Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor Part 18

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI

"POEMS OF THE ORIENT"

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

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

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

In the speed of my desire.

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

Or what more grand and affectionate than this from "Ha.s.san to his Mare":

Come, my beauty! come, my desert darling!

On my shoulder lay thy glossy head!

Fear not, though the barley-sack be empty, Here's the half of Ha.s.san's scanty bread.

Thou shalt have thy share of dates, my beauty!

And thou know'st my water-skin is free; Drink and welcome, for the wells are distant, And my strength and safety lie in thee.

Bend thy forehead now, to take my kisses!

Lift in love thy dark and splendid eye: Thou art glad when Ha.s.san mounts the saddle,-- Thou art proud he owns thee: so am I.

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

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

We have seen Damascus, O my beauty!

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

Another stirring poem of the East is "Tyre."

The wild and windy morning is lit with lurid fire; The thundering surf of ocean beats on the rocks of Tyre,-- Beats on the fallen columns and round the headlands roars, And hurls its foamy volume along the hollow sh.o.r.es, And calls with hungry clamor, that speaks its long desire: "Where are the s.h.i.+ps of Tars.h.i.+sh, the mighty s.h.i.+ps of Tyre?"

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XII

BAYARD TAYLOR'S FRIENDs.h.i.+PS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reader will remember Taylor's joy when a boy at receiving the autograph of d.i.c.kens. The time was coming when he should be on terms almost of intimacy with all the leading poets and writers of London.

"I spent two days with Tennyson in June," he writes to a literary friend in 1857, "and you take my word for it, he is a n.o.ble fellow, every inch of him. He is as tall as I am, with a head which Read capitally calls that of a dilapidated Jove, long black hair, splendid dark eyes, and a full mustache and beard. The portraits don't look a bit like him; they are handsomer, perhaps, but haven't half the splendid character of his face. We smoked many a pipe together, and talked of poetry, religion, politics, and geology.... Our intercourse was most cordial and unrestrained, and he asked me, at parting, to be sure and visit him every time I came to England."

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

But an account of his friends.h.i.+ps would not be complete without a reference to Mr. Bufleb, whom he met on his journey up the Nile.

Taylor writes to his mother from Nubia: "I want to speak of the friend from whom I have just parted, because I am very much moved by his kindness, and the knowledge may be grateful to you. His friends.h.i.+p for me is something wonderful, and it seems like a special Providence that in Egypt, where I antic.i.p.ated the want of all near sympathy and kindness, I should find it in such abundant measure. He is a man of totally different experience from myself: accustomed all his life to wealth, to luxury, and to the exercise of authority. He was even prejudiced against America and the Americans, and he confessed to me that he was by nature stubborn and selfish. Yet few persons have ever placed such unbounded confidence in me, or treated me with such devotion and generosity.... For two days before our parting he could scarcely eat or sleep, and when the time drew near he was so pale and agitated that I almost feared to leave him. I have rarely been so moved as when I saw a strong, proud man exhibit such an attachment for me.... I told him all my history, and showed him the portrait I have with me [that of Mary Agnew]. He went out of the cabin after looking at it, and when he returned I saw that he had been weeping."

Surely, there must have been something peculiarly n.o.ble and sweet in Bayard Taylor's nature to have drawn to him so powerfully a man of another nation and another race. The friends.h.i.+p was lasting, and Taylor spent many happy weeks at Mr. Bufleb's home in Gotha, Germany.

The latter even bought a little house and garden adjoining his own estate, which was for the special use of his friend, and he closes the letter which describes it by saying: "You see how I have written to you, my dear Taylor. In spite of our long separation and remoteness from each other, your heart I know could never tell you of any change in my feelings and thoughts. On the contrary, this _rapport_ which we enjoy has for me a profound meaning; whilst you were dedicating your glorious work on Central Africa to me, I was setting in order for you the most cherished part of my possessions."

CHAPTER XIII

LAST YEARS

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