A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 5

It is no wonder that under these circ.u.mstances men went to other countries, and that some of those who did not go cherished the project of transporting the people of various States to other lands, where the spirit of the civilization that had pa.s.sed away might be preserved.*

Many men whose names are now lost pa.s.sed out to the States of the West.

Business men, scholars, and men of all professions, who have since become famous in other States, were as complete a loss to the South as those who died on the battlefield. And when to all these are added the men and women who died broken-hearted at the losses of war, some idea may be conceived of the disadvantages under which the South began her work.

-- * See the 'Life and Letters of R. L. Dabney', for a plan in which many Virginians were interested.

The work of those men who remained in the South and set about to inaugurate a new era cannot be too highly estimated, -- a work made all the more difficult by strong men who resisted the march of events, and who refused to accept the conditions that then prevailed.

The readjustment came soon to more men than some have thought.

Lanier, writing in 1867, before the pressure of reconstruction government had been felt, said, in commenting on the growing lack of restraint in modern political life: "At the close of that war, three armies which had been fighting on the Southern side, and which numbered probably forty thousand men, were disbanded. These men had for four years been subjected to the unfamiliar and galling restrictions of military discipline, and to the most maddening privations. . . . At the same time four millions of slaves, without provisions and without prospect of labor in a land where employers were impoverished, were liberated. . . .

The reign of law at this thrilling time was at an end.

The civil powers of the States were dead; the military power of the conquerors was not yet organized for civil purposes. The railroad and the telegraph, those most efficient sheriffs of modern times, had fallen in the shock of war.

All possible opportunities presented themselves to each man who chose to injure his neighbor with impunity. The country was spa.r.s.ely settled, the country roads were intricate, the forests were extensive and dense, the hiding-places were numerous and secure, the witnesses were few and ignorant. Never had crime such fair weather for his carnival.

Serious apprehensions had long been entertained by the Southern citizens that in the event of a disastrous termination of the war, the whole army would be frenzied to convert itself, after disintegration, into forty thousand highwaymen. . . . Moreover, the feuds between master and slave, alleged by the Northern parties in the contest to have been long smouldering in the South, would seize this opportunity to flame out and redress themselves. Altogether, regarding humanity from the old point of view, there appeared to many wise citizens a clear prospect of dwelling in [the] midst of a furious pandemonium for several years after an unfavorable termination of the war; but was this prospect realized? Where were the highway robberies, the b.l.o.o.d.y vengeances, the arsons, the rapine, the murders, the outrages, the insults? They WERE, not anywhere. With great calmness the soldier cast behind him the memory of all wrongs and hardships and reckless habits of the war, embraced his wife, patched his cabin-roof, and proceeded to mingle the dust of recent battles yet lingering on his feet with the peaceful clods of his cornfield. What restrained these men?

Was it fear? The word cannot be spoken. Was he who had breasted the storms of Gettysburg and Perryville to shrink from the puny arm of a civil law that was more powerless than the shrunken muscle of Justice Shallow?

And what could the negro fear when his belief and a.s.surance were that a conquering nation stood ready to support him in his wildest demands?

It was the spirit of the time that brought about these things. . . .

A thousand Atlantic Cables and Pacific Railroads would not have contributed cause for so earnest self-gratulation as was afforded by this one feature in our recent political convulsion."*

-- * 'Retrospects and Prospects', p. 29.

Many Southerners were ready, like Lee, to forget the bitterness and prejudice of the war -- all but the hallowed memories.

Lanier, at the close of a fanciful pa.s.sage on the blood-red flower of war which blossomed in 1861, said: --

"It is supposed by some that the seed of this American specimen (now dead) yet remain in the land; but as for this author (who, with many friends, suffered from the unhealthy odors of the plant), he could find it in his heart to wish fervently that these seed, if there be verily any, might perish in the germ, utterly out of sight and life and memory and out of the remote hope of resurrection, forever and forever, no matter in whose granary they are cherished!"*

-- * 'Tiger Lilies', p. 116.

In this spirit Lanier began his work in Montgomery, Ala. As has been seen, he had extended the hand of fellowship to his Northern friend, thus laying the basis for the spirit of reconciliation afterwards so dominant in his poetry. Uncongenial as was his work, he went about it with a new sense of the "dignity of labor".

His aunt, Mrs. Watt, who had in the more prosperous times before the war traveled much in the North, and had graced the brilliant scenes of the opening of the Confederate Congress in Montgomery, becoming the intimate friend of Jefferson Davis and Stephens, now threw around her nephews -- Clifford was also working in the hotel -- the charm of the olden days. They found pleasure in social life: close to Montgomery lived the Cloptons and Ligons, who on their plantations enjoyed the gifts of "Santa Claus Cotton", just after the war.

Lanier writes to his sister, September 26, 1866: "I have just returned from Tuskegee, where I spent a pleasant week. . . .

They feted me to death, nearly. . . . Indeed, they were all so good and so kind to me, and the fair cousins were so beautiful, that I came back feeling as if I had been in a week's dream of fairyland."

The two brothers, eager for more intellectual companionship, organized a literary club, for the meetings of which Sidney prepared his first literary exercises after the war.

He played the pipe-organ in the Presbyterian church in Montgomery.

He writes to a friend about some one who was in a state of melancholy: "She is right to cultivate music, to cling to it; it is the only REALITY left in the world for her and many like her. It will revolutionize the world, and that not long hence. Let her study it intensely, give herself to it, enter the very innermost temple and sanctuary of it. . . .

The altar steps are wide enough for all the world." To another friend he writes at the same time: "Study Chopin as soon as you become able to play his music; and get his life by Liszt. 'T is the most enjoyable book you could read."

Most of the leisure time of the brothers, however, was spent in literary work, with even more ardor than while they had plenty of time to devote to it.

By May 12 Clifford had finished his novel, "Thorn-Fruit", and Sidney was at work on "Tiger Lilies", the novel begun at Burwell's Bay in 1863 and retouched at different times since then. They were planning, too, a volume of poems, although with the exception of their father they had not been able "to find a single individual who sympathized in such a pursuit enough to warrant them in showing him their production, -- so scarce is general cultivation here; but," Sidney adds, "we work on, and hope to become at least recognized as good orderly citizens in the fair realm of letters yet." Indeed, they planned to go North in the fall "with b.l.o.o.d.y literary designs on some hapless publisher."*

-- * Letters to Northrup.

In order to find out what was going on in the world of letters, Lanier subscribed to the "Round Table", which was then an important weekly paper of New York -- indeed, it was more like the London "Spectator" than any paper ever published on this side the water -- a journal, said the New York "Times", which "has the genius and learning and brilliancy of the higher order of London weeklies, and which at the same time has the spirit and instincts of America."

Moncure D. Conway was at that time writing letters of much interest from England and Justin Winsor from Cambridge, while Howells, Aldrich, Stedman, and Stoddard were regular contributors. The reviews of books were thoroughly cosmopolitan, and the editorials setting forth the interpretation of contemporary events were characterized by sanity and breadth.

In addition to the fact that Lanier's first poems were published in this journal,* it is to be noted that it exerted considerable influence over him -- especially in two directions. Its broad national policy -- more sympathetic than that of the "Nation" even -- was evidence to him that there were Northern people who were magnanimous in their att.i.tude to Southern problems. He was especially impressed with an editorial on the "Duties of Peace" (July 7, 1866) as "the most sensible discussion"

he had seen of the whole situation. In it were these striking words: "The people of the South are our brothers, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. They have courage, integrity, honor, patriotism, and all the manly virtues as well as ourselves. . . .

Can we realize that our duty now is to heal, not to punish? . . .

Consider their dilapidated cities, their deserted plantations, their impoverished country, their loss of personal property by thousands of millions; far more than this, their buried dead and desolate hearts. . . . No one with a heart can realize the truth of their condition without feeling that the punishment has been terrific. We should address ourselves to the grave task of restoring the disrupted relations of the two sections by acts of genuine kindness, truthfulness, fairness, and love. . . . In a word, let the era of blood be followed by another era of good feeling." The whole editorial is in accordance with the previously announced policy of the paper: "The Rebellion extinguished, the next duty is to extinguish the sectional spirit, and to seek to create fraternal feeling among all the States of the Union."

-- * "In the Foam", "Barnacles", "The Tournament", "Resurrection", "Laughter in the Senate" (not in his collected poems), "A Birthday Song", "Tyranny", and "Life and Song" were published in the 'Round Table'

during 1867 and 1868.

["Laughter in the Senate" is in later editions of his collected poems, including the edition published by Project Gutenberg. -- A. L., 1998.]

In discussing literary questions the "Round Table" showed the same national spirit, manifesting a healthy interest in those few Southern writers who were left after the deluge. The words found in two editorials, calling for a more vigorous and original cla.s.s of writers, must have appealed to Lanier. An editorial, May 12, 1866, ent.i.tled a "Plain Talk with American Writers", said: "In fact the literary field was never so barren, never so utterly without hope or life. . . . The era of genius and vigor that seemed ready to burst upon us only a few months ago has not been fulfilled.

There is a lack of boldness and power. Men do not seem to strike out in new paths as bravely as of old. . . . We have very little strong, original writing. Who will waken us from this sleep?

Who will first show us the first signs of a genuine literary reviving?"

And again, July 14, 1866, "We look to see young men coming forward who shall inaugurate a better literature. . . . If ever there was a time when a magnificent field opened to young aspirants for literary renown, that time is the present. Every door is wide open. . . .

All the graces of poesy and art and music stand waiting by, ready to welcome a bold new-comer. . . . Who will come forward and inaugurate a new era of bold, electrical, impressive writing?"

With some such ambition as this in his mind, Lanier gave up his work in Montgomery in the spring of 1867 and went to New York with the completed ma.n.u.script of "Tiger Lilies".* He was there for more than a month, finally arranging for its publication with Hurd & Houghton, the predecessors of the present firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. He was enabled to publish his book by the generous help of Mr. J. F. D. Lanier.

Some of his experiences on this, his first visit to the metropolis, are significant. He is somewhat dazed by the life of the big city.

"I tell you," he writes to a friend, "the Heavens are alien to this town, and if it were anybody else but the Infinite G.o.d that owned them, he wouldn't let them bend so blue over here." In a letter to his father, April 16, he describes the view of the city from Trinity Church steeple and tells a characteristic incident: "The grand array of houses and ships and rivers and distant hills did not arrest my soul as did the long line of men and women, which at that height seemed to writhe and contort itself in its narrow bed of Broadway as in a premature grave. . . .

I have not seen here a single eye that knew itself to be in front of a heart -- but one, and that was a blue one, and a child owned it.

'T was the very double of Sissa's [the name for his sister] eye, so I had no sooner seen it than I made love to it, with what success you will hear. On Sat.u.r.day I dined with J. F. D. Lanier.

We had only a family party. . . . Last and best little Kate Lanier, eight years old, pearly cheeked, blue eyed, broad of forehead, cherried i' the lip. About the time that the champagne came on I happened to mention that I had been in prison during the war.

-- * William Gilmore Simms was there at about the same time trying to get started again in his literary work, and Edward Rowland Sill was making his first venture into the literary world.

"'Poor fellow!' says little Katie, 'and how did the rebels treat you?'

"'Rebels,' said I, 'I am a rebel myself, Kate!'

"'What!' she exclaimed, and lifted up her little lilies (when I say lilies I mean hands), and peered at me curiously with all her blue eyes astare. 'A live Reb!'

"This phrase in Katie's nursery had taken the time-honored place of bugaboos, and hobgoblins, and men under the bed. She could not realize that I, a smooth-faced, slender, ordinary mortal, in all respects like a common man, should be a live reb. She was inclined to hate me, as in duty bound.

"I will not describe the manner of the siege I laid to her: suffice it that when I rose to take leave, Katie stood up before [me], and half blushed, and paused a minute.

"With a coquetry I never saw executed more prettily, 'I know,' said she, 'that you are dying for a kiss, and you're ashamed to ask for it.

You may take one.' . . . And so in triumph, and singing poems to all blue eyes, I said good night."

Leaving "Tiger Lilies" in the hands of the publishers, he returned to Macon, where in September we find him reading the proof of the same.

The novel appeared in October and was reviewed somewhat at length in the "Round Table".* The review refers to Lanier as "the author of some quaint and graceful verses published from time to time in the 'Round Table'." "His novel goes a long way to confirm the good opinion which his poems suggested. We have, indeed, seldom read a first book more pregnant with promise, or fuller of the faults which, more surely than precocious perfection, betoken talent. . . .

His errors seem to be entirely errors of youth and in the right direction."

"Exuberance is more easily corrected than sterility."

"His dialogue reads too often like a catalogue 'raisonne' of his library."

The critic finds traces of a scholarly and poetic taste, but withal a straining after novelty and "an affectation of quaintness so marked as to be often unpleasant." He objects to long abstract disquisitions on metaphysics and music. He commends it, however, for being "unmarred by the bad taste of its contemporaries in fanning a senseless and profitless sectional rancor."

-- * 'Round Table', December 14, 1867.

With this review the reader of "Tiger Lilies" at the present time must agree.

It is seldom that one finds a bit of contemporary criticism that hits the mark so well as this. As a story it is a failure -- the plot is badly managed and the work is strikingly uneven.

Lanier was aware of its defects, and yet pointed out its value to any student of his life. In a letter to his father from Montgomery, July 13, 1866, he says: "I have in the last part adopted almost exclusively the dramatic, rather than the descriptive, style which reigns in the earlier portions, interspersed with much high talk.