Col. A. L. Rumfort.
_The Artist, Ralph E. W. Earl, "Court Painter."_--Most of the portraits
in the Hermitage collection are the work of Ralph Eleazar Whitesides
Earl, who was born in New York City about 1788. He was a son of the
eminent American artist, Ralph Earl, and his second wife, Anne
Whitesides. Little is known of his early life, but information supplied
the author in 1936 by Ralph E. W. Prime, Jr., of Yonkers and New York
City, New York, indicates that he went abroad prior to the War of 1812,
painted numerous portraits in England and France, and returned to the
United States some time between the summer of 1815 and the early part of
1817. His long residence in the Hermitage household and his numerous
portraits of General Jackson's kinsmen and friends caused him to be
dubbed "The Court Painter." The correct spelling of the branch of the
family to which he belongs is "Earl," although historians frequently add
a final "e" to his name.
_The Garden._--It seems appropriate to add to that which has already been
written about the garden an important letter written to the late Miss
Louise Grundy Lindsley, charter member, former regent, and member of the
board of directors, of the Ladies' Hermitage Association, by Mrs. Rachel
Jackson Lawrence, about a year before the latter's death. The letter
states:
"As you enter the garden gate, you find the fringe tree planted by
Grand-pa. Passing down the walk, you find the crepe myrtle on either
side. Along the border farther down, are lilac and syringa. At the far
side of the middle plot, there is a smoke tree, and following the path
down, you find lilac, crepe myrtle, mock orange, and along the back
fence of the garden these same shrubs.
"As you enter the gate on the left-hand side, is the calicanthus or
Sweet Betsy. There are the fig bushes, the flowering almond, and many
other shrubs. Around the tomb are the magnolias.
"In the garden, the flowers were the June lily, lily-of-the-valley,
single white and blue hyacinth, the red, the white and the pink
peonies, blooming in succession as named.
"The center beds were filled with the old fashioned sweet-williams,
petunias, periwinkles, blue-bells, pinks, and other garden flowers.
There were iris and jonquils, and, as we called them, golden
candle-sticks. There was the coral honeysuckle, which hung in great
clusters, on the right side of the formal plot. Among the roses, there
was the old-fashioned little yellow rose, the hundred leaf pink rose,
the moss rose, and the large white cabbage rose. There was the
Japanese magnolia planted near the center, the rare cucumber magnolia,
the very rare tree peony. Like all old gardens, in the corners were
violets and blue bottles. Box trees marked the corners of the walks.
There were several evergreens around the tomb and a bunch of hickory
trees planted by Grand-pa. Now this is all that I can remember.
Signed--Rachel Jackson Lawrence."
Sarah York Jackson, who spoke often of the Hermitage garden in letters
to her sons, wrote Andrew Jackson, III, in the spring of 1852:
"... all our early flowers are destroyed, also all the first plants of
vegetables. You would be grieved to see our garden. We are making some
few improvements in it this season, bricking around the beds, and have
had a supply of fine roses. We have now about fifty varieties of roses,
some very fine...."
To this gracious, devoted woman was given the privilege of guarding
Andrew Jackson's Hermitage and its cherished garden through long, weary
years of war, sorrow, poverty and neglect, until the hands of other
women reached out to carry the responsibilities which Death alone caused
her to relinquish.