“The times are out of joint. O, cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set them right.”
He was the last man to set anything right, having been born wrong himself. A more delicate, high-strung, untuned human instrument was never set up; it was, moreover, set in a frame out of order in every part. A skin as thin and delicate as a girl’s; nerves all on the surface; a remarkably precocious intellect of poetic cast; proud and affectionate in disposition, and “a spice of the devil in his temper,” as he said. “A spice!” This was a mild term (a thing Randolph was not often chargeable with using) to apply to a person who at the age of four years would fly into such a passion as to swoon away and remain for some time unconscious. Every function of his organism seemed to be influenced by his mood; his mood responded like a thermometer to his environment; disappointment or mental disturbance would upset the whole machine. Thus natural poetry, sweetness and affection were “like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;” and body and mind became in harmony morbid—almost the only harmony in his organization.
Life, at its best, jars harshly on such natures; but it dealt with the unfortunate Randolph with a severity that might have appalled and broken down a strong and healthy nature. Nothing but physical and moral courage as extraordinary as the rest of his qualities could have carried him through sixty years of pent-up purgatory. While an infant he lost his father; and his mother (“the only human being who ever knew me”) was taken away when he was fifteen. The sensitive, irritable, delicate child was left to “rough it” alone.
A succession of blows destroyed the dearest object of his life—the transmission of the family name and estates. One brother, Theodorick, died three years after his mother (1791), and three years later the eldest brother, Richard, the pride and hope of the family. The perpetuation of the line rested then on John and Richard’s two infant sons. John Randolph nursed these carefully to manhood, only to see one of them become a hopeless madman from disappointment in love, and the other sicken and die with consumption.
Meanwhile Randolph had himself received a wound which at once blasted his own happiness, and cut off the last hope of succession through himself. He loved; something, we know not what, came between him and his affianced and she married another. Undoubtedly a man of his intense and self-repressed nature threw into this passion extraordinary abandon. At least he never recovered from the disappointment and never married—though, be it said to his credit, cynical as he was, he retained through life the most profound respect for women, and found in their society the only alleviation of his lot. Late in life he wrote: “There was a volcano under my ice, but it is burnt out. The necessity of loving and being beloved was never felt by the imaginary beings of Rousseau’s and Byron’s creation more imperiously than by myself.” Randolph erected a cabin for himself among those of his slaves and there, when not in Congress or traveling abroad he spent his life in solitude, brooding over his misery and ruin, as wretched a recluse and misanthrope as ever breathed out a painful, hopeless existence.
To complete the sad picture, give the hapless victim of himself and circumstances a deeply religious nature and take away the consolations of hope and faith. This last drop was added to the cup and he sipped its dregs all his life. He brought his wonderful intellectual powers to bear on this subject; read, studied, thought, brooded, agonized over it in pursuit of spiritual peace; went through all the variations of skepticism, contrition, hope, despair, conversion, and relapse. Such an analytical mind coupled with a quick and self-depreciating conscience, a high ideal of religious experience, and a downright honesty of purpose could not compromise with its own extreme demands, could accept of no doubtful convictions or half-conversion. The very desire for salvation might seem selfish and unworthy to an unhealthy nature; the failure to feel, to live all that others profess (often without feeling) becomes to it conclusive evidence of the hopeless, forever-lost condition of self. Doubt brought self-condemnation for doubting; self-condemnation in turn brought new doubts. So, in a fog, he traveled perpetually in a circle.
But, through all these years of struggle and misery John Randolph was a just, a pure, a benevolent man, and he discharged his private and public duties with a fidelity and devotedness that they of sound mind and body might well emulate. The contrasts of mood and act of such a man were many and strong; they got him the credit of being crazy, and of being most so when he was most himself—such is the world’s usual perception of eccentricity.
The personal appearance of the man, however, encouraged this idea: Tawny complexion, tall thin form, spindle shanks, long hair in a queue, large, black, glowing eyes, pointed chin, beardless face, small effeminate hands, long tapering fingers, and, above all, a voice shrill, piercing, sonorous and magnetic as a woman’s. He dressed in drab or buck-skin breeches, with blue coat and white top-boots, or large buckled shoes. His manner was courteous and attractive to the few whom he regarded as his equals; to the rest of mankind he was dignified and reserved; to no one did he permit familiarity. A man introduced himself to Randolph as Mr. Blunt. “Blunt?” said he with a piercing and repellant glance; “Blunt! Ah, I should say so!”
Another stranger addressed him in Washington: “Mr. Randolph, I am just from Virginia; I passed your house a few days ago?” “Thank you, I hope you always will,” was the only encouragement the advance received.