A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 24

One of the pieces of advice that Lanier gave to consumptives who went to Florida for their health was, "Set out to get well, with the thorough a.s.surance that consumption is curable."

He had literally followed his own advice, and had fought death off for seven years. By the spring of 1880 he had won his fight over every obstacle that had been in his way. He had a position which, supplemented by literary work, could sustain him and his family.

By prodigious work he had overcome, to a large extent, his lack of training in both music and scholarship. The years 1878 and 1879 were his most productive. By the "Science of English Verse" and the "Marshes of Glynn"

he had won the admiration of many who had at first been doubtful about his ability. From an obscure man of the provinces out of touch with artists or musicians, he had become the idol of a large circle of friends and admirers.

During all these years he had had to fight the disease which he inherited from both sides of his family and which was accentuated by hardships during the war and the habits of a bent student.

His flute-playing had helped to mitigate the disease. Finally, however, in the summer of 1880, he entered upon the last fight with his old enemy.

Lanier had laughed in the face of death, and each new acquisition in the realms of music and poetry had been a challenge to the enemy.

In 1876 he almost succ.u.mbed, but in the mean time three years of hard work had intervened. What he had suffered from disease, even when he was at his best, may be divined by one of imagination.

He once referred to consumptives as "beyond all measure the keenest sufferers of all the stricken of this world," and he knew what he was talking about.

He wrote to Hayne, November 19, 1880: "For six months past a ghastly fever has been taking possession of me each day at about twelve M., and holding my head under the surface of indescribable distress for the next twenty hours, subsiding only enough each morning to let me get on my working-harness, but never intermitting.

A number of tests show it not to be the 'hectic' so well known in consumption; and to this day it has baffled all the skill I could find in New York, in Philadelphia, and here. I have myself been disposed to think it arose purely from the bitterness of having to spend my time in making academic lectures and boy's books -- pot-boilers all -- when a thousand songs are singing in my heart that will certainly kill me if I do not utter them soon. But I don't think this diagnosis has found favor with any practical physician; and meantime I work day after day in such suffering as is piteous to see."* With his fever at 104 degrees he wrote "Sunrise", which, though considered by many his best poem, shows an unmistakable weakness when compared with the "Marshes of Glynn".

There is a letting down of the robust imagination. He delivered his lectures on the English Novel under circ.u.mstances too harrowing to describe.

His audience did not know whether he could finish any one of them.

-- * 'Letters', p. 244.

And yet the story of his life shall not close with a pathetic account of those last sad months. Even during the last year he maintained his cheerfulness, his playfulness, his good humor, and also his buoyancy.

In August, a fourth son, Robert Sampson Lanier, was born at West Chester, and the father writes letters to his friends, announcing his joy thereat.

One is to his old friend, Richard Malcolm Johnston.

West Chester, Pa., August 28, 1880.

My dear and sweet Richard, -- It has just occurred to me that you were OBLIGED to be as sweet as you are, in order to redeem your name; for the other three Richards in history were very far from being satisfactory persons, and something had to be done.

Richard I, though a man of muscle, was but a loose sort of a swashbuckler after all; and Richard II, though handsome in person, was "redeless", and ministered much occasion to Wat Tyler and his gross following; while Richard III, though a wise man, allowed his wisdom to ferment into cunning and applied the same unto villainy.

But now comes Richard IV, to wit, you, -- and, by means of gentle loveliness and a story or two, subdues a realm which I foresee will be far more intelligent than that of Richard I, far less turbulent than that of Richard II, and far more legitimate than that of Richard III, while it will own more, and more true loving subjects than all of those three put together.

I suppose my thoughts have been carried into these details of nomenclature by your reference to my own young Samson, who, I devoutly trust with you, shall yet give many a shrewd buffet and upsetting to the Philistines.

Is it not wonderful how quickly these young fledgelings impress us with a sense of their individuality? This fellow is two weeks old to-day, and every one of us, from mother to nurse, appears to have a perfectly clear conception of his character. This conception is simply enchanting. In fact, the young man has already made himself absolutely indispensable to us, and my comrade and I wonder how we ever got along with ONLY three boys.

I rejoice that the editor of "Harper's" has discrimination enough to see the quality of your stories, and I long to see these two appear, so that you may quickly follow them with a volume. When that appears, it shall have a review that will draw three souls out of one weaver -- if this pen have not lost her cunning.

I'm sorry I can't send a very satisfactory answer to your health inquiries, as far as regards myself. The mean, pusillanimous fever which took under-hold of me two months ago is still THERE, as impregnably fixed as a c.o.c.kle-burr in a sheep's tail.

I have tried idleness, but (naturally) it won't WORK.

I do no labor except works of necessity -- such as kissing Mary, who is a more ravishing angel than ever -- and works of mercy -- such as letting off the world from any more of my poetry for a while.

But it's all one to my master the fever. I get up every day and drag around in a pitiful kind of shambling existence. I fancy it has come to be purely a go-as-you-please match between me and the disease, to see which will wear out first, and I think I will manage to take the belt, yet.

Give my love to the chestnut trees* and all the rest of your family.

-- * It is said that he wrote the 'Marshes of Glynn' under one of these.

Your letter gave us great delight. G.o.d bless you for it, my best and only Richard, as well as for all your other benefactions to

Your faithful friend, S. L.

A few days before, he had written a more serious letter to his friend, Mrs. Isabelle Dobbin, of Baltimore. The concluding words show his realization of the deeper meaning of childhood.

West Chester, August 18, 1880.

Here is come a young man so lovely in his person, and so gentle and high-born in his manners, that in the course of some three days he has managed to make himself as necessary to OUR world as the sun, moon, and stars; at any rate, these would seem quite obscured without him.

It just so happens that he is very vividly a.s.sociated with YOU; for among the few treasures we allowed ourselves to bring away from home is the photograph you gave us, and this stands in the most honorable coign of vantage in Mary's room.

You'll be glad to know that my dear Comrade is doing well. . . .

We have reason to expect a speedy sight of our dear invalid moving about her accustomed ways again. If you could see the Boy asleep by her side! The tranquillity of his slumber, and the shine of his mother's eyes thereover, seem to melt up and mysteriously absorb the great debates of the agnostics, and of science and politics, and to dissolve them into the pellucid Faith long ago reaffirmed by the Son of Man. Looking upon the child, this term seems to acquire a new meaning, as if Christ were in some sort reproduced in every infant.

In the fall he was busy again with his books for boys, -- books, it may be said, that had their origin in the stories he told his own boys.* The spirit in which he worked on these "pot-boilers"

is seen in a letter to his publisher, Mr. Charles Scribner: --

-- * Of these 'The Boy's Froissart' was published in 1878, 'The Boy's King Arthur' in 1880, 'The Boy's Mabinogion' in 1881, and 'The Boy's Percy' in 1882.

435 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Md., November 12, 1880.

My dear Mr. Scribner, -- You have certainly made a beautiful book of the "King Arthur", and I heartily congratulate you on achieving what seems to me a real marvel of bookmaking art. The binding seems even richer than that of the "Froissart"; and the type and printing leave a new impression of graciousness upon the eye with each reading.

I suspect there are few books in our language which lead a reader -- whether young or old -- on from one paragraph to another with such strong and yet quiet seduction as this. Familiar as I am with it after having digested the whole work before editing it and again reading it in proof -- some parts twice over -- I yet cannot open at any page of your volume without reading on for a while; and I have observed the same effect with other grown persons who have opened the book in my library since your package came a couple of days ago. It seems difficult to believe otherwise than that you have only to make the book well known in order to secure it a great sale, not only for the present year but for several years to come. Perhaps I may be of service in reminding you -- of what the rush of winter business might cause you to overlook -- that it would seem wise to make a much more extensive outlay in the way of special advertis.e.m.e.nt, here, than was necessary with the "Froissart". It is probably quite safe to say that a thousand persons are familiar with at least the name of Froissart to one who ever heard of Malory; and the facts (1) that this book is an English cla.s.sic written in the fifteenth century; (2) that it is the very first piece of melodious English prose ever written, though melodious English POETRY had been common for seven hundred years before, -- a fact which seems astonishing to those who are not familiar with the circ.u.mstance that all nations appear to have produced good poetry a long time before good prose, usually a long time before ANY prose; (3) that it arrays a number of the most splendid ideals of energetic manhood in all literature; and (4) that the stories which it brings together and arranges, for the first time, have furnished themes for the thought, the talk, the poems, the operas of the most civilized peoples of the earth during more than seven hundred years, -- ought to be diligently circulated.

I regretted exceedingly that I could not, with appropriateness to youthful readers, bring out in the introduction the strange melody of Malory's sentences, by reducing their movement to musical notation.

No one who has not heard it would believe the effect of some of his pa.s.sages upon the ear when read by any one who has through sympathetic study learned the rhythm in which he THOUGHT his phrases. . . .

Sincerely yours, Sidney Lanier.

In January, he began his lectures at Johns Hopkins. Who would have thought that a dying man could give expression to such vigorous ideas in such rhythmic and virile prose as are some of the pa.s.sages in the "English Novel"? There is not the intellectual strength in this book that there is in the "Science of English Verse". There is more of a tendency to go off in digressions, "to talk away across country", and the whole lacks in unity and in scientific precision.

But there are pa.s.sages in it that men will not willingly let die.

His discussion of the growth of personality, of the relations of Science, Art, Religion, and Life, of Walt Whitman and Zola, and above all, of George Eliot, are worthy of Lanier at his best. These pa.s.sages and the still more important one on the relation of art to morals are too well known to be quoted; they will be considered in another chapter dealing with Lanier's work as critic. They are mentioned here only to show the range of Lanier's interest and the alertness of his mind when his body was fast failing.

Frances E. Willard heard these lectures, and her words descriptive of them indicate that even in those days of intense suffering Lanier impressed her favorably. "It was refreshing," she says, "to listen to a professor of literature who was something more than a 'raconteur' and something different from a bibliophile, who had, indeed, risen to the level of generalization and employed the method of a philosopher. . . . [His] face [was] very pale and delicate, with finely chiseled features, dark, cl.u.s.tering hair, parted in the middle, and beard after the manner of the Italian school of art. . . .

He sits not very reposefully in his professorial armchair, and reads from dainty slips of MS. in a clear, penetrating voice full of subtlest comprehension, but painfully and often interrupted by a cough. . . . As we met for a moment, when the lecture was over, he spoke kindly of my work, evincing that sympathy of the scholar with the work of progressive philanthropy. 'We are all striving for one end,'

said Lanier, with genial, hopeful smile, 'and that is to develop and enn.o.ble the humanity of which we form a part.'"*

-- * 'Independent', Sept. 1, 1881.

Just after finishing his lectures, which were reduced from twenty to twelve out of consideration for his health, Lanier went to New York to consult his publishers about future work. The impression made by him on one of his old students is seen in this pa.s.sage: "One day I had a startling letter from Mrs. Lanier, saying that he was coming to New York on business, though he was in no condition for such an effort, and begging me, as one whom he loved, to meet him and to watch over him as best I could.

I found him at the St. Denis, and we had dinner together.

I now know how completely he deceived me as to his condition.

With the intensity and exaltation often characteristic of the consumptive, he led me to think that he was only slightly ailing, was gay and versatile as ever, insisted on going somewhere for the evening 'to hear some music,' and absolutely demanded to exercise through the evening the rights of host in a way that baffled my inexperience completely.