SIDNEY LANIER
SIDNEY LANIERFrom a photograph owned by H.W. Lanier
On his return to Baltimore he lived at 55 Lexington in four rooms arranged as a French flat. He makes mention of a gas stove "on which my comrade magically produces the best coffee in the world, and this, with fresh eggs (boiled through the same handy little machine), bread, butter, and milk, forms our breakfast." December 3 he writes from the little French flat, announcing that he "has plunged in and brought forth captive a long Christmas poem forEvery Saturday," a Baltimore weekly publication. The poem was "Hard Times in Elfland." He says, "Wife and I have been to look at a lovely house with eight rooms and many charming appliances," whereof the rent was less than that of the four rooms.
The next month he writes from 33 Denmead Street, the eight-room house, to which he had gone, with the attendant necessity of buying "at least three hundred twenty-seven household utensils" and "hiring a colored gentlewoman who is willing to wear out my carpets, burn out my range, freeze out my water-pipes, and be generally useful." He mentions having written a couple of poems, and part of an essay on Beethoven and Bismarck, but his chief delight is in his new home, which invests him with the dignity of paying taxes and water rates. He takes the view that no man is a Bohemian who has to pay water rates and street tax.
In addition to supporting his new dignity he finds time and strength for his usual work, and he writes on January 30, 1878, "I have been mainly at work on some unimportant prose matter for pot-boilers, but I get off a short poem occasionally, and in the background of my mind am writing my Jacquerie." Unfortunately, "Jacquerie" remained in the background of his mind, with the exception of two songs—all we have to indicate what a stirring presentation our literature might have had of the fourteenth century awakening of "Jacques Bonhomme," that early precursor of the more terrible arousing in 'Ninety-Three.
In the latter part of the year Lanier was living at Number 180 St. Paul Street, and in December he wrote to a friend:
"Bayard Taylor's death slices a huge cantle out of the world.... It only seems that he has gone to some other Germany a little farther off.... He was such a fine fellow, one almost thinks he might have talked Death over and made him forego his stroke."
At Bayard Taylor's home, where Lanier visited, were two immense chestnut trees, much loved by the two poets. Mrs. Taylor wrote that one of the trees died soon after the death of its poet owner. The other lingered until a short time after the passing of Lanier. It was in connection with the lines of the "Cantata," written in the Baltimore home of the Southern poet, that the poet friends began a long-continued series of letters which one loves to read on a winter night, when the winds are battling with the world outside, and the fire gleams redly in the open grate, and the lamp burns softly on the library table, and all things invite to poetic dreams.
November 12, 1880, Sidney Lanier wrote to his publisher a letter of appreciation of the beautiful work done upon his volume, "The Boy's King Arthur." It is dated at Number 435 North Calvert Street, the latest Baltimore address that we have.
The distinction Sidney Lanier achieved as first flutist in the orchestra of the Peabody Institute led to an offer of a position in the Thomas Orchestra, which the condition of his health did not permit him to accept.
In the summer of 1880 his "Science of English Verse" was published. "Shakespeare and His Forerunners" resulted from his work with his classes in Elizabethan Poetry. "The English Novel" is the course of lectures on "Personality Illustrated by the Development of Fiction," delivered at Johns Hopkins University in the winter of 1880-'81. As we read the printed work in its depth and strength, we do not realize that his wife took the notes from his whispered dictation, and that his auditors as they listened trembled lest, with each sentence, that deep musical voice should fall on eternal silence. All this while he had been working at lectures and boys' books, when, as he said, "a thousand songs are singing in my heart that will certainly kill me if I do not utter them soon." One of the thousand, "Sunrise," he uttered with a temperature of 104 degrees burning out his life, but it is full of the rapture of the dawn.
To the pines of North Carolina the poet was taken, in the hope that they might give him of their strength. But the wind-song through their swaying branches lulled him to his last earthly sleep. On the 7th of September the narrow stream of his earthly existence broadened and deepened and flowed triumphantly into the great ocean of Eternal Life.
"THE POET OF THE PINES"
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
"Why are not your countrymen all poets, surrounded as they are by beautiful things to inspire them?" I asked a young Swiss.
"Because," he replied, "my people are so accustomed to beauty that it has no influence upon them."
They had never known anything but beauty: there were no sharp contrasts to clash, flint-like, and strike out sparks of divine fire.
Had the beauty of old Charleston produced the same negative effect, Southern literature would have suffered a distinct loss—if that may be regarded as lost which has never been possessed. For centuries the Queen of the Sea stood in a vision of splendor, the tumultuous waves of the Atlantic dashing at her feet, eternal sunshine crowning her royal brow. Her gardens were stately with oleanders and pomegranates, brilliant with jonquils and hyacinths, myrtle and gardenia. Roses of the olden time, Lancaster and York and the sweet pink cinnamon, breathed the fragrance of days long past. The hills that environed her were snowy with Cherokee roses and odorous with jasmine and honeysuckle. Her people dwelt in mansions in the corridors of which ancestral ghosts from Colonial days kept guard.
In old Charleston that goes back in history almost a century before the Revolution and extends to the opening of the Sixties—the old Queen City by the Sea, which now few are left to remember—was a circle of congenial creative souls just before the first shot at Fort Sumter heralded the destruction of the old-time life of the Colonial city. William Gilmore Simms was the head and mentor of the brilliant little band, and the much younger men, Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry Timrod, were the fiery souls that gave it the mental electricity necessary to furnish the motive power. Through all the coming days of trial and hardship, of aspiration and defeat, of watching from the towers of high achievement or lying prone in the valley of failure, not one of that little circle ever lost the golden memory of those magic evenings in the home of the novelist and poet, the thinker and dreamer, William Gilmore Simms, the intellectual father of them all.
At that time in the old city was another picturesque home that harked back to Colonial days—stately, veranda-circled, surrounded by that fascinating atmosphere of history and poetry known to those old dwellings alone of all the structures of the New World: the home of the Southern poet of Nature, Paul Hamilton Hayne. Its many-windowed front looked cheerfully out upon a wide lawn radiant with flowers of bygone fashion, loved by the poets of olden times, and bright with the greenery that kept perpetual summer around the historic dwelling. This beautiful pre-Revolutionary home was burned in the bombardment of Charleston, and with it was destroyed the library that had been the pride of the poet's heart.
In this old home the Poet of the Pines was born of a family that looked back to the opening days of the eighteenth century, when Charleston was young, glowing with the beauty of her birth into the forests of the New World, wearing proudly the tiara of her loyalty to King and Crown. Looking back along the road that stretched between the first Hayne, who helped to make of the old city a memory to be cherished on the page of history and a picture on the canvas of the present to awaken admiration, and the young soul that looked with poetic vision on the beginning of the new era, one sees a long succession of brilliant names and powerful figures.
Paul Hayne was the great-grand-nephew of "the Martyr Hayne," who has given to Charleston her only authentic ghost-story, the scene of which was a brick dwelling which stood till 1896 at the corner of Atlantic and Meeting Streets. Colonel Isaac H. Hayne, a soldier of the Revolution, secured a parole, that he might be with his dying wife. While on parole he was ordered to fight against his country. Rather than be forced to the crime of treason, he broke his parole, was captured and condemned to death. From her beautiful, mahogany-panelled drawing-room in that old home where the two streets cross, his sister-in-law, who had gone with his two little children to plead for his life, watched as he passed on his way from the vault of the old Custom House, used then as a prison, to the gallows. "Return, return to us!" she called in an agony of grief. As he walked on he replied, "If I can I will." It is said that his old negro mammy, to whom he was always "my chile," ran out to the gate with the playthings she had fondly cherished since the days when they were to him irresistible attractions, crying, "Come back! Come back!" To both calls his heart responded with such longing love that when the soul was released, the old home knew the step and the voice again. Ever afterward when eventide fell, one standing at that window would hear a ghostly voice from the street below and steps upon the stairs and in the hall; footsteps of one coming—never going.
Paul Hamilton Hayne's uncle, Colonel Arthur P. Hayne, fought under Jackson at New Orleans, and was afterward United States Senator. Paul was nephew of Robert Y. Hayne, whose career as a statesman and an orator won for him a fame that has not faded with the years. With this uncle, Paul found a home in his orphaned childhood.
Of his sailor father, Lieutenant Hayne, his shadowy memory takes form in a poem, one stanza of which gives us a view of the brave seaman's life and death:
He perished not in conflict nor in flame,No laurel garland rests upon his tomb;Yet in stern duty's path he met his doom;A life heroic, though unwed to fame.
He perished not in conflict nor in flame,No laurel garland rests upon his tomb;Yet in stern duty's path he met his doom;A life heroic, though unwed to fame.
He perished not in conflict nor in flame,
No laurel garland rests upon his tomb;
Yet in stern duty's path he met his doom;
A life heroic, though unwed to fame.
Though he pathetically mourns:
Never in childhood have I blithely sprungTo catch my father's voice, or climb his knee,
Never in childhood have I blithely sprungTo catch my father's voice, or climb his knee,
Never in childhood have I blithely sprung
To catch my father's voice, or climb his knee,
still
Love limned his wavering likeness on my soul,Till through slow growths it waxed a perfect wholeOf clear conceptions, brightening heart and mind.
Love limned his wavering likeness on my soul,Till through slow growths it waxed a perfect wholeOf clear conceptions, brightening heart and mind.
Love limned his wavering likeness on my soul,
Till through slow growths it waxed a perfect whole
Of clear conceptions, brightening heart and mind.
That clear conception remained a lifelong treasure in the poet's heart.
Through a great ancestral corridor had Paul Hamilton Hayne descended, with soul enjewelled with all the gems of character and thought that had sparkled in the long gallery through which he had travelled into the earth-light.
In the school of Mr. Coates, in Charleston, he was fitted to enter Charleston College, a plain, narrow-fronted structure with six severely classic columns supporting the façade. It stood on the foundation of the "old brick barracks" held by the Colonial troops through a six-weeks siege by twelve thousand British regulars under Sir Henry Clinton.
Hayne satisfied the hunger and thirst of his excursive and ardent mind by browsing in the Charleston Library on Broad and Church streets. It may be that sometimes, on his way to that friendly resort, he passed the old house on Church Street which once sheltered General Washington; a substantial three-storied building with ornamental woodwork which might cause its later use as a bakery to seem out of harmony to any butchefswith high ideals of their art.
The Library of old Charleston was composed chiefly of English classics and the literature of France in the olden time when Europe furnished us with something more than anarchy, clothes, and bargain-counter titles. A sample of the Young America of that early day asked an old gentleman, "Why are you always reading that old Montaigne?" The reply was, "Why, child, there is in this book all that a gentleman needs to think about," with the discreet addition, "Not a book for little girls, though." If we find in our circle of poets a certain stateliness of style scarcely to be looked for in a somewhat new republic that might be expected to rush pell-mell after an idea and capture it by the sudden impact of a lusty blow, after the manner of the minute-men catching a red-coat at Lexington; if we observe in their writing old world expressions that woo us subtly, like the odor of lavender from a long-closed linen chest, we may attribute it to the fact that aristocratic old Charleston, though the first to assert her independence of the political yoke, yet clung tenaciously to the literary ideals of the Old World.
On Meeting Street was Apprentices' Library Hall, where Glidden led his hearers through the intricacies of Egyptian Archæology. Here Agassiz sometimes lectured on Zoölogy, and our youthful poet may have watched animals from the jungle climb up the blackboard at the touch of what would have been only a piece of chalk in any other hand, but became a magic creative force under the guidance of that wizard of science. Here he could have followed with Thackeray the varying fortunes and ethic vagaries of the royal Georges. His poetic soul may have kindled with the fire of Macready's "Hamlet" when, thinking that he was too far down the slope of life to hark back to the days of the youthful Dane, he proved that he still had the glow of the olden time in his soul by reading the part as only Macready could. In this old hall he may have looked upon the paintings which inspired him to create his own pictures, luminous with softly tinted word-colors.
Meeting Street seems to have been named with reference to its uses, for here, too, was the old theatre, gone long ago, where Fannie Ellsler danced with a wavering, quivering, shimmering grace that drove humming-birds to despair. In that theatre it may be that Paul Hayne heard Jenny Lind fill the night with a melody which would irradiate his soul throughout life and reproduce itself in the music-tones of his gently cadenced verse. There the ill-fated Adrienne Lecouvreur lived and died again in her wondrous transmigration into the soul of the great Rachel.
When a boy, Hayne's heart may have often thrilled to the voice of the scholarly Hugh Swinton Legare, as he made the heart of some classic old poem live in the music of his organ-tones.
A sensitive soul surrounded by the influences of life in old Charleston had many incentives to high and harmonious expression.
That the Queen City of the Sea did not claim the privilege of the fickleness alleged to be incident to the feminine character is illustrated by the fact that she had but two postmasters in seventy years, a circumstance worthy of note "in days like these, when ev'ry gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow," and the disbursing counter is crowded with claimants for the rewards due for commendable activity in the campaign. One of those two was Peter Bascot, an appointee of Washington. The other was Alfred Huger, "the last of the Barons," who had refused to take the office in the time of Bascot.
In old Charleston the servants were the severest sticklers for propriety, and the butlers of the old families rivalled each other in the loftiness of their standards. Jack, the butler of "the last of the Barons," was wide awake to the demands of his position, and when an old sea captain, an intimate friend of Mr. Huger, dining with the family, asked for rice when the fish was served he was first met with a chill silence. Thinking that he had not been heard, he repeated the request. Jack bent and whispered to him. With a burst of laughter, the captain said, "Judge, you have a treasure. Jack has saved me from disgrace, from exposing my ignorance. He whispered, 'That would not do, sir;wenever eats rice with fish.'"
Russell's book-shop on King Street was a favorite place of meeting for the Club which recognized Simms as king by divine right. From these pleasant gatherings grew the thought of giving to Charleston a medium through which the productions of her thought might go out to the world. In April, 1857, appearedRussell's Magazine, bearing the names of Paul Hamilton Hayne and W.B. Carlisle as editors, though upon Hayne devolved all the editorial work and much of the other writing for the new publication. He had helped to keep alive theSouthern Literary Messengerafter the death of Mr. White and the departure of Poe for other fields of labor, had assisted Richards on theSouthern Literary Gazetteand had been associate editor of Harvey'sSpectator. For Charleston had long been ambitious to become the literary centre of the South. The object ofRussell's Magazinewas to uphold the cause of literature in Charleston and in the South, and incidentally to stand by the friends of the young editor, who carried his partisanship of William Gilmore Simms so far as to permit the publication of a severe criticism of Dana's "Household Book of Poetry" because it did not include any of the verse of the Circle's rugged mentor.Russell'shad a brilliant and brief career, falling upon silence in March, 1860; probably not much to the regret of Paul Hayne, who, while too conscientious to withhold his best effort from any enterprise that claimed him, was too distinctly a poet not to feel somewhat like Pegasus in pound when tied down to the editorial desk.
This quiet life, in which the gentle soul of Hayne, with its delicate sensitiveness, poetic insight, and appreciation of all beauty, found congenial environment, soon suffered a rude interruption. As Charleston was the first to throw off the yoke of Great Britain and draw up a constitution which she thought adapted to independent government, so did she first express the determination of South Carolina to break the bonds that held her turbulent political soul in uncongenial association.
Hayne heard the twelve-hour cannonade of Fort Sumter's hundred and forty guns echoing over the sea, and saw the Stars and Bars flutter above the walls of the old fort. He saw Generals Bee and Johnson come back from Manassas, folded in the battle flag for which they had given their lives, to lie in state in the City Hall at the marble feet of Calhoun, the great political leader whom they had followed to the inevitable end. General Lee was in the old town for a little while. A man said to him, "It is difficult for so many men to abandon their business for the war." The general replied, "Believe me, sir, the business of this generationisthe war." In the spirit of this answer Charleston met the crisis so suddenly come upon her.
All the young poet's patriotic love and inherited martial instinct urged him to the battle, but his frail physique withheld him from the field, and he took service as an aide on the staff of Governor Pickens.
At the close of the war, wrecked in health, with only the memory of his beautiful home and library left to him, with not even a piece of the family silver remaining from the "march to the sea," Hayne went to the pine-barrens of Georgia, eighteen miles from Augusta, to build a new home.
When the first man and woman were sent out from their garden home, it was not as a punishment for sin, but as an answer to their ambitious quest for knowledge and their new-born longing for a wider life. It was not that the gate of Eden was closed upon them; it was that the gates of all the Edens of the world were opened for them and for the generations of their children. One of those gates opened upon the Eden of Copse Hill, where the poet of Nature found a home and all friendly souls met a welcome that filled the pine-barrens with joy for them. Of Copse Hill the poet says:
A little apology for a dwelling was perched on the top of a hill overlooking in several directions hundreds of leagues of pine-barrens there was as yet neither garden nor inclosure near it; and a wilder, more desolate and savage-looking home could hardly have been seen east of the prairies.
What that "little apology of a dwelling" was to him is best pictured in his own words:
On a steep hillside, to all airs that blow,Open, and open to the varying sky,Our cottage homestead, smiling tranquilly,Catches morn's earliest and eve's latest glow;Here, far from worldly strife and pompous show,The peaceful seasons glide serenely by,Fulfil their missions and as calmly dieAs waves on quiet shores when winds are low.Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rillThat twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye,Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantasticalThat float and change at the light breeze's will,—To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury,Are more than death of kings, or empires' fall.
On a steep hillside, to all airs that blow,Open, and open to the varying sky,Our cottage homestead, smiling tranquilly,Catches morn's earliest and eve's latest glow;Here, far from worldly strife and pompous show,The peaceful seasons glide serenely by,Fulfil their missions and as calmly dieAs waves on quiet shores when winds are low.Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rillThat twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye,Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantasticalThat float and change at the light breeze's will,—To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury,Are more than death of kings, or empires' fall.
On a steep hillside, to all airs that blow,
Open, and open to the varying sky,
Our cottage homestead, smiling tranquilly,
Catches morn's earliest and eve's latest glow;
Here, far from worldly strife and pompous show,
The peaceful seasons glide serenely by,
Fulfil their missions and as calmly die
As waves on quiet shores when winds are low.
Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill
That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye,
Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantastical
That float and change at the light breeze's will,—
To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury,
Are more than death of kings, or empires' fall.
Here with "the bonny brown hand" in his that was "dearer than all dear things of earth" Paul Hayne found a life that was filled with beauty, notwithstanding its moments of discouragement and pain. We like to remember that always with him, helping him bear the burdens of life, was that wifely hand of which the poet could say, "The hand which points the path to heaven, yet makes a heaven of earth."
On sunny days he paced to and fro under the pines, the many windows of his mind opened to the studies in light and shade and his soul attuned to the music of the drifting winds and the whispering trees. When Nature was in darkened mood and gave him no invitation to the open court wherein she reigned, he walked up and down his library floor, engrossed with some beautiful thought which, in harmonious garb of words, would go forth and bless the world with its music.
The study, of which he wrote:
This is my world! within these narrow wallsI own a princely service
This is my world! within these narrow wallsI own a princely service
This is my world! within these narrow walls
I own a princely service
was perhaps as remarkable a room as any in which student ever spent his working hours, the walls being papered wholly with cuts from papers and periodicals. The furniture was decorated in the same way, even to the writing desk, which was an old work bench left by some carpenters. All had been done by the "bonny brown hands" that never wearied in loving service.
Many of his friends made pilgrimages to the little cottage on the hill, where they were cordially welcomed by the poet, who, happy in his home with his wife and little son, lived among the flowers which he tended with his own hands, surrounded by the majesty of the pines whose
Passion and mystery murmur through the leaves,—Passion and mystery touched by deathless pain,Whose monotone of long, low anguish grievesFor something lost that shall not live again.
Passion and mystery murmur through the leaves,—Passion and mystery touched by deathless pain,Whose monotone of long, low anguish grievesFor something lost that shall not live again.
Passion and mystery murmur through the leaves,—
Passion and mystery touched by deathless pain,
Whose monotone of long, low anguish grieves
For something lost that shall not live again.
Hither came Henry Timrod, doomed to failure, loss, and early death, but with soul eternally alive with the fires of genius. In the last days of his sad and broken life William Gilmore Simms came to renew old memories and recount the days when life in old Charleston was iridescent as the waves that washed the feet of the Queen of the Sea. Congenial spirits they were who met in that charming little study where Paul Hayne walked "the fields of quiet Arcadies" and
... gleamings of the lost, heroic lifeFlashed through the gorgeous vistas of romance.
... gleamings of the lost, heroic lifeFlashed through the gorgeous vistas of romance.
... gleamings of the lost, heroic life
Flashed through the gorgeous vistas of romance.
Hayne had the subtle power of touching the friendliness in the hearts of those who were far away, as well as of the comrades who had walked with him along the road of life. Often letters came from friends in other lands, known to him only by that wireless intuitional telegraphy whereby kindred souls know each other, though hands have not met nor eyes looked into eyes. Many might voice the thought expressed by one: "I may boast that Paul Hayne was my friend, though it was never my good fortune to meet him." Many a soul was upheld and strengthened by him, as was that of a man who wrote that he had been saved from suicide by reading the "Lyric of Action." His album held autographed photographs of many writers, among them Charles Kingsley, William Black, and Wilkie Collins. He cherished an ivy vine sent him by Blackmore from Westminister Abbey.
Hayne's many-windowed mind looked out upon all the phases of the beauty of Nature. Her varied moods found in him a loving response. He awaited her coming as the devotee at the temple gate waits for the approach of his Divinity:
I felt, through dim, awe-laden space,The coming of thy veiled face;And in the fragrant night's eclipseThe kisses of thy deathless lips,Like strange star-pulses, throbbed through space!
I felt, through dim, awe-laden space,The coming of thy veiled face;And in the fragrant night's eclipseThe kisses of thy deathless lips,Like strange star-pulses, throbbed through space!
I felt, through dim, awe-laden space,
The coming of thy veiled face;
And in the fragrant night's eclipse
The kisses of thy deathless lips,
Like strange star-pulses, throbbed through space!
Whether it is drear November and
But winds foreboding fill the desolate nightAnd die at dawning down wild woodland ways,
But winds foreboding fill the desolate nightAnd die at dawning down wild woodland ways,
But winds foreboding fill the desolate night
And die at dawning down wild woodland ways,
or in May "couched in cool shadow" he hears
The bee-throngs murmurous in the golden fern,The wood-doves veiled by depths of flickering green,
The bee-throngs murmurous in the golden fern,The wood-doves veiled by depths of flickering green,
The bee-throngs murmurous in the golden fern,
The wood-doves veiled by depths of flickering green,
for him the music of the spheres is in it all. Whether at midnight
The moon, a ghost of her sweet self,
The moon, a ghost of her sweet self,
The moon, a ghost of her sweet self,
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Creeps up the gray, funereal sky wearily, how wearily,
Creeps up the gray, funereal sky wearily, how wearily,
Creeps up the gray, funereal sky wearily, how wearily,
or morning comes "with gracious breath of sunlight," it is a part of glorious Nature, his star-crowned Queen, his sun-clad goddess.
To no other heart has the pine forest come so near unfolding its immemorial secret. That poet-mind was a wind-harp, and its quivering strings echoed to every message that came from the dim old woods on the "soft whispers of the twilight breeze," the flutterings of the newly awakened morn or the crash of the storm. "The Dryad of the Pine" bent "earth-yearning branches" to give him loving greeting and receive his quick response:
Leaning on thee, I feel the subtlest thrillStir thy dusk limbs, tho' all the heavens are still,And 'neath thy rings of rugged fretwork markWhat seems a heart-throb muffled in the dark.
Leaning on thee, I feel the subtlest thrillStir thy dusk limbs, tho' all the heavens are still,And 'neath thy rings of rugged fretwork markWhat seems a heart-throb muffled in the dark.
Leaning on thee, I feel the subtlest thrill
Stir thy dusk limbs, tho' all the heavens are still,
And 'neath thy rings of rugged fretwork mark
What seems a heart-throb muffled in the dark.
"The imprisoned spirits of all winds that blow" echoed to his ear from the heart of the pine-cone fallen from "the wavering height of yon monarchal pine."
When a glorious pine, to him a living soul, falls under the axe he hears "the wail of Dryads in their last distress."
In the greenery of his loved and loving pines, with memories happy, though touched to tender sadness by the sorrows that had come to the old-time group of friends, blessed with the companionship of the two loving souls who were dearest to him of all the world, he sang the melodies of his heart till a cold hand swept across the strings of his wonderful harp and chilled them to silence.
In his last year of earth he was invited to deliver at Vanderbilt University a series of lectures on poetry and literature. Before the invitation reached him he had "fallen into that perfect peace that waits for all."
"THE FLAME-BORN POET"[2]
HENRY TIMROD
A writer on Southern poets heads his article on one of the most gifted of our children of song, "Henry Timrod, the Unfortunate Singer."
At first glance the title may seem appropriate. Viewed by the standard set up by the world, there was little of the wine of success in Timrod's cup of life. Bitter drafts of the waters of Marah were served to him in the iron goblet of Fate. But he lived. Of how many of the so-called favorites of Fortune could that be said? Through the mists of his twilit life, he caught glimpses of a sun-radiant morning of wondrous glory.
Thirty years after Timrod's death a Northern critic, writing of the new birth of interest in Timrod's work, said: "Time is the ideal editor." Surely, Editor Time's blue pencil has dealt kindly with our flame-born poet.
In Charleston, December 8, 1829, the "little blue-eyed boy" of his father's verse first opened his eyes upon a world that would give him all its beauty and much of its sadness, verifying the paternal prophecy:
And thy full share of miseryMust fall in life on thee!
And thy full share of miseryMust fall in life on thee!
And thy full share of misery
Must fall in life on thee!
In early childhood he was destined to lose the loving father to whom his "shouts of joy" were the sweetest strain in life's harmony.
Henry Timrod and Paul Hayne, within a month of the same age, were seat-mates in school. Writing of him many years later, Hayne tells of the time that Timrod made the thrilling discovery that he was a poet; that being, perhaps, the most exciting epoch in any life. Coming into school one morning, he showed Paul his first attempt at verse-writing, which Hayne describes as "a ballad of stirring adventures and sanguinary catastrophe," which he thought wonderful, the youthful author, of course, sharing that conviction. Convictions are easy at thirteen, even when one has not the glamour of the sea and the romance of old Charleston to prepare the soul for their riveting.
Unfortunately, the teacher of that school thus honored by the presence of two budding poets had not a mind attuned to poesy. Seeing the boys communing together in violation of the rules made and provided for school discipline, he promptly and sharply recalled them to the subjects wisely laid down in the curriculum. Notwithstanding this early discouragement, the youthful poet, abetted by his faithful fellow song-bird, persevered in his erratic way, and Charleston had the honor of being the home of one who has been regarded as the most brilliant of Southern poets.
When Henry Timrod finished his course of study in the chilling atmosphere in which his poetic ambition first essayed to put forth its tender leaflets, he entered Franklin College, in Athens, the nucleus of what is now the University of Georgia. A few years ago a visitor saw his name in pencil on a wall of the old college. The "Toombs oak" still stood on the college grounds, and it may be that its whispering leaves brought to the youthful poet messages of patriotism which they had garnered from the lips of the embryonic Georgia politician. Timrod spent only a year in the college, quitting his studies partly because his health failed, and partly because the family purse was not equal to his scholastic ambition.
Returning to Charleston at a time when that city cherished the ambition to become to the South what Boston was to the North, he helped form the coterie of writers who followed the leadership of that burly and sometimes burry old Mentor, William Gilmore Simms. The young poet seems not to have been among the docile members of the flock, for when Timrod's first volume of poems was published Hayne wrote to Simms, requesting him to write a notice of Timrod's work, not that he (Timrod) deserved it of Simms, but that he (Hayne) asked it of him. It may be that Timrod's recognition of the fact that he could write poetry and that Simms could only try to write it led to a degree of youthful assumption which clashed with the dignity of the older man. The Nestor of Southern literature seems not to have cherished animosity, for he not only noticed Timrod favorably, but in after years, when the poet's misfortunes pressed most heavily upon him, made every possible exertion to give him practical and much needed assistance.
Upon his return from college, Timrod, with some dim fancies concerning a forensic career circling around the remote edges of his imagination, entered the office of his friend, Judge Petigru. The "irrepressible conflict" between Law and Poesy that has been waged through the generations broke forth anew, and Timrod made the opposite choice from that reached by Blackstone. Judging from the character of the rhythmic composition in which the great expounder of English law took leave of the Lyric Muse, his decision was a judicious one. Doubtless that of our poet was equally discreet. When the Club used to gather in Russell's book-shop on King Street, Judge Petigru and his recalcitrant protégé had many pleasant meetings, unmarred by differences as to the relative importance of the Rule in Shelley's Case and the flight of Shelley's Lark.
Henry Timrod was thrust into the literary life of Charleston at a time when that life was most full of impelling force. It was a Charleston filled with memories quite remote from the poetry and imaginative literature which represented life to the youthful writers. It was a Charleston with an imposing background of history and oratory, forensic and legislative, against which the poetry and imagination of the new-comers glittered capriciously, like the glimmering of fireflies against the background of night, with swift, uncertain vividness that suggested the early extinguishing of those quivering lamps. But the heart of Charleston was kindled with a new ambition, and the new men brought promise of its fulfilment.
Others have given us a view of the literary life of Charleston, of her social position, of her place in the long procession of history. To Timrod it was left to give us martial Charleston, "girt without and garrisoned at home," looking "from roof and spire and dome across her tranquil bay." With him, we see her while
Calm as that second summer which precedesThe first fall of the snow,In the broad sunlight of heroic deedsThe City bides the foe.
Calm as that second summer which precedesThe first fall of the snow,In the broad sunlight of heroic deedsThe City bides the foe.
Calm as that second summer which precedes
The first fall of the snow,
In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds
The City bides the foe.
Through his eyes we look seaward to where
Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud,Looms o'er the solemn deep.
Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud,Looms o'er the solemn deep.
Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud,
Looms o'er the solemn deep.
We behold the Queen City of the Sea standing majestically on the sands, the storm-clouds lowering darkly over her, the distant thunders of war threatening her, and the pale lightnings of the coming tempest flashing nearer,
And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched,Unseen, beside the flood—Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouchedThat wait and watch for blood.
And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched,Unseen, beside the flood—Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouchedThat wait and watch for blood.
And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched,
Unseen, beside the flood—
Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched
That wait and watch for blood.
We see her in those dark days before the plunge into the darkness has been taken, as
Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,Walk grave and thoughtful men,Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's bladeAs lightly as the pen.
Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,Walk grave and thoughtful men,Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's bladeAs lightly as the pen.
Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,
Walk grave and thoughtful men,
Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade
As lightly as the pen.
Thus he gives us the picture of the beautiful city of his love as
All untroubled in her faith, she waitsThe triumph or the tomb.
All untroubled in her faith, she waitsThe triumph or the tomb.
All untroubled in her faith, she waits
The triumph or the tomb.
Hayne said that of all who shared the suppers at the hospitable home of Simms in Charleston none perhaps enjoyed them as vividly as Timrod. He chooses the word that well applies to Timrod's life in all its variations. He was vivid in all that he did. Being little of a talker, he was always a vivid listener, and when he spoke, his words leaped forth like a flame.
Russell's book-shop, where the Club used to spend their afternoons in pleasant conversation and discourse of future work, was a place of keen interest to Timrod, and when their discussions resulted in the establishment ofRussell's Magazinehe was one of the most enthusiastic contributors to the ambitious publication.
While Charleston was not the place of what would be called Timrod's most successful life, it was the scene in which he reached his highest exemplification of Browning's definition of poetry: "A presentment of the correspondence of the universe to the Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal."
In the environments of Charleston he roamed with his Nature-worshipping mother, who taught him the beauties of clouds and trees and streams and flowers, the glory of the changeful pageantry of the sky, the exquisite grace of the bird atilt on a swaying branch. Through the glowing picture which Nature unfolded before him he looked into the heart of the truth symbolized there and gave us messages from woods and sky and sea. While it may be said that a poet can make his own environment, yet he is fortunate who finds his place where nature has done so much to fit the outward scene to the inward longing.
In Charleston he met "Katie, the Fair Saxon," brown-eyed and with
Entangled in her golden hairSome English sunshine, warmth and air.
Entangled in her golden hairSome English sunshine, warmth and air.
Entangled in her golden hair
Some English sunshine, warmth and air.
He straightway entered into the kingdom of Love, and that sunshine made a radiance over the few years he had left to give to love and art.
In the city of his home he answered his own "Cry to Arms" when the "festal guns" roared out their challenge. Had his physique been as strong as his patriotism, his sword might have rivaled his pen in reflecting honor upon his beautiful city. Even then the seeds of consumption had developed, and he was discharged from field service. Still wishing to remain in the service of his country, he tried the work of war correspondent, reaching the front just after the battle of Shiloh. Overcome by the horrors of the retreat, he returned to Charleston, and was soon after appointed assistant editor of theDaily South Carolinian, published in Columbia. He removed to the capital, where his prospects became bright enough to permit his marriage to Kate Goodwin, the English girl to whom his Muse pays such glowing tribute.
In May, 1864, Simms was in Columbia, and on his return to "Woodlands" wrote to Hayne that Timrod was in better health and spirits than for years, saying: "He has only to prepare a couple of dwarf essays, making a single column, and the pleasant public is satisfied. These he does so well that they have reason to be so. Briefly, our friend is in a fair way to fatten and be happy."
This prosperity came to an end when the capital city fell a victim to the fires of war, and Timrod returned to the city of his birth, where for a time the publication of theSouth Carolinianwas continued, he writing editorials nominally for fifteen dollars a month, practically for exercise in facile expression, as the small stipend promised was never paid. With the paper, he soon returned to Columbia, where after a time he secured work in the office of Governor Orr, writing to Hayne that twice he copied papers from ten o'clock one morning till sunrise of the next.
With the close of the session, his work ended, and in the spring he visited Paul Hayne at Copse Hill. Hayne says: "He found me with my family established in a crazy wooden shanty, dignified as a cottage, near the track of the main Georgia railroad, about sixteen miles from Augusta." To Timrod, that "crazy wooden shanty," set in immemorial pines and made radiant by the presence of his poet friend, was finer than a palace. On that "windy, frowzy, barren hill," as Maurice Thompson called it, the two old friends spent together the spring days of '67—such days as lingered in golden beauty in the memory of one of them and have come down to us in immortal verse.
Again in August of that year he visited Copse Hill, hoping to find health among the pines. Of these last days Paul Hayne wrote years later:
In the latter summer-tide of this same year I again persuaded him to visit me. Ah! how sacred now, how sad and sweet, are the memories of that rich, clear, prodigal August of '67!
We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet more "charmed sleep." Or we smoked, conversing lazily between the puffs,
"Next to some pine whose antique roots just peepedFrom out the crumbling bases of the sand."
"Next to some pine whose antique roots just peepedFrom out the crumbling bases of the sand."
"Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped
From out the crumbling bases of the sand."
But the evenings, with their gorgeous sunsets, "rolling down like a chorus" and the "gray-eyed melancholy gloaming," were the favorite hours of the day with him.
One of those pines was especially his own, by his love and his choice of its shade as a resting place. Of it Paul Hayne wrote when his friend had passed from its shadows for the last time:
The same majestic pine is lifted highAgainst the twilight sky,The same low, melancholy music grievesAmid the topmost leaves,As when I watched and mused and dreamed with himBeneath those shadows dim.
The same majestic pine is lifted highAgainst the twilight sky,The same low, melancholy music grievesAmid the topmost leaves,As when I watched and mused and dreamed with himBeneath those shadows dim.
The same majestic pine is lifted high
Against the twilight sky,
The same low, melancholy music grieves
Amid the topmost leaves,
As when I watched and mused and dreamed with him
Beneath those shadows dim.
Such dreams we can dimly imagine sometimes when we stand beneath a glorious pine and try to translate its whisperings into words, and watch "the last rays of sunset shimmering down, flashed like a royal crown." Sometimes we catch glimpses of such radiant visions when we stand in the pine shadows and think, as Hayne did so often after that beautiful August, "Of one who comes no more." Under that stately tree he
Seemed to drink the sunset like strong wineOr, hushed in trance divine,Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from farOf evening's virgin star.
Seemed to drink the sunset like strong wineOr, hushed in trance divine,Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from farOf evening's virgin star.
Seemed to drink the sunset like strong wine
Or, hushed in trance divine,
Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from far
Of evening's virgin star.
In all his years after, Paul Hayne held in his heart the picture of his friend with head against that "mighty trunk" when
The unquiet passion died from out his eyes,As lightning from stilled skies.
The unquiet passion died from out his eyes,As lightning from stilled skies.
The unquiet passion died from out his eyes,
As lightning from stilled skies.
So through that glowing August on Copse Hill the two Southern poets walked and talked and built their shrine to the shining Olympic goddess to whom their lives were dedicated.
When summer had wrapped about her the purple and crimson glories of her brilliant life and drifted into the tomb of past things, Timrod left the friend of his heart alone with the "soft wind-angels" and memories of "that quiet eve"
When, deeply, thrillingly,He spake of lofty hopes which vanquish Death;And on his mortal breathA language of immortal meanings hungThat fired his heart and tongue.
When, deeply, thrillingly,He spake of lofty hopes which vanquish Death;And on his mortal breathA language of immortal meanings hungThat fired his heart and tongue.
When, deeply, thrillingly,
He spake of lofty hopes which vanquish Death;
And on his mortal breath
A language of immortal meanings hung
That fired his heart and tongue.
HOUSE WHERE TIMROD LIVED DURING HIS LAST YEARS
HOUSE WHERE TIMROD LIVED DURING HIS LAST YEARS1108 Henderson Street, Columbia, S.C.
Impelled by circumstances to leave the pines before their inspiring breath had given him of their life, he had little strength to renew the battle for existence, and of the sacrifice of his possessions to which he had been forced to resort he writes to Hayne: "We have eaten two silver pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several sofas, innumerable chairs, and a huge bedstead."
We should like to think of life as flowing on serenely in that pretty cottage on Henderson Street, Columbia, its wide front veranda crowned with a combed roof supported by a row of white columns. In its cool dimness we may in fancy see the nature-loving poet at eventide looking into the greenery of a friendly tree stretching great arms lovingly to the shadowy porch. A taller tree stands sentinel at the gate, as if to guard the poet-soul from the world and close it around with the beauty that it loved.
But life did not bring him any more of joy or success than he had achieved in the long years of toil and sorrow and disappointment, brightened by the flame of his own genius throwing upon the dark wall of existence the pictures that imagination drew with magic hand upon his sympathetic, ever responsive mind. On the sixth of October, after that month of iridescent beauty on Copse Hill, came the days of which he had written long before: