HER CHRISTMAS
AT THE
HERMITAGE
A Tale about Rachel and Andrew Jackson
BY
HELEN TOPPING MILLER
LONGMANS, GREEN AND COMPANY
NEW YORK · LONDON · TORONTO
1955
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC.
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 3
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Ltd.
6 & 7 CLIFFORD STREET, LONDON W 1
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
20 CRANFIELD ROAD, TORONTO 16
HER CHRISTMAS AT THE HERMITAGE
COPYRIGHT · 1955
BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR ANY
PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM
PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO
FIRST EDITION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 55-9896
Printed in the United States of America
HER CHRISTMAS
AT THE HERMITAGE
1
Hannah was fat and her knees were getting stiff. When she had a chance
to rest on the well-polished stool before the fireplace, it was a
groaning misery for her to get up again. Her head, wrapped in a starched
white turban, thrust forward followed by a lunge of her shoulders till
finally her legs could be persuaded to lift her erect. But once on foot
she glared at the black women who giggled in corners, and at toothless
old Moll. Moll had come all the way from Virginia. She remembered the
long terrifying journey down the river to the Cumberland, the Indians,
the hardships. She was privileged. She had no work to do now.
“You black trash better stir your stumps,” Hannah snapped, “Heap of
company comin’. You, Betty, you put more sage in that dressin’. I raised
them turkeys. Ain’t goin’ to have ’em ruint. Mis’ Jackson, she like her
turkey seasoned high.”
Betty, narrow-faced and thin-lipped, gave an irritated shrug. But she
did not look about for sympathetic support from the others, from the
heckling tyranny of old Hannah, knowing that it would be nonexistent.
Betty was a pariah on the plantation, holding her place only because she
was the best cook in the county. Last year she had been sent back from
Pensacola for rebellious behavior. It was whispered that she had been
ordered whipped by General Jackson, had escaped that bitter disgrace
because the General’s lady had a heart as soft as butter. No other house
servant at the Hermitage had ever been ordered whipped and the stigma of
her disgrace lay now over Betty’s peaked brows, her bitter mouth. Nobody
ever talked to her, they all shied away from her aura of wickedness. All
but Emily Donelson, Rachel Jackson’s favorite niece.
“You let Betty alone,” Emily ordered now, looking up from counting out
silver on a long table. “Dilsey, you see that Simmy rubs all these
spoons with fuller’s earth and soda. Let’s see—I count fifty-two.
There’ll be Hutchingses and Hayses, Eastins, Donelsons—we’ll have to set
two tables and the children may have to wait. Has Sary got the napkins
ironed good and stiff?”
“Sary ironin’ in the washhouse now, Young Miss. She just yelled for Goby
fetch her more charcoal to hot her irons up good.”
“Hannah, you come along with me while I ask aunt Rachel to unlock the
press. We’ll need all the long tablecloths and they’ll have to be
pressed. I’ll need four more spoons. These are those lovely French ones
uncle Jackson brought from New Orleans. You tell Simmy to be mighty
careful with them, Dilsey. Come along, Hannah. People may begin coming
in today. There’s a lot to do.”
“Young Master Jack, he comin’?” asked Hannah boldly, grinning at the
bright flush that warmed the young girl’s face.
Emily, fifteen, imperiously lovely, red-haired, shook her head sadly.
“Uncle Jackson won’t let him come. I think it’s mean. He’s making Jack
stay on in that old law school when he wants to be at home for
Christmas.”
“Learnin’,” commented Hannah. “It mighty fine. Do Mis’ Rachel read to me
outen her Bible, glory just shine around. And when the General spout big
words out of books I gits shivers up my back.”
Emily hurried along the bricked way that set the kitchen apart from the
big house. The wind was fresh and keen off the Tennessee hills and she
drew her shawl close around her slender shoulders. In the house huge
wood fires burned in three fireplaces but the hall where the curving
stairs came down was chilly. She opened the dining room door and slipped
inside quickly.
Rachel Jackson, with a Negro woman helping and a half-grown boy up on a
stool, was getting china down from a high corner cupboard.
Aunt Rachel was getting heavy, Emily noted, and her breath quick and
short. She gasped occasionally as she bent over the table, counting the
plates the Negress set down, laughing a little as she straightened and
drew a long breath.
“Law, I must be getting old, Emily. I get so short-winded every time I
exert myself the least bit. I declare these china plates are still the
prettiest ones I’ve got. Not a nick in one of them. That’s because I’ve
always washed them myself. These came all the way from Pittsburgh by
boat. My gracious, that was twenty-seven years ago! Brother Samuel went
all the way up into Kentucky some place with the wagon to meet the boat
and bring the goods to Nashville to your uncle Jackson’s store. Indians
were everywhere too, those days. I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep till
Brother Sam got back and my husband too—he was away off to Philadelphia.
Sam was gone forty six days and my husband gone for two months.”
“You’ve been alone so much, aunt Rachel. If ever I get a husband I won’t
let him leave me for even one day.”
Rachel let her breath out slowly. There was that little pain again, that
came sometimes. She used Magic Sanitive Salve faithfully as her husband
directed but it didn’t seem to do much good.
“When you get a husband he’ll go where duty calls him and you won’t be
able to hold him back any more than any other woman. But it does look as
though duty called Andrew Jackson more than most men and into more
dangerous places. I declare I still like these old plates best of all.
Maybe it’s because they were the first nice things ever I owned.”
“Uncle Jackson likes the dangerous places,” Emily said. “He wouldn’t
have missed all that Indian fighting and defeating the British at New
Orleans for anything.”
Rachel pursed her lips. “He didn’t like that business of being governor
of Florida any better than I did. Thank the Lord we got away from that
place! So hot there in Pensacola and all that babble-gabble around you,
all Spanish so you couldn’t tell if they were calling you names or not.
I was mighty thankful to turn my face back towards Tennessee and poor
little Andy was sick every minute we were there.”
“It was the mosquitoes,” declared Andrew Jackson, Junior, from his high
perch on the stool. “They poisoned me. I can’t help it if my hide is
thin. And all that pepper in the victuals—onions too, and I never could
bear onions. What else do you want from up here, Mama? Nothing left but
soup tureens and teapots.”
“We’ll need two tureens. Your Papa thinks he hasn’t had anything to eat
unless he has soup. Count those plates again, will you, Emily? My head’s
all in a swivet. As many crowds of people as I’ve fed on this place
you’d think I’d get used to it but I always forget something.”
Hannah came in then for the tablecloths that Sary would press. Little
Negroes would hold the corners and edges high so that they would not
touch the floor and when the five-yard lengths of damask were glistening
smooth they would be carried in ceremoniously and spread over a spare
bed till Christmas morning.
Rachel Jackson liked to be proud of her table, and this was Christmas,
the first Christmas that she had had her husband at home with her for
more years than she liked to remember. She walked through the rooms of
her beautiful, new brick house trying not to feel too sinfully proud.
Her new, lovely Hermitage, built under the huge trees exactly where she
had wished it to be looked out upon the fields of the plantation through
windows that in the parlors were curtained with lace.
Upstairs and in her own big bedroom below were the fine French beds the
General had bought in New Orleans. Seven crates of beautiful furniture
on which the freight bill alone had been two hundred and seventy-three
dollars. Her own bed was elegantly fluted, of mahogany, with high posts,
a mosquito canopy of the finest muslin and a knotted Marseilles
counterpane.
There was the new sideboard in the dining room too, and in the cellar
gallons of the best brandy, old Madeira, claret and porter, bottles of
bitters in green glass and boxes of candied fruit. The turkeys and
chickens old Hannah had raised so faithfully were fat, and five turkeys
were being readied for roasting now in the kitchen. Rachel paused at a
south window and looked out across the wide lawn, a bit bleak now that
the trees were bare and all the flowers of her garden brown and dead
from frost. The pillared portico made her heart expand with pride.
A far cry, this palace of a house from the old log blockhouse in which
they had lived for so many years, where she had lain alone for so many
desolate nights, thinking of that audacious firebrand of a man she had
married, that Andrew Jackson who had spent so much of a long life
fighting enemies, red and white. Fighting the Creek and the Cherokee,
fighting the British. Fighting Jesse Benton and young Charles Dickinson,
who had died after that grim, dreadful duel in Kentucky.
Rachel shut her lips tight, remembering. All for her, that hot-headed
encounter. All for her the bullet Andrew Jackson still carried so
dangerously near to his heart that it could not be removed. Jesse
Benton’s bullet had shattered the General’s arm too, so that he had
carried the arm in a sling through all the Indian war in Alabama. The
arm still ached at night when a cold wind blew.
A fighting man whose eyes too quickly kindled to blue lightnings, whose
reddish hair seemed to burn with some flame within him that was never
cooled. Her own gentle counsel could damper it down now and then, but
only briefly. Given the provocation, his temper leaped alive like a
drawn sword and he became then, his wife was thinking sadly, as
dangerous and unpredictable as one of those wild stallions that snorted
and charged about the Hermitage meadows.
The amazing contradiction about him was that in his letters, in their
quiet conversations in the big bright bedroom, he voiced only one
passionate desire: to be able to live on here quietly for the rest of
his days in this home he had built. He yearned, so he had written her so
many times, to be free of wars and politics, answerable to no one but
the call of his heart. Not to Madison nor Monroe nor any other
president. Not to Sam Houston nor Governor Billy Carroll of Tennessee,
nor even to Major John Eaton who seemed, in Rachel’s mind, to be forever
grooming Andrew Jackson for some job or other, always important, always
controversial and inevitably always far from the Hermitage.
She saw them now, riding up the drive from the muddy road, the General
and John Eaton. Her husband sat very tall and a little gaunt on the
saddle and his gray horse seemed always to sense the mood of his master
and hold his head very high. Andrew Jackson’s hair, graying a little
now, blew wildly over his ears under his beaver hat. His high collar and
stock hid the thinness of his throat.
* * * * * * * *
He had been such a skinny lad, Rachel Jackson remembered, when John
Overton had brought him, a stripling lawyer, to her mother’s house on
the Cumberland, in that spring of 1789. And now it was 1823! Where had
the years gone? The Widow Donelson had taken him in, and there in the
house had been Rachel, Rachel Robards then, reconciled briefly to her
violent, unpredictable husband, Lewis Robards, after a separation that
had seen Rachel vilified, discarded, and abused.
The widow had tried hard to put some meat on that lanky young lawyer’s
frame, but now, thirty-four years and four wars later, he was still too
thin, still coughed too much and was weakened by digestive distresses
from living too long on parched corn and other scanty fare.
Philip, the horse handler, came running out to take the bridles of the
mounts and even through the windowpanes Rachel could hear her husband
giving Philip orders in his high, arresting voice, the same voice that
had commanded the defeat of General Pakenham at New Orleans, shouted
defiance at Red Feather at Tohopeka and the Spanish governor at
Pensacola.
Now he came shouting into the house. “Mrs. Jackson! Mrs. Jackson! Where
are you?”
Never had they called each other by their Christian names. In letters
they wrote, “My dearest.” At home he was the General, to her, or simply
Husband. She was Mrs. Jackson, the woman he honored, adored, had fought
for and would defend fiercely till her last breath.
“Here, Husband!” She hurried out into the hall where the two men were
handing their damp cloaks to a servant. “Mr. Eaton, you are welcome as
always here. Come in to the fire.”
“Feels like snow.” John Eaton slapped his gloves against his knee, shook
moisture from his high-crowned hat. “Misting now, but it’s getting
colder. Miss Emily,”—he made a courtly bow as they entered the warm
parlor—“you grow more beautiful every day. How any young man can stay
away from you is a puzzle in my mind.”
Emily made her curtsy. “You flatter me, sir.”
“All our girls are pretty,” stated the General, moving a chair near to
the fire for his wife. “It’s the air here on this hill. We keep ’em here
as long as we can, then sometimes we have to let ’em go home to their
mothers, but not for long. Be seated, Mrs. Jackson. You look weary, my
dear.”
“She is tired,” Emily said. “She’s been putting out dishes and silver
all day, attending to the Christmas dinner. Uncle Jackson,” she began
timidly, “if Jack should ride home for Christmas—”
“He won’t,” declared the General testily, getting down his long clay
pipe from the mantelpiece. “He won’t because I wrote and gave him his
orders not to come. I told him that the important thing for him now is
to finish his schooling and get admitted to the bar. I’ve raised that
boy.” He filled the pipe and handed it to Eaton. “You smoke that, John.
I like my old corncob best. I raised that boy, Andrew Jackson Donelson.
Going to make a gentleman and a scholar out of him. He’ll have the
chance I never had, he and young Andy.”
“Jack Donelson is your nephew, Mrs. Jackson?” Eaton drew on the pipe to
which Emily held a spill she had lighted at the fire.
“My brother’s son. But we’ve had him here with us since he was four
years old. Andy, our adopted son, is my brother Severn’s boy. We took
him four days after he was born.”
“Twins,” remarked the General. “Severn’s wife was mighty frail and one
baby was all she could nurse. So we took Andy off her hands. All named
after me,” he grinned, “a whole covey of ’em, Donelsons, Hutchingses and
Hayeses.”
“I must see about supper, Mr. Jackson. You gentlemen will excuse me?”
Rachel got up too quickly and the little pain caught at her and she put
a quick hand to her breast.
“I’ll go, aunt Rachel, you sit still and rest,” Emily volunteered
quickly.
“I want her to sit here and listen to my news,” said the General,
thumbing down his pipe. “You too, Emily. Let the women attend to the
supper. About a dozen of ’em around, ought to be able to manage to feed
us.”
Rachel had turned pale. “Oh, no!” she cried. “Not Pensacola again! Not
another war. I can’t bear it. You said we’d stay at home. Mr. Jackson,
you swore we’d live here in peace in our new Hermitage.” Distress
sharpened her voice, her eyes dimmed, and she dabbed at them nervously
with a corner of her white shawl.
“Compose yourself, my dear,” comforted her husband. “This news I’ve
brought is exciting. You’ll be pleased. You’re being offered an
opportunity to go where few women have ever gone—American women,
anyway.”
“But I don’t want to go anywhere,” Rachel almost wailed. “I’ve been to
Kentucky and Florida and Washington and Natchez and New Orleans and I
hated all those places. I just want to stay in my home and I want you to
stay in it with me. Mr. Eaton, we’ve been separated more than we have
been together all these years we’ve been married, Mr. Jackson and I, and
now were both getting old.”
“Old? You call yourself old, dear lady?” protested Eaton. “Why, the best
part of your life is ahead of you.”
“It could be,” she sighed, pressing her hands together, strong,
sun-browned hands that had helped to steer a heavy boat down the Ohio
River, that had gripped the rein on many a weary ride through the
wilderness, poured lead into bullet molds when savage enemies howled
outside the stockades, spun thread, planted rosebushes, tenderly
comforted many a child. “It could be,” she repeated, “if only I could
have those years in my home with my husband.”
The General’s eyes twinkled. He rapped out his pipe on an andiron,
brushed tobacco from his tight, snuff-colored trousers.
“I’m disappointed in you, my dear,” he bantered. “Here I bring you news
that you could have a chance to cross an ocean and see a new, strange,
fascinating world, and you don’t even want to hear about it.”
“The ocean?” gasped Emily. “Oh, no, uncle Jackson!”
Rachel’s face had drained gray. She pressed both hands hard on her chest
where the pain sprang alive, shutting off her breath, making her ears
throb. Eaton half rose from his chair, looking at her uneasily.
“Stop teasing her, General,” he warned. “Tell her about President
Monroe’s magnificent offer—which you don’t mean to accept.”
Andrew Jackson took a pose on the hearth, a boyish grin lightening his
long face. Emily drew a breath of relief, laid her hand against Rachel’s
cold cheek.
“It’s all right. Uncle Jackson is just having one of his jokes.”
Rachel relaxed a little. “I don’t like jokes,” she sighed. “Not when
they scare me half to death.”
“But this is a splendid joke, my dear,” insisted her husband. “John and
I laughed about it all the way home—especially we laughed at what
Secretary Adams said about it. President Monroe has offered to send me
as ambassador to Russia.”
“Russia!” both women cried at once.
“But you aren’t going, uncle Jackson?” Emily asked when the silence had
stretched too long. “Why, it’s thousands and thousands of miles away!
They have wolves there and snow all the year—I read it in a book.”
Rachel had never had time to read many books. There had always been too
much to do. Russia was as vague, as far, and as uncivilized as China or
Africa in her gentle mind. She sat rigidly waiting.
“I am not going to Russia,” announced the General finally.
“What was it Secretary Adams said?” Emily asked.
Jackson’s laughter pealed. “When the idea was talked about in Washington
and Monroe proposed to the cabinet to send me over there—to get me out
of the country, my love. That’s his motive and I’m not at all deceived
by the flattering language of the letter of invitation. I know what
James Monroe had in mind. Your husband is a disturbing influence in
these United States. Mrs. Jackson,”—he leaned over and gave her a tweak
on her soft arm—“your husband stirs up fights.”
“Marches an army in Florida and sets the governor back on his haunches,”
put in Eaton. “Beats a British army with a little handful of farmers and
hunters. And pirates! A dangerous man, Mrs. Jackson. He licked the
Creeks and the Cherokee and made this southwest safe to live in. And
there are some people who are talking around among themselves that
Andrew Jackson ought to be President of the United States.”
“Well, he can’t be!” said Rachel firmly. “I won’t hear of it. He’s not
strong nor well, you know that, John Eaton. He can’t even eat plain
victuals half the time, and he coughs at night no matter how much salve
I rub on his chest. Besides,”—she got to her feet, smoothing out her
black silk skirt—“I don’t want to live in any palace—anywhere! Not in
Russia. Not in Washington. I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of
the Lord than to live in the finest palace ever was.”
“You haven’t told us what Secretary Adams said,” persisted Emily.
“It was really a compliment,” Eaton told them, “though I doubt if Adams
intended it that way. He listened to the president’s proposal and
snorted. He snorts very eloquently, the little man. ‘Send Andrew Jackson
to represent this country in the court of the Czar,’ said he, ‘and that
would be the end of peace with Russia!’”
The girl’s laughter rippled. She flew across the room and kissed the
General’s chin. “You quarrelsome old thing! What a pity they don’t know
you as we know you, that soft heart you carry around under all those
medals—and bristles!”
He kissed her, then pushed her away, his mouth set firmly. “Flattery
will get you nothing, young woman! I am not going to let Jack Donelson
come home for Christmas. A long trip for a few days’ visit. He spends
too much now, the young rascal. All these youngsters,” he told Eaton,
“think the old man is made of money. Thirteen-cent cotton and shippers
take more than half of that. Sell a fine colt and you get less than the
worth of the hay to raise him.”
“You shouldn’t have bought all that expensive furniture, Mr. Jackson,”
worried Rachel. “We could have got along with what we had.”
“We lived in a log blockhouse then. Haven’t you earned a decent bed to
sleep in, my dear, after thirty-two years of putting up with me?”
“But if the children need the money—” Rachel always spoke of her
numerous nieces and nephews who considered the Hermitage their part-time
home as “the children.”
“They just think they need it. Including you, my spoiled pet.” He gave
Emily a pinch, ignoring her downcast face. “All spoiled, the whole pack
of you. Young Andy worst of all. Where is that scalawag, anyway? And
where’s supper? Are we supposed to fast till Christmas? I’ve smelled
cakes baking around this place for days and get set down to boiled meat
and hominy. Right now I could eat a hog, tail, squeal, and all.”
“I’ll see if it’s ready, Uncle.” Emily hurried out.
The General looked sharply at his wife. “Don’t encourage this
foolishness, my dear! That boy has got to buckle down to his law. Andy
too, as soon as he’s old enough.”
“Those two—Miss Emily and your nephew—are in love?” asked Eaton.
“I hope not. After all, they are first cousins.”
Rachel said nothing. Her gentle face, with the round, firm chin, the
dark eyes that held too often a brooding look under arched brows, grew
thoughtful. Young love could be so beautiful! Oh, she knew! She knew!
Never through all these years of struggle and anxiety and separation had
her own love faltered for this stormy, dynamic, explosive man who was
her husband. His word was law, but even a just law could be harsh when
it bruised what was young and sweet and trusting.
She went quietly out of the room and John Eaton watched her go, saw a
troubled look darken the General’s long face. A face hewn from a hickory
log, General Coffee had said once, at New Orleans. Only the eyes could
tolerate pain and now they darkened with hurt, following Rachel.
“A sorrow—a great sorrow that she has no children of her own,” he said.
“All her family—prolific all of them. Her mother bore ten children but
her daughter has none. So she has to mother a whole tribe and suffer
every small disappointment with them. These lads—Andrew Jackson
Donelson, young Andy and Andrew Hutchings are sons to her—to me too. The
problem is that I have to hurt her with my firmness to make men out of
them. Too much softness in the Donelson strain. I have been blessed by
it, but now I must fight against it and defeat it in those boys. It’s
not easy to do, John, not for a man who loves his wife as I love Rachel
Jackson.”
“You did not tell all your news, General.”
Andrew Jackson shook his head. “Let her enjoy her Christmas. We’ve had
mighty few of them together.”
A bell rang outside, and the General looked in dismay at his hands.
“Supper’s ready and I forgot to wash. Come along with me, John. You,
George!” He raised his voice in a shout. “Come here and mend this fire.
Feels like snow!”
2
Her room under the eaves of the Hermitage was big and bright. The walls
were covered with paper in a small, gay design; there were ruffled
curtains at the windows. They looked down on the meadow where even on
this chilly morning Andrew Jackson’s mares and colts picked at the
frosty grass, lifting their heads now and then to watch for Philip to
come trudging down from the stables to pour buckets of water and grain
into the feeding troughs.
Later, Emily knew, every animal would be led back to the barns to be
brushed and polished ready to meet the General’s critical eye.
The room was chilly. She had not bothered to light the fire laid on the
hearth. She had delayed too long sitting up in her warm feather bed, a
shawl around her shoulders, reading and rereading the letter. It made
her heart beat quickly and her cheeks burn to read it, and when she
pressed it against her heart it seemed to glow there, warming her all
over.
He loved her! In stiff, formal, slightly legal language he had written
it, plain to see, and the words danced before her eyes and got into her
blood and did pirouettes there like little live things with silver bells
on their feet. Lovely words! She kissed the letter now and then hid it
inside her Bible that lay on the table beside the bed. What a pity that
so much that was beautiful and wonderful must be hidden or face the
chilly breath of adult disapproval!
“If you marry your own cousin all your children will be idiots,” the
older people said, looking sombre, so desperately certain that they were
right. They were the elders and knew the truth as young people could not
be assumed to know it, not having lived long enough for experience to
lay its cold blight upon them.
“I gave Andrew Jackson Donelson orders not to come home,” her uncle
Jackson had said. The thrill in Emily’s heart was touched by panic now
as she hurried into her clothes. Her chemise, chilly and crisp, the
cramping stays, the long white ruffled drawers and petticoats. Her
fingers were clumsy with cold and dread as she struggled with the
fastenings. For Jack was coming! Already he was on the way. He must be
riding southward on that road from Kentucky this minute, school left
behind him—forever, the letter said.
He knew where he was needed, he had written. Aunt Jackson needed him. So
would the General.
“Circumstances have arisen that will make it needful for our uncle to
have assistance,” ran the letter. “So I shall return to offer my aid and
I hope at that time that it will be proper for me to make my addresses
to your family, my dear Emily, and request your hand in marriage.
Farewell, then, my love, till I enter the gate at the Hermitage.”
There would be some kind of furious explosion of displeasure from uncle
Jackson, she knew. He would be wrathy at being disobeyed, but her
experience with the tempestuous old warrior led Emily to hope faintly
that eventually he would give in. Especially if aunt Rachel should shed
a few tears. That was his history, storming, shouting orders and
blasting somebody with angry words, then softening instantly if he saw a
look of hurt in Rachel Jackson’s eyes.
Breakfast, when the General was away, was usually a quiet meal at the
Hermitage. Rachel never slept very well and rose, still and determined,
setting about the multitude of tasks before her, level-eyed and grave.
But when Andrew Jackson was at home there was hubbub. He was always
noisy and impatient in the mornings, eating rapidly, summoning one
servant after another to give orders about the cattle, the horses, the
winter plowing. Negroes hurried in, stood hat in hand listening
obediently. There was bedlam in the dining room when Emily went down on
this morning of Christmas Eve.
“Mix some bran with the oats for those nursing mares,” uncle Jackson was
barking at Philip.
“Yes, sah, Mista Jackson. That Truxton filly, she got sore foots. You
want me to put tar and grease on her foots, sah?”
“Don’t get it too hot. You blistered all the hair off last time. Here!”
Jackson slapped a piece of ham between the halves of a huge biscuit and
handed it to the slave. “Eat that and get moving.”
“Yes, sah. Thank you, sah.”
“I need somebody around this place to take some of these chores off me,”
grumbled the General. “You, boy!” He glared at Andrew, Junior, who was
wolfing down a plateful of egg. “You go see to that filly’s feet. Got to
learn. Got to learn some time.”
Young Andrew’s sensitive mouth jerked and his great eyes looked uneasy.
“It’s raining, Papa,” he protested.
“It may turn to snow. It felt very raw to me when I went out to the
dairy this morning,” Rachel put in gently.
“It rained on me at Fort Mimms and Chalmette,” snapped Andrew Jackson.
“You have ridden miles in the rain, my love—so has this fellow! What are
you, son, a lump of salt that a little rain can dissolve you? Or are you
a paper man cut out to dance on a string while somebody picks a banjo?”
“No, Papa, I’ll go.” The boy hastily wiped his lips. “But Philip won’t
pay any attention to me. He’ll just tell me to keep out of the way of
that mare’s heels.”
“Make him obey you! How are you going to be master of this place when
I’m gone if you can’t win the respect of the people? I may not be here
much longer. I never thought to live long enough to sleep under this
roof. Put that stuff on your wrist and be sure it’s not too hot.”
“You’ve been going to die before spring ever since I can remember, uncle
Jackson,” teased Emily, when the boy had gone out.
“It’s that cold he gets in his chest every time he gets wet,” Rachel
said. “And you get it too and so does Andy.”
“Let him get toughened up then,” growled the General. “You spoil all
these young ones, my dear. Andy will have heavy responsibilities when
I’m gone. He has to be trained to meet them. I’ve done fairly well with
Andrew Jackson Donelson for all you women trying continually to soften
him up. He’ll make a man.”
Emily’s heart was a bit happier. Uncle Jackson did need someone to help
him, as Jack had written. She hoped that when Jack arrived, when the
storm of her uncle’s ire had subsided, that the General would welcome
young Jack’s assistance. Inevitably, it was certain, the General would
be off again on some public service or other. He protested, he fumed,
but always, when he was convinced that the call came from the people, he
obeyed, and Rachel would be left alone again with the burden of this big
plantation.
The slaves were willing but aunt Rachel was too soft with them, as she
was too gentle, by the General’s standards, with the young people who
surrounded her. She was continually protesting the overseer’s decisions,
protecting shirkers and malcontents from punishment. She was too
indulgent with young Andy—a spoiled boy already who, his cousin was
convinced, was never going to learn the value of money.
Rachel excused herself now and hurried out—to see that the boy was
adequately protected from the weather, Emily suspected. She would wrap
him in coats and scarfs and when he returned from the pasture or the
stable he would be put to bed, his feet soaked in hot mustard water and
a plaster of goose grease and pepper on his chest if he so much as
sneezed. Jack would be out there, seeing to the mares, without being
told, his sweetheart believed worshipfully. Jack would be a great help
to aunt Rachel.
“I’ll do my own room, aunt Rachel,” she called, as she went back through
the house. “The girls have so much to do today.”
In the big buttery Rachel turned the keys in her hands anxiously. “I
declare I keep forgetting how many people you counted, Emily.”
“I counted fifty-two, but with the weather so bad some of them might not
get here. You know how awful the roads get when it rains very long. I
wish it hadn’t rained today. I was going to have the boys cut some
greens for me and decorate the house. There’s a big holly tree out there
beyond the tulip grove covered with red berries.”
“Send George,” her aunt suggested. “Mr. Jackson gave George his old
oilskin coat and a pair of boots. You could put holly on the
mantelpieces. It would look right pretty but it would dry out mighty
quick, I’m afraid. Emily, do you reckon Mr. Jackson has any idea of
going to Russia? My patience, that would be a terrible place to go!”
“He said he had refused the appointment, aunt Rachel.”
“I know. But he refused to be governor of Florida too, and first thing I
knew here I was packing to go to Pensacola. Emily, all I ask is so
little—just to be allowed to stay in my home with my husband and my
family. I don’t suit proud places. Sometimes I feel that Mr. Jackson
must be ashamed of me.”
“Nonsense, aunt Rachel!” Emily gave the quivering figure a quick hug.
“Uncle Jackson thinks you are perfect.”
“I wish I wasn’t getting so fat! It shortens my breath so.”
In her own room Emily quickly made her bed and hung her clothes away in
the big wardrobe. Then she sat at the window again to read her letter.
Words she had passed over lightly before in her happy daze now leaped
out to trouble her. “Circumstances that have arisen,” Jack had written.
A cold kind of prescience oppressed the girl, shot through with a
breathless excitement, as though she had heard a trumpet blow.
It had come to her that there was always about Andrew Jackson that
atmosphere of great events impending. Always when he seemed most
intimate, familiar and dear, there was a cloak of aloofness shutting him
in, a remote and dedicated sort of mystery. As though even when he was
thinking homely thoughts—a lame mare, a fire that needed replenishing—he
was listening to some far, calling drum. As though never could he belong
entirely to this Hermitage, this woman that he loved, the young people
he scolded and indulged impartially. Emily was very young and a trifle
naïve, but there was a wisdom deep in her that recognized the destiny
that cloaked this man she loved like a garment of silver, and her young
mind dreaded it even while it thrilled her.
She remembered John Eaton’s words, that people were saying that Andrew
Jackson should be President of the United States. She remembered, too,
aunt Rachel’s positive declaration that this he could not be! No palaces
for her, she had announced—but had there been a tinge of desperation in
that declaration? Did aunt Rachel feel the pressure of destiny too, that
remote glory that invested her man on horseback?
It would be exciting, Emily was thinking, to live in that new
president’s palace in Washington. The British had burned it in
retaliation for the sack of Toronto by the American forces, but it had
been rebuilt, finer than ever, she had heard, and now it was as
important as Buckingham Palace. Aunt Rachel had no wish to be a queen in
a palace. Only too well Emily knew that aunt Rachel would be an unhappy
queen.
“But I would love it!” she said suddenly aloud.
Silks and satins, servants bowing, diplomats with medals and ribbons on
their gleaming shirt bosoms, sentries and bands playing, her thoughts
raced and thrilled.
If only she and Jack could be guests in that palace! It was wonderful
even to think about. She sat in a roseate dream for a chilly half hour,
while her own fate hovered near, unfathomed. The fate that would make
her, Emily Donelson, a young queen in a palace—and an unhappy queen!
3
On Christmas Eve the servants all grew tense and garrulous with
excitement. The field workers, freed from toil for three days, were in
and out of their cabins, hanging around the kitchen door till Betty’s
sharp tongue sent them packing. The rain had ended but the day was bleak
and cloudy with the air bringing a threat of snow. But a wind rose and
though it whined in the great chimneys and sent whorls of smoke and
ashes drifting out into the rooms, Rachel was grateful for the wind.
At least it would dry up the mud so that the rutted, marshy road out to
the Hermitage would be passable for the carriages and wagons of the
Christmas guests. Some who had a long way to come would arrive before
night, and there was a frantic activity of black women airing blankets,
ironing the stored dampness out of bed linen, making down pallets in the
upper rooms and even in the hall. George lugged in ticks freshly stuffed
with hay and these were beaten flat with whacking brooms before feather
beds and quilts were spread over them.
The long tables in the dining room were set with the second-best linen
and china. The ceremonial draping with the finest cloths would wait for
Christmas morning. In the cellar the General and black Joey counted
bottles of Madeira, of good Jamaica rum and peach brandy, broached
charred kegs of whisky pounding in spigots, filling jugs that would be
set out for the holiday “dram” for every slave on the plantation.
In the smokehouse Rachel directed the slicing of the heavy slabs of fat
middling that would go, one to every cabin. There would be a chicken for
each family too, and this year every hand on the place would be measured
for a new pair of shoes. The shoemaker would come and stay for weeks and
the smell of the cured hides would be heavy on the air, but at least
every one of the more than a hundred black feet would be shod. That was
the big worry for Rachel, shoes. In summer the field hands preferred to
trudge behind a plow or drag a cotton sack barefooted, but in winter the
frosty ground brought chills and lung fevers and there was an endless
sound of coughing in the quarters and inevitably some of the people
died.
A fearful responsibility, all these black souls, but today they were all
happy and noisy, adding to the confusion in the house by their laughter
and singing—singing hushed whenever the voice of the master was heard
belowstairs but begun again as soon as a door slammed on him.
In her room Emily lovingly folded the Christmas gift she had knitted for
Jack Donelson. A crimson muffler with stripes and a fringe of bright
blue at either end. It narrowed a little in the middle where she had
knitted a bit too tight, but she stretched it to make it even before she
wrapped it in a square of white paper and tied it with a ribbon bow,
sticking a tiny bunch of holly jauntily on top. She had gifts for aunt
Rachel and uncle Jackson too, linen handkerchiefs she had hemstitched
with neat, tiny stitches, then washed and bleached and ironed, with Sary
standing around to keep the irons hot. She wrapped these too, along with
the gifts for her own family, aware of the curious eyes of the two girls
who were making an extra bed in the corner of the room. Some of the
cousins would sleep in here, likely enough two of them with her in her
own bed.
They would giggle and whisper about their beaus half the night and ply
her with questions that she would evade, quite certain that she was
fooling no one. She and Jack were a family anxiety, she knew. It was all
part of that silly old superstition that cousins should not marry. Jack
had more brains than all his relatives put together, she was fiercely
certain; he was the cleverest and steadiest of all the Donelson clan; he
was almost as smart as uncle Jackson. How could a brilliant young man
like Jack have children that were idiots?
“And I’m not a stupid fool either!” she said suddenly, aloud.
The women, shaking out quilts, broke into delighted laughter. “No, Miss
Emily, you sho’ ain’t no fool,” cried the older one, “You about the
smartest white Miss we got, savin’ Mis’ Rachel herself.”
“Thank you, ’Relia. Don’t use that pillowcase. It’s got a rip in the
seam.”
“Hit the very las’ one, Miss Emily. Done use every pillowcase Mis’
Jackson got.”
“Give it to me then. I’ll mend it. We can’t have guests sleeping on
rags.”
“Not Miss Mary Eastin, no ways. She want everything mighty fine. Best we
got ain’t none too good for Miss Mary.”
“Oh, Mary will sleep with me. She always does.”
“Her hair mighty pretty. Smooth and shiny as a new colt. Got a nice long
nose too.”
“We’ve all got long noses. It’s the Donelson curse. Mine’s longest of
all. All of us but aunt Rachel. Somehow it passed her by,” sighed Emily,
threading a needle.
“Ain’t flat like mine, anyhow,” ’Relia echoed the sigh. “If the good
Lord was to give me my dearest wish it would be to have a nice long nose
like you got, Miss Emily.”
“Ain’t nobody satisfy,” stated Becky, the other maid. “White folks all
wantin’ hair be curly. Colored folks all putting grease on they hair,
make it straight. You reckon we be white when we git to Heaven, Miss
Emily?”
“Law, we be angels with big white wings,” declared ’Relia. “Lord don’t
want no black angels around, he got to make us white. I wants me a pyure
white robe, white as Mis’ Rachel’s tablecloth. I goin’ put on my robe
and sing praises to the Throne, day and night.”
“Are you going to sing tonight, Becky—all of you? It wouldn’t be
Christmas if you people didn’t build a big fire out there behind the
smokehouse and all gather round and sing.”
“Look a little like snow,” said Becky, peering out the window. Becky
hated the cold. She burned more wood in her cabin than any other servant
on the place, Emily had heard her aunt complain. From the window now she
could see the wagon coming down the lane loaded with firewood, George
walking beside the team, cracking his whip and shouting. Great fires
would roar in every fireplace in the house, over the holidays. Rachel
Jackson was nervous about fire. Someday the General was going to burn
the Hermitage to the ground, she was always prophesying.[1]
A carriageload of cousins and aunts arrived shortly after the family had
finished dinner, and there was a confusion of greetings, band boxes and
parcels to be carried in, shawls, bonnets and cloaks laid off to be hung
up by maids, cold hands and feet to be warmed by the fires, the scurry
of excited children. Then all the food had to be warmed up and brought
in again and the guests fed.
Emily hurried about, setting out plates, getting down glasses for the
General, who insisted that everyone must have a tot of hot spiced rum to
ward off a chill. She had little chance to slip to the front of the
house to watch the drive from the windows, but while the company were
eating, with Rachel hovering around and the General being the affable
host, she did steal away to stand behind the long curtains, searching
the approaching avenue anxiously.
Dusk was beginning to gather under the great trees. The smoke from the
many chimneys eddied and settled to the ground. A few thin snowflakes
drifted by on the wind, then drops of rain spattered the windowpanes.
Bad weather for a young man riding alone. So many things could happen on
a long journey. A horse stumbling at a ford, footpads on the road lying
in wait for a solitary traveler, even the danger from Indians was not
ended.
She was growing more tense with anxiety by the minute but she must not
betray her unease, must keep her demeanor calm and be most surprised of
all when Jack came riding in, or her uncle would never forgive her for
hiding her letter. She had let the curtains fall when Andrew, Junior,
came up behind her.
“Who you watching for, Emmy?”
She managed a light laugh. “Anybody! I hope if more are coming tonight
they’ll get here before dark. We’d better light the candles. It’s going
to be a gloomy night.”
“George is getting his fire going,” Andy looked from the window. “I
suppose I’ll have to go out and help Papa dole out the Christmas Eve
gifts all around. Looky yonder, the people are coming out with their
cups and mugs and sacks already! You’ll have to light the candles,
Emily. I’ve got to go out and be Young Marse Jackson.”
“It’s an honor, Andy. There are a lot of Donelson boys. You were the one
chosen.”
“I know. It’s hard to live up to sometimes, ’specially when Jack’s
around. I know he’s smarter than I am and Jack’s a fool for work and
duty as I get reminded all the time.”
“You mustn’t be jealous. After all, they did pick you to be their son
and heir. You’ll have everything, being Andrew Jackson’s son.”
“You have to admit, though, that Papa’s a hard man to follow. Came up
from the direst kind of poverty, made it all for himself. I hear that
too. And how he got thrown into that prison where his brother died,
because he wouldn’t black some British officer’s boots.”
“He was no older than you are now, then, Andy. He’s just trying to
inspire you. You’d better hurry. I hear the cellar door slamming. That
means uncle Jackson and Joey are fetching out the jugs. Oh, Heaven,
there’s aunt Rachel out there without her cloak! I’ll get it before she
takes a chill. Run, Andy!”
Under the big trees all the Negroes on the place were gathering. George
had persuaded the big bonfire to burn in spite of the thin, misting
rain. Children, black and white, crowded close to it, their voices
shrill with excitement. Little Negro boys poked sticks into the blazing
fire, waved them smoking in air, dancing about till Betty laid about her
with a switch, ordering the brands extinguished.
“You set the young Misses’ dresses afire,” she screamed at them.
On long trestles the parcels of meat were laid out and the chickens,
tied by the feet and squawking, were brought from the chicken house and
handed around, one hen or rooster to a family. Instantly there was a
bedlam of screaming joy, chickens’ necks being wrung, cries of, “Thank
you, Massa, thank you, Mist’iss!” The General with Andy beside him and
Joey at hand to lift a jug stood at the end of the table. A line formed,
cups in hand.
“No crowding now—and no sneaking back to the end of the line for a
second drink!” warned Andrew Jackson.
Headless chickens flopped on the ground, prodded by shrieking little
Negroes with sticks. Emily wrapped a heavy cloak around her aunt’s
shoulders, pulled her own shawl tighter as they watched the line of
people file by to receive their portion of Christmas cheer. Even the
small ones got a tot, weakened with water, and as each child passed
Andrew Jackson tweaked a lock of kinky hair or pulled an ear, sending
the small black person off into a hysteria of shrieks and giggles.
George had put a great washpot over the flames and when the water was
hot the women would douse their fowls in the steaming cauldron and there
would be a great chattering and ripping off of feathers, but before that
all the people would gather in a phalanx to sing.
“We must go in and light all the candles,” Emily told a group of women.
“The house must be bright when they sing.”
“You go, Emily,” Rachel said. “I ought to stay here. Becky and Dilsey
both wanted that white rooster and they’re sure to get into a fight.”
“Let Mr. Field attend to it. It’s his business to keep the people in
order, aunt Rachel. You are a hostess with a houseful of guests, you
have enough to worry you.”
Rachel went reluctantly into the house, and presently every room was
ablaze with firelight and candlelight. The other women and children
drifted in, and Andy came too, standing before the fire balancing
uneasily on first one foot, then the other.
“Mama,” he began abruptly, “you know Papa said he was going to give me
that chestnut colt. Why can’t he give it to me for Christmas? He gave
Jack the sorrel and promised the chestnut to me when it was grown. Now
every time I speak to Philip about it he says it’s not old enough to
break yet. A two-year-old colt ought to be old enough to break to the
saddle. You know that, Mama.”
Rachel looked harassed. “Son, Philip knows about the horses more than I.
Your Papa has every confidence in Philip’s judgment. You have horses to
ride. Good safe horses too. And that new saddle and bridle and
everything. Goodness knows they cost plenty.”
“You’re too young to ride a stallion colt, Andy,” put in one of his
Donelson aunts.
“I should ride some old bag of bones like Duke, I suppose?” flared the
boy.
“Duke is a noble old horse,” stated Rachel sternly. “He carried your
Papa through two wars. He’s earned his rest and feed.”
“And he still pays for his keep by dancing on three feet whenever
anybody whistles ‘Yankee Doodle’,” laughed Emily. “Andy, you’re only
fourteen. Plenty of time for you to wrestle fractious stallion colts.”
“You could be killed,” worried his mother, “and you’ve got to live to
comfort me in my old age. Sometimes I feel like it’s coming on mighty
fast.”
“Nonsense, Rachel, you’ve got twenty good years ahead of you,” argued
one of her sisters-in-law, “and all the struggle is behind. This fine
house now—and everything fine in it and all the worry behind you.”
“If only they don’t decide that Mr. Jackson has to save the country in
some other awful place far from home!” sighed Rachel. “I declare, with
millions of men now in this country there ought to be enough to keep it
going peacefully without Mr. Jackson being dragged away from this place
again.”
“The trouble is,” remarked the other woman, “that Andrew Jackson was
never born for peace. Not that he starts any trouble but the minute
anything does start Andrew is the man they look for to put an end to
it.”
“He’d start a fight soon enough if anybody picked on Mama,” declared
Andy. “He’s done that already. That’s why he’s carrying that bullet
around right close to his heart.”