One of the pieces of advice that Lanier gave to consumptives
who went to Florida for their health was, "Set out to get well,
with the thorough assurance that consumption is curable."
He had literally followed his own advice, and had fought death off
for seven years. By the spring of 1880 he had won his fight
over every obstacle that had been in his way. He had a position which,
supplemented by literary work, could sustain him and his family.
By prodigious work he had overcome, to a large extent, his lack of training
in both music and scholarship. The years 1878 and 1879 were his
most productive. By the "Science of English Verse" and the "Marshes of Glynn"
he had won the admiration of many who had at first been doubtful
about his ability. From an obscure man of the provinces
out of touch with artists or musicians, he had become the idol
of a large circle of friends and admirers.
During all these years he had had to fight the disease
which he inherited from both sides of his family and which was accentuated
by hardships during the war and the habits of a bent student.
His flute-playing had helped to mitigate the disease. Finally, however,
in the summer of 1880, he entered upon the last fight with his old enemy.
Lanier had laughed in the face of death, and each new acquisition
in the realms of music and poetry had been a challenge to the enemy.
In 1876 he almost succumbed, but in the mean time three years of hard work
had intervened. What he had suffered from disease, even when
he was at his best, may be divined by one of imagination.
He once referred to consumptives as "beyond all measure the keenest sufferers
of all the stricken of this world," and he knew what he was talking about.
He wrote to Hayne, November 19, 1880: "For six months past a ghastly fever
has been taking possession of me each day at about twelve M.,
and holding my head under the surface of indescribable distress
for the next twenty hours, subsiding only enough each morning
to let me get on my working-harness, but never intermitting.
A number of tests show it not to be the `hectic' so well known in consumption;
and to this day it has baffled all the skill I could find in New York,
in Philadelphia, and here. I have myself been disposed to think it arose
purely from the bitterness of having to spend my time in making
academic lectures and boy's books -- pot-boilers all --
when a thousand songs are singing in my heart that will certainly kill me
if I do not utter them soon. But I don't think this diagnosis has found favor
with any practical physician; and meantime I work day after day
in such suffering as is piteous to see."* With his fever at 104 degrees
he wrote "Sunrise", which, though considered by many his best poem,
shows an unmistakable weakness when compared with the "Marshes of Glynn".
There is a letting down of the robust imagination. He delivered his lectures
on the English Novel under circumstances too harrowing to describe.
His audience did not know whether he could finish any one of them.
--
* `Letters', p. 244.
--
And yet the story of his life shall not close with a pathetic account
of those last sad months. Even during the last year he maintained
his cheerfulness, his playfulness, his good humor, and also his buoyancy.
In August, a fourth son, Robert Sampson Lanier, was born at West Chester,
and the father writes letters to his friends, announcing his joy thereat.
One is to his old friend, Richard Malcolm Johnston.
West Chester, Pa., August 28, 1880.
My dear and sweet Richard, -- It has just occurred to me
that you were OBLIGED to be as sweet as you are, in order
to redeem your name; for the other three Richards in history
were very far from being satisfactory persons, and something had to be done.
Richard I, though a man of muscle, was but a loose sort of a swashbuckler
after all; and Richard II, though handsome in person, was "redeless",
and ministered much occasion to Wat Tyler and his gross following;
while Richard III, though a wise man, allowed his wisdom
to ferment into cunning and applied the same unto villainy.
But now comes Richard IV, to wit, you, -- and, by means of
gentle loveliness and a story or two, subdues a realm which I foresee
will be far more intelligent than that of Richard I, far less turbulent
than that of Richard II, and far more legitimate than that of Richard III,
while it will own more, and more true loving subjects than all of those three
put together.
I suppose my thoughts have been carried into these details of nomenclature
by your reference to my own young Samson, who, I devoutly trust with you,
shall yet give many a shrewd buffet and upsetting to the Philistines.
Is it not wonderful how quickly these young fledgelings impress us
with a sense of their individuality? This fellow is two weeks old to-day,
and every one of us, from mother to nurse, appears to have
a perfectly clear conception of his character. This conception
is simply enchanting. In fact, the young man has already made himself
absolutely indispensable to us, and my comrade and I wonder
how we ever got along with ONLY three boys.
I rejoice that the editor of "Harper's" has discrimination enough
to see the quality of your stories, and I long to see these two appear,
so that you may quickly follow them with a volume. When that appears,
it shall have a review that will draw three souls out of one weaver --
if this pen have not lost her cunning.
I'm sorry I can't send a very satisfactory answer to your health inquiries,
as far as regards myself. The mean, pusillanimous fever
which took under-hold of me two months ago is still THERE,
as impregnably fixed as a cockle-burr in a sheep's tail.
I have tried idleness, but (naturally) it won't WORK.
I do no labor except works of necessity -- such as kissing Mary,
who is a more ravishing angel than ever -- and works of mercy --
such as letting off the world from any more of my poetry for a while.
But it's all one to my master the fever. I get up every day and drag around
in a pitiful kind of shambling existence. I fancy it has come to be
purely a go-as-you-please match between me and the disease,
to see which will wear out first, and I think I will manage
to take the belt, yet.
Give my love to the chestnut trees* and all the rest of your family.
--
* It is said that he wrote the `Marshes of Glynn' under one of these.
--
Your letter gave us great delight. God bless you for it,
my best and only Richard, as well as for all your other benefactions to
Your faithful friend,
S. L.
A few days before, he had written a more serious letter to his friend,
Mrs. Isabelle Dobbin, of Baltimore. The concluding words
show his realization of the deeper meaning of childhood.
West Chester, August 18, 1880.
Here is come a young man so lovely in his person, and so gentle and high-born
in his manners, that in the course of some three days he has managed
to make himself as necessary to OUR world as the sun, moon, and stars;
at any rate, these would seem quite obscured without him.
It just so happens that he is very vividly associated with YOU;
for among the few treasures we allowed ourselves to bring away from home
is the photograph you gave us, and this stands in the most honorable
coign of vantage in Mary's room.
. . . . .
You'll be glad to know that my dear Comrade is doing well. . . .
We have reason to expect a speedy sight of our dear invalid
moving about her accustomed ways again. If you could see the Boy
asleep by her side! The tranquillity of his slumber,
and the shine of his mother's eyes thereover, seem to melt up
and mysteriously absorb the great debates of the agnostics,
and of science and politics, and to dissolve them into the pellucid Faith
long ago reaffirmed by the Son of Man. Looking upon the child,
this term seems to acquire a new meaning, as if Christ were in some sort
reproduced in every infant.
In the fall he was busy again with his books for boys, --
books, it may be said, that had their origin in the stories
he told his own boys.* The spirit in which he worked on these "pot-boilers"
is seen in a letter to his publisher, Mr. Charles Scribner: --
--
* Of these `The Boy's Froissart' was published in 1878,
`The Boy's King Arthur' in 1880, `The Boy's Mabinogion' in 1881,
and `The Boy's Percy' in 1882.
--
435 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Md.,
November 12, 1880.
My dear Mr. Scribner, -- You have certainly made a beautiful book
of the "King Arthur", and I heartily congratulate you on achieving
what seems to me a real marvel of bookmaking art. The binding seems
even richer than that of the "Froissart"; and the type and printing
leave a new impression of graciousness upon the eye with each reading.
I suspect there are few books in our language which lead a reader
-- whether young or old -- on from one paragraph to another
with such strong and yet quiet seduction as this. Familiar as I am with it
after having digested the whole work before editing it and again reading it
in proof -- some parts twice over -- I yet cannot open
at any page of your volume without reading on for a while;
and I have observed the same effect with other grown persons
who have opened the book in my library since your package came
a couple of days ago. It seems difficult to believe otherwise
than that you have only to make the book well known in order
to secure it a great sale, not only for the present year
but for several years to come. Perhaps I may be of service
in reminding you -- of what the rush of winter business
might cause you to overlook -- that it would seem wise to make
a much more extensive outlay in the way of special advertisement, here,
than was necessary with the "Froissart". It is probably quite safe to say
that a thousand persons are familiar with at least the name of Froissart
to one who ever heard of Malory; and the facts (1) that this book
is an English classic written in the fifteenth century;
(2) that it is the very first piece of melodious English prose ever written,
though melodious English POETRY had been common for
seven hundred years before, -- a fact which seems astonishing
to those who are not familiar with the circumstance that all nations
appear to have produced good poetry a long time before good prose,
usually a long time before ANY prose; (3) that it arrays
a number of the most splendid ideals of energetic manhood in all literature;
and (4) that the stories which it brings together and arranges,
for the first time, have furnished themes for the thought, the talk,
the poems, the operas of the most civilized peoples of the earth
during more than seven hundred years, -- ought to be diligently circulated.
I regretted exceedingly that I could not, with appropriateness
to youthful readers, bring out in the introduction the strange melody
of Malory's sentences, by reducing their movement to musical notation.
No one who has not heard it would believe the effect of some of his passages
upon the ear when read by any one who has through sympathetic study
learned the rhythm in which he THOUGHT his phrases. . . .
Sincerely yours,
Sidney Lanier.
In January, he began his lectures at Johns Hopkins. Who would have thought
that a dying man could give expression to such vigorous ideas
in such rhythmic and virile prose as are some of the passages
in the "English Novel"? There is not the intellectual strength in this book
that there is in the "Science of English Verse". There is more of a tendency
to go off in digressions, "to talk away across country",
and the whole lacks in unity and in scientific precision.
But there are passages in it that men will not willingly let die.
His discussion of the growth of personality, of the relations of Science,
Art, Religion, and Life, of Walt Whitman and Zola, and above all,
of George Eliot, are worthy of Lanier at his best. These passages
and the still more important one on the relation of art to morals
are too well known to be quoted; they will be considered in another chapter
dealing with Lanier's work as critic. They are mentioned here
only to show the range of Lanier's interest and the alertness of his mind
when his body was fast failing.
Frances E. Willard heard these lectures, and her words descriptive of them
indicate that even in those days of intense suffering
Lanier impressed her favorably. "It was refreshing," she says,
"to listen to a professor of literature who was something more
than a `raconteur' and something different from a bibliophile,
who had, indeed, risen to the level of generalization and employed
the method of a philosopher. . . . [His] face [was] very pale and delicate,
with finely chiseled features, dark, clustering hair, parted in the middle,
and beard after the manner of the Italian school of art. . . .
He sits not very reposefully in his professorial armchair,
and reads from dainty slips of MS. in a clear, penetrating voice
full of subtlest comprehension, but painfully and often interrupted
by a cough. . . . As we met for a moment, when the lecture was over,
he spoke kindly of my work, evincing that sympathy of the scholar
with the work of progressive philanthropy. `We are all striving for one end,'
said Lanier, with genial, hopeful smile, `and that is to develop and ennoble
the humanity of which we form a part.'"*
--
* `Independent', Sept. 1, 1881.
--
Just after finishing his lectures, which were reduced from twenty to twelve
out of consideration for his health, Lanier went to New York
to consult his publishers about future work. The impression made by him
on one of his old students is seen in this passage: "One day I had
a startling letter from Mrs. Lanier, saying that he was coming to New York
on business, though he was in no condition for such an effort, and begging me,
as one whom he loved, to meet him and to watch over him as best I could.
I found him at the St. Denis, and we had dinner together.
I now know how completely he deceived me as to his condition.
With the intensity and exaltation often characteristic of the consumptive,
he led me to think that he was only slightly ailing,
was gay and versatile as ever, insisted on going somewhere for the evening
`to hear some music,' and absolutely demanded to exercise through the evening
the rights of host in a way that baffled my inexperience completely.
Only just as I left him did he let fall a single remark
that I later saw showed how severe and unfortunate, probably,
was the strain of it all."
Brave as he was, however, and eager to keep at his work,
he finally submitted to the inevitable, and in May started with his brother
to the mountains of western North Carolina. His final interview
with Dr. Gilman is thus related by the latter: --
"The last time that I saw Lanier was in the spring of 1881,
when after a winter of severe illness he came to make arrangements
for his lectures in the next winter and to say good-bye for the summer.
His emaciated form could scarcely walk across the yard
from the carriage to the door. `I am going to Asheville, N.C.,' he said,
`and I am going to write an account of that region as a railroad guide.
It seems as if the good Lord always took care of me.
Just as the doctors had said that I must go to that mountain region,
the publishers gave me a commission to prepare a book.' `Good-bye,' he added,
and I supported his tottering steps to the carriage door,
never to see his face again."*
--
* `South Atlantic Quarterly', April, 1905.
--
The last months of Lanier's career seem to bring together
all the threads of his life. He was in the mountains which had first
stimulated his love of nature and were the background of his early romance.
He was lovingly attended by father, brother, and wife,
and took constant delight in the little boy who had come to cheer
his last days of weariness and sickness. He named the tent Camp Robin,
after his youngest son, and from that camp sent his last message
to the boys of America. They are the words of the preface
to "The Boy's Mabinogion", or "Knightly Legends of Wales":
"In now leaving this beautiful book with my young countrymen,
I find myself so sure of its charm as to feel no hesitation
in taking authority to unite the earnest expression of their gratitude
with that of my own to Lady Charlotte Guest, whose talents and scholarship
have made these delights possible; and I can wish my young readers
few pleasures of finer quality than that surprised sense of a whole new
world of possession which came with my first reading of these Mabinogion,
and made me remember Keats's
watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."
A letter to President Gilman indicates his continued interest
in scientific investigation: --
Asheville, N.C., June 5, 1881.
Dear Mr. Gilman, -- Can you help me -- or tell me how I can help myself --
in the following matter? A few weeks from now I wish to study
the so-called no-frost belt on the side of Tryon Mountain;
and in order to test the popular account I propose to carry on
two simultaneous series of meteorological observations
during a fortnight or longer, -- the one conducted by myself
in the middle of the belt, the other by a friend stationed well outside
its limits. For this purpose I need two small self-registering thermometers,
two aneroid thermometers, and two hygrometers of any make.
It has occurred to me that since these observations will be conducted
during the University recess I might -- always provided, of course,
that there is any authority or precedent for such action --
procure this apparatus from the University collection,
especially as no instrument is included which could not easily be replaced.
Of course I would cheerfully deposit a sum sufficient to cover
the value of the whole outfit.
Should this arrangement be possible, I merely ask that you turn this letter
over to Dr. Hastings, with the request that he will have this apparatus
packed at my expense and shipped by express to me at this point immediately.
Yours very sincerely, Sidney Lanier.
The impulse to poetry was with him, too. He jotted down or dictated
to his wife outlines and suggestions of poems which he hoped to write.
Of these one has been printed: --
I was the earliest bird awake,
It was a while before dawn, I believe,
But somehow I saw round the world,
And the eastern mountain top did not hinder me.
And I knew of the dawn by my heart, not by mine eyes.
One agrees with "Father" Tabb that no utterance of the poet
ever betrayed more of his nature, -- "feeble and dying, but still a `bird',
awake to every emotion of love, of beauty, of faith, of star-like hope,
keeping the dawn in his heart to sing, when the mountain-tops hindered it
from his eyes."
On August 4 the party started across the mountains to Lynn, Polk County,
North Carolina. On the way they stopped with a friend in whose house
Lanier gave one more exhibition of his love of music. "It was in this house,"
says Miss Spann, "the meeting-place of all sweet nobility
with nature and with the human spirit, that he uttered
his last music on earth. At the close of the day Lanier came in
and passed down the long drawing-room until he reached a western window.
In the distance were the far-reaching Alleghany hills, with Mt. Pisgah
supreme among them, and the intervening valley bathed in sunset beauty.
Absorbed away from those around him, he watched the sunset glow
deepen into twilight, then sat down to the piano, facing the window.
Sorrow and joy and pain and hope and triumph his soul poured forth.
They felt that in that twilight hour he had risen to an angel's song."*
--
* `Independent', June 28, 1894.
--
Lynn is in a sheltered valley among the mountains of Polk County,
whose "climate is tempered by a curious current of warm air
along the slope of Tryon Mountain, its northern boundary,
a sort of ethereal Gulf Stream." Here death came soon than was anticipated
by the brother, who had gone back to Montgomery, preceded already
by his father. Mrs. Lanier's own words tell the story of the end
in simplicity and love: "We are left alone (August 29) with one another.
On the last night of the summer comes a change. His love and immortal will
hold off the destroyer of our summer yet one more week,
until the forenoon of September 7, and then falls the frost,
and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission
to the adored will of God." His death before the open window
was a realization of Matthew Arnold's wish with regard to dying: --
Let me be,
While all around in silence lies,
Moved to the window near, and see
Once more, before my dying eyes, --
Bathed in the sacred dews of morn
The wide aerial landscape spread,
The world which was ere I was born,
The world which lasts when I am dead."
The closing lines of "Sunrise" express better than anything else
Lanier's own confident faith as he passed behind the veil: --
And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge abide thee,
And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee,
Labor, at leisure, in art -- till yonder beside thee
My soul shall float, friend Sun,
The day being done.
His body was taken to Baltimore, where it rests in Greenmount Cemetery
in the lot of his friends, the Turnbulls, close by the son whose memory
they have perpetuated by the endowment of a permanent lectureship on poetry
in Johns Hopkins University. The grave is unmarked -- even by a slab.
It divides the interest of visitors to Baltimore with the grave of Poe,
which, however, is in another part of the city. So these two poets,
whose lives and whose characters were so strikingly unlike,
sleep in their adopted city.
Shortly after Lanier's death memorial services were held
at Johns Hopkins University, at which time beautiful tributes were paid to him
by his colleagues and friends. A committee of the citizens of Baltimore
was appointed to raise a fund for the sustenance and education
of the poet's family. They were aided in this by admirers of Lanier
and public-spirited citizens throughout the country.
Meantime his fame was growing, the publication of his poems in 1884
giving fresh impetus thereto.
Seven years after his death a bust of the poet was presented to the University
by Mr. Charles Lanier of New York.* "The hall was filled,"
says ex-President Gilman, "with a company of those who knew and admired him.
On the pedestal which supported the bust hung his flute
and a roll of his music; a garland of laurels crowned his brow,
and the sweetest of flowers were strewn at his feet. Letters came
from Lowell, Holmes, Gilder, Stedman; young men who never saw him,
but who had come under his influence, read their tributes in verse;
a former student of the University made a critical estimate
of the `Science of Verse'; a lady read several of Lanier's own poems;
another lady sang one of his musical compositions adapted to
words of Tennyson, and another song, one of his to which some one else
wrote the music; a college president of New Jersey held up Lanier
as a teacher of ethics; but the most striking figure was the trim,
gaunt form of a Catholic priest, who referred to the day when they,
two Confederate soldiers (the Huguenot and the Catholic),
were confined in the Union prison, and with tears in his eyes said,
his love for Lanier was like that of David for Jonathan.
The sweetest of all the testimonials came at the very last moment,
unsolicited and unexpected, from that charming poetess, Edith Thomas.
She heard of the memorial assembly, and on the spur of the moment
wrote the well-known lines, suggested by one of Lanier's own verses: --
On the Paradise side of the river of death."
--
* For a full record of the exercises see `A Memorial of Sidney Lanier',
Baltimore, 1888.
--
The aftermath of Lanier's home life is all pleasant to contemplate.
His wife, although still an invalid, has, by her readings from
her husband's letters and poems, and by her sympathetic help for all those
who have cared to know more about him, done more than any other person
to extend his fame. With tremendous obstacles in her way,
she has reared to manhood the four sons, three of whom
are now actively identified with publishing houses in New York city,
and one of whom, bearing the name of his father, is now living upon a farm
in Georgia. Charles Day Lanier is president of the Review of Reviews Company,
and is associated with his youngest brother, Robert Sampson Lanier,
in editing "The Country Calendar". Henry Wysham Lanier
is a member of the firm of Doubleday, Page & Company,
and editor of "Country Life in America". They all inherit
their father's love of music and poetry, and through their magazines
are doing much to foster among Americans a taste for country life.
By a striking coincidence -- entirely unpremeditated on their part --
three of the sons and their mother live at Greenwich, Connecticut.
It will be remembered that the home of the English Laniers was at Greenwich,
-- and so the story of the Lanier family begins and ends with this name, --
one in the Old World and one in the New.