  His Friends.—The Multitude of Mourners.—His London Acquaintances.—Tennyson, Cornwall, Browning, Carlyle.—German Popularity.—Auerbach.—Humboldt.—French Authors.—Early American Friends.—Stoddard, Willis, Kane, Bryant, Halleck, Powers, Greeley, Mrs. Kirkland, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson, Lowell, Dana, Alcott, Aldrich, Whipple, Curtis, Fields, Boker, Chandler.—Relatives. Seldom has the death of a single individual wounded the hearts of so many personal friends. Men have attained to greater renown, and have been, perhaps, as extensively known by their writings and their fame; but rare, indeed, can be found in history the name of one who had so many intimate companions. The number of those who claimed the right to be his friends is beyond computation, at this time,—within a few weeks after his death,—but it includes many of the most noted men of the world. Alfred Tennyson, the poet-laureate of England, was an acquaintance and correspondent of Mr. Taylor’s, their first meeting being at Mr. Tennyson’s house, Farringford, on the Isle of Wight. William Makepeace Thackeray was one of Mr. Taylor’s warmest literary friends, from the time when they met at a dinner of the Century Club, in New York, in Robert Browning often invited Mr. Taylor to join his select company in London, their acquaintance having begun in 1851; and Barry Cornwall (Bryan Waller Procter), treated Mr. Taylor with the greatest kindness and hospitality, writing frequently, until he died, in 1874, to inquire after Mr. Taylor’s progress in the translation of “Faust.” Thomas Carlyle and John Bright were numbered among his correspondents, although it so happened that he met them but seldom. Among the leaders of English literature whose friendship he enjoyed, there is a very large circle of literary and scientific men who knew Mr. Taylor through their frequent meetings on social and formal occasions, and who were well acquainted with Mr. Taylor’s books. From many of these there came the expressions of great grief, when the fact of Mr. Taylor’s death was announced in London. In Germany he was quite as well known as their native poets of his time, and he secured the respect and love of nearly every distinguished literary man and woman in that Empire. One of the sweetest friendships of his life was with that most fascinating descriptive writer, Berthold Auerbach, whose “Villa Mr. Taylor’s first acquaintance with Alexander von Humboldt, was in 1856, when Mr. Taylor called upon the great naturalist at his home in Berlin. The reading of Humboldt’s works had been of great benefit to Mr. Taylor, as a correspondent, and he so informed the Professor, at which he seemed much pleased. Humboldt took great pains to secure all of Mr. Taylor’s letters, as they appeared from time to time in the “Tribune,” and most warmly praised him for the remarkable manner in which he pictured the scenes he visited. The acquaintance was frequently renewed, and when Humboldt died, in 1859, Mr. Taylor is said to have been numbered among the mourning friends, by those in charge of the funeral, although he was in the United States at the time. For years the public in America was led to believe that Humboldt ridiculed Mr. Taylor’s writings, although what could have been the motive of the one who originated the falsehood it is hard to conjecture. With the French authors he did not have a very His acquaintances in America included nearly every living author of his generation, and he numbered among his intimate friends the most gifted men in the land. Nearest to him, perhaps, stood Richard H. Stoddard, of New York, and his talented wife, Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard. Both were born in Massachusetts, and have frequently spent the summer months at Mrs. Stoddard’s old home in Mattapoisett, in company with Mr. Taylor and his family. A jolly household it was, when the Taylors and the Stoddards united their families, as they frequently did, in the city, or on the seashore. One of Mr. Stoddard’s many books, viz., the Life of Humboldt, contains an introduction by Mr. Taylor, and many of Mr. Taylor’s poems were submitted to Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard for their criticism, before he published them. With them, and with Mr. George Ripley, he appears to have maintained the most confidential relations to the day of his death. Many of his early friends have preceded him to that “silent shore,” and many tears did he shed over their graves. Nathaniel P. Willis, his earliest friend in the great city, who encouraged him and introduced him into a literary life, died at his home of “Idlewild,” in 1867. Washington Irving, who in his old ago was earnest enough to leave his home at “Sunnyside” and go to New York, to urge Mr. Taylor to persevere in Dr. E. K. Kane, who aided Mr. Taylor in laying out his route through Norway, and whose letters of introduction and commendation to George Peabody, the great banker, and to other influential men in England, opened the way for Mr. Taylor into the best society of that capital, did not live to meet Mr. Taylor on his return from Norway, as had been arranged, but died alone, at Havana, in 1857. William Cullen Bryant, whose master-pieces were Mr. Taylor’s study, and whose personal friendship was so much valued, that Mr. Taylor visited the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, wherein the “Thanatopsis” had its birth, to note “if the scenes would have the same influence on a stranger, that they appeared to have had on a native,”—he whose counsel and companionship had, through many years, been counted among the “richest boons of life,” died a few months before Mr. Taylor, and the shadow had not passed from Mr. Taylor’s brow, and his poetical tribute to Bryant was hardly in print, before he was called “to join the caravan that moves to that mysterious realm.” Fitz-Greene Halleck, who used to caution the young poet, and who took pride in every new achievement of the traveller, died in 1867. Horace Greeley, the editor of the Tribune, whose friendship was of the most steady and substantial kind, “My own intercourse with him, though often interrupted by absence or divergence of labor, was frank at the start, and grew closer and more precious with every year. In all my experience of men, I have never found one whose primitive impulses revealed themselves with such marvellous purity and sincerity. His nature often seemed to me as crystal-clear as that of a child. In my younger and more sensitive days, he often gave me a transient wound; but such wounds healed without a scar, and I always found, afterward, that they came from the lance of a physician, not from the knife of an enemy. “I first saw Mr. Greeley in June, 1844, when I was a boy of nineteen. I applied to him for an engagement to write letters to the ‘Tribune’ from Germany. His reply was terse enough. ‘No descriptive letters!’ he said; ‘I am sick of them. When you have been there long enough to know something, send to me, and, if there is anything in your letters, I will publish them.’ I waited nearly a year, and then sent seventeen letters, which were published. They were shallow enough, I suspect; but what might they not have been without his warning? “Toward the end of 1847, while I was engaged in the unfortunate enterprise of trying to establish a weekly paper at Phoenixville, Penn., I wrote him—foreseeing the failure of my hopes—asking his assistance in procuring literary work in New York. He advised me (as I suspect he has “Six weeks afterward, to my great surprise (for I supposed he had quite forgotten me), he sent for me and offered me a place on the ‘Tribune.’ I worked hard and incessantly during the summer of 1848, hearing never a word of commendation or encouragement; but one day in October he suddenly came to my desk, laid his hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘You have been faithful; but now you need rest. Take a week’s holiday, and go into New England.’ I obeyed, and found, on my return, that he had ordered my salary to be increased.” Hiram Powers, the American sculptor, who so heartily welcomed the young pedestrian to Florence, Italy, and who through the years which followed, showed a most kindly spirit, making Taylor his guest and confidant, passed away from the contemplation of beautiful earthly forms to figures angelic, in 1873. Mrs. Kirkland, on whose magazine, in 1848, he began to regain the literary prestige which the failure of the “Phoenixville Pioneer” took from him, and who, with Halleck, so kindly opened the way for him to teach a school in New York, to repair his shattered fortunes, was gone, together with a large number of their mutual acquaintances in the literary circles of New York. Although the ranks were so sadly depleted, there are still living a most brilliant company of his early literary friends. John G. Whittier, who still resides in Amesbury, his patriotism unabated, his Quaker simplicity unchanged, and his fame as a poet increasing, as civilization and freedom extend. To him Mr. Taylor dedicated his poem of “Lars,” and in it thus mentioned his first meeting with Whittier:— “Though many years my heart goes back, Through checkered years of loss and gain, To the fair landmark on its track, When first, upon the Merrimack, Upon the cottage roof I heard the autumn rain. A hand that welcomed and that cheered, To one unknown didst thou extend; Thou gavest hope to song that feared; But now by Time and Faith endeared, I claim the right to call the Poet, Friend!” Thus did a Quaker write of a Quaker in dedicating a Quaker poem. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lives and sings as in those days when Taylor read the story of “Hyperion” and the poetry of “Voices of the Night,” and resolved to visit Boppart and to be a poet. Mr. Longfellow had a name to be envied in the annals of literature, when the man of whom we write was a rollicking, mischievious boy. Yet Taylor has appeared on the stage of life, has enacted a very important part, and is gone. His friend and benefactor remains, loved and honored in the old Washington mansion at Cambridge. That marvellously versatile and skilful man, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, though born long before Taylor, still walks the halls of learning, and, while enjoying the deserved rewards of “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,” “Old Ironsides,” and the numerous other publications in the shape of essays, poems, and medical text-books, was not ashamed to be called the friend of Mr. Taylor, and recalls his association with him in the most affectionate terms. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet and essayist, who, like Mr. Holmes, enjoys a world-wide reputation as a man of letters and thoughts, moves among men as of yore, while his younger acquaintance has passed on before. James Russell Lowell, upon whose brilliant literary career Mr. Taylor said he often “gazed with bewilderment,” but who was among his much-loved literary friends, adorns the court of Spain, as the Minister of the United States, while the life of his colleague which began much later, has ceased to move his hands to friendly grasps, and his lips to living words. Richard H. Dana, Sr., the “eldest poet,” has been dead but a few days. Amos Bronson Alcott retains his home in Concord, appearing much as he did when George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker were with him on the “Dial,” which the Taylors read in Pennsylvania; but he who came to their homes so short a time ago, will cross their thresholds no more. Thomas Bailey Aldrich remains, and writes on for George William Curtis, who was born the year before Mr. Taylor, and whose travels, books, and correspondence for the New York “Tribune,” gave him such a similar experience, now stands at the front in American oratory, and looks forward to wider fields of usefulness, as though life had just begun. As a representative American in literature and in political influence, he has lost in Mr. Taylor an earnest and efficient comrade. Edwin P. Whipple still lives on Beacon Hill in Boston, and, together with his brilliant wife, recalls the face and words of Taylor with the affectionate regard of appreciative minds and loving hearts. James T. Fields, of Boston, comes and goes, an authority on literary excellence, and an attractive expounder and biographer, while the boy who came to him long, long ago, to learn if Ticknor & Fields would publish a little poem, has grown into manhood, into fame, and passed on to the Hereafter. The friendship of many years,—so beautiful a sight between publisher and poet,—which the pressure and uncertainty of business could not sever or decrease, is broken, ah! so rudely, by the hand of death. The Hon. George H. Boker, of Philadelphia, still counts his useful years; while the boy whose poems he “You were the mate of my poetic spring; To you its buds, of little worth, concealed More than the summer years have since revealed, Or doubtful autumn from the stem shall fling. But here they are, the buds, the blossoms blown, Or rich or scant the wreath is at your feet; And though it were the freshest ever grown, To you its incense could not be more sweet, Since with it goes a love to match your own, A heart, dear friend, that never falsely beat.” George H. Boker, Jr., and Mrs. Taylor are, by the terms of Mr. Taylor’s will, his literary executors. The Hon. J. R. Chandler still resides in the same old home at Philadelphia, into which the trembling youth came for the loan of fifty dollars with which to see Europe on foot. After a long and honorable life he sees no act more creditable than the simple-hearted generosity which he displayed toward that ambitious stripling. His brother, J. Howard Taylor, M.D., and his cousin, Franklin Taylor, M.D., are both at their official posts of honor in Philadelphia, while the sisters and parents survive, still in that haze of doubt which precedes the hard realization that Bayard is dead. Mr. Whitelaw Reid may search long before he supplies to the “Tribune’s” readers all the characteristics of “The stern genius, to whose hollow tramp Echo the startled chambers of the soul, Waves his inverted torch o’er that pale camp, Where the archangel’s final trumpets roll.” |
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