A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 20

"I think that it was in the winter of 1879-80 that I heard that Mr. Lanier was to conduct a cla.s.s in English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University, where I was then a Fellow. My field of work was Aesthetics and the History of Art, and as I was eagerly searching for chances to broaden and deepen my ideas, I enrolled myself in the cla.s.s.

We were not many, and I have no recollection of individuals in the group.

Neither can I distinctly recall either the topics taken up or the method followed, except that most of the hours consisted of extended readings by Mr. Lanier with all sorts of interjected remarks, often setting aside the reading altogether. That the course was a real source of intellectual profit to me I cannot doubt, but not in the form of definite information or systemized opinion.

The benefit lay in a subtle expansion of the power of appreciation and an undefinable exaltation of the instincts of taste that I have since learned were more precious than any precise increments of cold knowledge.

"What I do remember vividly is the fact that often, almost regularly, I used to wait for Mr. Lanier after the cla.s.s (which was held in the evening) and walk home with him a mile or so, sometimes walking up and down for a long time. On these occasions we doubtless talked of all manner of things. I was only a student trying to 'find himself'

in reference to the vast areas of thought. I was eager for sympathy and for inspiration. My life-work was still unchosen, but I was conscious of an intense drawing toward artistic topics -- not much with the creative impulse of the artist, but rather with the a.n.a.lytic and rational desire of the student. I was beginning to have a profound sense of the interrelations of the fine arts with each other and of all of them with the movement of history. I wanted a chance to talk out what I was thinking and to get new lights and promptings.

So in our slow strolls homeward I presume that I often babbled freely of my studies in architecture and music, and my inconsequent remarks often led Mr. Lanier to speak somewhat freely, too, of his speculations and fancies.

I now recall with wonder how he put me on such a footing of equality that I often quite forgot the difference in age and experience between us and almost felt him to be a companion student. I now see that this was the sign of two notable traits, -- the extreme native Southern courtesy that clothed him always in all his dealings with every one, and the essential youthfulness of his mind when moving among his favorite subjects. His was surely one of the finest of sympathies, delicate, sensitive, elastic, vital to the highest degree, the like of which is all too rare among men, though hardly described by the term 'feminine'. In it breathed a genuine capacity for love in the most n.o.ble sense, for he was ready to identify himself with the interests of another, to etherealize and dignify what he thought he saw in them, and thus absolutely to transform them by the alchemy of his touch. And, the more I think of it, the more I recognize that his soul was incapable of aging. . . .

This absolute freshness of heart and spirit seems to me to have been one of the highest notes of Mr. Lanier's genius. Here he was clearly allied to many a more famous poet or painter or musician."*

-- * Letter to the author from Professor Waldo S. Pratt, now of Hartford Theological Seminary.

Among American poets Lanier has the same place with regard to the teaching of English that Lowell and Longfellow have in the study of modern languages. There were, to be sure, some greater English scholars in this country during the seventies than Lanier was, just as there were more scientific students of modern languages in the time of Longfellow and Lowell.

Professors Child of Harvard, Lounsbury of Yale, March of Lafayette, Corson of Cornell, and Price of Randolph-Macon College -- afterwards of Columbia University -- have a commanding place in the development of English teaching which has become such a marked feature of educational progress since, say, 1870.

Throughout schools and colleges and universities English is now firmly established as perhaps the most important branch of study.

It is to the credit of Lanier that before much had been done in this direction he saw the great need of such work. Indeed, as early as 1868, while examining the catalogue of a Southern university, he jotted down in his note-book a suggestion that the most serious defect in the curriculum was the lack of any English training.

It is true that there had been from time immemorial chairs of belles lettres in inst.i.tutions of learning, but the department had rather to do with things in general. Even where English was studied there was a tendency to use manuals of literature rather than the works of authors themselves; and there is now a tendency to use literature as the basis for philological work. Lanier's ideas strike one as singularly balanced and sane, suggesting a compromise between the warring camps of recent years.

By reason of Lanier's sympathy with the ideals of the University, and his influence over some few students, he has a permanent place in the history of Johns Hopkins. Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman wrote to President Gilman: "It is a fine thing that such an inst.i.tution as your University should have its shrines -- and among them that of its own poet, in a certain sense canonized, and with his most ideal memory a lasting part of its a.s.sociations." The University has, indeed, kept the fame and the personality of Lanier fresh in its memory.

As one enters McCoy Hall and notices the life-size portraits of the first president and the first members of the faculty, he misses the face of Lanier; but on entering Donavan Hall, just at the end of the main hallway, he finds himself in a room dedicated to the highest uses of poetry. There are pictures of men who have delivered lectures on the Percy Turnbull and Donavan foundations, ma.n.u.script letters of distinguished American poets and critics, and the bust of Lanier, whose spirit seems to dominate the surroundings.

It is the best of the likenesses of the poet, and is the source of admiration to all visitors, as well as an inspiration to all who labor at Johns Hopkins.

Those who were never thrilled by the l.u.s.tre of his dark eyes or never heard the tones of his voice as he interpreted pa.s.sages of great poetry, may find some satisfaction in such an image.

Chapter X. The New South

While Lanier was finding his place in the larger spheres of scholarship, of music, and of poetry, he constantly returned in thought and imagination to the South. Even after 1877, when he and his family became residents of Baltimore, his correspondence with his father and brother kept him in touch with that section. He continued to read Southern newspapers and to follow with interest Southern development. In his desk he kept a regular drawer for matters pertaining to the South.

Both from his experience, which enabled him to enter with unusual sympathy into the life of the South, and from the larger point of view gained from his life in other sections, his observations on Southern life and literature are of special value. They show that he was not such a detached figure as has been frequently thought. He was of the South, and took delight in every evidence of her progress. He sometimes despaired of her future -- so much so that he urged his brother to come to Baltimore in 1879.

He had little patience with the prevailing type of political leader at the time when the Silver Bill was pa.s.sed, so he wrote, June 8, 1879, to Clifford Lanier: --

"I cannot contemplate with any patience your stay in the South.

In my soberest moments I can perceive no outlook for that land.

Our representatives in Congress have acted with such consummate unwisdom that one may say we have no future there. Mr. ---- and Mr. ---- (as precious a pair of rascals as ever wrought upon the ignorance of a country) have disgusted all thoughtful men of whatever party; while the shuffling of our better men on the question of public honesty, their folly in allowing such people as Blaine and Conkling to taunt them into cheap hurlings back of defiance (as the silly Southern newspapers term it), their inconceivable mistake in permitting the stalwart Republicans to arrange all the issues of the campaign and to bring on the battle, not only whenever they want it, but on whatever ground they choose, instead of manfully holding before the people the real issues of the time, -- the tariff, the prodigious abuses cl.u.s.tered about the capitol at Washington, the restriction of granting powers in Congress, the non-interference theory of government, -- all these things have completely obscured the admitted good intentions of Morgan and Lamar and their fellows, and have entirely alienated the feelings of men who at first were quite won over to them. The present extra session has been from the beginning a piece of absurdity such as the world probably never saw before. Our men are such mere politicians, that they have never yet discovered -- what the least thoughtful statesmanship ought to have perceived at the close of our war -- that the belief in the sacredness and greatness of the American Union among the millions of the North and of the great Northwest is really the principle which conquered us. As soon as we invaded the North and arrayed this sentiment in arms against us, our swift destruction followed. But how soon they have forgotten Gettysburg!

That the presence of United States troops at the polls is an abuse no sober man will deny; but to attempt to remedy it at this time, when the war is so lately over, when the North is naturally sensitive as to securing the hard-won results of it, when, consequently, every squeak of a penny whistle is easily interpreted into a rebel yell by the artful devices of Mr. Blaine and his crew, -- this was simply to invade the North again as we did in '64.

And we have met precisely another Gettysburg. The whole community is uneasy as to the silver bill and the illimitable folly of the greenbackers; business men anxiously await the adjournment of Congress, that they may be able to lay their plans with some sense of security against a complete reversal of monetary conditions by some silly legislation; and I do not believe that there is a quiet man in the Republic to whom the whole political caucus at Washington is not a shame and a sorrow.

"And thus, as I said, it really seems as if any prosperity at the South must come long after your time and mine. Our people have failed to perceive the deeper movements under-running the times; they lie wholly off, out of the stream of thought, and whirl their poor old dead leaves of recollection round and round, in a piteous eddy that has all the wear and tear of motion without any of the rewards of progress. By the best information I can get, the country is substantially poorer now than when the war closed, and Southern securities have become simply a catchword.

The looseness of thought among our people, the unspeakable rascality of corporations like M---- -- how long is it going to take us to remedy these things? Whatever is to be done, you and I can do our part of it far better here than there. Come away."

The very next year, however, he wrote his essay on the New South, showing a far more hopeful view. After reading for two years the newspapers of Georgia, with a view to understanding the changed conditions in his native State, Lanier published in October, 1880, an article on that subject in "Scribner's Magazine".* To one who reads it with the expectation of getting an idea of the forces that have made the New South, it is sadly disappointing; for he is told at once that the New South means small farming, and the article deals largely with the increase in the number of small farms and a consequent diversity of products. Insignificant as such a study may seem, it is noteworthy as showing Lanier's interest in practical affairs.

It has been seen that ever since the war he had been interested in the redemption of the agricultural life of the South, that this was the subject of his first important poem.

Since the writing of "Corn" and of the earlier dialect poems, he had frequently commented on the future of the South as to be determined largely by an improved agricultural system.

To him the best evidence of the enduring character of the new civilization was a democracy, growing out of a vital revolution in the farming economy of the South. "The great rise of the small farmer in the Southern States during the last twenty years," he says, "becomes the notable circ.u.mstance of the period, in comparison with which noisier events signify nothing." The hero of the sketch is a small farmer "who commenced work after the war with his own hands, not a dollar in his pocket, and now owns his plantation, has it well stocked, no mortgage or debt of any kind on it, and a little money to lend."

Lanier clips from his newspaper files pa.s.sages indicating the constantly increasing diversity of crops. The reader is carried into the country fairs and along the roads and through plantations by a man who had a realistic sense of what was going on in the whole State of Georgia. "The last few years," he says, "have witnessed a very decided improvement in Georgia farming: moon-planting and other vulgar superst.i.tions are exploding, the intelligent farmer is deriving more a.s.sistance from the philosopher, the naturalist, and the chemist, and he who is succeeding best is he who has thirty or forty cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry of his own raising, together with good-sized barns and meat-houses, filled from his own fields, instead of from the West."

-- * 'Retrospects and Prospects', pp. 104-135.

Lanier saw that out of this growth in small farming -- this agricultural prosperity -- would come changes of profound significance.

He saw an intimate relation between politics, social life, morality, art, on the one hand, and the bread-giver earth on the other.

"One has only to remember, particularly here in America, whatever crop we hope to reap in the future, -- whether it be a crop of poems, of paintings, of symphonies, of const.i.tutional safeguards, of virtuous behaviors, of religious exaltation, -- we have got to bring it out of the ground with palpable plows and with plain farmer's forethought, in order to see that a vital revolution in the farming economy of the South, if it is actually occurring, is necessarily carrying with it all future Southern politics and Southern relations and Southern art, and that, therefore, such an agricultural change is the one substantial fact upon which any really new South can be predicated." It has been seen that Lanier underrated the development of the manufacturing interests in the South; and yet who does not see that with all the industrial prosperity of this section during the last twenty years, the most crying need now is the rehabilitation of the South's agricultural life? The present aggressive movement in the direction of the improvement of the rural schools is a confirmation of Lanier's vision of "the village library, the neighborhood farmers'-club, the amateur Thespian Society, the improvement of the public schools, the village orchestra, all manner of betterments and gentilities and openings out into the universe."

He saw, too, the effect on the negro of his becoming a landowner, and the consequent obliteration of the color line in politics.

He cites from his newspaper clippings evidences of the increasing prosperity of the negro race, -- for instance, how "at the Atlanta University for colored people, which is endowed by the State, the progress of the pupils, the clearness of their recitation, their excellent behavior, and the remarkable neatness of their schoolrooms, altogether convince 'your committee that the colored race are capable of receiving the education usually given at such inst.i.tutions.'" He sees in the appearance of the negro as a small farmer a transition to the point in which "his interests, his hopes, and consequently his politics become identical with those of all other small farmers, whether white or black."

Much as has been accomplished, however, he looks forward with expectancy to a still greater future: "Everywhere the huge and gentle slopes kneel and pray for vineyards, for cornfields, for cottages, for spires to rise up from beyond the oak-groves. It is a land where there is never a day of summer or of winter when a man cannot do a full day's work in the open field; all the products meet there, as at nature's own agricultural fair. . . . It is because these blissful ranges are still clamorous for human friendship; it is because many of them are actually virgin to plow, pillar, axe, or mill-wheel, while others have known only the insulting and mean cultivation of the early immigrants who scratched the surface for cotton a year or two, then carelessly abandoned all to sedge and sa.s.safras, and sauntered on toward Texas: it is thus that these lands are with sadder significance than that of small farming, also a New South."

In order to understand the development of the New South, here briefly indicated, and in order to appreciate what Lanier really accomplished, two types of Southerners must be clearly distinguished.

After the war the conservative Southerner -- ranging all the way from the fiery Bourbon to the strong and worthy protagonist of the old order -- failed to understand the meaning of defeat. He interpreted the conflict as the triumph of brute force, -- sheer material prosperity, -- and comforted himself with the thought that many of the n.o.blest causes had gone down in defeat. He threshed over the arguments of Calhoun with regard to the Const.i.tution of 1787. He quoted Scripture in defense of slavery, or tried to continue slavery -- in spirit, if not in name. He saw no hope for the negro, and looked for his speedy deterioration under freedom. Compelled by force of circ.u.mstances to acknowledge the supremacy of the Federal government, he was still dominated by the ideas of separation. He saw no future for the nation. "This once fair temple of liberty," one of them said, -- "rent from the bottom, desecrated by the orgies of a half-mad crew of fanatics and fools, knaves, negroes, and Jacobins, abandoned wholly by its original worshipers -- stands as Babel did of old, a melancholy monument of the frustrate hopes and heaven-aspiring ambition of its builders."

With him the pa.s.sing away of the age of chivalry was as serious a matter as it was to Burke. He magnified the life before the war as the most glorious in the history of the world. He saw none of its defects; he resented criticism, either by Northerners or by his own people.

He opposed the public school system, as "Yankeeish and infidel", stoutly championing the system of education which had prevailed under the old order. He recognized no standards. "We fearlessly a.s.sert,"

said one of them, speaking of the most distinguished of Southern universities, "that in this university, the standard is higher, the education more thorough, and the work done by both teachers and students is far greater, than in Princeton, or Yale, or Harvard, or in any other Northern college or university." If he ventured into the field of literary criticism, he maintained that the Old South had a literature equal to that of New England; if he had doubts upon that subject, he looked forward to a time not far off when the Southern cause would find monumental expression in a commanding literature. If he thought on theological or philosophical subjects, he thought in terms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The watchwords of modern life were so many red flags to him, -- science the enemy of religion, German philosophy a denial of the depravity of man, democracy the product of French infidelity and of false humanitarianism, industrial prosperity the inveterate foe of the graces of life.

To use Lanier's words, he "failed to perceive the deeper movements underrunning the times." Defeated in a long war and inheriting the provincialism and sensitiveness of a feudal order, he remained proud in his isolation. He went to work with a stubborn and unconquered spirit, with the idea that sometime in the future all the principles for which he had stood would triumph.

Into the hands of such men the reconstruction governments played.

Worse even than the effect of excessive taxation, misgovernment, and despair produced in the minds of the people, was the permanent effect produced on the Southern mind. The prophecies that had been made with regard to the triumph of despotism seemed to be fulfilled; every contention that had been made in 1861 with regard to the dangers of Federal usurpation seemed justified in the acts of the government. The political equality of the negro, guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, and the attempt to give him social equality, were stubborn facts which seemed to overthrow the more liberal ideas of Lincoln and of those Southern leaders who after the war hoped that the magnanimity of the North would be equal to the great task ahead of the nation. The conservative leaders were invested with a dignity that recalls the popularity of Burke when his predictions with regard to the French Revolution were realized.

During all the years that have intervened since reconstruction days, the conservative has had as a resource for leadership his harking back to those days. The demagogue and the reactionary -- enemies of the children of light -- have always been able to inflame the populace with appeals to the memories and issues of the past.

Such men have forgot nothing and learned nothing.*

-- * I have here sketched a composite picture; it is like no one man, but the type is recognizable. It is the result of a study of the magazines, newspapers, and biographies of the period from 1865 to 1880.

The type is not extinct.

In striking contrast with the conservative Southerner has been the progressive Southerner, a type ranging all the way from the unwise and unreasonable reformer to the well-balanced and sympathetic worker, who has endeavored to make the transition from the old order to the new a normal and healthy one. If the qualities which have made Lanier's progress possible are recalled, -- his lack of prejudice, his inexhaustible energy, the alertness and modernness of his mind, his ability to find joy in constructive work, his adoption of the national point of view, -- then the reader may see the elements that have made possible a New South. The same spirit applied to industry, to education, to religion, is now seen everywhere. The term "New South", used by Lanier and others, is meant in no way as a reproach to the Old South, -- it is simply the recognition of a changed social life due to one of the greatest catastrophes in history. In the early eighties it was employed by four Georgians, who had a right to use it, -- Benjamin H. Hill, Atticus G. Haygood, Henry Grady, and Sidney Lanier.

Georgia was the Southern State that led in this progressive work.

Here the readjustment came sooner, by reason of the fact that a more democratic people lived there, and also that the burdens of reconstruction were less severe. Virginia gave to the nation at the time of the foundation of the republic a group of statesmen rarely excelled in the history of the world. South Carolina statesmen led in the movement towards secession, and her people were the first to make an aggressive movement in that direction. The leadership of the New South must be found in a group of far-seeing, liberal-minded, aggressive Georgians.

The action of the State legislature in repealing the ordinance of secession and accepting the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves within one minute, was characteristic of her later work. In 1866, Alexander H. Stephens and Benjamin H. Hill -- one before the legislature of Georgia and the other before Tammany Hall -- sounded the note of patience, of nationalism, and of hope.

"There was a South of slavery and secession," said the latter; "that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom; that South, thank G.o.d! is living, breathing, growing every hour."

These words became the text of the now celebrated address of another Georgian who twenty years later, before the New England Club of New York, gave notable expression to his own ideals and those who had wrought with him in the genuine reconstruction of the South. Henry Grady, as editor of the Atlanta "Const.i.tution", was, after 1876, an exponent of the idea that the future of the South lay not primarily in politics, but in an industrial order which should be the basis of a more enduring civilization.

At his advice, as Joel Chandler Harris says, everybody began to take a day off from politics occasionally and devote themselves to the upbuilding of the resources of the State. Another Georgian, the late John B. Gordon, united with Grady and others in saying "a bold and manly word in behalf of the American Union in the ear of the South, and a bold and manly word in behalf of the South in the ear of the North." While recounting the last days of the Confederacy, he awoke in Northern hearts an admiration for Lee and in Southern hearts an admiration for Grant, and in all an aspiration towards nationalism.

Another Georgian, Atticus G. Haygood, -- president of Emory College and afterwards bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, -- voiced the sentiment of the liberal South with regard to the negro, in a book whose t.i.tle, "Our Brother in Black", sufficiently indicates the spirit in which it was written. In a Thanksgiving sermon on the New South, delivered in 1881, he criticised severely the croakers and the demagogues who were endeavoring to mislead the people, and reviewed with sympathy the great progress that had been made since the war. He pleads guilty to the charge of having new light and is glad of it. He points out with keen insight the illiteracy of the ma.s.ses of the Southern people and the lack of educational facilities.

A movement for the development of a public school system in the South was led by J. L. M. Curry, a Confederate soldier of Georgia stock.

He became an evangelist in the crusade for public education, announcing before State legislatures the principle upon which a true democratic order might be established. "I am not afraid of the educated ma.s.ses," he said, in an address before the Georgia legislature; "I would rather trust the ma.s.ses than king, priest, aristocracy, or established church.

No nation can realize its full possibility unless it builds upon the education of the whole people."

By 1885 the forces that have here been briefly sketched were well under way throughout the South. Factories were prospering, farm products were becoming more diversified, more farmers owned their own places, a public school system was firmly established in all the leading cities and towns, colleges and universities -- some of the strongest dating from the period just after the war -- were enabled to increase their endowments and to modernize their work, the national spirit was growing, and a more liberal view of religion was being maintained.

A day of hope, of freedom, of progress, had dawned.

It was natural that along with all these changes, and indeed antic.i.p.ating some of them, there should arise a group of Southern writers.

Indeed, immediately after the war there was a marked tendency in the direction of literary work -- "an avalanche of literature in a devastated country." Magazines were started and books were published in abundance. The literary activity was due, no doubt, in the first place, to the poverty of men and women: some who would have looked down upon literature as a profession before the war were now eager to do anything to keep starvation from the door. Furthermore, there was a great desire among some people to have the Southern side of the war well represented before the civilized world. Hence arose innumerable biographies, histories, and historical novels, and hence the demand for Southern text-books.