PARSONAGE LIFE—WILLIAM WIRT HENRY—HISTORIC SOIL—JOHN
RANDOLPH—THE LAST OF THE RANDOLPHS
THE village of Charlotte Court-House was a rambling hamlet in 1856.
The plank-road from the nearest railway station (“Drake’s Branch”)
entered the village at one side, and cut abruptly into the main street.
This thoroughfare meandered leisurely from a country road at each end,
through the entire length of the shiretown. It was lined irregularly
with public and private buildings. The Court House, three or four
stores, a couple of hotels, and perhaps half a dozen residences, made
up the nucleus of the place. Beyond, and on either side, dwellings—some
of brick, some of wood—were surrounded by spacious grounds embracing
shrubbery, plantations, groves, and gardens. The “Village Church,”
a brick edifice hoary with years, and redolent of ecclesiastical
traditions, stood at the left of the plank turnpike as one approached
the village from the station. A porticoed manor-house, that had a
history almost as old, faced it across lawn and shrubbery on the
opposite side of the way. When one had left the turnpike for the main
street, and driven a quarter of a mile or so toward the “real country,”
one passed the Parsonage. It stood well away from the street, from
which it was screened by a grove of native oaks. Behind it lay a large
yard, at one side of which were the kitchen and other domestic offices.
A picket fence divided the yard from a garden, and at the left of this
were the stables and pasture. Back of the garden a field lost itself
in a wood of virgin growth.
The house was a white cottage, a story-and-a-half high, fronted and
backed by wide porches. A hall cut the lower floor in half, and ran
from the entrance to the back door. On the left of the hall was a
parlor of fair dimensions, with windows at the front and rear. “The
chamber,” of like shape and proportions, was on the other side. The
dining-room was one wing, and “the study” another. Both connected
directly with a deep portico which filled the intermediate space. Two
bedrooms above stairs, and a store-room adjoining the dining-room,
completed the tale of rooms.
A modest establishment in very truth, but not contemptible from the Old
Virginia standpoint. Small as it was, we did not have it to ourselves
until after Christmas. I esteemed this a fortunate circumstance from
the first, considering how much I had to learn of housekeeping and
parish work. Subsequently, I knew it for one of the signal blessings of
a life that has been affluent in goodness and mercy.
For the occupants of the Parsonage, pending the completion of a house
of their own in building at the other end of the village, were Mr. and
Mrs. Wirt Henry, a young married couple with one child. They had rented
the cottage for the year ending January 1st, and kindly consented to
receive us as boarders until the term had expired.
From the moment that Wirt Henry came out to assist me to alight from
the carriage that had brought us from the station, one mid-October day,
to the end of his honored and useful life, his friendship for us knew
no variableness nor shadow of turning. He was already my husband’s
staunch right hand in church and community. He took me upon trust for
the time. I learned to love husband and wife long before we became
separate households. To this day, his widow is to me as a sister.
In the care-free three months of our happy companionship, Mrs. Henry
helped me tactfully through the initial stages of acquaintanceship with
parish and neighborhood. To the manor born, and connected by blood with
two-thirds of the best families in the county, her gentle “coaching”
was an inestimable benefit to the stranger within her gates.
Her husband was a grandson of Patrick Henry, and a lawyer of note,
although not yet thirty years of age. He attained eminence in his
native county as time went on, and in Richmond, to which city he
removed after the War. His _Life and Letters of Patrick Henry_ is
a standard biographical and historical classic; he filled with
distinction several public offices, among them that of President of the
American Historical Society, and Delegate to the Historical Congress at
The Hague, in 1897.
In private life he was the best of husbands and fathers, sweet-hearted
to the core, a thorough gentleman always and everywhere, and a genial
and delightful comrade. When I turned study and pen in the direction
of Colonial historical research, he was an invaluable auxiliary. I
told him, over and over, that he was to me an exhaustless reservoir of
information. I had only to open a sluiceway, to draw in copious measure
in my hour of need. As a faint expression of my sense of overwhelming
obligation to him, I dedicated to him my first volume on _Colonial
Homesteads and Their Stories_, published in 1896.
I cannot say that my thirst for Colonial traditions and histories
was created by my residence in Charlotte. From childhood I had been
indefatigable in the pursuit of genealogical details and the tales of
real life and happenings collected from the converse of my elders of
the “former days,” which they rated as better than these in defiance
of Solomon’s admonition. But it was not possible to live for three
years, as I did, in a region where the very earth was soaked in
historical associations; where every other name mentioned in my hearing
was interwoven with recitals of deeds of valor and of statesmanship
performed by the fathers of American history, and not be kindled into
zealous prosecution of my favorite studies.
The Court House, built in 1823, was designed by Thomas Jefferson. A
more interesting building was a shabby, tumbledown house, not far from
the site of the newer and better edifice. It was the “Court House”
in the stirring days when the paternal Government would not squander
money upon Colonial seats of justice. From the porch of this, Patrick
Henry delivered his last speech to his adoring constituents. He was
tottering upon the verge of the grave, into which he sank gently a few
weeks later. A crisis of national and state importance had called him
from his home at Red Hill, a dozen miles away. Keyed up by a sense of
the imminence of the peril to the country he had saved, his magnificent
will-power responded to the call; the dying fire leaped high. He had
never reasoned more cogently, never pleaded with more power than on
that day. But as the last word fell from his lips, he sank fainting
into the arms of his attendants. Dr. John Holt Rice stood on the
outskirts of the crowd. As the dying lion fell in his tracks, the
clergyman cried out: “The sun has set in all his glory!”
From the same homely rostrum John Randolph (whose homestead of
“Roanoke” is but a few miles from the county-seat) made his maiden
speech, and addressed for the last time those of whom he declared—“No
other man ever had such constituents.” In this address he recounted
the history of that relation, from the hour when the beardless boy
had raised his reedy voice to confute the arguments of the people’s
idol—Patrick Henry—to the date of this, his resignation of his office.
“Men of Charlotte!” The piercing voice that carried further in his
weakness than more stentorian tones, sent the farewell to the outskirts
of the breathless throng—“Forty years ago you confided this sacred
trust to me. Take it back! Take it back!”
The gesture, as of rolling a ponderous weight from heart and arms, was
never forgotten by those who saw it. With it he left the platform,
mounted his horse without another word, and rode off to Roanoke.
Mr. Jacob Michaux, of Powhatan County, was at that time a student in
Hampden-Sidney College, and came over to Charlotte for the express
purpose of hearing the famous orator. I had from his lips the
description of the scene. John Randolph, as is well known, never used
notes in speaking. It sent a sort of shudder, therefore, through the
audience, when he took a folded paper from his pocket and opened it,
saying:
“The infirmities of advancing age, and the consequent failure of
memory, have made it expedient that I should bring with me to-day a few
notes to remind me of what I would say to you.”
He held the paper in his hand while speaking, and referred to it
twice in the exordium. Warming to his work, he waved it aloft in his
impassioned gesticulation, evidently forgetful of it and what was
written on it. At last, it escaped from his fingers and fluttered down
to Mr. Michaux’s feet. The crowd, engrossed in the fervid oratory, did
not notice what had happened. The student put his foot upon the bit
of paper, without change of place or position. “It flashed across my
mind that I would secure it when the speech was over, and keep it as a
souvenir,” he said. “The next moment I forgot it, and everything else
except what the man before me was saying. It was a Vesuvian tide of
eloquence, and carried thought, feeling, imagination along with it. One
hears nothing like it in these degenerate days. I did not recollect the
paper until I was a mile away from the Court House, and the orator’s
voice began to die out of my ears.”
What a souvenir that would have been! I do not know that this anecdote
has ever been published before. I had it, as I have said, directly from
Mr. Michaux’s lips, and vouch for the authenticity.
Many of the stories that clung to the Parsonage had to do with the
Orator of Roanoke. The house was at one time the home of Captain “Jack”
Marshall, the father of the late Judge Hunter Marshall. The latter
was, during our residence in Charlotte, a near neighbor and charming
acquaintance. His father, “Captain Jack,” was one of the cronies
whom John Randolph’s eccentricities and fits of violent rage had not
estranged. Politically, his constituents adored Randolph. Personally,
they found him intolerable. Mrs. Eggleston, of whom I shall have more
to say by-and-by, told me of visiting a playfellow in the Marshall home
while John Randolph was staying with Captain Marshall. The two little
girls were busy with their dolls in the lower hall, when a hand-bell
was rung furiously above stairs.
Little Lucy looked wonderingly at her companion.
“Who is that? And what does it mean?”
“Oh, it’s Mr. Randolph trying to frighten away the devil. He has just
got up, you see, and he says the devil creeps from under his bed as
soon as he wakes up.”
The ringing continued at intervals for some minutes, and Lucy,
terrified by the fancy that the fleeing demon might appear on the
stairs, ran off home with the tale.
“My mother had heard it often, before,” said my friend, laughing at my
horrified incredulity. “It was but one of his crazy antics. No-o-o!”
doubtfully, as I put a question. “I _don’t_ believe it was delirium
tremens. He took opium at times. I don’t know that he drank heavily.
Everybody took his toddy in those days, you know. John Randolph was
_queer_, through and through, from the cradle to the grave, and like no
other man that ever lived! We children were terribly afraid of him.”
One of the numerous stories Mr. Henry told of the eccentric was of his
asking a neighboring planter who was dining at Roanoke, if “he would
not take a slice of cold meat upon a hot plate?”
As “Juba,” Mr. Randolph’s body-servant, was at the guest’s elbow with
the hot plate, the gentleman thought he was expected to say “Yes,”
and fearing to anger the choleric host, took the plate, accepting the
offered cold meat. Whereupon, Randolph swore savagely at him for a
“lickspittle,” and a “coward.”
“You dare not speak up to me like a man!” he snarled. “I asked the
question to see what you would say.”
He was as brutal to members of his own family. A clergyman, who studied
divinity under Doctor Rice in Richmond, told me of a conversation
between John Randolph and his sister-in-law, the widow of Richard
Randolph. She was very fond of the Rices, spending weeks together
at their home, and at last, dying while on one of these visits.
Some months prior to her death, she joined the Presbyterian Church,
and shortly after taking this step, had a call from her terrible
brother-in-law. Regardless of the fact that two of the students were in
the next room, and that what he shrieked in his piercing falsetto must
be heard from the top of the house to the bottom, the irate Congressman
berated Mrs. Judith Randolph in the coarsest terms for the disgrace she
had brought upon an honorable name in uniting with “the Dissenters.”
He stayed not for any law, written or tacit, of respect due to host or
hostess, reviling both as scheming hypocrites and wolves in sheep’s
clothing, who had decoyed her into their “conventicle” in the hope of
securing her fortune for themselves.
Yet, there is extant a letter which I have read, from John Randolph to
Doctor Rice, written after his sister-in-law’s death, extolling her
piety, thanking her late host for his great goodness to the sainted
deceased, and winding up by saying that he had, all day, been possessed
by the idea that he could see her spirit, “mild, loving, and benignant,
hovering above him!”
We must fall back upon Mrs. Eggleston’s dictum—“_Queer_, through and
through, from the cradle to the grave, and like no other man that ever
lived!”
Before quitting my gossip of the Randolphs, I must touch upon one of
the most pitiful of the many tragedies that darken the history of the
aristocratic clan.
The Sunday after my arrival in my new home, I saw, from my seat in
church, a late-comer stride up the aisle to one of the pews running at
right angles with those filling the body of the building. The tardy
worshipper was a man above the medium height, and erect as a Virginia
pine. He walked like an Indian, as I observed at once, planting his
feet straight forward, and rising on his toes with a loping motion. His
hair was snowy white, and hung down to the collar of his coat. When he
took his seat, and faced the congregation, one saw that his eyes were
dark and piercing; his eyebrows black; his features finely chiselled. A
full white beard added to his venerable appearance and accentuated the
quaintness of the figure in a community where shaven chins and upper
lips were the rule.
I had hardly noted these peculiarities when he bowed his head upon
his hands, resting his elbows upon his knees, evidently in silent
devotion, and remained thus for several minutes. The choir was singing
the introductory anthem when he sat upright, and perceived the occupant
of the pulpit. A brilliant smile irradiated the grave features; to
my amazement he arose, ran up the steps of the sacred desk, and held
out his hand to the preacher, the other hand upon his heart, and
bowed deferentially. Mr. Terhune arose, with no sign of surprise or
annoyance, and bowed silently over the locked hands. As nimbly as he
had mounted the steps, the eccentric individual ran down and resumed
his seat. Neither man had unclosed his lips, but the pantomime of
welcome and acknowledgment was so significant that words would have
been superfluous. The Unknown appeared to hearken devoutly to reading
and to sermon, accompanying his listening by actions foreign to the
behavior of latter-day church-goers. They were singularly expressive to
me, whose eyes wandered to him covertly every few minutes. Nobody else
paid any attention to him. Now, his joined hands were raised almost to
his chin, and the bowed head shaken over them, as in deep contrition—an
attitude that recalled the “publican standing afar off.” Once he beat
softly upon his breast. Again, he nodded approval of what he heard.
Often he closed his eyes, and his lips moved in prayer. He was the
foremost of the retiring congregation to leave the church after the
benediction, passing down the aisle with the free, sweeping lope that
had reminded me of an Indian.
I had the story over our early Sunday dinner. When Mr. Henry finished
it, I recalled that I had heard, when a mere child, my mother speak
of meeting at Doctor Rice’s, in her early girlhood, a nephew of John
Randolph—St. George Randolph by name—who was deaf and dumb.
“One of the handsomest young men I ever saw,” she subjoined, “with
flashing black eyes and dark, beautiful curls. He frightened me by
offering to teach me the finger alphabet; but his manners were very
pleasant, and he seemed gay, in spite of his affliction. He was
educated in France, and had just come home when I saw him.”
Obedient memory, following this clue, unearthed a passage in Garnett’s
_Life of John Randolph_, which was part of my biographical library.
In a letter to an old friend the uncle lamented that his nephew St.
George had become insane. He had made several efforts to marry, and was
unsuccessful—as he was given to understand—on account of his infirmity.
Mr. Henry’s narrative brought the biography down to date. The unhappy
youth—sole heir to his father’s and his uncle’s wealth after the
death of his younger brother, Tudor—was committed to an asylum for
the insane. How long this man—born in the purple, highly educated,
refined in taste, and elegant in bearing—was allowed to linger in the
filthy inferno of the old-time “mad-house,” I would not recollect if
I could. Then the creaking wheel of his fortunes took an unexpected
turn. By some legal manipulation I do not pretend to understand,
Mr. Wyatt Cardwell, of Charlotte, the father of our groomsman and
travelling companion in the first stage of our wedding-journey, became
the guardian of the almost forgotten lunatic. A visit to his afflicted
charge wrought so powerfully upon Mr. Cardwell’s sympathies, that he
left no stone unturned until the last of the direct line of Randolphs
was a free man, and domesticated in the home of his guardian. The
remnants of his once fine library were placed at his disposal; he had
his own riding-horse, and other luxuries—in short, all that he was
able to enjoy. The Charlotte people respected his misfortunes, and
treated him kindly whenever occasion offered. He read, and apparently
enjoyed books, reading French, Latin, and English at pleasure. His
reminiscences of his distinguished uncle, and the politics of his
unquiet day, were distinct, and to those who communicated with him by
signs or by writing, extremely entertaining.
His fellow-citizens came to have a pride in the relic of the heroic
age. His shrewd comments upon men he had known in his prime, and the
acquaintances of to-day, were repeated as _bon mots_.
Sane, he would never be. The splendid intellect, that should have
surmounted the frightful disability imposed at birth, was hopelessly
shattered. But he was a local celebrity, about whom clung a glamour of
romantic importance.
I entered fully into this feeling within three weeks after I had my
earliest glimpse of him.
The Rev. Mr. ——, from another county, who had filled the pulpit of the
Village Church more frequently in past years than was quite agreeable
to the congregation, chanced to spend the Sunday in the neighborhood,
and was invited to preach. He arose to announce the opening hymn just
as St. George Randolph lifted his head from his private devotions.
The expression of ineffable disgust, when he discovered who was to
officiate that forenoon, was unmistakable and indescribable. Then
he deliberately went through the pantomime of sharpening a pencil,
a forefinger doing duty as the pencil, three fingers of the right
hand holding an imaginary pen-knife. The sharpening done, he blew the
imaginary refuse into the air with a disdainful puff. We all witnessed
the operation, and the dullest could not miss the meaning. More than
one was unable to join in the song of praise selected by the only
man who was unconscious of the by-play. In the forty-five years of
his active pastorate, my husband but twice violated pulpit and pew
proprieties so far as to exchange meaning and amused glances with me.
That was one of the times. As for Wirt Henry, nothing but an agonized
ray from his wife’s eye kept him from disgracing himself.
Having testified to the nature and sincerity of his sentiments with
respect to the obnoxious interloper, as he considered him, our local
wit turned a cold shoulder toward the pulpit and buried himself in
the pages of a small, much-worn volume he drew from his pocket, never
vouchsafing another glance at desk or occupant during the service.
The little book was a collection of devotional readings he carried with
him everywhere. His mother had given it to him when he went abroad.
From her, too, he had learned to kneel by his bed each night and pray,
as he had done at her knee in infancy. He never remitted the habit. I
used to wonder, with a hard heartache, if he kept it up during that
dark, dreadful age in the asylum.
Less than three years after my first sight of him, the deaf, dumb and
lunatic heir of the vast Randolph estate joined the mother he had not
forgotten, nor ceased to love and venerate in the long night that had
no star of hope, and which was to know no dawning this side of heaven.