Edits a Country Newspaper.—The “Phœnixville Pioneer.”—The
Discouragements.—The Suspension.—Publishes “Views
Afoot.”—Introduction to Literary Men.—Contributes to
the “Literary World.”—Becomes an Editor of the New York
“Tribune.”—The Gold Excitement of 1849.—Resolves to visit the
Eldorado.—Arrival in California.
Bayard Taylor’s gifts were not such as would contribute toward the
success of a country newspaper—so delicate, refined, poetical, and
classical, we wonder that he should ever have undertaken so uncongenial
a work. The best things which he could write would be dull as lead to
the majority of his readers. The more literary merit his editorials and
poems contained, the less likely were they to receive the praise of
his subscribers. Yet his disposition to work was so inherent in every
nerve, that he had not been at home one week from his tour of Europe
before he was searching for a place for editorial work or correspondence.
Mr. Frederick Foster, who was an old acquaintance and who also had
been in the office of the West Chester “Village Record,” suggested the
establishment of a weekly newspaper. As they looked for an opening for
such an enterprise, they hit upon the town of Phœnixville, Pa., as the
most advantageous locality. Phœnixville was then a prosperous village,
containing about two thousand inhabitants, twenty-seven miles from
Philadelphia and thirty-one miles from Reading. There were rolling-mills,
furnaces, and a variety of manufactories in the town, and the people
constituted an enterprising and unusually vigorous community. There Mr.
Taylor and Mr. Foster began the publication of the “Pioneer,” and with
high hopes and an alarming confidence, waited neither for capital nor
subscribers.
Mr. Taylor has often related to his friends some most amusing anecdotes
connected with his life as a country editor. One subscriber wanted a
glossary, another wished to see the local gossip about John Henry Smith’s
surprise party, instead of the dull columns of literary reviews. One
suggested that two editors would kill any paper, while another ventured
to assert that he himself would edit the paper for them at three hundred
dollars a year and “find shears.”
It was a difficult task. To edit the New York “Herald” would have been
far easier and better suited to Mr. Taylor’s genius. The people, of
Phœnixville, however, began to appreciate their privileges after the lack
of support compelled the young journalists to close their office and
suspend the publication of the paper; and financial aid to re-establish
the “Pioneer” was generously offered. But one year in such an
unappreciated labor was enough for Mr. Taylor, and he left Phœnixville,
according to his own account, considerably wiser and poorer than he was
when he entered it. If any of our readers has attempted to start a
literary paper in the country, and passed through the perplexities of
financial management and rude discouragements, he will need no words to
prompt his most hearty sympathy with the work, and the suspension of Mr.
Taylor’s undertaking. To make successful a publication of that character
in a scattered and small community, requires a greater diversity of
talent, greater manual labor, and a closer study of all-various human
nature, than it does to conduct the largest establishments in the
limitless field of a great city. Mr. Taylor’s experience simply added
another illustration of the universal rule. His best articles were
unappreciated or believed to be borrowed, and everything hindered the
pursuit of that conscientious literary aspiration which feels keenly the
failings and improprieties of superficial work.
It was in this year that Mr. Taylor prepared, and Mr. Putnam published,
his surprisingly attractive volume, entitled “Views Afoot.” With such
Quaker-like simplicity was it written, and such a noble spirit of poetry
pervaded the descriptions of scenery, men, and art, that it leaped into
popular favor on the prestige of its advance sheets. Its success was a
forcible example of the winning power of simple truth. Its interest will
never abate, because he did not assume the pompous airs of an infallible
critic, but rather chose to pretend to nothing but describe what he saw
as it appeared to him.
The success of that book introduced him at once into the literary circles
of New York, where, with the friendship of Mr. Willis, Mr. Parke Godwin,
Mr. Horace Greeley, Mr. William Cullen Bryant, and many others, well
known as men of the highest culture, he received a most cordial welcome.
He was at once secured by the management of the “Literary World,” a
periodical issued weekly in New York, and which, from 1847 to 1853, held
the highest place in literary criticism and classical composition gained
by any American magazine or paper of that period.
When he sought employment on the New York “Tribune,” in 1848, a place
was readily found for him, and he began, by the contribution of small
articles, his long and honorable career as one of the editors of that
influential journal.
In the spring of 1849, Mr. Greeley suggested to Mr. Taylor the importance
of having some trustworthy information from the gold regions of
California, about which there was then so much excitement. The people
read, with the greatest avidity, every scrap of news or gossip from the
gold-fields, and thousands were on their way by steam and by overland
mule-trains to seek their fortunes in that Eldorado. At no period of our
nation’s history, not excepting the agitation at the beginning of great
wars, have the people of this country exhibited such uncontrollable
excitement as they displayed at that time.
The rich sold their property to the first bidder, and took the first
conveyance; while the poor started on foot, with nothing to preserve them
from the starvation which followed in the desert. For a time it appeared
as if New England and the Middle States would be left without sufficient
male population to carry on the routine of official duty.
In the height of that feverish exodus Mr. Taylor decided to fall in
with the tide, and drifting with the current, tell the readers of the
“Tribune” what he saw and heard. Hence, in June, he took passage on a
crowded steamer for Panama, and after a dreadful experience in crossing
the Isthmus, steamed up the Pacific Coast and entered the Golden Gate.