Where are these portraits of Napoleon and Marshal Ney, taken from life during the brief, but dramatic “one hundred days”?
One of the prominent visitors who sat for the young artist in his early days at the Hermitage was President Monroe, who visited Nashville and the Hermitage in June, 1819. The Nashville Whig, of Saturday, July 12, 1819, states:
“The citizens having learned through the committee that the President had reached the residence of General Jackson, and that he would dine with them on Wednesday, last, set out on that day to meet and conduct him to this place. They met him four miles from town accompanied by Maj. Gen. Jackson and suite and Brevet Maj. Gen. Gaines. Three miles from town he was received by a large collection of the Tennessee Volunteers, armed and dressed as they were when they were in the several campaigns in which they had been engaged....”
The reception by this colorful procession which thronged the highway to the Hermitage to greet General Jackson and his distinguished guest was but the beginning of the festivities. A dinner followed at the Nashville Inn. President Monroe was entertained at the Nashville Female Academy on Thursday, June 10, and on the evening of that day the crowning event of his visit, a ball at the old Nashville Inn, took place.
“A numerous assemblage of elegance and beauty attended,” said the editor of the Nashville Whig. “We have never seen more taste and beauty than was displayed in arranging the room, or a more numerous and brilliant assemblage of ladies. The arrangements were largely creditable to the managers. At the head of the room was a large transparency exhibiting an Eagle displayed and encircled in a ray of glory, bearing in his beak a transparent painting of our Chief Magistrate. Fronting at the lower end of the room, was suspended the portrait of Gov. Shelby of Kentucky. On the right side of the hall was a full length portrait of Maj. Gen. Jackson, with a distant view of the British encampment before New Orleans; fronting him were Genls. Coffee and Carroll. These inimitable paintings (with the exception of the transparency) were executed by our artist, Mr. Earl; and are highly honourable to the talents and profession aquirements of that gentleman. Over the paintings and around the room, were rich and beautiful festoons of evergreen and roses....”
A ray of glory—how the unknown artist of the transparency depicted it is a matter of conjecture, but the yellowed pages of the Nashville Whig bear testimony to its reality. It takes but small imagination to reconstruct the picture—men in handsome military uniforms, ladies in their gay-colored silks, dancing and conversing in the stately manner of the period, and paying due homage to the President of the United States and the Hero of New Orleans. At the Hermitage they found time, no doubt, to wander about in the moonlit, magnolia-scented grounds and to stroll along the paths of the new garden. Rachel, as she played the rôle of gracious, warm-hearted hostess, could not know that a long, lonely path, illuminated only by the cold rays of fame stretched before her adored husband, and that she, before a decade had passed, would rest under the friendly sod of her garden. Nor could President Monroe foretell the future of the distinguished soldier at his side. A great drama, of which the new Hermitage was to be the chief setting, was beginning.
It was not long until General Jackson was appointed governor of the Floridas, and he and Rachel moved their household temporarily to Pensacola.
“The Church Where Jackson Worships”
A quaint old print of the church which General Jackson had built near the Hermitage in 1823-24 for the convenience of his pious wife and her neighbors.