[a]Ashland, Residence of Henry Clay]
CLAY.
The Dryads are plainly no American divinities. A reverence for trees and groves, for woods and forests, is not an American passion. As our fathers and many of ourselves have spent the best of our strength in wrestling with, prostrating, using up the leaf-crowned monarchs, gray with the moss of age ere Columbus set foot on Cat Island, to expect us to love and honor their quiet majesty, their stately grace, were like asking Natty Bumpo or Leather-stocking to bow down to and worship Pontiac or Brandt, as the highest ideal of Manhood. An uncouth backwoodsman lately stated our difficulty with immediate reference to another case, but the principle is identical: "When I was a boy," said he, plaintively, "it was the rule to love rum, and hate niggers; now they want us to hate rum, and love niggers: For my part, I stick to the old discipline." And so it were unreasonable to expect the mass of Americans now living, to go into heroics over the prospect of a comely and comfortable mansion, surrounded by a spacious lawn or "opening" of luxuriant grass, embracing the roots and lightly shaded by the foliage of thrifty and shapely trees.
Why is it, then, that the American's pulse beats quicker, and his heart throbs more proudly as, walking slowly and thoughtfully up a noble avenue that leads easterly from Lexington,—once the capital and still the most important inland town in Kentucky,—he finds the road terminating abruptly in front of a modest, spacious, agreeable mansion, only two stories in height, and of no great architectural pretensions, and remembers who caused its erection, and was for many years its owner and master?
That house, that lawn, with the ample and fertile farm stretching a mile or more in the distance behind them, are hallowed to the hearts of his countrymen by the fact, that here lived and loved, enjoyed and suffered, aspired and endured, the Orator, the Patriot, the Statesman, the illustrious, the gifted, the fiercely slandered, the fondly idolized Henry Clay.
A friend who visited Ashland as a stranger in May, 1845, thus writes of the place and its master:
"I have at last realized one of my dearest wishes, that of seeing Mr. Clay at Ashland. I called on him with a friend this morning, but he was absent on his farm, and Charles, his freed slave, told us he would not be at home till afternoon; so we returned to Lexington, and, at five P.M., we retraced our steps to Ashland. Mr. Clay had returned; and meeting us at the door, took hold of our hands before I could even present a letter of introduction, and made us welcome to his home. His manners completely overcame all the ceremonies of speech I had prepared. We were soon perfectly at home, as every one must be with Henry Clay, and in half an hour's time we had talked about the various sections of the country I had visited the past year, Mr. Clay occasionally giving us incidents and recollections of his own life; and I felt as though I had known him personally for years.