[From _A Discourse on the Genius and Character of the Rev. Horace
Holley, LL. D._, by Charles Caldwell, M. D. (Boston, 1828)]
Lexington, May 27th, 1818.
I wrote a hasty letter to you on the night of my arrival. I shall now
he able to speak a little more in detail.
The town and the vicinity are very handsome. The streets are broad,
straight, paved, clean, and have rows of trees on each side. The
houses are of brick almost universally, many of them in the midst of
fields, and have a very rural and charming appearance. The taste is
for low houses, generally two, sometimes even but one story high, like
English cottages. This taste gives an effect that eyes accustomed to
the high buildings of an Atlantic city, where there is but little
room, are not at first pleased with. But it is a taste adapted to the
circumstances, and to me is not unpleasant.
I have taken lodgings at the principal hotel of the place, where I have
a drawing-room to receive calls, which were yesterday until dinner
almost innumerable.... In the afternoon I walked about town with Mr.
Clay, and called at a few charming houses. I visited also the Athenaeum,
an institution not yet furnished with many books, but well supplied with
newspapers, and the best periodicals. I find everything of this sort,
which is valuable, from Boston and the other Atlantic cities.
This morning I breakfasted at Mr. Clay's, who lives a mile and a half
from town. He arrived here only three days before me. Ashland is a
very pleasant place, handsomer than I anticipated. The grounds are
beautiful, the lawns and walks extensive, the shrubbery luxuriant, and
the garden well supplied. The native forest of ash in the rear adds a
charming effect to the whole. After breakfast Mr. Clay rode in with
me, and we went with the trustees, by appointment, to the college, to
visit the professors and students. They were all collected in the
largest hall to receive us. I made a short address, which was received
in a kind manner. I was then conducted to the library, the apparatus,
and the recitation rooms. The library is small, and the apparatus
smaller. There is no regular division of students into classes as in
other colleges, and but few laws. Everything is to be done, and so
much the better, as nothing is to be reformed. Almost the whole is
proposed to be left to me to arrange. I am now making all necessary
inquiries, and a meeting of the trustees is to be called next week.
After this visit, I went with a party of ladies and gentlemen, nine
miles into the country to the seat of Colonel [David] Meade [1744-1838]
where we dined and passed the day. This gentleman, who is near seventy,
is a Virginian of the old school. He has been a good deal in England,
in his youth, and brought home with him English notions of a country
seat, though he is a great republican in politics. He and his wife dress
in the costume of the olden time. He has the square coat and great
cuffs, the vest of the court, short breeches, and white stockings, at
all times. Mrs. Meade has the long waist, the white apron, the stays,
the ruffles about the elbows, and the cap of half a century ago. She is
very mild and ladylike, and though between sixty and seventy, plays upon
the piano-forte with the facility and cheerfulness of a young lady. Her
husband resembles Colonel Pickering in the face, and the shape of the
head. He is entirely a man of leisure, never having followed any
business, and never using his fortune but in adorning his place and
entertaining his friends and strangers. No word is ever sent to him that
company is coming. To do so offends him. But a dinner--he dines at the
hour of four--is always ready for visitors; and servants are always in
waiting. Twenty of us went out today, without warning, and were
entertained luxuriously on the viands of the country. Our drink
consisted of beer, toddy, and water. Wine, being imported and expensive,
he never gives; nor does he allow cigars to be smoked in his presence.
His house consists of a cluster of rustic cottages, in front of which
spreads a beautiful, sloping lawn, as smooth as velvet. From this
diverge, in various direction, and forming vistas terminated by
picturesque objects, groves and walks extending over some acres. Seats,
Chinese temples, verdant banks, and alcoves are interspersed at
convenient distances. The lake, over which presides a Grecian temple,
that you may imagine to be the residence of the water nymphs, has in it
a small island, which communicates with the shore by a white bridge of
one arch. The whole is surrounded by a low rustic fence of stone,
surmounted and almost hidden by honey-suckle and roses, now in full
flower, and which we gathered in abundance to adorn the ladies.
Everything is laid out for walking and pleasure. His farm he rents, and
does nothing for profit. The whole is in rustic taste. You enter from
the road, through a gate between rude and massive columns, a field
without pretension, wind a considerable distance through a noble park to
an inner gate, the capitals to whose pillars are unique, being formed of
the roots of trees, carved by nature. Then the rich scene of
cultivation, of verdure and flower-capped hedges, bursts upon you. There
is no establishment like this in our country. Instead of a description,
I might have given you its name, "_Chaumiere du Prairies_."