Sidney Lanier
by Edwin Mims · English · Gutenberg #1224 · 518,562 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sidney Lanier
Author: Edwin Mims
Release date: February 1, 1998 [eBook #1224]
Most recently updated: April 2, 2015
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1224
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIDNEY LANIER ***
Ver.04.29.93*END*
Sidney Lanier
by Edwin Mims [American (Southern U.S.) Scholar; 1872-1959.]
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized.
Some obvious errors have been corrected (see notes).]
Sidney Lanier
by Edwin Mims
Preface
The present volume is a biography of Lanier rather than a critical study
of his work. So far as possible, I have told the story in his own words,
or in the words of those who knew him most intimately. If I have erred
in placing undue emphasis on the early part of his career, it was intentional,
for that is the part of his life about which least is known.
I have intentionally emphasized his relation to the South, in order to avoid
a misconception that he was a detached figure. The bibliographies prepared
by Mr. Wills for the "Southern History Association" and by Mr. Callaway
for his "Select Poems of Lanier" make one unnecessary for this volume.
Of previously published material, I have been greatly indebted
to the Memorial by Mr. William Hayes Ward, the fuller sketch
by the late Professor W. M. Baskervill, and the volume of letters published
by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. For new material, I am indebted,
first of all, to Mrs. Sidney Lanier, who has put me in possession,
not of the most intimate correspondence of the poet,
but of many letters written by him to his father and friends,
as well as unpublished fragments and essays. She has done all in her power
to make this volume accurate and trustworthy. Her sons,
Mr. Charles Day Lanier and Mr. Henry W. Lanier, have put me under
special obligations, the latter especially, by reading the proof
of a large part of the volume. Mr. Clifford Lanier, the poet's brother,
put at my disposal a valuable series of letters, and otherwise aided me.
I am indebted to Dr. Daniel Coit Gilman, Mrs. Edwin C. Cushman,
Judge Logan E. Bleckley, Mr. Dudley Buck, Mr. Charles Scribner,
Mrs. Isabel L. Dobbin, Mr. George Cary Eggleston, Miss Effie Johnston,
Mr. Sidney Lanier Gibson, and Miss Sophie Kirk, for placing in my hands
unpublished letters of Lanier. The following have written reminiscences
which have proved especially helpful: Dr. James Woodrow,
Professor Gildersleeve, Chancellor Walter B. Hill, Professor Waldo S. Pratt,
Mrs. Arthur W. Machen, Mrs. Sophie Bledsoe Herrick,
Mr. F. H. Gottlieb, and Mr. Charles Heber Clarke. I desire to thank
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons and Mrs. Lanier for permission
to quote from the letters and collected writings of Lanier;
Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. for permission to quote from Lanier's
"Shakspere and his Forerunners", and the editor of "Lippincott's Magazine",
for the quotations from the letters to Mr. Milton H. Northrup.
For various reasons I am under obligations to Miss Susan Hayes Ward,
Mrs. W. M. Baskervill, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, Mr. George S. Wills,
Mr. J. P. Breedlove of the Trinity College Library, Mr. T. J. Kiernan
of the Harvard College Library, Mr. Philip R. Uhler of the Peabody Institute,
Mr. J. H. Southgate, Mr. F. A. Ogburn, Mr. Milton H. Northrup,
Mr. J. A. Bivins, Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, and to my colleagues,
Dr. W. P. Few and Dr. W. H. Glasson.
Trinity College, Durham, N.C.,
August 12, 1905.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter I. Ancestry and Boyhood
Chapter II. College Days
Chapter III. A Confederate Soldier
Chapter IV. Seeking a Vocation
Chapter V. Lawyer and Traveler
Chapter VI. A Musician in Baltimore
Chapter VII. The Beginning of a Literary Career
Chapter VIII. Student and Teacher of English Literature
Chapter IX. Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University
Chapter X. The New South
Chapter XI. Characteristics and Ideas
Chapter XII. The Last Year
Chapter XIII. The Achievement in Criticism and in Poetry
Sidney Lanier
-------------
Introduction
The author of the introduction to the first complete edition
of Sidney Lanier's poems -- published three years after the poet's death --
predicted with confidence that Lanier would "take his final rank
with the first princes of American song." Anticipating the appearance
of this volume, one of the best of recent lyric poets,
who had been Lanier's fellow prisoner during the Civil War,
prophesied that "his name to the ends of the earth would go."
Indeed, there was a sense of surprise to those who had read
only the 1877 edition of Lanier's poems, when his poems
were collected in an adequate and worthy edition. Since that time
the space devoted to him in histories of American literature has increased
from ten or twelve lines to as many pages -- an indication at once
of popular interest and of an increasing number of scholars and critics
who have recognized the value of his work. His growing fame
found a notable expression when his picture appeared in the frontispiece
of the standard American Anthology, along with those of Poe, Walt Whitman,
and the five recognized New England poets.
It cannot be said, however, that Lanier's rank as a poet
-- even in American, to say nothing of English literature -- is yet fixed.
He is a very uneven writer, and his defects are glaring. Some of the best
American critics -- men who have a right to speak with authority --
shake their heads in disapproval at what they call the Lanier cult.
Abroad he has had no vogue, as have Emerson and Poe and Walt Whitman.
The enthusiastic praise of the "Spectator" has been more than balanced
by the indifference of some English critics and the sarcasm of others.
Mme. Blanc's article in the "Revue des Deux Mondes", setting forth
the charm of his personality and the excellence of his poetry,
met with little response in France. In view of this divergence of opinion
among critics, it may be doubted if the time has yet come
for anything approaching a final valuation of Lanier's work.
In the later pages of this book an attempt will be made
to give a reasonably balanced and critical study of his actual achievement
in poetry and criticism.
Certainly those who have at heart the interest of American poetry
cannot but wage a feud with death for taking away one who had
just begun his career. The words of the great English threnodies
over the premature death of men of genius come involuntarily to one
who realizes what the death of Lanier meant. It is true that he lived
fourteen years longer than Keats and ten years longer than Shelley,
and that he was as old as Poe when he died; but it must be remembered that,
so far as his artistic work was concerned, the period from 1861 to 1873
was largely one of arrested development. He is one of the inheritors
of unfulfilled renown, not simply because he died young,
but because what he had done and what he had planned to do
gave promise of a much better and more enduring work. Such men
as he and Keats must be judged, to be sure, by their actual achievement;
but there will always attach to their names the glory of the unfulfilled life,
a fame out of all proportion to the work accomplished.
Poe had completed his work: limited in its range, it is all but perfect.
Lanier, with his reverence for science, his appreciation of scholarship,
his fine feeling for music, and withal his love of nature and of man,
had laid broad the foundation for a great poet's career.
The man who, at so early an age and in the face of such great obstacles,
wrote the "Marshes of Glynn" and the "Science of English Verse", and who
in addition thereto gave evidence of constant growth and of self-criticism,
would undoubtedly have achieved much worthier things in the future.
Of one thing there can be no doubt, that his personality
is one of the rarest and finest we have yet had in America,
and that his life was one of the most heroic recorded in the annals of men.
The time has passed for emphasizing unduly the pathos of Lanier's life.
He was not a sorrowful man, nor was his life a sad one. His untimely
and all but tragic death following a life of suffering and poverty,
the appeals made by admirers in behalf of the poet's family,
a few letters written to friends explaining his seeming negligence,
and a fragment or two found in his papers after death,
have been sometimes treated without their proper perspective.
A complete reading of his letters -- published and unpublished --
and of his writings, combined with the reminiscences of his friends
in Baltimore, Macon, and elsewhere, will convince any one
of the essential vigor and buoyancy of his nature. He would
have resented the expression "poor Lanier", with as much emphasis
as did Lamb the condescending epithet used by Coleridge.
He was ever a fighter, and he won many triumphs. He had the power
of meeting all oppositions and managing them, emerging into
"a large blue heaven of moral width and delight."
He was a sufferer from disease, but even in the midst of its grip upon him
he maintained his composure, cheerfulness, and unfailing good humor.
He had remarkable powers of recuperation. Writing to his father
from San Antonio in 1872, he said: "I feel to-day as if I had been
a dry leathery carcass of a man into whom some one had pumped
strong currents of fresh blood, of abounding life, and of vigorous strength.
I cannot remember when I have felt so crisp, so springy,
and so gloriously unconscious of lungs." During these
intervals of good health he was mentally alert, -- a prodigious worker,
feeling "an immortal and unconquerable toughness of fibre"
in the strings of his heart. There was something more than the cheerfulness
that attends the disease to which he was subject. There was an ardor,
an exuberance that comes only from "a lordly, large compass of soul."
As to his poverty, it must be said that few poets were ever so girt about
with sympathetic relatives and friends, and few men ever knew
how to meet poverty so bravely. He fretted at times
over the irresponsiveness of the public to his work,
but not so much as did his friends, to whom he was constantly
speaking or writing words of encouragement and hope. Criticism taught him
"to lift his heart absolutely above all expectation save that
which finds its fulfillment in the large consciousness of faithful devotion
to the highest ideals in art." "This enables me," he said,
"to work in tranquillity." He knew that he was fighting the battle
which every artist of his type had had to fight since time began.
In his intellectual life he passed through a period of storm and stress,
when he felt "the twist and cross of life", but he emerged into a state
where belief overmasters doubt and he knew that he knew.
He was cheerful in the presence of death, which he held off for eight years
by sheer force of will; at last, when he had wrested from time
enough to show what manner of man he was, he drank down the stirrup-cup
"right smilingly".
Looked at from every possible standpoint, it may be seen
that none of these obstacles could subdue his hopeful and buoyant spirit.
"He was the most cheerful man I ever knew," said Richard Malcolm Johnston.
Ex-President Gilman expressed the feeling of those who
knew the poet intimately when he said, "I have heard a lady say
that if he took his place in a crowded horse-car, an exhilarating atmosphere
seemed to be introduced by his breezy ways. . . . He always preserved
his sweetness of disposition, his cheerfulness, his courtesy,
his industry, his hope, his ambition. . . . Like a true knight errant,
never disheartened by difficulty, never despondent in the face of dangers,
always brave, full of resources, confident of ultimate triumph."
The student at Johns Hopkins University who knew him best said:
"No strain of physical wear or suffering, no pressure of worldly fret,
no amount of dealing with what are called `the hard facts of experience',
could stiffen or dampen or deaden the inborn exuberance of his nature,
which escaped incessantly into a realm of beauty, of wonder,
of joy, and of hope." Certainly the great bulk of his published lectures
and his poems bear out this impression. His brother, Mr. Clifford Lanier,
says that he would not publish some of his early poems
because they were not hale and hearty, "breathing of sanity, hope,
betterment, aspiration." "Those are the best poets," said Lanier himself,
"who keep down these cloudy sorrow songs and wait until some light comes
to gild them with comfort." And this he did.
Lanier, whose career has been here briefly suggested, makes his appeal
to various types of men and women. Enjoying the use of the Peabody Library
and living in the atmosphere of a newly created university,
he gave evidence of the modern scholar's zest for original research;
and in addition thereto displayed a spiritual attitude to literature
that is rare. The professional musician sees in him
one of the advance guard of native-born Americans who have achieved success
in some one field of musical endeavor, while a constantly increasing public,
intent upon musical culture, finds in his letters and essays
an expression of the deeper meaning of music and penetrative interpretations
of the modern orchestra. Lanier influenced to some extent
the minor poets of his era: who knows but that in some era of creative art --
which let us hope is not far off -- his subtle investigations and experiments
in the domain where music and verse converge may prove the starting point
of some greater poet's work? To the South, with which he was identified
by birth and temperament, and in whose tremendous upheaval
he bore a heroic part, the cosmopolitanism and modernness of his mind
should be a constant protest against those things that have
hindered her in the past and an incentive in that brilliant future
to which she now so steadfastly and surely moves. To all men everywhere
who care for whatsoever things are excellent and lovely and of good report
his life is a priceless heritage.
Chapter I. Ancestry and Boyhood
Sidney Lanier was born in Macon, Ga., February 3, 1842. His parents,
Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary J. Anderson, were at that time living
in a small cottage on High street, the father a struggling young lawyer,
and the mother a woman of much thrift and piety. There were on both sides
traditions of gentility which went back to the older States
of Virginia and North Carolina, and in the case of the Laniers
to southern France and England. Lanier became very much interested
in the study of his genealogy. He was convinced by evidence
gathered from the many widely scattered branches of the family
that a single family of Laniers originally lived in France,
and that the fact of the name alone might with perfect security
be taken as a proof of kinship. On account of their nomadic habits,
due to their continual movement from place to place during two hundred years,
he found it difficult to make out a complete family history.
He was not, nor have his relatives and later investigators been,
able to find material for the study of the Laniers in their original home.
At one time he expressed a wish that President Hayes would appoint him
consul to southern France. Certainly he was at home there
in imagination and spirit from the time when as a boy he felt
the fascination of Froissart's "Chronicles".
One of the keenest pleasures he had in later life was to discover
in the Peabody Library at Baltimore a full record of the Lanier family
in England. In investigating the state of art in Elizabeth's time
he came across in Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painting" references to
Jerome and Nicholas Lanier, whose careers he followed
with his accustomed zeal and industry through the first-hand sources which
the library afforded. There is no more characteristic letter of Lanier's
than that written in 1879 to Mr. J. F. D. Lanier, giving the result
of this investigation. He there tells the story of ten Laniers
who enjoyed the personal favor of four consecutive English monarchs.
Jerome Lanier, he believed, had on account of religious persecution
fled from France to England during the last quarter of the sixteenth century
and "availed himself of his accomplishments in music to secure a place
in Queen Elizabeth's household." His son Nicholas Lanier
-- "musician, painter, engraver" -- was patronized successively
by James I, Charles I, and Charles II, wrote music
for the masks of Ben Jonson and Campion and for the lyrics of Herrick,
and was the first marshal of a society of musicians
organized by Charles I in 1626. He also wrote a cantata
called "Hero and Leander". He was the friend of Van Dyck,
who painted a portrait of Lanier which attracted the attention of Charles I
and eventually led to that painter's accession to the court.
He was sent by King Charles to Italy to make purchases for the royal gallery.
He and other members of his family lived at Greenwich and were known
as amateur artists as well as musicians. After the Restoration
five Laniers -- Nicholas, Jerome, Clement, Andrewe, and John --
were charter members of an organization of musicians established by the king
"to exert their authority for the improvement of the science
and the interest of its professors." It was a great pleasure to Sidney Lanier
to find in the diary of Pepys many passages telling of his associations
with these music-loving Laniers. "Here the best company for musique
I ever was in my life," says the quaint old annalist,
"and I wish I could live and die in it. . . . I spent the night
in an exstasy almost; and having invited them to my house a day or two hence,
we broke up."
The study of these distant relatives enjoying the favor
of successive English kings must have suggested the contrast of his own life;
but he was pleased with the fancy that their musical genius had come to him
through heredity, for it confirmed his opinion that "if a man made himself
an expert in any particular branch of human activity there would result
the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch
would be found among some of his descendants."
Another Lanier in whom he was interested was Sir John Lanier,
the story of whose bravery at the battle of the Boyne, in 1690,
he first read in Macaulay's "History of England". Lanier's hope and belief
that the family would some day be able to fill the intervals
satisfactorily connecting Sir John Lanier with the musicians of the court
have not been realized, nor has any satisfactory study been made
of the coming of the Laniers to America. The best evidence of the connection
between the two families is found in a deed recorded in Prince County, Va.,
May 14, 1728, from Nicholas Lanier to Holmes Boisseau --
the name Nicholas being significant. It is certain that Thomas Lanier,
along with a large number of other Huguenots, settled in Virginia
in the early years of the eighteenth century at Manakin-town,
some twenty miles from Richmond. Some of these Huguenots,
notably the Moncures, the Maurys, the Latanes, and the Flournoys,
became connected with historic families of Virginia. There was a tradition
in the Lanier family as well as in the Washington family,
that Thomas Lanier married an aunt of George Washington,
but this has been proved to be untrue.* The Laniers were related by marriage
to the Washingtons of Surry County. They established themselves
in the middle of the eighteenth century in Brunswick and Lunenburg counties
of Virginia, as prosperous planters; they did not, however,
rank either in dignity or in wealth with the older gentry of Virginia.
In a letter written in 1877 Lanier gives in full the various branches
of the Lanier family as they separated from this point and went into
all parts of the United States. One branch joined the pioneers
who went up through Tennessee into Kentucky and thence to Indiana.
The most famous of these was Mr. J. F. D. Lanier, who played a prominent part
in the development of the railroad system of the West,
and at the time of the Civil War had become one of the leading bankers
in New York city. He was a financial adviser of President Lincoln,
and represented the government abroad in some important transactions.
He was of genuine help to Sidney Lanier at critical times
in the latter's life. His son, Mr. Charles Lanier, now a banker of New York,
was a close friend of the poet, and after his death presented busts of him
to Johns Hopkins University and the public library of Macon.
--
* `William and Mary Quarterly', iii, 71-74, 1895 (article by
Horace Edwin Hayden); iii, 137-139, October, 1894 (by Moncure D. Conway,
with editorial comment); iv, 35-36, July, 1895 (by the editor,
Lyon G. Tyler).
--
The branch of the Lanier family with which Sidney was connected,
moved from Virginia into Rockingham County, N.C. Sampson Lanier
was a well-to-do farmer -- a country gentleman, "fond of
good horses and fox hounds." Several of his sons went to
the newer States of Georgia and Alabama. Of these was Sterling Lanier,
the grandfather of the poet, who lived for a while in Athens, Ga.,
and was afterwards a hotel-keeper in Macon and Montgomery.
By the time of the Civil War he had amassed a considerable fortune.
In a letter written in 1844 from Macon we learn that he was
an ardent Methodist. His daughters were being educated
in the Wesleyan Female College in that city, his son Sidney
had sailed recently from Charleston to France, and expected to travel
through Sicily, Italy, and other parts of Europe on account of his health.
He was giving his younger sons the best education then attainable in Georgia.
His son Robert Sampson Lanier had four years before returned from
Randolph-Macon College, Virginia, and was at the time the letter was written
beginning the practice of law. He never became a lawyer of the first rank,
but he was universally esteemed for his "fine presence",
his "social gentleness", and his "persistent habit of methodical industry".
"During all of his long and active professional life,"
says the late Washington Dessau, "he never allowed anything
to interfere with his devotion to his calling as a lawyer.
No desire for office attracted him; no other business of profit or honor
ever diminished for a moment his devotion for his professional duties.
In the year 1850 he was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of Georgia,
and from that period down to the time of his death the name of his firm
appears in nearly every volume of the reports, indicating the wide extent
of his business. . . . As a lawyer, while not aspiring to be
a brilliant advocate, he was a most profound and able reasoner,
thoroughly versed and grounded in the knowledge of the common law,
well prepared with a knowledge of current decisions and in the learning
that grows out of them. . . . In his social intercourse
he was a gentleman of the purest and most refined type. . . .
At his own home, at the homes of others, in casual meetings,
in travel, everywhere, he always exhibited toward those who met him
an unbroken front of courtesy, gentleness, and refinement."*
--
* `Report of the 11th Annual Meeting of the Georgia Bar Association',
Atlanta, 1894.
--
He was just such a lawyer as Lanier would have become had he remained
in that profession; indeed, son and father were very much alike. The father
was a man of "considerable literary acquirements and exquisite taste."
He was fond of Shakspere, Addison, and Sir Walter Scott,
having the literary taste of the gentlemen of the old South.
The letters written to his son show decided cultivation. They show also
that he was in thorough sympathy with his son's intellectual life.
The letter written by Lanier to his father from Baltimore in 1873
may lead one to think otherwise. Mr. Lanier was opposed,
as were most of the men of his section, to a young man's entering upon
a musical or poetic career, but more than two hundred letters
written by son to father and many from father to son prove
that their relations during the entire career of the poet
were unusually close and sympathetic. In the earlier years,
Lanier sent his poems to his father, and valued highly his criticism,
and in later years he received from him financial aid and counsel.
While Robert Sampson Lanier was at college in Virginia
he met Mary Jane Anderson, the daughter of Hezekiah Anderson,
a Virginia planter who attained success in the political life of that State.
They were married in 1840, and Sidney was their first-born.
The poet thus inherited on his mother's side Scotch-Irish blood,
an element in Southern life which has been often underestimated.
She proved to be a hard-working woman, caring little for social life,
but thoroughly interested in the religious training of her children.
Her husband, although nominally a Methodist, was not actively identified
with the church, but willingly acquiesced in the somewhat rigid
Presbyterian discipline that prevailed in the home. The children
-- Sidney, Clifford, and Gertrude -- were taught the strictest tenets
of the Calvinistic creed. When Lanier afterwards, in Baltimore,
lived a somewhat more liberal life -- both as to creed and conduct --
he wrote: "If the constituents and guardians of my childhood
-- those good Presbyterians who believed me a model
for the Sunday-school children of all times -- could have witnessed
my acts and doings this day, I know not what groans of sorrowful regret
would arise in my behalf."
The seriousness of this life was broken, however, on week days.
Southern Puritanism differed from the early New England Puritanism
in a certain affectionateness and sociability. The mother could
play well on the piano, and frequently sang with the children
hymns and popular melodies. Between the two brothers there was from the first
the most beautiful relation, as throughout the rest of their lives:
comrades in boyhood, comrades during the War, comrades in
their first literary work, and to the end. On Saturdays they went to
"the boys' hunting fields -- happy hunting grounds, redolent of hickory nuts,
scaly barks, and rose-blushing, luscious, haw apples. . . .
Into these woods, across yon marsh, we plunged every permissible Saturday
for a day among doves, blackbirds, robins, plovers, snipes, or rabbits."*
Sometimes they enjoyed fishing in the near-by brook or the larger river.
The two brothers were devoted to their sister Gertrude,
to whom Sidney referred in later years as his "vestal sister,
who had, more perfectly than all the men or women of the earth,
nay, more perfectly than any star or any dream," represented to him
"the simple majesty and the serene purity of the Winged Folk up Yonder."
--
* Clifford Lanier, `The Chautauquan', July, 1895.
--
The beauty of this simple home life cannot well be overestimated
in its influence on Lanier's later life. He had nothing of the Bohemian
in his nature. He was throughout his life fully alive to all human ties,
fulfilling every relationship, whether of son, brother, father,
husband, or friend. His other relatives -- uncles, aunts, and cousins, --
filled a large place in his early life, especially his mother's brother,
Judge Clifford Anderson, who was the law partner of Lanier's father
and afterwards Attorney-General of Georgia; and his father's sister,
Mrs. Watt, who from much travel and by association with
leading men and women of the South brought into Lanier's life
the atmosphere of a larger social world than that in which he was born.
Nor did Lanier live apart from the life in Macon. Although in later years
he felt strongly the contrast between himself and his environment,
he always spoke of his native place with the greatest affection,
and it was among Macon people that he found some of his best friends
in his adopted city. Its natural beauty appealed to him from the beginning --
the river Ocmulgee, the large forests of oak-trees stretching
in every direction, the hills above the city, for which he often yearned,
from the plains of Texas, or the flats of Florida, or the crowded streets
of Baltimore. The climate was agreeable. Describing this section,
Lanier said: "Surely, along that ample stretch of generous soil,
where the Appalachian ruggednesses calm themselves into pleasant hills
before dying quite away in the seaboard levels, a man can find
such temperances of heaven and earth -- enough of struggle with nature
to draw out manhood, with enough of bounty to sanction the struggle --
that a more exquisite co-adaptation of all blessed circumstances
for man's life need not be sought."*
--
* `Music and Poetry', p. 134.
--
Macon was the capital of Middle Georgia, the centre of trade
for sixty miles around. There was among the citizens
an aggressive public spirit, which made it the rival in commercial life
of the older cities, Savannah and Augusta; before the War
it was a more important city than Atlanta. It was one of the first towns
to push the building of railroads; it became "the keystone of the roads
grappling with the ocean at the east and with the waters beyond the mountains
at the west." The richer planters and merchants lived on the hills
above the city -- in their costly mansions with luxuriant flower gardens --
while the professional men and the middle classes lived
in the lower part of the city. Social lines were not, however,
so sharply drawn here as in cities like Richmond or Charleston.
Middle Georgia was perhaps the most democratic section of the South.
It was a democracy, it is true, working within the limitations of slavery,*
and greatly tempered with the feudal ideas of the older States, but it was
a life which gave room for the development of well-marked individual types.
There were many Georgia "Crackers" in the surrounding country; they were
even recognized more than in other States as part of the social structure.
While still a young boy Lanier was delivery clerk in the Macon post-office,
and entertained the family at nights by "mimicry of their funny speech."
In later life he wrote dialect poems, setting forth the humor of these people,
and drew upon their speech for illustrations of philological changes
in language.
--
* In Macon a great many citizens had no slaves at all, and even those
who had them had only a few. In 1850 the white population was 3323,
while there were only 2352 slaves. In 1859, when the population
had grown to 8000, the proportion was maintained.
[Despite this statement by Mr. Mims, if these numbers are correct,
it would appear that Macon had a significantly higher percentage of slaves
than most areas of the South. -- A. L., 1998.]
--
In Macon hospitality was regarded as an indispensable, even sacred duty.
Cordiality and kindness in all the ordinary relations of men and women
made up for whatever deficiencies there were in art and literature.
Professor Le Conte, who lived in Macon during the boyhood of Lanier,
speaking of some weeks he spent there during a college vacation,
says, "Oh, the boundless hospitality of those times --
a continual round of entertainments, musicales, and evening parties, . . .
horseback rides and boat rides during the day and piano-playing, singing,
fluting, and impromptu cotillions and Virginia reels in the evening!"*
The Lanier House, a hotel owned by Sterling Lanier from 1844 to 1854,
was the centre of this social life. Here many distinguished men
were entertained and many receptions were held. The proprietor
was a typical "mine host", endeavoring to throw around his guests
some of the atmosphere of the finer Southern homes.
In 1851 President Fillmore and his Secretary of the Navy,
John P. Kennedy, visited Macon and were entertained at this hotel.
Macon was not without its cultivated people. Young ladies
studied music in New York and brought into the private life of the city
an atmosphere of musical culture. Now and then students were sent
to the universities of the East. A group of professional and business men
-- E. A. Nisbet, Washington Poe, Charles Day, Colonel Whittle,
L. Q. C. Lamar (in his earlier days) -- had the refinement and cordiality
characteristic of the old regime.
--
* `The Autobiography of Joseph Le Conte'.
--
The religious spirit ran high in Macon. While the Presbyterian church
had a better educated clergy and proportionately a greater number
of educated personages among the laity, the Methodist and Baptist churches
dominated the life of the community. Revivals that recall
the Great Awakening in New England in the time of Jonathan Edwards
were frequent. The most popular preacher in Macon -- George F. Pierce,
afterwards bishop in the Southern Methodist church --
is said to have preached the terrors of the law so plainly
that the editor of a long extinct Universalist paper said
he could smell fire and brimstone half a mile from the church.
The type of religion that prevailed was emotional, but in an earlier
stage of society it was a great barrier against immorality.
The clergy did not raise the question of the ethics of slavery,
-- on the other hand they defended it on biblical grounds, --
but they did enjoin upon masters the duty of kindness to slaves.
Many of them were not cultivated men, but they laid the foundation
for a better civilization in a stern and righteous social life
which flowered in the next generation. "The only burning issues
were sprinkling versus immersion, freewill versus predestination,"
and over these questions the churches fought with energy.
Divided though they were on many points, they agreed in resisting
the forces of modern thought that were making for a more liberal theology.
Although the people of Macon were thoroughly alive to the commercial,
social, and religious welfare of the community, they provided
no adequate school system. Lanier was schooled "in small private
one-roomed establishments, taught by a Mrs. Anderson, a Mr. Hancock,
or by that dear old eccentric dominie, `Jake' Danforth. One of these schools
stood in a grove of oak and hickory-nut trees and was called the 'Cademy.
Sidney was bright in studies, but while parsing, reading, writing,
and figuring, he was also chucking nuts from the tops of the tall trees,
sympathizing with the dainty half-angel, half-animal flying squirrels,
and drinking deep draughts of the love of nature from the cool,
solacing oaks."*
--
* Article by Clifford Lanier, in `Gulf States Historical Magazine',
July, 1903.
--
Lanier was undoubtedly influenced by the life in Macon; positively influenced
in that much of this life became a part of his own, and negatively in that
he reacted against many conditions and ideals that prevailed there.
All the time there was developing in him his own genius. He did not remember
a time when he could not play upon almost any musical instrument.
"When he was seven years old he made his first effort at music
upon an improvised reed cut from the neighboring river bank,
with cork stopping the ends and a mouth hole and six finger holes
extemporized at the side. With this he sought the woods to emulate
the trills and cadences of the song birds." Santa Claus's gift one year
took the form of a small, yellow, one-keyed flute, on which simple instrument
he would "practice with the passion of a virtuoso." Like Schumann,
he organized an orchestra among his friends and young playmates.
Simultaneously he was receiving his first initiation into
the joy of literature. He would frequently retire from playing
with his brother and other companions to the library of his father,
where he followed with absorbing interest the stories of Sir Walter Scott,
the romances of Froissart, the adventures of Gil Blas, and other stories that
his boyish mind delighted in. He was already producing among his playmates
a sense of the distinction of his personality, that caused them
to reverence him as one above them.
Chapter II. College Days
January 6, 1857, Lanier entered the sophomore class in Oglethorpe University,
situated at Midway, Ga. -- two miles from Milledgeville, which was then
the capital of the State. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast
than that between the sleepy town of Milledgeville and progressive Macon,
or between Oglethorpe and the better colleges of the South
at the present time. The essentially primitive life of the college
is seen in an act which was passed by the legislature
making it unlawful for any person to "establish, keep, or maintain
any store or shop of any description for vending any species of merchandise,
groceries or confectioneries within a mile and a half of the University."
It was a denominational college established by the Presbyterian Church,
and belonged to the synods of South Carolina and Georgia.
Like many other denominational colleges throughout the South,
it arose in response to a demand that attention should be given in education
to the cultivation of a strong religious faith in the minds of students.
The older State universities were supposed to be dominated
by the aristocratic class and by political parties, and there was
a tendency in them towards a more liberal view of religion than comported with
an orthodox faith. The origin of the denominational colleges
was similar to that of Princeton and the smaller colleges of New England.
Many of them, with small endowments and a small number of men in the faculty,
did much to foster intellectual as well as spiritual growth;
their place in the history of Southern life has not been fully appreciated.
Before the public-school system of later days was established,
they did much to educate the masses of the people.
Oglethorpe, at the time when Lanier became a student,
was presided over by Rev. Samuel K. Talmage, originally of New Jersey,
a graduate of Princeton and a tutor there for three years.
He was a warm personal friend of Alexander H. Stephens,
and was known throughout Georgia as a preacher of much power,
"foremost in the councils of his church." Another member of the small faculty
was Charles W. Lane, of the department of mathematics,
of whom one of his friends wrote that he was "the sunniest, sweetest Calvinist
that ever nestled close to the heart of Arminians and all else who loved
the Master's image when they saw it. His cottage at Midway was a Bethel;
it was God's house and heaven's gate."
The piety of such men confirmed in Lanier a natural religious fervor.
But the man who was destined to have a really formative influence over him
was James Woodrow, of the department of science. A native of England
and during his younger days a citizen of Pennsylvania, he had studied
at Lawrence Scientific School under Agassiz, and had just returned
from two years' study in Germany when Lanier came under his influence.
Circumstances were such that he never became an investigator
in his special line of work, but he was a thorough scholar
who kept abreast with the knowledge of his subject. He afterwards became
professor of science in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at
Columbia, S.C., and later the president of the University of South Carolina.
In 1873 and 1874 he was the champion of science against those
who called the church "to rise in arms against Physical Science
as the mortal enemy of all the Christian holds dear, and to take no rest
until this infidel and atheistic foe has been utterly destroyed."*
Dr. Woodrow maintained that the science of theology, as a science,
is equally human and uninspired with the science of geology.
He cited illustrations from the long warfare of science and theology
to show that the church would make a great mistake if it attempted
to shut off the human intellect from the search of truth
as reverent investigators in the realms of geology and biology might find it.
Comparing scientific truth to a great ocean, he speaks of
an opponent of science as "brandishing his mop against each succeeding wave,
pushing it back with all his might, but the ocean rolls on,
and never minds him; science is utterly unconscious of his opposition."
This point of view, maintained even to the point of accepting
the theory of evolution, led eventually to his trial and condemnation
by the Southern Presbyterian Church. Throughout the whole controversy
he maintained a calm and moderate temper and never abated in the least
his acceptance of the fundamental ideas of the Christian religion.
Such a man, coming into the life of Lanier at a formative period,
influenced him profoundly. He set his mind going in the direction
which he afterwards followed with great zest, the value of science
in modern life and its relation to poetry and religion.
He also revealed to him the meaning of genuine scholarship.
--
* `An Examination of Certain Recent Assaults on Physical Science'.
By James Woodrow. Columbia, 1873.
--
Teacher and pupil became intimate friends. In a letter addressed
to the writer, Professor Woodrow says: "When he graduated
I caused him to be appointed tutor in the University,
so that I became better acquainted with him, and liked him better and better.
I was professor of natural science, and often took him to ramble with me,
observing and studying whatever we saw, but also talking about everything
either of us cared for. About the same time I was licensed to preach,
and spent my Saturdays and Sundays in preaching to feeble churches
and in schoolhouses, court houses, and private houses,
within forty or more miles of the college; trying to make
my Sunday night services come within twenty-five miles of home,
so that I could drive to the college in time for my Monday morning
sunrise lecture. Every now and then I would invite Lanier to go with me.
During such drives we were constantly engaged without interruption
in our conversation. In these ways, and in listening frequently
to his marvelous flute-playing, we were much together.
We were both young and fond of study."
The first letter written by Lanier to his father from college announces
his admission to the sophomore class: "I have just done
studying to-night my first lesson, to wit, forty-five lines of Horace,
which I `did' in about fifteen minutes." Other letters show
that he was a very hard student and intensely conscientious.
At one time having violated one of his father's regulations, that he was not
under any circumstances to borrow money from his college mates, he wrote:
"My father, I have sinned. With what intensity of thought,
with what deep and earnest reflection have I contemplated this lately!
My heart throbs with the intensity of its anguish. . . .
If by hard study and good conduct I can atone for that,
God in heaven knows that I shall not be found wanting. . . .
Not a night passes but what the supplication, God bless my parents,
ascends to the great mercy seat." At another time he writes
for the following books: Olmsted's Philosophy, Blair's Rhetoric,
Cicero de Oratore, and an Analytical Geometry. He already has
some Greek tragedies which he is to study. Contemplating his junior year,
he writes: "I feel quite enthusiastic on the subject of studying. . . .
The very name of Junior has something of study-inspiring and energy-exciting
to me."
Lanier pursued the limited curriculum of the college
with zeal and with mastery. From his letters it is seen that he read
such of the Greek and Latin classics as were generally studied
in American colleges at that time. He mastered mathematics
beyond any man of his class, and became interested in philosophy and science.
His alert mind and energy enabled him to take at once a position of leadership
in the college. He joined a secret literary society,
of which he wrote to his father: "I have derived more benefit from that,
than any one of my collegiate studies. We meet together in a nice room,
read compositions, declaim, and debate upon interesting subjects."
His contact with these specially intimate friends was a thoroughly
healthy one. He took part in their sports and mischief-making
as well as in their more serious pastimes. "I shall never forget,"
says one of his companions, "those moonlight nights at old Oglethorpe,
when, after study hours, we would crash up the stairway and get out
on the cupola, making the night merry with music, song, and laughter.
Sid would play upon his flute like one inspired, while the rest of us
would listen in solemn silence."
Besides being a faithful student, Lanier was an omnivorous reader
in the wide fields of English literature, sharing his tastes
with some of his companions who with him lived in "an atmosphere
of ardent and loyal friendship." "I can recall," says Mr. T. F. Newell,
his classmate and room-mate,* "those Attic nights, for they
are among the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life,
when with a few chosen companions we would read from some treasured volume,
it may have been Tennyson or Carlyle or Christopher North's
`Noctes Ambrosianae', or we would make the hours vocal with music and song;
those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the gods. . . .
On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute
extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear.
At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance,
and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone,
that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony.
Or, in merry mood, I have seen him take a banjo, for he could play
on any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would strike
some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten,
he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled,
while his hearers would catch the inspiration, and an old-fashioned
`walk-round' and `negro breakdown', in which all would participate,
would be the inevitable result. At other times, with our musical instruments,
we would sally forth into the night and 'neath moon and stars
and under `Bonny Bell window panes' -- ah, those serenades!
were there ever or will there ever be anything like them again? --
when the velvet flute notes of Lanier would fall pleasantly upon the night."
--
* Quoted from Baskervill's `Southern Writers', p. 149.
--
Speaking further of his reading and of the way in which he shared his delight
with others, the same writer says: "I recall how he delighted in
the quaint and curious of our old literature. I remember that it was he
who introduced me to that rare old book, Burton's `Anatomy of Melancholy',
whose name and size had frightened me as I first saw it on the shelves,
but which I found to be wholly different from what its title would indicate;
and old Jeremy Taylor, `the poet-preacher'; and Keats's `Endymion',
and `Chatterton', the `marvelous boy who perished in his pride.'
Yes, I first learned the story of the Monk Rowley and his wonderful poems
with Lanier. And Shelley and Coleridge and Christopher North,
and that strange, weird poem of `The Ettrick Shepherd' of `How Kilmeny
Came Hame', and a whole sweet host and noble company, `rare and complete'.
Yes, Tennyson, with his `Locksley Hall' and his `In Memoriam' and his `Maud',
which last we almost knew by heart. And then old Carlyle,
with his `Sartor Resartus', `Hero-Worship', `Past and Present',
and his wonderful book of essays, especially the ones on Burns and Jean Paul,
`The Only'. Without a doubt it was Carlyle who first enkindled in Lanier
a love of German literature and a desire to know more of the language."
His flute-playing and extensive reading did not prevent Lanier
from graduating at the head of his class in July, 1860.*
His oration was on the ambitious subject, "The Philosophy of History".
One of the most important events in his early life was the vacation
following his graduation. His grandfather had bought
in the mountains of East Tennessee, at Montvale Springs, a large estate,
on which had been built a beautiful hotel. During the summer
his children and grandchildren -- some twenty-five in all -- visited him.
Here they enjoyed the pleasures of hunting, fishing, and social life.
There were many visitors from the Southern States to this
"Saratoga of the South". "What an assemblage of facilities for enjoyment,"
Lanier writes, "I have up here in the mountains, -- kinsfolk, men friends,
women friends, books, music, wine, hunting, fishing, billiards,
tenpins, chess, eating, mosquitoless sleeping, mountain scenery,
and a month of idleness." This experience, somewhat idealized,
is the basis of the first part of "Tiger Lilies". Here Lanier
had the opportunity of seeing at its best the life of the old South
just before it vanished in the cataclysm of the Civil War.
Of that life he afterwards wrote: "Nothing can be more pitiable than that
at the time when this amiable outcome of the old Southern civilization
became known to the world at large, it became so through being laid bare
by the sharp spasm of civil war. There was a time when all our eyes and faces
were distorted with passion; none of us either saw or showed true.
Thrice pitiable, one says again, that the fairer aspects of a social state,
which though neither perfect as its violent friends preached,
nor satanic as its violent enemies denounced, yet gave rise
to so many beautiful relations of honor and fidelity, should have now
gone to the past, to remain illuminated only by the unfavorable glare
of accidentally associated emotions in which no man can see clearly."**
--
* He was out of college the year 1858-9, being clerk in the Macon post-office.
The college records show that he received the highest marks
in his senior year, but shared the honors of graduation with one
whose record for the entire course was equal to his.
** `Florida: Its Scenery, Climate, and History', p. 232.
--
But while Lanier was thoroughly identified with this life,
he was at the time dreaming of a career which was not fostered by it --
a career in which music and poetry should be the dominating figures.
The scene in the first book of "Tiger Lilies" of a band of friends
gathered on the balcony of John Sterling's house -- a palace of art
reared by Lanier's imagination in the mountains of East Tennessee --
is strictly autobiographical. As they watch the sunset over the valley,
the rich notes of violin, flute, and piano blend with the beauty of nature;
the future of music is the theme and poetry the comment.
The various characters of that immature romance quote from Emerson, Carlyle,
and Richter. As they talk upon the theme so dear to their imagination
twilight comes. "And so the last note floated out over the rock,
over the river, over the twilight to the west."
With something of the power of Charles Egbert Craddock,
Lanier writes in the same book of the mountain scenery of that region:
"Here grow the strong sweet trees, like brawny men with virgins' hearts.
Here wave the ferns, and cling the mosses and clamber the reckless vines.
Here, one's soul may climb as upon Pisgah, and see one's land of peace,
seeing Christ who made all these beautiful things."
Again, it is "the trees that ever lifted their arms toward heaven,
obeying the injunction of the Apostle, `praying always', --
the great uncomplaining trees, whose life is surely the finest of all lives,
since it is nothing but a continual growing and being beautiful."
He describes a moonlight night on the mountains: "All this time
the grace of moonlight lay tenderly upon the rugged majesty of the mountains,
as if Desdemona placed a dainty white hand upon Othello's brow.
All this time the old priestly oaks lifted yearning arms toward the stars,
and a mighty company of leaf-chapleted followers, with silent reverence,
joined this most pathetic prayer of these dumb ministers of the hills."
After this enchanting and inspiring experience, he returned to Oglethorpe
as tutor: it was to be a year of hard work, especially in Greek.
He described himself at this period as "a spare-built boy,
of average height and underweight, mostly addicted to hard study,
long reveries, and exhausting smokes with a German pipe."
He did much miscellaneous reading and was busy with "hints and fragments
of a poetical, musical conception, -- a sort of musical drama
of the peasant uprising in France, called the Jacquerie,"
which continued to interest him during the remainder of his life,
but which remained unfinished at his death. If he wrote any poetry,
it has not been preserved. His brother is of the opinion
that his earliest efforts were Byronesque, if not Wertheresque.
"I have his first attempt at poetry," he says; "it is characteristic,
it is not suggestive of swallow flights of song, but of an eaglet
peering up toward the empyrean." His mind at this time
turned more especially in the direction of music. He jots down
in one of his note-books: "The point which I wish to settle
is merely by what method shall I ascertain what I am fit for
as preliminary to ascertaining God's will with reference to me;
or what my inclinations are, as preliminary to ascertaining
what my capacities are -- that is, what I am fit for.
I am more than all perplexed by this fact: that the prime inclination --
that is, natural bent (which I have checked, though) of my nature is to music,
and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting,
for God gave it me, I have an extraordinary musical talent,
and feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any composer.
But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician,
because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which,
it seems to me, I might do. Question here: `What is the province of music
in the economy of the world?'"
But the really practical plan that formed itself in Lanier's mind
was that of study in a German university, as preliminary to a professorship
in an American college, which might in turn give opportunity
for creative work. Young Southerners from the University of Virginia
-- such as Basil Gildersleeve and Thomas R. Price -- had already begun
their pilgrimages to the German universities. The situation in Lanier's case
is an exact parallel to that of Longfellow at Bowdoin College,
and one cannot but wonder what would have been Lanier's future
if circumstances had allowed him to follow out the career here indicated.
The best account given of him at this time is that of a young Northerner
who was teaching in an academy at Midway: --
"It was during the four months immediately preceding the outbreak of the war
that a kind Fate brought me into contact and companionship with Sidney Lanier.
We occupied adjoining rooms at Ike Sherman's boarding-house and ate
at the same table. Myself a young fellow just out of a Northern college,
boasting the same number of years, conducting a boys' academy
in the shadow of Oglethorpe, there was between us a bond of sympathy
which led to a friendship interrupted only by the Civil War and broken only
by his untimely death. Many a stroll and talk we had together
among the moaning pines, beguiled by the song of the mocking-bird.
Together we called on the young ladies of Midway, -- as this
little college community was known, -- together joined in serenades,
in which his flute or guitar had the place of honor, played chess together,
and together dreamed day-dreams which were never to be realized.
Contemporary testimony to my joy in his companionship is borne
in frequent references thereto in my private correspondence of those days.
`Several students,' says a New Year's letter to a Northern friend,
`room in the hotel, as well as a young and very intellectual tutor,
right back of me, which makes it very pleasant.' In a later letter:
`The tutor is a brick. I am much pleased with him and anticipate
much pleasure in his company.' As to his plans for the future:
`The tutor -- Lanier -- is studying for a professorship;
is going to remain here about two years, then go to Heidelberg, Germany,
remain about two years, come back, and take a professorship somewhere.'
It is needless to add that the destroying angel of war wrecked ruthlessly
all these beautiful ambitions.
"Lanier's passion for music asserted itself at every opportunity.
His flute and guitar furnished recreation for himself
and pleasant entertainment for the friends dropping in upon him.
As a master of the flute he was said to be, even at eighteen,
without an equal in Georgia. `Tutor Lanier,' I find myself recording
at the time, `is the finest flute-player you or I ever saw.
It is perfectly splendid -- his playing. He is far famed for it.
His flute cost fifty dollars, and he runs the notes as easily
as any one on the piano. Description is inadequate.'"*
--
* "Recollections and Letters of Sidney Lanier", by Milton H. Northrup.
`Lippincott's Magazine', March, 1905.
--
Before he was twenty years old, then, the master passions of Lanier's soul
-- scholarship, music, and to a less degree poetry -- had asserted themselves.
He had a right to look forward to a brilliant future.
Chapter III. A Confederate Soldier
From his dreams of music and poetry and from the ideal he had formed
of study at Heidelberg, Lanier was awakened by the guns of Fort Sumter
and by the agitation everywhere in Georgia. At Milledgeville he heard
some of the great speeches made for and against secession,
for, from November to January, the conflict throughout the State
and especially in the capital was a severe one. He himself,
like his father, hoped that the Union might be preserved,
but the forces of discord could not be stayed. The people of Macon,
on November 8, 1860, passed a declaration of independence,
setting forth their grievances against the North. When secession
was declared in Charleston on December 1, a hundred guns were fired
amidst the ringing of bells and the shouts of the people.
At night there was a procession of fifteen hundred people
with banners and transparencies.* When on January 16 the Georgia convention
voted to secede from the Union, Milledgeville was in "rapturous commotion".
"Tears of joy fell from many eyes, and words of congratulation were uttered
by every tongue. The artillery from the capitol square thundered forth
the glad tidings, and the bells of the city pealed forth the joyous welcome
to the new-born Republic."
--
* Butler's `History of Macon'.
--
Lanier afterwards, in "Tiger Lilies", described the war fever
as it swept over the South. "An afflatus of war was breathed upon us.
Like a great wind it drew on, and blew upon men, women, and children.
Its sound mingled with the serenity of the church organs and arose with
the earnest words of preachers praying for guidance in the matter.
It sighed in the half-breathed words of sweethearts,
conditioning impatient lovers with war services. It thundered splendidly
in the impassioned appeals of orators to the people.
It whistled through the streets, it stole into the firesides,
it clinked glasses in bar-rooms, it lifted the gray hairs of our wise men
in conventions, it thrilled through the lectures in college halls,
it rustled the thumbed book leaves of the schoolrooms. This wind blew upon
all vanes of all the churches of the country and turned them one way, --
toward war. It blew, and shook out as if by magic a flag whose device
was unknown to soldier or sailor before, but whose every flap and flutter
made the blood bound in our veins. . . . It arrayed the sanctity
of a righteous cause in the brilliant trappings of military display. . . .
It offered tests to all allegiances and loyalties, -- of church, of state;
of private loves, of public devotion; of personal consanguinity,
of social ties."*
--
* `Tiger Lilies', p. 119.
--
It does not fall within the province of this book to discuss the issues
that led to the Civil War, -- the questions of secession and slavery.
In 1861 they had ceased to be debated in the halls of Congress;
all the Southern people were being merged into a unit.
Ardent opponents of secession, like Alexander H. Stephens,
threw in their lot with the new Confederacy; States like Virginia,
which hesitated to disrupt a Union with which they had had so much to do,
were as enthusiastic as the more ardent Southern States;
old men vied with young men in their military ardor.
Scotch-Irish opponents of slavery marched side by side with the Cavaliers,
to whom slavery was the very corner-stone of a feudal aristocracy.
The fact is, the whole South was animated by a passion for war.
To young men like Lanier the Southern cause was one of liberty,
of resistance to despotism and fanaticism, of the protection of homes.
He who would understand their point of view must read such war lyrics as
"Maryland, My Maryland" and Timrod's "Ethnogenesis", or enter sympathetically
into the lives of that youthful band of Confederate soldiers all of whom
were afterwards to become distinguished in the field of letters, --
Timrod, Hayne, Cable, Maurice Thompson, and Lanier.
It was not given to many men on either side to divine
the true issues of the war. Lanier afterwards rejoiced
in the overthrow of slavery, and knew that it was the belief
in the soundness and greatness of the American Union
among the millions of the North and of the great Northwest
which really conquered the South. "As soon as we invaded the North," he said,
"and arrayed this sentiment against us, our swift destruction followed."
In a note-book of 1867 he pointed out with touches of humor
the folly of many of the ideas formerly held by himself and other Southerners.
He is writing an essay on the Devil's Bombs, "some half-dozen of which
were exploded between the years 1861 and 1865 over the Southern portion
of North America with widespread and somewhat sad results: namely,
a million of men slain and maimed; a million of widows and orphans created;
several billions of money destroyed; several hundred thousand
of ignorant schoolboys who could not study on account of the noise
made by the shells; and a large miscellaneous mass of poverty, starvation,
recklessness, and ruin precipitated so suddenly upon the country
that many were buried beneath it beyond hope of being extricated."
This universal tragedy he attributes in part to the conceit
of the Southern people. He himself became "convinced of his ability
to whip at least five Yankees. The author does not know now and did not then,
by what course of reasoning he arrived at this said conviction;
in the best of the author's judgment he did not reason it out at all,
rather absorbed it, from the press of surrounding similar convictions.
The author, however, was also confident, not only that he personally
could whip five Yankees, but ANY Southern boy could do it.
The whole South was satisfied it could whip five Norths. The newspapers said
we could do it; the preachers pronounced anathemas against the man
that didn't believe we could do it; our old men said at the street corners,
if they were young they could do it, and by the Eternal, they believed
they could do it anyhow (whereat great applause and `Hurrah for ole Harris!');
the young men said they'd be blanked if they couldn't do it,
and the young ladies said they wouldn't marry a man who couldn't do it.
This arrogant perpetual invitation to draw and come on,
this idea which possessed the whole section, which originated
no one knows when, grew no one knows how, was a devil's own bombshell,
the fuse of which sparkled when Mr. Brooks struck Mr. Sumner upon the head
with a cane.
"Of course we laugh at it NOW, -- laugh in the hope that our neighbors
will attribute the redness of our cheeks to that and not to our shame. . . .
The conceit of an individual is ridiculous because it is powerless. . . .
The conceit of a whole people is terrible, it is a devil's bombshell,
surcharged with death, plethoric with all foul despairs and disasters."
So Lanier spoke in the sober maturity of his manhood of the great tragedy
through which he with his section passed. But during the war
there was but one idea in his mind, and that was that he might take part
in the establishment of a Confederacy. He dreamed with his people
of a nation that might be the embodiment of all that was fine
in government and in society, that the "new Confederacy was to enter upon
an era of prosperity such as no other nation, ancient or modern,
had ever enjoyed, and that the city of Macon, his birthplace and home,
was to become a great art centre." In this hope, soon after finishing
the year's work at Oglethorpe,* he volunteered for service
and went to Virginia to join the Macon Volunteers, who had left Georgia
early in April -- the first company that went out of the State to Virginia.
It was an old company that had won distinction in the Mexican War,
and was the special pride of the city of Macon. The company was
stationed for several months near Norfolk, where Lanier experienced
some of the joys of city life in those early days when war was largely
a picnic -- a holiday time it was -- "the gay days of mandolin and guitar
and moonlight sails on the James River."
--
* The faculty and students almost to a man enlisted in the army;
and the college buildings were afterwards used for barracks and hospitals.
President Talmage lost his mind by reason of the conflict between
his affection for his native and for his adopted section.
--
In the main, however, they played "Marsh-Divers and Meadow-Crakes",
their principal duties being to picket the beach, and their
"pleasures and sweet rewards-of-toil consisting in agues which played dice
with our bones, and blue-mass pills that played the deuce with our livers."*
The company was sent in 1862 to Wilmington, N.C., where they experienced
a pleasant change in the style of fever, "indulging for two or three months,"
continues Lanier, "in what are called the `dry shakes of the sand hills',
a sort of brilliant, tremolo movement, brilliantly executed upon
`that pan-pipe, man', by an invisible but very powerful performer."
From here, where they were engaged in building Fort Fisher,
they were called to Drewry's Bluff; and from there to the Chickahominy,
participating in the seven days' fighting around Richmond. Just before
the battle of Malvern Hill they marched all night through drenching rain,
over torn and swampy roads. These were the only important battles in which
Lanier took part. Soon afterwards he was in a little gunboat fight or two
on the south bank of the James River. On August 26 they were sent
to Petersburg to rest. While there he enjoyed the use of the city library.
He and his brother and two friends were transferred to the signal corps,
which was considered at that time the most efficient in the Southern army,
and, becoming soon proficient in the system, attracted the attention
of the commanding officer, who formed them into a mounted field squad
and attached them to the staff of Major-General French.
"Often Lanier and a friend," says the latter officer,
"would come to my quarters and pass the evenings with us,
where the `alarums of war' were lost in the soft notes of their flutes,
for Lanier was an excellent musician."** Lanier tells in a letter
written to his father at that time of four Georgia privates with one general,
six captains, and one lieutenant, serenading the city.
--
* The account of Lanier's war experiences is based on the poet's
letters to Northrup, the reminiscences of Clifford Lanier,
Lanier's unpublished letters to his father, `Tiger Lilies',
and the `Official Records of the War of the Rebellion'.
** `A History of Two Wars', by Samuel G. French.
--
One of the most precious memories of Lanier's war career
was that of General Lee attending religious services in Petersburg.
The height of every Confederate soldier's ambition was to get
a glimpse of the beloved general, who was the idol of his soldiers.
Lanier reverenced him as one of the greatest of men. In later years
he gave his ideal of what a great musician ought to be. "A great artist,"
he said, "should have the sensibility and expressive genius of Schumann,
the calm grandeur of Lee, and the human breadth of Shakespeare, all in one."
In his "Confederate Memorial Address" he speaks of Lee as "stately in victory,
stately in defeat; stately among the cannon, stately among the books;
stately in solitude, stately in society; stately in form, in soul,
in character, and in action." Fortunately he had the chance to see him
under specially interesting circumstances. He afterwards related the incident
to the Confederate veterans in Macon: "The last time that I saw
with mortal eyes -- for, with spiritual eyes, many, many times
have I contemplated him since -- the scene was so beautiful,
the surroundings were so rare, nay, time and circumstance did so fitly
frame him, as it were, that I think the picture should not be lost. . . .
It was at fateful Petersburg, on one glorious Sunday morning,
whilst the armies of Grant and Butler were investing
our last stronghold there. It had been announced, to those who happened
to be stationed in the neighborhood of General Lee's headquarters,
that religious services would be conducted on that morning
by Major-General Pendleton. At the appointed time I strolled over
to Dunn's Hill, where General Lee's tent was pitched,
and found General Pendleton ensconced under a magnificent tree,
and a small party of soldiers, with a few ladies from the dwelling near by,
collected about him. In a few moments, General Lee appeared
with his camp chair, and sat down. The services began.
That terrible battery, Number Five, was firing, very slowly,
each report of the great guns making the otherwise profound silence
still more profound. I sat down on the grass and gazed,
with such reverence as I had never given to mortal man before,
upon the grand face of General Lee. He had been greatly fatigued
by loss of sleep.
"As the sermon progressed, and the immortal words of Christian doctrine came
to our hearts and comforted us, sweet influences born of the liberal sunlight
which lay warm upon the grass, of the moving leaves and trembling flowers,
seemed to steal over the General's soul. Presently his eyelids
gradually closed, and he fell gently asleep. Not a muscle of him stirred,
not a nerve of his grand countenance twitched; there was
no drooping of the head, nor bowing of the figure. . . .
As he slumbered so, sitting erect, with arms folded upon his chest,
in an attitude of majestic repose, such as I never saw assumed
by mortal man before; as the large and comfortable word
fell from the preacher's lips; as the lazy cannon of the enemy anon
hurled a screaming shell to within a few hundred yards of where we sat,
as finally a bird flew into a tree overhead and sat and piped
small blissful notes in unearthly contrast with the roar of the war engines;
it seemed to me as if the present earth floated off through the sunlight,
and the antique earth returned out of the past, and some majestic god
sat on a hill, sculptured in stone, presiding over a terrible yet sublime
contest of human passion."
A pleasant interlude in Lanier's soldier life was a two weeks' visit
to Macon in the spring of 1863. The city had not yet felt
any of the calamities of war, although high prices prevailed.
Mrs. Clay, wife of Senator Clement C. Clay, was a visitor in the city
at that time, waiting for a summons to join her husband in Richmond.
She writes, in recalling those days: "Spring was in its precious beauty.
Gardens glowed with brilliant blossoms. Thousands of fragrant odors mingled
in the air, the voices of myriad birds sang about the foliaged avenues."*
It was then that Lanier met Miss Mary Day, at the home of their friend,
Miss Lamar. Her father was a prominent business man in Macon. She had lived
for the first few years of her life in Macon, but had been since 1851
studying music in New York, and living with cultivated people
at Saratoga and West Point. In an atmosphere of romance, music, and love
Lanier spent his vacation.
--
* `A Belle of the Fifties', p. 194.
--
On their return to the Virginia battlefields the two brothers
were accompanied by Mrs. Clay and her sister-in-law. Mrs. Clay had been
a popular belle in Washington in the fifties, and was well acquainted
with leading men and women throughout the country. She had heard and met
in social circles Charlotte Cushman, Jenny Lind, Thackeray, Lord Napier,
and other notabilities. Lanier, eager always to hear of the larger world
outside of his own limited life, was much attracted by
her reminiscences of well-known men and women. Returning to Suffolk, Va.,
Clifford Lanier wrote to her: "What a transition is this --
from the spring and peace of Macon to this muddy and war-distracted country!
Going to sleep in the moonlight and soft air of Italy, I seem to have waked
embedded in Lapland snow." Sidney wrote: "Have you ever wandered,
in an all night's dream, through exquisite flowery mosses,
through labyrinthine grottoes, `full of all sparkling and sparry loveliness',
over mountains of unknown height, by abysses of unfathomable depth,
all beneath skies of an infinite brightness caused by no sun;
strangest of all, -- wandered about in wonder, as if you had lived an eternity
in the familiar contemplation of such things? If you have dreamed,
thought, and felt so, you can realize the imbecile stare
with which I gaze on all of this life which goes on around me here.
Macon was my two weeks' dream."*
--
* `A Belle of the Fifties', p. 200.
--
During 1863 and a large part of 1864 the two brothers served
as scouts in Milligan's Corps along the James River. The duties were
unusually dangerous and onerous, from the fact that their movements
had to be concealed, and that they were in constant danger of being captured.
In this work of hard riding Lanier displayed a cool and collected courage;
he was untiring in his energy, prudent and cautious.
Notwithstanding the dangers and hardships, he looked upon the period of life
at Fort Boykin on Burwell's Bay -- their headquarters --
as "the most delicious period of his life in many respects."
Writing of it later he said: "Our life was as full of romance
as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses,
a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us,
and plenty of hairbreadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals
who were continually visiting that Debatable Land. . . .
Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades,
the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay,
and the spirited brushes of our little force with the enemy."*
--
* Letter to Northrup, June 11, 1866.
--
This is the period of his life which he describes in the second part
of "Tiger Lilies". His brother Clifford also made it the basis of his novel,
"Thorn-Fruit". The effect produced by the young poet and musician
on the people who lived in the stately mansions along the James River
has been told by one who knew him well at this time: "The two brothers
were inseparable; slender, gray-eyed youths, full of enthusiasm,
Clifford grave and quiet, Sidney, the elder, playful with
a dainty mirthfulness. . . . How often did we sit on the moonlight nights
enthralled by the entranced melodies of his flute! Always the longing
for the very highest pervaded his life, and child though I was,
in listening to him as he paced the long galleries of my old home,
or as we rode in the sweet green wood, I felt even then that we sat
`in the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all the stars.'"*
--
* `Southern Bivouac', May, 1887.
--
This period of his army life is important also from the fact
that here at Fort Boykin he definitely began to contemplate
a literary life as his probable vocation. He was studying hard,
reading English poetry, and writing to his father to "seize at any price"
editions of the German poets, Uhland, Lessing, Schelling, and Tieck.
Thus at a time when other Southerners were, as Professor Gildersleeve
has said, getting out their classics to reread them, Lanier was voyaging into
strange fields of thought alone. Once, when the little camp was captured,
he lost several of his choicest treasures, -- a volume containing
the poems of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, a German glossary, Heine's poems,
and "Aurora Leigh". In a letter to his father, January 18, 1864,
he says: "Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself
into this business of writing, and especially of writing poetry.
I am going to try it; and am going to test, in the most rigid way I know,
the awful question whether it is my vocation." He sends his father
a number of poems, that they may be criticised. He has a sense of his own
deficiencies as a writer, -- deficiencies which he never fully overcame, --
for he writes: "I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency
to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far,
employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image,
and so making of it a CONCEIT rather than a metaphor,
a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne,
and others of that ilk."
The tendency is seen in a poem written at Boykin's Bluff
on, perhaps, his twenty-first birthday. Notable also
is the sense of the dawn of manhood: --
So Boyhood sets: comes Youth,
A painful night of mists and dreams,
That broods till Love's exquisite truth,
The star of a morn-clear manhood, beams.
In this dawn of his manhood -- not yet morn-clear, however, --
he began "Tiger Lilies", writing those parts having to do with his experience
in the mountains, some passages of which have already been quoted.
But Lanier's literary career was not to be begun as soon as he hoped.
He was, in August, 1864, transferred to Wilmington, N.C., where he became
a signal officer on the blockade-runners. Wilmington was the port which,
late in the war, was the scene of the most brilliant successes
of these swift vessels and the most strenuous efforts of the blockaders.
"Long after every other port was closed, desperate, but wary sea pigeons
would evade the big and surly watchers on the coast . . . and ho!
for the open sea." This was a service of keen excitement and constant danger,
demanding a clear head and iron nerves. In the latter part of 1864
it became more and more difficult for the blockade-runners to make their way
to Bermuda. On November 2, a stormy night, Lanier was a signal officer
on the Lucy, which made its way out of the harbor, but fourteen hours later
was captured in the Gulf Stream by the Federal cruiser Santiago-de-Cuba.
He was taken to Point Lookout prison, where he spent four months
of dreary and distressing life. To this prison life Lanier always attributed
his breakdown in health. In "Tiger Lilies" he afterwards attempted
to give a description of the prison and the life led by prisoners, but turned
with disgust from the harrowing memories. The few pages he did write
serve as a counterpart to Walt Whitman's strictures on Southern prisons
in his "Specimen Days in America".
And yet, under these loathsome conditions he read German poetry,
translating Heine's "The Palm and the Pine" and Herder's "Spring Greeting".
Here, too, he found comfort for himself and his companions
in the flute which he had carried with him during the entire war.
One of his comrades gives the following account of Lanier's playing:
"Late one evening I heard from our tent the clear sweet notes of a flute
in the distance, and I was told that the player was a young man from Georgia
who had just come among us. I forthwith hastened to find him out,
and from that hour the flute of Sidney Lanier was our daily delight.
It was an angel imprisoned with us to cheer and console us. Well I remember
his improvisations, and how the young artist stood there in the twilight.
(It was his custom to stand while he played.) Many a stern eye
moistened to hear him, many a homesick heart for a time forgot its captivity.
The night sky, clear as a dewdrop above us, the waters of the Chesapeake
far to the east, the long gray beach and the distant pines,
seemed all to have found an interpreter in him.
"In all those dreary months of imprisonment, under the keenest
privations of life, exposed to the daily manifestations of want and depravity,
sickness and death, his was the clear-hearted, hopeful voice that sang
what he uttered in after years."
The purity of Lanier's soul was never better attested than in a letter
written by a fellow-prisoner, Mr. John B. Tabb, to Charles Day Lanier,
the oldest son of the poet, trying to impress upon his mind
the character of his father as exhibited in this prison life at Point Lookout:
"To realize what our surroundings were, one must have lived in a prison camp.
There was no room for pretense or disguise. Men appeared
what they really were, noble or low-minded, pure or depraved;
and there did one trait of your father's character single him out.
In all our intercourse I can remember no conversation or word of his
that an angel might not have uttered or listened to. Set this down
in your memory. . . . It will throw light upon other points,
and prove the truth of Sir Galahad's words, `My strength is as
the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.'"
Lanier secured his release from prison through some gold
which a friend of his had smuggled into the prison in his mouth.
He came out "emaciated to a skeleton, down-hearted for want of news from home,
down-headed for weariness." On his voyage to Fortress Monroe
an incident occurred which, although told in somewhat overwrought language,
is a fitting climax to his career as a soldier.
The story of his rescue from death, says Baskervill, is graphically told
by the lady herself who was the good Samaritan on this occasion.
"She was an old friend from Montgomery, Ala., returning from New York
to Richmond; and her little daughter, who had learned to call him Brother Sid,
chanced to hear that he was down in the hold of the vessel dying.
On application to the colonel in command permission was promptly given to her
to minister to his necessity, and she made haste to go below.
`Now my friends in New York,' continued she, `had given me
a supply of medicines, for we had few such things in Dixie,
and among the remedies were quinine and brandy. I hastily took
a flask of brandy, and we went below, where we were led to the rude stalls
provided for cattle, but now crowded with poor human wretches.
There in that horrible place dear Sidney Lanier lay wrapped in an old quilt,
his thin hands tightly clenched, his face drawn and pinched,
his eyes fixed and staring, his poor body shivering now and then
in a spasm of pain. Lilla fell at his side, kissing him and calling:
`Brother Sid, don't you know me? Don't you know your little sister?'
But no recognition or response came from the sunken eyes.
I poured some brandy into a spoon and gave it to him.
It gurgled down his throat at first with no effort from him to swallow it.
I repeated the stimulant several times before he finally revived.
At last he turned his eyes slowly about until he saw Lilla,
and murmured: `Am I dead? Is this Lilla? Is this heaven?' . . .
To make a long story short, the colonel assisted us
to get him above to our cabin. I can see his fellow prisoners now
as they crouched and assisted to pass him along over their heads,
for they were so packed that they could not make room to carry him through.
Along over their heads they tenderly passed the poor, emaciated body,
so shrunken with prison life and benumbed with cold. We got him
into clean blankets, but at first he could not endure the pain from the fire,
he was so nearly frozen. We gave him some hot soup and more brandy,
and he lay quiet till after midnight. Then he asked for his flute
and began playing. As he played the first few notes, you should have heard
the yell of joy that came up from the shivering wretches down below,
who knew that their comrade was alive. And there we sat entranced about him,
the colonel and his wife, Lilla and I, weeping at the tender music,
as the tones of new warmth and color and hope came like liquid melody
from his magic flute."*
--
* `Southern Writers', p. 169.
--
Thus closes his war period. His name does not appear
in any of the official records, but no private soldier
had a more varied experience.* One scarcely knows which to admire most, --
the soldier, brave and knightly, the poet, preparing his wings for a flight,
or the musician, inspiriting his fellow-soldiers in camp and in prison.
--
* It is said that he refused promotion several times in order to be
with his brother. In a memorandum on the photograph herewith presented
he refers to himself as "captain" in the late Confederate army.
I have been unable to reconcile these statements.
[Photograph not included in this ASCII edition. -- A. L.]
--
Chapter IV. Seeking a Vocation
Lanier reached Macon March 15, after a long and painful journey
through the Carolinas. Immediately upon his arrival, losing the stimulus
which had kept him going so long, he fell dangerously ill,
and remained so for nearly two months. Early in May,
just as he was convalescing, General Wilson captured Macon,
and Jefferson Davis and Clement C. Clay were brought to the Lanier House,
whence they were to start on their way as prisoners to Fortress Monroe.
Clifford Lanier reached home May 19. He had, after the blockade was closed
at Wilmington, gone to Cuba. From there he sailed to Galveston
and walked thence to Macon. He arrived just in time to see his mother,
who a few days after died of consumption. She had kept herself
alive for months by "a strong conviction, which she expressed again and again,
that God would bring both her boys to her before she died." Sidney spent
the summer months with his father and his sister, ministering to them
in their sorrow. In September he began to tutor on a large plantation
nine miles from Macon. With thirty classes a day and failing health,
he whose brain was "fairly teeming with beautiful things"
was shut up to the horrible monotony of the "tear and tret" of the schoolroom.
He spent the winter at Point Clear on Mobile Bay, where he was
greatly invigorated by the sea breezes and the air of the pine forests.
After these months of sorrow and struggle he settled in Montgomery, Ala.,
as clerk in the Exchange Hotel, the property of his grandfather
and his uncles. His first feeling as he faces the new conditions
which he is trying to explain to Northrup, his Northern friend,
is one of bewilderment, -- the immense distance between
the beginning and the end of the war: --
"So wild and high are the big war-waves dashing between '61 and '66,
as between two shores, that, looking across their `rude, imperious surge',
I can scarcely discern any sight or sound of those old peaceful days
that you and I passed on the `sacred soil' of M----.
The sweet, half-pastoral tones that SHOULD come from out that golden time,
float to me mixed with battle cries and groans. It was our glorious spring:
but, my God, the flowers of it send up sulphurous odors,
and their petals are dabbled with blood.
"These things being so, I thank you, more than I can well express,
for your kind letter. It comes to me, like a welcome sail,
from that old world to this new one, through the war-storms.
It takes away the sulphur and the blood-flecks, and drowns out
the harsh noises of battle. The two margins of the great gulf
which has divided you from me seem approaching each other:
I stretch out my hand across the narrowing fissure,
to grasp yours on the other side. And I wish, with all my heart,
that you and I could spend this ineffable May afternoon
under that old oak at Whittaker's and `talk it all over'."*
--
* This and the following letter were printed in `Lippincott's Magazine',
March, 1905. A few changes are made to conform to the original copies.
--
In another letter (June 29, 1866) he encloses a photograph and comments on
the life in Montgomery: --
"The cadaverous enclosed is supposed to represent the face of your friend,
together with a small portion of the Confederate gray coat in which enwrapped
he did breast the big wars.
"I have one favor to entreat; and that is, that you will hold in consideration
the very primitive state of the photographic art in this section,
and believe that my mouth is not so large, by some inches,
as this villainous artist portrays it.
"I despair of giving you any idea of the mortal stagnation which paralyzes
all business here. On our streets, Monday is very like Sunday:
they show no life, save late in the afternoon, when the girls come out,
one by one, and shine and move, just as the stars do an hour later.
I don't think there's a man in town who could be induced
to go into his neighbor's store and ask him how's trade;
for he would have to atone for such an insult with his life.
Everything is dreamy, and drowsy, and drone-y. The trees stand like statues;
and even when a breeze comes, the leaves flutter and dangle idly about,
as if with a languid protest against all disturbance of their perfect rest.
The mocking-birds absolutely refuse to sing before twelve o'clock at night,
when the air is somewhat cooled: and the fireflies flicker more slowly
than I ever saw them before. Our whole world here yawns,
in a vast and sultry spell of laziness. An `exposition of sleep'
is come over us, as over Sweet Bully Bottom; we won't wake till winter.
Himmel, my dear Boy, you are all so alive up there, and we are all
so dead down here! I begin to have serious thoughts of emigrating
to your country, so that I may live a little. There's not enough
attrition of mind on mind here, to bring out any sparks from a man."
Into this strange new world -- "the unfamiliar avenue of a new era" --
Lanier passed with unfaltering courage. He was to show that
"fortitude is more manly than bravery, for noble and long endurance
wins the shining love of God; whereas brilliant bravery is momentary,
is easy to the enthusiastic, and only dazzles the admiration
of the weak-eyed." Did any young man ever have to begin life
under more disadvantageous circumstances? Cherishing in his heart
the ideal long since formed of the scholar's or the artist's life,
he looked around on the blankest world one could imagine.
It is perhaps in a later letter to Bayard Taylor that Lanier came nearest
to expressing the situation that confronted him at the end of the war.
"Perhaps you know that with us of the younger generation of the South,
since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying."
Added to his own poverty and sickness, was that of his family.
His grandfather had been compelled to leave his estate in East Tennessee
in 1863, and was now in old age deprived of his negroes and much of
his land and money. His father, weighed down with sorrow, had to take up
the practice of law from the start. Some members of his family,
"who used to roll in wealth, are every day," he writes, "with their own hands
plowing the little patch of ground which the war has left them,
while their wives do their cooking and washing."
Moreover, the entire South -- and to those who had shared
the hopes of a Southern republic it was still the land they loved --
was in a state of despair. Middle Georgia had lost through Sherman's
march to the sea $100,000,000.* In the wake of Sherman's armies
Richard Malcom Johnston had lost his estate of $50,000,
Maurice Thompson's home was in ashes, and Joel Chandler Harris,
who had begun life on the old Turner plantation under such favorable auspices,
was forced to seek an occupation in New Orleans. Only those
who lived through that period or who have imaginatively reproduced it,
can realize the truth of E. L. Godkin's statement: "I doubt much
if any community in the modern world was ever so ruthlessly brought
face to face with what is sternest and hardest in human life."
It was not simply the material losses of the war, -- these have often
been commented on and statistics given, -- it was the loss of libraries
like those of Simms and Hayne, the burning of institutions of learning
like the University of Alabama, the closing of colleges,
like Lanier's own alma mater. It was the passing away of a civilization
which, with all its faults, had many attractive qualities --
a loss all the more apparent at a time when a more democratic civilization
had not yet taken its place. The South was
Wandering between two worlds -- one dead,
The other powerless to be born.
Even States like Georgia, which soon showed signs of recuperation
and rejuvenation, suffered with their more unfortunate sisters,
South Carolina and Louisiana, where the ravages of war were terrific.
There was confusion in the public mind -- uncertainty as to the future.
The memories of these days are suggested here, not for the purpose
of awakening in any mind bitter memories, but that some idea may be given
of the tremendous obstacles that confronted a young man like Lanier.
--
* Rhodes's `History of the United States', v, 22.
--
It is no wonder that under these circumstances men went to other countries,
and that some of those who did not go cherished the project
of transporting the people of various States to other lands,
where the spirit of the civilization that had passed away might be preserved.*
Many men whose names are now lost passed out to the States of the West.
Business men, scholars, and men of all professions, who have since
become famous in other States, were as complete a loss to the South
as those who died on the battlefield. And when to all these are added
the men and women who died broken-hearted at the losses of war,
some idea may be conceived of the disadvantages under which
the South began her work.
--
* See the `Life and Letters of R. L. Dabney', for a plan in which
many Virginians were interested.
--
The work of those men who remained in the South and set about
to inaugurate a new era cannot be too highly estimated, -- a work made
all the more difficult by strong men who resisted the march of events,
and who refused to accept the conditions that then prevailed.
The readjustment came soon to more men than some have thought.
Lanier, writing in 1867, before the pressure of reconstruction government
had been felt, said, in commenting on the growing lack of restraint
in modern political life: "At the close of that war, three armies
which had been fighting on the Southern side, and which numbered probably
forty thousand men, were disbanded. These men had for four years been
subjected to the unfamiliar and galling restrictions of military discipline,
and to the most maddening privations. . . . At the same time
four millions of slaves, without provisions and without prospect of labor
in a land where employers were impoverished, were liberated. . . .
The reign of law at this thrilling time was at an end.
The civil powers of the States were dead; the military power of the conquerors
was not yet organized for civil purposes. The railroad and the telegraph,
those most efficient sheriffs of modern times, had fallen in the shock of war.
All possible opportunities presented themselves to each man who chose
to injure his neighbor with impunity. The country was sparsely settled,
the country roads were intricate, the forests were extensive and dense,
the hiding-places were numerous and secure, the witnesses
were few and ignorant. Never had crime such fair weather for his carnival.
Serious apprehensions had long been entertained by the Southern citizens
that in the event of a disastrous termination of the war,
the whole army would be frenzied to convert itself, after disintegration,
into forty thousand highwaymen. . . . Moreover, the feuds between
master and slave, alleged by the Northern parties in the contest
to have been long smouldering in the South, would seize this opportunity
to flame out and redress themselves. Altogether, regarding humanity
from the old point of view, there appeared to many wise citizens
a clear prospect of dwelling in [the] midst of a furious pandemonium
for several years after an unfavorable termination of the war;
but was this prospect realized? Where were the highway robberies,
the bloody vengeances, the arsons, the rapine, the murders,
the outrages, the insults? They WERE, not anywhere. With great calmness
the soldier cast behind him the memory of all wrongs and hardships
and reckless habits of the war, embraced his wife, patched his cabin-roof,
and proceeded to mingle the dust of recent battles yet lingering on his feet
with the peaceful clods of his cornfield. What restrained these men?
Was it fear? The word cannot be spoken. Was he who had breasted the storms
of Gettysburg and Perryville to shrink from the puny arm of a civil law
that was more powerless than the shrunken muscle of Justice Shallow?
And what could the negro fear when his belief and assurance were
that a conquering nation stood ready to support him in his wildest demands?
It was the spirit of the time that brought about these things. . . .
A thousand Atlantic Cables and Pacific Railroads would not have contributed
cause for so earnest self-gratulation as was afforded by this one feature
in our recent political convulsion."*
--
* `Retrospects and Prospects', p. 29.
--
Many Southerners were ready, like Lee, to forget the bitterness
and prejudice of the war -- all but the hallowed memories.
Lanier, at the close of a fanciful passage on the blood-red flower of war
which blossomed in 1861, said: --
"It is supposed by some that the seed of this American specimen (now dead)
yet remain in the land; but as for this author (who, with many friends,
suffered from the unhealthy odors of the plant), he could find it in his heart
to wish fervently that these seed, if there be verily any,
might perish in the germ, utterly out of sight and life and memory
and out of the remote hope of resurrection, forever and forever,
no matter in whose granary they are cherished!"*
--
* `Tiger Lilies', p. 116.
--
In this spirit Lanier began his work in Montgomery, Ala. As has been seen,
he had extended the hand of fellowship to his Northern friend,
thus laying the basis for the spirit of reconciliation
afterwards so dominant in his poetry. Uncongenial as was his work,
he went about it with a new sense of the "dignity of labor".
His aunt, Mrs. Watt, who had in the more prosperous times before the war
traveled much in the North, and had graced the brilliant scenes
of the opening of the Confederate Congress in Montgomery,
becoming the intimate friend of Jefferson Davis and Stephens,
now threw around her nephews -- Clifford was also working in the hotel --
the charm of the olden days. They found pleasure in social life:
close to Montgomery lived the Cloptons and Ligons, who on their plantations
enjoyed the gifts of "Santa Claus Cotton", just after the war.
Lanier writes to his sister, September 26, 1866: "I have just
returned from Tuskegee, where I spent a pleasant week. . . .
They feted me to death, nearly. . . . Indeed, they were all
so good and so kind to me, and the fair cousins were so beautiful,
that I came back feeling as if I had been in a week's dream of fairyland."
The two brothers, eager for more intellectual companionship,
organized a literary club, for the meetings of which
Sidney prepared his first literary exercises after the war.
He played the pipe-organ in the Presbyterian church in Montgomery.
He writes to a friend about some one who was in a state of melancholy:
"She is right to cultivate music, to cling to it; it is the only REALITY
left in the world for her and many like her. It will revolutionize the world,
and that not long hence. Let her study it intensely, give herself to it,
enter the very innermost temple and sanctuary of it. . . .
The altar steps are wide enough for all the world." To another friend
he writes at the same time: "Study Chopin as soon as you become able
to play his music; and get his life by Liszt. 'T is the most enjoyable book
you could read."
Most of the leisure time of the brothers, however, was spent in literary work,
with even more ardor than while they had plenty of time to devote to it.
By May 12 Clifford had finished his novel, "Thorn-Fruit", and Sidney
was at work on "Tiger Lilies", the novel begun at Burwell's Bay in 1863
and retouched at different times since then. They were planning, too,
a volume of poems, although with the exception of their father
they had not been able "to find a single individual who sympathized
in such a pursuit enough to warrant them in showing him their production, --
so scarce is general cultivation here; but," Sidney adds, "we work on,
and hope to become at least recognized as good orderly citizens
in the fair realm of letters yet." Indeed, they planned to go North
in the fall "with bloody literary designs on some hapless publisher."*
--
* Letters to Northrup.
--
In order to find out what was going on in the world of letters,
Lanier subscribed to the "Round Table", which was then
an important weekly paper of New York -- indeed, it was more like
the London "Spectator" than any paper ever published on this side the water --
a journal, said the New York "Times", which "has the genius and learning
and brilliancy of the higher order of London weeklies,
and which at the same time has the spirit and instincts of America."
Moncure D. Conway was at that time writing letters of much interest
from England and Justin Winsor from Cambridge, while Howells, Aldrich,
Stedman, and Stoddard were regular contributors. The reviews of books
were thoroughly cosmopolitan, and the editorials setting forth
the interpretation of contemporary events were characterized
by sanity and breadth.
In addition to the fact that Lanier's first poems were published
in this journal,* it is to be noted that it exerted considerable influence
over him -- especially in two directions. Its broad national policy
-- more sympathetic than that of the "Nation" even -- was evidence to him
that there were Northern people who were magnanimous in their attitude
to Southern problems. He was especially impressed with an editorial
on the "Duties of Peace" (July 7, 1866) as "the most sensible discussion"
he had seen of the whole situation. In it were these striking words:
"The people of the South are our brothers, bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh. They have courage, integrity, honor,
patriotism, and all the manly virtues as well as ourselves. . . .
Can we realize that our duty now is to heal, not to punish? . . .
Consider their dilapidated cities, their deserted plantations,
their impoverished country, their loss of personal property
by thousands of millions; far more than this, their buried dead
and desolate hearts. . . . No one with a heart can realize
the truth of their condition without feeling that the punishment
has been terrific. We should address ourselves to the grave task of restoring
the disrupted relations of the two sections by acts of genuine kindness,
truthfulness, fairness, and love. . . . In a word, let the era of blood
be followed by another era of good feeling." The whole editorial
is in accordance with the previously announced policy of the paper:
"The Rebellion extinguished, the next duty is to extinguish
the sectional spirit, and to seek to create fraternal feeling
among all the States of the Union."
--
* "In the Foam", "Barnacles", "The Tournament", "Resurrection",
"Laughter in the Senate" (not in his collected poems), "A Birthday Song",
"Tyranny", and "Life and Song" were published in the `Round Table'
during 1867 and 1868.
["Laughter in the Senate" is in later editions of his collected poems,
including the edition published by Project Gutenberg. -- A. L., 1998.]
--
In discussing literary questions the "Round Table" showed the same
national spirit, manifesting a healthy interest in those few Southern writers
who were left after the deluge. The words found in two editorials,
calling for a more vigorous and original class of writers,
must have appealed to Lanier. An editorial, May 12, 1866,
entitled a "Plain Talk with American Writers", said:
"In fact the literary field was never so barren, never so utterly
without hope or life. . . . The era of genius and vigor that seemed
ready to burst upon us only a few months ago has not been fulfilled.
There is a lack of boldness and power. Men do not seem to strike out
in new paths as bravely as of old. . . . We have very little strong,
original writing. Who will waken us from this sleep?
Who will first show us the first signs of a genuine literary reviving?"
And again, July 14, 1866, "We look to see young men coming forward
who shall inaugurate a better literature. . . . If ever there was a time
when a magnificent field opened to young aspirants for literary renown,
that time is the present. Every door is wide open. . . .
All the graces of poesy and art and music stand waiting by,
ready to welcome a bold new-comer. . . . Who will come forward and inaugurate
a new era of bold, electrical, impressive writing?"
With some such ambition as this in his mind, Lanier gave up
his work in Montgomery in the spring of 1867 and went to New York
with the completed manuscript of "Tiger Lilies".* He was there for more
than a month, finally arranging for its publication with Hurd & Houghton,
the predecessors of the present firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. He was
enabled to publish his book by the generous help of Mr. J. F. D. Lanier.
Some of his experiences on this, his first visit to the metropolis,
are significant. He is somewhat dazed by the life of the big city.
"I tell you," he writes to a friend, "the Heavens are alien to this town,
and if it were anybody else but the Infinite God that owned them,
he wouldn't let them bend so blue over here." In a letter
to his father, April 16, he describes the view of the city
from Trinity Church steeple and tells a characteristic incident:
"The grand array of houses and ships and rivers and distant hills
did not arrest my soul as did the long line of men and women,
which at that height seemed to writhe and contort itself
in its narrow bed of Broadway as in a premature grave. . . .
I have not seen here a single eye that knew itself to be in front of a heart
-- but one, and that was a blue one, and a child owned it.
'T was the very double of Sissa's [the name for his sister] eye,
so I had no sooner seen it than I made love to it, with what success
you will hear. On Saturday I dined with J. F. D. Lanier.
We had only a family party. . . . Last and best little Kate Lanier,
eight years old, pearly cheeked, blue eyed, broad of forehead,
cherried i' the lip. About the time that the champagne came on
I happened to mention that I had been in prison during the war.
--
* William Gilmore Simms was there at about the same time
trying to get started again in his literary work, and Edward Rowland Sill
was making his first venture into the literary world.
--
"`Poor fellow!' says little Katie, `and how did the rebels treat you?'
"`Rebels,' said I, `I am a rebel myself, Kate!'
"`What!' she exclaimed, and lifted up her little lilies
(when I say lilies I mean hands), and peered at me curiously
with all her blue eyes astare. `A live Reb!'
"This phrase in Katie's nursery had taken the time-honored place of bugaboos,
and hobgoblins, and men under the bed. She could not realize that I,
a smooth-faced, slender, ordinary mortal, in all respects like a common man,
should be a live reb. She was inclined to hate me, as in duty bound.
"I will not describe the manner of the siege I laid to her:
suffice it that when I rose to take leave, Katie stood up before [me],
and half blushed, and paused a minute.
"With a coquetry I never saw executed more prettily, `I know,' said she,
`that you are dying for a kiss, and you're ashamed to ask for it.
You may take one.' . . . And so in triumph, and singing poems
to all blue eyes, I said good night."
Leaving "Tiger Lilies" in the hands of the publishers, he returned to Macon,
where in September we find him reading the proof of the same.
The novel appeared in October and was reviewed somewhat at length
in the "Round Table".* The review refers to Lanier as
"the author of some quaint and graceful verses published from time to time
in the `Round Table'." "His novel goes a long way to confirm the good opinion
which his poems suggested. We have, indeed, seldom read a first book
more pregnant with promise, or fuller of the faults which,
more surely than precocious perfection, betoken talent. . . .
His errors seem to be entirely errors of youth and in the right direction."
"Exuberance is more easily corrected than sterility."
"His dialogue reads too often like a catalogue `raisonne' of his library."
The critic finds traces of a scholarly and poetic taste, but withal
a straining after novelty and "an affectation of quaintness so marked
as to be often unpleasant." He objects to long abstract disquisitions
on metaphysics and music. He commends it, however, for being "unmarred
by the bad taste of its contemporaries in fanning a senseless and profitless
sectional rancor."
--
* `Round Table', December 14, 1867.
--
With this review the reader of "Tiger Lilies" at the present time must agree.
It is seldom that one finds a bit of contemporary criticism
that hits the mark so well as this. As a story it is a failure --
the plot is badly managed and the work is strikingly uneven.
Lanier was aware of its defects, and yet pointed out its value
to any student of his life. In a letter to his father from Montgomery,
July 13, 1866, he says: "I have in the last part adopted almost exclusively
the dramatic, rather than the descriptive, style which reigns
in the earlier portions, interspersed with much high talk.
Indeed, the book which I commenced to write in 1863 and have touched
at intervals until now, represents in its change of style almost precisely
the change of tone which has gradually been taking place in me all the time.
So much so, that it has become highly interesting to me: I seem to see
portions of my old self, otherwise forgotten, here preserved."
The note sounded in the preface is characteristic. He professes
"a love, strong as it is humble, for what is beautiful
in God's Nature and in man's Art." He utters a plea against
"the horrible piquancies of quaint crimes and of white-handed criminals,
with which so many books have recently stimulated the pruriency of men;
and begs that the following pages may be judged only as registering
a faint cry, sent from a region where there are few artists
to happier lands that own many; calling on these last for more sunshine
and less night in their art, more virtuous women and fewer Lydian Guelts,
more household sweetness and less Bohemian despair, clearer chords
and fewer suspensions, broader quiet skies and shorter grotesque storms;
since there are those, even here in the South, who still love beautiful things
with sincere passion."
The story may be briefly indicated. The background of the first book is,
as has been seen, the mountain scenery of East Tennessee.
A party of hunters -- including Philip Sterling and Paul Ruebetsahl,
two young transcendentalists -- are on a stand waiting for deer.
Philip Sterling -- with "large gray poet's eyes, with a dream in each
and a sparkle behind it" -- is living in the mountains
with his father John Sterling and his sister Felix --
their home a veritable palace of art. Ruebetsahl is from Frankfort, Germany,
whence he brings an enthusiasm for music and philosophy,
into which he inducts his newly found friends. Another companion
is John Cranston, a Northerner who had also lived in Frankfort,
where he had often been compared to Goethe in his youth.
He had Lucifer eyes, he spoke French and German; he "walked like a young god,
he played people mad with his violin." These lovers of music and poetry
furnish much amusement to the native mountaineers, one of whom,
Cain Smallin, becomes one of the prominent characters
in the latter part of the book. It is worthy of note
that in this character and his brother, who turns out to be a villain,
Lanier anticipated some of the sketches by Charles Egbert Craddock.
The merry party of hunters retire to Sterling's house, where they enjoy
the blessings of good friendship and of music and high thought.
They, with other friends from all parts of the South,
plan a masquerade party, in which they represent the various characters
of Shakespeare's plays and the knights of the Round Table.
After a scene of much merriment and good humor, Cranston and Ruebetsahl
fight a duel -- both of them being in love with Felix Sterling,
each knowing the other's history at Frankfort. In the mean time
Ottilie with her maid comes from Germany to Chilhowee.
She was formerly the lover of Ruebetsahl, and was betrayed by Cranston.
She becomes identified with the Sterling family, she herself being a musician,
and naturally finding her place among these music-loving people.
The first book is filled with "high talk" on music, poetry,
philosophy, and nature. These conversations and masquerade parties, however,
are interrupted by war. The author omits the breaking out of the war
and the first three years of it. The action is resumed at Burwell's Bay,
where we meet the hero again with "a light rifle on his shoulder,
with a good horse bounding along under him, with a fresh breeze that had in it
the vigor of the salt sea and the caressing sweetness of the spring
blowing upon him." With him are "five friends, tried in the tempests of war,
as well as by the sterner tests of the calm association of inactive
camp life." The story here is strictly autobiographical, and is filled
with some stirring incidents taken from Lanier's life as a scout.
Perhaps the most striking scene in the book is the one in which Cain Smallin
finds out that his brother is a deserter. Never did Lanier come so near
creating a scene of real dramatic power.* "We was poor.
We ain't never had much to live on but our name, which it was as good as gold.
And now it ain't no better'n rusty copper; hit'll be green and pisenous.
An' whose done it? Gorm Smallin! My own brother, Gorm Smallin!"
When he finds his brother he says to him: "Ef ye had been killed
in a fa'r battle, I mought ha' been able to fight hard enough for both of us;
for every time I cried a-thinkin' of you, I'd ha' been twice as strong,
an' twice as clear-sighted as I was buffore. But -- sich things as these
burns me an' weakens me and hurts my eyes that bad that I kin scarcely
look a man straight furard in the face. Hit don't make
much difference to me now whether we whips the Yanks or they whips us. . . .
We is kin to a deserter! . . . I cain't shoot ye hardly.
The same uns raised us and fed us. I cain't do it; an' I am sorry I cain't."
He then makes him swear a vow: "God A'mighty's a-lookin at you
out o' the stars yon, an' he's a-listenin' at you out o' the sand here,
and he won't git tired by mornin'."
--
* Part ii, chapter vi.
--
The coming of gunboats up the river scatters the party in all directions,
some to prison and others to the final scenes around Richmond,
with the burning of which the story closes, not, however,
before the palace in the mountains -- where John Sterling and his wife,
Felix and Ottilie, have spent the intervening time -- is set fire to
by Gorm Smallin. The story is scarcely significant enough
to follow all the threads.
"Tiger Lilies" has the same place in Lanier's life that "Hyperion" has
in Longfellow's. They are both failures as novels or romances,
but they are valuable as autobiographies. Instead of laying the scene
in Germany, which he had never seen and yet yearned for,
Lanier brings Germany to America. There are long disquisitions
on the place of music and science in the modern world, many crude fancies,
some striking descriptions of nature, some of which have already been quoted.
Above all, there is Lanier's idea of what a musician or a poet ought to be, --
a study, therefore, of himself.
Perhaps the best single passage on music is that describing
Phil's playing of the flute. "It is like walking in the woods,
amongst wild flowers, just before you go into some vast cathedral.
For the flute seems to me to be peculiarly the woods-instrument:
it speaks the gloss of green leaves or the pathos of bare branches;
it calls up the strange mosses that are under dead leaves;
it breathes of wild plants that hide and oak fragrances that vanish;
it expresses to me the natural magic of music. Have you ever
walked on long afternoons in warm, sunny spots of the woods,
and felt a sudden thrill strike you with the half fear
that a ghost would rise out of the sedge, or dart from behind the next tree,
and confront you?"*
--
* `Tiger Lilies', p. 28.
--
Two passages may be cited to show the author's tendency
to use personifications and his insight into the "burthen of the mystery
of all this unintelligible world": --
"A terrible melee of winged opposites is forever filling the world
with a battle din which only observant souls hear: Love contending
with Impurity; Passion springing mines under the calm entrenchment of Reason;
scowling Ignorance thrusting in the dark at holy-eyed Reverence;
Romance deathfully encountering Sentimentality on the one side
and Commonplace on the other; young Sensibility clanging swords
with gigantic maudlin Conventionalities. . . . I have seen no man
who did not suffer from the shock of these wars, unless he got help
from that One Man whom it is not unmanly to acknowledge our superior."*
--
* `Tiger Lilies', p. 41.
--
"Nature has no politics. She'll grow a rose as well for York as Lancaster,
and mayhap beat both down next minute with a storm!
"She has no heart; else she never had rained on Lear's head.
"She has no eyes; for, seeing, she could never have drowned
that dainty girl, Ophelia.
"She has no ears; or she would hear the wild Sabian hymns to Night
and prayers to Day that men are uttering evermore.
"O blind, deaf, no-hearted Beauty, we cannot woo thee,
for thou silently contemnest us; we cannot force thee,
for thou art stronger than we; we cannot compromise with thee,
for thou art treacherous as thy seas; what shall we do, we, unhappy,
that love thee, coquette Nature?"*
--
* `Tiger Lilies', p. 178.
--
When "Tiger Lilies" appeared it was very favorably received.
Lanier writes to his brother of the "continual heavy showers
of compliment and congratulation" that he has received in Macon;
that the Macon paper had an editorial on his novel, and that a book firm
in the town had already disposed of a large number of copies.
Writing to Northrup, March 8, 1868, he says: "My book has been
as well received as a young author could have expected on his first plunge,
and I have seen few criticisms upon it which are not on the whole favorable.
My publishers have just made me an offer to bring out a second edition
on very fair terms; from which I infer that the sale of the article
is progressing."* At twenty-five, then, he was recognized
as one of the promising writers of the South; a biographical article
referring to his recent success, the "Tiger Lilies", was written
by J. Wood Davidson for his "Living Writers of the South", which appeared
in 1869, and his name was sought by ambitious editors of mushroom magazines
that sprang up in abundance after the war.
--
* There was never a second edition, however.
--
Lanier was not destined, however, to begin his literary career as yet,
nor was the South to have such an easy way out of her disaster
as he had hoped. He had made only one reference to politics in his romance,
and that was his manly utterance in behalf of Jefferson Davis,
who was then confined in prison under rather disagreeable circumstances
at Fortress Monroe. He said, "If there was guilt in any,
there was guilt in nigh all of us, between Maryland and Mexico;
Mr. Davis, if he be termed the ringleader of the Rebellion,
was so, not by virtue of any instigating act of his,
but purely by the unanimous will and appointment of the Southern people;
and the hearts of the Southern people bleed to see how their own act
has resulted in the chaining of Mr. Davis, who was as innocent as they,
and in the pardon of those who were guilty as he."
The Davis incident was an indication that forces other than those
which one might have hoped to see were in the air. By the fall of 1867
the reaction against the magnanimous policy of Lincoln had come in the North.
Reconstruction governments were being inaugurated throughout the South.
This was due in part to the lack of wisdom displayed by Southern legislatures
under the Johnson governments, -- a "disposition on the part
of the Southern States to claim rights instead of submitting to conditions,"
and harsh laws of Southern legislatures concerning the freedmen.
It must be confessed that the extreme men of the South were in some localities
as rash, unreasonable, and impracticable as the radicals of the North.
The magnanimous spirit of Lincoln and the heroic, chivalric spirit of Lee
could not prevail in the two sections; hence followed a direful period
in American history. As E. L. Godkin said, "That the chapter which tells
the story of reconstruction should have followed in American history
the chapter which tells the story of the war and emancipation,
is something over which many a generation will blush."
Again it must be said, as was said of the effect of the war on the South,
that reconstruction was something more than excessive taxation,
grinding and unjust as that was, something more than
the fear of black domination, as unthinkable as that is.
There was the uncertainty of the situation, the sense of despair that rankled
in the hearts of men, with the knowledge that nothing the South could do
could have any influence in deciding its fate. It was the closing
of institutions of learning, or running them under such circumstances
that the better element of the South could have nothing to do with them.
Lanier, writing about a position in the University of Alabama which
he very much desired, said: "The trustees, who are appointees of the State,
are so hampered by the expected change of State government
that nothing can be certainly predicated as to their action."
Lanier felt the effect of reconstruction at every point, --
he was baptized with the baptism of the Southern people.
The weight of that sad time bore heavily upon him. As he had
during the war touched the experience of his people at every point,
so now he went down with them into the Valley of Humiliation.
Under these circumstances his friend Northrup wrote him,
inviting him to go to Germany with him. He replied:
"Indeed, indeed, y'r trip-to-Europe invitation finds me all THIRSTY
to go with you; but, alas, how little do you know of our wretched
poverties and distresses here, -- that you ask me such a thing. . . .
It spoils our dreams of Germany, ruthlessly. I've been presiding
over eighty-six scholars, in a large Academy at Prattville, Ala.,
having two assistants under me; 't is terrible work,
and the labor difficulties, with the recent poor price of cotton,
conspire to make the pay very slim. I think y'r people
can have no idea of the slow terrors with which this winter
has invested our life in the South. Some time I'm going to give you
a few simple details, which you must publish in your paper."
Prattville, where he spent the winter of 1867-68, was a small
manufacturing town, with all the crudeness of a new industrial order
and without any of the refinement to which Lanier had been accustomed
in Macon and elsewhere. Perhaps there was never a time when drudgery
so weighed upon him, although his usual playfulness is seen in the remark:
"There is but one man in my school who could lick me in a fair fight,
and he thinks me at once a Samson and a Solomon." He worked for people
who thought that he was defrauding them if he did not work
from "sun up to sun down", as one of his patrons expressed it.
It was here, too, that he suffered from his first hemorrhages.
His poetry written at this time was an expression of the despair
which prevailed throughout the South. He whom the Civil War had not
inspired to speech, and who had kept silent under the suffering of the days
after the war, now gave expression to his disgust and his indignation.
It is not great poetry, for Lanier was not adapted to that kind of poetry,
and consequently neither he nor his wife ever collected all the poems.
"Laughter in the Senate", published in the "Round Table",
is typical of a group, several of which he left in an old ledger: --
Comes now the Peace, so long delayed?
Is it the cheerful voice of aid?
Begins the time, his heart has prayed,
When men may reap and sow?
Ah, God! back to the cold earth's breast!
The sages chuckle o'er their jest!
Must they, to give a people rest,
Their dainty wit forego?
The tyrants sit in a stately hall;
They gibe at a wretched people's fall;
The tyrants forget how fresh is the pall
Over their dead and ours.
Look how the senators ape the clown,
And don the motley and hide the gown,
But yonder a fast rising frown
On the people's forehead lowers.
To the same effect he wrote in unpublished poems, "Steel in Soft Hands"
and "To Our Hills": --
We mourn your fall into daintier hands
Of senators, rosy fingered,
That wrote while you fought,
And afar from the battles lingered.
And again in "Raven Days" and "Tyranny": --
Oh, Raven days, dark Raven days of sorrow,
Will ever any warm light come again?
Will ever the lit mountains of To-morrow
Begin to gleam athwart the mournful plain?
Young Trade is dead,
And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern
And folds his arms that find no bread to earn,
And bows his head.
In a letter to his father, January 21, 1868, he wrote:
"There are strong indications here of much bad feeling
between the whites and blacks, especially those engaged
in the late row at this place; and I have fears, which are shared
by Mr. Pratt and many citizens here, that some indiscretion
of the more thoughtless among the whites may plunge us into bloodshed.
The whites have no organization at all, and the affair would be
a mere butchery. . . . The Canton imbroglio may precipitate matters."
Writing of laws passed by Congress, he said: "Who will find words to express
the sorrowful surprise at their total absence of philosophical insight
into the age which has resulted in those hundreds of laws
recently promulgated by the reigning body in the United States;
laws which, if from no other cause, at least from sheer multiplicity,
are wholly at variance with the genius of the time and of the people,
laws which have resulted in such a mass of crime and hatred and bitterness
as even the four terrible years of war have entirely failed to bring about."*
--
* `Retrospects and Prospects', p. 31.
--
He recognized the need of some great man.
A pilot, God, a pilot! for the helm is left awry.
Years later, when the end of the reconstruction period had come,
he described a type of man that was needed for this emergency:
whether he realized it or not, it was a wish that Abraham Lincoln
might have been spared to meet the situation. "I have been wondering
where we are going to get a GREAT MAN, that will be tall enough
to see over the whole country, and to direct that vast undoing of things
which has got to be accomplished in a few years. It is a situation
in which mere cleverness will not begin to work. The horizon of cleverness
is too limited; it does not embrace enough of the heart of man,
to enable a merely clever politician, such as those in which we abound,
to lead matters properly in this juncture. The vast generosities
which whirl a small revenge out of the way, as the winds whirl a leaf;
the awful integrities which will pay a debt twice rather than allow
the faintest flicker of suspicion about it; the splendid indignations
which are also tender compassions, and will in one moment
be hustling the money-changers out of the Temple, and in the next
be preaching Love to them from the steps of it, -- where are we to find these?
It is time for a man to arise who is a man."*
--
* Letter to Judge Logan E. Bleckley, Nov. 15, 1874.
--
This state of affairs here set forth in Lanier's words
caused many to leave the South in absolute despair of its future.
It drove Maurice Thompson from Georgia to Indiana, and the Le Conte brothers
from Columbia to California. It caused the middle-aged Lamar
to stand sorrowfully at his gate in the afternoons in Oxford, Mississippi,
gazing wistfully into the west, while young men like Henry Grady
-- naturally optimistic and buoyant -- wondered what could be
the future for them. There is no better evidence of the heroism of Lanier
than the way in which he met the situation that confronted him.
He found refuge in intellectual work. In a letter to his father
he urges him to send him the latest magazines and books. June 1, 1868,
he writes from Prattville: "I shall go to work on my essays,
and on a course of study in German and in the Latin works of Lucretius,
whom I have long desired to study." In another letter he said:
"I have been deeply engaged in working out some metaphysical ideas
for some time, -- an application which goes on all the time,
whether I sit at desk or walk the streets." The volume of essays
referred to was never published, but we have some of them
in the essays "Retrospects and Prospects", "Nature-Metaphors",
and some unpublished ones in an old ledger in which he wrote at this time,
such as "The Oversight of Modern Philosophy", "Cause and Effect",
"Time and Space", "The Solecisms of Mathematics", "Devil's Bombs",
and other essays, which reveal Lanier's tendency to speculative philosophy
and his exuberant fancy. In this same ledger he wrote down many quotations,
which show that at the time he was not only keeping up
with contemporary literature, but continuing his reading in German poetry.
In the meantime, December 21, 1867, Lanier had married Miss Mary Day.
"Not even the wide-mouthed, villainous-nosed, tallow-faced drudgeries
of my eighty-fold life," he wrote his father, "can squeeze the sentiment
out of me." From the worldly standpoint it was a serious mistake to marry,
with no prospect of position and in the general upheaval of society
about them. But to the two lovers no such considerations could appeal,
and with his marriage to this accomplished woman came
one of the greatest blessings of Lanier's life. It was "an idyllic marriage,
which the poet thought a rich compensation for all the other perfect gifts
which Providence denied him." She was a sufferer like himself,
but her accuracy and alertness of mind, her rare appreciation of music,
and her deep divining of his own powers, made her the ideal wife of the poet.
Those who know "My Springs" and the series of sonnets which he wrote to her
during their separation when he was spending the winters in Baltimore,
need not be told of the part that this love played in his life.
Perhaps there are no two single lines in American poetry which express better
the deeper meaning of love than these: --
I marvel that God made you mine,
For when He frowns 't is then ye shine.
In his later lectures at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore,
contrasting the heroines of epic poetry with the lyric woman of modern times,
-- the patient wife in the secure home, -- he said: "But the daily grandeurs
which every good wife, no matter how uneventful her lot, must achieve,
the secret endurances which not only have no poet to sing them,
but no human eye even to see them, the heroism which is
as fine and bright at two o'clock in the morning as it is at noonday,
all those prodigious fortitudes under sorrows which one
is scarcely willing to whisper even to God Almighty,
and of which probably every delicate-souled woman knows,
either by intuition or actual experience, -- this lyric heroism,
altogether great and beautiful as it is, does not appear,
save by one or two brief glimpses, in the early poetry of our ancestors."*
He could not have described better his own wife and all that she was to be
in the years to come. Her fame is linked with his as is Clara Schumann's
with that of the great German musician.
--
* `Shakspere and his Forerunners', i, 99.
--
Chapter V. Lawyer and Traveler
Unable to secure a position in a Southern college or to make a living
by literary work, Lanier decided at the end of 1868
to take up the profession of law. He was led to do so
by the earnest solicitation of his father. With his mind once made up
in that direction, he went to the work with characteristic zeal.
He displayed a business-like and methodical spirit which at once
attracted attention. On November 19, 1869, he wrote to his brother,
who was urging him to go into the cotton-mill business:
"I have a far more feasible project, which I have been long incubating:
let us go to Brunswick. We know something of the law,
and are rapidly knowing more; it is a business which is far better
than that of any salaried officer could possibly be. . . .
It is best that you and I make up our minds immediately to be lawyers,
NOTHING BUT LAWYERS, GOOD lawyers, and SUCCESSFUL lawyers;
and direct all our energies to this end. We are too far in life
to change our course now; it would be greatly disadvantageous
to both of us. Therefore, to the law, Boy. It is your vocation;
stick to it: It will presently reward you for your devotion."
The scheme did not materialize, however; he remained at Macon
in the office of Lanier and Anderson. He writes to Northrup,
who has again held out to him a plan for going to Germany: --
"As for my sweet old dreams of studying in Germany, EHEU!
here is come a wife, and by'r Lady, a boy, a most rare-lung'd, imperious,
world-grasping, blue-eyed, kingly Manikin;* and the same must have
his tiring-woman or nurse, mark you, and his laces and embroideries
and small carriage, being now half a year old: so that, what with
mine ancient Money-Cormorants, the Butcher and the Baker and the Tailor,
my substance is like to be so pecked up that I must stick fast in Georgia,
unless litigation and my reputation should take a simultaneous start
and both grow outrageously. For, you must know, these Southern colleges
are all so poor that they hold out absolutely no inducement
in the way of support to a professor: and so last January
I suddenly came to the conclusion that I wanted to make some money
for my wife and my baby, and incontinently betook me to studying Law:
wherein I am now well advanced, and, D.V., will be admitted to the Bar
in May next. My advantages are good, since my Father and uncle
(firm of Lanier and Anderson) are among the oldest lawyers in the city
and have a large practice, into which I shall be quickly inducted.
--
* Charles Day Lanier. See poem, "Baby Charley".
--
"I have not, however, ceased my devotion to letters,
which I love better than all things in my heart of hearts;
and have now in the hands of the Lit. Bureau in N.Y. a vol. of essays.
I'm (or rather have been) busy, too, on a long poem, yclept the `Jacquerie',
on which I had bestowed more REAL WORK than on any of the frothy things
which I have hitherto sent out; tho' this is now necessarily suspended
until the summer shall give me a little rest from the office business
with which I have to support myself while I am studying law."*
--
* `Lippincott's Magazine', March, 1905.
--
Lanier's work as a lawyer was that of the office, as he never practiced
in the courts. To the accuracy and fidelity of this work
the words of his successor, Chancellor Walter B. Hill
of the University of Georgia, bear testimony: --
"About 1874 or 1875 I became associated as partner with
the firm of Lanier and Anderson, in whose office Sidney Lanier practiced law
up to the time he left Macon [1869-1873] -- I do not know
whether he was a partner in the firm or whether he merely used
the same office. At any rate, it seems that the greater part of his work
consisted in the examination of titles. The firm of Lanier and Anderson
represented several building and loan associations and had a large business
in this line of work. To examine a title, as you know, requires a visit
to what Oliver Wendell Holmes calls `that cemetery of dead transactions',
the place for the official registry of deeds and other muniments of title,
called in Georgia the office of the Clerk of the Superior Court.
One cannot imagine work that is more dry-as-dust in its character
than going over these records for the purpose of tracing the successive links
in a chain of title. When I came into the firm I had occasion frequently
to examine the letter-press copybook in which Lanier's `abstracts'
or reports upon title had been copied. Not only were the books themselves
models of neatness, but all his work in the examination of titles
showed the utmost thoroughness, patience, and fidelity. The law of Georgia
in regard to the registration of titles was by no means perfect at that time;
so imperfect, indeed, that I have known prominent lawyers
to refuse to engage in the work on account of the risk of error involved.
I remained a member of the firm for some time afterwards,
but during the whole period of my residence in Macon I never heard
any question raised as to the correctness and thoroughness of Lanier's work
in this difficult and intricate department of practice.
In going over some of his work I have often keenly felt the contrast
between such toil and that for which Lanier's genius fitted him.
To find that the poet spent many laborious days in such uninspiring labor
was as great an anomaly as it would be to see a fountain
spring from a bed of sawdust and `shake its loosened silver in the sun'."*
--
* Letter to the author.
--
While engaged in the practice of law, Lanier now and then
made public addresses. The most important of these
was the Confederate Memorial Address, April 26, 1870.*
The spirit and the language of it are equally admirable.
He who had suffered all that any man could suffer during the Civil War
and during the reconstruction period shows that he has risen above
all bitterness and prejudice. There is no threshing over of dead issues.
The spirit of the address is more like that seen in the letters
of Robert E. Lee than any other thing written by Southerners
during this period. Lanier is not yet national in his point of view,
but he represents the best attitude of mind that could be held
by the most liberal of Southerners at that time. Standing in the cemetery
at Macon, -- one of the most beautiful in the Southern States, --
he begins: "In the unbroken silence of the dead soldierly forms
that lie beneath our feet; in the winding processions of these stately trees;
in the large tranquillity of this vast and benignant heaven
that overspreads us; in the quiet ripple of yonder patient river,
flowing down to his death in the sea; in the manifold melodies
drawn from these green leaves by wandering airs that go like Troubadours
singing in all the lands; in the many-voiced memories that flock
into this day, and fill it as swallows fill the summer, -- in all these,
there is to me so voluble an eloquence to-day that I cannot but shrink
from the harsher sounds of my own human voice." Taking these as a text,
he comments first on the necessity for silence in an age
when "trade is the most boisterous god of all the false gods under heaven."
The clatter of factories, the clank of mills, the groaning of forges,
the sputtering and laboring of his water power, are all lost sight of
in contemplating the august presence of the dead, who speak not.
He speaks next of the stateliness of the trees, which suggests to him
the stateliness of the two great heroes of the Confederacy,
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, -- "bright, magnificent exemplars
of stateliness, -- those noble figures that arose and moved
in splendid procession across the theatre of our Confederate war!"
The patience of the river suggests the soldiers who walked
their life of battle, "patient through heat and cold,
through rain and drought, through bullets and diseases,
through hunger and nakedness, through rigor of discipline
and laxity of morals, ay, through the very shards and pits of hell,
down to the almost inevitable death that awaited them."
--
* `Retrospects and Prospects', p. 94.
--
The most significant passage, however, is his appeal to the men and women
of the South to rise to the plane of tranquillity and magnanimity: --
"I spoke next of the tranquillity of the over-spanning heavens.
This, too, is a noble quality which your Association tends to keep alive.
Who in all the world needs tranquillity more than we?
I know not a deeper question in our Southern life at this present time,
than how we shall bear our load of wrong and injury
with the calmness and tranquil dignity that become men and women
who would be great in misfortune; and believe me, I know not where
we will draw deeper inspirations of calm strength for this great emergency
than in this place where we now stand, in the midst of departed heroes
who fought against these things to death. Why, yonder lies my brave,
brilliant friend, Lamar; and yonder, genial Robert Smith; and yonder,
generous Tracy, -- gallant men, all, good knights and stainless gentlemen.
How calmly they sleep in the midst of it! Unto this calmness
shall we come, at last. If so, why should we disquiet our souls
for the petty stings of our conquerors? There comes a time
when conqueror and conquered shall alike descend into the grave.
In that time, O my countrymen, in that time the conqueror shall be
ashamed of his lash, and the conquered shall be proud of his calm endurance;
in that time the conqueror shall hide his face, and the conquered
shall lift his head with an exultation in his tranquil fortitude
which God shall surely pardon!
"For the contemplation of this tranquillity, my friends of this Association,
in the name of a land stung half to madness, I thank you.
. . . . .
"To-day we are here for love and not for hate. To-day we are here
for harmony and not for discord. To-day we are risen
immeasurably above all vengeance. To-day, standing upon
the serene heights of forgiveness, our souls choir together
the enchanting music of harmonious Christian civilization.
To-day we will not disturb the peaceful slumbers of these sleepers
with music less sweet than the serenade of loving remembrances,
breathing upon our hearts as the winds of heaven breathe upon
these swaying leaves above us."
Lanier did not abandon altogether his ideal of doing literary work.
He was much encouraged at this time by a sympathetic correspondence
with Paul Hamilton Hayne, who, after the Civil War, had settled
in a little cottage near Augusta. His beautiful home in Charleston
had been burned to the ground and his large, handsome library utterly lost.
With heroic spirit at a time when, as Lanier said of him,
"the war of secession had left the South in a condition which appeared
to render an exclusively literary life a hopeless impossibility,
he immured himself in the woods of Georgia and gave himself wholly
to his pen." When Simms visited him here in 1866, the poet had for supplies
"a box of hard tack, two sides of bacon, and fourscore, more or less,
of smoked herring, a frying-pan and a grid-iron." He and his wife
lived as simply as the Hawthornes did in the Old Manse. His writing desk
was a carpenter's work-bench. He wrote continually for the magazines,
corresponded with the poets of England and New England,
received visitors, with whom he talked about the old days in Charleston
when he and Timrod and Simms had projected "Russell's Magazine",
and held out to young Southern writers the encouragement of an older brother.
It was this man who, at a critical time in Lanier's life,
inspired him to believe that he might succeed in a literary career.
"I have had constantly in mind the kindly help and encouragement
which your cheering words used to bring me when I was even more obscure
than I am now," wrote the younger poet at a later time.
He did not have time, however, to act on this encouragement.
He wrote now and then a dialect poem which was printed
in the Georgia dailies and attracted attention by its humor and its insight
into contemporary life, and occasionally an exquisite lyric like "Nirvana".
In the main he had to say: --
"I have not put pen to paper in a literary way in a long time.
How I thirst to do so, -- how I long to sing a thousand various songs
that oppress me, unsung, -- is inexpressible. Yet the mere work
that brings me bread gives me no time. I know not, after all, if this is
a sorrowful thing. Nobody likes my poems except two or three friends, --
who are themselves poets, and can supply themselves!" And yet he writes,
"It gives me great encouragement that you think I might succeed
in the literary life; for I take it that you are in earnest in saying so,
believing that you love Art with too genuine affection to trifle with her
by bringing to her service, through mere politeness, an unworthy worker."*
--
* `Letters', passim.
--
Hayne was impressed with Lanier's intimate knowledge of Elizabethan
and older English literature, as displayed in his letters of this period.
He says: --
"He had steeped his imagination from boyhood in the writings of the earlier
English annalists and poets, -- Geoffrey of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Malory,
Gower, Chaucer, and the whole bead-roll of such ancient English worthies.
I was of course a little surprised during our earlier epistolary communion
to perceive, not only his unusually thorough knowledge of Chaucer,
for example, whose couplets flowed as trippingly from his pen
as if `The Canterbury Tales' and `The Romaunt of the Rose'
were his daily mental food, but to find him quoting as naturally and easily
from `Piers Plowman' and scores of the half-obsolete ballads
of the English and Scottish borders.
"He gloried in antiquarian lore and antiquarian literature.
Hardly `Old Monkbarns' himself could have pored over a black-letter volume
with greater enthusiasm. Especially he loved the tales of chivalry,
and thus, when the opportunity came, was fully equipped
as an interpreter of Froissart and `King Arthur' for the benefit of
our younger generation of students. With the great Elizabethans
Lanier was equally familiar. Instead of skimming Shakespeare,
he went down into his depths. Few have written so subtly
of Shakespeare's mysterious sonnets. Through all Lanier's productions
we trace the influence of his early literary loves; but nowhere do
the pithy quaintnesses of the old bards and chroniclers display themselves
more effectively -- not only in the illustrations, but through
the innermost warp and woof of the texture of his ideas and his style --
than in some of his familiar epistles."*
--
* `Letters', p. 220.
--
That Lanier kept in touch, too, with contemporary literature
is shown by an acute criticism of Browning's "The Ring and the Book",
then recently published: "Have you seen Browning's `The Ring and the Book'?
I am confident that, at the birth of this man, among all the good fairies
who showered him with magnificent endowments, one bad one
-- as in the old tale -- crept in by stealth and gave him
a constitutional twist i' the neck, whereby his windpipe became,
and has ever since remained, a marvelous tortuous passage.
Out of this glottis-labyrinth his words won't, and can't, come straight.
A hitch and a sharp crook in every sentence bring you up with a shock.
But what a shock it is! Did you ever see a picture of a lasso,
in the act of being flung? In a thousand coils and turns,
inextricably crooked and involved and whirled, yet, if you mark the noose
at the end, you see that it is directly in front of the bison's head, there,
and is bound to catch him! That is the way Robert Browning catches you.
The first sixty or seventy pages of `The Ring and the Book'
are altogether the most doleful reading, in point either of idea or of music,
in the English language; and yet the monologue of Giuseppe Caponsacchi,
that of Pompilia Comparini, and the two of Guido Franceschini,
are unapproachable, in their kind, by any living or dead poet, `me judice'.
Here Browning's jerkiness comes in with inevitable effect.
You get lightning glimpses -- and, as one naturally expects from lightning,
zigzag glimpses -- into the intense night of the passion of these souls.
It is entirely wonderful and without precedent. The fitful play
of Guido's lust, and scorn, and hate, and cowardice, closes with
a master stroke: --
"Christ! Maria! God! . . .
POMPILIA, WILL YOU LET THEM MURDER ME?
"Pompilia, mark you, is dead, by Guido's own hand; deliberately stabbed,
because he hated her purity, which all along he has reviled and mocked
with the Devil's own malignant ingenuity of sarcasm."*
--
* `Letters', p. 206; letter to Hayne, April 13, 1870.
--
On account of ill health Lanier frequently had to leave Macon and go to places
better suited to his physical temperament. At Brunswick, Georgia,
-- the scene of the Marsh poems, -- at Alleghany Springs in Virginia,
and at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, he spent successive summers.
In all of these places he reveled in the beauty and grandeur of the scenery.
His letters written to his wife and his father during his absences from Macon
are evidence that he was at this time developing steadily
in that subtle appreciation of nature which was afterwards to play
such an important part in his poetry. In fact, the letters themselves,
when published, as they will be some time, show artistic growth
when compared with the writings already noted. He was all his life
a prolific letter-writer -- and a great one. Writing from Alleghany Springs,
July 12, 1872, he says to his wife: --
"How necessary is it that one should occasionally place oneself
in the midst of those more striking forms of nature in which God has indulged
His fantasy! It is very true that the flat land, the bare hillside,
the muddy stream comes also directly from the creative hand:
but these do not bring one into the sweetness of the heartier moods of God;
in the midst of them it is as if one were transacting the business of life
with God: whereas, when one has but to lift one's eyes in order to receive
the exquisite shocks of thrilling form and color and motion
that leap invisibly from mountain and groves and stream,
then one feels as if one had surprised the Father in his tender, sportive,
and loving moments.
"To the soul then, weak with the long flesh fight and filled with
a sluggish languor by those wearisome disappointments
which arise from the constant contemplation of men's weaknesses,
and from the constant back-thrusting of one's consciousness of impotence
to strengthen them -- thou, with thy nimble fancy, canst imagine
what ethereal and yet indestructible essences of new dignity, of new strength,
of new patience, of new serenity, of new hope, new faith, and new love,
do continually flash out of the gorges, the mountains, and the streams,
into the heart, and charge it, as the lightnings charge the earth,
with subtle and heavenly fires.
"A bewildering sorcery seems to spread itself over even those things which
are commonplace. The songs and cries of birds acquire a strange sound to me:
I cannot understand the little spontaneous tongues, the quivering throats,
the open beaks, the small bright eyes that gleam with unknown emotion,
the nimble capricious heads that twist this way and that
with such bizarre unreasonableness.
"Nor do I fathom this long unceasing monotone of the little shallow river
that sings yonder over the rocks in its bosom as a mother crooning
over her children; it is but one word the stream utters:
but as when we speak a well-known word over and over again until it comes
to have a frightful mystery in it, so this familiar stream-sound fills me
with indescribable wonder.
"Nor do I comprehend the eloquence of the mountains which comes
in a strange `patois' of two tongues; for the mountains speak at once
the languages of repose and of convulsion, two languages which
have naught in common.
"Wondering therefore, from day to night, with a good wonder
which directs attention not to one's ignorance but to God's wisdom,
stricken, but not exhausted, by continual tranquil surprises;
surrounded by a world of enchantments which, so far from being elusive,
are the most substantial of realties, -- thou knowest that nature
is kind to me."
He went to New York in 1869, 1870, and 1871, now on business
and now to consult medical experts. In May, 1869, we find him
trying to make the sale of some property on which iron was supposed to be.
He writes his father that he has been down on Wall Street all day.
There is -- now as compared with his 1867 visit -- a certain fascination
for him in the intense spirit of hurry which displays itself on every side.
He finds himself in competition with many Southerners who were
at that time projecting similar enterprises. He is also visiting
the clients of Lanier and Anderson, and is anxious to extend the firm's name.
He is given much social attention, -- "teas, dinners, calls,
visits, business" consume his time. He visits the superb villa of his cousin
on the Hudson near Poughkeepsie. He writes, on May 15,
that he is beginning "to feel entirely unflurried in the crowd
and to go about business deliberately." He is in New York again in 1871,
when the Tweed ring is being exposed, and he cannot but compare
the situation there with the reconstruction government that prevails
in his own State. "Somehow this isn't a good day for thieves," he says.
"Wouldn't it be a curious and refreshing phenomenon if Tweed, Hall,
Bullock,* and that ilk should all continue in the service of the State --
only changing the scene of their labors from the office to the penitentiary?"
--
* Governor of Georgia during reconstruction days.
--
Most of all, however, Lanier was interested in the music which he heard
on these trips to the metropolis. He had kept up his flute-playing
while busy with his law work, frequently playing at charity concerts
in Macon and other cities of Georgia. In New York he reveled
in the singing of Nilsson, in religious music at St. Paul's Church,
but above all in Theodore Thomas's orchestra, then just beginning
its triumphant career. He writes, August 15, 1870:
"Ah, how they have belied Wagner! I heard Theodore Thomas's orchestra
play his overture to `Tannhaeuser'. The `Music of the Future' is surely
thy music and my music. Each harmony was a chorus of pure aspirations.
The sequences flowed along, one after another, as if all the great and noble
deeds of time had formed a procession and marched in review
before one's EARS instead of one's EYES. These `great and noble deeds'
were not deeds of war and statesmanship, but majestic victories
of inner struggles of a man. This unbroken march of beautiful-bodied Triumphs
irresistibly invites the soul of a man to create other processions like it.
I would I might lead a so magnificent file of glories into heaven!"*
--
* `Letters', p. 68.
--
And again, in 1871: "And to-night I come out of what might
have been heaven. . . .
"'T was opening night of Theodore Thomas's orchestra, at Central Park Garden,
and I could not resist the temptation to go and bathe
in the sweet amber seas of the music of this fine orchestra, and so I went,
and tugged me through a vast crowd, and, after standing some while,
found a seat, and the baton tapped and waved, and I plunged into the sea,
and lay and floated. Ah! the dear flutes and oboes and horns
drifted me hither and thither, and the great violins and small violins
swayed me upon waves, and overflowed me with strong lavations,
and sprinkled glistening foam in my face, and in among the clarinetti,
as among waving water-lilies with flexile stems, I pushed my easy way,
and so, even lying in the music-waters, I floated and flowed,
my soul utterly bent and prostrate."*
--
* `Letters', p. 70.
--
In November, 1872, Lanier went to San Antonio in quest of health.
In letters to his father giving an account of his trip
from New Orleans to Galveston and thence to Austin, he shows keen insight
into the life of that State. He sketches many types of character and scenes
-- sketches that show at once his knowledge of human nature and his ability
as a reporter. It may be said here that Lanier always took an interest
in the passing show, -- he was not a detached dreamer.
He arrived at San Antonio in November. On account of his ill health
he could write but few letters, although he is "fairly reeking
with all manner of quips and quiddities which I yearn to spread
for the delectation of such a partial set of people as a home set always is."
He writes to his sister: "To-day has been as lovely as any day can hope to be
this side of Millennium; and I have been out strolling morning and afternoon,
far and wide, ever tempted onward by the delicious buoyant balm in the air
and pleasantly surprised in finding what a distance I could accomplish
without over fatigue." He rode horseback a great deal -- a form of exercise
he was especially fond of all his life.
In a letter to his father he refers to some work he is doing
in the library: "I have also managed to advance very largely
my conceptions of the Jacquerie through a history which I secured from
the Library of the Alamo Literary Society, -- a flourishing institution here
which is now building a hall to cost some thirteen thousand dollars,
and of which I have become a literary member." He has been reading
Michelet's "History of France" which "gives him the essence of an old book
which he had despaired of ever seeing, but which is the only authority extant,
-- save Froissart and a few others equally unreliable;
it is the chronicle of the `Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis'."
With Olmsted's book of travels as a model, he planned a series of articles
for a New York paper.
The only result, however, from these plans was a picturesque sketch
of San Antonio,* afterwards published in the "Southern Magazine".
This sketch is at once a history of San Antonio and a description
of the scenery and the people of that quaint city. "Over all
the round of aspects in which a thoughtful mind may view a city,"
he says in a typical passage, "it bristles with striking idiosyncrasies
and bizarre contrasts. Its history, population, climate, location,
architecture, soil, water, customs, costumes, horses, cattle,
all attract the stranger's attention, either by force of intrinsic singularity
or of odd juxtapositions. It was a puling infant for a century and a quarter,
yet has grown to a pretty vigorous youth in a quarter of a century;
its inhabitants are so varied that the `go slow' directions over its bridges
are printed in three languages, and the religious services in its churches
held in four; the thermometer, the barometer, the vane,
the hygrometer, oscillate so rapidly, so frequently, so lawlessly,
and through so wide a meteorological range, that the climate
is simply indescribable, yet it is a growing resort for consumptives;
it stands with all its gay prosperity just in the edge of a lonesome,
untilled belt of land one hundred and fifty miles wide,
like Mardi Gras on the austere brink of Lent; it has no Sunday laws,
and that day finds its bar-rooms and billiard-saloons
as freely open and as fully attended as its churches;
its buildings, ranging from the Mexican `jacal' to the San Fernando Cathedral,
represent all the progressive stages of man's architectural progress
in edifices of mud, of wood, of stone, of iron, and of sundry combinations
of those materials; its soil is in wet weather an inky-black cement,
but in dry a floury-white powder; it is built along both banks
of two limpid streams, yet it drinks rain water collected in cisterns;
its horses and mules are from Lilliput, while its oxen are from Brobdingnag."
In the same vivid style he sketches the various characteristics of the city
and its people. His account of a Texas "norther", his descriptions
of the San Fernando Cathedral and of the Mission San Jose de Aquayo
are especially good.
--
* `Retrospects and Prospects', p. 34.
--
It was on this visit to San Antonio that Lanier resolved finally
to devote himself to an artist's career. He came in contact with
some of the German musicians of the city and played before the Maennerchor,
which received his flute-playing with enthusiastic applause.
San Antonio, Tex., January 30, 1873.
Last night at eight o'clock came Mr. Scheidemantel,
a genuine lover of music and a fine pianist, to take me to the Maennerchor,
which meets every Wednesday night for practice. Quickly we came to a hall,
one end of which was occupied by a minute stage with appurtenances,
and a piano; and in the middle thereof a long table, at which
each singer sat down as he came in. Presently, seventeen Germans
were seated at the singing-table, long-necked bottles of Rhine-wine
were opened and tasted, great pipes and cigars were all afire; the leader,
Herr Thielepape, -- an old man with long, white beard and mustache,
formerly mayor of the city, -- rapped his tuning-fork vigorously,
gave the chords by rapid arpeggios of his voice (a wonderful, wild,
high tenor, such as thou wouldst dream that the old Welsh harpers had,
wherewith to sing songs that would cut against the fierce sea-blasts),
and off they all swung into such a noble, noble old German full-voiced `lied',
that imperious tears rushed into my eyes, and I could scarce restrain myself
from running and kissing each one in turn and from howling dolefully
the while. And so . . . I all the time worshiping . . . with these
great chords . . . we drove through the evening until twelve o'clock,
absorbing enormous quantities of Rhine-wine and beer, whereof I imbibed
my full share. After the second song I was called on to play,
and lifted my poor old flute in air with tumultuous, beating heart;
for I had no confidence in that or in myself. But, `du Himmel!'
Thou shouldst have heard mine old love warble herself forth.
To my utter astonishment, I was perfect master of the instrument.
Is not this most strange? Thou knowest I had never learned it;
and thou rememberest what a poor muddle I made at Marietta
in playing difficult passages; and I certainly have not practiced;
and yet there I commanded and the blessed notes obeyed me,
and when I had finished, amid a storm of applause, Herr Thielepape arose
and ran to me and grasped my hand, and declared that he hat never heert
de flude accompany itself pefore! I played once more during the evening,
and ended with even more rapturous bravos than before,
Mr. Scheidemantel grasping my hand this time, and thanking me very earnestly.
My heart, which was hurt greatly when I went into the music-room,
came forth from the holy bath of concords greatly refreshed,
strengthened, and quieted, and so remaineth to-day. I also feel better
than in a long time before.*
--
* `Letters', p. 71.
--
Again he played for "an elegant-looking company of ladies and gentlemen"
in a private home. "I had not played three seconds," he says,
"before a profound silence reigned among the people, seeing which,
and dreaming wildly, and feeling somehow in an eerie and elfish,
and half-uncanny mood, I flew off into all manner of trills, and laments,
and cadenza-monstrosities for a long time, but finally floated down
into `La Melancolie', which melted itself forth with such eloquent lamenting
that it almost brought my tears -- and, to make a long story short,
when I allowed the last note to die, a simultaneous cry of pleasure
broke forth from men and women that almost amounted to a shout."*
Two weeks later he wrote: "I have writ the most beautiful piece,
`Field-larks and Blackbirds', wherein I have mirrored
Mr. Field-lark's pretty eloquence so that I doubt he would know the difference
betwixt the flute and his own voice."**
--
* `Letters', p. 73.
** `Letters', p. 47.
--
Inspired by the sympathy of people in whose judgment he had confidence,
and impelled by his own genius asserting itself, and realizing that
his hold upon life was but slight, he went from San Antonio in April, 1873,
with the fixed purpose to give the remainder of his life to music and poetry.
The resolution is all the more significant when it is remembered
that the year 1873 was one of financial distress, especially in the South.
"It was then," says Joel Chandler Harris, "that the effects of war and waste
were fully felt, and then that the stoutest heart was tried,
labor was restless and hard to control, the planter was out of funds
and interest was high, . . . the farmers were almost
at the point of desperation."
The formation of this resolution to devote himself to artistic work
marks an epoch in Lanier's life so important as to call for further comment.
For twelve years he had been deflected out of his true orbit.
For seven years he had given his time and talent to pursuits
which he did not cherish -- writing only now and then with his left hand.
Everything had been against him. To preserve unspotted the ideal of his youth
-- through all the changes and struggles of these years --
and now to give himself to it meant heroism of a rare type.
It meant that he must seem disobedient to a father with whom his relation
had been peculiarly intimate, that he would go in the face of the opinion
of friends and relatives, and that he must for a while at least
leave behind his family, whom he loved with an unparalleled affection.
He was to enter upon a career the future of which was not certain.
In spite of all these obstacles, he deliberately made up his mind
to give the remainder of his life to the work that he loved.
Once again, after he had settled down in Baltimore, his father made
a determined effort to induce him to change his mind, but to no avail.
Lanier's answer to his father's letter, written November 29, 1873,
is really his declaration of independence -- the vow of consecration: --
"I have given your last letter the fullest and most careful consideration.
After doing so I feel sure that Macon is not the place for me.
If you could taste the delicious crystalline air, and the champagne breeze
that I've just been rushing about in, I am equally sure
that in point of climate you would agree with me that my chance for life
is ten times as great here as in Macon. Then, as to business, why should I,
nay, how CAN I, settle myself down to be a third-rate struggling lawyer
for the balance of my little life, as long as there is a certainty
almost absolute that I can do some other thing so much better?
Several persons, from whose judgment in such matters there can be no appeal,
have told me, for instance, that I am the greatest flute-player in the world;
and several others, of equally authoritative judgment,
have given me an almost equal encouragement to work with my pen.
(Of course I protest against the necessity which makes me write such things
about myself. I only do so because I so appreciate the love and tenderness
which prompt you to desire me with you that I will make
the fullest explanation possible of my course, out of reciprocal
honor and respect for the motives which lead you to think
differently from me.) My dear father, think how, for twenty years,
through poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness,
through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army
and then of an exacting business life, through all the discouragement
of being wholly unacquainted with literary people and literary ways, --
I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances,
and of a thousand more which I could enumerate, these two figures
of music and of poetry have steadily kept in my heart
so that I could not banish them. Does it not seem to you as to me,
that I begin to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees
of these two sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly,
and through so much bitterness?"*
--
* Quoted by William Hayes Ward in his Introduction to Lanier's `Poems'.
--
The letter just quoted needs to be read with caution. It sets
in too sharp antagonism his life up to this point and that of his later years.
Previous chapters of this book have been written in vain if they have not
revealed the fact that Lanier was a much more highly developed man
when he left Georgia than the letter would indicate. He wrote it
in the first flush of enthusiasm at finding himself among artists.
But it is misleading. For instance, he speaks of the "farcical college";
yet in his last days, when he saw his life in its proper perspective,
he said that he owed to Dr. Woodrow the strongest and most valuable stimulus
of his early life. He was not a raw provincial; he had traveled extensively,
had been associated with people of culture, if not of letters,
and he had read widely and wisely. His inheritance from Southern people,
-- their temperament and their civilization, -- and his indebtedness
to Southern scenery will be the more apparent in later chapters of this book.
All the while his genius had been steadily growing. When the time came
he was a prepared man -- ready to seize with avidity every opportunity
that presented itself.
Furthermore, the very struggle he had to maintain his ideal,
and it will not do to minimize this struggle, had strengthened
and enlarged his soul. One may as well lament Milton's absorption
in the conflicts of his country as Lanier's participation
in the war and in the stirring events of reconstruction.
After the fortitude and endurance manifested in this period of his life,
his later sufferings were the more easily borne. One of his favorite theories
was that antagonism or opposition either in art or morals is to be welcomed,
for out of it comes a finer art and a larger manhood. He developed
somewhat at length this theory in his admirable study of Shakespeare's growth.
In a passage evidently autobiographical he traces Shakespeare's progress
in the three periods of his life, the Dream Period, the Real or Hamlet Period,
and the Ideal Period. Lanier, too, passed through his Dream Period, --
the college days and the early years of the war. He passed through
his Hamlet Period -- the years from 1865 to 1873 -- years in which he felt
the shock of the real, the twist and cross of life. There had been
suffering from poverty, drudgery, and disease; there had been also
something of the storm and stress of religious and philosophic doubt.
With the beginning of his artistic life he passes into his Ideal Period,
when by reason of the terrific shock of the real he was able to realize
"a new and immortally fine reconstruction of his youth." He was to know
what suffering meant in the future; but the serenity and joy of his life
from this point are apparent to all who may study it.
Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill,
Complain no more; for these, O heart,
Direct the random of the will
As rhymes direct the rage of art.
Chapter VI. A Musician in Baltimore
With his purpose firmly fixed in his mind he started for New York,
which was then fast becoming the musical and literary centre of the country.
For three months and more he gave himself unstintedly to the work
of perfecting himself in playing the flute, and attended regularly
the great concerts then being given by Theodore Thomas.
It was an opportune time. The day of the Italian opera,
for which Lanier did not care, was past, and orchestral music
was beginning its triumphant career in this country. These were months, then,
of education in the very music for which Lanier had yearned.
He at once attracted musical critics and made a stir
in some of the churches and concert-rooms of the city.
He had brought along with him two of his own compositions,
"Swamp Robin" and "Blackbirds"; and there were some who did not hesitate
to prophesy a brilliant career for him as "the greatest flute-player
in the world." Lanier did not rely on inspiration, however,
nor was he satisfied with the applause of popular audiences;
he knew that his course must be one of "straightforward behavior
and hard work and steady improvement." He would be satisfied
only with the judgment of Thomas or Dr. Leopold Damrosch,
then conductor of the Philharmonic Society.
On his way to New York he had stopped at Baltimore, and on the advice
of his friend Henry Wysham had played for Asger Hamerik,
who was at that time making efforts to have the Peabody Institute
establish an orchestra. Hamerik was so attracted by Lanier's playing,
both of masterpieces and of his own compositions, that he invited him
to become first flute in the prospective orchestra. With even
this promise in view, Lanier had written to his wife: "It is therefore
a POSSIBILITY . . . that I may be first flute in the Peabody Orchestra,
on a salary of $120 a month, which, with five flute scholars,
would grow to $200 a month, and so . . . we might dwell in the beautiful city,
among the great libraries, and midst of the music, the religion,
and the art that we love -- and I could write my books and be the man
I wish to be."* Hamerik did succeed in getting the orchestra established
and Lanier accepted the position -- for far less money, however.
Lanier settled in Baltimore, in December, and at once attracted the attention
of the patrons of the orchestra. In the Baltimore "Sun" of December 8, 1873,
his playing was mentioned as one of the features of the opening
symphony concert. In the same paper of January 25 occurs this note:
"Lanier and Stubbs could not have acquitted themselves better,
nor done more justice to their very difficult parts."
And so throughout the winter there is contemporary evidence
that this "raw provincial, without practice and guiltless of instruction,"
was holding his own with the finely trained Germans and Danes
of Hamerik's Orchestra.
--
* `Letters', p. 75.
--
The fact is, Lanier was a musical genius. In playing the flute
he combined deftness of hand and quick intuitiveness of soul.
The director of the Peabody Orchestra, who had been a pupil of Von Buelow,
and was a composer of distinction, has left the most authoritative account
of Lanier as a performer: --
"To him as a child in his cradle Music was given, the heavenly gift
to feel and to express himself in tones. His human nature
was like an enchanted instrument, a magic flute, or the lyre of Apollo,
needing but a breath or a touch to send its beauty out into the world.
It was indeed irresistible that he should turn with those poetical feelings
which transcend language to the penetrating gentleness of the flute,
or the infinite passion of the violin; for there was an agreement,
a spiritual correspondence between his nature and theirs,
so that they mutually absorbed and expressed each other.
In his hands the flute no longer remained a mere material instrument,
but was transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration.
Its tones developed colors, warmth, and a low sweetness of unspeakable poetry;
they were not only true and pure, but poetic, allegoric as it were,
suggestive of the depths and heights of being and of the delights
which the earthly ear never hears and the earthly eye never sees. No doubt
his firm faith in these lofty idealities gave him the power to present them
to our imaginations, and thus by the aid of the higher language of Music
to inspire others with that sense of beauty in which he constantly dwelt.
His conception of music was not reached by an analytic study of note by note,
but was intuitive and spontaneous; like a woman's reason:
he felt it so, because he felt it so, and his delicate perception
required no more logical form of reasoning. His playing appealed alike
to the musically learned and to the unlearned -- for he would
magnetize the listener; but the artist felt in his performance
the superiority of the momentary living inspiration
to all the rules and shifts of mere technical scholarship.
His art was not only the art of art, but an art above art.
I will never forget the impression he made on me when he played
the flute concerta of Emil Hartmann at a Peabody symphony concert, in 1878, --
his tall, handsome, manly presence, his flute breathing noble sorrows,
noble joys, the orchestra softly responding. The audience was spellbound.
Such distinction, such refinement! He stood, the master, the genius!"*
--
* Quoted in Ward's Introduction to `Poems'.
--
He made the same impression on every other artist he ever played for.
Badger called his flute-playing "astonishing"; Wehner, the first flute
in Thomas's Orchestra, sought every opportunity to play with him.
Theodore Thomas planned to have him in his orchestra at the time
when Lanier's health failed in 1876; Dr. Damrosch said he played "Wind-Song"
like an artist, -- that "he was greatly astonished and pleased
with the poetry of the piece and the enthusiasm of its rendering."
His own compositions, too, appealed to men. At times the "fury of creation"
was upon him. During the first winter in Baltimore he wrote a midge dance,
the origin of which he thus gives in a letter to his wife:
"I am copying off -- in order to try the publishers therewith --
a `Danse des Moucherons' (midge dance), which I have written
for flute and piano, and which I think enough of to let go forward as Op. 1.
Dost thou remember one morning last summer, Charley and I were walking
in the upper part of the yard, before breakfast, and saw a swarm of gnats,
of whose strange evolutions we did relate to thee a marvelous tale?
I have put the grave oaks, the quiet shade, the sudden sunlight,
the fantastic, contrariwise, and ever-shifting midge movements,
the sweet hills afar off, . . . all in the piece, and thus -I- like it;
but I know not if others will, I have not played it for anybody."*
--
* `Letters', p. 98.
--
During this winter and the succeeding one Lanier gave
almost his entire time to music. He practiced assiduously,
took every opportunity to play with the best musicians,
-- both those of his own orchestra and of Theodore Thomas's, -- and often
spent evenings with three or four of the choicest spirits he could command.
Hamerik was of special inspiration to him, bringing to him as he did
much of the spirit of music that prevailed in German cities.
Lanier studied the technique of the flute, mastering his new silver Boehm,
which "begins to feel me," he writes. "How much I have learned
in the last two months!" he exclaims. "I am not yet an artist, though,
on the flute. The technique of the instrument has many depths
which I had not thought of before, and I would not call myself a virtuoso
within a year." He suffers agony because he does not attain
a point in harmony which the audience did not notice. Writing of
the temptation of flute soloists, he once said: "They have rarely been able
to resist the fatal facility of the instrument, and have usually
addressed themselves to winning the applause of concert audiences
by the execution of those brilliant but utterly trifling and inane variations
which constitute the great body of existing solos for the flute."*
He fretted because "the flute had been the black beast in the orchestra."
With his mastery of its technique and his own marvelous ability
to bring new results from it, he looked forward to the time
when it would have a far more important place therein.
--
* `Music and Poetry', p. 38.
--
Lanier played not only for the Peabody Orchestra, but for
the Germania Maennerchor Orchestra, -- one of the many companies of Germans
who did so much to develop music in different parts of the country, --
the Concordia Theatre, charity concerts, churches, and in private homes.
He was very popular in Baltimore. Most of the musicians were Germans,
but Lanier was an American and a Southerner, who had graces of manner
and goodness of soul. He was a close friend of the Baltimore musicians,
such as Madame Falk-Auerbach, a pupil of Rossini's and a teacher
in the Conservatory of Music, "a woman who plays Beethoven
with the large conception of a man, and yet nurses her children all day
with a noble simplicity of devotion such as I have rarely seen,"
said Lanier. Outside of musical circles he had access
to the homes of the most prominent people of Baltimore,
in which he frequently played the flute or piano, while members of the family
accompanied him. "Memory pictures," says one of his admirers,
"that frail, slender figure at the piano, touching with white, shapely hands
the chords of Chopin's `Nocturne'." "He was a frequent visitor to our house,"
says another, "and would often play for us on his beautiful silver flute.
The image of him standing in his rapt passion, while he poured forth
the entrancing sound, I remember most distinctly."
And while he grew in his mastery of the flute he grew, too, in discriminating
study of the orchestra. His first interpretations of orchestral music
are rather impulsive -- he goes off into raptures without restraint,
even when the occasion is not really of the highest sort.
It is altogether unfair to him to confuse his earlier with his later letters.
As in every other respect, Lanier was growing in intellectual power.
"I am beginning," he writes, "in the midst of the stormy glories
of the orchestra, to feel my heart sure, and my soul discriminating.
Not less do I thrill to ride upon the great surges; but I am growing
calm enough to see the star that should light the musician, and presently
my hand will be firm enough to hold the helm and guide the ship that way.
NOW I am very quiet; I am waiting."* And again, after he has heard
Thomas's Orchestra; "I can preserve my internal dignity in great measure,
free from the dreadful distractions of solicitude, and thus my soul revels
in the midst of the heaven of these great symphonic works
with almost unobstructed freedom."**
--
* `Letters', p. 91.
** `Letters', p. 110.
--
One of the plans proposed by Lanier for helping people to understand better
the meaning of orchestral music should be mentioned in this connection.
He was always anxious to take every one with him into his kingdom of beauty.
He proposed that, for people living in cities of from three
to twenty thousand inhabitants, there should be organized "a Nonette Club,
consisting of himself for flute, oboe, clarionet, bassoon, and French horn,
and a string quartette. This club would travel through the smaller cities,
performing original compositions as well as excerpts from
the greatest symphonic orchestral works, and thus educating the masses
to an understanding of orchestral tonal color, and the relations,
in an analytical form, which the wood wind instruments
bore to the stringed family. . . . It was his purpose,
after each movement of a composition, to lecture on the same,
with special reference to the function performed by each instrument,
and in the formation of harmonious tonal color."*
--
* Letter from Mr. F. H. Gottlieb to the author.
--
While Lanier was giving his time to the perfection of his flute-playing and to
the study of the orchestra, he became interested in the science of music.
Helmholtz's recent discoveries in acoustics inspired him to make research
in that direction. He ransacked the Peabody Library for books on the subject,
many of them yet not unpacked.
While few people ever appreciated more the art of music and its spiritual
message to men, he realized that there was a science of music as well,
"embodying a great number of classified facts, and presenting a great number
of scientific laws which are as thoroughly recognized among musicians
as are the laws of any other sciences among their professors.
There is a science of harmony, a science of composition,
a science of orchestration, a science of performance
upon stringed instruments, a science of performance upon wind instruments,
a science of vocalization; not a branch of the art of music
but has its own analogous body of classified facts and general laws.
Music is so much a science that a man may be a thorough musician
who has never written a tune and who cannot play upon any instrument."*
Some of these investigations he afterwards used to good effect
in his "Science of English Verse".
--
* `Music and Poetry', p. 50.
--
Furthermore, Lanier became interested in the history of music.
In his valuable monograph on "Music in Shakespeare's Time"*
he shows a minute knowledge of Elizabethan music, -- madrigals, dances,
catches, and other forms of instrumental and vocal music.
He took great delight in following out through Shakespeare's plays
the dramatist's knowledge and appreciation of the art of music.
Indeed, all the people of that time were "enthusiastic lovers of the art.
There were professorships of music in the universities,
and multitudes of teachers of it among the people. The monarch, the lord,
the gentleman, the merchant, the artisan, the rustic clown,
all ranks and conditions of society, from highest to lowest,
cultivated the practice of singing or of playing upon
some of the numerous instruments of the time." For the class
to which he was then lecturing in the Peabody Institute
he was able to point out and illustrate various forms of music
and to give biographical sketches of the English musicians
of Shakespeare's age.
--
* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. ii, p. 1.
--
Lanier was most of all interested, however, in the development
of modern music, and especially in orchestral music. He underrated
some of the classical composers, notably Mozart. He was familiar
with the biographies of Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner.
He left behind a translation of Wagner's "Rheingold".
His poems on Beethoven and Wagner indicate his appreciation of their music,
while his essays "From Bacon to Beethoven" and "The Modern Orchestra"
show minute knowledge of their work and of the significance of the orchestra
in modern life. A better description of Theodore Thomas
as the leader of an orchestra has not been written than Lanier's: --
"To see Thomas lead . . . is music itself! His baton is alive,
full of grace, of symmetry; he maketh no gestures, he readeth his score
almost without looking at it, he seeth everybody, heareth everything,
warneth every man, encourageth every instrument, quietly, firmly, marvelously.
Not the slightest shade of nonsense, not the faintest spark of affectation,
not the minutest grain of EFFECT is in him. He taketh the orchestra
in his hand as if it were a pen, -- and writeth with it."*
--
* `Letters', p. 92.
--
If Lanier had been only a successful virtuoso with the flute,
the tradition of his playing would have lingered in the minds
of at least two generations. Through the reminiscences of college mates,
of soldiers and of frequenters of the Peabody concerts,
the memory of this genius with the flute would have remained
like that of some troubadour of the Middle Ages. It is unfortunate
that he left no compositions to indicate a musical power
sufficient to give him a place in the history of American music.
It cannot be controverted, however, that he is the one man of letters
in America who has had an adequate appreciation of the value of music
in the culture of the modern world. To him music was a culture study
as much as the study of literature. It was an education to him
to hear the adequate representation of modern orchestral works.
Hamerik's plan of giving separate nights to the music of various nationalities
was calculated to emphasize this phase of musical culture.
To Lanier, who had never traveled abroad and who did not have time
to read the literatures of foreign nations, such musical programmes
had the effect of enabling him to divine the places and the life
from which the music had come. "I am just come from Venice," he says,
"and have strolled home through the moonlight, singing serenades. . . .
I have been playing `Stradella' and I am full of gondellieds, of serenades,
of balconies with white arms leaning over the balustrades thereof,
of gleaming waters, of lithe figures in black velvet,
of stinging sweet coquetries, of diamonds, daggers, and desperadoes. . . .
I cannot tell the intense delight which these lovely conceptions of Flotow
gave me. The man has put Venice, lovely, romantic, wicked-sweet Venice,
into music, and the melodies breathe out an eloquence that is at once
sentimental and powerful, at once languid and thrilling."*
--
* `Letters', p. 98.
--
A description of the "Hunt of Henry IV" shows how Lanier
associated nature, music, and poetry with each other. He was
an ardent advocate of "programme-music". He saw music as he heard poetry.
He felt the musical effects in poetry and the poetical effects in music:
"Then, the `Hunt of Henry IV'! . . . It openeth with
a grave and courteous invitation, as of a cavalier riding by some dainty lady,
through the green aisles of the deep woods, to the hunt, --
a lovely, romantic melody, the first violins discoursing the man's words,
the first flute replying for the lady. Presently a fanfare; a sweet horn
replies out of the far woods; then the meeting of the gay cavaliers;
then the start, the dogs are unleashed, one hound gives tongue,
another joins, the stag is seen -- hey, gentlemen! away they all fly
through the sweet leaves, by the great oaks and beeches,
all a-dash among the brambles, till presently, bang! goeth a pistol
(it was my veritable old revolver loaded with blank cartridge
for the occasion, the revolver that hath lain so many nights under my head),
fired by `Tympani' (as we call him, the same being a nervous little Frenchman
who playeth our drums), and then the stag dieth in a celestial concord
of flutes, oboes, and violins. Oh, how far off my soul was
in this thrilling moment! It was in a rare, sweet glen in Tennessee;
the sun was rising over a wilderness of mountains, I was standing
(how well I remember the spot!) alone in the dewy grass,
wild with rapture and with expectation. Yonder came, gracefully walking,
a lovely fawn. I looked into its liquid eyes, hesitated, prayed,
gulped a sigh, then overcame with the savage hunter's instinct, fired;
the fawn leaped convulsively a few yards, I ran to it, found it lying
on its side, and received into my agonized and remorseful heart
the reproaches of its most tender, dying gaze. But luckily
I had not the right to linger over this sad scene; the conductor's baton
shook away the dying pause; on all sides shouts and fanfares and gallopings
`to the death', to which the first flute had to reply in time,
recalled me to my work, and I came through brilliantly."*
--
* `Letters', p. 85.
--
Because of its culture value, Lanier believed that music should have its place
in every college and university. As far back as 1867 -- in "Tiger Lilies" --
he had advocated the appointment of professors of music in American colleges
of equal dignity with other specialists. He himself hoped that he might
be appointed to such a chair, first in the College of Music in New York
and later in Johns Hopkins University. It is easy to conceive
that he might have become an expert teacher in the science of music,
but it is more probable that if he had held a chair in an academic institution
he would have forwarded the work that has now become
a distinct feature of all the larger universities. He would have made
an excellent "literary" teacher of music, interesting men
in the biographies of great musicians, and interpreting for them
the mysteries of orchestra and opera. He conceived of music
as one of the humanities, and would have agreed with President Eliot
that "music is a culture study, if there is one in the world."
In his life it took the place that travel and many literatures held
in the lives of Longfellow and Lowell. He believed with Theodore Thomas
that Beethoven's music is "something more than mere pleasure;
it is education, thought, emotion, love, and hope."
Furthermore, Lanier believed in the religious value of music;
it was a "gospel whereof the people are in great need, --
a later revelation of all gospels in one." "Music," he says,
"is to be the Church of the future, wherein all creeds will unite
like the tones in a chord." He was one of "those fervent souls
who fare easily by this road to the Lord." Haydn's inscription, "Laus Deo",
was in Lanier's mind whenever he listened to great music;
for it tended to "help the emotions of man across the immensity of the known
into the boundaries of the Unknown." He would have composers
to be ministers of religion. He could not understand
the indifference of some leaders of orchestras, who could be satisfied
with appealing to the aesthetic emotions of an audience,
while they might "set the hearts of fifteen hundred people afire."
The final meaning of music to him was that it created within man
"a great, pure, unanalyzable yearning after God."
Holding this exalted view of music, he believed that its future was immense
and that in America its triumphs were to be greater than
they had been elsewhere. At a time when musical culture was rare
in this country, he looked forward with hope and expectation to the time
when America would become a patron of the best music. "When Americans,"
he said, "shall have learned the supreme value and glory of the orchestra,
. . . then I look to see America the home of the orchestra,
and to hear everywhere the profound messages of Beethoven and Bach to men."
And again: "All the signs of the times seem to point to this country as
the scene of the future development of music. . . . It only needs direction,
artistic atmosphere, and technique in order to fill the land
with such orchestras as the world has never heard. When our so-called
conservatories and music schools, instead of straining every nerve
to outdo each other in turning out hosts of bad piano-players,
shall address themselves earnestly to the education of performers
upon all the orchestral instruments; when our people
shall have become aware of the height and glory of the orchestra,
as the only instrument for the deepest adorations in man; . . .
when our young women shall ask themselves for any serious reason
why they should all, with one accord, devote themselves to the piano
instead of to the flute, the violin, the hautboy, the harp, the viola,
the violoncello, the horn instruments which pertain to women
fully as much as to men, and some of which actually belong by nature
to those supple, tactile, delicate, firm, passionate, and tender fingers
with which the woman is endowed; when our young men shall have discovered
that the orchestral player can so exercise his office
as to make it of far more dignity and worth than any political place
in the gift of the people, and that the business of making orchestral music
may one day become far higher in nobility than the ignoble
sentinelship over one's pocket to which most lawyers are reduced,
or the melancholy slaveries of the shop and the counting-room
and the like `business' which is now paramount in esteem;
when -- I will not say when we have a new music to perform,
but when we shall have played Beethoven's symphonies as they should be played,
and shall have revealed to us all the might, all the faith, all the religion,
the tenderness, the heavenly invitation, the subtle excursions
down into the heart of man, the brotherhood, the freedom, the exaltation,
the whisperings of sorrow unto sorrow, the messages of God
which these immortal and yet unmeasured compositions embody,"*
then will America give to music the place it deserves.
Music will be one of the redeemers of the people from crass commercialism.
--
* An uncollected essay by Lanier, "Mazzini on Music", `The Independent',
June 27, 1878.
--
While Lanier held before the American people the vision
of what they might accomplish in music, he held up to musicians
the high ideal of what they should be. In the essay just quoted,
he indorses the saying of Mazzini's that "musicians may become
a priesthood and ministry of moral regeneration. . . . Why rest contented
with stringing notes together -- mere trouveres of a day --
when it remains with you to consecrate yourselves, even on earth,
to a mission such as in the popular belief only God's angels know?"
With his high ideal of what a musician should be, he could not but be
disgusted at times with the Bohemianism of the men who played with him,
and with the loose moral life of many more eminent musicians.
"Ah, these heathenish Germans!" he exclaims, as he sees some of the orchestra
at a church service making fun of the communion service: "Double-bass was
a big fellow, with a black mustache, to whom life was all a joke,
which he expressed by a comical smile, and Viola was a young Hercules,
so full of beer that he dreamed himself in heaven, and Oboe was a young sprig,
just out from Munich, with a complexion of milk and roses, like a girl's,
and miraculously bright spectacles on his pale blue eyes,
and there they sat -- Oboe and Viola and Double-bass -- and ogled each other,
and raised their brows, and snickered behind the columns,
without a suspicion of interest either in the music or the service.
Dash these fellows, they are utterly given over to heathenism, prejudice,
and beer."*
--
* `Letters', p. 88.
--
The best expression of his ideal of what a great composer should be,
is in a letter written to his wife just after he had read
the life of Robert Schumann: --
New York, Sunday, October 18, 1874.
I have been in my room all day; and have just concluded
a half-dozen delicious hours, during which I have been devouring,
with a hungry ferocity of rapture which I know not how to express,
"The Life of Robert Schumann", by his pupil, von Wasielewski.
This pupil, I am sure, did not fully comprehend his great master.
I think the key to Schumann's whole character, with all
its labyrinthine and often disappointing peculiarities, is this: That he had
no mode of self-expression, or, I should rather say, of self-expansion,
besides the musical mode. This may seem a strange remark to make of him
who was the founder and prolific editor of a great musical journal,
and who perhaps exceeded any musician of his time in general culture.
But I do not mean that he was confined to music for self-expression,
though indeed, the sort of critical writing which Schumann did so much of
is not at all like poetry in its tranquillizing effects upon
the soul of the writer. What I do mean is that his sympathies
were not BIG enough, he did not go through the awful struggle of genius,
and lash and storm and beat about until his soul was grown large enough
to embrace the whole of life and the All of things, that is,
large enough to appreciate (if even without understanding)
the magnificent designs of God, and tall enough to stand in the trough
of the awful cross-waves of circumstance and look over their heights
along the whole sea of God's manifold acts, and deep enough to admit the peace
that passeth understanding. This is, indeed, the fault of all German culture,
and
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