January 11, 1825

Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825 to December 19, 1878), an American writer and traveler, was born in Pennsylvania and died in Prussia, a few months after assuming the ambassadorial post in Berlin. In between he traveled to foreign lands, a lot, and wrote about his adventures. This kind of travelogue was the only access many people had to the expansive effects of strange cultures. Bayard Taylor sometimes traveled as a columnist for an American publication and then the articles were collected in books. Titles like these were very popular:

El Dorado; or, Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850)
A Journey to Central Africa; or, Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile (1854) 

The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain (1854)

A Visit to India, China and Japan in the Year 1853 (1855)
Northern Travel: Summer and Winter Pictures (1857). [about Sweden]

Bayard Taylor also wrote novels and poetry.  He translated Goethe's Faust (1870-71.) We found a poem, "The Soldier and the Pard" which illustrates Taylor's love for the exotic. The narrative of this long poem is a soldier's story about having found himself "alone and left behind" in the Egyptian desert, where he encounters a leopard who, having never seen a person before, turns out to be very friendly.

Here are some excerpts, starting with the scene Taylor sets at the start of "The Soldier and the Pard":

....breathe the hot Egyptian air,
Hear Kleber, see the sabre of Dessaix
Flash at the column’s front, and in the midst
Napoleon, upon his Barbary horse,
Calm, swarthy-browed, and wiser than the Sphinx
Whose granite lips guard Egypt’s mystery.
....

[We marched]....from day
To day, past wrecks of temples half submerged
In sandy inundation, till we saw
Old noseless Memnon sitting on the plain,
Both hands upon his knees, ...
The sphinxes wondered --such as had a face —-
To see us stumbling down their avenues ;
But we kept silent. One may whistle round
Your Roman temples .... or dance
Upon the Pont du Gard ;—but, take my word,
Egyptian ruins are a serious thing:
You would not dare let fly a joke beside
The maimed colossi, though your very feet
Might catch between some mummied Pharaoh’s
 ribs....

[The hero finds himself alone with a wild beast, a leopard, called then sometimes, a pard]

Not such as one of those they show you caged 

In Paris, lean and scurvy beasts enough...

No: but a desert pard, superb and proud, 

That would have died behind the cruel bars. 

I think the creature had not looked on man, 

For, as my brain grew cooler, I could see 

Small sign of fierceness...
....

She stopped: she rolled 

A deep-voiced note of pleasure and of love, 

And gathering up her spotted length, lay down, 

Her head upon my lap, and forward thrust 

One heavy-moulded paw across my knees, 

The glittering talons sheathing tenderly.
.....

And more of confidence between us came, 

I grateful for my safety, she alive 

With the dumb pleasure of companionship, 

Which touched with instincts of humanity 

Her brutish nature. When I slept, at last, 

My arm was on her neck.

[The soldier though becomes nervous about the cat; was he]
...
Deceived with false caresses, as a cat 

Toys with the trembling mouse she straight devours. 

Will she so gently fawn about my feet, 

When the gazelles are gone?
.....

[The soldier finds that the big cat follows him if he tries to leave. And]

... as I watched a flock of birds, that wheeled, 

And dipped, and circled in the air, the Pard, 

....

To win my notice, closed her careful fangs 

About my knee. 

Scarce knowing what I did, 

In the blind impulse of suspicious fear,

I plunged, full home, my dagger

[Into].. the Pard, 

Her splendid eyes all film, ....[she] fell

.....and I, her murderer,

Less than a beast, had thus repaid her love. 

Ah, friends! with all this guilty memory 

My heart is sore : and little now remains 

To tell you, but that ...
.... if a man 

Deny this truth she taught me, to his face 

I say he lies: a beast may have a soul.

This work was collected  in The Poems of Bayard Taylor, (1865).  It rises above the level of 19th century verse.  Here's the book, containing the whole text of "The Soldier and the Pard".

December 19, 1878

Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825 to December 19, 1878), an American writer and traveler, was born in a comfortable Pennsylvania setting, and died in Prussia, a few months after assuming the ambassadorial post in Berlin. In between he traveled to foreign lands, and wrote about his adventures. This kind of travelogue was the only access many people had to the expansive effects of strange cultures. Bayard Taylor sometimes traveled as a columnist for an American publication and then the articles were collected in books. Titles like these were very popular:

El Dorado; or, Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850)

A Journey to Central Africa; or, Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile (1854)

The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain (1854)

A Visit to India, China and Japan in the Year 1853 (1855)

Northern Travel: Summer and Winter Pictures (1857). [which is about Sweden]

We quote now from At home and abroad : a sketch-book of life, scenery and men (1862),
from his account of a stay in Thuringia.

[Arriving late at a house where he and his wife had previously arranged to stay]

.... the gloom of the evening is counterbalanced by our pleasant feeling of independence—by the knowledge that we occupy a house which we can temporarily call our own, conducting our housekeeping as we see fit. The rooms are neatly but completely furnished; a little bare, perhaps, to an American eye, but we are accustomed to the simplicity of German life, and, moreover, our home is rather outside than inside the cottage. Still, it is well to know that the beds are of fresh linen, that the supply of water is ample, and that the cane arm chairs in the drawing-room are agreeable to sit upon. A peep into the kitchen disclosed the surprising fact that we have butter, eggs, salad, and raw Westphalian ham, and as Hanna, the tidy servant-girl who awaited our arrival, has already made a fire in the ponderous range, I feel that our supper is secure. Let no apprehension for the morrow, therefore, disturb our first day of possession!

Really, this is the ideal of Travel. Not in great hotels, where one lives according to fixed rules, or pays enormously for breaking them—not in capitals, where the levelling civilization of our century is fast annihilating social peculiarities, and establishing, so to speak, a uniform gauge, adapted to all nationalities, can one feel the pulse of a foreign life. Men must be studied in their homes, and, whenever possible, from a home among them. We must find an empty cell in the hive, and inhabit the same, though it be in the character of a drone. ... [Of course one cannot] be so ignorant of the language, as to have a bunch of quills put on the table instead of a fowl, nor so wedded to his home habits as to make himself unhappy because he cannot retain them. With a little human flexibility, a catholic breadth of taste, and an entire freedom from the prejudices of the Little Peddlington in which most men are born, we may, without sacrificing a jot of our individuality, without hazarding the loss of a single principle, live the life of other races and other climates, and thus gather into our own the aggregate experience of Man.

This is the true ... World-Circle—the completed sphere of life on this planet, which he must traverse who shall write the yet unwritten human Cosmos...

This little study, [where] I find, [myself] illustrates a truth which is known to authors, and to none else: that the range of thought is in inverse proportion to the dimensions of the material dwelling of the thinker. In other words, the narrower your chamber, the wider your brain: hence poets seek garrets by a natural instinct, and the philosopher who could not sling a cat in his room assuredly never felt the need of that diversion. The mental labor which it would be difficult to perform in a spacious Gothic hall, would be comparatively easy in a low hut, with one window. If this journal should be discursive—of which I have a strong presentiment—the reason will be apparent. But where is our home? A familiar spot in a foreign land—distant, happily, from any capital, except that of small principality, aside from the highways of tourists, yet embosomed in a region of the loveliest scenery....


Bayard Taylord may have been a rare one to come from a home like Cedarcroft, below,

and sing the praises of humble dwellings. 

December 19, 1878

Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825  to December 19, 1878), essayist and diplomat,  is a forgotten name today but in his time he was ranked among the highest literary lights in American culture. He is listed in this title of Sherwin Cody's, from which we draw some interesting details about Taylor's life: Four famous American writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor; a book for young Americans (1899).

Bayard Taylor traveled widely and in 1846 published Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff. He later represented the United States at embassies in St. Petersburg and Berlin.

Cody quotes Bayard Taylor about his encounters with fauna:

On Sunday," says he, "I took [Schiller's] 'Don Carlos' with me in our boat, and rowed myself out of sight of the village into the solitude of the autumn woods. The sky was blue and bright as that of Eden, and the bright trees waved over me like gorgeous banners from the hilltops. I sat on a sunny slope and read for hours; it was a rare enjoyment! As I moved to rise I found a snake, which had crept up to me for warmth, and was coiled up quietly under my arm. I was somewhat startled, but the reptile slid noiselessly away, and I could not harm it."...
[Another story is told by one] who called on him when he was on one of his lecture tours. He was a stranger in the house of strangers, and no doubt as much a stranger to the cat as to any of the people; but it did not take him long to slip into easy intercourse with men or animals. '' I had listened for some time to his intelligent descriptions,...when Tom, a large Maltese cat, entered the room. At Mr. Taylor's invitation Tom approached him, and as he stroked the fur of the handsome cat, a sort of magnetism seemed to be imparted to the family pet, for he rolled over at the feet of his new-made friend, and seemed delighted with the beginning of the interview. In the most natural manner possible, Mr. Taylor slid off, as it were, from the sofa on which he had been sitting, and assumed the position of a Turk on the rug before the sofa, playing with delighted Tom in the most buoyant manner, still continuing his conversation, but changing the subject, for the nonce, to that of cats, and narrating many stories respecting the weird and wise conduct of these animals, which are at once loved and feared by the human race." ...

Such is the gentle man whose gossip reeks of American literature, as he writes letters with such details as these:

 "Reached Boston Sunday morning, galloped out to Cambridge, and spent the evening with Lowell;... got up early on Tuesday .... and rambled over the Merrimac hills with Whittier;...; back in the afternoon to Cambridge, where I smoked a cigar with Lowell, and then stayed all night at Longfellow's."