Life and letters of Rev. George Boardman Taylor

Foreword

About thirty years ago I spent a winter in Rome and for the first time met the Rev. Dr. George B. Taylor. I was sick in a strange city, and he visited me. I began then to realize how rich is the incidental ministry which the foreign missionary can perform to his own countrymen, whom he chances to find in need and pain, like ships that pass in the night. From that time his life touched mine at different points, and I ever learned more deeply to admire his strenuous and abstemious nature. There could hardly be a more perfect blending of saint, scholar and gentleman. I used to attend his Sunday services, and the vision of his pale but glowing features and his delicate frame, protected by a gray shawl against the tomblike chilliness of the locale where his disciples met, will never fade away from my remembrance.

When the English troops made their famous charge up Spion Kop, attaining its summit only to be swept down by the murderous cross-fire of the Boers, they had left Major Ross in camp weak and unable to walk. But we are told that rumors of the desperate conflict in which his regiment was involved must have reached the hospital tent in which the sick man lay, for at three o'clock that afternoon the orderly reported that his bed was empty. How his gallant spirit drove his weak body up the long climb, across the lead-swept plateau, and into the firing line, no man knows, for none then saw him; but at dusk his

FOREWORD

body was found on the crest where his company had struggled through the day. In some such way Dr. Taylor's unconquerable soul pushed his frail body through all the isolation and shock and strain incident to the part which he took in the establishment of Protestantism in the citadel of papacy, just at that interesting period when the temporal power of the Pope was ended, and Pome for the first time in her history flung her gates wide open to the gospel.

It is difficult to estimate the value of such a life. Our Master does not measure our work, but weighs it. Foundation laying is always slow and inconspicuous. Who can tell how much, in Italian thought, the swing of the pendulum from Romanism towards Atheism has been retarded by such a life as Dr. Taylor's, and how far it is due to his labors that we find the minds of the Italians that throng to our shores hospitable to Protestant ideas ! Success and suffering are vitally interrelated. If you suffer without succeeding, it is that others may succeed after you; if you succeed without suffering, it is because others suffered before you.

Edward Judson. 53 Washington Square, New York.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Early Years 7

II. Baltimore Pastorate — Marriage 29

CHAPTER I Early Years

Happy those early days, when I Shined in my early infancy!

Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white celestial thought.

— Vaughan.

The spirit of a youth That means to be of note, begins betimes.

— Shakespeare. +

A few years ago an American clergyman and his two daughters were journeying from Poland to Italy. They spent a day at the beautiful twin city on the Danube, Budapest, guests of the famous Hotel Hungaria. The next day, on the train, they fell into conversation with a fellow-countryman who had travelled in almost all lands. He, too, had been a guest the night before under the same roof as they. The talk turning to hotels, which have so much to do with our comfort when we are journeying, the stranger declared that in all his wanderings the finest hotels he had found were the "Hotel Hungaria' 7 at Budapest, and "The Jefferson" at Richmond, Virginia. Upon this the clergyman announced, with no small degree of pride and pleasure, that Richmond was his native city.

The clergyman was George Boardman Taylor, and he was fond of adopting Paul's language and declaring that he was "a citizen of no mean city." To the very end of his life, in his far-away home in the city by the Tiber, he always heard with keen delight accounts of the progress and prosperity of the city on the James. Here in a house on the corner of Fourth and Grace streets, where, the Grace Street Presbyterian Church now stands, on December 27th, 1832, he first saw the light, and was named George Boardman in honor of the consecrated missionary who just a little while before had laid down his life in distant Burmah, and who has been called the "Apostle to the Karens." His father, James B. Taylor, though born in England, had been brought to this country when still an infant. He was a man of strong intellect and great vigor and will power, yet withal gentle and mild in his manner. He never had college and university and seminary training, but he wrote and spoke with remarkable force, simplicity and clearness, and was not unfamiliar with the masterpieces of English literature. In 1832 he had been pastor of the Second Baptist Church some eight years. His wife was of the distinguished Williams family of New England, descended from a line of pious Congregational ministers. The second child born to these parents was a son, and the name he received suggests the religious atmosphere of the home into which he had come. The six children who were born into this home, three daughters and three sons, all of whom lived to see their own children men and women, were members of a family where "plain living and high thinking" were the order of the day. During the early childhood of the oldest son, a comfortable house of ten rooms with a large yard and garden was purchased. This yard afforded an ample space for the children's games, and it was there that George and his sister Jane used to amuse themselves playing college, naming the school, whose patrons they were, ''the College of George and Jane," in imitation of a venerable institution not far away. This house is thus referred to in ''Richmond in Bygone Days" :

"An antique dwelling, half brick, half wood, with the square on which it stood on the south side of Main, between Second and Third streets, was the residence many years ago of Major Andrew Dunscombe, a soldier of the Revolution and a gentleman of the olden time. He was, I think, a Master in Chancery of Judge Wythe's court, and, if I mistake not, he erected Goodall's Tavern (the Indian Queen), since called Washington and now Monument"

Good books abounded in this home. Most liberally were they provided for the children, regardless of cost, and this in a day when they were far more expensive than they are to-day. Some parents are lavish in their expenditure of money for clothes and food, but they starve the minds of their children. Not so in this home. To the third generation not a few handsome volumes have come down to bear witness to the mental pabulum that these children fed upon. For example, George, on March 15th, 1848, when he was a little over fifteen years old, received from his father Chambers' Encyclopaedia of English Literature, in two large volumes. Notice, too, that this was at neither birthday nor Christmas. Buying good books was evidently an everyday occurrence in this home. No wonder that George became as familiar with books as a stable boy is with horses. At four years of age he was reading the New Testament, thus establishing a precedent which some of his descendants have found burdensome.

When George was a child of seven summers, his father was appointed chaplain to the University of Virginia, he being the second Baptist to hold this position. On the journey towards Charlottesville, the child saw, possibly at Louisa Court House, a jail. He asked his mother why that house had iron bars across the windows. His mother explained that people who took things that did not belong to them were put into that house. All at once the child became very silent and very serious: "Mama, will they put me in there ? The other day when you were not looking I took a lump of sugar out of the sugar dish."

At the University, as in those days the parsonage had not been built, the chaplain lived in the house on the Lawn afterwards occupied by Dr. Basil L. Gildersleeve and at present the home of Prof. A. H. Tuttle. Although the chaplaincy lasted only a year, the University made a deep impression upon George, though he never dreamed that years afterwards he would twice occupy the position his father was filling.

When his father went to see the experiments of Professor Emmett in Chemistry, George would go along and the janitor would dust, and bring out for his use, an insulating stool with glass legs. If George's legs were scarcely long enough for the benches in the Chemistry lecture room, they were long enough and strong enough to enable him to accompany his father on many a tramp "over Observatory Mountain and Lewis Mountain, or through the fields, plucking the honeysuckle or wild-ivy and starting the bird from her nest," the eyes of the father and child "meantime feasting on the red fields inlaid with emerald forests, contrasting beautifully with each other and with the blue sky and distant Blue Ridge Mountains."

After the year at the University Mr. Taylor returned to Richmond to become pastor of the Grace Street Baptist Church, and so, until he left home to teach and to go to the University as a student, George's home was Richmond. Not a few of the anecdotes which come to us from this period of his life breathe that love of adventure and quiet courage which in later life were to help him in many important and trying experiences. Preachers' sons are often supposed to be effeminate and unable to defend themselves as other boys do, nor did his companions make a mental exception in favor of George until one day he kicked down a flight of steps an urchin who had presumed too far ; after this, his pluck and grit were not questioned.

From time immemorial Richmond boys have been famous swimmers, partly because James River just above Richmond, with its falls full of treacherous rapids, offers at once a place for natatorial sport and an unusual scope for skill and agility in the water. The boys were allowed by their school teacher to go to the river at recess, with the understanding that if they were not back on time they were to receive a stroke on the hand from the ferule for every moment they were tardy. One day George left his knife on the bank and went back for it, with the result that he was almost an hour late. Before the whole school he stood and took his punishment like a man, only pleading now and then to be allowed to hold out the other hand for awhile. His grandfather lived five miles or so out in the country, and thither the boy often went for a holiday as well as at other times. It was probably on one of these trips that he was so severely bitten by a dog that the scar on his leg went with him through life.

In December, 1833, Richmond College was moved from the country to the place it now occupies, and when George was still not fourteen years old he was already one of its students. Dr. Robert Ryland was the president of the College, Bennett Puryear Professor of Chemistry, and, for a season, Charles L. Cocke, afterwards the founder of Hollins Institute, was one of George's teachers. In 1846, on a long tour he was making through the South on behalf of the Foreign Mission Board, Mr. Taylor, writing home to his wife and telling how he longed to see his little family, made this reference to his oldest son:

"I would be willing to stroll out as far as the College, tired as I am of travelling, for the sake of looking into George's face. I 'reckon' he is as busy as he can well be. Mr. Cocke says in his letter to me that George can be at the head of his class, and it would not at all surprise me if in peeping into the school room I should find him there."

The professor of Chemistry was in the habit of administering occasionally laughing gas to his students. The story goes that upon one of these occasions young Taylor, always a good jumper, and now rendered abnormally active by the gas, cleared the high fence behind which Professor Puryear had, by way of precaution, stationed himself, and gave his teacher a hot chase across the campus to

KEV. GEORGE BOARDMAN TAYLOR, D. D. 13

his house. Dr. Ryland was fond of trying to trap the boys with hard questions. When he asked young Taylor how he pronounced a certain word, the answer he got, uttered in a serious tone, was: "Dr. Ryland, I never use that word." It was at this period of his life that the young collegian was one of a merry party of youths and maidens invited to take tea at the home of one of his father's members. When the party came to the table, the hostess called on him to ask the blessing. What must have been the surprise and suppressed amusement when they all heard him say : "I never do such things !"

While at Richmond College George B. Taylor and William D. Thomas were intimate friends. Both were of a philosophical turn of mind. On their long walks away out into the country, in turn they would speak at the top of their voices to imaginary audiences. In the Mu Sigma Rho literary society, likewise, Taylor entered the arena of debate, his whole being kindling into enthusiasm. In 1851 the third graduating class of Richmond College went forth from their alma mater. A programme of the order of exercises is still in existence and gives the list of graduates and the subjects of their addresses as follows : The Reformation, William S. Bland, King and Queen; The Scholar, Morton B. Howell, Richmond ; The Influence of Circumstances on Genius, George W. Keesee, Henrico; The Tolerance of Reform, George B. Taylor, Richmond ; The Relations of Animal and Vegetable Life, William D. Thomas, Richmond. All of this class have passed away, save Morton B. Howell, who is a distinguished member of the Nashville bar.

After his graduation at Richmond College, Mr. Taylor, then in his nineteenth year, taught for one session in the "Fork" neighborhood, Fluvanna County, what was popularly known in Virginia as "an old field school." This sojourn in Fluvanna was destined to mark an epoch in his life, and the memory of him and his work has not yet faded among those whom he taught and ministered to in other ways. With this his first protracted absence from his father's roof-tree began that series of long, frequent, charming letters to his loved ones which was to continue through his life and to be, for the lives of many, like the clear, refreshing, ever-flowing, life-giving waters from a splendid mountain spring. Through his letters we catch some glimpses of the teacher and his school. Under date of July 18th, 1851, he wrote to one of his brothers:

"The school house is about a mile from here. I walk over in the morning with seven of my sixteen scholars. The boys carry a large basket of dinner, and a jug of milk which is put into the spring to keep cool till lunch time. At the school house I stay till 4.30 or 5. Carry a cane all the time. Occupy my armchair with equal honor to my own station and terror to my scholars. My boys have several times brought me peaches or apples. Hope I may not have to engraft any thing of the peach on them. Six of my scholars are girls ! They are. I have them play to themselves. A large snake frightened them at play in the leaves yesterday at recess. They were making houses. I sent one of the boys to kill it. Yesterday after school at the earnest solicitation of my boys I accompanied them to the Rivanna to bathe."

EEV. GEORGE BOARDMAN TAYEOR, D. D. 15

In a letter of the same date to his father he writes : "I open school at 8.30 and close at 4.30; giving ten minutes recess at ten, ninety minutes at 12, and ten minutes more at 3.15. Don't I have quite a siege? The parents would like it better for me to keep from 7.30 to 5 or later. But that wouldn't be just to myself, and I will not do it. As it is, the confinement and constant engagement is quite enough for me, and I am satisfied some of the children are having their spirits broken by such continued sitting. ... I can say of the last two mornings :

'I saw the glorious sun arise.'

Had to rise myself at 5.15. Secured nearly an hour before breakfast, which occurs from 8 to 6.15. I want to try to get at least four hours of study every day — from 5 to 6, 7 to 8, 12.30 to 1, 5.30 to 7. Am reading a work on physiology which I have long intended to become acquainted with. Commenced law this morning."

This last statement called forth from his father in reply these words :

"So you have commenced the study of the law ? Do you really think you will be employed in the business of pleading before civil courts and on behalf of the earthly interests of your fellow-men? I do not object to the occupancy of your mind in this way, but it would be a matter of thankfulness to me if it was the will of the great Head of the Church to employ you as a pleader with men to be reconciled to Him."

It was to be as the father wished, and when one sees the devout, strong religious feeling which breathed in several letters written even before his life in Fluvanna, the wonder is, not that he became a preacher, but that he ever thought of the law at all.

With his younger brother, James, one of his pupils, he lived at the home of Silas B. Jones, whose children were in his school. The only complaint Mr. Jones had against the teacher was that he could not sing! Mr. Taylor made himself useful elsewhere besides in his school. It was a time of great temperance agitation and enthusiasm, and he was much in demand for temperance addresses. Once at a temperance rally and barbecue, just as he was about to conclude his address, the one in charge of the arrangements pulled his coat-tail and asked him if he could speak awhile longer, as the ox was not yet fully roasted. He was equal to the occasion, as his supply of suitable anecdotes was abundant, and his speech flowed on till dinner was ready. His voice was heard in the church as well.

Indeed, the brethren were so much pleased with him and his exhortations — if his addresses were not to be called sermons — that one day, when he was absent, the Fork Church licensed him to preach. So his career as a preacher may be said to have begun. Like Dr. Jeter, he used to say in later years that he always planned to take a good long time and deliberately decide whether he would preach, but having once gone to work, he was so busy preaching that he never had time to decide whether he would give his life to preaching. The following extract from one of his letters is not so much out of harmony with the foregoing as it might seem at first blush :

BEV. GEORGE BOARDMAN TAYLOR, D. D. 17

"I have been to two candy pullings within the past week, and pullings they were, too, and in a different from the ordinary sense. For when the candy attains some degree of whiteness everybody snatches from everybody else and grab game is the order of the evening. The first time I enjoyed myself considerably, but on the latter occasion I left off my Christian dignity and participated in the prevailing vapidity and frivolity. I have been ashamed and mortified ever since. Only wish that those who saw my levity could be cognizant of my remorse too."

The next three years of his life Mr. Taylor spent as a student at the University of Virginia, which seat of learning had then been established some twenty-seveai years. The affection which Mr. Jefferson had for this school is gauged by the fact that one of the three things he selected for his tombstone concerning himself was this : "Father of the University of Virginia." The broad and thorough scholarship, the honor system and the elective scheme of studies are some of the features incorporated by Jefferson which have helped to make the Virginia University a mighty force, especially in the South, but also to remoter bounds. Mr. Jefferson called from Europe the first professors. Among them was George Long, who after several years returned to his native land to occupy a chair in the new University of London. He carried with him, however, as a souvenir of this land, a Virginia wife. Jefferson's plan had been that the professors should occupy the upper rooms of the pavilions, as the residences on the Lawn were first called, the students to gather for class work in the rooms below ; but as the professors would not follow his plans and remain bachelors, the classes were soon driven to seek other quarters. Mr. Long suggested, as his successor in the chair of Ancient Languages, Gessner Harrison, one of his students, then only twenty-one years old, and he was elected. "In the opinion of many, who from a long life and distinguished position have had opportunities for judging, Gessner Harrison may be said to have done more than any one man, with the single exception of Mr. Jefferson, in raising the standard of education throughout the South." While Mr. Taylor and his fellow-students were greatly influenced and impressed by Gessner Harrison, there were other giants in those days, such as William H. McGuffey, Albert T. Bledsoe, William B. Rogers, J. L. Cabell and John B. Minor. Not only the professors but the place itself was inspiring. Many have been reminded of Italy as at sunset they have stood at "Monticello" and looked towards the University and the Blue Ridge beyond; then the buildings, each modelled after some classical edifice, were characterized by a unity and harmony scarcely found anywhere else on this continent at that time or for a third of a century thereafter.

Here, then, Mr. Taylor spent three very busy, three very helpful years. He had never been strong physically, and the many burdens he assumed during these years not only cost him his Master of Arts degree, but probably sent him out to his life work handicapped. One is amazed to learn from his letters what he undertook and what he accomplished. Of course he gave first place to his studies. Honesty, if not religion, dictated this. Mathematics was by no means his fort 1 ', yet an allusion in one of his letters reveals the fact that Dr. Bledsoe had given him on his report a good mark for this study. In Latin we find him one of twenty-seven who passed while thirty-seven failed. He tells in one of his letters how Dr. Harrison called on him once, the day after he had been away and missed a lecture. He says :

"The morning after my return here, Dr. Harrison took occasion to question me on the lecture before, delivered during my absence. It so happened, by good luck, or Providence, that I had gotten the points from a fellow-student, so that with my general acquaintance with the subject I was able to answer quite satisfactorily. A very desirable thing, when one is so seldom questioned."

In the class of Moral Philosophy Mr. Taylor must have taken particularly high rank, and he was one of a coterie in the class who thoroughly enjoyed the discussion led by Dr. McGuffey of the great problems which present themselves in the realm of moral and mental science. Mr. Taylor was a leader in the Washington Society^, taking many of its honors, and upon the back door of this hall can still be read, unless it has been very recently erased, his name, put there not by his hand put possibly by some over zealous friend. He was president of the Washington Literary Society during the session of 1853-4, and on February 22nd the anniversary orator. On this occasion Washington's Farewell Address was read by R. M. Mallory, of Brunswick County, Virginia.

He was a distinct factor in the Christian life of the University, being most tactful and successful in his efforts to win his fellow-students for Christ. A gentleman, now living, says that when as a youth he was a clerk in a book store in Richmond, a student of the University of Virginia came in, asking for certain religions bonks. Hi had been directed to these books by George B. Taylor, his fellow-student. He became a Christian and has for many years been a distinguished professor in one of our Southern colleges. ISTor were his labors for Christ confined to the 1 University. He seems to have taken an active part in the church in Charlottesville, making missionary talks, teaching in the Sunday school, and now and then, towards the end of his course, preaching. He tells, in one of his letters, as follows, how he went back to the neighborhood of the Fork, some twenty miles away, to preach:

"I feel Mondayish rather and excusablv I think. Saturday, after attending lectures, I rode on horseback to the Fork . . . and yesterday after preaching came back through any quantity of rain and mud, arriving here, by a most fatiguing ride, after dark. The wonder is that I am not sick to-day. I was agreeably surprised to find any congregation out, as the morning was so rainy and threatening. We had a snug little time. I talked from the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican."

Yet other calls were made upon him for work along similar lines. In one letter he writes:

" To-morrow a. m. we have that Sunday-school meeting, and I have engaged for a funeral service of a colored woman in the p. m."

In another letter he tells of sitting up with an old man who was sick, saying:

"I have watched with him two nights — a service most cheerfully rendered, except that in these days of standing all-day examinations, and preparing for them, one is hardly able to sit up at night and be very vigorous during the day. They thought the old gentleman was dying the other day and called me in to witness his will — a thing I never did before. While sitting up Sunday night I took a general review of my life and found it pleasant to call up many bygone scenes. I could distinctly remember much of the distant and long-forgotten past and could see in their old appearance many objects which have greatly changed."

In still another letter he speaks of attending the funeral of a colored man. Now he is taking part in the service of the Lord's Supper at the Charlottesville Church and now returning from preaching in the country. During at least a part of his University life he was pastor of the Mountain Plain Church, and it was at the call of this church that he was ordained to the gospel ministry, the services taking place in the Charlottesville Baptist meeting-house, James B. Taylor, his father, and John A. Broadus, being members of the presbytery. He sat with great delight under the preaching of John A. Broadus r who, after being assistant in Ancient Languages at the University of Virginia for a brief period, was now serving as pastor, the only regular charge he ever had. At this time he heard for the first time Dr. William F. Broaddus, the remarkable uncle of the Charlottesville pastor. In later life Mr. Taylor writes thus of these experiences :

"My first sight of Dr. William F. Broaddus was at

Charlottesville in the early fifties, when he had just returned from a stay, of several years, in Kentucky, and, with an agency for Columbian College, was visiting his nephew and helping him in a protracted meeting. I had often heard Drs. Fuller and Jeter, and was at that time sitting Sunday morning and night entranced under the preaching of John A. Broadus, which for popular power has scarcely been equalled since, even by himself. But here was something quite new in style, attractive and powerful. . . . Honored with an interview, I found Dr. Broaddus quite accessible and genial, and then began a mutual friendship, which, favored also by circumstances, became more intimate than from the difference in our ages would have seemed possible.

'We talked with open heart and tongue,

Affectionate and true, A pair of friends, though I was young,

And Matthew seventy-two.'

But Dr. Broaddus was not then seventy-two by a good many years, seeming still in his later prime."

Mr. Taylor found time for social life, and through his letters we catch many glimpses of him "in lighter vein" ; yet there was also the deeper current of religious thought and a conscientiousness, drawing near at times to morbid introspection and moroseness. The danger-land was, however, never entered, and long before his life had turned towards its decline, his Christian courage and cheerfulness had more than won the day. His letters to his sisters often tell of his visits to young ladies or allude to some of his lady friends in Richmond. To the end of his life he very greatly enjoyed the society of charming women, and the reply he made once to his younger son, years afterwards, tallies with what may be read between the lines of these letters of his student days. One day he asked this son who his sweetheart was. The son answered rather curtly that he did not have one. To this his father replied: "How then can you be my son, for there was never a time when I was a youth that I did not have a sweetheart !"