“In art matters Mr. Taylor was thoroughly at home. He could not only write a good criticism of a painting, but he was also proficient in the use of brush and pencil. He began sketching when he was a boy, and he executed many paintings in water-colors. He was made one of the members of the Water-Color Society soon after the society was started. Several of his works were shown at the annual exhibitions of the society, and were much admired. I met Mr. Taylor by appointment at Florence, Italy, in the spring of 1873, and visited with him for a short time in that city. We had talked of making a journey to Egypt together. I was to do some sketching there, while he was to glean materials for a book. Ill-health prevented me from making the proposed journey at that time, and I left him in Florence. He there occupied the rooms where Mrs. Browning had lived.
“In later years I had not seen so much of Mr. Taylor as I had wished. I remember the brilliant part he played in the Twelfth Night entertainment of the Century Club last winter, when he put on a high conical cap and marched about the room beating a large drum. As on many other occasions, his wit was displayed in comical speeches and retorts that kept his listeners laughing by the hour. I saw him for the last time at the house of a friend, when he spoke earnestly of the many happy associations he was about to leave. His heart was in this country, however much his interests might lie abroad.”
Mr. Charles T. Congdon, an associate on the “Tribune,” wrote:—
“Everybody in the office knew how high Mr. Taylor stood in the estimation of Mr. Greeley. A man who had worked his way up; who, beginning as a printer, had come to be an admired writer, who was ambitious of excellence, and not afraid of toil to attain it, Mr. Greeley was naturally fond of. So, when the monument of the great journalist was to be dedicated, Mr. Taylor was properly selected to make one of the principal addresses on the occasion. How good that address was, how well conceived and arranged and delivered, need not be said to those who had the satisfaction of hearing it. It was indeed an impressive occasion when, standing above the tomb of his old master, surrounded by those to whom that noble man was dear, with the liberal sky stretched over the earnest speaker, and the great, busy city in the distance, Mr. Taylor, in manly words and sonorous voice, paid those glowing tributes to which all our hearts responded. Somebody now must speak for him; but his memory will lack no eulogist. There is enough to say of such a vigorous and wise career; something, too, there is, alas! which must be left unsaid. Of any of us who remain, had our fate been his, he would have spoken kind and generous words; nor should he go to his grave ‘without the meed of one melodious tear.’
“After many years had gone by, Mr. Taylor came back to do regular daily work in the ‘Tribune’ office, and this he continued until his departure for Germany. I was near him, and, if there were any need of it, I could speak again of his unflagging industry, and of his excellent qualities as a journalist. He had the faculty which every newspaper writer should possess, of writing fairly well upon any topic confided to him. Of course his special skill was displayed in literary labor; but when he saw fit to write upon what may be called secular themes, he did so in an able and judicious way. He was thoroughly kind and obliging, and always willing to lend his help, or to give his advice when it was asked for, as it often was. Somehow, I cannot get away from the impression of his untiring assiduity. He seemed to have always a great variety of work in hand—work at home and in the office—as if he had caught something of the power of toiling from that great German upon whose biography he was then engaged. If he was somewhat proud of his accomplishments—thinking over the matter more, I see that he had a right to be—he had done much, and he had done it well, and he was entitled to the indulgence of some complacency.
“When the rumor came that Mr. Taylor was to be taken away from us for a time and advanced to high diplomatic honors, I think that we were all as proud of it as he was, and felt it to be a recognition, not perhaps made too soon, of the importance of journalism. It was something to send forth from among ourselves an Ambassador to the German Empire, and we were personally grateful to the powers at Washington, though we thought them also the obliged party. In our own way, and in our own place, and with a small token of our good-will, we bade Mr. Taylor farewell on that April afternoon, and spoke jestingly of the time when, his court-dress put off, we should welcome him back to his old desk. There came a statelier leave-taking afterward, when so many of the best and most distinguished of our citizens met to take leave of him in a more formal manner; but I think that he prized our little demonstration quite as highly, and thought of it afterward on the sea and in foreign lands quite as often.
“A man must be judged by what is best in him, by what he has really done, and not by the accidents of his character. Few Americans have written more, and more variously, than Mr. Taylor, and few have written better. Those of us who know how he owed nothing to chance, how methodical and painstaking he was, how he conquered difficulties which would have dismayed a weaker man, are in a position to judge of his merits, and to accord to him words of praise, little as he needs them, which have a specific meaning.”
James T. Fields, in the tributes published in the “Tribune,” gave this sketch of the acquaintance and friendship existing between Mr. Taylor and himself:—
“The death of a man like Bayard Taylor, awakens universal sorrow. Throughout the land of his birth a tearful grief has overspread the nation, and he is mourned everywhere, far and wide, in America. There never lived a public man of greater bonhomie, or of a franker disposition. He had many honors to bear, but he bore them meekly, and like an unspoiled child. Cynicism and vulgar egotism were strangers to his truthful nature; there were no jarring chords either in his understanding or his heart, and so he became his country’s favorite, as well as her pride.
“Thirty-two years ago, on a bright spring morning, a young man of twenty-three held out his hand to me, and introduced himself as Bayard Taylor. We had corresponded at intervals since his first little volume was published in 1844, but we had never met until then. He had come to Boston, rather unexpectedly, he said, to see Longfellow, and Holmes, and Whipple, and some others, who had expressed an interest in his ‘Views Afoot,’ then recently printed in book-form. No one could possibly look upon the manly young fellow at that time without loving him. He was tall and slight, with the bloom of youth mantling a face full of eager, joyous expectation. Health of that buoyant nature which betokens delight in existence, was visible in every feature of the youthful traveller.