He had hundreds of calls to lecture; and thereafter for several years he made lecturing his principal business. From his books and his lectures he received large sums of money, so that before he was thirty he had accumulated a modest fortune.
In 1856 Bayard Taylor took his two sisters and his youngest brother to Europe. He left them in Germany, while he himself carried out a plan long in his mind, of visiting northern Sweden and Lapland in winter. The following summer he visited Norway, and later published the results of these journeys in "Northern Travel."
While in Germany, after his trip to Sweden, he became engaged to Marie Hansen, daughter of Prof. Peter A. Hansen, the noted astronomer and founder of Erfurt Observatory. They were married in the following autumn, October 27, 1857.
He now hurried home with his wife and prepared to build a house and lay out the country estate which he called Cedarcroft. The land had belonged to one of his ancestors, and he was very proud of his fine country house; but he found it a rather expensive enjoyment.
CHAPTER X
HIS POETRY
We have seen how in youth Bayard Taylor conceived the ambition to be known as one of his country's great poets. He saw his books of travel sell by the hundred thousand; but while this brought him money and notoriety, he clung still to his poetry. He even felt annoyed when he heard himself spoken of as "the great American traveler" instead of the great American poet. The truth is, he had not been able to give to poetry the time or energy he could have wished; and he afterwards worked with desperate energy to recover those lost poetic opportunities.
Yet in his busiest days he was always writing verses, which in the minds of excellent judges are the best he ever did. From time to time he published volumes of poetry, and with certain of his intimate friends he always maintained himself on the footing of a poet.
We remember the publication of his first volume, entitled "Ximena," which he never cared to reprint in his collected works. During his first European trip he wrote a great deal. Some of his shorter poems he afterwards published under the title "Rhymes of Travel." The fate of a longer poem we must hear in his own words.
"I had in my knapsack," he says, "a manuscript poem of some twelve hundred lines, called 'The Liberated Titan,'—the idea of which I fancied to be something entirely new in literature. Perhaps it was. I did not doubt for a moment that any London publisher would gladly accept it, and I imagined that its appearance would create not a little sensation. Mr. Murray gave the poem to his literary adviser, who kept it about a month, and then returned it with a polite message. I was advised to try Moxon; but, by this time, I had sobered down considerably, and did not wish to risk a second rejection.