"
A pleasant interlude in Lanier's soldier life was a two weeks' visit
to Macon in the spring of 1863. The city had not yet felt
any of the calamities of war, although high prices prevailed.
Mrs. Clay, wife of Senator Clement C. Clay, was a visitor in the city
at that time, waiting for a summons to join her husband in Richmond.
She writes, in recalling those days: "Spring was in its precious beauty.
Gardens glowed with brilliant blossoms. Thousands of fragrant odors mingled
in the air, the voices of myriad birds sang about the foliaged avenues."*
It was then that Lanier met Miss Mary Day, at the home of their friend,
Miss Lamar. Her father was a prominent business man in Macon. She had lived
for the first few years of her life in Macon, but had been since 1851
studying music in New York, and living with cultivated people
at Saratoga and West Point. In an atmosphere of romance, music, and love
Lanier spent his vacation.
--
* `A Belle of the Fifties', p. 194.
--
On their return to the Virginia battlefields the two brothers
were accompanied by Mrs. Clay and her sister-in-law. Mrs. Clay had been
a popular belle in Washington in the fifties, and was well acquainted
with leading men and women throughout the country. She had heard and met
in social circles Charlotte Cushman, Jenny Lind, Thackeray, Lord Napier,
and other notabilities. Lanier, eager always to hear of the larger world
outside of his own limited life, was much attracted by
her reminiscences of well-known men and women.
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