THE MYSTERY OF RANDOLPH’S
COURTSHIP
It is said that in order to know a man, one must
begin with his ancestors, and the truth of the saying is strikingly exemplified
in the case of “John Randolph of Roanoke,” as he loved to write his name.
His contemporaries have told us what manner of man
he was—fiery, excitable, of strong passions and strong will, capable of great
bitterness, obstinate, revengeful, and extremely sensitive.
“I have been all my life,” he says, “the creature
of impulse, the sport of chance, the victim of my own uncontrolled and
uncontrollable sensations, and of a poetic temperament.”
He was sarcastic to a degree, proud, haughty, and
subject to fits of Byronic despair and morbid gloom. For these traits we must
look back to the Norman Conquest from which he traced his descent in an unbroken
line, while, on the side of his maternal grandmother, he was the seventh in
descent from Pocahontas, the Indian maiden who married John Rolfe.
The Indian blood was evident, even in his personal
appearance. He was tall, slender, and dignified in his bearing; his hands were
thin, his fingers long and bony; his face was dark, sallow, and wrinkled, oval
in shape and seamed with lines by the inward conflict which forever raged in
his soul. His chin was pointed but firm, and his lips were set; around his mouth
were marked the tiny, almost imperceptible lines which mean cruelty. His nose
was aquiline, his ears large at the top, tapering almost to a point at the
lobe, and his forehead unusually high and broad. His hair was soft, and his
skin, although dark, suffered from extreme sensitiveness.
“There is
no accounting for thinness of skins in different animals, human, or brute [he
once said]. Mine, I believe to be more tender than many infants of a month old.
Indeed I have remarked in myself, from my earliest recollection, a delicacy or
effeminacy of complexion, which but for a spice of the devil in my temper would
have consigned me to the distaff or the needle.”
“A spice of the devil” is mild indeed, considering
that before he was four years old he frequently swooned in fits of passion, and
was restored to consciousness with difficulty.
His most striking feature was his eyes. They were
deep, dark, and fiery, filled with passion and great sadness at the same time.
“When he first entered an assembly of people,” said one who knew him, “they
were the eyes of the eagle in search of his prey, darting about from place to
place to see upon whom to light. When he was assailed they flashed fire and
proclaimed a torrent of rage within.”
The voice of this great statesman was a rare gift:
“One might
live a hundred years [says one,] and never hear another like it. The wonder was
why the sweet tone of a woman was so harmoniously blended with that of a man.
His very whisper could be distinguished above the ordinary tones of other men.
His voice was so singularly clear, distinct, and melodious that it was a
positive pleasure to hear him articulate anything.”
Such was the man who swayed the multitude at will,
punished offenders with sarcasm and invective, inspired fear even in his
equals, and loved and suffered more than any other prominent man of his
generation.
He had many acquaintances, a few friends, and
three loves—his mother, his brother, and the beautiful young woman who held his
heart in the hollow of her hand, until the Gray Angel, taking pity, closed his
eyes in the last sleep.
His mother, who was Frances Bland, married John
Randolph in 1769, and John Randolph, of Roanoke, was their third son.
Tradition tells us of the unusual beauty of the
mother—
“the high expanded forehead, the smooth arched
brow; the brilliant dark eyes; the well defined nose; the full round laughing
lips; the tall graceful figure, the beautiful dark hair; an open cheerful
countenance—suffused with that deep, rich Oriental tint which never seems to
fade, all of which made her the most beautiful and attractive woman of her
age.”
She was a wife at sixteen, and at twenty-six a
widow. Three years after the death of her husband, she married St. George
Tucker, of Bermuda who proved to be a kind father to her children.
In the winter of 1781, Benedict Arnold, the
traitor who had spread ruin through his native state, was sent to Virginia on
an expedition of ravage. He landed at the mouth of the James, and advanced
toward Petersburg. Matoax, Randolph’s home, was directly in the line of the
invading army, so the family set out on a cold January morning, and at night
entered the home of Benjamin Ward, Jr.
John Randolph was seven years old, and little
Maria Ward had just passed her fifth birthday. The two children played together
happily, and in the boy’s heart was sown the seed of that grand passion which
dominated his life.
After a few days, the family went on to Bizarre, a
large estate on both sides of the Appomattox, and here Mrs. Tucker and her sons
spent the remainder of the year, while her husband joined General Greene’s
army, and afterward, the force of Lafayette.
In 1788, John Randolph’s mother died, and his
first grief swept over him in an overwhelming torrent. The boy of fifteen spent
bitter nights, his face buried in the grass, sobbing over his mother’s grave.
Years afterward, he wrote to a friend, “I am a fatalist. I am all but
friendless. Only one human being ever knew me. She only knew me.”
He kept his mother’s portrait always in his room,
and enshrined her in loving remembrance in his heart. He had never seen his
father’s face to remember it distinctly, and for a long time he wore his miniature
in his bosom. In 1796, his brother Richard died, and the unexpected blow
crushed him to earth. More than thirty years afterward he wrote to his
half-brother, Henry St. George Tucker, the following note:
“Dear Henry
“Our poor brother Richard was
born in 1770. He would have been fifty-six years old the ninth of this month. I
can no more.
”J. R. of R.”
At some time in his early manhood he came into
close relationship with Maria Ward. She had been an attractive child, and had
grown into a woman so beautiful that Lafayette said her equal could not be
found in North America. Her hair was auburn, and hung in curls around her face;
her skin was exquisitely fair; her eyes were dark and eloquent. Her mouth was
well formed; she was slender, graceful, and coquettish, well-educated, and in
every way, charming.
To this woman, John Randolph’s heart went out in
passionate, adoring love. He might be bitter and sarcastic with others, but
with her he was gentleness itself. Others might know him as a man of affairs,
keen and logical, but to her he was only a lover.
Timid and hesitating at first, afraid perhaps of
his fiery wooing, Miss Ward kept him for some time in suspense. All the
treasures of his mind and soul were laid before her; that deep, eloquent voice
which moved the multitude to tears at its master’s will was pleading with a
woman for her love.
What wonder that she yielded at last and promised
to marry him? Then for a time everything else was forgotten. The world lay
before him to be conquered when he might choose. Nothing would be too great for
him to accomplish—nothing impossible to that eager joyous soul enthroned at
last upon the greatest heights of human happiness. And then—there was a change.
He rode to her home one day, tying his horse outside as was his wont. A little
later he strode out, shaking like an aspen, his face white in agony. He drew
his knife from his pocket, cut the bridle of his horse, dug his spurs into the
quivering sides, and was off like the wind. What battle was fought out on that
wild ride is known only to John Randolph and his God. What torture that fiery
soul went through, no human being can ever know. When he came back at night, he
was so changed that no one dared to speak to him.
He threw himself into the political arena in order
to save his reason. Often at midnight, he would rise from his uneasy bed,
buckle on his pistols, and ride like mad over the country, returning only when
his horse was spent. He never saw Miss Ward again, and she married Peyton
Randolph, the son of Edmund Randolph, who was Secretary of State under Washington.
The entire affair is shrouded in mystery. There is
not a letter, nor a single scrap of paper, nor a shred of evidence upon which
to base even a presumption. The separation was final and complete, and the
white-hot metal of the man’s nature was gradually moulded into that strange
eccentric being whose foibles are so well known.
Only once did Randolph lift even a corner of the
veil. In a letter to his dearest friend he spoke of her as:
“One I loved better than my own soul, or Him who
created it. My apathy is not natural, but superinduced. There was a volcano
under my ice, but it burnt out, and a face of desolation has come on, not to be
rectified in ages, could my life be prolonged to patriarchal longevity.
“The necessity of loving and being loved was never
felt by the imaginary beings of Rousseau and Byron’s creation, more imperiously
than by myself. My heart was offered with a devotion that knew no reserve. Long
an object of proscription and treachery, I have at last, more mortifying to the
pride of man, become an object of utter indifference.”
The brilliant statesman would doubtless have had a
large liberty of choice among the many beautiful women of his circle, but he
never married, and there is no record of any entanglement. To the few women he
deemed worthy of his respect and admiration, he was deferential and even
gallant. In one of his letters to a young relative he said:
“Love to god-son Randolph and respectful
compliments to Mrs. R. She is indeed a fine woman, one for whom I have felt a
true regard, unmixed with the foible of another passion.
“Fortunately or unfortunately for me, when I knew
her, I bore a charmed heart. Nothing else could have preserved me from the full
force of her attractions.”
For much of the time after his disappointment, he
lived alone with his servants, solaced as far as possible by those friends of
all mankind—books. When the spirit moved him, he would make visits to the
neighbouring plantations, sometimes dressed in white flannel trousers, coat,
and vest, and with white paper wrapped around his beaver hat! When he presented
himself in this manner, riding horseback, with his dark eyes burning, he was
said to have presented “a most ghostly appearance!”
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.
HOW PRESIDENT JACKSON WON HIS
WIFE
In October of 1788, a little company of immigrants
arrived in Tennessee. The star of empire, which is said to move westward, had
not yet illumined Nashville, and it was one of the dangerous points “on the
frontier.”
The settlement was surrounded on all sides by
hostile Indians. Men worked in the fields, but dared not go out to their daily
task without being heavily armed. When two men met, and stopped for a moment to
talk, they often stood back to back, with their rifles cocked ready for instant
use. No one stooped to drink from a spring unless another guarded him, and the
women were always attended by an armed force.
Col. John Donelson had built for himself a
blockhouse of unusual size and strength, and furnished it comfortably; but
while surveying a piece of land near the village, he was killed by the savages,
and his widow left to support herself as best she could.
A married daughter and her husband lived with her,
but it was necessary for her to take other boarders. One day there was a
vigorous rap upon the stout door of the blockhouse, and a young man whose name
was Andrew Jackson was admitted. Shortly afterward, he took up his abode as a
regular boarder at the Widow Donelson’s.
The future President was then twenty-one or
twenty-two. He was tall and slender, with every muscle developed to its utmost
strength. He had an attractive face, pleasing manners, and made himself
agreeable to every one in the house.
The dangers of the frontier were but minor
incidents in his estimation, for “desperate courage makes one a majority,” and
he had courage. When he was but thirteen years of age, he had boldly defied a
British officer who had ordered him to clean some cavalry boots.
“Sir,” said the boy, “I am a prisoner of war, and
I claim to be treated as such!”
With an oath the officer drew his sword, and
struck at the child’s head. He parried the blow with his left arm, but received
a severe wound on his head and another on his arm, the scars of which he always
carried.
The protecting presence of such a man was welcome
to those who dwelt in the blockhouse—Mrs. Donelson, Mr. and Mrs. Robards, and
another boarder, John Overton. Mrs. Donelson was a good cook and a notable
housekeeper, while her daughter was said to be “the best story teller, the best
dancer, the sprightliest companion, and the most dashing horsewoman in the
western country.”
Jackson, as the only licensed lawyer in that part
of Tennessee, soon had plenty of business on his hands, and his life in the
blockhouse was a happy one until he learned that the serpent of jealousy lurked
by that fireside.
Mrs. Robards was a comely brunette, and her dusky
beauty carried with it an irresistible appeal. Jackson soon learned that
Captain Robards was unreasonably and even insanely jealous of his wife, and he
learned from John Overton that before his arrival there had been a great deal
of unhappiness because of this.
At one time Captain Robards had written to Mrs.
Donelson to take her daughter home, as he did not wish to live with her any
longer; but through the efforts of Mr. Overton a reconciliation had been
effected between the pair, and they were still living together at Mrs.
Donelson’s when Jackson went there to board.
In a short time, however, Robards became violently
jealous of Jackson and talked abusively to his wife, even in the presence of
her mother and amidst the tears of both. Once more Overton interfered, assured
Robards that his suspicions were groundless, and reproached him for his unmanly
conduct.
It was all in vain, however, and the family was in
as unhappy a state as before, when they were living with the Captain’s mother
who had always taken the part of her daughter-in-law.
At length Overton spoke to Jackson about it,
telling him it was better not to remain where his presence made so much
trouble, and offered to go with him to another boarding-place. Jackson readily
assented, though neither of them knew where to go, and said that he would talk
to Captain Robards.
The men met near the orchard fence, and Jackson
remonstrated with the Captain who grew violently angry and threatened to strike
him. Jackson told him that he would not advise him to try to fight, but if he
insisted, he would try to give him satisfaction. Nothing came of the
discussion, however, as Robards seemed willing to take Jackson’s advice and did
not dare to strike him. But the coward continued to abuse his wife, and
insulted Jackson at every opportunity. The result was that the young lawyer
left the house.
A few months later, the still raging husband left
his wife and went to Kentucky, which was then a part of Virginia. Soon
afterward, Mrs. Robards went to live with her sister, Mrs. Hay, and Overton
returned to Mrs. Donelson’s.
In the following autumn there was a rumour that
Captain Robards intended to return to Tennessee and take his wife to Kentucky,
at which Mrs. Donelson and her daughter were greatly distressed. Mrs. Robards
wept bitterly, and said it was impossible for her to live peaceably with her
husband as she had tried it twice and failed. She determined to go down the
river to Natchez, to a friend, and thus avoid her husband, who she said had
threatened to haunt her.
When Jackson heard of this arrangement he was very
much troubled, for he felt that he had been the unwilling cause of the young
wife’s unhappiness, although entirely innocent of any wrong intention. So when
Mrs. Robards had fully determined to undertake the journey to Natchez,
accompanied only by Colonel Stark and his family, he offered to go with them as
an additional protection against the Indians who were then especially active,
and his escort was very gladly accepted. The trip was made in safety, and after
seeing the lady settled with her friends, he returned to Nashville and resumed
his law practice.
At that time there was no divorce law in Virginia,
and each separate divorce required the passage of an act of the legislature
before a jury could consider the case. In the winter of 1791, Captain Robards
obtained the passage of such an act, authorising the court of Mercer County to
act upon his divorce. Mrs. Robards, hearing of this, understood that the
passage of the act was, in itself, divorce, and that she was a free woman. Jackson
also took the divorce for granted. Every one in the country so understood the
matter, and at Natchez, in the following summer, the two were married.
They returned to Nashville, settled down, and
Jackson began in earnest the career that was to land him in the White House,
the hero of the nation.
In December of 1793, more than two years after
their marriage, their friend Overton learned that the legislature had not
granted a divorce, but had left it for the court to do so. Jackson was much
chagrined when he heard of this, and it was with great difficulty that he was
brought to believe it. In January of 1794, when the decree was finally
obtained, they were married again.
It is difficult to excuse Jackson for marrying the
woman without positive and absolute knowledge of her divorce. He was a lawyer,
and could have learned the facts of the case, even though there was no
established mail service. Each of them had been entirely innocent of any
intentional wrong-doing, and their long life together, their great devotion to
each other, and General Jackson’s honourable career, forever silenced the
spiteful calumny of his rivals and enemies of early life.
In his eyes his wife was the soul of honour and
purity; he loved and reverenced her as a man loves and reverences but one woman
in his lifetime, and for thirty-seven years he kept a pair of pistols loaded
for the man who should dare to breathe her name without respect.
The famous pistol duel with Dickinson was the
result of a quarrel which had its beginning in a remark reflecting upon Mrs.
Jackson, and Dickinson, though a crack shot, paid for it with his life.
Several of Dickinson’s friends sent a memorial to
the proprietors of the Impartial Review, asking that the next number of the
paper appear in mourning, “out of respect for the memory, and regret for the
untimely death, of Mr. Charles Dickinson.”
“Old
Hickory” heard of this movement, and wrote to the proprietors, asking that the
names of the gentlemen making the request be published in the memorial number
of the paper. This also was agreed to, and it is significant that twenty-six of
the seventy-three men who had signed the petition called and erased their names
from the document.
“The Hermitage” at Nashville, which is still a
very attractive spot for visitors, was built solely to please Mrs. Jackson, and
there she dispensed gracious hospitality. Not merely a guest or two, but whole
families, came for weeks at a time, for the mistress of the mansion was fond of
entertaining, and proved herself a charming hostess. She had a good memory, had
passed through many and greatly varied experiences, and above all she had that
rare faculty which is called tact.
Though her husband’s love for her was evident to
every one, yet, in the presence of others, he always maintained a dignified
reserve. He never spoke of her as “Rachel,” nor addressed her as “My Dear.” It
was always “Mrs. Jackson,” or “wife.” She always called him “Mr. Jackson,”
never “Andrew” nor “General.”
Both of them greatly desired children, but this
blessing was denied them; so they adopted a boy, the child of Mrs. Jackson’s
brother, naming him “Andrew Jackson,” and bringing him up as their own child.
The lady’s portrait shows her to have been
wonderfully attractive. It does not reveal the dusky Oriental tint of her skin,
the ripe red of her lips, nor the changing lights in her face, but it shows the
high forehead, the dark soft hair, the fine eyes, and the tempting mouth which
was smiling, yet serene. A lace head-dress is worn over the waving hair, and
the filmy folds fall softly over neck and bosom.
When Jackson was elected to the Presidency, the
ladies of Nashville organized themselves into sewing circles to prepare Mrs.
Jackson’s wardrobe. It was a labour of love. On December 23, 1828, there was to
be a grand banquet in Jackson’s honour, and the devoted women of their home
city had made a beautiful gown for his wife to wear at the dinner. At sunrise
the preparations began. The tables were set, the dining-room decorated, and the
officers and men of the troop that was to escort the President-elect were preparing
to go to the home and attend him on the long ride into the city. Their horses
were saddled and in readiness at the place of meeting. As the bugle sounded the
summons to mount, a breathless messenger appeared on a horse flecked with foam.
Mrs. Jackson had died of heart disease the evening before.
The festival was changed to a funeral, and the
trumpets and drums that were to have sounded salute were muffled in black. All
decorations were taken down, and the church bells tolled mournfully. The grief
of the people was beyond speech. Each one felt a personal loss.
At the home the blow was terrible. The
lover-husband would not leave his wife. In those bitter hours the highest gift
of his countrymen was an empty triumph, for his soul was wrecked with the
greatness of his loss.
When she was buried at the foot of a slope in the
garden of “The Hermitage,” his bereavement came home to him with crushing
strength. Back of the open grave stood a great throng of people, waiting in the
wintry wind. The sun shone brightly on the snow, but “The Hermitage” was
desolate, for its light and laughter and love were gone. The casket was carried
down the slope, and a long way behind it came the General, slowly and almost
helpless, between two of his friends.
The people of Nashville had made ready to greet
him with the blare of bugles, waving flags, the clash of cymbals, and
resounding cheers. It was for the President-elect—the hero of the war. The
throng that stood behind the open grave greeted him with sobs and tears—not the
President-elect, but the man bowed by his sixty years, bareheaded, with his gray
hair rumpled in the wind, staggering toward them in the throes of his bitterest
grief.
In that one night he had grown old. He looked like
a man stricken beyond all hope. When his old friends gathered around him with
the tears streaming down their cheeks, wringing his hand in silent sympathy, he
could make no response.
He was never the same again, though his strength
of will and his desperate courage fought with this infinite pain. For the rest
of his life he lived as she would have had him live—guided his actions by the
thought of what his wife, if living, would have had him do—loving her still,
with the love that passeth all understanding.
He declined the sarcophagus fit for an emperor,
that he might be buried like a simple citizen, in the garden by her side.
His last words were of her—his last look rested
upon her portrait that hung opposite his bed, and if there be dreaming in the
dark, the vision of her brought him peace at last.
THE BACHELOR PRESIDENT’S
LOYALTY TO A MEMORY
The fifteenth President was remarkable among the
men of his time for his lifelong fidelity to one woman, for since the days of
knight-errantry such devotion has been as rare as it is beautiful. The young
lawyer came of Scotch-Irish parentage, and to this blending of blood were
probably in part due his deep love and steadfastness. There was rather more of
the Irish than of the Scotch in his face, and when we read that his overflowing
spirits were too much for the college in which he had been placed, and that,
for “reasons of public policy,” the honours which he had earned were on
commencement day given to another, it is evident that he may sometimes have
felt that he owed allegiance primarily to the Emerald Isle.
Like others, who have been capable of deep and
lasting passion, James Buchanan loved his mother. Among his papers there was
found a fragment of an autobiography, which ended in 1816, when the writer was
only twenty-five years of age. He says his father was “a kind father, a sincere
friend, and an honest and religious man,” but on the subject of his mother he
waxes eloquent:
“Considering her limited opportunities in early
life [he writes], my mother was a remarkable woman. The daughter of a country
farmer, engaged in household employment from early life until after my father’s
death, she yet found time to read much, and to reflect deeply on what she read.
“She had a great fondness for poetry, and could
repeat with ease all the passages in her favorite authors which struck her
fancy. These were Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, and Thompson.
“I do not think, at least until a late period in
life, she had ever read a criticism on any one of these authors, and yet such
was the correctness of her natural taste, that she had selected for herself,
and could repeat, every passage in them which has been admired....
“For her sons, as they grew up successively, she
was a delightful and instructive companion.... She was a woman of great
firmness of character, and bore the afflictions of her later life with
Christian philosophy.... It was chiefly to her influence, that her sons were
indebted for a liberal education. Under Providence I attribute any little
distinction which I may have acquired in the world to the blessing which He
conferred upon me in granting me such a mother.”
If Elizabeth Buchanan could have read these words,
doubtless she would have felt fully repaid for her many years of toil,
self-sacrifice, and devotion.
After the young man left the legislature and took
up the practice of law, with the intention of spending his life at the bar, he
became engaged to Anne Coleman, the daughter of Robert Coleman, of Lancaster.
She is said to have been an unusually beautiful
girl, quiet, gentle, modest, womanly, and extremely sensitive. The fine
feelings of a delicately organized nature may easily become either a blessing or
a curse, and on account of her sensitiveness there was a rupture for which
neither can be very greatly blamed.
Mr. Coleman approved of the engagement, and the
happy lover worked hard to make a home for the idol of his heart. One day, out
of the blue sky a thunderbolt fell. He received a note from Miss Coleman asking
him to release her from her engagement.
There was no explanation forthcoming, and it was
not until long afterward that he discovered that busy-bodies and gossips had
gone to Miss Coleman with stories concerning him which had no foundation save
in their mischief-making imaginations, and which she would not repeat to him.
After all his efforts at re-establishing the old relations had proved useless,
he wrote to her that if it were her wish to be released from her engagement he
could but submit, as he had no desire to hold her against her will.
The break came in the latter part of the summer of
1819, when he was twenty-eight years old and she was in her twenty-third year.
He threw himself into his work with renewed energy, and later on she went to
visit friends in Philadelphia.
Though she was too proud to admit it, there was
evidence that the beautiful and high-spirited girl was suffering from
heartache. On the ninth of December, she died suddenly, and her body was
brought home just a week after she left Lancaster. The funeral took place the
next day, Sunday, and to the suffering father of the girl, the heart-broken
lover wrote a letter which in simple pathos stands almost alone. It is the only
document on this subject which remains, but in these few lines is hidden a
tragedy:
“Lancaster, December 10, 1819.
“My Dear Sir:
“You have lost a child, a dear,
dear child. I have lost the only earthly object of my affections, without whom,
life now presents to me a dreary blank. My prospects are all cut off, and I
feel that my happiness will be buried with her in her grave.
“It is now no time for
explanation, but the time will come when you will discover that she, as well as
I, has been greatly abused. God forgive the authors of it! My feelings of
resentment against them, whoever they may be, are buried in the dust.
“I have now one request to make,
and for the love of God, and of your dear departed daughter, whom I loved
infinitely more than any human being could love, deny me not. Afford me the
melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before its interment. I would not, for
the world, be denied this request.
“I might make another, but from
the misrepresentations that have been made to you, I am almost afraid. I would
like to follow her remains, to the grave as a mourner. I would like to convince
the world, I hope yet to convince you, that she was infinitely dearer to me
than life.
“I may sustain the shock of her
death, but I feel that happiness has fled from me forever. The prayer which I
make to God without ceasing is, that I yet may be able to show my veneration
for the memory of my dear, departed saint, by my respect and attachment for her
surviving friends.
“May Heaven bless you and enable
you to bear the shock with the fortitude of a Christian.
“I am forever, your sincere and
grateful friend,
”James Buchanan.”
The father returned the letter unopened and
without comment. Death had only widened the breach. It would have been
gratifying to know that the two lovers were together for a moment at the end.
For such a meeting as that there are no words but
Edwin Arnold’s:
“But he—who loved her too well to dread
The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead—
He lit his lamp, and took the key,
And turn’d it!—alone again—he and she!”
For him there was not even a glimpse of her as she
lay in her coffin, nor a whisper that some day, like Evelyn Hope, she might
“wake, and remember and understand.” With that love that asks only for the
right to serve, and feeling perhaps that no pen could do her justice, he
obtained permission to write a paragraph for a local paper, which was published
unsigned:
“Departed this life, on Thursday
morning last, in the twenty-third year of her age, while on a visit to friends
in the city of Philadelphia, Miss Anne C. Coleman, daughter of Robert Coleman,
Esquire of this city.
“It rarely falls to our lot to
shed a tear over the remains of one so much and so deservedly beloved as was
the deceased. She was everything which the fondest parent, or the fondest
friend could have wished her to be.
“Although she was young and
beautiful and accomplished, and the smiles of fortune shone upon her, yet her
native modesty and worth made her unconscious of her own attractions. Her heart
was the seat of all the softer virtues which ennoble and dignify the character
of woman.
“She has now gone to a world,
where, in the bosom of her God, she will be happy with congenial spirits. May
the memory of her virtues be ever green in the hearts of her surviving friends.
May her mild spirit, which on earth still breathes peace and good will, be
their guardian angel to preserve them from the faults to which she was ever a
stranger.
“The spider’s most attenuated
thread
Is cord, is cable, to man’s
tender tie
On earthly bliss—it breaks at
every breeze.”
How deeply he felt her death is shown by extracts
from a letter written to him by a friend in the latter part of December:
“I am writing, I know not why, and perhaps had
better not. I write only to speak of the awful visitation of Providence that
has fallen upon you, and how deeply I feel it.... I trust to your philosophy
and courage, and to the elasticity of spirits natural to most young men....
“The sun will shine again, though
a man enveloped in gloom always thinks the darkness is to be eternal. Do you
remember the Spanish anecdote?
“A lady who had lost a favorite
child remained for months sunk in sullen sorrow and despair. Her confessor, one
morning visited her, and found her, as usual immersed in gloom and grief.
‘What,’ said he, ‘Have you not forgiven God Almighty?’
“She rose, exerted herself,
joined the world again, and became useful to herself and her friends.”
Time’s kindly touch heals many wounds, but the
years seemed to bring to James Buchanan no surcease of sorrow. He was always
under the cloud of that misunderstanding, and during his long political career,
the incident frequently served as a butt for the calumnies of his enemies. It
was freely used in “campaign documents,” perverted, misrepresented, and twisted
into every conceivable shape, though it is difficult to conceive how any form
of humanity could ever be so base.
Next to the loss of the girl he loved, this was
the greatest grief of his life. To see the name of his “dear, departed saint”
dragged into newspaper notoriety was absolute torture. Denial was useless, and
pleading had no effect. After he had retired to his home at Wheatland, and when
he was past seventy—when Anne Coleman’s beautiful body had gone back to the
dust, there was a long article in a newspaper about the affair, accompanied by
the usual misrepresentations.
To a friend, he said, with deep emotion: “In my
safety-deposit box in New York there is a sealed package, containing papers and
relics which will explain everything. Sometime, when I am dead, the world will
know—and absolve.”
But after his death, when his executors found the
package, there was a direction on the outside: “To be burned unopened at my
death.”
He chose silence rather than vindication at the
risk of having Anne Coleman’s name again brought into publicity. In that little
parcel there was doubtless full exoneration, but at the end, as always, he
nobly bore the blame.
It happened that the letter he had written to her
father was not in this package, but among his papers at Wheatland—otherwise
that pathetic request would also have been burned.
Through all his life he remained true to Anne’s
memory. Under the continual public attacks his grief became one that even his
friends forebore to speak of, and he had a chivalrous regard for all women,
because of his love for one. His social instincts were strong, his nature
affectionate and steadfast, yet it was owing to his disappointment that he
became President. At one time, when he was in London, he said to an intimate
friend: “I never intended to engage in politics, but meant to follow my
profession strictly. But my prospects and plans were all changed by a most sad
event, which happened at Lancaster when I was a young man. As a distraction
from my grief, and because I saw that through a political following I could
secure the friends I then needed, I accepted a nomination.”
A beautiful side of his character is shown in his
devotion to his niece, Harriet Lane. He was to her always a faithful father.
When she was away at school or otherwise separated from him, he wrote to her
regularly, never failing to assure her of his affection, and received her love
and confidence in return. In 1865, when she wrote to him of her engagement, he
replied, in part, as follows:
“I believe you say truly that
nothing would have induced you to leave me, in good or evil fortune, if I had
wished you to remain with me.
“Such a wish on my part would be
very selfish. You have long known my desire that you should marry whenever a
suitor worthy of you should offer. Indeed, it has been my strong desire to see
you settled in the world before my death. You have now made your own unbiased
choice; and from the character of Mr. Johnston, I anticipate for you a happy
marriage, because I believe from your own good sense, you will conform to your
conductor, and make him a good and loving wife.”
The days passed in retirement at Wheatland were
filled with quiet content. The end came as peacefully as the night itself. He
awoke from a gentle sleep, murmured, “O Lord, God Almighty, as Thou wilt!” and
passed serenely into that other sleep, which knows not dreams.
The impenetrable veil between us and eternity
permits no lifting of its folds; there is no parting of its greyness, save for
a passage, but perhaps, in “that undiscovered country from whose bourne no
traveller returns” Anne Coleman and her lover have met once more, and the long
life of faithfulness at last has won her pardon.
