Birth at Kennett Square.—Old Homestead.—The Quaker Church.—The
Village.—His Father’s Store.—Life on the Farm.—Mischievous
School-boy.—Inclination to write Poetry.—Practical
Joker.—Studious Youth.—His Parents.—His Brothers and Sisters.
Bayard Taylor was born at Kennett Square, Penn., Jan. 11, 1825. His
mother, whose maiden name was Rebecca Way, was then twenty-nine years
of age, and his father was thirty-one. The house then occupied was a
two-story stone-and-mortar structure, such as are yet very common in the
farming regions of central Pennsylvania. The house was long and narrow,
having a porch that extended along the whole front. The rooms were small
and low, but it was considered by the farmers of that time as a very
comfortable and respectable home. It was located at the junction of two
highways, and near the centre of the little hamlet called the “Square,”
and sometimes the “Village.” But few families resided there in 1825, and
the people were all more or less engaged in the cultivation of the soil.
The little rude Quaker meeting-house, so box-like and cold in its aspect,
was doubtless the centre of attraction, and the desire to be near the
house of God, led those devoted Quakers to build their dwellings on that
portion of their lands which lay nearest the church.
The village has increased in growth, and now has a population of six or
seven hundred, with several churches belonging to other denominations,
and very flourishing schools. But the old homestead building, in which
Bayard was born, was destroyed by fire in 1876.
At the time of his birth, his father kept a miscellaneous stock of
merchandise in one room of his house, and supplied the necessities of the
farmers, so far as the small capital of a country store could anticipate
their wants. Situated thirty-five miles from Philadelphia, to which
place he was compelled to send the produce he received, and in which
place he purchased his simple stock of goods, the merchant had a task
on his hands which cannot be appreciated or understood in these days of
railways, telegraphs, and commercial travellers. One of his neighbors,
living in 1872, used to relate how Mr. Taylor, having had a call for two
hay-rakes, which he could not supply, drove all the way to West Chester,
the distance of a dozen miles, to get those tools for his customer.
At the time of Bayard’s birth, his parents had been married seven years.
Their life had already been subject to many trials, and was fated to meet
many more. Of a family of ten children, only one-half the number survived
to see mature years. The losses by mercantile ventures, by failing
crops, by sickness and accidents, often swept away the hard earnings of
many a month. Yet they struggled on, industrious and cheerful, keeping
themselves and their children ever busy.
When Bayard was two or three years old, his father purchased a farm about
a mile from the village, and giving up his mercantile avocations, turned
his whole attention to farming. On that farm Bayard spent the opening
years of his life, and on one section of it did he build his beautiful
home of “Cedarcroft.”
“The beginning and the end is here—
The days of youth; the silvered years.”
How deeply he loved his home, how sincere his affection for the rolling
fields, the chestnut and the walnut woodland, the old stone farm-house,
the clumsy barn, the old highway, the acres of corn and wheat, the
distant village and its quaint old church, can be seen in a thousand
expressions finding place in his published works. His poetical nature
opened to his view beautiful landscapes and charming associations which
others would not detect. The birds sang in an intelligible language; the
leaves on the corn entered into conversation; the lowing of the cows
could be interpreted; and the rocks were romantic story-tellers. He loved
them all. That farm was his Mecca in all his travels. When he left, he
says he promised bird, beast, trees, and knolls, that he would return
to them. To the writer, who went to Cedarcroft after the poet’s death,
and who has so long loved and admired his poetry, it seemed as if the
trees patiently awaited his return. All things in nature must have loved
and trusted him, or they would not have confided to him so many of their
secrets.
Of the pastoral life in Pennsylvania he speaks with pleasing directness
in his volume entitled “Home Pastorals.” In one place the aged farmer
says:—
“Well—well! this is comfort now—the air is mild as May,
And yet ’tis March the twentieth, or twenty-first, to-day;
And Reuben ploughs the hill for corn: I thought it would be tough;
But now I see the furrows turned, I guess it’s dry enough.
I’m glad I built this southern porch; my chair seems easier here:
I haven’t seen as fine a spring this five and twenty year.
And how the time goes round so quick: a week I would have sworn,
Since they were husking on the flat, and now they plough for corn!
Across the level Brown’s new place begins to make a show;
I thought he’d have to wait for trees, but, bless me, how they grow!
They say it’s fine—two acres filled with evergreens and things;
But so much land! it worries me, for not a cent it brings.
He has the right, I don’t deny, to please himself that way,
But ’tis a bad example set, and leads young folks astray:
Book-learning gets the upper hand, and work is slow and slack,
And they that come long after us will find things gone to wrack.
Well—I suppose I’m old, and yet it is not long ago
When Reuben spread the swath to dry, and Jesse learned to mow,
And William raked, and Israel hoed, and Joseph pitched with me,
But such a man as I was then my boys will never be!
I don’t mind William’s hankering for lectures and for books,
He never had a farming knack—you’d see it in his looks;
But handsome is that handsome does, and he is well to do:
’Twould ease my mind if I could say the same of Jesse, too.
’Tis like my time is nearly out; of that I’m not afraid;
I never cheated any man, and all my debts are paid.
They call it rest that we shall have, but work would do no harm;
There can’t be rivers there, and fields, without some sort o’ farm.”
No description in prose can as well describe his occupation as a boy, as
his own lines, in the poem of the “Holly Tree.”
“The corn was warm in the ground, the fences were mended and made,
And the garden-beds, as smooth as a counterpane is laid,
Were dotted and striped with green, where the peas and the radishes grew,
With elecampane at the foot, and comfrey, and sage, and rue.
From the knoll where stood the house, the fair fields pleasantly rolled,
To dells where the laurels hung, and meadows of buttercup gold.”
Such was the farm when he left it, in words of the poet’s choosing, and
what he found when, after a quarter of a century of wanderings, he can
best describe.
“Here are the fields again, the soldierly maize in tassel
Stands on review, and carries the scabbarded ears in its armpits.
Rustling, I part the ranks,—the close, engulfing battalions
Shaking their plumes overhead,—and, wholly bewildered and heated,
Gain the top of the ridge, where stands, colossal, the pin-oak.
Yonder, a mile away, I see the roofs of the village,—
See the crouching front of the meeting-house of the Quakers,
Oddly conjoined with the whittled Presbyterian steeple.
Right and left are the homes of the slow, conservative farmers,
Loyal people and true; but, now that the battles are over,
Zealous for Temperance, Peace, and the Eight of Suffrage for Women.
Orderly, moral are they,—at least, in the sense of suppression;
Given to preaching of rules, inflexible outlines of duty:
Seeing the sternness of life; but, alas! overlooking its graces.
Let me be juster: the scattered seeds of the graces are planted
Widely apart; but the trumpet-vine on the porch is a token:
Yea, and awake and alive are the forces of love and affection,
Plastic forces that work from the tenderer models of beauty.”
There must be many things in the events of common life which find no
voice in poetry, as every life has its prose side. At all events, there
were some duties connected with agricultural work which young Bayard
never enjoyed. He never was ambitious to follow the plough, or do the
miscellaneous odd jobs which perplex and weary a farmer’s boy. Yet, like
Burns, he worked cheerfully, and wrung more or less poetry out of every
occupation. He was a spare, wiry, nervous boy, quick at work, study,
or play, and consequently had many leisure moments, when other boys
were drudging along with ceaseless toil. His schoolmates, and the only
school-teacher now living (1879) who taught him in his boyhood, all agree
that he was a mischievous boy. He loved practical jokes, and, in fact,
jokes of every kind. But he was ceaselessly framing verses. When his
lesson was mastered, which was always in an incredibly short space of
time after he took up his book, he plunged recklessly into poetry. Verses
about the teacher, about snowbanks, about buttercups, about pigs, about
courting, funerals, church services, schoolmates, and countless other
themes filled his desk, pockets, and hat.
Often he wrote love letters, couched in the most delicate phraseology,
and signing the name of some classmate to them, would send them to
astonished ploughboys and blushing maidens. One old gentleman in West
Chester, Penn., always claimed that a set of Bayard’s burlesque verses,
sent out in that way, induced him to court and marry a girl with whom
he had no acquaintance, until the explanation of his tender epistle was
demanded by her father. What volumes of poetry he must have written,
which never saw the type, and how much more of that which he was in the
habit of repeating to himself was left unwritten! The life he led, from
his earliest school days, until he was fifteen years of age, was that
of every farmer’s boy in America, who is compelled to work hard through
the spring, summer, and autumn, and attend the district school in the
winter. The only remarkable difference between Bayard and many other
boys, was found in his strong desire to read, and his genius for poetry.
He gathered the greater part of his youthful education from books, which
he read at home, and by himself.
He had a noble father, and a lovely mother, God bless them! and they
made it as easy for Bayard as they could in justice to the other
children. They might not have fully understood the signs of genius which
he displayed; but they put no needless stumbling-blocks in his way. No
better proof of this is needed, than the excellent record of the other
children, all of whom hold enviable positions in society. One brother,
Dr. J. Howard Taylor, is a physician, and connected with the health
department of the city of Philadelphia; another, William W. Taylor, is a
most skilful civil engineer; while a third, Col. Frederick Taylor, was
killed at the battle of Gettysburg, when leading the celebrated Bucktail
Regiment of Pennsylvania. Two sisters are living,—Mrs. Annie Carey, wife
of a Swiss gentleman; and Mrs. Lamborn, wife of Col. Charles B. Lamborn,
of Colorado. Growing up in such a family, as an elder brother, involved
much patient toil, and great responsibility. The best tribute to him, in
those days, was paid by an old lady, of Reading, Penn., who knew him in
his youth, and who summed up her evidence to the writer in the words, “He
did all he could.”