A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 2

The first letter written by Lanier to his father from college announces his admission to the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s: "I have just done studying to-night my first lesson, to wit, forty-five lines of Horace, which I 'did' in about fifteen minutes." Other letters show that he was a very hard student and intensely conscientious.

At one time having violated one of his father's regulations, that he was not under any circ.u.mstances to borrow money from his college mates, he wrote: "My father, I have sinned. With what intensity of thought, with what deep and earnest reflection have I contemplated this lately!

My heart throbs with the intensity of its anguish. . . .

If by hard study and good conduct I can atone for that, G.o.d in heaven knows that I shall not be found wanting. . . .

Not a night pa.s.ses but what the supplication, G.o.d bless my parents, ascends to the great mercy seat." At another time he writes for the following books: Olmsted's Philosophy, Blair's Rhetoric, Cicero de Oratore, and an a.n.a.lytical Geometry. He already has some Greek tragedies which he is to study. Contemplating his junior year, he writes: "I feel quite enthusiastic on the subject of studying. . . .

The very name of Junior has something of study-inspiring and energy-exciting to me."

Lanier pursued the limited curriculum of the college with zeal and with mastery. From his letters it is seen that he read such of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics as were generally studied in American colleges at that time. He mastered mathematics beyond any man of his cla.s.s, and became interested in philosophy and science.

His alert mind and energy enabled him to take at once a position of leadership in the college. He joined a secret literary society, of which he wrote to his father: "I have derived more benefit from that, than any one of my collegiate studies. We meet together in a nice room, read compositions, declaim, and debate upon interesting subjects."

His contact with these specially intimate friends was a thoroughly healthy one. He took part in their sports and mischief-making as well as in their more serious pastimes. "I shall never forget,"

says one of his companions, "those moonlight nights at old Oglethorpe, when, after study hours, we would crash up the stairway and get out on the cupola, making the night merry with music, song, and laughter.

Sid would play upon his flute like one inspired, while the rest of us would listen in solemn silence."

Besides being a faithful student, Lanier was an omnivorous reader in the wide fields of English literature, sharing his tastes with some of his companions who with him lived in "an atmosphere of ardent and loyal friendship." "I can recall," says Mr. T. F. Newell, his cla.s.smate and room-mate,* "those Attic nights, for they are among the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life, when with a few chosen companions we would read from some treasured volume, it may have been Tennyson or Carlyle or Christopher North's 'Noctes Ambrosianae', or we would make the hours vocal with music and song; those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the G.o.ds. . . .

On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear.

At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance, and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony.

Or, in merry mood, I have seen him take a banjo, for he could play on any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would strike some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten, he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled, while his hearers would catch the inspiration, and an old-fashioned 'walk-round' and 'negro breakdown', in which all would partic.i.p.ate, would be the inevitable result. At other times, with our musical instruments, we would sally forth into the night and 'neath moon and stars and under 'Bonny Bell window panes' -- ah, those serenades!

were there ever or will there ever be anything like them again? -- when the velvet flute notes of Lanier would fall pleasantly upon the night."

-- * Quoted from Baskervill's 'Southern Writers', p. 149.

Speaking further of his reading and of the way in which he shared his delight with others, the same writer says: "I recall how he delighted in the quaint and curious of our old literature. I remember that it was he who introduced me to that rare old book, Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy', whose name and size had frightened me as I first saw it on the shelves, but which I found to be wholly different from what its t.i.tle would indicate; and old Jeremy Taylor, 'the poet-preacher'; and Keats's 'Endymion', and 'Chatterton', the 'marvelous boy who perished in his pride.'

Yes, I first learned the story of the Monk Rowley and his wonderful poems with Lanier. And Sh.e.l.ley and Coleridge and Christopher North, and that strange, weird poem of 'The Ettrick Shepherd' of 'How Kilmeny Came Hame', and a whole sweet host and n.o.ble company, 'rare and complete'.

Yes, Tennyson, with his 'Locksley Hall' and his 'In Memoriam' and his 'Maud', which last we almost knew by heart. And then old Carlyle, with his 'Sartor Resartus', 'Hero-Worship', 'Past and Present', and his wonderful book of essays, especially the ones on Burns and Jean Paul, 'The Only'. Without a doubt it was Carlyle who first enkindled in Lanier a love of German literature and a desire to know more of the language."

His flute-playing and extensive reading did not prevent Lanier from graduating at the head of his cla.s.s in July, 1860.*

His oration was on the ambitious subject, "The Philosophy of History".

One of the most important events in his early life was the vacation following his graduation. His grandfather had bought in the mountains of East Tennessee, at Montvale Springs, a large estate, on which had been built a beautiful hotel. During the summer his children and grandchildren -- some twenty-five in all -- visited him.

Here they enjoyed the pleasures of hunting, fishing, and social life.

There were many visitors from the Southern States to this "Saratoga of the South". "What an a.s.semblage of facilities for enjoyment,"

Lanier writes, "I have up here in the mountains, -- kinsfolk, men friends, women friends, books, music, wine, hunting, fishing, billiards, tenpins, chess, eating, mosquitoless sleeping, mountain scenery, and a month of idleness." This experience, somewhat idealized, is the basis of the first part of "Tiger Lilies". Here Lanier had the opportunity of seeing at its best the life of the old South just before it vanished in the cataclysm of the Civil War.

Of that life he afterwards wrote: "Nothing can be more pitiable than that at the time when this amiable outcome of the old Southern civilization became known to the world at large, it became so through being laid bare by the sharp spasm of civil war. There was a time when all our eyes and faces were distorted with pa.s.sion; none of us either saw or showed true.

Thrice pitiable, one says again, that the fairer aspects of a social state, which though neither perfect as its violent friends preached, nor satanic as its violent enemies denounced, yet gave rise to so many beautiful relations of honor and fidelity, should have now gone to the past, to remain illuminated only by the unfavorable glare of accidentally a.s.sociated emotions in which no man can see clearly."**

-- * He was out of college the year 1858-9, being clerk in the Macon post-office.

The college records show that he received the highest marks in his senior year, but shared the honors of graduation with one whose record for the entire course was equal to his.

** 'Florida: Its Scenery, Climate, and History', p. 232.

But while Lanier was thoroughly identified with this life, he was at the time dreaming of a career which was not fostered by it -- a career in which music and poetry should be the dominating figures.

The scene in the first book of "Tiger Lilies" of a band of friends gathered on the balcony of John Sterling's house -- a palace of art reared by Lanier's imagination in the mountains of East Tennessee -- is strictly autobiographical. As they watch the sunset over the valley, the rich notes of violin, flute, and piano blend with the beauty of nature; the future of music is the theme and poetry the comment.

The various characters of that immature romance quote from Emerson, Carlyle, and Richter. As they talk upon the theme so dear to their imagination twilight comes. "And so the last note floated out over the rock, over the river, over the twilight to the west."

With something of the power of Charles Egbert Craddock, Lanier writes in the same book of the mountain scenery of that region: "Here grow the strong sweet trees, like brawny men with virgins' hearts.

Here wave the ferns, and cling the mosses and clamber the reckless vines.

Here, one's soul may climb as upon Pisgah, and see one's land of peace, seeing Christ who made all these beautiful things."

Again, it is "the trees that ever lifted their arms toward heaven, obeying the injunction of the Apostle, 'praying always', -- the great uncomplaining trees, whose life is surely the finest of all lives, since it is nothing but a continual growing and being beautiful."

He describes a moonlight night on the mountains: "All this time the grace of moonlight lay tenderly upon the rugged majesty of the mountains, as if Desdemona placed a dainty white hand upon Oth.e.l.lo's brow.

All this time the old priestly oaks lifted yearning arms toward the stars, and a mighty company of leaf-chapleted followers, with silent reverence, joined this most pathetic prayer of these dumb ministers of the hills."

After this enchanting and inspiring experience, he returned to Oglethorpe as tutor: it was to be a year of hard work, especially in Greek.

He described himself at this period as "a spare-built boy, of average height and underweight, mostly addicted to hard study, long reveries, and exhausting smokes with a German pipe."

He did much miscellaneous reading and was busy with "hints and fragments of a poetical, musical conception, -- a sort of musical drama of the peasant uprising in France, called the Jacquerie,"

which continued to interest him during the remainder of his life, but which remained unfinished at his death. If he wrote any poetry, it has not been preserved. His brother is of the opinion that his earliest efforts were Byronesque, if not Wertheresque.

"I have his first attempt at poetry," he says; "it is characteristic, it is not suggestive of swallow flights of song, but of an eaglet peering up toward the empyrean." His mind at this time turned more especially in the direction of music. He jots down in one of his note-books: "The point which I wish to settle is merely by what method shall I ascertain what I am fit for as preliminary to ascertaining G.o.d's will with reference to me; or what my inclinations are, as preliminary to ascertaining what my capacities are -- that is, what I am fit for.

I am more than all perplexed by this fact: that the prime inclination -- that is, natural bent (which I have checked, though) of my nature is to music, and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, for G.o.d gave it me, I have an extraordinary musical talent, and feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any composer.

But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?'"

But the really practical plan that formed itself in Lanier's mind was that of study in a German university, as preliminary to a professorship in an American college, which might in turn give opportunity for creative work. Young Southerners from the University of Virginia -- such as Basil Gildersleeve and Thomas R. Price -- had already begun their pilgrimages to the German universities. The situation in Lanier's case is an exact parallel to that of Longfellow at Bowdoin College, and one cannot but wonder what would have been Lanier's future if circ.u.mstances had allowed him to follow out the career here indicated.

The best account given of him at this time is that of a young Northerner who was teaching in an academy at Midway: --

"It was during the four months immediately preceding the outbreak of the war that a kind Fate brought me into contact and companionship with Sidney Lanier.

We occupied adjoining rooms at Ike Sherman's boarding-house and ate at the same table. Myself a young fellow just out of a Northern college, boasting the same number of years, conducting a boys' academy in the shadow of Oglethorpe, there was between us a bond of sympathy which led to a friendship interrupted only by the Civil War and broken only by his untimely death. Many a stroll and talk we had together among the moaning pines, beguiled by the song of the mocking-bird.

Together we called on the young ladies of Midway, -- as this little college community was known, -- together joined in serenades, in which his flute or guitar had the place of honor, played chess together, and together dreamed day-dreams which were never to be realized.

Contemporary testimony to my joy in his companionship is borne in frequent references thereto in my private correspondence of those days.

'Several students,' says a New Year's letter to a Northern friend, 'room in the hotel, as well as a young and very intellectual tutor, right back of me, which makes it very pleasant.' In a later letter: 'The tutor is a brick. I am much pleased with him and antic.i.p.ate much pleasure in his company.' As to his plans for the future: 'The tutor -- Lanier -- is studying for a professorship; is going to remain here about two years, then go to Heidelberg, Germany, remain about two years, come back, and take a professorship somewhere.'

It is needless to add that the destroying angel of war wrecked ruthlessly all these beautiful ambitions.

"Lanier's pa.s.sion for music a.s.serted itself at every opportunity.

His flute and guitar furnished recreation for himself and pleasant entertainment for the friends dropping in upon him.

As a master of the flute he was said to be, even at eighteen, without an equal in Georgia. 'Tutor Lanier,' I find myself recording at the time, 'is the finest flute-player you or I ever saw.

It is perfectly splendid -- his playing. He is far famed for it.

His flute cost fifty dollars, and he runs the notes as easily as any one on the piano. Description is inadequate.'"*

-- * "Recollections and Letters of Sidney Lanier", by Milton H. Northrup.

'Lippincott's Magazine', March, 1905.

Before he was twenty years old, then, the master pa.s.sions of Lanier's soul -- scholarship, music, and to a less degree poetry -- had a.s.serted themselves.

He had a right to look forward to a brilliant future.

Chapter III. A Confederate Soldier

From his dreams of music and poetry and from the ideal he had formed of study at Heidelberg, Lanier was awakened by the guns of Fort Sumter and by the agitation everywhere in Georgia. At Milledgeville he heard some of the great speeches made for and against secession, for, from November to January, the conflict throughout the State and especially in the capital was a severe one. He himself, like his father, hoped that the Union might be preserved, but the forces of discord could not be stayed. The people of Macon, on November 8, 1860, pa.s.sed a declaration of independence, setting forth their grievances against the North. When secession was declared in Charleston on December 1, a hundred guns were fired amidst the ringing of bells and the shouts of the people.

At night there was a procession of fifteen hundred people with banners and transparencies.* When on January 16 the Georgia convention voted to secede from the Union, Milledgeville was in "rapturous commotion".

"Tears of joy fell from many eyes, and words of congratulation were uttered by every tongue. The artillery from the capitol square thundered forth the glad tidings, and the bells of the city pealed forth the joyous welcome to the new-born Republic."

-- * Butler's 'History of Macon'.

Lanier afterwards, in "Tiger Lilies", described the war fever as it swept over the South. "An afflatus of war was breathed upon us.

Like a great wind it drew on, and blew upon men, women, and children.