Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell

by Hugh Blair Grigsby

The orthography of Tazewell, like that of the earlier Norman names which were forced to float for centuries on the breath of the unpolished Anglo-Saxon, has been spelt at various times in various ways by members of the same family, and in various ways in the same writing; as the name of Shakspeare, though a plain Anglo-Saxon name, was spelt in four different ways in his will. Thus, in the parish register of Buckland Newton, in the county of Dorset, the name is spelt in four different ways; and one of the spellings, which is still popular in England, is Tanswell, and opens up to us the true original of the name in Tankersville, the name of one of the knights who came over with William the Norman, and whose name is inscribed on the roll of Battle Abbey. The process was evidently Tankersville, which, contracted, and marked by the apostrophe, became Tan'sville; and, as the Norman blood became, in the course of centuries, more intimately commingled with the ruder but steadier Anglo-Saxon stream, the Norman ville gave way to the Saxon well, and Tan'sville took the form of Tanswell; and Tanswell and Tazewell, variously spelt, have been used indifferently by father and son of the same family for more than three hundred years, and are so used at the present day.[1] The late Mr. Tazewell thought that his name was originally spelt Tazouille, and that the ancestor emigrated from France to England before the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and I leaned to this opinion on another occasion; but, apart from the absence of all evidence to sustain this opinion, it is now certain, from the autobiography of the Rev. William Tazewell, translated from the original Latin by his grandson, the Rev. Henry Tazewell, Vicar of Marden, Herefordshire, and published by the Camden Society in 1852, that the family of Tazewell flourished in England at least a century before religious disputes drew to a head in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth. I have been particular in stating these facts, as they illustrate the history of races, especially of those races which composed the people of Virginia at the date of the Revolution; and it is something to know, that a descendant of one of those men, who, under William the Conqueror, wrested the empire of England from the successor of Alfred, and trod down beneath their iron hoofs the Anglo-Saxon people, aided in rescuing the colony of Virginia from the tyranny of George the Third, the inheritor of the blood as well as of the crown of the Norman robber.

Soon after the arrival of William Tazewell in Virginia, he married Sophia, daughter of Henry Harmanson and Gertrude Littleton, who was a daughter of Col. Southey Littleton, and the son of that marriage was called Littleton, after the surname of his grandfather. This Littleton was brought up in the secretary's office, under Secretary Nelson, and married Mary Gray, daughter of Col. Joseph Gray, of Southampton. With a view of being near the relations of his wife, he sold his estate in Accomack, which has long been the property of his grandson, Littleton Waller, and purchased land in Brunswick, of which county he became clerk of the court, dying at the early age of thirty-three. The son of this marriage was Henry, the father of our departed townsman, who also studied law, became a judge of the general court, a judge of the court of appeals, a senator of the United States, and twice president of the senate.

The mother of Mr. Tazewell was Dorothea Elizabeth Waller, a daughter of Judge Benjamin Waller, of Williamsburg. We are told by Dr. Johnson, in the Lives of the Poets, that Benjamin, the eldest son of the poet Waller, was disinherited by his father as wanting common understanding, and sent to New Jersey. It was not, however, from this Benjamin—a name still popular in the family—that the Virginia Wallers derive their origin. The first person of the name in Virginia was Edmund Waller, who bore the name of the poet, and was probably his grandson, and who came over in the beginning of the eighteenth century. His son Benjamin, the future judge, was born in 1716, was probably educated at William and Mary, and entered a clerk's office, in the duties of which he was profoundly versed. He was appointed clerk of the general court before the revolution, and attained to such distinction as a judge of law, that he was frequently consulted by the court, and is said to have given more opinions as chamber counsel, than all the lawyers of the colony united. He was appointed chief of three commissioners of admiralty under the republic, and as such was a member of the first court of appeals. It is said that his decisions were always sound law, but that he would never assign reasons for them. On the subject of the law of admiralty, his opinions were equally conclusive with the court and with clients. He died in 1786, at the age of 70. His influence, after the death of his daughter, on the mind of his grandson, will presently be seen.

Dorothea, the mother of our Littleton, was a lovely girl. Her name, which, from the ugly abbreviation of Dolly, has gone out of vogue, was popular with our fathers. It was borne by the brides of Patrick Henry, of James Madison, and of Henry Tazewell. It was honored in the strains of Spenser, in the sparkling prose of Sir Philip Sidney, and in the flowing verse of Waller; and finely shadows forth what a true woman ought to be and is—the gift of God. It was a favorite name in England, and evoked the sweetest measures of the poet Waller; and has ever been, probably from this circumstance, a family name among the Wallers of Virginia. A sweet portrait of Dorothea Waller, one of the finest productions of the elder Peale, always adorned the parlour of her distinguished son. In less than three years after the birth of Littleton, she died suddenly, and Mr. Tazewell had no recollection of his mother. It has often occurred to me that the true secret of the early retirement of Mr. Tazewell from the bar, might be found in the shortness of the lives of his progenitors. His grandfather Littleton died at the age of thirty-three, and his mother at the age of twenty-three; and when Mr. Tazewell retired from the bar, vigorous as he was, he was some years older than his father was at the time of his decease. It is believed that this same conviction was an element in that love of retirement which was the characteristic of Washington.

In a long, low wooden house, which may still be seen with its roof of red shingles, at the head of Woodpecker street, on the south side, in the city of Williamsburg, the residence of Judge Waller, and still owned by his grandson Dr. Robert Page Waller, and in a small room up stairs, at the north-east corner, looking on the street, in which his mother was born before him, on the seventeenth day of December, 1774, Littleton Waller Tazewell first saw the light. He was a healthy child, and, like all the children who were born about that time between the waters of the York and the James, was destined to frequent locomotion to avoid the marauding parties of the British, who for several years afterwards infested that region. As his mother died when he was in his third year, and as his father, who was engaged during the youth of Littleton in the Conventions, in the House of Delegates, or on the bench, was rarely at one place for any length of time, he lived, excepting a short interval in Greensville, with his grandfather Waller, who regarded with intense affection the beautiful orphan boy, preparing a trundle-bed for him in his own chamber, and watching him with parental solicitude. Until 1786 he lived with his grandfather, who taught him the rudiments of English and Latin, and superintended his studies at the school of Walker Murray; and when in that year the judge was on his death-bed, he sent for his old friend Mr. Wythe, and committed his grandson, then in his twelfth year, to his care; and with Mr. Wythe young Tazewell lived until that gentleman removed to Richmond, when he resided with Bishop Madison during his college course. The love which the child bore to his affectionate grandfather has been commemorated by a single fact. When Littleton came home from school and learned the old gentleman was dead, he was inconsolable, and finding that, in the painful anxieties of such a time, he was comparatively overlooked, he left the house, and went out into Col. Bassett's woods, where he had well-nigh perished. When he was missed, search was made for him, and he was found and brought home, but not until the funeral was over.

The following extract of a letter, addressed by Mr. Tazewell, in 1839 to William F. Wickham, Esq., the son and executor of the celebrated John Wickham of Richmond, and written on the death of that eminent lawyer, presents a sketch of his own early youth, not the less attractive as it embraces an interesting period of the youth of Mr. Wickham also:

"So much of my life," writes Mr. Tazewell, "was spent in the freest intercourse with your dear father, and during this intercourse mere time effected changes in our relations so gradually and imperceptibly, that, until they were matured into their last state, I was often at a loss to determine what was their true character. We first met in the year 1780, at the house of your grandfather, in Greensville county, (who was also the paternal grandfather of Mr. Tazewell), to which I had been sent to get me out of the way of the British army, then invading Virginia. I was a child not six years old, and he was a youth of about seventeen. Here he became my tutor; and during the course of about two years, he taught me first to read English better than I could do before; next, the rudiments of Latin, and lastly, to write. During this period I contracted for him that respect which children naturally feel for their seniors, and the ignorant for those much better informed than themselves; while he regarded me with the affection usually bestowed by a patron upon his protegè, who manifests no bad propensities, and a disposition, at least, to profit by instruction and advice.

"In 1782 we parted; and well do I remember the tears we both shed at our separation. In the winter of 1785-6 we again met at Williamsburg, at the house of my father, who then resided there. Here our intercourse was renewed upon a footing somewhat different than it had been maintained before, but with greater pleasure to both. He became a student of law in my father's office, and I was a boy in the first class of a celebrated grammar-school. To the careful instruction of my excellent grandfather.[2] I had been indebted for greater proficiency in my classical learning than is usually acquired by boys of my time of life. My grandfather died within a very short period after the return of your father to Virginia. Of the distress which I suffered at this deprivation, he was the sole comforter; and he immediately took upon himself the tasks which my poor old grandfather had been so delighted in performing for me. He heard and corrected my recitations—availed himself of every opportunity they offered to improve my taste and to inspire me with the wish of acquiring more information concerning the subjects to which they related. For all the pleasure which I have since derived from classical learning, I am indebted to his judicious instruction and advice.

"In 1787 your father commenced the practice of the law in Williamsburg, and mine shortly after removed from thence to Kingsmill, leaving me in Williamsburg under the care of your father to complete my education. Under his kind and useful advice, my rapid advance in my studies, both at school and in college, and my increased age, began to qualify me as a companion for him. By confiding to my discretion matters not often entrusted to those so young as I was, he taught me prudence; and, by his excellent precepts and example, he contributed much to the improvement of both my mind and manners."

As a boy of quick parts, Littleton doubtless observed with more or less attention the events that were passing around him. One proof of his recollection at an early age may be found in that shadowy notion which he carried to his grave, of the personal appearance of the venerable old treasurer, Robert Carter Nicholas, whom, as he died in 1780, he could only have seen when he was six years old. His father, as before observed, was constantly engaged in public life; and it is certain that young Tazewell had frequent opportunities of seeing the statesmen of that era. I well remember hearing him describe a visit he made to Patrick Henry, when the orator lived at Venable's Ford in Prince Edward, and his finding him in the shade of an oak playing the fiddle for the amusement of a group of girls and boys.