WIRT'S LIFE OF PATRICK CHAPTER I. Birth of Patrick Henry-Family Reminiscences-Early Propensities-Is placed under the Care of a Merchant-Engages in Business with his Brother- -Becomes bankrupt-Is married-Cominences farming-Abandons Agriculture and recommences mercantile Business-Is again unfortunateBecomes acquainted with Mr. Jefferson-Determines to study Law-Is licensed-Contest on the Subject of the Tobacco Law-Mr. Henry retained as Counsel-Success of his first Effort. PATRICK HENRY, the second son of John and Sarah, Henry, and one of nine children, was born on the twenty-ninth of May, seventeen hundred and thirty-six, at the family-seat, called Studley, in the county of Hanover and colony of Virginia. In his early childhood, his parents removed to another seat, in the same county, then called Mount Brilliant, now the Retreat; at which latter place Patrick Henry was raised and educated. His parents, though not rich, were in easy circumstances; and, in point of personal character, were among the most respectable inhabitants of the colony. His father, Col. John Henry, was a native of Aberdeen in Scotland. He was, it is said, a first cousin to David Henry, who was the brother-in-law and successor of Edward Cave, in the publication of that celebrated work, The Gentleman's Magazine," and himself the author of several literary tracts: John Henry is also said to have been a nephew, in the maternal line, to the great historian Dr. William Robertson. He came over to Virginia, in quest of fortune, some time prior to the year seventeen hundred and thirty, and the tradition is, that he enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Mr. Dinwiddie, afterward the governor of the colony. By this gentleman, it is reported, that he was introduced to the elder Col. Syme of Hanover, in whose family, it is certain, that he became domesticated during the life of that gentleman; after whose death he intermarried with his widow, and resided on the estate which he had left. 11 It is considered as a fair proof of the personal merit of Mr. John Henry, that, in those days, when offices were bestowed with peculiar caution, he was the colonel of his regiment, the principal surveyor of the county, and, for many years, the presiding magistrate of the county court. His surviving acquaintances concur in stating, that he was a man of liberal education; that he possessed a plain, yet solid understanding; and lived long a life of the most irreproachable integrity and exemplary piety. His brother Patrick, a clergyman of the church of England, followed him to this country some years afterward; and became, by his influence, the minister of St. Paul's parish in Hanover, the functions of which office he sustained throughout life with great respectability. Both the brothers were zealous members of the established church, and warmly attached to the reigning family. Col. John Henry was conspicuously so. "There are those yet alive," says a correspondent, (Mr. Pope, in eighteen hundred and five,) "who have seen him at the head of his regiment, celebrating the birth-day, of George III. with as much enthusiasm as his son Patrick afterward displayed in resisting the encroachments of that monarch."* Mrs. Henry, the widow of Col. Syme, as we have seen, and the mother of Patrick Henry, was a native of Hanover county, and of the family of Winstons. She possessed, in an eminent degree, the mild and benevolent disposition, the undeviating probity, the correct understanding, and easy elocution, by which that ancient family has been so long distinguished. Her brother William, the father of the present Judge Winston, is said to have been highly endowed with that peculiar cast of eloquence, for which Mr. Henry became, afterward, so justly celebrated. Of this gentleman, I have an anecdote from a correspondent, (Mr. Pope,) which I shall give in his own words: "I have often heard my father, who was intimately acquainted with this William Winston, say, that he was the greatest orator whom he ever heard, Patrick Henry excepted; that during the last French and Indian war, and soon after Braddock's defeat, when the militia were marched to the frontiers of Virginia, against the enemy, this William Winston was the lieutenant of a company; that the men, who were indifferently clothed, without tents, and exposed to the rigour and inclemency of the weather, discovered great aversion to the service, and were anxious and even clamorous to return to their families; * Mr. Burk's account of Mr. Henry is extremely careless and full of errors. He begins by making him the son of his uncle :-" Patrick Henry, the son of a Scotch gentleman of the same name,” &c.—3d vol. of the History of Virginia, page 300. when this William Winston, mounting a stump, (the common rostrum, you know, of the field-orator of Virginia,) addressed them with such keenness of invective, and declaimed with sucl. force of eloquence, on liberty and patriotism, that when he concluded, the general cry was, 'Let us march on; lead us against the enemy !' and they were now willing, nay, anxious to encounter all those difficulties and dangers which, but a few moments before, had almost produced a mutiny. Thus much I have been able to collect of the parentage and family of Mr. Henry; and this, I presume, will be thought quite sufficient, in relation to a man, who owed no part of his greatness to the lustre of his pedigree, but was, in truth, the soul founder of his own fortunes. Until ten years of age, Patrick Henry was sent to a school in the neighbourhood, where he learned to read and write, and made some small progress in arithmetic. He was then taken home, and under the direction of his father, who had opened a grammar-school in his own house, he acquired a superficial knowledge of the Latin language, and learned to read the character, but never to translate Greek. At the same time, he made a considerable proficiency in the mathematics, the only branch of education for which, it seems, he discovered in his youth, the slightest predilection. But he was too idle to gain any solid advantage from the opportunities which were thrown in his way. He was passionately addicted to the sports of the field, and could not support the confinement and toil which education required. Hence, instead of system, or any semblance of regularity in his studies, his efforts were always desultory, and became more and more rare; until at length, when the hour of his school exercises arrived, Patrick was scarcely ever to be found. He was in the forest with his gun, or over the brook with his angle-rod; and, in these frivolous occupations, when not controlled by the authority of his father, (which was rarely exerted,) he would, it is said, spend whole days and weeks, with an appetite rather whetted than cloyed by enjoyment. His school-fellows, having observed his growing passion for these amusements, and having remarked that its progress was not checked either by the want of companions or the want of success, have frequently watched his movements to discover, if they could, the secret source of that delight which they seemed to afford him. But they made no discovery which led them to any other conclusion than (to use their own expression) that "he loved idleness for its own sake." They have frequently observed him lying along, under the shade of some tree that overhung the sequestered stream, watching, for hours, at the same spot, the motionless cork of his fishing line, without one encouraging symptom of success, and without any apparent source of enjoyment, unless he could find it in the ease of his posture, or in the illusions of hope, or, which is most probable, in the stillness of the scene and the silent workings of his own imagination. This love of solitude, in his youth, was often observed. Even when hunting with a party, his choice was not to join the noisy band that drove the deer; he preferred to take his stand, alone, where he might wait for the passing game, and indulge himself, meanwhile, in the luxury of thinking. Not that he was averse to society; on the contrary, he had, at times, a very high zest for it. But even in society, his enjoyments while young, were of a very peculiar cast; he did not mix in the wild mirth of his equals in age; but sat, quiet and demure, taking no part in the conversation, giving no responsive smile to the circulating jest, but lost, to all appearance, in silence and abstraction. This abstraction, however, was only apparent; for on the dispersion of a company, when interrogated by his parents as to what had been passing, he was able, not only to detail the conversation, but to sketch, with strict fidelity, the character of every speaker. None of these early delineations of character are retained by his contemporaries; and, indeed, they are said to have been more remarkable for their justness, than for any peculiar felicity of execution. I cannot learn that he gave, in his youth, any evidence of that precocity which sometimes distinguishes uncommon genius. His companions recollect no instance of premature wit, no striking sentiment, no flash of fancy, no remarkable beauty or strength of expression; and no indication, however slight, either of that impassioned love of liberty, or of that adventurous daring and intrepidity, which marked so strongly, his future character. So far was he, indeed, from exhibiting any one prognostic of this greatness, that every omen foretold a life, at best, of mediocrity, if not of insignificance. His person is represented as having been coarse, his manners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his conversation very plain, his aversion to study invincible, and his faculties almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No persuasions could bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest, like one of the aborigines of the country, and divided his life between the dissipation and uproar of the chase and the languor of inaction. His propensity to observe and comment upon the human character was, so far as I can learn, the only circumstance which distinguished him, advantageously, from his youthful companions. This propensity seems to have been born with him, and to have exerted itself, instinctively, the moment that a new subject was presented to his view. Its action was incessant, and it became, at length almost the only intellectual exercise in which he seemed to take delight. To this cause may be traced that consummate knowledge of the human heart which he finally attained, and which enabled him, when he came upon the public stage, to touch the springs of passion with a master-hand, and to control the resolutions and decis ions of his hearers, with a power, almost more than mortal. From what has been already stated, it will be seen how little education had to do with the formation of this great man's mind. He was, indeed, a mere child of nature, and nature seems to have been too proud and too jealous of her work, to permit it to be touched by the hand of art. She gave him Shakspeare's genius, and bid him, like Shakspeare, to depend on that alone. Let not the youthful reader, however, deduce, from the example of Mr. Henry, an argument in favour of indolence and the contempt of study. Let him remember that the powers which surmounted the disadvantage of those early habits, were such as very rarely appear upon this earth. Let him re member, too, how long the genius, even of Mr. Henry, was kept down and hidden from the public view, by the sorcery of those pernicious habits; through what years of poverty and wretchedness they doomed him to struggle; and, let him re member, that, at length, when in the zenith of his glory, Mr. Henry himself had frequent occasion to deplore the consequences of his early neglect of literature, and to bewail "the ghosts of his departed hours." His father, unable to sustain, with convenience, the expense of so large a family as was now multiplying on his hands, found it necessary to qualify his sons, at a very early age, to support themselves. With this view, Patrick was placed at the age of fifteen, behind the counter of a merchant in the country. How he conducted himself in this situation, I have not been able to learn. There could not, however, I presume, have been any flagrant impropriety in his conduct, since, in the next year, his father considered him qualified to carry on business on his own account. Under this impression, he purchased a small adventure of goods for his two sons, William and Patrick, and, according to the language of the country, "set them up in trade." William's habits of idleness were, if possible, still more unfortunate than Patrick's. The chief management of their concerns, devolved, therefore, on the younger brother, and that management seems to have been most wretched. Left to himself, all the indolence of his character returned. |