The letter written by Lanier to his father from Baltimore in 1873
may lead one to think otherwise. Mr. Lanier was opposed,
as were most of the men of his section, to a young man's entering upon
a musical or poetic career, but more than two hundred letters
written by son to father and many from father to son prove
that their relations during the entire career of the poet
were unusually close and sympathetic. In the earlier years,
Lanier sent his poems to his father, and valued highly his criticism,
and in later years he received from him financial aid and counsel.

While Robert Sampson Lanier was at college in Virginia
he met Mary Jane Anderson, the daughter of Hezekiah Anderson,
a Virginia planter who attained success in the political life of that State.
They were married in 1840, and Sidney was their first-born.
The poet thus inherited on his mother's side Scotch-Irish blood,
an element in Southern life which has been often underestimated.
She proved to be a hard-working woman, caring little for social life,
but thoroughly interested in the religious training of her children.
Her husband, although nominally a Methodist, was not actively identified
with the church, but willingly acquiesced in the somewhat rigid
Presbyterian discipline that prevailed in the home. The children
-- Sidney, Clifford, and Gertrude -- were taught the strictest tenets
of the Calvinistic creed. When Lanier afterwards, in Baltimore,
lived a somewhat more liberal life -- both as to creed and conduct --
he wrote: "If the constituents and guardians of my childhood
-- those good Presbyterians who believed me a model
for the Sunday-school children of all times -- could have witnessed
my acts and doings this day, I know not what groans of sorrowful regret
would arise in my behalf."