(1842-1881)
Sidney Lanier has so recently passed from us that it seems desirable
briefly to recount the chief incidents of his life. This task
is much lightened by Dr. Wm. Hayes Ward's `Memorial',* upon which,
as stated in the Preface, is based this section of my essay.
Born at Macon, Ga., February 3, 1842, Sidney Lanier came of a family
noted for their love and cultivation of the fine arts.
From the time of Queen Elizabeth to the Restoration,
several of his paternal ancestors were connected with the English court
as musical composers and as painters. The father of the poet, however,
Robert S. Lanier, was a most industrious lawyer, who,
after a lingering illness of three years, recently** answered `Adsum'
to the summons of the supreme tribunal. The poet's mother, Mary Anderson,
a Virginian of Scotch descent, likewise sprang from a family
distinguished for their love of oratory, music, and poetry.
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* For the full title of works cited see `Bibliography'.
** October 20, 1893, at Macon, Ga.
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With such an ancestry we are not surprised to learn that
Sidney's earliest passion was for music, and that in boyhood he could,
although untutored, play on almost every kind of instrument. He preferred
the violin, in playing which he sometimes sank into a deep trance,
but in deference to his father's view gave it up for the flute,
his power over which we shall hear of farther on. At first,
strange to say, he considered music unworthy of one's sole attention,
but later he came to rank it as his fullest expression of worship.
At fourteen Sidney entered the Sophomore Class of Oglethorpe College,
near Macon, Ga., and, with a year's intermission, graduated with first honor
in 1860, when just eighteen. To Professor James Woodrow, of Oglethorpe,
now President of South Carolina College, Lanier declared
that he owed "the strongest and most valuable stimulus of his youth."
On graduating he was given a tutorship in his Alma Mater,
a position that he held until the outbreak of the Civil War.
The lecture-room was now exchanged for the battle-field;
in April, 1861, Lanier entered the Confederate Army as a private
in the Macon Volunteers of the Second Georgia Battalion,
an organization among the first to reach Norfolk and that still keeps up
its corporate existence. In the spring of 1862 Lanier was joined
by his young brother, Clifford; and throughout the war
each seemed to vie with the other in brotherly love;
for, while both were offered promotion, neither would accept it,
since to do so would have entailed separation from the other.
The leisure time of his first year's service Sidney spent
in the study of music and the modern languages. He was engaged
in several battles in Virginia, but afterward was transferred,
with Clifford, to the Signal Service, with head-quarters at Petersburg.
Here he had access to a small library, of which he made sedulous use.
In 1863 his company was mounted, and served in Virginia and North Carolina.
In the spring of 1864 both brothers were transferred to Wilmington,
the head-quarters of the Marine Signal Service, in which they remained
to the end of the war. Finally the two brothers were separated,
each becoming signal officer* of a blockade-runner. Sidney's vessel
was captured, and for five months he was a prisoner at Point Lookout, Md.,
with nothing but his flute to solace him. It was the exposure of prison-life,
no doubt, that first led to decline of health by developing
the seeds of consumption, a disease that was to carry off his mother
and that he was to struggle with the last fifteen years of his life.
Released from prison in February, 1865, he returned to Georgia,
for the most part afoot, and reached home March 15th.
An account of his war-life is given in his novel, `Tiger-lilies',
treated below.
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* It is sometimes erroneously stated that each was put in charge
of a blockade-runner.
--
During the succeeding nine years (1865-73) his life was checkered indeed.
Seriously ill for six weeks, he arose from his bed to see
his mother carried off by consumption and to find himself suffering
with congestion of the lungs. Slightly relieved, Lanier turned his hand
to various projects for making a living: clerking in a hotel
in Montgomery, Ala., for two years; writing* and publishing his novel,
`Tiger-lilies'; teaching at Prattville, Ala., one year, during which time**
he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Ga.; studying and then practising law
with his father at Macon, Ga., for five years; now, in the winter of 1872-73,
trying to recuperate at San Antonio, Texas, for hemorrhages had begun in 1868,
and a cough had set in two years later; and, finally, settling in Baltimore,
December, 1873, to devote himself to music and literature.
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* April, 1867.
** December 19, 1867.
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Against the son's devotion of his life to music and literature
the father protested, chiefly on business grounds, and begged him
to rejoin himself in the practice of the law. Thanking his father
for his thoughtfulness, Lanier justified his own course
in these earnest words: "My dear father, think how, for twenty years,
through poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness,
through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college
and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life,
through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted
with literary people and literary ways -- I say, think how,
in spite of all these depressing circumstances and of a thousand more
which I could enumerate, these two figures of music and poetry
have steadily kept in my heart so that I could not banish them.
Does it not seem to you as to me, that I begin to have the right
to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts,
after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through
so much bitterness?"*1* Of course, the father yielded and did all
that his slender means would allow toward keeping up his son,
who henceforth devoted every energy to music and literature.
Despite continued ill-health, which now and again necessitated
visits of months' duration to Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia,
Lanier did a vast amount of work. He was engaged as first flute
for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled
with rare distinction for six years. As to his literary work,
this began with the publication of his novel, `Tiger-lilies', in 1867,
and in the same year, of occasional poems in `The Round Table' of New York.
`Corn', published in `Lippincott's Magazine' (Philadelphia)
for February, 1875, is the first of his poems that attracted general notice,
and the one that gained him the friendship of Bayard Taylor.
To Taylor he owed his selection to write the `Centennial Cantata',
which gave him still greater notoriety, though, to be sure,
some of it was not very grateful to him. In 1876 the Lippincotts published
his `Florida', and in 1877 his first volume of `Poems',
which contained ninety-four pages and consisted chiefly of pieces*2*
previously published in the magazines. Soon after settling in Baltimore,
Lanier made a careful study of Old and Middle English, the fruits of which
he partially embodied in courses of lectures given to his private class
and to the public, the latter at the Peabody Institute, in 1879.
During these years, too, he had been steadily turning out poems of high order.
On his birthday, February 3, in 1879, he received notice of his appointment
as Lecturer on English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore
for the ensuing scholastic year, with a fixed salary, the first since
his marriage. In the summer of 1879 he wrote his `Science of English Verse',
which constituted the basis of his first course of lectures
at the Johns Hopkins University. Notwithstanding serious illness,
this same winter, 1879-80, he lectured at three private schools
and kept up his musical engagement at the Peabody Concerts.
The next winter, 1880-81, he came near dying, but still kept writing
(`Sunrise' was written with a fever temperature of 104 Degrees)
and went through his twelve lectures at the Hopkins, afterwards embodied
in `The English Novel'. How trying this must have been to him
can be gathered from the following words of Mr. Ward:
"A few of the earlier lectures he penned himself; the rest he was obliged
to dictate to his wife. With the utmost care of himself,
going in a closed carriage and sitting during his lecture,
his strength was so exhausted that the struggle for breath
in the carriage on his return seemed each time to threaten the end.
Those who heard him listened in a sort of fascinated terror, as in doubt
whether the hoarded breath would suffice to the end of the hour."*3*
After this a trip was made to New York to arrange for issuing some books
for boys, and four were issued, two posthumously: `Boy's Froissart' (1878),
`Boy's King Arthur' (1880), `Boy's Mabinogion' (1881),
and `Boy's Percy' (1882). Another work, an account of North Carolina
similar to that of Florida, was contracted for and was definitely planned,
but, owing to aggravating infirmities, could not be completed.
--
*1* Ward's `Memorial', p. xx. f.
*2* They are named in the `Bibliography'.
*3* Ward's `Memorial', p. xxviii.
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For the end was near at hand. Desperate illness had made it necessary
to seek relief near Asheville, N.C., where he was joined
by Mrs. Lanier and by his father and step-mother. Growing no better,
he was moved to Lynn, Polk County, N.C. Of the rest we shall hear
in the words of his wife: "We are left alone (it is August 29, 1881)
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 7th, and then falls
the frost, and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to
the will of God."* Unusually checkered his life had been, and yet for Lanier
as for Timrod poetry (and music) had "turned life's tasteless waters
into wine, and flushed them through and through with purple tints."**
The body was taken to Mr. Lanier's home in Baltimore, thence to
the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, where services were conducted
by the rector, the Rev. Dr. William Kirkus. It was then buried
in Greenmount Cemetery, in the lot of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull,
two of the dearest friends that Mr. and Mrs. Lanier had in Baltimore.
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* Ward's `Memorial', p. xxx.
** Timrod's `A Vision of Poesy', stanza xliv.
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Mr. Lanier left a family consisting of his wife and four sons.
Mrs. Lanier, who lives at Tryon, N.C., was the inspiration
not only of those glorious tributes, `Laus Mariae' and `My Springs',
but also of the poet's whole life. The eldest son, Mr. Charles Day Lanier,
was born at Macon, Ga., September 12, 1868, and was graduated A.B.
at the Johns Hopkins University in 1888. At one time he was
Assistant Editor of `The Cosmopolitan Magazine', a position that he gave up
only to become Business Manager of `The Review of Reviews',
with which he has been connected from its beginning.
He is the author of several graceful sketches in the magazines.
The second son, Sidney, is passionately fond of music,
and would have devoted himself thereto but for life-long ill-health.
After teaching three years in West Virginia, he has started a fruit farm
at Tryon, N.C., where he hopes to build up his health.
The third son, Henry Wysham, was prevented from entering the Johns Hopkins
by a partial failure of sight, and for three years has devoted himself
to railroad engineering in Baltimore and in Jamaica. The youngest,
Robert Sampson, only fourteen, is at Tryon, N.C., with his mother.
That interest in Lanier's life and work did not cease with his death,
there is abundant evidence. On October 22, 1881, a memorial meeting was held
by the Faculty and students of the Johns Hopkins University, at which
addresses*1* were made by President Gilman and Professor Wm. Hand Browne,
of the University, and by the Rev. Dr. William Kirkus, of Baltimore,
and a letter*1* was read from the poet-critic, Edmund C. Stedman,
of New York. In 1883 `The English Novel' was published,
and in 1884 the `Poems', edited by his wife, with the excellent `Memorial'
by Dr. Wm. Hayes Ward, who declared that he thought Lanier
would "take his final rank with the first princes of American song."*2*
Numerous reviews of his life and works were published, notably those
by Mr. Wm. R. Thayer, Dr. Merrill E. Gates, Professor Charles W. Kent,
and by the London `Spectator'. On February 3, 1888,
the Johns Hopkins University held another memorial meeting in Baltimore,
attended by many from other cities. "A bust of the poet, in bronze
(modelled by Ephraim Keyser, sculptor, in the last period of Lanier's life,
at the suggestion of Mr. J. R. Tait), was presented to the University
by his kinsman, Charles Lanier, Esq., of New York. It was also announced that
a citizen of Baltimore had offered a pedestal, to be cut in Georgia marble
from a design by Mr. J. B. N. Wyatt. On a temporary pedestal
hung the flute of Lanier, which had so often been his solace,
and a roll of his manuscript music. The bust was crowned
with a wreath of laurel; the words of Lanier, `The Time needs Heart',
were woven into the strings of a floral lyre; and other flowers,
likewise brought by personal friends, were grouped around the pedestal.
As a memento a card, designed by Mrs. Henry Whitman, of Boston,
was given to those who were present. Upon its face was a wreath,
with Lanier's name and the date, and the motto -- `Aspiro dum Exspiro';
upon the reverse appeared the closing lines of the Hymn of the Sun,
taken from the poet's `Hymns of the Marshes' -- and beneath,
a flute with ivy twined about it."*3* The exercises,
which were interspersed with music, were as follows:
addresses by President Gilman of the Hopkins and President Gates of Rutgers
(now of Amherst); selections from Lanier's poetry, read by
Miss Susan Hayes Ward, of Newark, N.J.; a paper on Lanier's
`Science of English Verse', by Professor A. H. Tolman, of Ripon College, Wis.
(now of the University of Chicago); poetic tributes by Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull,
Miss Edith M. Thomas, and Messrs. James Cummings, Richard E. Burton,
and John B. Tabb; and letters from Messrs. Richard W. Gilder,
Edmund C. Stedman, and James Russell Lowell -- all of which may be found
in President Gilman's dainty `Memorial of Sidney Lanier'. Again,
a replica of the above-mentioned bust, the gift also of Mr. Charles Lanier,
was unveiled at the poet's birthplace, Macon, Ga., on October 17, 1890;
on which occasion tender tributes*4* were again poured forth
in prose and verse, by Messrs. W. B. Hill, Hugh V. Washington,
Charles Lanier, Clifford Lanier, Wm. Hand Browne, Charles G. D. Roberts,
John B. Tabb, H. S. Edwards, Wm. H. Hayne, Charles W. Hubner,
Joel Chandler Harris, Charles Dudley Warner, and Daniel C. Gilman.
But more significant than these demonstrations, perhaps,
is the steadily growing study devoted to Lanier's works.
Mr. Higginson*5* tells us, for instance, that, when he wrote his tribute
in 1887, Lanier's `Science of English Verse' had been put
upon the list of Harvard books to be kept only a fortnight,
and that, according to the librarian, it was out "literally all the time."
Moreover, it would not be difficult to cite various poems
that have been more or less modeled upon Lanier's; it is sufficient, perhaps,
to point out that the marsh, a theme almost unknown to poetry before Lanier
immortalized it, is not infrequently the subject of poetic treatment now,
as in the works of Charles G. D. Roberts,*6* Clinton Scollard,*7*
and Maurice Thompson.*8* It is noteworthy, too, that many of
the younger poets of the day, both in Canada and the United States,
have sung Lanier's praise. A complete list is given in the `Bibliography'.
Still further, a devoted admirer, Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, of Baltimore,
in `The Catholic Man', has in the person of Paul, the poet,
given us an imaginative study of the character of Mr. Lanier.
Finally, only a few months ago the Chautauquans of the class of 1898
determined to call themselves "The Laniers", in honor of
the poet and his brother.
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*1* See the `Bibliography'.
*2* `Memorial', p. xi.
*3* Gilman's `A Memorial of Sidney Lanier', pp. 5-6.
*4* Published in `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890.
*5* See `The Chautauquan', as cited in the `Bibliography'.
*6* See recent files of `The Independent' (New York).
*7* See his `Pictures in Song' (New York, 1884), pp. 45-49.
*8* See his `Songs of Fair Weather' (Boston, 1883), pp. 27-28.
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