1890 HANDWRITTEN MANUSCRIPT ALS BY FAMED ARTIST/ENGRAVER REGARDING THE RENOWNED POET BAYARD TAYLOR

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On offer is an interesting, enigmatic handwritten manuscript letter [ALS] by renown John Sartain (1808-1897) an artist who pioneered mezzotint engraving in the United States. This letter dated December 7th, 1890 is in superb condition save for a fault in the upper left hand corner not affecting the text or letterhead. Addressed to H. Rush Hervey regarding, research suggests, the famed and noted author/poet Bayard Taylor. BIO NOTES: TAYLOR, BAYARD. Born in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, January 11, 1825; died in Berlin, Germany, December 19, 1878. The career of Bayard Taylor was a constantly shifting romance, comparable only to a kaleidoscope in which every turn brings out a design. From his earliest boyhood in a little Quaker town, he was imbued with two ambitions -- to travel and to be a poet; neither of which, from obvious circumstances, seemed at all probable. But Life, which is always in league with the dreamer, brought both to pass. He began at seven years of age to write poetry and at sixteen published his first verses. At nineteen he brought out his first book, "Ximen, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena." In this year the second desire of his life urged him to make trial of himself and he went abroad, traveling about Europe on foot for nearly two years, with his only luggage a knapsack and a scanty supply of script. From this trip, however, came "Views Afoot," almost the pioneer travel book of America, and immediately the poet-wanderer found the fates smiling upon him. Soon after his return he became head of the literary department of the "New York Tribune," but no office could hold so restless a spirit and at the outbreak of the gold-fever in California in 1849, he joined the seekers, bringing back, not gold, but the story of its pursuit, in "Eldorado." He married Miss Mary Agnew, a childhood friend, who was incurably ill and who lived but two months following the marriage. This grief sent the poet to Europe again and on into the East, the land which had been to him the dream within the dream. Here his poetic gift came suddenly into flower, and nearly all of his finest lyrics from this period relate to the East to which he made many subsequent trips. In 1856 he again visited Europe and was warmly received by scholars and writers, particularly in Germany, where he married a daughter of the astronomer, Professor Hansen. Returning to America, he established the beautiful home, "Cedarcroft," in his native Pennsylvania village, and in such intervals as were spent in its retirement, produced poetry, novels, essays, books of travel, and translations. To literature and travel he added diplomacy, and was sent as secretary to the American legation in Russia and as United States Minister to Germany, a position which he eagerly accepted in the hope that it would give him leisure to write a "Life" of Goethe, which he had long had in mind. This ambition, however, was not to be fulfilled, as he was stricken with illness not long after his arrival at Berlin and died there in a few weeks." Sartain refers to a letter Taylor sent him 50 years hence when Taylor was only 17 years old. Show more