Thus closes his war period. His name does not appear in any of the official records, but no private soldier had a more varied experience.* One scarcely knows which to admire most, — the soldier, brave and knightly, the poet, preparing his wings for a flight, or the musician, inspiriting his fellow-soldiers in camp and in prison.
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* It is said that he refused promotion several times in order to be
with his brother. In a memorandum on the photograph herewith presented
he refers to himself as "captain" in the late Confederate army.
I have been unable to reconcile these statements.
[Photograph not included in this ASCII edition. — A. L.]
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Chapter IV. Seeking a Vocation
Lanier reached Macon March 15, after a long and painful journey through the Carolinas. Immediately upon his arrival, losing the stimulus which had kept him going so long, he fell dangerously ill, and remained so for nearly two months. Early in May, just as he was convalescing, General Wilson captured Macon, and Jefferson Davis and Clement C. Clay were brought to the Lanier House, whence they were to start on their way as prisoners to Fortress Monroe. Clifford Lanier reached home May 19. He had, after the blockade was closed at Wilmington, gone to Cuba. From there he sailed to Galveston and walked thence to Macon. He arrived just in time to see his mother, who a few days after died of consumption. She had kept herself alive for months by "a strong conviction, which she expressed again and again, that God would bring both her boys to her before she died." Sidney spent the summer months with his father and his sister, ministering to them in their sorrow. In September he began to tutor on a large plantation nine miles from Macon. With thirty classes a day and failing health, he whose brain was "fairly teeming with beautiful things" was shut up to the horrible monotony of the "tear and tret" of the schoolroom. He spent the winter at Point Clear on Mobile Bay, where he was greatly invigorated by the sea breezes and the air of the pine forests.
After these months of sorrow and struggle he settled in Montgomery, Ala., as clerk in the Exchange Hotel, the property of his grandfather and his uncles. His first feeling as he faces the new conditions which he is trying to explain to Northrup, his Northern friend, is one of bewilderment, — the immense distance between the beginning and the end of the war: —
"So wild and high are the big war-waves dashing between '61 and '66, as between two shores, that, looking across their `rude, imperious surge', I can scarcely discern any sight or sound of those old peaceful days that you and I passed on the `sacred soil' of M——. The sweet, half-pastoral tones that SHOULD come from out that golden time, float to me mixed with battle cries and groans. It was our glorious spring: but, my God, the flowers of it send up sulphurous odors, and their petals are dabbled with blood.
"These things being so, I thank you, more than I can well express, for your kind letter. It comes to me, like a welcome sail, from that old world to this new one, through the war-storms. It takes away the sulphur and the blood-flecks, and drowns out the harsh noises of battle. The two margins of the great gulf which has divided you from me seem approaching each other: I stretch out my hand across the narrowing fissure, to grasp yours on the other side. And I wish, with all my heart, that you and I could spend this ineffable May afternoon under that old oak at Whittaker's and `talk it all over'."*
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* This and the following letter were printed in `Lippincott's Magazine',
March, 1905. A few changes are made to conform to the original copies.
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In another letter (June 29, 1866) he encloses a photograph and comments on the life in Montgomery: —
"The cadaverous enclosed is supposed to represent the face of your friend, together with a small portion of the Confederate gray coat in which enwrapped he did breast the big wars.