An old lady who lived for years on the banks of the Staunton, near Randolph’s solitary home, tells a pathetic story:
She was sitting alone in her room in the dead of winter, when a beautiful woman, pale as a ghost, dressed entirely in white, suddenly appeared before her, and began to talk about Mr. Randolph, saying he was her lover and would marry her yet, as he had never proved false to his plighted faith. She talked of him incessantly, like one deranged, until a young gentleman came by the house, leading a horse with a side-saddle on. She rushed out, and asked his permission to ride a few miles. Greatly to his surprise, she mounted without assistance, and sat astride like a man. He was much embarrassed, but had no choice except to escort her to the end of her journey.
The old lady who tells of this strange experience says that the young woman several times visited Mr. Randolph, always dressed in white and usually in the dead of winter. He always put her on a horse and sent her away with a servant to escort her.
In his life there were but two women—his mother and Maria Ward. While his lips were closed on the subject of his love, he did not hesitate to avow his misery. “I too am wretched,” he would say with infinite pathos; and after her death, he spoke of Maria Ward as his “angel.”
In a letter written sometime after she died, he said, strangely enough: “I loved, aye, and was loved again, not wisely, but too well.”
His brilliant career was closed when he was sixty years old, and in his last illness, during delirium, the name of Maria was frequently heard by those who were anxiously watching with him. But, true to himself and to her, even when his reason was dethroned, he said nothing more.
He was buried on his own plantation, in the midst of “that boundless contiguity of shade,” with his secret locked forever in his tortured breast. “John Randolph of Roanoke,” was all the title he claimed; but the history of those times teaches us that he was more than that—he was John Randolph, of the Republic.