His body was taken to Baltimore, where it rests in Greenmount Cemetery in the lot of his friends, the Turnbulls, close by the son whose memory they have perpetuated by the endowment of a permanent lectureship on poetry in Johns Hopkins University. The grave is unmarked — even by a slab. It divides the interest of visitors to Baltimore with the grave of Poe, which, however, is in another part of the city. So these two poets, whose lives and whose characters were so strikingly unlike, sleep in their adopted city.
Shortly after Lanier's death memorial services were held at Johns Hopkins University, at which time beautiful tributes were paid to him by his colleagues and friends. A committee of the citizens of Baltimore was appointed to raise a fund for the sustenance and education of the poet's family. They were aided in this by admirers of Lanier and public-spirited citizens throughout the country. Meantime his fame was growing, the publication of his poems in 1884 giving fresh impetus thereto.
Seven years after his death a bust of the poet was presented to the University by Mr. Charles Lanier of New York.* "The hall was filled," says ex-President Gilman, "with a company of those who knew and admired him. On the pedestal which supported the bust hung his flute and a roll of his music; a garland of laurels crowned his brow, and the sweetest of flowers were strewn at his feet. Letters came from Lowell, Holmes, Gilder, Stedman; young men who never saw him, but who had come under his influence, read their tributes in verse; a former student of the University made a critical estimate of the `Science of Verse'; a lady read several of Lanier's own poems; another lady sang one of his musical compositions adapted to words of Tennyson, and another song, one of his to which some one else wrote the music; a college president of New Jersey held up Lanier as a teacher of ethics; but the most striking figure was the trim, gaunt form of a Catholic priest, who referred to the day when they, two Confederate soldiers (the Huguenot and the Catholic), were confined in the Union prison, and with tears in his eyes said, his love for Lanier was like that of David for Jonathan. The sweetest of all the testimonials came at the very last moment, unsolicited and unexpected, from that charming poetess, Edith Thomas. She heard of the memorial assembly, and on the spur of the moment wrote the well-known lines, suggested by one of Lanier's own verses: —
On the Paradise side of the river of death."
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* For a full record of the exercises see `A Memorial of Sidney Lanier',
Baltimore, 1888.
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The aftermath of Lanier's home life is all pleasant to contemplate. His wife, although still an invalid, has, by her readings from her husband's letters and poems, and by her sympathetic help for all those who have cared to know more about him, done more than any other person to extend his fame. With tremendous obstacles in her way, she has reared to manhood the four sons, three of whom are now actively identified with publishing houses in New York city, and one of whom, bearing the name of his father, is now living upon a farm in Georgia. Charles Day Lanier is president of the Review of Reviews Company, and is associated with his youngest brother, Robert Sampson Lanier, in editing "The Country Calendar". Henry Wysham Lanier is a member of the firm of Doubleday, Page & Company, and editor of "Country Life in America". They all inherit their father's love of music and poetry, and through their magazines are doing much to foster among Americans a taste for country life. By a striking coincidence — entirely unpremeditated on their part — three of the sons and their mother live at Greenwich, Connecticut. It will be remembered that the home of the English Laniers was at Greenwich, — and so the story of the Lanier family begins and ends with this name, — one in the Old World and one in the New.
Chapter XIII. The Achievement in Criticism and in Poetry
Speculations as to what Lanier might have done with fewer limitations and with a longer span of years inevitably arise in the mind of any one who studies his life. If, like the late Theodore Thomas, he had at an early age been able to develop his talent for music in the musical circles of New York; if, like Longfellow, he had gone from a small college to a German university, or, like Mr. Howells, from the provinces to Cambridge, where he would have come in contact with a group of men of letters; if, after the Civil War, he had, like Hayne, retired to a cabin and there devoted himself entirely to literary work; if, like Lowell, he could have given attention to literary subjects and lectured in a university without teaching classes of immature students or without resorting to "pot-boilers", "nothings that do mar the artist's hand;" if, like Poe, he could have struck some one vein and worked it for all it was worth, — if, in a word, the varied activity of his life could have given way to a certain definiteness of purpose and concentration of effort, what might have been the difference! Music and poetry strove for the mastery of his soul. Swinburne, speaking of those who attempt success in two realms of art, says, "On neither course can the runner of a double race attain the goal, but must needs in both races alike be caught up and resign his torch to a runner with a single aim." And yet one feels that if Lanier had had time and health to work out all these diverse interests and all his varied experiences into a unity, if scholarship and music and poetry could have been developed simultaneously over a long stretch of time, there would have resulted, perhaps, a more many-sided man and a finer poetry than we have yet had in America.
So at last the speculation reduces itself to one of time. Lycidas was dead ere his prime. From 1876 till the fatal illness took hold of him he made great strides in poetry. Up to the very last he was making plans for the future. His letters to friends outlining the volumes that he hoped to publish, — work demanding decades instead of years, — the memoranda jotted down on bits of paper or backs of envelopes as the rough drafts of essays or poems, would be pathetic, if one did not believe with Lanier that death is a mere incident in an eternal life, or with Browning, that what a man would do exalts him. The lines of Robert Browning's poems in which he sets forth the glory of the life of aspiration — aspiration independent of any achievement — ring in one's ears, as he reads the story of Lanier's life.
This low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it;
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.