Poor Sidney Lanier, for
whom a middle school in Houston has been named since 1926, recently suffered
the indignity of having his name removed from the school, owing to his
participation in the Civil War on the Confederate side. The sad irony, of course, is that
Lanier is hardly known for his military service and was honored, not for that,
but for his later achievements as a poet, musician, and faculty member of Johns
Hopkins University.
Born in Macon, Georgia, on
February 3, 1842, to descendants of French Huguenots, Lanier studied the flute
as a child and then attended Oglethorpe University, graduating at age seventeen
as class valedictorian. When the Civil War broke out, he volunteered and served
mostly as a pilot and signal officer aboard British blockade-runners, smuggling
supplies past Union ships. He was
captured by Union forces and imprisoned for five months at Point Lookout in
Maryland, where he became infected with tuberculosis, which plagued him for the
rest of his brief life. At war's end, he had to walk all the way home to Macon, arriving
desperately ill.
He taught
school in Macon and then went to work as a desk clerk at the Exchange Hotel in
Montgomery, Alabama.
Adept at not only the flute, but also the banjo, violin, guitar, piano,
and organ, he entertained hotel guests with his music, and served as organist
at the First Presbyterian church. He also wrote his only novel, Tiger-Lilies, an anti-war
autobiographical work published in 1867.
The same year he moved to Prattville, Alabama, became a school principal, and
married a friend from Macon, Mary Day, with whom he had four sons.
Returning to Macon, he
took up the practice of law, as his health worsened from constant attacks of
tuberculosis. He began to publish poetry, much of which sold well and
established him as a literary figure. Most notable of his verses were "Corn"
(1875), "The Symphony" (1875), "Centennial Meditation"
(1876), "The Song of the Chattahoochee" (1877), "The Marshes of
Glynn" (1878), and "Sunrise" (1881).
Seeking a better climate
for his lungs, he left his family and went to Texas, where he spent time
in Houston, Galveston, Austin, and San Antonio, working as a freelance
musician. He left Texas in 1873 and sought permanent work in New York, Boston, and
Philadelphia, winding up as a member of the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in
Baltimore, where he soon rose to first flautist. Lanier composed several notable works for orchestra, including
“Black Birds,” a work that mimics the bird’s song on the flute.
Lanier's family rejoined him in Baltimore,
and he supported them with his work as a musician and as a poet. In the late
1870s he began to lecture on literature at Johns Hopkins University, where he
was named a permanent faculty member, specializing in Shakespeare, Chaucer,
English novelists, and Anglo-Saxon poetry.
Lanier maintained a
lifelong Christian belief, reflected in much of his poetry, which stemmed from
his college days, when he was under the influence of James Woodrow, a professor
of science, who regarded science as a gift of God. Woodrow taught the theory of evolution, for which he was
condemned by the Southern Presbyterian Church, but held to his Christian
faith—as did his pupil, Sidney Lanier.
In later life Lanier was unaffiliated with any denomination, but
remained a devout Christian and independent thinker.
Continually suffering from
tuberculosis, Lanier sought relief in North Carolina. Convalescing with his
family in the small town of Lynn, he suffered complications and died on September
7, 1881. He was thirty-nine. Lanier is buried in Green Mount
Cemetery in Baltimore.
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