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Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field cover

Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field

Chapter 53: BAYARD TAYLOR’S GERMAN
By Henry W. Fischer
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About This Book

A travel-writer recounts his time with two well-known American humorists while they lived and circulated in European cities, presenting a series of anecdotal sketches and recollections. The pieces capture their conversation, mannerisms, and responses to social customs, language, royalty, art, and contemporary personalities; they mix light-hearted episodes, reflections on fame and temperament, and brief critical remarks about literary and political topics. The arrangement is episodic rather than continuous, offering vivid vignettes that illuminate public and private behavior abroad.

BAYARD TAYLOR’S GERMAN

“No, I haven’t got an ounce of envy in me. I once tried hard to get envious, but happily my wife interfered. I had to forget about it and turn my mind into other, cleaner channels. That was on our first trip to Europe, in 1878. On the ship we met Bayard Taylor, the poet, bound for Berlin, as ambassador to Bismarck. That, I believe, states the case more correctly than the official ‘ambassador to the Court of Berlin.’

“Well, Bayard made me feel pretty cheap by his display of German. That fellow was forever talking, thinking and writing German. Compared with his, my own miserable German vocabulary was an ant-hill facing Chimborazo. And when I heard him recite whole acts of his metric translation of Faust, I wished myself in his shoes, for I certainly did envy the man his Teuton knowledge. However, when I told Livy about it, she warned me and made me promise to suppress the nasty habit. Well done, for Bayard Taylor died within five or six months, at the age of fifty-three.”