Henry Taylor

• Name — Henry Taylor • Honorific Prefix — Sir • Honorific Suffix — KCMG • Born — 18 October 1800 • Birthplace — Bishop Middleham, England • Died — 27 March 1886 • Occupation — Dramatist and poet • Language — English • Spouse — The Honorable Theodosia Alice Spring Rice • Children — Five: including Ida Alice Ashworth Taylor, Eleanor Ashworth Towle, and Una Ashworth Taylor

Henry Taylor was born on 18 October 1800 in Bishop Middleham. He was the third son of George Taylor Sr and Eleanor Ashworth, who died when he was an infant. His father remarried Jane Mills in 1818, and the family then moved to Witton-le-Wear. George Taylor Sr's friend Charles Arbuthnot found vocational positions in London for Henry Taylor and his elder brother, George Taylor Jr. In 1817, the pair along with their second brother, William, a medical student, went to London. Soon afterwards, all three siblings contracted typhus fever, and both his brothers died within a fortnight. Following this tragedy, Henry Taylor then accepted work in the Colonial administration of Barbados. Taylor's place in Barbados was abolished in 1820, subsequent to which he returned to his father's house.

Taylor obtained a clerkship in the Colonial Office, where he subsequently worked from 1824 until 1872 under Sir Henry Holland, 1st Baronet and Robert William Hay, to whom he was Permanent Secretary. In 1828, Taylor succeeded to the office of the West Indies expert Colonel Thomas Moody ADC Kt., of whom James Stephen had been the protégé. During the 1830s, Taylor and Stephen endorsed the abolitionist contentions of Viscount Howick, as a consequence of which Stephen replaced Hay. Taylor was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 1869 Birthday Honours. Taylor died on 27 March 1886.

In Witton, Taylor wrote The Cave of Ceada which was accepted for the Quarterly Review. Taylor wrote a number of plays, including Isaac Comnenus (1827), and Philip van Artevelde (1834). This latter brought him fame and elicited comparisons with Shakespeare. In 1845 there followed a book of lyrical poems. His essay The Statesman (1836) caused some controversy, as a "supposedly" satirical view of how the civil service worked. Taylor published his Autobiography in 1885, which contains portraits of Wordsworth, Southey, Tennyson and Walter Scott. In it, on his own account, he gave Richard Whately's opinion of him as a "resuscitated Bacon", who had better things to do than write verse (which could be left to women). His poem Edwin the Fair depicted Charles Elliot as Earl Athulf. Thomas Frederick Elliot, Charles's brother, was a Colonial Office colleague.

Taylor married Hon. Theodosia Alice Spring Rice, daughter of Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, on 17 October 1839. They had five children, including the biographer Ida Alice Ashworth Taylor and the novelists Eleanor Ashworth Towle and Una Ashworth Taylor.

* * * *

* * *

• With an Appendix containing the original Advertisements, and the Prefatory Letter on Music. * * • Originally published as: Preview. • Available online. • Money / Humility & independence / Wisdom / Choice in marriage / Children / The life poetic * • Wordsworth's letter to Henry Taylor regarding the essay: • The essay:

The authorities additionally record the headings Sir Henry Taylor and Henry, Sir Taylor. His recorded language was English. He was the child of George Taylor and Eleanor Ashworth. He married Theodosia Alicia Ellen Frances Charlotte Spring Rice. 4 children are recorded: Una Ashworth Taylor, Aubrey Charles Ashworth Taylor, Harry Ashworth Taylor and Ida Ashworth Taylor.

• Illustration — Study of King David, by Julia Margaret Cameron. King David is depicted by Sir Henry Taylor, 1866 Taylor wrote Byronic poems and an article on Thomas Moore, which in 1822 was accepted for the Quarterly Review by William Gifford. Returning to London in October 1823, he found that Gifford had printed another article of his, on Lord John Russell. Taylor had also contributed to the London Magazine, and had an offer of the editorship. His father George was a friend of William Wordsworth. In 1823, on a visit to the Lake District, Henry Taylor made the acquaintance of Robert Southey, and they became friends. Jane Taylor had a first cousin, Isabella Fenwick (1783–1856), whom he introduced to the Wordsworth family. She became a close friend of Wordsworth in later life, as she had been of Taylor up to the time of his marriage. Though Fenwick was not herself a writer, her friendship left an enduring impression on the writings of Taylor and Wordsworth. In his autobiography, Henry Taylor wrote, “There is a good deal of her mind in my writings. I wish there was more; and I wish that she had left her thoughts behind her in writings of her own.” • Illustration — Henry Taylor, photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron, for whom he was a regular sitter. The beard was grown after illness made him wary of shaving himself. Millais wished (in vain) to have Taylor model for him as Moses. Taylor's work also brought him literary friends: the circle of Thomas Hyde Villiers, and his colleague James Stephen. Through Villiers he became acquainted with Charles Austin, John Stuart Mill, and some of the Benthamites. He made speeches in opposition to their views, in the debating society documented by Mill. He also invited them to personal meetings with Wordsworth and Southey. Mill introduced Taylor to Thomas Carlyle in November 1831, initiating a long friendship. Carlyle's opinion of the "marked veracity" of Taylor was printed wrongly by the editor James Anthony Froude as "morbid vivacity". He also knew John Sterling, and made the acquaintance of Fanny Trollope whilst attending the court of Louis Philippe of France. Taylor aspired to become the official biographer of Southey. The family row over Southey's second marriage, to Caroline Anne Bowles, found him with the Wordsworths and others hostile to Bowles. He did become Southey's literary executor.