University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER IX

Randolph as a Man

It would be a grievous misconception to imagine that
Randolph was wholly given over to politics, necessary as
an occasional escape from Roanoke to Washington was to
dispel the melancholy which always settled down upon
him when he was withdrawn for a considerable time from
political and social excitements. Sawyer tells us that,
outside of the House, Randolph would not talk politics;
preferring to discuss agricultural or other topics.[1] In his
Diary, he kept a minute record of the weather and of his
social activities and inserted in it besides an extraordinary
farrago of memoranda relating to many other miscellaneous
subjects; but the references in this book to politics
are quite meagre. In other words, Randolph was not one
of those bores whose conversation is wholly subdued, like
the dyer's hand, to what he works in; he was not a mere
feverish politician; nor a mere ill-natured satirist. He
was a man of the world; a gentleman and a sportsman, as
well as a statesman; an orator, and a planter. He had a
keen zest for social intercourse with men and women; he
entered with intense sympathy into the interests and
feelings of the young; he deepy loved some of his relations;
he was almost romantically attached to his intimate
friends; he devoured good books of all sorts; he was never
so happy as when travelling, and he had a passion for
horses, dogs, and guns.

All the traits of character which made him so many
enemies, which led Sergeant to put James Buchanan on
his guard against his friendship,[2] and Sawyer to declare
too broadly, that he was not much respected as a politician
or beloved as a man,[3] were referable to infirmity of temper.
He was proud, imperious, sensitive as the aspen leaf,
fundamentally Anglo-Saxon, but partly Celtic. No one
knew his shortcomings better than he himself; for he had
too much sound manhood not to confess and lament them
at times. There was a touch of false pride in his declaration
that he was descended from a race which was never
known to forsake a friend or to forgive a foe.[4] And there
was an element of extravagant self-disparagement in that
other declaration of his made at a time when he was laboring
in the throes of religious conversion, that his temper
was naturally impatient of injury but insatiably vindictive
under insult and indignity.[5] (a) But when, with the perfect
frankness, which was one of the nobler features of his
character, he said in a letter to Dr. Brockenbrough that
his unprosperous life, as he called it, was the fruit of an
ungovernable temper,[6] his self-analysis was correct; and
it was doubtless the same cause for self-reproach which
was behind the remorse that he exhibited upon his deathbed—assuming
that he was then responding to any
rational impulse at all.

Of the extraordinary instability of his temper and of
its tendency, when acutely irritated, not to stop short
even of aggressive malice, evidence is not wanting. It
shows that boorish or tactless words or conduct, which the
ordinary individual would resent with a frigid glance or a
contemptuous shrug at the most, were enough to excite
his choler to a high degree. A very good illustration of
this fact is afforded by an incident which Jacob Harvey

has told us in his lively manner, which not infrequently
runs away with him: Among the fellow-passengers of
Randolph and himself on "the Amity" was a good-humored
but coarse-fibred Dutchman, whose rubs were soon
drawing electric sparks from Randolph.

The narrative is too long to be further continued verbatim.
Mr. — quietly arose, and left the cabin;
Randolph apologized to the other members of the company,
and went off to his state-room. Later, Harvey
expostulated with Randolph, and the Captain took Mr.
— aside, and told him that he was partly to blame
himself for the occurrence; receiving in reply the good-natured
assurance that Mr. — did not mind what
Randolph had said at all, since he regarded him as half-cracked,
and felt certain that he would forget all about the

matter before the next day. The result was that amicable
relations were in time re-established between Randolph
and Mr. —. But not permanently, until Randolph
had had occasion to administer another rebuke to
the thick-skinned Dutchman, and the latter had come to
realize that Randolph (to use one of Randolph's own
phrases) was not, like himself, made of brick earth. (a)
Then, the pair became so intimate that, when the rest of
the cabin passengers were reading, writing, or sleeping,
and Randolph was at a loss for an auditor, he would pin
Mr. — in a corner, and keep him there for an hour
or two, listening to the Greek poetry which he made a
point of reading aloud to him.[7]

Manifestly, this story is tricked out with a good deal
of fanciful embroidery. Not to go further, we have been
told by Randolph himself that he knew only enough Greek
"to help him to the etymology of a word"[8] ; but there is
enough truth in the story to illustrate our point.

How dangerous it is, however, to place too implicit a
trust in stories about Randolph, even when told by a substantially
reliable anecdotist like Harvey, is impressed
upon us by another story in regard to Randolph's fiery
temper, which Harvey says was communicated to him by
Randolph himself.

Its burden is that a tall, matter-of-fact New Englander,
who had formed the idea of investing a part of the fortune,
that he had made as a tobacco merchant, in Roanoke,
asked Randolph, immediately after he had been tendered
the hospitality of the latter's table, what he would take
for "niggers and all"; and was conducted by Randolph to
the boundary of his patrimonial lands and told that, if he
ever crossed this boundary again, to look out for Randolph's
best rifle-ball.[9] This story is evidently but a
variation, in the Darwinian process of evolution, to which

anecdotes about famous men, especially when they relate
to eccentric types of character, are even more slavishly
subject than mammals or birds. Obviously, the same
story re-appears in a paper by Henry Carrington published
by Bouldin; only in this instance the offender is a
Georgian, and awakens Randolph's wrath by telling him
that he was thinking that he was an eunuch.[10] The real
basis for the story is furnished us by John Randolph
Bryan, who was at Roanoke in 1818 or 1819, when the
incident, out of which it sprang, occurred.

Indeed, it is not too much to say that all the stories
which represent Randolph as breaking out into paroxysms
of indecent violence, or descending to vulgarity in conduct
or speech, should be received with the utmost distrust.
Except so far as they rest on the testimony in the Randolph
will litigation, going to establish the insanity of
Randolph, or on other evidence relating to the different
periods, when he was insane, they emanate from disgruntled
overseers, personal or political enemies, or tattling
countryside gossips, to whom Randolph was the
eighth wonder of the modern world.

The stories which Bouldin gathered from W. T. Harvey,
a man who was one of Randolph's overseers, shortly after
he returned from Russia, and which present Randolph to
us simply as a drunken bully and a coarse vulgarian, all
arise out of incidents, which, if they occurred at all,

occurred when Randolph might just as well have been in
a mad-house as at Roanoke. And yet, referring to Harvey,
Bouldin actually says: "We say we are glad we took
notes from him, because we feel that we must draw Mr.
Randolph as he really was."[12]

The most authentic of the stories which impute flagrant
violence to Randolph are those which relate to his neighbor,
Robert Carrington, the son of the elder Judge Paul
Carrington. It was said of him that he was the only person
of whom Randolph was ever afraid; but we should
have to know more than we do about the intercourse
between the two men to admit that Randolph feared even
him; though there can be little doubt that Robert Carrington
was a man of very resolute character. An entry,
under date of June 8, 1830, in one of Randolph's journals
comprises simply these three words: "Robert C's airs."[13]
This was doubtless the prelude to the litigious encounter
which took place between Randolph and Carrington,
when Randolph filed an action for trespass against Carrington
in the County Court of Charlotte County, alleging
that the latter had ploughed up and planted with corn a
road used by Randolph, which led along the Staunton
River, and across the Carrington estate from Randolph's
Middle Quarter to his Lower Quarter, and when Carrington
filed an action against Randolph in the same court,
alleging that, contrary to an agreement between the two
to maintain one common enclosure, Randolph had allowed
estrays from his property to wander over to Carrington's
lands and do a great amount of injury. Both of these
actions were brought in the early part of 1832 when Randolph's
derangement was at its worst; and they were both
entered in the latter part of 1832, after he had recovered
his reason, "dismissed—agreed"; which, of course, indicates
that the parties had arrived at an amicable settlement
with each other.

Apparently, these two cases were associated with
another legal proceeding in which Robert Carrington
sought to secure an outlet from his estate over a tract of
land adjacent to the Roanoke estate which Randolph had
recently purchased. Under an order of the County Court
of Charlotte County, Dennis E. Morgan, Captain Fowlkes,
and W. B. Green were directed to view the road, over
which Carrington desired to pass, and to report to the
Court. When they inspected it, they found pasted up on
a gate-post on it a large sheet of foolscap, giving notice
that all persons, whose names were written on the sheet,
were permitted to use the road as formerly. The paper
was filled from top to bottom with names, male and female,
and the viewers read it over carefully to see if the name of
anyone in the neighborhood, male or female, who had used
the road, or who might probably wish to do so, had been
omitted; and it was found that the only omission was that
of the name of Robert Carrington. The Commissioners
reported that the land, over which the road ran, was exceedingly
poor and of little value; that the road had been
in constant use as a mill and neighborhood road for about
50 years, and that its use had been interdicted to Robert
Carrington alone.[14]

It is said that, while the viewers were on the ground,
Randolph, true to the policy which has always been pursued
by corporations in condemnation cases under similar
circumstances, had a quantity of provisions brought to the
scene of the inquisition by his servants. He is also said
to have presented his case against the use of the road by
Carrington in a long speech, in which he abused the whole
Carrington family; a fact which hardly harmonizes with
the idea that he was any more afraid of Robert Carrington
than of anybody else.[15] Indeed, the argument, to use
Randolph's own figure of speech, "tickled under the tail"
so acutely that Carrington would have attempted a reply

had not a cool-headed friend persuaded him that it was
not in speaking that he could hope to contend successfully
with Randolph. Perhaps, it was this advice which impelled
him (as it is said) to address a short note to Randolph
forbidding him to use the river road, and telling him
flatly that, if he did so, he would shoot him; a letter which
provoked a reply from Randolph that is said to have
caused Robert Carrington to tell Judge F. N. Watkins of
Prince Edward County that Randolph had sent him four
pages of foolscap, very severe in character and as brilliant
as anything that Randolph had ever written.[16]

Much of the oral evidence relating to this controversy
should, we have no doubt, be accepted very cautiously;
but, while we are recalling such evidence, we might add
that the strife over the right-of-way which Carrington
sought could not have been as vicious as has been supposed,
because it is said that, when Dr. Isaac Read, of
Charlotte County, was moved by a generous impulse to
approach both Carrington and Randolph, in the hope of
composing the quarrel between them, Carrington declared
that, if the difficulty could be honorably adjusted, he
would have no objection; and Randolph not only said that
he was willing with all his soul, but delivered a lecture on
the magnanimity of forgiving an enemy which Dr. Read
thought equalled old Dr. Hoge in his best days.[17] (a)

There was undeniably an understrain of ill-feeling in the
intercourse between Randolph and the Carringtons of
Charlotte County generally, which began, doubtless,
with the fling at the integrity of the elder Judge Paul
Carrington in the will of the elder John Randolph; and
this fact, we suspect, had not a little to do with the censorious
feeling towards Randolph which prompted Henry
Carrington, of Ingleside, to say that Randolph did things
which nobody else could do, and made others do things
which they never did before, and of which they repented

all the days of their lives, and that on some occasions
Randolph was totally regardless of private rights, and yet
was not held amenable to the laws of the land.[18] Not only
did the elder Paul Carrington chuckle over the fact that
he was seated between Randolph's Middle Quarter and
Lower Quarter in such a way that he could help himself to
the Randolph lands on either side of him, but, when
Robert Carrington emigrated from Virginia to Arkansas,
Randolph, who had the appetite of an earth-worm for
land, and was very desirous of buying the Carrington
estate and getting rid of such a dangerous table companion
as the Carrington family, was thwarted in his purpose by
Col. Clem Carrington, another son of the elder Judge Paul
Carrington, who purchased the estate himself.[19] There
are slight circumstances evidencing the fact that the
regard in which the younger Judge Paul Carrington was
held by Randolph was by no means enthusiastic. In the
Diary, is pasted an obituary eulogy of the former which
Randolph had clipped from some newspaper, and, beside
its words of glowing panegyric, are these words written by
Randolph: "Galimatias—Phebus—fustian—bombast—
bathos." And Randolph had an even better reason for
harboring a grudge against old Col. Clem Carrington, the
son of the elder Judge Paul Carrington, than the fact that
he was a Federalist, because the Diary contains this memorandum
too: "Juno, my double-nosed Spanish slut, killed
by Col. Carrington's order. He had her head chopped off.
Her puppy escaped. She had done no mischief and attempted
none; she was not even in his enclosures." The
date of this occurrence seems to have been Oct. 5, 1811.[20]

But the Diary and Randolph's briefer journals show
that, between the year 1810, when Randolph removed
from Bizarre to Roanoke, until the very last years of his
life, he was on neighborly terms, on the whole, with all
the members of the Carrington connection in Charlotte

County; visiting them and being visited by them, dining
them and being dined by them, and keeping up with,
if he did not cordially share, their family joys and sorrows.
Nothing could be more decisive on this subject than the
statement of John Randolph Bryan: "Mr. Randolph had
a difficulty with Robert about the road referred to in the
Reminiscences (Bouldin's), I think about 1832; but he
never felt unfriendly towards either Mr. Robert or old
Col. Clem."[21] We are told that, even after the road controversy,
Randolph voted for Robert Carrington, when he
was a candidate for the House of Delegates and, when
Randolph died, he left behind him a list of his friends
which included the name of Robert Carrington,[22] with some
favorable comments on his courage, honor, and manliness.[23]
(a)

According to Jacob Harvey, Randolph said, after his
rub with his Dutch fellow-passenger on The Amity: "God
forgive me for being passionate; but you must know
that I am like a hair trigger and go off at half-cock."[24]
The judgment was just, as Randolph's judgments about
himself were apt to be. Nor can there be any doubt that
Randolph's temper was not only very choleric, but also
fickle and capricious, and quick to veer from gayety and
good humor to melancholy and moroseness. Harvey
tells us that one day he would be "full of jokes, repartee,
and good humor; the next abstracted, morose, and incommunicative."[25]

From Harvey too we derive a story which is but typical
of the many stories that were circulated during Randolph's
life about his abrupt transitions from one mood to another.
A gentleman who had been introduced to him at a dinner
party at Washington, when he was in fine spirits, found
him so cordial and attractive that the next day, when he

was walking towards the Capitol and observed Randolph
ahead of him, he quickened his pace until he came up
with him, when he exclaimed, puffing away for want of
breath:

"Good morning, Mr. Randolph; how do you do,
Sir!"

"Good morning, Sir," replied Randolph rather stiffly
and without stopping.

"You walk very fast, Sir," said the gentleman, "I have
had great difficulty in overtaking you."

"I'll increase the difficulty, Sir," replied Randolph;
and, suiting the action to the word, he soon left his bewildered
acquaintance behind him.[26]

A better known story is that of the man who remarked
to Randolph when the latter was in one of his crusty
humors: "I passed by your house this morning, Mr.
Randolph"; and received from him the stunning reply:
"I hope that you will always continue to do so."[27]

Still other stories of the same kind could be cited by us,
but most of them have but slight claims to authenticity.
This cannot be said, however, of cases where his bile is
known to have been stirred by some nettling circumstance
or some real appeal to his disapprobation or contempt.
He had a marked disrelish for any topic of conversation
that was forced upon him.[28] He resented, too, any effort
to obtain information from him when the object of the
application was not frankly disclosed. In other words,
to modify his own image a little, what are but pricks with
most of us became pimples with him, owing to his morbid
sensibility to external impressions.

Two well-authenticated stories have come down to our
time of the absolutely withering glance that he could bring

to bear upon conceit or shallow pretensions; or, to use his
own phrase, "a frog at the utmost degree of distention."[29]
The first of the two is related by the Rev. John S. Kirkpatrick
in such a vivacious way that we shall tell it
entirely in his own words:

The other of the two stories was imparted to Powhatan
Bouldin by Mr. Wm. M. Mosely, of Danville, Va., who
was present when the incident, out of which it arose,
occurred. A vain young popinjay, of the Buckingham
County bar, had been elected to the Virginia Assembly,
where he had gained some notoriety by a speech which
he had made in favor of the abolition of slavery, in the
course of which he had held up Randolph as a cruel slaveholder;
a very dangerous thing for anyone to do who
aspired to popular approval in Randolph's District. At
the next election, his constituents declined to re-elect him.
Nothing daunted by this result, he availed himself of the
last occasion on which Randolph ever addressed the
people of Buckingham County to make public amends for
his course in the Legislature and to apologize to Randolph
for the supposed injury that he had done him. He began
by expressing his deep sympathy for the honorable gentleman
in his very infirm state of health, and the hope that
Randolph's prospective visit to Europe would result in its
restoration. He had always been a devoted admirer of
Mr. Randolph, he said, and felt that it was due to that
distinguished gentleman, as well as to the speaker and his

fellow-citizens of Buckingham, that he should embrace the
present opportunity for recanting the speech delivered by
him, when he had been honored with a seat in the State
Legislature, in which he had spoken disparagingly of Mr.
Randolph as a tyrannical master to his slaves. He had
reason to know that his conduct in this respect did not
accord with the sentiments of his constituents; and he had
to confess that his personal attack upon his distinguished
friend had been made without any personal knowledge
of what sort of master Mr. Randolph actually was. He
trusted that his constituents would forgive him, and he
relied upon the well-known magnanimity of Mr. Randolph
for the forgiveness, too, of a wrong done him, in a
moment of heated debate, upon an exciting subject; the
right side of which he now saw that he had not espoused.
From this point we might as well tell the story in Mr.
Moseley's very words:

The mercurial nature of Randolph's temper is also
attested by a witness of unquestionable credit, the Rev.
Wm. S. Lacy, who conducted a school at Ararat, in Prince
Edward County. Speaking of a visit paid by Randolph
to this school, he says:

But worse still, Randolph's temper sometimes assumed
the character of settled, chronic animosity. In his boyhood,
he was passionately (for no other word is strong
enough to convey the idea) attached to his stepfather,
Judge St. George Tucker. "God bless you my father,
my ever beloved friend. Whilst this heart has motion,
it shall ever feel for you the liveliest affection," was the
way in which he concluded a letter to Judge Tucker when
he was about 23 years old.[33] And this was the tone to
which his letters to Judge Tucker were habitually attuned
until the year 1805, when they began to be less effusive.

From that time on, they were increasingly dry and formal,
until the final test of strength between Monroe and his
rival, Madison, of whom Judge Tucker was an adherent,
as Presidential candidates, brought all really cordial
intercourse between Randolph and his stepfather to an
end. In 1803, the reverence and affection, cherished by
Randolph for Judge Tucker, were so strong that, when the
character of the latter was slanderously defamed, Randolph
wrote to his stepbrother, Henry St. George Tucker,
in these madcap words:

In 1810-11, Randolph's feelings towards Judge Tucker
had become so acrid that he took legal advice with a view
to bringing suit against him, and was with difficulty dissuaded
from doing so.[35] His claim was that Judge Tucker
had contrived "to take to himself" the profits of his and
his brother Richard's estates during their respective
infancy, while Judge Tucker was their guardian, and that,
moreover, his grandfather, Theodorick Bland, had given
his mother certain slaves at the time of her marriage to his
father; that his father had held these slaves until his death;
and that, at his death, they were inventoried as a part of
his estate, and were considered such during his wife's
widowhood[36] ; but that Judge Tucker had contrived to

obtain a deed of them from Theodorick Bland and had
sold them and their progeny.

In his letter to the Richmond Enquirer, of Sept. 10,
1833, Judge Henry St. George Tucker, with a temper as
irreproachably loyal to the memory of his half-brother as
to that of his father, affirmed that, shortly after the death
of Richard Randolph, Judge St. George Tucker stated his
accounts between Richard Randolph and John Randolph
respectively and himself, showing a balance in his hands
to the credit of each of them of £200; and that he gave his
bonds for these balances to John Randolph and Judith
Randolph, as the executrix of Richard Randolph respectively;
taking a release from each of them; and that afterwards
he paid the amounts of both bonds to them.

As John Randolph was 23 years of age, when he gave
Judge Tucker the release, and continued for many years
afterwards to be on the most affectionate terms with him,
it would be even idler at this late date, than it would have
been in 1833, to attempt to go back of the release; which
there is no reason to believe was not based upon a perfectly
full and fair statement of accounts.

So far as the deed of gift of the slaves to Judge Tucker
was concerned, the facts appear to have been these: In
1758, a statute was passed by the Colonial Assembly of
Virginia making parol gifts of slaves void. Theodorick
Bland evidently availed himself of this statute, after the
death of his daughter, Mrs. John Randolph, to reclaim
control of the slaves, which he had given or lent to her,
and which, if they had been given by a deed of gift, in

compliance with the requirements of the Act of 1758,
would, under the hard rule of law that then existed, have
become the absolute property of her husband, John Randolph,
Sr. Indeed, it may well be that he did not transfer
them by a deed of gift because he wished to reserve the
right to reclaim them at pleasure. (a) The children of Mrs.
Randolph by her first husband were abundantly provided
for, and the object of Theodorick Bland in executing the
deed of gift to Judge Tucker was, doubtless, to make a
provision for Mrs. Randolph and her second set of children.
Be this as it may, there is no evidence whatever
that Judge Tucker employed any improper means to
obtain the deed, and, moreover, to infer that he did would
be to ignore the excellent reputation that he enjoyed for
integrity during his life and left behind him at his death.
The only explanation that Henry St. George Tucker could
offer for Randolph's idea that Judge Tucker had abused
his trust as his guardian was that "from some other cause,
he had become greatly offended with Mr. Tucker, and
from the influence of these unfriendly feelings labored
under a mental hallucination on this subject; as it was his
misfortune to have done on some others."[37]

The original cause assigned by Garland for Randolph's
alienation from his stepfather is stated in these words:

In our judgment, as we have intimated, it is much more
likely that it was the differences engendered by the Presidential
struggle between Madison and Monroe, in which
Randolph's heart was so zealously enlisted, that first
turned Randolph against Judge Tucker. In the winter
of 1813-14, when he spent some months in Richmond, an
effort was made by the common friends of his stepfather
and himself to bring about a reconciliation between them;
but the effort failed. In a letter to the widow of Judge
St. George Tucker, written after Randolph's death, Mrs.
John Randolph Bryan recalled the fact that Judge St.
George Tucker and Randolph had met at Bush Hill near
Richmond about 1816 or 1817 and that Randolph had
refused to take Judge Tucker's hand; Judge Tucker saying
in an agitated voice, like the good, affectionate man that
he was: "Oh, Jack! I never thought that one of my children
would refuse my hand."[39]

A few years later, Randolph inserted in the will which
he executed in 1821 these extraordinary words:

This was but the breaking of a boil which had long been
coming to a head.

In the Diary, Randolph preserved a list of all the
negroes to whom he thought that the estate of his father
was entitled; and along with their names he also entered
in the Diary several fixtures which he deemed Judge
Tucker to have unwarrantably removed from Matoax to
Williamsburg after the death of his first wife.

In a list which he kept in the Diary of his books, that
were destroyed with the mansion house at Bizarre on
Sunday, March 21, 1813, is this title: "Tucker's Blackstone,
4 vols. from the editor," with these splenetic words,
evidently appended to it at a date later than its insertion:
"With his profits."

Naturally enough, the reflections in the will of 1821 on
Judge Tucker were warmly resented by the Tuckers; but
of this we shall speak in a later connection.

Never, however, was the gall in Randolph's nature so
stirred as by the feelings which he came to cherish towards
Nancy Randolph, after the truth about the tragic incident
at Glenlyvar had been brought to his knowledge by a
confession which she made to him some years after it had
occurred. Speaking of his brother Richard, in a letter
written from Paris on July 24, 1824, he said:

But before these bitter, mournful, musical words were
written, there had been an interchange of letters between
Randolph and Nancy Randolph that can be compared
only to the deadly grapple in midair, with beak and claw,
of two fierce falcons.

On his way from Harvard, where he was a student, to
Virginia, in the year 1814, Tudor Randolph was taken
with a hemorrhage at Morrisania, in the State of New
York, the home of Gouverneur Morris, to whom Nancy
Randolph had been recently married. (a) When knowledge
of this fact reached Judith Randolph, who had in the
meantime become reconciled to her sister after a period of
estrangement, she went on to Morrisania herself to look
after Tudor; and was followed by Randolph. He reached
New York on Thursday, Oct. 20, and Morrisania on Saturday,
Oct. 22, and the next day he returned to New
York.[42] He seems, therefore, to have spent but a single
night at Morrisania before he left New York on his return
to Virginia. While writhing under the physical effects
of the accident, which we have already mentioned as
befalling him there, and, with a mind poisoned by aspersions
on the conduct of Mrs. Morris, which he had heard
from an enemy or enemies of hers after his return to New
York, he wrote to her the following letter; and evoked
from her the following reply,[43] which, however, was never
received by Randolph.[44]

Copies of these letters are in the possession of the New
York Public Library and other copies are in that of the
Virginia Historical Society. Numerous other copies, in
the possession of private individuals or booksellers, have
been brought to the attention of the author besides. The
copies, in the possession of the New York Public Library,
came to it from Henrietta Graham Youngs, the wife of
Thomas F. Youngs, of New York, a member of the Morris
family connection, and are supposed to have been made
from the original and copy formerly in the possession of
Mrs. Gouverneur Morris.[45] Not only her reply to Randolph's
letter but her correspondence with Jos. C. Cabell
and Wm. B. Giles showed that it was her desire to give as
wide circulation as possible, in Virginia at any rate, to the

correspondence; and it may well be doubted whether,
since papyrus rolls and parchment sheets ceased to perform
the present function of printed books, any unprinted
thing of the kind has ever been so frequently copied and
circulated.

A curious supplement to this correspondence was a
letter written by Randolph to Judith Randolph from
Georgetown, about a year later, which discloses the fact
that, at the time of his brother Richard's death, he was
not cognizant of the true circumstances surrounding the
Glenlyvar incident, and hints—an insinuation, supported
by nothing but his suspicion—that Nancy Randolph,
influenced by the knowledge that Richard Randolph had
of her secret and the strong aversion that he had formed
to her, might have administered poison to him.

This letter was apparently written in acknowledgment
of a statement made to Randolph by Judith, at his request,
of the circumstances surrounding Richard's death.

At one time Mrs. Morris made an effort to draw Wm.
B. Giles into the quarrel between Randolph and herself
opened up by the 1814-15 correspondence; but with no
effect except to elicit a letter from Randolph to Giles as
keen and cold as the point of a rapier which gave Giles a
plain warning that, if he intervened in that quarrel, he
would be held to the full measure of personal responsibility.[47]

There is no evidence that Nancy Randolph was to any
extent such a "moral Clytemnestra of her lord" as Randolph
made her out to be; but her correspondence with
Joseph C. Cabell, long after the interchange of letters
between herself and Randolph, suggests the suspicion
that, if she had been a man, Randolph himself might well
have been the subject of a Greek tragedy; and this, despite
the fact that, in the first of her letters to Cabell, she pictures
her family life as gliding on so smoothly in her luxurious
home that slander, to use her exact words, "sounds
like distant thunder."[48] In another letter to Cabell, she
says: "I seldom think of Jack unless his attacks on some
other persons become a subject of discussion—wretched
animal—

It is evident from the same letter that her idea was that
it was from David Ogden, whom she paints in the very
blackest colors, that John Randolph derived his belief in
New York that she was dishonoring the bed of her husband.
Indeed, she says that Jack Randolph became but

the humble tool of Ogden. (a) In this letter she terms
him "Crazy Jack," notwithstanding the fact that, in an
earlier letter she had said: "Some people think him crazy,
but it seems to me more like the account given of those
whom Satan entered in old times."[50] A reply by Cabell,
to one of Mrs. Morris' letters discloses the fact that, in
addition to her offer to him to show how corrupt the
branch of the Randolph family, to which Jack Randolph
belonged, had always been—an offer prompted by the
attack which Randolph had made upon the intellectual
capacity of William H. Cabell, at one time Governor, and
afterwards presiding Judge, of the Court of Appeals of
Virginia—she had also offered to place at the disposal of
Wm. H. Cabell, for his retaliatory use, certain letters
which had passed between Randolph and Gouverneur
Morris about the time of Randolph's visit to Morrisania.
The tender was made through Jos. C. Cabell, and was
declined by him on behalf of Wm. H. Cabell, as the same
letter shows. The same letter also shows that she had
nevertheless forwarded the letters to Jos. C. Cabell for his
personal perusal, as he supposed. Whilst he in his reply
speaks of the cordial feelings that Judge St. George
Tucker cherished for Mrs. Morris until the close of his
life; sends her the good wishes of Judge Tucker's widow
and Mrs. Cabell; thanks her for her tasteful and much
valued presents to Mrs. Cabell at different times, and even
begs Mrs. Morris to accept his humble prayers that her
son might live to be the comfort of her remaining years,
that she might survive the many troubles by which she
still seemed to be surrounded, and that increasing years
might bring to her all the indemnification for past injuries
and misfortunes which prosperity and this life can afford;
yet it is obvious that neither Joseph C. Cabell, nor his
brother Wm. H. Cabell, had any idea of allowing themselves
to be embroiled with such a "monopolizer of invective"
or Hotspur as John Randolph of Roanoke. In fact,
Jos. C. Cabell did not reply to Mrs. Morris for more than
a year after the receipt of the letter which his reply
acknowledged.[51]

At one time, Randolph entertained a very cordial regard
for Jos. C. Cabell; but the friendly intercourse between
the two men ceased for some reason after the Burr trial
with which the latter, like Randolph, was connected as a
Grand Juror. Since Randolph was never intimate, so
far as we know, with any other member of the Cabell
connection, there was nothing to restrain him from giving
full vent to partisan violence, when Wm. H. Cabell,
though at the time a Judge of the Court of Appeals of
Virginia, allowed himself to be made the presiding officer
of the Adams, or anti-Jackson, Convention held in the
City of Richmond; which was the occasion of Randolph's
attack on him. (a)

One of the letters written by Mrs. Morris to Jos. C.
Cabell shows that as late as 1831 she was still in correspondence
with some of her early Virginia friends and
relations, namely; Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Carrington, and Polly
Harrison; as well as some of her family connections,
namely; her cousin Lucy Randolph, of Alabama, her sister
Mrs. David Meade Randolph, and her sister-in-law, Mrs.
Thomas Mann Randolph, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson.[52]

The letters from Mrs. Morris to Joseph C. Cabell also
have much to say about her son Gouverneur, to whom she
seems to have been very much attached, and whom she
describes as being in 1831 six feet one inch, in height,
though only 18 years and some months old.[53]

She also has something to say, with a distinct understrain
of pride, about the heavy charges from which she

had freed the estate committed to her care as trustee and
guardian by Gouverneur Morris: "Now," she says, "the
ante-nuptial contract is the only remaining debt; so that
I can safely say my noble-minded son's property is unencumbered."[54]

But more interesting still is the account which she gives
in this letter of the manner in which she came to be the
wife of her husband.

And in the first of her letters to Cabell she declared:
"I glory in stating that I was married in a gown patched
at the elbows, being one of the only two I had in the
world."

In these letters, too, Mrs. Morris also makes much of
the money that she or her husband had advanced on
Tudor's account, but which she admits was all paid back
to her by Judith Randolph. Whatever credit may attach
to her other charges against John Randolph, it is unquestionable
that she made entirely too much of this matter.
Tudor was but a youth, and evidence has come down to
us that, though not in the least dissipated, he lived quite

extravagantly when he was pursuing his brilliant career
at Harvard.[56] It was a long way from Harvard to Virginia
then, and his need for the assistance of his Aunt,
Mrs. Morris, was, doubtless, entirely unexpected to both
his mother and his uncle; for nothing stands out more
saliently from the life of Randolph than the generous
manner in which he lavished money as well as affection
on Tudor. Immediately after Randolph's visit to Morrisania,
we find him expressing in a letter to Dr. Dudley his
dissatisfaction with Judith because she would not permit
Tudor to sit for his portrait to Sully in Philadelphia;
"under the thin pretext," he said, "that the paint would
prove injurious to his lungs."[57]

The letter, to which Jos. C. Cabell sent his reply,
contains a paragraph which adds another curious feature
to the remarkable conditions under which Randolph's
savage letter to Mrs. Morris was written in New
York.

The letter which Mrs. Morris mentions as having been
sent to Jos. C. Cabell the month before was a letter from

Randolph to Gouverneur Morris; and for some reason it
never reached Cabell.[59]

It was when Tudor was at Morrisania that he received
the autobiographical letter from his uncle on which we
have drawn so freely in the earlier part of this book.
After Tudor's death, Randolph was desirous of reclaiming
this letter, but he was unable to do so; and, shortly after
his own death, it was published in part in the New York
Commercial Advertiser. It was evidently suspected by
Jos. C. Cabell that it was published by Mrs. Morris,
because a letter from J. Aug. Smith to Cabell, dated Sept.
25, 1833, states that he had called on the editor of the
Commercial Advertiser, at Cabell's request, and had been
assured by him that the letter had not been placed in his
hands by Mrs. Morris but by a clergyman and professor
in one of their high institutions whose name he refused to
disclose.[60]

It can be truly said, however, that rarely have infirmities
of temper been attended with more palliating circumstances
than in Randolph's case. "A letter from his most
intimate and valued friend, Mr. Macon, written to me
after his death," Thomas H. Benton says, "expressed the
belief that he had never enjoyed during his life one day of
perfect health—such as well people enjoy."[61] "I believe
that he never had an hour of good health, nor was he ever
free from physical suffering," is the equally emphatic
testimony of Dr. I. B. Rice, a resident of Charlotte County,
who knew Randolph well.[62] To be confined to what Heine
called a "mattrass grave" is about the only physical
extremity to which Randolph was never subjected. That
he should have been the active horseman and sportsman
that he was, and that he should have so frequently participated,
often at great length, in the debates of the

House, are but proofs of the indomitable spirit which
nothing but absolutely the last pressure of Death's skeleton
fingers upon his throat ever subdued. As far back as
1791, when he was but 18 years of age, we find him writing
from Philadelphia to his young friend, Henry M. Rutledge,
that he was as unwell as he had ever been in the
course of his life, and, though not dangerously ill, was
pestered with a cursed disorder in his bowels which gave
him great pain and sensations similar to those produced
by sea-sickness; and chronic diarrhœa became so fastened
upon him that, as time went on, he repeatedly stated in
his letters that food passed through his stomach and
bowels entirely unchanged.

In 1803, when he was but 30 years of age, his appearance
was that of an old man, prematurely overtaken by
physical decrepitude, and doomed to an early death.[63]
In 1804, he wrote to Nicholson that his nerves were
shattered to pieces.[64] In February, 1805, he wrote to
Nicholson that an excruciating pain, accompanied by
fever which flew like lightning from his head to his stomach,
bowels, hands, etc., had inflicted upon him all the torments
of the damned, and compelled him to resort to an opiate.[65]
This pain he referred to the gout, "a proteus," he said,
"which can assume any shape in the long and dreadful
catalogue of disease."[66] Later in the same year, he wrote
to Nicholson that his bowels were torn to pieces.[67]

It would be a sickening task to enumerate all the
occasions on which serious or alarming illness drew expressions
of suffering from Randolph. They were so
numerous that, at times, we cannot but recall the savage
accusation of John Quincy Adams that Randolph turned
his diseases to commodity,[68] or wonder whether he did not

suffer more than most stricken men do merely because his
sensibility of body and mind was so much keener than
theirs. One of his letters to Elizabeth T. Coalter indicates
that he, himself, felt that things were not always quite as
bad as he represented them to be. "All our family," he
said, "make too much fuss about health; so don't mind
me. It is the effect of former affluence and ease. With
the cause it will gradually cease."[69] But, even after taking
Randolph's peculiarities of temperament and training
fully into account, we are amply warranted in doubting
whether any man, as gravely diseased throughout his life as
he was, ever exhibited more physical and mental activity.

We pass over all the stages of his life except those when
his ill health was so aggravated as to imperil his existence
or to subject him to extreme sickness. To do otherwise,
would be out of the question; for what he said of himself
in 1810 he could have truthfully said of himself at almost
any period of his life: "Indeed, exemption from pain has
become with me a highly pleasurable sensation."[70]

As early as February 20, 1808, Randolph, when recovering
from a fall, which had confined him to Philip Key's
home at Georgetown for some time, wrote to Nicholson
as follows:

In the succeeding year, he wrote to his stepfather from
Bizarre that he was still in that situation in which life is

but a burthen to its possessor—racked with pain and never
for two hours together free from some affection of his
stomach and bowels; that, in short, his whole nervous
system was shattered to atoms, and that, if it were not
for the society and attentions of Theodore Dudley, his
existence would be insupportable.[72] In 1811, he wrote to
his sister that he did not know a day without pain or disquietude.[73]
By this time, diarrhœa—the disease which
(he said) had terminated the career of every member of
his family—had become chronically fixed upon him.[74]
Many years later, he took an outbreak of this malady
lightly enough to heart, however, to write humorously to
Dr. Brockenbrough that, like the gallant Gen. H. (William
Henry Harrison, we suppose) "he was pursued" by it.[75]
(a) In 1813, he believed himself to be on the verge of the
grave from rheumatism and gout.[76] In the same year, in
a letter to Dr. Dudley from Bowling Green, he describes
himself as having been nearly mad with pain,[77] and a little
later, he wrote to Francis Scott Key from Roanoke,
"Alas! so far from taking the field against the poor partridges,
I can hardly hobble about my own cabin. It
pleased God on Tuesday last to deprive me of the use of
my limbs."[78] Indeed, the low condition to which Randolph
was reduced in 1817 was for some years the standard
by which he judged the severity of all the morbid onsets
that he had to face from time to time afterwards. Referring
to this attack, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough:

By the next day, after the inauguration of Monroe,
Randolph had rallied enough to leave Washington for
Richmond. His description of the journey is too characteristic
to be omitted:

After arriving in Richmond, Randolph had a relapse,
and lay utterly prostrate for many weeks at the home of

Mr. Cunningham in that city.[81] In 1824, he wrote to Dr.
Brockenbrough that the noisome atmosphere of the House
had overcome him and that he had had a copious effusion
of blood from his lungs[82] ; and in 1825, he wrote to Francis
W. Gilmer from Roanoke that he had been at death's door.[83]
In 1826, he wrote to the same correspondent:

During this illness, he had what he thought was the
highest fever, but one, that he had ever felt.[85] Shortly
after he formed this impression, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough:
"I am really ill; the whole machine is rotten; the
nails and screws that I drive will not take hold but draw
out with the decayed wood."[86] In the succeeding year,
he thought that he had not been so sensible of the failure
of his bodily powers since 1817. "A man with a toothache,"
he said, apologetically, "thinks only of his fang."[87]

In the succeeding year, his plight, if anything, was
worse. From Roanoke, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough
that, since his return to that spot, he had scarcely been off
his bed, except when he was in it. "My cough has increased
very much," he added, "and my fever never
intermits; with this, pain in the breast and all the attendant
ills."[88] A little later, he wrote to the same friend that
nothing seemed to relieve the anxiety, distress and languor
to which he was by turns subjected, or the pains, rheumatic

or gouty, that were continually flying about him.[89]
He was in that state of mind which regards the good health,
that is the common possession of most men and women,
as the gift, of all others, spun by the Parcæ from their
finest wool. "But I have so true a judgment," he said,
a few weeks later, "of the value of this world and its
contents that I would not give the strength and health of
one of my negro men for the wisdom of Solomon and the
wealth of Crœsus and the power of Cæsar.

In the next year, his physical misery is so poignant that
he writes of himself in these terms to Dr. Brockenbrough,
who, faithful friend though he was, must have wearied at
times of the procession of grisly horrors which Randolph's
letters steadily kept before his eyes.

When Randolph next wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough, it
was to tell him that he had been compelled to resort to
the drug of which, a year or so later, he was to say: "I live
by, if not upon, opium."[92]

In the latter part of 1829, Randolph, as we have seen,
experienced a considerable improvement in his health; but,
in the early part of that year, he was worse off, if anything,
than he was in 1828, and, on April 21, 1829, he wrote to
Dr. Brockenbrough these pathetic words:

The condition of Randolph's health after 1829 has
already been incidentally touched upon in the preceding
passages of this book, and it was marked by such painful
evidences of physical disintegration that no useful purpose
would be subserved by dwelling upon it more closely,
except to transcribe this last despairing groan in August,
1832, of a cruelly persecuted existence:

Randolph's disease was, and long had been, consumption,
we imagine, though none but a physician could say

authoritatively whether the real nidus of his ailments was
his lungs or his stomach. The wording of many of his
plaints about his maladies is so vivid that at times we find
it hard to believe that it is not just a little over-colored.
Certainly, never did any invalid drape his recitals of his
physical pains and disabilities with such a picturesque or
classical dress. Writing to Dr. Brockenbrough, about the
time of the Missouri controversy, he said: "Whatever it
be, something is passing in the noble viscera of no ordinary
character. They have got a Missouri question there that
threatens a divulsion of soul from body."[96]

Referring to another occasion, on which he said that he
had received his death wound, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough
as follows:

Even Randolph's body could not decay without shining
with a certain amount of phosphorescent brightness.

But we are not dependent solely upon himself for our
knowledge of his physical state during his last years in
Congress. In the letters to Weldon N. Edwards from
Nathaniel Macon, who lodged in the same house at Washington
with Randolph in 1827 and 1828, there are numerous
references to Randolph's wretched health at that
period of his life, and it was a source of astonishment to
Macon, as it is to us, that such a disease-ridden man
could have delivered such long and effective speeches as
he did during the first session of the Twentieth Congress.

In one of these letters, dated February 17, 1828, Macon
says that, when it was remembered that Randolph, during
the winter of 1827 to 1828, had been confined more than
half of his time to his bed or room, it would seem impossible
that he could have spoken in the House as he had
done.[98] In a later letter, Macon said:

In still another letter, Macon tells us that, by way of
illustrating the limitations on his strength at this time
when speaking, Randolph told him to tell Edwards that
his minutes had an hour's errand to go, like Sheridan's
six pence, which had to perform the office of two shillings.[100]

To Randolph's other infirmities was added poor eyesight;
and in his letters this subject was frequently mentioned.
As early as February 15, 1800, he wrote to Nicholson:
"I am literally blind,"[101] and, nine years later, he
wrote to him that he would probably have to go to Philadelphia
to consult the celebrated Dr. Physick about his
eyes which were sadly decayed.[102] Twenty-two years
later, he wrote to his niece that his eyes had begun to see
green ink and double strokes since he commenced the
letter that he was writing to her—"sometimes violet."[103]
Twenty-three years later, he wrote to her that he could
not see a single character that he was tracing with his pen.[104]

Some of these letters betray the excessive ictus of an eloquent
and high-keyed nature; and all of them, we have no
doubt, were written at times when Randolph's eyes had
for some reason been abused to an unusual extent; for,
throughout his life, he was an eager reader of all sorts of
printed matter, and wrote in his own clear, painstaking
handwriting, which, until the very last, never exhibited
any sign of shattered nerves or bedimmed vision, thousands
of letters which, only in the rarest instances, revealed
the slightest vestige of hurry or negligence. But, perhaps,
the most distressing infirmity from which Randolph
suffered was his sleeplessness. "We passed our evenings
together, or I may perhaps rather say, a good portion of
the night," we are told by Randolph's companion, of
1803, from whom we have already quoted: "For
he loved to sit up late because, as he was wont to
say, the grave, not the bed, was the place of rest for
him."[105]

In one of his letters to a friend, written immediately
after the death of William Pinkney (a) in 1822, Randolph
said: "I have not slept on an average two hours for the
last 6 days."[106] "I cannot sleep," he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough,
some four years later, and then the ever-glowing
imagination adds: "Death shakes his dart at me."[107] In
an earlier year, he wrote to Elizabeth T. Coalter, that he
had gone to bed, "the night before at eleven and got not
an hour's sleep, and that disturbed."

When he was three or four years younger, he had jotted
down in one of his briefer journals these words: "Slept
last night by means of hot infusion and pillow."[109] "No
sleep" was the short and pointed entry that he had made
in another of these briefer journals some six months before.[110]
Well might he have asked in the words of Comus:
"What hath night to do with sleep?" "Rose at three,"
"Rose at one," "I've been up ever since half-past two,"—
these are but some of the many entries and statements in
his journals and letters which show that he was as familiar
as a walking ghost with the deep waste and middle of the
night.[111]

At times, Randolph's insomnia must have been trying
not only to the servants who looked after his personal
comfort at Washington, but to such of his friends as happened
to be under the same roof with him during his
nocturnal vigils. On this point, the testimony which
Thomas H. Benton rendered in the Randolph will litigation
is important; for, during the winter of 1821 to 1822,
both he and Randolph boarded at Dawson's in Washington.

With such lidless, dragon eyes as these, a good night's
sleep is not a commonplace occurrence, but a voluptuous
delight.

After the adjournment of Congress on March 3, 1823,
Randolph hurried off to Oakland, the home of his friend,
William R. Johnson, of Chesterfield County, Virginia,
who was then looking forward eagerly to the great race
between Eclipse and Henry, the pride of the North and
South respectively, which was to come off on Long Island
in the month of May, 1823. The change of scene, air, and
mental occupation produced such a change in his state of
health that he could describe a night that he had spent at
Chesterfield Court House as if it had been a draught of
sparkling wine.

The treatment and regimen upon which Randolph
relied in combating illness deserve a word of comment.
He once wrote to Nicholson that he was not willing to take
anything from his physician except his advice.[114] When
he first fell ill at Washington in 1817, he called in two physicians,
but, later, he trusted to his own knowledge of
the pharmacopoeia to dose himself with medicines, among

which calomel, of which, in the course of his life he sometimes
took as much as ten or twelve grains at a time,[115] was
one.[116] "Drugs," he wrote to Nicholson, "are poison to
me in any shape in which they can be administered; air,
exercise and an undisturbed mind, essential to my very
existence."[117] This is all intelligent enough; but the measure
of his need for air would have been pronounced little
better than aerophobia by Benjamin Franklin. "Don't
be afraid of fresh air," Randolph wrote to Elizabeth T.
Coalter, "my health is so bad that I can't recommend my
example, yet I am persuaded it would be much worse if I
did not raise my windows every morning by the first peep
of day."[118] Often, he was driven by indigestion to a pitiably
meagre diet; and how a man with such a delicate
stomach could ever have smoked or drunk madeira it is
hard to see, but smoke he did at some periods of his life,
and drink madeira, with occasional intermissions, he certainly
did down to the last years of his life.

On March 1, 1820, he wrote to John Randolph Bryan
that he was confined to a strict milk diet. On December
15, 1827, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough:

In a letter to Littleton Waller Tazewell, Randolph even
made fun of his toast and water. Speaking of a little

dinner to which he had invited J. M. Garnett, Nathaniel
Macon, and Mark Alexander, he says that he was drunker
upon his toast and water and such thin potations than
they were upon old Jemaikey and Brarzil at $3.00, first
cost, per bottle. "So you see," he goes on to say, "that,
although a man of peace, I live like a fighting cock; for
small hominy and water is the chief part of my diet."[120]

During the next year, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough
that his breakfast consisted of a cup of tea and a cracker
without butter which he never touched.[121] In the latter
part of the same year, his stomach was still so intolerant
of the slightest excess that he wrote to the same friend:
"Kidder R. [Randolph] was here and had no one to join
him in a glass of claret, so that, as Burns says, I helped
him to a slice of my constitution, although my potation
was very moderate."[122]

During Randolph's life, there was quite a general impression
that he was not so infirm as he professed to be.
It was difficult for skeptical minds to believe that a man
could speak for hours in the House and ride for miles on
horseback over the roughest roads and yet be as moribund
as Randolph repeatedly insisted that he was. The
occasion of which we have already spoken when he assured
the Flournoys that he was dying, and yet shortly afterwards
galloped up behind them, on his way to Halifax
Court House, where he delivered one of the most powerful
speeches of his career, was by no means a solitary one.
A similar incident was related by Wm. H. Roane, a member
of the House from Virginia during the session of 18161817,
when Randolph's health was so wretched.

In bringing out Randolph's life-long ill-health, in connection
with his infirmities of temper, there is a kindred
subject, which, delicate as it is, we cannot avoid. So far

as we know, there is no written evidence to establish the
fact that he was devoid of virility at the time of his death;
but that he was so cannot admit of a doubt. The writer
remembers being told by his father, a resident of Charlotte
County, born in 1826, that in some form or other, the
exact nature of which he has forgotten, one of the physicians
who attended Randolph, during his last illness,
communicated to the world the fact that an examination
of Randolph's sexual organs after his death had demonstrated
his impotence, and was severely criticized by
public opinion for doing so. The writer regrets that his
memory cannot be more specific; but upon the accuracy
of what he does recall the reader can confidently rely.
Moreover, he has recently been told by an aged member
of the Baltimore Bar, of the very highest standing, that
he remembers distinctly reading a letter, written by a
Philadelphia doctor to Walter Jones, an ancestor of his,
when Jones was one of the counsel in the Randolph will
litigation, in which this doctor stated that a post mortem
inspection made by him had shown that Randolph's
testicles at the time of his death were mere rudiments.
These facts simply confirm a popular impression which was
universal during the latter part of Randolph's life. Three
times at least during his career did men who had been
exasperated by his satirical eloquence retaliate with more
keenness than decency by hinting at his lack of virile
force. One of these men was Daniel Sheffey, a conspicuous
and able member of Congress from Virginia, from
1809-1817, who began life as a shoemaker, and is said to
have received on one occasion from Randolph the stinging
advice, Ne sutor ultra crepidam, to which he is said to have
happily replied that "if that gentleman had ever been on a
shoemaker's bench, he never would have left it."[124] Just
what Sheffey said in the attack on Randolph, to which we
allude, we can only infer from Randolph's answer. It
was personal enough, however, to incite Randolph, after
he had thrice been prevented by the Speaker from making
the reply that he thought proper, to write to his friend,
T. M. Nelson, another member of Congress, what he had
intended to say, with a view to its passing into general
circulation. The circumstances, under which he proposed
to hurl his bolt, were a little too suggestive of the individual
who, despite all that he was in the habit of saying
about the grand way in which his aristocratic ancestors
had lived, had nothing better to display than a paper
sketch of the splendid house that one of them had intended
to build; and, moreover, the production smells a little of
the lamp; something that can rarely be said of Randolph's
"profuse strains of unpremeditated art"; but the words
drafted by Randolph are nevertheless pointed enough to
merit free transcription:

Much less elaborate but more effective was the reply
which Randolph has always been believed in Virginia to
have made to another person who sought to cast upon him
the same reproach as Sheffey. "You pride yourself upon
an animal faculty, in respect to which the negro is your
equal and the jackass infinitely your superior." Another
assailant who sought to wound Randolph in the same
vulnerable particular, was "Julius" (Richard Rush), one
paragraph of whose exclamatory tirade reminds us of the
titter with which James Thomson's ejaculatory line

was greeted when first spoken on the stage. "The fountain
of man's highest transports and holiest affections
was, alas! unknown to him. O! heavy malediction. O!
sufficient to have awakened commiseration for his lot,
were it not averted by the sense of his own transgressions."[126]

And, in another place, overcome with what he conceived
to be the lack of usefulness in Randolph's career, Julius
breaks out, this time not so infelicitously. "All, all was
sterility, as if under his barren star there could be no offspring."[127]

Still another assailant of the same kind was Tristam
Burges, of Rhode Island, who is said to have set down
Randolph in debate on one occasion as "hated of men and
scorned by women."[128] (a) Such taunts as these, of course,
belong to a stage of human development when sexual
incompetency was a reproach as well as a misfortune; but,
now that women are so much on a footing of parity in
every respect with men, it is hard to see why sterility
should be a source of sorrow only to one sex but impotence
a source of shame as well as of sorrow to the other; to be
resented, when imputed, with the indignation with which
Mrs. Quickly repelled the idea that she was not an "honest
woman."

That Randolph was congenitally impotent, however,
we do not believe. On the contrary, we entertain no
doubt that his want of masculine vigor in his later life was
caused by mumps or some other wasting disease,[129] and
that, in his early life, his sexual integrity was wholly intact.
In the discussion of this topic, stress has sometimes been
laid upon the fact that Randolph was beardless; but was
he beardless? It is certain at all events that, in one of his
communications to John Randolph Clay, he speaks of
having been in the habit of shaving himself when he was
a youth in Philadelphia.[130] And so, in the same manner,
significance is also sometimes attached to the fact that he
had a soprano voice. But a feminine voice no more than

a feminine face necessarily implies impotence. It is
incredible that a man as incomplete from birth as Randolph
is supposed to have been could have written to a
youthful companion in terms of ardent attachment about
one member of the opposite sex; or have cherished the
deepest gratitude to a friend for extricating him from an
entanglement with another; or should have been told by
a cousin, who had grown up in the same family circle with
him, that he had been in love with her; or should have
actually become engaged to one of the most beautiful
women of his time; or should have been the subject of an
effort, however feeble, by one of his most intimate friends
to bring about a match between him and a young woman,
or even should have given expression to sensations which
nothing but amorous desire is capable of producing; yet
all these things Randolph did. When in his eighteenth
year, he wrote to his friend Henry Rutledge: "You well
know my sentiments on a certain subject. They are still
the same. A pin for existence without her; but I will
drop a subject which never fails to demand the tribute of
a sigh."[131] In the same letter, Randolph said: "That man
who is possessed of the religion to which I allude, together
with a competent fortune, a sincere friend, a refined feeling,
and superior to them all, of an amiable partner of his
affections; that man, if such a one exists, must be happy."
A few months later, Randolph wrote to the same
friend:

The inferences suggested by such confidences as these
are too obvious to require comment.

The author of the sketch of Randolph in Appleton's
Cyclopedia of American Biography, when dwelling upon
his youthful life in Philadelphia, says:

A tradition to this effect has come down in the Tucker
family connection; and it is even so confident as to declare
that the woman was an English woman, and named
Hester Hargrave; but, so far as we know, the only really
substantial and authentic evidence upon this point is to
be found in an unpublished letter from Randolph to his
niece.

This letter was written five years before Randolph's
death, and, as his affectionate intimacy with his niece continued
until the last scrap of paper, on which he ever
wrote a line, dropped from his nerveless fingers, he,
doubtless, redeemed his promise to her, and, in that way,
handed down to the Grinnans, her descendants of our own
day, the tradition which we have mentioned. There are
few beloved nieces, we imagine, who would not sit in the
lap of a gray-headed uncle, like Vivien in the lap of Merlin,
until she had wheedled from the cells of his memory such
a secret as this.

We have already seen that Nancy Randolph in her
reply to Randolph claimed that he had once made the
approaches of a lover to her; and, if he had been deficient
in the full measure of vital energy at that time, the nature
of her reply is certainly such as to warrant the belief that
she would have been quick to give additional edge to her
cutting words in this connection by at least a veiled
reference to the physical feature of Randolph's body
which, for the purpose of paper battles, corresponded
with the heel of Achilles. In consequence of the disposition
of the true Virginian to adopt the advice that was
given to Uncle Toby by the father of Tristram Shandy
that nothing is so serious as love, much more has been
made of Randolph's engagement to Maria Ward than the
incident really justified. Pretty much all that we actually
know of her is that she was the daughter of Mrs. Benjamin
Ward, of Winterpock, in Chesterfield County; that she was

a superior woman in point of personal charms, intelligence,
and character; that Randolph became engaged to her;
that for some reason the engagement was broken off, and
that she became the wife of Peyton Randolph, the son of
Edmund Randolph, Washington's Attorney General and
Secretary of State, and the ancestress of more than one
living Virginian who has honorably met the obligations
cast upon him by his descent from her and her husband.
Why the engagement was broken off is not known; but,
so far as we are aware, the mysterious and high-flown
innuendoes by which Garland conveys the suggestion
that it was because Randolph was physically disqualified
for marriage are not sustained by any evidence. Our own
belief is that the marriage never took place because rumors
of the affair in which Randolph had become involved in
Philadelphia, that perhaps even represented it as amounting
to a marriage, came to the ears of Maria Ward and her
mother (then Mrs. General Everard Meade). To this
belief we are brought not only by the intrinsic probability
of the idea itself under the circumstances, but by a letter
to Randolph from one of his intimate friends, William
Thompson.

Of course, this sort of language is vague, but "the tale,"
to which it refers, hardly points to such a thing as a physical
impediment to marriage. That Randolph, one of the
proudest and least designing of men, should have been
charged by the tongue of scandal with an intended
imposture which was certain of exposure on the very first
night of marriage, and that Mrs. Meade should have relied
upon Randolph's honor to protect her daughter against
such deceit is assuredly an hypothesis, entirely too bold
to be accepted except in the total absence of any other
plausible one. We might add that the conclusion to
which we lean coincides with that which the late Moncure
Conway, a close student of this episode in Randolph's
life, was inclined to adopt.

And, after all, what more natural than that at the last
moment Maria Ward might have decided, even after "the
tale" had been cleared up, not to marry Randolph because
of misgivings implanted in her mind by his eccentric
character and habits and his ill-regulated temper?

That the image of Maria Ward remained lastingly
impressed upon Randolph's mind is certain.

Words like these plainly import reparable injuries, not
irreparable ones founded on physical facts that no explanation
or apology could alter. Later on, we shall quote a
still bitterer reference to the disappointment that Randolph's
love for Maria Ward had inflicted upon him.
How deeply his attachment was reciprocated by her we
have nothing but his own testimony to tell us. He is said
to have declared on one occasion: "I loved, aye, and was
loved again; not wisely but too well."[138] Indeed, we know
that his friend Benjamin Watkins Leigh deprecated the
free extent to which Randolph was in the habit of giving
expression to the gratification that he felt at having once
possessed the love of Maria Ward. As to the true state

of her feeling towards Randolph, we only know, apart
from his own testimony, that it is said by her descendants
that she felt enough interest in him to the last to make up
a package of his love letters to her, and formally, on her
death-bed, to request her executors to preserve them; a
request which it is said that they had too much of the
Virginian squeamishness about the sanctity of private
correspondence to comply with.[139] Randolph was so richly
endowed with imagination and sentiment that it is hard
to reconcile ourselves to such a loss. It is barely possible,
of course, that a man, incapable of consummating the
marriage rite, might seek the hand of a lovely woman and
marry her, or, being disappointed of marriage, speak of his
love for her years afterwards in words of glowing passion;
but reasoning deduced from such solecisms in human conduct
is so alien to Randolph's character and position in
life as hardly to deserve consideration.

Joseph H. Nicholson was intimate with Randolph in
1801 and, as a member of the House, must have been
brought into the closest contact from day to day with
Randolph's colleagues from Virginia. Surely, if such a
famous man as Randolph even then was had been subject
to sexual deformity from his birth—a thing that would
certainly have become known to every servant in the
Matoax household, and to every white or negro boy with
whom he ever "went in washing," as Virginia boys still
say—they would have heard of that fact; and Nicholson
too through them. Yet on October 1, 1801, we find Randolph
writing to Nicholson in terms which unmistakably
indicate that Nicholson had selected a certain person as
a proper wife for him who happened to be an object of
desire to some gallant major.

Scattered, too, through Randolph's letters are expressions
that could hardly have dropped from the pen of a
man who did not at least have recollections of erotic
sensations which nothing but Love, the physical brother
of Food, Drink, and Sleep, as well as the spiritual mother
of some of the purest, tenderest, and loftiest emotions of
the human soul, can kindle in the human frame. For
illustration, in a letter to Theodore Dudley, Randolph
moralized in this fashion:

Randolph might have stolen the pipe of Pan, but could
he have sounded a note like this, unless he had previously
stolen some of Pan's fruitful fire too?

And is it possible that Joseph Bryan, who shared Randolph's
early dissipations in Philadelphia, roomed with
him, and was united to him by ties of devoted friendship,
"body and soul," to use Randolph's phrase, could have
written such words as these to Randolph about his wife
and the mother of John Randolph Bryan, Randolph's
godson, if Randolph had not been able in his early manhood
at any rate to feel with Coleridge that

Nor should we forget in fixing the degree of responsibility
to which Randolph's infirmities of temper should be
held that his mind was at certain periods of his life positively
deranged; and at others so nearly so that it was hard
to say whether his mental condition was normal or not;
for rarely has any human being ever furnished a more
striking illustration of the saying that great wits to madness
are near allied.

A special study of the manner in which his mind occasionally
slipped its cogs might, it seems to us, prove an
instructive task for an alienist. It never crumbled as
something crumbles when it has been slowly decomposed;
nor did it ever fly to pieces like something that has been
revolved too rapidly. Even at a time after his return from
Russia, when he was manifestly mad, he had the practical
sense to negotiate successfully for the purchase of a tract
of land that belonged to one of his Roanoke neighbors—
Elisha Hundley.[143] His conversation was never more
brilliant than it often was when it was perfectly plain to
his companion that his wits were disordered.[144] (a) His

mind seemed to get away from him as a horse sometimes
passes from the control of his rider that begins to gallop
in an entirely natural manner; but, spurred more and
more by the excitement that he generates in his own
nervous system as he moves, finally flies off at what we
call a mad rate of speed, which continues until both limb
and wind succumb to exhaustion; slowly succeeded in turn
by the restoration of former conditions. (a) Letters have
come down to us that were written by Randolph in all
sorts of mental states; some when his general conduct was
such as to establish irrefragably his insanity; but it was
only after the adjournment of the Virginia Constitutional
Convention that he lost at intervals his marvelous gift for
terse, vivid expression and fell to chattering like poor
Ophelia. Here is a high-wrought letter to Elizabeth T.
Coalter plainly written when his spirits were unnaturally
exalted, and his eye was glistening with cerebral fever, but
his brain was still serviceably steady:

It would seem that Randolph's mind never became
really demented before the year 1818; though in the very
beginning of his political career his bearing was occasionally
so peculiar as to suggest the idea to others that it was
unhinged. Nor should the fact be overlooked that Dr.
Samuel Merry testified in the Randolph will litigation
that Randolph was deranged for several weeks at Roanoke
in 1811 or 1812.[146] Indeed, in that litigation the testimony
of Dr. Robinson, who, however, had formed a personal
grudge against Randolph, went almost to the point of
saying that the latter was out of his mind on each of the
three or four occasions between 1810 and 1819 when he
met him. But in 1818, just after the dreadful attack of
illness which for years afterwards furnished Randolph
with his low water-mark when he was noting fluctuations
in his health, Randolph was certainly not himself. In

1820, when his extravagant conduct at the funeral of
Commodore Stephen Decatur attracted general attention,
his mental faculties were beyond doubt gravely affected.
In the month of April in that year he walked into the
United States Branch Bank at Richmond and asked for
writing materials with which to make out a check. When
they were given to him, he dipped his pen in the ink and,
finding that it was black, asked for red ink, saying, "I
now go for blood." He filled the check up and asked
Mr. Anderson, the bank cashier, to sign it. Mr. Anderson
refused, and, after importuning him for some time to
change his mind, Randolph called for black ink, and signed
John Randolph of Roanoke, X, his mark. He then called
for the porter and sent the check to a Mr. Taylor's for the
purpose of paying an account.[147]

Testifying in the Randolph will litigation as to the
difference between the insanity of Randolph in 1818 and
1820 and his insanity in 1831 and 1832, Judge Leigh
said:

Thomas H. Benton testified in the Randolph will litigation
that during the winter of 1821 to 1822 he saw in
Randolph "indications of high excitement and of unsettled
mind, amounting as he believed to mental alienation."
The tokens of mental unsoundness, he thought, "were
extreme talking, sleeplessness, and giving undue, or even
mysterious, importance to trifles."

Benton further testified that, when Randolph returned
from England in 1822, he was "calm, self-possessed, poised,
everything right, natural, and proper."[151] Referring to
Randolph's chronic ill-health, and to his testimony in the
will case, Benton also makes these additional observations
on his sanity in his Thirty Years' View:

An interesting note to a part of these words might be
made of the fact that, in a letter to Judge Brooke, Henry
Clay, after his duel with Randolph in 1826, said that the
only thing which had made him hesitate about challenging
Randolph was his misgivings as to Randolph's sanity.[153]
More than one expression in Randolph's letters bears out
the idea that he carried about with him a brooding fear of
insanity; and, when he had recovered from one of his
spells of mental aberration, no one was more cognizant
than he of what his true condition had been. Dr. Thomas
Robinson testified in the Randolph will litigation that,
when Randolph passed through Petersburg in 1833 on his
way to Philadelphia, he told the doctor that, since the
latter had last seen him, he had been "stark mad, as well
entitled to a cell in Swift's hospital as anyone who had
ever occupied one"; and "that he felt conscious that he
had not entirely recovered as yet, but confident of ultimate
and perfect recovery."[154]

In the year 1826, Randolph was again overtaken by the
foul fiend who pursued him (to use his own phrase). It
was in that year that he made the long and multifarious,
though brilliant, and, in some instances, sagacious,

speeches in the Senate which helped his party enemies in
the Virginia Legislature to compass his defeat, as a candidate
for re-election. As usual, his loss of mind was concomitant
with a very low state of physical health. On
Feb. 27, 1826, he said in a letter: "The fever and the toast
and water (I touch nothing else) keeps me more intoxicated
(exhilarated rather) than two bottles of champagne."
It is a curious fact that, when testifying in the Randolph
will litigation, no recognition could be extorted from John
C. Calhoun of the fact that Randolph had ever been subject
to spells of insanity. The dark future of the South
had been irradiated by several of Randolph's speeches too
warningly for a man, to whom that future meant so much,
to push Randolph aside as a crack-brained Cassandra.
"Mr. Randolph," Calhoun said, "was generally regarded
as a man of remarkable genius and great brilliancy, with
uncommon sagacity and keenness in debate, and distinguished
colloquial powers." Calhoun further testified
that he had no recollection of any act or word of Randolph
which induced him to suspect him of insanity, or of such
aberrations of mind, permanent or occasional, as would
incapacitate him to make a will or contract or to manage
his private affairs. The most that he could say was that
Randolph was more excited at some periods than at others;
more so than was usual with most men; that he was most
excited about the period of the death of Commodore Decatur
(in 1820) and during the discussion of the Panama
Question in the Senate during the session of 1825-26
(when Calhoun presided over the Senate as Vice-President,
and sat as motionless as a figure of bronze or marble, while
Randolph was speaking hour after hour). But Calhoun
also testified that he had never, as he recollected, had
any correspondence with Randolph except in the form
of casual and ordinary notes; that the intercourse between
him and Randolph generally was as a rule not
more intimate than that which usually exists between
persons standing in similar official and political relations,
and was, therefore, of a nature to afford him but few
opportunities for observing his peculiar character, temper,
habits of life and deportment towards his personal friends
other than such as were afforded by such relations.[155]

The dementia of 1826 culminated, during that year,
when Randolph was at sea, on his way to England, in a
scandalous altercation between him and Captain Baldwin
of the packet-ship, Alexander, which got into the newspapers,
and, doubtless, did his standing as an United
States Senator no little harm.

One night, the Captain found him upon deck, conversing
with Mr. Matthews, the second mate. In a newspaper
statement, Randolph said that the first intimation that he
had of the Captain's presence was an "abrupt, angry, and
insolent reprimand for violating the discipline of the
ship by speaking to the officer on watch"; which, with the
proper allowance for a nature that readily magnified
social offenses, was, doubtless, true enough, if Randolph
was not too distracted at the time to remember the circumstances
accurately; for the salt ocean and not rosewater,
as we all know, is the element on which the autocrat
of the quarter-deck sails; and that this sea-dog was as
jealous of his authority as most members of his class is
attested by the fact that, in his newspaper reply to Randolph,
he made distinctly more than he might have done
of Randolph's answer to his threat to make him responsible
to him when they got ashore, "Barking dogs do not
bite." But it is only just to Captain Baldwin to recall
exactly what he had to say about Randolph on this voyage
in his statement; nor ought it to discredit Randolph to do
so; because, on the whole voyage, his manifestations of
mental irresponsibility were such as to remind us with
singular precision of some of the forms that his insanity

assumed during the winter of 1831-1832. The Captain
says that, before the Alexander sailed from Newcastle,
Randolph refused to pay any steamboat fare to Philadelphia
because he had been taken to Philadelphia against
his will; that this fare was actually paid by one of Randolph's
fellow-passengers "to prevent difficulty or detention";
that, no sooner had Randolph gained the deck of
the Alexander at Newcastle, than he proceeded to give
vent to the irritation awakened in him by hearing one
passenger ask another whether Mr. Randolph had paid
his steamboat fare; that, when Randolph got to sea, his
querulous disposition manifested itself in such a variety
of ways as to defy description; that it mainly exhibited
itself in contradiction, severity of remark, profanity,
vulgarity, and even obscenity; that, indeed, as regards the
latter, such was his language that the two gentlemen passengers,
who had their families with them, actually desired
the Captain to have a separate table for the ladies in their
own cabin; and that the Captain was obliged to assure
them that, if Randolph did not mend his manners, he
should have another apartment and table for his own
private use. Captain Baldwin, after thus cleverly preventing
Randolph from making an isolated occurrence of
his colloquy with him, takes up that incident in these
words:

Captain Baldwin also stated that all his passengers,
except Randolph, expressed their desire, as soon as the
Alexander should arrive at Liverpool, to sign a paper,
declaring their entire satisfaction with his conduct
throughout the affair.[156]

It should be remembered, too, that, even when Randolph
was not actually demented, his mind was often
acidulated by the bitter despondency which frequently
precedes or follows dementia. It was at remote and isolated
Roanoke, where there was little to divert his attention
from his physical and mental suffering, where the
dense primeval woods shut in the two rude habitations in
which he lived like prison walls, where the foxes, hares,
squirrels, and hermit thrushes came up fearlessly to his
very windows, and the click of a fly-catcher's mandibles,
closing down on an insect in midair, could be heard on a
quiet summer afternoon many feet away, that he was
most frequently a prey to the deepest dejection and the
darkest misanthropy. In the whole range of prose
literature, it would be difficult to find anyone who has ever
played upon the single string of human misery with so
many variations as he does in his letters. In that field of
performance, with his acute sensibility, his fertile fancy,
and his vivid imagination he is a Paganini unapproached
and unapproachable.

Poor Roanoke! seated in a rolling and picturesque
country, on one of the hills overlooking the Staunton

River, which Randolph called the Brown Mountains,[157]
in contrast with the Blue Ridge of his Piedmontese friend,
Francis W. Gilmer, and maintained by an extensive and
fertile estate, it might with a woman's touch, the voices
of children, and the blessings of health have been a happy
home, even though the nearest post-office to it—Charlotte
Court House—was 12 or 13 miles away, and Richmond
a three days' journey. Replying to a letter, in which
Randolph had given him a description of his log-cabin
and the forest around it, Francis Scott Key, weary with
the drudgery and the chicane of the bar, said:

But these were not the feelings of a man who was such
a sufferer that, for a large part of his life, it was impossible
for him to be at peace anywhere. On Dec. 21, 1819,
Randolph wrote to Theodore Dudley from Washington:

Some 16 months later, Randolph wrote to the same
correspondent:

In an earlier letter, he had said to Theodore Dudley:
"You know the savage solitude in which I live; into which
I have been driven to seek shelter."[161] About the same time
he referred to Roanoke, in a letter to Dr. Brockenbrough,
as his "lonely and savage" habitation; adding that he
led a life of seclusion there unchequered by a single ray
of enjoyment.[162]

Repeatedly in his letters to different correspondents, he
compares himself at Roanoke with Robinson Crusoe on
his desert island. In a letter to his niece, he spoke of
himself as a "wild man of the woods"[163] ; (b) and in another
he said: "Here then I must live, and here I must die,
`a lone and banished man.' "[164] In still another letter to
the same friend, he declared that he remained at Roanoke
and looked at the trees until he almost conceited himself
a dryad.[165] "I vegetate like the trees around me," was
another expression of his in writing to Dr. Brockenbrough.
Even the cool, green crown of these trees, so grateful in a
warm climate, cast only a heavy oppressive shadow over
his spirits; yet, when he returned on one occasion from
Washington to Roanoke, and found that one of his overseers
had cut down a tree, near one of the two houses in
which he dwelt, he is said to have asked him sharply why
he cut it down; and, when told because it was in the way

of the house, to have exclaimed impatiently: "Why did
you not remove the house?"

We should grow sick of Randolph's incessant repinings
and moans at Roanoke if he did not make wretchedness
such a musical thing; but how can we get out of patience
with a man who could run his hands over the whole keyboard
of his own unhappiness, from lassitude to loneliness,
from loneliness to misery, and from misery to Stygian
despair, and yet give as melodious an accent to every sigh
or groan as if he were but an academic votary of the tuneful
Nine singing unreal sorrows?

Occasionally, from the mere vacancy of his existence
he would go to bed by seven o'clock in the evening. And
when did the tædium vitæ ever dye a letter more deeply
than it does this one to Elizabeth T. Coalter:

As he advanced in life, he fell away from all the pastimes
at Roanoke, one by one, which had given him the
most pleasure at Bizarre and Roanoke.

He was not to give up riding entirely yet by any means;
but his zest for it was passing. What, however, was there
to take him out riding, when even on another fine day in
October in the benignant climate of Roanoke he could
bring back no reflections more cheerful than these? After
observing in a letter to his niece that, when a boy, he was a
huge admirer of the poet Thomson, but that, as his taste
had become more chastened, he had revolted at his "turgid
pomposity," he said:

Long before this, he had complained in a letter to Dr.
Brockenbrough that he had lost his relish for reading.
This last letter is a kind of pot pourri made up of all the
sensations felt by a "soul out of taste" with the world, to
use a term borrowed by Randolph from the sick when
speaking of their mouths after a fever.

In later letters, he speaks again of his distaste for
reading and his plantation affairs. "Even Shakespeare
and Milton have lost their empire over me," he wrote to
Elizabeth T. Coalter in 1822, and then he quotes: "Still
drops some joy from withering life away."[172] On March
31, 1825, he wrote to Francis W. Gilmer that, though
after a journey more toilsome and perilous than a voyage
across the Atlantic, he had reached "his dreary and
desolate habitation on March 22, he had not yet had
strength and courage enough to visit any of his plantations."[173]
On another occasion, he mentions the fact that
he had not visited his Bushy Forest estate on the Little
Roanoke, which was only about ten or twelve miles from
Roanoke, for some two and a half years. He also lost
heart for the shooting, to which he had once been so
eagerly addicted. "My good friend," he wrote to Dr.
Brockenbrough in 1828, "I am sick, body and mind. I
am without a single resource except the workings of my
own fancy. Fine as the weather is, and has been, all this
month, I have not drawn a trigger."[174] In another letter
to Elizabeth T. Coalter, he says:

Sometimes, as is true of other men when the world is
not served up to them with just the condiments which they
desire, he fancied that he despised it.

This letter was written from Washington, but another,
written by Randolph a few years earlier from Roanoke to
the same friend, is in the same vein:

In 1828, the fiend was still following Randolph ex croupa,
for he wrote to Elizabeth T. Coalter from Roanoke in that
year: "My excellent friend, Mr. William Leigh, who lay
here last night, left me this morning. Even his presence
seemed hardly to exercise any power over the foul fiend
that annoys me."[178] And, occasionally, Randolph's language
is that of the blackest dejection. "I shall be found
dead here one of these days like a rat in a hole," he wrote
to Elizabeth T. Coalter from Roanoke in 1823.[179] But, if
Randolph was more unhappy, on the whole, when he was
at Roanoke than when he was elsewhere, it was only because
at Roanoke he had more time to brood over his
unhappiness and to be dogged by blue devils. There are
letters written by him from Richmond and Washington
that are fully as sad and splenetic as any that he ever

wrote from Roanoke. It was from Richmond and not
Roanoke that he wrote to Key in 1814: "In short, I hope
that there is not another creature in the world as unhappy
as myself."[180] And it was from Washington, and not
Roanoke, that he wrote to Elizabeth T. Coalter about
Feb. 26, 1823: "Your letters constitute my almost only
resource against the dark spirit that persecutes me."[181]
It was from Washington, too, that he wrote to Theodore
Dudley: "I am glad to hear that you spend your time so
agreeably. Mine is spent in unintermitting misery."[182] The
truth is that, despite the forbidding terms in which Randolph
often spoke of the solitude and rudeness of his
Roanoke home and the frequency with which he announced
his intention of living abroad, he entertained
decidedly mixed feelings about the place, even after his
life had fallen into the sere and yellow leaf of an all too
precocious old age. Writing from Washington on Dec.
21, 1819, he said: "Here I find myself isolé almost as
entirely as at Roanoke, for the quiet of which (although I
left it without a desire ever to see it again) I have sometimes
panted; or rather to escape from the scenes around
me."[183] Some six years later, he wrote to Elizabeth T.
Coalter: "Your thoughts on home are beautiful and just.
I, too, have my thoughts on the same subject; although
not the same thoughts. Lonely, and (at times) irksome,
as it is, I wish I could pass my winter at my home[184] ;" and,
two days later, he wrote to the same niece that the time
was drawing near for his departure from home and that he
would leave it with great reluctance.[185] But what could
more strikingly illustrate the composite nature of his
feelings about Roanoke than this remarkable entry in
one of his journals, under the date of Feb. 21, 1819:
"This day left my wretched and solitary home. Would
it were never to return. Impious wish!"[186] If for no other
reason, he was reconciled at times to Roanoke for the
reasons that he gave to his niece in 1821:

The character of the two dwellings occupied by Randolph
at Roanoke, one inherited and the other built by
him, was hardly calculated to endear that place to him as
a home; but he was as scrupulously neat in his care of
them as he was in the care of his person. "His modest
dwellings," declared John Randolph Bryan, his godson,
who was frequently under his roof at Roanoke, in a letter
published in the Richmond Dispatch on May 20, 1878,
"were more free from everything that could soil a house
or yard than any other place I ever saw; no fowls of any
kind were allowed on his premises; nor was a horse permitted
to graze in his yard; flies shunned the place."
Indeed, they might well have done so, for Randolph had
such an intense aversion to them that we can almost
imagine him, like the Emperor Domitian, giving himself
up in his hours of relaxation to spitting them upon a bodkin.
(a)

Randolph evidently had a good ménage at Roanoke,
because on Oct. 9, 1829, when he was in attendance upon
the sessions of the Virginia Convention of that year, his
friend James Hamilton, of South Carolina, lauded Roanoke
in these terms in a letter to Martin Van Buren:

This letter certainly indicates that there was no lack of
comfort and good cheer at Roanoke. In the Diary, there
are references to fruit trees, butchered animals, and ice,
which tend to show that Roanoke furnished all the cheap
supplies, that, together with the domestic service peculiar
to slavery, did so much to give the old Virginia plantation
its reputation for abundant, if not super-abundant, hospitality.
There are few references in Randolph's writings
to his vegetable garden, but what he had to say in one of
his letters, from which we have already quoted, about his
asparagus, is enough to convince us that he had a good
one; for asparagus is rarely found occupying a position of
isolated excellence in a kitchen garden. (a) Dr. James
Waddell Alexander says that Randolph never would allow
a carpet to be on his floors at Roanoke[189] ; but this was a
mistake. At any rate, the Diary shows that he bought
some carpets or rugs at Kidderminster itself on April 15,
1822, when he was in England. The Diary shows too that
he had a considerable amount of fine silver, and Hugh
Blair Grigsby expressed the opinion that his library was
"the most respectable collection of pure literature made by
any of our eminent statesmen in Virginia since the Revolution."[190]
His books at Roanoke were what we might

expect of a man whose stores of knowledge were derived
from the best books of all ages, and whose intellect had
been so exquisitely educated by them that, even when he
was insane in 1832, there was no fault to be found with the
elegant diction which still flowed from his lips.[191] The only
respects, in the opinion of Grigsby, who had Randolph's
love of books himself, in which the Randolph library was
deficient, was in its lack of scientific works.[192]

But, all the same, Roanoke must have been in many
regards a bare and sombre place of residence for a man of
Randolph's wealth and social accomplishments; retained
by him only because the Roanoke estate, as he was in the
habit of saying, had never belonged to anyone except the
Red Indians and his ancestors[193] ; and because the burden of
the British debt, which he had inherited in early life, made
it imperatively necessary for him to cultivate habits of
economy so long that when, despite the deceit which
lurked in the value of a slave plantation, he had become
easier in his circumstances, he found himself more inclined
to absorb the lands of his neighbors around Roanoke than
to build himself a handsome residence. (a) In a letter to
Theodore Dudley, he speaks of this home as their "little
cabin."[194] On another occasion, he concludes a letter to
Theodore by saying: "I write this by candle light in our
solitary cabin with the back of the only pen in the
house."[195] This was certainly a sad state of destitution
for a man whose pen was hardly less prolific of words than
his tongue.

Apparently, there was no such thing as a flower garden
or a flower bed at Roanoke. The nearest approach to
anything of the sort, so far as we are aware, is mentioned
in a letter to Theodore Dudley, in which Randolph said:

"Pray plant some Sweet Briar and Swamp Roses"[196] ;
anæmic flowers which grew wild almost anywhere in
Charlotte County.

Describing Roanoke, with which he was thoroughly
familiar, Wm. H. Elliott, a schoolmate of Tudor Randolph,
says: "The house was so completely and closely
environed by trees and underwood of original growth that
it seemed to have been taken by the top and let down into
the bosom of a dense virgin forest."[197] The fullest description
of the place, so far as our knowledge goes, is one given
by Captain Harrison Robinson, of Danville, Va., who did
not visit the spot, however, until six years after the death
of Randolph.

Such was the home of John Randolph of Roanoke, the
owner of 8207½ acres of productive land in Charlotte
County, Va., assessed at $153,419.12[199] ; of 228 acres of land
in Halifax County, Va.[200] ; of three small lots in Farmville,
Va.[201] ; of 383 slaves of all ages,[202] and, in addition to other
farm chattels, of a stud of blooded horses worth perhaps
$30,000.[203] Begrudging of cash balances as the plantation
system may have been, another measure of the profound
despondency, in which Randolph was so often enveloped,
may be found in the fact that, though possessed of a total
estate, which could hardly have fallen short in value of
$300,000 or $400,000—a large fortune for his day—he constantly
spoke of himself as reduced to a condition of
impoverishment. (b)

In 1827, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough: "If property
in this country gave its possessor the command of money,
I would go abroad immediately; but I feel that I am fixed
here for life."[204] On another occasion, during the same

year, he wrote to the same friend: "There are other reasons
why I should stay at home. I have no clothes and no
money; in fact I never was in so abject a state of misery
and poverty since I was born."[205] In 1828, he wrote to his
sea-captain friend, West: "I am as poor as a rat."[206] And
it must be admitted that his Congressional salary was the
only item of income upon which he could rely with entire
confidence. All his other means were locked up in land
and slaves, and his returns from the one were subject to
many contingencies, and slaves, except in his early life,
when the first pressure of the British debt had to be met,
he would not sell at any price; though they increased from
year to year with a rapidity which spoke well for his good
management and benevolence. Purchase slaves, however,
he did whenever he needed more.

How his plantation fared under Jefferson's policy of
wounding our own citizens as often as their enemies
wounded them, we have already seen. In 1819, the
failure of the firm of Tompkins & Murray, of Richmond,
in whose hands he had a sum of money, caused him to
write to Francis Scott Key: "By the late bankruptcies
I am reduced from ease and independence to debt and
straitened circumstances. I have endeavored, in vain, to
sell a part of my property at a reduced price to meet my
engagements."[207] And then, too, even when there was no
embargo to throw his corn and tobacco back upon his
hands, and no general financial depression like that of
1819, and no scorching drouth, he had always, as the Diary
repeatedly shows, to reckon with the malevolent River
Spirit which issued at times from the Staunton and
wreaked its rage on Randolph's fair alluvial plains. In
1813, he wrote to Francis Scott Key: "We have been
flooded. This river has not been so high since August,

1795. A vast deal of corn is destroyed; I fear I have lost
500 barrels and 80 odd stacks of oats."[208] On another
occasion, we find him riding about up to his saddle skirts
in a rising flood at his Ferry Quarter, produced by a downpour
of rain which rendered the bridge over the Little
Roanoke at Mossing Ford impassable, as many another
downpour has done in the author's day.[209] Indeed, the
caprices of the Staunton River are a thing that can always
be counted upon to keep human existence along its banks
from sinking into a state of stagnation. A remorseless,
copper-colored sky, arid brown fields, twisted corn blades,
and sickly, spindling tobacco plants; the rumble of distant
thunder, the heavens slowly knitting their black brows,
the play of the forked lightning, the rush of the wind
through the tree tops, the refreshing, reviving rain, more
precious in moderation than any vintage of the wine cellar,
and, on the other hand, the long steady rainfall, unheralded
by the voice of thunder, or the glare of lightning, or
the wings of the wind, which continues hour after hour
until the hapless husbandman, listening to it, as it falls on
his roof, like clods on a coffin, grows sick and faint with
dismay; how familiar are these phenomena to every
planter who knows what drouth and flood mean on a
Staunton River estate like Roanoke! (a)

But the profits of planting, even when unaccompanied
by the profits of slave breeding, were not so uncertain that
Randolph, who began with 2796 acres of land, which he
had derived immediately, or mediately, from the estate of
his father,[210] could not end with three times as many.

Bodily and mental depression not only produced in
Randolph disgust with Roanoke, but with his whole
Southside Virginia environment as well. "This desert,"
he called it in a letter to Theodore Dudley.[211]

In 1827, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough:

In a letter to Francis W. Gilmer, Randolph expressed
the opinion that, except Ireland, Southside Virginia was
the most neglected country in the world.[214] And, in
another letter to Gilmer, he broke out into this gust of
impatience with the same region:

What are we to think of a Virginian to whom even "the
Valley" had become dreary? In justice to Randolph,
however, we should add that this letter was written after
"deluges of rain" had finally destroyed his tobacco crop,
and that, in writing it, he called it a "splenetic effusion,"
a term which could be aptly applied to most of his strictures
on Southside Virginia and Virginia at large, for the
reader should realize that the cloud, which Randolph saw
at this time, did not enfold simply Southside Virginia,
but the whole of Virginia, if not the whole of the United
States. Read this extract for illustration, from a letter
written by him to his niece on July 27, 1825:

On Christmas Day, in 1828, he takes up the same refrain
in another letter to his niece:

In 1829, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough in these
sweeping terms:

More pessimistic still is a letter written by Randolph
to Dr. Brockenbrough a few weeks later; in which he
quotes a striking passage from one of Macaulay's Essays:

Not infrequently, when Randolph was at Roanoke, his
melancholy assumed the form of an intense craving for
human society. In 1821, he wrote to Francis W. Gilmer:

To his niece the desire for congenial companionship
was expressed with still greater intensity: "At this moment,"
he wrote to her in 1823, "I would rather see the
face of a friend than fill a throne; but I am so unused to
the voice of kindness that it would unman me."[221] But it
was true friends that he wished to see; not mere curious
strangers, nor mere nati fruges [aut tempus] consumere.
In 1828, he wrote to his niece:

This letter was written from Washington, but it might
as well have been written from Roanoke. In another
letter to his niece, from which we have already quoted, he
said: "The people whom I see are made of wood and wire,
and talk like the cuckoos in a Dutch clock, mechanically;
and even such as these I hardly see once a month."[223] It
was this kind of people who had caused him to say to his
niece in still another letter, written at Roanoke on a dark
rainy day: "I bless God that I have a tight roof over my
head, and, if no company, no bore."[224]

Nowhere in his correspondence is the distinction which
he maintained between visits from his friends and agreeable
neighbors and visitations from other persons more
clearly manifested than in one of his letters to his niece:

Occasionally, of course, when profoundly à la mort
Randolph discharged his bile, as we all are likely to do,
under the same circumstances, in reproaches or even self-reproach.
In 1828, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough:
"For the last month, I have been sensible of a dejection of
mind that I can't shake off. Perhaps some interchange of
the courtesies and civilities of life might alleviate it; but
these are unknown in this region."[226] Less than a month
later, he wrote again to Dr. Brockenbrough, saying:
"Sometimes, in a fit of sullen indignation, I almost resolve
to abjure all intercourse with mankind; but the yearning
of my heart after those whom I have loved, but who,
in the eagerness of their own pursuits, seem to have
cast me aside, tell me better."[227] Once, in a letter, he
fell into poetic quotation, as it was easy for him, with a
memory that held everything in its grasp like a springlock,
to do, and compared himself with Darius:

More painful still, because our self-chastisements are
much more likely to be merited than our chastisements of
others, was the impulse which caused him to declare that
he knew how to win neither love nor esteem.

To ignore, when reviewing Randolph's intemperance of
speech and conduct, such physical pain and debility, and
such mental aberrations as those upon which we have
dwelt, would, obviously, be to violate the simplest principles
of common justice. Few men, no matter how
happy-tempered originally, could be so continuously harassed
as he was, body and mind, without a severe loss of
good nature and self-restraint. Moreover, as we shall
presently see, Randolph's temper was not only jaundiced
by disease, but soured by domestic misfortunes.

It has also been thought that Randolph's excesses of
temper were due in no little measure to drink; but we have
positive testimony to the effect that drink usually made
him rather good-natured than otherwise. "My opinion,"
Judge Leigh testified in the Randolph will litigation, "is
that the effect which intoxication produced on him was
to impair his articulation and to render him more good-humored."[229]
Moreover, we are convinced that Randolph
by no means drank as deeply at any period of his life as
has been supposed; and that the injustice, that has been
done him in this respect, is referable mainly to failure to
properly discriminate between the man, as he was after
his return from Russia, an utter wreck physically and
mentally, and as he was in the earlier stages of his existence.
That he consumed large quantities of spirits and
wine after his return from Russia, there can be no doubt.
On that point, the testimony of Wyatt Cardwell, John
Marshall, Judge Leigh, and Joseph M. Daniel, in the
Randolph will litigation, is conclusive; but even Judge
Leigh testified in that litigation in regard to this period:

"I do not remember that I saw him drinking to excess
previous to the first week in March, 1832." For a long
time after his return from Russia, Randolph did not have
mind enough to curb any urgent physical propensity, and,
even if his intellect had not been overthrown, he might
well have craved liquor as he craved opium; simply as an
anodyne with which to lull his unbearable misery to sleep.

Until his return from Russia, he drank very little spirits
of any sort. The only evidence to the contrary, so far as
we know, is that furnished us by James W. Bouldin, who
was a resident of Charlotte County. This is what he says:

This sounds very specific, but we are told by John Randolph
Bryan that James Bouldin's acquaintance with
Randolph was so limited that he was never in Randolph's
home as an invited guest. In this he was in part mistaken,
for, in his Recollections, Bouldin states that he
once slept in the same room at Roanoke with Randolph[231] ;
nor are references to Bouldin in Randolph's Diary and
other journals lacking. But it is an unquestionable fact
that Bouldin was not on the same intimate footing with
Randolph as either William Leigh or Dr. Brockenbrough,
if on anything approaching an intimate footing with him
at all. This being so, we find it difficult to accept his
statements in regard to Randolph's habits to their full
extent in the face of what Judge Leigh, who was for years
on the very closest terms with Randolph at Roanoke, at
his own home, and at the homes of common friends of
theirs, with whom they frequently dined together, has to
say upon the same subject under oath in the Randolph
will litigation.

This, it should be borne in mind, was the testimony of
a man who was not only for many years as familiar with
Randolph as any one brother is with another, and enjoyed
throughout life a singularly high reputation as a man of
veracity and integrity, but who was accustomed as a judge
to weigh his words most scrupulously. What he says, it
is true, does not exculpate Randolph from the charge of
excessive drinking at times, but it presents him to us as
not drinking more immoderately than some of his political
contemporaries did without suffering any considerable
amount of discredit.

The same observations might be made with even more
force upon the testimony of Dr. John Brockenbrough, who
was one of Randolph's intimate friends from 1807 until
the day of Randolph's death:

We do not forget what Dr. Lacy said about the amount
of rum toddy that Randolph drank at Ararat; but Randolph
drank rum toddy there, we imagine, because he had
left all his Madeira behind him at Roanoke. Besides, in
determining whether Randolph drank inordinate quantities
of rum toddy at Ararat, we should want to apply
some other standard to what he drank than that of a strict
Presbyterian clergyman, such as Dr. Lacy was. Moreover,

Dr. Lacy tells us that Randolph did not seem to be
in the least befuddled from what he drank; and this certainly
could not have been true of such a delicate and
excitable man as Randolph was if his potations had been
very deep. If there is anything certain about drink, it is
that when taken in excess it makes one drunk.

Nor do we forget that Jacob Harvey tells us that on one
occasion when the worthy Captain of the Amity insisted
upon their drinking "sweetheart and wives" on a Saturday,
in accordance with the rule, Randolph "became
rather beside himself"; but he adds, "Not drunk, gentle
reader, but noisy and somewhat oblivious."[232] Furthermore,
as we have already intimated, one of Harvey's
stories is sometimes as much the offspring of the imagination
as of the memory.

Dr. I. B. Rice was also of the opinion "that much of
the irregularity" of Randolph's conduct "proceeded from
disease of body and inebriety."[233] For all that his context
shows, however, this opinion may have been based upon
Randolph's habits after his return from Russia.

Moreover, how comes it that James W. Bouldin could
have stated that from the first time that he ever saw
Randolph, which was about 1808, or 1809, until Randolph's
death, he drank "great quantities of all kinds of
intoxicating drinks," and yet be reported by Powhatan
Bouldin as also saying that, during the War of 1812, Randolph
drank but little and he thought only wine?[234]

Randolph himself has some confessions to make on the
subject of drinking. In a letter written to Dr. Brockenbrough
in 1826, he says: "Now, when too late, I am a
confirmed toast and water man. My convivialities for
15 years (1807 to 1822) are now telling upon me"[235] ; and,
after entering in the Diary on different occasions dinners
at which he had been present at Col. Morton's, Col.

Clark's, Isaac Coles', and James Bruce's, he adds in each
case the word: "Debauch." Such confessions as these
should not be taken too literally. Randolph had a very
delicate constitution and a very emphatic tongue, and, as
we have seen, he could not even drink a little Madeira
with Kidder Randolph without declaring that he had given
him a slice of his constitution. So far as we are cognizant,
there is no evidence whatever that Col. Morton, Col.
Clark, Isaac Coles, and James Bruce were not among the
soberest and most conservative, as they were undoubtedly
among the most conspicuous, citizens and landowners of
Halifax and Charlotte Counties.

Then, too, if Randolph's testimony against himself is
to be weighed, so should his testimony in his own behalf.
In 1822, he wrote to Theodore Dudley:

Later, he wrote to Theodore Dudley:

Much was made by public gossip of Randolph's famous
call when he was speaking: "Tims, more toast and
water." But Mrs. Seaton, who knew Randolph well at
Washington, declares that she never saw him affected by
wine.[238] Nor could anything be more clear or more direct
than the testimony of Thomas H. Benton, who lodged in
a room next to that occupied by Randolph during the
Congressional Session of 1821-22, and saw Randolph at
all hours of the day and night:

Equally to the point is a letter from Mark Alexander,
one of Randolph's colleagues and intimate friends, which
was published in the Richmond Enquirer on Jan. 23, 1827.
After denying that Randolph had used scurrilous language
about one of his fellow-Congressmen, Alexander said:
"My association with Mr. Randolph, under the same roof
for many winters past, enables me farther to state that the
charge of drunkenness is equally unfounded."

But there can be no doubt that Randolph drank Madeira
freely throughout his life except at times when ill-health
compelled him to renounce it altogether for a time,
as in 1829.[240] "Peter," Randolph remarked on one occasion,
when his cousin, Peter Randolph, was at his table
at Roanoke, "You see I have not forgotten how to drink
old Madeira." "It would be very strange," replied
Peter Randolph, "if one so well versed in the practice
should forget it."[241] Aside from the years of Randolph's
life, which followed his return from Russia, and the few

occasions on which he became intoxicated before that time,
we suspect that the real extent on the whole to which he
used intoxicating beverages is pretty well summed up in
the letter written by John Randolph Bryan to Robertson,
to which we have already referred.

John Randolph Bryan is referring to the period of four
years during which he and his brother Thomas, of whom
we shall have a word to say hereafter, were under Randolph's
roof when they were not off at school.[243] In a
letter to John Randolph Bryan, written from London after
the latter had married his niece, Randolph adjured Bryan
to have a good apple orchard, and to banish ardent spirits
as a beverage from his table. "If at the beginning," he
said, "you are obliged to resort to spirits, let your wife
make the punch or toddy by measure of a certain strength,
never to be increased, according to the good old Virginia
fashion."[244] We can only trust that, when his niece read
this letter, she did not recall the one which her uncle had
written to her about two years before in which he had
informed her that his practice was to go to bed before
dark after having drunk the best part of a bottle of Madeira,
or the whole of a bottle of Hermitage. In 1832, his
habits in this respect were very much the same, because
under date of Oct. 20, 1832, Dr. Ethelbert Algernon
Coleman makes this entry in his Diary just after a visit to
Roanoke: "He seems very weak, and says that he was
worse from having omitted the usual opiate the night

before. At dinner, he had retired to his room but a cooler
of wine and a wine-glass was carried there."

The truth is that, though Randolph occasionally renounced
the use of wine entirely, or was for a time quite
abstemious in its use, he always had a plenteous supply of
Madeira on hand and consumed it profusely in accordance
with the habits of his convivial day. In 1817, he
writes to Dr. Dudley from "Babel": "I have bought a fine
pipe of Madeira. Did Quashia [one of his wagoners]
bring up the quarter cask?"[245] The Diary evidences the
fact that he bought a hogshead of Madeira in 1803, and
also that, on Oct. 27, 1812, he had 210 bottles, 2 carboys,
and 3 case bottles of Madeira of different vintages.
Opposite to another Madeira entry in the Diary, dated
Sept. 5, 1808, is this dolorous observation: "Drank in the
past year 10 dozen and 3 bottles. N. B. Very little at
home." But this wine would seem to have been consumed
in Washington, where he was frequently a host.
We also know, through a letter from John Randolph Clay,
to His Excellency, General Bibikoff, that a cask of Madeira
which belonged to Randolph, was shipped to him
at St. Petersburg from Copenhagen when he was minister
to Russia.[246]

Randolph was fond of saying that we never learn from
the experience of others, but his own success in making
palatable cider was, perhaps, one of the things that led
him to advise John Randolph Bryan to plant an apple
orchard. At any rate, in one of his briefer journals, under
date of March 20, 1830, he mentions the fact that he had
drawn off 104 bottles of cider.

The revivifying effect of a little Madeira on Randolph,
when he was sick and languid, was so great that his guests
must have been quick to condone his resort to it, if it
always produced the consequences described by Dr.

Robert L. Dabney, the celebrated Presbyterian divine,
in his Reminiscences of John Randolph.[247]

Of the high temper of Randolph, even when not goaded
by stimuli of any sort, there can be no doubt. "Like
many other men of genius," Dr. Brockenbrough testified
in the Randolph will litigation, "he was of the irritable in
his temper, and in some cases his feelings seemed to be
excited almost to frenzy." But we have a new and softening
sense of the strange amalgam, which constituted
Randolph's nature, when Dr. Brockenbrough adds: "But,
even on these occasions, he soon became mild and gentle
towards his friends and would hear any remonstrance from
them against his intemperance; provided there was no
third person present."[248] (a)

If anything derogatory to the reputation of Randolph
has been held back by us, we do not know what it is; and
now we assert, without hesitation, that sins of high, and
to some extent bad, temper, and occasional intemperance
aside, the character and conduct of Randolph, when he

was sane, were altogether admirable; and this, too, even
in some respects in which he has been grossly maligned.
All the royal organs of human character, to borrow a
phrase from the old Anatomists, were in him highly developed.
He was unflinchingly courageous; nicely truthful
and punctiliously honorable. How richly, so far as public
integrity goes, he is entitled to a share in the collective
credit which led Lowell to term Virginia the "mother of
States and unpolluted men," we have already seen; and
it is hardly necessary to say anything more about his
courage. It belonged to him as naturally as a red comb,
a lively plumage, a pair of sharp spurs, and a death-defying
spirit belong to a game-cock. One day in his early life,
when someone on the streets of Petersburg told him that a
desperado near its market had committed some outrage,
and was refusing to surrender to an officer of the law, he
sought the man out at once and, fixing his eye upon him,
walked fearlessly up to him, laid his hand upon him, and
called out: "Constable, do your duty!"[249]

John Randolph Bryan tells us that Randolph's advice
to him as a schoolboy was that, if he could really forgive
anyone for Christ's sake, always to do so; but never to
mistake the love of God for the fear of man.[250] In one of
his letters to his niece, he said: "No, my dearest child, I
fear God too much to fear man at all."[251] If this was not a
veracious vaunt, it was only because few vaunts are
entirely veracious. On one occasion, he goes to Hampden-Sidney
College to hear Dr. Hoge, and then, the same day,
swims the swollen Appomattox River on horseback, as if
the latter thing was as ordinary an occurrence as the
former.[252] Frail as he was, he would not have hesitated,
we think, to have backed Bucephalus. Any suggestion
of assistance, when he was handling a restive horse, was
met by him with disdainful impatience. When he was

almost in the last stages of physical decay, a man offered
to lead his horse over a stream at a difficult crossing.
"No man takes hold of my steed when I am on him,"
was Randolph's sharp reply.[253] (a) On another occasion,
about the same time, a horse, on which he was riding, took
fright at a bush. Randolph stuck his spurs deeply into
the animal's sides, and he plunged and reared so madly
that one of Randolph's overseers became alarmed for his
employer's safety, and so expressed himself. "It is as
easy to throw a new girth from a saddle as to throw me,"
was Randolph's proud exclamation; and he did not cease
to ply his spurs until he had made the horse go up to the
bush.[254] Such a man as this was certainly speaking with
studied moderation when, after one of the Randolphs had
tweaked Andrew Jackson's nose at Fredericksburg—a
dangerous feat, not unlike that of taking the breeks aff a
Hielander—he declared in his last speech at Charlotte
Court House: "I never could suffer to be imposed upon;
I cannot permit a man to pull my nose or kick my backside.
I am very far from being clear of the same faults that
Jackson has."[255]

Speaking of Randolph at the time of his duel with Clay,
when Tatnall was loading his pistols for him, just before
the exchange of shots took place, General James Hamilton
says: "I took his hand; there was not in its touch the
quivering of one pulsation."[256] (b) It is to be regretted
that a man of such well-established reputation for intrepidity
should not have consistently frowned upon duelling,
so far as it was possible for a public man to do so in Randolph's
day. Benton tells us that, at one time, doubtless
during the period of his religious enthusiasm, Randolph
declared that he would neither give nor receive a challenge;
but afterwards, Benton says, he hit upon a train of
reasoning, founded upon analogies derived from public

warfare,[257] which brought him back to the conviction which
he harbored when he made this entry in his Diary:
"Duelling: A man may shoot him who invades his character
as he may shoot him who breaks into his house.
Johnson, Boswell's Life." The view which this entry
indicates was still held by Randolph, when the Virginia
Convention of 1829-30 was in session; for, in that body,
he strenuously opposed a proposition which sought to
inflict disqualification for public office upon any person
fighting or abetting a duel; declaring, among other things,
that he had no hesitation in saying that place a man's
honor in one scale, and all the offices in the gift of King
or Kaiser in the other, a man of honor would spurn them
all in comparison with his violated feelings and his violated
reputation.[258] But Randolph, in this connection, at least
deserves the credit of having endeavored to lift the duel
above the level of ordinary affrays, fought without any
regard to decorum or fairness, and to relieve the challenged
party of the obligation to fight any challenger, whether he
had any honor to be wounded, or standing to be lost, or
not. The principles, by which the conduct of Randolph,
in relation to the duel, was regulated, are presented in a
pointed manner in one of his letters to Nicholson:

Randolph's pride in his veracity was like his pride in his
courage—instinctive; repellent of the slightest intimation
of reproach. "Not that my testimony wants evidence.
I should like to see the man who would question it on a
matter of fact," were his words when the Missouri question
was pending, and he was inveighing against the bad
treatment, which he believed that he had received at the
hands of Henry Clay, as the Speaker of the House.[260]

Rarely has any man spoken so much and, in language so
much heightened by the lively coloring of the fancy and
imagination, and yet so rarely fallen into inaccuracy or
misrepresentation. Baldwin truly declares: "He was a
man of a scrupulous and religious veracity in word, act
and thought."[261]

In his history of the United States, Schouler says that
Randolph seems to have taken a touch of Indian treachery
and dark reticence of purpose into his nature.[262] (a) This
observation is worthy of one of those academic writers
who cut out their historical figures from paper in forms
to suit their own a priori conceptions. There was not
a trace of treachery or sinister reticence in Randolph's
nature. A man more incapable of intrigue or invidious
finesse in either public or private life, it would be hard to
conceive. In all his words and actions, except when pride
or distrust kept him silent, he was frank, candid, outspoken,
sometimes almost ridiculously so, as we shall see.
Most conclusively does his whole life bear out the statement
of Randall, who was an uncompromising Jeffersonian,
and by no means an unreserved admirer of Randolph:
"He scorned meanness, duplicity or cowardice. His loves,
like his hates, were sincere and vehement."[263]

Nor was Randolph more courageous and truthful than
he was upright. He was a very honest man with a great
fund of good sense, is the verdict of James Parton, who
was writing just after the Civil War, when it was difficult
for any man, North or South, to see anything except
through the cracked lens of sectional prejudice. We will
not repeat the tributes paid by Randolph's contemporaries
to his sterling integrity both as a public man and a private
gentleman. Nor is there any contradictory testimony
whatever calling for the revision of another conclusion
reached by Randall in his life of Jefferson: "His integrity

was unquestionable."[264] Indeed, for many years Randolph
led a life of the most rigid self-denial, in order to
discharge his share of the British debt, due by his father's
estate, which would have crushed him, if John Wickham,
the attorney for his creditors, had not given him a long
credit.

"Now," he goes on, "I am called upon to educate
orphans and those who are not orphans; to pension widows
and portion maidens."[265] Randolph simply loathed debt.
"Mr. Speaker," he broke out on one occasion in Congress,
"I have discovered the philosopher's stone! It is this,
Sir: pay as you go! pay as you go!"[266] But his pecuniary
prudence went hand in hand with a perfectly sound and
wholesome comprehension of the precise function that
money should perform in a well-ordered life.

Could Poor Richard and Benjamin Franklin together
have assigned more judiciously to money its proper position
in the management of a human life? Indeed, now
that we speak of Poor Richard, we might recall one of
Randolph's favorite sayings, which is quite in Poor Richard's
manner: "Get the money first and the thing afterwards."[268]
The truth is that his long struggle with the
British debt gave him a first-hand insight into the misery
and meanness bred by pecuniary imprudence which no
precepts, unimproved by his own personal experience,
could ever have imparted to him. There are few sager
reflections to be found anywhere than some of his observations
on spendthrifts. After warning Dr. Dudley, in one
of his letters, against a precious scoundrel, he continues in
these words:

The same thoughts are presented in an even more
attractive garb in a letter which Randolph wrote to Dr.
Brockenbrough in 1826:

This letter was written during one of the years when
Randolph's reasoning undoubtedly forsook him, but it is
another illustration of the fact that, even if everything
else, that made him what he was, when in mental health,
deserted him at such crises, his command of pure, nervous
English and his provident turn of mind did not.

Indeed, all of Randolph's instincts were correct and
virtuous and true to the best moral and social traditions
of the race oversea from which he sprang. Who, describing
one of those English types of character, which are as
genuine and sterling as the English watch, or the English
woolens and boots that he wore, could do it better than he
did in this description of Col. Joel Watkins, a man whose
memory still lingers in Charlotte County like the scent of
some fragrant herb about an old-time chest:

Randolph's training and bias were highly aristocratic,
but his respect was bestowed upon every honest, worthy
man of his acquaintance, however humble his station in
life. In this regard, however, he did not differ from the
other leading members of his class, who had a way in both
peace and war of keeping in close and sympathetic working
relations with the common mass of the whites about them,
whose self-respect and independence of character maintained
quite as distinct reservations as their own.

Nor was Randolph's esteem for an estimable man any
keener than his reverence for a fine woman, matron or
maid. In 1822, he wrote to Dr. Dudley:

And Jacob Harvey narrates an incident which demonstrates
how careful Randolph was to see that any girl, to
whom this important office was to be entrusted, should
herself not be exposed to contamination:

And like a spotless lily of the valley, modestly lifting
its head above its tuft of green frondage, is the figure of
Marion Coleman as it is presented to our eye by a tender
letter from Randolph to Elizabeth T. Coalter:

In describing a friend of Delia, the wife of his friend,
Joseph Bryan, Randolph himself resorted to the fair
forms of the flower garden for the purpose of picturing her
as he saw her through the medium of his own refined sensibilities.

Nicholson was right when he said that Randolph was
romantic. Could any homage short of that inspired by
some Laura or Beatrice surpass that of the following letter
to his niece?

It was impossible, of course, for anyone to place woman
upon such a high pedestal as this without having man
grovelling at its base, and a letter from Randolph to his
sister, Fanny Bland Coalter, not only brings out the fact
that he thought Virginia wives entirely too good for their
husbands, but contains some general observations on
marriage that are worth recalling:

It is to be hoped that this outspoken letter was received
in good part by Mrs. Coalter, whose own letters show that
she had a husband for whom she entertained the most
devoted affection.

Randolph was not insensible to any of the infirmities of
women, much as he was inclined to rhapsodize about them:
"Graces à Dieu, I make a shift to get along without quite
as many heartaches as I have been made to feel by female
caprice and affectation," he wrote to Theodore Dudley,
shortly after his removal from the home of Judith Randolph
at Bizarre to his own house at Roanoke.[278] The
ejaculation is evidently a hit at Judith, whom he sincerely
admired and loved, but whose temper occasionally collided
with his own and struck off a momentary spark of
petulant impatience. "To Bizarre! What a reception!"
is one entry in the Diary under the date of Oct. 15, 1810.
"Tantrums of Mrs. R." is another which he made, apparently,
in the year 1809, stopping short with these words
as if Prudence had suddenly laid her finger upon his lips.
In a letter to his niece, he admonishes her to take care of
herself, not by housing and coddling, but by good, warm,
substantial clothing (not fashionable fig-leaf attire).[279]
In another letter to his niece, he has something to say
about women on whose honor no shade of suspicion could
be cast, and who were notable and not ill-natured in their
families, but whose ungovernable tongues rendered them
more odious and noxious than some of their frailer sisters

on whom they would look down with scorn—maybe with
compassion.[280] (a)

This was a singular thing for a man to have said who
was believed by his friend Joseph Bryan to have exercised
no little influence in bringing about the match between
Delia and himself. Decidedly pungent, too, are these reflections
in one of Randolph's letters to Theodore Dudley:

But, apart from a few pettish aspersions like these, Randolph
was a staunch champion and a warm admirer of
women, and regarded marriage and all the wholesome
interests that spring from it with a degree of profound
approval of which no one without strong domestic affections
is capable.

Commenting tolerantly in a letter to his niece on the
marriage of an old man, he said:

In another letter to his niece, he makes the lugubrious
assertion that even a funeral was as nothing in point of
seriousness to a wedding.[287] The marriage of a youthful
pair, with which he was in any way connected by ties of
relationship or friendship, was always an important event
to Randolph: "Give to the bride and bridegroom my
cordial congratulations on the event," he said in one of

his letters to Theodore Dudley. "I know not how to
offer them to my worthy old neighbor—to whom present
me in the most friendly terms."[288]

Once, after telling Theodore Dudley that certain persons,
including a Mr. W., had made friendly inquiries
about him, he adds: "So did Mrs. W., who is, `as ladies
like to be who love their lords,' and will present him in a
very short time with a chopping boy or girl; perhaps
both."[289] Some four years later, he wrote to Theodore
Dudley from Roanoke: "I have seen W. M. W. [Wm. M.
Watkins?] once by accident on the road; rather I rode as
far as his lane and met him. Asked him to dine with me,
but Mrs. W. was in daily expectation of the sage femme,
and he was obliged to watch the incubation."[290] That rich
vocabulary never lacked a delicate paraphrase with which
to veil or shade any reflection or idea. Nor did Randolph's
interest in marriage cease with the usual harbingers
of matrimonial fruitfulness; as witness this letter to Nicholson
written just after Mrs. Nicholson had, or was supposed
to have, given birth to "a fine child."

Randolph, of course, had pronounced ideas about the
limits to which the province of womanhood should be
extended. Returning from a concert in 1820, he says to
Dr. Brockenbrough:

But Randolph was not one of those early Americans
who was so modest as to think that even the legs of a piano
should be clothed with pantalettes. Ladies, he once
wrote to Theodore Dudley, had, as Theodore knew, no
legs.[293]

All this brings us back to our first point, that Randolph
had that deep respect, partly inborn and partly inbred,
for pure, good womanhood, without which a human being,
whatever else he may be, can never be a true gentleman.
Reproaching his niece on one occasion for not writing to
him, he said:

We can readily believe John Randolph Bryan when he
tells us that, in the society of ladies, Randolph's manner
was graceful, magnetic, and deferential to a degree that
made him greatly admired by them[295] ; and the forms of
many beautiful and graceful or benignant women, besides
those of his own mother, sister-in-law and niece and Maria
Ward and the other women whom we have already mentioned,
are mirrored in his letters. There are, for example:
Delia, a Forman of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the
wife of his friend, Joseph Bryan, whom he pronounced
"a charming woman," and whom, like another Cassio,
wooing another Desdemona, for another Othello, he seems
to have courted as assiduously for his friend as his friend
courted her for himself; and Miss Pratt, another "Eastern
Shore belle," whom he declared to be as amiable and
accomplished as Delia.[296]

But, however sectional Randolph may have been in
other respects, there was nothing sectional in the devoirs
that he paid to attractive women, who, even in the darkest
days of sectional discord, had a way peculiar to themselves
of setting aside geographical, as well as other,
barriers created by the passions or whims of men. One

of the most agreeable passages in that agreeable book,
Figures of the Past, by Josiah Quincy, is that in which he
tells us how fervently Randolph extolled in his presence
the charms and virtues of a Boston lady (doubtless Mrs.
Christopher Gore). What he said, Quincy declares, could
be compared only to the rhapsody of a lover.[298] When this
lady was on one occasion en route from Washington to
New England, he wrote repeatedly to Theodore Dudley,
who was then a medical student in Philadelphia, urging
him not to let her and her husband pass through Philaphia
without seeing them. In one letter to Dudley, who
had become a capital sportsman at Bizarre and Roanoke,
he said: "I hope you will not miss them in their passage
through Philadelphia. You are good at a flying shot."[299]
But he never paid Mrs. Gore a handsomer compliment
than just after his defeat in 1813, when he might well have
felt its smart too keenly not to have been thinking of the
ingratitude of men to the utter exclusion of the blandishments
of women. "It releases me from an odious thraldom,"
he wrote to Dudley, "and I assure you, my dear
Theodore, I have thought, and yet think, much more of
the charming Mrs. G. than of the election."[300] Not so
heartfelt, however, was this declaration as one which he
made to Dr. Brockenbrough when he heard that Mrs.
Brockenbrough had been deeply affected by his defeat in
1827. The tear shed by her eyes, he said, was more
precious in his own than the pearl of Cleopatra.[301] Other
captivating Maryland women besides Delia and Miss
Pratt won his admiration. "Tell Mrs. G.," he wrote to
Theodore Dudley on one occasion, "that her friends, the
Goldsboroughs [of Maryland], are quite well; that Miss
Anna Maria is as beautiful as ever."[302] In the same letter,
he says: "Mrs. Horsey, with whom I dined today, and
Mrs. Bayard enjoy their usual good health, good humor
and good spirits." In another place, he speaks of Anna
Maria, who afterwards became the wife of Wm. Fitzhugh,
of Virginia, as "La Belle Goldsborough."[303] After a visit
to Nicholson on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1801,
he asks Nicholson, when he sees Mrs. Lloyd, or the young
ladies, or his charming relation, Miss M., to present him
to them in Nicholson's best manner; and then he adds:
"The sweet notes of `Lucy' still vibrate in my ear."[304]

In many cases, Randolph's habit of initialing proper
names in his letters is not a matter of much concern to us;
but at times his letters are so profusely besprinkled with
such initials that we feel as if we were moving about at a
masked ball.

A Maryland "Miss," mentioned by Randolph in his
letters, is one of the three Catons, granddaughters of
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who afterwards married
respectively, the Earl of Stafford, the Duke of Leeds, and
the Marquis of Wellesley.[305]

How necessary the society of women was to Randolph,
we may partially infer from a letter which he wrote to his
niece in the year 1823:

Mrs. H., "a most charming woman," and "pretty Mrs.
W." are two other women whom he mentions in one of his
letters to Theodore Dudley.[307] To Mrs. Cunningham he
was not more grateful than he was to the daughter of
Philip Barton Key for nursing him in his sickness, and to
her he paid this cordial tribute in a letter to her cousin,
Francis Scott Key:

Nor should we by any means omit a paragraph from one
of his letters to Theodore Dudley written from Richmond,

in which his admiration for fine women ranged over the
whole Atlantic Coast from Richmond to Boston:

So, it is evident, after all, that it is not a Maryland or
a Virginia, but a New England, woman—the marvelous
Mrs. G—, who was in his eyes of "her gentle sex the
paragon." (a)

Scattered through Randolph's journals, too, are the
names of many Southside Virginia ladies whom he met
from time to time in his social circuits in that region, or
received at Roanoke; such as Mrs. Tabb, Mrs. Banister,
Mrs. Deane, Madame Carrington, and the Ladies Bruce.
"Ladies," is a word which frequently recurs in these
intimate records of his private life. Once, in amusing
juxtaposition to one of the meteorological jottings in which
they abound, he makes this confusing entry, which is
certainly suggestive of glowing charms: "Ladies 76°."[310]

The pleasure that Randolph derived from the society
of women is enough in itself to negative the idea that he
was a mere gloomy misanthrope. This idea was entertained
by even such a writer as Baldwin. "He was the
most unsocial of men," he says in one place[311] ; and in another
he terms him an "aristocratic anchorite."[312] This erroneous
conception of Randolph's life and character is doubtless

attributable to the fact that Baldwin wrote his essay at a
time and under circumstances that made him dependent
mainly upon Garland's Life of Randolph for his knowledge
of Randolph's social traits. Unfortunately, the social side
of that biography is principally made up of the unreserved
letters in which Randolph laid bare the most secret
recesses of his soul to Dr. Brockenbrough after his body
and mind had become deeply cankered by disease. He
was not "the most unsocial of men," nor was he an aristocratic
or any other sort of anchorite. It is true that
with advancing years and growing infirmities he sometimes
became peevish when some rustic neighbor taxed
his time and strength unduly with his uncongenial companionship,
or he was called upon to receive "unmeaning
visits" from some one whose call was inspired by mere
curiosity or conventionality. But his letters, when read
as a whole, and, above all, his Diary and other journals
demonstrate beyond the possibility of reasonable controversy
that, except when tortured by physical anguish, or
transformed by mental distraction, he was an intensely
social being. And, indeed, no matter how miserable he
was, his yearning for the society of those, who were truly
dear to him, underwent but little change. All agree that
in his happier hours he was a charming conversationalist
and a delightful companion. Testifying in the Randolph
will litigation, Dr. Thomas Robinson deposed that he had
had many years of close intimacy with Randolph before
he removed from Prince Edward County to take up his
residence in Petersburg, and that, during the interval
between 1800 and 1805, Randolph was "remarkably gay
in his temper and warm in his affections"; and that, even
after he had become more serious and reserved and was
more sleepless than any person whom the witness had ever
known, in consequence of his love affair, and would frequently,
in the course of the night, exclaim, "Macbeth
hath murdered sleep," he recovered in a degree, and resumed
in a measure, his gaiety and cheerfulness."[313] This,
the reader should bear in mind, is the testimony of a man
who was not friendly to Randolph during the later years
of his life, and fixes the real beginning of Randolph's
mental disturbances at quite an early period. "His conversation,"
we are told by Sawyer, who knew him well,
"was as agreeable and instructive as his manners were
polished, gentlemanly and polite."[314] In another place in
his biography, Sawyer pays a still more emphatic tribute
to Randolph's social gifts:

To Sawyer we owe two stories about Randolph which,
though destitute of any great degree of point, show how
facetious and light-hearted he could be in 1807 at Washington
with the members of his mess. On one occasion,
when Randolph was complaining of a hard bargain to
which he had been held by Melvil, his tailor, a member of
the mess interrupted him and said that Randolph was not
acquainted with the mode of shopping prevalent in Washington;
that the Washington merchants had two prices—
an asking price and a taking price, and that it had been
his own habit to send his wife around to make all the purchases
for the family, by which he had effected a saving of
15 to 20%. To this interruption Randolph merely replied:
"I had rather my wife should make a living any
other way but one than that." a reply which Sawyer says

his character as an old bachelor made even more comical
than it would otherwise have been. A few evenings afterwards,
Randolph took his turn at interruption. James M.
Garnett, who had recently been shooting canvas-back
ducks, was telling a story about another sportsman whom
he had met on his little excursion.

"Lying," broke in Randolph hilariously, to the great
diversion of the company.[316]

This, of course, was when Randolph wore the rose of
youth upon him, so far as the premature decline of his
health ever permitted him to wear a fresh one at all. But,
even 14 or 15 years later, the social vivacity which these
stories manifest had not died out, because it is of this
period in Randolph's life that Thomas H. Benton is speaking
when he bears instructive testimony to Randolph's
social accomplishments. "His temper was naturally gay
and social, and so indulged, when suffering of mind and
body permitted. He was the charm of the dinner table,
where his cheerful and sparkling wit delighted every ear,
lit up every countenance, and detained every guest."[317]

The intimacy between Randolph and Dr. Brockenbrough
was such that Randolph spent weeks at a time in
the house of the latter at Richmond, which afterwards,
when it was the official home of Jefferson Davis, became

known as "the White House of the Confederacy";[318] and Dr.
Brockenbrough is credited with the statement that Randolph
was the "most agreeable and interesting inmate
imaginable."[319] "In conversational powers," the Reminiscences
of Jacob Harvey declare, "he was surpassed by
none, and rarely equalled by any, of his distinguished
contemporaries."[320] Harvey further says that he could
not imagine a greater delight than it would be to him to
repeat the voyage on which Randolph was his fellow-passenger
in 1822.[321] John Lambert, an English traveller,
after expressing an unfavorable opinion of Randolph's
physical appearance, adds:

In his notes, Nathan Loughborough expresses regret
that there had been no Boswell to preserve Randolph's
"brilliant colloquial displays."[323]

All this praise is so absolute that we feel as if we were
treading upon somewhat safer ground when we find the
same laudation, dashed with a little acerbity, in the letters
of Elijah H. Mills, a Senator from Massachusetts. In a
letter written in 1816, Mills thus describes Randolph:

In another letter written in 1822, Mills said:

A view that Mills gives us of Randolph in 1826, four
years later, was, doubtless, tinged by impressions left upon
him by the unsettled condition of Randolph's mind in that
year. Mills was then sick, and Randolph was calling on
him oftener than usual for that reason.

What Randolph thought of Mills we have little means
of knowing, beyond an exclamation in one of his letters:
"Poor little Mills!"[327] But this abrupt way of disposing
of a man is entirely too much in the manner of Thomas
Carlyle to be at all final. One thing is certain: If Mills
had not been a very sensible, worthy man, Randolph
would never have sought his society as he did.

One of the impressions left upon the mind of Randolph's
time by his conversation was that of a memory almost
preternaturally retentive. In his Figures of the Past,
Josiah Quincy tells us that, in the course of a conversation,
which he had with Randolph at Washington in 1826,
Randolph, when asked by him just where he would find a
paragraph in the works of Edmund Burke, which the former
had quoted during the conversation, referred him to
a copy of Burke in the Congressional Library, and specified
unerringly from memory the very shelf and the very
place on it where the volumes stood and the number and
page of the particular volume in which the paragraph
would be found.[328]

In his Recollections of John Randolph, we are informed
by the Rev. Wm. S. Lacy that, on one occasion, when a
quotation from Sallust, used by Wm. B. Giles in a political
essay, which Randolph was reading aloud to a group of
his friends under the ancient elms, that shaded the court
house yard at Prince Edward Court House, was pronounced
very apt by some of Randolph's auditors, Randolph
remarked: "It is good Latin, but it is not Sallust's
Latin"; and, taking out his pencil, wrote on the margin of

the newspaper from which he had been reading what he
remembered as the true version and said: "Here, gentlemen,
is the language that Sallust uses in usum Delphini,
and I'll bet my Betsy Robertson [his riding mare] against
the sorriest gelding on the ground I am right and Mr.
Giles is wrong"; and so it proved when a copy of Sallust
was shortly afterwards produced and examined.[329]

The testimony of Jacob Harvey on the same subject is
equally amazing; indeed so much so that we cannot but
again suspect that Harvey's genius was just a little too
lively for the responsibilities of sober narration. According
to his account, which is extraordinary enough, even
when the bright froth on its surface has been blown
away, Randolph had a knowledge of the geography and
topography of Great Britain which Pennant might have
envied. He even exhibited the most intimate familiarity
with the most important light-houses and the principal
headlands on the British coast; indeed with the latitude
and longitude of different points on it. In bet after
bet between Randolph and the Captain of the Amity,
the Captain, Harvey tells us, was floored by Randolph's
superior knowledge in these respects. Later, the Captain,
after looking at the compass at Randolph's request, told
him how the ship was heading; whereupon Randolph
offered to bet him a pipe of wine or of Schuydam gin that,
if the Amity continued exactly on her present course, she
would strike Sligo Head. The Captain, not unmindful of
his previous disappointments, refused to bet, but said that
he thought that they would hit the "Mull of Cantiro."
Upon reference to the chart, however, it was ascertained
that Randolph was right.[330] Nor was this all. Harvey
found that Randolph was intimately acquainted with
every part of England, Scotland, and Ireland, not merely
with their cities, towns, and villages, including the streets,

lanes, and alleys of London, but also with their country
seats; and that he could repeat the pedigree of every noted
race horse then alive, describe every celebrated horse-race
which had occurred within the last fifty years, and even
remembered the names of the riders who took part in
them.[331] (a)

The root of this minute knowledge of Great Britain and
British conditions was, of course, Randolph's deep-seated
partiality for England. Harvey says that, when the
Amity was running along the coast of Ireland, Randolph
stated facts about its physical features which might have
fallen from the lips of an Irish country gentleman rather
than from those of a Virginia planter who had never been
across the Atlantic before; and that, when Randolph
obtained his first view of England, he shed tears of delight,
exclaiming: "Thank God that I have lived to behold the
land of Shakespeare, of Milton, of my forefathers! May
her greatness increase through all times!"[332]

But love England as he did, he never lost sight of her
duty to Ireland. "An Irish Tory, Sir, I never could
abide," he said on one occasion to Harvey.[333]

Even at Roanoke, alien to England as were its two
crude dwellings, its slave cabins, its black bondsmen, its
unsubdued woods, and its only partially subdued fields,
an English coach, English harness and saddlery, English
plate, English clothes and boots, English books, and an
English newspaper, side by side with the Richmond Enquirer,[334]
evidenced the fact that to Randolph at any rate
the American Revolution had not been one of those mighty
erosive agencies which leaves nothing behind it but an
unbroken sea separating two completely divided headlands.
The latter part of the Diary contains a mass of

information relating to English peers, peeresses, commoners,
scapegraces, and wantons, which we should be glad to
have had displaced by a mass of similar information more
in keeping with the spirit of our own age and country.
He was almost as much at home in London as was
Benjamin Franklin:

So wedded was Randolph to England that, after his
return from England, even his devoted friend, Wm. Leigh,
thought that it would be better for him to live in England
than at Roanoke. He could not go through a stormy
session of Congress; neither could he live in solitude at
home, Judge Leigh believed.[336]

One of the most interesting forms that the tenacious
memory of Randolph assumed was that of frequent and
apt quotations from the ancient and English classics.
Calhoun thought that he quoted too much. A third person
might well think that Calhoun himself quoted too
little. We can only say that no public speaker ever
quoted prose or poetry more appositely, or was less subject

to the reproach, just or unjust, which caused Disraeli
on a memorable occasion to advise Sir Robert Peel to stick
to quotation because he never quoted anything that had
not already received the meed of parliamentary approbation.
To realize how infinitely superior in point of real
culture Randolph was to most of his parliamentary contemporaries
in Congress, we have but to compare his
quotations with theirs, and, even if he did use a trite Latin
phrase, or quote one or more commonplace lines of poetry,
the tame words, transmuted by their highly original context,
seemed to undergo a change like that which is
wrought when a common twig or blade of grass becomes
incrusted with bright frost crystals in the night. His
memory bore his stores of knowledge so lightly that an
implement received by him from the hand of another
seemed to fit his as readily as one of his own. What he
knew he did not acquire by a process of veneering, but
by a process of absorption and saturation.

In addition to his lively temperament, his social sympathies,
and his intellectual endowments, Randolph possessed
most of the tastes which help to promote the
happiness of human society in its narrower sense. He
was not only fond of singing, but he had a good voice
himself.

He was a good whist and chess player.[338] He was not
indifferent to good fare when his health was such as to
make food something more than a mere staff of life to him;
smoked cigars occasionally, at any rate, and wished for a
companion with whom to share a pipe and bottle. (a)
How addicted he was to racing, an eminently social pastime,
and to shooting, a social pastime with all but the
grossly selfish, we shall presently see. If Baldwin could
have read the Diary and briefer journals of Randolph,
before expressing the opinion that the latter lacked a
social spirit, he would have recanted his incorrect conception
of Randolph's character. Of course, when Randolph
resided at Bizarre or Roanoke he was not in the
midst of such a stream of people as when he was at Washington
or Richmond. Both Bizarre and Roanoke were in
sequestered and sparsely settled regions, and no little
space had to be traversed by the individuals who made up
the social life of those places to render them real social
centres; but, scattered everywhere throughout the territory
in Virginia south of the James and north of the Roanoke,
which stretched from the foothills of the Blue Ridge
to Petersburg, were plantation homes which created a true
social life that, natural and simple as it was, and powerless
to vie with the ostentatious luxury and display of other
communities of the United States at the present time as
it would be, was distinguished by no common degree of
dignity and refinement. In most of these homes, Randolph
was throughout his life a frequent and a welcome
guest, and not a few of them were those of beloved relations
and friends. No detailed description of the Bizarre
mansion house, which was sustained by a plantation of
some 1,800 or 1,900 acres, lying on both sides of the
Appomattox, is known to us. We only know that it was
the second house that had stood upon the same site, and
Latrobe simply says of it that there was nothing about its

appearance to suggest oddity.[339] In a letter written by
Randolph in the latter part of his life, however, we do get
an interesting glimpse of its domestic economy and of its
efficient and proud-spirited mistress—Judith Randolph.
Indeed, the whole letter, with the exception of its concluding
paragraph, is a vignette which might well have
been added to our description in the preceding pages of
this book of Southside Virginia. It was written after
Randolph had returned from his asylum in the home of his
friend John Marshall, to his own home at Roanoke, and
had again reached mentally something like a state of
stable equilibrium:

The first entry in the Diary is under date of Sept. 1,
1808, and the last under date of Feb. 15, 1815. It covers
a period, therefore, of only some 6½ years. After its last
date, the book was used down to the date of Randolph's
death merely as a repository for memoranda of the most
miscellaneous descriptions relating to almost every conceivable
subject of which he desired to preserve a permanent
record. Even between 1796 and 1810, Randolph
was frequently at Roanoke, where he seems to have made
adequate provision for his occasional reception though he
was not living there permanently. After 1810, he resided
at Roanoke until his death, and, during the whole period,
covered by the Diary, his habits were very social, even
when he was not engaged in political canvassing. When
he resided at Bizarre, one day we find him at Bizarre; the
next day he is off to Charlotte Court House and Roanoke,
where he entertains his friends William Leigh and William
B. Banks; on another day, we find him at a barbecue; on
another, at a muster; on another, at an election in Cumberland
County, and, on still another, at a fête at Farmville
given to him by his friends in honor of his triumphant reelection
to Congress. Now, diarizing irregularly, de die in
diem, he notes that he slept at the Dillons'; or that he breakfasted
with his friend Booker, or dined at George Skipwith's,
or killed 25 partridges with the aid of Blake Woodson and
Theodore Dudley. These are but typical illustrations of
his movements, when he resided at Bizarre, gathered at

random from the first few pages of the Diary. In connection
with his oscillations between Washington and
Bizarre or Roanoke, the reader has already been apprized
of the manner in which the hospitable country seats between
Bizarre and Washington sometimes supplied him
with a series of easy stepping-stones. How hot he kept
his thoroughbred's hoofs, when he was in transit from one
point to another, we may imagine after reading this entry
in the Diary under date of March 27, 1809: "Left Bizarre
at ¾ths past 6; stopped at Cheshire's and Ça Ira 1 hour
and ½. Reached New Canton at ¼ past 12. Brunette
not at all fatigued. Mon. 27. Rode from court in two
hours. Mare looked as full as if she had not been used;
appetite or spirits never flagged in the least; she anxious
to come faster."

And not only does the Diary show that, when Randolph
resided at Bizarre, he was frequently visiting the houses
of his friends in the surrounding territory, but that they
were often visiting him at Bizarre; and occasionally visitors
from remote points would be lodged under its roof.
Among the families, with whom he was most intimate,
when he lived at Bizarre, were those of his innumerable
Randolph kinsfolk south of the James and west of Petersburg;
the Johnstons, the Bookers, the Creed Taylors, the
Cunninghams, the Dillons, the Woodsons, the Daniels,
the Skipwiths, of Hors du Monde, the Carringtons, the
Branches, the Mortons, the Robinsons, the Venables, the
Heths, the Millers, the Murrays, and the Watkinses,
whose homes, collectively speaking, stretched all the way
from the James to the Roanoke. During the period,
covered by the Diary, after Randolph left Bizarre, his
spirit at Roanoke was not less social than it had been at
Bizarre. Over and over again, while he resided at Roanoke,
we find him sleeping, breakfasting, or dining under
the roofs of many of the leading families of Halifax,
Charlotte, Prince Edward, Cumberland, Buckingham,

Amelia, Nottoway, Chesterfield, and Powhatan Counties,
in addition to all or most of those just mentioned, such as
the Coleses, the Leighs, the Clarks, the Colemans, the
Bruces, the Skipwiths, of Prestwould, the Bouldins,
the Reads, the Legrands, the Hubbards, the Wilsons,
the Nelsons, the Deanes, the Pembertons, the Scotts, the
Farrars, the Tabbs, the Banisters, the Bathurst Randolphs,
the Womacks, the Flournoys, the Mosbys, the
Merrys, the Johnsons, the Hardaways, the Harrisons,
the Cabells, the Spencers, the Barksdales, the Redfords,
the Berkeleys, and the Irbys. The Diary shows also that,
during the same period, Randolph so frequently extended
the hospitality of his home to his friends and acquaintances,
some from communities as remote as North
Carolina, that it would be simply an imposition upon the
reader to name them, or to say how frequently they
crossed his threshold. His 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1824
journals tell the same story of social activity, and so does
his 1830 journal, so far as it was kept before he sailed for
Russia.

In the course of little more than a week, in October,
1810, he dined with his friends the Deanes on Friday;
dined at Captain Pemberton's on Saturday; spent a quiet
day at Thomas Miller's on Sunday, and on Monday
pushed on to Wm. Scott's, where his friend Major Wm.
Scott was very low; and thence, on Tuesday, proceeded to
Richmond by the Manakin Town Ferrry; and thence, four
days later, reversing his course to the Ferry, returned to
Roanoke by way of Hors du Monde and Bizarre. With
the numerous Carringtons about him, he maintained for
many years a commerce of social amenities which was
rarely interrupted, and, when in 1813, the two Pauls, as
he called the two Paul Carringtons of his day, to signalize
their conversion from the damnable doctrine of Federalism
to the true Madisonian faith, kindly banished him for a
time from Sinope, he still kept up something like an interchange

of society with some good fellows in Halifax. We
use his own words.[341]

In using them, Randolph expressed himself but feebly,
because his journal entries make it plain that he thought
no more of riding off 15 or 20 miles to dine and play whist
with a group of his Halifax County friends, at Wm.
Leigh's, or James Bruce's, or one of the Clarks', or Coleses',
than an inhabitant of Richmond at the present time would
of going a few miles into its suburbs in a motor car to do a
similar thing. And very joily gatherings these must have
been, if we may judge by the reluctance with which the
individuals, who constituted them, parted company with
each other. For instance, on July 9, 1811, after spending
the preceding day with Mr. Coleman in Halifax, Randolph
went on to one of the Clarks' and spent the day
there with Ragland, Isaac H. Coles, and James Bruce;
and, on the next day, accompanied by Clark, Coleman,
Ragland, Coles, and Bruce, returned to Roanoke where
they all dined together, with the addition of one of the
Watkinses and William Leigh, who had arrived there
during Randolph's absence. Two days later, Randolph
goes off with Leigh and Bruce to Bruce's, to dine with
Bruce again, and thence, in the evening, to Wm. Leigh's.
Nor did the banishment from Sinope continue very long;
for few names recur oftener in Randolph's journals than
those of the Carringtons.

This was a part of his social itinerary in August, 1817:
On Aug. 6, he spent the night at the residence of Dr.
Bathurst Randolph, Obsto (I stop you), the very name of
which suggests the arresting hand of cordial hospitality;
the night of Aug. 7, he slept at D. Meade's; and then,
after spending Aug. 8 and 9 in Richmond, on Aug. 10 he
came back to Clay Hill, the home of Mrs. Tabb, in time for
dinner; whence, after taking dinner, he proceeded to
Obsto, where he remained some two weeks in the society

of his host and his host's family and of his friends, Dr.
Banister and Mrs. Tabb, who resided in the neighborhood
and had him to dinner at their houses on different days
before he went back to Roanoke. On Sept. 3, he was
again in the same hospitable locality and again for two
weeks the recipient of the same warm-hearted attentions
at the hands of its inhabitants.

In July, 1810, he went all the way to Warrenton, North
Carolina, spending a night at Prestwould both going and
returning, and receiving many social attentions, while in
North Carolina; but, being so unfortunate on his return,
when he was almost in sight of his home, as to have his
chair shafts broken, when he was crossing the Little Roanoke,
and to get a good ducking. In North Carolina, he
attended the wedding of his friend, Governor James
Turner, (a) and also a barbecue at Richard Bullock's.[343]
On another occasion in September, 1818, when his mind
was fermenting with religious enthusiasm, he went on an
excursion as far as the home of one of the Prestons, in
Botetourt County, Va., ascending the Peaks of Otter on
his way, and writing to Dr. Brockenbrough after his
return to Roanoke: "I was on the top of the pinnacle of
Otter this day fortnight; a little above the earth, but how
far beneath Heaven."[344] On a second visit in October,
1818, to the same region, he stopped long enough at Red
Hill, the former home of Patrick Henry, to refresh his
admiration for a statesman and orator, whose wisdom and

eloquence were ever among his favorite topics of conversation.[345]

In the summer of 1801, Randolph visited one of the
"Springs" in the Virginia mountains with a party of
ladies.[346] In June, 1813, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough
from Roanoke that, if he went to any watering place, it
would be to the Virginia Hot Springs, but this, he said, was
to be merely for the purpose of stewing the rheumatism
out of his carcass.[347] Other occasions, when he wandered
off his beaten social paths, might be mentioned; as when
he repaired several times to Nottoway County to see his
intimate friend Edmund Irby, or some other friend.[348]
Once, after remaining for some days at his favorite places
of resort, Obsto and Clay Hill, he kept on as far past
Petersburg as Claremont, the famous plantation on the
James River of Col. Wm. Allen.[349] (a)

To Richmond Randolph was frequently taken by the
desire for social diversion, and he had numerous friends
and acquaintances there. In 1813, after his defeat at the
polls, he visited that place, and remained in it, under the
roof of Dr. Brockenbrough, for six months; with the exception
of the time consumed in two excursions to Ellerslie.
Of this visit, the Diary contains the following memorandum:

In April, 1830, he attended the races at Richmond, and,
on the first day of the succeeding month, he attended a
barbecue at Richmond too.[351]

With the leading gentlemen of Maryland Randolph was
hardly less familiar than with those of Virginia. In 1804,
he wrote to Nicholson that he might pay him a visit at
Chesterfield, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, not to
view his country, desirable as it was, but to see and converse
with those in whose society he had passed some of
the least unpleasant moments of his life. Realizing that
such qualified language would hardly satisfy the just
expectations of an Eastern Shoreman, he added: "It is
a strange expression but I could not find one more appropriate."[352]
He was the guest of his friend, Charles Sterrett
Ridgely, at the latter's country seat, Oaklands, in Howard
County, Md., almost as frequently as he was the guest of
his friend, Wm. R. Johnson, at his country seat, Oakland,
near Petersburg.[353] In a letter to Nicholson, he tells him
that he has just dined with his friends, Francis Scott Key
and Stanford, of North Carolina, and Mr. and Mrs. Calvert
at Blenheim, the country seat in Maryland of Mr. R.
Lowndes, after having made a short excursion to see Mr.
George Calvert's famous paintings and flowers.[354] On

another occasion, one of his journals records the fact that
he had just dined with Mr. George Calvert himself.[355]

With the aid of the Diary, we can trace at least one visit
that he made to Wye, the celebrated country seat of the
Lloyds, in Talbot County, Md. In connection with this
visit, the Diary contains brief references to Lloyd Tilghman,
of Tilghman's Point, Robert Tilghman, of Perry
Hall, John Tilghman, of Bennett's Point, Wm. G. Tilghman,
Robert Goldsborough, of Miles River, and the
Haddaways. About the same time, he spent an evening
at Mrs. Lloyd's at Annapolis; dined with Mr. Oden at the
Woodyard, and visited Philip Steuart. A Marylander,
at any rate, would be at no loss to know who these friends
and acquaintances of Randolph were. Other Marylanders,
who are brought to our attention by Randolph's journals
and letters, are: Robert Oliver, one of the wealthiest and
most conspicuous Baltimoreans of his time, over whose
fine claret Randolph smacks his lips in the Diary; General
Winder, Dr. William Gibson, Jonathan Meredith, Robert
Gilmor, James Sterrett, and Mr. Cheston.

Randolph was also well known to the society of Philadelphia.
When Theodore Dudley was studying medicine
in that City, he wrote to him that it would give him great
pleasure to renew his old acquaintance in Philadelphia
and to form a new one with a few of its worthy inhabitants.[356]
Indeed, in his desire to give Theodore Dudley a
liberal education in every sense of the word, he did not
spare Virginia.

In the same letter he also says:

He had some close friends at Philadelphia, to whom we
shall refer later; and, when he hobbled to that City in 1814,
after leaving Morrisania, and suffering an injury to his
kneecap in the accident which befell him in New York,
he rested there for some little time, and was the recipient
of no little attention at the hands of some of its people.

North of Philadelphia, Randolph seems to have had no
friends except among such individuals as had been brought
into intercourse with him at Washington in one way or
another.

Of Yankees he spoke at times even more impatiently
than he did of Virginians in his letter to Theodore Dudley.
A memorandum in the Diary mentions the fact that
Captain Bridger of the Schooner Sally of Marblehead,
which was met by the Concord on its way to Cronstadt,
refused to accept anything but a little pork, whiskey, and
new potatoes for 600 or 700 pounds of fine fish. "Pretty
well for a Yankee," notes Randolph. On another occasion,
in an endorsement on a letter written to him by his
friend Mark Alexander, in 1822, he terms a certain sailing-master

in the United States Navy "a dirty mean Yankee
with a Vermontese savage for his mate."[359]

In describing the manner in which Randolph detected
the error in Giles' quotation from Sallust memoriter, Dr.
Lacy says that he exclaimed: "Now hand me the edition
I want; in usum Delphini mind you. I'll have nothing to
do with your Yankee contrivances with English notes.
Mr. Lacy, did you ever see a Yankee who knew anything
about the classics?"[360] (a)

But these were but the shallow and unreflecting utterances
of an intense, outspoken nature which was as lavish
as such natures generally are in the use of the acute accent.
Before the Civil War, there were reasons enough, founded
upon diversities of interest and clashes of honest conviction,
why a Virginian, like Randolph, and a New Englander
should have cherished unfriendly feelings towards
each other which easily passed into gross misconception and
misrepresentation; but there never was a time when close
contact between a Virginian and a New Englander did not
more or less dissipate the senseless prejudices and prepossessions
which they entertained about each other
personally, and which have now so far faded out that, to
give expression to them, should be regarded as denoting
not only provincial narrowness and a lack of genuine
patriotism but very bad manners besides. The letters
of Senator Mills show how much pleasure Randolph found
in the society of New Englanders at Washington; and
nothing could evidence better than the musical lines of
Whittier on Randolph how much Randolph had in common
with the culture of New England.

Not only did he pay frequent visits to his friends and
acquaintances, when he was at Roanoke or elsewhere, but,
after reading his journals, it is hard to understand how he

could have deemed himself a Robinson Crusoe when at
Roanoke. In holding himself up in that character, he
was simply indulging his propensity for intensive speech
or giving tongue to the restlessness and discontent of an
uncommonly active spirit, which craved strong excitements,
and of a body too diseased not to yield freely at
times to peevish impulses. Roanoke was but a bachelor
home, and yet, in reading Randolph's letters and journals,
it seems to us that it was not an unworthy exponent of
the social virtues and traditions of a Virginia home of his
time. Almost every day, when he was there, some relation
or friend of his was arriving at, or leaving it. Now it was
Randolph's nephews—Tudor and St. George—or Peyton
Randolph, or some other Randolph who came to shoot or
to enjoy some other form of recreation; and now it was
William Leigh on his peripatetic round of the county-seats
at which he practiced law so zealously that Randolph
speaks on one occasion of his looking badly and overworked;
and now it was William B. Banks bent on some
similar errand to Charlotte Court House or elsewhere;
and now it was James Bruce or General Edward Carrington,
of Berry Hill, or Col. Carrington, or Col. Clark, or
some other rapidly promoted colonel of the time, on a
purely social visit; or, perhaps it was Randolph's half-brother,
Henry St. George Tucker, or some devoted friend
of his like Dr. Brockenbrough, or Edmund Irby, or Barksdale;
or, perhaps, it was Dr. Hoge, whose character and
eloquence he so much admired. These names give but
an inadequate idea of the number of guests who, from
time to time, dined with him, formally or otherwise, or
slept under his roof during the periods covered by his
journals. One entry in the Diary, under date of Sept. 10,
1810, is: "Bouldin, Leigh, Banks; frolic at Roanoke."

On another occasion, some 10 guests sat down with him
to meat at his table at Roanoke. At Washington, he
enjoyed in full measure the social pleasures which a thinly

peopled country like that around Roanoke could only
partially supply. With some prominent residents of the
District, such as the Keys and the Tayloes, he was on
terms of heart-felt intimacy; and, in addition to being the
life of every Congressional mess, of which he was ever a
member, he frequently gave and received invitations to
dinner, and was not infrequently seen at private routs or
assemblies. Among the persons shown by his journals to
have dined with him, as his guests at Washington, were
Francis Scott Key, Gallatin, Colhoun, Poinsett, Van
Buren, and Chief Justice Marshall. The relations between
Albert Gallatin and himself became involved for a
time in the general estrangement caused by his defection
from the Jefferson administration, but in the year 1824
the two were on friendly terms again. "Couldn't dine
with General Jackson"; "Couldn't dine with Patroon
(Van Rensaeller)," are among the entries in his journal for
March, 1824.[361] He must have been very fond of dinners
to have burdened his pen, when diarizing about them,
with declinations as well as acceptances.

Among his dinner hosts in 1817 were Rufus King and
Chief Justice Marshall. Among the parties that he attended
in 1817 were Mrs. Bagot's and De. Neuville's.[362] (a)

In Randolph's letters, there are some quite full references
to social events of his day at Washington. Here, for
instance, is his description of a dinner given by Wm. H.
Crawford, when Secretary of the Treasury:

And the very next paragraph in this letter is a good
reminder of the danger of relying upon Randolph's repining
about his own solitariness, whether at Roanoke or
Washington: "Nothing can be more dreary than the life
we lead here. 'Tis something like being on board ship,
but not so various. We stupidly doze over our sea-coal
fires in our respective messes, and may truly be said to
hibernate at Washington."[364]

More vapid than the ministerial dinner given by Crawford
was another dinner given by himself; possibly because
his own expectations had been a little too roseate;
seeing that he had written two days before to Dr. Brockenbrough
that he was to have good company at least, if
not a good dinner. When the occasion had passed, he
wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough:

Rufus King had accepted an invitation but had been
prevented by sickness from attending.

Randolph himself had to be very sick not to keep a

dinner engagement and not to be the sprightliest member
of the company. In a letter to Theodore Dudley he thus
described the equivocal drink which piqued public curiosity
so keenly: "My drink," he says, "is toast and water
made by boiling the latter and pouring it on highly toasted
bread, so that it acquires the color of Cognac brandy."[366]
And the same letter indicates that he was in the habit of
carrying a bottle of this thin potation with him to dinner
parties when his health was at a low ebb.

How little Randolph allowed his desire for social
amusement to be influenced by his ill-health is also inferable
from other facts stated in this letter. Mentioning a
pleasant dinner at Georgetown, he said:

One of the winning features of Randolph's character
was his grateful sensibility to kindness or friendly sympathy
in every form. Writing to Theodore Dudley during
his desperate illness in 1817, he said:

Randolph's eager zest for human society also assumed
the form of numerous letters to his friends and acquaintances.
"Recollect, my son," he wrote to Theodore
Dudley in 1812, "that I have some 20 or 30 correspondents;
you perhaps not more than 3 or 4."[370] Some of these
correspondents, however, were business correspondents.
"I have about 30 letters to answer besides the daily
addition to my epistolary debt," he wrote to Joseph
Nicholson in the preceding year. "Three of them are
from Harry Tucker."[371] At a later period of his life, when
his strength was fast failing him, he speaks of having a
hundred unanswered letters on his hands.[372] Except when
a helpless invalid, he wrote letters with the ready facility
of a quick-witted and sympathetic woman who writes
without regard to anything but the sheer desire to open
up her heart or soul to a child or friend. It is to be regretted
that he never kept any copies of his charming
letters; a strong indication of their unstudied nature, and
it is still more to be regretted that so many of them should
have been deliberately destroyed from considerations of
delicacy or good feeling, which, however admirable, when
well judged, amounted in the old Virginia life to little less
than a destructive superstition. (a)

By Philip A. Bruce in his brief but very suggestive little
essay on Randolph the latter is pronounced the most
brilliant man ever produced by Virginia, and, perhaps, the
most brilliant letter-writer of whom the Old South can
boast.[373] We shall not stop to express an opinion upon the
first of these two judgments, but the second we should
modify by making it broad enough to cover the whole

United States; certainly so far as American public men
are concerned. In our opinion, the only distinguished
men in the political history of the United States who can
be placed in the same class with Randolph as a brilliant
letter-writer are Benjamin Franklin and William Wirt;
two men who differed from each other toto cœlo, except
that both had lovable natures and wrote sparkling letters.
Indeed, we do not hesitate to say that Randolph in his
own way is entitled to be included in the same category
with Gray, Horace Walpole, Gibbon, Cowper, Byron, and
Fitzgerald as one of the real masters of epistolary composition.
Most of the thousands of letters which he wrote
have been destroyed or lost; but enough remain to make
us ask sometimes why it was that he never tried his hand
at some purely literary task. We have his own word for
it that he never "made a verse in his life,"[374] and we are
also informed by him that all of his early literary efforts
of every sort, whatever they were, went up in flame and
smoke when Bizarre was consumed by fire.[375] The only
evidence that we have that he ever thought of engaging
seriously in literary work is found in a letter from him to
Francis Scott Key, written before his return to Congress
in 1815, in which he said: "I do think a review on the plan
you mention would be highly beneficial, and, if I was fit
for anything, I should like to engage in a work of the sort;
but 14 years of Congressional life have rendered me good
for nothing."[376] The same thought is presented more
positively in a subsequent letter to Key in which he
said:

Unfortunately, the reason that Randolph gave for his
lethargy as a potential man of letters is applicable, with
or without modification, to almost every Southern man
of his time who might have achieved literary distinction
but for the abnormal importance that the peculiar structure
of Southern society gave to public eloquence. So
fraught with vital issues to the South was the long sectional
controversy that a Southerner of commanding talents
had little choice, while it lasted, but to say with
Randolph: "As Calanthe died dancing, so must I die
speaking."

Randolph was fond of travel and quick to avail himself
of all the amusement and social enjoyments that it affords.
Nor can there be any doubt that, whenever he was abroad,
his conversational talents and distinguished presence won
a most cordial reception for him. He visited Europe in
1822, 1824, 1826, and 1830, and we cannot but regret that
the only Journals that he ever kept while he was abroad—
those of 1824 and 1830—are too fragmentary and meagre
to be of any real value.

Of his intercourse with conspicuous individuals in Great
Britain, we have some details, in addition to what we
have already laid before the reader. One of the things, by
which he was most impressed, when he was in England in
1822, was the great influence exerted by the eloquence of
Elizabeth Fry over fallen women.

Nor without interest is the account given by the daughter
of Elizabeth Fry to Harvey of the manner in which her
mother first became acquainted with Randolph.

We are also told by Harvey that the impression made
by Randolph upon Lord L. (Limerick?) was equally agreeable,
and that, after meeting Randolph for the first time
one night under the gallery of the House of Commons, his
Lordship, in conversation with Harvey, gave expression
to his feelings in these glowing terms:

Indeed, his Lordship was so much pleased with Randolph
that he solicited the permission of the Lord Chancellor
to introduce him as a distinguished American into
the House of Lords by the private entrance near the
throne instead of leaving him to force his way with the
crowd through the common entrance. The permission
was given, and Lord L. introduced Randolph to the doorkeeper
of the House of Lords, and asked him to admit him
whenever he presented himself, without requiring him to
exhibit any special order. In doing so, he remarked that
Randolph's figure and whole appearance were so singular
that the door-keeper would run no risk of having any
counterfeit Randolphs imposed upon him. The license,
sweeping as it was, stood successfully the test even of a
great debate on the Roman Catholic Peers Bill. Harvey
endeavored to persuade Randolph that it would not avail
on such an extraordinary occasion as that, and begged
him to make use of a special order of admission which
he had obtained from the Marquis of L.; but Randolph
replied:

Afterwards, when Harvey had finally squeezed himself
into the chamber by the lower door, half suffocated, and
had been fortunate enough to secure standing room at the
bar, whom should he see but Randolph walking in through
the private entrance to the chamber, in company with
Canning, Lord Castlereagh, Sir Robert Peel, and many
other celebrated members of the House of Commons; and
he observed that some of Randolph's companions even
selected for him a prominent position where he could see
and hear perfectly, and made him the object of many
courtesies during the course of the night.[381]

Harvey has also reported for us some amusing observations
made by Randolph upon a splendid ball which he
attended in London, and which was given under the immediate
patronage of George IV—once termed by Randolph
"The English Vitellius—" and the principal nobility
of his kingdom for the benefit of the poor Irish peasantry
of Munster and Connaught, who were suffering at the
time from famine and disease:

Harvey also reports a distinguished Irish member of
Parliament as recalling a conversation between Randolph
and Maria Edgeworth at his table in these words:

Thomas Moore was likewise among the famous persons
whom Randolph met in England.

It is profitable to compare this description of Moore
with the description that Moore himself gives of Randolph
in his journal under date of April 30, 1822.

A letter from Randolph to Dr. Brockenbrough mentions
the fact that Robert Southey was another poet whom
he had met in England in 1822. Writing to this friend
from Roanoke, he says in a postscript:

Altogether, Randolph achieved a distinct measure of
social success in England. Upon that point, we need not
go further than Washington Irving, who was in London
in 1822:

One of the results of Randolph's visit to England in
1822 was that, after his return to the United States, he
received more than one English publication on the subject
of slavery. Mentioning these publications in a letter to
Dr. Brockenbrough, he says: "They are from Wilberforce,
T. Clarkson, Adam Hodgson, and a larger pamphlet
entitled `Negro Slavery as it Exists in the U. S. and the
West Indies, especially Jamaica'; that being held up as
the negro paradise by the W. I. body in England." They
had, he further said, awakened him more than ever to the
momentous question of slavery.[388]

There are no salient particulars to be added to what we
have told the reader about Randolph's visits to England
in 1824 and 1826; but there are some additional circumstances
worthy of mention in connection with his visit to

England in 1830. The following extracts from a letter
which he wrote from London to Nathaniel Macon,
addressing him as "His old and dear friend," give us some
idea of his movements in England in that year when he
was not too sick to move about at all:

In a letter to his niece, Randolph gives us another
glimpse of his movements in England in 1830:

In the London Morning Herald of Dec. 27, 1830, the
entertainment given by the Lord Mayor was pronounced
"a very splendid" one, and the speech of thanks that it
drew from Randolph a "very elegant" one.

An important appendix to this letter consists of certain
statements made by Peter Irving, the brother of Washington
Irving, on the strength of information given him by
the latter in regard to Randolph when Randolph was in
England in 1830:

Since such profuse profanity as marks this narrative
has never, so far as we know, been imputed to Randolph
in his lucid hours by anyone else, we cannot but indulge
the idea that it was simply the sort that gave point to one
of Franklin's famous stories. A fellow, in relating a dispute
that had arisen between Queen Anne and the Archbishop
of Canterbury concerning a vacant mitre, which
the Queen wished to bestow on a person, whom the Archbishop
thought unworthy of it, made both the Queen and
the Archbishop swear three or four thumping oaths in
every sentence of the dispute. A by-stander, filled with
surprise, asked: "But did the Queen and the Archbishop
swear so at one another?" "Oh no, no!" said the fellow,
"that is only my way of telling the story."

Now that we have had portraiture of Randolph as he
was abroad, we might as well have a little caricature
besides, and this is copiously supplied to us by "Julius."

Then, after speaking of the curiosity and merriment,
excited by Randolph's appearance and conversation,
Julius continues in this manner:

In another place Julius describes Randolph as a monopolist
or a mute when conversation went its rounds; by
turns a misanthrope and a Merry Andrew.[395]

And not more indignant was Mrs. Malaprop over criticism
of her diction than Randolph must have been when
even his fastidious orthoepy was impeached by Julius.

The immediate occasion for this elaborate arraignment
was a note appended by Randolph to his speech on Retrenchment
and Reform in the House in 1828 in which he
had instituted the comparison between the relative qualifications
of Rush and Caligula's horse for a post of public
responsibility.[397] The deadly arrow, which Randolph shot
at Rush in this note, went to its mark all the more surely
for the accompanying lines, with which it was feathered:

It was during his last sojourn in London that Randolph
uttered his well-known paraphrase of the excuse given by
Adam for eating fruit from the forbidden tree. He had
been invited by Lord — to take lunch with him,
but, when on his way to the lunch, he stopped to call on a
lady, and was so agreeably entertained by her conversation
that he was still enjoying her society when the lunch
was served. Afterwards when he joined Lord —,
and was taxed with being late, he replied: "The woman
tempted me and I did eat."[399]

In one of his letters to his niece, Randolph pronounced
Friendship, Love, and Religion the only sources from which
happiness can be derived.[400] When he was not unbalanced,
or unduly swayed by prejudice or temper, there can be no
doubt that his heart was a truly generous, compassionate,
and tender one. Occasional presents of silver and frequent
presents of books were among the tokens which he
was in the habit of giving of his friendship or love. On
one occasion, he presented a young lady with a Hebrew
Lexicon bearing this inscription on its fly-leaf: "To a
young lady learning Hebrew from an old gentleman who
knows nothing of it, and is past learning."[401]

Francis Scott Key, he wrote to Dudley, might have any
one of his horses except only his English mare and Cornelia[402]
; and to Van Buren he gave a fine saddle-horse and
wished to give a handsome pair of carriage-horses besides.[403]
Not only did he offer to pledge his credit in aid of James

Monroe when they were friends; but, on one occasion,
when his friend, Judge Thomas T. Bouldin, then a young
man, was in a community, where he was but little known,
and was experiencing some difficulty in obtaining a security
as a fiduciary, the shrill voice of Randolph was heard,
calling out above the clamor of a crowd that he would
become his security. The act, Judge Bouldin said, at
once lifted him out of his dilemma and placed him on a
high elevation.[404]

How Randolph extended to his nephews and his other
youthful protégés the same liberal measure of his bounty
that he might have extended to a son we shall presently see.

Appeals of suffering or want met with a ready response
at his hands. "He was charitable," Benton tells us, "but
chose to conceal the hand that administered relief. I
have often seen him send little children out to give to the
poor."[405]

On one occasion, we find him bringing a young boy
down from Roanoke to Richmond so that he could receive
proper surgical attention. On another, it is said that he
turned his horses and plows into the fields of an absent young
friend whose crop was being smothered by weeds and grass.
Among the written scraps which he preserved, was a brief
note from one Richard Knowles, who would seem to have
been an overseer at one time at Bizarre. It thanks him
for a gift of wine, which the note says that the recipient
would gladly acknowledge in his own hand but for his low
state of health.[406]

The journal which he kept, when he was on the Concord,
brings to our knowledge the fact that he was thoughtful
enough to send a box of Château Margaux to the steerage
of that ship.[407] "Although I do not deal in bows and
humble servants and all that trash, yet I have some of the

milk of human kindness in my composition," he once
wrote to Nicholson.[408] And so he had; and more than most
men have.

A truthful, though quaint, summary was that of the
English traveller, John Lambert:

Writing to Theodore Dudley of the death of a trusted and
favorite overseer of his, he gives this account of the event:

On the same day, Randolph wrote to John Taylor, of
Caroline:

Jacob Harvey was right when he said that, if Randolph
"did take a fancy, the rank of the person never seemed to
weigh with him for a moment," and that he admired especially
those who never pretended to more knowledge than
they actually possessed, but understood thoroughly what
they did know.[412]

Indeed, Randolph's sensibility to the sufferings of others
was almost morbid. During his first visit to England, he
wrote to his niece on one occasion:

We are told by James Bouldin that Randolph's feelings
were once so moved by the recollection of "two little hares"
hanging by the neck, upon which he had come, when
hunting in his boyhood, that tears stood in his eyes.[414]
In fact, we are asked to believe that his susceptibility
to compassionate impulses even took in the vegetable
kingdom.

In his John Randolph, Henry Adams says sarcastically
that he refrains from inquiring too deeply what the children
of Charlotte County would have said to a suggestion of
climbing Randolph's knee[416] ; a remark brought out by a
sentence in Randolph's speech in the House, in 1828, on
Retrenchment and Reform which related to his proposed
retirement: "The very children will climb around my knees
to welcome me." The sneer is a wanton one. When Randolph
said that he believed that there was no man in the
world so fond of children as he was, he had some color of
right to make the assertion. There are homes in Southside
Virginia today, such as that of Mrs. J. Spooner Epes,
of Petersburg, a descendant of Edward Booker and of the
Gaineses, of Mossingford, in Charlotte County, who are
descendants of Wm. M. Watkins, in which Randolph's
love of children has been handed down as an unbroken
tradition.[417] "Do not let Edward forget me," is one message
that he sends to Nicholson about his son, Edward[418] ; and,
some three years afterwards, he writes again to Nicholson:
"Do not let Edward forget `Rannie.' "[419] And, when in
due season, Edward enjoyed the companionship of a little
sister, Randolph did not forget her either in his letters to

Nicholson.[420] In another letter to Nicholson, he refers to
the Nicholson children as "the papooses."

After dining on one occasion with the dignified and
elegant Mrs. Bell, he wrote to Theodore Dudley: "I dined
there a few days ago and have quite overcome the coyness
of little Mary Anne, who says, `I love Mr. Randolph.' "[422]
Mrs. Joseph M. Daniel, of Charlotte County, used to tell
how highly gratified he was when he was on a visit to her
house, and one of her little girls went into her garden, and
culled a bouquet of beautiful flowers, and presented them
to him. "She had chosen the old man for her valentine,"
he declared, and, the next time he visited Mrs. Daniel, he
brought the little girl some fruit, saying gracefully, as he
placed it in her hands: "Flowers produce fruit." A little
later, when a member of the Daniel family visited Roanoke,
he found that the flowers had been preserved in water
on Randolph's centre table.[423] In one of his letters to
"Master Joseph A. Clay," the brother of John Randolph
Clay, Randolph sends his love to "dear little Anna," the
sister of the Clays. Repeatedly, in his correspondence
with his niece, he sends gentle messages to her little sister,
whose shyness he was determined to overcome, as he had
overcome that of Mary Anne Bell. "Let the taciturn
little Anne make up for me a bulletin of your health every
other day and send it to town for the postman, and, by this
means, she will break the ice of her reserve, I hope," is one

of his injunctions to Elizabeth T. Coalter. And, later in
the same letter, he adds: "It we were together, Anne could
read to us; you would walk about the room, and I should
now and then throw in a word which should produce a following
of suit from you both. God bless you both! This
is no senseless or insincere ejaculation."[424] But the ice
finally gave way, we know, because six months later he
wrote to his niece: "Dear little Anne, I return her love
most sincerely and, if I were near enough, you and she and
mammy [Mammy Aggy] should be my almost inseparable
companions."[425] In a letter to Nicholson, he asks him to
present his compliments to a Mr. Cooke and his good
family not forgetting Miss Susan, to whom he dared send
his best love. "Tell them," he further said in this letter,
"that Sophia attracted all eyes and many hearts at the
British Envoy's fête, where she danced like a sylph."[426] (a)

Randolph spoke but the truth when he said on one
occasion that to love and be loved was a necessity of his
nature.

At one time or another, he took under his affectionate
patronage at Roanoke no less than four different lads:
Carter Coupland, a grandson of his friend, Mrs. Tabb,
John Randolph Clay, the son of his friend, Joseph Clay,
of Philadelphia, and John Randolph Bryan and Thomas
F. Bryan, the sons of his friend, Joseph Bryan. In 1811,
he wrote to Theodore Dudley: "Carter Coupland became
a member of my family a few days since. Some society
was indispensable to me and he is a well-disposed boy, who,
I trust, will relieve in some degree my uncomfortable
situation."[427] In the same year, Carter was taken sick at
Roanoke, and he had made such a favorable impression
upon Randolph that the latter wrote to Theodore Dudley

that he felt that he was too strongly bound to him by his
kind attentions to himself and family to think of leaving
him under such circumstances.[428]

When he learnt that Joseph Clay had died, leaving
John Randolph Clay and other children behind him, he
wrote at once to Theodore Dudley, who was then in Philadelphia:
"I consider Randolph as my son"[429] ; and, as his
son, Randolph treated him from that time on, taking
him under his roof at Roanoke in 1815; educating him at
Ararat and Mr. Kilpatrick's school in Halifax County;
appointing him Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburg,
and opening up to him the diplomatic career, in the course
of which he became chargé d'Affaires at that court, and
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to
Peru.[430] At times, when Randolph was in London, after
leaving St. Petersburg, he made some querulous complaints
to Clay about the "careless and slovenly" manner
in which Clay "put up" his letters to him and the like[431] ;
but the affectionate relations between the two really
lasted until Randolph's death, and, among the most
sensible letters known to us, are some that Judge Leigh,
who had become a sort of third father to Clay, wrote to
him in regard to the obligations of gratitude and deference
that he owed to Randolph.[432] Clay was little more than
a youth, when he accompanied Randolph to Russia, and
the barbaric splendor of its "mighty monarch," as Clay
once termed the Czar, and the pompous ceremonial of its
court threatened to turn his head at one time,[433] but he
appears to have acquitted himself very well on the whole
in the discharge of the responsibilities imposed on him by
Randolph's departure from St. Petersburg; and his subsequent

career appears to have been such as to justify the
care that Randolph had bestowed upon him.

When Randolph took a boy under his patronage, the
process was so much like that of complete adoption that
the mother could not always refrain from exhibiting a
little jealousy, and there are letters extant from Randolph
to Clay's mother which must have been a severe test of
her patience, unless she was constituted very differently
from most fatuous parents. In one letter, he told her
that he had just seen his little namesake at school and
that, after being somewhat laughed at by his school-fellows
for his helplessness and effeminacy, he was now
as manly and as hardy as the best of them.[434] In another
letter, written to Mrs. Clay some three years later, when
he was sending the lad home to Philadelphia to see her,
he expressed himself in terms of such candor that her
feelings must have been decidedly mixed. The magisterial
tone of the letter, however, can readily be forgotten
when the parental oversight and affection, of which John
Randolph Clay had been the recipient at Roanoke, and
the final success of the discipline, to which he had been
subjected, are duly borne in mind. This is what Randolph
said:

After leaving school, John Randolph Clay thought of
practicing law in Virginia, and several letters from Randolph
to him bear upon this topic. On one occasion,
Clay asked Randolph's advice in this connection, and he
received the following reply. It suggests the idea that
Randolph did not think that the young man was as laborious
as he might have been:

Indeed, there are indications in a previous letter from
Randolph to John Randolph Clay that Randolph deemed
his protégé a little slow in taking up the task of earning a
livelihood.

The two Bryan lads became inmates of Roanoke in
1816, and left it for their home in Georgia in 1820; and
during their residence at Roanoke they were pupils, first
at Ararat, and then at Mr. Kilpatrick's school, in Halifax
County. When they left Roanoke, Randolph purchased
a vehicle for them at Petersburg, supplied them with a
horse from his own stable to match another that had been
purchased for them, accompanied them as far as North
Carolina on their homeward journey, and, on leaving
them, placed them under the care of Quashee, one of his
most experienced drivers, who drove them all the way to
Savannah. He had grown so attached to the boys that
it must have cost him a severe struggle to part with them;
but who could have resisted such an appeal as this from

their mother, who had evidently begun to feel that, if
they were detained much longer at Roanoke, they might
become weaned from their blood relations:

In this same letter, Delia Bryan spoke of a third son
of hers—Joseph—as a noble-hearted boy, and a little
tactlessly added that he loved her with all the ardor that
her son Randolph once did.[438] The letter wounded Randolph's
feelings, but we can hardly regret the fact when
we find that it drew from her this second letter, which is
another testimonial to the nobler side of Randolph's nature.

As to the two Bryans, when they were at Roanoke, they
formed a devoted attachment to Randolph which never
ceased, except with their lives. Writing to his brother,
John Randolph, from St. Mary's College, in 1827, Tom
Bryan [T. M. F.] said:

Then, after quoting an extract from a letter which he
had just received from John Randolph of Roanoke, Tom
continues: "Brother Randolph, I don't know but I feel a
kind of reverence and love for that man."

These feelings were fully shared by John Randolph
Bryan; and, to realize how fully, one has but to turn to the
communications in which, many years after the death of
Randolph, he roundly denounced the parts of Bouldin's
Home Reminiscences of John Randolph of Roanoke which
were derogatory to his god-father. "My first meeting
with Mr. Randolph," he said in one of them, "was in
Baltimore in 1816, and I can never forget the sweet way
he met my brother and self."[441] In the same letter, he said
that John Randolph Clay, Thomas Bryan, and he were
treated by Randolph as if they were his children, and that
one or the other of them often slept in the same bed with
him, and that, when Randolph was absent from them, he
often wrote to them. "He took an interest in their manners,
language [and] reading," he declared, "and made
them say their prayers and often read to them."[442] In
another place, in the same letter, Bryan says: "In his
intercourse with us boys, the sweetness of his manner and
considerateness to our blunders and awkwardness was
truly parental."[443] Even after the Bryans had returned
to their home in Georgia, Randolph's affectionate interest
in them underwent no change.

Even when the Bryans were at school in Prince Edward
County or Halifax County, they were frequently at
Roanoke on Saturdays or holidays; and the Rev. Wm. S.
Lacy, in his Early Recollections of John Randolph, has
much to say about Randolph's visits to Ararat when John
Randolph Clay and the Bryans were pupils there under
the care of the writer, who published his reminiscences
anonymously, and wrote as if he had been merely a pupil
at the school.

Once, Randolph, in a letter to John Randolph Bryan,
mentioned Tom Bryan, and added: "God bless the
rogue"[446] ; and in a letter to his friend, Thomas Spalding, of
Georgia, he referred to Tom Bryan as "my young friend,
Tom," and said: "I love the rogue as well for his own
sake as his father's."[447]

While they were with him, true to his highly practical
instincts, he exercised as close a supervision over them as
if he had been their mother. In a letter to Clay and the
two Bryans, when they were at Mr. Kilpatrick's school in
Halifax County, he addressed them as "my dear children,"
and told them that he had driven to Roanoke on the
previous Sunday in the hope of seeing them before they
went off to school, but that "the birds were flown;" and
then, in his desire to see the lads, he concluded: "You will
return with Johnny, and I trust with clean faces, hands,
teeth and clothes; if any are to be dirty, let it be the last."[448]

Nor did he ever lose an opportunity to impart knowledge
to his young friends. In another letter, of later date,
to John Randolph Bryan, "from Babel," he tells him that
David Walker, a member of Congress from Kentucky,
had died that morning of ossification of the great aorta.
("The largest artery in the system—ossis and fieri—i. e.
becoming bone"), he explains.[449] And then he enjoins the
boy to take care of his Virgil, and tells him that Clay who
was at some other school, was in Horace.

The pleasure that it must have given Randolph to see
two persons whom he loved so much as his niece and John
Randolph Bryan intermarried, we can readily imagine.

Affectionate, too, in the highest degree, were the relations
sustained by Randolph for many years to Theodore
Dudley, who resided with him at Bizarre from 1800 until
1810, and afterwards at Roanoke until 1820.[450] Indeed, for
the greater part of this period, he called Theodore his son,
and was a father to him in every respect; maintaining and
educating him at his expense, first, at school in Virginia,
and, afterwards, at the medical college in Philadelphia;
and applying himself assiduously in every regard to the
task of fashioning him into a worthy and accomplished
man. Of the letters of Chesterfield, Dr. Samuel Johnson
said that, with the immorality taken out, they should be
put in the hands of every young man. In the sage, scintillating
letters, written by Randolph to Theodore, there
is no immorality to be excised. No one can read them,
written as they were without the slightest thought of
publication, without feeling that Randolph was not only
a brilliant man, but, at bottom, a thoroughly wise and
good one. Not many men with such tastes and occupations
as his would have taken the trouble, day after day,
to drill a mere cousin, such as Theodore was, into the

correct knowledge of orthography and syntax. After
pointing out, in one letter, various errors which the boy
had committed in a letter to him, he sums up:

and following up this damning tabulation, he adds:
"Surely you cannot have read over once what you wrote;
moreover, the hand is a very bad one; many words blotted;
and every part of it betrays negligence and a carelessness
of excelling—a most deplorable symptom in a young
man.'[451] (a) This time he relied upon mere pedagogic
austerity. In the next letter to Theodore, he reminds
him of the copy of the letters written by the Earl of
Chatham to his nephew, which Randolph had sent to the
boy, and says: "Our situation, and that of its writer and
his nephew, are not dissimilar. Let us then profit by
their example; whilst I endeavor to avail myself of the
wisdom and experience of the one, do you also strive to
imitate the amiable docility of the other, and so may God
bless you, my dear boy."[452] In another letter, written
several years later, Randolph brings even his wit to bear
upon the pride of the boy. After calling Theodore's
attention to numerous errors in a paper which he had
translated from English into Latin, such as the use of
"equos" for "æquos" and the like, Randolph exclaims:

These are but random specimens of the sedulous oversight
that Randolph gave to the early education of Theodore.

It did not go unrewarded, for enough sentences
penned by the latter have survived to prove that he became
the master of a correct and pointed diction. And
this result represented the triumph not more of educational
proficiency and discipline than of loving-kindness
on the part of his real master.

When Theodore replied to Randolph's letter in regard
to the translation in terms that plainly revealed his mortification,
Randolph replied in turn:

In a subsequent letter, written from the Library of
Congress, Randolph is quick to inform Theodore that
another translation of his bore scarcely any resemblance
to its predecessor; being, with a single exception, literally
correct, which proved, he said, that, when the boy committed
gross errors, it was not from a want of ability to
avoid them, and, indeed, impressed him with the belief
that, when he chose, he could excel.[455]

Under Randolph's tuition, Theodore not only became
a good scholar, but a fine shot. In one of his letters to
him, when he was in Philadelphia, Randolph expressed the
hope that he would learn to fence and to dance also; and
told him that he was very anxious that he should speak
French and read Italian, Spanish, and German. "As
many languages as a man knows, so many times is he a

man," he quoted.[456] He was even willing that Theodore
should play upon the clarionet.[457]

It is not enough to say that Randolph met cheerfully all
the expenses of every kind connected with the maintenance
and education of Theodore, both in Virginia and at
Philadelphia; for he repeatedly and eagerly urged him not
to shun any expense that was necessary for his comfort
or improvement. For instance, he wrote on one occasion:

When Theodore grew older, Randolph made more and
more of a companion of him, and took him more and more
into his confidence. In 1813, he wrote to him:

In another letter, written during the same year, Randolph
said:

In a letter written a few days before from Richmond,
Randolph was so impatient to see Dr. Dudley again that
he inquired: "Cannot you meet me here on the road?—
say Farmville, or Amelia. You know not how much you
are prized by those who know you only as an acquaintance.
Can you wonder then, my dear Theodore, at the value
which I, who know you au fond, set upon you?"[461] In the
succeeding year, he writes to Theodore that the latter's
epistles bear strong symptoms of hypochondriasis.

On one occasion, he wrote to Theodore three times in
one day, and, on another, four times in 12 or 18 hours.
Nor would he have been surfeited, if Theodore had written
to him twice as often. In one letter, he tells Theodore

that his letters are "scanty," and "look like the forced
production of an ungenial climate."[463] Some four years
later, he asked Theodore to write him "long, garrulous
letters."[464] In a subsequent letter, he tells him that he
(Theodore) is not the only correspondent who has alleged,
as a reason for not replying to his letters, that he expected
to hear from him.[465] A year or so later, he prized a letter
from Theodore so highly that he wrote to him at a time,
when the defamation of which he had been the subject
during the War of 1812 had not entirely died out:

In truth, there are no limits to be set to the parental
affection with which Randolph cherished his young
cousin's welfare. In one letter, he even tells him that, if
he lacks socks, to look into the upper drawer of his desk
and to take his.[467] Running through all of his letters to
Theodore, is his intense desire that the intercourse between
them should be the frank, unreserved intercourse
of a loving father and a loving son.

All the best letters written by Randolph should be
blended with the Letters to a Young Relative and published
with proper editorial notes. We know few books of the
sort that would be better entitled to be considered a classic.
Rarely have the precepts of universal wisdom and sound
morality been enforced in sweeter or more winning accents
than in The Letters to a Young Relative. Take this little
ethical discourse for example:

Or could anything be smoother than the transition in
the following letter from copybook instruction to golden
truths of world-wide application:

It came easy to Randolph to inculcate habits of deliberation
because, contrary to the false notions, which are so
often entertained of his character, he was never, John
Randolph Bryan tells us, in a hurry; though the soul of
energy both mentally and physically. Another letter of
exhortation is this:

"A liar is always a coward," is another homily that
Randolph read to Theodore in connection with a long

pointed discourse on the meanness, misery, and dishonor begotten
by debt.[472] One more homily, and we will cease to
consider Randolph in the light of a gnomic philosopher:

In the preface to The Letters to a Young Relative, Dr.
Dudley tells us that his sentiment of filial devotion to
Randolph for many years constituted a large portion of
his moral existence. Alas! that such a relationship should
have become but a part of the mere lachrymæ rerum. How
the blame for this fact should be apportioned between
the two, we, at least, shall not undertake to say; for what
judge can ever sum up all that is to be said on each side of
a family estrangement of this kind? Even before Aug.,
1818, there are hints in Randolph's letters to Dr. Dudley
that the latter was of a moody disposition; but it is a letter,
written to Dr. Dudley in August, 1818, that bares to our
eye for the first time the rift which this disposition, conspiring
with the excesses of temper, produced in Randolph
by the spell of mental derangement through which he had
recently passed, had made. Randolph's letter was in
these words:

When this letter was published in The Letters to a Young
Relative, Dr. Dudley added to it this terrible footnote:

When Dr. Dudley left Roanoke in February, 1820,[476] it
was to enter upon the practice of medicine in Richmond.
Later on, hearing that he thought of leaving Virginia,
Randolph wrote to him:

The last letter in The Letters to a Young Relative is dated
Feb. 11, 1822. It was preceded six days before by another
in which Randolph, after telling Dr. Dudley that he had
never received a letter from him that had gratified him
more than the one which he acknowledged, said characteristically:
"Your medical advice is very thankfully received
and will be followed . . . so far as my own
experience does not run counter to it."[478]

In the Randolph will litigation, Dr. Dudley testified
that the first attack observed by him which clearly indicated
mental derangement on Randolph's part had
occurred during the summer of 1818; that, about 12
months before this time, Randolph had told him that he
was conscious that his intellect was disordered on the
subject of an early love affair, and that he knew that he
had alienated almost all of his nearest friends by his
unhappy temper; and that, during the first violent paroxysm
of Randolph's insanity, which lasted nearly all of the
summer of 1818, and afterwards returned, Randolph was
guilty of the wildest extravagance; such as rising at midnight
and imagining that his neighbors were committing

trespasses on his land; cutting down line trees, etc. Dr.
Dudley also testified that the paternal interest of Randolph
in his welfare continued until the spring of 1822,
when all intercourse between them ceased, and that, from
that time on, whenever an opportunity arose, he displayed
the deepest malignity of feeling toward him; on one occasion
even writing him "a most insolent letter," demanding
payment for certain articles which he had given him. In
his deposition, however, Dr. Dudley also stated that in
his opinion there had never been a time, after the attack
of 1818, when Randolph had been capable of making a
valid will. He also bore witness to the complete change
in all his ordinary traits of character which Randolph
underwent when subject to a fit of mental disorder.[479]

Randolph's relations to Theodoric Tudor Randolph
were closely similar to his relations to Dr. Dudley, when
the latter was of the same age. Describing in a letter to
Nicholson the serious illness which befell Tudor when he
was a boy, he says: "Before he was bled, he never closed
an eye, but lay patiently mute, taking without reluctance
everything that was offered him and baring his little arm
for the lancet. Never did I see more composed fortitude."[480]
"My son is better," he tells Nicholson in his
next letter.[481]

Until Tudor was 9 years old, he had never had any other
tutor than his uncle.[482] When he was approaching his
tenth year, Randolph informed Nicholson that the boy
was making good progress in Cæsar.[483] Tudor was afterwards
placed with Theodore Dudley at a school in Richmond,
which was conducted by a Dr. Haller; and subsequently
he was also for a time under the tuition of Dr.

John H. Rice, at the home of the latter in Prince Edward
County; but, throughout Tudor's brief life, Randolph had
such a free hand in the formation of his character and
intellect that he was in the habit of saying with no little
justice that Tudor was a creature entirely of his own
creation. Once in a letter to his friend Mr. Parish, of
Philadelphia, he said: "Permit me to introduce to you
my nephew—let the father say my son—for he has known
no other father and is the child of my heart and of my
adoption—Mr. Tudor Randolph."[484]

His pet name for Tudor as a boy was "Buona." The
boy soon gave proof of the extraordinary talents that
caused Randolph to say after his death that he was the
most gifted human being that he had ever known.[485] When
he was at school in Richmond, his uncle described him in
these pointed terms in a letter to Nicholson:

The letters contained in The Letters to a Young Relative,
are in some instances addressed to Tudor as well as Theodore,
and in the collection there are a number of references
to the former. On one occasion, Randolph asks Theodore
what could have induced Buona to spell "watch"
"wacth."[487] On another he conveys through Theodore
a reproof to Buona for writing "a tolerable long letter,"
instead of "a tolerably long letter."[488] In the same letter,
he says that, if Buona had been describing Richmond to
his mother or himself, he would never have introduced it
with: "I beg leave to wait upon you"; an awkward
exordium which even Mr. Expectation, of Norfolk, would
not approve. "I wish you were with me, my sons, to
enjoy the sport," Randolph says in conclusion. "Your
skill, my dear Theodore, would make amends for my
clumsiness, and dear Buona would hold Miniken, who now
runs away from uncle whenever she has an opportunity."[489]
This was when Tudor was eleven years old. Later, in a
letter to Theodore, Randolph expressed the hope that even
Buona would soon come to beat him on the wing. "Give
my love to him. I long to see his rosy cheeks," the letter
adds.[490] Over and over again, evidence is brought to our
attention in Randolph's letters that Tudor, like Theodore,
was frequently the beneficiary of a degree of pecuniary
generosity on Randolph's part which we should hardly
expect anyone but a father to exhibit.

After Randolph moved from Bizarre to Roanoke, Tudor
and his brother St. George were frequently companions of
Randolph there. For instance, under date of July 17,
1811, when Tudor was in his fifteenth year, the Diary
contains this entry: "Tudor arrives in evening from
Bizarre with Fidget and Beauty." There is also this

amusing reference to Tudor in the School-boy Reminiscences
of John Randolph, by Wm. H. Elliott:

Of Tudor, when he was a pupil at Dr. Rice's, we have
but few details, beyond the fact that Dr. Rice hoped to
make a clergyman of him[492] ; warned him when he was
leaving Virginia for Harvard against contracting a disgust
for his native State,[493] and referred to him in a letter
to Judith, whom he had won over from the Episcopal to
the Presbyterian Church, as "our dear boy."[494]

At Harvard, Tudor acquired a standing which spoke
well not only for his own natural genius, but for the
thoroughness of the education which a boy could receive
in his day in Southside Virginia, despite the unfavorable
opinion which Henry Adams formed of its inhabitants.

In appearance, Edmund Quincy tells us that Tudor was
a tall, swarthy youth with a good deal in his looks that
seemed to justify his claim to a descent from Pocahontas
and Powhatan.

A still more flattering account of the youth was given
by John G. Palfrey, the New England historian, in a letter
to Jared Sparks:

A later letter—one from Charles Folsom to Jared Sparks
—told Sparks that a third person had seen Tudor in London
very much emaciated, pale, and enfeebled in body and
voice; that he had just returned from Cheltenham Springs
from which he thought that he had derived some benefit,
but that he was manifestly past recovery, and connected
with the world by hope only.[497] After the death of Tudor,
a third friend of Sparks wrote of him to Sparks in these
measured but generous terms:

The judgment of Tudor, formed by Sparks himself, is
hardly less favorable. "Taken all in all, he was one of
the most promising, perhaps, the most promising, young
man who has been at Cambridge within my knowledge of
the institution. I was very warmly attached to him."[499]

As usual, Randolph had formed a correct estimate of

intellectual capacity. He did not often trouble himself
about the valuation placed upon his speeches by others,
but, after Tudor's death, he wrote to Judith:

In an earlier letter to David Parish, Randolph said:
"I shall embark for England in the spring, and spend the
summer at Cheltenham, where is lodged in the bosom of
the earth the treasure of my heart."[501]

Over the grave at Cheltenham, he caused a stone to be
placed with an inscription, stating that Tudor had fallen
a victim to the consequences of intense study, which had
obliged him to leave his college about 12 months before his
decease, and that, in testimony of his merit as a scholar,
the corporation of the University of Harvard had conferred
on him the degree of Bachelor of Arts, at their
annual commencement, held on August 30, 1815; ignorant
that he was then removed beyond the sphere of human
censure or human applause.[502] (a)

Peculiarly tender were Randolph's relations to John
St. George Randolph, Tudor's elder brother, who was born
deaf and dumb, and died after many years of hopeless
insanity. If anyone doubts that Randolph was turtledove
as well as falcon, all that he has to do is to make himself
familiar with the infinite love and compassion that
he heaped upon this unfortunate youth. At Bizarre, St.
George grew up immediately under the eye of his uncle,
and, after the latter had removed to Roanoke, he frequently

passed to and fro between Bizarre and Roanoke.
Though too deaf to hear the whirr of a partridge's wings,
and too dumb to utter a command to a pointer, he
achieved the highest ambition of a Southside Virginia boy
of his day; except that of making an eloquent speech,
namely, that of being a good shot on the wing. On one
occasion, he wrote to his uncle that he had killed 5 partridges
and a hare at 8 shots.[503] Whole or maimed, it was
to that and better that every Southside lad of his age
aspired in the stubble field.

In his desire to give St. George the best education that
one in his condition was capable of receiving, Randolph
sent him abroad in 1805 to take a course of instruction,
first, at Braidwood's, at Harkney, near London, and then
at Sicard's, near Paris. "I am here that I may see the
last of my poor boy," he wrote to St. George Tucker from
Baltimore. "He leaves me tomorrow for England."[504]
Everything that money could do to promote the improvement
of the boy, while he was abroad, Randolph saw that
money did; and, throughout his entire correspondence
with Monroe, who, with his family, was, to some extent,
Randolph's proxy in the care of St. George, when the
latter was in England, there are expressions of the eagerest
solicitude about the boy's welfare. "Poor dear unfortunate
boy"[505] ; "My unhappy boy"[506] ; "That dear, interesting
boy,"[507] are some of the caressing terms that Randolph
employs about St. George in his letters to Monroe. To
Monroe and the members of his family Randolph's heart
overflowed, as it was wont to do in requital for any real
service to him, in words of the warmest acknowledgment,
for their kindness to his nephew. It would seem, however,

that St. George derived but little benefit from his schooling
abroad; for, in one of his letters to Dr. Dudley, after the
young man's return, Randolph says that of late St.
George's letters to him had been hardly intelligible.[508] "I
fear he will lose the faculty of expressing his thoughts on
paper if no one takes the trouble to correct him," Randolph
observed. "Alas! `prayers are not morality,' nor
`kneeling religion.' "[509] (a) Some of the poor boy's unintelligible
letters to his uncle, all breathing a spirit of the
most devoted affection for him, have survived. In one of
them, speaking of Randolph's servant, Jupiter, he says:
"I fear it would trouble you to tell you that Jupiter clothes
are worn out now but it will be mended well I hope."
However, when these jumbled words are read, a smile
does not light up the face so readily as it would do if St.
George had not already expressed in the same letter the
great pleasure afforded him by his uncle's letters, and
declared: "It delighted me very much, my dear uncle,
that you remember me as tenderly as if you were my
father."[510] "This county has none the gold rings. I
wish you to get one for me in Richmond, if you please,"
is another fumbling sentence which he wrote to his uncle;
doubtless at a time when he thought that he was about to
be married.[511]

Randolph, it seems, was desirous that the young man
should marry. (b) This fact comes out in a letter from
Judith to Randolph, written at a time when St. George's
affections were fixed upon a definite object—his cousin,
Jane Hackley, the daughter of his mother's sister Harriet,
the wife of Richard S. Hackley, who was for a time the
American Consul at San Lucar, Spain.[512] "You have
always encouraged the idea of St. George forming a matrimonial
connection at a proper age," she said.

So far as we are aware, only one letter from Randolph
to St. George is extant. It was written the year before
the boy was sent to England:

The Diary records the circumstances under which the
first knowledge of St. George's insanity was received by

Randolph. When it reached him, he was still lingering
in Richmond, after having spent the winter of 1813-1814
there so delightfully. This is the entry: "1814, May 10.
Tuesd. Rec'd Judith's letter, announcing St. George's
insanity. Set out immediately for Mrs. Tabb's that
night—next day to Farmville." About two weeks later,
Randolph took St. George to his own home at Roanoke
from Farmville, where Judith resided for a while after the
destruction of her home at Bizarre; and, from this time on,
there are frequent references to St. George in Randolph's
letters to his friends.

In a letter to Key written eleven days later, Randolph
told Key that St. George had made several attempts to
marry, and that, brooding over the cause of his failure,
had reduced him to his present state.[516]

When this letter was written, St. George had been taken
back to Farmville, but had been again shifted from Farmville
to Roanoke, because, as Randolph intimated in his
letter, he had become incurably alienated from his mother.

The exact mental condition of St. George is clearly
stated by Randolph in a letter which he wrote the next
day to Dr. Brockenbrough.

Later, St. George was confined in an insane asylum at
Philadelphia, and, afterwards, he was confined in one at
or near Baltimore. In 1817, Henry St. George Tucker
went to see him at Philadelphia, and, reporting what he
saw to Dr. Dudley, Randolph said: "He went with
Ryland to see St. George, and was surprised to find his
madness of so bad a type. He tears everything to tatters
that he lays his hands on. He recognized his uncle at
once but the moody expression of his countenance indicated
in Harry's opinion, incurable insanity."[518] Nothing
can be more pathetic than the language in which Randolph
spoke of St. George, after the latter had lost his
reason: "Poor St. George, ill-starred, unfortunate boy!"
he wrote to Theodore,—"His destiny was sealed before his
birth or conception. Take care of yourself; you are my
last stay."[519] These words were written from Morrisania
in 1814, after the sight of poor Tudor's consumptive face
there, and the approaching extinction of all hopes of further
descent from his father had awakened in him the
feelings which afterwards caused him to exclaim in words,
partly borrowed from the famous speech of the Indian
Chief, Logan, that there remained not a drop of Logan's
blood, except St. George, "the most bereaved and pitiable
of the stepsons of nature."[520] Even before Randolph
visited Morrisania, however, the ruin, in which his whole
family line was being involved, had become plain to him.
Writing to Key from Roanoke on July 31, 1814, he penned
these harrowing words:

Some of the letters written by Judith to Randolph when
St. George was at Roanoke in a demented condition have
been preserved, and they are indicative of both a strong
intellect and a lofty spirit. After St. George had been
absent from her for about a month, she wrote these affecting
words to Randolph:

In response to this letter, St. George was a week or so
later taken to Farmville; but three days afterwards, for
some reason, he was taken back to Roanoke.[523] Subsequently,
his condition improved for a time, because in one
of Randolph's briefer journals, under date of Nov. 18,
1816, it is stated that St. George had relapsed. About
two weeks later, after being bled, he was taken to the
asylum at Philadelphia; Randolph, who was in Richmond,
when he reached that City, noting in the journal just
mentioned, under date of Dec. 2, 1816, that he had slept
with the poor fellow the night before.

Among the letters from Judith to Randolph, in regard
to St. George, when he was at Roanoke, is one in which she
thanks him for giving her every week accurate intelligence
about her son. "May the mercy of Heaven be extended
to my beloved child," she concludes. "Excuse me, my
dear brother, these idle and impertinent wanderings.
May God bless you."[524] But the most noteworthy of all
the letters is one upon the back of which we can still trace
a diligent effort by Randolph to converse with his deaf
and dumb nephew. The words, scribbled by St. George,
are entirely irrational, and, so far as they are intelligible
at all, betray a delusion upon his part that Randolph was
about to be put in prison by the people of Cumberland
County; which Randolph endeavored to dissipate by his
written replies. The strange conversation opens with
these words: "I am glad to see you so much better these
two days, my dear nephew. I love you much."[525]

St. George died at an advanced age, after being taken
under the roof of his committee, Wyatt Cardwell, at

Charlotte Court House, and his estate, so far as made up
of what he received from the compromise in the Randolph
will litigation, was distributed, in the proportion of
one-half, among his paternal, and, in the proportion of
one-half, among his maternal, kindred. A description of
him, as he was in 1856, a few years before his death, when
he was at large at Charlotte Court House, and a harmless
lunatic, has been recently given to us by Marion Harland
in her Autobiography. He was then a man of venerable
appearance, with a full white beard, but his figure, which
was above the medium height, was still "erect as a Virginia
Pine." He planted his feet straight forward, like
an Indian, as he walked, his hair was snow-white, his eyebrows
were black, his eyes were dark and piercing, and his
features were finely chiselled.[526] He had his own riding
horse, he read and apparently enjoyed Latin and French,
as well as English, books, and retained a distinct recollection
of his famous uncle and of the politics of his day.[527] (a)

Indeed, Randolph seems to have felt a deep sympathy
in every respect with what he calls in one of his letters to
his niece "the freshness of unhackneyed youth."[528]
Bouldin tells an interesting story of the kindly manner in
which he relieved the despondency of a sensible and meritorious
young man, who had begun the study of one of the
learned professions, by assuring him repeatedly that he
had nothing to fear; that he had the requisite qualifications
for success in his chosen calling, and that all he had to do
was to persevere, as several men of his acquaintance that
he mentioned had done, who, without splendid abilities,
had, solely by their industry and persistency, won good
positions for themselves in life.[529]

More definite is this beautiful tribute paid to Randolph
by the Rev. John T. Clark in the reminiscences which we

have already quoted in connection with Randolph's views
on the subject of slavery:

The same kindly characteristics came out the afternoon
before Randolph's death in an interview between him and
Dr. Ethelbert Algernon Coleman. These are the words
in which this interview is recalled in the Doctor's Diary:

Among the letters of affectionate counsel, written by
Randolph, are two to his relation, Richard Ryland Randolph,
when the latter was a medical student at Philadelphia.
"Go on, my young friend," he tells Ryland in one

FRANCES BLAND TUCKER

Half Sister of John Randolph, and wife of Judge Jno. Coalter.

of these letters, "and may God prosper your laudable
endeavors to be worthy of the excellent father and friend
whom we both deplore."[531] And then, after some words of
sound advice, he says in the same letter:

In another letter, Randolph advises Ryland to keep a
diary and gives him very persuasive reasons why he should
do so. In the same letter commenting on the rule which
Ryland had laid down for himself, "not to follow any of the
maxims of the young men of the present day," he, while
declaring the rule to be an excellent one, shrewdly suggests
that, at the same time, there was no necessity for Ryland
letting the young men know it except by his conduct. He
then digresses into these amusing observations on the
improper transposition of words:

To some of his older relations, too, Randolph was fervidly
attached. One was his brother Richard. "He was
the best and truest of brothers," Randolph said in a letter
to James Monroe. Sawyer states that Richard was "a
man of great personal beauty and superior talents."[533] He
might have added that he had the faculty of winning
affection, which we are almost tempted to say is, if not
abused, a better thing than either.

Of Judith, too, Randolph was very fond, notwithstanding
the impatience that he occasionally exhibited with
her positive characteristics, which were, doubtless, asserted
not more emphatically than his own temperament at
times made necessary. The few letters from her to him,
which still exist, show that he was both esteemed and

beloved by her. Though, in a letter to Creed Taylor, she
very properly sought the independent advice of the latter
on certain points, affecting the pecuniary interests of her
sons, which had arisen out of the partition of a portion of
the estate of Randolph's father between Randolph and her
husband's estate, and even called attention to the fact that,
while she had lived "but a little removed from poverty,"
Randolph had made purchases of real estate to the extent
of upwards of £3,000, she yet disclaimed any intent whatever
to reflect upon his integrity, and said: "To you, my
dear Sir, I need not mention the long and affectionate
attachment I have cherished for the brother of him who
was the best of husbands."[534] As to Taylor himself, he is distinctly
on record as expressing the opinion that Randolph
was "one of the most honest men in the world."[535] Nothing
need be added to what we have already said about the
estimation in which Judith's proficiency as a domestic
manager was held by Randolph. In an early letter to
his friend, Wm. Thompson, he spoke of her as "that pattern
of female virtue."[536] In another letter to Thompson,
he described her as a woman who united to talents of the
first order a degree of cultivation uncommon in any
country, but especially in ours.[537] Not only William S.
Lacy, in his Recollections, but John Randolph Bryan, too,
has testified to the love that Randolph bore for Judith.[538]

He often visited her after he left Bizarre, and her name
several times appears in his journals as a visitor at Roanoke.
Indeed, in one of her letters to him she says that
she hopes soon to be up again, and ready to return to
Roanoke, and enter upon her new occupation as house-keeper;
but this, apparently, she never did.[539]

After the death of Tudor, and St. George's loss of reason,
Judith, between grief and declining health, presents herself
to us as little more than a Niobe—all tears. Subsequent
to these events, she became even more intimate
than before with Dr. John H. Rice and his wife, and died
at their home in Richmond, where she had resided, agreeably
with their repeated invitations, ever since the death
of Tudor, on March 10, 1816[540] ; leaving a will by which she
made Randolph one of her executors and bequeathed a
legacy of $1,000 to Dr. Rice; which that able and good
man, moved partly by the fear that his kindness to her in
her later years might be ascribed to mercenary motives,
distributed among various Christian charities which he
knew that she had patronized, when living.[541] Such a
pronounced pietist was Judith, after her conversion to
Presbyterianism, that Randolph in one of his letters to
Dr. Dudley once said: "I heard from Bizarre today. All
there are well. I shall not be disappointed if a lady of our
acquaintance should give her hand to some Calvinistic
parson."[542] Very noble in spirit and form is a letter from
Randolph to Dr. Rice, which was written six days after
Judith's death, and which furnishes us with but another
proof that the affection and respect that Judith and Randolph
felt for each other was never really shaken:

The last words uttered by Tudor and his mother, respectively,
certify as nothing but similar words could do
to the profound spiritual change infused by Presbyterianism
into the class of Southside Virginians of which Judith
was a representative. Those of Tudor were: "Don't
grieve for me, for I die happy"; those of Judith: "Christ
is my only hope."[544]

Tenderer still were the relations of Randolph to his
sister Fanny Bland Tucker, who afterwards became the
wife of John Coalter. His letters to St. George Tucker
frequently contain loving messages to her when she was a
mere girl. It is to be deeply regretted that his letters to
her, with a few exceptions, should have perished, as so
much else from his pen did; but a number of her letters to
him are extant, and they reveal an unusual capacity for
fluent and correct composition, a rare degree of fidelity to
all the domestic virtues, a heart overflowing with love not

only for her husband and children, but for her kith and
kin generally; and alas! besides the consumptive habit of
body which finally brought her to the grave, but which
never beclouded her spirits nor fretted the pure rich flow
of her affections. It is impossible to read her letters to
Randolph without feeling that she too must have been in
his mind when he depicted in such a happy manner in the
House the Virginia matron and her distaff. Her letters
to Randolph abound in references to her children, including
the one whom she terms Randolph's favorite, and supply
one more additional proof of the partiality that Randolph
felt for children. In one letter she sends him the
love of her children, and their thanks for a present which
he has just made to them.[545] In another, referring to
Randolph's "little favorite," she says: "Saint is a fine
fellow. I am sure you will love him more than ever."[546]

One of the most earnest cravings of her heart during the
period covered by her letters was that there should be a
reunion of all the descendants of her mother and their
wives and children under one roof.

In the succeeding year she recurs to the same subject,
revealing again as she does so the deep love that she entertained
for Randolph:

And so she continued to write to him as long as her sweet
spirit resided in its "fleshly nook."

And these were the endearing terms in which Randolph
wrote to her a year or so after he became a member of the
House:

And love each other they did until the very last.

Henry St. George Tucker, Randolph's "uterine brother,"
as he called him, was one of the correspondents to
whom Randolph wrote almost as often as he did to Dr.
Brockenbrough or Tazewell. He was an admirable man
in point of intellect, character, disposition, and manners;
and Randolph was not only truly attached to him, but had
a profound underlying respect for him besides. This was
natural enough, for no public man, except a few of the very
first rank, ever occupied a higher place in the admiration
of the people of Virginia than Henry St. George Tucker.
"In short, in my opinion," Judge E. C. Burks, long a
conspicuous member of the Virginia Court of Appeals
himself, declared, "Judge Tucker stands first in the bright
catalogue of Virginia's distinguished jurists; inter pares
facile princeps."[550]

Of Henry St. George Tucker, when he was a member of
Congress, Sawyer says that he was little inferior to Randolph
as a debater, and he contrasts the disposition and
temper of the former with those of the latter, decidedly to
the disadvantage of the latter. But we know nothing

JUDGE HENRY ST. GEORGE TUCKER

From the portrait owned by the Hon. Henry St. George Tucker, Lexington, Va.

whatever to justify Sawyer's statement that "there appeared
no such evident marks of familiar affection and
attachment between them during the time they served
together as we were led to suspect from their near relationship."[551]
On the contrary, the frequency with which
Randolph wrote to Henry St. George Tucker, the deep
concern which he exhibited when the latter was severely
injured in a stage-coach accident in 1816, and the affectionate
references to him in Randolph's letters to third
persons, from the early part of Randolph's life until its
last hours, all fully warrant the view that we have taken
of the relations of the two brothers. In one of his letters
to St. George Tucker, Randolph said: "When I reflect
too that it is your intention to settle Henry in a distant
quarter, where I can never see and seldom hear from him,
it brings the most mournful recollections and presages to
my mind."[552] In another letter to his step-father, Randolph
said playfully: "My love to dear Fan. Why do
not the boys write to me? Beg Hal's pardon for this
insult to [the] toga virilis."[553] In 1811, Randolph wrote to
Dr. Dudley that he had reached Richmond half dead, but
that he had been amply compensated by meeting with his
dear brother Henry.[554] Some 10 or 12 years later, he wrote
to his niece: "What have I done to Uncle Henry that he
will not write to me?"[555] And, some three years later,
after Henry St. George Tucker had visited him at Roanoke,
he said in his vivid way: "This visit of your Uncle
Henry has spoiled me. A sudden flash of lightning makes
the succeeding darkness more intense."[556] It was in the
succeeding year that he wrote to his niece that he had
given up all his correspondents for a time, even her Uncle
Henry.[557] The correspondence was too agreeable to be
long abandoned, and, two years later, he enclosed a letter
from "Harry" to him to his niece, saying that she would
read it with great pleasure if it gave her a hand-breadth
part of the pleasure that it had given him.[558] At one time,
he seems to have written to Henry every day.[559] In 1828,
his affection for him was still undiminished, as was proved
by a letter to his niece in which he said: "I have now only
brother Harry and you to be proud of. Tell him to write
to me before he leaves Chatham, and as soon as he gets
home."[560] Randolph sometimes visited his brother at his
home at Winchester, and Henry was occasionally at
Roanoke. In one of his letters to his niece, Randolph
said that he wished very much to see his brother Henry,
even if it were but for a minute.[561] In 1829, he noted with
gratification, in a letter to Dr. Brockenbrough, the fact
that the affection of his brother Henry for him was increasing
with their advancing years.[562] A few days later, he
wrote to the same friend that he did not know anywhere
a more useful and respectable man than his brother.[563]

While the two brothers were separated during the course
of their lives for considerable intervals of time, they were
never, so far as we are aware, in the slightest degree
estranged from each other at any time. "If my dear
brother Harry be not gone, entreat him to come to me on
the receipt of this," were among the last words that Randolph
ever penned, and were written when he was on his
way to his deathbed at Philadelphia.[564] (a)

Randolph's cynical distrust of the medical fraternity

made an amusing story of the professional attentions
bestowed upon Henry after the stage-coach accident, to
which we have referred.

A remarkable letter is the following written by Randolph
to Henry shortly after the death of the latter's eldest
son in 1826. It is all the more remarkable in that it was
penned after the paroxysm of religious enthusiasm, which
overthrew Randolph's reason in 1818, had subsided:

After Randolph's death, Henry St. George Tucker was
very much shocked by the aspersions which the will of
1821 cast upon the integrity of his father; but, in the discharge
of his divided duty to the memory of his father
and to the memory of his brother, he exhibited an extraordinary
degree of impartial affection. Referring to
letters which he had received from his brother Beverley
and Wm. Leigh, he wrote to John Randolph Bryan:

Randolph's relations to his half-brother, Beverley
Tucker, were also, on the whole, very affectionate. In
his early letters to St. George Tucker, he sends the same
fraternal messages to Beverley as to Henry. In one of
them, he refers to the two brothers as "those dear fellows."[568]
"My dear Beverley," he said in another, "must
not blame me for not answering his kind letter by Mr.
Bassett. I am as ever his entirely."[569] Subsequently,
after the marriage of Beverley to Miss Mary Coalter, the
sister of Judge John Coalter, he took up his residence at
Roanoke, and practiced law in the surrounding territory.[570]
And here he remained until the year 1815, when he
emigrated to Missouri, where he soon became a judge.
Later, he returned to Virginia, and died there after a
distinguished career as a law-lecturer and a man of letters.

Not long after Beverley removed to Roanoke, Randolph
conveyed to him a tract of land near Roanoke, and
transferred to him a number of slaves with whom to
cultivate it; and Beverley also received some assistance
from his father. But, under the influence of the feelings,
excited by the suspended expectations of early professional
life, and the burdens of domestic responsibility, he was
overtaken by a fit of despondency which elicited this most
affectionate letter from Randolph:

While Beverley resided at Roanoke, or on his own land
nearby, the most familiar and affectionate relations
existed between Randolph and him and his wife Polly.
On one occasion, Beverley wrote to Randolph that Polly
was quite "crazy" to see him[572] ; and, in one of his letters
to his sister, Randolph asks her to congratulate Polly, who
was at the time near Staunton, in his name on her maternal
honors.[573] (a) It is said that, whenever Beverley was at
Roanoke, he sat at the foot of Randolph's table, unless
there was some clergyman present to occupy the place.[574]
Before his emigration to Missouri, he acquired a good professional
footing in Southside Virginia, and his engagements
as a lawyer are occasionally brought to our attention
in Randolph's journals. His mobility, however, was
responsible for several indications of slight impatience
on Randolph's part: "I fear I shall lose the opportunity
of Beverley. He has been missing ever since yesterday
morning,"[575] Randolph wrote on one occasion to Dr.

JUDGE N. BEVERLEY TUCKER

From a portrait owned by George P. Coleman, Esq., of Williamsburg, Va.

Dudley. In a later letter, he wrote to Dr. Dudley: "To
my surprise I received a letter from Beverley, dated the
10th, at Richmond! London would not have been more
unexpected."[576]

When Beverley made up his mind to return to Virginia,
Randolph was eager to welcome him back. "More than
half of the allotted time within which you `must be in
Missouri' has elapsed," he wrote to Beverley at St. Louis
on the eve of his return to Virginia, "or I would set out
tomorrow for Winchester to see you once more before I
die, and something tells me that that time is not far off."
In conclusion, he says: "Write to me as often as you can;
the oftener the better, and the longer the better."[577]

After Beverley's return to Virginia, we occasionally find
him in close companionship with Randolph, both in
Charlotte County and at Washington, and it was Randolph's
desire that he should succeed him as the representative
of his old District in the House.[578]

After Randolph's death, Beverley was particularly
active in the prosecution of the attacks on his wills, which
resulted in the final compromise; and among his papers,
which are still in existence, is an interesting one, dated
May 15, 1836, in which John R. Cooke, one of the counsel
in the Randolph will litigation, outlined to John G. Mosby,
another eminent Virginia lawyer of that day, his reasons
for thinking that the insanity of Randolph could be
judicially established. The paper is a curious specimen
of the unhesitating zeal with which a lawyer, when he
wishes to make out a case for his client, will undertake to
construct a stone wall out of batter puddings. He was
even prepared to assert that Randolph was insane in 1811,
1812, 1814, and 1815, as well as in 1818, 1819, and 1820.[579]

To Beverley Tucker we owe a slight sketch of Randolph.[580]
More important, however, is the following
tribute which he paid to him in an address delivered
before the students of Randolph-Macon College.

The fraternal kindness, of which Randolph made Beverley
the object, is also alluded to in one of the letters
from Fanny Bland Coalter to Randolph. Speaking of
Beverley and his newly-married wife, she says:

An effort was made in the Randolph will litigation to
show that, before Beverley went off to Missouri, a serious
estrangement had sprung up between him and Randolph,
but the effort did not get very far. The basis for it
apparently was a statement of Randolph's that he had
given to Beverley the only slaves of his that were unencumbered
by the British debt, and also a tract of land in
Charlotte County to enable him to support his family;
that the slaves were connected by family ties with other
slaves retained by him; that it was understood by Beverley
and himself that, as soon as the slaves retained by him
were released from the encumbrance, Beverley and he
were to make an exchange of slaves that would restore
those that had been given to Beverley by Randolph and
their former family ties; but that Beverley had failed to
carry out his part of the understanding.[583] At this late
day, this statement can have no value beyond that of a
merely ex parte one, which rested, besides, on oral testimony
only; and the prudence of not accepting it too
quickly is suggested likewise by the fact that the blame
for the miscarriage of the understanding was cast by
Randolph upon St. George Tucker.[584] And it is noticeable
that the same witness, who testified to the statement in
the Randolph will litigation, also testified that, on the
first occasion that he saw Randolph and Beverley together
after Beverley's return from Missouri, Randolph treated
the latter with great kindness and affection, and that their
relations at a later date were those of "great intimacy."[585]

The truth is that Randolph's brothers and sisters of the
half-blood loved and admired him in the highest degree,
and were warmly loved and admired by him in turn, and
that, if any fugitive cloud ever threw its shadow over his

intercourse with any one of the three, the fact was solely
due to his own idiosyncracies.

But where could we go to find anything more charming
or more suggestive of human nature in its purest and
tenderest moments than the intercourse between Randolph
and his niece—Elizabeth T. Coalter? Here and
there among the numerous letters from him to her there
are inflections of misanthropy, spiritual weariness, and
physical pain; but, as a whole, these letters are not morbid
enough to forfeit their right to be compared with the best
of the sort in any language.

One of them invites his niece to pay him a visit at
Roanoke.

A letter in the succeeding year has a word of praise for
natural, unstudied letter-writing; and from this subject
Randolph deviates to some tart criticism of the changes
made in the style and idiom of the Bible and the Episcopal
Book of Common Prayer by "pudding-bellied bishops."[587]
In the same letter, he offers to replace his niece's favorite
pony with a horse which he would have thoroughly broken
for her, he said.

Instruction in one form or another was rarely out of his

mind when he was writing to his niece; and the letter
concludes with an enumeration of the famous English
writers that he would have her take as models for the
formation of her style.

In another letter, he counsels her not to be afraid of
plenty of fresh air, and warns her against the dangers of
a stooping posture.[588]

In his correspondence with his niece, he was at great
pains to see that she did not fall into artificial or pretentious
forms of expression. On one occasion, he tells her
that her reflections on sickness and adversity are, with the
exception of a line and a half, well written; and, after
quoting the words which met with his disapproval, he
comments as follows:

But he makes everything right by ending: "God bless
you, my dear. I have a charming copy of Shakespeare
for you."[589]

If he had been her lover, he could not have manifested

more concern than he did when he heard that her cough
was still dry and a good deal harassing.[590]

On one occasion, he had evidently inculcated moderation
of language on the part of his niece just a little too
earnestly; for we find him employing these soothing words:

and then he leaves the dangerous topic, and goes on to tell
her about the rout which he had just attended at Madame
De Neuville's in Washington: "There," he said, "I saw
our poor wild men like calves fatting and patted by the
butchers to make them quiet under the knife; unlearning
their best qualities and learning our worst. My red blood
partook of their injuries."[591]

When necessary, he did not hesitate to take his niece
quite sharply to task for misuse of language. Referring
on one occasion to her last letter, he said: "You `have
been dissipating it.' Dissipating what? You see at once
the whole matter and that's enough."[592] On another
occasion, he wrote to her:

On a third occasion, Randolph begins by telling his
niece: "That you can write very charming letters I know,
having numerous proofs of the fact in my possession";
but ends by telling her that her last letter "bears everywhere
the mark of effort, constraint and ambition of
ornament, and abounds with alliteration and what the
Italians call conceit."[594]

Once he exercised the privilege of a chaperone, and
admonished her that, when she came in to an evening
party in Richmond from her home at Bush Hill, near that
town, she should pass the night in the city.[595] But his
reproofs and admonitions were so liberally intermixed
with approbation and praise that she would have been
unreasonable, indeed, if she had accepted them with a
bad grace.

In a letter, written nine days later, Randolph touches
upon this last topic again. The letter is too well turned
not to be quoted in its entirety.

A few weeks later, he tells Elizabeth that a Washington
coachmaker had promised to complete a little carriage for
him by the adjournment of Congress, and that she must
hold herself in readiness to accompany him from Richmond
to Roanoke; and he asks her to extend his invitation
to her father, her step-mother, and her brother, and to
Mammy Aggy too; and it was perhaps to make certain of
her that he told her in the same letter that her last letter
was admirably written and that, if the manner fell short of
the inimitable grace of Madame de Sévigné, the thoughts
and the language too would not be unbecoming the pen of
Lady Wortley. In short, it was just what a letter ought
to be with one "leetle" exception (as his good Southside
friend, Major Scott, used to say).[598]

Another letter brings before us in a single group Elizabeth,
her mother, and her grandmother.

Another letter prescribed a complete course of reading
for his niece, which evidences in the most striking manner
how familiar he was with the best books of the past. "I
wish," he says, among other things, "I had the leisure to
complete an Index Expurgatorius, since I deem it more
important, if possible, to point out those to be shunned
than such as are worthy of perusal."[600]

Nor did Randolph withhold from Elizabeth his usual
arraignment of Virginian barbarisms of speech. After
quoting some of them such as "mar" and "har" for
"mare" and "hare," he said:

Some of the letters were written while Randolph was
abroad. One of these contains a reference to a stagecoach
accident, which had befallen him at Stoney Startford,
and which had fractured one of his shoulder blades
and two of his ribs. "I am returning a poor cripple,
nearly helpless, to my native land,"[602] he said. One letter,
received by Elizabeth, contained various extracts from a
letter[603] which had been written to Randolph by Sir Grey
Skipwith, Bart., the son of Sir Peyton Skipwith, of Prestwould,
and the brother of St. George Tucker's second
wife, who was then residing at Alvestone, England, and
who was at the time, or recently had been, the father of 18
children, whom Randolph calls off, one by one, by name

in another letter to Elizabeth.[604] Among the extracts, is
one in which Sir Grey said dolefully that he was sorry to
add that his very prolific wife was again in a way to add
to their already numerous family. It would be curious,
to know what the wife of the good Baronet might have
said at times about her philo-progenitive husband.

Seven years later, when Randolph was in London, he
sent to Elizabeth extracts from another letter written to
him by Sir Grey, in which Sir Grey informed him that it
had pleased God to deprive him of his dear and excellent
wife.[605]

Many of the letters are distinguished by the richest
strains of sentiment or reflection:

And then, with one of his sudden transitions, he adds:
"And now let me just remind you that `on yesterday' is
not good English. Yesterday is an adverb and is not
governed by any preposition."[606]

In 1828, Elizabeth was residing in the country near
Fredericksburg, and this fact was responsible for these
reminiscences:

And what feet would not have been tempted to tread the
fair meads of literature by such a seductive letter as this:

A fit companion-piece for this last letter is another
which Randolph wrote a few days later to his niece:

In the following letter, his romantic love for his niece
reaches its acme:

The range of the letters, written by Randolph to his
niece, is sufficiently wide to give us a sharpened insight
even into his most intimate personal habits.

In some of the letters, there are religious observations,
which bespeak a deeper undercurrent of religious feeling,
after all, than anything that we find in the letters that he
wrote during his period of religious hysteria; but of these
letters, as well as of his religious manifestations generally,
we shall have something to say a little later on.

Among the letters written by Randolph to his niece and
her husband, was one containing this advice which might
be profitably taken to heart by a Virginian at the present
day.

In another letter, written a few weeks later to John
Randolph Bryan, after giving him a good deal of the old-fashioned
advice about economy and kindred virtues
which has rarely been known to find lodgment anywhere
short of the caverns of the moon, Randolph promised him
some acorns "of an oak from Turkey," and also a few
English acorns and various edible nuts of one kind or
another. This letter also bears testimony to the difficulties,

with which the owner of a country seat in Virginia, in
Randolph's time, far removed from the shops and skilful
mechanics of urban centers, and dependent for its proper
care upon slipshod negro labor, had to contend.

Poor B.! It is well that Randolph had the habit of
amputating proper names.

After the death of Randolph, his niece, between the
injurious reflections made by him in his will, executed in
1821, upon the integrity of her grandfather Tucker, and
the fact that the great bulk of his estate was by his will,
executed in 1832, given to her son, John C. Bryan, was
placed in a very delicate and trying situation; especially
as it was said by one of Randolph's overseers that, in
addition to the wills, executed by Randolph, that had been
brought to light after his death, he had made another, in
which, after bequeathing the sum of $50,000.00 to John
C. Bryan, he had left the residue of his property to his
natural heirs. Just what her feelings were, however, we
are at no loss to know, because free expression was given
to them by her in several letters to her step-grandmother
which are still extant, and go far to confirm the high opinion
which Randolph entertained of her mind and character.
These letters show that not only Randolph's brothers,

but his brother-in-law, Judge Coalter, felt that, whatever
disposition might be made of the will of 1832, that of 1821,
with its aspersions on the honor of St. George Tucker,
should not be allowed to stand. Indeed, in a memorandum
which accompanied one of them, Mrs. Bryan tells
Mrs. Tucker that her father had declared that the will of
1821 contained a slander on his father-in-law that should
not go on record uncontested while his head was warm.[615]
In a letter, subsequent to the date of this memorandum,
Mrs. Bryan also quotes her Uncle Beverley as saying:

If Mrs. Bryan failed at all in living up to all the requirements
of her painful situation, it was, perhaps, in allowing
herself to be pushed, by the necessities of the case into
emphasizing just a little too strongly what she believed to
be the mental irresponsibility of her uncle. In her first
letter to Mrs. St. George Tucker, to whom she was tenderly
attached, she says:

In a postscript to this letter, Mrs. Bryan further says:
"I dread as much as possible the last one (the will of 1832)
and had rather (almost if not quite) give up my darling
to his Maker than have him live to experience such a trial
and temptation. It is dreadful to think of." In the
memorandum, to which we have referred, after recalling
what her father had said about the will, she continues in
these words:

Another letter from Mrs. Bryan to Mrs. Tucker discloses
the fact that the writer never knew until after the
death of her uncle that he had ever assailed the integrity
of her grandfather. She had supposed, she said, that the
coolness, which had sprung up between them, had been
due to Randolph's prejudice against second marriages
and stepmothers.

In this same letter, she declares that she regarded the
charges in the will of 1821 "as the act of a madman," and
she added that she had never thought of Randolph but
as insane on many subjects since she "first had very personal
intercourse with him," which was, she thought, in
1816. In this letter, too, Mrs. Bryan declares that Randolph
always spoke of her father to her "in the most
exalted and respectful terms," and never said one disrespectful
word to her about her grandfather.

Bitter as the enmities of Randolph were, evidence can
readily be brought forward to show that, long before his
end, his feelings towards every one of the individuals who
had been the subjects of them—Jefferson, Madison, Wm.
B. Giles, Samuel Smith, John Quincy Adams, and St.
George Tucker—had undergone a more or less softening
change. Josiah Quincy, Jr., says that his father, Josiah
Quincy, was the only friend that Randolph ever had with
whom he did not quarrel first or last[620] ; and Sawyer tells us
that Randolph died almost friendless.[621] Nothing could
be further from the truth than either statement, though
the first certainly, and the second possibly, was made
without malice. Throughout his life, Randolph was never
without a circle of devoted friends, and, if he did not have
as many at the end of his life as he had had in its earlier
stages, that was simply the penalty which we all pay for
living on after crossing over the ridge which separates the
watershed of the River of Life from the watershed of the
River of Death. When he wrote to his sister that no man
ever poured out his whole soul both in friendship and love
more freely than her poor old brother had done in his early
days, he had no little reason for saying what he did, and
he was simply reaping the just rewards of his constancy as

a friend when he found himself in a position to declare,
some 14 years later: "What an ill-starred wretch have I
been through life—a not uneventful life—and yet how
truly blest have I been in my friends; not one, no not one
has ever betrayed me whom I have admitted into my
sanctum sanctorum."[622] Sawyer says that the tenure of
Randolph's friendship was too frail to render it sincere or
ardent.[623] This statement too is entirely destitute of foundation.
When W. J. Barksdale, who knew Randolph
intimately, was asked in the Randolph will litigation
whether it was not a trait of Randolph's character to be
very variable in his friendships, he answered promptly:
"According to my observation, not at all so."[624] The truth
is that we cannot recall an instance in which Randolph
ever gave his friendship and withdrew it, when sane, for
reasons other than such as would be recognized by any
fair-minded individual as good reasons for withdrawing it.
He did not dull his palm with the entertainment of any
new-fledged comrade, for he was too reserved to confer his
confidence upon anyone hastily; but, friendship once given,
its tie, at any rate until the irresponsibility of his latter
years set in, was for him as indissoluble as the marriage
tie usually was in Virginia.

Banister and Rutledge have already been introduced
to the reader. When Randolph parted with Rutledge in

1796, he did not meet him again for a long stretch of years.
In mentioning some of his friends to Dr. Brockenbrough,
Randolph once said:

Long suspended, as personal intercourse between Randolph
and Rutledge was, Rutledge's image never grew
faint in Randolph's memory. Of this we need no better
proof than the following letter, written after Rutledge's
return to the United States from a foreign excursion:

Other early friends of Randolph were John Thompson
and his brother, William Thompson. John Thompson
was a young man of great promise, and created considerable
stir in the last years of the 18th century by his newspaper
publications on political topics, signed "Gracchus,"
"Cassius," and "Curtius"; and especially by a letter
which he addressed to John Marshall, when he was a Federalist
candidate for Congress in the Richmond District.
To him it was that Randolph referred somewhat grandiosely
in the debate on Gregg's Resolution as "the author
of the immortal letters of Curtius." However, the thread
of Thompson's life was slit too early by sour Atropos for
anyone to say safely just what his future would have been.
At any rate, even before Randolph became a member of
Congress, this friend had the foresight to descry the fame
that awaited him. Writing to William Thompson from
Europe some months before the first election of Randolph
to the House, he said: "Our friend John Randolph offers

for Congress, and will probably be elected. He is a brilliant
and noble young man. He will be an object of
admiration and terror to the enemies of liberty."[628]

William Thompson was hardly less talented than his
brother, but he was one of those clever, wayward, and
convivial young men, so common in the social and political
life of his time, who could never make any steady progress
in the world because liquor was forever tripping up their
heels. In 1798, he and Randolph walked over to the
Virginia Mountains to visit Richard Kidder Meade, one
of Randolph's relations; commencing their journey at
Bizarre, with no impedimenta except a small bundle at the
end of the cane carried by each.[629] Later, they returned to
Bizarre in fine health and spirits, and Thompson went
abroad, wandered over the face of Germany, studied
medicine, and then abandoned it for the study of the law,
and finally returned to Virginia.[630] A dissipated vagabond,
he was rapidly squandering all his opportunities and sinking
into the position of an irreclaimable outcast, when
Randolph extended his hand to him, placed him under
shelter at Bizarre, endeavored by every means in his
power to rehabilitate him in the respect of others and his
own self-respect, and expended upon him a measure of commingled
patience and affection which did no little honor
to the amiable side of his own character. Writing from
Bizarre to Randolph on one occasion, Thompson says:

Was it with Judith that he was in love? The reader
may make his own guess as we proceed. Of the relations
between the two, while Thompson was at Bizarre, we have
no information apart from Thompson and Randolph
themselves, except a letter from Nancy Randolph to Mrs.
Creed Taylor, in which she says that the fact that Thompson
and Judith and "the girls" (probably the daughters
of Mrs. Guilford Dudley) were out taking a walk had
afforded her an opportunity to write to her friend.[632] The
next time that Thompson swims into our ken is in an
indignant and eloquent letter to Randolph in which he
castigates with no little rhetorical vigor the injustice to
which Randolph had been subjected in the matter of the
assault made upon him at the play-house by Capt.
McKnight and Lieut. Reynolds.[633]

While Thompson was at Bizarre, and Randolph was
away from it, engaged with his Congressional duties, a
regular correspondence was kept up between them. The
following letter was written by Randolph from Philadelphia,
when Congress was sitting in that city, in reply to
one which he had received from Thompson:

To this letter Thompson replied in the following terms:

The next letter in the correspondence is this one from
Randolph to Thompson:

The moral atmosphere at Bizarre proved too highly
rarefied for Thompson; for, in the early part of the year
1800, he went off to Petersburg, and, while there became
involved in an amour which he disclosed in a letter to
Randolph upon his return to Bizarre:

And these were the dissuasives that Randolph in his
reply brought to bear upon his friend:

The next letter from Thompson to Randolph was
written a few weeks after this letter from Randoph to him.
It was as follows:

This letter indicates that the febrifuge had not been
without effect, and that Thompson was once more a votary
of virtue. In the meantime, however, of course, the
neighborhood gossips were saying that Thompson was
insensible neither to Judith's personal charms nor to her
admirable house-keeping, and was lingering at Bizarre
with a view to convincing her that a second marriage was
the best solace for the untimely termination of the first.
Thompson's position became so uncomfortable that there
was nothing left for him to do but to make off from
Bizarre on his high stilts, and to write the following letter
to Randolph:

This letter placed Randolph in a very embarrassing situation,
but his sublimated friendship for Thompson was
equal even to its requirement.

But Thompson never came back to Bizarre as a home;
soon lapsed into his old vagabond, dissipated courses, and
could think of nothing better to do than to wander off on
a long pedestrian excursion to Canada.[642] Degraded,
however, as he was, Randolph did not forsake him, even
though he manifested a disposition to keep entirely aloof
from his friend.

It is said that this generous letter had its effect. Be
this as it may, after spending a few months with Creed
Taylor in the vicinity of Bizarre, Thompson repaired to
Richmond and read law in the office of George Hay.
When he had completed his course of study, Randolph
procured a public position for him in the Territory of
Louisiana, and, in the spring of 1804, while he was on his
way to his post, after marrying an estimable wife, sent
him this Godspeed:

But this letter proved only a last sad viaticum for poor
Thompson, who died before his journey was completed,
leaving Randolph, after all his unselfish efforts to set him
on his feet, nothing to do except to endorse on the letter
which we have just reproduced, when in some manner it
had come back into his hands, the brief but all significant
words: "W. T. May 13, 1804. Alas!"[645]

There are several references to Maria Ward in Thompson's
letters to Randolph. This is one:

And this is another:

A very different sort of friend from William Thompson
was Joseph Bryan, who strode about on his own honest,
sturdy legs and scorned stilts of any kind. He was such
a character as Sir Walter Scott would have loved to portray;
bluff, hearty, affectionate, choleric, vehement, and
even violent, but cool in the face of peril, and quick to
make generous atonement for any injury inflicted by his
impetuosity. Nor was his vigorous mind, improved by an
European education and not unimproved by familiarity
with good books, one to be despised. "The character of Mr.
Bryan was every way original," we are told in an obituary
notice of him written by Randolph. "He was himself
and no one else at second hand." A person that might
have served as a model to the statuary, wonderful activity
and strength of body, united to undaunted resolution,
generosity as conspicuous as the robust, unflinching manhood
with which it was associated, fidelity in friendship,
unimpeachable integrity, and a mind of the first order,
stored with various, but desultory, reading, are the endowments
attributed by this notice to Bryan.[647]

After serving for three sessions, as a representative
from Georgia in the House, with Randolph, he resigned
his seat because his father-in-law, a resident of the Eastern
Shore of Maryland, to whom he refers in one of his letters
to Randolph as "ye old Hidalgo on the Sassafras,"[648] had
announced his intention of paying him a visit at his
distant home; which was on a sea island near Savannah.

After the death of Bryan, his wife returned all the letters
written to him by Randolph to the latter. They perished,
we suppose, at the hands of Judge Leigh; but many of the
letters written by Bryan to Randolph are still in existence,
and they are as fresh and animated as if the writer had
penned them but yesterday.

They make manifest, first of all, the fact that Bryan
admired and loved Randolph as intensely as his son John
Randolph Bryan did after him. He died on Sept. 5,
1812, and among his letters to Randolph was one written
just a little over a year before in which he said: "God
bless you and yours, is the prayer of your friend, who
may, in some respects, be compared to Dryden's Hind,
unchanging and unchanged."[649]

Bryan's letters cover quite a wide range of topics.
One of the earliest, written in January, 1800, informed
Randolph, who had recently become a member of Congress,
that he was about to embark soon for England and
wished him to secure certificates of citizenship for himself
and a companion from President Jefferson.[650] In another
letter, written shortly after this one, he gave Randolph
his reasons for leaving the United States.

When this letter was written, Bryan expected to sail
from Savannah about Feb. 20, 1800. Through the
rather grandiose diction of the reply which Randolph
made to it, we can discern the first stages of the melancholia,
of which he was afterwards to be so frequently
the prey.

This letter did not reach Bryan in time to alter his
intention of sailing from Savannah, and, in consequence,
Randolph's first voyage to Europe was deferred until the
year 1822.

When Bryan returned from Europe, it was only, of
course, to fall in love again; this time with Delia Forman,
the daughter of General Forman, of the Eastern Shore of
Maryland, who had become an intimate friend of Randolph,
doubtless through his intercourse with Joseph H.
Nicholson. This was after Bryan, at the solicitation of
Randolph, had been first an unsuccessful, and then a
successful, candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives,[653]
where he gave Randolph his whole-hearted
support, when the latter was hacking the heads of the
Yazoo hydra. Subsequent to his return from Europe,
he was at least once a guest at Bizarre, and it was from
this place that Randolph wrote to him on Sept. 8, 1804,
to this effect:

The next thing that the correspondence between
Bryan and Randolph discloses is the fact that Bryan is
in Chestertown on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and
writing to Randolph with all the unrestrained joy of the
sheer love of living:

In other letters from Bryan to Randolph, there are
references to Randolph's quarrel with the Jefferson
administration, and they indicate that the former had fully
grasped the unhappy effect which it might have upon
Randolph's political future. "You have passed the
Rubicon, and Madison or yourself must down," he wrote
in 1806.[656] He consoled himself, however, with the reflection
that if Randolph fell, he could only cease to be Chairman
of the Committee of Ways and Means. "They can hurt
you no more," he said, "let them rain heaven and earth."
In a subsequent letter, he said very sensibly:

Equally sensible was Bryan's advice about Jefferson:
"I feel rejoiced that you are about to do yourself justice
on Madison and his Myrmidons. If I may advise, leave
the President alone, unless self-defence makes it necessary
to use his name."[658]

Cautious as Bryan's advice usually was to Randolph
in political respects, he entered zealously into the bold

intrigue by which Randolph sought to bowl Madison off
the Presidential alley with Monroe. Referring to Gideon
Granger, Bryan said in another letter:

He did all that he could to secure popular support for
Monroe in Georgia, and he kept Randolph fully apprized
of every moment of the political tides there. After
Randolph's speech on Gregg's resolution, he wrote
derisively of Milledge, a Georgia politician:

He was quick to tell Randolph that the Georgia Legislature
had named one of its new counties after him; a
county which bid fair to become one of the most important
in the State.[661] In another letter, he tells Randolph that
he may do what he pleases with Troup and Smelt, two
active Georgia politicians, "by condescension or brandy,"
although he believed that neither was deficient in understanding
or honesty, and that both Harris and Spalding,
two other active Georgia politicians, adored him.[662]

Encouraged by Randolph's reviving influence during the

second session of the Ninth Congress, Bryan wrote: "I
find that you are getting ahead again; an easy matter to
you, no flattery."[663] In one of his letters, he also mentioned
the fact that Eppes had written to him in "becoming,
nay, high terms" of Randolph; though at the same time
expressing his regret that Randolph's manners to him
should be repulsive; and Bryan added that he wished that
Randolph could be reconciled to him.[664]

The political features of these letters, however, are by
no means the most interesting. One of them deals with
the point of honor involved in the duel as if it were a sort
of colic to be relieved only by a little blood-letting.
Speaking of a wrathful conversation that he had had
with an individual named Wright about the Yazoo Fraud,
Bryan said:

Bryan was not slow, however, to make amends for one
of his rash outbreaks. He was no mere rixator de lana
caprina. Among the Bryan manuscripts is a letter to
some one in which he refers to a fracas into which he had
been drawn at Louisville, Georgia, in these contrite terms:
"You may suppose, Sir, that I am pleased with the issue
of this affair. I solemnly assure you I am not. I am
ashamed of the beginning, ashamed of the consequences
and ashamed of the end."[666] Pleasingly contrasted with
this violent explosion of ill-regulated temper, are the
revelations of Bryan's devoted affection for Randolph,

and his own family, and for plantation life in Georgia,
which we find in his letters to Randolph. "Adieu, dear
misanthrope, I am going to Delia," are the concluding
words of one of them.[667] "God bless you, you have many
friends here, none of which love you more than Joseph
Bryan," are those of another.[668]

One of the desires of Bryan's heart was that Randolph
should pay him another visit:

Indeed, Bryan rarely wrote a letter to Randolph in
which he did not have something to say about Randolph's
godson. A request from Randolph that he might be the
godfather of the child provoked these characteristic
comments:

A few weeks later, he wrote to Randolph:

Another letter pronounces the child truly a cherub.[672]
In still another, Bryan writes: "Citizen Randolph is
making a terrible racket in the room, dressed in a scarlet
frock and check apron."[673] And in yet another, he fears
that Randolph's godson would need a dozen godfathers
to keep him from sinning; for a more mischievous child,
he said, never was born, nor one more obstinate.[674] Later
on, he wrote to Randolph that his protégé was as saucy as
need be, spelt in two syllables and was as active as a cat,
but that the writer's son, Tom, was worth two of him.[675]
This letter was written some months after a preceding
one in which Randolph had been informed that his godson
had as much spirit in embryo as his godfather, and that,
a few minutes before, he had thrown a large piece of
lightwood at his father, believing that the latter was
hurting his mother.[676]

Many are the playful references in Bryan's letters to
the help that Randolph had given him in his courtship
of Delia. After telling him in one letter that, if he would
pay him a visit, he would find lamb, veal, fish, terrapin, and
laughter in abundance, would literally kill poor Spalding
with joy, and make the midriffs of Houston and Bailey,
as well as those of his other friends, quiver with ecstasy,
Bryan said:

In the succeeding year, he refers to Delia again:

At home, all the interests, joys, and sorrows of Bryan
were those of a typical Southern planter. His place of
residence was, of course, very malarious, and Randolph
observed on one occasion that, in his references to the
health of his family and himself, he always spoke of "the
fever" as if he had taken out a patent on it.[679] In one
letter to Randolph, he says that he has nearly 100 bags
of cotton on hand, commonly worth $10,000, after having
disposed of one-third of his crop to advantage; but that,
owing to the embargo, this residue was worth little more
than nothing.[680] In another letter, he says: "I am a
planter and nothing else. All my faculties are employed
by grass, bugs, rains, dry weather, etc."[681] At times, he was
in debt, as most Southern planters, no matter how much
their lands and negroes might increase, were likely to
be. In 1812, he wrote to Randolph that he believed
that he might with safety assert that he was "worth
nearly twice as much property" at that time as he had
possessed when he married[682] ; but, struggle as he might, he
found himself face to face occasionally with the necessity

of selling some of his land and negroes. In one of his
letters, he wrote:

On another occasion, he sums up pithily in his own
case the lot of most Southern planters, even the richest:
"I have little money, but plenty of everything else."[684]

The whinny of the horse, it is hardly necessary to say,
runs through Bryan's letters. In one of them, he tells
Randolph that he is about to purchase an imported
stallion, "a grandson of Rockingham" and that he had
purchased a mare impregnated by Bedford.[685] In another
letter, he notes that Randolph still has "a little love for
the smack of the whip," and then follow some observations
on Hyperion, his "poor friend Roanoke," "old
Jacobin," and Randolph's colt out of his imported mare
by Dragon, which were doubtless very interesting to
Randolph at the time, but have become a little passé with
the lapse of 114 years.[686]

After reading the following letter from Randolph to
Bryan, our regret that almost all of his letters to Bryan
should have been destroyed receives a new edge:

Other intimate friends of Randolph in the earlier stages
of his career were Joseph H. Nicholson; Joseph C. Clay;
James W. Garnett; and Nathaniel Macon (a), all of whom
served in the lower House with him. It was doubtless
through Nicholson that Randolph first became acquainted
with Delia and her father, General Forman. "Bryan
was so kind as to give me his company for some time on
his way to Georgia," Randolph wrote to Nicholson,
before Delia became Bryan's wife. "And a most pleasant
time it was. Do you see his Dulcinea frequently? She
is a charming woman, and deserves such a worthy fellow

as my friend, which is what I would not venture to say to
all the ladies whom I have seen."[688] Subsequent to Delia's
marriage, he wrote to the same friend:

Just what the cause of this breach was is not entirely
clear. Perhaps, it was because General Forman was
averse to having his daughter live at such a great distance
from him. At any rate, we know that he offered to give
Bryan a life estate in his country-seat on the Eastern
Shore of Maryland, called "Rose Hill," if he would become
a resident of Maryland. Perhaps, it was because the
General tied his purse strings into too hard a knot.

Whatever the origin of the breach was, Randolph soon
noted that General Forman kept aloof from him, and the
relations between the General and Bryan were never
cordial. But, like a good daughter, Delia made a persistent

point of being reconciled to her father, and formed
a cordial regard for his second wife, who may, after all,
have supplied the ferment that stirred up the whole
trouble.

Many of the observations made by Randolph in his
letters to Nicholson on the course of political events have
already been laid before the reader. Others are worthy
of mention, especially those in which Randolph communicated
to Nicholson the feelings with which he had
been inspired by the efforts of Samuel Smith and his
brother, Robert Smith, of Maryland, "the Lords Baltimore"
of Maryland politics, as they were called, and their
fellow conspirators, to drive Albert Gallatin out of the
office of Secretary of the Treasury. During the administration
of Madison, the group became known to Randolph,
Macon, and their friends as "the invisibles,"
because of the secret manner in which their machinations
were conducted. Speaking of the Smiths in one of his
letters to Nicholson, Randolph said:

For a time, all intercourse between Gallatin and Randolph
ended, though Randolph never ceased to entertain
a high degree of admiration for Gallatin's ability and
usefulness. (a)

It was in this letter that in his witty way, after expressing
the opinion that the Jefferson Administration would
be as supine under the Chesapeake outrage as it had been
under previous outrages, Randolph said:

Afterwards, the Smith faction, reinforced by Wm. B.
Giles, harassed Gallatin and the administration of Madison
so successfully that Randolph declared in a letter to
Nicholson that Madison was President de jure only.

Three days later, Randolph was reduced to such a
state of despair that the whole world seemed black:

The struggle between Gallatin and the Smith and Giles
cabal finally came to absorb the attention of Randolph
to an extent that he himself could hardly understand.

As usual, Randolph was in the possession of authentic
information. He was always a capital scout, and on one
occasion declared that he had paid more for information
than any public man of his time.[696]

Some of the weightiest comments made by him on
contemporary politics were made in letters to Nicholson.
Take, for example, the following letter in regard to the
foreign relations of the United States in 1808:

Not without interest too is this letter:

"War carried on by Giles and old Smilie and Willis
Alston!" Randolph exclaimed scornfully on another
occasion. "It must be against the pismires, for the
pigmies and cranes, or the frogs and mice, would be too
formidable antagonists."[699]

Nicholson died on Mar. 4, 1817, at the age of forty-nine,
(a) and, at least, until Mar. 20 1812,[700] the intercourse
between him and Randolph was of the most affectionate
description. This was not because Randolph was not as
candid with him as he was with everyone else. On one
occasion he wrote to Nicholson in these frank terms:

As usual, when Randolph loved a friend, he loved
Nicholson's wife and children too, and many are the
affectionate messages to her and them that we find
scattered through his letters to her husband.[702] "Give
my love, yes, my love, to her and them," was one of these
messages.[703] On another occasion, he referred to Mrs.
Nicholson as Nicholson's "charming moiety."[704]

Among the letters from Randolph to Nicholson, are
two mysterious ones, written some three years apart, and
yet both apparently inspired by the same circumstances.
In the first, he wrote to Nicholson in these terms:

In the second of the two letters, Randolph said:

To what event in the life of Randolph do these two
letters refer? Doubtless to the rupture of his engagement
to Maria Ward.

It seems that Mrs. Nicholson, as well as her husband,
was interested in finding a wife for Randolph; but this
was early in his Congressional career.

In the same letter, there is a touch of the conservative
sentiment which was such a marked feature of Randolph's
character:

When Nicholson sent in his resignation to Congress,
Randolph was affected even to tears.[709]

With the differences of opinion, aroused by the War of
1812, the correspondence between the two friends came
to an end (a), and a premonition of this result can be
found in the following letter written by Randolph from
Georgetown on Dec. 20, 1811:

Exactly how the estrangement of Nicholson from
Randolph came about we are unable to say. We only
know that the War of 1812 produced a passing coolness
in the relations of Randolph and Macon as well as those
of Randolph and Nicholson. "I cannot account for the
coldness with which you say he treated you, or his not
staying at your house while in Baltimore," Macon wrote
to Nicholson of Randolph in 1815.[711] On the other hand
we find Randolph complaining in a letter to Dr. Dudley
that Nicholson had not called upon him when he passed
through Baltimore.[712] (a) There is every reason to believe
that no real termination of the friendship was ever effected
and that, if the life of Nicholson had not been cut off when
it was, the intercourse between him and Randolph would
have been as completely renewed as that between Macon
and Randolph was. We need no better confirmation of
this assertion than a letter which Randolph wrote to his
niece after the death of Nicholson:

So far as we know, no letters from Randolph to Joseph
Clay are in existence; but there can be no doubt that
his relations with Clay were as affectionate as his relations
with Nicholson. When he heard that Clay had been
stricken with the illness which resulted in his death, he
wrote to Dr. Dudley, who was then in Philadelphia: "I
shall be on thorns until the arrival of the next mail";[714]
and, a few days later, he wrote to Dr. Dudley: "I leave
you to judge of the state of my feelings when I tell you
that I rode 30 miles through the rain yesterday for the
sake of hearing of Mr. Clay's situation, and found no
letter from you."[715] A few days more, and the afflicting
intelligence reached Randolph, through Dr. Brockenbrough,
that Clay was dead.

In the Diary, the name of Clay is associated with these
words: "Died Monday, July 26, 1811, `Quis desiderio sit
modus tam cari capitis!' "

But with no friend was Randolph on easier or more
familiar terms than with James M. Garnett, of Essex
County, Va., who was a member of the House of Representatives
from 1805 to 1809, and one of his inflexible
adherents. "Mine ancient," Randolph fondly called him
in a letter to Tazewell.[717] Indeed so heartfelt and informal
was the intercourse between Randolph and Garnett that
it is for that very reason perhaps that the numerous letters
from the former to the latter, which are still in existence,
are not more important than they are. In other words,
Randolph brought to his letters to Garnett a spontaneous,
careless flow of feeling which, while very attractive so far
as it goes, does not cover any considerable variety of
topics. (a) Nothing, however, could be more affectionate
than the terms in which the two friends address each
other during the long period of their intimacy.

"One whom I love," is the way in which Randolph
described Garnett in a letter to Garnett himself.[719]

More like the love of a woman for a man or a woman,
than of a man for a man was that which Randolph and
Nathaniel Macon bore for each other. It began during
the Sixth Congress, and never ended so long as they lived.

Indeed, as Randolph's ancestors believed that the warrior
still retained his favorite bow in the happy hunting
grounds beyond the grave, so it costs us almost a struggle
to realize that the life-long communion of spirit and conviction
which marked the lives of these two men could be
dissolved even by death: "Jonathan did not love David
more than I have Randolph," Macon wrote to Nicholson
during the brief period when he thought it possible that
he might lose his friend and, when we remember that envy
and jealousy are among the most general of all human
passions, we cannot but find something uncommonly
sweet and winning in the unfailing sympathy and admiration
with which Macon drank in all of Randolph's great
oratorical displays. One of Randolph's speeches on the
Yazoo question he pronounced the most eloquent speech
ever made within the walls of the House.[720] In their early
lives, they were both devotees of the Arcadian Republicanism
which the first election of Jefferson to the Presidency
was expected to establish. Later, after the political
divergences, created by the War of 1812, had come to an
end, they were again brought into harmonious fellowship
by the State-Rights cause. The understanding between
them became as perfect as it had ever been, and finally,
when from advancing years and physical infirmity they
were compelled to hug their fireside at Washington more
closely than they had done in the past, they grew almost
like a husband and wife, who have shared the same
thoughts and feelings so long that, from the ties of habit,
if nothing else, they are indispensable to each other. "I
can't read," Randolph wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough in
1827, "and my old friend's cough is excited by talking;
so we sit and look at the fire together, and once in half an
hour some remark is made by one or the other."[721] About
a year later, he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough: "I go nowhere,
and see nobody but Mr. Macon. He is so deaf
that he picks up none of the floating small trash in the
Senate, and I am hard put to it to make him hear my
hoarse whispers."[722] It was during the same year that
Randolph wrote to his niece of Macon: "He is as pure
and upright a man as lives and the wisest, take him for
all in all, that I ever knew. During a friendship of 30
years, he has steadily gained upon my regard."[723] (a)

In his will, executed in 1832, Randolph was still sure
enough of himself, after making various specific bequests
to Macon, to declare that he was "the best, purest and
wisest man" that he had ever known; and this declaration
was but the last repetition of what he had over and over
again said during the long years of their intercourse.[724]
That "warm-hearted and sound-headed" man, is his
description of Macon on one occasion.

Subsequently, after Randolph had left Congress forever,
he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough that he had just received
two letters from Macon, "written evidently in fine spirits."
"The good old man," he said, "is amusing himself with
fox-hunting, but is by no means an inattentive or indifferent
observer of public affairs."[726] (a)

In another letter, the fact is brought to our attention
that Macon, when fox-hunting, experienced some annoyance
from the fact that his hounds had a way of deserting
the sport and running off after wild turkeys. Despite age
and domestic troubles, of which he had his full share, he
hunted both foxes and deer until the last.[727]

Of the domestic troubles, we have an inkling in a shrewd
observation of his prompted by these troubles which
Randolph was in the habit of quoting. Moved by the
burdens which had been imposed upon him by grandchildren,
who should have been taken care of by their
own father, he called the attention of Randolph to the
fact that men are the only grandfathers in the whole
range of the animal creation who concern themselves
about their grandchildren.

It is an appropriate thing that the names of these two
friends should have been blended in the name of
"Randolph-Macon College"; even though it has been
hinted that the dual name of the institution owed its
origin to a desire to propitiate the pecuniary favor of
two of the most affluent planters in the Valley of the
Roanoke.

A very good summary of the character of Macon is to
be found in a letter written to Hugh Blair Grigsby by
Mark Alexander, of Mecklenburg County, who served in
Congress with both Randolph and him.

Next to the effort of the philosopher Locke to establish
an order of Caciques in South Carolina, we know few
things of the sort more amusing than the coat of arms
which Randolph designed for Macon when he was in
London in 1830, and his comments on it in a letter to
Macon:

A close friend of both Randolph and Garnett was
Richard Stanford, of North Carolina, who was a member
of the House from 1797 to 1816. "Honest Dick," Randolph
sometimes called him, and he was as sensible as he
was honest, though apparently somewhat eccentric.

During Stanford's last illness he was faithfully nursed
by Randolph's servant Jupiter, until he succumbed to his
exhausting vigils, and became ill himself. During the
last night of his friend's existence, Randolph sat up with
him until he died.[731] Two weeks after Stanford's death,
saddened by it and the recent deaths or estrangement of
other persons, who had been dear to him, Randolph wrote
to Garnett in these terms: "Indeed, for the last fortnight
(it is exactly that length of time since his melancholy and
untimely end) I have been in a state of depression that
disables me from thinking of anything except a sense of
unhappiness which hangs heavy about my heart."[732]
Stanford was one of the friends who clung to Randolph
through all his political vicissitudes, without the slightest
mutation of loyalty. "In him," Randolph wrote to Dr.
George Logan, "I lost the best political friend that I had
left on the floor of Congress."[733] (a)

And Dr. George Logan himself, who served in the
Senate from 1801 to 1807, was also one of Randolph's
friends. He was a grandson of James Logan, the friend
of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin, and resided at
Stenton, the home of his ancestor near Philadelphia.
When Randolph was in Philadelphia, in the winter of
1814-1815, he more than once enjoyed the hospitality of
this historic home, and to its master and mistress he was
truly attached. Once, when sending Ryland Randolph
a letter of introduction to Dr. Logan, he said: "You will
find him and his lady two of the most amiable and well

informed people in the world. An excursion to Stenton
will be an agreeable relaxation, as the spring advances."[734]

And now that we have been deflected from Washington
to Stenton, we might add that Randolph had another
warm friend in Pennsylvania in the person of David
Parish, one of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens
of Philadelphia. "He is a gentleman of great worth and
intelligence," is the judgment that he passed upon him
in one of his letters to Dr. Dudley.[735] Both when Randolph
stopped over in Philadelphia on his way to Morrisania
in 1814 and when he stopped over there on his return to
Virginia, he was the recipient of much hospitable kindness
at the hands of conspicuous Philadelphians; such as
Parish, Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, a native of Virginia,
and a Philadelphia physician of high repute; T. W.
Francis, Dr. Logan and others. Parish had a home at
Ogdensburg on the St. Lawrence as well as in Philadelphia,
and, on one occasion, Randolph wrote to him playfully:
"Save me an island in the St. Lawrence of about 300 acres.
I mean actually to take a farm there and become one of
your subjects."[736] In the same letter, he told Parish that
he would like to know whether his neighbor, Charles
Kahn, had received a few twists of chewing tobacco which
he had sent him for a Mr. Yard, and that he hoped that
Parish himself had received his "Virginian Champagne"—
whatever that was; brandy or whiskey, we shrewdly
suspect.

It was when Randolph was in Philadelphia in the winter
of 1814-1815 that he had a sharp encounter with the
Abbé Correa, the Portugese Minister to the United States,
who had been so incautious at dinner as to use language
which Randolph construed into a reflection upon Virginia.
On this occasion Randolph is supposed to have been rather

worsted,[737] with the result that, afterwards, when he called
at the house in Washington of Walsh, the newspaper
editor, with whom Correa lived, his penetrating voice
was heard in the parlor by Mrs. Walsh saying to the
servant at the door, "Mind that card is for Mr. Walsh.
I do not call on Ministers who board out."[738]

It was when Randolph was a guest of David Parish in
1815 that George Ticknor met him for the first time, and
received the impressions, as much the result of previous
prejudice as of actual knowledge, which have come down
to us in these words:

Other Northern men, with whom Randolph was connected
by a tie of genuine friendship were John Langdon,
of New Hampshire, Josiah Quincy, and Rufus King.

Langdon was President of Marache's Club, where the
members of Randolph's mess boarded, when Congress
was still sitting in Philadelphia; and for him Randolph
cherished a high degree of respect and affection.

Some 15 months or so later, he wrote to Nicholson:

Nothing but the old grating conflict of sectional aims
and sympathies kept Randolph and Quincy from being
the fastest of friends. The correspondence between them
and the feelings, which were entertained about Randolph
by Quincy's sons, Edmund and Josiah, make it clear that
the two men had a natural affinity for each other. The
manner, in which they became friends, has been narrated
by Quincy in these words:

Edmund Quincy tells us that it would be difficult to
imagine two men more dissimilar in character and opinions
than Randolph and Quincy were, and that yet the regard
which they entertained for each other was a very real one.[743]

In the correspondence between them, it is clear enough
that Randolph, though a slave-holder and an anti-Federalist,
was disposed to bestow upon Quincy a measure of
cordial friendship which the latter, with his sectional and
partisan prejudices, was unable altogether to reciprocate.
On one occasion, Mrs. Quincy asked her husband how it
had happened that Randolph had referred, in a highly
complimentary manner, to the speeches delivered by
Harmanus Bleecker and James Emott, of New York, both
Federalists, in a debate in the House, and yet had made
no mention of his speech in the same debate. Quincy's
reply betrays some little amour propre.

Randolph and he, Quincy further said, however, were
upon friendly and confidential terms, as far as it was
possible to be so with a man so wayward and versatile

in his friendships and enmities as he had shown himself.
Nor did Quincy fail to say that he had seen no evidence
of any disposition on the part of Randolph not to do
justice to him. If there was any, he was inclined to think
that it was due to the fact that, next to the name of
Timothy Pickering, his name was the most obnoxious to
the Southern States. There was really no reason why
this letter should have been colored by pique, for, in a
second letter to his wife, Quincy, in touching upon the
idea which she had formed that Randolph was inclined
to be unjust to him, stated that he had said to Randolph
the day before: "Randolph, have you any news from
Virginia?"; that Randolph had replied: "Yes!" very
significantly, and had put into his hands a letter from a
Mr. Leigh, a gentleman of distinction there, who, in
acknowledging the receipt of a speech by Quincy from
Randolph, had expressed himself upon it in a style very
far too flattering for him to repeat; and that Randolph
had evidently seemed gratified, although he did not say
a word except, "That man's opinion is worth something,
Quincy."[745]

But it was the kind attentions paid by Quincy to
Tudor, when Tudor was at Cambridge, that implanted in
Randolph's breast a sentiment of lasting friendship for
him. Not only did Quincy take Tudor on from Washington
to Cambridge, when the young man became a
matriculate of that institution, but he secured for him the
privilege of living in the home, and under the immediate
eye, of President Kirkland.[746] He even undertook to keep
up an oversight of Tudor's pecuniary outlays—a task
which proved by no means a sinecure; for while the boy
was not irregular in his habits, and soon acquired the
reputation of being a brilliant student, he was somewhat
profuser in his expenditures, especially in the gratification

of what Joseph Bryan called the love for the
smack of the whip, than his circumstances really warranted.[747]

Quincy has been the means of preserving for us some
of the phrases in which Randolph had such a happy way
of hitting off his ideas, however intemperate. Freedom
of commerce and navigation was never advocated in
more sweeping terms than it was by Randolph, if what
Jacob Lewis told Quincy at a dinner party in New York
about a conversation that had taken place between Randolph
and one of the Departmental Heads at Washington
is to be believed:

Our thanks are also due to Quincy for bringing to our
knowledge what was thought of Randolph by Sir Augustus
Foster, the British Minister at Washington at the beginning
of the War of 1812.

When Quincy read these words, he doubtless did not
forget those other words which Randolph had written to
him a year or so after Sir Augustus had shaken the dust
of Transatlantidis from his feet, and gone back to England:
"The curse of slavery, however,—an evil daily
magnifying, great as it already is—embitters many a
moment of the Virginian landholder who is not duller
than the clod beneath his feet."[750]

And, if he had ever heard what Randolph had said of
Sir Augustus in a letter to Rufus King, we may be sure
that he had not forgotten that. "It seems to me," said
Randolph, "that the various administrations of the British
Government fell into the error of supposing that narrow
instructions would cure the defect of narrow understandings
when they sent us such men as Merry and Erskine
and Foster, who, although a good fellow, was no Solomon,
you know."[751]

In the correspondence between Sir Augustus and Quincy
we also find a very extraordinary tribute to the singular
influence exerted in the House by Randolph's peculiar
methods of parliamentary warfare, which would have
still more interest for us, if it had been accompanied by
just a little fuller recognition of the fact that to Quincy,
at any rate, Randolph's relations were always those of
heartfelt and sincere respect, and, so far as the mutual
repulsions of their several environments would permit,
of affection:

In addition to the letters written by Randolph to
Quincy on political topics, from which we have made free
extracts in a preceding chapter, there are two others of a
different character, which we do not feel that we can pass
over or even abridge, except slightly. The second of the
two letters is the last that Quincy ever received from
Randolph, and we agree with Edmund Quincy in thinking
that its liveliness, wit and pathos make it a fit conclusion
of their correspondence:

Strange as the fact may seem, Randolph not only
acquired a friendly footing with Quincy, but even with
such a rabid Federalist as Timothy Pickering. In one of
his letters to his wife, written about the time of the Compensation
Bill, Pickering said: "Mr. Randolph is the
most uncommon man I ever knew. He has learning,
sagacity, and a vivid imagination, with an extraordinary
memory." Notwithstanding his discursiveness, he was

listened to with attention, Pickering further said, "because
there are some profound thoughts, some biting satire,
and some strokes of humor throughout his discourses."[755]
So truly cordial did the intercourse between Pickering
and Randolph become that Pickering presented Randolph
with a proof impression of his profile drawn by Saint
Mémin, and a copy of an engraving of his portrait which
had just been taken in New York by Waldo, and received
in turn from Randolph the last copy that he had of an
engraving which had been taken of his miniature
painted by Wood in 1809.[756] Far more valuable, doubtless,
to Pickering than his gift was the tribute paid to
him by Randolph in a speech delivered in the House on
Jan. 30, 1817:

It is not easy to speak of Quincy in connection with
Randolph without also speaking of Harmanus Bleecker,
who served in the House from 1811 to 1813, and was
appointed by Van Buren in 1839 Chargé d'Affaires at the
Hague, where, when he was first presented at Court, his
Dutch, derived from the classic models of Dutch Literature,
won this remarkable compliment from the King of
Holland: "Sir, you speak better Dutch than we do in
Holland."[758] After Bleecker and Quincy were thrown
together in the House, they became intimate friends, and
to such a degree was the good opinion, in which Bleecker
was held by Quincy, shared by Randolph that, on one
occasion, the latter wrote to Quincy: "Bleecker is, indeed,
all that you say of him and more."[759] Many letters passed
between Randolph and Bleecker, a considerable number
of which we have reason to believe are still in existence,
but, after the most diligent inquiry, we have been unable
to obtain access to them. A portrait of Randolph, presented
by Bleecker to the State of Virginia, is one of the
most attractive of all the portraits that were ever taken
of him.

And, before leaving the State of New York, we should
also mention the fact that for few men in public life did
Randolph cherish a profounder respect, or a more cordial
regard, than he did for Rufus King. He spent the evening
with King at Jamaica, on Long Island, after the famous
race between Eclipse and Henry, and his favorable opinion
of him was so much strengthened by this incident that,
in referring to the debates on the Missouri Compromise,
in which King had won such conspicuous distinction, he

said: "Ah, sir! only for that unfortunate vote on the
Missouri Question, he would be our man for the Presidency.
He is, Sir, a genuine English gentleman of the
old school, just the right man for these degenerate times;
but, alas! it cannot be."[760] In Washington, King and
Randolph were often the recipients of social civilities at
each other's hands; and, at Randolph's request, King
seems to have had his portrait painted by Wood for Randolph.
The letter, written by Randolph to King on this
subject, is a good example of the profound deference with
which King, who was a much older man than Randolph,
was always treated by him, both because of the difference
in their ages and because of the admiration which Randolph
entertained for his character and abilities:

In another letter, Randolph asked King to order a lot
of apple, peach, pear, plum, cherry, nectarine and apricot
trees for him from two nurserymen in King's neighborhood,
named Prince; and also some rare evergreens. This

is all commonplace enough, but when was such a simple
request ever more gracefully introduced:

The fruit trees produced some palatable fruit for us too
in the form of another letter from Randolph to King, in
which they are mentioned:

Of Randolph's relations to his kinsman, Chief Justice
Marshall, with whose portrait he wished the portrait of
King to be mated, we have already said nearly all that
need be said. The fall of the mighty welding hammer,
that the Chief Justice brought down from time to time so
sagaciously and fearlessly upon the loose joints of the
National Government, and his provincial vernacular
occasionally jarred for a moment upon Randolph's nerves,
but, throughout his life, on the whole, even his most wayward
and intolerant impulses were held completely captive
by the powerful mind, the kind heart, and the native
simplicity of Marshall; and it may well be regretted that,
Marshall left behind him, we believe, no oral or written
word lastingly to authenticate the cordial regard for Randolph
which his conduct never failed to exhibit whenever
there was any reason for its manifestation. In one of
Randolph's letters to Dr. Brockenbrough, the names of
John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton are coupled in
such a way as to afford another proof of the fact that
Randolph gave to ability its just due, no matter how
partisan the medium through which he had to examine it.

In Delaware, Randolph had a warm friend in Cæsar A.
Rodney, who was a member of Congress from 1803 to
1805, and was appointed by Jefferson to the office of
Attorney General. "That good fellow Rodney," is the
manner in which he describes him in one of his letters,
after they had served together as managers in the Chase
impeachment case.

In Maryland, he had several intimates besides Joseph
H. Nicholson. One of his friends in that State was Daniel
Murray, of whom he said on one occasion, when chiding
Francis Scott Key for not sending him "a dish of chitchat:"
"There's that fine fellow D. M—y, whom you
have not once named."[765]

Another Maryland friend was Charles Sterrett Ridgeley,
who owned a country place, named Oaklands, near Elkridge
Landing, in Howard County, Maryland, to which

Randolph was in the habit of frequently resorting for the
purpose of escaping from the heavy tax imposed upon his
delicate frame by his arduous duties at Washington, and
of enjoying the society of the group composed of Baltimore
and other friends, which Ridgeley had drawn around him:
"That gallant-spirited man, Sterrett Ridgeley," were the
terms in which Randolph spoke of this friend in a letter to
Nicholson, written just after the threatened duel between
Randolph and Eppes had sputtered out, with the usual
effort on each side to refer the first suggestion of the
reconciliation to the other.[766] In one letter to Dr. Dudley,
Randolph mentions that Ridgeley had arrived the night
before at Georgetown, to Randolph's "great joy."[767] In
another, he tells Dr. Dudley that he had recently left
"the hospitable mansion" of his friend, Charles Sterrett
Ridgeley.[768] In Randolph's letters to Francis Scott Key
there are numerous references to Ridgeley. In one,
written during the War of 1812, Randolph says:

Subsequently, when Ridgeley was a candidate for a seat
in the Maryland Legislature, Randolph doubted his fitness
for it; on alleged grounds, however, that were as creditable
to him as they were discreditable to the public life of which
he was a part. He was sorry, Randolph told Key, to see
their "noble-spirited friend, Sterrett Ridgeley" engaged
in politics.

All this becomes decidedly plainer when, a little later
on, Randolph, contrasting mentally the universal suffrage
of Maryland with the freehold suffrage of Virginia, and,
going back to his Milton for a phrase, which is even more
significant in our time than it was in Milton's or Randolph's,
says: "Electioneering is upon no very pleasant
footing anywhere, but with you, when the `base proletarian
rout' are admitted to vote, it must be peculiarly irksome
and repugnant to the feelings of a gentleman."[771]

A devoted friendship existed between Francis Scott Key
of Maryland, and Randolph. On Randolph's side, it
included Mrs. Key and her children, to whom he was in
the habit of frequently sending affectionate messages.
Indeed, if any one of Randolph's friends was married, his
friendship for him was almost invariably bestowed upon
all the members of his family also. The interest, however,
that attaches to the correspondence between Randolph
and Key is mainly religious, and a most effective tract
would be a little pamphlet containing the spiritual anxieties,
misgivings and doubts which Randolph poured into
the ears of Key, and the soothing and consoling assurances
with which that talented, pure-minded and upright man,
to whom the invisible universe was quite as real as the
visible, sought to bring peace to the agitated mind of his
friend. Better preaching it would be hard to find anywhere
than is to be found in one or two of Key's letters
to Randolph; preaching that is all the more effective because
of its lack of professional dogmatism and of its
likeness merely to the quiet communings of the human

soul with itself. If anything could have been sufficient
to make religion a thing of practical helpfulness, solace
and joy to Randolph, instead of an affrighting nightmare,
it might well have been the influence of Key. As early
as Feb. 8, 1811, he wrote to Nicholson that he knew no
man "more intrinsically estimable than Frank Key."[772]
Ten years later, after he had been almost as intimate
with Key as a brother, he paid this striking tribute to him
in a letter to Dr. Brockenbrough; a tribute all the more
striking because the sunshine with which it irradiated
Key is painfully, though poetically, contrasted with the
shadows which encompassed himself:

Of Edward Lloyd, the brother-in-law of Joseph H.
Nicholson and Francis Scott Key, Randolph wrote
laconically to Nicholson: "I love the man."[774]

Afterwards, in one of his letters to Randolph, Key

wrote that Lloyd had told Mrs. Key that Randolph never
wrote to him.[775] And this was Randolph's reply, which,
like many other letters, contained more between its lines
than in them:

In one of his letters to Nicholson, Randolph recommends
to his favor a Mr. Sargeant, of Petersburg, Va. He tells
Nicholson that he is an old friend of his, that he is one of
the most agreeable and amiable men that he has ever
known, and is a "travelled gentleman;" indeed, what we
would now term a "globe trotter."[777]

Closely associated with James M. Garnett in the mind
and life of Randolph, was the celebrated John Taylor of
Caroline, whose residence—Hazelwood—was not very
far from Elmwood—Garnett's residence—and was close
to one of the land routes by which Randolph reached
Washington from Roanoke. For the character of Taylor,
as a statesman, he entertained a high degree of respect;
notwithstanding the crabbed and artificial diction which
make his productions anything but easy reading. Especially
was Randolph attracted to Taylor by the fact that
he was one of the nicest and sternest sticklers for the Virginia

conception of State Sovereignty. He was the author,
besides, under the nom-de-plume of "Arator," of a series
of agricultural essays, which Randolph, as he wrote
Quincy, regarded as sensible, though whimsical. Nor
was Taylor a mere theoretical farmer; as farmers who
desert the plow for the pen are so likely to be; for, in one
of his letters to Garnett, Randolph, while quite complacent
about the condition of Roanoke, frankly confesses that it
is in no such state of improvement as Hazelwood. With
all his respect for Taylor, the latter's treatise on banking
was too much for his patience:

It was Taylor who wrote on one occasion to Creed
Taylor: "Bank stock cannot be incarcerated within geographical
bounds; it flies, like the vulture, towards the
place where its prey is to be found."[779]

At Hazelwood, after his retirement from Congress,
with Randolph occasionally passing near his home, when
journeying to or from Washington, Taylor was not unlike
an old cavalry horse turned out to grass, when he sees a
squadron of horse coming down the road on the other side
of the pasture fence. Once, when reproached by Taylor
for failing to stop at Hazelwood, Randolph wrote to him

that he "had been too much pleased with his reception
at his house ever to pass it willingly."[780] (a)

Three intimate friends of Randolph in the later stages
of his Congressional career were Thomas H. Benton, of
Missouri, James Hamilton, of South Carolina, and Mark
Alexander, of Mecklenburg County, who was a member of
the House from 1819 to 1833. Of the forms that the
friendship between Randolph and Benton assumed, we
have already said enough. After the Randolph-Clay duel,
Randolph, as a token of his appreciation of the good feeling
which Benton had exhibited in connection with it, gave
him a gold seal, which he had had made for him in London,
duly accompanied by a proper crest and family pedigree.
Benton is said to have laughed the crest and pedigree
aside, but the seal he wore until the day of his death.[781]

The devise, which Randolph made to him in his codicil
executed in 1826 Benton promptly and positively refused
to accept on the ground that he did not feel that he was
entitled to such a benefaction at the expense of Randolph's
heirs. To few persons is the reputation of Randolph more
deeply indebted than to this friend, who knew him well,
and almost invariably presents him to the reader in a
highly amiable light.

The friendship between Randolph and Hamilton really
dated back to one which existed between their mothers
as early as the American Revolution.[782] "He is a noble
fellow," Randolph wrote of Hamilton to Andrew Jackson,
but this was about a year before Jackson issued his Proclamation
against Hamilton and the other South Carolina
nullifiers.[783]

During the second winter that Mark Alexander, whom
Randolph was in the habit of calling familiarly Mark

Antony, spent at Washington, he was a member of the
mess which consisted of Randolph, Macon, Benton,
Edwards, Cobb, Tatnall and himself. Edwards, Cobb
and Tatnall were all three warm friends of Randolph, too.
Alexander's room was directly opposite to Randolph's and
a highly confidential and intimate association sprang up
between them. Alexander tells us that he often acted as
Randolph's amanuensis, and frequently "resorted to his
room, day and night, to hear his conversational powers,
replete with wisdom and instruction." "I am proud to
say," Alexander adds in this interesting letter, "I had
his confidence to the day of his death." In the same
letter, Alexander says of Benton: "Benton who roomed
near him (Randolph) was always reserved, with no intimate
association or friendship, but always master of the
subject he discussed, and whose lamp never went out at
night until one or two o'clock."[784]

Quite a different kind of a friend was Stephen H.
Decatur. Yet a tie of genuine friendship seems to have
existed between him and Randolph. Indeed, it was
doubtless partly because of the shock inflicted on him by
the death of Decatur in his duel with Commodore Barron
that Randolph's mind gave way in the year 1820. His
conduct at Decatur's funeral is thus depicted by John
Quincy Adams in his Memoirs: "John Randolph was there,
first walking, then backing his horse, then calling for his
phaeton, and lastly crowding up to the vault, as the coffin
was removed into it from the hearse—tricksy humors to
make himself conspicuous."[785] A motion made by Randolph
in the House that it should adjourn, so that its
members could attend Decatur's funeral—a motion which
also provided that the members of the House should wear
crape in honor of Decatur's memory—was rejected by the
House; and was again rejected when repeated on the

succeeding day; and the same fate befell even a bare
motion by Randolph looking to adjournment simply.[786]
The House was too much horrified by the details of the
tragic duel to give its approval to any motions of the sort.

In the will, which he executed in 1832, Randolph made
the following bequests to his friend John Wickham:

This was the effusion of a mind not too much impaired
to remember the indulgence that Wickham had both
generously and wisely accorded to Randolph in connection
with the British debt, which had lowered over his early
life, and of a heart that was quite as slow to ignore a benefit
as it was quick to resent a slight or an indignity.

The home of John Wickham was at Hickory Hill, near
Richmond, and here Randolph was often the guest of a
host whose social charm was not less conspicuous than his
rare abilities and accomplishments. It was of Wickham
that William Wirt wrote these words:

As usual, Wirt paints with too flaring a brush, but, in
this instance, he little exceeded the sober truth. One
specimen of Wickham's wit was too good not to stick in
Randolph's memory, and to be reported by him to Andrew
Jackson. Speaking of an individual, who had undertaken
to discharge the duties of the Post-office at Richmond,
Wickham said that nobody could blame him for the
notorious irregularities of his office, because he was never
there.[789]

To his friend, Francis W. Gilmer, who was much his
junior, Randolph's manner was quite different from what
it was to his older friends. In other words, it was the sort
of manner that is inspired, to use Randolph's own phrase
by "the freshness and unhackneyed youth" when impelled
by the ingenious enthusiasm of its nature to pay its
homage to conspicuous distinction or worth.

In addition to the sketch, which he wrote of Randolph
as an orator, Gilmer also harbored the idea of some day
writing a biography of him, a thing that he was capitally
qualified, with his rare scholarly attainments, sincerity,
and balance of character, to do. The fact is mentioned
in a letter which was written by Randolph to Dr. Brockenbrough
after Gilmer's death:

In an earlier letter to Dr. Brockenbrough, when it was
becoming manifest that Gilmer was soon to be numbered
among those that doubly die, in that they die so young,
Randolph said:

Tenderer still was the language which Randolph subsequently
addressed to Gilmer himself:

Some of Gilmer's observations were entered in the Diary
by Randolph. Among them is this passage in relation to
the Scotch Highlands from a letter written by him to
Elizabeth T. Coalter: "God forgive him that tempted

me to go a-laking it—where bald, bleak mountains distil
perpetual ink into the little holes below that they call
lakes."

Love of literature was among the principal ties that
bound Randolph and Gilmer to each other. In one of
his letters to Gilmer, Randolph tells him that he had
found the shades of Roanoke so peaceful and so cool that
it had been with difficulty that he could tear himself away
from them at the expiration of near a month, but that
nevertheless the monotony of the life at Roanoke and
the utter oblivion into which he had fallen among the few
that had once called themselves his friends, had induced
a wish on his part to come down to the nether regions, and
see what was passing in Pandemonium [i. e. Petersburg.]
No sooner, however, he went on to say, was his head out
of the shell than he had been assailed and stunned with
the clamor of the "children of mammon wiser in their
generation than the children of light." Then, after
mentioning the business matter hinted at in this academic
fashion, he tells Gilmer that he could not stand indifferent
to the good opinion or kind feelings of any person whose
principles he respected; especially if to that character
was united a congenial love of literature.[793] In the same
letter, he told Gilmer that he held their nocturnal tête-atêtes
in cherished recollection.

Randolph's letters to Gilmer are among his best. In
one, he tells him that, when he strikes his tent and commences
Arab, he must head his course towards the camp
of a brother Ishmaelite:

In still another letter, Randolph, with the perfect
frankness which belonged to his character, told Gilmer
that he had such a sincere desire that he should never at
least retrograde in anything, that he must beg him to
return to his former well-defined compact and neat characters
in exchange for the loose and straggling hand and
wide intervals of the letter then before Randolph.[795]
Another letter to Gilmer contains this dreary description
of Washington society:

However, it is only fair to Randolph to say that, in
concluding this querulous letter, he terms it a "triste-ennuyeuse
epistle."

Every now and then, in his letters to Gilmer, Randolph
puts off into the sea of politics:

In another letter, Randolph takes one of his flings at
Henry Clay: "Among innumerable instances of false
everything, he spoke of duties which England had lain.
This beats `crimes malum in se and crimes malum prohibitum,'
and rivals `have they not fled (correcting himself),
have they not flew to arms'?"[798] (a) Here and there in
the letters to Gilmer are allusions to the foreign professors
whom Jefferson brought over to his newly established
University of Virginia with the aid of Gilmer.

"Yours whate'er betide to the end of the chapter of
life," appear to have been the last words that Randolph
ever wrote to Gilmer; whose casement, to use the image
of Tennyson, was slowly growing a glimmering square
when he received them. Gilmer died on Feb. 25, 1826,
in his 36th year, and of no young Virginian in civil life,
dying so early, have his contemporaries ever been able to
say more truthfully in the words of Beaumont and Fletcher's
Lover's Progress,

But Gilmer had been so long the victim of physical
suffering that death must have signified to him not so
much blasted ambition as surcease of suffering. "Pray,
stranger," reads the epitaph over his grave at Pen Park,
in Albemarle County, Virginia, written by himself, "allow
one who never had peace while he lived, the sad immunities
of the Grave, Silence and Repose."

Two friends to whom Randolph was drawn by their
common passion for horse-flesh were Nathan Loughborough,
of Grassland, near Washington, and Wm. R.
Johnson, of Oakland, near Petersburg. At one time,
Loughborough conceived the idea of publishing a sort of
compilation made up of Randolph's table talk and excerpts

from his speeches; but, beyond a few rough, but very
valuable memoranda, the purpose was never carried into
execution; a fact deeply to be regretted, as Loughborough
seems to have been well qualified for the task. It was
certainly not from want of Boswellian enthusiasm that it
was never completed, for, in the Randolph will litigation,
Loughborough was unwilling to admit that there was any
flaw at any time, mental or otherwise, in the perfect crystal
which he evidently conceived Randolph to be. The fact
is all the more surprising because the letters written by
Randolph in the latter part of his life to Loughborough,
in which he betrayed his notion that ass' milk was for
him the very elixir of life, plainly indicate a disordered
intellect. Some of the letters from Randolph to Loughborough
are little better than wormwood. Writing to
the latter from London about the attacks being made on
him in connection with the Russian Mission, he said:

Worse still was this later exacerbation:

Nor is there much choice between this and the distempered
picture of Virginia which he painted in a letter
to Loughborough in the year 1828:

At Oakland, the home of W. R. Johnson, Randolph
was quite frequently a guest, and, with the passion that

both had for horses, there was much to cement the friendship
which existed between them. No letter from Johnson
to Randolph, so far as we are aware, is in existence,
and the references to him in Randolph's general correspondence
are by no means abundant. Curiously enough,
it is to a dinner to which he was invited by "the celebrated
Mr. Gulley of pugilistic fame," when he was in England
in 1830, that we must go to ascertain the impression made
upon his mind by Johnson's presence. Describing Gulley
in a letter written to Macon from London, he says:

During the last 12 months of his life, however, Randolph
had a sporting grudge of some sort against Johnson,
for in one of his letters to Loughborough he declined an
offer from a Dr. Duvall to train his horses which had been
communicated to him by Loughborough, and gave vent
to his impatience in these hasty words:

One of the closest friends that Randolph had in Richmond
was Benjamin Watkins Leigh. After the frightful
holocaust at the Richmond Theatre in the latter part of
1811, which brought consternation and agonizing grief to
almost every prominent family in Richmond, Randolph
wrote to James M. Garnett:

A fellow-planter to whom Randolph was truly attached,
was Edmund Irby, of Nottoway County, Va. Irby had
an interest in a plantation on the Banister River, in
Halifax County, and, on his journeys to or from this plantation,
he occasionally stopped over at Roanoke. Randolph
was equally familiar with Irby's home in Nottoway
County, and, in one of his letters to Garnett, he spoke of
it as being as healthy as any in the middle country. The
Nottoway, he said, had been straightened and widened,
and its lowgrounds perfectly drained for many miles; and
Irby had erected a dyke along it to protect his lowlands

against floods.[806] In another letter to Garnett, he gave
him this description of Irby:

A minor but significant proof of the esteem and affection,
in which Irby was held by Randolph, is to be found
in the fact that, after Irby's death, Randolph entered in
the Diary the dates on which he was born and died, and
also the birth dates of his widow and six children.

By his codicil, executed in 1826, he also bequeathed to
Irby the next choice after that of his friend, William J.
Barksdale, of any of his mares and fillies and his double-barrel
gun.[808]

During the latter part of Randolph's life, a very cordial
intimacy existed between him and William J. Barksdale,
who resided at Clay Hill, in Amelia County, Va., and
whose wife was a daughter of Randolph's friend, Mrs.
Tabb, as was the wife of his friend, Dr. Bathurst Randolph.
A regular correspondence was kept up between
them, and Randolph was often a guest at Clay Hill. The
opinion that he had of this friend may be inferred from
what he said of him in a letter to Gilmer: "I spent nearly
a week with Barksdale, whose house I find incomparably
preferable to my own. He is indeed a finished gentleman,
and one of the worthiest men in the world into the bargain."[809]

John Marshall, who resided at Charlotte Court House,
was also a warm friend of Randolph. It was under his
roof, as we have seen, that Randolph found an asylum, in
1832, when his mind forsook him. Marshall was a lawyer
of high standing, and transmitted his practice and abilities
to his son, the late Judge Hunter H. Marshall, of Charlotte
County.

Randolph's other friends, who resided in the neighborhood
of Bizarre or Roanoke, or along the highways, over
which he rode through Southside Virginia, on his way to
Washington, have already been sufficiently mentioned by
us in a preceding chapter, in connection with his general
social activities; but an additional word with regard to
one or two of them may be pardoned. (a)

Randolph was so often absent at Washington that the
care of Bizarre, while he resided there or was responsible
for its management, was confided to Thomas A. Morton,
as were likewise certain lots which he owned in Farmville.
The relation between them was one of real friendship, and
the following letter from Randolph to Morton merits
perusal:

Several letters from Randolph to Edward Booker, of
Prince Edward County, who was another warm friend of
his, have survived; but their interest was transitory.

Not so, however, is the last of the tributes of gratitude
and affection that we shall quote Randolph as paying to
Mrs. Tabb. Included in it, the reader will note, is the
widow of Dr. Bathurst Randolph:

Nor can we omit another word in regard to Dr. Thomas
Robinson, who was very intimate with Randolph when the
latter resided at Bizarre, and who, after his removal to

Petersburg, was consulted professionally by Randolph's
sister when her feet were about to slip into the grave.
Writing of the medical attentions which Tudor was
receiving at Dr. Robinson's hands during the early sickness,
to which we have previously referred, Randolph
said in a letter to Nicholson:

Dr. Robinson married one of Randolph's Murray
cousins, and there is a playful message to her in a letter
from him to her husband:

No friends of Randolph, however, were closer to him
than the four whom we are yet to mention: Littleton
Waller Tazewell; Dr. and Mrs. John Brockenbrough, and
William Leigh.

The friendship between Tazewell and Randolph began

in boyhood and lasted throughout their lives; retaining
until the very last something of its boyhood exuberance
and freshness. Hugh Blair Grigsby, who knew both well,
tells us that, when Randolph was speaking, Tazewell
would listen with the relish of a school-boy, rubbing his
hands and laughing heartily, as the orator went along.[814]
And not the least interesting passage in Grigsby's Discourse
on Tazewell is that in which he described a great
plea made by Tazewell in an important case argued in the
Supreme Court of the United States in 1822, which filled
Randolph with such sensations of admiration that he
incontinently exclaimed, as he listened, in a voice audible
to those about him: "I told you so—I told you so! old
Virginny never tires." Was this the origin of the celebrated
phrase which caused some jealous outlander to
say, that if Virginia never tired, it was, perhaps, because
she never moved along fast enough to become tired?[815]

The most striking thing about Tazewell, however, after
all, was not so much the impression of extraordinary
abilities that he left upon his contemporaries by his actual
achievements at the Bar and in public life, as their feeling
that he possessed a reserve of force which lacked nothing
but the incitements of personal ambition and a great
occasion to convert Strength half leaning on his own right
arm into erect and irresistible power. In the opinion of
Randolph, Tazewell needed only an urgent motive for
self-assertion to be second to no man in the country;
indeed, in a letter to General Mercer he is said to have
declared superlatively that, if such a conjuncture in the
affairs of the United States were to arise as would call into
full play the faculties of Tazewell, he would be the first
man of the 19th century.[816] (a)

When Tazewell thought of resigning his seat in the
United States Senate in 1826, Randolph wrote to him:

On another occasion, writing to Tazewell, during the
absence of the latter from the Senate, he told him that he
was supporting a motion of his, and then added: "I wish
you would (could) leave me your abilities and information
too when you are obliged to be absent."[818] Randolph also
had the highest opinion of the scholarship of Tazewell.
Stirred by the death of Gilmer, and the belief that Tazewell
too had succumbed to a severe attack of illness, he
wrote on one occasion to Dr. Brockenbrough:

Not the least interesting of the letters from Randolph
to Tazewell is a brief one in which he asked him to institute
legal proceedings against St. George Tucker, for the
reasons that we have already explained, and holding out
to him a retainer of $100.00 and a sum of not less than
$500.00 as a trial fee.

How deeply Randolph must have loved Tazewell we
can begin to divine, when we find him coupling his name
with that of Dr. Brockenbrough, who was, perhaps, after

all, dearer to him, if intimacy is susceptible of such delicate
shading, than any other friend that he ever had. Speaking
of some Scotch airs which he had heard sung at a party in
Washington by a Mrs. F., he wrote to Dr. Dudley as
follows:

On one occasion, Randolph spoke of Dr. Brockenbrough
as his most intimate friend; and the following is the
account given by Dr. Brockenbrough of the origin of the
friendship. It began when Randolph and he were both
members of the Burr Grand Jury.

It was to Dr. Brockenbrough that Randolph wrote
after his defeat in 1813: "Absorbed as I may be supposed
to be with my own misfortunes, I live only for my friends;
they are few, but they are precious beyond all human
estimation."

Randolph was frequently under Dr. Brockenbrough's
roof at Richmond, and once, to his great delight, Dr. and
Mrs. Brockenbrough paid him a visit at Roanoke.

Despite what Dr. Brockenbrough says about Randolph
as an agreeable guest, and, despite his reluctance in the
Randolph will litigation to admit that Randolph was ever
positively insane, his patience with his friend must have
been tried at times. In the course of the litigation just
mentioned, he testified that, in 1826, Randolph passed a
night in prayer at his house, keeping two candles burning
in his bedroom throughout his devotions; and that, before
day, Randolph ordered the servant, whom he had required
to sit up with him, to take the two candles and light him
down to the Eagle Tavern.[822] In one of his journals, under
date of April 16, 1819, Randolph also made this curious
entry: "Dined with Dr. Bro.—vile conduct."[823]

When Dr. Brockenbrough and Randolph were absent
from each other, Randolph wrote to him with great frequency,
and in terms to which reticence was almost a

stranger; but in the preceding chapters of this book, we
have quoted with such freedom from these letters as to
render only a sparing reference to them in this place
necessary. They not only have a distinct value for personal
and social reasons, but also because of the pointed
political reflections which they sometimes contain. To
no one did Randolph ever state more clearly than to Dr.
Brockenbrough the causes to which he referred the ever
increasing disparity, in point of population and wealth,
between the Northern and Southern sections of the Union:

The subject was one that haunted his thoughts so persistently
that he recurred to it five days later in these
words:

How deeply attached Randolph was to Dr. and Mrs.
Brockenbrough many of his letters abundantly attest.
On one occasion, he wrote from Dr. Brockenbrough's
home to Dr. Dudley in this manner of his hosts:

As Gabriella Harvie, Mrs. Brockenbrough had first
married Thomas Mann Randolph, of Tuckahoe; and the
marriage had been an unhappy one.

On another occasion, he wrote to Dr. Dudley: "I am
glad that my good friend, Dr. Brockenbrough, found you
out. Cherish the acquaintance of that man. `He is not
as other men are.' "[827] "There is a mind of a very high
order; well improved, and manners that a queen might
envy," was the judgment which Randolph passed upon
Mrs. Brockenbrough in one of his letters to his niece.[828]
At the end of the same year, he also wrote to his niece:

Some four years later, in another letter to his niece, he
spoke of the pair in these touching words:

The friendship continued as long as Randolph lasted.
"Took leave of my friends Dr. and Mrs. Brockenbrough.
Felt more like leaving home than returning to it," was an
entry made by him in one of his journals under date of
Feb. 18, 1830.[831] And, perhaps, Dr. Brockenbrough was
the only person in the world to whom Randolph, even in
his shattered condition of body and mind, could have
written these words, wrung from his proud nature by the
pitiable state in which he found himself in the late summer
or early fall, of 1832, when the cup of existence had nothing
for him but its blackest and bitterest dregs:

The long friendship between Randolph and Wm. Leigh
began as Mrs. Malaprop thought marriage should begin—
with a little aversion; for, in the Randolph will litigation,
Leigh testified that he had been told by Beverley Tucker
that, in the first instance, Randolph had taken a dislike
to him.[833] The dislike was subsequently converted into
feelings of the deepest esteem and the warmest affection.
After the year 1822, Leigh looked after Randolph's
business affairs, when he was not at home; saw him two
or three times a month, when he was at home, and conversed
with him, when he met him, in the most unreserved
and confidential manner. We quote Leigh's own words
in the Randolph will litigation.[834] In one of his letters to
his niece, Randolph spoke of Leigh as his Fidus Achates,[835]
and, while he was disposed to charge to Leigh's professional
preoccupations the demoralized condition, in which
he found his plantation, as he thought, on his return from
Russia, his feelings about Leigh never underwent the
slightest change. At one time, he conducted a plantation
on the Dan River, purchased by Leigh, jointly with
him; contributing to its operation a certain number of
negroes, draft animals, and implements. This arrangement
Randolph evidently entered into for the purpose of
assisting Leigh, who did not have the hands with which to
work the plantation himself. Many years later, he asked
Leigh how the account between them stood, and was told

by him that there was a balance in favor of Leigh of
$2,807.44; but that Randolph had been given no credit
for the hire of the negroes. Randolph replied that it did
not amount to more than the balance against him. Leigh
told him that he thought that it did, though he could not
say how much; whereupon Randolph proposed that they
should execute mutual releases; which was done, Randolph
himself preparing with his own hand the release by which
he discharged Leigh.[836]

It is not often that one friend has occasion to write
more painful words about another than these which Leigh
wrote to John Randolph Clay a few months after Randolph's
death:

Such was Randolph in his family and social relations.
When, in addition to the facts which we have set forth
above, the reader is told that no less than five persons—
Randolph's brother Henry, Joseph Bryan, Thomas
Spalding, of Georgia, Joseph Clay, Sir Grey Skipwith,
and Charles Sterrett Ridgely, are known to have named
sons after him, because of the love that they bore him, it
is difficult to find words keen and indignant enough to
fitly condemn the reckless brutality which led Henry
Adams to say that Randolph belonged "to an order of
animated beings still nearer than the Indians to the
jealous predacious instincts of dawning intelligence."[838]

To Randolph religion brought only a precarious degree
of happiness; though it cannot be doubted that, except
during the period of his avowed infidelity in early life, he
was subject to truly religious emotions, when in a normal
state of mind and heart.

In his childhood, he received the religious instruction of
a pious mother, and, in his later years, he took pride in
the fact that he was born and baptized in the Church of
England.[839] In the prayer book, which he gave to his
nephew, John St. George Randolph, on August 8, 1818,
he wrote these words:

Influenced by the general religious reaction of the time,
and such scoffers as Voltaire, Diderot and D'Alembert,
Randolph, in his earlier years, forgot the precepts of his
mother and became an infidel. This condition of mind,
however, curiously enough had been preceded by a brief
period, during which he imagined that he might become a
Mohammedan.

This vagary, as fantastic as the conversion of Lord
George Gordon to Judaism, soon passed away.

Side by side with it, should be read the letter from
Randolph to Dr. Brockenbrough, in which he narrated

the process by which he had been reconverted from his
parlor Mohammedanism and subsequent state of religious
skepticism to the faith in which he had been born and
nurtured, as a child.

Of the perplexities, the anxieties, and the misgivings,
which accompanied the transition mentioned in this
letter, we need not speak in detail. The transition itself
was doubtless initiated, in no little measure, by the general
religious reawakening of which Dr. John H. Rice
spoke in one of his letters to the Rev. Archibald Alexander:

So John Randolph was but one of the many straws
caught up and floated off into the bosom of the Church by
one of those rising tides of Evangelical Presbyterianism,
which were so common in this region. From being a
merely exercised hearer, he, after experiencing all the
vicissitudes of doubt, fear, and love which attended the
full reconcilement of a human soul to the purposes of God
in his day, and, after receiving word after word of explanation,
assurance, and hope from Key, William Meade,
and Dr. Hoge, at last found that he no longer shrank from
the altar which he had written to Key that he would have
given all that he was worth to be able to approach, and yet
could not;[844] and broke out into this triumphant pæan of
confidence and joy:

Looking back a few weeks later over the long pathway,
strewn with pitfalls, and enveloped in obscurity, which he
had trod, Randolph wrote of his conversion to Wm.
Meade: "I can compare it to nothing so well as the dawning
sun after a dark, tempestuous night."[846]

It would take us too far afield to quote very freely from
the numerous letters written by Randolph on such topics.
Moreover, religious as the world still is, the morbid psychology,
revealed by these letters, is more or less obsolete.
On the principle, however, of ex pede Herculem we will
bring two more of them to the attention of the reader.
Both were written to Dr. Brockenbrough.

One of the effects of the full maturity of Randolph's
spiritual re-birth was to chill his interest in politics.
Immediately after his election to Congress in 1815, he
wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough:

Another effect of religion upon Randolph's nature was
to fill him with a sense of humility, which he had never
before known: "If I could have my way," he said to Key
in one of his letters, "I would retire to some retreat far
from the strife of the world and pass the remnant of my
days in meditation and prayer; and yet this would be a

life of ignoble security."[850] In the same letter, he told Key
that there were two ways only, in his opinion, in which he
might be serviceable to mankind; one was in teaching
children, and that he had some thoughts of establishing
a school.

After this change took place in Randolph, it was
observed that, when Dr. Hoge dined with him at Roanoke,
he always seated himself at the foot of his table, and
placed Dr. Hoge at its head; and here, as well as elsewhere,
we might mention the fact that for this celebrated divine
he felt the highest degree of admiration.

In speaking of Randolph at divine service in Westminster
Abbey in 1822, Harvey says:

We also learn from Harvey that, when Randolph was
crossing the Atlantic with him in 1822, he read aloud an
extract from the Bible and a part of the Episcopal service
each Sunday, except when he was prevented by bad
weather or ill-health, once delivered an extemporaneous
prayer, and on Good Friday composed some religious
observations suitable to the day, which were expressed
in the purest English.[853]

But most grateful after all is the sober testimony rendered
by Wm. Leigh in the Randolph will litigation, to the
real change of heart which religious conversion produced
in Randolph.

Another result was a quickened sensitiveness on his
part to his character as a slave-holder, which led him to
accumulate a sum of money for the purpose of defraying
the expense of emancipating his slaves, and establishing
them in life. This fund was lost by the failure of Tompkins
and Murray in 1819.[854]

Of course, as time elapsed, and Randolph's spiritual
convulsion abated, leaving him fully subject to all his
natural impulses and all the excitement of public life, he
became involved occasionally in inconsistencies between
religious profession and practice, which were by no means
edifying to a straight-laced Christian. In his observations
on John Randolph's religious character, it is quite obvious
that Bishop Meade, whom Randolph in the meridian of
his religious enthusiasm, had sometimes gone all the way
from Washington to Christ Church, at Alexandria, to
hear preach,[855] had grave doubts as to whether Randolph
could be safely held up as an example of the full efficacy
of Grace.[856] More than one amusing story is told of the
dexterous shifts to which Randolph, between the ready

spur of his quick temper and his desire to maintain a
reputation for religious conformity, was driven, when he
found it necessary to convince a Southside Virginia pietist
that the word "damn" was nothing more than an equivalent
for the word "condemn." The incompatibility
between the hair-triggered temper and religious decorum
was especially pronounced, it is hardly necessary to say,
during seasons of mental disturbance. An illustration
of this fact, at once sad and amusing, is recalled in the
Reminiscences of John Randolph by the Rev. R. L. Dabney,
to which we have already referred.

But all the same, it is undoubtedly true that the religious
impressions stamped on Randolph's mind in childhood,
and afterwards renewed by the throes, through
which he passed between 1810 and 1819, were never
wholly effaced. Indeed, they never seemed so natural
or genuine as during those rare moments in his latter
years when his soul, like that of Saul, freed from the evil
spirit that persecuted him, was at peace.

In the same year he wrote to his niece:

Some five years later, he wrote to the same beloved
object of his affections: "That you think of me before
committing yourself to rest is a grateful circumstance.

Remember me in your prayers."[860] These letters, be it
remembered, were written to a young girl on whom he
was simply lavishing the unaffected language of his
spontaneous thoughts and feelings.

Some of the remarkable entries made by Randolph in
one of his journals, during the period in 1818, when his
religious mania was at its height, are not without interest.
One, under date of Aug. 26, is: "Tempted and did not
fall. Praised be His holy name."[861] Another, under date
of Aug. 27: "Tempted again, and was falling, but arrested
by the hand of God. Repent and am ashamed."[862] A
month later, he fell all the way to the ground, because,
under date of Sept. 27, he enters these words: "Sin,
repent."[863] "Oh! night of bliss," "This morning God
gives me leave to look over my old papers," are other
jottings.

These entries were made when the stream of his religious
thoughts had not worked itself free from its turbid elements.
A few years later, when it had deposited its
sediment, and was no longer chafed by the rocks and
shoals of spiritual anxieties and fears, it was a very different
thing. "He was habitual in his reverential regard
for the divinity of our religion," we are told by Benton,
"and one of his beautiful expressions was that `if woman
had lost us paradise, she had gained us heaven."[864] And
truly, like a song in the night, must have been the rhapsody
which fell from his lips in the presence of Benton
during the last months of his life, when, between mental
distractions, bodily disease, and the lenitives, to which he
resorted to assuage intolerable distress, he was as deserving
of the pity of God as any object upon which it has ever
been bestowed:

"It would have been as easy for a mole to have written
Sir Isaac Newton's Treatise on Optics," he declared on
another occasion, "as for uninspired men to have written
the Bible."[866]

It is a just remark of Parton that Randolph's political
influence was enhanced by his high social position[867] ; and
another thing that helped to bring his figure out in high
relief was the fact that he was the owner of a large plantation,
and many hundreds of negroes. In other words, he
belonged to a class of which Randolph himself said, with
some truth, that it was as much a nobility as if it had been
composed of Dukes, Earls, or Barons.[868]

In addition to his other lands, Randolph was also the
owner for a time of a farm of 400 acres, called "the Micheaux
place," in Cumberland County, Va., which he sold,

in 1816, to Thomas A. Morton.[869] After his death his
estate was also compelled to pay about $14,000 for a tract
in Chesterfield County which he had contracted to buy
from Benjamin Moody.[870] And his correspondence with
Garnett shows that he was eager at one time to acquire
an estate between the James and Rappahannock called
Port Tobago.[871]

Roanoke was divided into three shifts, known as the
Ferry Quarter, the Middle Quarter, and the Lower Quarter;
and the two dwellings, in which Randolph resided,
were situated on the Middle Quarter. To the Staunton
River, which bounded Roanoke on the South, there is a
happy allusion in one of his letters to Josiah Quincy:

At this day it is difficult to realize how remote and
secluded Roanoke was. Richmond, nearly a hundred
miles off, was the nearest town to it of any considerable
importance, except Petersburg, a place of only 8,322
inhabitants even in 1830.[873] As late as 1840, Lynchburg
had a population of but some 5,000 persons[874] ; and, as late
as 1847, Danville was a town of only about 1,500 inhabitants.[875]
Norfolk was some 160 or so miles away. To
secure the household commodities that he needed, and to

find a vent for the produce of his lands, Randolph maintained
what was practically a wagon line between Roanoke
and Richmond, and repeatedly in his correspondence we
find references to his wagoner, Quashee, who, with Simon
and other wagoners of his, must have been almost perpetually
on the road hauling tobacco, wheat or flour from
Roanoke to Richmond, and herdsgrass seed, clover seed,
plaster, and domestic commodities of all sorts from Richmond
to Roanoke. The nearest postoffice to Roanoke
was at Charlotte Court House, 12 or 13 miles distant.[876]
When we recall the ubiquitous service, which now brings
the federal mail every secular day of the week practically
to the door-step of every negro cabin in Charlotte County,
we can scarcely refrain from smiling when we read these
words in a letter written by Randolph to Dr. Dudley in
1810: "Direct to Charlotte C. H., `Roanoke, near Charlotte
C. H., Va.' "[877] As late as the year 1832, Randolph
told Nathan Loughborough that he had been reduced to
sending three times and often four times a week to Charlotte
Court House for his mail.[878] (a)

Living under such circumstances of isolation, it is not
surprising that he should have written to Dr. Brockenbrough
from Oakland, the home of his friend, Wm. R.
Johnson, in 1829: "I shall with a sick heart, as well as
dead, try to get to my lair by the middle of next week."[879]

In the first year of the 19th century, when he was
residing at Bizarre, his postal facilities were even more
limited; for in that year he wrote to Nicholson that the
post arrived but once a week at the little village (Farmville)
adjacent to his residence.[880]

Roanoke produced large quantities of tobacco. In
1810, before its acreage had been enlarged by subsequent

purchases, it produced 49 hogsheads of tobacco and 1,541
barrels of corn.[881] The tobacco, grown on Roanoke in that
year, however, should not be accepted as its standard of
production, since we are informed by Randolph that its
tobacco crop in 1810 was "very indifferent."[882] In 1814,
no less than 430,000 hills of tobacco were destroyed by the
great freshet of that year on the Roanoke lowgrounds
alone, besides corn, oats, and wheat.[883] In the succeeding
year, Randolph wrote to his friend, David Parish, that,
notwithstanding the unfavorable season, he had made the
greatest crop ever raised at Roanoke. "This," he said,
"I calculate will make me a return of from $20,000 to
$25,000—a small affair for you great nabobs, who deal in
millions of money and hundreds of thousands of acres of
land."[884] During the career of Randolph, the market
prices of tobacco underwent violent fluctuations. In
1805, when he was still residing at Bizarre, he wrote to
Nicholson that the merchants in Richmond had offered
him no more than $7.00 per hundred-weight for his
tobacco.[885] In 1814, when the War of 1812 was under
way, he wrote to Josiah Quincy that tobacco had sold in
Richmond as high as $13.10 per hundred-weight[886] ; and,
in 1816, he informed Dr. Dudley from Richmond that he
had sold his tobacco for $20.00 per hundred-weight, payable
in the succeeding July.[887]

A few weeks later when at Roanoke he wrote to Dr.
Dudley that a general apprehension of famine pervaded
the land, and that $6.00 and $7.50 had been given in
advance for new corn from the stack.[888] In the letter to
Nicholson, to which we have just referred, he stated
that he had lost nearly $1,000 by the recent fall in the

price of flour, but that, by the sale of both his flour and his
tobacco, he hoped to raise enough money to pay his debts
at home, and to leave him $3,000 or $4,000 for a voyage
to Europe, which he contemplated. At the time of
Randolph's death, he is said to have had more than
$20,000 in bank; but this balance may have been derived
in part from the sums which he received as Minister to
Russia.

But to the general reader more interesting than the
tobacco and corn grown on the Roanoke estate were the
horses reared on it by Randolph, either for his own personal
use or for the competitions of the race track. From his
early manhood until the day when he sat up on his deathbed
at Philadelphia, cracking his coach whip, he was
passionately addicted to horses, and to all the different
forms of recreation and sport to which they minister.
Nicholson, it seems, had some kinsman who shared Randolph's
tastes in this respect, for, in 1802, Randolph, on
his return to Bizarre from Congress, by way of Richmond,
wrote to Nicholson that he had seen Nicholson's "little
nabob" uncle beaten for three successive days, to his
irrepressible mortification.

In 1805, Randolph wrote to Nicholson that the races
at Richmond were over, and that Mr. Selden had started
a colt of his that had run with great credit three heats of
4 miles each, but had not won.[890] Indeed, it is said by
W. B. Green, one of Randolph's neighbors, that Randolph
was generally unsuccessful on the turf.[891]

JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE

By William Henry Brown.

One of the features of the races which were the subject
of Randolph's letter to Nicholson, was a great match for
$3,000 between Mr. Tayloe's Peacemaker, 5 years old
(118 lbs.), and Mr. Batt's Florizet, 4 years old (106 lbs.);
both by Diomed. It was won by Florizet, Randolph said
in a subsequent letter to Nicholson, in a canter.[892]

And few persons, even professional turfmen, we venture
to say, have ever been more familiar with Weatherby's
calendar than Randolph. Convincing evidence of this
fact is to be found in more than one letter from his hand,
including one which he addressed to his friend, John S.
Skinner, of Baltimore, in which he called off the names of
celebrated horses, as if his life had mainly been spent in
the pasture field and on the judge's stand at race courses.[893]
It was an easy thing to inflame his pride about one of his
horses. On one occasion, he offered for sale at public
auction one of his best stallions, Roanoke, by the famous
Old Sir Archie out of Lady Bunsbury. For a considerable
time, there was no bid made, but, at length, Hugh Wyllie,
the owner of Marske, a renowned race horse, bid £50;
whereupon Randolph flared up in flaming indignation,
and, turning a face full of anger to Wyllie, exclaimed:
"Do you, Sir, bid £50 for a horse that pushed Marske up
to the throat-latch?" There was a dead silence, and
Roanoke was led away unsold.[894]

One of the most famous races ever attended by Randolph
was that on Long Island in 1823, between Eclipse,
the pride of the North, and Henry, the pride of the South.
In its day, this race stirred up fully as much popular
excitement as the subsequent debate between Webster
and Hayne. Just as the two horses were about to start
off, a stranger walked up to Randolph, and offered to
bet $500 on Eclipse. "Done," Randolph said. "Col.
Thompson will hold the stakes," said the stranger. "Who
will hold Col. Thompson," replied Randolph—a reply
which has been frequently repeated on race tracks from
that day to this.[895] During this race, Randolph is said to
have stood in a very conspicuous position, surrounded by
rival backers of the two sections, and, misled by his disposition
to disparage what he once called the wrong side
of the Potomac, he was very confident of the success of
Henry. Afterwards, when the host of assembled spectators
were vociferously applauding Purdy, the jockey
who had ridden the victorious Eclipse, he was heard saying
in his satirical accents: "Well, gentlemen, it is a lucky
thing for the country that the President of the United
States is not elected by acclamation, else Mr. Purdy would
be our next President beyond a doubt."[896] When Jared
Sparks was in Richmond in May, 1726, one of the years
in which Randolph lost his mental balance, he found the
whole town, gentlemen, ladies, mechanics, and negroes,
agog with excitement over the pending races. "John
Randolph was here yesterday," he said, "with the appearance
and manners of a madman. He carried in his hand
a large purse of silver coin. With this he went to the
races. He talked wildly and behaved extravagantly."[897]

In reading Randolph's letters, we are struck, first, with
the great number of his horses, and, secondly, with the

strong feeling of personal attachment that he cherished
for them. In one of his letters to Dr. Dudley, he speaks
of his numerous idle horses, and we can readily believe
that the adjectives were not misapplied. Both when he
lived at Bizarre and Roanoke, he frequently mentioned
his horses by name in his correspondence with his friends.
In his letters to Dr. Dudley, while he still lived at Bizarre,
he often refers to his favorites in language that trenches
closely upon the affection of one human being for another.
"I hope," he wrote on one occasion, "Mr. Galding will
attend to poor little Minikin."[898] On another occasion, he
wrote:

Sans-Culotte and Jacobin, of course, were given their
names at the beck of the same Gallomania which led
Joseph Bryan to speak of Randolph's little godson as
"Citizen Randolph." Could the Jacobin mentioned by
Randolph in his letter to Dr. Dudley have been the Jacobin
that he says in his 1830 journal that he had sold to
David Sims for $150?[900] If so, the price was no greater
than the one at which he wrote to Dr. Dudley on one
occasion that he had sold each of his colts.[901] For Randolph's
day, the general run of his horses commanded
very good prices, and by his neighbor, W. B. Green, we
are told that, after his death, his stud of blooded horses
brought high prices at auction, and were, in many
instances, purchased by gentlemen who resided outside of
the State of Virginia.[902] "If anyone will give you $1,000

for Gracchus," he wrote to Dr. Dudley, "take it."[903] We
know, too, that he was once offered for one of his saddle
horses $500.[904]

It evidently cost him a considerable twinge of pain to
sell any of his pets. After selling two saddle horses—
Bloomsbury and Fidget—to his friend David Parish, of
Philadelphia, he wrote to Dr. Dudley, who was in Philadelphia
at the time, that in reminding him of them,
Dr. Dudley had recalled to his memory some unpleasant,
at least mournful, recollections.[905] Minimus, "his little
bay," Duette, Brunette, Hyperion, to whom he deemed
every rival but a satyr, Everlasting, Spot, Roanoke,
Topaz, Rosetta, Boojet, Witch, Rob Roy, Black Warrior,
Yellow Jacket, Gascoigne, Junius, "the finest horse and
foal-getter in the world," Fairy Queen, Agnes Sorel,
Wildfire, Fidget, Bloomsbury, John Hancock, Rinaldo,
Earl Grey, Miss Peyton, Hob, Ranger, Never Tire, and
Daredevil are some of the names which turn up in Randolph's
journals and letters in connection with his stables
and pastures.

Randolph raised horses of all sorts—race horses, draft
horses, and saddle horses. (a) What some of them were
we can well judge from their names, to say nothing of
perilous situations in which at least one of them involved
him. Wildfire! (b) Daredevil! Yellow Jacket, out of

Frenzy! we experience little difficulty in forming a mental
picture of what these nervous, mettlesome, and wicked-eyed
creatures were.

Of a very different order was his steady, trustworthy
horse Spot. "I should like to meet Spot," he wrote to
Dr. Dudley on one occasion from Georgetown, "to take
me through the sloughs and over the ruts and gullies
between that place (Richmond) and Obsto. I shall go
via Farmville and Prince Edward Court."[907] Five years
after this letter was written, Randolph wrote to Dr.
Dudley:

Of all Randolph's draft and saddle horses, Brunette
and Fidget, we should say, had the most speed and the
best bottom. Among his journal entries, is one which
states that on Sept. 23, 1811, Randolph, behind Brunette
and Fidget, covered the distance between Roanoke and
Prince Edward Court House, 34 miles, in 4 hours and 20
minutes. All this hurry apparently was because he
wished to be on hand to hear Caleb Baker tried for murder,
and defended by Beverley Tucker.[909]

Whatever else may have palled in his latter years upon
the interest of Randolph, his horses never did. On one
occasion, when at Roanoke, he noted that Euston had
broken his left fore-leg above the knee[910] ; and, 8 days later,
that a foal by Hyperion out of Duchess, produce of 1809,

had been found dead in the pasture.[911] "You have never
mentioned whether the chestnut gelding colt is yet lame
or not," he reminds Dr. Dudley in one letter from Georgetown[912]
; and, three days later, he asks Dr. Dudley in another
letter: "How is the chestnut gelding out of the blaze-faced
S. C. mare?"[913] "I believe I omitted to tell you that
I wished you to use Everlasting; pray be merciful to her,"
was his petition to Dr. Dudley in a third letter.[914]

Nor was Randolph more passionately attached to his
horses than he was to his dogs. A fit preface to what we
shall say on this subject is his general observations in the
Diary on dogs, in which he takes ireful exception to the
opinion of Jefferson that dogs were a pernicious, at least
a useless, race, and that, to save food and put an end to
hydrophobia, measures ought to be taken by law for their
extirpation. The observations are as follows, and remind
us not a little of Byron's epitaph on Boatswain:

To say how many dogs Randolph had in the course of
his life would be almost like trying to say how many
horses he had. In an unpublished letter before us, dated
March 4, 1833, the writer stated that Randolph was in
Washington, when she wrote, with an English chariot and
four horses, two men servants, and a bare-footed boy who
had seven dogs under his care.[915] Whatever change, therefore,
may have taken place in his cynical views about
man since 1804, when his observations on dogs were
inserted in the Diary, none had taken place in his partial
estimate of dogs. More than once in letters written by
or about him, the head of a dog or puppy looks out at us
over the body of his vehicle as he flounders along over the
long lake of mud between Washington and Richmond.
It would be curious to run down all his contemporaries
who named a son after him, or gave him a dog. Commodore
John Rogers, for certainty, gave him a Spanish
bloodhound bitch; Beaumontais, a setter; Mr. Hackley,
Judith's brother-in-law, a double-nosed Spanish pointer,
and M. DeKantzow, the Minister of His Swedish and
Norwegian Majesty, a slut of some species or other which
came to be known as Sylph, and whose only puppy,
despite her high degree, was begotten by a cur—a faux
pas that she never had an opportunity to repeat, as she
was afterwards bitten by a mad dog, and was killed on
that account; all of which, like many other particulars of
the same sort, is duly chronicled in the Diary.[916]

Of the double-nosed pointer, we only know that she was
stolen from the Fountain Inn in Baltimore, but was
recovered by another inn-keeper at Washington, and
turned over to Wm. Bernard, of Mansfield, the owner of
one of the famous old Virginia country seats, to whom
Randolph, true to his working principle that all life is a
commerce,[917] was generous enough to resign her.

The Diary also records the fact that J. S. Skinner gave
him a setter dog, named Topaz; Dennis A. Smith, "a
rough Scotch terrier," named Vixen, and Elisha Hundley,
"a black puppy with white legs," named Keeper. (a)
Carlo, Echo, Sancho, Dido, Juno, Banquo, Bibo, Cæsar,
Cæsar No. 2, Milo, Mina, Venus, Ebony, Lion, Tiger,
and Nero (a fine house-dog) are the names of some of the
other dogs or puppies owned at one time or another by
Randolph.[918]

Nor were Randolph's friends more generous in presenting
him with dogs than he was in returning the favor.
Another proof that, until Randolph's "lonesome latter
years," he and Robert Carrington were good friends is the
fact that the Diary records the gift by him to Carrington
of Dash, "pupped," Randolph declares, "in March (late),
1826, by old Czar, the most celebrated dog between Richmond
and New York, out of a very fine slut."

Sometimes, a friend would send a slut to Roanoke to be
crossed by one of his fine dogs. Thus he tells us in the
Diary that in 1822, Maj. John Nelson's setter slut was
sent to Roanoke in August of that year, and was "warded"
by Bibo. For this service, he received his toll in the form
of a fine male puppy.

Nothing relating to Randolph's dogs was, in his eyes,
too trivial to be commemorated in the Diary. Dido we
know was responsive enough to bear 6 puppies to Sancho,

though he had had access to her only once; Carlo was a
latch-opener, which speaks highly at any rate for his
intelligence; and Venus, with all the charms that her name
implies, was purchased by him from a steerage passenger
in 1826 for the paltry sum of $5.00. And, in reading the
journals and letters of Randolph, it is curious to note how
frequently his dogs, though far from being exposed to the
almost incessant peril, to which feræ naturæ are, became
involved in more or less tragic casualties. It would seem
that Randolph could not always give up the companionship
of dogs, even when he was journeying abroad; for
Venus was purchased from a steerage passenger when his
face was set towards England, only to be lost after he
arrived there.[919] The seller, Randolph says in the Diary,
with the emotion of tenderness that a child rarely failed
to arouse in him, was returning to Scotland with his wife
and "little daur Jeannie."

When in his own country not only did Randolph's dog
have the freedom of the floor of the House of Representatives
as fully as one of its former members, but, when he
was at Roanoke, that of the homes of his neighbors:

Somewhere Darwin expresses the idea that to a dog,
eyeing his master, the form of the latter must present the
appearance of a demigod. To Randolph's dogs his tall,
lank figure must have been at least that of some kind of
benignant genius. Nothing can be more intensely human
than the unfailing interest and affection that he lavished

upon them from youth until death. Like his horses, they
seemed, in his contemplation, to belong, at any rate, to
some stage of being, intermediate between the brute creation
and man.

Carlo, Echo, and Dido seem to have been his favorites.
In one of his letters to Dr. Dudley, after telling him that
Mr. Hackley had sent him two Spanish pointers, one
double-nosed and the only one of that species that could
be procured, he added loyally: "However, I question if
they are better than Echo or Dido whom old Carlo is now
guarding with a Spaniard's jealousy."[923] The fracture of
"poor Sancho's" hind leg was bad enough,[924] but, when
Echo died, it was almost as if he had lost a two-footed
friend.

One of the important events in Randolph's life was a
scrape in which Echo involved herself in 1810. In giving

the date of this incident, we but follow the example of
Randolph himself, who did not disdain to enter even the
date of the death of a favorite dog in the Diary. The
story is told in a letter from him to Dr. Dudley, written
just after he had returned from Mecklenburg Court to
Roanoke, where he had left Echo confined at the beginning
of his absence.

Made restless by the loss of her master, Echo had
coursed in half a night, with a trace-chain about her neck,
over the 40 miles of distance between Roanoke and
Bizarre, but had had the good sense never once to leave
the highway.[927] Another reference to this incident is
readable, if for no other reason, because it is a good specimen
of the pleasing way in which Randolph's interest in
the smallest practical details could be given a graceful
turn by his literary culture:

Echo, the reader should be told, had been a part of the
Bizarre household, before Randolph took up his permanent
residence at Roanoke, and, shifted from Bizarre to

Roanoke, did not find it easy to conquer the force of old
habits.

In going over Randolph's library at Roanoke after his
death, Hugh Blair Grigsby observed this marginal entry
in Randolph's handwriting on the leaves of one of his
books, which had been torn: "Done by Bibo when a
puppy." The inference intended to be suggested by the
writer, of course, was that Bibo would not have been
guilty of such a shabby trick if he had arrived at years of
discretion.

And ah! how joyously for a moment at least does the
blood surge again even in those depleted veins which
Juvenal grimly says warm with fever alone when the
superannuated sportsman reads this description in a
letter from Randolph to Theodore of Dido:

A fitting conclusion, perhaps, to what we have said
about Randolph and his dogs, is a letter which he wrote
to an unknown correspondent in the year 1826.

During the shooting season, Randolph's setters and
pointers must have had a happy existence at Roanoke;
for his journals and letters are filled with the fresh, stimulating
breath of the autumnal fields of Southside Virginia,
and the manly jocund sports of which they were the scene.
In all his early tastes and habits, he was a typical Southside
Virginia boy. These are the terms in which he
recalled his childhood at Matoax in a letter to Garnett:

Indeed there was no time in Randolph's life when he
could not say truthfully with the Douglas that he would
rather hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak. So long

as he retained a moderate measure of health, he found a
large part of his enjoyment in the open sky, the fair face
of the earth, and the simple phenomena of its forests,
fields, and waters. He owned several copies of Wilson's
Ornithology, and the feathered life about Roanoke must
have sent him frequently to its pages for identification or
comparison. Throughout all his more vigorous years his
attitude towards bird and mammal at Roanoke reminds
us not a little of Gilbert White and his Natural History
of Selborne. Now we find him measuring and weighing
an owl, 4 ft. and 2 inches from tip to tip, and 1 pound and
6 oz. in weight; or weighing a turtle, which had crawled
up the Ferry Branch from the Staunton River. It
weighed 28 pounds.[932] The circumstance that Henry Dies
had killed a ground-hog at the Lower Quarter of Roanoke
he thought quite material enough to be entered in the
Diary; and he had as little compunction as Gilbert White
would have had about noting in one of his other journals
that on July 14, 1818, a raccoon had been killed at Roanoke.
Indeed, he knew the relation between rats and the
corn that he grew on the Staunton River lowgrounds too
well to refrain from entering in the same jounral four days
later even the fact that he had killed 100 rats.[933] A pang
went through him when he heard that a hawk had finally
destroyed the two wood-ducks, whose movements he had
long observed; and well might this have been the case; for
civilization has worked few small tragedies of more
moment than the practical extinction of this beautiful
bird in parts of the United States where it was once abundant
and something more than a mere migrant. If he
flushed a wild turkey or a pheasant, in one of his horseback
rambles at Roanoke, he was likely to mention the fact in
the Diary, whether he had had his gun along with him or
not. In other words, so long as he was not too old or
diseased for the "vernal joys," of which he deplored the
loss so pathetically in the words of Michael Bruce, every
rural sight or sound was to him a source of pure and deep-seated
joy. (a)

Both at Bizarre and Roanoke, Randolph was constantly,
during the proper seasons, whenever he could escape from
the trammels of Congress, engaged in the pastime of
shooting; usually, if not always, with one of his nephews
or other relations or friends, and at one time he was a fox-hunter
too.[934] In the Diary, there are frequent references
to the wild turkey—that coureur du bois, fleet of foot and
fleet of wing, which in a state of barnyard degeneracy is a
good illustration of what a nation comes to which forgets
that there is such a thing as war; the pheasant, now but a
rare denizen of the Charlotte County woods; the whistling
plover, a fine game bird which has passed away, or all but
passed away, in that county with the passenger pigeon;
the reed bird, which drops that name and its other aliases
—"rice bird," and "bob-o-link"—and resumes in the
valley of the Staunton its French name "ortolan"; the
sora, or soree, (vulgarly "soaruss"), which vanishes with
the first frost, like a ghost with the first streak of morning
light; the wood-cock which appears to be a so much easier
mark for the gunner than it really is; the jack-snipe, hard
to hit in his first flurry, but, afterwards, by no means so;
the bull bat, which the merest tyro can bring down without
difficulty when he is flying along in a direct course, provided
that he is low enough, but which hopelessly bewilders
any but a practiced eye when he is circling tortuously
about the eaves of a weevil-infested barn; and, above all,
that nonpareil of small game birds, the quail or partridge,
as he is called in Virginia, which needs only a little protection
from the hawk and the trespasser to be as abundant
in the valley of the Staunton as it ever was. It is a
curious fact that there is no mention in the journals or

letters of Randolph of the common dove, which is probably
as abundant in Charlotte County to-day as it ever was
and has always been considered there a game bird, or of
the passenger pigeon, which is now extinct, but which in
Randolph's time darkened the very sky with its countless
numbers; or, with one exception, of the wild goose, which,
like the mallard and the dusky duck, still winters in the
valley of the Staunton. There are references in the Diary
to the squirrel, which warrant the idea, that, in Randolph's
eye, this animal was worth a load of powder and shot.
For instance, on one occasion, he mentions the fact that
he has shot two squirrels "flying"; and, under date of
Aug. 13, 1811, there is this entry too: "Boys killed blackbirds."
But blackbirds and meadow-larks, of which, by
the way, no mention is made either by Randolph in his
journals, were the objects upon which a Southside Virginia
boy usually began when he wished to learn how to
shoot on the wing; not unlike the barber apprentices in
Ireland in the 18th century, who are said to have learned
how to shave by first shaving beggars.

In Randolph's time there was, of course, no such thing
as a breech-loading gun, but only muzzle-loaders, and once
his hand was dreadfully lacerated by an explosion caused
by pouring a charge of powder from his powder-flask down
the barrel of his gun when a piece of ignited wadding was
still sticking in it. (a) He evidently had a sense of strong
attachment to his fowling-pieces which were imported
from England, and the weights of several of them are
entered in the Diary.

In October, 1811, he had not yet become a sufficient
Sabbatarian to scruple about shooting ortolans and partridges
on Sunday with John Morton and Henry Tucker,
the brother of George Tucker the historian.[935] "To-day
we broke the Sabbath, according to the estimation of
Puritans," he said.

Randolph was a good shot, though, apparently, by no
means a crack shot. In one of his letters to Nicholson,
he mentions the fact that he had shot 8 partridges and a
hare, a day or so before, at 12 shots. But this was at
Bizarre.[936] Later, on one occasion at Roanoke, he killed
2 woodcock, 4 partridges, and 2 plover at 8 shots.[937] Other
feats, approximating this measure of skill, are mentioned
in the Diary, but neither at Bizarre nor at Roanoke do his
bags appear to have been very remarkable. We do find this
entry in one of his journals: "Killed 30 pieces; Dr. 22."
But it is not altogether clear that the shooting on this day
was limited to Dr. Dudley and himself. One bag of 45
partridges, and another amazing bag of 65 partridges,
almost as famous as the great flood of 1877 in the Staunton,
has been known by the author to have been made in
his boyhood in a single day by a single gunner on a Staunton
River plantation some 15 or 16 miles west of Roanoke.
But this was when poaching was not so common on such
a plantation as it is to-day; and, moreover, when the law
permitted shooting before the vegetation of the fields had
been entirely killed down by frost or the birds had acquired
their full strength of wing.

In the mind of Randolph, his slaves, some 373 in
number when he died, were intimately associated with
his horses and dogs. Like the wife in The Locksley Hall
of Tennyson, one of them was to him a little better than
his horse, a little dearer than his dog; but then he loved
his horses and dogs so intensely that this is saying much.
The birth of the last black infant at the Ferry Quarter is
entered in the Diary in very much the same matter of
fact way as the birth of the last foal dropped by one of his
English mares. "Sally has a child; black mare (Quashee's)
died on the 12th," is one entry in it. "What of cloverseed?
of Spot, and Roanoke?—one or both of which I shall

want very soon? Of the dogs? and though last, not least,
of old Essex (a) and Co., and little Molly?" (b), is a paragraph
in one of Randolph's letters to Dr. Dudley.[938] On
another occasion, pining for news from Roanoke, after his
long sojourn in Richmond, in the winter of 1813-14,
Randolph wrote to Theodore: "I wish when you write
to me, you would call to mind such objects as you suppose
would interest me; even the dogs and little Molly, I would
rather hear of than nothing."[939] "You have not said one
word of Dido or her puppies, or my poor old Carlo, or
little Molly, or Essex, or Jupiter, or Nancy. J'en suis
faché."[940] But, until his mind finally succumbed, Randolph
was a very kind, not to say affectionate, master.

It is said by Bouldin that Randolph's servants were
the best and politest in the county, and, if they really
deserved this commendation, it was doubtless because of
the kind and considerate treatment that they had received
at the hands of their master.[942] (c) The Rev. James
Waddell Alexander goes so far as to declare that Randolph
was adored by his negroes.[943] This is strong language,
but it is corroborated by a paragraph in Josiah Quincy's
Figures of the Past.

Authentic instances are not wanting in which Randolph
occasionally chastised one of his servants with his own
hand; but, if any such incident can be referred to any
period when his mental condition was normal, the fact
can be reasonably reconciled with the parental relation
that the words of Quincy depict. Certainly, all the facts
disclosed by Randolph's journals and letters tend to bear
out the statements of Sawyer and Quincy.

It was a remark of Wm. Cabell Rives that a Virginia
plantation was a sort of mimic Commonwealth,[945] and we
derive a renewed sense of the felicity of this description
when the relations of Randolph to Roanoke and its black
population and overseers are brought to our knowledge.
Randolph's negroes were well fed and when, because of
some natural catastrophe, there was any reason for him
to doubt his ability to supply them with abundant food,
his distress was poignant. Productive as Roanoke was,
and many hands as well as mouths as it contained, Randolph
had to buy, after his return from Russia, nearly
$2,000 worth of provisions for the maintenance of his
slaves.[946] His slaves were also well clothed, doubtless
principally with garments made out of cloth spun or woven
on his own plantations; although he mentions in his letters
purchases of cloth for his slaves made by him. We know
also that his slaves were well provided with bed-clothing.[947]

In his Reminiscences of John Randolph, the Rev. R. L.
Dabney recalls a scene witnessed at Roanoke by Wm.
Coles Dickinson, a horse breeder, on one occasion, when
he had been taken to Roanoke by his business:

A letter from Randolph to Dr. Brockenbrough, dated
Nov. 15, 1831, not only evidences the fact that the negro
children at Roanoke were warmly clad in wool during the
winter, but also gives us an insight into the contents of a
negro cabin of the best class there.

The attention of the reader has already been called to
the fact that the efforts of John Randolph to impart
religious instruction to his slaves went hand in hand, on
soberer occasions than the one mentioned by the Rev.
Mr. Clopton, with his efforts to impart it to such boys as

happened to be under his roof. There could be no better
proof of the considerate manner in which he looked after
the material welfare of his negroes than the advanced
ages of some of them who are named in the list of his
emancipated slaves registered at Charlotte Court house.
For instance the age of old Quash, whom we have more
than once mentioned in these pages, is given in this register
as 90 years, and that of his wife Nancy, called
Mulatto Nancy, as 80. Among the persons registered
was also Granny Hannah, aged 100 years.

Randolph's slaves were divided into two classes—his
"out" servants, whose labor carried on his plantation
operations, and his house servants, who performed the
various menial services that his household establishment
required. He was so frequently absent from Roanoke
that his plantation affairs were largely left to the management
of his overseers; consequently, it is not often that
we obtain a glimpse of any of his field laborers in his
journals and letters. On one occasion, however, they are
brought rather dramatically to our notice by an order
which he once gave to them, in the later years of his life,
to save fodder on the Sabbath. As a result of this violation
of the sanctity of the Sabbath, John Marshall, of
Charlotte Court House, who was at Roanoke when the
order was given, and heard it uttered, was summoned
before the Grand Jury at Charlotte Court House to testify
to the offence. He positively refused to make any
answer to the Grand Jury, when questioned upon the
subject, on the ground that to do so would be a breach
of social duty. This excuse the Grand Jury declined to
accept as valid, but, Marshall still refusing to answer, it
was left no choice but to submit it to the Court, Judge
Wm. Leigh, Randolph's intimate friend, who at once
decided that a guest could not lawfully claim such a privilege.
Hardly, however, had Marshall been remanded to
the Grand Jury room when Randolph was driven up to

the court house in his English coach, drawn by four
blooded horses. Leaving it, he proceeded directly into
the court room, and took his seat immediately in front of
Judge Leigh; announcing, audibly, in one of his strange
half-whispers, that he understood that he was to be presented,
and that he had come to make his defence. Happily
for him, it did not become necessary for him to do so,
because, when sent back to the Grand Jury room, Marshall
had shrewdly raised the point that, under the revised Code
of Virginia then in force, the act of each slave was a separate
offence, and that the penalty prescribed for it, $1.67,
was below the jurisdiction of the Court. The incident
rests upon the testimony of Wood Bouldin, of Charlotte
County, who afterwards became a distinguished member
of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, and by him
we are also told that, if his memory was not at fault, E.
W. Henry, the last surviving son of Patrick Henry, was
the foreman of the Grand Jury.[950]

Repeatedly, however, certain of the house servants of
Randolph are mentioned by him in one connection or
another; and often in terms of the sincerest affection and
sympathy. "Nancy," he wrote on one occasion, "is
very ill. Old Essex, too, is laid up with a swelled jaw from
a carious tooth. This, I believe, is the sum of our domestic
news, except that old Dido is plus caduque que son
maître."[951] To John Marshall, of Charlotte Court House,
we are indebted for a vignette of Essex before he incurred
the displeasure of his master in 1831.

To the two of his slaves, who were his body servants—
Juba, or Jupiter, and John—Randolph was peculiarly
attached, and, so closely associated were they with all the
movements of their master that they became almost as
well known as he was. In one of his letters to Dr. Dudley,
Randolph asks him to remember him to old Essex, and
Jupiter, and Nancy, and little Molly, and Hetty, and all
the people. "I hope Jupiter does well," he adds.[953]
"Remember me to Juba," is the postscript a year or so
later to one of his letters to Dr. Dudley.[954] This was when
Jupiter had been worn down by nursing Richard Stanford
at Washington, and had gone back to Roanoke. "You
say nothing of Juba," is a reminder that he gives to Dr.
Dudley several weeks later.[955] Jupiter was twice prostrated
by illness, while in the service of his master; once
immediately after Stanford's death, and, subsequently,
when Randolph was at St. Petersburg. Nothing could
have been tenderer than the feelings excited in Randolph
by each event. In one of his letters, he mentions the fact
that Juba had murmured in one of his intervals of restless
sleep after Stanford's death, "I wish master and I was at
home." (a) Jupiter's second illness at St. Petersburg
affected Randolph even more deeply. Describing it in a
letter to Dr. Brockenbrough, he said:

There is also a pleasant reference to Juba in the reminiscences
of Jacob Harvey.

There are two references to Juba in Randolph's letters
to John Randolph Clay. In one letter, he says: "Juba
humbly but affectionately returns your greeting. Homer
says that, in reducing man to the state of a slave, you
take half his worth away. When you enfranchise a negro,
you take away the remaining half."[958] In another letter,
written during the same month, Randolph said: "Poor
Juba sends his humble howdye'."[959] A Virginian, at any
rate, will smile when he reads a statement in one of Randolph's
letters from Richmond that Juba had cut his leg
against the "rock"; that is the marble slabs, on the staircase
in Dr. Brockenbrough's bank.[960]

If anything, John was still closer to Randolph than
Juba. He was one of Randolph's body servants as early
as 1803, and served him in that capacity until his last
respiration.

Twenty-seven years after these words were written,
Randolph wrote a letter to his friend, Thomas A. Morton,
from London, in which, after asking Morton to remember
him to the old servants, particularly Syphax, Louisa,
Sam, and Phil, he paid this tribute to John in a postcsript:
"John, my servant, is quite well. He has not been otherwise
since we left the U. S., and is a perfect treasure to
me. He desires his remembrance to Syphax, &c., &c."[962]
In an earlier letter to Littleton Waller Tazewell, who had
just lost one of his faithful servants, Randolph spoke of
John in these terms:

Some few years afterwards, he wrote to John Randolph
Clay: "People may say what they please, but I have
found no better friends than among my own servants."[964]

In the following letter from Randolph to his niece, he not
only had something to say about the weaker side of John's
character, but also some observations to make on his
other servants and the management of servants generally:

In the preceding pages of this book we have more than
once referred to Mammy Aggy, who had been the maid
of Randolph's mother, but had afterwards become
attached to the family of Judge Coalter. Nothing could
be more characteristic of the Slave Era than the place
which this woman occupied in Randolph's affections.
Few names recur oftener than hers in his letters to his
niece. "My love to mammy. God bless you, my dear,"
were the concluding words of one of them.[966] When his

niece, who had recently received an injury to her foot,
writes to him that she cannot get the information which
she would like to get from Mammy about his Aunt Murray,
he simply cannot understand it, and goes off into a
long genealogical excursion, for the purpose of refreshing
Mammy's waning memory.

Several other letters from Randolph to his niece make
it apparent that he was a sort of nexus between Mammy
Aggy and the older Randolph negroes at Roanoke.

An institution, under which the kindest master might,
by the loss of his reason, be converted into a harsh and
tyrannical one, without any escape for the slave from his
lot, was an institution not easily defended, even at its
best; but, after closely going over the relations of Randolph
to his slaves, before the milk of human kindness in
his breast had been curdled by insane impulses and delusions,
we can readily understand how his neighbor and
friend, John Marshall, could have testified in the Randolph
will litigation: "His slaves were very much attached
to him; they almost worshipped him."[969]

If Randolph was unkind to anybody on his plantations,
it was not to his slaves, but to his overseers. His relations
with some of them were far from being either trustful or
friendly. If there was good reason for this, it was probably
because his frequent absence from home gave unusual
point in his case to the saying that the eye of the master
is worth both hands of the servant. The salary usually
paid by him to one of his overseers appears to have been
$400.00 or $500.00, per annum[970] ; but, of course, many
perquisites went along with this salary, which made it a
much larger one in fact than in terms of money. More
than once in his life Randolph formed the idea that it was
considerably increased by dishonest practices.

In one place in the Diary, Randolph speaks of "Palmer's
villainy"; and it really does look as if this overseer was
far from being everything that he should have been. In
one of his letters, Randolph says in that academic diction
which sat upon him as naturally as he sat upon a saddle,
that another overseer of his is in meditatione fugæ to
Tennessee.

The rough manner in which he handled one of his
overseers, named Pentecost, who had incurred his displeasure,
has been told by Henry Carrington in a manner
which gives us a sharpened insight into the seamy side of
plantation life:

According to the details of this transaction, given by
one of Randolph's journals, when he heard that Pentecost
was dying he went to his house, and found him in a state
of hysteria, and, subsequently, after first writing a long
bill in chancery, so as to provide for every contingency,
like Sydney Smith, when he took along with him to the
bedside of his ill parishioner both the Collects for the Sick
and a bottle of castor oil, visited him again, and bought
from him his boy Moses, with a view to accelerating his
hegira from Roanoke.[973]

But all of Randolph's overseers were by no means
Palmers or Pentecosts. It was a saying of Charles Bruce,
the Charlotte County planter, to whom we have more
than once referred, that it was easier to secure a hundred
good hands than one good overseer; and, taken as a whole,

the man, who occupied the position of overseer on a large
Virginia plantation, however illiterate he might be, was
usually endowed to a greater degree than most men with
the three elements that make up that rare thing—executive
ability; namely, justice, kindness, and firmness.

What Randolph thought of the faithful, capable Curd,
whom he nursed so tenderly under his own roof, the reader
has already been told. And another one of his overseers,
Cumby by name, was held in equally high esteem by him.
"Cumby can do anything," he was in the habit of saying.
One day, he said, he and Cumby were riding over Roanoke
when they came to a frame house, which drew from him
the remark that he wished that he could have it for a
store-house. Two days afterwards, the house walked up
(to use his expression) into his yard; with everything
complete except the chimneys. On another occasion,
according to Randolph, Cumby built a barn, when he was
absent from Roanoke. When he returned, he told him
that it was in the right place but that it was set wrong,
and should have been set on a north and south line. The
next day, when he rode by it, he found that it had been
turned entirely around by Cumby, and he was so pleased
that he gave it the name of the "turn-around barn,"
which it ever afterwards bore.[974]

On one occasion Randolph was told by Palmer that he
was "too tight with him"; that is, to adopt Randolph's
translation of these words, would not permit him to
encroach beyond the terms of his contract with him; and
this Randolph set down as a piece of impertinence.

But he knew when to relax as well as to tighten the
reins with his overseers, and we learn from Jacob Harvey
that he expressed a strong feeling of respect for a favorite
overseer who had declined to adopt a new-fangled plan of
planting tobacco, which he had picked up at Washington.
Randolph, or "Mr. Randall," as this overseer was in the

habit of calling him, bowed his neck in submission,
although he was told flatly by the man that, notwithstanding
the respect that he had for the opinions of "Mr.
Randall" on all other subjects but tobacco planting, he
would plant tobacco in his own way or not at all. The
result, Randolph said, was a great crop.[975]

In concluding what we have had to say about Roanoke,
it may interest the reader to know that this was a list of
topics which Randolph once, when at Washington, asked
Dr. Dudley to cover in his next letter from Roanoke, in
the order in which he mentioned them: