IV: DESCRIPTION OF THE HOUSE
When the wrought-iron gates swing back on the cut-stone pillars at the entrance to the driveway leading up to the Hermitage front door they leave an opening that is a tight fit for an entering automobile, although it was amply wide for the carriages in vogue a hundred years ago when it was built. Anyhow, this front entrance is not open to automobiles now—the ladies concluded that the trees were being jeopardized by the visitors’ cars—but, nevertheless, the Hermitage makes its most impressive appearance when approached from the front.
The house is situated back about a hundred yards from the county road, and is reached by a beautiful tree-lined driveway in the shape of a guitar. This driveway was built in 1837, when the Jacksons returned from the White House, and its design was suggested by Mrs. Sarah York Jackson. The ever-ready and versatile Earl drew the plans for it, and he and the General superintended the actual construction work. The General took particular interest in it and personally looked after the planting of the cedar trees on both sides of it. The driveway curves up to the step leading onto the portico, shaded by two splendid old holly trees, and here the visitor of today enters at the same place as did the guests of General Jackson in the early part of the Nineteenth Century.
The floor plan of the Hermitage, as will be seen from the accompanying sketch, was a convenient and commodious one.
Crossing the broad front portico, floored with flagstones quarried from the native limestone, and entering through the beautifully detailed double front door, the visitor finds himself in the wide central hall, running from front to back, a feature so much in favor in Southern architecture on account of the free ventilation thus afforded. The most immediately striking architectural feature of the hall is the superb circular staircase which sweeps in a perfect curve of beauty to the second floor. Whoever designed and built this stairway, craftsman though he may have been, had the soul of an artist combined with the brain of a mathematician, for every feature of it is so carefully planned and built that there is never a flaw in the flowing grace of its inspiring upward spiral sweep.
Passage from kitchen on left to entrance to butler’s pantry on right, with rear gallery in the background.
The Hermitage well, with primitive windlass and bucket.
The front gate and entrance driveway, bordered with native cedar trees planted by General Jackson in 1837.
The garden as seen from the window of one of the guest rooms, showing the east field beyond.
To the left of the hall are the double parlors, separated with folding doors, and each with its doorway into the hall. Each of the parlors has a handsome marble mantelpiece, the one in the front being made from marble quarried in Italy while that in the rear is made from native Tennessee marble. The crimson damask curtains at the windows were ordered by General Jackson in Philadelphia in 1836 when the Hermitage was refurnished, the color being specified because his wife had always preferred it. The piano in the back parlor is one bought by General Jackson for his little granddaughter, Rachel, soon after he retired from the Presidency. “Would my baby like to take music lessons?” he asked her one day; and when she answered in the affirmative he sent her mother to town to buy her a new piano—the old one wasn’t good enough for his little pet. The old piano was sold in 1865 when the adopted son’s widow disposed of some surplus furniture, the purchaser being a neighboring farmer who confided that he expected to use it to hive bees. There is also to be seen in the back parlor a handsome mahogany center table which has an interesting history. When General and Mrs. Jackson were entertained in New Orleans in 1815, following the battle, the handsome furnishings of the room where they were entertained were presented to them and shipped up the river to the Hermitage when they returned. Most of this presentation furniture was burned in 1834, but this old table survived. On the mantel in the back parlor is General Jackson’s favorite clock, with its hands stopped at the hour of his death. All the furnishings of the parlors—the chairs, mirrors, chandeliers, draperies, carpets, vases, divans, etc.—are part of the Hermitage’s original furnishings, and are in the places they occupied when General Jackson was alive. The crystal chandeliers are especially impressive. They seem to hang rather low—but they were placed there in the days when candles were used for lights, even before the later days when the primitive tapers were replaced with the modern sperm-oil lamps.
A doorway leads from the front parlor into the dining room wing, and there is also a door into the dining room from the broad front portico. To the rear of the dining room are the pantry and storeroom, with a passage leading to the semi-detached old-fashioned kitchen in the rear.
In the dining room is to be seen the massive mahogany sideboard purchased by Mrs. Jackson in New Orleans when she and the General were returning from Florida, together with the table, chairs and other original furnishings of this room. Here also is displayed most of the Hermitage silverware, including the silver formerly belonging to Commodore Decatur, engraved with his coat of arms, which was purchased from his widow by Jackson in 1833 when she was in reduced circumstances. The General bought from Mrs. Decatur for $350 her china and silverware, but he presented the china and two silver fruit baskets to Mrs. Emily Donelson, giving the remainder of the silver to “my daughter, Sarah Jackson.” When Commodore Decatur was killed in his duel with Captain Barron it left his wife in financial distress. One of her impatient creditors brought suit against her which, to use her own words, “frightened all the trades people with whom I have any little dealing and makes them more pressing for payment;” and the General’s check for $350 gave her very welcome relief.
The dining-room fireplace is featured by the celebrated Eighth of January mantelpiece, a rustic affair built of pieces of rough hickory by one of Jackson’s veterans of the Battle of New Orleans who made it as a monumental labor of love, working on it all by himself and working only on successive anniversaries of the battle until he got it finished on January 8, 1839. The General entered into the spirit of the thing and installed it in this room, with suitable ceremonies, on January 8, 1840. It is now in a rather dilapidated condition, thanks to the depradations of souvenir hunters in the early days before the present iron railing was built.
The floor in the dining room is a reproduction, the only floor in the house not original. This room, however, had been used for years as a storeroom when the association took over the property and the flooring was ruined. An oak floor was laid to replace it; but in 1931 this was removed and a floor of wide poplar boards was built to correspond with the original. All the floors in the house are made of poplar, except the porch floors which are native Tennessee red cedar and which constitute a striking tribute to the durability of this wood.
In the broad central hall downstairs there is seen on the walls the celebrated pictorial wall paper, bought for the new house in 1836. Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence, the General’s granddaughter, is authority for the statement that similar paper was used in the hall before the house was burned, and she was fond of recalling that the paper for this hall had to be bought three times: The first time from Paris, during Mrs. Rachel Jackson’s lifetime; and the two purchases that had to be made to get the paper on the walls in 1836. In the refurnishing of the new Hermitage most of the purchases were made in Philadelphia by Mrs. Sarah York Jackson; acting, of course, under the General’s suggestions when he had any to make. Accordingly in January, 1836, a shipment of furniture and furnishings was made from Philadelphia, the invoice covering which included the pictorial paper ordered from Paris: “3 sets of fine paper hanging, Views of Telemachus, @ $40, $120.” But the steamboat on which these furnishings were being transported, the John Randolph, was burned at the wharf at Nashville on March 16, 1836 (with the loss of three lives); and only a part of the boat’s cargo was saved. At a sale of the salvage, probably through error, the crate containing the paper, along with a lot of other stuff, was sold to Mr. W. G. M. Campbell who had just finished building a new home on his farm on the Lebanon Road near Nashville. Surviving members of Mr. Campbell’s family state that he did not know what was in the crate when he bought it, simply buying it “sight unseen” along with other salvage from the burned steamboat. The inescapable inference from the preserved correspondence is that Jackson’s Nashville factors, Yeatman and Company, who owned the John Randolph, tried to recover the paper after they discovered that it had not been damaged by the fire so as to render it unfit for use; but, it seems, they were thwarted by Mr. Campbell who resorted to the expedient of pasting the paper on the walls of the parlor of his new house before starting to argue about it. The Campbell descendants today affirm that they never heard that there was any argument about it, and that all there was to it was that Mr. Campbell bought it at public sale, paid for it and used it—a strictly legitimate and above-board transaction. But on May 27, 1836, Colonel Armstrong wrote General Jackson in some heat as follows:
“I send you enclosed a note addressed to me by the Messrs. Yeatman after a conversation I had with them this morning. They have always been ready and willing to do all in their power to get back the paper from those who purchased it. When I called on Campbell I expected to get the paper; that night he cut it and put it on the walls. Williams is not at home. I saw Shelly, who will do nothing. He is not disposed to restore it. Williams dare not, as his wife claims it; so I called on the Messrs Yeatman and stated the facts, who willingly proposed to purchase another set. I did not present Andrew’s note to them enclosed to Colonel Love, but suggested in their letter to draw on them for the amount. My dear sir, when you have this whole matter explained it will give you a pain to find men so lost to all honorable feelings as to retain that which does not belong to them. It is a theft. The person who you got the other set from will draw on Messrs. Yeatman or myself on sight and the draft will be paid. Send it out as soon as possible, so that we may complete the house. Major Eaton will be with you in a few days and will explain this unpleasant affair and the treatment received. Yeatman will sue for the real value of the paper. He thinks he has been badly treated by Williams and Campbell. He offered them any profit in advance if that was their object. Let me request you to send out the other without delay, as I want to see the house complete before Mrs. Jackson and yourself get out.”
Colonel Armstrong’s letter is tantalizingly incomplete in details, and there is no other written reference to this “unpleasant affair;” nor is there any inkling as to the identity of the Williams and Shelly mentioned.
Be that as it may, the paper was hung on the walls of the Campbell parlor and is there today, although it is now covered with two layers of modern wall paper put on to satisfy the taste of modern tenants of the old Campbell homestead who objected to the faded grandeur of the old hand-painted paper imported from Paris and wanted something bright and new.
Promptly upon receipt of news of the original paper’s fate, General Jackson wrote to his friend Henry Toland in Philadelphia and ordered a duplicate set. This paper, manufactured by Dufour in France and imported by Toland, is the paper that is on the walls of the downstairs hall today, attracting the admiring glances of all visitors.
This paper depicts the familiar story from mythology of the adventures of Telemachus on the island of Calypso while on his journey in search of Ulysses. There are four scenes in the paper: No. 1, the landing of Telemachus on the island, showing the queen advancing to meet him; No. 2, Telemachus, with Mentor beside him, relating to Calypso the story of his travels; No. 3, the fete given by Calypso in honor of the visitor; No. 4, Telemachus leaping from the cliff after the maidens of the island had burned his boat upon learning of his resolution to escape.
Midway of the downstairs hall, on the right-hand side, is the door to a cross-hall which leads to the side entrance on the east or garden side. On either side of this little hall are doorways leading to the downstairs bedrooms; and the entry hall at the side is flanked on the left by a small room formerly used, first as the overseer’s or steward’s room and later as a nursery, and now serving as the museum. On the right is General Jackson’s library or office which has a door leading to the front bedroom (which was the General’s) and another door opening on the front portico, corresponding to the similar door at the other end of the porch which affords entrance into the dining room.
Perhaps the most interesting room of all is that front bedroom, the old General’s room, just as it was the day he died. There is the high old four-poster bed, with its heavy canopy and with its little steps at its side, the bed on which he breathed his last. There is the couch by the window on which he spent so much of his time during the latter years of his life. There is his chair, his dressing gown, his tobacco box; and there above the mantel is the portrait of his much beloved Rachel, placed where his eyes could see it the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night while he lived and where the last flickering glance of his closing eyes rested the day he died. Two windows look out on the front porch, and it was by these windows that the plantation’s slaves gathered and waited weeping while he gasped out his last few breaths. Also it was through one of these windows that the old man leaped one night when he awoke suddenly and found his room filled with smoke. A spark had popped out of the fireplace and set fire to his big chair, but he thought that the house was afire and fled precipitately, calling for help. Here is a room redolent with memories of the old General; it is no wonder that visitors linger at its doorway longer than at any other spot in the whole house.
The room immediately across the side hall was originally known as “Mrs. Jackson’s room” and was used as a family sitting room, before the wings were added. At that time the present back parlor was used as the dining room, and the front parlor was known as the portrait parlor, being the room in which all the portraits were hung. In 1832 this back bedroom was refurbished to be used by Andrew Jackson, junior, and his wife as their room. “It will be more convenient than upstairs,” the General wrote Andrew when suggesting this use of the room—and perhaps he also looked ahead to the time when the adjoining little room would be useful as a nursery.
The office or library, adjoining General Jackson’s bedroom, might well be said to have been the center of political activity of the United States for thirty years. History was made in this room. Presidents were made and unmade, Cabinet officials and other high dignitaries had their fate decided there. Here are the furnishings—the bookcases, desks and chairs—just as they were in those days. One feature that might strike the visitor is that there are not so many books in evidence as one might expect to find in the library of the President of the United States. Less than 1,000 volumes are in the cases. Andrew Jackson was a man of action rather than reading, but the books he possessed (many of them gifts of admirers and of proud authors) indicate that he had a widely diversified taste for good literature and that he was not a stranger to classical and studious reading.
The Hermitage bookshelves show a library of which nobody need feel ashamed. Here are Shakspeare’s works, the poems of Byron and Burns and Dryden, Pilgrim’s Progress and theological works alongside the novels of Smollett and Fielding. Here is Johnson’s Dictionary, and an early Encyclopedia Americana; the Spectator, the Rambler; early American novels, notably those of William Gilmore Simms and Charles Brockden Brown; here are Horace and Virgil in translation—and a burlesque Iliad. Memories of his war on the Bank are recalled by the numerous treatises on banking and currency; and one is reminded of his military days by a copy of the Infantry Regulations, dated 1812, along with a number of books referring to the War of 1812. There is a complete array of medical books for the home—necessary in those days before the telephone and automobile made doctors so immediately accessible; and his practical knowledge of stock breeding is indicated by the books on the veterinary science and the other aspects of animal husbandry. Here is young Andrew’s copy of Robinson Crusoe, also some of his schoolbooks; and a sentimental touch is provided by a calf-bound copy of Burns’ Poetical Works on the flyleaf of which is inscribed “To Rachel Jackson, from her beloved husband, And^w Jackson.” Also reminiscent of Rachel is a flower gardening guide, with quaint old illustrations. There are bound volumes of Niles’ Weekly Register, there are the Madison Papers and the American State Papers, some law books of the early days—in short, it is the library of a country gentleman and statesman of a century ago.
Here in his office, aside from his books, we find his old walnut desk, used throughout his life from the time he was a practicing attorney; the mahogany tables; candlesticks and lamps. It is the workshop of the statesman, just as he left it nearly a century ago.
In a cabinet on one side of the room are a number of bound volumes of newspapers of Jackson’s day, which recalls the fact that he was an omnivorous reader of the newspapers and periodicals current in his time. His postage account with the Nashville postoffice in 1825 shows that he received regularly the following papers: Washington City Gazette, Florence Gazette, American Farmer, Louisville Public Advertiser, National Journal, National Chronicle (daily), Niles Register, Columbian, Louisiana Gazette, Kentucky Gazette, Baltimore Morning Chronicle (daily), Jackson Gazette, Knoxville Enquirer, Allegheny Democrat, Mobile Commercial Register, National Republican, Knoxville Register and Florida Intelligencer—all these in addition to the Nashville papers. One wonders how he had any time at all for reading books!
The little room to the right of the side entrance was originally designed for an overseer’s room, but was later used as a nursery for the children of Andrew, junior. Now it provides an admirable place for the display of the many interesting Jackson relics accumulated by the Ladies Hermitage Association. Here is a wonderful array of historical and personal relics—the General’s swords and pistols (also his prayer book and silver communion cup); his gold spurs, epaulettes and stirrups, and his dress suit; Mrs. Jackson’s lace cap and veil; specimens of the White House silver, china and cut glass; the famous candle taken from the tent of Cornwallis; medals; jewelry; letters and documents—an intensely interesting collection of memorabilia pertaining to the vivid career of the Hermitage’s master. Literally hours may be spent in this room profitably and pleasantly.
One of the garden walks, with original boxwood and crape myrtle.
View of garden from the house, showing the tomb in the corner in the background.
The hall between the library and museum was originally an open entry, but was enclosed when the rebuilding was done. The closet on the right-hand side of the hall, under the stairway, was added after General Jackson’s death, but the left-hand closet was original. This was used in the old days to store the cotton goods made by the plantation spinners before it was doled out to the sewing women. Every year in the late fall the negroes were called up to the overseer’s room to be given their winter clothing, and this occasion was always seized upon by the negroes for a big celebration. A plantation slave orchestra, composed of fiddle, tambourine and bones, would make music while the negroes were coming and going and everybody—black and white—always had a big time on these occasions.
Going upstairs by way of the back stairway there is to be found on the right a bedroom that was used by the boys brought up on the place—Andrew Jackson, junior; Andrew Jackson Donelson and Andrew Jackson Hutchings. On the left is the bedroom occupied so long by Ralph E. W. Earl, the artist who married one of the nieces of Mrs. Jackson and who, upon his wife’s early death, was taken in as a permanent member of the Hermitage household.
The arrangement of rooms upstairs is similar to the downstairs of the central part of the house—a broad central hall, running the full length of the house, with two bedrooms on each side of it. This hall has doors at front and rear opening onto the upstairs back and front porticos; and its walls are covered with a hand-painted duplicate of the scenic paper downstairs. This duplicate paper was painted by Miss Jennings for use in the replica of the Hermitage which stood on the exposition grounds at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. After the exposition closed it was brought back to Nashville and placed in its present location, where it provides a pleasing complement to the original paper in the lower hall.
On the western side of the upstairs hall the back bedroom was used as a guest room (and it was seldom empty); and the front bedroom is officially labeled “The Lafayette Room,” probably because it was in the corresponding room in the old Hermitage that the Marquis de Lafayette spent the day when he visited Jackson in 1825, ten years before the present Hermitage was constructed.
The fire in 1834 destroyed much of the furniture then in use in the house, and it was replaced with goods purchased in Philadelphia. Jackson left the selection of the furnishings to Mrs. Sarah York Jackson, his only suggestion in connection with the furniture being that she order beds with plain posts instead of carved ones as they would be easier to keep clean. This admonition accounts for the severely plain bedsteads to be seen throughout the Hermitage.
This new furniture was shipped in coastwise vessels to New Orleans, and thence by river steamboats to Nashville. There seems, for some reason, to be a strange conflict of erroneous opinions about the origin of the furniture used to furnish the new Hermitage. Some have stated that it was imported directly from France. At one time it was persistently reported that Jackson took the White House furniture to the Hermitage when he retired from office in 1837. The records clearly indicate, however, that the furniture was bought in Philadelphia through Jackson’s agent there, Henry Toland, and consigned by Toland to Maunsel White, Jackson’s New Orleans factor, with instruction to send it up the river to the Hermitage. The total value of the new furniture was $2,303.77, divided among seven Philadelphia merchants. A specimen bill for furniture from one house, showing the values prevailing at the time, was as follows:
| Andrew Jackson, Jr., Esqr., | |||
| to Barry & Krickbaum Dr | |||
| To | 1 large wardrobe | $ 75 | |
| 2 dressing bureaus to match | 110 | ||
| 2 wardrobes, French pattern | 120 | ||
| 1 elliptic front bureau | 45 | ||
| 1 secretary and bookcase, complete | 50 | ||
| 2 pier tables, marble tops | 120 | ||
| 1 work table, elegantly fitted up | 50 | ||
| 1 work stand, marble tray top | 35 | ||
| 2 ditto ditto | 50 | ||
| 1 marble slab | 10 | $665 |
The detailed bill of lading for the principal consignment of the new furnishings gives a good idea of the original cost of much of the furniture now in the house:
| Andrew Jackson, junior, Esqr., | |||
| to George W. South, Dr. | |||
| For the following goods, shipped on board the ship Edward Bonaffe: | |||
| 6 mahogany bedsteads, including the packing @ $40 | $240 | ||
| 24 fancy chairs, cane seat, rich blue and gold @ $2.50 | 60 | ||
| Matting to cover the chairs | 2 | $302 | |
| For the following goods shipped on board the Ship Milo: | |||
| 4 curtains, crimson silk lined with white silk and full mounted, @ $75 | 300.00 | ||
| Box | 1.00 | 301 | |
| 7 pair tongs and shovels, polished steel, @ $4.50 | $ 31.50 | ||
| 1 pair Ditto large size | 7.50 | ||
| 1 pair chamber candlesticks, plated | 6.00 | ||
| 1 brass fender, Best | 13.00 | ||
| Box | 1.00 | 59 | |
| 1 wardrobe, black and ornamented | 50.00 | ||
| 2 wash stands, marble tops, @ $18 | 36.00 | ||
| 2 ditto small, @ $5 | 10.00 | ||
| 2 large size bureaus @ $30 | 60.00 | ||
| 2 center tables @ $30 | 60.00 | ||
| 8 packing boxes | 16.50 | 232.50 | |
| 5 wire fenders with knobs @ $4.50 | 22.50 | ||
| 1 nursery fender | 6.50 | ||
| Box | 1.75 | 30.75 | |
| 2 pairs brass andirons @ $6 | 12.00 | ||
| 1 pair ditto | 6.50 | ||
| 2 pairs ditto @ $7 | 14.00 | ||
| 32.50 | |||
| Box | 1.00 | 33.50 | |
| 3 sets of fine paper hanging, Views of Telemachus @ $40 | 120.00 | ||
| Shipped by Ship John Sergeant: | |||
| 150 yards super Nankeen matting @ $.50 | $75.00 | ||
| 20 yards Brussels 4/4 stair carpeting, crimson damask center with red border, @ $2.87½ | 57.50 | ||
| 1 mahogany bedstead packed | 40.00 | ||
| 1 ” ” very fine | 60.00 | 232.50 | |
| 1 blind, large size | 10.00 | ||
| 1 pair blinds to match | 10.00 | ||
| 1 dozen 40 inch stair rods | 6.50 | ||
| Box. | 1.75 | 28.28 | |
| 1,339.50 | |||
| Insurance for Bonaffee at | $400 | ||
| ” Milo | 900 | ||
| ” Jno Sergeant | 300 | ||
| $1,600 | |||
| @ 1½% | $24 | ||
| Policy | 1 | 25.00 | |
| $1,364.50 | |||
| Received payment, Geo. W. South, January 14, 1836. | |||
All the goods mentioned in the above invoice arrived safely in New Orleans, but when they were reshipped on river steamboats to Nashville a large part of the goods was lost when the John Randolph burned at the wharf in Nashville on May 16, 1836. The John Randolph carried eighteen crates of the new Hermitage furniture, including the famous Telemachus paper, and this loss coming close on the heels of the loss of his house must have been sorely discouraging to the old man. But he promptly, upon receipt of the bad news, wrote Andrew to check up the bills of lading and let him know just what parcels were burned so that he could reorder them in Philadelphia. His letter closes on a pathetic note: “This catastrophe will make it necessary that I should have more means, and in one of my letters I said to you to inquire whether the tract in the Western District, or part of it, could be sold and for what. You told me some time ago that there was a man would give five dollars per acre for 400 acres. If you can get that for it in cash I authorize you to sell it. You can say with truth that I had declined taking that offer for it because it was too low; but the burning of my house, and now my furniture, makes it necessary for me to sell.”
The General’s worst fears were realized insofar as he was perturbed about the inability of his resources to absorb the loss of his home and furniture. Soon after his return from Washington he wrote to a friend: “I returned home with just ninety dollars in money, having expended all my salary and most of the proceeds of my cotton crop; found everything out of repair, corn and everything else to buy for the use of my farm; having but one tract of land besides my homestead, which I sacrificed and which has enabled me to begin the new year clear of debt, relying on our industry and economy to yield us a support, trusting to a kind providence for good seasons and a prosperous crop.” To another friend he wrote, complaining that he had to buy bacon for his family and also corn and oats for the stock—an unforgivable thing to a practical farmer. Furthermore, upon his return he found “the new roof of my house, just rebuilt, leaking and to be repaired.” Continuing he said: “I carried $5,000 when I went to Washington—it took all of my cotton crop ($2,250) with my salary, to bring me home. The burning of my house and furniture has left me poor.” A few days after his return he said: “I find my blooded stock in bad order and too numerous for empty corn cribs and hay lofts. I have determined to sell out part to enable me to feed the balance better.” In the spring of 1838, anticipating a needed vacation at a health resort during the approaching summer, he was trying to sell off some town lots he owned in Alabama, admitting frankly that unless he could sell the lots he would not have the means to make the desired trip to the springs. It was at this time that he wrote: “To wind up our debts since last spring we have paid upwards of $7,000. Andrew was inexperienced, and most men are likely to become swindlers when an opportunity offers, and he happened to fall into the hands of men who pretended to be friends and trusted too much to their honesty. But, thank God, we are not now in debt.”
But in the midst of his adversity we find him writing unselfishly to Andrew Jackson Donelson: “I heard you say that your means to buy corn was exhausted. Inclosed I send you half of my present means after paying for my corn, oats and fodder engaged. This half Eagle ought to buy you three barrels of corn. It will buy 20 bushels of oats, which will be better for your colts.”