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Sidney Lanier
by Edwin Mims
February, 1998 [Etext #1224]
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Sidney Lanier, by Edwin Mims
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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the most intimate correspondence of the poet, but of many letters written by him to his father and friends, as well as unpublished fragments and essays.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 Sidney Lanier Gibson, and Miss Sophie Kirk, for placing in my hands unpublished letters of Lanier.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
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,
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
—
* `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.
— * `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
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
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
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.