A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 22

But Lanier's service to the South and to Southern literature is greater than the recognition of any one writer or the encouragement given to any one of them. All of them were cheered in their work by his heroic life; not one but looked to him as a leader.

His life, which in a large sense belongs to the nation, belongs in a peculiar sense to the South. He was Southern by birth, temperament, and experience. He knew the South, -- he had traveled from San Antonio to Jacksonville, and from Baltimore to Mobile Bay.

Its scenery was the background of his poetry, -- the marsh, the mountain, the seash.o.r.e, the forest, the birds and flowers of the South stirred his imagination. He knew personally many of the leaders of the Confederacy, as well as the men who made possible the New South. He was heir to all the life of the past. His chivalry, his fine grace of manners, his generosity and his enthusiasm were all Southern traits; and the work that he has left is in a peculiar sense the product of a genius influenced by that civilization. All these things render him singularly precious to Southerners of the present generation.

He had qualities of mind and ideals of life, however, which have been too rare in his native section. He was a severe critic of some phases of its life.

From this standpoint his career and his personality should never lose their influence in the South. There had been men and women who had loved music; but Lanier was the first Southerner to appreciate adequately its significance in the modern world, and to feel the inspiration of the most recent composers.

There had been some fine things done in literature; but he was the first to realize the transcendent dignity and worth of the poet and his work.

Literature had been a pastime, a source of recreation for men; to him the study of it was a pa.s.sion, and the creation of it the highest vocation of man. Compared with other writers of the New South, Lanier was a man of broader culture and of finer scholarship. He did not have the power to create character as some of the writers of fiction, but he was a far better representative of the man of letters.

The key to his intellectual life may be found in the fact that he read Wordsworth and Keats rather than Scott, George Eliot rather than Thackeray, German literature as well as French. He was national rather than provincial, open-minded not prejudiced, modern and not mediaeval. His characteristics -- to be still further noted in the succeeding chapter -- are all in direct contrast with those of the conservative Southerner.

There have been other Southerners -- far more than some men have thought -- who have had his spirit, and have worked with heroism towards the accomplishment of enduring results. There have been none, however, who have wrought out in their lives and expressed in their writings higher ideals. He therefore makes his appeal to every man who is to-day working for the betterment of industrial, educational, and literary conditions in the South. There will never be a time when such men will not look to him as the man of letters who, after the war, struck out along lines which meant most in the intellectual awakening of this section.

He was a pioneer worker in building up what he liked to speak of as the New South: --

The South whose gaze is cast No more upon the past, But whose bright eyes the skies of promise sweep, Whose feet in paths of progress swiftly leap; And whose fresh thoughts, like cheerful rivers, run Through odorous ways to meet the morning sun!

Chapter XI. Characteristics and Ideas

Perhaps the best single description of Lanier is that by his friend H. Clay Wysham: "His eye, of bluish gray, was more spiritual than dreamy -- except when he was suddenly aroused, and then it a.s.sumed a hawk-like fierceness. The transparent delicacy of his skin and complexion pleased the eye, and his fine-textured hair, which was soft and almost straight and of a light-brown color, was combed behind the ear in Southern style. His long beard, which was wavy and pointed, had even at an early age begun to show signs of turning gray.

His nose was aquiline, his bearing was distinguished, and his manners were stamped with a high breeding that befitted the 'Cavalier' lineage.

His hands were delicate and white, by no means thin, and the fingers tapering.

His gestures were not many, but swift, graceful, and expressive; the tone of his voice was low; his figure was willowy and lithe; and in stature he seemed tall, but in reality he was a little below six feet -- withal there was a native knightly grace which marked his every movement."*

If to this be added the words of Dr. Gilman as to the impression he produced on people, the picture may be complete: "The appearance of Lanier was striking. There was nothing eccentric or odd about him, but his words, manners, ways of speech, were distinguished.

I have heard a lady say that if he took his place in a crowded horse-car, an exhilarating atmosphere seemed to be introduced by his breezy ways."**

-- * 'Independent', November 18, 1897.

** 'South Atlantic Quarterly', April, 1905.

He was mindful of the conventionalities of life. He had nothing of the Bohemian in his looks, his manners, or his temperament.

Poor though he was, he was scrupulous with regard to dress.

He was a hard worker, but when his health permitted, he was thoroughly mindful of duties that devolved upon him as a member of society.

He wrote to Charlotte Cushman: "For I am surely going to find you, at one place or t' other, -- provided heaven shall send me so much fortune in the selling of a poem or two as will make the price of a new dress coat.

Alas, with what unspeakable tender care I would have brushed this present garment of mine in days gone by, if I had dreamed that the time would come when so great a thing as a visit to YOU might hang upon the little length of its nap! Behold, it is not only in man's breast that pathos lies, and the very coat lapel that covers it may be a tragedy." Professor Gildersleeve gives a characteristic incident: "I remember he came to a dinner given in his honor, fresh from a lecture at the Peabody, in a morning suit and with chalk on his fingers.

Came thus, not because he was unmindful of conventionalities. He was as mindful of them as Browning, -- came thus because he had to come thus.

There was no time to dress. The poor chalk-fingered poet was miserable the whole evening, hardly roused himself when the talk fell on Blake, and when we took a walk together the next day he made his moan to me about it.

A seraph with chalk on his fingers. Somehow, that little incident seems to me an epitome of his life, though I have mentioned it only to show how busy he was."*

-- * Letter to the author.

He was a welcome guest in many homes. "He had the most gentle, refined, sweet, lovely manners, I think I may say, of any man I ever met,"

says Charles Heber Clarke. A letter from the daughter of the late John Foster Kirk, former editor of "Lippincott's Magazine", gives an impression of Lanier in the homes of his friends: --

"My first sight of Lanier was when he came into the room with my father at dusk one evening (they had been walking through the Wissahickon woods and came back to tea), and his presence seemed something beautiful in the room, even more from his manner than from his appearance, gracious and fine as that was. He always seemed to me to stand for chivalry as well as poetry, and his goodness was something you felt at once and never forgot.

He was at our house one day with his flute. He and my father were going to Mr. Robert P. Morton's, in Germantown, to play together.

We happened to speak of the fact that my sister, then a little girl, though absolutely without ear for music, had a curious delight in listening to it. Mr. Lanier said he would like to play to her; we called her in from the yard where she was playing, and he played some of his own music, explaining to her first what he thought of when he wrote it, describing to her the brook in its course, and other things in nature. He could easily have found a more appreciative listener, but not a happier one.

"I remember his eagerness about all forms of knowledge and expression.

We went with him to the Centennial, where we were full of excitement about pictures, though none of us knew much about them.

I remember the pleasure Mr. Lanier had in the sense of color and splendor given him by the big Hans Makart ('Caterina Cornaro') and discussions of that and the English and Spanish pictures. Intellectually he seemed to me not so much to have arrived as to be on the way, -- with a beautiful fervor and eagerness about things, as if he had never had all that he longed for in books and study and thought."*

-- * Letter to the author.

Lanier had remarkable power for making and keeping friends.

This has already been seen in his relations to the Peac.o.c.ks, Charlotte Cushman, and Bayard Taylor. In the large circle of friends among whom he moved in Baltimore may be seen further attestation of this point. People did not pity him, nor did they dole out charity to him.

They did not reverence him merely because he was a poet, a teacher, or a musician of note; they were drawn to him by strong personal ties -- he had magnetism. The little informal notes that he wrote to them, or the longer letters he wrote in absence, or the conversations that he had with them, sometimes till far into the night, are cherished as among the most sacred memories of their lives.

He knew how to endure human weakness and to inspire human efforts.

One of the friends who knew him best has recorded in a tender poem what Lanier meant to those who were intimate with him: --

"That love of man for man, That joyed in all sweet possibilities: that faith Which hallowed love and life. . . .

So he, Heaven-taught in his large-heartedness, Smiled with his spirit's eyes athwart the veil That human loves too oft keep closely drawn. . . .

So hearts leaped up to breathe his freer atmosphere, And eyes smiled truer for his radiance clear, And souls grew loftier where his teachings fell, And all gave love. . . .

Aye, the patience and the smile Which glossed his pain; the courtesy; The sweet quaint thoughts which gave his poems birth."*

-- * Poem by Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, read at the presentation of the Lanier bust to Johns Hopkins University.

She speaks, too, of "his winning tenderness with souls perplexed"; "his eagerness for lofty converse"; "his oneness with all master-minds"; "his thirst for lore"; "his grat.i.tude for that the Lord had made the earth so good!"

In the house of this same friend, Mme. Blanc (Th. Bentzon) first realized the dead poet's personality; she there caught something of the afterglow of his presence: --

"The morning that I spent with Mrs. Turnbull was almost as interesting as an interview with Sidney Lanier himself would have been, so fully does his memory live in that most aesthetic interior, where poetry and music are held in perpetual honor, and where domestic life has all the beauty of a work of art. The hero of Mrs. Turnbull's novel, 'A Catholic Man', is none other than Sidney Lanier, and that scrupulously faithful presentment of a 'universal man'

was of the greatest a.s.sistance to me.

"The beautiful mansion on Park Avenue has almost the character of a temple, where nothing profane or vulgar is allowed admission. Pa.s.sing through the reception rooms, I was introduced into a private parlor out of which opened a music-room, from whose threshold I recognized the man whom I had come to seek, -- the poet himself, as he was represented in his latest years, by the German sculptor, Ephraim Keyser. . . .

By way of contrast, Mrs. Turnbull exhibits a glorified Lanier, crowned with his ultimate immortality. He appears in a symbolic picture, ordered by this American art patroness, from the Italian painter Gatti, where are grouped all the great geniuses of the past, present, and future, -- the latter emerging vaguely from the mists of the distance, and including a large number of women. This innumerable mult.i.tude of the elite of all ages encircles a mountain which is dominated by Jesus Christ; and from this figure of the Christ emanates the light which Mrs. Turnbull has caused to be shed upon the figures of the picture, with more or less brilliancy according to her own preferences.

Designating a tall, draped figure who walks in the front rank of the poets, the lady said to me: 'This is Sidney Lanier;' and when I, despite my admiration for the poet of the marshes, ventured to offer a few modest suggestions, she went on to develop the thesis, that what exalts a man is less what he has done than what he has aspired to do."

"Mrs. Turnbull had too much tact to multiply her personal anecdotes of Sidney Lanier, but she pictured him to me as he loved to sit by the fireside, where he had always his own special place; coming, of an evening, unannounced, into the room where we then were, rising like a phantom beside her husband and herself, in the hour between daylight and dark, and pouring forth those profound, unexpected, and delightful things which seem to belong to him alone, which characterize his correspondence also, and all his literary remains."*

-- * 'Revue des Deux Mondes', 1898. Translated for 'Littell's Living Age', May 14 and May 21, 1898.

The quality of affection in Lanier reached its climax in his home life.

There he was seen and known at his best. An early aspiration of his was "to show that the artist-life is not necessarily a Bohemian life, but that it may coincide with and BE the home-life." Such poems as "Baby Charley" and "Hard Times in Elfland", and the story of "Bob"

reveal the playful and affectionate father, while "My Springs", "In Absence", "Laus Mariae" and many published and unpublished letters are but variations of the oft-recurring theme: --

When life's all love, 't is life: aught else, 't is naught.

A letter written to his wife will serve to give the spirit which prevailed in the home: --

January 1, 1875.