University of Virginia Library

JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.

I remember some years since to have seen John Randolph
in Baltimore. I had freqently read and heard
descriptions of him, and one day, as I was standing in
Market, now Baltimore street, I remarked a tall, thin,
unique-looking being hurrying towards me with a quick
impatient step, evidently much annoyed by a crowd of
boys who were following close at his heels, not in the
obstreperous mirth with which they would have followed
a crazy or a drunken man, or an organ grinder and
his monkey, but in the silent curious wonder with which
they would have haunted a Chinese bedecked in full
costume. I instantly knew the individual to be Randolph
from the descriptions. I therefore advanced towards
him, that I might make a full observation of his
person without violating the rules of courtesy in stopping
to gaze at him. As he approached, he occasionally
turned towards the boys with an angry glance, but
without saying any thing, and then hurried on as if to
outstrip them, but it would not do. They followed close
behind the orator, each one observing him so intently
that he said nothing to his companions. Just before I
met him he stopped a Mr. C—, a cashier of one of
the banks, said to be as odd a fish as John himself. I
loitered into a store close by, and, unnoticed, remarked

the Roanoke orator for a considerable time, and really
he was the strangest looking being I ever beheld.

His long thin legs, about as thick as a strong walking
cane, and of much such a shape, were encased in a
pair of tight small clothes, so tight that they seemed
part and parcel of the limbs of the wearer. Handsome
white stockings were fastened with great tidiness at the
knees by a small gold buckle, and over them, coming
about half way up the calf, were a pair of what, I believe,
are called hose, coarse, and country knit. He
wore shoes. They were old-fashioned, and fastened
also with buckles—huge ones. He trod like an Indian,
without turning his toes out, but planking them down
straight ahead. It was the fashion in those days to
wear a fan-tailed coat, with a small collar, and buttons
far apart behind, and few on the breast. Mr. Randolph's
were the reverse of all this, and, instead of his coat being
fan-tailed, it was what, we believe, the knight's of
the needle call swallow-tailed; the collar was immensely
large, the buttons behind were in kissing proximity,
and they sat together as close on the breast of the garment
as the feasters at a crowded public festival. His
waist was remarkably slender; so slender that, as he
stood with his arms akimbo, he could easily, as I
thought, with his long bony fingers have spanned it.
Around him his coat, which was very tight, was held together
by one button, and, in consequence, an inch or
more of tape, to which it was attached, was perceptible
where it was pulled through the cloth. About his neck
he wore a large white cravat, in which his chin was occasionally
buried as he moved his head in conversation;
no shirt collar was perceptible; every other person seemed
to pride himself upon the size of his, as they were
then worn large. Mr. Randolph's complexion was precisely

that of a mummy, withered, saffron, dry and
bloodless; you could not have placed a pin's point on
his face where you would not have touched a wrinkle.
His lips were thin, compressed, and colorless; the chin,
beardless as a boy's, was broad for the size of his face,
which was small; his nose was straight, with nothing
remarkable in it, except perhaps it was too short. He
wore a fur cap, which he took off, standing a few moments
uncovered. I observed that his head was quite
small, a characteristic which is said to have marked
many men of talent, Byron, and Chief Justice Marshall,
for instance. Judge Burnet, of Cincinnati, who
has been alike distinguished at the bar, on the bench
and in the United States Senate, and whom I have
heard no less a judge and possessor of talent than Mr.
Hammond, of the Gazette, say, was the clearest and
most impressive speaker he ever heard, has also a very
small head. Mr. Randolph's hair was remarkably fine—
fine as an infant's, and thin. It was very long, and
was parted with great care on the top of his head, and
was tied behind with a bit of black riband about three
inches from his neck; the whole of it formed a queue
not thicker than the little finger of a delicate girl. His
forehead was low, with no bumpology about it; but his
eye, though sunken, was most brilliant and startling in
its glance. It was not an eye of profound, but of impulsive
and passionate thought, with an expression at
times such as physicians describe to be that of insanity,
but an insanity which seemed to quicken, not destroy,
intellectual acuteness. I never beheld an eye that
struck me more. It possessed a species of fascination,
such as would make you wonder over the character of
its possessor, without finding any clue in your wonderment
to discover it, except that he was passionate, wayward,
and fearless. He lifted his long bony finger impressively
as he conversed, and gesticulated with it in a
peculiar manner. His whole appearance struck me,
and I could easily imagine how, with his great command
of language, so appropriate and full, so brilliant
and classical, joined to the vast information that his
discursive oratory enabled him to exhibit in its fullest
extent, from the storehouse of which the vividness of
his imagination was always pointing out a happy analogy,
or bitter sarcasm, that startled the more from the
fact that his hearers did not perceive it until the look,
tone, and finger brought it down with the suddenness
of lightning, and with its effects, upon the head of his
adversary; taking all this into consideration, I could
easily imagine how, when almost a boy, he won so
much fame, and preserved it so long and with so vast an
influence, notwithstanding the eccentricity and inconsistency
of his life, public and private.

By the bye, the sudden, unexpected, and aphoristical
way in which Randolph often expressed his sentiments
had much to do with his oratorical success. He would,
like Dean Swift, make a remark, seemingly a compliment,
and explain it into a sarcasm, or he would utter
an apparent sarcasm, and turn it into a compliment.
Many speakers, when they have said a thing, hurry on
to a full explanation, fearful that the hearer may not understand
them; but when Randolph expressed one of these
startling thoughts, he left the hearer for some time puzzling
in doubt as to what he meant, and when it pleased
him, in the coolest manner in the world he explained his
meaning, not a little delighted if he discovered that his
audience were wondering the while upon whom the
blow would descend, or what principle the remark would
be brought to illustrate. A little anecdote, which I

heard a member of Congress, from Kentucky, tell of
him, shows this characteristic. The Congressman, on
his first visit to Washington, (he had just been elected,)
was of course desirous of seeing the lions. Randolph,
though not a member of either house, was there,
and had himself daily borne into the Senate or House
by his faithful Juba, to listen to the debates. Every
body, noted or unnoted, were calling on the eccentric
orator, and the member from Kentucky determined to
do likewise, and gratify his curiosity. A friend, General
—, promised to present him, saying though:
“You must be prepared for an odd reception, for, if
Randolph is in a bad humor, he will do and say any
thing; if he is in a good humor, you will see a most
finished gentleman.” They called. Mr. Randolph
was stretched out on a sofa. “He seemed,” said the
member, “a skeleton, endowed with those flashing eyes
which ghost stories give to the re-animated body when
sent upon some earthly mission.”

The Congressman was presented by his friend, the
General, as a member of Congress from Kentucky. “Ah,
from Kentucky, sir,” exclaimed Randolph, in his shrill
voice, as he rose to receive him, “from Kentucky, sir;
well, sir, I consider your State the Botany Bay of Virginia.”
The Kentuckian thought that the next remark
would be a quotation from Barrington's Botany Bay
epilogue, applied by Randolph to the Virginia settlers
of Kentucky,

but Randolph, after a pause, continued: “I do not
make this remark, sir, in application to the morals or
mode of settlement of Kentucky, No, sir, I mean to
say that it is my opinion, sir, that the time approaches
when Botany Bay will in all respects surpass England,
and I fear it will soon be so with regard to your State
and mine.”

I cite this little anecdote not for any peculiar pith
that it possesses, but in illustration of his character, and
in proof of the remark above made.

If Mr. Randolph had lived in ancient times, Plutarch,
with all his powers in tracing the analogies of
character, would have looked in vain for his parallel.
And a modern biographer, with all ancient and all modern
times before him, will find the effort fruitless that
seeks his fellow. At first, the reader might think of
Diogenes as furnishing some resemblance to him, and
that all that Randolph wanted was a tub; but not so if
another Alexander had asked him what he would have
that imperial power could bestow—the answer never
would have been a request to stand out of his sunlight.
No, Randolph, if he could have got no higher emolument
and honor, would immediately have requested to
be sent on a foreign mission; that over, if Alexander
had nothing more to give, and was so situated as not to
be feared, who does not believe that the ex-minister
would turn tail on him.

The fact is, that Randolph was excessively ambitious,
a cormorant alike for praise and plunder; and
though his patriotism could point out the disinterested
course to others, his love of money would not let him
keep the track himself—at least in his latter years, when
Mammon, the old man's God, beset him, and he turned
an idolator to that for which he had so often expressed
his detestation that his countrymen believed him. His
mission to Russia broke the charm that the prevailing
opinion of his disinterestedness cast about him, and his
influence in his native State was falling fast beneath the

appointment and outfit and salary that had disenchanted
it when he died; and now old Virginia will forget
and forgive these inconsistencies of one of her greatest
sons to do reverence to his memory.

Randolph's republicanism was never heartfelt; he
was at heart an aristocrat. He should have been born
in England a noble— there he would stubbornly have
resisted the encroachments of all below him upon his
own prerogatives, station, dignity, and quality; and he
would have done his best to have brought the prerogatives,
station, dignity, and quality of all above him a
little below his level, or at least upon an equality with
his. Randolph would have lifted Wilkes up to be a
thorn in the side of a king whom he did not like, and
to overthrow his minister; had he been himself a minister,
his loyalty would then have pronounced Wilkes
an unprincipled demagogue. Wilkes, we know, when
he got office, said he could prove to his majesty that he
himself had never been a Wilkeite. Randolph was intensely
selfish, and his early success as a politician and
orator impressed him with an exaggerated opinion of
his own importance, at an age when such opinions are
easily made and not easily eradicated. In the case of
Randolph this overweaning self-estimation grew monstrous.
“Big man me, John,” and the bigness or littleness
of others' services were valued and proclaimed
just in proportion as they elevated or depressed the interests
and personal dignity of the orator of Roanoke.
And often when his interest had nothing to do with the
question presented to him, his caprice would sway his
judgment, for his personal resentments led him far away
from every consideration save that of how he could best
wound his adversary.

His blow wanted neither vigor nor venom; his weapons

were poisoned with such consummate skill, and
he so well knew the vulnerable point of every character,
that often when the wound by an observer who
knew nothing of his opponent was deemed slight, it
was rankling in the heart. Randolph was well acquainted
with the private history of the eminent men of
his time, the peccadilloes, frailties, indiscretions, weaknesses,
vanities, and vices of them all. He used his
tongue as a jockey would his whip; he hit the sore
place till the blood came, and there was no crack or
flourish, or noise, or bluster in doing it. It was done
with a celerity and dexterity which showed the practised
hand, and its unexpectedness as well as its severity
often dumbfounded the victim so completely that he had
not one word to say, but writhed in silence.

I remember hearing two anecdotes of Randolph,
which strikingly type his character. One exhibits his
cynical rudeness and disregard for the feelings of others—in
fact a wish to wound their feelings—and the
other his wit. I do not vouch for their accuracy, but I
give them as I have frequently heard them, as perhaps
has the reader.

Once, when Randolph was in the city of B—, he
was in the daily habit of frequenting the bookstore of
one of the largest booksellers in the place. He made
some purchases from him, and was very curious in looking
over his books, &c. In the course of Randolph's
visits, he became very familiar with Mr. —, the
bookseller, and they held long chats together; the orator
of Roanoke showing off with great courtesy. Mr.
— was quite a pompous man, and rather vain of
his acquaintance with the lions who used to stop in his
shop. Subsequently, being in Washington with a
friend, he espied Randolph advancing towards him, and

told his friend that he would introduce him to the “great
man.” His friend, however, knowing the waywardness
of Randolph, declined. “Well,” said Mr. —, “I
am sorry you will not be introduced—I'll go up and
give him a shake of the hand at any rate.” Up he
walked, with outstretched hand, to salute the cynic.
The aristocratic Republican (by the bye, how often your
thoroughgoing Republican is a full-blooded aristocrat in
his private relations) immediately threw his hand behind
him, as if he could not “dull his palm” in that way, and
gazed searchingly into the face of the astonished bookseller.
“Oh, oh!” said he, as if recollecting himself,
“you are Mr. B—, from Baltimore?” “Yes, sir,”
was the reply. “A bookseller?” “Yes, sir,” again.
“Ah! I bought some books from you?” “Yes, sir, you
did.” “Did I forget to pay you for them?” “No, sir,
you did not.” “Good morning, sir,” said the orator,
lifting his cap with offended dignity, and passing on.
This anecdote does not show either Randolph's goodness
of head or heart, but it shows his character.

The other anecdote is as follows. The Honorable
Peter —, who was a watchmaker, and who had represented
B— county for many years in Congress,
once made a motion to amend a resolution offered by
Randolph, on the subject of military claims. Mr. Randolph
rose up after the amendment had been offered,
and drawing his watch from his fob, asked the Honorable
Peter what o'clock it was. He told him. “Sir,”
replied the orator, “you can mend my watch, but not
my motions. You understand tictics, sir, but not tactics!”

That, too, was a fine retort, when, after he had been
speaking, several members rose in succession and attacked

him. “Sir,” said he to the Speaker, “I am in
the condition of old Lear—

All accounts agree in praising the oratorical powers
of Randolph. His manner was generally slow and impressive,
his voice squeaking, but clear and distinct,
and, as far as it could be heard, what he said was clearly
understood. His gesture was chiefly with his long
and skeleton-like finger. The impressiveness with
which he used it has been remarked by all who have
heard him. When he was sarcastic, amidst a thousand
it would say, stronger than language, to the individual
whom he meant, “Thou art the man.” In his choice
of language he was very fastidious, making sometimes a
considerable pause to select a word. His reading was
extensive, and in every department of knowledge—romances,
tales, poems, plays, voyages, travels, history,
biography, philosophy—all arrested his attention, and
each had detained him long enough to render him familiar
with the best works of the kind. His mind was
naturally erratic, and his desultory reading, as he never
devoted himself to profession, and dipped a little into
all, increased his natural and mental waywardness.
He seldom reasoned, and when he did, it was with an
effort that was painful, and which cost him more trouble
than it was worth. He said himself, in one of his
speeches in the Senate of the United States, “that he
had a defect, whether of education or nature was immaterial,
perhaps proceeding from both—a defect which
had disabled him, from his first entrance into public life
to the present hour, from making what is called a regular
speech.” The defect was doubtless both from education

and nature; education might have, in some measure,
corrected the tendencies of his nature, but there
was perhaps an idiosyncrasy in the constitution of the
man, which compelled him to be meteoric and erratic in
mind as well as temper. He said that “ridicule was the
keenest weapon in the whole parliamentary armory,”
and he learned all the tricks of fence with it, and never
played with foils. He seems to have had more admiration
for the oratory of Chatham than that of any other
individual, if we may judge from the manner in which
that great man is mentioned in his speeches. They
were certainly unlike in character, very unlike. Chatham
having had bad health, and it being well known
that he went to Parliament and made his best efforts
when almost sinking from sickness, Randolph might
have felt that, as he had done the same thing, their
characters were assimilated. Chatham was seized with
a fainting fit when making his last speech, and died a
short time afterwards. And probably it is not idle speculation
to say that Randolph, with a morbid or perhaps
an insane admiration of his character, wished to sink as
Chatham did, in the legislative hall, and be borne thence
to die.

However, there was enough in the character of Chatham
to win the admiration of any one who loved eloquence,
without seeking in adventitious circumstances
a motive for his admiration; and Randolph appreciated
such talents as his too highly not to have admired them
under all circumstances, but his reverence was doubtless
increased from the resemblance which he saw in
their bodily conditions, and which, he was very willing
to believe, extended to their minds. Chatham was bold,
vehement, resistless, not often witty, but eminently successful
when he attempted it; invective was his forte.

In some of these points Randolph resembled him; but
then Chatham's eloquence was but a means to gain his
ends; his judgment was intuitive, his sagacity unrivalled;
he bore down all opposition by his fearless energies,
and he compelled his enemies to admit that he was a public
benefactor in the very breath in which they expressed
their personal dislike. Chatham kept his ends steadily
in view, and never wavered in his efforts to gain them.
Not so Randolph. He reminds us of the urchin in the
“Lay of the Last Minstrel,” who always used his fairy
gifts with a spirit of deviltry to provoke, to annoy, and
to injure, no matter whom he wounded, or when or
where. Randolph did not want personal dignity, but he
wanted the dignity which arises from consistent conduct,
a want which no brilliancy of talent can supply. On
the contrary, the splendor of high talents but serve to
make such inconsistency the more apparent. He was
an intellectual meteor, whose course no one could predict;
but, be it where it might, all were certain that it
would blaze, and wither, and destroy. As a statesman,
it is believed that he never originated a single measure,
though his influence often destroyed the measures of
others. Some one observes “that the hand which is not
able to build a hovel, may destroy a palace,” and he
seemed to have had a good deal of the ambition of him
who fired the Ephesian dome. As a scholar, he left
nothing behind him, though his wit was various and his
acquirements profound. He seems not to have written
a common communication for a newspaper, without
great labor and fastidious correction. I have been informed
by a compositor who set a part of his speech on
“retrenchment,” which he dedicated to his constituents,
that his amendations were endless. I have a part of the
MS. of this speech before me; it is written with a trembling
hand, but with great attention to punctuation, and
with a delicate stroke of the pen. It was as an orator
he shone; and, as an orator, his power of chaining the
attention of his audience has been, perhaps, never surpassed.
In an assembly where Demosthenes, Cicero,
Chatham, Mirabeau, or Henry spoke, Randolph's eloquence
would have been listened to with profound interest,
and his opposition would have been feared. As
an orator he felt his power—he knew that in eloquence
he wielded a magic wand, and he was not only fearless
of opposition, but he courted it; for who of his contemporaries
has equalled him in the power of carrying on
successfully the partisan warfare of desultory debate—
the cut and thrust—the steady aim? Who could wield
like him the tomahawk, and who of them possessed his
dexterity in scalping a foe? His trophies are numberless,
and he wore them with the pride of his progenitors,
for there was truly a good deal of Indian blood in his
veins. It is said that Randolph first signalized himself
by making a stump speech in Virginia in opposition to
Patrick Henry. Scarcely any one knew him when he
rose to reply to Henry, and so strong was Henry's conviction
of his powers, that he spoke of them in the highest
terms, and prophesied his future eminence. Randolph
gloriously said of Henry that “he was Shakspeare and
Garrick combined.”

Randolph's character and conduct forcibly impress
upon us the power of eloquence in a republic. How
many twists, and turns, and tergiversations, and obliquities
were there in his course; yet how much influence
he possessed, particularly in Virginia! How much he
was feared, courted, admired, shunned, hated, and all
because he wielded the weapon that “rules the fierce
democracy!” How many men, far his superiors in
practical usefulness, lived unhonored and without influence,
and died unsung, because they had not eloquence.

Eloquence is superior to all other gifts, even to the dazzling
fascinations of the warrior; for it rules alike in war
and peace, and it wins all by its spell. Randolph was
the very personification of inconsistency. Behold him
talking of the “splendid misery” of officeholders; “what
did he want with office; a cup of cold water was better
in his condition; the sword of Damocles was suspended
over him by a single hair,” &c. &c.—when lo! he
goes to the frigid north—for what? For health? No,
for an outfit and a salary! and dies childless, worth, it is
said, nearly a million!

Randolph's oratory reminds us forcibly of Don Juan;
and if Byron had written nothing but Don Juan, Randolph
might have been called the Byron of orators. He
had all the wit, eccentricity, malice, and flightiness of
that work—its touches that strike the heart, and sarcasms
that scorn, the next moment, the tear that had
started.

In a dying state Randolph went to Washington during
the last session of Congress, and, although not a member,
he had himself borne daily to the hall of legislation
to witness the debate. He returned home to his constituents
and was elected to Congress, and started on a
tour to Europe, if possible to regain his health; he said
“it was the last throw of the die.”

He expired in Philadelphia, where he had first appeared
in the councils of the nation, in the sixty-first
year of his age, leaving a reputation behind him for classic
wit and splendid eloquence which few of his contemporaries
may hope to equal; and a character which his
biographer may deem himself fortunate if he can explain
it to have been compatible with either the duties
of social life, the sacredness of friendship, or the requirements
of patriotism unless he offer as an apology partial
derangement. In the letter in which the deceased

acknowledged that he had made a misstatement in regard
to the character of Mr. Lowndes on the tariff, he
assigned, as a reason of the error, the disordered state
of his mind, arising from the exciting medicine which
he was compelled to take to sustain life.

I have, perhaps, expressed myself harshly, inconsistent
with that charitable feeling which all should possess
who are “treading upon ashes under which the fire is not
yet extinguished.” If so to express our conscientious
opinions is sometimes to do wrong,

For who can tell, in the close alliance between reason
and madness which were so strongly mixed up in his
character, how much his actions and words partook of
the one or the other? Where they alternated, or where
one predominated, or where they mingled their influence,
not in the embrace of love, but in the strife
for mastery, oh! how much he may have struggled with
his mental aberrations and wanderings, and felt that
they were errors, and yet struggled in vain. His spirit,
like the great eye of the Universe, may have known
that clouds and storms beset it, and have felt that it was
contending with disease and the film of coming death,
yet hoped at last to beam forth in its brightness.
And so is it with the mind, and Randolph's “brokenly
lived on” till the raven shadows of the night of death
gathered over him and gave him to the dark beyond.