As to Marshall’s religious affiliations, he was a regular and devoted attendant, all his life, of the Episcopal Church, in which he was brought up; taking an active part in the services and the responses, and kneeling in prayer, we are told, even when the pews were so narrow that his tall form had to be accommodated by the projection of his feet into the aisle. His friend, Bishop Meade, the Episcopal bishop of Virginia, states that he was never a communicant in that church; and he quotes a letter from an Episcopal clergyman who often visited Mrs. Harvie, Marshall’s only daughter, in her last illness, and who reports from her the statement that, during the last months of his life, he told her “that the reason why he never communed was that he was a Unitarian in opinion, though he never joined their society.” It is added, however, in the same letter, that Mrs. Harvie, a person “of the strictest probity, the most humble piety, and the most clear and discriminating mind,” also said that, during these last months, Marshall read Keith on Prophecy, and was convinced by that work, and the fuller investigation to which it led, of the supreme divinity of Jesus, and wished to commune, but thought it his duty to do it publicly; and while waiting for the opportunity, died.
The reader of such a statement seems to perceive or to conjecture an anxiety to relieve the memory of the Chief Justice of an opprobrium. Whatever the exact fact may be about this late change in opinion, there is little occasion to be surprised that Marshall shared, during his active life, the opinions of his friend Judge Story. The genuineness and the simplicity of Marshall’s lifelong piety are indicated by another statement reported from Mrs. Harvie: “Her father told her that he never went to bed without concluding his prayer with those which his mother taught him when a child, viz. the Lord’s prayer and the prayer beginning, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’”
Marshall was a man of vigorous physique. “He was always,” says a descendant,[45] “devoted to walking, but more especially before breakfast in the early morning. A venerable professor I met in Washington told me that, when he was a boy, regularly every morning at seven o’clock, when he was on his way to school, he met the Chief Justice returning from a long walk. He walked rapidly always. Hon. Horace Binney says: ‘After doing my best one morning to overtake Chief Justice Marshall, in his quick march to the Capitol, when he was nearer to eighty than seventy, I asked him to what cause in particular he attributed that strong and quick step, and he replied that he thought it was most due to his commission in the army of the Revolution, in which he had been a regular foot practitioner for six years.’”
We often hear of the Chief Justice at his “Quoit Club.” He was a famous player at quoits. A club had been formed by some of the early Scotch settlers of Richmond, and it came to include among its members leading men of the city, such as Marshall, Wirt, Nicholas, Call, Munford, and others. Chester Harding, the artist who painted the full-length portrait of Marshall that hangs in the Boston Athenæum, tells us of seeing him at the Quoit Club. Fortunately, language does not, like paint, limit the artist to a single moment of time. He gives us the Chief Justice in action. Marshall was then attending the Virginia Constitutional Convention, which sat from October, 1829, to January, 1830. The Quoit Club used to meet every week in a beautiful grove, about a mile from the city. Harding went early. “I watched,” he says, “for the coming of the old chief. He soon approached, with his coat on his arm and his hat in his hand, which he was using as a fan. He walked directly up to a large bowl of mint julep, which had been prepared, and drank off a tumblerful of the liquid, smacking his lips, and then turned to the company with a cheerful ‘How are you, gentlemen?’ He was looked upon as the best pitcher of the party, and could throw heavier quoits than any other member of the club. The game began with great animation. There were several ties; and before long I saw the great Chief Justice of the United States down on his knees, measuring the contested distance with a straw, with as much earnestness as if it had been a point of law; and if he proved to be in the right, the woods would ring with his triumphant shout.”[46]
An entertaining account has been preserved[47] of a meeting of the club, held, apparently, while Marshall was still at the bar, at which he and Wickham—a leading Virginia lawyer, one of the counsel of Aaron Burr—were the caterers. At the table Marshall announced that at the last meeting two members had introduced politics, a forbidden subject, and had been fined a basket of champagne, and that this was now produced, as a warning to evil-doers; as the club seldom drank this article, they had no champagne glasses, and must drink it in tumblers. Those who played quoits retired, after a while, for a game. Most of the members had smooth, highly polished brass quoits. But Marshall’s were large, rough, heavy, and of iron, such as few of the members could throw well from hub to hub. Marshall himself threw them with great success and accuracy, and often “rang the meg.” On this occasion Marshall and the Rev. Mr. Blair led the two parties of players. Marshall played first, and rang the meg. Parson Blair did the same, and his quoit came down plumply on top of Marshall’s. There was uproarious applause, which drew out all the others from the dinner; and then came an animated controversy as to what should be the effect of this exploit. They all returned to the table, had another bottle of champagne, and listened to arguments, one from Marshall, pro se, and one from Wickham for Parson Blair. The company decided against Marshall. His argument is a humorous companion piece to any one of his elaborate judicial opinions. He began by formulating the question, “Who is winner when the adversary quoits are on the meg at the same time?” He then stated the facts, and remarked that the question was one of the true construction and application of the rules of the game. The one first ringing the meg has the advantage. No other can succeed who does not begin by displacing this first one. The parson, he willingly allowed, deserves to rise higher and higher in everybody’s esteem; but then he mustn’t do it by getting on another’s back in this fashion. That is more like leapfrog than quoits. Then, again, the legal maxim is, Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad cœlum,—his own right as first occupant extends to the vault of heaven; no opponent can gain any advantage by squatting on his back. He must either bring a writ of ejectment, or drive him out vi et armis. And then, after further argument of the same sort, he asked judgment, and sat down amidst great applause.
Mr. Wickham then rose, and made an argument of a similar pattern. No rule, he said, requires an impossibility. Mr. Marshall’s quoit is twice as large as any other; and yet it flies from his arm like the iron ball at the Grecian games from the arm of Ajax. It is an iron quoit, unpolished, jagged, and of enormous weight. It is impossible for an ordinary quoit to move it. With much more of the same sort, he contended that it was a drawn game. After very animated voting, designed to keep up the uncertainty as long as possible, it was so decided. Another trial was had, and Marshall clearly won.
All his life he played this game. There is an account of a country barbecue in the mountain region, where a casual guest saw him, then an old man, emerge from a thicket which bordered a brook, carrying a pile of flat stones as large as he could hold between his right arm and his chin. He stepped briskly up to the company and threw them down. “There! Here are quoits enough for us all.”
Of Marshall’s simple habits, remarkable modesty, and engaging simplicity of conduct and demeanor, every one who knew him speaks. These things were in the grain, and outlasted all the wear and tear of life. “What was it in him which most impressed you?” asked one of his descendants, now a distinguished judge,[48] of an older relative who had known him. “His humility,” was her answer. “With Marshall,” wrote President Quincy, “I had considerable acquaintance during the eight years I was member of Congress, from 1805 to 1813, played chess with him, and never failed to be impressed with the frank, cordial, childlike simplicity and unpretending manner of the man, of whose strength and breadth of intellectual power I was … well apprised.”
“Nothing was more usual,” we are told, as regards his life in Richmond, “than to see him returning from market, at sunrise, with poultry in one hand and a basket of vegetables in the other.” And, again, some one speaks of meeting him on horseback, at sunrise, with a bag of seeds before him, on his way to his farm, three or four miles out of town. It was of this farm that he wrote to James Monroe, his old friend and schoolmate, about passing so much time in “laborious relaxation.” The italics are his own.