Unable to secure a position in a Southern college or to make a living by literary work, Lanier decided at the end of 1868 to take up the profession of law. He was led to do so by the earnest solicitation of his father. With his mind once made up in that direction, he went to the work with characteristic zeal. He displayed a business-like and methodical spirit which at once attracted attention. On November 19, 1869, he wrote to his brother, who was urging him to go into the cotton-mill business: "I have a far more feasible project, which I have been long incubating: let us go to Brunswick. We know something of the law, and are rapidly knowing more; it is a business which is far better than that of any salaried officer could possibly be. . . . It is best that you and I make up our minds immediately to be lawyers, NOTHING BUT LAWYERS, GOOD lawyers, and SUCCESSFUL lawyers; and direct all our energies to this end. We are too far in life to change our course now; it would be greatly disadvantageous to both of us. Therefore, to the law, Boy. It is your vocation; stick to it: It will presently reward you for your devotion." The scheme did not materialize, however; he remained at Macon in the office of Lanier and Anderson. He writes to Northrup, who has again held out to him a plan for going to Germany: --
"As for my sweet old dreams of studying in Germany, EHEU! here is come a wife, and by'r Lady, a boy, a most rare-lung'd, imperious, world-grasping, blue-eyed, kingly Manikin;* and the same must have his tiring-woman or nurse, mark you, and his laces and embroideries and small carriage, being now half a year old: so that, what with mine ancient Money-Cormorants, the Butcher and the Baker and the Tailor, my substance is like to be so pecked up that I must stick fast in Georgia, unless litigation and my reputation should take a simultaneous start and both grow outrageously. For, you must know, these Southern colleges are all so poor that they hold out absolutely no inducement in the way of support to a professor: and so last January I suddenly came to the conclusion that I wanted to make some money for my wife and my baby, and incontinently betook me to studying Law: wherein I am now well advanced, and, D.V., will be admitted to the Bar in May next. My advantages are good, since my Father and uncle (firm of Lanier and Anderson) are among the oldest lawyers in the city and have a large practice, into which I shall be quickly inducted.
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* Charles Day Lanier. See poem, "Baby Charley".
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"I have not, however, ceased my devotion to letters, which I love better than all things in my heart of hearts; and have now in the hands of the Lit. Bureau in N.Y. a vol. of essays. I'm (or rather have been) busy, too, on a long poem, yclept the `Jacquerie', on which I had bestowed more REAL WORK than on any of the frothy things which I have hitherto sent out; tho' this is now necessarily suspended until the summer shall give me a little rest from the office business with which I have to support myself while I am studying law."*
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* `Lippincott's Magazine', March, 1905.
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Lanier's work as a lawyer was that of the office, as he never practiced in the courts. To the accuracy and fidelity of this work the words of his successor, Chancellor Walter B. Hill of the University of Georgia, bear testimony: --
"About 1874 or 1875 I became associated as partner with the firm of Lanier and Anderson, in whose office Sidney Lanier practiced law up to the time he left Macon [1869-1873] -- I do not know whether he was a partner in the firm or whether he merely used the same office. At any rate, it seems that the greater part of his work consisted in the examination of titles. The firm of Lanier and Anderson represented several building and loan associations and had a large business in this line of work. To examine a title, as you know, requires a visit to what Oliver Wendell Holmes calls `that cemetery of dead transactions', the place for the official registry of deeds and other muniments of title, called in Georgia the office of the Clerk of the Superior Court. One cannot imagine work that is more dry-as-dust in its character than going over these records for the purpose of tracing the successive links in a chain of title. When I came into the firm I had occasion frequently to examine the letter-press copybook in which Lanier's `abstracts' or reports upon title had been copied. Not only were the books themselves models of neatness, but all his work in the examination of titles showed the utmost thoroughness, patience, and fidelity. The law of Georgia in regard to the registration of titles was by no means perfect at that time; so imperfect, indeed, that I have known prominent lawyers to refuse to engage in the work on account of the risk of error involved. I remained a member of the firm for some time afterwards, but during the whole period of my residence in Macon I never heard any question raised as to the correctness and thoroughness of Lanier's work in this difficult and intricate department of practice. In going over some of his work I have often keenly felt the contrast between such toil and that for which Lanier's genius fitted him. To find that the poet spent many laborious days in such uninspiring labor was as great an anomaly as it would be to see a fountain spring from a bed of sawdust and `shake its loosened silver in the sun'."*
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* Letter to the author.
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While engaged in the practice of law, Lanier now and then made public addresses. The most important of these was the Confederate Memorial Address, April 26, 1870.* The spirit and the language of it are equally admirable. He who had suffered all that any man could suffer during the Civil War and during the reconstruction period shows that he has risen above all bitterness and prejudice. There is no threshing over of dead issues. The spirit of the address is more like that seen in the letters of Robert E. Lee than any other thing written by Southerners during this period. Lanier is not yet national in his point of view, but he represents the best attitude of mind that could be held by the most liberal of Southerners at that time. Standing in the cemetery at Macon, -- one of the most beautiful in the Southern States, -- he begins: "In the unbroken silence of the dead soldierly forms that lie beneath our feet; in the winding processions of these stately trees; in the large tranquillity of this vast and benignant heaven that overspreads us; in the quiet ripple of yonder patient river, flowing down to his death in the sea; in the manifold melodies drawn from these green leaves by wandering airs that go like Troubadours singing in all the lands; in the many-voiced memories that flock into this day, and fill it as swallows fill the summer, -- in all these, there is to me so voluble an eloquence to-day that I cannot but shrink from the harsher sounds of my own human voice." Taking these as a text, he comments first on the necessity for silence in an age when "trade is the most boisterous god of all the false gods under heaven." The clatter of factories, the clank of mills, the groaning of forges, the sputtering and laboring of his water power, are all lost sight of in contemplating the august presence of the dead, who speak not. He speaks next of the stateliness of the trees, which suggests to him the stateliness of the two great heroes of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, -- "bright, magnificent exemplars of stateliness, -- those noble figures that arose and moved in splendid procession across the theatre of our Confederate war!" The patience of the river suggests the soldiers who walked their life of battle, "patient through heat and cold, through rain and drought, through bullets and diseases, through hunger and nakedness, through rigor of discipline and laxity of morals, ay, through the very shards and pits of hell, down to the almost inevitable death that awaited them."
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* `Retrospects and Prospects', p. 94.
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The most significant passage, however, is his appeal to the men and women of the South to rise to the plane of tranquillity and magnanimity: --
"I spoke next of the tranquillity of the over-spanning heavens. This, too, is a noble quality which your Association tends to keep alive. Who in all the world needs tranquillity more than we? I know not a deeper question in our Southern life at this present time, than how we shall bear our load of wrong and injury with the calmness and tranquil dignity that become men and women who would be great in misfortune; and believe me, I know not where we will draw deeper inspirations of calm strength for this great emergency than in this place where we now stand, in the midst of departed heroes who fought against these things to death. Why, yonder lies my brave, brilliant friend, Lamar; and yonder, genial Robert Smith; and yonder, generous Tracy, -- gallant men, all, good knights and stainless gentlemen. How calmly they sleep in the midst of it! Unto this calmness shall we come, at last. If so, why should we disquiet our souls for the petty stings of our conquerors? There comes a time when conqueror and conquered shall alike descend into the grave. In that time, O my countrymen, in that time the conqueror shall be ashamed of his lash, and the conquered shall be proud of his calm endurance; in that time the conqueror shall hide his face, and the conquered shall lift his head with an exultation in his tranquil fortitude which God shall surely pardon!
"For the contemplation of this tranquillity, my friends of this Association, in the name of a land stung half to madness, I thank you.
. . . . .
"To-day we are here for love and not for hate. To-day we are here for harmony and not for discord. To-day we are risen immeasurably above all vengeance. To-day, standing upon the serene heights of forgiveness, our souls choir together the enchanting music of harmonious Christian civilization. To-day we will not disturb the peaceful slumbers of these sleepers with music less sweet than the serenade of loving remembrances, breathing upon our hearts as the winds of heaven breathe upon these swaying leaves above us."
Lanier did not abandon altogether his ideal of doing literary work. He was much encouraged at this time by a sympathetic correspondence with Paul Hamilton Hayne, who, after the Civil War, had settled in a little cottage near Augusta. His beautiful home in Charleston had been burned to the ground and his large, handsome library utterly lost. With heroic spirit at a time when, as Lanier said of him, "the war of secession had left the South in a condition which appeared to render an exclusively literary life a hopeless impossibility, he immured himself in the woods of Georgia and gave himself wholly to his pen." When Simms visited him here in 1866, the poet had for supplies "a box of hard tack, two sides of bacon, and fourscore, more or less, of smoked herring, a frying-pan and a grid-iron." He and his wife lived as simply as the Hawthornes did in the Old Manse. His writing desk was a carpenter's work-bench. He wrote continually for the magazines, corresponded with the poets of England and New England, received visitors, with whom he talked about the old days in Charleston when he and Timrod and Simms had projected "Russell's Magazine", and held out to young Southern writers the encouragement of an older brother.
It was this man who, at a critical time in Lanier's life, inspired him to believe that he might succeed in a literary career. "I have had constantly in mind the kindly help and encouragement which your cheering words used to bring me when I was even more obscure than I am now," wrote the younger poet at a later time. He did not have time, however, to act on this encouragement. He wrote now and then a dialect poem which was printed in the Georgia dailies and attracted attention by its humor and its insight into contemporary life, and occasionally an exquisite lyric like "Nirvana". In the main he had to say: --
"I have not put pen to paper in a literary way in a long time. How I thirst to do so, -- how I long to sing a thousand various songs that oppress me, unsung, -- is inexpressible. Yet the mere work that brings me bread gives me no time. I know not, after all, if this is a sorrowful thing. Nobody likes my poems except two or three friends, -- who are themselves poets, and can supply themselves!" And yet he writes, "It gives me great encouragement that you think I might succeed in the literary life; for I take it that you are in earnest in saying so, believing that you love Art with too genuine affection to trifle with her by bringing to her service, through mere politeness, an unworthy worker."*
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* `Letters', passim.
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Hayne was impressed with Lanier's intimate knowledge of Elizabethan and older English literature, as displayed in his letters of this period. He says: --
"He had steeped his imagination from boyhood in the writings of the earlier English annalists and poets, -- Geoffrey of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Malory, Gower, Chaucer, and the whole bead-roll of such ancient English worthies. I was of course a little surprised during our earlier epistolary communion to perceive, not only his unusually thorough knowledge of Chaucer, for example, whose couplets flowed as trippingly from his pen as if `The Canterbury Tales' and `The Romaunt of the Rose' were his daily mental food, but to find him quoting as naturally and easily from `Piers Plowman' and scores of the halfobsolete ballads of the English and Scottish borders.
"He gloried in antiquarian lore and antiquarian literature. Hardly `Old Monkbarns' himself could have pored over a black-letter volume with greater enthusiasm. Especially he loved the tales of chivalry, and thus, when the opportunity came, was fully equipped as an interpreter of Froissart and `King Arthur' for the benefit of our younger generation of students. With the great Elizabethans Lanier was equally familiar. Instead of skimming Shakespeare, he went down into his depths. Few have written so subtly of Shakespeare's mysterious sonnets. Through all Lanier's productions we trace the influence of his early literary loves; but nowhere do the pithy quaintnesses of the old bards and chroniclers display themselves more effectively -- not only in the illustrations, but through the innermost warp and woof of the texture of his ideas and his style -- than in some of his familiar epistles."*
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* `Letters', p. 220.
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That Lanier kept in touch, too, with contemporary literature is shown by an acute criticism of Browning's "The Ring and the Book", then recently published: "Have you seen Browning's `The Ring and the Book'? I am confident that, at the birth of this man, among all the good fairies who showered him with magnificent endowments, one bad one -- as in the old tale -- crept in by stealth and gave him a constitutional twist i' the neck, whereby his windpipe became, and has ever since remained, a marvelous tortuous passage. Out of this glottis-labyrinth his words won't, and can't, come straight. A hitch and a sharp crook in every sentence bring you up with a shock. But what a shock it is! Did you ever see a picture of a lasso, in the act of being flung? In a thousand coils and turns, inextricably crooked and involved and whirled, yet, if you mark the noose at the end, you see that it is directly in front of the bison's head, there, and is bound to catch him! That is the way Robert Browning catches you. The first sixty or seventy pages of `The Ring and the Book' are altogether the most doleful reading, in point either of idea or of music, in the English language; and yet the monologue of Giuseppe Caponsacchi, that of Pompilia Comparini, and the two of Guido Franceschini, are unapproachable, in their kind, by any living or dead poet, `me judice'. Here Browning's jerkiness comes in with inevitable effect. You get lightning glimpses -- and, as one naturally expects from lightning, zigzag glimpses -- into the intense night of the passion of these souls. It is entirely wonderful and without precedent. The fitful play of Guido's lust, and scorn, and hate, and cowardice, closes with a master stroke: --
"Christ! Maria! God! . . .
POMPILIA, WILL YOU LET THEM MURDER ME?
"Pompilia, mark you, is dead, by Guido's own hand; deliberately stabbed, because he hated her purity, which all along he has reviled and mocked with the Devil's own malignant ingenuity of sarcasm."*
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* `Letters', p. 206; letter to Hayne, April 13, 1870.
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On account of ill health Lanier frequently had to leave Macon and go to places better suited to his physical temperament. At Brunswick, Georgia, -- the scene of the Marsh poems, -- at Alleghany Springs in Virginia, and at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, he spent successive summers. In all of these places he reveled in the beauty and grandeur of the scenery. His letters written to his wife and his father during his absences from Macon are evidence that he was at this time developing steadily in that subtle appreciation of nature which was afterwards to play such an important part in his poetry. In fact, the letters themselves, when published, as they will be some time, show artistic growth when compared with the writings already noted. He was all his life a prolific letter-writer -- and a great one. Writing from Alleghany Springs, July 12, 1872, he says to his wife: --
"How necessary is it that one should occasionally place oneself in the midst of those more striking forms of nature in which God has indulged His fantasy! It is very true that the flat land, the bare hillside, the muddy stream comes also directly from the creative hand: but these do not bring one into the sweetness of the heartier moods of God; in the midst of them it is as if one were transacting the business of life with God: whereas, when one has but to lift one's eyes in order to receive the exquisite shocks of thrilling form and color and motion that leap invisibly from mountain and groves and stream, then one feels as if one had surprised the Father in his tender, sportive, and loving moments.
"To the soul then, weak with the long flesh fight and filled with a sluggish languor by those wearisome disappointments which arise from the constant contemplation of men's weaknesses, and from the constant back-thrusting of one's consciousness of impotence to strengthen them -- thou, with thy nimble fancy, canst imagine what ethereal and yet indestructible essences of new dignity, of new strength, of new patience, of new serenity, of new hope, new faith, and new love, do continually flash out of the gorges, the mountains, and the streams, into the heart, and charge it, as the lightnings charge the earth, with subtle and heavenly fires.
"A bewildering sorcery seems to spread itself over even those things which are commonplace. The songs and cries of birds acquire a strange sound to me: I cannot understand the little spontaneous tongues, the quivering throats, the open beaks, the small bright eyes that gleam with unknown emotion, the nimble capricious heads that twist this way and that with such bizarre unreasonableness.
"Nor do I fathom this long unceasing monotone of the little shallow river that sings yonder over the rocks in its bosom as a mother crooning over her children; it is but one word the stream utters: but as when we speak a well-known word over and over again until it comes to have a frightful mystery in it, so this familiar stream-sound fills me with indescribable wonder.
"Nor do I comprehend the eloquence of the mountains which comes in a strange `patois' of two tongues; for the mountains speak at once the languages of repose and of convulsion, two languages which have naught in common.
"Wondering therefore, from day to night, with a good wonder which directs attention not to one's ignorance but to God's wisdom, stricken, but not exhausted, by continual tranquil surprises; surrounded by a world of enchantments which, so far from being elusive, are the most substantial of realties, -- thou knowest that nature is kind to me."
He went to New York in 1869, 1870, and 1871, now on business and now to consult medical experts. In May, 1869, we find him trying to make the sale of some property on which iron was supposed to be. He writes his father that he has been down on Wall Street all day. There is -- now as compared with his 1867 visit -- a certain fascination for him in the intense spirit of hurry which displays itself on every side. He finds himself in competition with many Southerners who were at that time projecting similar enterprises. He is also visiting the clients of Lanier and Anderson, and is anxious to extend the firm's name. He is given much social attention, -- "teas, dinners, calls, visits, business" consume his time. He visits the superb villa of his cousin on the Hudson near Poughkeepsie. He writes, on May 15, that he is beginning "to feel entirely unflurried in the crowd and to go about business deliberately." He is in New York again in 1871, when the Tweed ring is being exposed, and he cannot but compare the situation there with the reconstruction government that prevails in his own State. "Somehow this isn't a good day for thieves," he says. "Wouldn't it be a curious and refreshing phenomenon if Tweed, Hall, Bullock,* and that ilk should all continue in the service of the State -- only changing the scene of their labors from the office to the penitentiary?"
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* Governor of Georgia during reconstruction days.
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Most of all, however, Lanier was interested in the music which he heard on these trips to the metropolis. He had kept up his flute-playing while busy with his law work, frequently playing at charity concerts in Macon and other cities of Georgia. In New York he reveled in the singing of Nilsson, in religious music at St. Paul's Church, but above all in Theodore Thomas's orchestra, then just beginning its triumphant career. He writes, August 15, 1870: "Ah, how they have belied Wagner! I heard Theodore Thomas's orchestra play his overture to `Tannhaeuser'. The `Music of the Future' is surely thy music and my music. Each harmony was a chorus of pure aspirations. The sequences flowed along, one after another, as if all the great and noble deeds of time had formed a procession and marched in review before one's EARS instead of one's EYES. These `great and noble deeds' were not deeds of war and statesmanship, but majestic victories of inner struggles of a man. This unbroken march of beautiful-bodied Triumphs irresistibly invites the soul of a man to create other processions like it. I would I might lead a so magnificent file of glories into heaven!"*
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* `Letters', p. 68.
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And again, in 1871: "And to-night I come out of what might have been heaven. . . .
"'T was opening night of Theodore Thomas's orchestra, at Central Park Garden, and I could not resist the temptation to go and bathe in the sweet amber seas of the music of this fine orchestra, and so I went, and tugged me through a vast crowd, and, after standing some while, found a seat, and the baton tapped and waved, and I plunged into the sea, and lay and floated. Ah! the dear flutes and oboes and horns drifted me hither and thither, and the great violins and small violins swayed me upon waves, and overflowed me with strong lavations, and sprinkled glistening foam in my face, and in among the clarinetti, as among waving water-lilies with flexile stems, I pushed my easy way, and so, even lying in the music-waters, I floated and flowed, my soul utterly bent and prostrate."*
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* `Letters', p. 70.
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In November, 1872, Lanier went to San Antonio in quest of health. In letters to his father giving an account of his trip from New Orleans to Galveston and thence to Austin, he shows keen insight into the life of that State. He sketches many types of character and scenes -- sketches that show at once his knowledge of human nature and his ability as a reporter. It may be said here that Lanier always took an interest in the passing show, -- he was not a detached dreamer. He arrived at San Antonio in November. On account of his ill health he could write but few letters, although he is "fairly reeking with all manner of quips and quiddities which I yearn to spread for the delectation of such a partial set of people as a home set always is." He writes to his sister: "To-day has been as lovely as any day can hope to be this side of Millennium; and I have been out strolling morning and afternoon, far and wide, ever tempted onward by the delicious buoyant balm in the air and pleasantly surprised in finding what a distance I could accomplish without over fatigue." He rode horseback a great deal -- a form of exercise he was especially fond of all his life.
In a letter to his father he refers to some work he is doing in the library: "I have also managed to advance very largely my conceptions of the Jacquerie through a history which I secured from the Library of the Alamo Literary Society, -- a flourishing institution here which is now building a hall to cost some thirteen thousand dollars, and of which I have become a literary member." He has been reading Michelet's "History of France" which "gives him the essence of an old book which he had despaired of ever seeing, but which is the only authority extant, -- save Froissart and a few others equally unreliable; it is the chronicle of the `Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis'." With Olmsted's book of travels as a model, he planned a series of articles for a New York paper.
The only result, however, from these plans was a picturesque sketch of San Antonio,* afterwards published in the "Southern Magazine". This sketch is at once a history of San Antonio and a description of the scenery and the people of that quaint city. "Over all the round of aspects in which a thoughtful mind may view a city," he says in a typical passage, "it bristles with striking idiosyncrasies and bizarre contrasts. Its history, population, climate, location, architecture, soil, water, customs, costumes, horses, cattle, all attract the stranger's attention, either by force of intrinsic singularity or of odd juxtapositions. It was a puling infant for a century and a quarter, yet has grown to a pretty vigorous youth in a quarter of a century; its inhabitants are so varied that the `go slow' directions over its bridges are printed in three languages, and the religious services in its churches held in four; the thermometer, the barometer, the vane, the hygrometer, oscillate so rapidly, so frequently, so lawlessly, and through so wide a meteorological range, that the climate is simply indescribable, yet it is a growing resort for consumptives; it stands with all its gay prosperity just in the edge of a lonesome, untilled belt of land one hundred and fifty miles wide, like Mardi Gras on the austere brink of Lent; it has no Sunday laws, and that day finds its bar-rooms and billiard-saloons as freely open and as fully attended as its churches; its buildings, ranging from the Mexican `jacal' to the San Fernando Cathedral, represent all the progressive stages of man's architectural progress in edifices of mud, of wood, of stone, of iron, and of sundry combinations of those materials; its soil is in wet weather an inky-black cement, but in dry a floury-white powder; it is built along both banks of two limpid streams, yet it drinks rain water collected in cisterns; its horses and mules are from Lilliput, while its oxen are from Brobdingnag." In the same vivid style he sketches the various characteristics of the city and its people. His account of a Texas "norther", his descriptions of the San Fernando Cathedral and of the Mission San Jose de Aquayo are especially good.
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* `Retrospects and Prospects', p. 34.
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It was on this visit to San Antonio that Lanier resolved finally to devote himself to an artist's career. He came in contact with some of the German musicians of the city and played before the Maennerchor, which received his flute-playing with enthusiastic applause.
San Antonio, Tex., January 30, 1873.
Last night at eight o'clock came Mr. Scheidemantel, a genuine lover of music and a fine pianist, to take me to the Maennerchor, which meets every Wednesday night for practice. Quickly we came to a hall, one end of which was occupied by a minute stage with appurtenances, and a piano; and in the middle thereof a long table, at which each singer sat down as he came in. Presently, seventeen Germans were seated at the singing-table, long-necked bottles of Rhine-wine were opened and tasted, great pipes and cigars were all afire; the leader, Herr Thielepape, -- an old man with long, white beard and mustache, formerly mayor of the city, -- rapped his tuning-fork vigorously, gave the chords by rapid arpeggios of his voice (a wonderful, wild, high tenor, such as thou wouldst dream that the old Welsh harpers had, wherewith to sing songs that would cut against the fierce seablasts), and off they all swung into such a noble, noble old German full-voiced `lied', that imperious tears rushed into my eyes, and I could scarce restrain myself from running and kissing each one in turn and from howling dolefully the while. And so . . . I all the time worshiping . . . with these great chords . . . we drove through the evening until twelve o'clock, absorbing enormous quantities of Rhine-wine and beer, whereof I imbibed my full share. After the second song I was called on to play, and lifted my poor old flute in air with tumultuous, beating heart; for I had no confidence in that or in myself. But, `du Himmel!' Thou shouldst have heard mine old love warble herself forth. To my utter astonishment, I was perfect master of the instrument. Is not this most strange? Thou knowest I had never learned it; and thou rememberest what a poor muddle I made at Marietta in playing difficult passages; and I certainly have not practiced; and yet there I commanded and the blessed notes obeyed me, and when I had finished, amid a storm of applause, Herr Thielepape arose and ran to me and grasped my hand, and declared that he hat never heert de flude accompany itself pefore! I played once more during the evening, and ended with even more rapturous bravos than before, Mr. Scheidemantel grasping my hand this time, and thanking me very earnestly.
My heart, which was hurt greatly when I went into the music-room, came forth from the holy bath of concords greatly refreshed, strengthened, and quieted, and so remaineth today. I also feel better than in a long time before.*
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* `Letters', p. 71.
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Again he played for "an elegant-looking company of ladies and gentlemen" in a private home. "I had not played three seconds," he says, "before a profound silence reigned among the people, seeing which, and dreaming wildly, and feeling somehow in an eerie and elfish, and half-uncanny mood, I flew off into all manner of trills, and laments, and cadenza-monstrosities for a long time, but finally floated down into `La Melancolie', which melted itself forth with such eloquent lamenting that it almost brought my tears -- and, to make a long st