Andrew Jackson's Hermitage

by Mary French Caldwell

But what of the outward appearance of the Hermitage of this period? There is every indication that the cedars along the driveway were set out at this time. A drawing of the Hermitage dated 1856 indicates that the cedars were still quite young at that time, and a statement of Parton, based on his visit to Nashville prior to the publication of his Life of Andrew Jackson in 1859, further corroborates it and gives, as well, an interesting picture of the appearance which the Hermitage finally assumed after its series of changes. He wrote:

“Now we leave the turnpike and turn into a private road, straight, narrow, a quarter of a mile long, the land on both sides dead level. We come to a low iron gate in a white wooden frame, which admits us to an avenue of young cedars, ending in a grove, through which a guitar-shaped lawn is visible.... We alight, at length, on the stone steps of the piazza, and the Hermitage is before us.... A two-story brick house, with a double piazza both in front and in the rear; the piazza wooden and painted white supported by thick grooved pillars of the same material and color. The floors of the lower piazza are of stone, and each terminates in a wing of the house....”

A familiar and cherished picture to Tennesseans, and to many thousands of Americans who have journeyed the same road to pay tribute to the memory of Andrew Jackson. Parton, like the Frenchmen with Lafayette, was struck by the simplicity of the Hermitage, but he was much impressed with the fertility of the land and the natural beauty of the estate. Like the Frenchmen, he, too, was much concerned with the “sad spectacle” of slavery, but he was convinced that the Jackson slaves had an unusually happy lot.

The best-known authority on the laying out of the cedar drive is the narrative of Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence (“little Rachel”) which appears in the second volume of the late S. G. Heiskell’s Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History. Mr. Heiskell was not only an eminent lawyer, but he was a careful and painstaking historian. He quotes Mrs. Lawrence as saying:

“Colonel Earle assisted in laying off the grounds, the front yard, at the Hermitage. My mother drew the plan, and Colonel Earle superintended the laying off, and the planting of all those cedars you can see there. He also laid off the center of the Hermitage garden. I think it was exposure to the sun, after being so closely confined in his studio, that resulted in his death. He came in, I remember, and sat down at the dinner table, and said he did not feel very well, thought he had something like a chill.... When supper time came, he was still feeling very badly.... About daylight he died with a congestive chill.”

Earl’s death was mentioned in General Jackson’s letters of September, 1838. “His death,” he wrote, “is a great bereavement to me ... he was my friend and constant companion....”

Mrs. Lawrence’s statement does not definitely place the laying out of the flower beds in the center of the garden. It is possible that, in those lonely days after his young wife’s death in 1819, he worked with Rachel Jackson in the garden of her new home. Frost, the English gardener may have worked with them. At any rate, the garden grew as the estate developed and, through the twenty years of his residence at the Hermitage, it must have delighted the beauty-loving soul of the artist.

But what suggested the guitar as a model for the drive? There is a tradition that General Jackson selected it because Rachel played the guitar—certainly, even at Hunter’s Hill, she played a harpsichord, and often accompanied the General when he played upon his flute. There is definite proof that Sarah York had a guitar, for General Jackson, in a letter written in Washington, April 12, 1832, said: “Your cousin Saml. J. Hays has agreed to take the Dog—will rest at Rockville with you tonight. He takes on Sarah’s Gator (guitar)—you must direct him where to leave it....”

Somewhere the connection between music and the cedars was seen by a mind poetic enough to look forward to a day when they would grow into a massive instrument upon which the pleasant winds might play. Perhaps “Old Hickory” himself conceived the idea—at any rate he approved it, or the drive would not have been planted. It is enough to know that in planting the trees he connected them with the music of at least one—perhaps two—mistresses of the Hermitage.

General Jackson was interested, too, in the willows which he had planted by Mrs. Jackson’s tomb and in the flowers she had loved. In a letter written to Andrew Jackson, Jr., on August 20, 1829, he expresses deep concern for the care of her grave in the garden: