A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 21

It is clearly impossible to give any adequate sketch of this literary awakening, -- if so it may be called, when contrasted with a later one. Of the magazines which were started, the most important were "Debow's Review", "devoted to the restoration of the Southern States and the development of the wealth and resources of the country," whose motto was, "Light up the torches of industry"; the "Southern Review", edited by Dr. A. T. Bledsoe and William Hand Browne and dedicated "to the despised, the disfranchised, and the down-trodden people of the South"; "The Land We Love", started in Charlotte, N.C., by Gen. D. H. Hill, and devoted to literature, military history, and agriculture; "Scott's Monthly", published in Atlanta, "Southern Field and Fireside", in Raleigh, and "The Crescent Monthly", in New Orleans; the "New Eclectic Magazine" and its successor, the "Southern Magazine", published by the Turnbull Brothers of Baltimore; and, as if Charleston had not had enough magazines to die before the war, the "Nineteenth Century", in that city. Most of these had but a short career, and none of them survived longer than 1878. There was in them a continual crying out for Southern literature which might worthily represent the Southern people.

The response came, too -- so far as quant.i.ty was concerned.

One of the editors remarked that he had enough poetry on hand to last seven years and five months.

Of these magazines the most important was the "Southern Magazine", published at Baltimore from 1871 to 1875, -- a magazine which came nearest filling the place occupied by the "Southern Literary Messenger"

before the war. While it was somewhat eclectic in its character, -- reprinting articles from the English magazines, -- it had as contributors a group of promising young scholars and writers. The editor was William Hand Browne, now professor of English literature in Johns Hopkins University. Professor Gildersleeve, then of the University of Virginia, Professor Thomas R. Price, then professor of English at Randolph-Macon, James Albert Harrison, later the biographer and editor of Poe, and Margaret J. Preston were regular contributors. Richard Malcolm Johnston contributed his "Dukesborough Tales" to it. One of the publishers of the magazine, Mr. Lawrence Turnbull, visited Lanier at Macon in 1871 and became much interested in him. To the magazine Lanier contributed "Prospects and Retrospects" (March and April, 1871), "A Song" and "A Seash.o.r.e Grave" (July, 1871), "Nature-Metaphors"

(February, 1872), "San Antonio de Bexar" (July and August, 1873), and "Peace" (October, 1874).

Of the books published during this period, few have survived.

John Esten Cooke's novels and his lives of Stonewall Jackson and Lee, two or three collections of the war poetry of the South, Gayarre's histories, the "War between the States", by Alexander H. Stephens, Craven's "Prison Life of Jefferson Davis", and Dabney's "Defense of Virginia"

are perhaps the most significant. J. Wood Davidson's "Living Writers of the South", published in 1869, gives the best general idea of the extent and quality of the post-bellum writing.

Noteworthy, also, is a series of text-books projected with the idea that the moral and mental training of the sons and daughters of the South should no longer be intrusted to teachers and books imported from abroad.

As planned originally, the scheme called for Bledsoe's Mathematics, Maury's Geographies, Holmes's Readers, Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar, histories of Louisiana and South Carolina by Gayarre and Simms respectively, scientific books by the Le Conte brothers, and English Cla.s.sics by Richard Malcolm Johnston.

So much needs to be said of the character of the literature immediately succeeding the war, if for no other reason, that it may be contrasted with the literature of, say, the period from 1875 to 1885.

With the death of Timrod in 1867, and of Simms, Longstreet, and Prentice in 1870, the old order of Southern writers had pa.s.sed away.

By 1875 a new group of writers had begun their work, Paul Hamilton Hayne best representing the transition from one to the other.

The younger writers either had been Confederate soldiers, or had been intimately identified with those who were. They began to write, not out of response to a demand for distinctively Southern literature, but because they had the artistic spirit, the desire to create.

They were interested in describing Southern scenery, and in portraying types of character in the social life of their respective States.

Unlike most of the literature of the Old South, the new literature was related directly to the life of the people. Men began to describe Southern scenery, not some fantastic world of dreamland; sentimentalism was superseded by a healthy realism. The writers fell in with contemporary tendencies and followed the lead of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, who had begun to write humorous local sketches and incidents.

With them literature was not a diversion, but a business. They were willing to be known as men of letters who made their living by literature.

They stood, too, for the national, rather than the sectional, spirit.

"What does it matter," said Joel Chandler Harris, "whether I am Northerner or Southerner if I am true to truth, and true to that larger truth, my own true self? My idea is that truth is more important than sectionalism, and that literature that can be labeled Northern, Southern, Western, or Eastern, is not worth labeling at all." Again, he said, speaking of the ideal Southern writer: "He must be Southern and yet cosmopolitan; he must be intensely local in feeling, but utterly unprejudiced and unpartisan as to opinions, tradition, and sentiment. Whenever we have a genuine Southern literature, it will be American and cosmopolitan as well.

Only let it be the work of genius, and it will take all sections by storm."

And it did take all sections by storm. Contrary to the idea which had prevailed after the war that Northern people would be slow to recognize Southern genius, it must be said that Northern magazines, Northern publishers, and Northern readers made possible the success of Southern writers. In 1873, "Scribner's Magazine"

sent a special train through the South with the purpose of securing a series of articles on "the great South". While in New Orleans, Mr. Edward King, who had charge of the expedition, discovered George W. Cable, whose story, "'Sieur George", appeared in "Scribner's Magazine"

in October of that year. Between that time and 1881 the magazine published, in addition to Cable's stories, -- afterwards collected into the volume "Old Creole Days", -- stories and poems by John Esten Cooke, Margaret J. Preston, Maurice Thompson, Mrs. Burnett, Mrs. Harrison, Irwin Russell, Richard Malcolm Johnston, Thomas Nelson Page, and Sidney Lanier. In an editorial of September, 1881, the editor, referring to the fact that no less than seven articles by Southerners had appeared in a recent number of "Scribner's", said: "We are glad to recognize the fact of a permanent productive force in literature in the Southern States. . . . We welcome the new writers to the great republic of letters with all heartiness."

"The Century Magazine", the successor of "Scribner's", continued to be the patron of the new Southern writers. The number for April, 1884, contained Lanier's portrait as a frontispiece, a sketch of Lanier by William Hayes Ward, Thomas Nelson Page's "Ma.r.s.e Chan", an installment of Cable's "Dr. Sevier", Walter B. Hill's article on "Uncle Tom Without a Cabin", and William Preston Johnston's poem, "The Master".

"Harper's Magazine", in January, 1874, began a series of articles on the New South, by Edwin De Leon, and in the following year published a series of articles by Constance F. Woolson, giving sketches of Florida and western North Carolina. In May, 1887, appeared an article giving the first complete survey of Southern literature, which, according to the author, had introduced into our national literature "a stream of rich, warm blood." The "Independent", a paper which had seemed to Southerners extremely severe in its criticism of the life of the South, is especially connected with the rising fame of Lanier.

The editor recognized his genius while he was still alive, after his death continued to publish his poems, and in 1884 wrote the Memorial for the first complete edition of his poems. Maurice Thompson, another Southern writer, became its literary editor in 1888.

Nor was the "Atlantic Monthly", which had been identified with the New England Renaissance, slow to recognize the value of the new Southern story-writers and poets.

In 1873, while Mr. Howells was editor, Maurice Thompson's poem, "At the Window", was hailed by the editor and by Longfellow as "the work of a new and original singer, fresh, joyous, and true."

The author received encouraging letters from Lowell and Emerson.

In the same year and in the following appeared a series of articles ent.i.tled "A Rebel's Recollections", by George Cary Eggleston. In May, 1878, appeared Charles Egbert Craddock's first story of the Tennessee Mountains, "A Dancing Party at Harrison's Cove". The value of her work was at once recognized by Mr. Howells and his successor, Mr. Aldrich.

In a review of 1880, Cable's stories in "Old Creole Days" are characterized "as fresh in matter, as vivacious in treatment, and as full of wit as were the 'Luck of Roaring Camp' and its audacious fellows, when they came, while they are much more human and delicate in feeling." In January, 1885, in an article on recent American fiction, appears the following tribute to the work of recent Southern writers: "It is not the subjects offered by Southern writers which interest us so much as the manifestation which seemed to be dying out of our literature.

We welcome the work of Mr. Cable and Mr. [sic] Craddock, because it is large, imaginative, and constantly responsive to the elemental movements of human nature; and we should not be greatly surprised if the historian of our literature a few generations hence, should take note of an enlargement of American letters at this time through the agency of a new South. . . . The North refines to a keen a.n.a.lysis, the South enriches through a generous imagination. . . .

The breadth which characterizes the best Southern writing, the large free handling, the confident imagination, are legitimate results of the careless yet masterful and hospitable life which has pervaded that section. We have had our laugh at the florid, coa.r.s.e-flavored literature which has not yet disappeared at the South, but we are witnessing now the rise of a school that shows us the worth of generous nature when it has been schooled and ordered."*

-- * In 1896 Mr. Walter H. Page, a native North Carolinian, became editor of the "Atlantic".

The effect of this literature on Northern readers was altogether wholesome, and ministered no doubt to the better understanding both of the Old South and of the New. The stories of Harris, Page, Cable, and Craddock reached the Northern mind to a degree never approached by the logic of Calhoun or the eloquence of impetuous orators, while the poems of Hayne and Lanier, breathing as they did the atmosphere of the larger modern world, and at the same time characterized by the warmth and richness of Southern scenery and Southern life, ministered in the same direction. On Southerners the effect was stimulating; one of the younger scholars of that time, the late Professor Baskervill, recalled "the rapture of glad surprise with which each new Southern writer was hailed as he or she revealed negro, mountaineer, cracker, or creole life and character to the world. There was joy in beholding the roses of romance and poetry blossoming above the ashes of defeat and humiliation, and that, too, among a people hitherto more remarkable for the masterful deeds of warrior and statesman than for the finer, rarer, and more artistic creations of literary genius."*

-- * Baskervill's 'Southern Writers' is the best study that has been made of the Southern literature of this period. A second volume was prepared by his pupils and friends after his death.

One of the most significant characteristics of the Southern writers was that they all showed a certain discipline in their artistic work.

They had little patience with much of the criticism that had prevailed in the South. As early as 1871 the editor of the "Southern Magazine", in a review of "Southland Writers", said: "We shall not have a literature until we have a criticism which can justify its claims to be deferred to; intelligent enough to explain why a work is good or bad, . . .

courageous enough to condemn bad art and bad workmans.h.i.+p, no matter whose it be; to say, for instance, to more than half the writers in these volumes: 'Ladies, you may be all that is good, n.o.ble, and fair; you may be the pride of society and the lights of your homes; so far as you are Southern women our hearts are at your feet -- but you have neither the genius, the learning, nor the judgment to qualify you for literature.'" In the same magazine for June, 1874, Paul Hamilton Hayne condemned severely the provincial literary criticism which had prevailed, -- "indiscriminate adulations, effervescing commonplace, shallowness and poverty of thought." "No foreign ridicule," he said, "however richly deserved, nothing truly either of logic or of laughter, can stop this growing evil, until our own scholars and thinkers have the manliness and honesty to discourage instead of applauding such manifestations of artistic weakness and artistic plat.i.tudes as have hitherto been foisted upon us by persons uncalled and unchosen of any of the muses.

. . . Can a people's mental dignity and aesthetical culture be vindicated by patting incompetency and ignorance and self-sufficiency on the back?"

Lanier himself wrote to Hayne, May 26, 1873, commending a criticism that Hayne had pa.s.sed upon a popular Southern novel: "I have not read that production; but from all I can hear 't is a most villainous, poor, pitiful piece of work; and so far from endeavoring to serve the South by blindly plastering it with absurd praises, I think all true patriots ought to unite in redeeming the land from the imputation that such books are regarded as casting honor upon the section.

G.o.d forbid we should really be brought so low as that we must perforce brag of such works; and G.o.d be merciful to that man (he is an Atlanta editor) who boasted that sixteen thousand of these books had been sold in the South!

This last d.a.m.ning fact ought to have been concealed at the risk of life, limb, and fortune." Lanier himself saw the futility of such praise of his own work by the Southern people. Referring to the defense made of his Centennial poem by Southern newspapers, he wrote from Macon: "People here are so enthusiastic in my favor at present that they are quite prepared to accept blindly anything that comes from me. Of course I understand all this, and any success seems cheap which depends so thoroughly upon local pride as does my present position with the South." And again: "Much of this praise has come from the section in which he was born, and there is reason to suspect that it was based often on sectional pride rather than on any genuine recognition of those artistic theories of which his poem is -- so far as he now knows -- the first embodiment.

Any triumph of this sort is cheap, because wrongly based, and to an earnest artist is intolerably painful."

Lanier's own standards of criticism did not prevent his recognition of the value of the real artists who lived in the South, nor his encouragement of every young man contemplating an artistic career.

He wrote to Judge Bleckley about his son: "I am charmed at finding a Georgia young man who deliberately leaves the worn highways of the law and politics for the rocky road of Art, and I wish to do everything in my power to help and encourage him."

Writing to George Cary Eggleston, December 27, 1876, he said: "I know you very well through your 'Rebel's Recollections', which I read in book form some months ago with great entertainment.

Our poor South has so few of the guild, that I feel a personal interest in the works of each one." His letters and published writings bear out the truth of this statement. It has already been seen that he was intimate with Paul Hamilton Hayne, who had encouraged him to undertake the literary life at a time when all other forces were tending in another direction. Lanier criticised in detail many of Hayne's poems.

In a review of his poems published in the "Southern Magazine", 1874, he paid a notable tribute to his fellow worker in the realm of letters.

He does not fail to call attention to trite similes, worn collocations of sound, and commonplace sentiments; and also his diffuseness, princ.i.p.ally originating in a lavishness and looseness of adjectives. At the same time he praises the melody of Hayne's poetry, especially of his poem "Fire Pictures", which he compares with Poe's "Bells". In his book on Florida, while giving an account of Southern cities which travelers are apt to pa.s.s through in going to and from that State, he has discriminating and sympathetic pa.s.sages on Timrod, Randall, Jackson, Hayne, and others. Of Timrod he says: "Few more spontaneous or delicate songs have been sung in these later days than one or two of the briefer lyrics.

It is thoroughly evident that he never had time to learn the mere craft of the poet, the technique of verse, and that broader a.s.sociation with other poets, and a little of the wine of success, without which no man ever does the very best he might do."

In his lectures at the Peabody Inst.i.tute he quoted one of Timrod's sonnets, prefacing it with the words: "And as I have just read you a sonnet from one of the earliest of the sonnet-writers, let me now clinch and confirm this last position with a sonnet from one of the latest, -- one who has but recently gone to that Land where, as he wished here, indeed life and love are the same; one who, I devoutly believe, if he had lived in Sir Philip's time, might have been Sir Philip's worthy brother, both in poetic sweetness and in honorable knighthood."*

-- * 'Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. i, p. 170.

He was one of the first to recognize the genius of Joel Chandler Harris, whose Uncle Remus stories he first read in the "Atlanta Const.i.tution".

He refers in his article on the New South to Uncle Remus as a "famous colored philosopher of Atlanta, who is a fiction so founded upon fact and so like it as to have pa.s.sed into true citizens.h.i.+p and authority, along with Bottom and Autolycus.

This is all the more worth giving, since it is really negro-talk, and not that supposit.i.tious negro-minstrel talk which so often goes for the original. It is as nearly perfect as any dialect can well be; and if one had only some system of notation by which to convey the TONES of the speaking voice, in which Brer Remus and Brer Ab would say these things, nothing could be at once more fine in humor and pointed in philosophy. Negroes on the corner can be heard any day engaged in talk that at least makes one think of Shakespeare's clowns; but half the point and flavor is in the subtle tone of voice, the gesture, the glance, and these, unfortunately, cannot be read between the lines by any one who has not studied them in the living original."

In a letter to his brother, September 24, 1880, Lanier said: "Have you read Cable's book, 'The Grandissimes'? It is a work of art, and he has a fervent and rare soul. Do you know him?"

In his announcement of the course on the English Novel at Johns Hopkins University, he included this novel in a list of recent American novels which he intended to discuss.

Nor was he contented with recognizing the genius of men who wrote of their own accord. His letters to "Father" Tabb were especially stimulating. He was the prime cause in inducing Richard Malcolm Johnston to offer first to the magazines, and then to the publishers, his stories of Middle Georgia.

Johnston had published the "Dukesborough Tales" in the "Southern Magazine"

as early as 1871, but they had made little or no impression on account of the limited circulation of that periodical.

In 1877 "Mr. Neelus Peeler's Condition" was sent by Lanier to Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, then editor of "Scribner's Monthly".

He had the rare pleasure of sending Mr. Gilder's letter of acceptance with enclosed check to his friend. The following letter shows how he advised Colonel Johnston as to one of the stories.

55 Lexington Street, Baltimore, Md., November 6, 1877.

My dear Col. Johnston, -- Mrs. Lanier's illness on Sat.u.r.day devolved a great many domestic duties upon me, and rendered it quite impossible for me to make the preparations necessary for my visit to you on Sunday. This caused me a great deal of regret; a malign fate seems to have pursued all my recent efforts in your direction.

I have attentively examined your "Dukesborough Tale". I wish very much that I could read it over aloud in your presence, so that I might call your attention to many verbal lapses which I find and which, I am sure, will hinder its way with the magazine editors. I will try to see you in a day or two, and do this. Again, ascending from merely verbal criticism to considerations of general treatment, I find that the action of the story does not move quite fast enough during the FIRST twenty-five pages, and the LAST ten, to suit the impatience of the modern magazine man.

Aside from these two points, -- and they can both be easily remedied, -- the story strikes me as exquisitely funny, and your reproduction of the modes of thought and of speech among the rural Georgians is really wonderful. The peculiar turns and odd angles, described by the minds of these people in the course of ratiocination (Good Heavens, what would Sammy Wiggins think of such a sentence as this!), are presented here with a delicacy of art that gives me a great deal of enjoyment. The whole picture of old-time Georgia is admirable, and I find myself regretting that its FULL merit can be appreciated only by that limited number who, from personal experience, can compare it with the original.

Purely with a view to conciliating the editor of the magazine, I strongly advise you to hasten the movement of the beginning and of the catastrophe: that is, from about p. 1 to p. 34, and from p. 57 to p. 67. The middle, i.e., from p. 34 to p. 57, should not be touched: it is good enough for me.

I would not dare to make these suggestions if I thought that you would regard them otherwise than as pure evidences of my interest in the success of the story.

Your friend, Sidney L.