The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard TaylorConwell, Russell H.
General
The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor
Conwell, Russell H.
Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878
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 1856, until Mr. Thackeray’s death, in 1863. The friendship
was kept alive by Mr. Thackeray’s daughters, who first met Mr. Taylor in
London, in 1858, and who at that time most hospitably entertained him,
together with his brother and sisters.
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 on the Rhine” was given to the American public
in 1869, by Mr. Taylor. These two authors were like twin brothers in
their authorship, and some of Auerbach’s letters, descriptive of European
scenes and people, could be inserted in Mr. Taylor’s books, verbatim,
and the interpolation be scarcely detected. Their regard for each other
equalled their gifts, and one of the sincerest mourners at the funeral of
Mr. Taylor, was that gifted scholar, Berthold Auerbach.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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