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.
--