Andrew Jackson's Hermitage

by Mary French Caldwell

“To illustrate him in a scene: The Hermitage house was a solid, plain, substantial, commodious country mansion, built of brick, and two stories high. The front was south. You entered through a porch, a spacious hall, in which the stairs ascended, airy and well lighted. It contained four rooms on the lower floor, each entering the passage and each on either side opening into the one adjoining. The northwest room was the dining room, the southeast and southwest rooms were sitting rooms, and the northeast room had a door entering into the garden. The house was full of guests. There were visitors from all parts of the United States, numbering from twenty to fifty a day, constantly coming and going, all made welcome, and all well attended to.

“The cost of the coming Presidency was even then very great and burdensome; but the general showed no signs of impatience, and was alive and active in his attentions to all comers and goers. He affected no style, and put on no airs of greatness, but was plainly and simply, though impulsively, polite to all. Besides his own family he had his wife’s relatives, Mr. Stokely and Andrew J. Donelson, around him every day, and his adopted son, Andrew Jackson, relieved him of all the minute attentions to guests.

“Henry Lee, of Virginia, was, we may say, resident for the time with him, as he was engaged in writing for his election some of the finest campaign papers ever penned in this country. One of Lee’s fugitive pieces, on the death of an Indian youth, the son of a chief who was killed at the battle of the Horseshoe, whom the general had taken as a godson, an orphan of one of his victories, is a precious pearl of poetry in prose. (This refers to Lincoya and places his death about 1828. Where is Lee’s article on his death? Both the Lee Foundation and the Ladies’ Hermitage Association are interested in finding it.)... He was not as handsome as his half-brother, General Robert E. Lee....

“The first or second evening of our stay, Mr. Lee had drawn around him his usual crowd of listeners; but we were the more special guests of Mrs. Jackson. She was a descendant of Colonel Stokely of our native county, Accomack, Virginia, and we had often seen his old mansion, an old Hanoverian hip-roofed house, standing on the seaside, not far above Metompkin; and she had often heard her mother talk of the old Assawaman Church, not very far above Colonel Stokely’s house, pulled down long before our day, endowed with its silver communion-service by our grandfather, George Douglas, Esq., of Assawaman. Thus she was not only a good Presbyterian too, but the groom was from the county of her ancestors, in Virginia, and could tell her something about the traditions she had heard from which she sprung....”

When there is added to Wise’s description of the interior of the Hermitage of this period the view of the building and grounds included in Earl’s 1831 portrait of General Jackson, the picture of the house as it was from 1819 to 1831 is complete. The Nashville Republican and Tennessee Gazette, on Thursday, August 25, 1831, repeated a criticism of this portrait which had appeared in the Washington Globe.

It reads, in part: “The artists of Boston announce it a ‘first rate work,’ and the intimate friends of the President consider it the most perfect likeness ever taken of him. It is not only recommended by this circumstance, but it is rendered doubly interesting as a sort of historical picture, in which the taste and talent of the designer is, in high degree manifested. The President stands alone in the solitude of the Hermitage. The scene is most accurately delineated. The house and surrounding grounds, although thrown somewhat in the distance, are identified to all acquainted with the spot, by its most striking features....”

To the west is seen a small square building which may have been used by General Jackson as an office. There is a tradition that it was Earl’s studio and, since the artist was a member of the household in 1818 and 1819, it is more than likely true. There is a remote possibility that it was the kitchen, for the dining room, according to Wise’s description, was “the northwest room,” but it is more probable that the old kitchen was located near the present one, on the north side of the building. (Since 1933 a brick building, in the style of the period, has been erected on this foundation.) Traces of the foundation of this small building are still visible. It is important to observe further in this portrait which, in 1831, was accepted by the public and Nashville and in Washington as a historically accurate view of the Hermitage, there was still no evidence of the famous cedar-lined, guitar-shaped drive.

This portrait, which from an historical standpoint is probably the most important of the Jackson portraits, was presented to the Ladies’ Hermitage Association in 1944 by Mrs. Charles W. Frear, of Troy, New York, in memory of her husband. For many years the Association did not know the location of the original, although it had long used a reproduction in its catalogue which, it appears, had been given to the organization about 1901 by McClure’s Magazine. It is interesting that the acquisition of this famous portrait by the Ladies’ Hermitage Association was perhaps due, in part, to the interest of a member of the artist Earl’s family.

Mr. Ralph Earl Prime, Jr., of Yonkers and New York City, New York, writing to the author on October 8th, 1936, said:

“I have borne in mind your interest in the 1831 portrait of Gen. Jackson with the Hermitage as a background, which was painted by Ralph E. W. Earl. I followed up the clue afforded by the article in the issue of McClure’s Magazine in 1897, to which you called my attention, with the result that I have just received a letter, of which the following is a copy:—

“‘In reply to your letter of October 2, 1936, with reference to portrait of Andrew Jackson painted by Ralph E. W. Earl, will say the portrait was for many years in possession of the late Wm. H. Frear. It is now in my possession. The information you have in regard to the portrait is substantially correct to the best of my belief. Yours very truly, C. W. Frear.’

“If he (Mr. Frear) could visit the Hermitage in person,” Mr. Prime continued, “as I and some of my friends have done with so much satisfaction, and catch the spirit which actuates its custodians, I am sure that he would realize how appropriate it would be to restore the painting to its former setting as a gift to posterity, either presently or by his will....”

Happily, through Mrs. Frear’s generosity, this treasure has been restored to The Hermitage, where it will remain through the years as a memorial to her husband.

This was Rachel Jackson’s Hermitage—the Hermitage in which she entertained Monroe, Lafayette, and all that gay and distinguished company which, as stars in the great Jackson constellation, were destined, for a time, to dazzle the nation. And how many of them had known the kindly hospitality of the mistress of the Hermitage ... the quiet, studious, James K. Polk, who as “young Hickory” was to carry the Jackson banner again to the president’s chair; Sam Houston, gay, lovable, and erratic, who was to be president of the Lone Star Republic; “Jeff” Davis, future president of the Confederate States of America; Thomas Hart Benton, destined to a powerful career in the United States Senate; John Eaton, John Coffee, William Carroll, and a score of others who shared the Jackson military and civil honors. All of them spent happy days under her roof and all of them, at some time during their career, took time to pay public tribute to her beloved memory.

As the year of 1828 drew to a close General Jackson’s victory was assured. There was no personal elation in it for Rachel, however, just as there was no bitterness toward her persecutors during their most severe attacks upon her. Her reply when news of victory was brought to the Hermitage was: “For Mr. Jackson’s sake, I am glad; for my own part, I never wished it. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the House of my Lord than to live in that palace in Washington.”