Part 24

THE village of Charlotte Court-House was a rambling hamlet in 1856. The plank-road from the nearest railway station (“Drake’s Branch”) entered the village at one side, and cut abruptly into the main street. This thoroughfare meandered leisurely from a country road at each end, through the entire length of the shiretown. It was lined irregularly with public and private buildings. The Court House, three or four stores, a couple of hotels, and perhaps half a dozen residences, made up the nucleus of the place. Beyond, and on either side, dwellings—some of brick, some of wood—were surrounded by spacious grounds embracing shrubbery, plantations, groves, and gardens. The “Village Church,” a brick edifice hoary with years, and redolent of ecclesiastical traditions, stood at the left of the plank turnpike as one approached the village from the station. A porticoed manor-house, that had a history almost as old, faced it across lawn and shrubbery on the opposite side of the way. When one had left the turnpike for the main street, and driven a quarter of a mile or so toward the “real country,” one passed the Parsonage. It stood well away from the street, from which it was screened by a grove of native oaks. Behind it lay a large yard, at one side of which were the kitchen and other domestic offices. A picket fence divided the yard from a garden, and at the left of this were the stables and pasture. Back of the garden a field lost itself in a wood of virgin growth.

The house was a white cottage, a story-and-a-half high, fronted and backed by wide porches. A hall cut the lower floor in half, and ran from the entrance to the back door. On the left of the hall was a parlor of fair dimensions, with windows at the front and rear. “The chamber,” of like shape and proportions, was on the other side. The dining-room was one wing, and “the study” another. Both connected directly with a deep portico which filled the intermediate space. Two bedrooms above stairs, and a store-room adjoining the dining-room, completed the tale of rooms.

A modest establishment in very truth, but not contemptible from the Old Virginia standpoint. Small as it was, we did not have it to ourselves until after Christmas. I esteemed this a fortunate circumstance from the first, considering how much I had to learn of housekeeping and parish work. Subsequently, I knew it for one of the signal blessings of a life that has been affluent in goodness and mercy.

For the occupants of the Parsonage, pending the completion of a house of their own in building at the other end of the village, were Mr. and Mrs. Wirt Henry, a young married couple with one child. They had rented the cottage for the year ending January 1st, and kindly consented to receive us as boarders until the term had expired.

From the moment that Wirt Henry came out to assist me to alight from the carriage that had brought us from the station, one mid-October day, to the end of his honored and useful life, his friendship for us knew no variableness nor shadow of turning. He was already my husband’s staunch right hand in church and community. He took me upon trust for the time. I learned to love husband and wife long before we became separate households. To this day, his widow is to me as a sister. In the care-free three months of our happy companionship, Mrs. Henry helped me tactfully through the initial stages of acquaintanceship with parish and neighborhood. To the manor born, and connected by blood with two-thirds of the best families in the county, her gentle “coaching” was an inestimable benefit to the stranger within her gates.

Her husband was a grandson of Patrick Henry, and a lawyer of note, although not yet thirty years of age. He attained eminence in his native county as time went on, and in Richmond, to which city he removed after the War. His _Life and Letters of Patrick Henry_ is a standard biographical and historical classic; he filled with distinction several public offices, among them that of President of the American Historical Society, and Delegate to the Historical Congress at The Hague, in 1897.

In private life he was the best of husbands and fathers, sweet-hearted to the core, a thorough gentleman always and everywhere, and a genial and delightful comrade. When I turned study and pen in the direction of Colonial historical research, he was an invaluable auxiliary. I told him, over and over, that he was to me an exhaustless reservoir of information. I had only to open a sluiceway, to draw in copious measure in my hour of need. As a faint expression of my sense of overwhelming obligation to him, I dedicated to him my first volume on _Colonial Homesteads and Their Stories_, published in 1896.

I cannot say that my thirst for Colonial traditions and histories was created by my residence in Charlotte. From childhood I had been indefatigable in the pursuit of genealogical details and the tales of real life and happenings collected from the converse of my elders of the “former days,” which they rated as better than these in defiance of Solomon’s admonition. But it was not possible to live for three years, as I did, in a region where the very earth was soaked in historical associations; where every other name mentioned in my hearing was interwoven with recitals of deeds of valor and of statesmanship performed by the fathers of American history, and not be kindled into zealous prosecution of my favorite studies.

The Court House, built in 1823, was designed by Thomas Jefferson. A more interesting building was a shabby, tumbledown house, not far from the site of the newer and better edifice. It was the “Court House” in the stirring days when the paternal Government would not squander money upon Colonial seats of justice. From the porch of this, Patrick Henry delivered his last speech to his adoring constituents. He was tottering upon the verge of the grave, into which he sank gently a few weeks later. A crisis of national and state importance had called him from his home at Red Hill, a dozen miles away. Keyed up by a sense of the imminence of the peril to the country he had saved, his magnificent will-power responded to the call; the dying fire leaped high. He had never reasoned more cogently, never pleaded with more power than on that day. But as the last word fell from his lips, he sank fainting into the arms of his attendants. Dr. John Holt Rice stood on the outskirts of the crowd. As the dying lion fell in his tracks, the clergyman cried out: “The sun has set in all his glory!”

From the same homely rostrum John Randolph (whose homestead of “Roanoke” is but a few miles from the county-seat) made his maiden speech, and addressed for the last time those of whom he declared—“No other man ever had such constituents.” In this address he recounted the history of that relation, from the hour when the beardless boy had raised his reedy voice to confute the arguments of the people’s idol—Patrick Henry—to the date of this, his resignation of his office.

“Men of Charlotte!” The piercing voice that carried further in his weakness than more stentorian tones, sent the farewell to the outskirts of the breathless throng—“Forty years ago you confided this sacred trust to me. Take it back! Take it back!”

The gesture, as of rolling a ponderous weight from heart and arms, was never forgotten by those who saw it. With it he left the platform, mounted his horse without another word, and rode off to Roanoke.

Mr. Jacob Michaux, of Powhatan County, was at that time a student in Hampden-Sidney College, and came over to Charlotte for the express purpose of hearing the famous orator. I had from his lips the description of the scene. John Randolph, as is well known, never used notes in speaking. It sent a sort of shudder, therefore, through the audience, when he took a folded paper from his pocket and opened it, saying:

“The infirmities of advancing age, and the consequent failure of memory, have made it expedient that I should bring with me to-day a few notes to remind me of what I would say to you.”

He held the paper in his hand while speaking, and referred to it twice in the exordium. Warming to his work, he waved it aloft in his impassioned gesticulation, evidently forgetful of it and what was written on it. At last, it escaped from his fingers and fluttered down to Mr. Michaux’s feet. The crowd, engrossed in the fervid oratory, did not notice what had happened. The student put his foot upon the bit of paper, without change of place or position. “It flashed across my mind that I would secure it when the speech was over, and keep it as a souvenir,” he said. “The next moment I forgot it, and everything else except what the man before me was saying. It was a Vesuvian tide of eloquence, and carried thought, feeling, imagination along with it. One hears nothing like it in these degenerate days. I did not recollect the paper until I was a mile away from the Court House, and the orator’s voice began to die out of my ears.”

What a souvenir that would have been! I do not know that this anecdote has ever been published before. I had it, as I have said, directly from Mr. Michaux’s lips, and vouch for the authenticity.

Many of the stories that clung to the Parsonage had to do with the Orator of Roanoke. The house was at one time the home of Captain “Jack” Marshall, the father of the late Judge Hunter Marshall. The latter was, during our residence in Charlotte, a near neighbor and charming acquaintance. His father, “Captain Jack,” was one of the cronies whom John Randolph’s eccentricities and fits of violent rage had not estranged. Politically, his constituents adored Randolph. Personally, they found him intolerable. Mrs. Eggleston, of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by, told me of visiting a playfellow in the Marshall home while John Randolph was staying with Captain Marshall. The two little girls were busy with their dolls in the lower hall, when a hand-bell was rung furiously above stairs.

Little Lucy looked wonderingly at her companion.

“Who is that? And what does it mean?”

“Oh, it’s Mr. Randolph trying to frighten away the devil. He has just got up, you see, and he says the devil creeps from under his bed as soon as he wakes up.”

The ringing continued at intervals for some minutes, and Lucy, terrified by the fancy that the fleeing demon might appear on the stairs, ran off home with the tale.

“My mother had heard it often, before,” said my friend, laughing at my horrified incredulity. “It was but one of his crazy antics. No-o-o!” doubtfully, as I put a question. “I _don’t_ believe it was delirium tremens. He took opium at times. I don’t know that he drank heavily. Everybody took his toddy in those days, you know. John Randolph was _queer_, through and through, from the cradle to the grave, and like no other man that ever lived! We children were terribly afraid of him.”

One of the numerous stories Mr. Henry told of the eccentric was of his asking a neighboring planter who was dining at Roanoke, if “he would not take a slice of cold meat upon a hot plate?”

As “Juba,” Mr. Randolph’s body-servant, was at the guest’s elbow with the hot plate, the gentleman thought he was expected to say “Yes,” and fearing to anger the choleric host, took the plate, accepting the offered cold meat. Whereupon, Randolph swore savagely at him for a “lickspittle,” and a “coward.”

“You dare not speak up to me like a man!” he snarled. “I asked the question to see what you would say.”

He was as brutal to members of his own family. A clergyman, who studied divinity under Doctor Rice in Richmond, told me of a conversation between John Randolph and his sister-in-law, the widow of Richard Randolph. She was very fond of the Rices, spending weeks together at their home, and at last, dying while on one of these visits. Some months prior to her death, she joined the Presbyterian Church, and shortly after taking this step, had a call from her terrible brother-in-law. Regardless of the fact that two of the students were in the next room, and that what he shrieked in his piercing falsetto must be heard from the top of the house to the bottom, the irate Congressman berated Mrs. Judith Randolph in the coarsest terms for the disgrace she had brought upon an honorable name in uniting with “the Dissenters.”

He stayed not for any law, written or tacit, of respect due to host or hostess, reviling both as scheming hypocrites and wolves in sheep’s clothing, who had decoyed her into their “conventicle” in the hope of securing her fortune for themselves.

Yet, there is extant a letter which I have read, from John Randolph to Doctor Rice, written after his sister-in-law’s death, extolling her piety, thanking her late host for his great goodness to the sainted deceased, and winding up by saying that he had, all day, been possessed by the idea that he could see her spirit, “mild, loving, and benignant, hovering above him!”

We must fall back upon Mrs. Eggleston’s dictum—“_Queer_, through and through, from the cradle to the grave, and like no other man that ever lived!”

Before quitting my gossip of the Randolphs, I must touch upon one of the most pitiful of the many tragedies that darken the history of the aristocratic clan.

The Sunday after my arrival in my new home, I saw, from my seat in church, a late-comer stride up the aisle to one of the pews running at right angles with those filling the body of the building. The tardy worshipper was a man above the medium height, and erect as a Virginia pine. He walked like an Indian, as I observed at once, planting his feet straight forward, and rising on his toes with a loping motion. His hair was snowy white, and hung down to the collar of his coat. When he took his seat, and faced the congregation, one saw that his eyes were dark and piercing; his eyebrows black; his features finely chiselled. A full white beard added to his venerable appearance and accentuated the quaintness of the figure in a community where shaven chins and upper lips were the rule.

I had hardly noted these peculiarities when he bowed his head upon his hands, resting his elbows upon his knees, evidently in silent devotion, and remained thus for several minutes. The choir was singing the introductory anthem when he sat upright, and perceived the occupant of the pulpit. A brilliant smile irradiated the grave features; to my amazement he arose, ran up the steps of the sacred desk, and held out his hand to the preacher, the other hand upon his heart, and bowed deferentially. Mr. Terhune arose, with no sign of surprise or annoyance, and bowed silently over the locked hands. As nimbly as he had mounted the steps, the eccentric individual ran down and resumed his seat. Neither man had unclosed his lips, but the pantomime of welcome and acknowledgment was so significant that words would have been superfluous. The Unknown appeared to hearken devoutly to reading and to sermon, accompanying his listening by actions foreign to the behavior of latter-day church-goers. They were singularly expressive to me, whose eyes wandered to him covertly every few minutes. Nobody else paid any attention to him. Now, his joined hands were raised almost to his chin, and the bowed head shaken over them, as in deep contrition—an attitude that recalled the “publican standing afar off.” Once he beat softly upon his breast. Again, he nodded approval of what he heard. Often he closed his eyes, and his lips moved in prayer. He was the foremost of the retiring congregation to leave the church after the benediction, passing down the aisle with the free, sweeping lope that had reminded me of an Indian.

I had the story over our early Sunday dinner. When Mr. Henry finished it, I recalled that I had heard, when a mere child, my mother speak of meeting at Doctor Rice’s, in her early girlhood, a nephew of John Randolph—St. George Randolph by name—who was deaf and dumb.

“One of the handsomest young men I ever saw,” she subjoined, “with flashing black eyes and dark, beautiful curls. He frightened me by offering to teach me the finger alphabet; but his manners were very pleasant, and he seemed gay, in spite of his affliction. He was educated in France, and had just come home when I saw him.”

Obedient memory, following this clue, unearthed a passage in Garnett’s _Life of John Randolph_, which was part of my biographical library. In a letter to an old friend the uncle lamented that his nephew St. George had become insane. He had made several efforts to marry, and was unsuccessful—as he was given to understand—on account of his infirmity.

Mr. Henry’s narrative brought the biography down to date. The unhappy youth—sole heir to his father’s and his uncle’s wealth after the death of his younger brother, Tudor—was committed to an asylum for the insane. How long this man—born in the purple, highly educated, refined in taste, and elegant in bearing—was allowed to linger in the filthy inferno of the old-time “mad-house,” I would not recollect if I could. Then the creaking wheel of his fortunes took an unexpected turn. By some legal manipulation I do not pretend to understand, Mr. Wyatt Cardwell, of Charlotte, the father of our groomsman and travelling companion in the first stage of our wedding-journey, became the guardian of the almost forgotten lunatic. A visit to his afflicted charge wrought so powerfully upon Mr. Cardwell’s sympathies, that he left no stone unturned until the last of the direct line of Randolphs was a free man, and domesticated in the home of his guardian. The remnants of his once fine library were placed at his disposal; he had his own riding-horse, and other luxuries—in short, all that he was able to enjoy. The Charlotte people respected his misfortunes, and treated him kindly whenever occasion offered. He read, and apparently enjoyed books, reading French, Latin, and English at pleasure. His reminiscences of his distinguished uncle, and the politics of his unquiet day, were distinct, and to those who communicated with him by signs or by writing, extremely entertaining.

His fellow-citizens came to have a pride in the relic of the heroic age. His shrewd comments upon men he had known in his prime, and the acquaintances of to-day, were repeated as _bon mots_.

Sane, he would never be. The splendid intellect, that should have surmounted the frightful disability imposed at birth, was hopelessly shattered. But he was a local celebrity, about whom clung a glamour of romantic importance.

I entered fully into this feeling within three weeks after I had my earliest glimpse of him.

The Rev. Mr. ——, from another county, who had filled the pulpit of the Village Church more frequently in past years than was quite agreeable to the congregation, chanced to spend the Sunday in the neighborhood, and was invited to preach. He arose to announce the opening hymn just as St. George Randolph lifted his head from his private devotions. The expression of ineffable disgust, when he discovered who was to officiate that forenoon, was unmistakable and indescribable. Then he deliberately went through the pantomime of sharpening a pencil, a forefinger doing duty as the pencil, three fingers of the right hand holding an imaginary pen-knife. The sharpening done, he blew the imaginary refuse into the air with a disdainful puff. We all witnessed the operation, and the dullest could not miss the meaning. More than one was unable to join in the song of praise selected by the only man who was unconscious of the by-play. In the forty-five years of his active pastorate, my husband but twice violated pulpit and pew proprieties so far as to exchange meaning and amused glances with me. That was one of the times. As for Wirt Henry, nothing but an agonized ray from his wife’s eye kept him from disgracing himself.

Having testified to the nature and sincerity of his sentiments with respect to the obnoxious interloper, as he considered him, our local wit turned a cold shoulder toward the pulpit and buried himself in the pages of a small, much-worn volume he drew from his pocket, never vouchsafing another glance at desk or occupant during the service.

The little book was a collection of devotional readings he carried with him everywhere. His mother had given it to him when he went abroad. From her, too, he had learned to kneel by his bed each night and pray, as he had done at her knee in infancy. He never remitted the habit. I used to wonder, with a hard heartache, if he kept it up during that dark, dreadful age in the asylum.

Less than three years after my first sight of him, the deaf, dumb and lunatic heir of the vast Randolph estate joined the mother he had not forgotten, nor ceased to love and venerate in the long night that had no star of hope, and which was to know no dawning this side of heaven.

XXXIII

PLANTATION PREACHING—COLORED COMMUNICANTS—A “MIGHTY MAN IN PRAYER”

IN the group of midland counties that embraced Charlotte, Prince Edward and Halifax—names that fell into line, as by natural gravitation, in the thought and speech of the “Old Virginian”—the Presbyterian was the leading denomination. Rice, Lacy, Hoge, Alexander, and Speece had left their mark upon preceding generations, and a fragrant memory—as of mountains of myrrh and hills of frankincense—through all the Southern Church.

Five out of seven of the leading planters in the region were Presbyterians. The others were, almost without exception, Episcopalians, and the two denominations affiliated more cordially than with Baptists, Methodists, and the sparse sprinkling of Campbellites, or “Christians,” as they preferred to call their sect.

Slavery existed in Virginia in its mildest possible form, and nowhere was the master’s rule more paternal than in the group of counties I have named. The negroes were permitted to hold their own prayer-meetings in their cabins whenever it pleased them; they attended religious services as regularly as their owners, and, in a majority of the old families, were called in to family worship with the children of the household. No more convincing proof of their religious freedom could be desired than the fact that the bulk of the colored population belonged to the Baptist Church. Why, I could never make out. The Methodists would seem likely to attract them with equal force, their methods appealing to the emotional, excitable natures of the semi-tropical race as strongly as those of the denomination that found favor in their sight. Yet, when one of our servants “got through” the spiritual conflicts that ushered in a state of grace, we expected him, or her, to join the Baptist Church as confidently as we looked for the child of the Covenant, “ordered in all things and sure,” to confirm, when it arrived at “the age of discretion,” the vows taken by parents and sponsors in baptism.

It was not singular, therefore, that the new pastor of the Village Church at Charlotte Court-House should find, at his installation in his cure of souls, the name of but one colored person upon the roll of communicants. We never spoke of them as “negroes” in that benighted age.

“Uncle Cæsar,” the trusted “headman” upon the plantation of Colonel Marshall—Mrs. Henry’s father—had once partaken of the Lord’s Supper in the church in which his master was an elder. Which violation of the laws of his denomination, being duly reported, was the occasion of a case of discipline long talked of throughout the colored community. The recusant was sharply reprimanded, and notified that a second offence would be punished by ex-communication. The doughty old servitor thereupon declared that, as he hoped to sit down to the supper of the Lamb in heaven with his master, so he would continue to do on earth, when the Lord’s table was spread in the Village Church. An example was made of him for the edification of others, and Cæsar became a Presbyterian, taking his seat among the communicants gathered in the main body of the church, whenever a Communion season came around.