Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor Part 16

It was double, and sealed neatly with a seal bearing the initials C.D.

In the inside was a sheet of satin notepaper, on which was written, 'Faithfully yours, Charles d.i.c.kens, City Hotel, Hartford, Feb. 10, 1842'; and below, 'with the compliments of Mr. d.i.c.kens.' I can long recollect the thrill of pleasure I experienced on seeing the autograph of one whose writings I so ardently admired, and to whom, in spirit, I felt myself attached; and it was not without a feeling of ambition that I looked upon it that as he, a humble clerk, had risen to be the guest of a mighty nation, so I, a humble pedagogue [he was then pupil teacher at the Academy], might by unremitted and arduous intellectual and moral exertion become a light, a star, among the names of my country. May it be!"

When he went to work at West Chester his reading was chiefly poetry and travel. The result of his "fireside travels" we shall soon see.

The way in which he read poetry may be gathered from the following extract from a letter to one of his comrades:

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

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

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

"I have met with strange things since I wrote last," writes Taylor to a school friend in March, 1843. "Last November I wrote to Mr.

Griswold, sending a poem to be inserted in the _Post_. However, I said that it was my highest ambition to appear in _Grahams Magazine_. Some time ago I got an answer. He said he had read my lines 'To the Brandywine,' which appeared in the _Post_, with much pleasure, and would have put them in the magazine if he had seen them in time. He said the poem I sent him would appear in April in the magazine, and requested me to contribute often and to call on him when I came to town. I never was more surprised in my life."

He went to Philadelphia the next autumn, and consulted Griswold regarding a poetic romance he had written--about a thousand lines in length--and Griswold advised him to publish it in a volume with other poems. He wrote to a friend to inquire how much the printing and binding would cost, and finding that the expense would not be very great, he concluded to ask his friends to subscribe for the volume.

When he had received enough subscriptions to pay the cost of publication, he brought the volume out. It was ent.i.tled "Ximena; or, The Battle of the Sierra Morena, and Other Poems. By James Bayard Taylor." (The James was added by mistake by Griswold.) It was dedicated "To Rufus W. Griswold, as an expression of grat.i.tude for the kind encouragement he has shown the author."

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

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

CHAPTER V

A TRAVELER AT NINETEEN

It was not as a poet, however, that Bayard Taylor was to win his first fame. At the age of nineteen, when he had but half completed his four years' term of apprentices.h.i.+p, he made up his mind to go to Europe. He had no money; but that did not appear to him an insurmountable obstacle. He thought he could work his way by writing letters for the newspapers. So he went up to Philadelphia and visited all the editors.

For three days he went about; but all in vain. The editors gave him little encouragement. He was on the point of going home, but with no thought of giving up his project.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'To Amboy.'

"'Take you there for a quarter!'

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

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

CHAPTER VI

TWO YEARS IN EUROPE FOR FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS

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

In New York he visited all the editors with an introduction from Nathaniel P. Willis; but none of them gave him any encouragement, except Horace Greeley, the famous editor of the _Tribune_. Here is Bayard Taylor's own description of the interview: "When I first called upon this gentleman, whose friends.h.i.+p it is now my pride to claim, he addressed me with that honest bluntness which is habitual to him: 'I am sick of descriptive letters, and will have no more of them. But I should like some sketches of German life and society, after you have been there and know something about it. If the letters are good, you shall be paid for them, but don't write until you know something.'

This I faithfully promised, and kept my promise so well that I am afraid the eighteen letters which I afterward sent from Germany, and which were published in the _Tribune_, were dull in proportion as they were wise."

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

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

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

The experiences of the next two years he has also told briefly and tersely. "After landing in Liverpool," he says, "I spent three weeks in a walk through Scotland and the north of England, and then traveled through Belgium, and up the Rhine to Heidelberg, where I arrived in September, 1844. The winter of 1844-45 I spent in Frankfurt on the Main [in the family in which N.P. Willis's brother Richard was boarding], and by May I was so good a German that I was often not suspected of being a foreigner. I started off again on foot, a knapsack on my back, and visited the Brocken, Leipsic, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich, returning to Frankfurt in July.

A further walk over the Alps and through Northern Italy took me to Florence, where I spent four months learning Italian. Thence I wandered, still on foot, to Rome and Civita Vecchia, where I bought a ticket as deck-pa.s.senger to Ma.r.s.eilles, and then tramped on to Paris through the cold winter rains. I arrived there in February, 1846, and returned to America after a stay of three months in Paris and London.

I had been abroad two years, and had supported myself entirely during the whole time by my literary correspondence. The remuneration which I received was in all $500, and only by continual economy and occasional self-denial was I able to carry out my plan. I saw almost nothing of intelligent European society; my wanderings led me among the common people. But literature and art were nevertheless open to me, and a new day had dawned in my life."

CHAPTER VII

THE HARDs.h.i.+P OF TRAMP TRAVEL

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

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

Not only did they have very little money in any case, but they were frequently obliged to wait months for remittances. While in Italy, Taylor's funds ran so low, and he became so discouraged, that he gave up going to Greece, as he had at first planned. He was expecting a draft for a hundred dollars; but that would barely pay his debts. "My clothes," he writes to one of his companions, "are as bad as yours were when you got to Heidelberg, nearly dropping from me; and I cannot get them mended. What is worse, they must last till I get to Paris."

Later he speaks of spending three dollars for a pair of trousers, as those he wore would not hold together any longer. In despair, he exclaims, "It is really a horrible condition. If there ever were any young men who made the tour of Europe under such difficulties and embarra.s.sments as we, I should like to see them."