A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 15

And I do SO long to see you and Miss Stebbins!

Out of the sombre depths of a bottomless sea of Florida statistics in which I am at this present floundering, pray accept, my liege Queen, in art as in friendliness, all such loyal messages and fair reports compacted of love, as may come from so dull a waste of waters; graciously resting in your mind upon nothing therein save the true faithful allegiance of your humble knight and subject,

Sidney L.

In November, 1875, he visited her for a week at the Parker House in Boston.

Though she was at that time critically ill, she was "fairly overflowing with all manner of tender and bright and witty sayings."

"Each day," he wrote, "was crowded with pleasant things which she and her numerous friends had prepared for me." On this visit to Boston Lanier spent two "delightful afternoons" with Lowell and Longfellow.

Of this visit Lowell afterwards wrote President Gilman: "He was not only a man of genius with a rare gift for the happy word, but had in him qualities that won affection and commanded respect.

I had the pleasure of seeing him but once, when he called on me 'in more gladsome days', at Elmwood, but the image of his shining presence is among the friendliest in my memory."

Lanier returned from Boston and on New Year's day sent a greeting to Miss Cushman. It is quoted as an ill.u.s.tration of Lanier's considerate regard for his friends, which expressed itself in many delicate ways, especially on anniversaries and special seasons of the year.

It is an Elizabethan sonnet in prose: --

If this New Year that approaches you (more happy than I, who cannot) did but know you as well as I (more happy than he, who does not) he would strew his days about you even as white apple-blossoms and his nights as blue-black heart's-ease; for then he should be your true faithful-serving lover -- as am I -- and should desire -- as I do -- that the general pelting of time might become to you only a tender rain of such flowers as foretell fruit and of such as make tranquil beds.

But though I cannot teach this same New Year to be the servant of my fair wishes, I can persuade him to be the bearer of them; and I trust he and these words will come to you together; giving you such report, and so freshly from my heart, as shall confirm to you that my message, though greatly briefer than my love, is yet greatly longer than I would the interval were, which stands betwixt you and your often-longing,

S. L.

Another friend that Mr. Peac.o.c.k interested in Lanier was Bayard Taylor, who was the means of bringing the poet into the world of letters, and became one of the most inspiring influences in his life.

Taylor had been a very prominent figure in the literary world for over twenty-five years, as author, translator, traveller, diplomatist, and lecturer. To meet him was like the fulfillment of a dream to a man who had lived all his life outside of literary circles, and Taylor's encouraging words to Lanier were "as inspiriting as those from a strong swimmer whom one perceives far ahead, advancing calmly and swiftly."

Taylor, on the other hand, was glad to extend the young poet's acquaintance among those whom he had a right to know. Through him Lanier attended the Goethe celebration, August 28, 1875, and was admitted to the Century Club, of which Bryant was at that time president, and where Taylor, Stoddard, Stedman, and "many other good fellows" frequently met.

What this meant to Lanier is shown in the following quotation: --

"As to pen and ink, and all toil, I've been almost suppressed by continued illness. I can't tell you how much I sigh for some quiet evenings at the Century, where I might hear some of you talk about the matters I love, or merely sit and think in the atmosphere of the thinkers.

I fancy one can almost come to know the dead thinkers too well: a certain mournfulness of longing seems sometimes to peer out from behind one's joy in one's Shakespeare and one's Chaucer, -- a sort of physical protest and yearning of the living eye for its like.

Perhaps one's friendship with the dead poets comes indeed to acquire something of the quality of worship, through the very mystery which withdraws them from us and which allows no more messages from them, cry how we will, after that sudden and perilous Stoppage.

I hope those are not illegitimate moods in which one sometimes desires to surround one's self with a companionship less awful, and would rather have a friend than a G.o.d."*

-- * 'Letters', p. 171.

Mr. Stedman has recorded his impression of Lanier as he met him at Bayard Taylor's: "I saw him more than once in the study of our lamented Deucalion, -- the host so buoyant and sympathetic, the Southerner nervous and eager, with dark hair and silken beard, features delicately moulded, pallid complexion, and hands of the slender, white, artistic type." The friendship between Lanier and Taylor was no less cherished by the older poet. He rejoiced to recognize in Lanier "a new, TRUE poet -- such a poet as I believe you to be -- the genuine poetic nature, temperament, and MORALE."

He was heartily glad to welcome him into the fellowship of authors.

He gave him some valuable criticism as to the details of his work, and encouraged him by showing him that the struggle through which he was pa.s.sing was identical with his own. He, too, had to resort to pot-boiling and hack work of all kinds, and he had also been severely criticised by the same men who now criticised Lanier.

So he closed many of his letters with the inspiriting words: "Be of good cheer! On! be bold!" The friendship which began as a literary friendship soon developed on Taylor's part, as well as Lanier's, into one of deep personal regard. Taylor recognized, as did every other man who came in personal touch with Lanier, the charm and the fineness of his personality.

By the summer of 1876 Lanier had thus established himself as a promising man of letters. He had not only written poetry that had attracted attention, but he had found a place among a group of artists who recognized the value of his work and the charm of his personality.

When Charlotte Cushman died, he had the promise that he would be employed by her family to write her life. Upon the basis of this promise he brought his family North, and they settled down at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania.

Soon afterwards, however, he received the disappointing news that Miss Stebbins, on account of ill health, could not fulfill her part of the contract, namely, to go over the correspondence of Miss Cushman.

This was a severe blow to him, and probably had something to do with his breakdown in health. He spent several weeks at Mr. Peac.o.c.k's in Philadelphia, attended by the best physicians in the city.

He was planning to go back to Baltimore to resume his place in the orchestra, when he was told that he must go at once to Florida if he wished to save his life. He went, attended by his wife, and they spent the winter there and the spring in Brunswick and Macon.

The letters written by him to Mr. Peac.o.c.k and Bayard Taylor are among the best he ever wrote, full as they are of sunshine and hope.

A few extracts are given:* --

-- * 'Letters', pa.s.sim.

"I have found a s.h.a.ggy gray mare upon whose back I thrid the great pine forests daily, much to my delight. Nothing seems so restorative to me as a good gallop."

"What would I not give to transport you from your frozen sorrows instantly into the midst of the green leaves, the gold oranges, the glitter of great and tranquil waters, the liberal friendship of the sun, the heavenly conversation of robins and mocking-birds and larks, which fill my days with delight!"

"In truth I 'bubble song' continually during these heavenly days, and it is as hard to keep me from the pen as a toper from his tipple."

"I have at command a springy mare, with ankles like a Spanish girl, upon whose back I go darting through the green overgrown woodpaths, like a thrasher about his thicket. The whole air feels full of fecundity: as I ride I am like one of those insects that are fertilized on the wing, -- every leaf that I brush against breeds a poem. G.o.d help the world when this now-hatching brood of my Ephemerae shall take flight and darken the air."

"I long to be steadily writing again. I am taken with a poem pretty nearly every day, and have to content myself with making a note of its train of thought on the back of whatever letter is in my coat-pocket. I don't write it out, because I find my poetry now wholly unsatisfactory in consequence of a certain haunting impatience which has its root in the straining uncertainty of my daily affairs; and I am trying with all my might to put off composition of all sorts until some approach to the certainty of next week's dinner shall remove this remnant of haste, and leave me that repose which ought to fill the artist's firmament while he is creating."

They returned to the North in June and spent another summer at Chadd's Ford, -- a place of great natural beauty. "As for me," says Lanier, "all this loveliness of wood, earth, and water makes me feel as if I could do the whole Universe into poetry; but I don't want to write anything large for a year or so. And thus I content myself with throwing off a sort of spray of little songs, whereof the magazines now have several."

Notwithstanding his illness, then, the year ending with September, 1877, was one of marked productivity. He wrote "Waving of the Corn", "Under the Cedarcroft Chestnut", "From the Flats", "The Mocking-Bird", "Tampa Robins", "The Bee", "A Florida Sunday", "The Stirrup-Cup", "To Beethoven", "The Dove", "The Song of the Chattahoochee", and "An Evening Song". He was in a fair way to realize his ambition with regard to poetry. Again, however, he was to be deflected from his course, but at the same time to find "fresh woods and pastures new".

Chapter VIII. Student and Teacher of English Literature

When Lanier returned from Florida he tried to get various positions which might enable him to secure a livelihood. A lectureship at Johns Hopkins University, -- about which President Gilman had talked with him in 1876 -- a librarian's position in the Peabody Library, and a place in some of the departments of the government in Washington, -- all these were sought for in vain. One of the saddest commentaries on the condition of political life in the seventies is that Lanier was not able to secure even a clerkship in any department.

The days of civil service reform and the time when a commissioner of civil service would urge the application for government positions by Southern men had not yet come. "Inasmuch," Lanier says in a letter to Mr. Gibson Peac.o.c.k, June 13, 1877, "as I had never been a party man of any sort, I did not see with what grace I could ask any appointment; and furthermore I could not see it to be delicate, on general principles, for me to make PERSONAL application for any particular office. . . .

My name has been mentioned to Mr. Sherman (and to Mr. Evarts, I believe) by quite cordially disposed persons. But I do not think any formal application has been entered, -- though I do not know.

I HOPE not; for then the reporters will get hold of it, and I scarcely know what I should do if I could see my name figuring alongside of Jack Brown's and Foster Blodgett's and the others of my native State."*

It was the same year in which Bayard Taylor was nominated as minister to Germany and Lowell as minister to Spain, but Lanier could not obtain a consulate to France or even the humblest position, "seventy-five dollars a month and the like," in any department in Washington.

-- * 'Letters', p. 43.

Under these circ.u.mstances he wrote what are perhaps the most pathetic words in all his letters. "Altogether," he says, "it seems as if there wasn't any place for me in this world, and if it were not for May I should certainly quit it, in mortification at being so useless."*

He did not remain in this mood long, however. He settled in Baltimore with his family in November, 1877, in four rooms arranged somewhat as a French flat, and a little later in a cottage, about which he writes enthusiastically to his friends.

There is no better ill.u.s.tration of his playfulness and his ability to get the most out of everything than his letter to Gibson Peac.o.c.k: --

-- * 'Letters', p. 46.

33 Denmead St., Baltimore, Md., January 6, 1878.

The painters, the whitewashers, the plumbers, the locksmiths, the carpenters, the gas-fitters, the stove-put-up-ers, the carmen, the piano-movers, the carpet-layers, -- all these have I seen, bargained with, reproached for bad jobs, and finally paid off: I have also coaxed my landlord into all manner of outlays for damp walls, cold bathrooms, and other like matters: I have furthermore bought at least three hundred and twenty-seven household utensils which suddenly came to be absolutely necessary to our existence: I have moreover hired a colored gentlewoman who is willing to wear out my carpets, burn out my range, freeze out my water-pipes, and be generally useful: I have also moved my family into our new home, have had a Xmas tree for the youngsters, have looked up a cheap school for Harry and Sidney, have discharged my daily duties as first flute of the Peabody Orchestra, have written a couple of poems and part of an essay on Beethoven and Bismarck, have accomplished at least a hundred thousand miscellaneous necessary nothings, -- and have NOT, in consequence of the aforesaid, sent to you and my dear Maria the loving greetings whereof my heart has been full during the whole season.

Maria's cards were duly distributed, and we were all touched with her charming little remembrances. With how much pleasure do I look forward to the time when I may kiss her hand in my own house!

We are in a state of supreme content with our new home: it really seems to me as incredible that myriads of people have been living in their own homes heretofore as to the young couple with a first baby it seems impossible that a great many other couples have had similar prodigies. It is simply too delightful. Good heavens, how I wish that the whole world had a Home!

I confess I AM a little nervous about the gas-bills, which must come in, in the course of time; and there are the water-rates, and several sorts of imposts and taxes: but then, the dignity of being liable for such things (!) is a very supporting consideration.

No man is a Bohemian who has to pay water-rates and a street-tax.

Every day when I sit down in my dining-room -- MY dining-room! -- I find the wish growing stronger that each poor soul in Baltimore, whether saint or sinner, could come and dine with me.