His Friends.—The Multitude of Mourners.—His London Acquaintances.—Tennyson, Cornwall, Browning, Carlyle.—German Popularity.—Auerbach.—Humboldt.—French Authors.—Early American Friends.—Stoddard, Willis, Kane, Bryant, Halleck, Powers, Greeley, Mrs. Kirkland, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson, Lowell, Dana, Alcott, Aldrich, Whipple, Curtis, Fields, Boker, Chandler.—Relatives. Seldom has the death of a single individual wounded the hearts of so many personal friends. Men have attained to greater renown, and have been, perhaps, as extensively known by their writings and their fame; but rare, indeed, can be found in history the name of one who had so many intimate companions. The number of those who claimed the right to be his friends is beyond computation, at this time,—within a few weeks after his death,—but it includes many of the most noted men of the world.
Alfred Tennyson, the poet-laureate of England, was an acquaintance and correspondent of Mr. Taylor’s, their first meeting being at Mr. Tennyson’s house, Farringford, on the Isle of Wight.
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[297] 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[298] 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.
With the French authors he did not have a very[299] extended personal acquaintance, although he had met many of them, and frequently exchanged books with Victor Hugo and Guillaume Lejean.
His acquaintances in America included nearly every living author of his generation, and he numbered among his intimate friends the most gifted men in the land. Nearest to him, perhaps, stood Richard H. Stoddard, of New York, and his talented wife, Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard. Both were born in Massachusetts, and have frequently spent the summer months at Mrs. Stoddard’s old home in Mattapoisett, in company with Mr. Taylor and his family. A jolly household it was, when the Taylors and the Stoddards united their families, as they frequently did, in the city, or on the seashore. One of Mr. Stoddard’s many books, viz., the Life of Humboldt, contains an introduction by Mr. Taylor, and many of Mr. Taylor’s poems were submitted to Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard for their criticism, before he published them. With them, and with Mr. George Ripley, he appears to have maintained the most confidential relations to the day of his death.
Many of his early friends have preceded him to that “silent shore,” and many tears did he shed over their graves. Nathaniel P. Willis, his earliest friend in the great city, who encouraged him and introduced him into a literary life, died at his home of “Idlewild,” in 1867. Washington Irving, who in his old ago was earnest enough to leave his home at “Sunnyside” and go to New York, to urge Mr. Taylor to persevere in[300] his poetical undertakings, and whose advice assisted Mr. Taylor so much in his various trips into Spain, died in 1873.
Dr. E. K. Kane, who aided Mr. Taylor in laying out his route through Norway, and whose letters of introduction and commendation to George Peabody, the great banker, and to other influential men in England, opened the way for Mr. Taylor into the best society of that capital, did not live to meet Mr. Taylor on his return from Norway, as had been arranged, but died alone, at Havana, in 1857.
William Cullen Bryant, whose master-pieces were Mr. Taylor’s study, and whose personal friendship was so much valued, that Mr. Taylor visited the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, wherein the “Thanatopsis” had its birth, to note “if the scenes would have the same influence on a stranger, that they appeared to have had on a native,”—he whose counsel and companionship had, through many years, been counted among the “richest boons of life,” died a few months before Mr. Taylor, and the shadow had not passed from Mr. Taylor’s brow, and his poetical tribute to Bryant was hardly in print, before he was called “to join the caravan that moves to that mysterious realm.”
Fitz-Greene Halleck, who used to caution the young poet, and who took pride in every new achievement of the traveller, died in 1867.
Horace Greeley, the editor of the Tribune, whose friendship was of the most steady and substantial kind,[301] and for whom Mr. Taylor felt the respect due to a parent, expired in 1872. It was when writing of Mr. Greeley’s death that Mr. Taylor gave the following sketch of their friendship:—
“My own intercourse with him, though often interrupted by absence or divergence of labor, was frank at the start, and grew closer and more precious with every year. In all my experience of men, I have never found one whose primitive impulses revealed themselves with such marvellous purity and sincerity. His nature often seemed to me as crystal-clear as that of a child. In my younger and more sensitive days, he often gave me a transient wound; but such wounds healed without a scar, and I always found, afterward, that they came from the lance of a physician, not from the knife of an enemy.
“I first saw Mr. Greeley in June, 1844, when I was a boy of nineteen. I applied to him for an engagement to write letters to the ‘Tribune’ from Germany. His reply was terse enough. ‘No descriptive letters!’ he said; ‘I am sick of them. When you have been there long enough to know something, send to me, and, if there is anything in your letters, I will publish them.’ I waited nearly a year, and then sent seventeen letters, which were............