CIVIL WAR PRESIDENT LINCOLN RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT POET AUTHOR AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED

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CIVIL WAR PRESIDENT LINCOLN RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT POET AUTHOR AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED :
$18.52

BAYARD TAYLOR

(1825 - 1878)

CIVIL WAR DIPLOMAT - SECRETARY OFLEGATION AT ST. PETERSBURG, AND ACTING MINISTER TO RUSSIA FOR A TIME DURING1862-3 APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN AFTER THE RESIGNATION OF AMBASSADOR SIMONCAMERON,

MINISTER TO PRUSSIA APPOINTED BYPRESIDENT HAYES IN 1878

AMERICAN POET, LITERARY CRITIC,TRANSLATOR, and TRAVEL AUTHOR!

HERE\'S AN AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED BY TAYLOR,REMOVED FROM A 19th CENTURY AUTOGRAPH ALBUM and SIGNED

“Very truly yours,

Bayard Taylor.

Manchester, N. H.

Jan. 18, 1870~~”

A RARE ADDITION TO YOUR AMERICAN CIVILWAR ERA POLITICAL and LITERARY HISTORY AUTOGRAPH, MANUSCRIPT & EPHEMERACOLLECTION!

THE DOCUMENTMEASURES 4½” x 3¾” AND IS IN VERY FINE CONDITION.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF

BAYARD TAYLOR

The Life of Bayard Taylor (1825-1878)

Eastern adventures, andrevising the books he had already published. In July 1856, he departed New York once again for Europe in order to travelthrough the northern countries and gather material for a future book. OnDecember 6, 1856 Bayard arrived in Stockholm, Sweden, and after a week,departed for a two-month tour of Lapland and the Arctic regions. Bayardwrites in his journal that the temperature was minus 47 at noon onJanuary 28, 1857. Before continuing his northern travels, he brieflyvisited Germany and England. While in England, he spent two dayswith Alfred Lord Tennyson. Bayard and Tennyson spent their time togetherdiscussing poetry, religion, politics, and geology. After this briefvisit, Bayard joined his friend August Bufleb in Norway, were they spent thesummer traveling together. The experiences of these trips, sent back tothe Tribune as letters, formed the basis of his book, NorthernTravel: Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland ,which appeared in the fall of 1857. After Bayard’s trip to Norway he returned to Gotha, were he to Bufleb’s home inGotha, were he became acquainted with Mrs. Bufleb’s niece, Marie Hansen.In June 1857, they became engaged, and on October 27, 1857, they weremarried. That winter, they made a trip to Greece, a place he longed tovisit. He and his wife returned to Gotha in the spring of 1858 to awaitthe birth of a daughter, Lilian, and on October 1, 1858, the familysailed for America. After settling the family, Bayard departed on a lecture tour to obtain money tobegin the building of Cedarcroft , his future country estate north ofKennett Square. The estate was finished in the summer of 1860, andwas dedicated with great celebration on Saturday, August 18, 1860 with aproduction of a comedy, Love at a Hotel , written by Bayard and hisfriend, Richard Henry Stoddard. Guests included Ralph Waldo Emerson, JohnGreenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and Horace Greeley, amongothers. His new home proved to be an expensive luxury (it cost $15,000 to build), andit was frequently necessary to set aside the poetry that he loved for morelucrative writing, as well as continuing with his lecture tours. In 1862,he accepted an appointment as chargé d’affaires of the Russian legation in St.Petersburg. In December 1863, Bayard was in Washington, D. C. for aseries of three lectures on the topic of Russia, its people and place inhistory. President Abraham Lincoln attended Bayard Taylor’s lecturein Willard’s Hall. The President, impressed by Bayard’s lecture, wrotehim a brief letter of admiration. Later, in 1869, Bayard published his Balladof Abraham Lincoln , “one of the earliest compositions in verse aboutLincoln, prepared especially for children.”

Legacy and honors

Cedarcroft, Taylor\'s home from 1859 to 1874, which he built near Kennett Square, is preserved as a National Historic Landmark.
The Bayard Taylor School was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
The Bayard Taylor Memorial Library is in Kennett Square.

Evaluations

Though he wanted to be known most as a poet, Taylor was mostly recognizedas a travel writer during his lifetime. Modern critics have generally acceptedhim as technically skilled in verse, but lacking imagination and, ultimately,consider his work as a conventional example of 19th-century sentimentalism.

His translation of Faust, however, was recognized for its scholarlyskill and remained in print through 1969. According to the 1920 edition of EncyclopediaAmericana:

It is by his translation of Faust, one of the finest attempts ofthe kind in any literature, that Taylor is generally known; yet as an originalpoet he stands well up in the second rank of Americans. His Poems of theOrient and his Pennsylvania ballads comprise his best work. His verse isfinished and sonorous, but at times over-rhetorical.

According to the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica:

Taylor\'s most ambitious productions in poetry—- his Masque of the Gods(Boston, 1872), Prince Deukalion; a lyrical drama (Boston, 1878), ThePicture of St John (Boston, 1866), Lars; a Pastoral of Norway(Boston, 1873), and The Prophet; a tragedy (Boston, 1874)—- are marredby a ceaseless effort to overstrain his power. But he will be remembered by hispoetic and excellent translation of Goethe\'s Faust (2 vols, Boston,1870-71) in the original metres.

Taylor felt, in all truth, the torment and the ecstasy of verse; but, as acritical friend has written of him, his nature was so ardent, so full-blooded,that slight and common sensations intoxicated him, and he estimated theireffect, and his power to transmit it to others, beyond the true value. He had,from the earliest period at which he began to compose, a distinct lyricalfaculty: so keen indeed was his ear that he became too insistently haunted bythe music of others, pre-eminently of Tennyson. But he had often a true andfine note of his own. His best short poems are The Metempsychosis of thePine and the well-known Bedouin love-song.

In his critical essays Bayard Taylor had himself in no inconsiderabledegree what he wrote of as that pure poetic insight which is the vital spiritof criticism. The most valuable of these prose dissertations are the Studiesin German Literature (New York, 1879).

In Appletons\' Cyclopædia of American Biography of 1889, Edmund ClarenceStedman gives the following critique:

His poetry is striking for qualities that appeal to the ear and eye,finished, sonorous in diction and rhythm, at times too rhetorical, but rich insound, color, and metrical effects. His early models were Byron and Shelley, and his more ambitious lyrics anddramas exhibit the latter\'s peculiar, often vague, spirituality. Lars,somewhat after the manner of Tennyson, is his longest and most attractivenarrative poem. Prince Deukalion was designed for a masterpiece; itsblank verse and choric interludes are noble in spirit and mould. Some ofTaylor\'s songs, oriental idyls, and the true and tender Pennsylvanian ballads,have passed into lasting favor, and show the native quality of his poetic gift.His fame rests securely upon his unequalled rendering of Faust in theoriginal metres, of which the first and second parts appeared in 1870 and 1871.His commentary upon Part II for the first time interpreted the motive andallegory of that unique structure.

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