Chapter I: His Life

Bayard Taylor in 1841, when he was sixteen, contributed to the Philadelphia ‘Saturday Evening Post’ the verses entitled ‘Soliloquy of a Young Poet.’ In 1878, the year of his death, he was still planning new literary enterprises, and in so far as declining health permitted, carrying them out. If unwearied devotion through nearly forty years to the literary life, great fecundity in production, much taste, no little scholarship, and unquestioned sincerity in the exercise of his art entitle one to be called by the honorable name of man of letters, who is more deserving than the author of _The Masque of the Gods_? To be sure, only a few of his many books are read. But Taylor is in no worse case than many men who tower giant-fashion above him. They likewise have written forty volumes and are known and measured by two or three.

Taylor was partly of German, partly of English Quaker stock, and could boast an ancestor (Robert Taylor) who had come to America with William Penn. The fourth of the ten children of Joseph and Rebecca (Way) Taylor, he was born at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, on January 11, 1825. His education was got at the neighboring academies of Westchester and Unionville. He was a rhymester at the age of seven, and had become an industrious writer by the time he was twelve.

Having no inclination towards school-teaching and still less towards his father’s vocation, farming, Taylor was apprenticed to a printer. He was presently seized with a passion for travel, and in 1844, with one hundred and forty dollars in his pocket, payment in advance for certain letters he was to write for Philadelphia journals, he set out on a pedestrian tour of Europe. He had a few remittances from home. Greeley promised to print some of his letters provided they were ‘not descriptive’ and that before writing them the young traveller made sure that he had been in Europe ‘long enough to know something.’ Seventeen of Taylor’s letters appeared in the ‘Tribune.’

By rigid economy Taylor managed to get on. But one must have youth to endure the hardships of such a journey. Especially must one have youth if he proposes, as Taylor did, to walk from Marseilles to Paris in the cold winter rains. The history of these two years of wandering is recounted in _Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff_ (1846).

Taylor returned to America and took up journalism. Failing in an attempt to make of the ‘Phœnixville Pioneer’ a paper according to his ideal, he went to New York (December, 1847). After various experiences he secured a place on the ‘Tribune,’ was rapidly advanced, and became in time a stockholder. He was sent to California to report on the gold discoveries. This journey furnished him with the matter for his second book of travel, _El Dorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire_ (1850).

His whole subsequent career is but a variation on the themes of 1846 and 1850. He went everywhere,--to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor (1851–52); to Spain and India, then on to China, where he joined Perry’s expedition to Japan (1853). He was in Germany, Norway, and Lapland in 1856, in Greece in 1857–58, in Russia in 1862–63 (where for a while he held the post of secretary of legation), in Switzerland, the Pyrenees, and Corsica in 1868, and in Egypt and Iceland in the same year (1874).

All his adventures were transmuted into books: _A Journey to Central Africa_, 1854; _The Lands of the Saracen_, 1854; _A Visit to India, China, and Japan in the Year 1853_, 1855; _Northern Travel_, 1857; _Travels in Greece and Russia_, 1859; _At Home and Abroad_, 1859; _At Home and Abroad_, ‘second series,’ 1862; _Colorado_, 1867; _By-Ways of Europe_, 1869; _Egypt and Iceland_, 1874.

A part of the great success of these books was due to causes far from literature. Doubtless, if written to-day, the volumes would be read, but it were idle to suppose that they could have the vogue they enjoyed in the Fifties. The American public of a half-century ago was not nomadic. It had few ways of gratifying its thirst for knowledge of foreign lands. Photographs were so expensive that one seldom ran the risk of being obliged to sit down with a friend ‘just back from Europe’ to admire such novelties as the Leaning Tower and the Bridge of Sighs. The oxyhydrogen stereopticon was imperfect, the panorama clumsy and ill-painted. Therefore the writings of a man who had the knack of telling agreeably what he had seen were most welcome. The home-keeping public enjoyed also hearing the traveller talk. When Taylor lectured (for he became one of the most popular lecturers of the day) they crowded the hall and thought two hours of him not long enough.

Timeliness, however, does not explain all the success of _Views Afoot_ and its companion volumes. Taylor was an excellent writer even when he wrote most hastily. If his word-pictures were often highly colored, they possessed, among other virtues, the great virtue of having been painted on the spot. Through their aid one could really see what Taylor had himself seen.

But Taylor was a poet before he was a traveller. In 1844 he published (under the patronage of R. W. Griswold, his first literary adviser) a little volume entitled _Ximena, or, The Battle of the Sierra Morena, and Other Poems_. It was followed by _Rhymes of Travel_ (1848) and _The American Legend_, the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard (1850). To these must be added _A Book of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs_, 1851; _Poems and Ballads_, 1854; _Poems of the Orient_, 1854; _Poems of Home and Travel_, 1855; _The Poet’s Journal_, 1862; _The Picture of St. John_, 1866; _The Masque of the Gods_, 1872; _Lars_, 1873; _The Prophet_, 1874; _Home Pastorals, Ballads, and Lyrics_, 1875; _The National Ode_ (read by the author at the opening of the ‘Centennial’), 1876; and _Prince Deukalion_, 1878. The great translation of Goethe’s _Faust_, with the commentary, appeared in 1870–71.

Not content with his commercial success as a writer of travels, and his artistic triumphs in poetry, Taylor tried fiction. The first of his four novels, _Hannah Thurston_ (1863), is in part a satire and shows in their most disagreeable light the people who abhor meat and swear by vegetables, the people who profess to hold communication with spirits, the people who think other people ought not to buy and sell human flesh, and so forth.

_John Godfrey’s Fortunes_ (1864) embodies not a few of Taylor’s journalistic experiences in New York. Here are glimpses of literary society such as the soirées at the home of Estelle Ann Lewis, the Mademoiselle de Scudéry of that time and place. _The Story of Kennett_ (1866) is a Pennsylvanian study, a true and lively picture of a phase of civilization which the author perfectly understood. _Joseph and his Friend_ (1870) closed the series of efforts by which Taylor tried to earn money enough to free him from the thraldom of the lecture platform.

His other publications were _Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home_ (1872), _The Echo Club_ (1876), the posthumous _Studies in German Literature_ (1879), and _Essays and Studies_ (1880).

Of Taylor’s private life a few important facts remain to be recorded. The pathetic story of Mary Agnew, the beautiful girl whom he had loved since they were school-children together, and whom he married on her death-bed, is a romance which fortunately has been well told by both of Taylor’s biographers. In 1857 (seven years after Mary Agnew’s death) Taylor married Marie Hansen, daughter of Professor Hansen of Gotha, the astronomer. How devoted and helpful she was to him during his arduous life, and how loyal to his memory, are facts too well known to require emphasis.

The home at Kennett known as ‘Cedarcroft’ was built in 1859–60. Taylor lavished on it both money and affection; and while for a few years it gave him a deal of happiness, it proved in the end a burden he could ill afford to carry.

Robust and vigorous though he seemed in middle life, Taylor by unremitting activity had sapped his powers. He gave no evidence of declining literary ambition, but at fifty he was worn out by overwork. A notable recognition of his worth came to him in 1878, when President Hayes appointed him Minister to Germany. He was not to enjoy the honor for long. In May, 1878, he took up the duties of his office, and on the fifteenth of the following December he died while sitting in his armchair in his library.