Turnbull has caused to be shed upon the figures of the picture,
with more or less brilliancy according to her own preferences.
Designating a tall, draped figure who walks in the front rank of the poets,
the lady said to me: `This is Sidney Lanier;' and when I,
despite my admiration for the poet of the marshes, ventured to offer
a few modest suggestions, she went on to develop the thesis,
that what exalts a man is less what he has done than what he has
aspired to do."
. . . . .
"Mrs. Turnbull had too much tact to multiply her personal anecdotes
of Sidney Lanier, but she pictured him to me as he loved to sit
by the fireside, where he had always his own special place;
coming, of an evening, unannounced, into the room where we then were,
rising like a phantom beside her husband and herself, in the hour
between daylight and dark, and pouring forth those profound,
unexpected, and delightful things which seem to belong to him alone,
which characterize his correspondence also, and all his literary remains."*
--
* `Revue des Deux Mondes', 1898. Translated for `Littell's Living Age',
May 14 and May 21, 1898.
--
The quality of affection in Lanier reached its climax in his home life.
There he was seen and known at his best. An early aspiration of his
was "to show that the artist-life is not necessarily a Bohemian life,
but that it may coincide with and BE the home-life." Such poems
as "Baby Charley" and "Hard Times in Elfland", and the story of "Bob"
reveal the playful and affectionate father, while "My Springs",
"In Absence", "Laus Mariae" and many published and unpublished letters
are but variations of the oft-recurring theme: --
When life's all love, 't is life: aught else, 't is naught.
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