Part 1 (2/2)
On the evening of October 7, 1732, thatjust finished a journey through King William County for the inspection of his estates, was conducted, for his night's lodging, to the house of a bloo , Mistress Sarah Sy her guest to be soed affections, ”put on a Gravity that becomes a Weed;” but so soon as she learned her hten'd up into an unusual cheerfulness and Serenity She was a portly, handsome Dame, of the Family of Esau, and seem'd not to pine too much for the Death of her Husband, as of the Family of the Saracens Thisis a person of a lively & cheerful Conversation, with much less Reserve than most of her Countryworeeable Qualities to Advantage We tost off a Bottle of honest Port, which we relisht with a broil'd Chicken At Nine I retir'd to my Devotions, And then Slept so Sound that Fancy itself was Stupify'd, else I shou'd have drea Sunday, ”the courteous Widow invited o to Church with Her, but I excus'dher she wou'd certainly spoil my Devotion Then she civilly entreated me to make her House my Home whenever I visited my Plantations, which madeafter that notable visit, the sprightlygave her hand in ood fae and probably a kins to reside on her estate of Studley, in the county of Hanover, she becah the lineage of both his parents, this child had some claim to an inheritance of brains The father, a man of firm and sound intellect, had been liberally educated in Scotland; ainia, he was held in high esteeence and character, as is shown by the positions he long held of county surveyor, colonel of his regie of the county court; while he could nu his near kinsmen at home several persons of eminence as divines, orators, or men of letters,--such as his uncle, William Robertson, minister of Borthwick in Mid Lothian and afterward of the Old Greyfriars' Church in Edinburgh; his cousin, David Henry, the successor of Edward Cave in the azine;” and especially his cousin, Williah, and author of the ”History of the Reign of the E the later paternal relatives of Patrick Henry enius very brilliant and in quality not unlike his own Patrick Henry's father was second cousin to that beautiful Eleanor Syhahaham, as thus the third cousin of Patrick Henry To soenuity to discover in the fiery, eccentric, and truculent eloquence of the great English advocate and parliamentary orator a family likeness to that of his renowned American kinsman; or to find in the fierceness of the chalish anti-slavery reforainst aristocratic and coer radicalism that burned in the blood of him who, on this side of the Atlantic, was, in popular oratory, the great chae III, and afterward of the political autono centralization which he saw coiled up in the projected Constitution of the United States[2]
Those, however, who knew the mother of Patrick Henry, and her family, the Winstons, were accustomed to think that it was from her side of the house that he derived the enius, but of his disposition The Winstons of Virginia were of Welsh stock; a family marked by vivacity of spirit, conversational talent, a lyric and draift for music and for eloquent speech, at the same time by a fondness for country life, for inartificial pleasures, for fishi+ng and hunting, for the solitude and the unkempt charms of nature It was said, too, of the Winstons that their talents were in excess of their aht into use except in a fitful way, and under the sti occasion They seeed to that very considerable class of persons in this world of whoht have beenold inia, of Patrick Henry's uncle, his ift of eloquence dazzling and wondrous like Patrick's, nay, as hireat speakers of Virginia except by Patrick hiinia during Patrick Henry's early years was extremely simple It consisted of an alated by the sporadic and irregular exercise of domestic tuition Those who could afford to iot it, if they desired; those who could not, generally ithout As to the youthful Patrick, he and education never took kindly to each other From nearly all quarters the testimony is to this effect,--that he was an indolent, dreamy, frolicsome creature, with a ard for fishi+ng-rods and shot-guns; disorderly in dress, slouching, vagrant, una more tastes and aspirations in common with trappers and frontiers no hint nor token, by word or act, of the possession of any intellectual gift that could raise hi the first ten years of his life, he seehborhood, so, writing, and arithe of thewith that of other children, being aided in the task by the very competent help of a brother, the Rev Patrick Henry, rector of St Paul's parish, in Hanover, and apparently a good Scotch classicist In this way our Patrick acquired soe ofthe only branch of book-learning for which, in those days, he showed the least liking However, under such circumstances, with little real discipline, doubtless, and amid plentiful interruptions, the process of ostensible education went forith the young man; and even this came to an end by the tie, he was duly graduated from the domestic schoolroom into the shop of a country tradesle year, his father set hi with him in the conduct of a country store his elder brother, William, a youth more indolent, if possible, as well as more disorderly and uncommercial, than Patrick hiht the petty concern to its inevitable fate Just one year after that, having attained the ripe age of eighteen, and being then entirely out of employment, and equally out of ave sywoman quite as impecunious as himself The na a shborhood
In the very rashness and absurdity of this proceeding on the part of these two interesting young paupers, irresistibly smitten with each other's charms, andit, there seems to have been a sort of semi-ludicrous pathos which constituted an irresistible call for help
The parents on both sides heard the call, and by their joint efforts soon established the young couple on a little farm near at hand, from which, by their own toil, reenforced by that of half a dozen slaves, they were expected to extort a living This experiment, the success of which depended on exactly those qualities which Patrick did not then possess,--industry, order, sharp calculation, persistence,--turned out as ht have been predicted At the end of two years he made a forced sale of some of his slaves, and invested the proceeds in the stock of a country store once more But as he had now proved himself to be a bad farmer, and a still worse merchant, it is not easy to divine by what subtle process of reasoning he had been able to conclude that there would be any iriculture and back into merchandise
When he undertook this last venture he was still but a youth of twenty By the time that he enty-three, that is, by the autumn of 1759, he had become convinced that his little store was to prove for him merely a consumer of capital and a producer of bad debts; and in view of the necessity of soon closing it, he had a into consideration what he should do next Already was he the happy father of sundry small children, with the ement and multiplication of his paternal honors Surely, to a e of fifteen, had been engaged in a series of enterprises to gain his livelihood, and had perfectly failed in every one of them, the question of his future means of subsistence must have presented itself as a subject of no little pertinence, not to say urgency
However, at that ti health and of inextinguishable spirits, and even in that crisis of his life he was able to deal gayly with its problems
In that very year, 1759, Thomas Jefferson, then a lad of sixteen, and on his way to the College of William and Mary, happened to spend the Christe, in Hanover, and there firstthese days, Jefferson furnished this picture of him:--
”Mr Henry had, a little before, broken up his store, or rather it had broken him up; but his misfortunes were not to be traced either in his countenance or conduct” ”During the festivity of the season I met hih I wasof coarseness in the, and pleasantry He excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him”[4]
Shortly after Jefferson left those hilarious scenes for the soe at Willia in his own , so it seemed, neither could he traffic, but perhaps he could talk Why not get a living by his tongue? Why not be a lawyer?
But before we follow hiates which, after soes, threw open to him the broad pathway to wealth, renown, unbounded influence,--let us stop a et a more distinct idea, if we can, of his real intellectual outfit for the career on which he was about to enter
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Byrd Manuscripts_, ii 79, 80
[2] I have froham are of his relationshi+p to Patrick Henry, and that in recognition of it he showed rand-nephew of Patrick Henry, the late W C Preston, of South Carolina, when the latter was in England
Moreover, in his _Life and Tiham declares that he derived from his maternal ancestors the qualities which lifted him above the mediocrity that had always attached to his ancestors on the paternal side
[3] Wirt, 3
[4] In a letter to Wirt, in 1815, _Life of Henry_, 14, 15; also _Writings of Jefferson_, vi 487, 488, where the letter is given, apparently, from the first draft
CHAPTER II