Bert Leston Taylor (November 13, 1866 – March 19, 1921) was an American columnist, humorist, poet, and author."In Memory of Bert Leston Taylor". Program and Records of a Public Meeting Held in the Blackstone Theatre March 27, 1921. The Cliff Dwellers, Chicago. 1921.
Bert Leston Taylor became a journalist at seventeen, a librettist at twenty-one, and a successfully published author at thirty-five. At the height of his literary career, he was a central literary figure of the early 20th century Chicago renaissance as well as one of the most celebrated columnists in the United States.
The early years Bert Leston Taylor was born in Goshen, Massachusetts, on November 13, 1866. He was born in Goshen while his mother was visiting with relatives, but his parents lived in nearby Williamsburg at that time. His mother was Katherine White (of Dublin, Ireland) and his father was Albert O. Taylor, who worked primarily in the whaling industry. Albert Taylor served in the navy during the Civil War and distinguished himself as a high-ranking officer. While in the navy, he met James Gordon Bennett; after the war he became the navigator for Bennett's racing yacht, the Dauntless.
Taylor's family moved to New York shortly after his birth. He grew up in the Manhattan neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and Yorkville. Taylor attended public schools in New York City and excelled at writing, as evidenced by his winning a prize for an original story. From 1881–1882, he attended the University of the City of New York (now New York University). His original ambition was to become a lawyer, but after two years of studying law, he began to lose interest. He was attracted to music but felt he lacked sufficient talent to become a great artist. After he graduated, Taylor pursued instead his passion for writing, choosing the field of journalism.
In 1883, he published his own magazine, The Aerolite, which did not have much success. Harrison Grey Fiske, an established New York journalist, playwright, and theatrical manager, wrote a serial for the paper. In 1887, Taylor moved to Montpelier, Vermont, where he worked for The Argus, The Patriot, and The Watchman. His column, the "Montpellier Mere Mention", was the prototype for his famous "A Line o' Type or Two" column at the Chicago Tribune. Taylor was known for his unique offhand writing style and independent spirit that often compromised his job at those early papers. He later moved south to Barre, Vermont, to start his own paper. The Barre Daily News ran only for a few months. Frustrated from the lack of support from the citizens and local businessmen, he printed the final issue in red ink as a reprisal before leaving town.
Taylor next moved in 1893 to Manchester, New Hampshire, where he wrote editorials for the Manchester Union. It was in Manchester that Taylor met Walter Lewis, who would eventually become a close friend and collaborator. Walter Lewis was a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. Together, Taylor as librettist and Lewis as composer, they staged three comic operas.
On November 16, 1895, Taylor married Emma Bonner of Providence, Rhode Island. The following year, they moved west to Duluth, Minnesota, after Taylor accepted an editor position at the News-Tribune. Taylor drolly referred to own editorials as the "What-does-the-New-York-Sun-mean-by-the-following?" variety. He remained in Duluth for three years before moving to Chicago in 1899 to work at the Chicago Journal. His journalistic fame began when he took over a column titled "A Little About Everything", which originally contained only brief news items. Taylor made the column more popular by adding humor and light verse.
Chicago Tribune (1901–1921) Editors at the Chicago Tribune noted his originality and growing popularity at the Journal, and made him a generous offer. Taylor accepted, and created and conducted his own column at the Tribune called "A Line o' Type or Two". He worked on the top floor of the new Tribune building, which was a seventeen-story skyscraper built in 1902 on the corner of Madison and Dearborn streets referred to as "Tribune corner". He conducted his column with little supervision for two years before resigning in 1903. He and Emma relocated back east and bought a home in Cos Cob (Greenwich) Connecticut, while their daughter, Alva, attended Harvard. Taylor first wrote a column for the Morning Telegraph called "The Way of the World". In 1904, he became one of the contributing editors of Puck, replacing W.C. Whitney who had died that year. During this time back east, he also contributed articles to the New York Sun. Meanwhile, editors at the Tribune met little success in sustaining the same quality of Taylor's "Line". James Keeley, a hiring manager at the Tribune, made a lucrative offer to Taylor in hope to lure him back to the paper. Taylor accepted the offer and returned to Chicago in 1909, where he resumed conducting his column without interruption until his death.
The brand of journalism Taylor used and improved upon was begun in 1883 by Eugene Field with his "Sharps and Flats" column in the Chicago Daily News, and later used in 1895 by Tribune writer Henry "Butch" White. Taylor's satirical verse was a bit more polished than Field’s plain style, and he covered a greater variety of topics. He arranged his column as a mélange of whimsical paragraphs, amusing excerpts from rural papers, and light verse interspersed with submissions from outside contributors; indeed, it was considered an honor to be selected for the "Line". Many of the selected contributions came from some of the best-known writers of the time who submitted their work using only their initials or pseudonyms such as "Pan" (Keith Preston of The Chicago Daily News) or "Riquarius" (Richard Atwater of The Chicago Evening Post) for example. Submissions came in the form of verse, funny clippings from other newspapers, or absurd observations by "gadders" (tourists) during their travels. Taylor received anywhere from eighty to a hundred letters a day, most addressed simply to "B.L.T." or "A Line o' Type or Two" at the Tribune, and he managed to read every one. He also took meticulous care of the column's editing and layout, correcting all typographical and grammatical errors and orchestrating the flow of elements: the upper half of the column contained whimsical philosophy in the form of essay and light verse, followed by pure humorous pieces in the lower half poking fun at the "so-called human race". His goal was to "send [the reader] away smiling". Taylor's editorial opinion and style often conflicted with the Tribune'''s editorial policy, but because of his column's popularity and unique originality, editorial differences were always pardoned; in fact, this editorial disparity increased the column's appeal.
Taylor set the standard for literary excellence and had a disdain for trite and poor writing (including his own), and he would write about sending all bad writing, or “canned bromides,” off to the “cannery” where each bad piece was placed into a numbered canister. He ended the column using only his initials, "B.L.T.", which served as Taylor's trademark and were referred to by critics of the day as "the most famous initials in America". Taylor's journalistic excellence inspired other great columnists including Franklin Pierce Adams (F.P.A.), nationally known for his "The Conning Tower" column in the New York Post. Simeon Strunsky, columnist for The New York Times, called Taylor "a star of the first magnitude". By the time of his death, Taylor's "A Line o' Type or Two" column was syndicated throughout the country and overseas.
During his employment at the Tribune, Taylor owned a townhouse in downtown Chicago, but later had an estate constructed in Glencoe, Illinois, approximately twenty-five miles north of Chicago on Lake Michigan. The Cape Cod colonial style house was designed by architect Robert SeyfarthRobert E. Seyfarth Robert Seyfarth, Architect. Accessed 20 June 2010 of Chicago and was built circa 1916. He was fond of this homeJewett, Eleanor (c. March 1921), "Art and Architecture - Cape Cod Colonial Seen in B.L.T.'s Home", The Chicago Tribune. and did most of his writing there. The title of one of his books, The East Window, refers to his study.
A man of letters Apart from journalism, Taylor was an accomplished and recognized humorist, librettist, author, and poet. Taylor was celebrated in his day as one of great American humorists and critics likened him to Josh Billings, Eli Perkins, and Mark Twain. At the height of his celebrity, Taylor was one of the invited guests at Mark Twain’s seventieth birthday held at Monico's in New York City on December 5, 1905. Novelist Henry Kitchell Webster considered Taylor to be among the great letter-writers of the world and classed him with Thomas Gray and British author Edward FitzGerald.
Above all, however, Taylor loved poetry and possessed a remarkable talent for composing it. He wrote predominantly light verse, considered a subgenre of traditional poetry. Light verse is traditionally intended to be humorous, although humor is often a way to approach serious subjects. The use of wordplay, puns, and alliteration are common conventions, and light poetry is typically considered structured form poetry with rhyme schemes. It has been said that writing light verse successfully is the most difficult of all intellectual accomplishments in order for the poet to be taken seriously. Taylor’s wit was not a savage but it often had a bite, and he possessed a keen sense of language and technical skill using rhythmical structures to frame his thought. His verse was often compared to that of Charles Stuart Calverley and William S. Gilbert. In her eulogy at Taylor’s memorial service, Harriet Monroe, founder of Poetry, considered Taylor to be in the same league as British poets Frederick Locker-Lampson and Henry Austin Dobson, and American poets Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Taylor was well read and knew the classics intimately. Horace was a major influence, and Taylor was adept in capturing the essence of his work. Taylor’s love of poetry extended beyond humorous verse, however, as he also enjoyed the work of the more “serious” contemporary poets. In particular, he was fond of Yeats and attended his readings whenever he was in Chicago. In his book of poetry, A Penny Whistle,Bert Leston Taylor (1921) A Penny Whistle: Together with the Babette Ballads, A.A. Knopff, New York Taylor dedicates several poems to Yeats. Taylor's poetry influenced on all levels of society. His poem "Battle Song" (from Motley Measures) was presented to Edith Carow Roosevelt, which greatly inspired her husband, former president Theodore Roosevelt.
Taylor was a member of several literary groups. One such group referred to themselves as "The Little Room", the name borrowed from a short story by Madeline Wynne in which a room magically disappears and reappears. The group mimicked the story in that it disappeared and reappeared on Friday afternoons at such places as Chicago’s Auditorium Hotel (now occupied by Roosevelt University) and Fine Arts Building. The group was composed of an eclectic range of distinguished members including reformer Jane Addams, sculptor Lorado Taft, architects Allen Bartlit Pond and Irving Kane Pond, dramatist Anna Morgan, painter Ralph Clarkson, and poet Harriet Monroe. Taylor was also a member of the Cliff Dwellers Club, a club established by novelist Hamlin Garland that consisted of Chicago artists and literary men. The club's name originated from a novel written by Henry Blake Fuller. Fuller was a close friend of Taylor's, and played an instrumental role in getting Taylor published.