Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, by Sherwin Cody
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Sherwin Cody >> Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe,
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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 buttercups. 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 appetite
that day.
"The miles now became longer, and the rosy color of my anticipations
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 refreshing 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
glass,' 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 friendship 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 ship "Oxford," bound for Liverpool. They had taken a second-cabin
passage, the second cabin being a small place amidships, flanked with
bales of cotton and fitted with temporary and rough planks. They paid
ten dollars each for the passage, but were obliged to find their own
bedding and provisions. These latter the ship'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-passenger to Marseilles, 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 HARDSHIP 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 pass on without giving
some of the details of commonplace hardship 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
embarrassments as we, I should like to see them."
But all this only urged him to greater efforts. "I tell you what,
Frank," he writes almost in his next letter, "I am getting a real rage
in me to carve out my own fortune, and not a poor one, either.
Sometimes I almost desire that difficulties should be thrown in my
way, for the sake of the additional strength gained in surmounting
them."
These words were written from Italy; but yet harder things were in
store for him. "I reached London for the second time about the middle
of March, 1846," he writes in his paper on "A Young Author's Life in
London," "after a dismal walk through Normandy and a stormy passage
across the Channel. I stood upon London Bridge, in the raw mist and
the falling twilight, with a franc and a half in my pocket, and
deliberated what I should do. Weak from sea-sickness, hungry, chilled,
and without a single acquaintance in the great city, my situation was
about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive. Successful authors in
their libraries, sitting in cushioned chairs and dipping their pens
into silver inkstands, may write about money with a beautiful scorn,
and chant the praise of Poverty--the 'good goddess of Poverty,' as
George Sand, making 50,000 francs a year, enthusiastically terms
her;--but there is no condition in which the Real is so utterly at
variance with the Ideal, as to be actually out of money, and hungry, with
nothing to pawn and no friend to borrow from. Have you ever known it,
my friend? If not, I could wish that you might have the experience for
twenty-four hours, only once in your life."
On this occasion Bayard Taylor went to a chop-house where he could get
a wretched bed for a shilling. The next morning he took a sixpenny
breakfast, and started out to look for work. By good fortune he met
Putnam, the American publisher, who lent him a sovereign (five
dollars) and gave him work that would enable him to earn his living
until he could get money from America for his return passage.
CHAPTER VIII
HIS FIRST LOVE AND GREATEST SORROW
At the very first school which Bayard Taylor attended there was a
little Quaker girl who would whisper with a blush to her teacher, "May
I sit beside Bayard?" Her name was Mary Agnew. As schoolmates and
neighbors the two children grew up together; and in time Bayard began
to confide to his diary his dream of happiness with her. Toward this
object, all his thoughts and plans were gradually directed.
Mary Agnew's father did not countenance this neighbor lover, however,
and when Bayard set out for Europe he was not allowed to write to her.
He sent messages through his mother, and occasionally heard from the
young girl in the same way. On his return, however, he grew more bold,
and soon became openly engaged to her. The romance is a sadly
beautiful one; for this fair girl who was his inspiration during the
years of his hardest struggles, finally fell into a decline and died
just as he was beginning to earn the money that would have made them
happy together.
"I remember him," says a neighbor, speaking of the two at this time,
"as a bright, blushing, diffident youth, just entering manhood; and
with him I always associate that gentle and beautiful girl, with
matchless eyes, who inspired many of his early lyrics, and whose death
filled the nest of love with snow."
Mary Agnew reminds us of Poe's beautiful Virginia Clemm, his "Annabel
Lee." Grace Greenwood wrote of her as "a dark-eyed young girl with the
rose yet unblighted on cheek and lip, with soft brown, wavy hair,
which, when blown by the wind, looked like the hair oft given to
angels by the old masters, producing a sort of halo-like effect about
a lovely head."
And Taylor at this time was evidently her match in looks as well as
spirit. A German friend describes him thus: "He was a tall, slender,
blooming young man, the very image of youthful beauty and purity. His
intellectual head was surrounded by dark hair; the glance of his eyes
was so modest, and yet so clear and lucid, that you seemed to look
right into his heart."
On his return from Europe, young Taylor found that his letters to the
newspapers had attracted some attention, perhaps largely owing to the
fact that one who was almost a boy had made the journey on foot, with
little or no money. At the same time he had told his story in a
simple, straightforward way, which proved him to be a good reporter.
Friends advised him to gather the letters into a volume, which he did
under the title, "Views Afoot; or Europe Seen with Knapsack and
Staff." Within a year six editions were sold, and the sale continued
large for a number of years.
Yet this success, quick as it was, did not solve all his difficulties
at once. He was anxious to earn a good living as soon as possible,
that he might marry Mary Agnew. After looking the field over, he and a
friend bought a weekly paper published in Phoenixville, a lively
manufacturing town in the same county as his home. This, with the aid
of his friend, he edited and managed for a year. He not only failed to
make money, but accumulated debts which he was three years in paying
off. At the same time he found that he could no longer endure a narrow
country life. He tried to give his paper a literary tone; but the
people did not want a literary paper. They cared more for local news
and gossip, which he hated.
The old ambition and aspiration to be and to do something really worth
doing was still uppermost with him. In a letter to Mary Agnew he says:
"Sometimes I feel as if there were a Providence watching over me, and
as if an unseen and uncontrollable hand guided my actions. I have
often dim, vague forebodings that an eventful destiny is in store for
me; that I have vast duties yet to accomplish, and a wider sphere of
action than that which I now occupy. These thoughts may be vain; they
spring only from the ceaseless impulses of an upward-aspiring spirit;
but if they _are_ real, and to be fulfilled, I shall the more need thy
love and the gladness of thy dear presence."
He wrote to his friends in New York about getting work there, but they
did not encourage him much. Horace Greeley bluntly advised him to stay
where he was. The editor of the _Literary World,_ however, offered him
employment at five dollars a week. He thereupon sold out his interest
in his country paper at a loss, and went to try his fortunes in New
York. Before he had been there many weeks, Horace Greeley offered him
a position on the _Tribune_ at twelve dollars a week. The connection
thus begun lasted for the rest of his life. It was as the _Tribunes_
correspondent that he traveled all over the world. He was soon able to
buy stock in the _Tribune_ company, and this was the foundation of his
future fortune.
He had many literary and other distinguished friends in New York. And
during these first few years he worked very hard indeed, hoping soon
to earn enough money to provide for Mary Agnew. In 1850, after three
years in New York, he was able to set the date of their marriage. But
it was postponed from time to time on account of her illness. At last
he knew that she could never be well again; yet in any case he wished
the marriage ceremony performed. They were accordingly married October
24, 1850; and two months later she was dead.
CHAPTER IX
"THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAVELER"
It had been Bayard Taylor's boyhood ambition to become a great poet;
but it seemed as if fate meant him for a great traveler. He was sorry
that this was so: yet he was fond of travel, and never refused any
opportunity to visit other lands. In 1849, when the California gold
fever was at its height, he was sent by the _Tribune_ to the Pacific
Coast.
"I went," he says, "by way of the Isthmus of Panama--the route had
just been opened--reached San Francisco in August, and spent five
months in the midst of the rough, half-savage life of a new country. I
lived almost entirely in the open air, sleeping on the ground with my
saddle for a pillow, and sharing the hardships of the gold diggers,
without taking part in their labors."
On his return he gathered his letters into a volume entitled
"Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire: comprising a voyage to
California, via Panama; Life in San Francisco and Monterey; Pictures
of the Gold Region, and Experiences of Mexican Travel."
He now began to feel the strength and confidence of success; his brain
was seething with new ideas, and he felt as if he could do that which
would realize the destiny of which he had dreamed. But sorrow was
already at his door. His hopes were for the time broken and thrown
back by the death of Mary Agnew.
In the summer of 1851 he found himself worn out and depressed. His
health was shattered and his mind was overpowered. But a change and
rest were at hand. The editors of the _Tribune_ suggested his going to
Egypt and the Holy Land. In the autumn he set out, and spent the
winter in ascending the Nile to Khartoum. He even went up the White
Nile to the country of the Shillooks, a region then scarcely known to
white men.
Bayard Taylor fancied that he had two natures, one a southern nature
and one a northern nature. Of course the northern nature was his
regular and ordinary one. In one of his later journeys, when he had
entered Spain from France and was sitting down to a breakfast of red
mullet and oranges fresh from the trees, "straightway," he says, "I
took off my northern nature as a garment, folded it and packed it
neatly away in my knapsack, and took out in its stead the light,
beribboned and bespangled southern nature, which I had not worn for
eight or nine years."
He donned this southern nature for the first time on his trip to
California by way of Panama. Horace Greeley especially commended his
letter from Panama. But it was during his journey in Egypt that he
became most saturated with the south, and composed his "Poems of the
Orient"--perhaps the best he ever wrote. He had not been in Alexandria
a day and a half before he wrote to his mother that he had never known
such a delicious climate. "The very air is a luxury to breathe," he
said. "I am going to don the red cap and sash," he wrote from Cairo,
"and sport a saber at my side. To-day I had my hair all cut within a
quarter of an inch of the skin, and when I look in the glass I see a
strange individual. Think of me as having no hair, a long beard, and a
copper-colored face." So much like a native did he become that when he
entered the bank in Constantinople for his letters and money, they
addressed him in Turkish.
He made the journey up the Nile on a boat with a wealthy German
landowner, a Mr. Bufleb, who became to him like a brother, though he
was nearly twice the age of Taylor. Some years later the young man
married Mrs. Bufleb's niece.
When he reached Constantinople he received a letter from the managers
of the _Tribune_ suggesting that he go across Asia to Hong-Kong,
China, and join the expedition of Commodore Perry to Japan. As the
expedition would not reach Hong-Kong for some months, however, he had
time to visit his German friend and go on to London. From London he
returned through Spain and went by way of the Suez, Bombay, and
Calcutta to China, stopping on the way to view the Himalayas.
Commodore Perry made the young journalist "master's mate," and gave
him a place on the flagship. This was necessary, because no one not a
member of the navy was allowed to accompany the expedition.
There is not space to detail the wonderful sights he saw or the
interesting experiences he had. He reached New York, December 20,
1853, after an absence of more than two years, and found that in his
absence he had become almost famous. His letters in the _Tribune_ had
been read all over the country, and everybody wanted to know more of
the "great American traveler."
He at once prepared for the press three books. They were "A Journey to
Central Africa; or, Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro
Kingdoms of the Nile "; "The Land of the Saracens; or, Pictures of
Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain"; and "A Visit to India,
China, and Japan in the Year 1853."
He had hundreds of calls to lecture; and thereafter for several years
he made lecturing his principal business. From his books and his
lectures he received large sums of money, so that before he was thirty
he had accumulated a modest fortune.
In 1856 Bayard Taylor took his two sisters and his youngest brother to
Europe. He left them in Germany, while he himself carried out a plan
long in his mind, of visiting northern Sweden and Lapland in winter.
The following summer he visited Norway, and later published the
results of these journeys in "Northern Travel."
While in Germany, after his trip to Sweden, he became engaged to Marie
Hansen, daughter of Prof. Peter A. Hansen, the noted astronomer and
founder of Erfurt Observatory. They were married in the following
autumn, October 27, 1857.
He now hurried home with his wife and prepared to build a house and
lay out the country estate which he called Cedarcroft. The land had
belonged to one of his ancestors, and he was very proud of his fine
country house; but he found it a rather expensive enjoyment.
CHAPTER X
HIS POETRY
We have seen how in youth Bayard Taylor conceived the ambition to be
known as one of his country's great poets. He saw his books of travel
sell by the hundred thousand; but while this brought him money and
notoriety, he clung still to his poetry. He even felt annoyed when he
heard himself spoken of as "the great American traveler" instead of
the great American poet. The truth is, he had not been able to give to
poetry the time or energy he could have wished; and he afterwards
worked with desperate energy to recover those lost poetic
opportunities.
Yet in his busiest days he was always writing verses, which in the
minds of excellent judges are the best he ever did. From time to time
he published volumes of poetry, and with certain of his intimate
friends he always maintained himself on the footing of a poet.
We remember the publication of his first volume, entitled "Ximena,"
which he never cared to reprint in his collected works. During his
first European trip he wrote a great deal. Some of his shorter poems
he afterwards published under the title "Rhymes of Travel." The fate
of a longer poem we must hear in his own words.
"I had in my knapsack," he says, "a manuscript poem of some twelve
hundred lines, called 'The Liberated Titan,'--the idea of which I
fancied to be something entirely new in literature. Perhaps it was. I
did not doubt for a moment that any London publisher would gladly
accept it, and I imagined that its appearance would create not a
little sensation. Mr. Murray gave the poem to his literary adviser,
who kept it about a month, and then returned it with a polite message.
I was advised to try Moxon; but, by this time, I had sobered down
considerably, and did not wish to risk a second rejection.
"I therefore solaced myself by reading the immortal poem at night, in
my bare chamber, looking occasionally down into the graveyard, and
thinking of mute, inglorious Miltons.
"The curious reader may ask how I escaped the catastrophe of
publishing the poem at last. That is a piece of good fortune for which
I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford. We were
fellow-passengers on board the same ship to America, a few weeks later,
and I had sufficient confidence in his taste to show him the poem. His
verdict was charitable; but he asserted that no poem of that length
should be given to the world before it had received the most thorough
study and finish--and exacted from me a promise not to publish it
within a year. At the end of that time I renewed the promise to myself
for a thousand years."
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