University of Virginia Library

JOHN RANDOLPH, OF ROANOKE.

I remember some years since to have seen
John Randolph in Baltimore. I had frequently
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 take 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 anything, 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 stout
walking-cane, and of much such a shape, were encased
in a pair of tight smallclothes, 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 knights 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 ribbon, 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 by, 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.
Everybody, noted or unnoted, was 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 anything; 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 reanimated 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
later years, when mammon, the old man's God,
beset him, and he turned an idolater 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 bring 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 have pronounced Wilkes an unprincipled
demagogue. Wilkes, we know, when he
got an 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
overweening self-estimation grew monstrous. “Big
man me, John,” and the bigness or littleness of
others' services was valued and proclaimed just in
proportion as it 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 peccadillos,
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 by, 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” with such “entertainment,” and gazed
searchingly into the face of the astonished bookseller.
“Oh, ho!” 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 tic-tics, 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
gestures were 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 any 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 serves 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 emendations
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 quick surprise—the cut and
thrust — the arrowy aim — the murderous fire?
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, on hearing him, 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 office-holders; “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 a 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 for the error, the
disordered state of his mind, arising from the
exciting medicines which he was compelled to take
to sustain life.

I have, perhaps, expressed myself harshly, inconsistently
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.

“Why draw his frailties from their dread abode?”
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 embrance 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
storms and clouds 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 it is 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.