MRS. - BA.YARD TAYLOR'S REMINISCENCES.
On Two Continents : Memories of Half a Century. By Marie Hansen Taylor. With the Co-operation of Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 10s.)—This is a quiet retrospect of a life full of interesting and varied experience. Mrs. Bayard Taylor remembers much, but her inclination is rather to dwell on the reflective and meditative aspects of time and place than to note exceptionally vivid incidents. Hence a lack of salient points in her book, and a tendency to an evenness of tone that is rather depressing. She labours, also, under the disadvantage of following as a mere gleaner across a field that has already been reaped. The "Life and Letters" of her husband have fore- stalled her. Yet her book, if not vivid, is pleasant. She was born on a hill called the Seeberg, distant three miles from the town of Gotha. Her father, Peter Andrew Hansen, of Danish extraction, was Director of the Ducal Observatory ; her mother was descended from a long line of huntsmen. Mrs. Taylor's grandfather held the post of Forstmeister, or Master of the Preserves, to Duke August of Gotha. The times were simple, and the Hansen family, living frugally on a salary of six hundred thalers per annum in an official residence communicating with the Observatory, were in touch with the Court on its side of culture and its side of sport. The Royal hunts were important occasions to their family, and the little girl was impressed by her grandfather's presence in the field in green huntsman's garb, and by his rapid change into gold-embroidered dress uniform when the "kill" and the cutting-up and skinning were over, and it was his next duty to dine with the ducal party at the Castle. The Hansens left the Seeberg when Marie was ten years old, and they had been settled twelve years in the town when Bayard Taylor came to Gotha, and the friendship began which ended in a happy marriage. The halo of romance was about him. Marie's uncle, Emil Braun, had met him travelling in the East, seeking to recover from the loss of his first love, to whom he had been married on her death-bed. When he came, Marie got the impression of "an unusual, unspoiled, good and noble man," and thus he re- mained in her memory. But there was no talk or thought of marriage or courting till 1856. And in the meanwhile Taylor made new travels, and Marie visited Rome and England. Of these visits the Memoir tells really nothing that is important enough to quote. But they gave the writer new acquaintances and new ideas, and by the time she came to New York in 1857 as Bayard Taylor's wife she had seen and appreciated much of the best culture of the Old Continent—she knew the Brownings and Thackeray—she had learned to appreciate antique art, and to know her way about modern Rome. In later years she came back to London with her husband, and again one finds oneself unable to select anything especially readable in her experiences while there, except that she missed Thackeray—by this time dead—and was impressed and also amused by Swinburne. "His sturdy form, the reddish hair that curled thickly over his head, his fine and mobile features, high forehead, bright brown eyes, and a thin moustache above the sensitive mouth—all these com- bined to give him the air of an unusual personality. He was very excitable, impulsive in speech and gesture. He teased our little daughter, romped with her and hid under the heavy folds of the table-cloth. He seemed to be pleased that we admired his 'Atalanta in Calydon ' and his latest drama, Chastelard,' and offered to read us the French chansons occurring in the latter. He asked for a lighted candle, although it was bright daylight; then he held the book in one hand close to the taper, and read, with the index finger of the other hand closing the left eye." Both husband and wife appear to have had the gift of dreaming dreams that were prophetic, and the instances given are the more interesting in that they do not—as such dreams generally do— relate to death. Mrs. Bayard Taylor shows herself throughout a devoted and admiring wife. She chronicles the progress of her husband's various literary works, and does him a good deal of Boswell service in minor matters also. Bayard Taylor appears to have been considerably victimised by fools, and not to have suffered them at all gladly. Quite a collection of experiences of bores, and methods of dealing with them, might be gathered from the book. But the best story of a fool comes out of the experience of Browning. He took a lady down to dinner who had been most anxious to meet him in order to ask him some questions. And the questions were :—" Can you tell me who were the Davenport Brothers and the Plymouth Brethren? And oh, what are Yarmouth bloaters ? "
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