A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 3

Its sound mingled with the serenity of the church organs and arose with the earnest words of preachers praying for guidance in the matter.

It sighed in the half-breathed words of sweethearts, conditioning impatient lovers with war services. It thundered splendidly in the impa.s.sioned appeals of orators to the people.

It whistled through the streets, it stole into the firesides, it clinked gla.s.ses in bar-rooms, it lifted the gray hairs of our wise men in conventions, it thrilled through the lectures in college halls, it rustled the thumbed book leaves of the schoolrooms. This wind blew upon all vanes of all the churches of the country and turned them one way, -- toward war. It blew, and shook out as if by magic a flag whose device was unknown to soldier or sailor before, but whose every flap and flutter made the blood bound in our veins. . . . It arrayed the sanct.i.ty of a righteous cause in the brilliant trappings of military display. . . .

It offered tests to all allegiances and loyalties, -- of church, of state; of private loves, of public devotion; of personal consanguinity, of social ties."*

-- * 'Tiger Lilies', p. 119.

It does not fall within the province of this book to discuss the issues that led to the Civil War, -- the questions of secession and slavery.

In 1861 they had ceased to be debated in the halls of Congress; all the Southern people were being merged into a unit.

Ardent opponents of secession, like Alexander H. Stephens, threw in their lot with the new Confederacy; States like Virginia, which hesitated to disrupt a Union with which they had had so much to do, were as enthusiastic as the more ardent Southern States; old men vied with young men in their military ardor.

Scotch-Irish opponents of slavery marched side by side with the Cavaliers, to whom slavery was the very corner-stone of a feudal aristocracy.

The fact is, the whole South was animated by a pa.s.sion for war.

To young men like Lanier the Southern cause was one of liberty, of resistance to despotism and fanaticism, of the protection of homes.

He who would understand their point of view must read such war lyrics as "Maryland, My Maryland" and Timrod's "Ethnogenesis", or enter sympathetically into the lives of that youthful band of Confederate soldiers all of whom were afterwards to become distinguished in the field of letters, -- Timrod, Hayne, Cable, Maurice Thompson, and Lanier.

It was not given to many men on either side to divine the true issues of the war. Lanier afterwards rejoiced in the overthrow of slavery, and knew that it was the belief in the soundness and greatness of the American Union among the millions of the North and of the great Northwest which really conquered the South. "As soon as we invaded the North," he said, "and arrayed this sentiment against us, our swift destruction followed."

In a note-book of 1867 he pointed out with touches of humor the folly of many of the ideas formerly held by himself and other Southerners.

He is writing an essay on the Devil's Bombs, "some half-dozen of which were exploded between the years 1861 and 1865 over the Southern portion of North America with widespread and somewhat sad results: namely, a million of men slain and maimed; a million of widows and orphans created; several billions of money destroyed; several hundred thousand of ignorant schoolboys who could not study on account of the noise made by the sh.e.l.ls; and a large miscellaneous ma.s.s of poverty, starvation, recklessness, and ruin precipitated so suddenly upon the country that many were buried beneath it beyond hope of being extricated."

This universal tragedy he attributes in part to the conceit of the Southern people. He himself became "convinced of his ability to whip at least five Yankees. The author does not know now and did not then, by what course of reasoning he arrived at this said conviction; in the best of the author's judgment he did not reason it out at all, rather absorbed it, from the press of surrounding similar convictions.

The author, however, was also confident, not only that he personally could whip five Yankees, but ANY Southern boy could do it.

The whole South was satisfied it could whip five Norths. The newspapers said we could do it; the preachers p.r.o.nounced anathemas against the man that didn't believe we could do it; our old men said at the street corners, if they were young they could do it, and by the Eternal, they believed they could do it anyhow (whereat great applause and 'Hurrah for ole Harris!'); the young men said they'd be blanked if they couldn't do it, and the young ladies said they wouldn't marry a man who couldn't do it.

This arrogant perpetual invitation to draw and come on, this idea which possessed the whole section, which originated no one knows when, grew no one knows how, was a devil's own bombsh.e.l.l, the fuse of which sparkled when Mr. Brooks struck Mr. Sumner upon the head with a cane.

"Of course we laugh at it NOW, -- laugh in the hope that our neighbors will attribute the redness of our cheeks to that and not to our shame. . . .

The conceit of an individual is ridiculous because it is powerless. . . .

The conceit of a whole people is terrible, it is a devil's bombsh.e.l.l, surcharged with death, plethoric with all foul despairs and disasters."

So Lanier spoke in the sober maturity of his manhood of the great tragedy through which he with his section pa.s.sed. But during the war there was but one idea in his mind, and that was that he might take part in the establishment of a Confederacy. He dreamed with his people of a nation that might be the embodiment of all that was fine in government and in society, that the "new Confederacy was to enter upon an era of prosperity such as no other nation, ancient or modern, had ever enjoyed, and that the city of Macon, his birthplace and home, was to become a great art centre." In this hope, soon after finishing the year's work at Oglethorpe,* he volunteered for service and went to Virginia to join the Macon Volunteers, who had left Georgia early in April -- the first company that went out of the State to Virginia.

It was an old company that had won distinction in the Mexican War, and was the special pride of the city of Macon. The company was stationed for several months near Norfolk, where Lanier experienced some of the joys of city life in those early days when war was largely a picnic -- a holiday time it was -- "the gay days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sails on the James River."

-- * The faculty and students almost to a man enlisted in the army; and the college buildings were afterwards used for barracks and hospitals.

President Talmage lost his mind by reason of the conflict between his affection for his native and for his adopted section.

In the main, however, they played "Marsh-Divers and Meadow-Crakes", their princ.i.p.al duties being to picket the beach, and their "pleasures and sweet rewards-of-toil consisting in agues which played dice with our bones, and blue-ma.s.s pills that played the deuce with our livers."*

The company was sent in 1862 to Wilmington, N.C., where they experienced a pleasant change in the style of fever, "indulging for two or three months,"

continues Lanier, "in what are called the 'dry shakes of the sand hills', a sort of brilliant, tremolo movement, brilliantly executed upon 'that pan-pipe, man', by an invisible but very powerful performer."

From here, where they were engaged in building Fort Fisher, they were called to Drewry's Bluff; and from there to the Chickahominy, partic.i.p.ating in the seven days' fighting around Richmond. Just before the battle of Malvern Hill they marched all night through drenching rain, over torn and swampy roads. These were the only important battles in which Lanier took part. Soon afterwards he was in a little gunboat fight or two on the south bank of the James River. On August 26 they were sent to Petersburg to rest. While there he enjoyed the use of the city library.

He and his brother and two friends were transferred to the signal corps, which was considered at that time the most efficient in the Southern army, and, becoming soon proficient in the system, attracted the attention of the commanding officer, who formed them into a mounted field squad and attached them to the staff of Major-General French.

"Often Lanier and a friend," says the latter officer, "would come to my quarters and pa.s.s the evenings with us, where the 'alarums of war' were lost in the soft notes of their flutes, for Lanier was an excellent musician."** Lanier tells in a letter written to his father at that time of four Georgia privates with one general, six captains, and one lieutenant, serenading the city.

-- * The account of Lanier's war experiences is based on the poet's letters to Northrup, the reminiscences of Clifford Lanier, Lanier's unpublished letters to his father, 'Tiger Lilies', and the 'Official Records of the War of the Rebellion'.

** 'A History of Two Wars', by Samuel G. French.

One of the most precious memories of Lanier's war career was that of General Lee attending religious services in Petersburg.

The height of every Confederate soldier's ambition was to get a glimpse of the beloved general, who was the idol of his soldiers.

Lanier reverenced him as one of the greatest of men. In later years he gave his ideal of what a great musician ought to be. "A great artist,"

he said, "should have the sensibility and expressive genius of Schumann, the calm grandeur of Lee, and the human breadth of Shakespeare, all in one."

In his "Confederate Memorial Address" he speaks of Lee as "stately in victory, stately in defeat; stately among the cannon, stately among the books; stately in solitude, stately in society; stately in form, in soul, in character, and in action." Fortunately he had the chance to see him under specially interesting circ.u.mstances. He afterwards related the incident to the Confederate veterans in Macon: "The last time that I saw with mortal eyes -- for, with spiritual eyes, many, many times have I contemplated him since -- the scene was so beautiful, the surroundings were so rare, nay, time and circ.u.mstance did so fitly frame him, as it were, that I think the picture should not be lost. . . .

It was at fateful Petersburg, on one glorious Sunday morning, whilst the armies of Grant and Butler were investing our last stronghold there. It had been announced, to those who happened to be stationed in the neighborhood of General Lee's headquarters, that religious services would be conducted on that morning by Major-General Pendleton. At the appointed time I strolled over to Dunn's Hill, where General Lee's tent was pitched, and found General Pendleton ensconced under a magnificent tree, and a small party of soldiers, with a few ladies from the dwelling near by, collected about him. In a few moments, General Lee appeared with his camp chair, and sat down. The services began.

That terrible battery, Number Five, was firing, very slowly, each report of the great guns making the otherwise profound silence still more profound. I sat down on the gra.s.s and gazed, with such reverence as I had never given to mortal man before, upon the grand face of General Lee. He had been greatly fatigued by loss of sleep.

"As the sermon progressed, and the immortal words of Christian doctrine came to our hearts and comforted us, sweet influences born of the liberal sunlight which lay warm upon the gra.s.s, of the moving leaves and trembling flowers, seemed to steal over the General's soul. Presently his eyelids gradually closed, and he fell gently asleep. Not a muscle of him stirred, not a nerve of his grand countenance twitched; there was no drooping of the head, nor bowing of the figure. . . .

As he slumbered so, sitting erect, with arms folded upon his chest, in an att.i.tude of majestic repose, such as I never saw a.s.sumed by mortal man before; as the large and comfortable word fell from the preacher's lips; as the lazy cannon of the enemy anon hurled a screaming sh.e.l.l to within a few hundred yards of where we sat, as finally a bird flew into a tree overhead and sat and piped small blissful notes in unearthly contrast with the roar of the war engines; it seemed to me as if the present earth floated off through the sunlight, and the antique earth returned out of the past, and some majestic G.o.d sat on a hill, sculptured in stone, presiding over a terrible yet sublime contest of human pa.s.sion."

A pleasant interlude in Lanier's soldier life was a two weeks' visit to Macon in the spring of 1863. The city had not yet felt any of the calamities of war, although high prices prevailed.

Mrs. Clay, wife of Senator Clement C. Clay, was a visitor in the city at that time, waiting for a summons to join her husband in Richmond.

She writes, in recalling those days: "Spring was in its precious beauty.

Gardens glowed with brilliant blossoms. Thousands of fragrant odors mingled in the air, the voices of myriad birds sang about the foliaged avenues."*

It was then that Lanier met Miss Mary Day, at the home of their friend, Miss Lamar. Her father was a prominent business man in Macon. She had lived for the first few years of her life in Macon, but had been since 1851 studying music in New York, and living with cultivated people at Saratoga and West Point. In an atmosphere of romance, music, and love Lanier spent his vacation.

-- * 'A Belle of the Fifties', p. 194.

On their return to the Virginia battlefields the two brothers were accompanied by Mrs. Clay and her sister-in-law. Mrs. Clay had been a popular belle in Washington in the fifties, and was well acquainted with leading men and women throughout the country. She had heard and met in social circles Charlotte Cushman, Jenny Lind, Thackeray, Lord Napier, and other notabilities. Lanier, eager always to hear of the larger world outside of his own limited life, was much attracted by her reminiscences of well-known men and women. Returning to Suffolk, Va., Clifford Lanier wrote to her: "What a transition is this -- from the spring and peace of Macon to this muddy and war-distracted country!

Going to sleep in the moonlight and soft air of Italy, I seem to have waked embedded in Lapland snow." Sidney wrote: "Have you ever wandered, in an all night's dream, through exquisite flowery mosses, through labyrinthine grottoes, 'full of all sparkling and sparry loveliness', over mountains of unknown height, by abysses of unfathomable depth, all beneath skies of an infinite brightness caused by no sun; strangest of all, -- wandered about in wonder, as if you had lived an eternity in the familiar contemplation of such things? If you have dreamed, thought, and felt so, you can realize the imbecile stare with which I gaze on all of this life which goes on around me here.

Macon was my two weeks' dream."*

-- * 'A Belle of the Fifties', p. 200.

During 1863 and a large part of 1864 the two brothers served as scouts in Milligan's Corps along the James River. The duties were unusually dangerous and onerous, from the fact that their movements had to be concealed, and that they were in constant danger of being captured.

In this work of hard riding Lanier displayed a cool and collected courage; he was untiring in his energy, prudent and cautious.

Notwithstanding the dangers and hardships, he looked upon the period of life at Fort Boykin on Burwell's Bay -- their headquarters -- as "the most delicious period of his life in many respects."

Writing of it later he said: "Our life was as full of romance as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hairbreadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting that Debatable Land. . . .

Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay, and the spirited brushes of our little force with the enemy."*

-- * Letter to Northrup, June 11, 1866.

This is the period of his life which he describes in the second part of "Tiger Lilies". His brother Clifford also made it the basis of his novel, "Thorn-Fruit". The effect produced by the young poet and musician on the people who lived in the stately mansions along the James River has been told by one who knew him well at this time: "The two brothers were inseparable; slender, gray-eyed youths, full of enthusiasm, Clifford grave and quiet, Sidney, the elder, playful with a dainty mirthfulness. . . . How often did we sit on the moonlight nights enthralled by the entranced melodies of his flute! Always the longing for the very highest pervaded his life, and child though I was, in listening to him as he paced the long galleries of my old home, or as we rode in the sweet green wood, I felt even then that we sat 'in the aurora of a sunrise which was to put out all the stars.'"*

-- * 'Southern Bivouac', May, 1887.

This period of his army life is important also from the fact that here at Fort Boykin he definitely began to contemplate a literary life as his probable vocation. He was studying hard, reading English poetry, and writing to his father to "seize at any price"

editions of the German poets, Uhland, Lessing, Sch.e.l.ling, and Tieck.

Thus at a time when other Southerners were, as Professor Gildersleeve has said, getting out their cla.s.sics to reread them, Lanier was voyaging into strange fields of thought alone. Once, when the little camp was captured, he lost several of his choicest treasures, -- a volume containing the poems of Coleridge, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats, a German glossary, Heine's poems, and "Aurora Leigh". In a letter to his father, January 18, 1864, he says: "Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself into this business of writing, and especially of writing poetry.

I am going to try it; and am going to test, in the most rigid way I know, the awful question whether it is my vocation." He sends his father a number of poems, that they may be criticised. He has a sense of his own deficiencies as a writer, -- deficiencies which he never fully overcame, -- for he writes: "I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a mult.i.tude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a CONCEIT rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously ill.u.s.trated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk."

The tendency is seen in a poem written at Boykin's Bluff on, perhaps, his twenty-first birthday. Notable also is the sense of the dawn of manhood: --

So Boyhood sets: comes Youth, A painful night of mists and dreams, That broods till Love's exquisite truth, The star of a morn-clear manhood, beams.

In this dawn of his manhood -- not yet morn-clear, however, -- he began "Tiger Lilies", writing those parts having to do with his experience in the mountains, some pa.s.sages of which have already been quoted.

But Lanier's literary career was not to be begun as soon as he hoped.

He was, in August, 1864, transferred to Wilmington, N.C., where he became a signal officer on the blockade-runners. Wilmington was the port which, late in the war, was the scene of the most brilliant successes of these swift vessels and the most strenuous efforts of the blockaders.