From Constantinople to Gotha.—Visit to Russia.—Moscow
and St. Petersburg.—Return to Prussia.—Arrival in the
United States.—Incessant Work.—Lecturing and Travels in
California.—The Construction of Cedarcroft.—His Patriotic
Addresses and Poems.—Visits Germany in 1861.—Anxiety for the
Fate of His Nation.—Life at Cedarcroft.
After a short stay in Constantinople, the party, under the guidance
of Mr. Taylor, went by steamer to the mouth of the Danube, and thence
up that river to his new home at Gotha. Mr. Taylor had set his heart
on building a residence in the oak woodland near his old home at
Kennett, and now that he was married, his anxiety to see it completed
led him to think seriously of returning at once to the United States.
Having, however, a vague fear that he might not again visit Europe as a
traveller, and being unwilling to leave the largest empire in the world
unvisited, he resolved to make a hasty trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg.
It was not a tour which he would personally enjoy as he had his stay
in Greece, yet it was needed to make complete his knowledge of Europe.
Hence he hastened away from Gotha, and, taking Cracow, the salt mines of
Wieliczka and Warsaw in his route, arrived at Moscow about the middle
of June. Having seen the wonders of that ancient capital of Russia, he
went by railroad direct to St. Petersburg. There he was much interested
in the massive structures of granite and marble which stand over the
land which was once an impassable marsh, and pondered, with feelings
of great wonder, upon the control which man exercises over nature. The
grand squares, the wide Boulevards, the ponderous bridges, the extensive
palaces, the solid cathedral, and the broad quays and docks, give an
impression of grandeur in simplicity, which no other city possesses. The
great capital has none of that air of gayety and ostentation which one
notices in Paris and London; but is stately, dignified, grand. Everything
is done on a large scale, and the buildings, halls, streets, and parades,
are alike suggestive of might, and a strong will. The city is Peter the
Great in stone. It conveys the impression to the traveller, of strength
without coarseness, and of beauty without display.
Little did Mr. Taylor expect, when he bade those extensive, massive
palaces adieu, that he should return to that city, in a few years, as the
official representative of a powerful nation. Probably the idea of being
again in those galleries of art, was as remote from his calculations as
was the idea of being minister of the United States at the court of the
German Empire, when he walked reverently along the Unter-den-Linden at
Berlin for the first time, trying to get a peep at the distant carriage
of the king.
From St. Petersburg, he took the inland route for Prussia, passing
through the Baltic provinces, and studying the habits and appearance of
the people. His return to Gotha, from Russia, was regarded by himself,
and by his friends, as the close of his wanderings, and, with a sigh of
relief, he laid down his pen, and declared that he wished for nothing
more than to “settle down in a home of his own near the old farm in the
States.” A few weeks later, and he was receiving the congratulations of
his friends in New York, and had taken his place at the familiar desk in
the office of the New York “Tribune.”
Then began another season of closest and severest mental labor. Rest,
during his waking hours, seemed impossible, and even the hours which he
spent at the Literary Club and at his rooms, were more or less connected
with his work. Literature was his work, and literature was his play. He
had become enamored of Goethe and Schiller, and already conceived the
idea of giving to the world a translation of their best works. He had the
“Argument” of the “Poet’s Journal” in his mind, and every visit to the
scenes of his first love, in the companionship of the second, served to
urge him to complete and publish it.
He had become one of the noted men of America, and the calls, to lecture,
to write, to visit, to attend dinners, and write editorials, were
incessant and persistent.
The construction of his house took much of his attention, and he
ransacked his collections of sketches, and photographs of villas,
palaces, and cottages in the Old World, to find such a plan as he could
be satisfied to adopt. It was no child’s play with him to construct
the building wherein to make his home. He had thought of the matter
from boyhood, and that clump of oaks on the highland, about a mile to
the westward of Kennett Square, and within a short distance of the
old homestead, had ever been his choice. His years of wanderings had
sharpened his desire for a permanent home, and, with characteristic
care and thoroughness, he investigated his plans and means. He had
owned the land for five years, and had gloried in being the owner of
American soil, without which one can hardly claim to be an American. He
attended to all the details of rooms, closets, stairways, windows, brick,
stone, cornices, roof, tower, with caution and deliberation; and when
he contracted with the masons, carpenters, and gardeners, he knew just
what was needed, and told to each what was expected of them. There was
a ceremony attendant on breaking the ground, a procession, and a box of
records deposited in the foundation, when the corner-stone was laid, and
such a house-warming when it was dedicated October 18 and 19, 1860, as
Americans seldom enjoy. There was feasting, singing, original poetry,
original plays, and one of the happiest, merriest companies ever gathered
under a hospitable roof.
But while the building was being slowly and carefully constructed, with
its thick walls of stone and brick, Mr. Taylor, was engaged no less in
his editorial tasks. The summer after his return from Europe, he made
several excursions in an editorial capacity, one of which took him again
to California. The great changes in the city of San Francisco, and in the
appearance of the entire State, so far as he visited it, were marvellous,
and were as marvellously pictured to the minds of his readers. His time
was much occupied in delivering lectures in the various cities of the
State; but he used his disciplined eyes and ears to such advantage that
he gave in his book the most full and accurate account of California,—its
agriculture, its institutions, its lakes, its mountains, its great trees,
its mines, its enterprises, and its people,—to be found in any work of
the kind now in print. It is astonishing how much he could put into a
paragraph, without giving it a crowded appearance!
His time, from the day he returned from California, was mostly engaged
in delivering lectures and writing letters. He was not rich, and he was
generous. He had a house to build, and to pay for. Furniture must be
had, and his accumulated fortune was not large enough for all. Hence he
travelled, and he delivered lectures, notwithstanding the disagreeable
experiences which he was compelled to endure. He yearned to be at the
translation of “Faust”; but necessity drove him to talk of travel and
biography. He had a home, for “it is home where the heart is,” and he
longed to be in it. But necessity sent him forth with a rude hand, and
held him aloof from his own. Oh! that is the saddest experience in
human life! To feel called to a certain work; to know that there is one
task for which one is peculiarly fitted by nature and by discipline;
to see before him still the beckoning forms which have hovered in the
glory of every setting sun, since earliest childhood; to feel that
one’s productions, which might be valuable, are unfinished, and hardly
shaped, before they are forced into the hands of conscienceless critics,
is one of the most miserable conditions in life. This condition, which
has worn out so many men of genius, and which has, with tyrannical
coldness, compelled authors to fence up their own literary highway, or
die, was not felt by Mr. Taylor in that degree that it was by some of his
cotemporaries,—and by many since his time. But he felt it often enough
and keenly enough to sympathize with others, and most forcibly expressed
their feelings in his “Picture of Saint John.”
“But soon assailed my home the need of gold,
The miserable wants that plague and fret,
Repeated ever, battling with our hold
On all immortal aims, lest, overbold
In arrogance of gift, we dare forget
The balanced curse; ah, me! that finest powers,
Must stoop to menial services, and set
Their growth below the unlaborious flowers.”
Yet manfully did he toil, neglecting sleep and food, eager to teach,
determined to earn honestly the money which he was to receive. He
desired to have a home free from debt, to which he could invite his
friends, and feel that his hospitality could be safely and honestly
extended to all those whom he loved and honored. So he toiled, as men
seldom toil, using every moment on railway and steamboat, to write out
those pages which his engagements prevented him from doing at home. As a
consequence, his health began to decline, and oft-repeated warnings of
friends and of physicians, which he tried to keep from the knowledge of
his relatives, drove him from the lucrative field of lecturing.
With his face set, steadfastly set, toward the tombs of Goethe and of
Schiller, seeing the great obligation he was under, to a Providence which
had so richly endowed him, to give to man some masterpiece, he turned at
once toward his loved Germany, when he felt the necessity of a change of
home, and a change of work.
But the exciting events immediately preceding the War of the Great
Rebellion, so stirred his patriotic soul, that he turned his thought and
work into patriotic channels, and worked on until late in the spring of
1861. His words in the newspapers, in the magazines, and on the rostrum,
were ringing trumpet-calls to the defence of the Republic. The Chinese
say that “there are words which are deeds.” That could be said of those
Mr. Taylor uttered. His public addresses were enthusiastic appeals for
the salvation of the nation, and his poems had in them the boldest spirit
of patriotism.
In his poem, “Through Baltimore,” written in April, 1861, he described
the approach of the Union soldiers to Baltimore, the onset of the mob,
and closed the story with these words:—
“No, never! By that outrage black,
A solemn oath we swore,
To bring the Keystone’s thousands back,
Strike down the dastards who attack,
And leave a red and fiery track
Through Baltimore!
Bow down, in haste, thy guilty head!
God’s wrath is swift and sore:
The sky with gathering bolts is red,—
Cleanse from thy skirts the slaughter shed,
Or make thyself an ashen bed,
O Baltimore!”
On the 30th of April, 1861, he wrote an address to the American people,
the last verse of which expressed the sentiment of the whole poem and we
insert it here:—
“Slow to resolve, be swift to do!
Teach ye the False how fight the True!
How bucklered Perfidy shall feel
In her black heart the Patriot’s steel;
How sure the bolt that Justice wings;
How weak the arm a traitor brings;
How mighty they, who steadfast stand
For Freedom’s Flag and Freedom’s Land!”
But the poem which created the greatest enthusiasm at the time of its
publication, and which is still a most touchingly inspiring selection,
was written at about the same time as the “Address to the American
People,” possibly ten days later, and it was given the title of “Scott
and the Veteran.” To fully appreciate the power of those verses, one
needs to recall the hesitation, and the excitement, and the uncertainty
which the nation felt in that dark hour. In a time like that, a few
clear, unmistakable words work wonders with a people. Well does the
writer recall the electrical effect of that poem in 1861, when read at a
patriotic gathering of the yeomen, in a valley of the Berkshire Hills, in
Western Massachusetts. The lines were not so polished, nor the words so
choice as many other verses which Mr. Taylor had written; but they seem
to come again as they were then recited, and awaken memories of mountain
glens, and “mountain boys”; of camps and battles, of fields of cotton
made fields of carnage; of loved faces looking skyward, cold and still;
of a nation saved, redeemed, renewed. The three closing verses we have
never forgotten.
“If they should fire on Pickens, let the Colonel in command
Put me upon the rampart, with the flagstaff in my hand:
No odds how hot the cannon-smoke, or how the shells may fly;
I’ll hold the Stars and Stripes aloft, and hold them till I die!
I’m ready, General, so you let a post to me be given,
Where Washington can see me, as he looks from highest heaven,
And say to Putnam at his side, or, may be, General Wayne;
‘There stands old Billy Johnson, that fought at Lundy’s Lane!’
And when the fight is hottest, before the traitors fly,
When shell and ball are screeching and bursting in the sky,
If any shot should hit me, and lay me on my face,
My soul would go to Washington’s, and not to Arnold’s place!”
In June, the necessity of rest, and the desire to obtain it in such a
way as to get pleasure and advantage from his release, influenced him to
take a trip to his wife’s old home, and to spend a month at the country
residence of a friend which was situated on slopes of the Thuringian
Forest, not far from Weimar and Gotha. It was a lovely spot, and a
pretty cottage, and about him were numberless reminders of Schiller and
Goethe, with whose names he was so creditably to connect his own. Whether
he gained the rest he needed or not, is a question still undecided.
Certainly he did not gain as much as he would, had he left Goethe’s
“Faust,” and his own new volume of poems behind him, and chafed much less
under his great suspense concerning the results of the American War. He
ran up the American flag to the ridge-pole of his cottage, and walked
about uneasily, awaiting news from home. He talked of the war with his
neighbors and visitors, wrote about it to whomsoever of his friends he
thought might not understand the merits of the contest, and, at last,
about the 1st of August, hastily broke up his cosy housekeeping, and
returned to America.
[Illustration: CEDARCROFT, KENNETT SQUARE, PA.]
When he again opened the doors of his dwelling at Kennett, which he
had given the poetical name of “Cedarcroft,” it was to welcome to his
fireside all who loved their country. But, as he afterwards proudly
declared, no traitor ever crossed its threshold. Many distinguished
men visited him, including members of Congress, and of the President’s
Cabinet.
[Illustration: NICHOLAS BRIDGE]