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