PATRICK HENRY.
PATRICK HENRY, the second of nine children, was born on the 29th day of
May, 1736, at Studley, in Hanover County. The dwelling-house is no
longer standing; antique hedges of box and an avenue of aged trees
recall recollections of the past. Studley farm, devoid of any
picturesque scenery, is surrounded by woods; so that Henry was
actually,--
"The forest-born Demosthenes,
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas."[519:A]
His parents were in moderate but easy circumstances. The father, John
Henry, was a native of Aberdeen, in Scotland; he was a cousin of David
Henry, who was a brother-in-law of Edward Cave, and co-editor with him
of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and his successor. Some say that John
Henry married Jane, sister of Dr. William Robertson, the historian, and
that in this way Patrick Henry and Lord Brougham came to be related.
John Henry, who emigrated to Virginia some time before 1730, enjoyed the
friendship and patronage of Governor Dinwiddie, who introduced him to
the acquaintance of Colonel John Syme, of Hanover, in whose family he
became domesticated, and with whose widow he intermarried. Her maiden
name was Sarah Winston, of a good old family. Colonel Byrd describes her
as "a portly, handsome dame," "of a lively, cheerful conversation, with
much less reserve than most of her countrywomen. It becomes her very
well, and sets off her other agreeable qualities to advantage." "The
courteous widow invited me to rest myself there that good day, and to go
to church with her; but I excused myself by telling her she would
certainly spoil my devotion. Then she civilly entreated me to make her
house my home whenever I visited my plantations, which made me bow low,
and thank her very kindly." She possessed a mild and benevolent
disposition, undeviating probity, correct understanding, and easy
elocution. Colonel Syme had represented the County of Hanover in the
house of burgesses. He left a son who, according to Colonel Byrd,
inherited all the strong features of his sire, not softened in the least
by those of his mother.[520:A]
John Henry, father of Patrick Henry, Jr., was colonel of his regiment,
county surveyor, and, for many years, presiding magistrate of Hanover
County. He was a loyal subject, and took pleasure in drinking the king's
health at the head of his regiment. He enjoyed the advantage of a
liberal education; his understanding was plain but solid. He was a
member of the established church, but was supposed to be more conversant
with Livy and Horace than with the Bible. He appears to have made a map
of Virginia which was published in London in 1770.[521:A]
When James Waddel first came to Virginia he visited the Rev. Samuel
Davies in Hanover, near where Colonel John Henry lived, and being
introduced to him, on a Sunday, he accepted an invitation to accompany
him home. At parting, Mr. Davies remarked to young Waddel, that he would
not find the Sabbath observed in Virginia as in Pennsylvania; and he
would have to bear with many things which he would wish to be otherwise.
Soon after the settlement of Colonel John Henry in Virginia, Patrick,
his brother, followed him, and after some interval became, by his
brother's interest, (April, 1733,) rector of St. George's Parish, in the
new County of Spotsylvania, where he remained only one year. He
afterwards became rector of St. Paul's Church in Hanover. John Henry, in
a few years after the birth of his son Patrick, removed from Studley to
Mount Brilliant, now the Retreat, in the same county; and it was here
that the future orator was principally educated. The father, a good
classical scholar, had opened a grammar-school in his own house, and
Patrick, after learning the first rudiments at an "old field school" in
the neighborhood, at ten years of age commenced his studies under his
father, with whom he acquired an English education, and at the age of
fifteen had advanced in Latin so far as to read Virgil and Livy; had
learned to read the Greek characters, and attained some proficiency in
the mathematics. At this age his scholastic education appears to have
ended, and, as he mentioned to John Adams in 1774, he never read a Latin
book after that. His attainments, however, evince that he could not have
been so deficient in application to study as has been commonly supposed.
With a taste so prevalent, and for which his kinsmen, the Winstons, were
peculiarly distinguished, he was fond of hunting and angling. He would,
it is said, recline under the shade of a tree overhanging the
sequestered stream, watching in indolent repose the motionless cork of
his fishing-line.
He loved solitude, and in hunting chose not to accompany the noisy set
that drove the deer, but preferred to occupy the silent "stand," where
for hours he might muse alone and indulge "the pleasing solitariness of
thought." The glowing fancy of Wirt has, perhaps, thrown over these
particulars some prismatic coloring. Young Henry, probably, after all,
fished and hunted pretty much like other lads in his neighborhood. It
would, perhaps, not be easy to prove that he was fonder of fishing and
hunting than George Mason, George Washington, and many other of his
cotemporaries. From his eleventh to his twenty-second year he lived in
the neighborhood where Davies preached, and occasionally accompanied his
mother to hear him. His eloquence made a deep impression on young Henry,
and he always spoke of Davies and Waddel as the greatest orators that he
had ever heard. Whether he ever heard Whitefield does not appear.
Isaac Winston was one of the persons informed against in 1748 for
allowing the Rev. John Roan to preach in his house. Two of the sisters
of Patrick Henry--Lucy, who married Valentine Wood, and Jane, who
married Colonel Samuel Meredith--were members of Davies' congregations.
At the age of fifteen Patrick Henry was placed, about the year 1751, in
a store, to learn the mercantile business, and after a year so passed
the father set up William, an elder brother, and Patrick together in
trade. There is reason to believe that his alleged aversion to books and
his indolence, have been exaggerated by Wirt's artistic romancing. There
is no royal road to learning; men do not acquire knowledge by intuition.
Aversion to study is by no means unusual among the young; nor is it
probable that Patrick Henry was much more averse to it than the
generality of youth; indeed, his domestic educational advantages were
uncommonly good, and the early development of his mind proves that he
did not neglect them. The mercantile adventure, after the experiment of
a year, proving a failure, William, who, it would appear, had less
energy than Patrick, retired from the concern, and the management was
devolved upon the younger brother. Patrick, disgusted with an
unpromising business, listened impatiently to the hunter's horn, and the
cry of hounds echoing in the neighboring woods. Debarred from these
congenial sports, he sought a resource in music, and learned to play
not unskilfully on the flute and the violin, the latter being the
favorite instrument in Virginia. He found another source of
entertainment in the conversation of the country people who met at his
store, particularly on Saturday; and was fond of starting debates among
them, and observed the workings of their minds; and by stories, real or
fictitious, studied how to move the passions at his will. Many country
storekeepers have done the same thing, but they were not Patrick Henrys.
That he employed part of his leisure in storing his mind with
information from books, cannot be doubted. Behind the counter he could
con the news furnished by the _Virginia Gazette_, and he probably dipped
sometimes into the _Gentleman's Magazine_. At the end of two or three
years, a too generous indulgence to his customers, and negligence in
business, together perhaps with the insuperable difficulties of the
enterprise itself, in a period of war, disaster, and public distress,
forced him to abandon his store almost in a state of insolvency. William
Henry, the older brother, was then wild and dissipated; but became in
after-life a member of the assembly from the County of Fluvanna, enjoyed
the title of colonel, and had a competent estate. In the mean time
Patrick had married the daughter of a poor but honest farmer of the
neighborhood, named Shelton; and now by the joint assistance of his
father and his father-in-law, furnished with a small farm and one or two
slaves, he undertook to support himself by agriculture. Yet, although he
tilled the ground with his own hands, whether owing to his negligent,
unsystematic habits, much insisted on by Wirt and others, or to the
sterility of the soil, or to both, or to neither, after an experiment of
two years he failed in this enterprise, as utterly as in the former. It
was a period of unexampled scarcity and distress in Virginia; and young
Henry was suffering a reverse of fortune which befell many others at the
same time; and it would be, perhaps, unjust to attribute his failure
exclusively or even mainly to his neglect or incompetency. However that
may be, selling his scanty property at a sacrifice for cash, for lack of
more profitable occupation he returned to merchandise. Still displaying
indifference to the business of his store, he resumed his violin, his
flute, his books, and his curious inspection of human nature; and
occasionally shut up his store to indulge his favorite sports. He
studied geography, and became a proficient in it; he examined the
charters and perused the history of the colony, and pored over the
translated annals of Greece and Rome. Livy became his favorite, and in
his early life he read it at least once in every year. Such a taste
would hardly have developed itself in one who had wasted his schoolboy
days in the torpor of indolence. It is true that Mr. Jefferson said of
him in after years, "He was the hardest man to get to read a book that
he ever knew." Henry himself perhaps somewhat affected a distaste for
book-learning, in compliance with the vulgar prejudice; but he probably
read much more than he got credit for. He did not, indeed, read a large
number of books, as very few in Virginia did then; but he appears to
have read solid books, and to have read them thoroughly. He was fond of
British history. Having himself a native touch of Cervantic humor, he
was not unacquainted with the inimitable romance of Don Quixote. But he
did not read books to talk about them. Soame Jenyns was a favorite. He
often read Puffendorf, and Butler's Analogy was his standard volume
through life.
His second mercantile experiment turned out more unfortunate than the
first, and left him again stranded on the shoals of bankruptcy. It was
probably an adventure which no attention or energy could have made
successful under the circumstances. These disappointments, made the more
trying by an early marriage, did not visibly depress his spirit: his
mind rose superior to the vicissitudes of fortune. The golden ore was
passing through the alembic of adversity. He lived now for some years
with his father-in-law, who was then keeping the tavern at Hanover
Court-house. When Mr. Shelton was occasionally absent, Mr. Henry
supplied his place and attended to the guests.
In the winter of the year 1760 Thomas Jefferson, then in his seventeenth
year, on his way to the College of William and Mary, spent the Christmas
holidays at the seat of Colonel Dandridge, in Hanover County. Patrick
Henry, now twenty-four years of age, being a near neighbor, young
Jefferson met with him there for the first time, and observed that his
manners had something of coarseness in them; that his passion was
music, dancing, and pleasantry; and that in the last he excelled, and it
attached everybody to him. But it is likely that the music of his voice
was more attractive than even that of his violin. Henry displayed on
that occasion, which was one of festivity, no uncommon calibre of
intellect or extent of information; but his misfortunes were not to be
traced in his countenance or his conduct: self-possessed repose is the
characteristic of native power; complaint is the language of weakness. A
secret consciousness of superior genius and a reliance upon Providence
buoyed him up in the reverses of fortune. While young Jefferson and
Henry were enjoying together the Christmas holidays of 1760, how little
did either anticipate the parts which they were destined to perform on
the theatre of public life! Young Henry embraced the study of the law,
and after a short course of reading, was, in consideration of his genius
and general information, and in spite of his meagre knowledge of law,
and his ungainly appearance, admitted to the bar in the spring of 1760.
His license was subscribed by Peyton and John Randolph and Robert C.
Nicholas. Mr. Wythe refused to sign it.
In the "Parsons' Cause" Henry emerged from the horizon, and thenceforth
became the star of the ascendant.
FOOTNOTES:
[519:A] Lord Byron so calls him, in the Age of Bronze.
[520:A] Several persons of the name of Winston came over from Yorkshire,
England, and settled in Hanover. Isaac Winston, one of these, or a son
of one of them, had children: 1. William, father of Judge Edmund
Winston. 2. Sarah, mother of Patrick Henry, Jr., the orator. 3. Geddes.
4. Mary, who married John Coles. 5. A daughter who married ---- Cole. She
was grandmother to Dorothea or Dolly Payne, who married James Madison,
President of the United States. Of these five children, William, the
eldest, called Langaloo William, married Alice Taylor, of Caroline. He
was a great hunter; had a quarter in Bedford or Albemarle, where he
spent much time in hunting deer. He was fond of the Indians, dressed in
their costume, and was a favorite with them. He was also distinguished
as an Indian-fighter. He is said to have been endowed with that rare
kind of magnetic eloquence which rendered his nephew, Patrick Henry, so
famous. Indeed it was the opinion of some that he alone excelled him in
eloquence. During the French and Indian war, shortly after Braddock's
defeat, when the militia were marched to the frontier, this William
Winston was a lieutenant of a company, which, being poorly clothed,
without tents, and exposed to the rigors of an inclement season, became
very much dissatisfied, and were clamorous to return to their homes. At
this juncture, Lieutenant Winston, mounting a stump, made to them an
appeal so patriotic and overpowering that when he concluded, the general
cry was, "Let us march on; lead us against the enemy!" This maternal
uncle of Patrick Henry, Jr., being so gifted with native eloquence, it
may be inferred that he derived his genius from his mother. William
Winston's children were: 1. Elizabeth, who married Rev. Peter Fontaine.
2. Fanny, who married Dr. Walker. 3. Edmund, the judge, who married,
first, Sarah, daughter of Isaac Winston; second, the widow of Patrick
Henry, the orator, (Dolly Dandridge that was.)
[521:A] A copy of this rare map is in possession of Joseph Homer, Esq.,
of Warrenton, Virginia. Appended to it is an epitome of the state and
condition of Virginia. The marginal illustration is profuse, and, like
the map, well executed.