite of the mild airs of the day, but I shall write until my
fingers grow numb. I shall probably hear from thee to-morrow,
and shall await with joy the news of thy returning health and
strength. . . . When worried and perplexed by worldly cares,
as I now frequently am, it all passes away before the rebuking
calmness of the night and the consoling influence of solitude.
How easy it is to bear trouble, when we have a Fortunate Isle of
our own in the midst of the waves, – an Eden of peace and
repose, sphered by an ocean of storms I have lately been
tempted to complain, but I am now willing to bear any burden,
since thy love and my own, and the glorious passion of poetry
and love of all things beautiful, are in the opposite scale. . . .
Friday morning.
This is a long time to keep a letter which was commenced on
Monday. It will be all the better, however, if I can give thee
any impression of my own cheerfulness and constant determina-
tion to work out my plan of the future. I shall have some diffi-
culty for a year or two, and will need all my strength and energy
and ambition, and all thine. But I have adopted a course of
exercise for the preservation of my health and strength, and
144 BA YARD TA YLOR.
already feel the reflection of it mentally. Such a course is
neglected by most persons here, and they soon wear out. I
have resolved to take time every day for this exercise, no matter
how hurried I may be. For three weeks I have kept up a sys-
tem of strong gymnastic exercise of the arms and breast, morn-
ing and night. Before going to work I walk down to the Bat-
tery and breathe the sea-air, and at least three times a week
indulge in the luxury of a sea-water bath. I can already feel the
change, and I mean to go on and make myself as strong phys-
ically as an editor can be. What would I not give for six months
with the Rocky Mountain trappers . By the bye, I was very
near going to California, two weeks ago, as a special agent of
the “Tribune.” But they have now given it up, at which, no
doubt, thou art well satisfied. It would only have taken me
four months, and would have been a fine thing for me, mentally
and physically. But I can’t say that I am disappointed in not
going. Pray write me a long letter, —as long, as minute, as
candid and confiding, as I would write if I had more time.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, Sunday night, April 15.
. . . If happiness is a dead level of feeling, I don’t want to
be happy. All experience—even the most terrible — ministers
to my need of expression. Next to my craving for that love
which thou hast satisfied, and which is the deepest and purest
passion of my nature, is this need of poetic expression. It pos-
sesses me like a fever, and will not let me rest. I care not how
soon my life and energy is wasted, so I but speak what is within
me. Then lastly, and making up the sacred trio of my life-pas-
sions, is the love of the earth in the wild worship of nature in
every form and under all circumstances. Thou canst join me in
this, and help my resolutions to ramble over the world with me,
when we shall be able to do so, and so make ours a charmed and
glorious life. This is not fanciful, though it sounds so. We
make our own lives, and we can make ours what we will. . . .
I never think of this world as all, as most people do. It
seems to me but a speck in the vast career of being which is
begun for us, and I confess I feel almost an indifference, so far
as concerns myself, about the future. I never think of the
world as having anything to do with us and our destiny further
than our dependence on society and the duty we owe to others
So long as we stay among them. . . .
I am writing a poem called “Kubleh.”
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 145
The outside world came upon him with considerable
violence shortly after this, for he was in the midst of
the Macready riots, doing duty as reporter for the
“Tribune.”
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEW YORK, Monday, May 14, 1.30 p. m.
Thou seest I have postponed writing to the latest hour, so that
thou mayst have the satisfaction of knowing that the troubles
are all over. I have seen them all through, from beginning to
end, and written the accounts in the “Tribune.” I am very
glad to have done all this, since the thing must be. I shall never
forget the terribly sublime scenes of that night, nor the strange
and romantic excitement of the military encampments for three
nights since. On Friday evening, when there was another riot, I
was within the lines of the soldiers. No one was allowed to
pass. Cannon were all around us, and the rattle and gleam of
arms in the darkness had a most singular and exciting effect.
I was very weary yesterday, after the excitement cooled down,
but now I am fresh and strong again. I have not time now to
give any particulars of the scene. We can talk that over when
I see thee, which will be in less than two weeks. . . .
Ever thine, alive, and to remain so.
TO JOHN B. PHILLIPS.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, Sunday, midnight, May 27, 1849.
Ah, my dear, faithful friend, it will not do for us to die before
we empty a bottle of golden Falernian together in the shadow of
the Roman Pantheon I For God's sake, let us try, at some period
of our lives, to cheat Life of some of its toil and harsh exaction,
and give the stolen time to Youth and Poesy and Joy We
were born for something better than we are, but who knows or
believes it 2 Let the stupid world wag as it lists, and let us
build up a kingdom, at whose entrance the true soul of life will
stand warder, and where we can take our pleasure undisturbed.
There is such a kingdom, and I often enter it, sometimes in com-
pany, as last night, when a poet was with me. The other night
there were three of us, - the other two noble fellows, great poets
and true hearts. For three hours we were alone : we talked
VOL. I. 10
146 B4 YARD TA YLOR.
with Milton, and Shelley, and the divine spirit of Keats, and
Shakespeare, our Father and our Master. Would you had been
there !
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, May 29, 1849.
Your welcomest letter came this morning, and from the bot-
tom of my heart was I rejoiced by it. I can well imagine your
feeling of triumph at this earnest of fame. . . . I instantly
hunted up the London “Times” and found “Calaynos” adver-
tised for performance,—second might. I showed it to Griswold,
who was nearly as much surprised and delighted as myself. Of
course he will make good mention of it in his book. It will sell
immensely for you, and especially just now, when you are coming
out with “Anne Bullen.” I shall not fail to have a notice of it
in to-morrow morning’s “Tribune.”
Stoddard spent Saturday night with me, and we read the
“Song of the Earth’’ together. He was rapturous in his praises
as we went along, swinging on your dactyls, marching through
your files of iambics, and sliding over your anapests. He has
the soul to comprehend the grandeur of the thing, and not a drop
of that dammable spirit of depreciation which curses half our
authors. . . . I pray you, as you care for my future, attack me
without mercy if you see that I am growing indolent and care-
less. Let us all make up our minds to become sacrifices (burnt-
offerings () at the altar of divinest Poesy. . . .
I have done nothing since you left, but my head is swarming
with plans of poems, novels, histories, tragedies, farces, sermons,
etc., etc. Write to me often, my dear friend and fellow-martyr;
your letters are real godsends when yourself is not here. . . .
Enough of this. How should I dare to think of poetry, when
there is a murder trial, two accidents, and a religious anniversary
to put into shape for the evening paper 1 So, no more, my dear
fellow, from yours forever, here and elsewhere.
The proposed trip to California in the interest of
the “Tribune,” which had been abandoned, was taken
up again as the excitement over the rush thither in-
creased, and with it the difficulty of securing any trust-
worthy account of the real situation on the Pacific.
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 147
Bayard Taylor had shown his capacity as a traveler
and reporter, and everything pointed to him as the
most suitable person on the “Tribune" staff for the
enterprise. He was divided between the desire for an
actual sight of what had already filled his imagination
and the dread of postponing his marriage; but the op-
portunity was too good to be lost, and he did not long
hesitate, especially as his journey would be a very di-
rect contribution to his livelihood.
IBAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, Sunday night, 12.30 o'clock.
. . . What wouldst thou think of my going to California for a
month or two 2 There is some talk of it again, and it might be
that I shall be sent out by the “Tribune” as a special agent to
report the progress of the mines and the formation of the gov-
ernment. It would be a grand opportunity for me, for this won-
derful phenomenon is not yet over. The great objection is the
absence from thee (yet it would only cause one visit the less),
and it would put off our marriage a month longer. The trip
will take from four to five months. If I go, I go at once, yet
not till I have seen thee. It will be decided in a day or two. If
I go, I shall probably be a bearer of dispatches for government,
and shall have letters to all the public officers there. However,
we will wait the development of things.
Pray write to me soon. I want to hear from thee very much.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, Wednesday afternoon, June 13, 1849.
I “take my pen in hand” to send thee another dispatch in re-
lation to the important matter under consideration here. I hope
my first letter reached thee last night, so that I may hear from
thee to-morrow. I am anxious to know how the thought of this
expedition appears to thee. I am afraid thou wilt look upon it
as something vast, terrible, undefined, full of danger, and abound-
ing in horrors. Shall I confess to thee it seems to me like a com-
mon episode of life, entirely without danger, and no subject of
apprehension in any degree ? Let me tell thee the plan of oper-
ations in a few words, though there are many important consid-
148 BA YARD TA YLOR.
erations connected with it which I have not time to dwell upon.
This, then, is the idea of Greeley, McElrath, , and the other
editors, as well as that of myself, - if I go : —
Leave immediately in the Falcon, via Panama, and reach San
Francisco August 1st. I would have a free passage in the steamer
both on the Atlantic and Pacific sides. The provisional govern-
ment of California meets August 1st, and I would report its pro-
ceedings. Having letters to General Smith, Colonel Mason, and
all the authorities of the Pacific coast, I would have every facil-
ity for seeing and observing all that is going on, would visit
the mines, acquaint myself with the condition of the country,
people, etc., and dispatch the news to the “Tribune” by every
possible mode of conveyance. Besides, I would establish agen-
cies for the California “Tribune" all over the country, and lay
the basis for a great circulation of our paper on the Pacific
coast. Leaving San Francisco about the middle of September, I
would reach here by steamer towards the end of October, having
been absent only five months, and accomplished a vast work.
Putnam says if I go he will engage a book in advance.
The main thing to me is that I see all this not only without
cost, but actually making money all the time, and that it is such
an opportunity (in a historical point of view) as happens scarcely
once in a thousand years. This summer is the grand crisis, not
only of the Californian epoch, but of our opportunity to build
a circulation for the “Tribune " on the Pacific. Another con-
sideration is that it would recruit my system completely, and
make me able to work with more vigor and more inspiration.
will leave again for Europe in the fall, and then I shall
have much more to do than now, This breathing-time would
be a great thing for me, physically.
Thou seest, from this, how the current of my own thought
runs. I know that the absence from thee will be severe on both
sides, and I believe that we have already waited long enough for
the delayed happiness not to prolong the period, even for a
month or two. But it is only once in a life that such a combina-
tion of circumstances meet, and all the energy and ambition of
my nature leap to seize them. If I go, and successfully accom-
plish the journey, it will advance me more, as an editor, than five
years of steady labor here.
But I need not say more, and on any other subject I cannot
talk till the thing is settled. God is great ; let us trust Him.
LITERARY LIFE IN NE W YORK. 149
Pray don't say a word of this to any one till I see thee, which
may be on Saturday or Sunday. At least, be as cheerful as pos-
sible till we meet, or till thou shalt hear from me again. But
there is a particular reason for not mentioning it to any one. We
had a meeting on Monday of all the editors and owners of the
paper. The next time thou hast word of me the thing will be
settled, one way or the other. There is some glory in life, after
all, is there not ? A special fortune seems to attend me, or at
least to make opportunities for me. Write soon.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, June 22, 1849, 2 p. m.
I must write a few lines this week, although hurried. Thy
letter came this morning, and was most welcome. It was sad,
though seemingly cheerful; but I hope that renewed health and
the vital electricity of this solstitial heat will restore thy light-
ness and happy buoyancy of spirit. Is not this a good prepara-
tion for the tropics 2 I shall not feel the vertical sun of the
South, after such a sweltering atmosphere as we now have. I
thrive in it, and am confident that summer, sunshine, Sea air, and
tropical scenery will make a new man of me. Letters from Cali-
fornia speak highly of the delightful climate and scenery. There
are a few scarecrows from despairing diggers, but don’t mind
them. I am going to tell the truth, and I think I shall have a
cheerful story to send home. These late arrivals make the jour-
ney very short and familiar to me. May it be so to thee
Pray be cheerful, or at least hopeful. I shall have every pro-
tection, and shall protect myself as well. Be assured that I shall
be neither rash nor thoughtless. I shall neglect nothing that my
health or personal safety requires. This trip is not my only work
on earth, and I want it to strengthen me for something else. . . .
I am well, and eager for the ocean. I feel instinctively that I
shall grow strong and enduring in the sea air.
I will send thee the books as soon as I begin to pack up mine,
— to-morrow or next day. Don't forget to borrow my Keats,
Shakespeare, etc. . . .
I will write thee more the next time. I am cheerful and full
of confidence. Many letters are promised me, and as I shall find
many acquaintances there I will be well taken care of.
150 BAYARD TA YLOR.
MARY AGNEW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
Friday night, June 22, 1849.
Thou must be very hopeful, and cheerful, and happy, or else
I would not feel so. I know not when I have felt such a quiet
happiness as I have for the past two days. Why is it 2 I often
reproach myself with it, for fear I am too certain, too confident,
of the future. It does not seem to me yet that thou art going so
far, and I do not believe I will realize it fully till thou comest
back. It seems to me like a thing that had been long thought
of, and I can look upon it as a part of thy destiny, as it is. It
would be wrong not to follow the path, when it is laid out so
plain before thee. The struggle was hard for me. I thought at
first I never could have thee go; it seemed to me almost like
giving up my life ; but gradually it has been made clearer and
brighter, and I can now look upon it as calmly and with as much
faith as I ought to. I can take it to me as a part of my life, and
as a fitting preparation for what is yet to come ; if I did not try
to bear it cheerfully, I would not be worthy of thy love, and it
would be selfishness in me to ask thee to stay, when I know it
will be of so much advantage. God alone knows how much I
suffered and how hard it was, but He has given me faith and
strength to bear it ; and to His charge I trust my precious love,
my more than life, with the certainty that everything will be for
the best. Good-night, dearest, and may happiness be ever with
thee.
Sunday morning. I sit down early this bright morning to fin-
ish this, for fear some one may come to hinder me ; and it must
go to the office to-day to reach thee before thou goest, which I
hope it will. I received thine last night, which was so welcome.
I was afraid there would none come, and I wanted to hear so
much that for very joy the tears came when it was handed to
me. I am sorry now that I said anything about the books. I am
afraid it will trouble thee to send them ; if so, do not do it, for I
will endeavor to find enough to occupy me. If John B. goes on,
thou canst send them with him without any difficulty.
I have just finished reading a letter from California from Colo-
nel Stevenson ; it seems to me like a true account. The poor
miners must be in a terrible condition ; even if they gain gold,
they lose that that is far above the price of rubies, a pure heart
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 151
and peace of mind. Oh, how anxiously I shall await the arrival
of thy letters I shall then know the state of affairs there, for it
seems to me now like an awful place. It is a beautiful country,
no doubt, with a delightful climate and scenery ; but then there
are so many people there, of every class and nation, with such
sordid motives, that it will mar the beauty.
I write this with a throbbing headache, and I know it will be
very unconnected, but thou wilt make all allowances. I would
leave it till I felt better, but there is no time for delaying ; what
I want to say must be said to-day, but I cannot say all. I have
a thousand things I would like to talk of if I had an opportunity,
but that will not be for five months, five long, weary months,
and it may be much longer. Sometimes, when I think of it, it
seems impossible for thee to go so far, do so much, and be back
in so short a time ; but God grant that it may be so. That is
long enough for me to live without thy presence. But I wish not
to murmur ; it is our destiny, and I must learn to bear it ; it is
hard, but yet it may be that it is meant to prepare me, to make
me fit and ready to bear what I may be called upon to do in the
future. Be assured that I will always be hopeful, and sometimes
cheerful ; we do not live here for nothing. Thy life is an active
one ; thou hast much to do upon this earth, and my sympathies,
my hopes, and my love shall ever be with thee, and may they in-
spire thee with fresh vigor in the time of need. Oftentimes, dur-
ing thy absence, I shall feel most wretched, but hope will not
forsake me. I shall think of thee always as being well and
strong and full of life ; and if thou art always so, and come
back benefited, the sacrifice of my wishes and feelings will be
nothing, for there is a pleasure in suffering for those we love.
I shall feel anxious to hear from thee during thy voyage.
These hot days I shall think of the increased heat where thou art,
and sickness ; but this may be avoided. Thou must write to me
from every place where the vessel stops, and tell me everything
concerning thyself; do not let an opportunity pass without send-
ing me something, if it is but a line.
Thou must tell me when to write, and how to direct my letter.
I shall expect to get one from thee on Thursday ; that will be
the day thou goest. My hopes and my prayers will be with thee,
and may they be realized. Little did I think, three weeks ago,
when thou wert here, that this trial awaited me ; how little we
know of the future, and it is well, perhaps, that we are thus ig-
152 BA YARD TA YLOR.
norant. It has taught me a lesson. I felt so secure, so confident,
of the promises of the future, and now I see it was wrong ; for
how uncertain everything is 1 Even if it lies within our grasp, we
know not what may come between us and the possession of it. I
have just now looked over the first part of this letter; it cer-
tainly is much more cheerful than what I have written to-day,
but as I feel so must I write, and unless I felt brighter I had
better stop. I hope this will reach thee on Tuesday ; I shall
send it to the office to-night. Write to me before thou start-
est, and as often as thou canst during thy absence. And now
good-by, and may God watch over and protect thee, and may
thoughts of thy Mary ever cheer thee.
EAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, June 26, 1849.
Thy blessed letter came to-day. It gave me much happiness,
which, added to my former hope and buoyant lightness of spirit,
will carry me through the work triumphantly. I am very well,
and in the best spirits. If thou canst only feel always as thou
hast written in thy letter, what a comfort it will be to me ! That
is the true feeling, — the true trust and confidence, such as I
have felt from the first. Canst thou not keep it 2
Everything favors me. I have excellent letters to California;
indeed, the best possible. My outfit is nearly complete, and will
be most perfect in its way. I have a pocket thermometer, ba-
rometer, compass, and Spyglass; a good revolver (as a specula-
tion, — I shall not kill anybody, thou mayst be sure); a suit of
fustian, with hunter boots and blanket; sketch-book and journal,
etc., etc.
The Falcon, in which I sail from here, is a most commodious
and elegant steamer, and I have one of the best berths. We
shall merely touch at Charleston bar, and I am not certain
whether I can send a letter, — don’t look positively for one ; at
Havana, we shall be quarantined, and not permitted to go ashore,
—a most provoking arrangement. We shall, however, go up to
the city of New Orleans and stay a day, so I shall have a chance
to see something of it. . . . Thou mayst believe all I say in my
published letters. The first number of the “Tribune” will come
to thee this week, in thy father's name. I shall send several
books to-morrow, - not so many as if I had more time to get
them. I am much hurried, and write a rambling letter. My'
LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK. 153
friends here, to whom I have told the secret, are delighted. Wil-
lis thinks it a glorious chance. Trust, then, dearest Mary, that it
has not been given me for nothing. Thou canst scarcely see, as
I do, the great strength it will give to the creative faculty within
me, nor how it will supply a lacking element in my poetical na-
ture.
I shall feel at times very painfully the severity of absence.
But I shall be always occupied, always in the open air, and al-
ways among inspiring scenery. I shall gain a vigor and energy
which I now know how to profit by. But I must close. God
bless thee and keep thee cheerful and happy -
NEw York, Wednesday night [June 27, 1849].
Since I cannot, probably, write from Charleston, I send thee
another line, which I hope will cheer thee. I met to-day with a
translation of the rare and glorious “Frithiof's Saga,” which I
have sent thee by mail. It is a jewel of a book. Reading it, and
the history of the Northern nations, thou wilt reach the very heart
of old Norse tradition and song. I am much mistaken if thou
art not as much charmed by it as I was. It is a book hard to
find, and I only picked it up accidentally. I have sent to Harry
Peterson, by express, copies of Milnes’ “Life of Keats,” Curzon's
“Monasteries of the Levant” (a beautiful book), and Carlyle's
Translation of Dante. I think thou wilt have, with these and
other books, sufficient reading for three or four months. I wrote
to Harry to take the books to Webb’s.
Everything works well. I am light and buoyant-hearted,—
never was more so. My preparations are all made and trunk
packed. I have the best letters possible to have, and leave under
the best promises and influences. Pray fear nothing for me,
but leave everything to God, who has given me this path to
tread. . . .
I am in excellent health, – a little sleepy to-night, but shall
be blithe enough in the morning. The weather is delicious, and
there are now moonlight nights. Think of moonlight in the trop-
ics /
My time is short, and I must now close. Try and feel cheer-
ful ; be as happy as thou canst.
CHAPTER VII.
FLDORADO AND HYLAS.
1849–1850.
The infinite bliss of Nature
I feel in every vein ;
The light and the life of Summer
Blossom in heart and brain.
In the Meadows.
THE occasional allusions to Sweden and Norway in
Bayard Taylor's correspondence at this time are a hint
of the two currents of feeling which met in his nature.
He was fascinated by the mysterious north, and he had
a tropical imagination which was constantly looking
wistfully toward the summer climes. He was dream-
ing of a journey to Scandinavia when the summons
came to visit California, and it is hard to say in which
direction he would have turned with the greater readi-
ness. There are many references to this dual nature
in his records of travel. He could not pass from the
north to the south without being conscious of laying
aside one nature and taking on another equally wel-
come. Thus when he had entered Spain from France,
in one of his later journeys, and at breakfast red mullet
came upon the table and oranges fresh from the tree,
“straightway,” he says, “I took off my northern na-
ture 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
ELDORADO AND HVLAS. 155
had not worn for eight or nine years.” The thought
reappears in one of his best known poems, “The
Palm and the Pine : ”—
For, as a fountain disappears,
To gush again in later years,
So hidden blood may find the day,
When centuries have rolled away;
And fresher lives betray at last
The lineage of a far-off Past.
That nature, mixed of sun and snow,
Repeats its ancient ebb and flow :
The children of the Palm and Pine
Renew their blended lives — in mine.
For the time his northern nature was laid aside, and
he reveled in the richness and splendor of a southern
world. Nothing in the letters which he sent back to
the “Tribune” is so characteristic and so worth not-
ing as the delight which he took in the glories of
tropical verdure and the evanescent wonders of sunset
and sunrise. He was sent to report on the discoveries
which every one was in a feverish haste to learn about,
and he made his report promptly and faithfully; for
all that, he made his readers stop whenever he came to
a scene which stirred the poet in him.
“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 coun-
try. 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. Returning through Mexico, which I
156 BA YARD TA YLOR.
traversed diagonally from Mazatlan to Vera Cruz, I
reached New York in March, 1850, and resumed my
duties as editor.”
The duty of writing at every opportunity to the
“Tribune,” the irregularity of his life, and the imper-
fect means of forwarding letters, necessarily abridged
his correspondence with his friends, and his letters
during his absence were for the most part hurried
notes, in which he referred to the “Tribune” letters
for details of his adventure. At Monterey, however,
he made a longer halt, and with rest from travel the
old desires came trooping back. -
TO MARY AGNEW.
MonTEREY, CAL., September 23, 1849.
So far in my absence and on my adventurous pilgrimage. I
sit here alone, in the army quarters at Monterey, listening to the
roar of the surf as it rolls in from the Pacific. It is after sun-
set, and heavy mists are creeping down from the hills, among the
forests of pines. I am lonely, inexpressibly sad and lonely,
thinking of thee and the thousands of miles that intervene be-
tween us and the many days to be passed ere we meet again.
Do not think I am unhappy; my frame is glowing with health,
and in this delicious climate one never thinks of disease. But
within the past week I have been more alone than since leaving
New York. I have walked hither from San Francisco, without
a companion, and through some of the most glorious scenery on
earth, beneath a sky surpassing Italy. Truly this land should
be our home, could we but shape our fortunes as we would. How
often I have thought of thee when climbing to some peak whence
I could overlook leagues of wild and beautiful valleys, that in a
short time will be more lovely places of abode than even Val
d’Arno or sunny Sorrento I have transferred all my poetry
from Italy to this young land of splendid promise. Thank God
that I was permitted to be here at such a crisis, and to blend my
labors, even in so humble a way, with the infancy of the fairest
empire on the earth !
... I have only commenced my travels through the interior,
ELDoRADo AND HYLAs. 157
having been delayed in order to make the necessary arrangements
for transmitting letters. I shall leave here for San Francisco
in a few days, and will then start on my journey to the head of
the Sacramento Valley. This will take from three to four weeks,
in which time I shall be again in San Francisco. I shall then
proceed to San Diego by land, and take the steamer for my re-
turn at that port. Traveling through the country is entirely
safe ; indeed, I never before received so much kindness from
entire strangers. I have already made hundreds of acquaint-
ances, and go where I choose I always am sure to meet some-
body I know or that knows me. Thou mayst therefore be en-
tirely assured of my safety. The country is very healthy, except
along the Sacramento, where there has been a good deal of fever
and ague. It is now subsided, and the fall digging has com-
menced. I anticipate no difficulty on that score. If one takes
only ordinary care of himself he need not fear.
I need not relate to thee my adventures at length. I have
written them out for the “Tribune,” and thou wilt see them
there. They have been varied and (to use a painter's word) pic-
turesque. Don’t be frightened at what I may say of Indians,
grizzly bears, and the like ; the greatest thing to be feared in
this country is fleas, and with them I have been sadly tor-
mented. For this reason I prefer sleeping under the open sky, -
a luxury I never knew before, but shall ever remember with de-
light. It is so delicious to fall asleep with the stars above you, -
to feel their rays, the last thing glimmering in your hazy con-
sciousness, and then shining on, brighter and purer, in your
dreams How often, under the sycamores or evergreen oaks,
with my head on a dragoon-saddle and a Mexican blanket rolled
warmly around me, have I lain in the silent wilderness, and
thought of thee One night, which I will tell thee of when we
meet, I slept, or rather watched, all alone on the top of a moun-
tain, with vast plains glimmering in the moonlight below me, and
the wolves howling far down in the ravines. Was it not a glo-
rious night 2 I cannot express to thee how I have been charmed
with this country. Its pure, cloudless sky; its spring-like airs,
always filled with the odor of balmy shrubs and grasses; its
vast plains, that stretch away like seas, with forest islands and
shores ; its mountain ranges, which the wild oats cover with
cloth of gold, and which loom through the violet haze ; its deep-
cloven ravines; its shores and sparkling seas impress me like
158 - PA YA RD TA YI, OR.
Some new-created world. The mine of poetry which it contains
is to me richer than all its gold. This is our “land of the olive
and vine.” In future song El Toro will take the place of So-
racte, the sunsets of San Diego outshine those of Paestum, and
the “ripe Falernian * be forgotten in the vintage of San Juan
and Santa Barbara.
But I must stop this rhapsody ; there is far more meaning,
and a more welcome chime to thee in the simple words: I think
of thee. Thank God, the half of my absence is over, and the
other half will pass away more speedily. Yet I must still have
many a lonely hour ; I think of thee not so much as absent as
a part of my own soul— of my own nature — lost to me. My
constant memory of thee is that of a wedded sharer of my des-
tiny, - a serene, holy memory, untroubled by fear of change in
aught that will not bring thee nearer. . .
I have wondered a thousand times how thou hast passed the
summer ; whether the books I sent reached thee ; how thou
wert pleased with “Frithiof'; whether Keats beguiled thee
into exclaiming, “Oh, for a draught of vintage l’” etc. But with
a more painful thought I have wondered what thou wert obliged
to endure when my departure startled the neighborhood out of
its propriety. I have not yet had a word from home, and shall
not for a month to come. The steamer that has just arrived
brought no mail, and the next is not expected for three weeks
at least. So I shall only hear from thee twice during my ab-
sence. This is hard, when I have been so long without hearing
from thee. But I console myself with the thought that I have
often been thus long absent from thee, in New York, and that an
equal length of time will bring me to thee again ; so it is like
missing one visit to Kennett. This letter will reach thee about
the middle of November, and thou mayst then look for me in a
month. By that time the great load of thy weary waiting will
be over. Then I shall be on my way to San Diego, and so home-
ward. I only ask of thee to keep a firm confidence in my good
fortune, to preserve a brave heart; and should they talk lightly
of me or of our union, call thy woman’s pride to meet them. Do
not suffer thyself to despond or even doubt. I would rather
see thee proud and self-relying, yet with an humble dependence
on the Great Father, to whom we both look for help in time of
need. As I write, I hear the hymn sung by the scanty congre-
gation of the town, at their worship in this same building, and I
ELDORADO AND HYLAS. 159
pray God to give thee strength in the hour of weakness. With
all my confidence in my destiny, I never forget to cast myself on
his mercy, and humble myself in heart, supplicating his protec-
tion from day to day.
I have written to thee from Charleston, New Orleans, Chagres,
Panama, Acapulco, Mazatlan, San Francisco, and the Diggings, –
eight times in all, besides this letter. Thou must at least have
heard from me every two weeks since I left. I shall send an-
other letter after I reach San Francisco, which will accompany
this. The next steamer after this will take thee the last letters
I shall need to send. Myself shall be the final letter, — the
longest of all, -somewhat stouter and fuller-cheeked than when
thou last saw me, and a good deal browner, but I hope, as M
S would say, “not ill-favored.” I have the appetite of
three men, and am sometimes absolutely ashamed of my per-
formances in that way.
And now, good-by. I feel assured, from my own buoyancy
of spirit, that thou art as well and cheerful as I could hope. I
trust it is so ; for this separation will give us a better claim on
all the promises of our love. -
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
MonTEREY, CAL., September 23, 1849.
If you think of me with any degree of friendly commiser-
ation, I shall get a letter from you by the next mail. Here I am,
in the capital of the Californias, having been three months from
home (in which time all that my nature possessed of the poetic
has changed into the equine), and not the first word of news.
So long as I am in motion, knocking around among the gold-
diggers, scouring the plains with vaqueros and rancheros, sleep-
ing on the mountains with wolves and grizzly bears, and eating
elk with Mexicans and Indians, my animal part is enough to take
care of, and anything that looks like refined civilization is an
abomination. But here in this quiet town, though there are blue
and sparkling seas, grand pine forests, mountains far and near,
and delicious air, – the sweet, childlike breath of a young em-
pire, — I am vexed, tired, lonely, and completely unhinged for
want of news from home. What under heaven are you poets
at, in this mild September prime, – the very flowering-time of
imagination and ripe harvest-weather of thought 2 What new
designs have been shaped in the first glow, or hammered out into
160 BAYARD TA YLOR.
enduring form 2 By the gods, I nearly envy you your quiet.
The goddess visits not a rambling spirit like mine. All the ma-
terials of poetry are around me, and I am laying up a good stock
for future use, but I am too much on the wing to be singing. I
could relish hearing you, all of you, nevertheless, and if you do
but send me the new voices of all your souls I shall teach them
to the echoes of the California mountains.
In truth, my dear friend, I miss you sadly at times like these,
and can only take a scanty satisfaction in building up a future in
which we all shall have achieved honor in the lofty service to
which we are sworn. I think of yourself, Read, Stoddard, and me
as grown gray in the muse's livery, -ancients of song, whose
lives and literary fortunes have “in quaternion run.” But this
is idle ; better be working than dreaming, taking the bloom of
the present than waiting a more genial season, and so I try to
do. This journey has been one of great interest to me, and all
that has yet transpired but fulfills the presentiment with which
I left home. In after ages this will be the land of epic song and
romantic fiction ; we who witness its infancy may make its ear-
liest lays, and blend our names with the wonderful history of its
birth. I have seen things more marvelous than the “Arabian
Nights,” witnessed more splendid achievements than followed
in the paths of Godfrey or Columbus. This may sound extrav-
agant, but posterity will not think it so. The country surpasses
Italy in climate and scenery, and the life of the Bedouin is not
more wild and picturesque than that of a native Californian. I
have already accomplished one wish that I had on leaving : I
have stridden a canelo, and run races with the wind over plains
that are like the sea. Would to Heaven you could be here an
hour ! We would dash off over the hills on our horses, past the
ruined mission of Carmel, and ride down to Point Lobos, where
ten thousand seals and sea-lions cover the rocks. I wish Read
could come out here ; it is a splendid field for a painter. I hope
he has written to me. If he has not, it is now too late, and I
must wait till winter, when we shall have a jolly meeting in dear
old, familiar Philadelphia.
I leave here in two or three weeks for the Sacramento Valley,
which I shall ascend to the borders of Oregon ; then down the
interior to San Diego, where I shall ship to Mazatlan, and cross
Mexico to Vera Cruz. A fine route, is it not ? I have enjoyed
everything (except fleas) thus far, and have the lusty health,
JELDORADO AND HVLA.S. 161
complexion, ghd appetite of a teamster. Perhaps this is the
reason why I have written no poetry.
TO MARY AGNEW.
MONTEREY, CAL., September 30, 1849.
Another week has passed, as thou wilt see by the date of this,
and yet I am still here. A circumstance has occurred which
has occasioned a change in my designs, though one which will not
increase the length of my stay, or alter the manner of my return.
I have been employed by an agent of the government at Wash-
ington to examine some old Spanish documents in the archives
here, — a work which will keep me here about three weeks
longer, and bring me a good round sum of money. I can then
afford to buy a mule, and make the remainder of my trip with
much more speed and comfort. The chance is a fortunate one,
and will enable me, with the worst luck in other respects, to
make the journey a source of pecuniary profit. Perhaps it is
fortunate in another respect. By the time I reach the Sacra-
mento Valley, the fever and ague season will be quite over, and
the clear, cool, healthy weather preceding the winter rains, have
arrived. The Sacramento country is now so overrun with gold-
diggers that traveling in any part of it is perfectly safe.
I have just returned from a ride to Point Conception, about
five miles from here, on the coast. It is a misty afternoon, and
the coast scenery was singularly wild and impressive. The long
swells came rolling in upon the bleak rocks, breaking upon them
with a shock like thunder, and dashing their spray high into
the air. I walked along the inlets, tearing pearl-oysters from
their hold on the rocks, and robbing them of their beautiful
shells. The star-fish and sea-flower grew abundantly in the
edge of the waters. The road to this place leads through the
Pine Forest the whole distance. . . . The society of the place is
agreeable, and I have met with much hospitality among the
resident Americans. I have had the offer of a house if I would
come here to live, but the gift of a gold-mine would not hire me
to leave New York. There is to be the field of my future
labors. . . .
And now, as my time is short, I again take leave of thee,
asking Heaven’s blessing on thee during this time of absence.
I fervently trust I shall hear from thee in two weeks at least.
Till I write again, be of good heart.
VOL. I. 11
162 BAYARD TA YLOR.
MonterEY, October 22, 1849.
I thought until a day or two ago I must have been fated to be
without news from thee during all my absence. Another steamer
came, bringing no mail, though we heard that one was about
crossing the Isthmus when she left. The next steamer has not
yet arrived, but by a blessed good luck three or four letters of
mine, intrusted to private hands, found their way hither. I was
completely happy on finding inclosed in a letter from mother
thy note of July 12th. And what raised my happiness to the full-
est extent was the bright, cheerful, encouraging tone of thy let-
ter. Heaven bless thee for it ! . . .
I am still as healthy and vigorous as ever, but have lost a little
of my brown complexion from indoor work here. This little
rest has been of advantage to me in many ways. I have made
acquaintances among all the principal men of the country, have
learned much that will be useful concerning the history and laws
of California, and have retarded my Sacramento trip so much
that there is no further fear of agues. The country is now thor-
oughly healthy, and the temperature most delightful. I antici-
pate a great deal of pleasure, and no danger, from my trip. I
have written a little during my stay here, — a poem on “The
Pine Forest of Monterey,” another called “Taurus,” and a third,
which I here send thee. It is brief and true, – true as my
love : —
I plucked for thee the wilding rose
And wore it on my breast,
And there, till daylight's dusky close,
Its silken cheek was prest.
Its desert breath was sweeter far
Than palace rose could be, –
Sweeter than all Earth’s blossoms are,
Dut that thou gav'st to me.
I kissed its leaves, in fond despite
Of lips that failed mine own,
And thought of such, that one dear might
Within thy tresses shone.
I vowed no rose should rival mine,
Though withered now, and pale,
Till those are plucked whose white buds twine
Above thy bridal veil.
The wild California rose is sweeter than the Oriental. I have
ridden through thickets of them, and slept at night in the fra-
grant shade of the bay and laurel ; so do not think of me quite,
FL DORADO AND H YEA S. 163
as among savage and inhospitable deserts. Some of the finest
scenery in the world is here. I am not in love with the country,
either ; I shall be most happy when my mission is fully and
faithfully performed, and my face is directed homewards. The
charm of novelty and the excitement of adventure make the
time pass more quickly than I anticipated, but I still have some
lonely hours. I should have many and anxious ones, did I not
feel a secret confidence that thou art well and cheerful. . . .
SAN FRANCIsco, November 28, 1849.
These will be glad words for thee to read, I know, because
they are probably the last I shall write to thee from San Fran-
cisco. My wild wanderings through this savagely beautiful
country are at an end, because I could not travel if I would. I
did not think, when I left home, to have been on California soil
at this date, nor didst thou : but I shall not regret it if, when
we meet, thou canst forget the pains and anxieties of absence.
The stay here has been in the highest degree valuable to myself;
Heaven grant the long separation may be made light to thee I
shall be at home about the first of February. I should leave in
the steamer which sails two days from now, but I wish to return
through Mexico, and she does not touch at Mazatlan. I shall
probably leave next Monday (December 3d), in a sailing vessel,
for Mazatlan. It is a twelve or fourteen days’ trip, as the wind
always blows down the coast. Ships frequently make as short
passages to Mazatlan as the steamer. From thence to Vera
Cruz is about four weeks’ travel across Mexico, - one of the
most interesting journeys in the world, and one of the most de-
lightful, as I am told by those who have made it. It is now the
dry season in Mexico, perfectly healthy and safe for travelers
without money. I shall take letters of credit instead, travel
without baggage and with not more than two companions, –
which will make the trip as safe as any in the United States. I
am familiar with the language, customs, geography, etc., and
anticipate a most delightful journey. I could not go in the pres-
ent steamer if I wished, for no ticket is to be had under double
price, and my plan is more expeditious than to wait three weeks
for the next chance.
I wish thou couldst see me as I am now, -fat, brown, and
rough as a mountaineer, heavier by fifteen pounds than I ever
was before, and with the rugged feeling of health and strength
164 RA YARD TA YLOR.
I have so long coveted. I am fitted for three years’ encagement
in New York, without grumbling. I can make glorious use of
my rough experience in this country, as thou shalt see anon. It
will give me such a lift as I could not have attained by years of
labor at home. My life is not all roughness here, either. With
warm, genial airs, skies soft and blue, sunsets far surpassing
Italy, mountains green with springing grass, and glorious moon-
lights, life is a double enjoyment here. My travels among the
Indians may frighten thee a little, but they are all past now. I
have never had a moment's doubt or fear since leaving home.
Heaven has greatly blessed me, while nearly every one I know
has been more or less ill. I have enjoyed from the first the
most vigorous and exulting health.
If thou wert here, —if we were but united, - I could will-
ingly prolong my stay. As it is, the prospect of seeing thee in
two months is a joyful one. How much we shall have to say to
each other how many memories to recount how many happy
anticipations to exchange Ah, dearest Mary, let us not be kept
much longer from each other's happiness : let us soon unite our
fates, and laugh at the hollow world and its heartless babble. I
shall come back to thee with a more profound yet not a more
sorrowing knowledge of human nature, a wider experience of
life and its strongest passion, a fresher sense of enjoyment in
God’s grand and perfect works, and with as true a heart, as
loyal a constancy, as fervent a devotion, as before. “I trust in
God ; I trust in thee.” By that trust, my own dear Mary, I ask
thee to wait for me with a brave and cheerful heart, and to wel-
come me back with a face on which the tears of absence have
left no trace.
It is late at night, and rather cold, in this gloomy post-office
kitchen. I have but a day or two since returned from the Sacra-
mento, and am hurried in getting ready my “Tribune” corre-
spondence. I shall probably write from Mazatlan, though it is
most likely that I will reach home sooner than a letter from that
place. From Vera Cruz I shall go to Mobile, thence to Charles-
ton, thence to New York, and then— to thee I Don’t look for
me before February 1st, nor be alarmed at not hearing from me.
Depend upon it, I shall get home safe. There is no steamer
yet. The last letter from thee was dated August 12th, but one
from , of August 23d, speaks of thee as being well. Would
to Heaven I could again hear from thee before starting home-
ward | Good-by for a few days.
ELDORADO AND BIYLAS. 165
PACIFIC, NEAR MAZATLAN, January 7, 1850.
So far safely on my way. I have left behind the region of
rain and storms, and am now on the border of the tropics, with
a cloudless sky overhead and a smooth blue sea around. The air
is like that of Paradise. I am happy and light-hearted, and full
of pleasant anticipations of Mexican travel. . . .
The six months that are gone since we parted have changed
me much. I have seen more of human life, and am grown more
serious and self-dependent. My ambition burns with a more
steady flame, and is more certain of its object. The school
through which I have just passed was wanting to fit me for
future labors. I have gained more, if not of philosophy, at least
of courage and determination. I no longer chafe at the bars
which galled so before, The erratic glow and enthusiasm of
youth seems departing, yet it is not dead, but only slumbers
for the time. Perhaps thou wilt never feel this, but thou hast a
woman’s quick insight into human nature, and maySt understand
how it has been wrought in me. . . . -
Bayard Taylor had the experience of being robbed
in Mexico, as he has related in his volume of travel
devoted to this trip, and, reaching Vera Cruz, left for
home February 19, 1850. On the 27th he reached
Mobile, ascended the Alabama River, and by rail and
stage went to Charleston. Thence he went to Wash-
ington, where he delivered dispatches to the govern-
ment, spent a day at Kennett, and was again at the
Tribune office on the 10th of March. He had been
unable to send any letters to the paper after leaving
California, and he now busied himself with throwing
the letters into book-form, adding many incidents from
recollection, and continuing the narrative by relating
his experiences in Mexico. The letters had excited
great interest. When the one came which described
the Panama Isthmus, Mr. Greeley wrote to him in his
characteristic fashion : —
166 BAYARD TA YLOR.
HORACE GREELEY TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
NEw York, August 16, 1849.
BAYARD,-Your Isthmus letter (the crossing) is generally
esteemed here as A No. 1. All I have heard agree that nothing
so workmanlike has been done since the immortal Stephen H.
Branch awoke the catamounts of the Chagres, even if then.
Those from the intermediate seas do not make so much impres-
sion, simply because the scenes and occurrences were less in-
teresting here. . . .
The record of travel was published in May, 1850
by Mr. Putnam, under the title of “Eldorado, or Ad-
ventures in the Path of Empire; comprising a Voyage
to California, via Panama; Life in San Francisco and
Monterey; Pictures of the Gold Region, and Experi-
ences of Mexican Travel.”
Of poetry he had written but little during his jour-
ney. “Taurus,” “The Pine Forest of Monterey,” and
“Manuela,” a new California ballad, were indeed
written while under the immediate inspiration of the
scenes which they reflect, and in his note-book he
would jot down, sometimes in darkness, the lines
which came to him. Once back at his familiar work,
there came a new impulse, under which he wrote “Hy-
las,” a marked illustration of the greater freedom
with which he gave himself to artistic conception. It
is to be noted that in a later arrangement of his poems
he did not include this among “Earlier Poems,” though
that division embraced some written after “Hylas.”
It was during this summer also that he made his first
essay at “The Picture of St. John,” but the develop-
ment of that poem belongs to a later date.
We recur to “Hylas” because it appears to be the
sudden, exalted expression of a state of mind which
was the result of much of the struggle which his life
ELDORA DO AND HYL.A. S. 167
had always witnessed between a native sense of liberty
and the pressure of surrounding influences. His jour-
ney to California, the wild life which he there led, re-
turning almost to a savage mode, and his new sense of
a vast energy in nature and humanity, all conspired
to give him a bound into conscious independence. It
was just before writing “Hylas” that he recorded in
his private journal, to which he committed his thought
unreservedly : —
“More than a year, a strange, eventful, all-impor-
tant period, since I last took up the pen for this con-
fessionall What a time ! How changed is the world
since then | God! how blind was I then, how little
true reliance I possessed, how failing a strength, how
weak a will! Now, all is different. Men are not as
they were, nor are my relatiens toward them the same.
For the first time in my life, I feel secure of my des-
tiny. All those blind motions of the soul, those vague
instincts and groping passions, which I now recognize
in what I have written in this book, are taking form.
With the consciousness of my own true nature comes
the knowledge of my real power and the will to do all
that it would ask of me. Thank God that the mists
are clearing away ! Thank God that I breathe the
pure air at last !
“It was a mistake — a misfortune, rather — that I
was trained to be that which I am not. But the true
nature will make way at last. Had I not been made
to believe that passion was sin, I had gained some pre-
cious years of power. I had earlier learned my own
soul, and might have planted its roots in the genuine
soil, where they have now but freshly struck. I had
not then believed, and they had not believed, that I
was all gentleness and kindness; hence, the harder
168 BAYARD TAYLOR.
lesson for them, to learn the new nature that has fully
awakened after such a long slumber. And I, who
would have kept it down, – ah, how little I knew of
the awful majesty of Poetry, of the passion and scorn
and Sorrow which they must learn to feel who wor-
ship her truly 1 The veil has risen at last, — I stand,
face to face with that dread Power. If she claims a
life of toil and outward bitterness, it will be gladly
given, so she is mine before I die.”
Thus, though the public was more interested in his
record of travel, he did not for a moment turn aside
in his purpose from his true vocation, and he received
now and then a slight sign that others were regarding
him as he regarded himself.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, March 17, 1850.
I send you a hasty line for two reasons, first, to express my
delight at reading “Anne Boleyn,” which I think a great ad-
vance on “Calaynos,” and a great tragedy in itself. It will last.
Some of the passages are equal in effect to anything I ever read.
You have done all that could have been wished, for your sake
and divine Poetry’s. When I get my book off my hands, I will
say in type what I think of it. Ripley is charmed with it, and
will still look out for a chance to give his opinion. Go ahead,
my dear poet ! It will soon be your turn to damn those who
would willingly damn you. . . .
Now, George, I want you to write me a line, at least, before
the end of the week. Come along bodily just as soon as you
can. I shall be here, working on my book, three weeks longer,
before visiting home again. It will be out in two volumes,
splendidly got up. As for the matter, I say nothing.
TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, Sunday night, March 17, 1850.
Delinquent again, and not in a fit mood for writing to-night;
but I must say one word. I have been troubled to-day with a
bad sore throat, from cutting off my beard prematurely. Nature
ELDORADO AND HVLA S. 169
no doubt intended it should stay. However, civilization exacts
a good deal from us, and perhaps we receive a corresponding
benefit. I feel like a different individual from the one who went
on board the Falcon last June. My nature is setting into its
destined mould. I am no longer the pliant, passionate, restless
youth ; I look upon life more soberly than heretofore. The glow-
ing impulses of my heart have subsided, at least to outward ap-
pearance. I see things through a clearer, more unruffled air.
The impatience which made my love for thee “a joy, sharp e'en
to pain,” no longer torments me. I have in its stead a quiet,
happy feeling, — a sense of contentment with fate, a serene trust
in the future. The thought of soon having thee with me, which
last spring seemed a miracle of joy which could hardly be real,
is now so natural, so inevitable, a happiness, that my heart com-
prehends it without an effort. My pulses no longer throb with
the fever of unrest. We are no longer enchanted beings, walk-
ing apart in some unapproachable world of love, but woman and
man, with the joys and sorrows of common life as our portion.
Canst thou explain this change 2 I think I can. The fiery part
of my nature has had full play and free expression in the ex-
citement of my recent travel, and goads me no longer. Calmer
feelings return, and the tired spirits willingly submit to their
rule. I cannot say but I am glad of this. The clearer and sim-
pler life appears to us the stronger is our control of it. . . .
I am hard at work on my book. It will be out in about
twenty days (perhaps less), and till then I shall be bound to it.
Putnam gives me no respite, as the earliest possible appearance
will greatly increase the sales. As the trip has cost me much,
the book ought to pay me well in return. I have written home
that I shall certainly be there before the 7th of April. Keep up
thy spirits till then ; I know thou canst, now that my return is
fully realized. Meanwhile write often, much, and as freely as
thy thought.
NEw York, May 8, 1850.
It is a little after midnight. They have all gone and left me
alone in the office. The rain is pouring without, and its sound,
though sad, is soothing, for it is in harmony with my own feel-
ings. Thy note, which came to-day, has thrown a shadow on
my heart. I feel inexpressibly sad and lonely. Thou wert so
well, looked so well, and I thought would be so strong and
happy; and now, the health and strength thou hast been gather-
170 BA YARD TA YLOR.
ing for a year are gone at once. I have been anxious about thee
ever since we parted, but I hoped the genial season would restore
thee; now, I fear it may take weeks before thou art strong
again. If thou wilt only be quite well in another month, I will
try to bear it ; – but then, what have I to bear in comparison
with thee ? I will stop my marriage preparations, if thou wish-
est it ; but it will be a terrible disappointment if we should have
to postpone the day. Still, need this be done under any circum-
stances 2 Even if thou shouldst not be considered well enough
to come here in June, could not the ceremony be performed on
the 19th 2 I have a preference for the day, - a sort of super-
stitious desire to be married then, now since it has been fixed.
Even if — which God forbid — thou shouldst be obliged to
wait at home a month or two longer, might not the simple
words be spoken, might we not write to each other and think
of each other as husband and wife 2 But I will not forebode
anything of the kind. I trust in Heaven thou wilt soon re-
cover. Only, must I stop my preparations 2 In case of thy
continued weakness, which I see thou hast already pictured to
thyself as possible, may we not still cherish the same anticipa-
tions of being given to each other on that day ? Forgive me if
I write strangely : I am deeply grieved and disappointed by thy
illness. I will agree to anything that seems best to thee. Think
only of thyself; thou hast had so much to bear I should be
wicked and unmanly if I were not willing to make every sacri-
fice for thy good. Tell me with all the candor of thy heart
how thou art growing from day to day, what thou wouldst fain
ask of me, what I should do, and how thou couldst be happiest.
Thursday morning.
It is still dull and chilly here. I am hard at work among
California news, anniversaries, and a pile of such trash. I have
not time to say more now, but a word is better than nothing. I
will write again to-morrow or Saturday, and hope to hear from
thee again before that time.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, NEw Yorr, May 10, 1850.
I dash off a line from the midst of my City Items, California.
News, Cuban Expeditions, and a host of such trash, to tell you
how my “Eldorado” has been running off.
ELDORADO AND HVLA.S. 171
Putnam has orders for near two thousand copies, and can’t
get the books bound fast enough. He has, as yet, sold none at
retail, and, for my part, I have not got a single copy. I beg
you, therefore, to excuse me to my good Boston friends, to whom
I intend to send copies, for a day or two longer, and take
part of the same to yourself. I hope to be supplied on Monday
or Tuesday, and will then remember all my friends, Miss Mit-
ford included. This time I am really going to send her all
my three works in one lump, — enough to terrify the poor old
lady.
Boker called on me yesterday. He tells me he had a delight-
ful time with you and Whipple. Would I had been there ! But
this devilish work, to which we are doomed, always stands be-
tween us and our desires.
I hope a time may come when I shall be no longer bound.
Where is Longfellow going to stay in Washington 2 Is he going
farther south 2 How can I send an “Eldorado’’ to him 2 Will
he not stop a day here on his return ? I want to see him very
much.
I must stop ; it is near one o'clock. Greeley is in the other
room, and the rest of my fellow-editors hard at work. A police
report, or something equally disgusting, will be thrust under
my nose the next minute for my special attention and contem-
plation. I must not forget, however, to thank you for your kind
notice of my book in the “Transcript.” I think it will help the
sale of it in Boston, which is about all I hope from my prose
works. As for literary reputation, I would not swap that of ten
lines of good poetry for all the prose I shall ever write. . . .
TO MARY AGNEW.
Thursday night, May 14, 1850.
. . . I will do in everything as thou shalt desire. Do not try
to get well ; it will make thee worse. Let Nature regain her
strength in her own time. I hope everything from these warm
days and balmy airs. I feel most deeply for thee. Thou hast
had so much to suffer, and all thy best happiness has been in the
future. Ah, well, God will not desert those who suffer patiently ;
we shall be happy yet, under his blessing.
. . . I will wait calmly and hopefully. I have already more
than half given up the idea of being married on the 19th. I
would much rather put it off a month than that thou shouldst
172 JBA YARD TA YLOR."
not be quite well. The thought of another relapse would be
terrible. Try to be cheerful, dear Mary. If thou wishest I
will go home in two weeks, if only for half a day. Indeed, if
before then thou shouldst desire to postpone the day of our mar-
riage, I will go, whether thou wishest or not. It is late, and I
am weary and sleepy. I feel a little sad, but I should be quite
happy if I thought thou wert cheerful and hopeful still. Be
cheerful, Mary; this trial is hard, but a year hence we will not
feel it. . . .
Monday morning, June 10, 1850.
Yesterday I received a letter from mother, which explains the
reason of thy not writing. She tells me thou art not so well as
when I left. I am deeply grieved and saddened, as thou mayst
easily imagine, for I had hoped so much from the delightful
weather of last week. I pray that thou art better by this time,
for the pleasant sunshine and warmth of the season must help
thee, if Nature has not grown perverse. I shall look for a letter
to-morrow with great anxiety. Mother writes to me that the
doctor said riding out every day would much hasten thy re-
covery, and asks if I cannot get away for a week to take thee
out. I think I can. Greeley is not at home, but I can make
some arrangement to leave. At any rate, he may storm as he
likes: I would sooner bear it than have thee suffer much longer
with that terrible pain, when I may help to relieve thee of it.
I shall certainly leave here by the last of this week, - perhaps
sooner. Thou mayst look for me Thursday night, for I don’t
think I shall disappoint thee. . . .
TO R. H. STODDARD.
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., June 27, 1850.
I have been here four days. Mary is somewhat better, though
still in a very uncertain and dangerous state. My hopes are a
little brighter, and I can now with a calmer mind entreat God to
spare her to me. I have partly recovered my old faith, and do
my best to cheer and encourage her. In this I have succeeded.
For two days past she has been slowly improving. She does not
speak of her danger, has not been told of it, but I think guesses
it. The physician had no hope, and has but little now, yet I will
dare to hope against him. God help me if I lose her 1
Write to me, Stoddard, at once, for I shall return in a week.
What have you been doing ? What new plans afoot ? I have
ELDORADO AND HYLAS. * 173
conceived another poem ; Heaven only knows when it will take
shape And now, my dear boy, good-by.
An invitation to deliver the annual poem before the
Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College at Com-
mencement was accepted, and he busied himself over
a poem entitled “The American Legend.” He did
not think it worth while to reprint it in any of his col-
lections, and took his principal pleasure in the oppor-
tunity afforded of seeing his Boston friends. Several
years afterward, writing to Mr. Boker, who had re-
ceived the same invitation, and had printed his poem,
he expressed his regret that his friend had published
the poem. “I made the same mistake,” he says.
“My Harvard poem, poor as it is, was received with
great applause; but alas! I published it, and thus
killed the tradition of its excellence, which, had I not
done so, might still have been floating around Har-
vard.”
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
-> - June 30, 1850.
I know nothing more likely to beguile myself from a doleful
consciousness of this sweltering heat than the writing to you.
What do you with your solid substance this weather ? These
lank, skeleton poets can live well enough, for they have nothing
to lose ; but we, who are not only blood and bone, but some fat,
must suffer. I rejoice in a tolerable heat, and so long as the
mercury don’t rise above 80° choose the sunny side of the street.
I am conscious of a sort of ripening, so, for it is my favorite
theory that one becomes more intensely vital by giving himself
up to the sum and air. (Don't pun () Stoddard and I, though
it’s against nature and all precedent, have been plying our pens
diligently, - he on his “Search for Proserpine,” I on my damned
Harvard stuff. By the way, I have had an invitation from Co-
lumbia College, in this city, to redeliver the poem at the Com-
mencement in October, and have accepted. I must also tell you
that there are now three reprints of “Eldorado” in London. I
have seen three or four notices, – long, and so far good, but that
of the “Spectator” is sneering and contemptible. Had it not
174 * BA YARD TA YLOR.
been for the shelter of Bentley's name (Her Majesty's publisher),
I should have fared much worse. . . .
You must come out in the fall with a volume of poems. Stod-
dard will, and so, I think, will I. You can make a capital vol-
ume, with your “Song,” “Sir John,” “Goblet,” and other things;
Stoddard has his “Castle” as a fine leader, with a number of
short songs ; and I, besides fifteen or twenty published since
“Rhymes of Travel,” have a poem in view and to be written
Soon, narrative, legendary, national, and semi-epic. We might
walk out side by side on the platform of public perusal. The
publishing showmen would of course parade our wonderful qual-
ities, and the snarling critics in the crowd would show their teeth ;
but we would be as unmoved as the wax statues of Parkman and
Webster, except that there might now and then be a sly wink at
each other, when nobody was looking. . . .
Since my return I have had a short note from Mary, but I
cannot learn from it whether she is better or not. God grant it
may be as I hope | If I lose her, I shall have but a darkened
life left me. Write soon.
TO MARY AGNEW.
July 8, 1850.
My last letter from home reached me on July 4th. I need not
say how much I was delighted with the news of your improve-
ment. I hope there has been no check to it since. The weather
has been so charming here and I have felt so well that I think it
must have an equally genial effect upon thee. I am entirely
wrapped up in my Harvard poem. The time is near at hand,
and I must finish the poem this week. I can do it by sticking to
it. I wrote about one hundred and fifty lines on Saturday and
Sunday, besides which the California mail is just in, giving me
a wilderness of work to do.
I missed writing to thee on Friday last, being so occupied
with work in the morning that mail-time passed over before I
knew it. I felt sorry at this, for I had promised to write then,
and I knew thou wouldst expect it.
I feel tolerably satisfied with my progress in the poem thus
far, and think it will be successful. Didst thou see Whittier's
glorious “Eldorado” in the “Era” 2 Dickens had an excellent
notice in his “Household Words.” All the London papers, in
fact, have treated it very handsomely. Stoddard has gone to
ELDORADO AND HYLA S. 175
New Jersey for his health, and as I am alone I work the more.
But I take a daily swim in the salt sea, and am hearty. Write
when thou art able, but no sooner. This week I will write on
Friday.
Monday, July 15, 1850.
I have been steadily working since Saturday at noon, and have
my poem finished except the copying. I feel quite used up, hav-
ing written about one hundred lines on Saturday night, and toiled
over the conclusion yesterday. I shall leave for Boston to-mor-
row, and return on Saturday. I am tolerably satisfied with the
poem, but don’t know how it will please the Puritan profes-
sors. I think the students will like it, which will be sufficient
glory. . . .
Thou wilt pardon this hasty scrawl, -my head is so full and
my hands so busy with completing the poem. I am entirely well,
though a little enervated by this sultry weather.
NEw York, July 22, 1850.
I returned from Boston yesterday morning. As you may sup-
pose, I was so preoccupied by engagements attendant on my sit-
uation that I could get no chance of sending a letter which
would reach home before this. I am hurried to-day, by circum-
stances which I will mention by and by, but must not omit send-
ing a short account of my doings.
I reached Boston at ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, having
been left behind at Stonington by the cars, which obliged me to
wait three hours in a dark depot, and go forward in a freight
train, packed among boxes and coffee-bags. I found Fields at
once, went to his house (a charming place), and repeated my
poem to him. He was delighted with it, which gave me courage
for the delivery next day. We took a carriage and rode out to
Cambridge, where we saw part of the Commencement ceremo-
nies, and dined with a club of students. I was lionized, of course,
introduced to professors, judges, etc., but bore my honors
meekly. We went down by way of Roxbury and Jamaica Pond,
through delicious glimpses of scenery.
I returned to Cambridge in the evening and spent the night
with Lowell, whom I had met at the Commencement. His
father's classmates—graduates of the year 1800—were spend-
ing the anniversary with him. Among them was Chief Justice
Shaw of Massachusetts. Allston was of the same class. It
176 BAYARD TA YLOR.
was delightful to hear those old men laughing over their college
tricks, fifty years ago.
Next morning Lowell and I went down to the College build-
ings. I was elected an honorary member of the P. B. K. Society,
and tied the pink and blue ribbons in my button-hole. The pro-
cession was formed in the Library, my place being with the orator
of the day, immediately behind the old president, Quincy. We
had to pass between double files of the members, all standing
uncovered, and thus entered the church, which was already
crowded. Judge Walker's oration was very commonplace and
respectable, but not exactly dull, which was fortunate for me.
When my turn came, I was received with such a warm, cordial,
universal expression that all my embarrassment disappeared at
once. I went through the poem without the least timidity or
misgiving. The audience paid me the compliment of profound
silence till the close, when they gave another most hearty and
enthusiastic round of applause. The old members — gray-
headed men of seventy and eighty — crowded about me with
their thanks and congratulations. Ralph Emerson, who sat be-
side Fields, said it was the best poem which had ever been deliv-
ered there. Thence we went to the dinner, which I cannot now
describe. It was overflowing with wit, fun, and good feeling.
Professor Felton, R. H. Dana, Lowell, and hosts of other good
fellows made speeches. I had to say a few words, but got
through without trouble. In the evening I attended a soirée at
Professor Horsford's.
Friday morning, early, Lowell and I started for Amesbury,
which we reached in a terrible northeaster. What a capital
time we had with Whittier, in his nook of a study, with the rain
pouring on the roof and the wind howling at the door We had
several stormy adventures on our return, for we did not reach
Cambridge till after midnight. Next day we went down to Na-
hant to see Longfellow, who, unfortunately, had gone to Portland.
I left Boston the same evening, being obliged to decline invita-
tions enough to have furnished me with two weeks' board. The
P. B. K.’s took forcible hold of my poem, and are going to pub-
lish it. It has been admirably noticed in the Boston papers.
So much for a visit which has delighted, gratified, and hum-
bled me, – warmed my heart towards a whole community, and
incited me to fresh labor, that I may deserve the honor already
given. My poem does not.
ELDORADO AND HYL.A.S. 177
And now, as to my present condition. In two hours I must
start for Fire Island, about sixty miles off, on the Atlantic shore.
The vessel containing Margaret Fuller d’Ossoli, her husband
and child, Horace Sumner, of Boston (brother of Charles), and
Powers’ statue of Calhoun was wrecked there in the hurricane,
and it is believed that all are lost. I am going to do what I can,
and if the bodies are washed ashore to bring them up to this
place. I may be back to-morrow, certainly on Wednesday. We
have just received the news; it is terrible.
This may prevent my seeing thee before the last of next week.
If I possibly can, I will go on Saturday, but must return in the
midnight train the same day. I hope to hear from thee to-mor-
row. I have not time to send more than a single word home.
Please, therefore, to let mother see this letter, if she should
come to see thee. I will write again on Wednesday, in any case.
NEw Yorº, July 24, 1850.
I cannot leave this week. I have just returned from the wreck
at Fire Island, and after losing two nights and wading about all
day in the toilsome sand I feel quite incompetent to go to Ken-
nett and back on Saturday and Sunday, even if I could con-
veniently leave, – which I can’t. Charles Sumner was down yes-
terday, to look for his brother's body. It is a most distressing
thing. The ship is beaten to fragments, and every article washed
ashore was stolen ahd carried off by the pirates who live along
the coast. Neither M. Fuller nor her husband has been found.
Their child is buried in the sand. Powers’ statue lies in the sea,
together with three hundred tons of Carrara marble. It is hoped
M. F.'s history of the “Revolutions in Italy” has been saved.
Her mother, brother, and Mr. Thoreau of Concord, are now here.
I shall certainly get home next week, and will write again on
Friday. Why have I not had a letter ? Eight days, – it is
months; at least my travels in that time make it seem so. I am
very anxious to hear from thee. Thou shouldst be much better
by this time. If we cannot make that excursion together when
I go home, don’t give thyself trouble on my account. I would
sooner see thee well than see thee as my wife, and God knows I
cannot express more solicitude than these words contain.
Be cheerful and in good heart. It will be only ten days till I
see thee. But write to me in the mean time, — but a line, if thou
canst no more, — or at least tell some one to write to me.
VOL. I.
178 BA YAF D TA YLOR.
I shall write more the next time. I am now hurried on all
sides.
MARY AGNEW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
- Friday, July 26, 1850.
Many thanks for the letters that have reached me this week;
they found me in bed, in pain and suffering, and have done me
more good than thou canst imagine. It was so gratifying to hear
of thy visit and thy success. I knew it would be so, it could not
be other, and delightful to hear of those with whom thou hast
been. Thy last one came last night. I very much fear that
after so much exposure thou wilt be sick. Do keep well, and
come home soon. I hoped I would see thee this week, but as
that cannot be I will wait patiently till next week; thou wilt
come them. Thou sayest, “Why have I not had a letter ?” I
put off writing until Sunday, thinking that perhaps I might hear
from thee on Saturday. When Sunday came it was a beautiful
morning, and I thought I must take a ride. I went as far as thy
father's, and against I got back I was so fatigued, and coughed
so much, that it was impossible to write intelligibly. Monday I
was not near so well, and since Tuesday morning I have not
sat up any, till this morning, on account of pain and soreness
in my breast. I am much better now ; am sitting up writing
this, while there is no one in the room to chide me for it. I felt
as if I must write. I would have got some one to have written
to thee before this, but I still thought perhaps thou wouldst be
home this week; now when thou art not coming, thou must
hear from me. I cannot tell thee particulars, because it takes so
much writing to tell so little. Thou wilt soon be home, dear
Bayard; we can then talk everything over, and thou canst tell
me what is to become of me. Oh I long to see thee and talk to
thee ; there is no one else I can talk to as I wish. Why is it that
we are so much apart 2 Sometimes I think there is a more cruel
destiny yet awaiting us. God grant that it be not so. Pray ex-
cuse the defects of this letter. I am not fit to write, but I felt
as if I must send thee a few words after such a long silence. I
know thou wilt forgive every fault. Write soon as thou receivest
this, and tell me when I may look for thee. I hope to see thee
in a week. May God bless thee and keep thee well and happy.
PLDORADO AND HYLAS. 179
BAYARD TAYLOR TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, July 29, 1850.
He who gives this to you is R. H. Stoddard, who as a poet and
one of my best friends should be one of yours. You know him
already, and I need say no more.
Many thanks for the papers you sent me. I should not have
made much of a figure on the occasion (before the public, at
least) had it not been for you. Give Whipple my sincerest
thanks for his cordial notice of “Eldorado’’ in “Graham.” I
have read his Oration and like it exceedingly, but his article on
Wordsworth seems to me one of the very best papers he has
ever written. Ripley has written a notice of the Oration, which
you will see in this morning’s “Tribune.”
Will you put “Hylas” into an envelope and forward to me
within three or four days 2 I am thinking of arranging it for
publication. I will print my “Sicilian Bacchic,” too, shortly.
It may make me some enemies among those who cant of mo-
rality and think no poetry is poetry that is not teetotal, non-resist-
ant, and antislavery, but if I cared for that I should deserve to
be damned. I am now engaged on a poem of considerable length,
entitled “The Picture of St. John.” It will not be finished for
several months. For Heaven's sake, say nothing about it.
Pray give my kindest regards to Mrs. Fields. I feel that I
deserve no mercy in leaving Boston without again calling at your
house, and did I not know you so well I should expect none. I
feel most grateful for the kindness I received from every one
during my visit. The only way I can repay it is by trying to
deserve it, and this I hope to prove in three or four years, God
willing. Somehow, praise for what I don’t value much has the
effect of humbling me to myself, and since I returned I have felt
like a beginner in literature who has everything yet to achieve.
Good-by. God bless you and yours.
CHAPTER VIII.
MARY AGNEW TAYLOR.
1850.
So rarely on the soul the joy to be
Prophetic dawns, so frequent falls the shade
Of near misfortune 1
The Picture of St. John.
BAYARD TAYLOR’s marriage with Mary Agnew had
been postponed once and again on account of her pre-
carious health. Now, in August, she was in so alarm-
ing a condition that some change of life seemed neces-
sary to arrest the progress of an insidious disease, and
Bayard, leaving his work, arranged for the removal of
Mary, attended by her mother, first to Philadelphia to
consult a physician, and then to West Point for a
breath of hill-country air. The noise and excitement
of this resort were unfavorable, and, by good fortune,
a place was found at Cornwall, near by, where the
Willises were staying ; and here the ladies remained
for a while, Bayard Taylor returning to New York,
and snatching opportunities to escape from his imper-
ative occupation. It was a time of distraction, of al-
ternate hope and fear, of anxiety which could not be
laid, and yet of ardent longing to conquer the diffi-
culties in the way. That to which he had so long
looked forward receded as he apparently drew near
possession, and he found himself in an agony at the
prospect of loss.
MARY A. G.NE W TA YLOR. 181
TO HIS MOTHER.
PHILADELPHIA, August 9, 1850.
We reached here at half-past one o'clock yesterday afternoon.
Mary sustained the fatigue of traveling much better than I had
expected. Dr. Morton came at five o'clock yesterday. He made
a careful examination, both by Sounding and questioning as to
the progress of the disease. He says there is no action in her
right lung, and probably never will be again. The left lung is
sound. The disease is partly pleuritic, and the only chance of
her recovery is in the drying up of the right lung, to effect
which everything should be done to keep up her strength. The
only thing he could recommend was a visit to West Point, which
would do more than medicine, or indeed any other course of
treatment. Her mother has agreed to go, and we shall leave for
New York to-morrow, stay in the city till Monday, and then go
up the Hudson. Her mother will stay a week at West Point, at
least. From what Morton says I have very little hope of the
recovery. There is, however, the more need to do everything
possible. I am very glad we came. Mary is as well as usual
this morning, and has a much better appetite than for some time
past. She does not seem to be much fatigued, and certainly
looks no worse.
NEw York, August 11, 1850.
We left Philadelphia yesterday morning at nine o’clock. The
day could not have been better, as the rain had laid the dust and
freshened the air. Mary bore the ride in the cars much better
than we had expected. We reached here about two P. M., and shall
leave for West Point to-morrow morning at seven. Mary seems
stronger than when we left home. Her appetite is much better,
and she goes up and down two flights of steep stairs for her
meals. She has coughed very little for two days, but in other
respects is not much improved. I do not know whether to hope
or not ; I rarely allow myself to think of anything but the worst.
Since she has come thus far, I do not want her to go back again
to Kennett, but want her, when she leaves West Point, to be
married at once and remain. This is her own desire. . . . I
never will consent to her staying at home through the winter,
and she has promised me not to do it, whatever may happen.
I am very much wanted here (at the office, where I am now
Writing), and shall have to return from West Point in four or five
182 JBA YA R D TA YLOR.
days. However, there are four trains a day thither on the Hud-
son River Railroad, and I can go up every day without difficulty.
NEw York, Friday, August 16, 1850.
You will probably have heard before this what we have been
doing. I arrived here last night, as I could not remain away
from the office longer. We went to West Point on Monday last,
but Mary did not like the place at all. The noise was too great,
and the hotel was so crowded by visitors, many of whom knew
me, that it was very unpleasant for her. Fortunately, at the din-
ner-table we met Willis and his wife, who, by the merest acci-
dent, happened to be there on a visit. They proposed at once
that we should go to the place where they were staying, about
eight miles off in the country, back of Newburgh ; and the next
morning we took the boat to Newburgh, and rode the remaining
four miles in a carriage. We found the place a quiet, secluded
farm-house, on a natural terrace at the foot of the Highlands,
with a splendid view of the country round, and a purer mountain
air than one gets at West Point. It was the very place for
Mary, and she was delighted with it. The people are plain
farmers, and the Willises are living very secluded, seeing scarcely
any one. Mrs. Willis has been very kind and attentive, and
Mrs. Agnew thinks her a wonderful woman. I stayed there two
days to see them comfortably settled, and then came down here.
I shall go up again to-morrow for a few hours. I have eight or
ten chances of getting there and back every day, which makes it
very convenient.
Mary is better than she has been at any time. She walks out
a short distance every day, and feels herself much stronger. She
has had but one slight spell of coughing since leaving Philadel-
phia. I want her to stay here till the first of September. . . .
The sudden coming of autumn, with cold nights,
made it wise to hasten the return to Kennett, and
both Bayard Taylor and Mary Agnew accepted the
necessity with a good grace, for they persuaded them-
selves that as soon as preparations could be made they
would be married and make their home in New York,
where better care could be given the invalid. There
were delusive symptoms in the disease which buoyed
them with a vain hope.
MARY AGNE W TA YLOR. 183
Mary Agnew returned to Kennett and Bayard Tay-
lor plunged into his work, going to his home whenever
he could steal a chance, and keeping up an anxious cor-
respondence with his mother. He was casting about
for every possible means to add to his slender income
and make provision for his married life, and an oppor-
tunity occurred in the furore connected with the com-
ing of Jenny Lind. “The American Parnassus was
a Bedlam in the autumn of 1850,” says Mr. Stoddard
in his Reminiscences, already quoted, “and Bayard
Taylor was the innocent cause of its madness. The
Prince of Showmen had imported Jenny Lind to sing
before his admiring countrymen, and, to flatter their
national vanity, he offered a prize of two hundred dol-
lars for an original song for her. All the versifiers in
the land set at once to work to immortalize themselves
and to better their fortunes, and as many as six hun-
dred confidently expected to do so. Bayard Taylor
came one afternoon early in September and confided
to me the fact that he was to be declared the winner of
this perilous honor, 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 an-
other.” “If you think so,” I answered, “withdraw your
name, and put my name in place of it. You shall have
the money, and I will bear the abuse.’ He laughed,
and left, as I thought, to do what I had suggested; but
he concluded to acknowledge the authorship himself,
and stand the consequences. The decision of the com-
mittee was published next day, and the indignation
of the disappointed competitors was unbounded. They
rushed to all the editors whom they knew or could
reach, and these sharp-witted gentlemen, having an
184 B.A. YA R D TA YLOR.
eye for mischief as well as fun, published their prose
and their verse, which ranged from an epigram up to
an epic. The choice of the committee had fallen upon
only two out of the whole number of manuscripts which
had been sent to them; and being in some doubt as to
which of the two was the more suitable for the occa-
sion, they showed both to Jenny Lind, who chose the
shorter one, as containing the feeling she wished to ex-
press in her greeting to America. It happened to be
the one which Bayard Taylor had written, and it was
accordingly set to music by Jules Benedict, and sung
by her at her first concert in Castle Garden. I have
recovered this unfortunate lyric, but I shall not quote
it here, for Bayard Taylor desired to have it forgot-
ten.” -
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, September 17, 1850.
Lowell (who was here a few minutes ago) happening to men-
tion his meeting with you in Albany, I was reminded that I had
a letter owing to you, and the more need of writing it since I
have a word or two to say.
Since you were here, I scarcely know whether I am on my
head or heels, so many distracting causes there are to bewilder
me. First, this Jenny Lind matter, in which I am obliged to
mingle, whether I will or inot ; then, my business affairs to care
for, and they need considerable looking after, just now ; and to
fill the measure of my trouble to overflowing, Mary is much
worse, and the prospect of her recovery looks dark indeed.
I have not felt like my proper self for some time past, and
cannot so long as these causes continue.
I wanted to say a word, however, with regard to the Prize
Song, — a trifling matter, to be sure. . . .
As far as I can learn, the committee acted with entire impar-
tiality, and till the decision was made but one of them had actu-
ally recognized my writing. Jenny Lind, also, as I have been
told, declared that she would sing mine, or none at all. Of
course, I am not foolish enough to attribute this to any merit in
the song, but to its adaptation for the occasion. . . .
MARY A. G. NE W TA YLOR. 185
Remember me kindly to Mrs. Fields, and Whipple, and Long-
fellow. If Heaven is propitious, I shall yet redeem what reputa-
tion I have lost by the degradation of winning a prize. But I
cannot write or do anything else with such a cloud on me as at
present. I am nearly ready to give up all hope, and look for-
ward to a life lonely and darkened where it most needs light and
sympathy. . . .
*
TO MARY AGNEW.
NEw York, September 18, 1850.
. . . I must send a line or two further this bright morning, al-
though is still out of town, and the foreign mail is in. . . .
I have a great deal to do, but bear the burden without complaint,
and so make it lighter. Lowell and his wife are now here ; I
called on them a few minutes this morning. They were at the
concert last night, and of course are in raptures with Jenny
Lind. I must not forget to tell thee that I had occasion to call
on Jenny a day or two ago, and spent about an hour talking with
herself and Mr. Benedict. She is one of the most charmingly
natural and unaffected women I ever saw ; very frank and cor-
dial, and as simple and innocent as a Swedish peasant girl. There
were about eight thousand persons at the concert last night.
I have not written anything lately. I cannot collect my
thoughts sufficiently amid all this business, and when I have, in
addition, a constant anxiety about thee. If I could but hear
that thou wert improving and there was a chance of thee coming
here, I should be better satisfied. At any rate, when I go home
again, whether thou art able to travel or not, we must have the
ceremony performed. . . .
If any one should bring thee (which is very likely) some ill-
natured notice of my Jenny Lind song, don’t let it trouble thee
in the least. There are 752 disappointed candidates, and many
of them have a chance of making themselves heard. I have been
assailed in a great many quarters, but this is what I expected
before, and I don’t mind it in the least. I must now close, but
will write again on Friday.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, September 19, 1850.
Have you been observing how delightful a flaying I am under-
going at the hands of every sixpenny critic in the country 2 It is
186 BA YARD TA YLOR.
a new sensation, I assure you, and you will readily imagine that I
would rather have had it than not. I care nothing for the song;
it is poor enough, God knows, for my only inspiration was the hope
of getting the two hundred dollars; hence the savage manner in
which it was torn to pieces, line after line, does not touch me in
the least. I look on, with as merciless a heart as the fiercest of
them. Some have gone further, however, and basely attacked
my character as a man. This I cannot forgive, and I swear to
you there will come a day when they shall repent it. However,
I don’t take this matter at all to heart. Through the success of
the song I have one creditor less, and am therefore so much
nearer to that point where I need contend for no prizes, nor
write at the temptation of any man's money. I may confess to
you, however, that at times I feel a bitter sense of degradation in
having written at all, and my success seems but to increase it.
This is a proper punishment to me for having defiled the temple
of divine Poetry. Depend upon it, I shall never do the like
again, and I shall not fail to woo her with prayers and penances
till the fault be expiated, and she admits me once more into her
priesthood.
But enough of this. I had two or three poems partly written,
but so strong is this consciousness of having degraded the poetic
faculty, I have not the heart to touch them at present. I inclose
a simple little thing, conceived the other day while walking on
the Battery. All I have aimed to do is to imitate in the metre
the rapid rolling to shore of the waves under a fresh breeze,
The repetition of the last line seemed to be demanded, but I am
doubtful about the effect. Now, for the life of me, I can’t tell
whether it is worth publication. I leave the thing entirely to
your judgment. If you think so, you may give it to Sartain ; if
not, light your cigars with it.
[N. B. —I find I have not the poem with me here, at the
office, and I have not time to copy it. I shall send it in a day
or two, and the instructions will hold good.]"
I see Stoddard about twice a week. He has commenced work
in earnest, and intends finishing the first book of “Proserpine’’ in
a week or two. . . . I have sent a poem of his, addressed to Jenny
Lind, to “Graham.” He, as well as myself, is delighted with
her. She is to me a complete embodiment of Genius in Woman;
for she has genius. I have seen in no one more of its truth, its
1 The poem was The Waves.
MARY A. GNEW TA YLOR. 187
earnestness, its humility, and its glorious pride. Now I am not
mad about her, but I recognize her wonderful faculty and rever-
ence her noble character.
Yet, deeply as I feel the enjoyment of her music, I almost re-
gret that it is part of my business to hear it. The news from
home is "most dispiriting, and all joy, even of the intellect, comes
to me under a cloud. Mary is much worse than ever, and I
have made up my mind to bear the worst of all. I can no longer
hope against hope. I must expect to live a life darkened where
it most needs light. It is in vain that you would attempt to
cheer me by calling the gods merciful. Here is what I wrote, on
reading your letter : —
You comfort me as one that, knowing Fate,
Would paint her visage kinder than you deem;
You say, my only bliss that is no dream
She clouds, but makes not wholly desolate. -
Ah, friend your heart speaks words of little weight
To veil that knowledge you have learned in song,
And 'gainst your solace Grief has made me strong:
The Gods are jealous of our low estate;
They give not Fame to Love, nor Love to Fame;
Power cannot taste the joy the humbler share,
Nor holy Beauty breathe in Luxury's air,
And all in darkness Genius feeds his flame.
We build and build, poor fools l and all the while
Some Demon works unseen, and saps the pile.
I thank you most warmly, my dear friend, for your sympathy
with me. God knows I shall need it in the desolation that is to
come. I will try to bear it like a man, but when I think of her,
poor girlſ — whose only dream for years has been a life shared
with me, and now to be cut off just as our paths joined and our
hands were meeting, no more to be divided — it quite unmans
me. But I should not burden you with my own griefs. Write
to me soon. -
TO MARY AGNEW.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, Friday noon, September 27, 1850.
No letter yet. The equinoctial has come on, and I feel very
much afraid—nay, almost sure—that thou art not so well. The
dreary, melancholy November days will soon be at hand, and
what must I do? Is there no chance, no hope, of my seeing thee
in New York before the winter comes 2 Is it not possible for
thee to travel so far 2 If it be, pray get ready at once, and come
home with me next week. I hope to see thee next Monday ;
188 BA YARD TA YLOR.
probably Monday forenoon, but of that I am not certain. Unless
I hear from some one to-morrow (Heaven grant it may be thou !)
I shall have little peace till I reach home. As long as I do not
hear, I have not heart to hope.
I am tolerably strong, but have still a little uneasy feeling
in my breast. That, however, is fast wearing away, and-will not
trouble me much more. It is a terrible stroke of fate that thou
shouldst be so dangerously ill, when in all other respects Fortune
is so gracious. Scarcely a day passes but some pleasant recogni-
tion is given me. I was invited last Friday to dine with Ban-
croft and Cooper; on Saturday with Sir Edward Belcher and
Herman Melville ; on Monday I was applied to by the Phila-
delphia Mercantile Library Society to deliver a lecture for them,
and be paid seventy-five dollars, and so on, day after day. These
things seem like mockeries, sent to increase my bitterness of heart.
Again my friend and brother, Boker, has been gloriously success-
ful, and I can give him but half the joyous congratulation that I
ought. There may be some severe, chastening lesson in all this,
but I am too weak and blind to see it. I would give all, and
more than all, I possess to look on the future with the same
happy security as last spring. But I should write to cheer, not
to sadden thee, and unless I could cheer I had much better be
silent. I shall hardly need to write again before my visit. God
bless thee
TO GEORGE H. BOKER,
NEw York, October 8, 1850.
God bless you for your words of sympathy to me in these my
dark days 1 I cannot tell you how your letter touched my heart
and softened the bitterness of its grief. I do not write to burden
you with my own trials, to sadden you for my sake, but I must
say that it is inevitable. I must lose her. I cannot implore God
to spare her now, for it is too late ; I shall have but few more
days with her on earth. It was a terrible struggle to keep my
heart from rising in rebellion against Him, but the first agony of
the trial is over, and I am now too dead and benumbed in soul
for that. I have foreboded this from the beginning, but I shut
my eyes and would not see it. She, too, poor girl her whole
life has been full of trouble, for my sake, and all her hope was
to join me at last and share my destiny. I never knew what I
could bear till I saw her grief. But it will not do to write thus,
— you know it all. . . .
MARY A. G.NE W TA YLOR. 189
I was at home a day last week. I found Mary greatly changed,
and I only returned to make arrangements to leave here for two
or three weeks, so that I may be with her till the hour comes. I
expect to leave to-morrow, and may see you on the way, but
cannot tell. I have been detained so long here that there
will be no time to lose. But you must write to me when you
Call. . . .
I was obliged to deliver a poem before the societies of Colum-
bia College last night, according to appointment. It was an affair
of somewhat more than two hundred lines, –heroics, about equal
to, or perhaps better, than my Harvard poem. I wrote nearly the
whole of it on Sunday night, for I could not sooner bring my
hand to touch the hated task. It was the most arduous piece of
work I ever accomplished. I wondered at my good fortune, till
Stoddard learned to-day that the same day was your birthday.
Certainly, as your good Genius of Poetry hovered over you, con-
secrating you to fresh toils, he must have touëlled me with the
tip of his wing. “This, too, do I owe to thee, Giaffar !”
TO R. H. STODDARD.
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., October 22, 1850.
Your note came last night, but not so soon as I expected it,
or required it. What you say about “Proserpine” rejoiced me
greatly. Go on with your cry to Melpomene (may the divine
muse hear and bless you !), and don’t touch the first book till I
see it. If you work as you ought, you should finish the second
book before the year is out.
My head is swarming with ideas, an entirely new growth, –
stronger, freer, and sturdier, but springing up, alas, without the
light and warmth which a hopeful heart only can give. I have
not written much, though the call is upon me constantly. I
cannot touch the “ St. John ” — it is too human ; it comes too
near to my own sorrow. If I can, I will remove something else
from my conscience. There are two subjects pressing upon me,
— grand, strong, and full of the free breath of the woods and
hills. This calm, serene autumn weather fits me to undertake
them, and I shall try to do something before I return.
My dear friend, I am indeed grateful for your sympathy with
me in this terrible trial. It is better to love and lose than never
to have loved. This love henceforth shall be the consolation,
as it has been the happiness, of my life. But do not deceive
190 B.A. Y.A. RD TA YLOR.
yourself or try to deceive me with words of hope. There is no
hope ; the worst is certain. She may linger a little while longer,
—it may be weeks or it may be months, – but death is the end.
It seems to me that the crowning bitterness of the struggle is
over. I am no longer rebellious against God, as I have been,
but try to yield to his will. I see now a thousand warnings to
which I was always blind, - warnings that our vision of love
would never be fulfilled. . . .
TO JOHN B. PHILLIPS.
- KENNETT, October 28, 1850.
I know it will gladden your heart when I tell you that I am
writing this note in the chamber of my wife. Yes, after all our
trials, after all our sorrows, after years of weary waiting, Mary
is at last my own wedded wife, and will die bearing my name.
This is a poor recompense for all we have endured, but it is
something wrestéd from an unkind destiny, and I feel it as a
partial consolation in my grief. Mary seems dearer to me than
ever before ; and while I thank God for the angel he has given
me, I try to subdue the impatient grief of my heart, and believe
that since it is his will that she must die it must be good. I
am sitting by her bedside as I write these words. She is paler
and weaker than when you were here, but more calm and saint-
like in her pure and perfect beauty. There is no hope that she
can survive the winter. (God what terrible words are these !)
I try to be strong, — to be patient, and, if it may be, resigned.
We have had some heart-breaking hours, talking of what is be-
fore us, and are both better and calmer for it. I was reading to
her from the Bible the other day, when I came to some passages
that so gently and tenderly reproved my own rebellious heart I
could scarcely speak for a gush of repentant tears. Since then
I have striven hard, and am now patiently bowed to God’s will.
But I need much strength for all the agony that is yet in store.
Pray with me, my dear friend, that she, at least, may be sustained
and soothed in that terrible hour. . . . -
We were married on Thursday last, the 24th. There were
only three persons present, — Mary’s parents and my mother.
. . . I shall be obliged to leave for New York to-morrow. . . .
MARY A GNEW TA YLOR. 191
TO MARY AGNEW TAYLOR.
TRIBUNE OFFICE, Wednesday, 1 p. m., October 30, 1850.
. . . My first letter as a husband must be shorter than those I
shall write hereafter. I find a good deal of work waiting for
me. My substitute was not very satisfactory, though the best I
could get, and there has been much gratification expressed on
account of my return. If I were free of all pecuniary obligation
to the office or those connected with it, I would not regard this,
but leave my place entirely, to be with you. As it is, I will do
all I can. It is a great trial to both of us, but most to thee; yet
it seems inevitable. I know I am severely blamed by many,
who think it a matter of choice, and I can but wonder at the pa-
tience with which thou bearest the sad necessity of separation. I
hope it will not be long this time; I shall certainly see thee week
after next, but whether the first or last part I cannot now tell. . . .
Trust in God, my dear wife, and we shall learn to bear this bit-
ter sorrow meekly and patiently.
NEw York, November 3, 1850.
Your letter came yesterday morning, as I had hoped. It was
a great joy to get one written by my wife, though I could see
from the hand that it must have cost you much trouble to write
it. I had hoped, however, to hear that you were better. My
anxiety is not relieved, but I must bear it two days longer, as I
can hardly expect another letter before Tuesday morning. . . .
I have, within two or three days, written a poem called “Au-
tumnal Vespers,” the last stanza of which embodies this thought
[of submission]. It was written with a chastened feeling, as
yielding to God’s will, which made me strong for the time, or I
could not have written at all. This expression of my soul has
given me a sort of mournful comfort, and it may comfort you :
Our life is scarce the twinkle of a star
In God’s eternal day. Obscure and dim
With mortal clouds, it yet may beam for Him,
And darkened here, shine fair to spheres afar.
I will be patient, lest my sorrow bar
His grace and blessing, and I fall supine :
In my own hands my want and weakness are,
My strength, O God l in Thine.
My dear wife, I am trying to look calmly on the future. I
foresee that it will be stern and solemn, yet, with God’s blessing,
192 BA YARD TA YLOR.
not wholly dark. It remains for me to do what I have sworn to
do, as a Poet and a Man, with a more true and conscientious aim,
—more than ever to subdue and correct the restless, unenlight-
ened impulses of my nature, and so to strive with all that
drags us down to the degrading level of the world that I may at
last win a crown worthy to be worn with the blessing of thy love.
Thou wilt be ever with me in this struggle, and I suspect it will
not last very long. Forgive me for speaking of this. I would
not have you add my sorrow to your own, and I wished to show
the fountain whence I hope to draw that serene strength which
purifies the heart under affliction. It is wrong for either of us
to despair, – nor do we. I feel like a child worn out with weep-
ing, that lies, with only a quiet Sob now and then, on its moth-
er's breast. I am shielded by the arm of our great Father's
love, and lie trustingly in his embrace. Never, never has God
seemed so near, so kind, and so tender.
I cannot write to you on lighter subjects to-night, dear Mary.
My heart is full, though less sad since I have shared its thoughts
with you. . . .
TO R. H. STODDARD.
KENNETT SQUARE, CHESTER Co., PA., November 19, 1850.
I cannot write much to you to-night, but a word or two will
be enough to draw something from you in return. I have been
here six days. Mary was very weak when I reached home, and
has been growing weaker ever since. It seems impossible for
her to live many days in this condition. I find it a hard trial to
see her going from me with so slow and certain a decay. My
own health is already shattered, and if this were to last much
longer it would kill me outright. It is very hard to be resigned
to God's will ; do what we may, the heart will at times rebel.
I have done nothing ; I have no spirits to work.
. . . Did you see the Brooklyn announcement of my lecture ?
(“Bayard Taylor, the successful competitor for the Jenny Lind
prize” () It is simply infernal. Is that damned song to be the
only thing which will save my name from oblivion ? Stoddard,
I wonder that we poets are not Bedlamites in reality ; mankind
must certainly think us fools. Well, we have this advantage :
we believe no more than we choose of what men tell us of our-
selves, while men believe everything that we tell them of them-
selves.
MARY AGNEW TA YLOR. 193
It is late at night. I am alone in our old homestead. The
wind is whistling dismally in the trees, and the fire has gone
down. I feel too sad and desolate to stay awake, and will leave
you with a short good-night.
TO JOHN B. PHILLIPS.
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., November 23, 1850.
It is after dark, this raw, dismal night. The fire is simmer-
ing and flickering warmly on one side of me, and Mary lies
asleep, or nearly so. I have bethought me of my promise to
write, but I have nothing very cheerful to say. Mary is still
weaker; she cannot last long, and yet the principle of life seems
so strong in her frame that sometimes it is impossible for me to
realize that she must die. However, I am fully resigned to that,
and God has given me strength to bear it. I cannot stay with
her much longer, and she seems so to cling to me as the only com-
fort left her, that, as you may easily understand, my situation is
very painful. This constant anxiety of mind has at last begun to
affect my health. Since last May I have gone through more than
I supposed it possible for me to bear, and it will be some time
before I can recover from the effects of it. But I have resolved
to endure my trials manfully, to learn patience and submission.
It seems cowardly to shrink from the pain of my grief. No
doubt God sent it for some wise purpose, and I must not meas-
ure his decrees with my weakness and blindness.
Sometimes it seems to me that the path I early marked out for
myself, without knowing why (but the aim of which I now plainly
see), is still kept for me to tread. May there not be a destiny,
distinct and unchangeable from the cradle to the grave 2 Be
that as it may, these sorrows have lifted me into a purer region
of poetry, and I see heights to reach which I once thought above
my powers. I cannot talk of them now, with Mary lying pale
and quiet before me. I am writing this to lay a spirit of unrest,
and you must pardon my incoherence. . . .
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
NEw York, November 29, 1850 (Friday).
On reaching here last night, after an absence of two weeks, I
found your note, which, as it is not dated, may have been here
nearly the whole of the time.
VOL. I. 13
194 B.A. Y.A. RD TA YLOR.
I have sent your notice to the compositors ; it may partly an-
swer your end, though so late.
That I have not written you will readily pardon me ; though
I should not have been silent so long had I not supposed you
were in my debt. If I am not mistaken, I wrote last. How-
ever, I have been absent half the time for the past three months,
and so disturbed and unhappy while here that I had no heart
to write to any one. I do not like to write sadly to my friends,
and I have not been and am not able to write cheerfully.
Mary is sinking rapidly ; she cannot possibly survive another
month. I have been expecting this since last spring, and I can
scarcely yet resign myself to the blow.
We were married about a month ago, - she wished to bear my
name for a few days, at least. Do not congratulate me.
I feel wretched in body as well as soul; but that signifies noth-
ing. Those who are terribly afflicted are sure to live. It is only
the fortunate who are in danger of death. . . .
TO MARY AGNEW TAYLOR.
NEw York, Sunday afternoon, December 1.
It was so mild and fair this morning that I felt strong and
cheerful ; but now the clouds have come over the sky, and my
spirit begins to sink. However, I feel less depressed than when I
last wrote, though very anxious to hear from thee. No letter
has come, as yet, but I still hope for one to-night.
I am quite busy, so that I have not yet finished my lecture. I
find, however, that it need not be so long as I supposed. I am
obliged to write an article on California for the Whig Almanac,
which will take about two days. The printers have been waiting
for me two or three weeks. Greeley came back this morning ; I
have not yet had any conversation with him. It is now pretty
nigh settled that will not go to Washington. I can very
nearly promise positively to reach home on Wednesday. I must
finish this California article, which I cannot do at home on ac-
count of not having the Tribune files. I hope to get through in
time to leave Wednesday, but will not be later than Thursday.
So, you see, the half of our absence is already over.
Boker's play was given for the last time last night. I went to
hear it, and was delighted, though it was badly acted. Stoddard
came to me yesterday. He is unwell and dispirited, but I be-
lieve he will live long enough to do great things. Greeley’s boy
MARY A. G.NEW TA YLOR. 195
has twice sent a message to me from the spirit-world, - at least,
a request to speak to me. He lately rapped out on the floor a
number of lines of poetry, which are said to be quite good. In
spite of all, I will not believe that intelligent souls pass their
future lives in such trifling employment.
I think I shall write once again before I leave. I have, I be-
lieve, told thee everything that can interest thee. I look for-
ward with joy (the best joy I have left me) to the prospect of
being with thee again.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., December 4, 1850.
Your letter reached here the day after I left for New York,
and I did not receive it till my return to-day.
I hardly need tell you how much I regretted my absence from
New York. What might we not have said in two weeks I had
discovered a new beer-house which I thought would be exactly to
your taste, where we could have a quiet hour now and then.
But while you were in New York I was here, watching at the
bedside of my dying wife, and more wretched, in body and
mind, than I have ever been before. Mary has been sinking with
fearful rapidity for the last week or two, and she is now very
near her end. During my absence of two or three days in New
York the expression of her countenance has wholly changed.
The limes are sunken, as in death, and the eyes are large, clear,
and strangely bright. She is radiantly beautiful, but it is not
the beauty of earth. She can speak but a few words and in the
faintest whisper. It almost breaks my heart to see her suffer.
I have just left her for the night, and feel very weak and sad,
but can no longer delay sending you a few words. I bear up
under all this sorrow with what heart I have, bow myself to
God’s will, and look to Him for strength when the last trial comes.
It is unmanly to shrink, when Mary herself sets me such a di-
vine example of patience and resignation.
It is a blessing to me that I have this speech of poetry to em-
balm and consecrate my affliction. I experience a pious joy in
writing lines which will link our names to the same destiny. We
have loved so long, so intimately, and so wholly that the foot-
steps of her life have forever left their traces in mine. If my
name should be remembered among men, hers will not be for-
gotten.
196 BA YARD TA YLOR.
With the next year I shall commence a new epoch of my life.
My future has tumbled into ruin ; I must build another. I shall
take new resolves, swear new vows, and think new thoughts. I
try to think calmly, now, on all that has been and must be, and
often succeed ; but when I sit beside Mary, hour after hour,
looking on her pale, wasted face, I know nothing but the bitter-
ness of separation. It does not add to my pain, to write to you,
but rather relieves it for the time. I would have written more
frequently, but I feared to oppress you with my sad history.
Pray write to me again : it was wrong in you to withhold any
news of yourself. Believe me, my dear George, I have the same
interest in your doings as ever : if my thoughts are not with you
as frequently as in brighter times, they are none the less warm ,
and sincere. I shall write to you again in two or three days. I
have much to say that I cannot say now.
I saw the last night of the “Betrothal’’ in New York. It is
even better as an acting play than I had anticipated, but was
very badly acted. I have heard nothing but good of it, from all
quarters. If I had been at my post, I would have smuggled a
notice into the Tribune. Good-by. God bless you !
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., December 17, 1850.
I have been at home two weeks since my last flying trip to
New York, but it seems as many months l I think I have never
been more disturbed, restless, and entirely wretched in my life.
Mary is still lingering on, sometimes better for a day or two, and
then hanging on the verge of death ; suffering fearfully, yet
never losing her quiet patience. I have been with her almost
constantly, suffering scarcely less than she. Perhaps I ought
not to say this, but I have still more to bear than the loss of her.
It seems as if all the cares of my life are crowding up in the
rear of this great calamity. They are as nothing beside it, but
they help to bewilder me, and shake the trust and courage I was
beginning to attain. Well, God is above us all, and sees the
good end which is dark to us. I have resolved to be patient,
but cannot succeed as I ought.
I hoped to have heard from you before this, but perhaps your
new play is still on your hands. If so, I will forgive your writ-
ing till it is finished. But when the last couplet of the epilogue
is turned to your liking, sit down and give me a history of your-
Self for the last month or two, and what new shores are looming
MARY A. G.NE W TA YLOR. 197
in your future. Let us not lose sight of each other's hopes and
aspirations. I feel a powerful change working in myself, but as
yet I can only dimly see to what it is tending. Perhaps to noth-
ing, I sometimes think. If sorrow teaches song (a cruel teacher!)
I should be learning a great deal. . . .
My lecture in Philadelphia comes off on the 8th of January.
I have two in progress : “The Animal Man”—a glorification
of physical life, with its bearing on literature, art, etc. — and “The
Life and Genius of Schiller.” Now, which of these subjects is
best adapted to the meridian of Philadelphia 2 What will be
the character of my audience 2 Perhaps you can give me some
advice, for, being my first appearance there in that capacity, I
naturally desire not to fail.
So Tennyson is laureate. None fitter than he, and in him the
title loses none of the glory it took from Wordsworth. You
spoke of “In Memoriam.” In my opinion it is the first poem
which this generation has yet produced. God bless him for the
worthy consecration of a true friendship ! I cannot build such a
monument as that for the love I lose, but it has become so vital
a part of my nature that if I live at all it will live with me. I
am glad you understood so readily the feeling with which I wrote
the poem I sent you.
TO R. H. STODDARD.
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., December 27, 1850.
It is over. Perhaps you may already know it, but I wish to
tell you so before we meet. She died on Saturday last, and was
buried in the midst of that cruel storm on Monday. She is now
a Saint in heaven. She had no foes to pardon and no sins to be
forgiven. God help me to be worthy of her guarding care
through life and her welcome after death !
My dear friend, I cannot now write to you more. I will not
attempt to tell you all the anguish I have suffered. I have sub-
mitted myself to God's will, and neither hope for nor desire
consolation. The blow has shaken me terribly, but I have been
strengthened to bear it.
I shall return to New York on Monday night or Tuesday
morning, and hope to see you in better hopes and spirits. God
give you a happier fate than mine !
Several years later, when writing to a friend who
198 BA YARD TA YLOR.
had lost his wife, Bayard Taylor recurred thus to the
period of his own loss: “In my case all mention of
what I had suffered, even that which was meant for
sympathy and condolence, gave me pain, and I knew
not what I could say to you which might not wound
more than it would cheer. . . . I cannot attempt to
console you. All such attempts are useless. There
must be a great gulf of time between you and your
sorrow before you can contemplate it calmly, and
speak of it without pain. In fact, that you can never
expect to do. But you must force yourself to think
of something else, – you must shut your eyes on the
past, for a time, if you would have peace. There is no
doubt a terrible reproach in your grief, as there was
in mine, – that of not having sooner taken your
heart's fortune into your own hands, of not having
disregarded all worldly considerations, and united your
fates, leaving the future to God. There is no cure for
this reproach; you must resolutely turn away from it.”
How impossible it was for himself to get away from
the memory of what had been appears in a letter to
E. C. Stedman, written October 31, 1866, in which he
says, “These sad autumnal days depress me unaccount-
ably. I count the growth of the night with a sort of
horrible shrinking, and shall not recover my elasticity
until the 21st of December is over, and the Sunshine
begins to return. I suppose it is partly constitutional,
and partly the result of association.”
The closing entry in Bayard Taylor's journal for
1850 is a prayer, written on the last night of the
year: —
“Almighty Father, who knowest the burden of
every heart, help me to bear the cruel sorrow which
has fallen upon me. Remove the weakness and blind-
MARY AGNEW TAYLOR. 199
ness of my rebellious soul, that I may see thy ways
more clearly, and still the outcry of my heart. Soften
the bitterness of my grief, that I may not fail to praise
Thee and love Thee with the same confiding spirit as
of old. Let me believe that Mary has been gathered
to thy bosom, in mercy to her, and not in chastisement
to me. Let me know that she is still near me, that
she watches me in my desolation, that she will wel-
come me to a purer life when I pass away from this.
Suffer me to become all that she hoped of me, all that
I believe I may become, if thy blessing sanctions the
labors of my life. Help me to be purer and better
than I yet have been ; help me to toil more zealously
and faithfully than I yet have toiled. All that I have
I have from Thee ; let the powers Thou hast given me
ripen to the fulfillment of my best aims, the completion
of my destiny.”
CHAPTER IX.
A BOOK OF ROMANCES, LYRICS, AND SONGS.
1851.
So feeling dead, Art's habit held me bound !
The Picture of St. John.
WHEN the strain under which Bayard Taylor had
been living was relaxed, there followed a period of
dull pain which made it difficult for him to rouse him-
self to any activity. He resorted to his friends rather
than to his poetry. He began to look forward to some
distant plan of travel, and meanwhile plodded on with
his daily editorial work, answered one or two calls to
lecture, and made infrequent visits home. It was pain-
ful for him, however, to be at Kennett, and he preferred
having a visit from his father and mother and Mary's
father. His financial affairs were steadily improving;
he remarks in a letter to his mother, written early in
the year, that he had balanced his accounts, and found
that he had exactly three thousand dollars more than
he owed, and by investments in Tribune stock, which
was very remunerative, he looked forward to a speedy
release from all the drudgery of editorial work.
Although robust, he felt the effect upon his constitu-
tion of long-continued labor and anxiety, and early in
the spring began to consider the possibility of again
setting out on his travels. There was a talk at the
Tribune office of sending a correspondent to Central
A BOOK OF ROMANCES. 201
America, and he thought he might go; but the plan
fell through, and soon his old desire to see the East
took possession of him, and he made his arrange-
ments to go abroad in the fall as soon as Mr. Greeley
should return from London, where he had gone to re-
port the World’s Fair. He made diligent study of
books to qualify himself for the journey, and also set
his own house in order. He accepted from Mr. Put-
nam the task of editing a “Cyclopædia of Literature
and the Fine Arts,” for the money which it would bring
him ; but gave his special attention to preparing for
the press a volume containing the best of the poems
written since the publication of “Rhymes of Travel.”
He wrote a few poems chiefly under the impulse which
the new book offered, but labored more constantly in
revising those which he designed for the volume. He
wished to gather his past work and leave it in order,
for he felt that the future held other forms of verse
and fuller, larger life. He was slowly rising from
under the weight of sorrow.
TO GEORGE H. BOIKER.
NEw York, January 1, 1851.
It is a great deal to thank God as fervently as I do now, in the
midst of my grief. Your earnest and ready sympathy was my
greatest support in the terrible time that is over, and now this
noble proffer of your love is the only thing in the world that
could cheer and encourage me. . . . -
This, the beginning of the year, the turning-point of the cen-
tury, seems to me like the beginning of a new career. I hope
to live a nobler and better life than I have yet done. If it is
lonely and blighted on one side, it will still be happy, so long as
you are spared to me.
NEw York, January 25, 1851.
This is the third effort I have made at writing to you within a
week, and as I have all Saturday night before me I hope to get
202 BA YARD TA YLOR.
on without interruption. I have been constantly busy and per-
plexed since your letter came. The perplexity is now over, but
the business remains. My pecuniary interest in the “Tribune ''
required arranging, and I have succeeded in establishing it in
such a way that, if no misfortune intervenes, two years of steady
work will make me independent of all minor resources. After
buffeting six or seven years with these contemptible money dif-
ficulties, I begin to see smooth water ahead. My days of deg-
radation are over, thank God
. . . What you say about a dramatic style I fully appreciate.
It must necessarily be of slow growth, however. The same
thing has been a torment to me for a year or two, and I am just
beginning to believe that I have a poetic individuality, and may
in time give it expression. Let us wait five years before we be-
gin to despair.
I have been working a little at such odd hours as I could
snatch from my tread-mill. I have written a poem of near two
hundred lines, entitled “The Summer Camp.” + If it is not an
advance in some material points I shall be much discouraged;
yet now, while the reaction is on me, I cannot read it. “St.
John ” is untouched. I have three or four troublesome spirits to
lay before taking it up again. Beside, part of the story will re-
flect my own sorrow too keenly, and I do not now feel strong
enough to contemplate it face to face, and calmly describe its
features. The old spirit is stirring again, and I hope to do a
great deal before the spring is over. Would you were here, that
I might sometimes have your counsel ! I shall not publish my
last poem until you have first seen it.
So, George, you have found out my weakness, have you?
Well, since we have it in common, there is no use in trying to
conceal or suppress it. I confess to a most profound and abid-
ing tenderness of heart towards those I love, whether man or
* General Beale, who was Bayard Taylor's traveling companion in Cali-
fornia, and to whom he dedicated Eldorado, wrote to him after the appear-
ance of the volume containing “The Summer Camp,” “The description
of California summer scenery on the plains is the finest thing you have
yet accomplished; it is a daguerreotype of nature as it exists there in the
month of August. Apart from your very kind remembrance of me in it, I
admire it beyond measure.”
A BOOK OF IROMANCES. 203
woman. There is much more than an intellectual sympathy
between us. I trust my whole nature, good and bad, in your
hands. The thought of your sympathy with me in my trials
softens me as nothing else can. I take refuge in it when that
wild and desolate sense of wretchedness creeps over me, as it
sometimes will. But I am not so blind as not to see that life
still keeps many joys for me, and that by singly following the
voice of my better (poetic) nature I may make it glorious to
myself, however waste and profitless to the world. The years of
labor before us will indeed be glorious, working hand in hand,
helping each other on, and achieving at last, let us hope, a broth-
erhood of fame. Dear George, is it too much to anticipate such
a destiny ?
Do not fear as to the epic element. I am working up to it
gradually ; my ideas begin to take that form. In addition to
“St. John,” I have three subjects in my head for long and elabo-
rate poems, beside half a dozen such transition pieces as “Kub-
leh’” and “Hylas.” I think I know exactly how much of the
requisite power I possess, and in what particulars I am yet want-
ing; but that cannot be fairly shown without trial. I am deter-
mined to finish “St. John ” before summer. I must write occa-
sionally for the magazines, for I cannot yet do without their aid ;
but I think of preparing several prose papers, and keeping all
my poems by me till there is sufficient for a volume.
. By the bye, James' paid me a very elegant compliment, in his
speech at the printers' banquet the other night, referring to me
as the best landscape painter in words that he had ever known.
This is something from an Englishman, but it humiliates me at
the same time, for I want to do more than paint landscapes, or
even portraits, – St. Johns and Holy Families, at least. But it is
not good to say too much about one's aspirations, when their ful-
fillment, if it ever come, is still so far off. I have given you
enough of what would be egotism to any one else. You must
expect this, however, for I expect it and desire it of you.
TO JOHN B. PHILLIPS.
NEw York, February 19, 1851.
Your letter reached me to-day. I am very glad that you have
written to me so frankly and fully of your feelings and desires.
What you say surprises me somewhat, since you never intimated
1 G. P. R. James, the novelist.
204 BAYARD TA YLOR.
to me the existence of this current in your nature ; but it also
rejoices me. I have frequently wondered how, with your keen
and vital sympathy with all that is great and glorious in litera-
ture and art; with your sound habits of thinking, your good
judgment, and your clear and comprehensive view of human
nature, — of man in the abstract, — how, with all these rare re-
quisites of an author, you had never been visited with the impulse
of utterance, that passionate hunger of the soul, which only finds
food in expression. Now, I speak coolly and impartially. I am
not looking at you through the warm light of our long-tried love;
I place you in the clear atmosphere of the intellect, and try to
see you with its searching eyes.
I think I wholly understand your state of mind. I rejoice in
it, as I have said ; and yet I scarcely know how to counsel you.
Are you aware of the toil, the disappointment, and the anxiety
which the best minds must endure, often for a long time, before
there is the first dawning of success 2 Have you ever struggled
with your own thought till you have compelled it to wear the
poor livery of language 2 Have you mastered it, and wrought in
it and with it, as a sculptor in his clay, a mechanic with his
tools? Have you been tortured by reluctant phrases as by dev-
ils, and had whole days of Sunshine blackened by the lack of one
necessary word 2 Can you conquer the resistance of your imag-
imation, your feeling, your reflection, to be put into speech, and
make the very heat of effort serve for the glow of a genuine in-
spiration ? Tell me, John, not whether you have felt all this
already, because that could not be ; but have you thought of it,
— have you a glimmering of it, when this desire for achieving
something better is uppermost in your mind 2 The restless, tor-
menting necessity of giving voice to his individual nature makes
the author ; but to fulfill this necessity is labor without end. The
soul must sometimes sweat blood. Nothing great is achieved
without the severest discipline of heart and mind ; nothing is
well dome that is done easily.
Now, with time and toil and discipline, I believe you can do
much, – enough, at least, to bring you into that charmed circle
of artist and author life, which is the only real life of this world.
Only, if you begin it, you must expect a thorny path at the out-
set. You must determine to work hard and work always; to
overcome discouragement and despondency, and almost despair;
to look into your heart of hearts, and bring up to the light the
A BOOK OF ROMANCES. 205
profoundest experiences of your life. Besides, you must have
enough confidence in yourself to lift you out of all these pits,
and enable you to bear the unutterable disgust of contemplating
what you have previously done, when you have climbed to a
higher platform. I write this with the more lively sense of its
importance, since I am at this moment unable to read a line I
ever wrote without a hopeless sinking of the heart. It is the
natural and unavoidable reaction from a long poem, which I fin-
ished two or three days ago.
The matter stands thus with me : As a poet, I would join with
you at once in all your aspirations, cheer you in every possible
way, and rejoice to see you cut adrift from all your previous
associations, and laboring with a single soul to do honor to the
divinity of our choice, — yours and mine ! As a man who has
seen something of the world, I should caution you against has-
tily breaking up your present connections, if in so doing you
incur much present or prospective loss. I should tell you that it
is possible, to some degree, to serve both God and Mammon, —
in fact, I do it daily, but I hate Mammon while I serve him :
there's my safety. I should ask you whether it would not be
well to commence your new work now, devoting all your leisure
to it, and all your time and life, as soon as you are certain of a
fair provision for your creature wants. These latter suggestions
are not those of my heart ; they come from an acquired pru-
dence and caution which I cannot wholly disregard. Would that
you were here for a day or two Why can you not slip away
for a few days and join me? We might then settle the matter in
secret conclave. I try to write with all candor, but on looking
back over what I have written the tone seems to me cautious
and guarded. The more I think of it the more my heart enters
into your plans, but I do not wish to throw its heedless enthusi-
asm into the scale in so important a matter.
NEw York, March 6, 1851.
I have been looking for some days for a letter from you. Why
have you not written ? I am anxious to hear from you again,
that I may write you a more intelligible letter than I fear my
last has been. I wrote that letter late at night, with not the
clearest head and in not the most genial mood. I was suffering
from a fit of intense disgust at everything I have ever done. The
fit has partly passed off, - enough, at least, to make me desirous
206 B.A. YA R D TA YLOR.
of showing a more active sympathy with your plans. If we
could but talk together | Why can’t you pay me a visit here,
after your busy spring season is over ? At all events, you must
meet me in Kennett in three weeks. I shall stay about three
days at home, and expect to deliver my lecture in the Square.
I have not written a line of poetry since I last wrote to you, -
cannot. But this is a natural revulsion, after getting off about
five hundred lines. I am miserably ignorant yet, and must de-
vote more time to study, or give up the hope of promotion.
I am living a busy, excited life here — scarcely a waking mo–
ment unoccupied. This is best, for when I am alone and unable
to write — given up, in fact, to my memories — the sensation of
utter loneliness and desolation is too heavy to bear. I try to
look the future steadily in the face, but it shows me such a
blighted life that even the past is less sad. I try to find help in
the recollection of God’s infinite wisdom and mercy, but this
seems unavailing to stop the outcry of my heart. Forgive me
for this ; it is painful for me to write, and must pain you to read
it. But I seem lost. . . .
NEw York, March 21, 1851.
I begin to feel alarmed at receiving no word from you. Why
do you not write 2 What did I write to you ?— not the last time,
but the time previous. I dashed off the letter late at night, just
after receiving your letter and after a hard day's work, when my
faculties were not the clearest. I have but a glimmering recol-
lection of the general drift of it, but something seems to tell me
that it was not such a letter as I ought to have written. The
truth is, I have been in such a bitter and gloomy mood this win-
ter that I am not my true self more than half the time. I can-
not work with any spirit ; another such winter will kill me, I am
certain. I shall leave next fall on a journey somewhere, — no
matter where ; probably I shall go to Italy, Greece, Egypt, Pal-
estine, etc. (This to you alone.) I can do so without much
difficulty or loss to myself.
TO GEORGE II. BOKER.
NEw York, March 28, 1851.
This delicious weather gives me a new life to-day. Your let-
ter this morning found me in a mood more like content than I
have felt for many months, and I read it with a deep, subdued
A BOOK OF ROMA WC.E.S. 207
joy. I have an idle hour before me, and I cannot flatter this
happy mood so successfully as in a talk with you. . . .
I look forward with delight to the prospect of meeting you.
I shall get to Philadelphia in the Friday morning train, and
leave on Saturday morning. The Central American trip is unde-
cided, but I am certainly going somewhere, though I may not
leave before the end of summer. There is so much to be said on
this subject that I shall wait till I see you. What you say
about yourself at the same time gratifies and troubles me. I
have thought the same thing of your quiet Philadelphia life, and
I am glad that you see it in a stronger light than I do ; but
there must be a change sometime. Destiny is not blind ; we
think we are groping in the dark, but we are always guided by a
wise hand. Your fetters cannot harm you much, so long as you
feel them to be fetters. And yet, sometimes, I think such fetters
better than the freedom of the world.
Do you know, George, that I have a similar presentiment
about the days we shall spend together. When it will be I
know not, for mine will be a wild and wandering career ; but
there-will come a time when we can lie alone under the summer
trees, and look upon our life as calmly as on the white clouds
along the sky.
I have been writing a little at times ; but I cannot write in
the old vein. My old ideas and sensations are going from me.
I trust they will be replaced by better. . . .
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
NEw York, April 19, 1851.
Your note came while I was absent in Pennsylvania, and so
my acknowledgment has been delayed. Stoddard and I under-
stood from the Astor clerk that Mrs. Fields was ill, which had
hastened your return. I hope she is entirely recovered, and that
both of you are enduring this dismal weather with a patience be-
coming to good Christians. As for me, I am utterly dispirited
and disgusted with it. Everything goes wrong with me except
sleeping, and I get little of that to do. I should like to be
drowned during these days, like a fly in soap-suds, to be resusci-
tated when the sun shines on me.
I saw so little of you while you were here that a great deal I
intended saying remained unsaid. One of the most important
topics was this : I should like to bring out a volume of poems
208 BA YARD TA YLOR.
next fall, and, furthermore, I should like to make some arrange-
ment by which they can be clothed with the incomparable type
and paper, and sanctified by the all-potent imprint of Ticknor,
Reed & Fields. I have come to the belief that poetry sells bet-
ter coming from you than from any other publisher, and have
prevailed on Putnam (to whom I am bound for future works) to
let me apply to you on the subject.
I have poems enough, published and unpublished, to make a
volume of one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty
pages, which is quite large enough ; the title to be, “A Book
of Romances, Ballads, and Lyrics,” or something better, if I can
find it. The poems will be classified : the Romances, which open
the volume to include “Hylas,” “Kubleh,” “Ariel in the Cloven
Pine,” and five or six others of like character : the Ballads will
contain “Manuela " and three unpublished California poems; and
the Lyrics a great mass of heretical, bacchanalian, revolutionary,
and audacious material. I want to square accounts and take a
fresh start, having a long poem commenced and others in con-
templation.
I am getting into a very different sphere of thought, and feel
that, whether it be better or worse, I never can wholly return to
the themes I have hitherto tried. But this is idle talk. You
have my idea : let me know yours. Have no hesitation what-
ever in speaking your mind “right out.”
I am very glad you are going to give Stoddard a chance. If
you can only do one of the two, do his. Remember me always
to all friends.
TO HIS MOTHER.
NEw York, April 29, 1851.
. . . We have had a terrible stormy time here till within a
few days. I have had a bad cold, but have now got over it, and
am as well as usual. The “Tribune" is still flourishing. . . .
Oliver Johnson has just arrived from Ohio to help in Greeley's
absence. I shall not be much overworked through the summer,
but I have had so much to do and to bear for a year past that I
want to spend next winter in Italy or the East. I cannot remain
here without being obliged to work, and as I can take a six
months' trip without expense I shall persuade Greeley to let me
off when he returns.
A BOOK OF ROMANCES. 209
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, May 1, 1851.
. . . I wish I could write something good of myself. I am
not as healthy in body as I should be, and this keeps me con-
stantly depressed. I am haunted sometimes by a dreary idea of
having lived in vain. This is, of course, a morbid state of feel-
ing, and it will not last, yet it makes everything drag with
me. I cannot write a line of poetry ; I can scarcely read it. I
have tried by turns “In Memoriam,” Shelley, Wordsworth, and
Schiller, but always close the book with a very sickness of soul.
Nothing, I am sure, will wholly cure this disturbance but a
change of scene and a relief from my business duties here. I
cannot leave before September, however, and must do my best
till then. This is not, George, a vain regret for what I have lost.
I have resolved to bear all that has been placed upon me silently
and as submissively as I can : but in all my hopes, all my am-
bitions, all my lookings towards the future, there is a continual
blind pain, – the motions of a passion whose office has been de-
stroyed. It is something like that vague distress which is felt
in the place of an amputated limb. But I know my ailment,
and there is therefore hope for me. No doubt all will be right
again in good time.
The Tribune people oppose my going up the White Nile, so
I am afraid that splendid plan will fall to pieces. In that case
I shall sail direct for Gibraltar, visit Granada on one side and
Fez on the other, and then to the Orient, taking Italy on my
way. I shall push into Persia, or climb Caucasus, or make my
way into some other remote and unvisited part of the East.
There is no use in continually walking in other people's tracks.
Would to Heaven you could join me !
Ticknor & Co. (silly souls () have agreed to bring out a volume
of poems for me next fall, at their own risk. I have enough to
make a volume of one hundred and fifty pages, which will
square accounts and leave me a clear field for better under-
takings. I am getting out of the age of sensations and short
poems. Ticknor & Co. seem to think my book will sell, and I
hope it may ; mevertheless, I was a little astonished at their
ready acceptance.
An Italian sculptor, named Piatti, is now engaged in busting
me. He desired to do it for his own private amusement. It
VOL. I. 14
210 B.A. YARD TA YLOR.
promises to be a good thing, but with the thinnest nose ever cast
in plaster. The hair is bacchic and luxuriant, the mouth heavy,
and the eyes close together. The face looks to me like a cross
between Coptic and Tartar. By the bye, has Brackett a model
from which he could take a cast of your bust 2 I should like
to elevate our ghostly semblances on two pillars in my room. . . .
TO JAMES T. FIELDs.
NEw York, May 2, 1851.
Thank you for your ready acquiescence in my plan. I shall go
to work and arrange you a volume which, I trust, will be no dis-
credit to your house or to me. As to the terms, I expected no
more. I never write poems for pay, and am not anxious to make
money by them.
If the book sells well, finds appreciative readers, and the pub-
lishers are satisfied, I shall be content, whether or not it puts
money in my purse. I know perfectly well the difference be-
tween poetry and prose. My “Rhymes of Travel,” miserable as
they are, have made some small returns to Putnam and to my-
self, and as the volume I am now preparing will be infinitely
better I think it ought to have a more ready sale. However, if
a volume of poems can be sold at all in this country, it is with
your imprint.
When you have time let me know your objections to my title.
I have tried it with Ripley, , and Stoddard, and they all
think it very good. I like the quaintness of calling the volume
“A Book of ’’ etc., etc. Besides, “Romances” is an unappro-
priated word for poetry, yet the best word for such poems as
“Hylas.” Ask Whipple what he thinks of it. I must, in all
cases, avoid “and Other Poems.” What do you say to “Mon-da-
min ; the Spirit of Maize ; with Lyrics and Rhymed Romances 2 ”
I don’t like it, yet it might serve your purposes better. By the
bye, the “Spirit of Maize '' is not corn brandy, but an Indian
divinity. The poem is from an African legend. To get a plain,
simple, direct title is the most difficult thing in the world. I
shall try again, however, but I should like very much to retain
the word “Book.” I suppose, if you get the copy complete
some time in August, it will be in ample season. Of course you
can bring out the volume when it best suits your interests.
I hope to visit Boston at Commencement time to hear your
poem. I have such pleasant recollections of Phi Beta Kappa
A BOOK OF ROMANCES. 211
day that I want to participate in the jubilee once more before
going off to join the Bedouins. I have no fear of Boston on the
score of morality, but, judging from the reputation of our city
in New England, you should rather dread to see me among you.
I hope you do not mean that Boston is dull because it is moral.
In that case there is no hope of our in provement.
Don’t let books bury you up entirely. If your eyes are blinded
by the Traffic, bathe them with the lotion of Helicon. Anoint
your wearied faculties with the grease which drips from Apol-
lo's chariot-wheels. You will find it a spiritual Holloway’s Oint-
ment, healing with a touch the wounds of your slavery. But
enough of this nonsense. Write soon.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, May 22, 1851.
I know I deserve your brotherly rebuke for this unaccountable
fit of despondency, but its cure seems almost out of the reach of
my will. Its causes are partly physical, for, to tell the truth, I
am troubled with a feeling of weakness in the lungs and a general
sluggishness of the whole nervous system. This warm summer
weather operates favorably, however, and though I shall have a
double share of work to do for three months to come I now
hope to hold out till the fall brings me release. A winter in the
Orient will restore my health, and enable me to begin with fresh
spirit the works for which I am now gathering strength. But do
not speak of my having achieved anything as a poet. Could you
know how utterly discouraged I sometimes feel, - how, com-
pared with the originals in my brain, all my best poems seem
failures, – you would understand my present state of feeling.
Your kind anticipations of fame humble me to the dust. I have
almost ceased to expect appreciation from the world at large, but
so long as I have yours and that of a few who know me I shall
not complain.
Can you imagine how it is that while the ideas of poems come
to me as constantly as ever, and the craving for expression is just
as strong, I can only write with the greatest difficulty 2 Some
electric connection between thought and speech seems to be lost.
It puzzles and distresses me. For a week or two I have been
trying to write a poem which weighs sorely on my conscience,
and am now nigh ready to give up in despair. There is no pleas-
ure in these poetic pains, I assure you. I can only cross my
212 BA YARD TA YLOR.
hands, and say with the Turks, “It is the will of God l’” and
wait for brighter days. Seriously, dear George, though I am
half ashamed to show myself to you in such a pitiful light, these
things all combine to depress me. I think the best medicine
would be a week of your society, and, if you love me, let me
have it soon.
NEw York, May 29, 1851.
I have been working harder than ever for a week past, and
can only have a few words with you now at the fag end of the
day. When will you come to New York 2 I should like to pass
some of these bright mornings or cool summer nights with you,
particularly now, when I need your advice and criticism in rela-
tion to my new volume. I want to make a decent book, -some-
thing, if possible, which shall put a stop to all this slang about
“promise ; ” for if I have yet performed nothing, I never shall.
The volume, I am sure, will decide the question whether I am to
be acknowledged as a true poet ; for whatever my friends may
think, I am well aware that my literary reputation in general de-
pends on my books of travel. I look forward to the publication
as a test in this respect, but without the least concern ; for the
judgment of critics cannot change my judgment of myself. There
are two or three poems which I am doubtful about admitting ;
among these, “The Tulip-Tree” and “Earth-Life” (a horrid
title, this last). You will hardly remember them. The “Chant
of the Dreams ” I shall of course omit. Some that I shall in-
clude were written from a lower platform of thought, but they
do not attempt more than they compass, and are therefore com-
plete so far as they go. . . .
Stoddard wants me to commence the Romances with “Love and
Solitude.” I scarcely know what to think about it. Pray give
me your counsel. What would be your own inclinations in a sim-
ilar case ? It is an embodiment of happy love, with a presenti-
ment (unconscious, perhaps) of coming evil. The poem was com-
menced before this sorrow fell on me, and I found a melancholy
solace in completing it. I have tried to soften the bitterness of
my grief by giving it poetical expression, and perhaps at some
future day I may publish all poems which sprang from my love,
—but nothing now which refers directly to my loss. You know
the idea of “Love and Solitude,” and I shall include or omit it
as you advise.
I send with this a new poem, which will go in the volume. I
A BOOK OF ROMANCES. 213
finished it to-day, after laboring on it at odd hours and half-hours
for a week. It was written piecemeal, as I am obliged to write
everything now. This ruinous occupation of mine, I am afraid,
will destroy my poetry. Just think of writing one stanza in the
morning, one at noon, and one at midnight, — and so on till the
thing is done ! Instead of painting on a free canvas, I must work
in mosaic. Scrutinize this poem severely. It must be perfect of
its kind, or it is worth nothing. It is too near and warm in my
mind, as yet, for me to stand off and look at it calmly.
My health is still indifferent, and I am convinced that nothing
short of rest and a milder climate next winter can prevent some
chronic derangement of the lungs or nerves. I have rallied some-
what from my terrible fit of despondency, and will try to avoid
another henceforth.
NEw York, June 5, 1851.
It was kind in you to send me a good long letter while I was
lying all alone in my room, with nothing else to do but take vil-
lainous doses of medicine. Stoddard was here while I was at the
height of fever, with a letter half written to you, so I don’t know
what terrible things he has said of my attack, which was simply
the crisis of a long course of derangement. It came upon me all
at once, shook me pretty severely for a day or two, and has now
gone again, leaving me quite weak, but otherwise sound. This is
four days that I have been alone in my room, and the seclusion is
most refreshing, now that I can read a little and write a little.
This little attack, too, seems to have purged the acrid humors
from my heart. I feel to-night a tranquil sense of happiness, of
tender reconciliation with the world. I trust I have wholly
thrown off that moody melancholy with which I have so long af-
flicted you in my letters. But looking back over the past spring
is a most dismal experience, — too dark and heavy to recover
from so suddenly.
You see, by dint of hammering away at the cursed fetters
which bound my poetry, I broke loose, and accomplished a rather
laborious fancy about a pine-tree. I began the next night on
“The Soldier and the Pard,” which was stopped by my illness;
but that and one American story must I finish in time for my
volume, so as to complete the plan. These two latter things have
been vegetating in my thoughts for a year or two, and are all
complete but the writing. I shall have six romances to lead off
with. The “Pine-Tree” is intended for one.
214 BA YARD TA YI, OR.
I have been fortunate in frequently seeing Jenny Lind and her
friends during their stay here. She is the only great, unques-
tioned genius in woman’s form I have ever known, and the more
I see her the more I reverence her truth, her purity, her faith in
art as the crown and glory of our nature. You should see her
face when she speaks of these things. And with all this, she is
more truly feminine than the whole herd of our spiritual, inner-
lived, and sweet-sympathy-craving women writers. If you have
not already imagined that Jenny Lind was all this, think of it
when you next hear her sing. . . .
TO JAMES T, FIELDS.
NEw York, June 9, 1851.
I was in bed nearly all last week, or I should have sent you a
line sooner. This slavish life and villainous weather combined
brought on a bilious attack, which, if I had not possessed a very
accommodating constitution, would have racked me severely. As
it is, I am at work again, busily preparing my poems to make a
decent appearance before the world. I do not feel satisfied with
your reluctant consent to my title, and, though I still hold it to
be a good one, the fact of your not thinking so — you, of all men,
being the best judge of good titles — makes me distrust myself.
Pray tell me, candidly, your original objection to it. I have writ-
ten to Boker, and have consulted all my friends here, with the
most triumphant verdict in its favor. That you may see how I
want it to look I inclose a mimic title-page.
In studying over the plan of the book, I have resolved to exer-
cise the severest judgment upon all my published poems, mer-
cilessly casting out all that do not satisfy me, and to admit a
greater number of unpublished poems. The book must have no
half-way character; it must be either something or nothing. My
very life's blood is in some of the poems I shall include. .
TO IIIS MOTHER.
* NEw York, July 30, 1851.
. . . I shall most probably leave in the Franklin, which sails on
the 20th. I am very anxious for the time to come, not so much
for the sake of getting away as for the relief which travel will
afford me, and the renewed health and spirits which I am sure of
obtaining. I am still engaged in studying the route over which
I shall pass and getting all possible information in advance. It
will make the trip much more interesting and easy to me. . . .
A BOOK OF ROMANCES. 215
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
NEw York, August 2, 1851.
. . . Whipple wrote to me that you would be in the White
Mountains about two weeks, so I suppose this will find you in
Boston. I hope to see you soon. My health has been bad this
summer, and I wait with intense longing for the time of leaving
for Europe. I shall sail on the 20th of September, and be ab-
sent eight or nine months.
My poems are ready for the printer. The work is all done,
and I hope to read all the proofs before starting, perhaps to take
a few copies with me. Can this be 2 When you think best I
will go to Boston with the copy.
TO GEORGE H. BOECER.
NEw York, August 2, 1851.
. . . My poems are ready for the press, thank Heaven —all
revised and fairly copied and arranged. It is a great relief, for
the exercise of mind which it hast cost me, in addition to my
other duties and labors, was most exhausting. I look forward
with the most intense longing and delight to the prospect of get-
ting away. I verily believe another year of my present life
would put an end to me.
The book contains all I have written up to the present time,
and more than half of it will be now first published. This circum-
stance will probably help its sale, but that is a matter which, on
my own account, I care little about. I hope it will pay the pub-
lisher, but I don’t publish it for the sake of profit.
I had a letter from Powers the other day. He says nothing of
Read. I shall sail from here on the 20th of September. I think
my brother will go out with me, to spend the winter in Germany,
and return with me in the spring. Unfortunately, he cannot go
the whole round. Ah, if you could go, George ' If we could
sail on the Nile together, or guide our camels over the Desert
As a poet, the trip would be as advantageous to you as to me.
NEw York, August 17, 1851.
I only have time to-night for a line or two. I hope to leave
the country by the 10th or 11th of September. Greeley’s return
releases me two weeks sooner than I anticipated, but not too
soon, for I am fagged out, weak, dull, and miserable. I am in a
216 BA YARD TA YLOR.
fever of impatience to be away, - to reach the solitude of the
seas, where no thought of work can annoy me. I shall visit home
week after next. If you are in Philadelphia by that time, won’t
you go out with me to my father's. I shall only be there three
days. But I don’t absolve you from your promise of a week
here. It will be a long time before we meet again, as I shall be
gone at least ten months. I was at Boston a week ago. The
printers have all my copy in hand and I shall read the proofs
before starting. The book will have to stand or fall by its own
merits, as I shall not be here to help it.
My “Cyclopædia of Literature and the Fine Arts” is nearly
finished. A week's hard work will carry me through. Would
to Heaven the week were over ! I’ve half a mind to keep you
in the dark about this Dictionary, but it’s really not worth many
words: a piece of hack-work I am doing for Putnam, - nothing
more. It will give me the means of traveling two months in
the Orient ; so, blessed be the Dictionary 1
TO JAMES T. FIELDS. -
NEw York, August 22, 1851.
Since writing you, two or three days ago, I have made another
change in my plans. I shall now leave in the City of Manchester,
which sails from Philadelphia on Thursday next. I am offered
a free passage in her, and want to take advantage of it. This
will hurry me somewhat, but I can do it, and the sooner I get
away, the better in every respect.
If you could go, I would wait ; but as you have given it up,
in the words of Robinson Crusoe, “I must finish my journey
alone.” -
I received some proof on Wednesday night, and sent it back
yesterday; the second sheet has not come to hand. Please send
me some more by to-morrow (Saturday) evening's mail, directed
to this place, and until Tuesday evening direct to Philadelphia,
at the office of “Graham's Magazine.” After Tuesday it will be
too late to reach me.
I can, however, read all the Romances, and for the rest I must
depend on the printers. If they stick faithfully to copy I have
little fear of errors. Pray don’t let them take any liberties
whatever, unless to correct bad spelling. Would you be kind
enough to look over the proofs of those poems which are in
MS. 2 It would oblige me very much. The proof sent to me
A BOOK OF ROMA NCES. 217
was remarkably correct, except where they did not follow copy.
I am very exact in my punctuation, but they tried to improve it,
and blundered. I hope the volume will be successful. My ab-
sence, I suppose, will rather help its sale than otherwise ; but at
any rate, I am determined you shall lose nothing by it. If it
shall not have paid expenses by the time I return, I shall will-
ingly make up the difference.
“A Book of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs” was
published by Tickmor, Reed & Fields in the fall, after
its author had again set out on his travels. He dis-
missed it from his mind as soon as he had performed
the necessary labor upon it, and hardly recurred to it
again in his thought, for such poetic purpose as he had
lay now in new directions. He scarcely knew, indeed,
how great was his relief until he was once more in the
forced rest of an Atlantic voyage, and then the charm
of the sea came flowing in upon his tired mind and
body with an inexpressible power of soothing. The
end of the voyage found him refreshed and even eager
for the scenes and persons which lay before him.
“These two weeks which have elapsed since I left
home,” he writes to Mr. Boker, “ have made a differ-
ent man of me. We found the ocean in a delicious
state of calm, and for four days I lay in the shade,
looking out on the blue water and enjoying — brain,
heart, and limb — the most perfect rest. After this
sedative, the medicine which I most needed, the fresh
sky and bracing air of these northern latitudes have
been a wonderful tonic to my relaxed nerves. The
sea spoiled but one of my days, and gave the others
so much pure inspiration, so much and so varied en-
joyment, that I almost regret our approach to land.
I take delight in living again; the very circulation of
my blood, warmer and quicker than it has moved for
many months, gives me pleasure. And under all the
218 B.A. Y.A.R.D TA YLOR.
desolation of the grief that has been consuming my
heart the old hopes and dreams and resolves are com-
ing to life once more.”
Bayard Taylor was accompanied by his brother
William in the early part of his journey. They
landed at Liverpool, and after a pleasant stay in
Warwickshire went up to London, where they saw
the World’s Fair and Bayard met again old friends
as well as made new personal acquaintance with the
Brownings, Robert Owen, Lady Stuart Wortley, John
Kenyon, and others. They left London September
27th for the Continent, and went by Heidelberg and
Nürnberg to Vienna, where they parted company,
and Bayard Taylor pursued his way alone to Triest,
whence he went by Smyrna to Alexandria. He de-
tailed his experiences in letters to the “Tribune,”
which he reprinted several years later when he col-
lected a number of papers in the sketch-book entitled
“At Home and Abroad.” The only poetical record
was in two short poems, “Smyrna” and “To a Per-
sian Boy, in the Bazaar at Smyrna.”
CHAPTER X.
TRAVELS IN THE EAST.
1851–1852.
Beyond the dark-blue, dimpled sea
Lie sands and palms, the Nile's wide wealth of corn,
And soaring pylons, granite roofs upheld
By old Osirid columns: there the sun
Sheds broader peace in all his aged beams,
And hoary splendor on uncrumbled stone.
Prince Deukalion.
The Poet came to the Land of the East,
When spring was in the air:
The Earth was dressed for a wedding feast,
So young she seemed, and fair;
And the Poet knew the Land of the East, —
His soul was native there.
The Poet in the East.
THE plan which Bayard Taylor had formed of
spending the winter in Egypt was due partly to a be-
lief that the climate would offer a cure for the affec-
tion of the throat from which he was suffering, partly
to the fact that the country would afford fresh mate-
rial for letters to the “Tribune,” and partly also to a
desire which he had to come into close contact with a
life which had always made an indefinite but power-
ful appeal to his imagination. “The journey,” he
writes, “was simply a change of position, from assist-
ant editor to correspondent, enabling me to obtain the
strength which I sought without giving up the service
on which I relied for support.” He had scarcely
landed at Alexandria before he began to feel the re-
storative charm of the air. “I have not felt so well
220 B.A. YA R D TA YLOR.
22
and strong since leaving home,” he writes to his
mother, “as during the day and a half I have been in
Egypt. The air, the climate, the sky, the scenery, -
everything combines to make me cheerful. The cli-
mate is delicious, the very air a luxury to breathe.”
Out of the months which he spent in Egypt, Syria,
and Asia Minor came the poems which he afterward
collected in the volume of “Poems of the Orient.”
“I thought, and I think so still,” says Mr. Stoddard,
“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, or Moore would have reflected it with
greater fidelity in “Lalla Rookh.’”
He landed at Alexandria November 4, 1851, and
after a few days’ stay went on to Cairo, and thence up
the Nile to Khartoum. From this place he ascended
the White Nile as far as the country of the Shillooks,
and returning was again in Cairo April 1, 1852. By
the few opportunities which he had he sent to America
his letters to the “Tribune,” and wrote to his home
friends, especially anxious to relieve his mother of the
concern which she might feel as to his safety, since
absurdly exaggerated reports had appeared in the pa-
pers regarding his proposed journey.
TO IIIS MOTIIER.
CAIRO, EGYPT, November 14, 1851.
. . . You need be under no apprehension about my trip into
the interior. I am not going to the Niger nor to the source of
the Nile, nor where nobody else has ever been. I am going to
I(hartoum in Nubia, as I expected to do on leaving home, and as
I assured you all. Put no faith in newspaper reports from peo-
ple who don't understand geography. The journey is long and
TRA VELS IN THE EAST. 221
toilsome, but here, where the people ought to know something
about it, they tell me there is no danger from the Arabs and that
the trip will be most interesting. . . . I engaged a dragoman
yesterday. . . . The American consul assures me..that he is one
of the best in Egypt. It would be very difficult to travel with-
out an interpreter, although I have already picked up consider-
able Arabic. Besides, this man understands the desert thoroughly,
and will be not only a protection, but a sort of companion. He
is a brown fellow, from Upper Egypt, wears the Arabic dress,
and is acquainted with many of the government officials. He
speaks English and Italian very well. I am going to don the
red cap and sash, and sport a Sabre at my side. To-day I had
my hair all cut within a quarter of an incli 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. My
throat gives me no trouble. I wear no cravat, and shall get an
Egyptian shirt which is open at the neck and has no collar. . . .
Give my love to all at home, including those of whom I think
so often when I feel what I have lost. Tell them I do not travel
to escape from my sorrow, but to learn to bear it more patiently.
It is always with me, but more subdued and resigned than be-
fore. Remember me kindly to all who inquire. I think of all
my friends, perhaps more than they suppose, and am grateful
for the interest they take in my wanderings. . . .
UPPER EGYPT, NEAR THEBEs, December 3, 1851.
We are now approaching the town of Kenneh (within forty-
eight miles of Thebes), and as I hope to meet an acquaintance of
mine from New York there I cannot let the opportunity slip
of sending you a few lines. It is now sixteen days since we left
Cairo, and we have come rather more than four hundred miles.
It is the most delightful journey I ever made, and each day I
feel in better health and spirits. We have had no trouble of
any kind. My dragoman is a most honest and faithful fellow,
the sailors are the simplest, most ignorant, and best hearted peo-
ple in the world, and my fellow-traveler is a man out of a million.
The climate is like that of our June, and I cannot conceive a
more healthy life than that we lead. Egypt has disappointed
me in every respect, but on the right side. I rejoice more than
ever over the instinct which brought me here, for it seems the
beginning of a new life. . . .
222 BA YARD TA YLOR.
I cannot be sufficiently grateful for the fortune which brought
me my present companion. He is a wealthy German land-owner,
forty-five years old, weighs two hundred and twenty pounds, and
is in every respect the reverse of myself. But a more honest,
manly nature, a warmer and more generous heart, I never knew.
I love the man like a brother, and it will be a sore trial to part
with him. IIis companionship and sympathy have strengthened
me for the whole of my journey. IIe will not believe this, but
considers himself indebted to me, and has made me promise to
visit him in Saxe-Coburg next summer. Were it even the North
Pole I should certainly go. I do not think two such happy and
harmonious travelers were ever on the Nile. If he had not a
wife at home, he would go with me to the White Nile, to Pales-
tine and Nineveh.
UPPER EGYPT, NEAR THE FIRST CATARACT,
December 11, 1851.
I am now drawing near the point where I shall leave behind
me all opportunities for sending letters home, and you will prob-
ably have to wait three months after receiving this before you
hear from me again. However, you need have no fear on that
account. I am already in the heart of Africa, more than five
hundred miles from Cairo, and nearly half way to Khartoum, the
end of my journey. The farther I go the more safe and agree-
able the trip appears, and if I had any misgivings about it be-
fore leaving home I should have none now. My friend, who
thought it a terrible undertaking when we first met at Smyrna,
now congratulates me on it, and says he has no anxiety whatever
in relation to it. This is the strongest testimony you could have,
for he has told me that there is no man living for whom he has
a warmer regard than for me. I don’t know what I should have
done without his friendship and sympathy. You know I am not
weak nor sentimental, yet I assure you that when we speak of
parting in a few days it brings the tears into our eyes. My visit
to him in Germany next summer is all arranged. He has a
splendid Arabian horse, which I am to have for a ride through
the Thüringian Forest. We are going to take a week for the
tour, and enjoy it as much as our present journey. . . . Out of
the circle of home and my few tried and faithful friends in
America, I have never met a man who so entirely gave me his
heart. His unselfish devotion to me has cured me of many re-
bellious thoughts. . . .
TRA VELS IN THE EAST. 223
My dragoman is a man who makes himself respected every-
where, and makes the Arabs respect me. He always speaks of
me to them as “His Excellency.” I am now wearing one of
his dresses : a green embroidered jacket, with slashed sleeves ;
a sort of striped vest, with a row of about thirty buttons from
the neck to the waist ; a large plaid silk shawl as belt ; white
baggy trowsers, gathered at the knee, with long, tight-fitting
stockings and red morocco shoes. I had a pair of trowsers made
yesterday to wear while riding camels. They reach from the
hips to the knees, and only contain eighteen yards of muslim.
They cost, with the tailor's bill, about $1.50. This Egyptian
dress is very cool and pleasant, and I shall wear it till I reach
Cairo. . . .
NEAR KoRosſco, NUBIA, December 19, 1851.
I am resolved that you shall have as little anxiety about me
as possible, so I embrace every chance to write to you. I shall
get to Korosko to-day, and shall probably start to-morrow on
my journey through the desert. I will send this letter by the
Arabic post to the governor of Assouan, directing him to give it
to the first American traveler going down the Nile, to put it into
the office at Cairo. It is hardly possible that I shall have an-
other chance of writing before reaching Cairo again, toward the
end of March. Three days ago I parted with my friend at As-
Souan, and set sail in a smaller boat for Korosko. . . .
I want to speak of the friend from whom I have just parted,
because I am very much moved by his kindness, and the knowl-
edge may be grateful to you. His friendship for me is some-
thing 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 self-
ish. Yet few persons have ever placed such unbounded confi-
dence in me, or treated me with such devotion and generosity.
He gave me his pistols for the journey, his medicines, and
everything which he thought I would need. Besides this, he
purchased a number of supplies in Assouan, pretending they
were for his return journey, and then persuaded Achmet to pack
them secretly in my boxes. He also told Achmet he was going
224 BA YARD TA YLOR.
to leave a handsome present for him with a merchant in Cairo,
but he (Achmet) would not receive it unless he had served me
faithfully. 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. He told me he could scarcely account for
it, but he felt almost ready to give up all his engagements to
return home and accompany me. I told him all my history, and
showed him the portrait I have with me. He went out of the
cabin after looking at it, and when he returned I saw that he
had been weeping. . . . Almost the last thing he asked of me
was to look at it once more before leaving. And he knew so
well how to speak to me, soothing, but without offering consola-
tion, that I feel stronger than for a long time past. The last
three days have been very lonely, but they would have been
more so had I not met with him. I shall pursue my travels in a
far more happy and courageous mood than I anticipated. Be-
sides, I have promised to spend two or three weeks with him
next summer in Germany, and shall keep my promise. I owe
him far more than I can lightly repay, and it is some satisfaction
to confess the debt to you."
KIIARTOUM, IN ETITIOPIA, January 18, 1852.
I am more fortunate than I expected in having an opportu-
nity of writing to you from this place, in the heart of Africa.
I wrote from Korosko, just before starting on my journey through
the Nubian Desert, and hope you will receive the letter before
this. My journey has been of the highest interest, and better in
every respect than I have anticipated. A peculiar good fortune
seems to follow me. . . .
1 It was on the steamer, when passing from Smyrna to Alexandria, that
Bayard Taylor fell in with this gentleman, Mr. August Buſleb, and thus
began an acquaintance which ripened into an ardent friendship. Mr.
Bufleb, in his letters to his wife at this time, speaks in the strongest terms
of his new-found friend. “A glorious young man,” he says. “If it
were not for you I would go with him.” “His company is a gain to me
in every respect. He, with his clear head and pure heart has preferred to
travel with me, while many of his countrymen are following or sailing
ahead of us. . . . He has won my love by his amiability, his excellent
heart, his pure spirit, in a degree of which I did not believe myself capa-
ble.”
TRAVELS IN THE EAST. 225
On reaching here I went to the house of Dr. Reitz, the Aus-
trian consul, for whom I had letters of introduction. He made
me at once bring my effects and take up my residence with
him. I am writing this in my room, a lofty chamber, roofed
with palm logs, the windows of which open on a court-yard, in
which two large ostriches are pacing up and down. The door
leads to a balcony, covered with jessamine in bloom, looking
upon a garden of palm, orange, banana, pomegranate, lemon,
and fig trees, and many beautiful flowering shrubs. To one of
the trees is chained a tame leopard, a particular pet of mine.
I have already taught him to climb up on my shoulders. To
vary my amusement there are two hyenas, who are a little wolf-
ish and Snap sometimes, an immense adjutant crane, and a whole
yard full of gazelles, wild goats, antelopes, and ibexes. In the
outer court is a full-grown lioness, which is also a great friend
of mine. I sit on her back, and give her my hand to lick. She
likes to take my leg in both paws, then open her jaws and close
them very gently around it, but she is too well fed to bite.
The pacha has a little lion which runs loose about the house,
and gives him great amusement by frightening the slaves.
When I add that I ride every day on a red stallion of the wild
breed of Dar-Fur you will certainly think I have grown bar-
baric in my tastes."
In his diary, under date of January 24, 1852, he
writes, “Archipelago of the Shillooks, 2 P. M. We have
just passed the northern point of the island of Aba, on
our return to Khartoum. The sails are taken down,
and the men are rowing along the lee side of one of
the island-beds of foliage which stud this glorious river.
I reached my turning-point, between lat. 12° and 13°
north this morning at nine o'clock, in just forty-eight
hours from Khartoum, having sailed in that time two
hundred and fifty miles. Now, the gateway to the
unknown south is closed, and my face is turned to
1 The juxtaposition of these letters brings out forcibly the singular
power of attraction which Bayard Taylor had over both men and dumb
animals. The reader of his poems will recall many cases where the theme
has been suggested by the subtle association of man and beast.
VOL. I. 15
226 BA YARD TA YLOR.
the Mediterranean. But I have at least stood on
the threshold of that wonderful land, and in the grand
and strange vistas opened before me have realized a
portion of my dream. For what I have seen I thank
God, who has protected me beyond hope and almost
beyond example.” Fifty-seven days from Khartoum
saw the traveler once more in Cairo, which he reached
April 1st, to find a generous store of letters and papers
àwaiting him.
TO THIS MOTHER.
CAIRO, EGYPT, April 2, 1852.
. . . I have had nothing but good luck from beginning to end."
The whole trip has occupied less than five months, and I have
traveled four thousand miles. Notwithstanding the great heat
of Central Africa (105° in the shade at noon), and the sand
storms in the desert, and the fatigue of traveling thirty-four days
on a dromedary, my health has been always good, and I look so
fat and black that you would hardly know me. At present I am
suffering from an inflammation of the eyes, caught, I presume,
by the sudden change from the dry air of the Desert to the moist
air of the Nile ; I don’t know how else. I had nearly cured them
yesterday morning, but to-day they are worse, partly from stand-
ing yesterday on the top of my cabin, in a strong wind, in the
excitement of approaching Cairo, and partly from reading let-
ters and fine newspaper print half the night. But the mail to
England closes this afternoon, and I must at least let you know
1. It is worth while to note, in passing, that a more credulous man than
Bayard Taylor might well have supposed himself a special favorite of
Providence ; for in all his affairs, now and for some time, everything
turned out as he could wish. “Oh, master,” exclaimed Achmet, on one
occasion, “there never was such a lucky journey as this!” and his friend,
Mr. Buſleb, was independently struck with the good fortune which always
attended him. In his diary, under date of January 30th, Bayard Taylor
remarks, “I sat in the cabin and wrote diligently most of the time. About
half an hour before dinner another large fish jumped on deck, and was
instantly caught and put into the frying-pan. This Achmet considers as
a most extraordinary toſken of good luck. It is a little singular that for
three days a fish should jump on board precisely in time to make a dish for
my dimmer.”
TRA VELS IN THE EAST. 227
of the fortunate termination of my long and adventurous tour in
the wilds of Africa. It was delightful, coming down the Nile, to
revisit the scenes I saw on my fortunate upward journey. Every
guide and donkey-boy in all the towns recognized me at once,
and hailed me with, “Thank God, you have come back safely l’”
TO GEORGE II. IROIKER.
CAIRO, EGYPT, April 4, 1852.
Three days ago I was beating down the Nile against a strong
wind. The citadel of Cairo was in sight, and I hurried the men
with prayers and promises till they reached the old town, where
I jumped ashore, took a donkey, and galloped at full speed to
the British consulate and my banker. I came to my hotel with
my pockets full of letters and my arms full of newspapers.
Two of the letters were from you, and while the sun set behind
the pyramids, and the odor of lemon-groves in blossom came
through the open window, I read them, God knows with what
gratitude, what serene joy in my heart | That hour paid me for
all the long silence, the death (so far as the real, living world is
concerned), of my journey into Central Africa. I cannot say
that I have recovered my whole strength till now. God has led
me into submission with a beneficence which is the greatest re-
proach to my mad rebellion against his will. He has weighed
me down with a weight of love which I feel almost too weak to
bear. Your letters have humbled me ; you have shown me to
myself, not as I am, but as I once aspired to be. I have not the
strength, the courage, the heroism, you attribute to me. On the
contrary, half my life has been spent in concealing, or trying to
overcome, the weaknesses of my nature ; and I have too much
pride to make this confession even to you, did I not feel that you
will still love me in spite of all my short-comings. I cannot
glory in the little I have accomplished, when I see so clearly how
much more I might have done. And as for popular favor, – good
God, what is there so humiliating as to be praised for the exhi-
bition of poverty and privation, for parading those very struggles
which I would gladly have hidden forever, when that which I
feel and know to be true to my art is passed by unnoticed 1 For
I am not insensible that nine tenths of my literary success (in a
publishing view) springs from those very “Views Afoot” which
I now blush to read. I am known to the public not as a poet,
the only title I covet, but as one who succeeded in seeing Europe
228 BAYARD TA YLOR.
with little money; and the chief merits accorded to me are not
passion or imagination, but strong legs and economical habits.
Now this is truly humiliating. It acts as a sting or spur, which
touches my pride “in the raw,” whenever some true recognition
sets me exulting. In spite of your letter I have, at this distance,
a sort of magnetic impression that my volume of poems has only
had a negative success ; yet I am not discouraged ; I am hardly
surprised at it. It is enough for me that you and some few
others recognize a forward step in it. What you say of my
“American Legend”* gratifies me beyond measure, because you
have been impressed with the very qualities which I strove to
give it. The subject was warm in my mind, and suggested
abundance of imagery, but I did not dare to mar the beautiful
symmetry of the story by overloading it with embellishments.
The legend, as I found it, seemed to me as pure and perfect as a
Grecian myth. It had, besides, a grander and broader signifi-
cance, and I had faith enough in it to give it the severest and
simplest form of which I was capable. The descriptions of the
seasons are my own additions, and I only hazarded them because
the artistic development of the story seemed to require it. I
think the poem the best I have done ; it is the first which (to
me) gives promise of a longer life than mine.
But enough of this, when I have so much else to say, and must
husband my time and be merciful to my eyes, hardly recovered
from an attack of ophthalmia. You have probably the answer
to your questions after receiving my note from Assouan. Yes,
George, I have grown strong and patient beyond all hope. I
have found a peace as new as it is grateful, - a peace which
does not reproach my love while it takes away the bitterness
from my sorrow. I felt its approaches as we do those of sleep,
but cannot tell how nor when it first descended upon me. I only
know that I am changed ; that the world again looks bright and
life cheerful ; that the capacity of being happy is restored to
me ; that I look forward hopefully to the future ; and, better than
all, that no memory of the past is less sacred. Something of
this I have gained from nature, in these five long months, dur-
ing which I have been buried in the heat and silence and mys-
tery of mid-Africa; but more from man. The most remarkable
good fortune has attended me. Such a luck has marked my
1 “ Mon-da-Min.”
TRA VELS IN THE EAST. 229
journey from the start that even my wild Arab attendants were
struck by it, and considered me as a man specially protected by
God. And such kindness of heart as everywhere overflows to-
wards me, I know not why | I have tried to fathom this mystery,
but cannot ; I find no particular quality in myself, no peculiarity
in my intercourse with others which can account for it. Why
rigid Mussulmen should pray that I might enter the Moslem
paradise ; why guides, camel-drivers, sailors, and the like should
show me such fidelity ; why beys and pashas, to whom I had no
word of recommendation, should pay me most unusual courtesies,
is quite beyond my comprehension. If I were a devout believer
in the special workings of Providence, I should say that this ex-
perience was sent me as a healing. There is no balm for such a
sorrow so potent as gratitude for the love of others.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT, April 12, 1852.
I should have written to you sooner, but on my first arrival in
Egypt I was so busied with preparations for my further journey
that I found no time, and afterwards, as you may well suppose,
could hardly mail a letter to Boston from the land of the lion
and hippopotamus. I have had a glorious five months’ tour in
mid-Africa, having gone up the White Nile farther than any
English or American traveler, had a rich store of adventures,
and, what is best of all, quite recovered my health and strength,
both of body and mind. If you think of me now, picture me
to yourself as brown as an Arab, with a long beard, a red cap
and white turban, a big shawl around my waist, and red slippers
on my feet. I have quite a smastering of Arabic, and can swear
by Allah with the true Moslem unction. Would to Heaven you
had been with me, to taste the light and heat and mystery of
African travel ! Nothing else in the world could have wrought
such a powerful change in me. That quiet and peace of soul
which I had only hoped for as the work of years has descended
on me, I know not how. Life again begins to look cheerful, and
I have wholly recovered my perfect trust in God, - that prop
without which I was drifting so helplessly.
I am not able to write you a long letter on account of an at-
tack of Egyptian ophthalmia, from which I am just recovering.
You will no doubt have seen some account of my wanderings in
the “Tribune,” and I need not describe them. I leave here in
230 BA YAPD TA YLOR.
two days for Beyrout and Jerusalem, after which I shall ride
through Asiatic Turkey as far as the borders of Persia. I shall
be in Constantinople early in July, and beg you to write to me
there, “Care of J. Alléon & Cie.,” inclosed to Baring Brothers,
London. I should like to hear something of the reception of my
volume. My letters from home are so taken up with other mat-
ters that they say little about it. I learn, however, that it is
published, and has been favorably received in some quarters. A
letter from a friend in Copenhagen (think over what latitudes
we are scattered 1) says the “Westminster Review "glorifies it.
But I have, somehow, a magnetic impression that its success has
been only negative. There are some things in it for which I
hoped a recognition, but shall not be greatly disappointed if they
have not received it. I should be glad to know, however, that
its sale has not been such as to dishearten the publishers. My
last letters were written more than two months ago, and it had
probably not been published long enough for my friends to know
anything about its success. Will you write to me frankly on
this subject 2 How has Stoddard’s book gone off, and the
“Golden Legend” 2 I have been out of the world and know
nothing. Send me all the literary news, but, more than all, news
of yourself. I often thought of you during my long marches
in the desert.
Pray give my kindest remembrances to Whipple and Long-
fellow and Whittier, and all good friends in and around Boston.
How glad I shall be to see them all once more 1 Do not fail to
write to me. God bless you !
A reply came from Mr. Fields in June from Lon-
don, whither the letter had followed him from Boston.
He urges Bayard Taylor to join him there, and enjoy
with him the society of their literary friends, adding,
“You ask about the success of your volume. My
long absence does not allow me to judge either of
your own or Stoddard’s book, nor do I know what the
critics have said. But this I do know: that my old and
dear friend Miss Mitford says, if she writes another
book, in you and Stoddard must go. She swears by
you both, and says you are fame-sure. Copies shall be
TRA VELS IN THE EAST. 231
here to meet you on your arrival. “The Golden Le-
gend’ is a great success, and adds to rather than
diminishes the author's good name. Longfellow is
very popular here, and is fast taking the wind out of
every sail in the English seas of Poesy. Hawthorne,
too, is immensely popular. He has just finished a
new romance, the scene of which is laid at Brook
Farm. I have not read the MSS., of course, but
E. P. W. writes me it is sparkling with beauty. I see
at every railroad station your books selling to travel-
ers daily. Come and taste your own fame at my side,
dear Bayard.”
He left Alexandria April 14, 1852, for Beyrout,
and spent three months traveling in Syria, Palestine,
and Asia Minor. The season had advanced so far and
was so oppressively hot that he gave up the plan of
visiting Nineveh and Arabia. Indeed, he was becom-
ing somewhat weary of his isolation, and writes in his
journal June 26th, “Here in the heart of Asia Minor
all life seems to stagnate. There is sleep everywhere,
and I feel as if a wide barrier separated me from the
living world. I have now been eight months out of it,
only touching its borders now and then ; finding the
rest I sought, it is true, but now that the healing is
complete I miss the accustomed stir and struggle of
the life to which I return.” He reached Constantinople
July 12th on his way home, and the following letter
to Mr. Fields describes the general course of his three
months' journey : —
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
CoNSTANTINorLE, July 14, 1852.
The first thing I did after reaching here, two days ago, was to
get my letters, among them your welcome missive from London.
How surprised I was to learn that you left home so soon after
232 JBA YA R D TA YLOR.
me ! Why did you not come on to Cairo and visit Palestine
with me? It would have well repaid you. Europe is tame after
this grand and gorgeous Orient, wherein I have now been revel-
ing for nearly nine months. If you could see me now you would
swear I was a disciple of the Prophet. I am become
“Long and lank and brown
As is the ribbed sea-sand,”
but I pray you mislike me not for my complexion, I wear the
tarboosh, smoke the Persian pipe, and drop cross-legged on the
floor with the ease of any tailor whatever. When I went into
my banker's they addressed me in Turkish. The other day, at
Brousa, my fellow-Mussulmen indignantly denounced me as
damned, because I broke the fast of the Ramazan by taking a
drink of water in the bazaar. I have gone into the holiest
mosques in Asia Minor with perfect impunity. I determined to
taste the Orient as it was, in reality, not as a mere outside
looker-on, and so picked up the Arabic tongue, put on the wide
trowsers, and adopted as many Eastern customs as was becoming
to a good Christian. Now, however, all is over. Yesterday,
alas ! I crammed my unwilling legs into a pair of narrow panta-
looms, elevated a straight collar about my neck (though no gib-
bet-rope could be more uncomfortable), and am now taking ex-
ercise in sitting bolt upright on a chair. What I suffer you can’t
imagine. I don’t wonder that the Druse conscripts in Syria
have revolted, rather than wear the Frank dress. Fortunately, I
don’t need to wear gloves, as my hands are precisely the color of
yellow kid, and pass for such.
But enough of this nonsense, and let me tell you what I have
been doing. After seeing all Palestine and Syria, I coasted
northwards from Beyrout to the mouth of the Orontes, and then
traveled inland to Antioch and Aleppo. In Aleppo I stayed
several days. It is a great and stately city, and pleased me
even better than Damascus. I saw a great deal of society
there, and attended both Christian and Hebrew weddings, balls,
and other festivities. Thence I crossed the mountains into Cili-
cia, and after visiting ancient Tarsus, and drinking a cup of
snow-cold water from the Cydnus at the very spot where Cleo-
patra met Mark Antony, struck northward into Asia Minor. I
was three days passing the Taurus, by a defile grander than any
in the Alps, and reached the plains of Karamania. Thence to
Romieh (the ancient Iconium), and so on into the glorious piny
TRA VELS IN THE EAST. 233
mountains of Phrygia, where I found the tombs of King Midas
and the Gordian monarchs. Thence to Kiutahya, to the old
Greek city of CEzani, with a magnificent theatre and temple, and
over Olympus, through the sublimest beechen forests in the
world, and down on the other side to Brousa. A voyage in an
open boat across the Sea of Marmora finished the journey, and
brought me here in time to see, last night, the superb illumina-
tion of the mosques and the Golden Horn, on the occasion of the
Sultan's taking a new wife. I have been occupied with this trip
ever since my last note to you. But was it not worth making 2
Now my Oriental tour is over, and I shall turn westwards, but
not in time, I fear, to meet you in London. Would to Heaven I
could be there with you ! — I so long to see the face of a friend.
I feel as if I had been lost to the world for a long time. I am
glad to know that you are in such pleasant hands. What would
I not give for one of your days I must see your friend Miss
Mitford, when I pass through England, and hope I shall this
time be fortunate enough to meet Barry Cornwall. I shall stay
three or four weeks in London, where I hope to see more of men
than when I passed through last autumn. I shall send a note by
this mail for G. G., whom I hope to meet somewhere.
I know not yet what course I shall take from here, but I think
via Athens, Naples, Florence, Venice, and then into Saxony, to
spend two weeks with a German friend, who was my companion
on the Nile. I cannot say anything with certainty until I receive
further letters from home. There is a bare possibility (which
I both hope and dread) of my going farther east. But the
chances are a hundred to one against it. God bless you!
The last sentence refers to an important proposi-
tion in letters from his Tribune associates, which he
found awaiting him at Constantinople. He did not
feel at liberty to speak more definitely to his friend,
but the next day he wrote to his mother.
TO EIIS MOTHER.
CoNSTANTINopLE, July 15, 1852.
I must let you into the secret of some news which reached me
by the last mail from America, – news which has quite unsettled
me for the present, and which, I fear, will not be gratifying to
234 BA YARD TA YLOR.
you, though in many respects it ought to be. It is nothing less
than a proposition which will lengthen my stay abroad from six
to nine months,- a proposition which, if it was merely to travel
and write letters I should not accept, though conscious that every
additional month so spent serves to settle my healthy habits of
body, and strengthen me in every way for work at home. But
they have made application to the Secretary of the Navy to get
me a place on board of the flagship of Commodore Perry's expe-
dition to explore Japan, one of the most remarkable and interest-
ing enterprises of the present day. In case they are successful
(which they expect to be) they will forward me the order at
once, with funds which will enable me to take the overland route
by steamer to Alexandria, Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore,
to Macao in China, where I shall meet the expedition about the
end of October. The “Tribune '’ offers to pay my expenses to
China, and give me a much higher rate for all the letters I shall
write. The expedition will be from two to four months in all
probability at Japan, and I shall afterwards return to Europe,
via India. It is a grand and fascinating proposal, and may be
the means of advancing me more than anything I have done. I
am a little ambitious, and the expedition offers chances which I
can’t let slip of doing something which may make me honor.
My situation on board the ship will of course be that of guest
and looker-on, but the order will give me every possible facility
for this. If I consulted my heart alone, I should decline, for I
long to see you all again, and I fear lest this prospect may trou-
ble you ; but my head tells me I must go. Even without reason-
ing with myself on the subject, my magnetism urges me on, and
when I follow it I always go right. If I should go, have no fear
for me. There is no danger greater than I should endure on the
way from here to New York. . . . This Oriental trip has done
enough for me to more than satisfy my anticipations. I feel
that it only needs for me to continue in the same course I have
begun to assure me fame and fortune. The latter appears now to
be assured me, and of the former I have already ten times more
than I ever expected. But it is impossible to stand still or turn
back : all I have done only prompts me to do more. Pray say
nothing about all this till I write again, but be sure that whether
I go eastward or westward I am safe. My term of life has not
yet run out, and so long as I keep this feeling the uttermost parts
of the earth have no terrors for me.
TRA TWELS IN THE EAST. 235
The first letters which his Tribune associates sent
him expressed no doubt of their being able to procure
for him the necessary order to accompany Commo-
dore Perry, but they promised later and more definite
instructions. For these he waited nearly a month in
Constantinople, and was at last on the point of leav-
ing, in despair of hearing, when a letter came with
funds for prosecuting the journey, but with a some-
what less specific assurance of the essential coöper-
ation of Commodore Perry. “I have endeavored,”
the writer says, “to procure from the Secretary of
the Navy some appointment which would give you a
good official position on the squadron for as long a
time as you might wish to hold it, but the Secretary
declared himself powerless in the matter. Next I ap-
plied to the Commodore through the active interces-
sion of his friend, George Blunt, the hydrographer.
But even to him Perry replied that he had refused
thousands of such applications, and that his fear was
that if he accepted you he might not only be compro-
mised with others, but that, not knowing you, he had
Some fear that you might not be exactly the man he
wanted, and might indiscreetly publish something con-
cerning the expedition after you had joined it. On all
these points Blunt made the most urgent and positive
assurances, and finally Perry said that he could not
bind himself to take you, but if you were at Hong
Rong when he was there he should be very happy to
see you. In Blunt's opinion this is enough to justify
your going there for this purpose, and, after consider-
ing the matter in our semi-annual meeting last week,
we all came to the same conclusion. Accordingly, I
inclose a letter from Blunt, introducing you to Perry.”
Under these conditions Bayard Taylor determined to
236 BA YARD TA YLOR.
accept the commission. The expedition would not
reach Hong Kong, however, before the end of the
year, and thus he would be enabled to carry out his
original plan of joining his brother at Florence, cross-
ing the Alps, and visiting Mr. Bufleb in Gotha, and
then making a short stay in England before setting
out on his overland journey to China. It was while
waiting at Constantinople for advices from the “Trib-
une” that he wrote to Mr. Boker and Mr. Stoddard.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
CoNSTANTINOPLE, July 18, 1852.
The grandest cannonading I ever heard is thundering around
me as I write, and the tremendous echoes, flapping back and
forth between the shores of Europe and Asia, are prolonged far
up the Bosphorus. I wish you were here to sit at my window
with me and look out on this superb Constantinople, now spark-
ling with the thousand lamps of the Bairam festival. Last night
the fast month of Ramazan terminated, and this morning at sun-
rise I was in the Sultan's seraglio, witnessing the great proces-
sion of all the dignitaries of the Turkish Empire, from Abdul-
Medjid himself down to his chief eunuch. I am here at a
fortunate time, having seen, a few nights ago, the illumination
of the Golden Horn, – a scene truly magical in its magnificence.
Again I say, would to Heaven you were here! I thought so this
evening, as I sat watching the sunset fade away between the
cypresses of the cemetery of Pera, and quietly smoked a long
Persian pipe the while. One whiff of that same pipe would whis-
per to you more secrets of the Orient than I could say or sing in
a twelvemonth. There is a touch of the East in your mature,
George, – perhaps even more than in mine, – and I wish you
would cultivate it. I think you could enjoy with me the glori-
ous laziness of this land. We cannot be lazy at home ; one's
cónscience is too active. But here it is another thing. True
strength is best exhibited in a certain degree of repose ; there is
wisdom in silence, and so I find both dignity and poetry in the
inertia of Oriental life. . . .
I have now finished the Orient, and in another week will prob-
TRA VICLS IN THE EA ST. 237
ably sail for Italy, via Athens. There is, however, a secret
chance (which I must whisper to you) of my being sent eastward
to India and China, there to join the U. S. expedition to Japan,
in character of correspondent extraordinary. The prospect
chimes in too strongly with my own fancy to be rejected, and if I
get the necessary order (which has not yet come to hand) I shall
be on my way to the Flowery Kingdom in a month. This will
postpone my return to the United States six or eight months;
but if, at the end of that time, God gives me one night with you
in your new house, we shall make amends for this long, long
separation. How comes on that same house ? I have not for-
gotten all the promises which are being built up in it for me :
the welcome at the threshold ; the place at the table ; the bottle
in the vaults; the strong, true heart, never beating but in faith
and friendship. By all the gods we worship, if the stones of that
house hold together as long as I shall claim the fulfillment of
those promises, they will outlast your day and mine ! . . .
TO R. H. STODDARD.
CoNSTANTINOPLE, July 21, 1852.
I wish I had you here for an hour, instead of sitting down to
stain the virginity of this sheet of paper. I wish you were here
for two reasons: that you might enjoy with me this superb view
of two continents and their proudest city, which I now see when-
ever I lift my head; and, secondly, that I might relieve my heart,
and perhaps yours, by letting loose a fountain of talk which has
been sealed up for months. Since my German friend left me on
the Nile, I have met no one to whom I could speak of poetry and
be understood. I am like a lover who has no confidant. Nothing
now would refresh me half so much as to stumble on the number
of “Sartain” containing your “Carmen.” (But what is there es-
pecially poetical about the nature of triumphant car-men 3 Do tell
me!) Seriously, my dear Stoddard, I am beginning to feel lonely,
and would give my best pipe for a talk with you. . . . Well, God
be with us all, and speed the time when I may so see you, and we
may gossip away the midnight in my lofty attic. Fields promises
to have copies of both our books waiting for me in London, so
that I shall see something of you before I reach home. . . .
Bayard Taylor left Constantinople August 7th,
reached Malta on the 11th, and, failing to make an
238 BA YARD TA YLOR.
expected connection, took a small sailing-boat to Cata-
nia in Sicily, which he reached just in time to see the
grand festival of St. Agatha, which takes place only
once in a hundred years. He went to Messina by
stage, and took passage to Leghorn. On reaching
Florence he found his brother just recovering from an
attack of fever, and, after a few days' stay among his
earlier Florentine friends, they both went by Venice to
Germany, where they separated; his brother returning
home, and Bayard going to Gotha to pay the promised
visit to Mr. Bufleb, who received him with open arms.
“Indeed,” he writes to his mother, “he had not dared
to leave Gotha for four weeks beforehand, fearing I
should arrive in his absence. Every kindness that
friendship could invent has been heaped upon me.
All his relatives and friends received me like a lost
member of the family; every door was open for me,
and there was a place already prepared at every table.
Two days after I arrived, as the weather was fine, we
started on a tour through the Thüringian Forest, which
we made partly on foot, partly in B.'s carriage.” A
narrative of this excursion is contained in the first
series of “At Home and Abroad.” He was in Lon-
don again October 11, 1852.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
LoNDoN, October 18, 1852.
Behold me once more in London, but not as near home as I
imagined when I wrote to you from Cairo. It is tantalizing to
think that in two weeks I might take you by the hand, and pour
my living soul into your ears and eyes, instead of spreading a
few small atoms of myself over this dull paper. But alas ! the
time for that is a year off; not the Atlantic, but all Europe, and
Asia, and the Pacific, and our own continent lie between us. You
may well be afraid of me when we meet. If I get through this
TRA VELS IN THE EAST. 239
second trip as successfully as the first, I shall come to you bur-
dened with Gibraltar and the Alhambra, with the rivers and jun-
gles of India, the Himalayas and the pagodas of Delhi and Be-
nares, the “summer isles of Eden’’ of the Eastern Archipelago
and the wonders of the Central Flowery Land, in addition to the
conquest of Japan. I shall be able to strangle like a Thug, or
run amuck like a Malay; I shall be as expert a disemboweler as
the chief executioner of Japan; I shall yearn for my missing
bird's-nest soup and puppy-pie, – Heaven knows what I shall not
be capable of. A man can’t pass through so much and be the
same he was originally. . . .
Many thanks to you, dear George, for writing to me here. It
is a great satisfaction to hear from you once more before going
into a region where mails are less frequent and letters less cer-
tain. But nevertheless continue to send letters after me. Heaven
rewards such efforts, even if they fail. Write next to Calcutta,
to the care of the American consul there. . . . I have three rea-
sons for making this new trip : it is the urgent wish of my asso-
ciates of the “Tribune,” who have furnished me with ample
means; it is a chance, such as I may never have again, of seeing
some of the most wonderful cities of the world; and, thirdly, by
spending a second winter in a warmer climate I hope to secure
my present good health beyond the possibility of relapse. My
frame was shaken more than I knew, and has barely recovered
its balance. I think you will see the weight of these reasons,
and agree with me that I could not rightly do otherwise than
80. . . .
I have much changed during the past year, but changed in a
manner that brings me nearer to you. In spite of all that
you say, I believe you are stronger than I, and, because I have
gained in strength and will, I feel more worthy of your love,
though still far, far below the character you give me. I try to
think well of my own efforts because you do ; but my last vol-
ume, which I found here the other day after long search, has dis-
heartened me more than I like to confess. It is so far inferior
to what I anticipated; it is unworthy of what I hoped and still
hope to do. But thank Heaven, I am young yet, and capable of
better things. I wish I could see your last volume. Why did
you not send it here to meet me? Good God, what would I not
give for a night with you ! How shall I get through this com-
240 BA YARD TA YLOR.
ing year without seeing you ? I, too, have changed in my ideas
of poetry. I have been a slave heretofore, but henceforth I will
be free. My aims have never yet been acknowledged, though I
have received far more praise of one kind or other than I deserve.
During my whole year in the East I was lying fallow, and did
next to nothing. But two months ago, in Malta, I picked up a
volume of the “Westminster Review,” wherein I read, “B.T.
has published a volume of Tennysonian imitations,” etc. I fired
up in an instant. “Damn the reviewer l’” I said to myself. “Be-
fore he dies he shall tell another story,” and in two days I had
conceived at least six new poems. This convinced me that the
faculty was not dead, but only sleeping, and I shall never doubt
it more. If God gives me life and health I shall prove that I
am something better than a mere traveler, — a reputation which
the world is now trying to force upon me. But enough of this
stuff.
I am writing this in Southampton. It is now October 28th, and
to-morrow I leave in the Madras for Gibraltar. I am all alone
in my chamber in the hotel, and write as vehemently as my
thoughts. Will you not write me a good long letter, not later
than December 1st, to the care of the American Consul, Calcutta ?
I would write you oftener and longer letters did not my duties to
the “Tribune” occupy so much of my time. My stay of two
weeks in Ilondon was very agreeable. I made lots of friends,
and found that I had already a good foothold as an author. Two
or three publishers were anxious to treat with me for the copy-
right of future works. My “Eldorado,” it appears, has had a
very great sale, and some stray copies of my poems have found
their way to different authors. These things are encouraging;
and when I compare my present visit to London with my former
one, seven years ago, I feel cheered by the comparison. I have
seen “Calaynos” in two or three places, and heard it highly spoken
of. Dick, too, is making headway here. I shall write to him to-
night. . . . I anticipate nothing but success in the coming trip,
but when it is finished, and I am with you in the house, what a
jubilee I Do not fail to write oftener, for I need your letters
more than you do mine.
TRA VELS IN THE EAST. 241
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
SourHAMPTON, October 28, 1852.
I should have written you before this, but my stay in Lon-
don was given up to the necessary preparations for the new
tour I have before me ; and this, with the numerous invita-
tions to dinner, — so kindly offered that one could not but ac-
cept them, - consumed all my time. Now, however, I am all
alone in this dull seaport, where not a soul knows me, and take
the occasion of acknowledging your kind notes of September
4th and 18th. I wish we could have met in England, as it will
be another year before I reach America, and then, from what
your English friends tell me, you will probably be settled here.
I hope you will find reason to change your mind. I don’t see
how we can spare you at home. I shall sink out of sight as
soon as you leave. I have no doubt that, if the little pyramid
of my literary reputation were taken down, I should find the
initials “J. T. F.” scratched on half the stones composing it.
I found Bennoch the day after reaching here. He is both
great and good, and I am indebted to him for a deal of kind-
ness. Grace was here the first week, but left about eight days
ago for Paris and Rome. Barry Cornwall is not at home, and
Leigh Hunt is waiting on a sick son, — so I have seen neither.
I have become acquainted, however, with Charles Mackay, Ben-
nett, and good old Miss Mitford, with whom I spent an after-
noon. She is enthusiastic in your praise and in Louis Napoleon’s.
I agreed with her concerning the former, but not the latter. We
had a merry afternoon. The Russells (do you know them 7)
were there, and I narrowly missed meeting “Alton Locke.” Al-
together I have been delighted with my London experiences
this time. Bennoch took me one night to dine with the alder-
men, and we had a jolly time. America was toasted with nine
cheers, and I had to reply. I have seen Kossuth, Mazzini,
Freiligrath, Mary Howitt, Murray, Bogue, and a number of
other worthies. But the greater part of my time was occupied
in writing up my correspondence for the “Tribune” (which I
had neglected since leaving Constantinople), and hunting for
rare books and maps.
I leave here to-morrow in the Madras for Gibraltar, where I
stop and take three weeks to visit Seville, Cordova, and the Al-
hambra. Then I take the next steamer direct for Bombay, go
WOL. I. 16
242 BAYARD TA YLOR,
overland to Calcutta, via the old Indian cities of Delhi, Agra,
and Benares, and the Himalayas; embark for Singapore, Ba-
tavia, and Hong Kong; visit Manila and the Sandwiches; and
will probably find my way home, via California, some time next
September. It is a glorious prospect, and I commence the jour-
ney in high spirits. I am led into these wanderings almost
without my will ; it seems to be my destiny. Where I shall go
next Heaven only knows.
CHAPTER XI.
THE FARTHER EAST.
1852–1853.
He met the men of many a land;
They gave their souls into his hand.
The Palm and the Pine.
THE departure of Commodore Perry had been de-
layed, so that Bayard Taylor was enabled to make a
somewhat leisurely journey to the point where he was
to join the expedition. He was glad to have the op-
portunity of visiting Spain, and not sorry to leave
behind him the autumnal rains of England. “The
weather was cold, dark, and dreary,” he writes, “and
the oppressive, sticky atmosphere of the bituminous
metropolis weighed upon me like a nightmare. Heart-
ily tired of looking at a sun that could show nothing
brighter than a red copper disk, and of breathing an
air that peppered my face with particles of soot, I left
on the 28th of October [1852]. It was one of the
dismalest days of autumn; the meadows of Berkshire
were flooded with broad, muddy streams, and the
woods on the hills of Hampshire looked brown and
sodden, as if slowly rotting away. I reached South-
ampton at dusk, but there the sky was neither warmer
nor clearer; so I spent the evening over a coal fire, all
impatience for the bright, beloved south, toward which
my face was turned once more.”
244 R.A. Y.A.R.D TA YLOR.
He landed at Gibraltar November 5th, and found
himself in sunshine. “I have a southern soul, it seems,”
he writes in his diary, “for I feel strongest and hap-
piest when I am where the sun can blaze upon me; ”
and in his printed narrative of the same day he says,
“I am a worshiper of the sun. I took off my hat to
him, as I stood there, in a wilderness of white, crimson,
and purple flowers, and let him blaze away in my face
for a quarter of an hour. And as I walked home with
my back to him, I often turned my face from side to
side that I might feel his touch on my cheek.” He
had but three weeks in Spain, yet it was so in continu-
ation of his Eastern travel that wherever he went he
saw rather the Saracen than the Spaniard. He caught
himself writing poems which had their impulse from
the Orient, and he donned the Andalusian dress for
the time; half figuring thus the facility with which he
slipped into the life of the people amongst whom he
was especially when they appealed so strongly to his
native love of the bizarre. When well on his way to
India he sketched in brief the course of his travel in a
letter to his friend Phillips.
TO JOHN B. PEIILLIPS.
STRAITS OF BABELMANDEB, MoUTH of THE RED SEA,
December 17, 1852.
. . . I left England on the 29th of October, and reached Gi-
braltar in six and a half days. Thence I went to Cadiz, up the
Guadalquivir to Seville (beautiful city 1); then to Cordova,
where I saw the great Moorish mosque, then to Baylen, in the
borders of La Mancha, and southward by way of Jaen to Gra-
nada. There I stayed four days, delighted with everything, and
especially with the matchless Alhambra, the crown and blossom
of Oriental architecture. Then I put on an Andalusian dress,
took a guide and horses, and rode through the robber-haunted
mountains of Malaga and Ronda, – as wild and rough a journey
THE FARTHER EAST. 245
as you would like to make ; but I went through it safely, in
spite of robbers, storms, and swollen rivers. So I came back to
Gibraltar to meet the India mail, and left again November 27th.
We had one hundred and seventy passengers, among them num-
bers of English officers, who supplied me with abundance of let-
ters to all parts of India. We touched at Malta, and reached
Alexandria December 8th. Of course as I was booked for Bom-
bay, I could make no stay in Egypt, but was hurried on to
Cairo and Suez with the other passengers. I was eight or ten
hours in Cairo, and saw my faithful dragoman Achmet, who was
beside himself with joy. Go to Egypt, by all means, before you
return home ! Give up Greece, Palestine, Constantinople, if you
must, but go to Egypt We left Suez on the night of the 11th,
saw Sinai and JHoreb the next morning, passed within one hun-
dred miles of Mecca, and so on down the hot Red Sea to its
mouth, which we have just now (ten P. M.) reached. We saw
the town of Mocha this afternoon, about ten miles distant. To-
morrow morning we touch at Aden to coal, and I shall put this
letter in the post-office there, hoping that in time you will safely
get it at Heidelberg. . . .
I am in excellent health and spirits, though a heavy head-sea
and dim lamps make me write with difficulty. But I cannot
neglect the first opportunity I have of communicating with you.
I am full of pleasant anticipations of my trip in India, and my
later voyage to China and Japan. Is it not a rare opportunity ?
The only thing that troubles me is the long absence from my
sanctuary, and the little I can do for my art while thus on the
wing. I have written eight or ten short poems, Oriental in
style and subject, but can attempt nothing of any magnitude
till I get home again. . . . And now, my dear John, I must
close, hoping that if you have not already written you will do
so at once. God grant us a happy meeting after our wander-
ings
He reached Bombay December 27, 1852, and after
a week's stay sent his heavier baggage by steamer to:
Calcutta, and proceeded himself across the Ghauts.
A week's traveling by cart brought him to Indore,
whence he went to Agra and from Agra, to Delhi.
There he was still a thousand miles from Calcutta,
246 BAYARD TA YLOR.
with only a month before him, but he could not resist
the temptation to get a glimpse of the Himalayas, and
So he made a hasty and rough journey to Landowr,
the highest point in the range which could conven-
iently be reached during the winter season. Turning
back to Dehra, he went on to Meerut, and by Luck-
now to Cawnpore. At Allahabad he struck the
Ganges, and making a short stay at Benares reached
Calcutta February 21st.
TO EDIS MOTEIER.
CALCUTTA, February 24, 1853.
Here am I at last in the city of palaces, all my journeys in
India finished, and with a ticket for Hong Kong (to leave in
two days) in my pocket. During less than two months I have
traveled 2,200 miles in the interior. If you look on the map,
and draw a line from Bombay to Agra and Delhi, and thence
northward to the Himalaya Mountains, where they intersect
latitude 31°, thence southeast to Lucknow, Benares, and Cal-
cutta, you will see what my track has been, and how much
ground I have gone over. . . . My whole journey through India
has been a succession of narrow escapes, but I have come off
clear. Now I can breathe freely, for the hardships of my jour-
ney are all over, and steam shall tug me all the rest of the way
around the world. My health, of course, is excellent. How
could it be otherwise ? All climates are the same to me. I
have met nothing but kindness from one end of India to the
other. Every door was open, and I was free to stay as long as I
chose. It was a great satisfaction to find that I was already
known. “Eldorado’ has been before me, and all the intelligent
Englishmen I meet have read it. I found a copy, in a library at
the foot of the Himalayas . The Indian newspapers have noticed
my progress through the country in the kindest terms.
Although so rapid a journey permitted only the
record of impressions formed by a quick-eyed traveler,
the accuracy and trustworthiness of those impressions
have been testified to by many subsequent travelers.
THE FAR THER EAST. 247
All the guide-books to India contain passages from
his descriptions as still the best. This is especially
true of his description of the Taj Mahal. The letters
to the “Tribune” were necessarily rather sketches
than full narratives or elaborate observations. The
contact with India, however, which this rough excur-
sion gave, had a value for Bayard Taylor, who had al-
ready begun in his mind those studies of human life
and faith which he was afterward to make the basis of
poems of cosmic thought. “There is something,” he
wrote at Bombay, “in every form of religion worthy
of general respect; and he who does not feel this
can neither understand nor appreciate the art which
sprang from the ancient faiths. Our teachers of re-
ligion speak with sincere and very just horror and con-
tempt of all forms of idolatry, yet under pain of their
anathemas I dare assert that he who can revile Osiris
and Amun-Re is unworthy to behold the wonders of
Thebes. The Christian need not be an iconoclast;
nay, more, his very faith, in its perfect charity and its
boundless love, obliges him to respect the shrines
where the mighty peoples of the ancient world have
bowed and worshiped. Besides, there is truth, how-
ever dim and eclipsed, behind all these outward sym-
bols. Even the naked and savage Dinkas of Central
Africa worship trees; and so do I. The Parsees wor-
ship the Sun, as the greatest visible manifestation of
the Deity; and I assure you I have felt very much
inclined to do the same, when he and I were alone in
the desert.”"
Besides this, it was a pleasure to him to see, as he
occasionally did, not only the magnificence of temple
and castle, but the pomp and pageantry of ceremony
1 A Visit to India, China, and Japan in the Year 1853, pp. 50, 51.
248 PA YARD TAYLOR.
and ritual. Lucknow, with its gayety and prodigality
of riches, was a feast to his eyes, and he enjoyed to the
full his own impromptu share in the display of the
city. He had been invited by a British officer to
make an excursion through the place.
“We were joined by one of Captain Sleeman’s
friends, and mounted on three of the king's largest
elephants. With our gilded howdahs, long crimson
housings, and the resplendent dresses of the drivers
and umbrella holders who sat behind us, on the ele-
phants' rumps, we made as stately a show as any of
the native princes. It was the fashionable hour for
appearing in public, and as we entered the broad
street leading to the Roomee Derwazee it was filled
with a long string of horses and elephants, surging
slowly through the dense crowd of pedestrians. We
plunge boldly into the tumult, and, having the royal
elephants and footmen gifted with a ten-man power
of lungs, make our way without difficulty. It is a
barbaric pageant, wholly to my liking, and as I stare
Solemnly at the gorgeous individuals on the elephants
that pass us I forget that I have not a turban around
my brows.” 1
He left Calcutta February 28th, glad to accept the
repose of the sea in exchange for the wearisome jolt-
ing over rough roads which had so lately been his ex-
perience, and after touching at Singapore arrived at
Hong Kong March 16th. The United States steam-
frigate Susquehanna was lying in the harbor just
ready to sail for Macao, and Captain Buchaman at
once invited Bayard Taylor to accompany him to that
port, where he could take a steamer to Canton. At
Macao he went to pay his respects to Colonel Hum-
1 A Visit to India, China, and Japan in the Year 1853, p. 226.
THE FARTHER EAST. 249
phrey Marshall, the United States minister there,
when that gentleman at once proposed to make him
an attaché of the embassy which was just about to
leave for Shanghai, and possibly Nankin. The Impe-
rial Commissioner with whom Colonel Marshall was to
treat was at that time at the head of the Chinese army,
which was attempting to put down the revolt headed
by Tien-Teh, and afterwards by Tae-Ping. The pro-
posal took Bayard by surprise, but he could not hesi-
tate a moment. The possibility of seeing Nankin, a
city which not more than half a dozen Europeans had
at that time ever visited, was enough in itself to de-
cide him. So the next day he was again on board the
Susquehanna.
“It was worth all my long wanderings in foreign
lands and among strange races,” he writes, “to expe-
rience the pride and satisfaction of walking the deck
of a national vessel, and hearing again the stirring
music of our national airs. One must drink deep of
absence and exile to learn the tenderness of that re-
gard for his native land which at home lies latent
and unsuspected at the bottom of his nature. I want
no man for a friend whose heart will not beat more
warmly at the sight of his country's banner floating
On a distant sea.”
The Susquehanna reached Shanghai March 28th,
and three days later the commissioner decided to start
for Nankin. Unfortunately, the vessel was very ill-
managed by the pilots, and after repeated attempts to
ascend the river it was pronounced impracticable, and
the Susquehanna returned to Shanghai. As a matter
of fact the same vessel went up with great ease the
next summer. All sorts of rumors reached Shanghai
as to the success of the rebels and the probable fate
250 BA YARD TA YLOR.
of Shanghai itself, and the period of Bayard Taylor's
detention there was one of great excitement, as well as
of unusual opportunities for obtaining a knowledge of
China and the Chinese.
At last on the 3d of May the mail-steamer arrived
bringing the European and American mails, and news
that Commodore Perry had left Hong Kong; the next
day the Mississippi, his flagship, dropped anchor be-
side the Susquehanna. Bayard Taylor at once pre-
sented himself to the commodore with his letters, and
after some diplomacy received the appointment of
master's mate.
TO HIS MOTHER.
SHANGHAI, CHINA, May 8, 1853.
The question is settled this morning, and fortunately just in
time for the mail which closes this afternoon. I am to accom-
pany the expedition to Japan, in the capacity of —imagine it if
you can — master’s mate with a salary of $300 a year, and six
dollars a month for rations. Oh, what a falling off From the
attaché of an embassy to master’s mate on board a man of war.
Think of me hereafter as wearing a blue coat, with big gilt but—
tons, a gilt anchor on the front of my cap, and a terrible sword
by my side. I belong to the great American Navy — that
glorious institution which scatters civilization in every broadside,
and illuminates the dark places of the earth with the light of its
rockets and bomb-shells. Now shall the name of Taylor be as
renowned upon the sea as it already is upon the land.
Seriously, I consider myself most fortunate. The rules of
the Navy Department are so strict in regard to the expedition
that nobody has been allowed to accompany it except in some
naval capacity. Everybody has been refused. English noble-
men, German barons, and American scholars have applied in
vain, and the mere chance of a vacancy in a merely nominal of
fice has enabled me to join. I shall have nothing to do con-
nected with the service, except in case of need, to act as messen-
ger from one part of the squadron to another, or similar small
duties. The captain of the Susquehanna, who is my fast friend,
applied to have me as his clerk. The commodore refused, and
THE FAR THER EAST. - 251
for a few days I had not the slightest hopes of going. By
dexterous management I have succeeded in bringing a good deal
of influence to bear upon the commodore, who is a blunt, honest
old fellow and well-disposed towards me, and he this morning
gave his consent. He prefers that I should join as master's
mate, because I should then be under his immediate command,
and could accompany him in all his official visits and excursions
on shore. This will give me the very position I seek. I shall
mess with the midshipmen of the Susquehanna, and the artist
(an old friend of mine), daguerreotypist, and telegraphist. The
rules of the service forbid me writing a line for publication 1 and
oblige me at the end of the cruise to give up my journal to the
Navy Department. But I shall have little difficulty, through
Commodore Perry's aid, in reclaiming it and publishing a history
of the expedition.
In this, however, he was disappointed. He kept a
full journal, which was delivered to the Navy Depart-
ment, but never returned to the writer. He was
obliged, therefore, to rely upon his memory and upon
his letters home to write, after he had left the service,
a brief narrative of his share in the expedition. He
regretted this especially in the case of the visit which
he made to the Loo-Choo Islands, of which he made a
full report to Commodore Perry, who pronounced it of
great value. It was used, as well as other portions of
his journal, by Dr. Hawks in his “Narrative of the
Expedition of an American Squadron to the China
Seas and Japan,” published by Congress in 1856.
The Susquehanna, which had become the commo-
dore's flagship, left Shanghai May 17th, for a trip to
the Loo-Choo Islands and afterward to the Bonin Isl-
ands. On returning to Loo-Choo June 24th, the Plym-
outh, one of the vessels of the squadron, was found
in the harbor, having on board the mail for the Sus-
1 He received permission, however, to write to the Tribune special let-
ters, which first passed under the commodore's eye.
252 B.A. Y.A.R.D TA YLOR.
quehanna. It was welcome news to Bayard Taylor,
for he had had no word from America since he left
Alexandria, December 8, 1852, and the large package
of letters which had been accumulating for him at dif-
ferent places, and had at last been forwarded to Hong
Kong, gave him abundant food for thought on the
voyage to Japan. Especially interesting was the in-
telligence in a letter from his mother that his father
had made a bargain for eighty acres of land near the
Taylor homestead on his account. His mother had
known of his wish some day to own this land, and
had brought matters to a successful conclusion. The
property thus bought was the Pusey farm, afterward
named Cedarcroft, so dear from that time forward to
its owner. How exciting to him was the news of the
purchase can be judged when one reads the account
which he afterward gave of a bit of earth steeped in
early and late associations.
“It happened,” he says, “that adjoining my fa-
ther's property there was an old farm, which was fast
relapsing into a state of nature. Thirty or forty years
had passed since the plough had touched any part of
it. The owner, who lived upon another estate at a
little distance, had always declined to sell,—perhaps
for the reason that no purchaser could be found to
offer an encouraging price. Left thus to herself, na-
ture played all sorts of wild and picturesque pranks
with the property. Two heaps of stones were all that
marked the site of the house and barn; half a dozen
ragged plum and peach trees hovered around the out-
skirts of the vanished garden, the melancholy surviv-
ors of all its bloom and fruitage; and a mixture of
tall sedge-grass, sumacs, and blackberry bushes cov-
ered the fields. The hawthorn hedges which lined
THE FARTHER EAST. 253
the lane had disappeared, but some clumps of privet
still held their ground and the wild grape and scarlet-
berried celastrus clambered all over the tall Sassafras
and tulip trees.
“Along the road which bounded this farm on the
east stood a grove of magnificent oaks, more than a
hundred feet in height. Standing too closely to per-
mit of lateral boughs near the earth, their trunks rose
like a crowded colonnade clear against the sky, and
the sunset, burning through, took more gorgeous hues
of orange and angry crimson. Knowing that if the
farm were sold, those glorious trees would probably
be the first to fall, and that the sunset would thereby
for me lose half its splendor, I gradually came to
contemplate them with the interest which an uncer-
tain, suspended fate inspires. . . . In another wood of
chestnuts, beyond the field, the finest yellow violets
were to be found; the azaleas blossomed in their sea-
son, and the ivory Indian-pipe sprang up under the
beech trees. Sometimes we extended our rambles to
the end of the farm, and looked down into the se-
cluded dells beyond the ridge which it covered. Such
glimpses were like the discovery of unknown lands.
How far off the other people lived How strange it
must be to dwell continually down in that hollow,
with no other house in sight ! But when I build a
house, I thought, I shall build it up on the ridge, with
a high steeple, from the top of which I can see far
and wide.” "
This was the vision which again rose to his eyes in
those far Eastern waters, as he read his letters from
home, and although he could not, and did not wish to
withdraw from the expedition on which he had set
1. At Home and Abroad, ii. pp. 3–5.
254 BAYARD TA YLOR.
out, his plans and hopes for the future were quickened
by the new knowledge.
TO HIS MOTHER.
NAPA, Loo-CHoo, June 28, 1853.
I very much hope father has made the bargain with John
Pusey. I have always wanted to get hold of the property, and
the terms he offers strike me as very reasonable. If I have it, I
promise you not a sound tree on the place shall come down. I
intend also getting the fifty acres which I proposed buying of
father, and later, perhaps the forty now held by Uncle M. My
idea is to get as much land as possible adjoining father's prop-
erty, so as to create a large family homestead estate. I shall not
be able to live on my part of it for many years to come, but it
will be a satisfaction to secure it, and the money is not lost. . . .
If the Japan business is over this summer (which I very much
doubt), I shall have a splendid chance to make something out of
it. If not, I shall resign my situation and return home, for I
cannot remain another year, even for the opportunity of writing
the history of the expedition. I am beginning to get a little
tired of travel, and I miss the society to which I have been ac-
customed. I shall not want to leave home again for a long, long
time after I get back. . . .
The squadron sailed from the harbor of Napa-Kiang
July 2, 1853, and six days later made a headland not
far south of the great bay of Yedo. It was not till
the 14th that the preliminary ceremonies were dis-
missed and the first foreign ambassadors since the ex-
pulsion of the Portuguese were received on Japanese
soil. We have become so familiar with Japan since
that day and there has been so much reciprocal rela-
tion, that the hasty notes which could be made of
sights which were then strange and full of promise
have been largely superseded by more liberal narra-
tives, but there remains the very interesting account
of a most suggestive meeting of the American and
Japanese representatives. Commodore Perry made
THE FAIR THER EAST. 255
only initial overtures on this short visit and returned
the following summer to complete the diplomatic rela-
tions of the two countries. The squadron now re-
mained but three days longer in the bay of Yedo. On
the 17th of July it took its leave and, after a short
stay again at Loo-Choo, reached Hong Kong August
7th. Here the squadron was divided, and the Sus-
quehanna after touching at Macao was ordered to
Cumsingmoon, a Chinese island about fifteen miles
farther north, where was a good anchorage, good wa-
ter, and healthy air.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
U. S. S. SUSquEHANNA,
MACAO, CHINA, August 11, 1853.
Your letter of November 25, 1852, reached me at Loo-Choo
on the 25th of June, 1853. So far am I removed from you, from
home and civilization. What have I not seen and experienced in
that time 2 yet all that experience seems to be urging me far-
ther and farther away, till I am ready to write to you as to an in-
habitant of a different planet. If you could have received a let-
ter which I wrote to you in April last, you would have known
what a mighty yearning I have for the old life of home; but
that letter now lies at the bottom of the China Sea, in the hold
of a sunken steamer, with thirty or forty drowned seamen and
lascars. You will see that I have neither forgotten nor neg-
lected you. I do my best to keep the place you have given me
in your heart, because every day of my life teaches me better
how to value it. Your letter was a rare joy to me, for seven
months had passed over my head without a word from home,
and I was fast growing reckless and desperate. We were about
leaving for Japan, for an indefinite length of time, and in a day
or two more I should have been beyond the reach of mails, when
one of the vessels of the squadron arrived from Shanghai, bring-
ing me a large packet of letters. I need only say to you that
when I received them I nearly cracked my skull against one of
the timbers of the orlop-deck, where I was domiciled, without
being sensible of the blow.
I suppose you know something of my movements since leaving
256 BA YARD TA YLOR.
London. I hope so, for I am not in the mood for narrating
them. They are nearly all thrust far back in my memory by
more recent things. I saw Spain and India by the way, and
spent two months in China as attaché to the American Legation ;
and on the arrival of the squadron at Shanghai succeeded in get-
ting on board the flagship for the expedition to Japan by enter-
ing the service. Yes, George, I give you liberty to laugh at me
to your heart's content. I am nothing but a “master's mate” in
the navy, privileged to wear an anchor on my cap, and a blue
coat with eighteen buttons; allowed to go up and down the
gangways by the port ladders; to Smoke cigars forward of the
main shaft ; to mess in the cockpit ; to salute the quarter-deck;
to take off my cap to the commodore, and swear at the seamen.
I appear at “general quarters” with a cutlass belted at my
side ; and in Japan I went so far as to stand my night-watch
with a loaded carbine, ready to repel the enemies of my country.
“I have done the state some service ; ” but alas ! the state will
never know or recognize it. Well, we shall at least have a jolly
laugh together, when I can tell you of my performances in this
new rôle. It will ruin forever my small reputation as a poet, I
fear, for the world believes that a poet can never be anything
else than a poet, least of all a naval officer.
We sailed from Shanghai in May, and went to the great Loo-
Choo island, a place little visited and little known. The commo-
dore made me one of an expedition to explore the interior, which
was wholly unknown. We had a remarkable week’s work,
tramping up mountain and down dale, surrounded with spies,
avoided as a pestilence, and yet treated with the greatest possi-
ble respect. We were enchanted with the beauty of the scenery,
and made some interesting discoveries. Early in June we sailed
for the Bonin Islands, eight hundred miles to the eastward,
where we found a colony of runaway sailors, living like Robin-
son Crusoes, with Kanaka women for their mates. Here I was
appointed to the command of an exploring party, and had a
frightful labor in crawling through impenetrable forests and
scaling impassable precipices. It was a task to my liking, and I
had one or two manly, resolute fellows with me. The age of ad-
venture is nearly past, but I have had some few tastes of its
spirit, — enough, I fear, to subject me to visitations of unquiet
and the thirst for a roving, venturesome life for the rest of my
days. We returned to Loo-Choo, whence we sailed on the 2d of
THE FARTHER EAST. 257
July for Japan. How we fared there you will learn from the
newspapers. I have sent a full account to the “Tribune.” The
visit was interesting to me from its historical importance, and it
is a source of some satisfaction to have participated in it, but I
should never choose Japan as a field of travel. China. I hope
never to see again. These people lack all sense of art, and their
most celebrated productions are at best but labored monstrosi-
ties. I have taken an inveterate disgust to them, and shall re-
joice greatly when I see their stupid, impassive, yellow visages
for the last time. We reached here a few days ago, on our re-
turn from Japan ; and as the squadron will not leave again for
Yedo before next May, I am about to resign my place and return
home by the first opportunity. You may expect me in Philadel-
phia about New Year's Day, 1854, when I shall claim the wel-
come, the seat, and the bottle, which you promise me in your
new house.
I have been greatly shocked and depressed for the past few
days by an accident which occurred while we were lying at Hong
Kong. My hammock-boy, who was one of the finest men in the
ship, fell overboard during the mid-watch, and was drowned. I
was awakened from sleep by his drowning cries, and saw him
struggle and sink without being able to save him. He showed a
manly attachment for me, which I fully repaid, for wherever I
go I must have some one on whom to spend the surplus of my
affection. Not two hours before his death he had for the first
time partly made me a confidant, for he was of a respectable
family and serving under a false name. A large property had
been left him, and he was desirous of getting permission to re-
turn home. Yet so sadly did the poor fellow talk, and so loath
was he to leave the place where my hammock was slung, that I
am certain the shadow of death was then upon him. Great God!
‘is there an unrelenting fate in the world, ever ready to snatch
from our lips every cup which might relieve the fever and weari-
ness of life 2 That man's last bubbling cry is still in my ears,
torturing me anew with doubts of the justice of Providence. I
shall never lose the recollection of it. He was one of the main-
topmen, who are selected from the best men in the ship, and one
of his mates immediately offered to take his place as my boy. I
wrote an inscription for the tombstone of another, who died in
Hong Kong, and thereby gained the cordial good-will of all the
men, who take every occasion to show it by such trifling-acts of
VOL. I. 17
258 B.A. Y.A.R.D TA YLOR.
attention as they can give me. There are some fine fellows
among them, and I shall feel more regret at parting with them
than with most of the officers on board. I am waiting for letters
by the steamer Powhatan, which went off to Loo-Choo before
our arrival, with three months’ mails on board. When I get my
letters I shall take measures for returning home, probably in a
clipper ship, direct for New York, as there are no American ves-
sels up for San Francisco. I shall have ninety days at sea, in
that case, – ninety days of perfect rest and quiet, — and shall
try to do something in the way of poetry. I shall have little to
show you else, and that little, I fear, will disappoint you. There
is a poem of mine in the June number of “Blackwood,” which
you may not have seen, remarkable only for my theft of a meas-
ure in your “Song of the Earth.” What would I not give to
have your new poems and tragedies to read and criticise (!) on
the way home ! Tell Stoddard that a letter of mine to him lies
at the bottom of the China Sea, but I would also write a note to
him if he had not neglected me so cruelly. Give my love to
him, nevertheless, and to Read, who seems to have dropped me
out of his memory.
MACAo, August 18, 1853.
Since commencing this letter, I have been at the anchorage of
Cumsingmoon, about fifteen miles to the northward of this place.
I was there four days, when the commodore, who had taken a
house here, sent for the artists (among whom I am classed) to
come down, and take up their quarters in a large building which
he has hired as an hospital for seamen. It is a fine old Portu-
guese mansion, in the highest part of the town, and we find it an
airy and agreeable residence for a tropical summer. Here I
shall stay until I leave for home. I have not yet recovered from
my regret at leaving the noble old Susquehanna, and nothing but
my long absence from home, and the necessity of returning to
take charge of my neglected business matters, prevents me from
remaining and seeing the cruise to an end. In spite of all its
disagreeable features this ocean life exercises a powerful fascina-
tion upon me, and I find myself frequently lamenting that I am
not young enough to adopt it. This is idle and ridiculous, of
course, but we can’t always control our fancies; and for my part,
I am as prone to whimsical longings as a pregnant woman. The
secret of it is, perhaps, that there are among the men a few
blunt, hardy, honest, and wholly manly natures, whom I cordially
THE FAR THER EAST. 259
esteem, and who, in their rough way, show an attachment for
me. Since I parted with my Spanish muleteer in Gibraltar,
theirs are the first faces in which I have read a manly affection
for myself, - an affection in which I feel honored. There is
room in one’s heart, you know, for a score of these simple
friendships, and I am restless and unhappy when I am without
them. Do not fear that I am prodigal of my feelings, and shall
spend all their best warmth during my rovings, so that I shall
go back to you with a languid love. No, my dear George, we
know each other too well for anything to shake that steady faith
in each other which is the greatest happiness Heaven has left
to me.
You speak of changes which absence and my varied experi-
ences have wrought in me. Alas ! I fear you will find little
growth in anything, except in my attachment to yourself. I
have gained, indeed, a considerable accession of mere knowledge,
and perhaps a better insight into the mysteries of human nature ;
but I do not feel that I have advanced in art, or am, as I should
be by this time, a better poet. Perhaps when the harvest of new
thought shall be ripe I may find my gain, for I cannot say that
I am disheartened by the consciousness of how little I have done.
You may see in Putnam's new magazine a poem called “Cama-
deva,” which I sent him. It is a fair sample of the few I have
written—the sum of my labors for two years I feel a kind of
shame creep over me when you speak of your hopes for me.
I have relented towards Dick, and send him a note by the
same mail which carries this. But the lazy fellow has no excuse
for not writing to me. What is he doing 2 My latest news
from home are no later than the middle of February. The
Powhatan has not yet returned from Loo-Choo, but is hourly ex-
pected, as she is overdue. I must close without waiting to see
whether there is another letter from you in her, for the mail
leaves to-morrow for England. The chances are that I shall
leave here in three or four weeks, and reach home by the close
of the year. It will be a bad season for such a sun-enamored
body as mine, after nearly two years of tropical existence. You
must keep a warm corner for me at your fireside, and I don’t
think a warm potation would hurt either of us, when the winter
nights are longest and coldest. Would you were here, even in
this torrid August weather, that we might stroll to the garden
and grotto where our brother Camoëns wrote the “Lusiad l’”
260 BA YARD TA YLOR.
And now, please God, I drop my correspondence with you un-
til we meet face to face. Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Boker
and your father's family. God bless you !
TO R. H. STODDARD.
U. S. S. SUsquEFIANNA,
CUMSINGMOON, CHINA, August 13, 1853.
. . . I fear I shall go back to you the same mere lyrist as of
old, with a few new Orientalisms in my imagery, an additional
glow and color, perhaps, in my cup of wine, but nothing else. I
shall have little to show, and that little, I fear, will disappoint
you, if you have been measuring my growth in the mean time by
your own. I have relapsed into a traveler, an adventurer, seek-
ing the heroic in actual life, yet without attaining it ; satisfied
with the sensation of animal existence, and more admiring and
more thinking of the lusty joys of living and breathing among
my fellow-men than of the glorious art to which I once devoted
myself. It has repaid me, however, by inspiring me with a
warm sympathy with all kinds and classes of men, and I shall
have, for some years to come, friends in the deserts of Nubia,
the mountains of Spain, and among the hardy seamen of our
navy, who, I am sure, will remember me with kindly feeling.
The experience of the last two years has been most valuable to
me in every respect. It has vastly increased my sum of mere
knowledge, and, most of all, my knowledge of human nature. I
have a rich store of material to work up in after life, if I live,
and my art does not forsake me. . . .
Commodore Perry, on learning that a prolonged ab-
sence would be a serious disadvantage to his extem-
porized master's mafe, good-naturedly gave him per-
mission to resign, and on the 5th of September he
took the anchor from his cap, bade adieu to his mess-
mates, and embarked on board the steamer for Can-
ton. He was much touched by the hearty good-will
of the men of the Susquehanna, who sent a deputation
to the captain and begged permission to man the rig-
ging and give him three cheers. “It could not be
granted,” he says in a letter to his mother, “as such
THE FAIRTHER EAST. 261
a compliment is only allowed for a commodore or cap-
tain, and my rank as an officer is three grades below
the latter; but here the will is the same as the deed.
It is the most grateful compliment I ever received;
for it came from a body of three hundred men, none
of whom knew me as an author, but only as a man,
and it was all genuine; there is no humbug in a sail-
or's heart. When the captain told me of it, I sent
for the men who had come to him, and told them to
thank the crew for me.”
After a short stay in Canton he embarked Septem-
ber 9th on the Sea-Serpent, a merchant-ship bound
for New York round the Cape of Good Hope. The
quiet sailing through summer seas was a pleasant time
for retrospect. There was work to do in rewriting let-
ters which had been lost at Sea, and more than a score
of poems found their way upon paper. It would seem
as if in that long suspense between continent and con-
tinent he had leisure to distill the essence of his two
years of travel. As he was looking toward New York,
he wrote in his diary: —
“December 2, 1853. We are to-day 2,400 miles from
New York, having already sailed somewhat more than
12,000 miles. I can scarcely yet realize that I am so
near home, and that in three weeks I may be under
that roof where so much parental and fraternal kind-
ness awaits me. Yet I am becoming restless and im-
patient, and rejoice that the tasks I proposed to my-
self, in starting, are so nearly accomplished. Of all
the crowd of poems with which my mind was preg-
nant, three only are still awaiting their parturition:
the lost letters have been rewritten, and the unwritten
ones likewise; and of the sketches of Eastern travel
I determined to fill up, there only remains the work
262 BA YARD TA YLOR,
of four or five days. I shall go home with clean
books, and a mind which, if not precisely a tabula
rasa, is at least free from the reproaches of a poetical
conscience — to me quite as hard to bear as those of a
moral one.” . . . The last entry in the journal is,
“Landed at New York Dec. 20th, at 2 P. M.”
CHAPTER XII.
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRAVEL.
1854.
Unto the desert and the desert steed
Farewell ! The journey is completed now :
Struck are the tents of Ishmael’s wandering breed,
And I unwind the turban from my brow.
L’Envoi (in “Poems of the Orient”).
Now Fame approached, when I expected least
Her moisy greeting.
The Picture of St. John.
WHEN Bayard Taylor came home after two years
of travel he found his name far more widely known
than he had imagined. There could be little opportu-
nity for him, while wandering, to know of the interest
which people took in his wanderings, but he had been
keeping himself in the minds of his countrymen in the
most effectual way. “The ‘Tribune’ comes next to
the Bible all through the West,” he once wrote to his
mother with an amused pride, and the readers of the
“Tribune” had heard his voice more than a hundred
times, when he had been living with scarcely a sound
from home. Now he was to hear and see the public
in the most emphatic manner. The lecture system,
outside of the great eastern cities where new attrac-
tions had begun to divide the field, was at its height,
and in the West especially a popular lecturer enjoyed
the highest favor.
As soon as it was known that Bayard Taylor had
264 B4 YARD TA YLOR.
returned to America, invitations to lecture poured in
upon him, and in a short time he had received so
many that he saw a new and prosperous vocation open
clearly before him. He was busy preparing his notes
and arranging his evenings, and wrote to Mr. Boker
when he had been in the country but ten days: “I am
overwhelmed with invitations to lecture, and shall have
to visit every town from Maine to Wisconsin, between
now and April.” He had no admiration for himself
as an orator. “I have a quiet laugh to myself now
and then,” he writes to Mr. Fields, “at the idea of be-
ing a popular lecturer, I who have no faculty for any-
thing like oratory. I see how it is that people are
interested in what I say; but that does n’t lessen the
absurdity of the thing. I care no more for the ap-
plause I receive from lecturing than if it were bestowed
on somebody else; the only advantage I am conscious
of is, that I can stand up in the face of the multitude
without feeling embarrassed.”
The explanation of his success as a lecturer is a very
simple one. He had already acquired a reputation as
a man of wide experience, who wrote agreeably and
freshly of what he had seen ; he had an interesting
story to tell, and he told it frankly, without affecta-
tion, with hearty good-nature, speaking as a man to
his friends. It was for him a profitable but irksome
mode of publication. He had a vigorous constitution
which had been reinforced by his life in the open air
in the East, and he endured the fatigue which attends
incessant traveling and speaking as few men in his
place could endure it. It was wearisome to see so
many people, to hear the same things said to him in
each place, and for that matter to say very much the
same things himself, yet in no other way than by lec-
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRAVEL. 265
turing could he so rapidly accumulate the means which
would rid him of all literary drudgery.
Besides lecturing he needed to prepare at least three
books of travel from his letters, journals, and notes,
and he set about them in the order of his tour. “A
Journey to Central Africa: or, Life and Landscapes
from Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the Nile; with
a Map and Illustrations by the Author,” was published
by Mr. Putnam in August, 1854, and “The Land of
the Saracens: or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor,
Sicily, and Spain,” later in the same season. A year
after appeared “A Visit to India, China, and Japan
in the Year 1853.”
The labor of preparing these books, together with a
revised edition of “Views Afoot,” kept him constantly
in reminiscence of his experience; wherever he went
he found himself recognized as a traveler; the form
of recognition was often exceedingly distasteful, but
the fact could not be overlooked that people believed
in him as having unusual gifts as a painter in words
of landscape, scene, and costume. Above all, he had,
he was obliged to confess to himself, a real love of
seeing many cities and men, and of coming face to
face with nature in strange and distant moods. It is
no wonder, then, that at this period of his life he
should have come to regard his travel as more of an
end and less as a mere means. He had become some-
what reconciled to a view of himself which came more
closely to an agreement with the popular conception of
him than he would once have been willing to admit.
“It would be strange,” he says, speaking of his East-
ern travel, “if an experience so prolonged should not
sensibly change the bent of an author’s mind. It was
not the sphere of activity which I should have chosen,
266 BAYARD TA YLOR.
had I been free to choose, but it was a grateful release
from the drudgery of the editorial room. After three
years of clipping and pasting, and the daily arrange-
ment of a chaos of ephemeral shreds, in an atmosphere
which soon exhausts the vigor of the blood, the change
to the freedom of Oriental life, to the wonders of the
oldest art, and to the easy record of impressions so
bright and keen that they put themselves into words,
was like that from night to day. With restored health
the life of the body became a delight in itself; a
kindly fortune seemed to attend my steps; I learned
something of the patience and fatalistic content of the
races among whom I was thrown, and troubled myself
no longer with an anxious concern for the future.
“I confess, too, that while floating upon the waters
of the White Nile, while roaming through the pine
forests of Phrygia or over the hills of Loo-Choo, I
learned to feel the passion of the Explorer. Almost
had I eaten of that fruit which gives its restless poison
to the blood. It is very likely that, had I then been
able to have marked out my future path, I might have
given it the character which was afterwards ascribed
to me.
“I will further confess that the unusual favor with
which those three volumes of travel were received, per-
haps, also, the ever-repeated attachment of “traveler’
to my name, and that demand for oral report of what
I had seen and learned which threw me suddenly into
the profession of lecturing, with much the sensation of
the priest whom Henri Quatre made general by mis-
take, I will confess, I say, that these things did for a
time mislead me as to the kind of work which I was
best fitted to do.” 1
1 By-Ways of Europe: “A Familiar Letter to the Reader.”
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL. 267
To this frank confession should be added the signif-
icant fact that while thus going with the stream, he
found his happiest work in shaping a new volume of
poems and in ordering his new domain of Cedarcroft.
We have seen how abundantly the Oriental life had
flowed in song during his reminiscence of it, especially
when homeward bound. He added now a few more
poems, and collected the material into “Poems of the
Orient,” published in the fall of this year by Ticknor
& Fields, and the hearty reception given to the vol-
ume by the public gave him surprise and genuine
pleasure. His very lecturing tour brought him many
reminders that among those who listened to him as to
a traveler were others who knew him more intimately
as a poet.
When he bought Cedarcroft he wove an invisible
web about himself. Every tree which he planted in-
vited him to rest beneath it; the sunset through the
oaks was the background to his reveries, and his mind,
when at leisure from arduous duties, turned wistfully
to the fields and copses which his ardent youth had
known. In the midst of his busy life he was always
Snatching a moment to send a few lines to his mother,
with money for the purchase of trees and shrubs and
directions as to the planting. The place grew in his
heart as the homestead for all; he heard with alarm
and strong dissatisfaction of his father's wish to move
to the village of Kennett Square; he had chosen the
spot where he meant to build a large house. For here
it may be said, without the particulars which do not
belong to the public, that Bayard Taylor was as loyal
to his family as if they formed together a Scottish
clan. From the first moment that fortune breathed
on him he made haste to bring them all under the
Same warm air.
268 BA YARD TA YLOR.
His long absences both from New York and from
Kennett, while lecturing, gave slight opportunity for
literary work beyond a poem which now and then
called for expression, and his correspondence suffered
from the same causé. He wrote often to his mother,
but chiefly detailing his movements and the meetings
which he had with members of the family or neighbors
whom he met in the West; he was obliged, also, to
write on the business of his book to Mr. Fields, and
the occasion was pretty sure to call out something be-
sides business, and he found moments of comparative
leisure when he enjoyed a friendly word with Mr.
Boker and Mr. Stoddard. From early in January
until the end of April he was constantly moving from
town to town.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER. &
SPRINGFIELD, MAss., Sunday, February 5, 1854.
I am passing my Sunday alone here, resting after a week's
hard work, and have just read your letter over again to dispel
my loneliness. I wish I could see your face for an hour to-day,
for our last meeting was little more than a mutual exposition
of our poetical labors. . . . I am perhaps happier, or at least
stronger, than you suspect. Strong emotion of any kind always
carries the expression of sadness, and when I was last with you
I was subdued almost to tears by the recollection of your sym-
pathy during my season of trial, of the stay which your friend-
ship gave me in my weakness, of the constancy with which your
sympathy followed me in my long absence, and by the great joy
of meeting you again. Do not suffer all the debt to be on my
side. . . .
I passed through Philadelphia twice last week on my way to
and from Baltimore, but had barely time to get from one station
to another. In Baltimore I had a great triumph. I spoke to
four thousand people in a hall three hundred and fifty feet long.
It was a new and proud experience to magnetize so many per-
sons at once. I soon felt that I could enchain their attention,
and was never more confident and collected. In Albany, also, I
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL. 269
had great success, hundreds being unable to get into the hall.
I have now not a single evening vacant before the middle of
April, and am refusing invitations daily. To-morrow here, then
in Salem, Amesbury (where I spend a night with Whittier),
Manchester, N. H., etc., and next week Rochester and Buf-
falo. It is a profitable business, but I consider the money well
earned. . . .
I have not seen Dick for a week. The poem was his, and I
am glad you like it. He has half a dozen other charming little
things in MS. My own brain is beginning to ferment again as
the vernal equinox draws migh, but I shall have no chance of re-
lieving it until this vagabondage is over. I like your “Stand-
ard” better than ever, after reading it in “Graham.” Don't be
lazy, George, but have one of these library drawers filled by the
time I come to see you. I long to take possession of that bit of
“Gulistan’’ which you have given me in your third story, and to
smoke away the nights with you in your library. I could for-
get the Orient there, but here, with the mercury at zero every
morning, my Arab blood is chilled. Write to me as often as you
Call.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
- PENNYAN, N. Y., February 17, 1854.
. . . When shall we have a chance to notice the changes which
three years have made in each other ? I am going to be in Bos-
ton in May, and can hardly hope to see you before then, as my
engagements in the West will detain me until the middle of
April. This lecturing is a great business. I have sixty-five en-
gagements, and have delivered twenty or thirty. Everywhere I
have crushing houses. This afternoon a special train comes
down from Canandaigua, solely on my account Curiosity is
alive to see “The Great American Traveler.” It provokes and
humiliates me, but I suppose it is natural, and I must submit to
it. But I would give all this noisy popularity for a quiet even-
ing with you.
TO BIIS MOTHER.
CoRNING, N. Y., February 25, 1854.
. . . I inclose ten dollars to pay the expense of getting fifty
more pine-trees, making one hundred altogether. I want them
set to the north and west of where the house will stand, along
the fence and among the other trees, so as to form rather a dense
270 BA YARD TA YLOR.
grove. A protection of this kind is needed to keep off the
northwest winds. Fred knows where the house will stand.
My lectures continue to be as popular as ever. The houses are
crowded, and people come here, fifteen and twenty miles, to hear
me. I find that everybody, literally everybody, has read my let-
ters, and knows me already. Such introductions as I must go
through with ! I am stared at and pointed at as if I were the
great Gyaskutos itself. It is not very pleasant, but I must pay
the penalty. However, it makes me acquainted with many ex-
cellent people all over the country, so that, wherever I go, I am
never almong strangers.
A pleasant account of the manner in which he made
friends, when on his lecturing tours, appears in a rem-
iniscence by a writer in the Troy (N. Y.) “Whig,”
after Bayard Taylor's death: “I met him first,” the
writer says, “after his return from India, and knowing
him then only as the “great American traveler,’ and
never having read or heard as to his personal appear-
ance or manner, was prepared for the manifestation in
him of anything that was distant, cool, dignified, re-
pelling, or repressing. He was as much a stranger to
all the others who were present on this occasion as to
me, and he must have known by his keen power of
studying character that those whose guest he then was
regarded him with great respect and admiration. But
from the first moment of his introduction to the end of
his visit, the ease of his manner, the attention which
he paid to the various queries which were propounded
to him, the full and intelligent information that he
conveyed, and the graphic words in which he described
what he had seen and heard, and which we desired
most particularly to hear, won me away from my pre-
conceived notions as to his style and bearing, and left
him forever enshrined in memory as one who
‘Bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman.’
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL. 271
“I had listened for some time to his intelligent de-
scriptions, enunciated with extreme modesty in the mod-
ulated tones of his pleasing voice, when Tom, a large
Maltese cat, entered the room. At Mr. Taylor's invi-
tation 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 assuming
the position of a Turk on the rug before the sofa, re-
mained there for ten or fifteen minutes, playing with
delighted Tom in the most buoyant manner, still con-
tinuing 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.” "
TO R. H. STODDARD.
BUFFALO, March 5, 1854.
. . . I have lectured nine times since I saw you, and have had
great success everywhere. Crammed houses ; women carried
out fainting ; young ladies stretching their necks on all sides,
and crying in breathless whispers, “There he is that's him l’”
etC.
Believe me, Stoddard, it is a miserable business, this lecturing.
There is some satisfaction in finding so many persons that have
known you, and read what you have written, and feel a sincere
interest in you, and are kind and hospitable towards you, but,
oh the vanity and vexation of hearing the same remarks twenty
times a day, and being obliged to answer questions that have be-
come hideous by endless repetition. I wonder how I retain my
patience under it all. Sometimes I snap them rather short off,
but they think it’s my way of talking, and are not offended. I
find that this business of traveling has entirely swamped and
1 Troy Morning Whig, December 23, 1878.
272 JBA YARD TA YLOR.
overwhelmed my poetical reputation, except with a few sensible
people here and there. People can’t see that if I had not been a
poet, I should never have had such success as a traveler. Then
to hear remarks made about me and my lectures, in the cars and
hotels, by people who don't know me personally, it’s amusing,
yet humiliating, for I am not flattered by the value they put upon
me. There is not the least fragment of discrimination in it.
Most of them admire me hugely for having gotten over so much
ground, and some are inclined to sneer because the others admire.
Altogether, the experience is interesting and useful, but I foresee
that I shall soon get enough of it.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
MILWAUKEE, WIs., March 16, 1854.
Your letter has reached me at last, after chasing me all over
the West. I shall be in Boston (I hope and expect) about the
last of April, so I shall certainly see you before your departure.
How long shall you be absent 2 I hardly envy you the journey
just now, for I desire nothing so much as rest. I have had no
rest since I reached home, and shall have none for a month or
two to come. But I must see you before you leave for many
reasons. And to come to the main subject at once, I do desire to
bring out a new volume of poems in the fall. They are mostly
Eastern in subject or spirit, and I think of calling them “Poems
of the Orient.” But few of them have been published. I have
forty or fifty in all. As my work on my African travels will ap-
pear in August, and another on Syria, Asia Minor, and Spain in
November, I think if I could get out the poems in October they
would come in a propos to the travels. I want to show you the
poems, and discuss the subject of their publication.
I am afraid my “Romances,” etc., have been an unfortunate
investment for you. I have fully made up my mind that the
book has been a complete failure. Now, James, I want to know
the exact truth. If you remember rightly, I promised to make
up whatever deficiency there might be. I have not the slightest
idea that the book has paid the expense of publication, and I
want to know my indebtedness. I did hope a rather more favor-
able result, but am not disheartened, seeing that in order to have
a great sale one must adopt the style of Tupper or Alexander
Smith.
Therefore, if a limited sale proves that I have no resemblance to
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL. 273
those worthies, I am well satisfied. "But I do not intend that
you shall lose a penny by my failure. I make Ticknor & Co.
my preferred creditors, and there are still sufficient assets in my
hands to pay you one hundred cents on the dollar. Make no
bones about the matter, my dear James, but come down upon me
as you would upon an absguatulating book-agent. -
TO HIS MOTHER.
MILWAUKEE, WIs., March 16, 1854.
Here I am, in the wilds of Wisconsin, just come in from a
journey of three or four days on the Rock River prairies. I
have the most astounding success all through the West. The
little country towns all give me fifty dollars a lecture, and cram
their halls and churches. People come ten, fifteen, and twenty
miles over the prairie in their wagons to see and hear me. They
all take the “Tribune " and read every one of my letters con-
scientiously, and their great curiosity is to see what sort of an
animal I am. They are greatly disappointed because I am not
forty-five years old. I had no idea before that I was half so well
known. I am carried from place to place in triumph, have the
best rooms at hotels, the most obsequious attention, and am
stared at in a way that quite puts me out of countenance. At
Rockford they gave me a serenade. Some of the farmers' wives
are so overcome with awe when I am introduced to them that
they cannot say a word. It's puzzling to me to see this ; I ex-
amine myself to see what I am, and find myself to be somebody
else than I thought I was. Why, there are men coming down
from Janesville (seventy miles off) to hear me lecture to-night
here, although I have lectured in Janesville once already. The
people are infatuated, and I can’t understand why. It is a new
and curious experience. If I lecture next winter I can spend
three months in the West, and have engagements for every
night.
Mr. Fields relieved his mind with regard to the for-
tune of “A Book of Romances.” “It has sold,” he
writes, “to that extent which leaves the author thereof
uncalled upon to pay. . . . Do let us publish the other
volume of poems. Stoddard had the MS., and I bor-
rowed it to read in the cars going home from New
WOL, I, 18
274 PA YA R D TA YLOR.
York last Saturday. It is fine throughout, and one
poem in particular, one of the longest, is one of the
best pieces from anybody's pen that has appeared for
years. It is that where the Arab tells his love, and
relates how he carried off his lady on the back of
El—something.”"
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
ST. LOUIs, Mo., April 15, 1854.
Behold me here, in the Missourian wilds, on my lecturing cru-
sade I have half a mind to run up to Nebraska and roll out
one of my harangues to the unsettled prairies of that great coun-
try. I am doing my best to fulfill my engagements in the West,
but the invitations increase in geometrical ratio ; so that I have
finally set a limit, and now sternly decline the entreaties which
still pour in upon me from all sides. The programme of my
season is at length completed, and if you knew how arduous and
incessant my labors have been for the past three months, you
would congratulate me heartily. I lecture to-night for the sixty-
eighth time, and have still twenty more appointments.
I have to be at Portsmouth, N. H., on the 9th of May, so you
may expect me in Boston on Monday afternoon, May 8th, and on
Thursday, May 11th, all day. Now I sincerely trust you have
not engaged to leave for England before that time, for I look
forward to a night with you as a hart panteth for the water-
brooks.
What you say of my Book of Lyrics, etc., my dear James, is
not wholly calculated to satisfy me. I believe you to be wicked
enough to equivocate in such matters, for the purpose of sparing
your friends. I am not altogether certain that you have not
done so in the present instance, and ask you solemnly, in the
words of Chadband, “Is that Terewth 2 ” And why is it not
Terewth 2 O my young friend, tell me why
I am highly gratified with your approbation of my Oriental-
ities. Of course I want you, and no other, to have the book, and
your willingness to bring it out, after the former failure, sur-
prises me even more than it pleases me. I will see that you
have the entire copy in season to publish in September or Octo-
ber, if you choose. But of all this, and much more, we will dis-
1 El-Azrek in the poem “Amran's Wooing.”
FRUIT AND FLOWER of TRAVEL. 275
course when we meet, three weeks hence. Pray Heaven that I
find you still at your post. I know of no man just now the sight
of whom would refresh me more. This is merely a scrawl to re-
mind you of my whereabouts, doings, and plannings. My lec-
tures are mightily successful, but I am very tired of being shown
up as a lion, and long to meet with somebody who don’t consider
me a phenomenon.
TO HIS MOTHER.
NEW ALBANY, IND., April 23, 1854.
. . . I had crowded houses at Indianapolis, many persons com-
ing seventy miles to attend. You must know, by the by, that I
am a professor in the Indiana State College. They wanted me
to lecture for them, and in order to secure for me the College
Hall, which no one can use except a member of the Faculty, the
trustees elected me Professor of History pro tem. I was very
sorry I could not go after that ; but I have promised to lecture
for them next winter, and shall not resign my professorship until
that time. . . . I shall reach New York in just two weeks from
to-day. Last night was my seventy-fourth lecture, and I have
thirteen more to deliver before going home. I shall wait until
next spring before setting out more pines on my place, as it is
now rather late in the season. I shall no doubt want two rows in
some places, and perhaps three. If I ever come to live on my
property I think I shall make it entirely a grazing farm, which
will be much more easily managed and quite as profitable. . . .
NEwARK, OHIO, April 30, 1854.
. . . I have six more lectures this week (every night) which
will take me back to New York. Next week I must visit Boston,
on business, and lecture in Portsmouth, N. H., and Lawrence,
Mass. Week after next I shall lecture twice in Wilmington, and
be at home. Week after that I shall lecture in West Chester,
which will close this season's work, thank Heaven I am quite
fagged out, not with speaking, but with traveling, and with
being shown up, introduced, questioned, visited and made to
visit, handshaken, autographed, honorary membershiped, compli-
mented, censured, quizzed, talked about before my face by
people who don’t know me, written about in the papers, dis-
played on handbills, sold on tickets, applied to for charitable
purposes, and the Lord knows what else. Nevertheless, my
276 BA YARD TA YLOR.
voice is in splendid order, stronger and clearer than ever be-
fore, and I still keep every ounce of my 172 pounds of solid
flesh. . . . It is said that a rolling stone gathers no moss, but I
think I’ve gathered something that will feather my nest quite as
well.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEWARK, OHIO, April 30, 1854.
. . . I have another piece of good news, in which I am cer-
tain of your congratulations,— Ticknor's offer to bring out my
Oriental poems in the fall, and of course I intend doing it.
Fields writes me that the other volume paid expenses, but, be-
tween ourselves, I doubt it. Fields would rather lose some-
thing out of his own pocket than acknowledge to me that the
book was a failure. I have half a dozen more Orientals to write,
which will make about fifty poems in all, and clear off, I hope,
all the small fry on which I have been engaged. I shall then go
steadily to work on my “Picture of St. John,” which, you may
remember, was commenced three years ago. I have two or three
large canvases in my studio, and hope that time and energy may
be allowed me to fill them up.
This western tour, thank God l is nearly over. Last night I
lectured for the eightieth time, and I have ten more engagements
to fill. I shall be in New York in another week, and shall then
visit Boston and New Hampshire. I am tired to death of being
introduced to people, answering questions (many of them silly
enough), and being stared at with a mixture of curiosity and
awe as “the man that went to Africa.” Fame (if this is it) is
not worth the trouble we take to get it. There is, however, a
counterbalancing pleasure in the knowledge that one has written
things which tens of thousands have had delight in reading. I
have been touched by an incident related to me the other day,
of a man in Ohio who rode several miles one raving night to
borrow the “Tribune,” in order that his sick wife might read my
letters, which, it seems, had a cheery effect upon her. I have
also met numbers of bright-eyed children (God bless them ()
who were as eager for my letters as for Robinson Crusoe, and
who seem so delighted to see me and talk with me that I take
my notoriety gratefully, with all its annoyances. On the whole,
I am immeasurably cheered and strengthened by this winter's ex-
periences, and I pray God to keep me from all undue exaltation
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL. 277
of mind on account of it. I foresee that this popularity is tem-
porary, and that somebody else will soon take my place ; but it
is a great happiness to feel once in your life that you have
achieved something which has given you an interest in the minds
of your countrymen and a warm place in their hearts. I expect
to call at 506 Walnut Street on the morning of May 16th, on
my way to Chester County.”
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
NEw York, June 12, 1854.
. . . I am over head and ears on my “Journey to Central Af-
rica,” which must be out by the close of August. There will be a
map and fifteen to twenty illustrations, and I am obliged to be my
own illustrator, so that my hands are tolerably full. Nevertheless,
I shall have the Poems ready whenever you call for them. I sup-
pose if you get the copy in a month it will answer very well. I
have added to my stock the following : “Proem Dedicatory —
An Epistle from Mount Tmolus;” “Hassan to his Mare ;” “The
Wisdom of Ali; ” “A Paean to the Dawn; ” “In the Meadows; ”
“The Phantom,”—all written since I saw you. Am I not a good
boy 7 Now I have an “Envoi Extraordinary” and three more
Orientals to beget, and then I shall lay my manuscripts at your
feet. There will be fifty-five poems in all, and I suppose the
volume will make two hundred pages. Don’t be alarmed at this,
for I pledge you my word that I shall write no more than I
have said, and I am going to omit two from the MS. book which
you saw. In spite of your advice, I cannot make up my mind to
print what seems to me to be tame trash.
TO HIS MOTHER.
NEw Yorr, June 13, 1854.
. I almost regret having come home so soon, when I see
what a fine time my brother officers are having in Japan. You
will find the account in to-morrow's paper. Perry is perfectly
successful, as I said he would be. . . . I have become acquainted
with Sami Effendi, the Egyptian commissioner to the Crystal
Palace. He is a Circassian by birth, but a good Mahometan,
and therefore I like him. I have been daguerreotyped in Arab
dress, to be engraved for “Putnam's Magazine.” . . .
278 BA YARD TA YLOR.
TO R. H. STODDARD,
KENNETT SQUARE, CHESTER Co., PA., August 10, 1854.
Many thanks for your care in forwarding my letters, but many
complaints for your not sending a line or two of your own with
them. My holiday is nearly up, and I do not wish any more
letters sent to this address, as I shall be in New York on Mon-
day night. The country is glorious at this season ; I never saw
it more fresh and luxuriant. I have been leading an animal
life in the open air, and flourish like a green bay tree. My own
trees are growing bravely. I have blistered my hands and torn
my coat in trimming out and civilizing a favorite pine grove.
I have wrought wonders, as you shall see when you come here
with me in October. I have made a seat under the father-pine,
and intend putting another seat and writing-desk in the thickest
shade. The birds know me already, and I have learned to imi-
tate the partridge and the rain-dove, so that I can lure them to
me. I have some superb cedars and the grandest oaks you ever
saw. This savagism in the open air has quite destroyed the
inclination to write. . . . I have not written a line, and could
not if I would. For this chiefest of mercies the Lord’s name
be praised. I have just thought of a couplet of Goethe's, which
please make a note of : —
“Gray and hoary is all Theory
Forever green Life's golden tree.”
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
Swallow FIELD, August 18, 1854.
MY DEAR MR. TAYLOR, - Thank you very sincerely for your
most interesting letter. Your two books and your lectures will
have, I doubt not, the great power which you most wish, that
of making the Arab character known in the West. Only this
very day I find a very distinguished man (Arthur Stanley, the
biographer of Dr. Arnold) expressing just your feeling. He
tells a most dear friend of his and mine that he “cannot keep
away from the East; ” and that you should wish to return thither
is far less surprising. You seem to me not unlike an Arab your-
self, - frank, loyal, faithful, brave, generous, imaginative, and,
above all, nomadic. To keep you in one place would be like
fixing a lark to the earth or imprisoning a swallow. Wander-
ing is your destiny, dear friend, and your power of writing and
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL. 279
of speech make it a destiny profitable to your country and to
ours. I always thought of Moore's verses (they are not poetry)
just as you do. Knowing the man well, I liked him as a com-
panion and a wit, but now by publishing his diary he has shown
that he was a mere party man, a place-hunter, and a base syco-
phant to rank, money, fashion, — mammon in every shape. It
is a book which ought to do good to authors by showing what
bitter apples they swallow who haunt in the form of toad-eaters
the tables of the great. Theodore Hook himself was not a more
miserable warning. It is a comfort to me that I expressed, two
years ago, in my “Recollections,” the same opinion of Moore's
verses (even his Irish verses), and almost in the same words.
Just look at the book; you will find the sentence in one of the
chapters on Irish poets. Have you read a little book by Monck-
ton Milnes, called “Palm Leaves”? That is an imperfect ap-
proach to your plan. “Les Orientales,” by Victor Hugo, far
more poems than either Milnes’ or Moore's lyrics, are hardly
Eastern. Altogether, the ground is left vacant for you, who will
best fill it.
If you have read the Preface to “Atherton,” it will perhaps
give you some idea of my state to say that I have been growing
gradually and steadily worse ever since. About six weeks ago I
was so much fatigued and excited by a two hours’ visit from a
friend, who had come from Germany a year before his time in
order to see me once again, that from mere exhaustion such a
struggle for breath followed my being lifted into bed as made
every one believe it the last. So now I am not moved from my
chair, but sit night and day on a water cushion, propped by air
cushions, my feet sometimes put up on another cushion, and
sometimes wheeled to the open window. I grow weaker and
weaker, and the digestive powers are failing ; but God is very
merciful. I believe that his visitation has been graciously sent
to draw me to Himself, and He has been pleased to spare my un-
derstanding and my affections. I have all material comforts, –
servants who nurse me as if I were their mother, a most skillful
surgeon, who is also a most dear friend, and neighbors who are
so attentive that the difficulty is to exclude visitors who exhaust
my strength. Amongst these, dear Lady Russell is the most
constant. I see her nearly every day; and once I have seen
your acquaintance Mr. George, a clever, idle lad, who will I hope
exert his abilities and become a distinguished man. But it is one
280 B.A. YA R D TA YLOR.
of the dangers of English life to be the younger son of a man of
large landed property, and so connected that, without being rich
himself, he is thrown into all the temptations of luxury and dissi-
pation. His elder brother is in the Guards, and now, I suppose,
before or at Sebastopol. God bless you, dear Mr. Taylor. Re-
member me to my dear American friends, not forgetting Mr.
Stoddard. Ever faithfully yours,
M. R. MITFORD.
Write to me, if you have time. This state is uncertain as to
duration, although to all appearance the end draws near.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.
- NEw York, September 15, 1854.
MY DEAR FRIEND, - I can scarcely say how much I thank
you for your letter which reached me yesterday. I know how
much it must have cost you to write at all, and, if this should
not find your health improved, I hope you will not feel bound
to exhaust your strength by replying to it. I will still hope
that you may be spared to your friends for summers to come ;
but, if this should not be, the cheerfulness with which you an-
ticipate the great change will sweeten its approach.
I wish I could say something that could cheer the weariness
of your illness; but what can I write, except what you must
already know, that you have many true friends on this side of
the ocean; that many whom you have never seen think of you
with esteem and affection, and that their warmest sympathy is
with you in your afflictions. If I should never see you again, it
will be a happiness to remember that I have seen and known
you in your house at Swallowfield. Shall I ever forget that
stormy afternoon I passed in your little library 2 I then hoped
that our meeting was but the commencement of an intercourse
which I knew I should value the more the longer it existed; for
I looked forward then, as now, to visiting England frequently.
Your kindness to a rough stranger like myself made me at once
your friend, and I shall never think of you otherwise, my dear
Miss Mitford, than with the sincerest friendship and esteem.
Stoddard and I speak of you often and involuntarily as an old
and tried friend, so near and familiar the thought of you has be-
come. You will still live thus in our memories when you shall
have left the world, in which we must struggle a little while
longer.
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRAVEL. 281
My work on Africa will be published in a few days, and I
will send you a copy by the first opportunity. It may serve to
divert the tedium of your imprisonment. I have tried to fix the
sunshine of the East on its pages, and perhaps a little may be
reflected into the glooms of your English October. It promises
to be very successful here, six or seven thousand copies having
been ordered before publication. I am busily engaged upon an-
other, to be called “The Lands of the Saracen,” embracing my
travels in Syria, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain. Three volumes
in one season. You see I am not idle, although I work some-
what against my will, for the old Oriental indolence returns now
and then. -
I am glad you like the idea of the Oriental poems. It re-
mains to be seen whether they will be recognized as successful.
A poetical fame is usually of slow growth, and circumstances
have obliged me to throw my prose in the way of my poetry.
I know perfectly well, however, that literary fame must be
waited for, not sought ; that if I deserve it I shall Surely get it,
and if I don’t deserve it I ought not to wish it.
I have seen nearly all our authors this summer, —Irving,
Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Willis, and Bryant, — but they are
idling at present. Stoddard and I are working side by side,
and trying to keep our early vows. There is happiness in the
labor, and we are cheerful and hopeful. Heaven grant, my dear
friend, that we may be as fortunate as you when the time comes
for us to cease working, that we may look back on our success-
ful achievements, and be surrounded by as many and as faithful
friends !
But I fear lest it may tire you to read as well as to write, and
that I may be making my letter too long. I will write again
soon if I can say anything to interest you. God bless you !
Ever faithfully your friend, BAYARD TAYLOR.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, September 1, 1854.
What are you doing? This is fine working weather and I am
already deep into my second book of travels. I call it “The
Lands of the Saracen,” as it embraces Syria, Asia Minor, Sicily,
and Spain. The poems are all in type, making a volume of two
hundred and three pages. They will be published in about a
month. My African book is all printed and bound (about four
282 BA YARD TA YLOR.
thousand copies ordered), and will be published in about four
days. I shall send you a copy as soon as possible. Stoddard has
read the most of it, and prefers it to my other prose works,
although he still thinks that it is liable to the same objection, a
want of poetic and imaginative description. My plan, however,
is to keep poetry in one dish and prose in another, and let those
mix them who choose. Dick and I have, for our own amuse-
ment, written a poem in imitation of Shelley. Mine is called “A
Vision of Sleep,” and really reads quite like Shelley. In other
respects Dick is lazy, and I am so engrossed by my prose that
poetry is dead and buried for the time.
I am receiving any quantity of invitations to lecture next win-
ter, and expect to start on my tour about the 20th of October.
I shall be thus employed until May, when I shall resume work
on the “Tribune.” I had made a pleasant arrangement with
Bogue for the republication of my books in London, and now the
recent copyright decision knocks it all in the head. How much
longer are we to be treated in this beggarly manner by our leg-
islators ? I have no hope of the Copyright Treaty ever being
ratified by the present Senate.
WASFIINGTON IRVING TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
SUNNYSIDE, September 12, 1854.
My DEAR BAYARD TAYLOR, - I am quite grieved that I was
from home when you visited Sunnyside last Saturday, and that
you did not make yourself at home notwithstanding my absence.
Why did you not take command of my little library, such as it
is, or while away the sultry day under the trees 2 My women-
kind would have been happy to give you the best entertainment
the house afforded. One of my nieces hastened down-stairs to
welcome you and was extremely disappointed at finding you had
gone. I trust you will act better on any future occasion, and
will feel assured that whoever is in the house will be happy to
receive you, and should nobody be at home, that the house itself
is at your service.
I feel very much obliged to you for the volume you were so
kind as to leave, and promise myself great pleasure in once more
accompanying you in your African travels.
Yours very cordially and sincerely,
WASHINGTON IRVING.
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL, 283
The older men of letters, of whom Irving was then
the recognized dean, always received from Bayard
Taylor the respect which he paid to the men who had
done honorable service in literature, and gave to him
that hearty companionship which age in letters always
knows so well how to share with youth. For the men
of his own time of life, he had a very cordial sympathy.
His letters have already shown how sensitive he was
to the affection of his intimate literary friends, but
they only rarely hint at the full pleasure which he took
in their companionship. Mr. Stoddard, in his “Rem-
iniscences,” has given a glimpse of comradery which
subsisted between himself, Bayard Taylor, and Fitz
James O’Brien, the brilliant young Irish littérateur.
“I recall many nights which Bayard Taylor passed
in our rooms. . . . Great was our merriment; for if
we did not always sink the shop, we kept it for our own
amusement solely. Fitz James O’Brien was a frequent
guest, and an eager partaker of our merriment, which
somehow resolved itself into the writing of burlesque
poems. We sat around a table, and whenever the
whim seized us, which was often enough, we each wrote
down themes on little pieces of paper, and putting
them into a hat or a box we drew out one at random,
and then scribbled away for dear life. We put no re-
striction 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 l’ It was
a neck and neck race between Bayard Taylor and Fitz
James O’Brien, who divided the honors pretty equally,
and whose verses, I am compelled to admit, were gen-
erally better than my own. Bayard Taylor was very
dexterous in seizing the salient points of the poets we
girded at, and was as happy as a child when his bur-
284 BA YARD TA YLOR.
lesques were successful. He reminded me, I once told
him, of Kalterfelto
“With his hair on end
At his own wonders.”
He blushed, laughed, and admitted that his cleverness
pleased him, and he was glad that it pleased us also.
“It is good sport, he remarked; “but poetry, - that
is very different.’”
A writer in the “Tribune" refers to the same
mock-duels in an article on Fitz James O’Brien, and
instances a case where the theme was “The Helmet.”
He gives O’Brien's verses: —
A warrior hung his plumed helm
On the rugged bough of an aged elm ;
“Where is the knight so bold,” he cried,
“That dares my haughty crest deride 2 ”
The wind came by with a sullen howl
And dashed the helm on the pathway foul,
And shook in scorn each sturdy limb, -
For where is the knight could fight with him?
And here is Mr. Stoddard’s poem : —
Where the standards waved the thickest,
And the tide of battle rolled,
Furiously he charged the foeman,
On his snow-white steed so bold ;
But he wore no guarding helmet
Only his long hair of gold.
“Turn and fly, thou rash young warrior,
Or this iron helmet wear.”
“Nay, but I am armed already
In the brightness of my hair ;
For my mother kissed its tresses
With the holy lips of prayer.”
1 The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1879.
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL. 285
“Mr. Taylor came in last,” adds the writer, “though
not far behind. He could not write upon the helmet,
he explained; he had tried it on his head, and there
was nothing in it!”.' It chanced that Bayard was
writing shortly after to Mr. Boker, and sent him his
poem.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, September 15, 1854.
Dick brought me a deserved reproof from you, but he did not
tell you that he was the cause of my not sending you a copy of
my book by him. The scamp promised to call at my rooms the
evening before I left, and I had the book ready to send by him.
I shall bring it to you myself in three weeks, or thereabouts. I
am glad you like the commencement, for I think it grows bet-
ter towards the close, and therefore you are certain to like the
whole of it. My friends here think it a great advance on my
other prose works, and the fact that between six and seven thou-
sand copies have been sold in advance of publication tells well
for its success. It will come out on Monday, having been de-
layed by the necessity of having ten thousand to start with. I
have nearly finished my second book of travels, a volume of 450
pages, which will be published about the first of December.
Three books in one publishing season 1 Don’t I deserve a medal
from the Society for the Promotion of Industry 2 and now I
must have three lectures ready within a month, and then off for
six months. How I yearn for next spring, and the prospect of
sitting down with all my toil behind me, and a fair field and a
clear brain for poetry ! I am glad that you agree with me about
poetic prose. Dick finds this book nearly free from the objec-
tions he had against “Eldorado; ” O’Brien, however (a very
clever young Irishman and a littérateur), stoutly maintains the
same opinion. Curtis, who turns his poetry into prose, is vastly
delighted with the “Africa,” which is a weight in the opposite
scale. These opinions are, of course, simply interesting to me,
for I do not think I am in the least sensitive about my prose
writings. I fully agree with one of your criticisms; “palpa-
ble" is wrong, but as for “journey,” custom has made it right.
Words are often diverted from their original meaning, and we
1 New York Daily Tribune, March 6, 1881.
286 BAYARD TAYLOR.
are not bound to stick to the old usage. “Prevent” is a case in
point. Sterne, whose diction is very choice, has a “Sentimental
Journey.” Besides, we have the verb “to journey,” which is
never used except in the sense of “to travel.” Now, the literal
meaning of travel is toil, and my African travel was a delight
and a recreation. “Expedition ” will not do at all, and I detest
66 wanderings,” “skippings,” “meanderings,” and the like. What
word could I use but “journey 2” Tell me that, my master |
Nevertheless, don’t lay aside your pencil as you read, for these
things are useful to me. -
Dick, O’Brien, and I were talking the other evening about Ger-
man ballads, and it was suggested, on the spur of the moment,
that we should try our hands on something in the German vein.
We chose “The Helmet.” as a subject, and had but fifteen min-
utes to conceive and carry out our ideas. Dick wrote a very
pretty thing. As for mine, I copy it as a curiosity which may
divert you : —
“If my daughter you would wed,
Bring me your helm,” the old man said,
“Full of wealth as it can hold,
Heaped with jewels and heavy with gold;
For I will not give my daughter to share
With the penniless knight his beggar’s fare.”
Forth to the wars went the penniless knight,
For booty gleams in the wake of fight,
And he will gather. to fill his helm,
The richest spoils of the hostile realm,
Till the miser's heart shall softer grow
When he sees the gold and the rubies glow.
The fight has been fought and the wars are o'er,
And the old man laughed at his palace door
As he saw that the place of the penniless lord
Was filled by a stranger helm and sword;
But his daughter came and knelt where he stood,
And she held a helmet brimming with blood.
“O father, O father, his blood was worth
All the jewels and gold of earth.
It poured from his heart as his eyes grew dull,
And I bring you his helmet brimming full:
You have your will, and I am his bride.”
At her father’s feet the maiden died.
With these exceptions I have written no poetry of late, and
don’t expect to write much more before next spring. My vol-
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL, 287
ume of Orientals must buoy me up until then, unless it should
prove a dead weight to my feet and drown me altogether. What
have you been doing 2 . . .
I am trying to keep up a supply of animal vigor, by bath-
ing, gymnastics, and the like. I have an excess of physical vi-
tality, which must be ministered to in this way, or it will play
the devil with me. I spend half an hour every day in the cold
sea-water, and then have a man rub me with hair-gloves until the
skin is worn nearly through. I have been practicing this for two
or three weeks, and am now in good condition to enter the ring.
Look out for my fists, young man, and beware how you provoke
my anger | Next summer I am going to enter a gymnasium, and
get the use of a horse. I find now, more than ever, that my body
never was meant for a sedentary life, and that, if I want to stay
at home and achieve something, I must humor it in these ways.
I have just had a letter from Miss Mitford. The dear old
lady is near her end, and I am afraid my answer will not find her
living.
NEw York, September 20, 1854.
In the first place, let me thank you for the very kind notice of
my book in the “North American.” It is everything that I could
desire, and more than I deserve. The evident sincerity of the
notice is its great merit to me and to my publisher, who has
quoted the greater part of it in a circular announcing the fact
that the tenth thousand of the book is now ready. So you see you
are helping my pocket as well as my reputation. When will you
give me a chance to do the same good office for you ?
. I shall finish the “copy” of the second book of travels to—
morrow, and shall then commence preparing my lectures. I have
just a month left in which to write three and make my visit to
Chester County with Dick and you, so it behooves me not to lose
time. I have just returned from Tarrytown, where I spent the
afternoon with Washington Irving, who is a charming old man
and a good friend of mine. There is an autumnal wind on the
Hudson, and I have come back with a cold in the head, the result
of civilization. If I were in my natural barbaric state, I should
have escaped it. This stupid cold must be my apology for this
brief note. I write with a muddled head and a languid pen
because I would not longer delay telling you how much I thank
you.
288 BA YARD TA YLOR,
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD TO BAYARD TAYLOR. -
º September 28, 1854.
MY VERY DEAR FRIEND, - Your most charming letter, so
tender and so true, has gone straight to my heart, as it came
straight from yours. I cannot think of it without tears. Never-
theless, I am well accustomed to touching letters just now, - to
marks of goodness, which make me say, “How have I deserved
all this kindness 2'' My own country-people have not failed me;
friends and strangers, high and low, all crowd the little court
with calls of inquiry, and load the postman with letters; and your
great American nation is to the full as warm-hearted. Dear Mr.
Fields sent me yesterday a bill for £50, on account of the au-
thor's profits of “Atherton; ” and when I consider how cheap
that one volume is, and how short is the time since it has been
published, it shows that the number of readers, each of whom
they say becomes a friend, is very considerable. Mr. Fields says
that it is still “going famously,” and, welcome as money is in so
long and so expensive an illness, I love the sale which increases
my unknown friends better for that cause than for the pecuniary
benefit. You will understand this feeling. Many, indeed, of the
very best are already my friends by personal acquaintance, as
dear Mr. Fields, Mr. Tickmor, the other Mr. Ticknor, — him of the
Spanish literature, your own dear self, and very many more; and
others by correspondence, as Drs. Holmes and Parsons, Mr. Haw-
thorne, Mr. Whittier, Mr. Stoddard, and again many more ; and
I have always found that the deeper we penetrated into the inner
man the more there was to love and to esteem. Only yesterday I
had a letter from Mrs. Trollope, my friend of fifty years, and she
compliments me on having “pierced the crust of the American
character" so much earlier than herself. She writes from Flor-
ence, and gives a bad account of Mr. Thompson's health. I had
given him a letter for her. She does not say where he is now,
giving me credit with being better acquainted with him than I
am. She is herself quite recovered, and a wonderful woman.
When I was a girl of fifteen she was a woman of two or three
and twenty. Now she is a score of years younger, in all but
mind and heart; for God has dealt mercifully with me, and
spared my affections, and my sympathies, and my tastes ; even
the small things which interest those around me, the daily tri-
fles, still interest me, –an unspeakable mercy. But the whole
FRUIT AND FLOWER OF TRA VEL. 289
visitation has been sweet. I feel that it was sent to draw me to
Him. May He give me grace not to forfeit the occasion 1
Since I wrote to you last I have revived to a certain point, so
that my death is no longer expected from week to week, or from
day to day, or from hour to hour, as was the case then. I owe
this under Providence to the admirable kindness of my medical
attendant, who, although giving me up, did not abandon the
stranded ship, but in spite of his own great practice (he tires a
pair of horses a day), and my distance from Reading (six miles),
and his own bad opinion of the case, continued to watch every
symptom and to exhaust every resource of his great art, as if his
own home and fortune had depended on the result. It is, of course,
only a short respite, since, humanly speaking, nothing seems so
impossible as my surviving the winter, or even the change from
autumn to the colder season. Still the amelioration is much, and
it is one for which I am intensely thankful. My way of life is no
ways changed. I am still incapable of moving from my chair, or
even of being lifted into bed; but the weakness is.less painful,
the cheerfulness less like resignation. His will be done ! You
give me an added motive for clinging to life in the desire to see
you over again. But it is something to look forward to the vol-
ume, – that Eastern volume from which I expect so much de-
light. It has always seemed to me that Saladin was the emblem
of mind, and Richard of brute force. The Moorish architecture
is one of the really great things of the world. Surely, it influenced
that which is called the Gothic. John Ruskin sent me lately some
photographs of architecture at Rouen, which at once made me
think of the Moors, although he did not mention them. May God
bless you ! I am desired not to write, but I could not refrain.
Ever yours, MARY M.
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
CAMBRIDGE, October 4, 1854.
Many thanks for your kind remembrance and the “Journey to
Central Africa,” which we are reading with great interest and
pleasure. I am not going to weary you with the commonplaces
and platitudes usually dealt out to authors on such occasions. You
know very well already how welcome you and your writings al-
ways are under this roof. So I need only thank you for your
book as for a visit, and say that you are among friends here un-
der the evening lamps.
WOL. I.
290 BA YARD TA YLOR.
I am charmed with your drawings. Can I have one of the
original sketches, or a copy by your hand? The “Residence at
Khartoum,” for instance, or “Abdôm.” Of course, I should pre-
fer a sketch made on the spot, but fear you may want to keep
all originals. *
BAYARD TAYLOR TO HENRY W. LONGRELLOW.
º NEw York, October 11, 1854.
I shall be most happy to furnish you with one of my sketches.
I presume an unpublished one will be just as acceptable to you
as one of those given in the book. The “Residence at Khar-
toum ” was worked up from a very rough sketch, and the “Ab-
dôm ” in the original is less satisfactory to me than some others
which were not engraved. I have one representing my boat de-
scending the White Nile just at the point where I heard the
lions and hyenas and saw the river-horses, which suggested the
stanza from your poem," quoted at the head of chapter xxv. I
not only wrote the chapter and the stanza while in my boat on
the river, but I shouted out the latter to the forests and the lions
and the river-horses. The sketches have no artistic merit, but
they are faithful representations of the original scenes; and as
they can be only interesting to you from the fact of their being
made on the spot, I should prefer giving you one with which you
are associated in my memories of that fascinating voyage. I
shall send it to you by the first opportunity, -unless you should
have a particular desire to possess either of the two you named.
I am very glad the book interests you. The writing of it was
a great delight to me, and I rejoice at its success among my
friends, apart from any literary considerations. Remember me
kindly to Mrs. Longfellow, and to Lowell, when you see him.
1. At night he heard the lion roar,
And the hyena scream,
And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds
Beside some hidden stream ;
And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums,
Through the triumph of his dream.
The Slave's Dream.
CHAPTER XIII.
CLEARING-AWAY WORK.
1854–1856.
I breathe a space, between two sundered lives,
And view what now is ended, what survives.
The Picture of St. John.
BAYARD TAYLOR entered the lecture-field in the
fall of 1854 with no illusions. The work was distaste-
ful to him, but he knew well that in no other way
could he so quickly reach the independence of fortune
which was his goal. He pleased himself with the
fancy that by hard labor for a year or two more he
should be able to dismiss all care for pecuniary re-
turn and devote himself with a free mind to poetry.
He saw the great journal with which he was con-
nected, and to which he had contributed his strength,
prospering and returning dividends to its conductors
beyond expectation ; his books of travel ran at once
into large editions, and his poems, from which he ex-
pected no returns, helped to swell his income. The
fact that they should sell pleased him out of all pro-
portion to the amount which he received from the
sale. It was the evidence that people were not mis-
led into thinking of him only as a traveler and lec-
turer which pleased him.
The business of lecturing broke up his literary
work. It occupied the months when he would natu-
rally accomplish the most, and it left him too tired,
292 BA YARD TA YLOR.
when summer came, for any considerable ventures.
This irregular and unfruitful life, and the conscious-
ness that it was after all a passage from the wander-
ing existence he had led to the larger and calmer
devotion to art to which he looked forward, disposed
him to use the opportunity for clearing away, so to
speak, the odds and ends of his previous career. He
listened to a proposition made to him by a Western
house to prepare a “Cyclopædia of Travel,” to be sold
by subscription. He saw in the work an opportunity
to turn to account his interest in travel and his own
experience by putting into compact form a summary
of geography. The promises held out to him by the
publishers agreed with his own hopes, and he was
ready to do a piece of task work which bore to his
literary occupation much the same relation as lectur-
Ing.
He wrote a few new poems, but in poetry also the
same spirit moved him. He busied himself with Se-
lecting from his previously published poems, and from
these new ones, such as he was ready to place by the
side of “Poems of the Orient,” and arranged them
under the general title of “Poems of Home and
Travel,” intending to allow this volume to supersede
his “Rhymes of Travel,” and “Book of Romances,
Lyrics, and Songs.” With this work, the final prepa-
ration of “ India, China, and Japan,” a revision of
“Views Afoot,” his lectures, and his “Cyclopædia,”
he was engaged until the summer of 1856.
TO MR. AND MRS. R. H. STODDARD.
AUBURN, N. Y., Thursday, November 9, 1854.
Imagine your friend seated alone in a dreary inn, on the raw-
est of all raw November afternoons, with a bost idferdal cold
id his head, and his mind agitated by doubts as to whether he
CLEARING-A WA Y WORK. 293
will have voice enough to lecture by to-night, and you have a
true picture of his situation, mood, and prospects. In this di-
lemma the wing of my friendship moults a feather, whereby to
claim your wedded commiseration. Oh, if I were but back in
Washington Square If I could but step around to-night to
46, smoke my cigar without fear in the presence of the Inexora-
ble, discuss the Theory with Richard, and drive away my cares
and my cold together in potations of the Homeric draught !
But alas ! my friends, this cannot be : here am I in sweet Au-
burn, with a bad cigar in my mouth, a dinner of corned beef and
cold boiled beets in my stomach, a cold which would have de-
lighted Jeremiah, for it makes my head a mill-dam, whereof my
nose is the sluice, and the ennui of a public lecture awaiting me.
Better look after debentures (whatever they are) like Dick, than
enjoy this dismal popularity.
Nevertheless, I had pleasant times in Montreal. I was there
three days, had glorious weather, and was treated with great cor-
diality by the natives. I found that I was very well known there.
My lectures were well attended, and I received much courtesy
from the editors of the place. I then went to Ogdensburg, lec-
tured once, and took a steamer up the St. Lawrence. It was so
cold that the pitcher in my state-room had a lump of ice instead
of water, and I could n’t sleep for the keen, cutting chill of the
air. Here I sowed and planted the grain which has now come to
head. I commenced an address to the river, but my mind was
so numb after the first couplet that I got no farther. I give the
lines, as they constitute all the poetry I have written since leav-
ing New York. They are : —
“O St. Lawrence
Thou 'rt my abhorrence ’” —
It blew like all furies when we reached the Thousand Islands,
and we could just get into Kingston Harbor, when the captain
gave up the voyage. I waited half a day for the gale to go
down, wandering meanwhile about Kingston, which is a dread-
fully licentious place, as I was informed by a clergyman, who
added, explanatorily : “I don’t say this from my personal knowl-
edge, but I was told so by others.” On board the boat there was
a curious female specimen, which I describe for Lizzy's edifica-
tion. She was about thirty-nine years of age, very thin and wasp-
ish in form, and with scanty hair of a pale straw color and coarse
texture, combed straight back over a narrow, Small head, and
294 B.A. YA RD TA YLOR.
belayed around a remarkably high semi-circular comb, of black
buffalo horn. Her eyes were small, of a weak whitish-gray, with
pink edges and straw-colored lashes. Her face was of the hue
of an ancient tablecloth, with a few dabs of butter here and there
over its surface. Her teeth were inserted with a picturesque ir-
regularity, and when she smiled I could only liken it to stretch-
ing a piece of buckskin over a steel-trap. I admired her at a
distance, for I did not dare to approach her. At Ogdensburg,
I sat next to a young lady at dinner, whose face was like a raw
beefsteak, with two pickled onions upon it. I helped her to the
various dishes, and she looked at me admiringly with the pickled
onions, and ate so much that the beefsteak hue of her face
changed to purple. Since then I have been haunted by a third
female, whom, by a singular fatality, I meet wherever I go.
Since Monday, we have traveled together on five different lines
of railway. She is dressed in a black balzorine, with tulle flounces,
brought over the shoulder in the basque form, and united on the
back by moeuds ; the sleeves are half large, with a gore just
above the wrist, set between two bias folds, which, you know,
Lizzy, gives a very pretty effect to the arm. But my admiration
of her dress leads me away from herself. She wears a bag of
oiled silk over her head, bonnet and all, with an opening in front,
which forms a circle extending from her eye-brows to her under-
lip. The greater part of this circle consists of nose, for the eyes,
though large and gray-green, are thrown entirely into shadow by
the promontory between them. Wherever I go I see that oiled
silk bag and that projecting nose accompanying me. Heaven
grant it is not another Coutts, to buy up the front seats at my lec-
tures ] There was a girl yesterday who was traveling alone, and
made many advances to me, in the way of Smiles, speaking looks,
etc., etc. She had a book with a pink cover, which, on looking
over her shoulder, I found to be “Louisa, or the Lovely Orphan.”
She is not on hand to-day, which I regret, for she pleased me
better than the oiled silk bag and the nose. I met a native of
Iowa last night—a queer fellow, who wanted to know whether I
was in the dry-goods business. I told him, No, I was in the hard-
ware line ; and we had a long talk about hatchets, files, shovels,
locks, pickaxes, etc., etc. I lectured last night in Oswego to a
fair audience; don't know how many I shall have here, and don’t
care. I am disgusted with this way of lecturing, and shall never
adopt it again. My agent don’t know how to arrange matters,
CLEARING!—A WA Y WORK. 295
and I won’t, and would n’t for twice the profit, trouble myself
with the details of the business. Hereafter I shall only lecture
for societies, where everything is done for me, and I have noth-
ing to do but talk and take the money.
By the bye, my Oriental poems seem to be dead already.
They are not advertised, and I see no notices of them in the pa-
pers. The “Tribune " has not yet mentioned them, which, I
suppose, is owing to election times. Do you know I feel quite
indifferent about them now, and have n’t the slightest idea that
they will sell any better than my last book.
Write to me, both of you, and I’ll write again, with or without
a cold in my head. If you write in two days after getting this,
direct to Hamilton, C. W. —If you don’t, you need not write at
all, for the Lord knows where I shall be. Give my kide rebeb-
radces to O’Bried, whed you see hib, ad believe be, ever,
Your sidcere Fred.
His Oriental poems were by no means dead, and
the haste with which he pronounced the funeral words
was really only one of those precautions which the
mind takes to save itself too great disappointment.
By saying very distinctly that they were dead he
would be equally prepared for the confirmation or the
disappointment of his fears. In his wanderings about
the country he was cut off from very prompt or fre-
quent knowledge of the fortune of his book, but the
letters which found him came sometimes with rare
power to kindle him, as when Mr. Lowell wrote : —
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
ELMwooD, December 4, 1854.
It gives me the greatest pleasure to thank you for your volume
of poems. It is a great triumph in the opinion of everybody, and
I cannot help twitching off my cap to fling it up with the rest, I
like it all, but there are some poems whose pathos and deep
sentiment I feel that I have a more than common right to be
grateful for.
Allow me to say, my dear Taylor, that I have always particu-
larly valued and respected in you that quiet and unconscious
296 BA YARD TA YLOR.
strength of character which has kept you so loyal to your past
Bayard Taylor, amid all the temptations of reputation and pop-
ularity. It is a constancy as rare as it is admirable. Do not
suppose that I have any sad particular in my mind: I am think-
ing only of general characteristics.
But beware of becoming too deeply enamoured of the sensuous
in poetry. It is natural that the pendulum of us Yankees should
swing very far away from our Puritan and Quaker extreme —
only we must remember that Bacchus was the god of severe
tragedy also. What I mean is that you must not trust too far
to your own purity, because few of your readers will be able to
match it.
Forgive me for preaching, but I am a parson's son, and it runs
in the blood, I suppose. I should not have said anything if I
had not thought so highly as I do of your book. It gives proof
of remarkable development in all directions.
Other evidence came of the success of the book
when he could write to his mother: “Ticknors have
sold 1,500 copies already, and the demand continues.
This, for poetry, is doing wonderfully well. Longfel-
low and Willis in particular are delighted with the
book.”
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
|UTICA, N. Y., December 10, 1854.
Do not think me ungrateful or neglectful, because I have not
before this thanked you for pouring your sunshine upon my Ori-
ental children. I have been dogged to death by labor for the
past month, and have been obliged, perforce, to write so many
letters that I am thoroughly disgusted with pen and ink. I have
no sensation but that of intense weariness. But I turn to you
this afternoon as a refuge from my own individual self, which is
a devil that I cannot drive away. This dreadful white world
and gray sky and bleak air depress me terribly. Light and
color, and the joy of breathing and movement, are all lost. I am
shut up in a dreary hotel room (you know what that is), and
cannot escape my own thoughts. What an awful significance
there is in that line of Manfred : —
“Thy curse shall be — to think I’’
Life, Death, Eternity, Existence, Destiny, and the humbugs of
CLEARING – A WA Y WORK. 297
the outer life of man, have taken me at a disadvantage, and
pricked and goaded me until I can find no peace but in the
shadow of your personality. You are the rock in the weary
land, and thus I throw myself at your feet in all the selfishness
of friendship.
I hear you were to be in New York about this time. Why
will you always come when I am absent 2 By the sword of Ha-
roun, if this happens again, I will call you to account But I
shall see you next week, when I shall spend three days in Phil-
adelphia, and at least two of them with you, O faithless I am
sorry to hear of your trouble about your eyes, and trust you will
have recovered sufficiently for cigars by the time we meet.
I met Griswold in Boston ten days ago. He tells me you are
reading the proof of Read’s new poem ; you must have it ready
to show to me. I had good news from Ticknor. The second
thousand of my poems is rapidly melting away. The book is
considered a decided success. Longfellow spoke to me about it
in the warmest and kindest manner. Willis told Fields that
it was the most astonishing stride I had ever made. He has
copied the whole of “Hassan’s Temptation” into the “Home
Journal.” I am very glad, by the way, that you liked Hassan.
He is a good fellow, in spite of his sins. I am greatly encour-
aged by the success of the book, for it is my first general recog-
nition as a poet.
TO HIS MOTHER.
CINCINNATI, January 23, 1855.
. . . The climate here (with the exception of the past three
days) has been delightful, and I feel better than I have done for
three months — partly because I take great care of myself, and
am lazy whenever I can find time to be so. I have discovered
an Irishman at the Burnet House here, where I am staying, who
understands the Oriental style of bathing, and who gives me a
thorough currying down whenever I arrive, dusty and wearied.
This puts new life into me. Besides, I take great care to keep
warm, and to protect my throat after speaking. Consequently,
although I have lectured fifty-eight times, I look forward with
encouragement to the sixty or seventy engagements still on hand.
I spent two days at Antioch College, staying with Horace Mann.
They made me preach in the chapel on Sunday afternoon, on the
“Religions of the World.” I spoke for more than an hour ex-
298 BA YARD TA YLOR.
temporaneously, a new thing to me. I was a little scared, but
got through with credit.
Colum BUs, OHIo, February 10, 1855.
. I shall write again from New Albany. My engagements
multiply, and I shall probably be occupied in lecturing until May
1st. Why can't father and you come out to New Albany about
May 1st, go with us to the Mammoth Cave, and then home via
Niagara. I will pay all your expenses if you will only do it.
Pray think of it, for it can be done without the least difficulty. . . .
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
CHICAGO, ILL., February 24, 1855.
Let me sit down and say a word to you this “bitter chill”
evening. The cigar in my mouth is a guaranty that I shall not
be very dismal, but the snow-drifts and the zero out of doors
will prevent me from being very cheerful. I have been snow-
bound here for the past two days, the railroads being blocked
up. Will the spring ever come 2 I have endured all the rigors
of the North Pole within the last six weeks, and there is no re-
laxation. The lengthening days only lengthen the gloom, for the
nights only are tolerably cheery.
. . . I had a note from Read the other day. He seems in
good spirits, and speaks confidently of the “New Pastoral,”
which, by the way, I see is out. Read says I am the original of
“Arthur.” What sort of a fellow is Arthur 2 I hope he has
more consistency, more firmness of purpose, and fewer conflict-
ing elements in his character than I. Read wants to get my
poems sent out to him through Parry & McMillan, who are going
to send him a box of books. Now, let me task your kindness to
have two copies of my “Orientals” put into the box, for R. and
Powers. P. & McM. can transfer them to Ticknors, as taken on
my account. I have had two notes from England about my
poems, – from Milnes, cold and stately, and Camilla Crossland
(née Toulmin), warm and cordial. Ticknors are now selling
the third thousand. The booksellers in the West tell me it goes
off extremely well. I have had a handsome offer from a Cin-
cinnati house to compile a “Cyclopædia of Modern Travel,”—a
piece of hack-work, to be sure, but one which I could do with
some spirit, and I have a mind to undertake it ; what say you ?
It would bring me in a very handsome sum. This is another of
those devilish baits to entice me away from my beloved art, but
what 's to be dome 2 º
CLEARING—A WA Y WORK. 299
This lecturing business is beginning to exhaust me. I have
lectured already seventy-nine times, and have fifty-one more en-
gagements on hand. I cannot write, hardly read, and my very
thoughts are beginning to be sterile. Yet in all this desolation
I feel the upheaving of the poetical element from time to time,
showing that there is still fire under the cold craters. I have
still a year's labor on hand—a year's incessant toil—and then,
please God, I shall go out into the atmosphere of the world and
draw a free breath. Be ready, George, for that winter on the
Nile; let us steal some real, tangible glory from life. Ah, there
is so much that is possible, if we only determined that it should
be real | Do not think of the plan as a dream, or it will always
remain one. I am bent on making my life rich, if not in results,
at least in experiences, sensations, enjoyments ; and I know you
would find also that action quickens the pulse of thought.
TO R. H. STODDARD.
DETROIT, March 4, 1855.
. . . In Louisville two weeks ago I saw the home of George
Keats, and learned much about him and his family. They say
his character was one of the noblest and purest. He has two
sons, John and Clarence, neither of whom I saw. But fancy
John Keats an American The house was Grecian, built with
considerable taste, and though in the city, had a garden around
it, with antique statues. I thought of his and our poor brother,
John, and saw, by a sudden mirage, his daisied grave in the
meadow under the wall of Rome.
. . . A curious instance of natural clairvoyance occurred to
me the other morning. I awoke, and as it was light, wondered
whether it was time to get out of bed. Inmediately I seemed
to see through the pillow (I was lying on my back) and through
the case of my watch, which was under it, and read the time, –
eleven minutes past six The impression was so curious that I
arose, took out my watch and opened it, and found the time, —
eleven minutes past six Was not that remarkable 2
TO IIIS MOTHER.
OTTAwa, ILL., March 21, 1855.
. . . I had a letter from Putnam yesterday. My copyright
on the first of January amounted to $2,650, so you see my trip
has not turned out badly. Henceforth I shall get a good income
300 B.A. Y.A.R.D TA YLOR.
from my books alone. I want to purchase two more shares of
the “Tribune” in July, if possible. I feel now perfectly re-
lieved of all future anxiety about money matters, which is a
great Satisfaction. I am about making an engagement with a
Cincinnati publishing house to compile a “Cyclopædia of Mod-
ern Travel,” which will yield me at least five thousand dollars in
the course of two years. . . .
His mother and father joined Bayard Taylor at
New Albany as he proposed, and together they made
an excursion to the Mammoth Cave, of which he wrote
an account afterward, published in the first series of
“At Home and Abroad.” “Wathek’s Hall of Eblis
is nothing to it,” he wrote to Mrs. Stoddard. After
the lecture season closed he was again in New York
hard at work upon his “India, China, and Japan,”
when a sudden proposition was made that he should
have the position of Commissioner to Japan. As us-
ual, he wrote freely of this new plan to his mother, on
whose sympathy and counsel he eagerly depended.
TO IIIS MOTHER.
NEw Yorº, July 9, 1855.
. . . I received your letter yesterday. As you complain of
having no news, let me give you some. I went to Washington
on Thursday evening and returned on Saturday. My object was
to see Commodore Perry and get permission to use my journals,
in which I have a good prospect of success. The commodore
proposed that I should apply for the appointment of United
States Commissioner to Japan. He said I would be almost sure
to get it, as the government has great difficulty in finding a
proper person to fill it. The appointment will not be made on
political grounds, and the recommendation of such men as Ir-
ving, Bancroft, Bryant, and Seward would be sufficient to secure
it for me. The salary is $5,000 a year, and I would be taken
out in a national vessel, besides having one at my disposal to
visit the various Japanese ports. The commodore says I would
be able to travel through the interior of Japan, and to make
such a book about the country as has never been written. The
CLEARING-A WA Y WORK. 301
appointment would be a highly complimentary and honorable
one, and as I feel confident of being able to discharge its duties,
it would vastly increase my reputation. The prospect is very
tempting, but I have not yet decided to apply. I should have to
be absent about two years. The expenses of living in Japan
would be from $1,000 to $2,000 a year. Besides, I could take
along the material for my Cincinnati work and do it there. I am
going to wait a few days before giving the commodore my de-
cision ; in the mean time write to me, and tell me what you
think of it. My friends here to whom I have mentioned it urge
me strongly to go. I shall consult Bryant to-day. Keep the
matter Secret.
In Washington I saw Yusef, Ross Browne's Syrian dragoman
and a friend of Achmet. He brought over some Arab horses
for a Kentucky friend of mine. This Kentuckian told me that
he read some of my “Poems of the Orient” to Yusef, - among
others, “Hassan to his Mare.” Yusef was greatly excited,
sprang up with tears in his eyes, and swore that the Arabs talked”
just in that way to their horses. He is going to write the poem
in Arabic, take it back with him this summer, and give it to the
Aneyzeh Arabs in the Syrian Desert. So, perhaps my songs
will be sung by the Bedouins.
NEw York, July 17, 1855.
I have been waiting until I should hear from Commodore
Perry before writing to you again, but no letter has arrived. I
am sorry you consider the project an unwelcome one. My jour-
neys abroad have hitherto done more for me than anything else
could have done, and this plan promises to be even more advan-
tageous. My time for retirement has not yet come ; I am in the
world at the most active and ambitious period of a man’s life,
with the opportunity of achieving things worthy to be remem-
bered. What can I do 2 Look at the matter with my own eyes,
not with yours. If you were a man of my age, I am certain you
would do the very same thing. You are fearless for yourself —
would you have me cowardly 2 I would rather not leave home
for a year yet, but I must go again some time, and perhaps more
than once. I was born for it, and it is the best thing for me.
Now here is a chance which does not come once in a century, and
it seems like slighting fortune to disregard it.
However, perhaps I won’t get it, after all. The administra-
302 BA YARD TA YLOR.
*
tion may be disinclined to appoint a colleague of Greeley, and I
shan’t ask until I hear that my asking would be favorably re-
ceived. I wrote to Commodore Perry that I was no suppliant,
but would take the office if it was tendered to me, because I felt
able to discharge its duties. I shall probably hear from him in
a day or two, and will then write again.
NEw York, July 25, 1855.
I am drudging along as usual, expecting to get through with
my book in about ten days more. The weather is very favorable
for work now, after the intense heat we had a week ago. I
have given up all idea of applying for any situation whatever in
the hands of the government.” . . .
I am going on with the Cincinnati work shortly, having just
received a letter from the publishers. I want to get it completed
by next May, so that I can make my contemplated visit to Swe-
den during the summer. The invitations to lecture come in fast,
and I have already a number of appointments made. After an-
other season, I shall be well satisfied to knock off for a while.
I shall go to Newport in about ten days, and spend a week
there. Bancroft, Longfellow, Curtis, Boker, and other of my
friends are already there, and more are going. I anticipate a
pleasant visit, though it won’t be quite a holiday, for I shall take
my work along.
I had a letter from F. yesterday which I shall answer to-day
Or to-morrow.
TO HIS YOUNGEST BROTHER FREDERICK.
NEw York, July 27, 1855.
I have been so busy for the past two days that I have had no
time to answer your letter, and I must even now reply rather
briefly. I did not originally object to your going through a reg-
ular college course because I thought it would be no advantage
to you, but because I believed that a better practical education
could be had without it. The value of any particular system of
education, however, depends on its adaptation to one's career in
after life, and if you feel sure that you are best fitted for a
teacher, you are probably right in your choice. If my objection
is an obstacle in your way, I withdraw it, but I do not think you
should decide hastily. It would be a great advantage to myself
1 Mr. Townsend Harris was appointed commissioner.
CLEARING-A WA Y WORK. 303
at present if I could have gone through a regular course of col-
lege studies; but as that was impossible, I did what I considered
was the next best thing for me. Perhaps, as things have since
turned out, it was the very best. You must remember that a
professorship is not so easily obtained — rarely, at present, until
middle life. There are numbers of applicants for every vacant
place, and years of mere tutorship must intervene before you
could aspire to such a station with any chance of success. In
this country a man must be a great scholar to live by scholarship
alone.
If you are determined to make the trial, you had best choose
the place which offers the greatest advantages, and make the
most thorough course which can be had. In my opinion, Har-
vard is decidedly the first institution in the country. I shall be
able to assist you by the time you need assistance. I think it is
too late to enter this season, but am not certain. If you should
graduate in the usual period, there will still be time to apply
yourself to some other profession, in case you should change your
mind. For my part, I do not think that the life of a teacher
would be agreeable to you. It is laborious, full of annoyances,
and not very remunerative. But you should know your own in-
clinations best, and I do not wish to control them in any way.
At your age we see the bright side of everything, and it is per-
haps best that each one should learn wisdom for himself. I have
seen so much of the world that I am a little more cautious than
I used to be. What you say of my own early inclination is quite
true, and if I thought that your convictions or impressions were
as strong as mine at that time, I should be very sorry to be any
hindrance to your plans. I should like to see you an accom-
plished scholar, and I believe you would use every exertion to
make yourself one. The two strongest objections to it are, dis-
ordered health and an incapacity for the practical business of
life. If you think you are strong enough, and are careful to take
sufficient exercise, you may overcome the former tendency ; the
latter will depend entirely on your individual character. But it
is a danger which you should never lose sight of. If you should
go through college without falling into either, I shall rejoice that
you have carried out your plan. It depends on yourself entirely
whether that plan shall be an advantage or a loss.
You must not imagine that because I write rather coldly and
cautiously I am indifferent to your prospects. I am only anxious
tº
304 BA YARD TA YLOR.
that you should do what will really be best for you, what will
enable you to overcome most successfully the difficulties which
surround every young man at his entrance into life. I have no
fears for you on account of the temptations to which you would
be exposed, but I should not want to see you a mere bookworm,
unfit for the active, energetic life of the present time. Decide
according to your best convictions, and I will acquiesce in your
decision, and help you to put it into practice.”
TO JAMES T, FIELDS.
NEw York, July 11, 1855.
Thanks for your prompt kindness in sending me more than I
asked for. I have read traditions of poets receiving money for
their works, but I never credited them before. I am still fear-
ful lest the check may be an illusion, and have opened your note
twice to see that it has not evaporated. I shall have the money
paid me in hard gold, the most tangible of all substances, that I
may hear it clink in my pockets as I go up and down Broadway,
the eagles chiming heavy iambuses, and the quarter eagles tink-
ling in anapests, so that all the people shall point at me, and
say : “There goes a poet with money in his pocket !” Great is
Brahma, venerable is Vishnu, but most delectable is the benign
Plutus of the Greeks ]
It will be seen by one of the foregoing letters that
Bayard Taylor had already begun to allow his plans
for another journey to Europe to take the shape of a
visit to the northern parts. Meanwhile he was sud-
denly invited to join a party bound for Newfoundland.
To IIIS MOTHER.
NEw York, July 30, 1855.
If I am disappointed in one chance of travel, another soon
offers. I suppose it is fatality or destiny, or something of the
sort. I am going to make a voyage to Newfoundland. A special
steamer leaves here on Thursday with a party of forty, includ-
ing Lieutenant Maury, of Washington, Professor Silliman, and
various other lions, to put down the submarine telegraph between
Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. I am invited, and will go on
1 His brother decided to enter the University of Michigan.
cLEARING-AWAY WoRK. 305
behalf of the “Tribune.” We shall visit Halifax, Prince Ed-
ward Island, Cape Breton, the French islands of Miquelon, St.
Johns, and various other interesting places which are almost un-
known to the world. We shall be absent from fourteen to
eighteen days, and anticipate a glorious time. Of course it costs
me nothing. I am working hard to finish my book before start-
ing, and shall succeed. . . .
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
NEw York, August 6, 1855.
The steamer did not get off on account of bad boilers. An-
other has been engaged, and we leave to-morrow positively. I
have employed the interval in preparing my poems for you, and
the thing is done. You will get the whole batch by Kingsley's
Express to-morrow. I think it will make a decent book.
I have cut away without mercy among the old poems, touched
up the others here and there, and added eleven bran new ones.
The volume will be about two hundred and twenty-five pages,
matching very well with the Orientals. The two will be my
complete poetical works, for what is not included in them is
damned. May it never be resurrected
Many thanks for “Maud,” which came safely, and will be re-
viewed at once, probably in to-morrow's paper.
The extracts are already scattered far and wide.
There are delicious things in the book, but it is not an ad-
vance on Tennyson's former books, neither a falling off, and per-
haps we should not ask more. It will sell immensely, of course.
Send on Longfellow in the same way, and he will be served
likewise.
Of course you will consult your own interest in the time of
bringing out my book. I shall be able to read the proof as soon
as it is ready. I shall be in Boston on my return from New-
foundland, about three weeks from now.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, August 6, 1855.
George Curtis has no doubt told you that I intend going off to
Newfoundland for twenty days or so. . . . This will delay my
visit to Newport, but I shall be along about the 25th, or a day or
two later, and most earnestly desire that you may be still there.
Don't leave as soon as you anticipated, for I want to stay ten
WOL. I. 20
306 BAYARD TAYLOR.
days and have a jolly good time. I look forward to the visit as
to an experience of the third heaven. I have been working and
sweating for the past six weeks like a Congo nigger, and have
entirely completed my travels in Eastern Asia (five hundred and
fifty pages) and my complete edition of poems for Ticknor
(two hundred and twenty-five pages). Is not this work with a
vengeance 2 I am pretty well worn out, and this voyage to the
North is a godsend. I have been wanting to write to you, but
waited, half expecting you would send me a line, if only a piece
of your fishing-line. I wish I could have consulted you before
sending off my poems. I have eleven new ones, and have used
the cleaver most unmercifully among the old ones. . . .
TO HIS MOTHER.
NEw York, September 6, 1855.
I arrived yesterday at noon, after a voyage of twenty-nine
days. We had a pleasant time on the whole, though we did not
succeed in laying the cable. The trip has done me much good.
I am brown and rugged and strong, and feel ready for any
amount of work. We had a delightful company on board, and
were received with great rejoicings at St. Johns, the capital of
Newfoundland. I had a chance to see a good deal of the island,
and to become acquainted with its people. -
I have brought you a fine dog, which I got at Cape Ray, on
the southwestern coast. He is about ten months old, and not
fully grown. He is of the Newfoundland breed, not the ordi-
nary black breed, but wolf-color and web-footed. He is a fine
dog, and will make a capital watch-dog. His father was
the best dog at Cape Ray. I call him Ray, and he already
knows me and his name. The sailors took care of him on the
voyage, and taught him some tricks. He is handsome and intel-
ligent, and I think you will like him. . . . I find awaiting me
fifty invitations to lecture, and could easily make five thousand
dollars again this winter if I were willing to undertake it.
The Newfoundland trip was enjoyed with an ar-
rière pensée for Norway. It is interesting to see how
in his narrative, which was published in letters to the
“Tribune” and afterward reprinted in the first series
of “At Home and Abroad,” he frequently draws com-
CLEARING—A WA Y WORK. 307
parisons between the country which he is visiting and
that which he had planned to visit. The shadow of the
Norseman seemed to accompany him, and point at one
object and another as native to Scandinavia. Shortly
after his return to New York, which he reached with-
out passing through Boston, he received a letter from
his faithful friend, Mr. Bufleb, who had been his trav-
eling companion on the Nile. He had written to Mr.
Bufleb of his intention to visit Europe the next year,
and this was the response which came.
A. BUFLEB TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
GOTHA, July 27, 1855.
A short time ago I bought a piece of property adjoining my
estate, a garden with a small, modest house. This house is to be
Taylor's home, when he keeps his promise next year, and visits us,
I said to myself. All arrangements are made with this in view.
The upper part of the garden, a genuine French establishment of
the last century, with its statues and fountains, its densely-
shaded beech-alleys and smoothly shorn box trees, is in readi-
ness and awaits my distant friend. A smaller house near the
fountain, covered with bark, is to be the bath-house. The lower
part of the garden, a little grove with beautiful large forest trees
covering an acre or so, is to refresh you with its cool shade, and
will I hope become for you a Snug sanctuary of nature. The little
salon in the house will serve for us when we gather around you
at your pleasure. 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 dedi-
cating your glorious work on Central Africa to me, I was setting
in order for you the most cherished part of my possessions.
BAYARD TAYLOR TO HIS MOTHER.
NEw York, September 10, 1855.
. . . I leave for Newport and Boston to-morrow, and shall
be gone the rest of the week. My Japanese book will be out in
five or six days, and I shall send you an early copy. I must
308 BAYARD TA YLOR.
finish “Views Afoot” and attend the Authors and Publishers’
dinner on the 27th of this month before going home, but shall see
you by the 1st of October. If F. goes to Ann Arbor, he must
come this way. It is a pretty place, and the University is very
good. I have been there.
NEw York, October 12, 1855.
I have not much to say except that I am working away as
hard as ever, and expect to finish “Views Afoot ” to-morrow.
The Boston volume of poems is done, but will not be published for
about a month. The book on Japan has sold eight thousand al-
ready and is still going off fast. There is a prospect that the
States of Ohio and Indiana will order copies of my books for all
the common schools, making two thousand copies of each. . . . We
are all overjoyed at Dr. Kane's return. Everybody was surprised
except myself. I always knew he would get back safely. He
and I have the same lucky nature : we can go anywhere without
the least danger. Another man in his place would have been
finished a dozen times.
NEw York, November 16, 1855.
I found your letter here on Wednesday when I returned from
New England. I went down to Taunton to lecture, having now
fairly commenced my campaign, with seventy-four engagements
ahead. . . . My new volume of poems is out, and I have sent
you a copy by mail.” It is a very handsome book. There are a
number of new poems at the end, among which are four, entitled
“Studies for Pictures,” which some of my saintly friends may
find fault with, because they can’t understand the design with
which they were written. They are simply imaginary pictures
representing the feelings of men under various circumstances,
and were written from my observations of other men, not from
any experience of my own. I should not think it necessary to
make any explanation to you, but the world is full of fools, and
you may meet with some of them.
I have met Thackeray and like him very much. He likes me,
too, for he has said so to all my friends. We shall breakfast to-
gether with and Curtis on Sunday. I have just got a col-
lection of rare and valuable books of travel. My library has now
about seven hundred volumes. Hicks has nearly finished the Ori-
ental portrait. It is one of the most charming things you ever
1 Poems of IIome and Travel. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: Ticknor
& Fields, 1855.
CLEARING—A WA Y WORK. 309
saw. I found at Taunton, Mass., a daguerreotype of Achmet in
the hands of a gentleman who traveled with him a year ago,
and borrowed it to get a copy made. I shall get Hicks to put
Achmet into my picture. The sailor, Patterson," wants very
much to go with me to Norway. He says he would go to the
end of the world with me. I should like to take him if I could.
He is greatly attached to me, and I believe would be a most
faithful attendant. I intend having a servant, but I am afraid
he is not just the person I want for such a journey.
AUGUSTA, MAINE, December 8, 1855.
Here I am on the banks of the Kennebec River, away down
east, where the mercury goes to five hundred degrees below zero
in the winter. I expected to be frozen up and sent back to New
York in a box, with some venison and Kennebec salmon; but
the weather is really miraculous. Days without a cloud, sweet,
cold air, – just cold enough to be refreshing, — and the starriest
nights. Such weather has not been known here for many years.
I lecture to-night for the twentieth time already, and don’t feel
the least tired—quite the contrary. . . .
Last Sunday, before leaving New York, I gave a breakfast
party. I had Thackeray, Curtis, Boker, Stoddard, Hicks, Judge
Daly, Lieutenant Bent of the Navy, and Glass, an English artist.
We had a glorious time : the breakfast lasted five hours. I
gave it at Delmonico's. Thackeray says he will try and come
with me to Kennett for a day or two next April. When I go to
London next summer, he promises to introduce me into the liter-
ary society of England. tº
Hicks has finished my portrait, which is one of the finest paint-
ings you ever saw. Everybody is delighted with it, and I would
not take any amount of money for it. He says it is the best
thing he has ever done. Did I write to you that the first edition
of my last book of poems sold in less than a week 2 I was very
agreably surprised, as I did not suppose it would be exhausted in
less than six months. The public seems to have found at last
that I am a poet as well as traveler. . . . As I shall see you in
twelve days I will not write again. I have written to A and
E—, and hope my letters were acceptable.
The last sentence in this letter is perhaps an inti-
1 Patterson was one of the crew of the Susquehanna.
310 BAYARD TA YLOR.
mation of a proposal which he had made and which re-
sulted in his taking to Europe his two sisters and a
brother as his guests. He was confident that he had
now reached the financial independence for which he
had been working, and that from his copyrights, his
Tribune stock, and such lectures as he might choose to
give he could count upon a liberal income. The first
use which he made of this fortune was a characteris-
tic one — he shared it with others.
The winter of 1855–56 was one of great severity,
and Bayard Taylor was exposed to extreme hardship
in fulfilling his lecture engagements. He wrote to his
mother from Ann Arbor, detailing some of his expos-
ure, and adding: “This is the third winter, and I am
not afraid of Norway after my recent experiences.”
But he was evidently very desirous of coming to the
end of his season, for after reporting unusual divi-
dends from his Tribune stock, of which he had just
had accounts, he closes: “That being the case, I think
I shall give up my five or six engagements in New
Brunswick and not lecture after March 1st. I be-
lieve it is the anticipation of my coming holiday in
Europe which enables me to bear this winter's fatigues
so well.” The termination of his lecture season came
more suddenly than he had intended, for he broke
down early in February and canceled all the engage-
ments which remained.
TO HIS MOTHER.
Boston, February 17, 1856.
I should have written to you sooner, but waited a day or two,
hoping I might be able to announce the end of an attack of ill-
ness which has come upon me ; but the affair is so tedious that I
may wait a week longer for that matter. I left New York last
Monday week (the 4th), came here next day intending to go to
Lowell, but the roads were snowed up. I was engaged at Green-
CLEARING-A WA Y WORK. 311
field on the 6th, but the trains didn’t run on account of drifts ;
at Worcester 7th, and reached there ; at Nantucket 8th, but the
Sound is full of ice, and communication cut off, so stayed here
comfortably, visiting my friends. The thawy weather of Friday,
I think, affected me. On Saturday night I had a chill. I bathed
my feet in hot water, but did n’t sweat, and passed a restless
night. The next day, feeling no better, I sent for Dr. Stedman,
who said the attack was brought on by my irregular habit of life,
and gave me a strong emetic. I was much better on Monday,
and, having an engagement to lecture in New Bedford, consulted
him about going. He told me I was able to do it, but must be
very careful of myself. So I went, became the guest of Hon. Jo-
seph Grinnell (Mrs. Willis's father), felt weak and hoarse, but got
through my lecture well, and expected to go to Fall River next
day. But when I woke I had almost entirely lost my voice, and
there was a light return of fever. So I stayed three days with
Mr. and Mrs. Grinnell, who treated me with the greatest possi-
ble kindness. I was not confined to bed, but to the house ; and
when the physician had pronounced me entirely without fever,
and in a fit condition to come here, I left. I reached here Thurs-
day night, and have not been out of doors since. Dr. Stedman
tends me every day. He says I am recovering, and, in fact, I
feel almost well, though rather weak after living a week upon
gruel. The attack is of a typhoid character, and the change from
day to day is so slow as to try my patience. I am not confined
to my room, but mostly keep in it, as he says I need complete
quiet. I dress myself and sit in the rocking-chair all day, read-
ing or seeing my friends, many of whom call. Dr. Elder was
here yesterday, Dr. Walter Channing to-day, Fields often, and
others. I don’t get much sleep at night, and have tried Dover's
powders and morphine in vain. If I could get a good night's
rest I think it would cure me. If the fever was typhoid, it was
wonderfully light, and I may thank my stars for getting over it
so easily. I am very carefully waited upon here (at the Tremont
House), and have refused two invitations of friends to go to their
houses. I hope I shall get out of the doctor's hands in about
two days more. My lectures are all given up as far as Wednes-
day next, and I am seriously thinking of giving up all the re-
mainder to March 1st. I shall let the doctor decide, as I intend
running no reckless risks. . . .
312 BA YARD TA YLOR.
BosTON, February 20, 1856.
. . . I have not been out of doors yet, to-day was so dark and
damp. The cough has quite left me. . . . It is the worst winter
ever known here. I am quite anxious to get back to New York,
which is a much better climate. The doctor advises me to give
up my engagements for next week, which I shall do, as they lie
far apart, and would require hard traveling. I shall miss seven-
teen engagements in all, with a loss of between $700 and $800;
but I would much rather lose the money than my health, and
shall not complain about it.
My friends here have been very kind in sending me fruit, books,
flowers, etc., and I have had many visitors. Longfellow has been
in, R. H. Dana, Mr. Grinnell, and many others, so that the time
has not been dull. Now, since my tongue is clear and my pulse
correct, I feel all right again, except a little weakness and fa-
tigue. I shall not start for New York unless the weather is good
and the track entirely clear. Every road is blocked up at pres-
ent.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
NEw York, February 25, 1856.
On Friday last I went to Springfield; did n’t feel very tired,
so re-shipped to New Haven. There the train was not much
behind time, the day delightful, and I was only a little tired,
so the devil instigated me to go on to New York. There were
delays, and the train was late, and I was excessively hungry
and abominably tired when I arrived, but no harm came of it,
except Soreness and rheumatism the next day.
I am recovering slowly and Surely ; my tongue is now clear
as a new pewter platter, my body recovering strength, and my
brain, reason. I drink porter, eat beefsteaks, Smoke occasion-
ally, and lie in my easy chair in a glorious state of inaction. I
tried my hand at poetry last night : consequence, vertigo, or, as
they say in the West, a virago. I have read the “Simple Story,”
which is very touching and funny. I hesitated so long whether
to laugh or cry that I did neither. .
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, February 25, 1856.
I have come back disabled, to recruit from my labors. I
have been absent three weeks, two of which were spent in Boston,
under the doctor's hand. I have had a mild attack of typhoid
CLEARING—A WA Y WORK. 313
fever, brought on by the exposures and irregularities of my lec-
ture life. In consequence thereof I have given up all remaining
engagements, – a considerable loss, – and come home to stay.
I was not seriously ill, but the fever was stubborn, and has left
me weak. I am now nursing myself, and improve from day to
day. I hope to be as well as ever by the end of the week. . . .
I have a little plan to communicate to you. Would it not be
a handsome thing if some dozen of us American authors should
unite and send a testimonial to old Savage Landor ? He is now
past eighty, can’t live much longer, is a great man, has never
been rightly appreciated, is a noble old republican, – in fact, the
only one of the old generation who sympathizes with the march
of the age and the later literature, — and I think his old heart
would be cheered by such a tribute. I proposed it to Fields;
Longfellow, and Curtis. All are delighted with the idea. L.
suggested that we should have a copy of Ariosto's inkstand made
in massive silver, which strikes me as best. It would cost about
$150, and fifteen of us at $10 each would be enough. It is the
act that makes the thing valuable. Tell me what you think of
it, and ask Leland to join also.
TO MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS.
NEw York, March 15, 1856.
Thanks for your kind letter, which found me hard at work.
I have mounted the treadmill again, and am now going round,
day after day, in the old, monotonous routine. I have just fin-
ished the last of three or four lectures, which conclude my
doings in that line for years to come, perhaps forever. I hope
so at least, for I am utterly disgusted with the business, and
heartily ashamed of myself for being tempted (by the love of
lucre) to keep it up so long. But perhaps we should not abuse
the bridge that carries us safely over. My health is completely
reéstablished. My head was weak for a fortnight or so, but
having stood the manufacture of a poem of three or four hun-
dred lines, I think I may trust it with the drudgery of compila-
tion, my present employment.
I am very much obliged to Mrs. T. for her kind desires, and
to all the friends in Boston who helped to make my illness en-
durable. It is not a bad place to be sick in, where one is so
kindly cared for.
I hope Boker's poems will be out soon. He was here yester-
314 BA YARD TA YLOR.
day in good spirits, but a little anxious, as was natural, about
their reception. I know they will be admired by all authors,
scholars, and men of taste, and I hope the public will not ignore
them. Browning's experience, I think, should be an encourage-
ment to all poets. The success of my own poems does not exalt
me, because three fourths of it is due to my books of travel.
I hope to see old Barry when I go to England, and Kingsley,
too. I think I could fraternize easily with both of them,
Will not J. T. F. come on to attend the trade sale 2 I hope
he will take his time to it, and spare us some, instead of dodging
around, as usual, as if he were tied to the tail of a whirlwind.
But I am a pretty fellow to talk of leisure, or of taking things
mildly, who have so many irons in the fire By way of recrea-
tion I have just commenced taking lessons in water-color under
Wanderford’s tuition. I expect to come back from Europe as
the Turner of Norway, the Claude of Lapland (if I get scratched
by polar bears), or the Salvator Rosa of Iceland. Don’t you
want to order a $500 picture in advance 2 Now is your chance,
before my prices go up. .
I must stop, lest you should doubt whether my head be not
still a little weak.
TO HIS MOTHER.
NEw Yorr, March 15, 1856.
. . . I have given three or four lectures this week, and now
have no more. I shall devote my time entirely to the book,"
which is getting on tolerably well. My head is quite strong
again. I have also commenced taking lessons in water-color
painting from an English artist, so as to be able to paint Nor-
wegian scenery. If I can get time I shall also take some les-
sons in drawing figures. This is a recreation, not a labor. I
intend practicing all next winter. Dr. Kane has sent me a
charming little sketch, made at the North Pole, which I have
had framed. My portrait by Hicks is in the exhibition. I wish
you could see it.
I have just had my semi-annual copyright report from Put-
nam. My profit on the books amounts to $2,724; not bad, - is
it 2 This assures me the $5,000 which I shall need to start
with in July. My income from my books and the “Tribune”
for the last six months amounts to $5,400, quite a little fortune.
1 The Cyclopædia.
CLEARING—A WA Y WORK. 315
The girls and Fred have thus no particular reason to thank me
for taking them abroad, since the funds come so easily. For
my part I feel that I am justified in taking a good holiday. . . .
To JAMES T. FIELDS.”
NEw York, April 7, 1856.
The Kingsley came safely to hand. I admire the “Saint's
Tragedy” exceedingly. The book ought to have a great sale
among the Know-Nothings, on account of such a furious show-
ing-up of Catholicism. Your announcements delight me. We
want “Sordello,” and Arnold richly deserves republication. I
don’t admire much, but the name will probably sell an edi-
tion. The success of the “Angel in the House ’’ is a most en-
couraging sign ; so is the sale of Browning. I begin to think
that better times are dawning for poetry. These things improve
Boker's chances. . . . Thackeray came here on Saturday. I
breakfasted with him yesterday. He looks jolly and rosy, al-
though he had a few chills on the Mississippi. He is staying
with Robinson, 604 Houston Street. It is refreshing to see his
good face and big body among us once more. He says he will
stay until June 1st, but I expect he will disappear suddenly some
Wednesday morning.
The weather for five days has been heavenly. I have just
killed Mungo Park, and must take his remains to be electro-
typed ; so, good-by!
TO HIS MOTHER.
NEw York, April 28, 1856.
I gave Braisted * a line or two for A , but as he went to
Washington he may not yet have returned. He came here on
Wednesday morning before I was dressed. We had a long talk
which ended in my taking him. I think he will prove to be the
right man for me, and am glad that I have engaged him. He
seems quite willing to do everything I shall need done, and I am
1 This and some other of the letters written to Mr. Fields were printed
in a series contributed by Mr. Fields to the Congregationalist of Boston.
In a prefatory note to this letter he says: “In the following we have a
glimpse of the great English author who fell in love with Taylor at first
sight. Thackeray's hearty delight in a warm companionship with the
spirited American author was unbounded.”
2 The sailor whom Bayard Taylor had engaged to accompany him to
Europe.
316 BA YARD TA YLOR.
quite sure of his honesty and fidelity. I told him to go up after
he returned to Kennett, as there would be no objection whatever
to his staying at home and doing some work for his board. I
should like A to give him some lessons in writing, as his
hand needs improvement.
I am getting on with the book; 250 pages are in type, and I
hope to have 600 finished by the 1st of June. Thackeray went
off in the Baltic on Saturday, running away from his friends, for
fear of having to say good-by. I saw him off; he seemed sorry
to leave. He asked Lawrence, the English artist, to take a head
of me for him, and I believe Lawrence is going to do it. I have
done my first picture in water colors with good success.
May 13, 1856.
. . . I had a letter the other day from the Cincinnati publish-
ers, in which they say I may make 900 pages if I choose. This
is 100 more than I had counted upon. I have about 450 done,
and the last half is always the shortest, but I am getting very
tired of it and very impatient. I feel the need of relaxation
more than ever, and the anticipation of relief in six weeks is
very delightful. The publishers say that agents are applying
every day to distribute and sell the book, and they anticipate a
large sale. If I make 900 pages they will increase the price to
four dollars. I am pretty sure of making at least $10,000 on it
in two years. It will be a very interesting book and very use-
ful, but there is a great deal of drudgery in the making of it.
I received to-day a copy of the German translation of my “Cen-
tral Africa,” published in Leipzig. It is very well done. The
translator gives a biography of me, in which he says I was born
at Kennett Square, near the Brandywine, in that charming re-
gion renowned for its associations with the war of Independence.
He then says that I went to New York to live in 1843, and there
married the daughter of Bryant Also that I won the prize for
the best poem in praise of Jenny Lind.
On Friday I had a letter from Bufleb and his wife. They re-
ceived my letter on Easter day and read it in my garden, where
a lot of children were busy hunting colored eggs, which they
had hid among my box-bushes. They send their love to all of
you. I am delighted to find that the children still remember
me. The old forester, with whom we passed the night in the
Duke's woods, has read my “Africa” with great satisfaction.
CLEARING—A WA Y WORK. 317
One of B.’s nieces has married a Russian astronomer and gone to
St. Petersburg; so if I go to Russia. I shall have friends there.
Up to almost the last moment before leaving, he
was at work upon his Cyclopædia, and had the sat-
isfaction of leaving behind him all his literary en-
gagements well fulfilled. He had swept his desk
clean, and was ready with a cheerful mind for what
was to come next. It was as well that he should go
off with no concern about his business, but he was to
meet with a sorry disappointment. The expectations
which he had reasonably formed regarding the Cyclo-
paedia were not to be met. It was published after he
had sailed under the title: “Cyclopædia of Modern
Travel: A Record of Adventure, Exploration, and
Discovery for the past Fifty Years; comprising Nar-
ratives of the most distinguished Travelers since the
beginning of the Century. Prepared and arranged by
Bayard Taylor. Illustrated with Maps and Engrav-
ings. Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, Keys & Co.
1856.” The book was sold by subscription, and the
great popularity which the editor enjoyed, especially
in the West, justified him in anticipating a solid re-
turn for his work. The publishers excused the com-
parative failure of the enterprise by the fact that it
was issued during an exciting Presidential canvass, and
when there were apprehensions of a financial crisis.
An attempt was made three years later to revive in-
terest in it by the addition of a supplement, but with-
Out SucceSS.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
NEw York, June 17, 1856.
I have been working, it is most true. I have never before
done so much in the same space of time. Since the 1st of April,
I have finished nine hundred royal 8vo pages, besides prepar-
318 * BA YARD TA YLOR.
ing thirteen maps, and a variety of cuts, and looking after ther
printing, engraving, etc. ; but I shall finish to-day ! Io, Io 1 J
Bacche | Nothing remains but title-page and preface. I have
compressed ninety volumes into one, and made, I think, a most
interesting and Salable work, for which I hope to receive thou-
sands of dollars. It has been a terribly fatiguing time, especially
for the past fortnight, when I have been in addition tortured
every day by a dentist. But now for one consolation. I shall
dine with you, O George 1 on Thursday, as I pass through on my
way homewards. Expect me positively at three o'clock. And
now I must stop, in order that I may
Eighteenth, noon — called off yesterday — no time to say more.
Will dine with you to-morrow, D. W., and tell the rest. God bless
you forever !
TO JAMES T. FIELDS,
NEw York, July 5, 1856.
As I must leave without seeing you, I wish to say a final word
on business and other matters. I should like to get a set of the
proofs of Boker's poems, if they can be had at once, as I wish to
write an article on them and send it back from Europe. If a set
can be had, please send it by express at once, so that it will get
here by Tuesday evening at farthest. Kensett is going out with
me, and Curtis gives us a parting dinner at Delmonico’s on Tues-
day. We expect to have a glorious time. I am wild with the
thoughts of my coming holiday. My sisters and brother come on
Tuesday. My man Friday is with me now. He is all I expected.
Give my kindest parting regards to Longfellow, Holmes,
Whittier, Lunt, and all Boston friends, whom I would gladly
have seen once more before setting out. . . .
I shall dine with Thackeray on the 1st of August. What shall
I say for you? Write to me at once, if only for good luck.
The House in the Garden at Gotha.
CHAPTER XIV.
NORTHERN TRAVEL.
1856–1857.
For mot to any race or any clime
Is the completed sphere of life revealed ;
He who would make his own that round sublime,
Must pitch his tent on many a distant field.
w L’Envoi (to “Poems of the Orient’’).
Speed swifter, Night ! wild Northern Night,
Whose feet the Arctic islands know,
When stiffeming breakers, sharp and white,
Gird the complaining shores of snow !
A Requiem in the North.
, THE party, consisting of Bayard Taylor, his two sis-
ters, his youngest brother, and John Braisted, left New
York in July, 1856, and landed at Liverpool. His
purpose was to give his sisters and brother a taste of
European travel, to make his promised visit to Mr.

320 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Bufleb, and then to enlarge his own personal experi-
ence by an extended journey in the north, both in the
winter and summer seasons. He was more exhausted
by his recent work than he had supposed, and it was
some time before he recovered his wonted exuberance.
Meantime there was a relaxation in travel which grad-
ually restored his spirits. He visited England now as
one who held a recognized position in literature, and
the friendships which he had formed opened the way
to further agreeable society. He missed, alas ! the
friendly Miss Mitford, who had died eighteen months
before. Then it was a pleasure to refresh his familiar
knowledge of the beaten paths of Europe through the
new experience of his ingenuous companions. Thus
he spent four months in leisurely travel before he set
about his special errand in Scandinavia. He lingered
a few days in London, passed on to Paris, thence to
his old haunts at Frankfurt, and so to Gotha, where
with his party he was the guest of Mr. Bufleb, and
where he took possession of the charming house which
Mr. Bufleb had provided for his special delectation.
- The circumstances under which he traveled lessened
his opportunities for letter-writing ; there was little
occasion to write to the “Tribune" until he should go
to the north, and his letters home were chiefly hurried
notes, detailing the plans of the party, and leaving to
the others to write more at length. Many of the spe-
cial incidents of the journey, however, he used as the
basis of separate articles which he afterward collected
into the two series of “At Home and Abroad.”
TO MR. AND MRS. R. H. STODDARD.
- PARIs, August 4, 1856.
My time, as you may suppose, is mostly taken up in playing
the cicerone to my brethren ; but I have not forgotten, nor
NORTHERN TRA VEL. 321
do I intend to neglect, my duty towards you. Everything has
gone well thus far. Our voyage across the ocean was even more
favorable than I anticipated, - not a rough sea the whole way.
We landed at Liverpool in the midst of a pouring rain, whereby
I got wet feet, resulting in a swollen head. One side of my face
was twice the size of the other, and the pain I endured prevented
me from sleeping for three nights. Finally, at Stratford-on-
Avon, my jaw was lanced and I recovered. I never saw Eng-
land so beautiful. The weather was clear and warm, and the
country greener (if possible) than the fields of Kennett. I saw
the loveliest ivy-grown cottages, – Anne Hathaway's among the
rest, — the fairest meadows, the most dazzling poppy-fields, the
picturesquest elms and oaks, but no trees, I swear, – not even
the venerable oaks of Charlecote, where Shakespeare poached, –
equal to my own. Kensett went with us through Warwickshire,
a journey of four days, – it was 'eavenly. At London, I went
with the children to Sydenham, to the Crimean review at Alder-
shott, into the hall of St. Paul’s, and to the Poet's Corner. The
girls were in raptures with everything they saw, and their enjoy-
ment repaid me handsomely for the trouble and expense of
bringing them. Thackeray was in London, and I found him as
jovial and as tender-hearted as ever. His daughters came to see
the girls, took them out driving a whole afternoon, and we all
dined together in the evening. The dinner came off on the 1st,
according to promise ; present, Thackeray, Mark Lemon, Tom
Taylor, Shirley Brooks, Horace Mayhew, Leech, Bradbury and
Evans, Hurlbut, Story, Olmsted, and myself. It was a capital
dinner, in Thackeray's own house. The Americans, with Tom
Taylor, S. Brooks, and Thackeray, did all the talking ; the other
people were rather slow.”
I breakfasted with Barry Cornwall and Browning. Dear old
Barry I loved him from the first minute. He is reputed si-
lent, but he opened his heart to me like an uncle. He showed
me all his MSS., lots of unpublished poems, etc., and talked out
of the abundance of his golden nature. Browning was most cor-
dial. He wanted me to call on his wife, and I did so, and a
jolly hour's talk I had with the two. She is about publishing
1 See an account of this dinner in “The Writers for Punch.” At Home
and Abroad, ii. 416–420. Of Barry Cornwall and the Brownings he wrote
a brief sketch under the general title, “Some English Celebrities.” At
Home and Abroad, i. 413–445.
VOL. I. 21
322 BA YARD TA YLOR.
a poem of eleven thousand lines,” — something entirely new in de-
sign, – and she feels a little nervous about it. I told her she
should not, for if it was good it would surely be appreciated
some time or other, and if not, the sooner it was damned the bet-
ter; to which polite remark she agreed. Browning is much
pleased with the American success of his last volume. He as-
saulted me with “From the desert I come to thee,” etc., which
he knows by heart, and says is the finest thing of the kind he
ever read. (Hold me !)
. . . We reached here yesterday morning, via Dieppe. Paris
is glorious, – wonderfully changed since ’46 I am happy
enough just to walk the streets again, and see the dazzling world
pass by me. My whole nervous system was more shaken than I
knew, by my labors, and I am now going through the convulsive
pangs of a return to health, – “dying into life,” as Keats says.
It makes me restless, irritable, and ill at ease ; but the result
will be health and firm nerves again, thank God
TO EIIS MOTHER.
FRANKFURT, August 13, 1856.
Here we are at last in the old familiar town, and I feel per-
fectly at home in its streets. The weather is intensely warm, but
clear, and, with the exception of the heat, we see everything
under the most favorable circumstances. I suppose the others
will tell you of our journey from Paris to Cologne and our voy-
age up the Rhine. We took two days to it, and had fine views
all the way. We were all sorry enough to leave Paris, where
we were so comfortable. The little French hotel where I stayed
was a very home-like place (for France), and the people were
kind and honest. The bill was very moderate, and they all
seemed quite loath to see us go. We had quite a lively journey
from Paris here. Our baggage was examined only at Aix-la-
Chapelle, where the girls were charmed with the politeness of
the Prussian officers. I have great difficulty in getting them to
practice French. . . . My own relapse into health goes on
bravely. I have not felt so vigorous for a year, and shall be still
better and stronger when I get among the Alps. We reached
here only last night. I have found Schenck's address, but have
not yet seen him. We thought it best to finish the letters home
first, as the mail goes this afternoon. To-morrow I shall be in
1 Aurora Leigh.
NORTHERN TRA VEL. 323
Gotha, where Bufleb expects me. We shall stay there five or
six days. . . .
GOTHA, August 20, 1856.
I write to you from my house, sitting in my room, with my
fountain playing before the window. I reached here last Thurs-
day, and was received with open arms. My house adjoins Bu-
fleb’s residence, and the gardens are thrown into one. It is one
of the most charming little places I ever saw. The house is a
story and a half high, with a large room and two side boudoirs
on the first floor, a little cellar, a study and bed-room above, and
no end to the closets and queer little nooks. It is furnished in
antique style with high-backed red velvet chairs, Brussels rugs,
sofas, mirrors, flower-stands, matches and cigars on the table,
tea, sugar, etc., in the cupboard, and beer in the cellar. Nothing
was forgotten ; the smallest things were all in their places, and
here I live like a prince. The house stands on a raised terrace
covered with flowers. A flight of stone steps, with statues at the
foot, leads to a broader terrace, in the middle of which is a foun-
tain, always playing. The basin is deep, and I have three big
fish which come to be fed. From this terrace commences an
arched avenue of the dwarf beech, making a comfortable shade.
It opens into a large circular arbor, and then continues a hun-
dred feet farther, to a garden walk bordered with flowers.
Then you come to a pool surrounded with water-lilies, then more
flower-beds, and finally a sort of triumphal arch ushers you into
the grove, – two acres of wood, with winding paths, statues,
fountains, a hermitage of bark, and numerous stone seats and
tables. At the end of the wood is the Duke's tree, a large wal-
nut planted by Ernest II. in 1760. The house was built in the
same year by his prime minister. Fred and I sleep in the house,
which will hold only two, and the girls in Bufleb's house. We
spend the day here, and take our meals (except supper) with
them. . . . We have made two excursions, - to Eisenach and
the Wartburg, and to the Thüringian Forest. Although it rained
a little both days, we had delightful trips, and the Buflebs en-
joyed them as much as the rest of us. They have taken quite
a fancy to Fred and the girls, and this relieves me from all feel-
ing of uneasiness at taxing them with so many guests. Every-
body knew me on my return, and they all seemed truly glad to
see me. . . . I could not find the Schencks in Frankfurt after
devoting half a day to the search, and inquiring at forty or fifty
324 BA YARD TA YLOR.
places. They must have moved away, but I could discover no
one who knew them at all. . . .
After the visit to the Buflebs, Bayard Taylor took
his party to Switzerland and Italy, and returning to
Switzerland, left his sisters and brother in Lausanne
for the winter. He then went to Gotha, where he
made a month's stay before going to the north.
TO HIS MOTHER.
GoTHA, October 20, 1856.
Braisted and I reached here on Saturday evening, and we are
now quietly settled in my house. We left Lausanne on Tuesday
morning and went by way of the Neufchâtel and Bienne Lakes to
Basel, where we arrived the next morning in time to take the
first train for Heidelberg. In the cars I made the acquaintance
of Dr. Sprengler, the author of an admirable “Life of Mahomet,”
who was on his way home after thirteen years in India. We
stayed all night in Heidelberg, and went on Thursday to Frank-
furt, where we remained until Saturday morning. I made an-
other attempt to find Schenck, and was successful. . . . We had
splendid weather all the way, except at Heidelberg, where it
rained. Bufleb met me at the cars, and there was great rejoic-
ing over my return. The season is not so far advanced as I ex-
pected. My garden is still green, and only the beeches and
horse-chestnuts have changed color. Bufleb has gathered some
nuts of the latter to send home and plant in the spring. My
fountain is playing away while I write. I wish you could see
the place once, and know how charmingly I am situated. I find
that my fame has increased while I have been absent. The
daughter of the poet Rückert has written to Bufleb to borrow my
books, and says that her father admires them very much. Zieg-
ler, a German author, also writes to Bufleb that he wants to visit
me, and that he has written to Ritter, the great geographer in
Berlin, saying that I am going thither. The common people
about Gotha have an idea that I am a very extraordinary man,
and they treat me with the greatest respect. I should be almost
sorry to have them undeceived — it is so pleasant to feel that
one is known in a strange land. The Frau Professor Jacobi has
translated some of my poems, and they are circulating in manu-
NORTHERN TRA VEL. 325
script. Bufleb is more than ever attached to me, and he and his
wife seem so glad to have me back, and so resolute to keep me,
that I shall not get off under four weeks, at least. We are go-
ing to visit the old forester in a few days, and spend a night in
the woods. I must also go to Coburg and visit Rückert. In
fact, I shall have so much visiting to do that it will interfere
with my work.
He had, however, begun to take up again his wonted
work, and the surroundings which had now grown so
familiar gave him suggestion for several interesting
sketches. The reader will find in “Holidays in Switz-
erland and Italy’ a narrative of the six weeks which
he spent when traveling with his sisters and brother,
after leaving Gotha and before he returned to his
home there ; while “A German Home and Life in
the Thüringian Forest” give in more detail the cir-
cumstances of his residence in Gotha. The three pa-
pers have been reprinted in the first series of “At
Home and Abroad,” and in the same volume he has
collected incidents of his interviews with German au-
thors, and more especially his conversations with Alex-
ander von Humboldt. In the frankness of his letters
to his mother, he speaks of these interviews as they
affected his own consciousness of the position which he
occupied in literature. He knew that his mother
would take pleasure in these intimations of the recog-
nition which her son received, and he had a manly and
simple delight himself in meeting upon an equal foot-
ing men whose literary work he honored.
TO HIS MOTHER.
BERLIN, November 22, 1856.
I have not fulfilled my promise of writing to you again before
leaving Gotha, because I was obliged to devote so much time to
my friends, and to employ my leisure in commencing my corre-
326 BA YARD TA YLOR.
spondence with the “Tribune.” The four weeks passed away be-
fore I knew it, and the season is now so far advanced that I am
hurrying on toward Lapland as fast as I can. I left Gotha on
the 14th, went to Coburg, where I spent a day with Rückert, the
poet, and Gerstäcker, the celebrated German traveler. Both
had read my travels in German, and were most friendly and
cordial towards me. We then went to Dresden, where Ziegler,
another traveler and author, whom I had previously known,
received me with open arms. Dresden is the literary city of
Germany, and I met with all the authors living there. I was
delighted to find that they all knew me. When I called on the
poet Julius Hammer, he was at his desk, translating my poem
of “Steyermark.” Gutzkow the dramatist, Auerbach the nov-
elist, Dr. Andrée the geographer, and others whose names are
known all over Europe, welcomed me as a friend and brother-
author. We had a grand dinner together the day before I left.
The Dresden papers spoke of me as a distinguished guest, and
published translations of my poems. In fact, I think I am al-
most as well known in Germany as in the United States. I left
Dresden with regret and the promise to go back again. We
came here on Wednesday and will stay two days more. I have
visited Ritter, the great geographer, and expect to see Humboldt
shortly. . . . Every one who knows anything about the north of
Europe tells me I am quite right in making a winter journey to
Lapland. Ritter says my plan is a capital one, and I shall have
the most interesting experiences. They all say that traveling is
easier in the north in winter than in summer, and that one soon
becomes accustomed to the cold. I bought a fur robe in Gotha,
which reaches from the crown of my head to the sole of my
feet. . . . I am in high spirits at the thought of this winter jour-
ney.
The journey to the north was the fulfillment of an
old desire. It was also in some degree the first-fruits
of a new resolve. The passion for exploration, for ad-
venture, which was part of an exuberant physical na-
ture, was subsiding, although still energetic ; but there
had been forming in Bayard Taylor's mind a maturer
conception of travel. The task which he had accepted
of compiling an encyclopaedia of travel had brought
NORTHERN TRA VEL. 327
him more directly into contact with the minds of great
travelers, and he had been struck by the wide and
varied equipment which was essential to eminent suc-
cess in this field. He had had his dreams of reputa-
tion through travel, but his waking reflections showed
him clearly that there was an incompatibility between
the higher, finer literary production which was his
dearest object, and the career of one who should add
deliberately to the stock of human knowledge. There
is little doubt that his acquaintance with Humboldt at
this time deepened the reflections which had been oc-
cupying his mind. Here was the greatest of modern
explorers, who carried the wealth of the Indies with
him to every remote Indies which he visited. The very
wealth of his endowment caused his visitor to be con-
scious of his own lack of severe and specific training.
It also stimulated him to a profounder conception of
the use to which he might put the material he was
gathering. Might there not be such a work as a hu-
man Cosmos?
Meanwhile he was still impelled by the desire to
feel, as well as to see, the cold north. He would not
attempt what he could not do, but he knew well that
he could so travel as to receive impressions and record
them as pictures for the mind of the reader, and he
set out with hearty interest upon his new adventure.
The stream of travel had not then set in toward Scan-
dinavia, and he had nearly virgin soil for literary cul-
tivation.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
StockHolm, December 7, 1856.
I reached here yesterday after a journey of thirty miles in an
open sled, with the mercury below zero. My first walk was to
the post-office, in the midst of a blinding snow-storm, and the
first letter I received was yours. I came back to my lodgings in
328 B.A. YA R D TA YLOR.
the early darkness of the north, sat down and read your words
with a mixture of joy and pain which I know not how to express
to you. I passed a restless night, and if my clairvoyant faculty
were always certain, I am sure you must have thought of me.
Now I cannot delay a moment until I have written, and know
that my letter is on its way to you. . . .
I hardly know how to explain this silence myself. The fact
is, I wrote so much and labored so hard during my two years
and a half at home that for three months after I sailed I never
touched a pen without a violent effort. I wrote as little as pos-
sible, even to my mother. . . . I only began to write for the
“Tribune” about six weeks ago, while in Gotha. I determined
then that I would make atonement for my neglect of you. I
thought of you day after day, sat down to my table with the
resolution to write ; but I swear I don’t know how it happened
that I never did. I was absorbed, and have been since then, by
a personal matter which I will explain to you when we meet, and
which may have been partly to blame. . . .
George, I have been undergoing a mental and moral fermen-
tation for the last four months. Until it has subsided I can’t say
what the result will be. It is one of those transition periods
which are inevitable in our nature, which we can foresee, but not
prevent or retard. I believe it will bring wine instead of vin-
egar, new vitality, fresh force, and a sparkling effervescence of
cheerfulness and courage. You know what these periods are,
how restless they make one, yet not unhappy, how full of the
desire without the proper calm capacity for labor. So it has
been, and still partly is, with me. Yet I have rarely been hap-
pier in my life, and the future never seemed brighter or more
Sec. 111°C.
You ask, when will my wanderings end ? God only knows.
For me they are an absolute necessity; I owe my life and my suc-
cess to them. In another week I start for Tornea, and by New
Year's day shall be on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Think
of me when you get this as driving my reindeer over the solid
Snow, in the sunless days of the Polar Circle. . . .
It will not interest you much to hear what I have been doing
since leaving home. I devoted three months to my sisters and
Fred, visiting in that time London, Paris, Germany, all Switzer-
land, Italy as far as Rome, and Savoy. I secured winter quar-
ters for them at Lausanne, and then went on to Gotha, where I
NORTHERN TRA VEL. 329
spent a month at home, in my own house. It was a home I as-
sure you. I knew everybody, and everybody knew me. I dined
with prime ministers and danced with peasant girls; talked
philosophy with scholars, and camped out with foresters. I went
to Dresden, where I fell in with the principal living authors of
Germany, and was delighted to find that they all knew my name.
Thence to Berlin, where I had interviews with Humboldt, Rit-
ter, and Mügge, the author of “Afraja.” Thence to Hamburg
and Lübeck, whence I sailed for Stockholm on the 1st. It was
the last trip of the season, for the Baltic Sea is nearly closed.
We had a polar voyage — storm, ice, snow, and cold — for five
days, but succeeded in reaching a little port thirty miles from
here, where we were stopped by the ice. We came on by land,
through pine forests heavy with snow — superb winter scenery.
The days are waxing short, barely six hours of daylight, but in
three weeks more, in Lapland, we shall have no sunrise at all.
I stand the cold admirably, and am waxing ruddy and strong.
After a week at Stockholm for the purpose of pre-
paring for the northern journey, the two travelers set
out December 15, 1856, and were precisely two months
making the tour to Lapland and back. It must be
said that the narrative of the excursion leaves upon
the reader's mind the impression that it was a feat
performed rather than a pleasure enjoyed, and the
note-books containing the incidents from which the
fuller letters were written out intensify the impression.
For much of the way it was a desperate fight with the
cold. On the 26th of January, when they had turned
back and were making their way out of the cold and
darkness, Bayard Taylor notes in his journal:—
“The weather seems to be moderating a little,
which God grant, for the continuance of extreme cold
is terrible. Mercury now — 34°. My nose has still
escaped, but I have much trouble with my hands and
feet. Cannot now describe the little incidents of my
journey — am almost used up by fighting with the
330 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Arctic climate. But we are going southward, and the
Sun rises higher every day. . . . Jan. 27. . . Still,
sparklingly clear, and intensely cold —47°. Had good
horses and rattled merrily along, so that we were in
fine spirits. Splendid snow-forests, illuminated by
the sun, which rose about ten o’clock. Not a bit of
warmth in his beams, but we were rejoiced to see his
round, white face once more. . . . Did not suffer much
from the cold to-day, except in hands and forehead.
My eyebrows, eyes, and upper parts of my cheeks were
like marble, rather than flesh. I know now how a
statue feels. . . . Jan. 28. . . . We were in strong
hopes that the power of the cold weather was broken,
but this morning it had sunk to —49°, the mercury
beginning to freeze, and even now when the sun has
been shining nearly an hour, it is —46°. I have
suffered considerably from this continuance of vio-
lent cold; the bridge of my nose is frozen, my bodily
temperature is lowered to a chilly point, and I have
had a terrible headache over the eyes to-day, from the
freezing yesterday. There is a little wind from the
west, and I can scarcely bear it on my face. Nothing
can be more severe ; flaying, branding with a hot
iron, cutting with dull knives, etc., may be something
like it, but no worse. Air hazy from the frozen moist-
ure, smoke frozen in solid masses, Snow hard and
crisp, iron sticks like glue — in short, no signs of a
proper Arctic temperature are wanting.”
There were striking views of Arctic heavens and
the ever-varying forest scenes; the very cold carried
with it much of the time a sense of physical exhilara-
tion, and Bayard Taylor was able to say after it was
all over that the experience had confirmed his physical
strength, and that he had been absolutely free from
NORTHERN TRA VEL. 331
colds. Still, the satisfaction of having accomplished
the feat remained as the most positive result. He had
known in his own person the extreme rigor of a north-
ern clime, and thus had added to the range of his
sensations.
He was able to bring into requisition the study he
had made of water-color drawing, and brought back
a number of sketches from the north. He settled
himself in Stockholm with his companion, where he
worked up the material of his notes and his reminis-
cences into letters to the “Tribune,” made further
studies in Swedish life, language, and literature, and
went through a regular gymnastic training under the
system which was then peculiar to Sweden. The gen-
eral result of his leisurely stay in Stockholm is given
in a letter which he wrote shortly before returning to
Gotha.
TO HIS MOTHER.
STOCKHOLM, April 21, 1857.
We are getting along as usual, and I have very little to say,
except that I am in good health and getting better. I don’t
know that I ever felt more cheerful in my life, at least not for
six years past. The gymnasium has wonderfully strengthened
my arms and breast. I can now climb a smooth pole thirty feet
high, run up a rope with my hands, and perform various other
feats which two months ago would have been utterly impossible.
My breast has increased an inch and a half in circumference,
and all this is solid muscle. I really believe I could become a
strong man. My only derangement is of the digestive organs
from my sedentary life in New York, brought on again by sitting
so much in a sled during my Lapland journey. I have consulted
a physician, who tells me only to sit as little as possible, and take
exercise. I have a high desk where I can stand and write, and
shall tramp through Norway in the summer, so the matter will
soon be settled. I have determined, however, never again to
work as I have worked. I felt the bad effects of it all last
summer and fall, and am only just now beginning to be my old
332 BA YARD TA YLOR.
self again. I am glad that I have laid out so much travel. This
winter has been a great benefit to me, but I am anxious to make
myself thoroughly robust and vigorous without a weak nerve
about me, and cannot do it under another year at least. I shall
continue the gymnasium practice whenever I get a chance. It
is admirable. I never knew what it was to have strong arms
before. The weather has much improved. We have some glo-
rious days now, and I go out in the country to sketch. I have
made two very good views of Stockholm, and shall make two or
three more before I leave. I have also improved in figures, and
can take a tolerable portrait without much trouble.
By the middle of May he was again in Gotha, where
he found his sisters and brother, who had preceded
him from Switzerland, and were now enjoying the
hospitalities of Mr. Bufleb before they should return
to America.
TO HIS MOTHER.
GoTIIA, May 26, 1857.
. . . Our past week has been a continual round of dinners and
excursions into the forests and mountains, with the loveliest
weather imaginable, and the whole country blooming like a vast
garden. Gotha is in every sense of the word a home to all our
family, and there will be lamentation on all sides when the day
of departure comes. . . . The whole family look upon us as rel-
atives and treat us as such. The people here claim me as a
fellow-citizen. The newspapers regularly publish translations of
my letters, and everybody is familiar with my doings. If you
and father were here I could forget that I am an American. I
must say again that Fred and the girls have remarkably im-
proved, both mentally and physically. I am proud to be their
brother, and grateful that I have been able to give them this
year in Europe. When I took them from home I did not know
that I was doing anything for myself, but so it is. Their presence
here has, as it were, turned all my friends into relatives, so inti-
mate and familiar have they become with all of us.
When this letter was written, Bayard Taylor was
not at liberty to disclose the fact which lay beneath it
and gave special meaning to his words. A few days
NORTHERN TRA VEL, 333
later he announced to his mother his engagement to
“Marie Hansen, daughter of Hansen, the distinguished
astronomer, and niece of Mrs. Bufleb.” He had waited
until the consent could be had of his future wife's
mother, who was at the time in St. Petersburg. “I
hope you will be satisfied,” he concludes, “with a step
which makes us all so happy and my future so bright.”
The betrothal took place on the eve of the return of
Bayard Taylor's sisters and brother to America. He
saw them on their way from Bremen, and then went
to England for a few days before completing his north-
ern travel by a summer trip through Norway. He
saw again his English friends, and made new acquaint-
ances. Thackeray introduced him to Tennyson, whom
he visited. “I have written a letter to Tennyson,”
Thackeray writes, “containing comments upon your
character which I could n’t safely trust to your own
hand.” The two days which Bayard Taylor spent
with Tennyson at his home were full of pleasure. “He
was most kind and friendly,” he writes to his mother,
“ and says I must visit him every time I come to Eng-
land. To-night I am going with Read (who has just
arrived from Rome) to visit Leigh Hunt. I expect
to see Dickens before I leave. I met last Sunday with
Layard, the discoverer of Nineveh, and Kinglake, the
author of ‘Eothen.’”
Some of the impressions of this society he recorded
in a paper which is included in the second series of
“At Home and Abroad,” “Summer Gossip from
England,” and also in a slight sketch of Leigh Hunt,
printed in the first series. But he was unwilling to
give more than the lightest sketches of persons whose
privacy he respected, however public they might be
through their literary fame. This was especially true
334 B.A. Y.A. RD TA YLOR.
as regards Tennyson, of whom he wrote more famil-
iarly to his friend Mr. Boker: —
“I spent two days with him in June, 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, splen-
did dark eyes, and a full mustache and beard. The
portraits don’t look a bit like him ; they are hand-
Somer, perhaps, but have n’t half the splendid charac-
ter of his face. We smoked many a pipe together,
and talked of poetry, religion, politics, and geology. I
thought he seemed gratified with his American fame;
he certainly did not say an unkind word about us.
He had read my Oriental poems and liked them. He
spoke particularly of their richness of imagery and
conscientious finish. I need not tell you that his ver-
dict is a valuable one to me. 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. His wife is one of the best women I ever
met with, and his two little boys, Hallam and Lionel,
are real cherubs of children.”
Mr. Bufleb joined Bayard Taylor in Norway, and
they spent the summer in travel, going as far as the
North Cape in one of the steamers which make the
coasting voyage. It was rather a supplement to his
winter in Sweden and Lapland. It enabled him to
complete the round of his observation, and quite effect-
ually satisfied the desire which he had so long had, to
experience in his own person the quality of northern
life. “We had quite enough of the north,” he writes
to his mother. “It is interesting to see it once, but
now that I have been inside of the Arctic zone both in
winter and summer I am satisfied, and never wish to
NORTHERN TRA VEL. 335
go back again.” He parted with Mr. Bufleb in Chris-
tiania, and made a journey through Dalecarlia to Stock-
holm, and thence to Gotha again by way of Copenha-
gen, where he saw Andersen.
It is to be noticed that since he had left America
he had apparently not written a line of poetry. His
prose, indeed, was more marked by poetic form, for he
gave many picturesque descriptions of northern scen-
ery, and seemed to relieve the hardness of the outer
world by warm imaginative touches, and the life which
he witnessed remained in his mind as material for
poetic use afterward. This appears especially in the
singularly truthful reproduction of Norwegian land-
scape, manners, and sentiment in the pastoral poem of
“Lars.” The strong contrasts, both of nature and of
character, which make Norway dear to the artist and
poet, appealed to him and found partial expression in
his prose narrative, as when he described his visit to
the region which he afterward adopted as the locale
for the earlier scenes in “Lars.”
“We had a terribly tough pull up the mountain,
through fine woods, to the summit level of the fjeld.
The view backward, over the lake, was enchanting,
and we lingered long on the steep, loath to lose it.
Turning again, a desolate lake lay before us, heathery
swells of the bleak table-land, and distant peaks
touched with snow. Once upon the broad level sum-
mit of a Norwegian fjeld one would never guess what
lovely valleys lie under the misty breaks which sep-
arate its immense lobes, what gushes of life and
beauty penetrate its stony heart. There are, in fact,
two Norways: one above —a series of detached, ir-
regular masses, bleak, snowy, wind-swept, and heath-
er-grown, inhabited by herdsmen and hunters: and
336 BAYARD TA YLOR.
one below—a ramification of narrow veins of land
and water, with fields and forests, highways and vil-
lages.” +
The letters which he wrote to the “Tribune” formed
the basis of the volume of “Northern Travel” which
he published in the fall of 1857 in New York with
Mr. Putnam, and in London with Sampson Low &
Co. A German edition was also brought out at the
same time. He was busily engaged in preparing the
book for the press at the time of his marriage, which
took place October 27, 1857. His friends in New
York celebrated the event on the same day in a pleas-
ant fashion by a dinner to which he invited them.
Immediately after his marriage, Bayard Taylor
went with his wife to London, where he remained
long enough to see his “ Northern Travel” through
the press and to secure an English copyright. He
had intended making a journey of exploration into
Russian Tartary for the purpose of procuring fresh
material for a volume of travels. His plan was to
spend a winter in Moscow, preparing himself by study
and familiarity with Russian life for the adventure in
the following summer, but the letters which he received
from America forced him to reconsider his resolve.
The financial disasters of this year, 1857, had tempo-
rarily affected his sources of income, and he did not
deem it prudent to incur so heavy an expense as the
Russian winter and the summer in Tartary would de-
mand. It was of little use, however, to return to
America, where literature and lecturing were both at
a stand-still. He could maintain himself better by
correspondence than in any other way, and he decided
to pass the winter in Greece, which he had not yet
1 Northern Travel, p. 351.
NORTHERN THA VEL. 337
visited, and which offered a good field for work.
After a short stay, therefore, in Gotha, upon returning
from London, he went with his wife to Athens, which
he reached on the evening of Christmas Day. By
good fortune he found that the dragoman, François,
who had been with him in Palestine and Asia Minor,
was settled in Athens and kept a furnished house for
strangers.
“We have engaged a parlor and two bedrooms,”
he writes to his mother on the last day of the year,
“ and shall move there day after to-morrow. . . .
François has a warm house, and I think we shall be
very comfortable with him. His wife is a German
woman, who will be some company for M. while we
are off on our trips into the interior. Of course Fran-
çois will accompany us always, and I know him well
enough to depend on him. . . . We shall not go any-
where for a month at least, and then to Candia first,
afterwards Rhodes, and then back to Athens. I can-
not take M. on this trip as there are no inns on either
of the islands, and the houses are dirty, without beds,
and full of fleas.”
With his customary promptness and facility he ap-
plied himself at once to acquiring a colloquial knowl-
edge of modern Greek, and a month after they had set-
tled themselves in Athens he was able to write to his
mother: “I commit three to four pages to memory
every morning, and then talk them over with my
teacher. In this way, without grammar or dictionary,
I have learned so much that I can ask for everything
I want and talk about ordinary topics. It is a beau-
tiful language, and I only wish I had time to study it
thoroughly. I have also taken a few sketches when-
ever the weather permitted, and am, besides, reading
"VOL. I. 22
338 B.A. Y.A.R.D TA YLOR.
Grecian history. So you see my time is pretty well
taken up.”
The society at Athens was full of interest to him,
and he was especially indebted to Dr. and Mrs. Hill,
the American missionaries. Through them he was
able to enlarge and modify the impressions which he
received of Greece, and to get a quicker introduction
into the mingled Bavarian and Hellenic life of the
capital. The experiment, then still new, of reorgan-
izing Greece under the supervision of the Western
Powers interested him extremely, and his diary con-
tains many observations which he did not think it ex-
pedient to enlarge upon in his printed narrative. He
came to Greece with a poet's apprehension of the clas-
sic life, not a scholar’s ; yet he was too actual in all
his habits of observation to lose himself in a merely
romantic or regretful vision of modern Greece. The
burst of passionate admiration with which he viewed
the Acropolis was the accumulated expression of en-
thusiasm for Greek art which had always possessed
him even when he had but remote or fragmentary ob-
jects to call it forth. Now, in the heart of ancient
Greece, the full tide of feeling rushed forth. He
brought to the scene no careful culture through the
study of Grecian literature, art, and history, but a
mind apt at receiving those great impressions of great
art which overflow the soul and sweep away for the
time being all other thoughts and emotions.
The whole winter in Greece and the Grecian Isl-
ands was a most delightful verification to him of old
dreams and present aspirations, and as such found an
immediate expression in a book of travel, which has,
perhaps, greater unity and finish than any of his
previous prose works. The reader will recall the wist-
NORTHERN TRAVEL. 339
ful look which Bayard Taylor cast toward Greece
when he was first in Europe. In the plans for his
earliest journey, none excited his enthusiasm as did
that for visiting Greece, and his greatest disappoint-
ment was when in Italy he turned his back upon that
near East and set his face toward France. Now, when
he had visited the shores of so large a part of the
globe, had seen many cities and many men, fortune
brought him, under happy auspices, to this navel of
the poetic world. He brought with him the poetic
fervor of his youth and the maturer judgment of his
experience. He was ready to yield at once to the fas-
cination of the antique, and to watch with curious eye
a people and land which offered to the modern trav-
eler aspects a world away from the Greece of Peri-
cles.
After he was sufficiently equipped with a knowl-
edge of the language and a familiarity with Grecian
ways he made several excursions: to Crete in Febru-
ary, to the Morea in the latter part of March, and to
Thessaly in April. He had learned the art of travel
thoroughly now, and one is aware in reading his rec-
ord how lightly he disposed of difficulties, and how
easily he adjusted himself to the circumstances of his
life. He had learned also more perfectly the art of
rendering his sketches of travel so that the narrative
should have something more than sequence ; the nice
proportion, the composition, indeed, of his work on
Greece indicate that even though he wrote necessarily
in fragments, his work assumed a unity and true per-
spective as he went on with it. He wrote no poem
during his stay in Greece, but he was clearly under
the influence of the artistic mood and used his faculty
in the completer, more picturesque form of his prose
narrative.
340 BA YARD TA YLOR.
His stay in Greece closed when spring had fairly
come, and the party returned to Gotha by way of
Constantinople and the Danube. As soon as Bayard
Taylor had established his wife in her former home,
he set out for a hurried excursion to Moscow and St.
Petersburg. Although he had been obliged to give
up the more elaborate plan which he had formed, he
was unwilling to go home without a glimpse of a coun-
try which interested him, and which now seemed to
require his notice, if he would complete in his mind
some of the reflections which had arisen from the ac-
quaintance with modern Greece. He returned by a
rapid movement through the Baltic provinces, and
reached Gotha sooner than he had been expected.
He wrote to Mr. Stoddard, July 21st, “The poetic
faculty is beginning to give signs of life at last. Two
years of silence was quite enough, but the time is not
lost. I may bring you half a dozen poems with me,
but no more. I need American air, when I write po-
etry.” A few days later he wrote a poem, “A Watch
of the Night,” which found its place in the first edi-
tion of “The Poet's Journal.” The expected cry of a
child, when the wind was howling without, was the
theme which invited him to take up his song again.
This poem was omitted from the later editions of
“The Poet's Journal.” It had, perhaps, for him
both an intimacy which he shrank afterwards from
sharing with others, and a slight uncertainty of hand-
ling, as if his fingers were not yet newly used to the
once familiar instrument.
This poem and two which followed shortly after,
“The Father ” and “The Mother,” have an autobio-
graphic interest to the reader for their frank expression
of that unhesitating affection which he gave to those
MORTHERN TRA VEL. 341
whom he loved. In a fragment of a confession which
he wrote four years before, he said: “I have been
reading ‘Rousseau's Confessions,’ and am struck with
certain similarities which my nature bears to his. He
was a man, evidently, whose very life consisted in low-
ing. Love was the breath of his being; and the older I
grow the more I find that the same thing is true with
regard to myself. I have felt all the transports and
the tendernesses of passion which he describes — the
same feminine devotion to the beloved object, the same
enthrallment of the imagination and the affections.
But as I have much less genius than he, so I have
more worldly wisdom, and my affections, though they
tyrannize over me completely, rarely betray themselves
to the observation of others.” This reserve is very
manifest in his poetry; the personal feeling is hidden
for the most part ; even when the subject which his
art chooses lies parallel with his own personal history,
one is aware of a still depth which does not disclose
to the ordinary observer more than the reflection of
sentiment. The three poems written at this time
were written, one might almost say, when he was off
his guard. In the glow of his new possession he wrote
to his old friend, Mr. Stoddard:—
Now you and I are quits, I shall no longer contrast your
household happiness with mine, and sigh for what I find want-
ing. I, too, am a father. Do you hear — a father. Pshaw, as
I wrote the word the dumb letters don’t seem to mean any-
thing, and yet they should mean the unspeakably blessed fact
that I have a child. . . . I look at the little thing with a sort
of childish delight and wonder, and continually ask myself : Is
this helpless being really sprung from my loins ? I see my
own brown eyes in its face, my hair on its head, my “three-
cent-piece of a mouth,” and wonder how much of my soul goes
with these features. It is ugly, as all newly-born babies are,
342 PA YARD TA YLOR.
yet to me it is as divinely beautiful as the Child-Christ of Ra-
phael. I never cared for such fresh existences before ; but now
all its blind motions, shrill cries, and semi-stupid signs of won-
derment at finding itself in the world, inspire me with the pro-
foundest interest. I now know what the tenderness of a parent
1S. . . .
The family remained at Gotha until it was prudent
to travel to America. During the interval occurred
the three hundredth anniversary of the University of
Jena, which Bayard Taylor attended and where he had
the pleasure of meeting Fritz Reuter. He wrote an
account of the University and of the celebration, which
is reprinted in the first series of “At Home and
Abroad.” On the 1st of October he sailed with his
family from Hamburg, arrived at New York on the
20th, and four days later they were at the old home-
stead in Kennett Square.
CHAPTER XV.
1858–1860.
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT.
Careless of fate, yet with a central strength
I knew would hold his life in equipoise,
And bent his wandering emergies, at length,
To the smooth orbit of serener joys.
The Poet’s Journal,
High is the house and sunny the lawn: the capes of the woodlands,
Bluff, and buttressed with many boughs, are gates to the distance
Blue with hill over hill, that sink as the pausing of music.
Proem (to “Home Pastorals.”)
THE journey to Greece was the last of a series of
travels which had occupied Bayard Taylor's mind for
fourteen years. He was conscious that he had satis-
fied the impulse which sent him out, for it was not so
much a craving for knowledge of the world as it was
a desire to place himself en rapport with a wide range
of humanity and nature, which had given him a rest-
lessness of life. With the decrease of interest in the
mere externals of travel came of necessity a diminu-
tion of zeal for that form of literature which consists
mainly in description and the quick record of impres-
sions. If he could not travel to write, he had little
care to travel at all, for expression of his life was a
necessity to his nature.
He had, moreover, now given hostages to fortune,
and the realization of his dreams of domestic life lent
a new force to his old passion for the place of his
344 JBA YARD TA YLOR.
childhood. He had already, when in Germany, made
plans for the house which he meant to build upon his
estate, and he now threw himself with ardor into the
work of building. For two years and more all his
energy was devoted to earning the necessary money
and carrying out the plans which he had formed, plans
which grew and grew with that fatal facility which
every one who models his house after his prototype in
Spain knows so well.
The great resource always open to him was lectur-
ing. It was not his chosen form of expression. He
never deceived himself into believing that he had the
art of a born lecturer; but having accepted the one
available method for turning his experience into gold,
he spared no pains to make the most of such gifts as
he had. Thus his delivery and the style of his dis-
course steadily improved, and in spite of the many an-
noyances and discomforts of the life, he even learned
to find pleasure in addressing an audience. In this,
however, he was very dependent upon the audience,
for its response was a prime necessity to his ease and
enjoyment.
He effected also, after his return to America, a
change in his business relations with Mr. Putnam.
He bought the stereotype plates of his works and
leased them to Mr. Putnam, who assumed toward him
and Washington Irving the relation of agent. This
purchase and the outlays immediately called for in the
construction of his house impelled him to the earliest
possible increase of his resources, and as soon as
ground had been broken, and he had established his
family for the winter in a joint occupation with Mr.
Stoddard and his family of a house in Brooklyn, he
hurried off on a lecture tour which kept him busily
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT. 345
engaged until late in the spring. While away he
amused himself one night with sketching his expe-
riences as a lecturer in a rhymed letter to Mr. Stod-
dard.
RECREATIONS OF A RAINY DAY.
Did you ever hear of Niles, my boy 2
Did you ever hear of Niles 2
Not the Congress Register,
Bound in bulky files—
Not where Egypt’s river
Spawns the crocodiles—
Not by dykes of Holland,
Or Venetian piles —
Not where Knox and Genin
Sell their shiny tiles —
Not where black papooses
Bask in tropic isles —
But away in Michigan,
Many hundred miles
From your Brooklyn domicile,
Here I am in Niles l
Rain is falling, pouring
As in Noah's time ;
Hardly can the omnibus
Stagger thro’ the slime;
Driver wrapped in oilcloth
Takes the proffered dime,
As we reach the tavern door
Songs begin to chime :
“Will you have your dinner, Sir 7”
“Yes, I will, for I’m
Hungry as a catamount.”
“Walk in — just in time !”
Now I light the exquisite
Roll of Cuban weed,
Purchased in Chicago —
Dear enough, indeed I
346
BA YARD TA YLOR,
Rollick in the rocking chair
While the smoke ascends,
Think on wife and baby,
And on you, my friends !
Comes a rapping, tapping
At my chamber door,
But, unlike Poe's raven
Crying “Evermore 1”
'T is the new Committee
Any one can tell,
Come to see the lecturer :
“Hope you’re very well
“How d'you like our city ?”
“It’s growing mighty fast.”
“Where d'you go to-morrow?”
“Where 'd you lecture last 7”
!”
Finally they leave me,
I’m alone, again,
Watch the roaring, pouring
Equinoctial rain,
Swashing down the gutters,
Splashing on the pane,
Lounge in pleasant indolence
Resting bones and brain :
When again a rapping—
(Hope you will not laugh) —
School-boy with an album
Wants an autograph 1
Next a solemn gentleman,
Unctuous of face :
“What’s your real opinion
Of the human race 2 °
Then a man salacious,
Libidinous to view :
“Is the marriage custom
A false one or a true 2 ”
Then a grim one, smelling
Of the sepulchre :
“Sprinkling or immersion,
Which do you prefer ?”
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT. 347
“You have given the body
Development enough :
Don't you think the spirit
Should have quantum suff, 3 *
Thicker than the deluge
Pouring out-of-doors,
Comes a rain of questions
From the crowd of bores;
“Where's your lady staying 7”
“What’s your baby's name 2"
“Do you find Society
Everywhere the same 2 ”
“Where are you going to travel?”
“What’s your future plan 2°
“Do you think you’ll ever
Be a settled man 2 ”
“Ain’t you now the greatest
Traveler alive 2 °
“What’s the land where turnips
Seem the best to thrive 2 ”
“Don’t you suffer awful
From the heat and cold 2 ”
“So, you’re now a German
Citizen, I’m told !”
“What might be your birth-place 7"
“Where d'you call your home 2"
“Can you stay in any place —
You're so used to roam 2 ”
Would I were in Douglas Street
With a glass of beer—
Tears upon the paper
Leave an inky Smear,
Oh, I want to see you
Oh, I want to be
Where, for information,
No one comes to me.
I’d be a bloody whaler
Among the Kurile Isles,
348 BA YARD TAYLOR.
A tearing, swearing sailor
Whom the Captain riles,
Anything but Taylor
Lecturing in Niles |
On his return he moved with the Stoddards to New
York, and went again to the distant West on a four
weeks' tour of lecturing.
He was full of vigor. The great burden which he
had assumed only stimulated him to harder work, and
he entered with a certain athletic joy upon the task of
making literature, not a stick or a crutch, but a horse
on which he proposed to ride hard into prosperity.
He felt again his pulse beat quicker at the thought of
poetry, and while he looked forward to the goal to-
ward which he was speeding as one when honest lei-
sure should wait upon his poetic mood, he could not
altogether delay for that consummation. He had not
been gone long on his tour, before he wrote the half-
sad, half-eager poem, “The Return of the Goddess,”
which stands as the preface to “The Poet's Journal,”
and is quite as significantly the preface to this period
of his life.
When the summer came and he was released from
the labor of lecturing, he found as absorbing an occu-
pation in superintending the work upon his house. He
removed with his family to the old homestead, where
he could watch every brick and stone and timber. Nor
did he wholly intermit his literary work. He had ac-
cepted a liberal offer from the “New York Mercury”
to furnish a number of sketches of travel for that
paper, for he could not afford to disregard any oppor-
tunity of adding to his income, since the outgo was
unceasing. He was also at work on his “Travels in
Greece and Russia” for Mr. Putnam and upon a
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT. 349
revision of his “Cyclopaedia” for Moore, Wilstach &
Keys of Cincinnati. Since he was at his mother's,
and had his family with him, he wrote but few letters.
One to Mr. Stoddard gives a hint of his bustling life
and of his eager interest in his new house.
TO R. H. STODDARD.
KENNETT, June 9, 1859.
. . . We are all well, but awfully busy and perplexed. The
house and the Lord knows how many other things give me no
peace by day or night. I am worried by a hydraulic ram
which won’t work properly, with carpenters, brick-makers, brick-
layers, stone-setters, haulers, etid omne genus diabolorum. If I had
no “Mercury,” no Putnam, no Moore and Company, to molest me
or make me afraid, I should rather enjoy this other worriment—
but there's a little too much of a good thing. It is really a
Napoleonic business to build a house. Meanwhile, the walls are
slowly going up. Some of the door and window frames are in
position, and the corners have reached the height of three stone
blocks. To-day we placed the great corner-stone of the tower,
with all due ceremony. Under it is a box of zinc, containing a
copy of “Views Afoot,” an original poem by me, to be read five
hundred years hence by somebody who never heard of me, a
“Tribune,” some coins, a poem by R. H. S. in his own MS., and
various small things. All of us — even Lily — contributed a
trowel-full of mortar. I broke the neck of a bottle on the stone,
poured a libation to all good Lares and Penates, and then gave
the workmen cake and ale. The great arched window in the
south front is raised to its place, and you never saw a lovelier
summer picture than it inframes. God willing, I shall have the
walls done by September 1st, but, O Lord ' what a job
Write soon — I can’t say more, for I must work for the
“Mercury” this afternoon, besides attending to my hydraulic
ram, which fleeces me of my gold— so it may be called the ram
with the golden fleece. . . .
Before the summer was over, Bayard Taylor re-
ceived an invitation from a literary society in San
Francisco to lecture. He took the opportunity to
make a three months' lecturing tour through Califor-
350 BAYARD TA YLOR.
nia, and it was one of the most interesting experiences
of his life, he used to say, to find beautiful cities
where ten years before he had slept on the bare
ground in a wilderness. He took his wife with him
and traveled through the whole extent of the gold re-
gions. He had been persuaded that he should clear
five thousand dollars by the tour, and that made it
worth his while to go, but he was obliged to content
himself with a less complete success.
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., July 29, 1859.
... I have been immensely busy this week, have written six one
hundred dollar articles for the “Mercury,” besides superintend-
ing the building of my house since Monday morning. My head
is beginning to whirl with this accumulation of labor, but in
another week I shall enjoy the repose of the sea. If you hear a
new tone in that corner of the Gulf Stream which laps the beach
of Newport, ten days hence, you will know where it comes from.
I wish I could have a week on the rocks there with you, and the
MSS. to read and discuss.
Have you seen Tennyson's book 2 The extracts in the papers
promise unusually well. . . .
TO EIIS FATHER.
SAN FRANCIsco, September 4, 1859.
. . . I have at last got fairly started with my lectures. They
are fully as successful as I could expect, and will be still more so
after the 7th, which is election day. I had a thousand persons
at my first lecture here, and received two hundred dollars at San
José, although there was not time to give general notice. The
people seem well satisfied, the papers speak well of me, and so
the commencement promises a successful campaign. I go to
Sacramento to-morrow, and lecture here again on Friday. I
have four lectures this week and six next. All my time is now
taken up until the 26th of this month. . . .
It is astonishing how the country has improved. Everywhere
there are splendid roads, villages, lines of stages, and fenced
and cultivated farms. The fruit and vegetables are the finest in
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT. 351
the world. Apples are raised weighing three pounds apiece,
pears four pounds, beets fifty pounds, and pumpkins two hun-
dred and sixty pounds. We have seen bunches of grapes two
feet and a half long and eighteen inches wide. I have never
lived so well before. Everything is the best of its kind. We
are both as stout and hearty as we can be. . . .
TO HIS MOTHER.
SACRAMENTo, September 18, 1859.
We have been three weeks in California to-day, and the time
has passed on the whole rapidly and pleasantly. I have fin-
ished my engagements in San Francisco, and shall this week be
occupied with Sacramento and Maryvsille. I have given twelve
lectures in all, but six or seven of them were in small places
around San Francisco, merely to fill up the time, and did not
average over eighty or ninety dollars apiece. I am now free to
make my own arrangements for this place and the mining towns,
and expect to do as well as I anticipated, if not better. There
are so many more towns, however, than I supposed, and I have
so many more chances of lecturing, that I have decided to re-
main two weeks longer than I had intended. . . .
We have received much politeness and hospitality from the
people, and our stay is as pleasant as it can well be, so far from
home, but we are very anxious for the absence to be over. I
wish I could see how my house is coming on. I hope it is under
roof by this time. . . . *
TO R. H. STODDARD.
SACRAMENTo, CAL., October 3, 1859.
. . . I am not so well remunerated in the interior towns as I
anticipated, but am working hard to make up for the deficiency.
On the whole, the trip will pay tolerably, not splendidly. I
travel fifty miles a day in torrid heat and infernal dust, and lec-
ture in the evening to a lot of miners who go out every fifteen
minutes to take drinks, and then come back again. Sich is
fame !
Lord l how I want to get home again More now than ever;
seventeen days more, and then we embark. We have been over
the awfullest mountains you ever heard of, down into gold mines,
and everywhere else. I have traveled seventy-five miles to-day
in killing dust, and must to bed, as I go sixty to-morrow and lec-
352 BA YARD TA YLOR.
ture afterwards. Talk of my getting rich ! I earn every cent
twice over. . . .
PLACERVILLE, CAL., October 4, evening.
. . . I came hither from Sacramento to-day — another day of
fierce heat and awful, blinding, choking dust. I have ten days
more of such work in the mountains, and then to San Francisco
and home. I shan’t make as much as I expected, but don’t re-
pent coming. I may clear four thousand dollars by the trip, but
that is yet uncertain. I have only made twenty-seven hundred
dollars over expenses as yet, and worked devilish hard. I am
disgusted with the process of getting up lectures myself in the
mining towns. It’s a terribly shabby, nasty business, and humil-
iates me immensely. Nevertheless, I don’t wear away in flesh
any, but am burnt brown and whole, though bruised with many
jolts. M. is very well, quite robust, and can stand much fa-
tigue. The other day she rode twenty miles on horseback, at a
stretch, in the heat and dust. We are going to the big trees on
Sunday next.
My lectures in San Francisco were a splendid success, and I
am going to give two more there ; but in Sacramento and Ma-
rysville, where I had counted high, they turned out very in-
differently. We have had many funny adventures. The other
day we two, with driver and guide, were taken for a quartette
club, and invited to stop and give a concert |
The California experience had its rough side, and
the letters written en route naturally reflected this,
but Bayard Taylor was greatly impressed by the vital-
ity and promise of the State, and his enthusiasm found
voice in the poem “On Leaving California,” annexed
to “The Poet's Journal,” beginning : —
O fair young land, the youngest, fairest far
Of which our world can boast, —
Whose guardian planet, Evening's silver star,
Illumes thy golden coast, —
How art thou conquered, tamed in all the pride
Of savage beauty still !
How brought, O panther of the splendid hide,
To know thy master's will !
THE BUILDING OF CEDAR CR OFT. 353
During his absence he wrote also a series of letters
which were afterward collected in the second series of
“At Home and Abroad,” under the title “New Pic-
tures from California,” and beneath all the glowing
description of material prosperity runs a current of
thought reflecting the real power of the country, which
finds clear expression in the closing words: “For my-
self, in breathing an air sweeter than that which first
caught the honeyed words of Plato —in looking upon
lovelier vales than those of Tempe and the Eurotas —
in wandering through a land whose sentinel peak of
Shasta far overtops the Olympian throne of Jupiter—
I could not but feel that nature must be false to her
promise, or man is not the splendid creature he once
was, if the Art and Literature and Philosophy of An-
cient Greece are not one day rivaled on this last of
inhabited shores!”
It was the middle of November when Bayard Tay-
lor and his wife returned to the east. The volume of
“Travels in Greece and Russia, with an Excursion
to Crete,” had already appeared, and seven thousand
copies had at once been sold. The first series of “At
Home and Abroad, a Sketch-Book of Life, Scenery,
and Men,” also appeared this season, containing a col-
lection of the various sketches and letters which he
had been contributing to journals, and which could not
be included in the continuous narratives already pub-
lished. After removing his family and household gods
to Thirteenth Street in New York, where the Stod-
dards were again associated in occupation, he resumed
his lecture engagements. He has said, in summing
up his California experience: “On the whole, the
business of lecturing left the impression of ennui and
uselessness to myself, if I subtracted the mere gain in
VOL. I. 23
354 BA YARD TA YLOR.
money. In America the lecturer is more or less of a
teacher, and his work is therefore important, but I
never considered it my particular calling.” This im-
pression was no doubt the result largely of the con-
tinuous strain which an unceasing campaign laid upon
him, especially since he was compelled to take charge
of the business of his course. At the east, when his
lecturing fell into an established routine, and he was
able to make his circuit pass occasionally through his
home in New York, he was less oppressed by the work.
Of the life in New York Mr. Stoddard has written
pleasantly in his “Atlantic ’’ paper: —
“Our home was frequented by artists, by men of
letters, and by poets. We were a nest of singing birds,
as Dr. Johnson told Mistress Hannah More, when
he showed her his old rooms in Pembroke College.
We made much of Christmas, which we kept as the
poet's wife had been accustomed to see it kept in her
German fatherland. . . . We invited a young poet
[Mr. Aldrich] to spend a Christmas Eve with us, and
showered upon him all sorts of musical instruments:
drums, trumpets, fiddles, fifes, penny-whistles, jews'-
harps, – everything, in short, that would indicate his
devotion to the Muse. We made more of our Christ-
mas Eves than of all other nights in the year.”
The winter of 1860, full as it was of travel and
work, was also one of anticipation, for the house at
Cedarcroft was approaching completion, and with the
house finished, and his dream realized of a substantial
footing, the poet looked forward eagerly to his cher-
ished vocation.
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT. 355
TO GEORGE H. BOKER.
ScranTON, PA., February 27, 1860.
Do you remember promising to inquire for me in regard to
oak and black-walnut mantelpieces 2 I had quite forgotten
about it until a note from my carpenter reminds me that it
must be attended to. I therefore inclose a very rough draft,
merely to give an idea of dimensions: I want the mantels mas-
sive rather than ornamental, though a little ornament is desira-
ble. Please ascertain the probable cost, as well as the time
when they could be ready, and let me know.
I am sorry I was unable to be home ten days ago when you
were there. I hope you had a pleasant visit. I want our New
York society to be as attractive to you as possible, that you may
not give up your idea of becoming one of us. I was at home
last Saturday; there were about fifty, but not all of them to my
taste, and I longed for the more choice company of the previous
week. . . .
I am drawing near the end of my lectures, God be praised
When the end comes, I shall have given two hundred and seventy
in the space of eighteen months My house, however, is paid
for, though it costs $15,000, and all the stereotype plates of my
works are paid for ($5,000 more), and so I feel rather proud of
my labors. All my “Mercury” and other engagements are fin-
ished (that is, the work is done) and I have now six months for
poetry. Congratulate me ! . . .
GREENE, N. Y., Saturday, March 17, 1860.
After various consultations and calculations, I have decided
to take the mantel, and therefore send back the design. Will
you please order it for me — of best seasoned oak. I wish but
a single panel as keystone, and on it, instead of a “T”, the old
coat of arms of the Taylor family, which I will send when I
reach New York. It is simple — a lion rampant, holding a scal-
lop-shell in his paws, and three of the same shells on the shield.
This, I think, will look better than an initial letter. I presume
the whole thing can be done in three or four weeks : I want it in
about a month from now. I have not yet decided about the
others. There are two more up-stairs, but I will wait a while, as
they can be put up any time.
I am gradually getting through with my work, having only seven-
356 BA YARD TA YLOR.
teen lectures more. I promise you I shall do no labor of any kind
from the 1st of May to the 1st of October, except to clear my
brain of the confused mass of poems which are swimming there.
You ask me how I keep my youth. I scarcely know, except
by preserving my sympathies for others. For the last three or
four years I have been gradually growing younger, and intend to
be no older when my hair is white. My married life is very
happy; my friends are faithful ; my struggle with the world
is pretty much over (and even while it lasted, I was always care-
ful not to become soured by it). In fact, I have adopted a
cheerful philosophy, which bears me lightly over all unpleasant
experiences.
. . . Ah, what other hearts were ours, when we first met ! Do
you remember those days, those dreams ? In spite of my will, I
am older than then — but, thank God l not colder.
I look upon your visit to Kennett as certain. But meantime
I shall see you in New York. Sinner that I am, I don’t know
when Easter week comes, but I’ll find out. I inclose you one
brick" from my clay-bed.
NEw York, April 6, 1860.
I have just returned, and find your letter. I inclose the coat
of arms, which, I presume, can be readily cut. The ermine marks
may be omitted, if need be. I simply want the thing waxed and
oiled, not polished. I believe nothing further is requisite. I
shall be home a part of next week, and shall therefore see you.
I have written two short poems lately — the first waves of the
coming freshet.
TO R. H. STODDARD.
KENNETT SQUARE, PA., May 10, 1860.
... We reached home a week ago, all right, and just in time to
avoid the heavenly hot weather. The growth of vegetation since
we came is magical. The woods are all in leaf already. The
house goes on slowly ; the carpenter work lags, but we have
done something at clearing away rubbish, sodding, and making
the surroundings fair to look upon. I have shoveled dirt until
I am as stiff as a rail. . . .
I have accomplished nothing in the way of writing, except to
begin a new poem, “The Quaker Widow,” which popped into
my head the other day. I’ll send it to you when it’s done. . . .
1 The poem, “The Return of the Goddess.”
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT. 357
KENNETT, May 14, 1860.
I send you my “Quaker Widow,” which you may offer to
“Harper's Monthly,” — fifty dollars. I want the money, and I
think it’s a subject which will suit them. Dramatically, the poem
is as true as it can be, – full of Quaker expressions from begin-
ning to end, and that is about all I aimed at. The thing has n’t
been done before, not even by Whittier or B. Barton.
I am beginning a prose article, and shall try to write another
“pome” this week. We shall be in New York about a week
from to-morrow. All are well here. The awful rains hinder
my out-door work very much, but inside it goes on. All up-
stairs will be finished and furnished this week. M. and I are
going to Philadelphia to-morrow to buy furniture. We have
just one hundred dollars left. Write to me soon. Best remem-
brances to Stedman from both of us. The country is seraphical.
Thus poetry, prose, and house-building went on to-
gether, and the poet, quick with new themes and glad
at the freshet of song which was rising, strained every
nerve to meet the demands made upon him by his ven-
ture, and by the many nameless complications of his
home affairs. “The Quaker Widow” was an essay in
a new direction and the forerunner of the ballads
which he afterward wrote in the same vein and which
are among the most popular of his poems. His house
at last was finished, and at the end of May he estab-
lished himself in it, and in the spirit with which he
had conceived the whole enterprise, transferred his fa-
ther and mother and two sisters to his hospitable and
roomy home, making of it the family hall.
In a series of papers, from which we have already
quoted, “A Country Home in America,” Bayard
Taylor sketched the history of Cedarcroft from the
first reminiscence of the old estate to the day when
he had been the comfortable occupant for eighteen
months. He wove into the narrative his experience
1 At Home and Abroad, Second Series.
358 BA YARD TA YLOR.
in building, the plans he formed, the mistakes he
made ; but it is with the completed house that we are
now concerned, and from the sketch a few paragraphs
may be taken which afford a modest view from the
owner's sight.
“When I came to think, seriously, upon the plan of
a house, which was to be built up with no imaginary
mortar, but bond fide lime and sand, I found that the
true plan was already there, perhaps unconsciously
suggested by the expectant trees. It must be large
and stately, simple in its forms, without much orna-
ment — in fact, expressive of strength and perma-
nence. The old halls and manor houses of England
are the best models for such a structure, but a lighter
and more cheerful aspect is required by our southern
summer and brighter sky. There must be large win-
dows, and spacious verandas for shade and air in sum-
mer, steep roofs to shed the rain and winter snow, and
thick walls to keep out our two extremes of heat and
cold. Furthermore, there must be a tower, large
enough for use as well as ornament, yet not so tall as
to belittle the main building.
“Thus much being settled, the next step was to plan
the interior arrangements that they should correspond
to the external forms. The true way to build a house
is to determine even the minutest details before com-
mencing the work. In any case, the interior is of par-
amount importance, and it is better to get the rooms,
staircases, closets, doors, and windows rightly arranged
at first, and then inclose them with the external wall,
than the reverse. . . . The soul of a house, after all,
which is its character as a home, is of more importance
than the body. . . . .
“After much deliberation I decided upon brick,
THE BUILDING OF CIEDARCR OFT. 359
with stone quoins. The clay (from one of the fields
on the place), to my great satisfaction, had a pale,
purplish tinge when burned, instead of the usual glar-
ing red, and harmonized admirably with the bluish-
gray granite of the corners. There was such an abun-
dance of it that I felt entirely free to carry out my
ideas with regard to strength and durability. I there-
fore fixed the thickness of the walls at two feet, in-
cluding a hollow chamber of an inch and a half, and
the thickness of the inner partition walls (which were
also of brick) at one foot. The latter, besides being
fire-proof and almost impervious to sound, proved to
be as cheap in the end as studs and laths. The result
has satisfied me that no house can be truly comforta-
ble unless the walls are thick, with a hollow chamber,
or at least furred on the inside. The latter plan, how-
ever, does not always insure complete dryness. On
the other hand, I have heard of one brick wall of thir-
teen inches which proved to be quite dry; but in this
case the mortar was of the best quality. The addi-
tional thickness of the wall would be paid for in a few
years by the saving in fuel, in many parts of the coun-
try.
“For the finishing of the rooms there is nothing
equal to the native wood, simply oiled to develop the
beauty of the grain. Even the commonest pine,
treated in this way, has a warmth and lustre beside
which the dreary white paint, so common even in the
best houses, looks dull and dead. Nothing gives a
house such a cold, uncomfortable air as white paint
and white plaster. This color is fit only for the trop-
ics. . . . Two verandas of yellow pine, treated to two
coats of boiled oil, have a richness and beauty of color
beyond the reach of pigments; and my only regret
360 BA YARD TA YLOR.
connected with the house is, that I was persuaded by
the representations of mechanics to use any paint at
all.
“There is another external feature which the bril-
liancy of our sunshine not only suggests but demands.
Relief is an absolute requirement. Most houses should
have not only a cornice proportioned to their dimen-
sions and in keeping with their character, but string-
pieces between the stories, and window-caps and sills
projecting sufficiently to cast a shade. I found also
that an excellent effect could be obtained, without ad-
ditional expense, by setting the windows and doors in
raised panels of brickwork projecting two or three
inches from the face of the wall. For the string-
pieces, a simple row of dentils, formed by setting out
alternate bricks, can be made by the most ordinary
workman. Design, not cost, is the only difference be-
tween a fine house and a poor one. . . .
“Let me give one more hint, derived from my ex-
perience, to those who may be contemplating a little
private architecture. Get all the estimates from the
various mechanics, add them together, and increase
the sum total by fifty per cent., as the probable cost
of your undertaking; but do not say what the real
cost is until everything is finished. Then you will
know. Even the estimates of the most experienced
workmen, I have found, are not to be depended upon.
It is the little ills of life that wear us out, and it is
likewise the little expenses that empty our purses.
“ However, let me content myself that another
requisition of the Italian proverb is fulfilled, -that
the house is built, and likely to stand for two or three
centuries, when, in all probability, the inscribed stone
THE BUILDING OF CEDAR CROFT. 361
over its portal' will be the only memorial of the name
of its builder. That, however, does not concern me.
While I live, I trust I shall have my trees, my peace-
ful, idyllic landscape, my free country life at least half
the year; and while I possess so much, with the ties
out of which all this has grown, I shall own one hun-
dred thousand shares in the Bank of Contentment,
and consider that I hold a second Mortgage Bond on
the Railroad to the Celestial City.”
From these passages, one may form some notion of
the house into which Bayard Taylor had built his
dreams. But the house, after all, was only a part of
his castle. He always thought of the building only
as a necessary portion of a larger whole. To own
broad acres, to set his house in the midst of them, and
to make it blend with chestnuts and oaks, – this was
his more generous desire. That liberal love of nature
which drew him back to Kennett made it necessary
for him that his fields should be as varied as his house
was capacious; it was not the arrogance of ownership,
but the delight of an expansive home which moved
him, and thus he took an unending delight in seeing
the boundaries of the place extend, and in watching
the growth of all the forms that surrounded him. He
wished to have the whole place expressive of his nature.
In another series of papers written in 1869 for
“Hearth and Home,” a weekly journal edited by his
friend, Donald G. Mitchell, he rehearsed his experi-
ences in house-building, and added a paper which gave
him an opportunity at once to set forth his views of
landscape-gardening and to use for illustration a sketch
of his own grounds at Cedarcroft.
1 The stone over the portal of Cedarcroft bore the inscription, “Bayard
Marie Taylor, 1859, '' in accordance with an old style prevailing in that
neighborhood.
362 JBA YA RD TA YL OR.
“I have always looked,” he says, “upon the art of
landscape-gardening, in its best sense, as being to na-
ture what a refined civilization is to man. It should
aim to develop and make attractive, not to conceal or
change the individuality of scenery. Nature, indeed,
seems to second all efforts in the former direction even
as she resists arbitrary intermeddling with her habits.
In the way of cultivation, contrast, and careful finish,
not a great deal can be done in this country without
ample means; but there are two things which cost
very little, and upon which the first effect of home
scenery depends — to spare and to relieve.
“The first I claim to have done, and the second I
hope gradually to accomplish. This is about the ex-
tent of my landscape-gardening. In the present rough
condition of my grounds, I feel, and like to feel, that
whatever of beauty they may possess was already there
when they first became my property, betraying itself
through the disguises of long neglect. The wood of
old oaks had hardly been touched by the axe ; where
once a hedge had inclosed a lane leading to where the
fallen house had stood, a row of locust, Sassafras, and
tulip trees had sprung up and grown undisturbed for
fifty years, while the natural lawn between had been
appropriated by hundreds of cedars. Although mul-
leins, briers, and sedge-grass had taken possession of
the exhausted soil, and the aspect of the place was
waste and desolate, much resembling that of a worn-out
Virginia plantation, its fine and stately features could
not be concealed.
“My first step was to cut away the awkward and
stunted cedars from the future lawn, leaving all the
best specimens, singly or in groups, as they grew. The
soil was cleared of bushes and briers, and ploughed
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT'. 363
and cultivated for a year or two before being sown
with grass-seed. The cultivation, however, is not yet
deep enough for a good, persistent turf, and some
under-drainage is required; so that the work must be
done over again, and more thoroughly, before I can
hope for a smooth, even green.
“The lines of the garden-terraces [in the plan]
show the direction of the ridge upon which the house
is built. It strikes the public road (which runs due
north and South) at an angle of about thirty degrees,
giving the lawn a southeastern slope, falling eight
hundred and fifty feet in the distance of a furlong.
Looking down it from the house, there is the old
forest on the left, the line of trees, overgrown and
tangled together with wild grape and ivy, on the right,
the point of the wood at the bottom of the lawn in
front, and over its edge and between it and the grove
of yellow pine, a look-out into the country, bounded
by some hills five or six miles away. Other glimpses
to the west and southward open between the trees.
The ground falls to the north, but a wood of several
acres keeps off the wind, and beyond it there is a
parallel ridge fifty feet higher than that on which the
house is built.
“The place seems well adapted for the cultivation
of fruit, being elevated enough to escape the first and
last frosts, yet tolerably protected; and, accordingly,
all the best ground (except the lawn) has been given
up to vines and fruit trees. Even in the orchards,
however, I have allowed a number of fine large cedars
to stand, for a triple reason — they are beautiful; they
protect the tender varieties of trees; they help to feed
birds through the winter. You will see that the ce-
dars, the pines, and the grand old deciduous trees
364 BA YARD TA YLOR.
already furnish very delightful contrasts of form and
color. To increase these contrasts was not difficult.
A purple beech or two, to show against the oaks; a
birch in front of a darker mass of cedar; the great
arms and needles of the Austrian pine beside the light,
delicate plumage of the latter; the large-leaved mag-
nolia (macrophylla) to add richness; a larch or South-
ern cypress for its tender vernal green — and fine ef-
fects were already produced with slight means. They
are only semi-effects as yet, but they improve from
year to year.
“Near the northwestern corner of the house, and
not far from the garden, there is a small group of
black-walnut and locust trees, which gives us the near-
est shade in summer. No large trees are planted
nearer than the lowest terrace in front. Westward, a
hundred yards distant, there are two enormous chest-
nut-trees, which surpass in dimensions any I have
seen in this country. One of the trunks is twenty-
seven feet in circumference, the other twenty-four feet !
I presume they are not less than three or four hun-
dred years old. Although some of the main boughs
are dead, and they suffered severely by our New Year's
sleet, I hope, by putting fresh earth about the trunks,
to secure to them what life they still have.
“I know of nothing else that seems to me worthy
of report. My place still shows, in various ways, the
marks of old neglect, and I do not commend it to the
reader as notable for anything but the beauty of cer-
tain natural features. During the eight years which
have passed since the house was built, I have only been
able to spend four summers at home; and, moreover,
I have only devoted to the grounds what little labor or
‘means could be spared from farm, orchard, and gar-
THE BUILDING OF CEDARCROFT. 365
den. There is still a great deal to be done; but this
is one of the charms of a country home—that it never
is, or can be, finished—that it continually changes
with seasons and the years.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE POET'S JOURNAL.
1860–1862.
As a man that walks in the mist,
As one that gropes for the morning
Through lengthening chambers of twilight,
The souls of the poems wander
Restless, and dumb, and lost,
Till the Word, like a beam of morning,
Shivers the pregnant silence,
And the light of speech descends
Like a tongue of the Pentecost
The Sunshine of the Gods.
THE time had come when, to all external appear-
ance, the poet had accomplished his preliminary pur-
pose. He had built himself a stately pleasure-house,
he was in the midst of his own broad acres, and now
he might realize the other part of his dream and write
the poems which had been postponed for this circum-
stance. It must be confessed that most who have put
off the Muse to a more convenient season have found
themselves unvisited when the hour named had fairly
struck; for there is something paralyzing in such prep-
arations and anticipations, and the willing poet even
has been forced to admit that poetry cannot safely be
made to wait. “s
But Bayard Taylor's devotion was too genuine to be
the sport of an inconstant Muse, and scarcely had the
sound of hammer ceased, before he was in his library
or under his trees, writing eagerly at poems which
THE POET’S JOURNAL. 367
shaped themselves into a series of lyrical suggestions
of a narrative whole. “I am in a fury of writing,”
he wrote to a friend when in the midst of his scheme,
“and cannot stop, — cannot do or think of anything
else.” All through the month of June the songs flew
from his mind like birds set free from a cage, and in
that month he wrote almost the entire lyrical portion
of “The Poet's Journal.”
The freedom of mind which he enjoyed, the power
thus to determine his own production, was not the
mere rebound from a long tension of less enjoyable
work, although something was due to his sense of
escape. It had in it an element of resolution and the
subjection of crowding care, for the release upon the
completion of Cedarcroft was more apparent than real.
Work as hard as he would, the house had come out
ahead in the race, and he was in debt, involved, in spite
of his stringent economy, and from causes which did
honor to his generous nature, in liabilities which tugged
at his mind and called upon him to give, give.
For all that, he had so buoyant a nature and was so
heartily glad of the opportunity to show hospitality
that he threw open his doors and eagerly welcomed .
friends far and near to share his pleasure. He entered
upon a real possession of his domain, for he drew from
the soil an abundant harvest, not only of material
things, but of whatever fed the eye and ear and heart
of man. He planted fruit trees, he made gardens,
and seized upon every vista in his woods and every
view from his hill-tops as a part of his unfailing do-
main. One of his greatest pleasures was in entertain-
ing through the summer his friends, the Buflebs, who
came from Germany to visit him and his wife. In
August there was a merry house-warming, and we
368 RA YARD TA YLOR.
recur to Mr. Stoddard’s reminiscences for a sketch of
one of the incidents: —
“Bayard Taylor finished his country house, Cedar-
croft, in the summer of 1860, and gave his friends and
neighbors a house-warming such as was never before
known in Pennsylvania. Our families were together
as in New York, and we, their lords and masters, re-
solved to surprise them, and ourselves, by writing a
play. We went into a quiet room, and sketched out
a trifle with which we hoped to amuse the expected
visitors. There was but one room in which it could
be acted, and as scenery was not practicable, we man-
aged to have the action take place in the parlor of
a hotel which we named the “Effervescing House,’ and
located at Saratoga. We studied our company, and
settled upon the number we thought we could depend
upon, and upon the parts which would be likely to
suffer least at their hands; then we set to work, and
wrote as rapidly as our pens would travel over the
paper, and when our company was letter perfect in
the text and in their stage directions, we went to an
old disused printing-office in Kennett, and set up the
bill of the performance, with flaming head-lines: —
CEDARCROFT THEATRE I
GREAT ATTRACTION |
SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 1860,
WILL BE PRESENTED FOR THE FIRST TIME A
NEW COMEDY
In One Act, entitled
LO W E A T A H O TE I, I
By the World-Renowned Dramatic Authors,
MR. B. T. CEDARCROFT AND MR. R. H. S. CUSTOMHOUSE.
THE POET’S JOURNAL. 369
This was followed by the dramatis personae : Mr.
Charles Augustus Montmorency, a fast young gentle-
man without any visible means of support; Captain
Morton Price, U. S. A.; Mr. A. Binks, proprietor of
the Effervescing House; Barney O'Brien, porter;
Miss Araminta Delaporte, a sentimental old maid of
French descent, with a nervous dread of bugs, mice,
etc.; Miss Julia Grindle, her niece; and Mehitable
Jones, of Squam Neck, chambermaid. The ‘comedy”
was a great success, and deserved to be (before a coun-
try audience), for there was not an original scene, situ-
ation, thought, or word in it. It had been played so
many times before in one form or another, that it
could not well have failed now; and it did not fail.
We amused our audience in the acting, as we had
amused ourselves in the writing, and we parted on the
best of terms.””
It was a delight to Bayard Taylor to write “The
Poet's Journal; ” he was satisfying the demands of
his nature by such work; but he knew very well that
it was not poetry which built Cedarcroft or could meet
the incessant demands on his purse, and he wrote dili-
gently for the periodicals, as well as prepared a new
lecture for the coming season. The great Presidential
election of 1860 was drawing near and casting its
shadow before, on all occupations, making publishers
cautious and disturbing all serenity of thought. Bay-
ard Taylor took a strong interest in the event, and pre-
sided at a great mass meeting of Republicans held
upon the historic field of the Brandywine. He said
with earnestness: “It is a national, not a party strug-
gle in which we are engaged; for the question whether
1 “Reminiscences of Bayard Taylor,” The Atlantic Monthly, February,
1879.
WOL. I. 24
370 B.A. Y.A. RD TA YLOR.
our national policy shall or shall not be based upon
the recognition of the natural rights of man— upon
the rights of labor, the untrammeled freedom of
thought and speech — upon those principles, in fact, on
which the progress of the race depends — concerns not
merely a party, but all mankind.”
His plans included the publication of “The Poet's
Journal” in the fall, the preparation of articles for
“The Independent” and the monthly magazines, and
the translation of a new work by Gustav Freytag
which had greatly interested him.
TO JAMES T. FIFLDS.
CEDARCROFT, NEAR KENNETT SQUARE, CIIESTER Co., PA.,
August 22, 1860.
I have been thinking of what you said with regard to the pub-
lication of my poems. It would certainly be advisable to delay
them till the election is over ; but after that event, as you know,
there is always a complete lull in politics — a reaction, in fact,
and the close of November, therefore, strikes me as a favorable
time. I am going to Germany in April next, and have decided
to publish the poems before I leave, so I must choose between
November and March. Rudd and Carleton are anxious to publish
the book, but of course I shall have no negotiations with them,
unless it is impossible for you to bring it out. Pray let me know
what you think of it. I am fully resolved to publish the book
before my departure for Europe, as it closes an epoch in my
literary life which I wish to leave behind me.
I have been reading Freytag's “Pictures of Life in Germany
during the last Four Hundred Years” with great interest. Frey-
tag is, you may know, the author of “Debit and Credit.” These
pictures are taken from authentic manuscripts, mostly autobio-
graphical, and have an interest beyond any historical work. The
“Thirty Years' War,” related by the actors therein; the Em-
peror Charles W., Martin Luther, Melancthon, and other dis-
tinguished men described by those who saw them ; life at the
watering-places, at the feudal castles; courtship and marriage,
etc., are some of the themes illustrated. They extend over a
period of four hundred years. I should like nothing better than
THE POET’S JOURNAL. 371
to translate this work, if there were a likelihood that it would
prove as interesting in English as it is in German. It is a thing
I could do in two months, with hard work. It will make the
two volumes of four hundred pages each. I propose it to you
first ; think of it and let me know your decision. Harpers pub-
lished “Debit and Credit,” which is the most successful German
novel of this century. I know the author personally.
We are living here quietly in our country home. Mrs. Stod-
dard is with us. We had a comedy last week, in which she and
Mrs. T. performed with success. It was an original production,
written by Stoddard and myself. We have the loveliest country
neighborhood in the United States, though I say it that shouldn’t.
When you come on to attend the September trade sales, be sure
and give us a day or two. Please let me have your decision on
both points soon.
September 22, 1860.
I have purposely delayed writing until I could fix a time when
the MSS. will be ready. I have been immensely busy, at work
which must be first done because it will pay first. (This over-
running one's estimates $5,000 in building a house is not quite
the thing, and hence I am laboring under temporary poverty.)
I shall go on to New York on the 2d of October, taking the
MSS. with me, and will thence dispatch them to you by express.
Can they not be all in type by election day, so that I can read
the proofs before starting on my winter tour 2 I really think the
times are not altogether unpropitious. My name is still well be-
fore the public, and my other books sell encouragingly. I shall
call the volume “The Poet's Journal,”—“only that and nothing
more,” — and you may announce it whenever you think best,
saying that its contents are almost entirely new.
“Icarus,” in the October “Atlantic,” is mine, and I am just
sending a prose story of very curious complexion to the same
journal. Pray read my “Quaker Widow” in “Harper” for Oc-
tober. It will come in the volume also.
Between preparing my poems, my new lecture, short articles
for “The Independent,” political speeches, etc., I am over head
and ears in work. But my stature does not diminish. I still weigh
two hundred pounds. My wife sends kindest regards to you and
yours, in which I join. Our German friends sailed on the 15th,
unhappy at being obliged to return.
372 BA YA R D TA YLOR.
Cedarcroft is lovelier than ever. The sunset lights on my
lawn are the most beautiful in the world.
KENNETT SQUARE, PA, October 15, 1860.
I have ready thirty-eight pages of proof ; the work goes
bravely on. It reads better in print than in MS., which encour-
ages me. The type is delicious.
I have just received a letter from Lowell, accepting the prose
article. Pray don’t mention the author's name. I want it to be
thought a bonā ſide confession, and was very careful to give it
that character. I think it will attract attention. Now comes
the brunt of my letter. Button up your pockets and listen I
should like to be paid for turning state's evidence before said
evidence is published. It is contrary to your custom, I know,
but I presume this deviation will not affect you seriously, while
to me it would be a real favor, seeing that certain notes of mine
have to be paid in a fortnight. I am paying the penalty of my
ambition for building, you see. Fortunately the house is done,
and I see the end of expense at last.
I have a few lectures between now and election day, but will
forward the proof with as little delay as possible. I write this
before my own hickory fire, with my wife (who greets you) as
vis-à-vis. My Lar salutes your Lar.
The prose article referred to in the last letter was
“The Confessions of a Medium,” which was afterward
reprinted in the second series of “At Home and
Abroad.” Mr. Lowell, in accepting the sketch, says,
“You have dotted out with great nicety the waving
boundary-line that divides self-deception from humbug
—me-cheating from thee-cheating.” The publishers ad-
vised against bringing out “The Poet's Journal” until
the spring, or at any rate until the Southern excitement
consequent upon the election of Mr. Lincoln should
be allayed. Lecturing was resumed, but though the
season was quite as favorable as usual, the lecturer,
moving about the country, was able to form an im-
pression of the undercurrent of political thought which
was stirring the people. Bayard Taylor's unconcealed
THE POET'S JOURNAL. 373
views and his connection with the “Tribune" ren-
dered him an object of suspicion to many. Mr. Curtis
had been mobbed when speaking in Philadelphia,
and Bayard Taylor, lecturing immediately afterward
in Brooklyn, took up the cudgels for his friend and
brought hisses down upon himself — a novel experi-
ence to him. He himself lectured the next week in
Philadelphia, with a posse of policemen on the plat-
form. He gave vent to his patriotic indignation over
the proclamation for a fast by the President, who
was throwing down the reins, in a spirited ballad,
“Prayer-Meeting in a Storm,” which he published in
the “Tribune.” The good ship Constitution had been
caught in a storm, and the captain, who doubts if
he can weather Hatteras, makes the temporizing pro-
posal:—
The wind on the one side blows me off,
The current sets me shoreward :
I'll just lay to between them both
And seem to be going forward.
When everything is ready to go by the board, and tars
and mates and passengers are all growling, the cap-
tain cries: —
“Pipe all hands to the quarter-deck,
And we’ll save her by Devotion 1’’
The first mate hurled his trumpet down;
The old tars cursed together
To see the good ship helpless roll
At the sport of wave and weather.
The tattered sails are all a-back,
Yards crack and masts are started ;
And the captain weeps and says his prayers,
Till the hull be midships parted ;
374 BA YARD TA YLOR.
But God is on the steersman's side—
The crew are in revolution :
The wave that washes the captain off
Will save the Constitution
One of the incidents of this exciting time which
furnished fuel for the flames that were burning North
and South was a correspondence between the chairman
of a lecture committee in a Southern city and Bayard
Taylor. The chairman wrote to revoke an invitation
to lecture, and succeeded in supplying a series of rea-
sons which were admirable targets for return shots.
The letters were printed and commented on widely,
and formed a part of that furious discharge of literary
musketry which was kept up throughout the winter
before the attack on Sumter.
Perhaps the intensity of feeling with regard to
America had something to do with the carrying into
execution a plan which he had long in his mind of
writing a novel of American life, material for which
he had had abundant opportunities for gathering in his
varied travels in his own country. He had already
tried his hand at some short stories and sketches, but
his mental habit required a good long steady flight.
It was a pleasure to him when he could weave his
lyrics even into a larger plan. His travels, the light-
est kind of his writing, had involved continuity, and
thus when he came to the composition of fiction, he
was dissatisfied with anything less than a fully con-
structed and elaborated novel. Besides, he was full of
intellectual vigor, and since he was cut off from the
subjects which his long travels had heretofore afforded
him, he needed a new field. None offered better
promise to him than the novel, and he sketched in his
mind “Hannah Thurston,” which he began in mid-
THE POET’S JOURNAL. 375
winter, 1861. He enjoyed greatly the new sensation
in literature, and he had the incentive which was still
goading him into relentless activity. He saw the day-
light of freedom from debt just ahead of him. To
his buoyant, hopeful nature, the edge of the forest
through which he was making his way was that streak
of light which struck through the trees and quickened
his footsteps. Moreover, he had laid his plans to take
his wife to her German home for the summer, and he
wished to leave everything clear behind him.
In the spring of 1861 Bayard Taylor decided to
give up the attempt to keep house in New York as
well as in the country. Accordingly he moved all his
possessions to Cedarcroft, intending to make that his
permanent home, and to spend a short winter only in
the city. He hoisted the American flag from the
tower of his house and professed to enjoy all the dig-
nity of a landed proprietor. “The house looks already
quite baronial, with its new splendor,” he writes to a
friend. “We have fowls, a pig, two peacocks, and one
rabbit. But I long for spring. If the weather were
but warmer or brighter I should pluck up a little cour-
age.” He owned to an aversion to writing and a gen-
eral disquiet. He was writing in the lull before the
storm. Ten days later all was changed.
TO R. H. STODT) AR.D.
CEDARCROFT, Sunday, April 21, 1861.
Everything here is upside down. We live almost in a state
of siege, with the rumors of war flying about us. At present
we don’t know what is going on. We have reckless secessionists
within twelve miles of us. Everybody is arming. The women
are at work night and day, making clothes for the volunteers.
Fred has raised sixty riflemen, and goes off in two days. The
people of Kennett have contributed four thousand dollars to
equip them. All the young Quakers have enlisted. The ex-
376 BA YA R D TA YLOR.
citement and anxiety is really terrible. We are so near the
frontier that if the damnable Maryland traitors are not checked
within three days we may have to meet them here. I never
knew anything like the feeling — earnest, desperate, sublime —
which the people exhibit. There are no parties any more. All
are brothers, drawn together by the common danger. Chester
County will furnish one thousand men, and dangerous men to.
meet. Of course we can’t think of going to Europe now, nor
until this immediate crisis is over. The danger is too near and
too great. Our departure is postponed until some decisive ac-
tion occurs. I cannot leave home now, though I want to go
to New York to raise money. I shall have to sell one share of
Tribune stock immediately, to pay Fred's pressing debts and
let him go. C L has enlisted, W C , G ’s
boys; everybody that can be spared, in fact. The old men are
forming a home guard for the defense of their households.
I never had such a day as last Thursday in Washington. I
had a private interview with Lincoln, which was very satisfac-
tory. I passed through Baltimore just before the attack on the
Massachusetts men, – four hours only. Wilmington is loyal, I
think ; the news to-day is favorable, but we live from hour to
hour in a state of terrible excitement. Show this letter to Put-
nam immediately (I have no time to write to him), and let me
ask him in this way immediately to send me a check for one
hundred dollars, or fifty dollars, or twenty-five dollars, any sum
he can spare, to buy arms. We are unarmed ; that is our great
danger. Just let him read this, as if written to him. Go to his
house ; if you don’t find him at home, tell Fiske my situation.
I will send him a letter as soon as I can. Seward was not to be
seen when I was in Washington, and Sumner had just left. We
are courageous here, and full of hope for the final result, but
the next few days will decide our fate. I will write again soon.
God and Liberty
Tuesday, April 23.
We are fast getting armed and organized here. An armed
band of traitors has been within thirty-seven miles of us. We
have night patrols (mine armed with my African swords and
spears, in default of better weapons), and are preparing to de-
fend our homes. Cedarcroft will make a good castle. I was
out scouting yesterday, and I make patriotic addresses (extem-
poraneous) every night. To-day I am going into Delaware to
THE POET’S JOURNAL. 377
stir them up. The people here have acted splendidly, - the
women are heroes. Old Quaker women see their sons go, with-
out a tear. One of my aunts yesterday was lamenting that her
only boy was not old enough to fight. Money is poured out like
water. All the old arms are hauled out and put in order, and
ploughshares are beaten into swords. Yesterday we heard heavy
cannon, probably at Baltimore. My brother W. is still there,
and we can't hear a word from him. Mother is a model of
courage and patriotism. She is as cheerfnl as ever. We feel
more safe now than on Sunday, but we are still not beyond
danger.
I still hope that I shall be able to go to New York on Thurs-
day. I shall come back as soon as possible, however, for an im-
portant reverse of the national arms would very soon bring the
enemy here. God bless New York | The country will be
saved at last, but these days in which we live are very mo-
mentous.
Write to me as often as you can. Don’t be alarmed, for in
two or three days more we shall be so armed and organized as to
be safe against surprise, at least. Love to L. and W. from all
of us. The country is lovely.
To appreciate the excitement under which Bayard
Taylor labored, one must remember that in those days,
when there seemed to be scarcely any orderly action
on the part of the government, and the people were
rising in a very grand but also in a helter-skelter
fashion, Chester County was sufficiently near the de-
batable ground and so strongly marked by its anti-
slavery character as to give its inhabitants a very vivid
sense of the reality of war. Bayard Taylor threw
himself into the movement, and when his brother
Frederick volunteered, sold a share in the “Tribune”
and devoted a thousand dollars of the proceeds as
his contribution to the needs of the country. He had
postponed the journey to Germany, but finally decided
to carry out his original plan.
378 BA YARD TA YLOR.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
CEDARCROFT, KENNETT SQUARE, PA., May 13, 1861.
Being in New York three or four days ago, I found the pack-
age at the Tribune office, where it had doubtless been lying
for some time. . . . I have carefully read the proofs [of “The
Poet's Journal”], and find five easily corrected errors, a note of
which I inclose. -
I am delighted with the appearance of the book, and will “pos-
sess my soul in patience” till the fitting time comes for its ap-
pearance.
Our visit to Germany, which was postponed, has been again
determined upon, and we shall sail on Saturday, the 18th, in the
City of Baltimore. We shall make but a short stay, however.
I should not go at all, were it not for the fact that our passage
was secured some time ago, and preparations made for us at
Gotha. I can now go with an assured heart, feeling that all is
Safe for the present, and that the principal operations will not
take place till fall. We expect to be home again early in Au-
gust. . . .
In addition to his wife and child, Bayard Taylor
took his mother with him, and after a two days’ stay
in London went to Gotha.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
GoTHA, June 15, 1861.
Even at this distance you are not safe from me. My wife
wishes very much to get a copy of the “Confessions of a Me-
dium ” and the “Haunted Shanty,” for translation and insertion
in a German periodical.
If you could take the two articles, and split the numbers of
the “Atlantic ’’ so as to make but one, the postage would not be
enormous. If the third article, “Experiences of the A. C.,”
should be in type, perhaps you could include it also. M. thinks
the articles will be very striking and curious to German read-
ers. Thackeray, the other day, told me that he was completely
taken in by my “Confessions.”
We had a rapid and delightful voyage across the Atlantic.
I spent two days in London, but saw no man of note except
Thackeray, who was very kind and very jolly. We found our
THE POET'S JOURNAL. 379
German relatives in good condition, and are pleasantly domiciled
here for two months. To-morrow I shall leave for a pedestrian
trip of ten days in the Franconian Mountains, taking Coburg on
the way, where the old poet Rückert lives.
Every post from America brings more and more cheering
news. The deepest interest is felt here ; in fact, I find more
genuine sympathy and a more intelligent understanding of our
troubles here than in England. I hold up my head more proudly
than ever. But it is hard to be away at such a time.
After his return from his trip among the Fran-
conian Mountains, Bayard Taylor established himself
and family, on the first day of July, at Friedrichroda,
in the Thüringian Forest, where they remained a
month. He filled the time with active literary work,
writing at once his letters to the “Tribune,” a paper
for “Harper's Magazine,” “A Walk through the
Franconian Switzerland,” and for “The Independent”
a series of ten papers on “A Home in the Thüringian
Forest,” both of which were reprinted in the second
series of “At Home and Abroad.” He included in the
sketches of their life at Friedrichroda an account of
an interesting interview which he had with the reign-
ing Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who took a gracious
interest in him and his writings. The whole expe-
rience of German country life both confirmed his
former familiarity with the people and gave him new
insight into a nationality in which he became almost
a son by adoption.
Another visit at Gotha, and the four sailed from
Hamburg for New York August 24th. They went im-
mediately to Cedarcroft, where Bayard Taylor busied
himself with writing, among other things, war songs
to German melodies, and in preparing a paper on
Hebel, the German Burns. He visited Washington
also, but found his greatest pleasure in the life at
380 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Cedarcroft, which took on a rich glow as the autumn
changed the colors of earth and sky.
TO MRS. R. H. STODDARD,
CEDARCROFT, October 14, 1861.
There's a deluge of pure golden light streaming through the
western window of my library, not a cloud in the sky nor a
breath o' wind among the trees (four P. M.), and I wish you were
here to enjoy the exquisite autumnal quiet. M. and I have just
picked three barrels of apples from our trees, and expect to have
cider in a few days. Mother has made about five gallons of good
Catawba wine. We have also gathered half a bushel of chest-
nuts, a cart-load of black walnuts, some filberts and hickory-nuts
besides, and have twelve water-melons in the cellar. The toma-
toes and Lima beans are inexhaustible. A salt mackerel costs six
cents, herrings still less, potatoes abound, coffee is bad, and the
last ice of the season has just been consumed. But on the whole
we live comfortably, and with astonishing cheapness. We can
get up a meal for six persons for about twenty-five cents. As
for the house, it is our great consolation. We have superb rooms,
books and pictures, mice beds (M.'s linen, you know, is of the
best), Ben and the buggy, Jack as watch-dog, a bottle of wine
(Bufleb’s present) for birthdays, and three daily papers. You
are quite mistaken about possibilities being aggravating. No
such thing. Simply as we live, we have no rivalry to endure
anywhere in the neighborhood. Everybody else lives still more
simply. Our plain life, therefore, carries no air of reduction
with it, but is splendidly luxurious in our neighbors’ eyes. This
would not be the case if we were near a large city, but as it is
we have the seclusion (which I like), the lovely climate, the
beauty of the scenery, tolerable society, and the comforts of the
house in addition. There is no house in the country more truly
comfortable. Never hot in summer, never cold in winter, never
damp, — it is really all that we could desire. We had a little
fire on the hearth last might for the first time, – not because it
was really necessary, but for the sight of it. Our roasted chest-
nuts were delicious. The trees here have just begun to turn ;
we have had no frost yet, and the country is fresh and beautiful.
I wish I could begin my novel, but I must write some pot-boilers
first. I am just finishing a long article on Hebel, the German
THE POET’S JOURNAL. 381
Burns, for the “Atlantic,” with copious translations from the
Alemannic dialect. I think it will be very readable. There is
an article of mine in the “Cornhill” for October, — a “ German
Shooting-Match.” I must write something for money, - no mat-
ter what ; for the invitations to lecture don’t come in, and with-
out them I am lost. I hope Putnam will do something with the
new edition of my books; it will be very handsome, but I must
wait until next summer for the first results. These war times
are hard on authors; the sword of Mars chops in two the strings
of Apollo's lyre . . .
• The sun is down and my room is beginning to darken. What
a mellow beauty in the broad flush of the western sky | What
perfect silence and sweetness in the motionless woods ! A leaf
falls from the orange-tree in the box, and it sounds almost like a
crash. Now a chicken flaps its wings, and now again there is
only the scratch of this pen to be heard in all the world around
me. Good-by! I have been watching the quiet while I wrote,
and the dusk now holds my hand. Good-night, dear friend
The reference in this letter to a new edition of his
writings is to the Caxton edition, which Mr. Putnam
had projected with the hope of reviving the public in-
terest in the entire series. He proposed to lead off
with the first series of “At Home and Abroad,” and
to follow that with a second and new series; continu-
ing with new impressions of the older volumes on bet-
ter paper, and with such enticements of illustration,
binding, and style as a publisher depends upon for
persuading people into a new acceptance of familiar
works. As it turned out, the two series of “At Home
and Abroad” were separated by “Views Afoot.” Mr.
Putnam held out only moderate promises of what the
series would do, and Bayard Taylor still placed his re-
liance on lecturing, but was puzzled over the general
indifference of the public. He wrote of this to Mr.
George W. Curtis, who shared the popularity which
he enjoyed as lecturer: —
382 IBA YARD TA YLOR.
TO GEORGE W. CURTIS.
CEDARCROFT, KENNETT SQUARE, PA., October 31, 1861.
I hoped to have fallen in with you when I was in New York
t’other day, but my stay was so short that I could not go down to
the Island.
How are you, and how are wife and children 2 I am living
here in comparative seclusion, and know the world only by the
newspapers. But I see that you are to lecture in Philadelphia,
which is a great satisfaction to me, and I presume it is a greater
to you. Who could have foreseen the changes of this year 2 I
do not despair of lecturing in Richmond before I die.
Now, my object in writing is twofold : first, and most impor-
tant, to ask you to come out here for a day or two, if you possibly
can, when you lecture in Philadelphia ; you shall have pen, ink,
and silence, if you need 'em. Secondly, what is to be the state
of our business this winter ? I get precious few invitations, and
from widely scattered places. What is your experience 2 Am I,
the individual, passed over, or has the institution “suspended” 2
As I have no other dependence for this winter, I am curious to
know what calculations to make. (Tribune dividends and copy-
rights silent inter arma.)
I am writing a lecture on the “American People, in their So-
cial and Political Aspects,” being sufficiently cosmopolitan in my
experience to judge objectively, - at least, I so flatter myself.
What is your subject 2 I wish you could give us a lecture here,
but the place is rather too small in these times. Our young men
are all away fighting. My wife sends love to you. . . .
Mr. Curtis made reply: “As for the “business,’ it is
certainly depressed. I have had, I think, not more
than half of the usual invitations. Chapin told me
some time since that he had fallen off in the same
way.” With news from the front, and rallies, and
the drum-beat in every town, it was not surprising that
the public should be careless about the attractions of
a lyceum lecture. Throughout the winter, however,
Bayard Taylor was back and forth, lecturing as he
had opportunity, and resorting to his family at Cedar-
THE POET’S JOURNAL. 383
croft, or in New York, where they spent a few weeks.
In the interim he wrote a few poems, and continued
his work on “Hannah Thurston.”
TO R. H. STODDARD.
DUBUQUE, Iowa, January 24, 1862.
. . . I have had a lonely and dismal journey through the West-
ern snows for the last three weeks, and have no adventures to re-
late, except that I gave my new lecture in St. Louis to an audi-
ence one third secession, who ground their teeth with rage and
swore under their breath, but did not dare to utter a single hiss.
The faces were a study. Half the society were traitors, but they
didn’t know what the lecture was going to be. I was all bland-
ness and suavity to the wretches after it was over, thus compel-
ling them to treat me with courtesy, which was utter misery and
disgust to them. . . .
He visited Washington and the camps in the capac-
ity of head war correspondent of the “Tribune,” and
later, when his family was again established at Cedar-
croft, went to the front, hoping, as others, to go with
the army to Richmond, - that little march which was
four years in making. Suddenly he returned to Ce-
darcroft to advise with his wife on a proposition made
to him by Mr. Simon Cameron to accompany him to
Russia, to which place he had just been accredited as
minister. Bayard Taylor was to go as secretary, but
assurances were given that Mr. Cameron's stay would
be short, and he would then remain as chargé d'af.
faires. He returned to Washington the next day,
and telegraphed to his wife that he had accepted the
offer. -
TO MR, AND MRS. R. H. STODDARD.
WASHINGTON, Sunday, March 30, 1862.
You will have seen in yesterday’s “Tribune” some intimation
of the new turn in my destiny. The ice is therefore broken, which
I am glad of, because my most unwelcome necessity will be the
384 BA YARD TA YLOR.
separation from you two. The facts of the case are simply these:
Cameron came to me and offered the post. So urgent was he
that he employed several persons to persuade me to accept, and
spoke to the President in advance. I was surprised, undecided,
and inclined not to accept. I consulted with Forney, with Sum-
ner, with Vice-President Hamlin, and others, all of whom said,
“Go this is only the first step. Cameron will not stay long, and
you will be his successor.” Cameron himself said to me, “I
shall return in the fall, leaving you in charge of the legation
(acting chargé d'affaires, with $6,000 a year), and if I should
not return I can manage to give you my place.” The Vice-
President came afterwards, saying, “I earnestly request you to
go, and will almost insure you the succession.” Thus urged, with
the chargéship certain and the ministership very probable, I de-
cided to accept. The President was evidently pleased when
Cameron announced it to him in my presence. I said to him
(Lincoln), “My only reason for accepting is the chargéship, af-
ter Mr. Cameron's departure.” He smiled, nodded his head,
and said, “All right.” I have seen numbers of senators, con-
gressmen, members of the cabinet, and others, who all say, “Go,
by all means, and consider this only the first step.” The minis-
ter gets $12,000, which would enable me to live conformably to
the position. Besides, it would give me unbounded facilities for
exploring Central Asia, under Russian protection, — the great
ambition of my life. All things considered, I have decided to
make the venture. The stake is not so high but that I may win
it. This is a fortunate chance, which I do not dare to reject. It
chimes so wonderfully with my own secret desires and plans that
I trust myself to the promise. I may be disappointed ; if so, it
is a loss of one Tribune share, but so much more in my life.
If I have not good friends here to assist me, we are a race of
hypocrites. Do write to me—to Kennett. I must see Seward
to-morrow and a few senators, and then will return to make ready.
I ran home and consulted M. first before I decided. She agrees
cordially.
TO MRS. R. H. STODDARD.
CEDARCROFT, Sunday, April 6, 1862.
. . . Since I determined to go, things Smooth themselves before
my feet. Some difficulties which I apprehended have disappeared.
I go with a great deal of resolution and measured expectations.
THE POET’S JOURNAL. 385
Cedarcroft is getting to be lovely now, and it goes hard with me
to give up the summer's rest. My novel I shall finish, somehow
or other. I wrote two chapters to-day and yesterday. I shall
have one third written before starting, and as summer is a leisure
time in St. Petersburg am pretty sure I can get it through by
August.
I sent my “Euphorion” 1 to Fields the other day. Have two
other poems in my head, which I shall try to write. . . .
I planted fifty pear-trees on Friday, and shall put out fifty
peach-trees to-morrow. Three summers hence we shall be over-
whelmed with fruit. Cedarcroft improves with age, from the
growth of things, although so much remains to be done. When
my debts are paid, and I have one thousand dollars over, I shall
transform the grounds. . . . -
1 “Euphorion” was written upon the death of the oldest boy of the
Stoddards.
VOL. I. 25
CHAPTER XVII.
THE RUSSIAN MISSION.
1862–1863.
My door
Looks on the rushing Neva, cold and clear:
The swelling domes in hovering splendor lie
Like golden bubbles, eager to be gone;
But the chill crystal of the atmosphere
Withholds them, and along the northern sky
The amber midnight Smiles in dreams of dawn.
Prom the North.
Two motives were uppermost in Bayard Taylor's
mind when he accepted the appointment as secretary
of legation under Mr. Cameron. He saw an oppor-
tunity to release himself from the distasteful drudgery
of lecturing, and he was fired with a new zeal to use
his position in Russia for making a study of the al-
most unknown interior of the country and writing a
book which should crown his works of travel. He
was confident also that his duties would not preclude
him from finishing his novel of “Hannah Thurston,”
in which he had become deeply interested. He sailed,
therefore, with his wife and child, in company with
Mr. Cameron and his family, on the 7th of May for
Liverpool. Mr. Cameron's party remained in Eng-
land for a short excursion, and Bayard Taylor took his
family to Gotha, stopping on the way at Paris, where
they were guests of Mr. and Mrs. James Lorimer
Graham, Jr. Leaving his family at Gotha, he went
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 387
on to St. Petersburg with the Camerons, with whom
he made his home until he was rejoined by his wife
and child, five or six weeks later. The intimate rela-
tions which he thus formed with his chief laid the
foundation for a strong and lasting friendship, in
which each recognized the other's sterling qualities
and fidelity of affection.
TO EIIS MOTHER.
ST. PETERSBURG, June 19, 1862.
We reached here at midnight on Sunday, the 15th, after
thirty-two hours’ railroad travel from Königsberg in Prussia, –
six hundred and sixty miles. This is my first chance to write a
line, there has been so much to look after. Clay 1 is still here,
having waited for our arrival, but will leave in a few days, and
I have been posting myself up with regard to the affairs of the
legation, besides assisting Cameron in various ways. It is now
nearly eleven o’clock, and I will at least commence this, adding
to it as I get leisure. After we get fairly installed in the lega-
tion, there will really be next to nothing to do except to make
and return visits. We had an interview with Prince Gortcha-
koff, Minister of Foreign Affairs, on Tuesday, and are to be pre-
sented to the Emperor at the Winter Palace on Tuesday next.
The Prince was very cordial and friendly, and expressed himself
towards our country as kindly as we could have desired. Cam-
eron has taken the house occupied by Clay, and the family moved
into it this evening. They have invited me to live with them
until M. comes, and I shall probably go to-morrow. This will
save me something, and give me time to make the best arrange-
ments for her. Americans who have lived here some years tell
me I can get along very comfortably on thirty-five hundred dol-
lars per annum. I think, with management, three thousand dol-
lars will answer. . . .
I like St. Petersburg even better than on my first visit. What
little Russian I knew has come back, and I already know enough
to make bargains ! I think I could speak it fluently in three
months, if I had time to study hard, but I must first attend to
1 Hon. Cassius M. Clay, whom Mr. Cameron succeeded as Minister to
Russia.
388 BA YARD TA YLOR.
“Hannah Thurston.” My “Travels in Russia” have been ap-
proved by the censor, and are permitted to be sold here, which
is a lucky thing for me. I shall not be able to go to Pulkowa 1
before Saturday night, and shall spend Sunday there. Wagners
are overjoyed at our coming. The country is entirely green and
beautiful, but the lilacs and horse-chestnuts are just in bloom.
The weather is delightful, -neither too warm nor too cold ;
Sunshine all day, and no darkness at night. . . .
Our last news is the destruction of the rebel fleet and the tak-
ing of Memphis. Good and bad are so mixed, however, that we
hardly know how to feel; only this, – that since I am again in
Europe I don’t want the war to end too soon. The longer it
lasts, the more certain is the doom of slavery. And if the war
is over without slavery being utterly crushed, we shall have a
second war in ten years. Being farther off, I can see all sides
more clearly, and I say that slavery must fall, or all this strug-
gle has been thrown away.
TO R. H. STODDARD.
ST. PETERSBURG, July 1, 1862.
I was going to write to you from Paris, but Graham had so
much company (and I, as guest, was bound to help entertain)
that the quiet moment never came. Since then, I have had
pretty much everything to do ; but at last am settled in my
place, with a tolerably clear understanding of my duties, and my
mind has come back to its usual equilibrium. Graham was un-
affectedly kind and cordial, and our stay of ten days with him,
his wife, and Fiske was marked with white. We had good.
weather, and so M. got a fair outside idea of Paris. Besides, we
saw Him and Her. They passed our carriage so close that we could
have shaken hands. He turned towards us and bowed. I as-
sure you She is very beautiful, - more so than her portraits.
Unfortunately, we did not see their Napkin, which was to be re-
gretted. . . .
For myself, everything goes well so far. I like St. Peters-
burg and the Russians better than ever. I am on the best of
terms with the Cameron family, whom, indeed, I heartily like,
and my prospects for the future do not look any the worse. We
were received by the Emperor a week ago, and with unusual cor-
1 Mrs. Taylor's sister is the wife of Mr. von Wagner, one of the as-
tronomers connected with the Imperial Observatory at Pulkowa.
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 889
diality. The general was delighted with him, and I–satisfied.
To be sure, my interview was very brief, but it gave me a com-
plete impression of the man. He has more energy and determi-
nation than I expected. Since then, we have been twice to the
Summer Palace of Tzarsko-Selo to see the Hereditary Prince
and the Empress, both of whom won our affections. The prince
is about nineteen, – thoroughly good, amiable, sincere, and un-
spoiled, and, withal, very handsome. The Empress is neither
beautiful nor plain, but wonderfully graceful, self-possessed, and
refined. She spoke for some time with me in German. They
treated us well, - gave us carriages and footmen, breakfasts,
wine, cigars, and all other accompaniments. I have made the
acquaintance of various counts and princes of the court, none of
whom are intellectually formidable, and consequently don’t em-
barrass me. One of the most marked men I have seen is Prince
Italinski, grandson of the old fighter Suwarrow. I live with
Camerons at the legation until M. comes. We have a stylish
open carriage, with a footman in livery, - cocked hat, with half
a busliel of red, white, and blue chicken-feathers on it, — and ride
out every day to make state calls. The government has fur-
nished us with a list of one hundred and eighty-three names, all
of which we must acknowledge in this official style. The busi-
ness of the legation, otherwise, is very slight, and I am already
fully up to it. Besides, the consul, who left here three weeks
ago on account of ill health, has appointed me his vice, giving me
half his salary. As the fees amount to four dollars in three
months, the business, you may suppose, is not onerous, while the
additional thousand dollars a year will be a great help to me.
As soon as he was fairly at home in his work and
social life, Bayard Taylor resumed his writing. “Han-
nah Thurston’’ was always at his side; he began the
papers which he contributed to the “Atlantic,” de-
scriptive of Russian life and scenery; he wrote two
or three poems, among them “The Test,” and he
worked from time to time upon a longer poem, “The
Picture of St. John.” “The Poet's Journal” was pub-
lished by Ticknor & Fields in the fall of the year.
His mind, however, was not at leisure, for he was har-
390 BAYARD TA YLOR.
assed by the uncertainty of his position. Mr. Cam-
eron spent the summer only in St. Petersburg, when he
returned, after travel in Europe, to the United States,
leaving Bayard Taylor as chargé d'affaires. This was
in accordance with the understanding by which the
latter accepted the post of secretary. The chargé
d'affaires was minister in everything but rank and
salary, and after a trial of the place Bayard Taylor
could have no question as to his ability to occupy the
higher position. He was thoroughly equipped by his
education, which had given him command of several
languages; he had won the respect and confidence of
the court and the diplomatic circle; he was familiar
with the ways of court life; and above all he had a
profound faith in his country and was alive to the ex-
igencies of the situation. He was eager to serve the
nation. Above and beyond his own private fortunes,
he was sure that he could so represent the United
States at this important court as to secure essential
advantage to his country.
He had the qualifications for the post, and he was
conscious of his fitness. IHis services were recognized
by those who were best able to judge of them, and upon
the face there was every reason why he should receive
the appointment. But Bayard Taylor was not a per-
son of political influence. He was connected, indeed,
with a journal of marked political power, but this fact
rather hindered than helped him. The editor of the
“Tribune” had severed the famous partnership of
Seward, Weed, and Greeley, and in his criticism of
the war was not singularly subservient to the admin-
istration. Bayard Taylor's position on the journal, to
be sure, was not on its political side, and his name in
the public mind was associated only with literature
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 391
and travel. He had friends who gave him their hearty
support, and a few of these, notably Mr. Cameron,
were men of weight with the administration. But
Bayard Taylor knew very well how many considera-
tions came in to affect the administration in making
appointments, aside from the peculiar fitness of a man
for his post. There were accounts to settle, ulterior
ends to accomplish, and nice adjustments of the ma-
chinery of government to regulate. Accordingly he
set in motion all the proper and natural means which
he could, at that distance, employ. The most natural,
and one would think the most effective, was a faithful
fulfillment of the duties of his place and a vigilant
watch for opportunities to serve his country. Long
before the winter was over, however, he made up his
mind that he should fail of receiving the appointment,
and after he had recovered from the first annoyance
of failure he dismissed the whole matter. He was no
place-hunter for the sake of place, and when fairly
plunged into literature he forgot his disappointment
and took delight in his native work.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
UNITED STATES LEGATION,
ST. PETERSBURG, August 18, 1862.
I have delayed writing to you for four weeks past, only that I
might finish and send the accompanying article,” which I think
you may find suitable for the “Atlantic.” At least, it may do to
thrust in between the heavier articles ; the ground it goes over
is wholly untrodden. If the article pleases, pray send the com-
pensation to the Tribune office for me ; if not, send the article
itself to Greeley, who may be able to dispose of it otherwise for
me. I am very glad that you like my Quaker story,” which I
find in the July number. I have ordered Trubner to send me
the numbers regularly, and have the August also. I have the
1 “A Cruise on Lake Ladoga.”
* “Friend Eli's Daughter.”
392 BAYARD TAYLOR.
subject of a curious Russian story, to be called “Beauty and the
Beast,” if you think the banks of the Volga are not too far off
for a reality which is more astonishing than romance. . . .
TO HIS MOTHER.
UNITED STATES LEGATION,
ST. PETERSBURG, September 24, 1862.
. . . I have been really sick for the last four or five days over
the horrid news 1 we receive ; and yet I have, under all, a half-
confidence that it may be for the best. Our people must have
their eyes opened ; the government must appreciate the immen-
sity of its task ; the half-and-half system must be dropped at
once, or we are lost. I would rather be at home and share the
humiliation which all loyal men must feel than be here and be
obliged to put a good face on it, and make all sorts of excuses
and explanations. But I can do more good here, perhaps, than I
could at home.
Camerons have now been gone nearly a week, and I have
everything in my own hands. We are rather lonely in these big
rooms, but must accustom ourselves to it. It will be another
month before St. Petersburg becomes gay and social. The
weather is already quite cold, but a great many families are still
in the country. . . . I recently wrote a poem on the one thou-
sandth anniversary of the Russian Empire, a copy of which Cam-
eron gave to Prince Gortchakoff, who showed it to the Emperor.
The latter sent word to me that he was very much touched and
delighted. I have sent a copy to Greeley, and you will see it in
the “Tribune.” I thus commence my chargéship under good
auspices.
October 22, 1862.
. . . We are in better spirits about our cause. The last news
is very cheering, and the English are furious. I avoid them as
much as possible, except the embassy, where they are very po-
lite, and avoid the subject. We are all very well and cheerful.
The weather is now delightful. We have had what is called
“the little winter,” snow and cold weather for a week, and now
the days are sunny and mild, and the trees not yet bare. The
leaves mostly are green until they drop off, - there are scarcely
any autumnal colors, so that the parks and gardens look more
like spring than fall. The court is still at the country palace,
1 Of the second battle of Manassas.
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 393 *
and will not come to the city for nearly a month yet. I have
now no important business on hand, and have renewed my ac-
quaintance with “Hannah Thurston.”
TO MRS. R. H. STODDARD."
ST. PETERSBJRG, November 5, 1862.
Your letter and Dick's came to-day, just after M. had started
for Pulkowa (about twelve miles from here) with L. and Minna
to spend the night. I was making out a report of a shipwreck
(consular business) to send to the State Department, and the
mail-hour was near at hand, but I stopped and read your tardy,
welcome pages before I went farther. Now, after four hours
more of work; after receiving visits and turning two vile seces-
sionists out of the house by the freezing dignity of my manners
and the indignant eloquence of my speech ; after a walk in the
cold air, among the trees of the Admiralty Place, so crusted
with rime that they resemble avenues of ivory and pearl, I come
back to sit down by candle-light at four P. M. in this northern dark-
ness, and put you to shame by my punctuality in replying. The
fact is, I cannot do anything else until I have written to you
both. I have no longer the spur of my own interests, because
my fate will have been decided before this reaches you, but I
have the inspiration of our old friendship.
. . . The only literature I get is the “Atlantic Monthly.”
Thoreau’s articles are very fine, but Winthrop's “Life in the
Open Air '' is in the most wretched manner. I cannot read it.
The stories are full of “cool brows " and “purple hair" and
convulsed conversation. I turn from them to continue the even
tenor of Hannah Thurston's way with refreshment. I am mak-
ing a book which shall be entertaining from beginning to end,
without violent passion, though with an occasional approach to it.
I get on slowly with it, because it is my recreation, and I do not
want to exhaust it too soon. I often think of Dick and you as I
write. Besides my Russian poem I have written another, called
“The Test,” which M. likes, and Ishall send to the “Atlantic.” . . .
My literary yearnings increase and improve under the weight of
this diplomatic business. I often say to M. that I shall be glad
when my stay here is over, and I can return to our old Olympian
life, only with fewer distracting cares than before.
I am sorry that neither Dick nor you yet seem to understand
the true reason of my desire for the higher post. It can give me
394 BA YARD TA YLOR.
no new honor. I have now been for nearly two months the sole
American representative at this court ; have had important offi-
cial interviews, and know just what it is. If I succeed, however,
I can carry out the only remaining bit of ambitious travel I care to
make ; I can complete my studies of the human cosmos ; I can
discard lecturing when I come home, and devote a few quiet years
to the production of something which may extort praise even from
you. I inherit a late development, both from father and mother,
and my mind is not yet at its ripest. I would rather represent
the interests of the United States even here, on the sixtieth de-
gree of latitude, than wear out my life in winter lecturing tours.
How much rest have I had at home 2 How much freedom from
anxiety in the last four years ? I am tired of it, worn out, and
don’t want to come home just now to resume it. I like this city
and my position because I have determined to do so. If I were
free to do what I please, I should leave next week. . . . You
ought to know that I have no political ambition and don’t value
political distinction one fig. I sigh for my felt hat, and swear at
my uniform every time I put it on. But I have a pride in doing
a thing well, when I once undertake it.
TO HIS MOTHER.
ST. PETERSBURG, November 26, 1862.
. . . Since I last wrote I have had to take care of American
interests all through the recent crisis. I have represented our
country, alone, for more than two months, and there has been no
more important period for us for the past fifty years than during
the past three weeks. We have gotten safely through, and I am
glad that I had a share in it. I think the government will be
satisfied with my energy and activity. I have already written
ten dispatches, eight of them very important ones, since being
chargé. I shall therefore always be glad that I came.
The crisis referred to in this letter was the pro-
posed intervention in American affairs by France and
England in connection with Russia. In an interview
which Bayard Taylor had with Prince Gortchakoff
October 29th, the Russian minister had intimated that
proposals for intervention were in the air, and not
long after an announcement appeared in the “Lon-
THE RUSSIAN MISSIOIV. 395
don Morning Post’’ and “La Patrie” of Paris to
the effect that France had submitted a proposition
to England and Russia. It will be remembered that
the Union cause had met with reverses, and that there
was a general feeling of despondency as to the issue
of the conflict. Bayard Taylor saw the great impor-
tance of preventing Russia from accepting the propo-
sition, and he immediately sought another interview
with Prince Gortchakoff, the account of which is con-
tained in a dispatch to the government.
TO HON, WILLIAM H. SEWARD, SECRETARY OF STATE.
LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATEs,
ST. PETERSBURG, November 12, 1862.
SIR,--I hasten to communicate to you the information prom-
ised in my dispatch of yesterday. I have just returned from
an interview with Prince Gortchakoff, who, with the generous
frankness which has hitherto characterized his intercourse with
me, has placed me in possession of all the facts of which it is
necessary that the government of the United States should be
informed.
I first asked him whether the proposition of France, announced
in the journals of Paris and London, had actually been made to
the imperial government. He replied in the affirmative. I then
asked whether he was willing to communicate to me its exact
terms. He answered in French, apparently quoting the words
of the official communication : “A conjunctive proposition on
the part of France, Russia, and England, to the belligerent par-
ties in America, to agree to an armistice of six months.” He
further informed me that the proposal was to be considered by
the English cabinet on the 11th (yesterday).
I stated to the Prince that the declarations of Russia had
heretofore been sufficiently frank and explicit; that we could
rely upon her action in the matter as that of a friend, and what-
ever it might be the government of the United States was as-
sured in advance of the friendly consideration which would in-
spire it. I judged it necessary to add, however, that the moment
was ill chosen for the presentation of such a proposal. After
a campaign the unsatisfactory character of which I could not
396 BAYARD TA YLOR.
deny, and the non-fulfillment of promises which ought never to
have been made, the prospect of the suppression of the rebellion
was now decidedly encouraging. The government was aware
of the necessity of the most speedy and vigorous action; three
hundred thousand men had been added to our army within the
last two months, and the new iron-clad vessels, probably afloat
by this time, would, I hoped, soon enable us to dispense with the
blockade by putting usin possession of all the Southern ports.
The Prince assured me, in reply, that the action of Russia.
would be governed entirely, as heretofore, by the most friendly
feelings toward the United States. He would take no step
which could not receive that interpretation. He then offered to
read to me his instructions to M. de Stoeckl in regard to the
proposed action of the three powers. After stating the proposi-
tion, the dispatch refers to the position which Russia has occu-
pied since the commencement of the struggle, repeats her desire
for a settlement by conciliatory measures, and expresses her
willingness to tender her good offices in a way that shall be ac-
ceptable, and that shall seem to promise a good result. . . .
The dispatch having been rapidly read, and in a foreign lan-
guage, I do not pretend to give you the precise words, but I am
sure of having reproduced the material substance of it. Its
prevailing tone was a delicate and friendly consideration of the
views of the government of the United States.
“There,” said Prince Gortchakoff, when the reading was fin-
ished, “now you know the worst so far as Russia is concerned.”
I considered myself justified in assuring him that there was
nothing in his instructions to M. de Stoeckl to which the govern-
ment of the United States could take exception, for it would
interpret every act of Russia in the light of her motives. An
assurance of this kind seemed to me necessary in return for his
frankness. I then retired.
I should do the government ill service by disguising from it
the truth that the European powers most friendly to it are at
last becoming impatient. The failure of two campaigns is the
prominent fact in their eyes; the important advantages which
have been gained are overlooked. Nearly all the news which
is received comes distorted through English and French chan-
nels. The correspondents of the London journals, in particular,
continually give currency to malicious falsehoods, the absence of
which in American newspapers they pretend to account for by a
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 397
tyrannical censorship. These statements, copied throughout the
continent, and persistently repeated, are beginning to produce
their matural effect ; to which is added the prestige of apparent
success, to a certain extent, on the part of the rebel government.
There is a universal sympathy, independent of the principles at
stake, with success against odds, and this sympathy is beginning
to tell, not only against the government of the United States,
but against the wisdom of its friends.
What Russia evidently fears at present is the ultimate ex-
haustion of the two sections of the Union, which will leave them
either divided or reunited, helpless to resist the encroachments
of hostile powers. The political equilibrium which she sees in
the maintenance of the Union in its original strength would thus
be destroyed. No news could be more welcome to her than that
which should indicate the speedy overthrow of the rebellion,
but a struggle protracted much longer seems to her not less un-
fortunate than immediate separation.
I believe this to be a strictly correct statement of the predom-
imating feeling of the imperial government. My duty terminates
in communicating it, for the possibility of its existence and the
course which it suggests have undoubtedly been foreseen by the
President and by yourself.
I have the honor to be, with the highest respect, your obedient
servant, BAYARD TAYLOR,
Chargé d'Affaires.
So anxious was the chargé to impress upon the
Russian government the resolution of the United
States and the resources which enabled that country
to put down the rebellion, that he went beyond the
strict demands of his place, and prepared an elabo-
rate paper, which he submitted to Prince Gortchakoff,
reporting his proceeding at once to Mr. Seward.
TO HON. W. H. SEWARD, SECRETARY OF STATE.
LEGATION of THE UNITED STATEs,
ST. PETERSBURG, November 28, 1862.
SIR, - Judging that you may desire to have regular reports
from this legation at the present time, I have the honor to trans-
mit to you an account of all that has occurred in relation to
American interests since my dispatch of the 15th instant.
398 BAYARD TA YLOR.
With regard to the project of intervention made by France,
the impression here is that since the replies of Russia and Eng-
land it has been temporarily suspended, but not relinquished, by
that power. If a renewal of it at any time shall be made to
this court, I am convinced that Prince Gortchakoff, with the en-
tire absence of reserve which has characterized all his intercourse
with me, will inform me promptly of the fact. I have received
a confidential communication from Mr. Dayton, giving me an
account of his interview with M. Drouyn de l’Huys, and have in
return transmitted to him a report of my own conversations
with Prince Gortchakoff. I have also forwarded a similar con-
fidential dispatch to Mr. Adams, as I judged it important that
both he and Mr. Dayton should be officially informed of the sen-
timents of the imperial government. I trust that this proceed-
ing will meet your approval.
Since my last dispatch I have had no further personal inter-
course with Prince Gortchakoff, but I have prepared and sent to
him a statement, drawn up with great care, of the present national
debt of the United States ; the estimated annual revenue under
the new laws ; the additions made to the active force of our
armies during the last three months; the number of iron-clad
vessels in process of construction ; and the important movements
already commenced in the West and on the sea-coast. This
statement was forwarded with a private (unofficial) note, inform-
ing him that it was not intended as an indirect prediction of re-
sults, but as a simple exposition of facts, which would clearly
show that an armistice at this time could only be of advantage to
the rebellious States, and that no proposition of the kind could
be entertained by the Federal government. I am aware that
in this act I have exceeded the strict line of my duty, but I felt
that some such presentation of the brighter aspects of our cause
was necessary to strengthen the hopes and refresh the sympathies
of the government most friendly to us.
I had a conversation yesterday with the ambassador of France,
the Duke de Montebello, in which I expressed to him the same
views concerning the proposed intervention of his government.
He informed me that immediately after receiving the dispatch
of M. Drouyn de l’Huys he had called upon me, in order to
communicate its contents to me, but had not found me at home.
I infer from his expressions, both on this and other occasions,
that his personal sympathies are in favor of the preservation of
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 399
the Union. The only defense of the proposition which he offered
was that it was very carefully worded, did not betray a hostile
spirit, and that an armistice need not necessarily include the
raising of the blockade.
The British ambassador, Lord Napier, has been especially kind
and cordial in his personal intercourse, but seems disposed to
avoid any discussion of our national struggle, or the European
proposition concerning it. -
There are in Russia about 237,000 stand of arms, which have
been condemned, and offered for sale by the government. Eight
or ten thousand of them have percussion locks and bayonets; but
the remainder are flint-lock muskets and carbines of an obsolete
pattern, and may be had for seventy-five copeks (about fifty-
eight cents) apiece. A few days ago I discovered that an Amer-
ican here, well known for his treasonable sentiments, had been
examining the specimens offered, with the expressed intention of
making a large purchase. In the absence of any fund for de-
tective service, I have been voluntarily assisted by two loyal
American residents, who have been so successful in following up
the transaction that no further steps can be taken without their
knowledge. The arms are so worthless, however, that I do not
anticipate their purchase.
The imperial court is at present at Moscow, where it will re-
main for the next three weeks. The internal condition of the
empire is generally quiet and satisfactory. Since the promulga-
tion of the plan of judicial reform, the increase in public confi-
dence has been very remarkable. Count Panin, who opposed its
adoption, has been dismissed from the ministry.
I have the honor to be, with the highest respect, your obedient
Servant, BAYARD TAYLOR,
wa Chargé d'Affaires.
Mr. Seward’s reply is as follows: —
TO BAYARD TAYLOR.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
- WASHINGTON, December 23, 1862.
SIR,-Your dispatch of November 28th has been submitted
to the President. A perusal of it produces the same impression
which follows the reading of the dispatches of all our represen-
400 - B.A. YARD TA YLOR.
tatives in Europe, namely, that the government of the United
States is regarded by foreign governments as weak and in crit-
ical circumstances. The existence of such an opinion in Europe
is natural. Our utterances, which are controversial, because we
are really free and confident of the national safety, however we
may seem to despond, too often present the government in this
light. This is the result of a commendable impatience for
greater activity, with the promise of greater and speedier re-
sults. The insurgent emissaries in Europe inculcate the same
opinion, and their prejudiced or interested European sympa-
thizers have the public ear in Europe, as insurgent exiles always
do. Nothing, however, could be more injurious to the country
than a seeming admission of the justice of the opinion in ques-
tion by this government. This sentiment was among those
which induced my instructions to yourself, Mr. Dayton, and
Mr. Adams, to ask no explanations, and make no comments on
any explanations which should be offered by any of the three
powers which lately engaged in a correspondence with each other
concerning American affairs. The note which you have ad-
dressed to Prince Gortchakoff, exhibiting our resources and ad-
vantages, was written before you received this instruction ; and
it is believed that, from your known ability, you have made the
argument presented a strong one, and therefore the President,
so far from censuring you for the performance, is rather grat-
ified with it. But it will be well for you, nevertheless, to explain
to Prince Gortchakoff that this government would not have in-
structed you to write the paper, and that for the special reason
before mentioned it would not have approved of it had the gov-
ernment been advised of the preparation of the document. At
no previous time since this civil war began has this government
been better assured of its ultimate success in the present contest,
or had more gratifying proofs of the strength of the very ex-
traordinary political system which was bequeathed to us by our
fathers; and the President is no more likely to accept overtures
of foreign mediation in our affairs than the government of the
United States is likely to offer its mediation in similar affairs to
any other nation. -
To-day members of Congress arrive here who have been duly
elected in Louisiana; and this is a palpable demonstration that
the crisis of disunion has passed, and the process of restoration
has begun. . . .
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 401
In regard to Russia, the case is a plain one. She has our
friendship, in every case, in preference to any other European
power, simply because she always wishes us well, and leaves us
to conduct our affairs as we think best.
I do not misunderstand the seductions which partisan divisions
existing here, not in reality disloyal, offer to foreign powers.
Such seductions are always offered in every civil war. I can,
however, hardly remember a case in history in which any foreign
state listened to such persuasions with any advantage accruing
to itself or to the state in whose behalf its sympathy was moved.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
WILLIAM. H. SEWARD.
TO HON. W. H. SEWARD, SECRETARY OF STATE.
LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATEs,
ST. PETERSBURG, January 21, 1863.
SIR,-Your dispatch No. 10, of December 23d, was received
on the 17th instant. The first portion of it, which relates to the
impression conveyed by my dispatch No. 21, of November 28,
1862, has, I trust, been already answered by my subsequent dis-
patches. I consider that a part of my official duty is to acquaint
you, without reserve or modification, with the state of public
opinion at this capital concerning the events of our national
struggle. These statements, however, are entirely of an objec-
tive character, and I have unfortunately chosen my words if they
suggest the inference that I have in any manner shared the
doubts and anxieties which I have described as being prevalent
here.
On the contrary, I have invariably expressed my confidence in
the strength of the Federal power and the successful issue of the
struggle, not from a sense of official propriety, but from my own
unshaken, individual faith. I believe, however, that you will not
have misunderstood me in this respect.
I have just returned from an interview with Prince Gortcha-
koff, which I had requested immediately upon receiving your
dispatch. . . . “Tell Mr. Seward,” said he, “that the policy of
Russia in regard to the United States is fixed, and will not be
changed by the course adopted by any other nation. We greatly
desire, as you know, the termination of your unfortunate struggle,
but we shall not offer our friendly mediation until it is certain of
being accepted on both sides, – by the Federal government and
VOL. I. 20
402 B.A. YA RD TA YLOR,
the Southern States. We earnestly hope for the maintenance
of the Union, but at the same time we have no hostility to the
Southern people ; and for the sake of both sides we shall gladly
proffer our services when they are mutually requested, but not
until them.” This reply, I trust, will prove as explicit and satis-
factory as you could have desired ; but it is probably no more
than the course of Russia hitherto has led you to anticipate.
I also gave the Prince the explanation you required, concern-
ing the statement of the strength and resources of the United
States, which I sent to him, unofficially, in November. In com-
pliance with your request, I informed him that you would not
have instructed me to take this step, and therefore would not
have given your sanction, had you been informed of it in advance.
He answered that he regarded the paper at the time he received
it entirely as a confidential communication ; that he had read it
with great interest, and was very glad that I had prepared it, as
it contained important facts which had not previously come to
his knowledge. He further said that he regarded the relations
between the two countries as possessing, necessarily, something
of an intimate and confidential character, and my act was there-
fore especially that of a friend.
The best justification which I can offer for an unauthorized
step of the kind is the good effect which it evidently produced.
I did not venture upon it without careful deliberation, nor can I
now perceive, looking back to that period, that it was ill-judged.
For the previous two months our military operations only had
been watched by European observers; and in November the im-
pression was very general here, even among our friends, that the
national cause was about to fail. I do not suppose that, except
myself, a single diplomatic representative at this court had faith
in our success: our real sources of strength were overlooked ;
and the imperial government, hearing nothing but unfavorable
opinions from all quarters, showed signs of impatience and de-
spondency. It seemed to me that Russia had deserved, by her
steady friendship towards us, that her confidence in our national
power and stability should be supported. Such support I knew
would, under the circumstances, be acceptable to her, no less
than advantageous to us. The paper I prepared was a simple
exhibition of our actual strength and resources ; it contained no
argument; it was sent to Prince Gortchakoff unofficially ; and,
as I have to-day learned from his excellency, the act was under-
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 403
stood precisely as I had desired. Before receiving your last dis-
patch I had considered that I was incidentally justified by the
closing words of your dispatch No. 9, of December 7th, stating
that the President's message and the accompanying reports would
be very useful in enabling me “to show to Prince Gortchakoff
the grounds of the public confidence in the stability of the Union.”
I had already endeavored to do the same thing by anticipating
some of the statements contained in these documents. . . .
I have the honor to be, with the highest respect, your obedient
Servant, BAYARD TAYLOR,
Chargé d'Affaires.
The diplomatic correspondence attests the closeness
with which Bayard Taylor applied himself to the du-
ties of his office, and the assiduity with which he fol-
lowed every clew which seemed likely to lead to im-
portant results. He did his work with something
more than conscientious fidelity; he was inspired by
patriotic zeal. Nevertheless, it was with delight that
he seized upon every free hour for his novel, for the
articles which he was able to send home, and for the
poems which came to him. “The Poet's Journal” ap-
peared at this season, and his American correspond-
ents kept him informed of its fortunes. The poem
from its structure was so far a reflection of his personal
history that the public, which does not trouble itself
with fine distinctions, insisted upon accepting it as a
literal transcript of his experience. No artist who al-
lows himself to use the results of his own moods and
thoughts, careless of the likeness or unlikeness to ex-
ternal circumstances, can help feeling a sense of an-
noyance when his work is treated as a thinly disguised
revelation of his personal history, and Bayard Taylor
had the mortification of seeing his poem set forth by
the publishers in such a way as to give a quasi-confir-
mation to the popular conception of its intention.
/
404 BA YARD TA YLOR.
TO JAMES T. FIFLDS.
UNITED STATES LEGATION,
ST. PETERSBURG, December 16, 1862.
. . . The days are now at their darkest, — five hours of sun-
shine, – but the season, thus far, has been rather mild. With
my pelisse of raccoon and my cap of skunk-skin, I take my daily
walk beside the frozen Neva. Sables are so expensive as to be
vulgar, and skunk (if you only knew it) is infinitely handsomer.
I see that my “Journal” is published. But why, oh why, did
you issue such an advertisement 2 It implicates me, indirectly,
as being
“Of the race
Who hawk their sorrows in the market-place,”
gives a false idea of the book, and will be no advantage to its re-
ception by the public. I see the newspapers are beginning to
speak of the book as my “Life-Story,” which is dreadful. The
“Journal” is not entirely the record of my own experience,
though that certainly forms its basis. Ernest is only half myself,
and Edith is only one fourth my wife. The story is a mixture of
truth and poetry, and was never intended to be put forth as a
personal record. The advertisement will be accepted everywhere
as having my sanction, the thought of which gives me a cold
shudder. If you had said nothing of the kind, you would have
left an air of mystery about the book, which would have been far
more attractive (for business purposes) than an explanation so
naked as to be almost shameless. But the mischief is done, and
for all the rest of my life I shall be annoyed with impertinent
questions about an experience which the public might have sar-
mised, but would have had no right to assume, if it had not been
stated in this way. I never thought to warn you against any-
thing of the kind, because you have always been so discreet and
considerate heretofore.
Please send me a dozen copies of the book, to Trübner, from
whom I can get them through the English bookseller here. I
should also like to have copies sent in my name to Thackeray,
Tennyson, Kingsley, Arnold, Browning, Proctor, Freiligrath,
Tom Taylor, and Hughes; also, to Adolf Strodtmann (care of
Hoffman & Campe, Hamburg), a German poet, who translates
American authors better than any other living man. Let me
also know how the book is received at home. I shall be glad if
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 405
you can forward me any notice of it which is really intelligent
and discriminating. The usual wishy-washy notices I don't care
to see.
My novel is nearly finished. My wife thinks it fine, but she's
not impartial. It is at least entertaining, which is the first requi-
site, and also quite original in its subject. It ought to be a suc-
cess, but there's no telling in advance. We send greetings to
all friends.
TO R. H. STODDARD.
UNITED STATES LEGATION,
ST. PETERSBURG, December 23, 1862.
Many thanks for your letter, which came yesterday. I am too
glad at hearing from you to scold you for what you have not told
me — though I might reasonably complain of your not sending
me your “column” from the “World.” Pray send me any sen-
sible and discriminating criticisms. Of course, I don’t care about
Seeing the usual wishy-washy stuff of which “book notices” are
made. You are quite right about the advertisement of the book.
I am very much vexed and mortified, and have written so to
Fields. My object was simply to represent in poetry the moods
of such an experience as mine, not the experience itself. Your
criticism, nevertheless, is correct, and I wish you had made it
when you read the MSS. The poems, as a whole, lack distinct
form, and I could easily have corrected this fault. I could very
much improve them now. I think I am a better poet now than
ever before ; at least, I see my own deficiencies more clearly. I
have lost, may be, a little lyric swing, but I had an overplus of
it at the start. Why do you give your opinion so — hesitatingly,
I was about to write, but not quite that — with a half-apology
for it 2 I detect, in fact, Dick, or rather feel, in reading your let-
ter, a lack of your usual downright utterance to me, almost im-
plying a fear that I shall not understand you properly. When-
ever I write trash I want one man to tell me of it, and that man
is yourself. You and I, I think, will always understand each
other completely. . . . I have made a number of lofty titled ac-
quaintances, but, between ourselves, I wouldn’t give you for
five crowned heads, nor L. for twenty-five princesses in moire
antique, with pearls as big as walnuts. These people are fear-
fully and wonderfully dressed, speak French nothings with great
elegance, but a square mile of them couldn't get up such an
evening as we two and you two, with Stedman, Tom, Graham,
406 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Booth, George, and the rest. The fact is, I have been used to
the best society in the world at home, and this is coming down
a little. I study hard at Russian, which is a tough but most
attractive language. I like it hugely. “Hannah Thurston’’ is
nearly at the end of her rope. I shall be sorry when I get her
off my hands, for she is pleasant company for me. . . .
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
UNITED STATES LEGATION,
ST. PETERSBURG, January 24, 1863.
. . . Your account of the sale of my poems and the reception
they met with is very pleasant to receive, though nothing can
quite console me for the manner of the announcement. The first
effect of it reached me in the New York “Times,” so thoroughly
mean and nasty that I tore up the paper lest my wife should
see it. If I had chosen to represent my own history, out and
out, with real name, I should have boldly done so. Petrarca,
Dante, Byron, and Longfellow (in “Hyperion”) have described
theirs, and no one finds anything wrong in it. But I have not
chosen to represent more than certain moods or phases of pas-
sion out of what is not an unusual experience, and therefore do
not wish the poems to be read with the impression now given
to them. However, I shall write nothing more of the kind, in all
probability. My present plans, at least, include something very
different as my next poetic venture. I hope you will have given
heed to my request, and have sent me any really critical notices, if
such have appeared. I have not written any rhyme since “The
Test,” but have two poems in process of mental incubation.
For the last month I have devoted myself to sickness, balls,
and diplomacy. First, I had a week’s attack, then my wife, and
now our little girl is just turning the crisis of a violent fever.
The winter is disgustingly warm, and correspondingly unhealthy.
Our skating melts as fast as it freezes, the ice-hills loosen and
slip down in avalanches, and the splendid winter teams of the
noblesse bump along the streets, more in mud than in snow. We
have had some grand balls at the court and elsewhere, but one
soon gets enough of this brilliant artificial life. My wife has been
presented to the Empress (the Emperor presented himself with-
out ceremony), and we are now invited to all the solemnities
going. My diplomacy, owing to circumstances, has both been
very important to the country and very successful (“though I say
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 407
it that should n’t’), and I shall therefore take my probable fail-
ure of the appointment very philosophically. The fact is, I
scarcely expect it, knowing so well the usual practice of our re-
publican government to consider only party services, without re-
gard to fitness or propriety. But I shall soon have completed six
months’ service as independent representative, and can then re-
turn home, if need be, without pecuniary loss, and with a good
deal of valuable experience. I am satisfied, at least, that I was
right in coming here, however my further plans may fail.
In Russian I begin to read with tolerable facility, even poetry.
It is a tough language, though, I assure you. But in society
here one rarely hears anything except French. The tone of the
higher Russian society is quite free and agreeable, with a certain
democratic air. I saw the Emperor the other night, at a private
ball given by Count Apraxin, sit down and play a game of cards
like any other mortal, and the dancing and conversation went
on as if he were not present. You wouldn’t see such a thing in
London or Paris.
I get the “Atlantic * regularly from Trübner, and find it a
great consolation. I must say, however, that I am glad to reach
the end of “Mr. Axtell.” Holmes’s “Hunt” is admirably writ-
ten. I congratulate you on keeping up the magazine so suc-
cessfully, and am glad to hear of your good publishing business.
Remember me to all the good fellows (and there are many of
them) in Boston.
UNITED STATES LEGATION,
St. PETERsBURG, February 18, 1863.
Your kind little note, with the photos—excellent ones—reached
me safely. I am very glad to find that you had no hand in the
unfortunate announcement : it was incredible to me that it could
be so. I have never been more astonished than when I saw it.
We will let the matter drop; as one of those unpleasant features
of life which must be forgotten, as far as possible. . . .
Just now I am completely used up with splendid festivities.
The marriage of the young Duchess of Leuchtenberg with Prince
Wilhelm of Baden has given rise to a succession of court balls,
which last nearly all night, which I must attend (for official
reasons), and can’t slip away from before the end, because such
delinquency would be noticed and reported. I am heartily
fatigued in body and mind, and look forward to my approaching
departure with complacency.
408 BAYARD TAYLOR.
I shall certainly not get the appointment. If I had succeeded
in bringing ridicule on the legation, if my dispatches were writ-
ten in shocking English and without the least evidence of pru-
dence or judgment, I might have some chance. But as every
dispatch from home expresses complete satisfaction with my pro-
ceedings, I am sure that I shall fail. Every evidence of fitness
tells against me. I am not square enough to be put into this
round hole. I am serious. . . .
I shall leave here about the 1st of April, on a flying trip to the
Caspian and the Caucasus, first sending my family to Germany.
Shall reach home in July or August, entirely satisfied that I
came here, but not sorry to get back again.
I have been treated this winter with the most grateful kind-
ness and courtesy by all members of the imperial family. They
know something about my books, it seems; the Empress, in par-
ticular, has questioned me a great deal about my travels. She
is one of the most charming women in Europe. Lent begins
next Monday, and then I shall get a little rest from these social
labors; for labors in some respects they are.
In the early spring Bayard Taylor had the good
fortune to intercept dispatches from Mr. Benjamin,
Jefferson Davis's Secretary of State, to Mr. Lamar,
who had been appointed agent of the Confederacy at
St. Petersburg. The dispatches contained instructions
not to permit the introduction of a clause prohibiting
the African slave-trade in any treaty of amity and
commerce which the Confederate States might make,
after Russia should have recognized their independ-
ence, on the ground that the treaty-making power of
the States was not authorized to deal with the subject.
It was classed among those powers which the Confeder-
ate States, “without delegating them to the general
government, have thought proper to exercise by direct
agreement among themselves.” In transmitting these
dispatches to Mr. Seward, Bayard Taylor caustically
remarks, “It is a curious illustration of the combat
of the powers of light and darkness for the possession
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 409
of the world that, on this 3d day of March, 1863, the
day of jubilee, on which twenty millions of serfs be-
come free forever, I forward to you an insidious doc-
ument in the interest of human slavery. ”
He sent copies of the dispatches to Mr. Dayton, the
United States Minister at Paris, and to Mr. Adams,
at London. Mr. Dayton, in his acknowledgment,
says, “As its use was intended solely for the season
subsequent to the acknowledgment by foreign powers
of the Confederacy, it may be questioned whether Mr.
Benjamin has lately read the story of the milkmaid,
her eggs and her chickens !” Mr. Adams, after ex-
posing the sophistry of the dispatch, says shrewdly,
“The truth is that the President’s proclamation [of
January 1, 1863] has laid a stumbling-block in the
way of all these intriguers in Europe, which they do
not yet manage to evade. In this country it has de-
veloped an amount of popular sympathy which for
the moment checkmates the energies of all the upper
classes. In all Europe the issue is plain between
vested rights and popular liberty. The bald pretense
that these people are struggling with oppression is re-
futed by the proof given that on the contrary they are
fighting only to establish it. In opposition to all this,
what is the effect of such a document as the present
but to show the way in which the conspirators cower
under the apprehension of a possible application to
their case of the opinion of the civilized world? Wer-
ily such is the doom of the unrighteous ! Jefferson
was right in saying that he trembled for his country-
men when he reflected that God is just.”
It was not long after this incident that Bayard Tay-
lor learned of the appointment as Minister to Russia
of Hon. Cassius M. Clay, who had regretted his resig-
410 BA YARD TA YLOR.
nation when Mr. Cameron came to take his place, and
had sought a reappointment upon Mr. Cameron's re-
turn to America. Bayard Taylor resigned his posi-
tion at once as secretary of legation, remaining only
long enough in St. Petersburg, after Mr. Clay re-
turned, to pass over the papers of the office and make
necessary explanations.
TO R. H. STODDARD.
. ST. PETERSBURG, March 15, 1863.
. . . I have not much news to give since I wrote to L. There
is a slight let-up in the social tread-mill, and I have made use
of it to work at my novel. I am at the thirty-first chapter,
and there will be only five more. It will be finished in a fort-
night, greatly to my regret, for the writing of it has been a pos-
itive pleasure to me. I have written only one poem recently,
“The Neva.” We are both now rather glad that I shall not be
appointed minister ; we could hardly endure two more years of
exile. If my novel succeeds, I have two more planned out in
my brain, and that will give me occupation at home. All I want
is to get above the necessity of lecturing. The “Tribune” is
now making money, and my lost revenue from that source will
soon be restored, I hope. I have learned a great deal here this
winter, and the knowledge is satisfactory in every way. Not the
least refreshing result is the new delight in our old life with
you, after the contrast of this splendid but hollow existence. I
always wanted to know this sort of thing as a part of my cos-
mical experience. I have it now as thoroughly as if I had lived
here twenty years. -
I suppose Clay will be here in five or six weeks, and then I
shall at once go “where the sands of the Caspian are sparkling ”
with a tooral looral, etc. (see Tom Moore). “My friend,” the
Grand Duke Michael, is now commander of the Caucasus, and
I expect he will entertain me properly when I visit him. But
I will write to you again as my fate develops further. . . .
TO HIS MOTHER.
St. PETERSBURG, April 11, 1863.
. . . We are delighted at the prospect of getting home again,
and shall come back thoroughly rested and refreshed. If I could
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 411
only manage to live without being obliged to lecture, I should be
perfectly satisfied. Perhaps my novel may prove a success, and
then I shall be able to do it. I did not know how much my
mind had been exhausted until this relief showed it to me.
ST. PETERSBURG, May 11, 1863.
I believe I have not written to you since the arrival of the new
minister. I will do so now, as I shall probably leave here in a
week, at farthest, and will be hurried during the last days of my
stay. Clay came on the 29th of April, but was not received by
the Emperor until the 7th instant, until which time I remained
chargé. Since then, I have been posting him in the business of
the legation and putting the papers in complete order, so that he
can do without a secretary until somebody is appointed for him.
I wrote to the President in the most positive terms that I would
stay under no conditions, and a letter from Cameron, dated April
20th, says that he told Lincoln the same thing. Cameron says he
is just about to visit Cedarcroft, and I presume he will have
been there long before this reaches you. In that case he has
probably hinted that the government (President and Secretary
of State) feel that I have been treated rather shabbily in the
matter of this mission, and propose a special piece of work for
me. What it is I am not now permitted to say, because I shall
not decide whether to accept it or not until I get further details
from Washington. I will only say this, – that it will postpone my
return about six months. It is something special and temporary,
involving the highest confidence and trust, and altogether more
distinguished and important than the Russian mission. You are
to keep the matter a profound secret, not even telling thus much
to any one outside of our immediate household. In case I accept
I shall be sorry riot to get home so soon, — though the delay will
be slight in proportion to the great advantage gained, - more
sorry for your sakes than for ours, because I know you must
miss us, having less variety and entertainment to fill out the time
than we have. But I must ask you to have a little patience, for
the sake of the great advantage. My one ambition is to be able
to live without lecturing, so as to be more at home and devote my
time to authorship ; this business will enable me to do that.
The special mission thus referred to was to the
Persian court. The amity between the Russian and
412 - B.A. YA RD TA YLOR.
United States governments had been strengthened by
the ordeal of the war for the Union, since Russia
alone of the great powers had unequivocally shown
herself a friend of the Union. It was conceived that
this friendship could be sealed more completely if the
United States were to enter into diplomatic relations
with Persia, since it was clear to statesmen that the
movements of Russia in the future would be on that
frontier, and any moral support which the United
States, as an English-speaking people, might thus
grant to Russia would be of peculiar value. All this
appears to have been only vaguely outlined. Explicit
instructions were to follow, and for these Bayard Tay-
lor impatiently waited, first at St. Petersburg, and
then at Gotha. -
TO HIS MOTHER.
GoTIIA, June 22, 1863.
. I am looking every day for the dispatches promised to me
from Washington. My presentiment is that the new offer will
be, on the whole, hardly worth my acceptance, and that we shall
return home this summer. The work proposed for me to do is
very agreeable, but I fear the remuneration will not be what it
should be. I shall only take it in case it pays well, and can be
accomplished in six months. . . . M. and I have an intense long-
ing to be back in Cedarcroft. . . . M. has translated “Hannah
Thurston,” except the last three chapters. There are thirty-six
in all. You only heard seven before I left home. A publisher
in Hamburg has already offered to bring out the translation, and
will pay two hundred thalers for it. Putnam is very anxious
to get the original. I have also a letter from about the
“Tribune,” which is doing remarkably well, in spite of the high
price of paper.
While waiting for definite news from Washington,
Bayard Taylor made excursions to the Bohemian For-
est, and with his wife to Coburg, where they were the
guests of their Highnesses the Duke and Duchess, and
THE RUSSIAN MISSION. 413
to Switzerland and the Italian lakes. On their return
finally to Gotha, July 23d, they found letters from
home announcing the death of Bayard Taylor's young-
est brother, Frederick, who fell at Gettysburg. This
decided them to return at once to America.
TO HIS MOTHER.
GOTIIA, July 24, 1863.
I hoped this blow might have been spared for your sake. I
will bear my share of it, though to me it is very, very hard. No-
body knows how dear Fred was to me : through him I knew
what a brother's love meant. I had brighter hopes for him than
for myself ; he was better and nobler than I. A purer, braver,
and more beautiful soul never visited the earth. Let us at least
be thankful, even in our sorrow, that we possessed him, - that
the glory of his life and death has become a treasure that cannot
be taken away from us. If we must lose him, we could not lose
him at a better time, or in a more glorious way. Thank God
that his precious blood was not shed in vain, but helped to buy
the victory which saved our country ! Thank God that he fell in
the front rank, and that his passing away was painless and sub-
lime ! We must think of these things: they are a sad consola-
tion in our bitter loss. No stain rests on his memory. He
stands in the ranks of the perfect heroes.
I anticipated the news. I awoke on the morning of the 4th
with a terrible weight in my heart, — a weight which I carried
with me and could not shake off. When I saw the outside of the
letter yesterday, I knew what it contained. The blow was not
less severe because it was softened by anticipation. I had tried
to overcome my fear, to create an artificial hope, but in vain.
Something told me a great sorrow had fallen upon us. Try and
bear it until we come to you ; for we are coming. I have no
heart to serve an administration which has so prolonged the war
by its miserable incompetency. You need us now more than the
country. We shall be back in six weeks from this time. I have
to-day written to Liverpool to take passage, and to St. Petersburg
to have my boxes sent on.
I will write to A. to-morrow. I cannot write more now. I can
no longer see through my tears. My poor mother and father
I would gladly bear a greater pain, if I could make yours less.
God bless and keep you !
414 BA YARD TA YLOR.
Bayard Taylor and his family reached America
September 8th, and went immediately to Cedarcroft.
Later, he sought an explanation of the Secretary of
State for the singular manner in which he had been
treated. No satisfactory explanation was ever given.
Some faint murmur of “no funds” was allowed to
take the place of an explanation, and when he went to
see Mr. Lincoln the latter was astonished to find he
was not in Persia. Mr. Lincoln had left everything
to Mr. Seward, and had taken it for granted that in-
structions and funds had been sent months before.
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