The true character of a man in public life is often misjudged by the
people when only his public acts are taken into consideration; but the
facts about his real disposition and inclinations are invariably
revealed clearly and infallibly in his home life. Andrew Jackson stands
this test admirably; for visitors to the Hermitage were always impressed
with the gentle and considerate conduct of the man at home. A
contemporary wrote that the Jackson household "was the abode of native
dignity, artless good cheer, instinctive courtesy and a hospitality
which no adjective is adequate to describe." And, making due allowance
for the permissible hyperbole of a grateful guest, it is a compliment to
any family to receive such a warm tribute.
Parton records that Jackson, "so irascible sometimes and sometimes so
savage, was never so much as impatient with children, wife or servants.
It used to astonish people who came for the first time to the Hermitage
to find that its master, of whose fierce ways and words they had heard
so much, was indeed the gentlest and tenderest of men." And then he
proceeds to tell of how an unexpected visitor to the Hermitage one
evening found the old man seated in his big rocking chair "with a chubby
boy wedged in on each side of him and a third, perhaps, in his lap"
while he was trying to read his newspaper.
A similarly flattering picture of the domestic side of the General's
life is to be found in the published recollections of Thomas H. Benton.
Benton knew all sides of Jackson's character for he was first his
admiring young henchman, then his bitter enemy and then his devoted
friend again. He was with Jackson on the battlefield, he was with him in
the political maelstrom of Washington, he visited him frequently in the
quiet seclusion of the Hermitage; and of the latter aspect of the old
chieftan's life, Benton says that "He was gentle in his house and alive
to the tenderest emotions." As an instance of this--an instance, it
should be observed, greatly at variance with the popular conception of
his character but worth more than a long discourse in showing what that
character really was, Colonel Benton tells of how he arrived at the
Hermitage one wet, chilly evening in February and came upon the General
in the twilight sitting alone before the fire, a lamb and a child
between his knees. "He started a little," says Benton, "called a servant
to remove the two innocents to another room, and explained to me how it
was. The child had cried because his lamb was out in the cold and begged
him to bring it in--which he had done to please the child, his adopted
son, then not two years old. The ferocious man does not do that!" This
incident made a deep impression on Colonel Benton, and he referred to it
again in a eulogy on Jackson's character delivered after the latter's
death.
Another early visitor at the Hermitage left this observation concerning
Jackson, the host: "Had we not seen General Jackson before we would have
taken him for a visitor, not the host of the mansion. He greeted us
cordially and bade us feel at home, but gave us distinctly to understand
that he took no trouble to look after any but his lady guests. As for
the gentlemen, there were the parlor, the dining-room, the library, the
sideboard and its refreshments, there were the servants; and if anything
was wanting all that was necessary was to ring. He was as good as his
word. He did not sit at the head of the table, but mingled with his
guests, and always preferred a seat between two ladies, obviously
seeking a chair between different ones at various times. He was very
easy and graceful in his attentions; free and often playful, but always
dignified and earnest, in his conversation. He was quick to perceive
every point of word or manner, was gracious in approval, but did not
hesitate to dissent with courtesy when he differed. He obviously had a
hidden vein of humor, loved aphorism, and could politely convey a sense
of polite travesty. If put upon his metal he was very positive but
gravely respectful. He conversed freely and seemed to be absorbed in
attention to what the ladies were saying; but if a word of note was
uttered at any distance from him audibly he caught it by a quick and
pertinent comment without losing or leaving the subject about which he
was talking to another person--such was his ease of sociability without
levity or lightness of activity, and without being oracular or heavy in
his remarks." And isn't that a perfect picture of the gentlemanly host?
[Illustration: A corner of General Jackson's bedroom. His favorite
portrait of Mrs. Jackson still hangs over the mantel, as it hung
during his lifetime, where his eyes could fall on it the first thing
every morning.]
[Illustration: The broad entrance hall, showing the famous scenic
wall paper and the graceful spiral stairway.]
As a specific and characteristic instance of Jackson's attentiveness and
courtliness to his guests one of the neighbors used to tell of how a
homely young girl who had been taken by Mrs. Jackson to be raised at the
Hermitage was acting the part of a wall-flower at an evening's
entertainment there one time. "When all the beautiful women and
distinguished men had been introduced around," she said, "General
Jackson, seeing that she had been forgotten, caught her by the arm and
introduced her with so much earnestness as to indelibly impress a
pleasurable sensation with her until her death and was ever a green spot
in her life."
It is significant of the beneficent influence of Rachel Jackson on the
Hermitage and its social life that no guest ever recorded his
impressions of a visit there without pleasant mention of her gracious
presence. Indeed, no account of the home life of the Hermitage could be
complete without a deferential tribute to the spirit of this woman who
occupied so large a place in Jackson's life and whose lovable nature
contributed so much to making the Hermitage a delightful place to be.
"Her quiet, cheerful and admirable management of her household" made a
lasting impression on Colonel Benton, and of her he says in his
recollections: "She had the General's own warm heart, frank manner and
hospitable temper; and no two persons could have been better suited to
each other, lived more happily together, or made a house more attractive
to visitors. She had the faculty--a rare one--of retaining names and
titles in a throng of visitors, addressing each one appropriately, and
dispensing hospitality to all with a cordiality which enhanced its
value. No bashful youth or plain old man whose modesty sat them down at
the lower end of the table could escape her cordial attention any more
than the titled gentlemen on her right and left. Young persons were her
delight, and she always had her house filled with them--clever young
women and clever young men--all calling her affectionately 'Aunt
Rachel.' I was young then and was one of that number. I owe it to early
recollections and to cherished convictions to bear this faithful
testimony to the memory of its long mistress, the loved and honored wife
of a great man."
Aunt Rachel, according to another contemporary, was "the childless
mother of all the young people of the neighborhood;" and the old house
probably didn't seem much like a hermitage with the young folks making
the rafters ring with their laughing and singing, the General gaily
joining in the chorus when his old favorite tunes were raised.
The fine ladies of New Orleans, when Rachel went there in 1815 to join
in the celebration of the general's great victory, tittered at her
homely appearance and her sun-tanned arms and face; latter-day
biographers and magazine writers have written of her with slightly
up-tilted noses, overemphasizing her alleged lack of formal education
and dwelling unduly on her old-fashioned habit of smoking a pipe by her
fireside at night--a practice suggested by her family doctor as a relief
from asthma. But if ever a woman had a heart of gold it was Rachel
Jackson; and none ever visited the Hermitage while she was alive but
went away to sing her praises.
Contrary to the popular impression, perhaps, the Hermitage household was
conducted on the lines of an old-fashioned Christian home, with a
regular devotional hour in the evening which was attended by the whole
family and also by the house servants. This practice was followed after
Rachel's death as well as before. After the son's marriage his wife
always conducted the musical part of the devotional exercises; but when
she was not at home the old General himself would line the hymn ("Alas,
and Did My Saviour Bleed" was one of his favorites) and lead in prayer.
Young Mrs. Jackson's widowed sister, Mrs. Adams, was musically talented,
and during the General's declining years she gave him much pleasure with
her playing of the piano and guitar and with her singing. The General's
favorite song was "Auld Lang Syne;" but when Mrs. Adams would take her
guitar of an evening, seated at the fireside, and would play and sing
"Johnny Sands" or some of the other humorous songs of the day, Jackson
showed his keen enjoyment even though he loved the old songs best.
Mrs. Adams, with her musical talent, was a valued and enlivening
addition to the Hermitage family group, and after her coming she always
provided the music for the many impromptu dances in the Hermitage
parlors. Despite his advanced years the General took great delight in
these affairs; and it was the customary thing for him to start off the
festivities of the Virginia Reel by taking his daughter-in-law as a
partner and dancing the first round with her.
It was one of the minor tragedies of Jackson's life that he, who set
such store by his home life, should have no family of his own; but to
fill the vacant place in his heart left by the lack of children he
legally adopted his wife's nephew and bestowed on him the most sincere
and lavish affection a father could give his own son.
It was on December 22, 1809, that the wife of Severn Donelson, Mrs.
Jackson's brother, gave birth to twin boys. The news reached the General
and his wife as they sat at the breakfast table in the old Hermitage.
Mrs. Jackson, upon receiving the message, looked across the table at the
General and said: "I'm afraid brother's wife will be unable to raise
both the little fellows with all those other children--she isn't very
strong, you know. Suppose we take one of them."
Rachel's merest suggestion was law to the General; and so after
breakfast the horses were brought to the door and away they went to
brother Severn's to see the new twins and suggest the adoption. The
mother agreed to the proposal, the General promptly had the infant's
name officially changed to Andrew Jackson, junior; and from that day he
treated him as his own son. Aunt Hannah, the most trusted of the house
servants, was assigned to his special care; and it was in her strong
arms that he was carried two miles through the woods from his birthplace
to the Hermitage which was to be his future home. Hannah lived to be 101
years old, and never tired of telling of how she reared the young
master. Later she was assigned to the duty of looking after Mrs.
Jackson; and then Alfred took charge of little Andrew and helped bring
him up to the estate of young manhood. Those were gay days on the
Hermitage farm when little Andrew was growing up, and the loyal and
loving Alfred was taking him hunting and fishing, along with the little
Donelson cousins.
The tender and patient devotion of the old General to his adopted son is
one of the most touching chapters of his life. From the day old Hannah
brought him in her arms across the threshold of the Hermitage, the
General ever referred to him as "my son;" and had the boy actually been
his own offspring he could not have treated him with more kindly and
enduring affection. In his letters to his wife, while he was off
fighting the Indians in Alabama, he never failed to mention little
Andrew; and in one of these letters, following the bloody battle with
the Creeks at Tallapoosa, he wrote: "Tell Andrew that I have for him a
warrior's bow and arrow." The picture of the rough, turbulent,
Indian-fighting frontiersman painted by conventional history does not
tell us much of this side of the old soldier's nature.
When the General returned from the Indian wars, Mrs. Jackson went to
Huntsville to meet him and carried the little boy along; and when she
went to New Orleans in 1815 to attend the popular celebration given
there by the citizens in honor of her illustrious husband's great
victory over the British, little Andrew again went with her. A current
account of visit of the General's family to New Orleans brings out the
fact that little Andrew was a pet at headquarters; and it is easy to
believe the statement that the General could not deny him anything and
spent every leisure moment in playing with him, often holding him in his
arms while he transacted business. One evening, so the story goes, some
companies of soldiers stopped beneath the windows of headquarters and
the crowd began to cheer the General and call for his appearance. Little
Andrew, asleep in the next room, was waked up by the commotion and began
to cry. The General had already started to the window to answer the
cheers of the people in the street below, but when he heard the boy
whimpering he went to his bedside, picked him up, soothed away his tears
and carried him along to the balcony where he bowed to the people and,
at the same time, amused little Andrew with the scene in the street.
When the General was made Governor of the Florida Territory in 1821, and
went there with Mrs. Jackson to take up his residence, they took Andrew
with them as Mrs. Jackson would not think of leaving him behind; but the
country around Pensacola was not, with its heat and its mosquitoes, an
ideal place for a child, and so in August he was sent home when one of
Jackson's staff officers returned to Tennessee.
As the boy grew older he was sent to college in Nashville and was given
every opportunity available to the son of a prosperous and distinguished
father; and it is easy to see, from what Jackson said and wrote, that he
had the greatest ambitions for the boy he had chosen to be his son and
to perpetuate his name.
When he went to Washington to be inaugurated President in 1828 he left
young Andrew at the Hermitage to help wind up affairs there; but Andrew
went on to Washington in a few months, as soon as his foster father had
got settled in the White House. After a brief stay in Washington he
returned to the Hermitage, however, chiefly because of a love affair
with a young lady of the neighborhood, a ward of their neighbor Colonel
Ward who lived at Hunter's Hill and mentioned in one of Jackson's
letters as "the daughter of my deceased friend," but now known only as
"Miss Flora."
Jackson's solicitude for his son's happiness and well-being was never
more strongly revealed than in the benevolent letters of fatherly advice
he wrote him from Washington during the late summer of 1829 when the
young man was back at the Hermitage prosecuting his suit. It is a little
amusing to find the President setting aside the affairs of state to dip
his oar into the management of the courtship; but Jackson had a flair
for match-making, and also his affection for Andrew was so great that he
did not want to see him make any mistake. While the love affair was
progressing he made no direct objection to it, although he repeatedly
expressed the firm conviction that Andrew should not permit the young
lady to trifle with him but should press her for a positive answer one
way or the other; and he was obviously relieved when his son wrote him
at last to say that he had been rejected. The General wrote Andrew a
kindly letter of consolation, venturing the sour-grapes comment that
Miss Flora was "a fine girl, but a coquette;" and he begged the young
man not to enter into any more love affairs without consulting him.
Young Andrew returned to the White House after the shattering of his
Tennessee romance; but it wasn't long before he again fell a victim.
This time the object of his affections was Miss Sarah York of
Philadelphia, one of three orphan sisters of good family and social
standing. Miss Sarah was a spirited young lady and had declared her
unwillingness to marry the ordinary run of suitors. Indeed, she was
quoted as saying that she "wouldn't marry less than a prince." But the
sons of kings were hard to find in this republican country, and so she
evidently decided to lower her sights sufficiently to be satisfied with
a mere President's son. Jackson approved of the match when told of his
son's new flame, and the wedding took place in Philadelphia on November
24, 1831. Acting on the old General's instructions, Andrew brought his
bride to the White House at once; and, from the moment he clasped his
new daughter in his arms at the front door of the White House, she had a
place in his affections until the time of his death that was never
disputed by anyone.
Andrew and his young wife remained with Jackson in Washington until the
spring of 1832, setting out on April 12th to take up their residence in
the Hermitage, which was to be their home all the remaining years of
their lives. Accompanying them on the journey to Tennessee was Sarah's
cousin, Miss Emma Forbes, who came along to keep Sarah company while she
was getting accustomed to her new home, and the General strictly
enjoined Andrew to "give all your attention to Sarah and Emma. They are
strangers in a strange land." Evidently Andrew made the strangers feel
very much at home, so much so that Miss Emma soon fell in love and
married Andrew's own twin brother, Thomas Jefferson Donelson, and became
a resident of the Hermitage community.
Young Andrew was at this time twenty-three years old; and although the
General expressed the fullest confidence in him and made it clear to him
that he wanted him to take charge of affairs at the Hermitage and run
the place, he nevertheless took the precaution to write out for him
before he left a memorandum which is a model of thoughtful and thorough
suggestions for a young man about to assume the management of an
extensive estate. In this memorandum he authorized the son to purchase
from Samuel Donelson a tract of 100 acres adjoining the Hermitage for
$1,500; instructed him to have a settlement with the contractor, Mr.
Morrison, who had been making the additions to the Hermitage and
building the tomb in the garden; instructed him to arrive at a
settlement of the accounts of Steele, the overseer, giving him a
detailed account of all the involved transactions in which that worthy
had tangled himself; reminded him that he was expecting Steele to make
enough brick to build a new stable for the riding and carriage horses,
with suggestions as to the plan for the stable; gave careful
instructions about the desired procedure in connection with the horses
and other cattle. "When you reach home," he wrote, "I hope you will find
the supplies and furniture which I have sent on safe at the Hermitage.
The pipe of Maderia wine you will have placed on its stand and one-half
gallon of best French brandy put into it and after two or three days it
will be fit for use. You will have the old dining room newly papered for
Sarah's and your bedroom as it will be more convenient than upstairs;
but when she sees the house she can judge for herself. The carpet in the
portrait room shall be taken for that, and the one in the parlor put in
one of the rooms upstairs. Sarah will arrange the rooms and furniture.
If the supplies I have sent on reach home in safety you will have an
abundant supply of sugar, coffee, Maderia and Sherry wines, etc. Salt
and flour will be the only articles to be laid in, but you will have now
to begin to learn the wants of a family and supply it. This will require
economy and care, which you will have to learn and attend to if you
expect to get through life well--by always knowing your means and living
within them you will get well through life. This has been my rule and I
recommend it to you."
Sarah undoubtedly enjoyed her new rôle of mistress of the President's
home place, and she immediately set about giving the Hermitage that deft
touch of feminine management which it had lacked since Rachel's death.
Within a few days she was writing to the General about the need for a
carpet for the dining room, more table linen and some additional
silverware for the table. Jackson promptly attended to these matters,
doubtless greatly pleased at Sarah's interest in household affairs.
Sarah's interest in her new home, however, was apparently not shared to
any great extent by her husband. Jackson in his parting memorandum had
urged his son to write him fully about the state of affairs on the farm;
but Andrew neglected to do so, and from that time forward Jackson's
published correspondence reveals clearly the difficulty he had in
impressing on young Andrew the importance of attending strictly to
business and the apprehension the absentee planter in Washington was
caused by the slack management of the plantation by the young man.
There were forebodings of trouble on this score from the very first. As
early as May 25, 1832, Overseer Steele wrote Jackson: "I have prest on
Andrew to pay strict attention to the management and manner in which
your affairs has been conductied during your absence but it appears that
he don't take the least pride or feel the least intrusted in the farm or
aneything there pertaining."
At this very time Jackson was writing his son: "I have no wish to
acquire wealth for myself. If I can add to your and Sarah's comforts
whilst I live and leave you comfortable and independent of the world
when I die, I am contented." A few days later he wrote him: "The jewelry
of your dear mother is under your care. Present to Sarah, with my
affectionate regard, the pearl necklace, ear rings, etc."
Andrew and Sarah were back in the East early in 1833 to visit Jackson in
the White House and Sarah's family in Philadelphia. In July they
accompanied the President and his party to the Rip Raps in Hampton Roads
for a summer vacation of six weeks, and then after another visit in
Philadelphia they were back at the Hermitage in October. While in
Philadelphia Andrew had instructed one of his friends there to order a
chest of tools for use on the farm; and when the bill was presented to
the President in November he paid it and wrote Andrew the following
revelatory letter, one of the very few of his family letters in which
the sardonic note intrudes:
My son: Inclosed you will find Mr. Toland's receipt to Mr. Brown for
the chest and tools laid in for you by your friend Mr. Hart, and Mr.
Brown's receipt for a check for $62.03 drew by me in his favor, being
in full for that bill. You will find the chest (from the price
charged, a nice piece of furniture for the parlour) not well suited to
a negro's workshop; and the tools very fine, such I suppose as
cabinet-makers use. Be this as it may, bought wit is the best--when
not bought too dear; and I could not permit either your feelings or
character to suffer for the amount of the bill; but I think that it
will henceforth admonish you to purchase your own tools for the farm
and not entrust it to an agent. Remember my advice, my son: Never
purchase any useless article. Those that are needed for your comfort
or that of your dear little family purchase always as far as you have
the means; and be always certain, if you wish to die independent, to
keep your wants within your means; always, when you have the money,
paying for them when bought. I have said before and now repeat: The
world is not to be trusted. Many think you rich, and many you will
find under false pretensions of friendship would involve you if they
can, strip you of your last shilling and afterwards laugh at your
folly and distress.
In the ensuing years there must have been many times when Andrew
Jackson, junior, looked back on the sage advice embraced in that letter
and wished that he had indeed learned a lesson from the injudicious
purchase of the tool-chest suited for a parlor and the tools such as
cabinet makers use. He had plenty of "bought wit" in the years to come;
and most of it was, indeed, "bought too dear."
Andrew also caused the old man considerable worry at this time by having
purchased a slave in Maryland before returning to the Hermitage, paying
only a part of the purchase price in cash and leaving a balance due. He
neglected to say anything to Jackson about the unpaid balance, and he
learned of it only when the Maryland slavetrader dunned him for the
money. This annoyed and embarrassed Jackson, but his chief concern was
evidently not the money involved; he was worried about Andrew's careless
business habits. "Why will you not, my dear Andrew," he wrote him,
"attend to my admonition about money matters?" And, further, "My son, at
all times and on all occasions state to your father things just as they
are."
Inattentive to these admonitions, however, Andrew gave further cause for
annoyance during that summer when he repurchased the old Hunter's Hill
property adjoining the Hermitage. Jackson had consented that Andrew make
the purchase if he thought it advisable, encouraging the young man to
take the initiative and make the decision for himself; but he was
particular to impress on Andrew that he wanted him to have the terms of
the sale reduced to writing and a copy of the agreement forwarded to
him. Nevertheless, his first knowledge of the purchase was a draft drawn
on him for the first payment on the purchase price; and then began a
long succession of letters from father to son unsuccessfully seeking to
learn the exact details of the trade. Similarly, he was unable to get
from Andrew information as to the number of pounds of cotton baled and
shipped to New Orleans. "My son," he wrote in May, "surely it is a duty
that you would owe to an entire stranger, surely more imperious to me,
to acknowledge the receipt of such business letters as these." And
again, despairingly, in June: "My son, why will you not learn to
transact your affairs like a man of business?"
Andrew, apparently, was incorrigibly negligent about answering letters;
for in October, when Jackson had returned to Washington after spending
the summer at the Hermitage, he wrote him: "Thirty-one days have elapsed
since we left the Hermitage, Sarah on a sick bed. I had your promise
that you would write me how they were; and I am now, even now, without
one line from you."
To add to the old General's worries at this stage of young Andrew's
career, there is strong evidence that he had reason to be fearful of his
son's falling into intemperate habits. Perhaps the young wife conveyed
the idea to the old man. At any rate, Sarah went on a visit to
Philadelphia early in April, 1835, leaving Andrew at home, supposedly
looking after the work of rebuilding the burned Hermitage; and on April
14,1835, Jackson wrote him a long and pointed fatherly letter concerning
the evils of intemperance, in the course of which he said: "When I
reflect on the fate of your cousin Savern, brought on him by
intemperance, from being an honor to his friends reduced to the contempt
of all by his brutal intemperance, I shudder when I see any appearance
of it in any other branch of our connection. Your conduct, standing as
my representative, the son of the President, draws upon you the eyes of
the world, and the least deviation from the rules of strict decorum and
propriety are observed and commented upon by all our enemies and those
who envy you of your situation. Added to this, your charming little wife
and sweet little ones' respectability in society depends on your upright
course in your walks of life. This, my son, ought always to be before
your eyes, and I am sure must be; and your pledge to me on the point of
intemperance assures me that you never will permit spirits to enter your
lips again."
A few weeks later, taking as his text the experience of a Washington
friend who had been humiliated by public drunkenness, Jackson wrote
Andrew another letter of warning against "intoxication, which reduces
the human being below that of the brute," concluding his letter with:
"Oh, my son, if you were to be found in such condition it would destroy
me."
These letters apparently had the desired effect, for Major Lewis after
visiting the Hermitage in May, 1835, wrote Jackson that he was much
gratified at the fine and healthy appearance of the young man, that he
looked like a different person; and, he concluded: "I have no doubt he
has faithfully complied with his promise to you to the letter." Jackson,
upon receipt of Major Lewis's letter, wrote at once to Andrew telling
him how delighted he was at the favorable report of his good conduct and
healthful appearance and his good standing with everybody. "This, my
son," he said, "is more grateful to your dear father than all the wealth
of Peru, and I have now the greatest confidence in your good conduct
through life"--which confidence, the future revealed, was well placed.
Early in the summer of 1835 Andrew joined Sarah and the children at the
White House and they went with the President for another vacation at the
Rip Raps in July and August. They went on a visit to Philadelphia in
September, and late in that month Andrew went back to the Hermitage,
leaving Sarah to return to Tennessee later. They were there at the
Hermitage in the summer of 1836 when Jackson came to look at his rebuilt
home, but they went to Philadelphia again in October and then for a
final visit to the White House. They left there with the worn-out
ex-President in March, 1837, and all returned to the Hermitage together.
At this time the son's little family consisted of his wife, Sarah, and a
little son and daughter: Andrew, III, born April 4, 1834; and Rachel,
born in 1832. Both the children were born at the Hermitage, and they
were a never-failing source of pleasure and comfort to the old General
in his declining years. Little Rachel was his especial pet from the time
she was born, and she was one of those who stood by his bedside when he
died.
Like every doting grandfather, he was inordinately proud of her cunning
little ways; and he chuckled as he related to his friends how the little
girl, upon her arrival at the White House with her mother following the
burning of the Hermitage, greeted him with: "Grandpa, the great fire
burned my bonnet; and a big owl tried to kill Poll, but Papa killed the
owl." Needless to say, Grandpa dropped all the affairs of State long
enough to see that little Rachel was supplied with a new bonnet without
delay. And he probably joined her in rejoicing over the narrow escape of
old Poll from the owl, for the old Hermitage parrot was a great pet of
the General's. In his letters home he inquired about her, and William
Donelson in writing to him in December, 1829, said: "Poor Poll is doing
well. She is as fat and saucy as ever. From her continued good health I
think she will live to be an old bird. Elizabeth desires to be
remembered affectionately to you, and says that she will insure Polly's
life till you return." As a matter of fact, the old bird outlived the
General himself; and she distinguished herself by introducing an element
of the grotesque into the solemnity of the funeral services when she
suddenly startled the assembled mourners by bursting into a loud torrent
of profanity which made it necessary to suspend proceedings until her
perch could be removed from the upper front portico to a more remote
vantage point.
Second only to his adopted son in General Jackson's affections was
Andrew Jackson Donelson, son of Samuel Donelson, one of Mrs. Jackson's
brothers. Samuel had been Jackson's law partner in his early days and he
it was whose elopement Jackson had aided back in 1797 when Samuel
romantically stole his bride, Polly Smith from the window of the "Rock
Castle" home of her father, General Daniel Smith--the same Daniel Smith
who helped survey the much disputed extension of the dividing line
between Virginia and North Carolina. The eloping couple had fled to
Jackson's near-by home at Hunter's Hill to have the wedding ceremony
performed; and, strangely enough, it was at the Hermitage that Samuel
died in 1802, death overtaking him there suddenly one evening when he
had stopped by to pay a fraternal visit. He left three young
sons--Andrew Jackson, Daniel and John--and General Jackson was made the
guardian of the eldest of the three, his namesake. At first all three
boys continued to live with their mother at the home of her father,
General Smith; but one day when Jackson paid a visit to them, little
Andrew returned to the Hermitage with him, riding behind the General on
his horse. He came to spend a few days; but so firm a hold did he gain
on Jackson's affections that he was never sent home. From then on the
Hermitage was his home, and he was reared there with all the love and
care that could be shown one's own son.
Young Donelson was educated at Cumberland College (University of
Nashville), Transylvania University at Lexington, and at West Point.
Throughout his college life he was an outstanding student, and at the
Military Academy he distinguished himself by finishing the four-year
course in three years and graduating second in his class. Upon his
graduation he was appointed an aide-de-camp to General Jackson, at the
latter's special request, and served with him in the Florida wars. After
his return to Nashville he practiced law for a short while, but soon
abandoned this and began to take an active and useful part in General
Jackson's political activities.
Jackson had a genuinely high regard for young Donelson. "I have reared
and educated him as my son," he wrote a friend on one occasion; and that
the old General had the most unlimited ambitions for him is shown by a
letter he wrote to him while he was at Transylvania College encouraging
him to seek his associates and friends among the better class of
students and concluding: "I look forward, if you live, to the time when
you will be selected to preside over the destinies of America." Donelson
did not climb that high on the political ladder, but he did achieve
distinction in his own right in public affairs; and there were many of
his friends who thought that his star might have shone with greater
brilliance had it not been dimmed by the too-close effulgence of his
famous guardian and friend.
By the time Jackson was elected President in 1828 the young man had
reached such a place in his confidence and affection that he was his
spontaneous choice as private secretary, and he went with him to
Washington in this capacity. The Jackson administration, however, had
not been afloat very long before it ran on the rocks of the Peggy Eaton
embroglio, that tempest in a teapot that threatened for a while to upset
the government; and Major Donelson and his wife became the storm centers
of this furious affair. Mrs. Donelson was a niece of Mrs. Jackson's, the
major having married his own first cousin, Emily, daughter of Captain
John Donelson; and Jackson felt for her a very real avuncular affection
when he installed her as mistress of the White House. Red-headed Miss
Emily, however, was a spunky individual with a spirit of her own; and,
although she reluctantly consented to receive Peggy Eaton coldly but
courteously as an official guest at the White House, she flatly refused
to visit Mrs. Eaton or to have any other social contacts with her. This
brought about strained relations in the White House family, but the
affair was temporarily kept from coming to a head; and the President and
the Donelsons returned in amity together to Tennessee to spend the
summer of 1830. There had almost been a flare-up before leaving
Washington. The Eatons had been invited to dine at the White House, and
the petulant Peggy had refused to enter the house while the Donelsons
were there, claiming that Emily had publicly snubbed her a short while
previously. This naturally riled the General and he raised considerable
of a rumpus. In his flurry of anger he threatened to take the Donelsons
home and leave them there, and this threat got under the Donelsons'
skin. Accordingly, when they all got back to Tennessee in June, the
Donelsons did not go to the Hermitage to stay but went to the home of
Mrs. Donelson's mother, then a widow. The Eatons made a rather showy and
carefully pre-arranged visit to Tennessee during this summer, a feature
of the trip being their entertainment at the Hermitage; and Major
Donelson later explained that he and his wife went to Mrs. Donelson's to
stay because they did not want to put themselves in the way of the
honors General Jackson intended to pay to the Eatons at the Hermitage.
But the President's feelings were hurt. "When I expected you and Emily
to go to my house and remain with me as part of my family, it was
declined," he wrote in a letter to Major Donelson that fall when the two
of them were back in Washington carrying on that childish interchange of
formal letters within the walls of the White House which almost
precipitated a crisis at that time.
Jackson smelt trouble brewing as early as July, when he mentioned in a
letter to Major Lewis from the Hermitage: "It may so happen that I shall
return to the city in company with my son alone," and asked the Major to
be looking about for some eligible man to serve as his secretary. "My
connections have acted very strangely here," he wrote; adding, with
characteristic fire: "but I know I can live as well without them as they
can without me, and I will govern my own household or I will have none."
When the time came to return to Washington in October, Mrs. Donelson
announced that she would spend the winter in Tennessee with her widowed
mother; and it is not recorded that General Jackson interposed any
violent objection to this program. Major Donelson, however, went along
with him.
Hardly had they got back to Washington before General Jackson wrote back
to Emily's sister, Mary Eastin, saying that "Major Donelson has informed
me that the house appears lonesome; and on his account it would give me
great pleasure if you and Emily and the sweet little ones were here." He
went on to say, however: "Provided you will pursue my advice and assume
that dignified course that ought to have been at first adopted, of
treating every one with attention and extending the same comity and
attention to all the heads of Departments and their families." He told
Miss Eastin to convey this qualified invitation to Emily and he himself
told Major Donelson what he had written. Then ensued that absurd and
pathetic intramural correspondence between these two strong-willed men
who lived in the same house, worked together daily in the close and
confidential relations of a President and his private secretary--but who
fought out their private quarrel by means of long, formal letters.
Jackson had a deep and sincere affection for Major Donelson, but he felt
that his honor was at stake; worse than that, he had tortured the shabby
controversy into a "conspiracy" to strike at him through Eaton and
through him at his departed Rachel. Donelson, on the other hand, while
his letters breathed love and respect for his uncle, felt that his and
his wife's dignity and self-respect would not permit of any dictation as
to their social contacts.
[Illustration: The stairway in the side hall, with its unusual
architectural features. This is the stairway now used by the public
in ascending to the second floor.]
[Illustration: One of the four guest rooms, with original
furnishings typical of all the bedrooms.]
So matters rocked along, and in December Jackson wrote General Coffee
that Donelson's "demeanor toward Major Eaton is more free." He kept up a
friendly correspondence with Emily back in Tennessee, and wrote Coffee
that he expected her to come on to Washington in March or April. Major
Donelson wrote his wife in January, 1831, that he had had "a very
satisfactory conversation with Uncle in relation to our social
difficulty" and that "He has left to my own discretion the period of
your return, without alluding to the influence which produced your stay
in Tennessee." The Major expressed great gratification at the prospect
of getting things patched up, and on March 8th left Washington for
Nashville to get his little family and take them back to the White House
with him.
Late in March, however, the Eaton affair boiled over in Washington
again, and some new developments there made the President furious. On
March 24th he wrote a long letter to Major Donelson, couched in words of
genuine affection but reflecting plainly his agitation. The partially
healed sore was reopened and he candidly said: "As much as I desire you
and your dear little family with me, unless you and yours can harmonize
with Major Eaton and his family, I do not wish you here."
This new crisis in the Eaton affair resulted in the resignations of Van
Buren and Eaton from the Cabinet, and Jackson hastily wrote Donelson on
April 19th telling him of these resignations and predicting that "you
will find an entire new Cabinet when you arrive."
But now the Donelsons were offended. Upset by the strong words of
Jackson's letter of March 24th they, as General Coffee expressed it,
"fear that you require more than they can consistently comply with." In
reply to this letter Donelson wrote a reply which Jackson styled "a
vindictive phillippic," the general tenor of which was that he could not
return with his wife under the terms set forth in Jackson's
communication. Jackson's reply was firm, though tempered with
expressions of his affection, and showed clearly the extent to which the
controversy had upset him. His letter concluded: "I am laboured almost
to death, and have been a good deal afflicted; but will try amongst
strangers to get a man who will aid me and who will think it no disgrace
to associate with me and my friends." This must have cut Donelson to the
quick, but it did not alter his determination to sever his official
relations with his godfather, the President. He went back to
Washington--alone--to wind up his personal affairs there; and before
leaving finally, on June 18th, he wrote an affectionate note to Jackson
giving "assurance of my readiness to resume the relation which I have
maintained near you for so many years, whenever you think that my
services can be of any avail." In a letter written home to his wife he
told of a long conversation he had had with Jackson, and dropped the
strange comment that "After what has now passed, while our duty remains
the same, I am almost as well satisfied that the view which Uncle takes
is correct." Nevertheless, he went on home; and Jackson engaged as his
private secretary Mr. Nicholas P. Trist (whose wife was a granddaughter
of Thomas Jefferson), and he served until the reconciliation with the
Donelsons.
The reconciliation, as might have been expected where there was so much
mutual love and esteem, was not long in coming. Jackson kept up a
friendly correspondence with Andrew and Emily as though nothing had
happened, and in July two Nashville friends, John C. McLemore and John
Bell, took it upon themselves to act to bring Jackson and Donelson back
together. They talked to the Major, read all the letters the President
had written to him, and then gave him the sensible advice to pack up his
family and return to the White House "without further correspondence."
They wrote Jackson that they had given Donelson this advice and stated
further that "we think there is no necessity for the specification of
terms on one side or the other." That this effort of the peacemakers was
at length successful is shown by a single reference in one of Jackson's
letters to Coffee on September 6th: "Major Donelson and his little
family reached here yesterday."
Thus ended the spat between General Jackson and the Donelsons; and in
all their future relations there was never anything to suggest that
there had ever been the slightest asperity between them. Mischief-making
Peggy Eaton drove them apart; but even she, with her genius for creating
dissention, could not keep them apart.
In 1818 Major Donelson had inherited from his father a handsome
plantation called Tulip Grove which lies directly across the Lebanon
Road from the Hermitage; and in 1834 General Jackson, perhaps to seal
the reconciliation, engaged Messrs. Reiff and Hume to build on it the
handsome residence which still stands there. Emily, the innocent stormy
petrel, died December, 1836, of tuberculosis. The disease wasted her
strength rapidly and she died before her husband could get back from
Washington where he had gone to help wind up the affairs of the Jackson
administration under the impression that she was not dangerously ill.
Major Donelson later married another of his cousins, herself the widow
of Lewis Randolph of Virginia, who was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson.
Major Donelson, after Jackson's administration closed went back to Tulip
Grove and lived the life of a farmer for a few years, keeping in touch
with Uncle Jackson across the road and helping him sometimes with his
flood of correspondence. By President Tyler he was appointed charge de
affairs to the Republic of Texas, and he played an active and able part
in promoting the annexation of the Lone Star State. When James K. Polk
was elected President he was made minister to Prussia, an office which
he filled with ability and distinction. Following this service he became
editor of the _Washington Union_; and in 1856 took his last fling at
politics when he was a candidate for Vice President on the ticket with
Millard Fillmore. He died on June 26, 1871.
Major Donelson ever stood high in the affections of Andrew Jackson, and
when the old statesman made his will in 1843 he left to him the gorgeous
gold-encrusted sword which had been presented to him on July 4, 1822, by
the State of Tennessee in honor of his services in the War of 1812. This
priceless heirloom is still in the possession of Mrs. Bettie M. Donelson
of Nashville, widow of Major Donelson's son Alexander. There is a note
of pathos in the apologetic explanatory clause embraced in the paragraph
of the will in which this bequest is made: "This, from the great change
in my worldly affairs of late, is, with my blessing, all I can bequeath
him"; but, the dying General added: "This bequest is made as a memento
of the high regard, affection and esteem I bear for him as a
high-minded, honest and honorable man." And, since a good name is rather
to be chosen than great riches, what more precious bequest could anyone
receive?
* * * *
Andrew Jackson Donelson was not by any means General Jackson's only
ward. Another namesake and relative of his wife's who was bequeathed to
him and who was brought up at the Hermitage was Andrew Jackson
Hutchings, orphan son of his old partner in the mercantile business,
John Hutchings, who died in Alabama in November, 1817. The elder
Hutchings was then a widower, and when he knew that death was upon him
he sent for his old partner and asked him to consent to act as guardian
to the little five-year-old boy he was leaving behind him. Jackson took
the boy ("little Hutchings" he generally called him in his letters about
him), and carefully reared him at the Hermitage, giving him every
possible attention and advantage.
When Jackson went to Florida in 1821 he did not take Hutchings with him,
the reason assigned, in a letter to John Coffee, being a strange one: "I
am aware if I did and an accident happen his grandfather would believe I
had destroyed him that his estate should go to his father's family." So
he engaged a combination nurse and tutor to take up her residence at the
Hermitage during his absence and keep the boy at his studies; and in his
letters home from Florida he never neglected to inquire about the lad's
health and send him messages. "Say to him his cousin Andrew will bring
him a pretty present when he returns, and I will buy him a pony."
Hutchings, as the years passed on, developed into a rather difficult
subject. Jackson had hardly arrived at the White House in March, 1829,
heart-broken over his wife's recent death and naturally worried over the
tremendous burden of responsibility he was taking on his shoulders, when
news reached him that the boy had been suspended from the University of
Nashville. Much perturbed, he wrote to William Donelson asking him to
send Hutchings to the school conducted by Mr. Otey at Franklin. "I wish
him taught penmanship, arithmetic and bookkeeping, algebra and some of
the other branches of mathematics, moral philosophy, belles letters and
such other branches that may be profitable to him as a farmer and
private gentleman. I have lost all hope of making him a classic scholar,
and do not wish him to touch the languages except to review those books
of Latin and Greek that he has read, but wish him to understand his
grammar well." He also wrote Hutchings directly that he wished him to
enter the school at Franklin, but Hutchings was having too good a time
back home at the Hermitage where there was no restraining hand save that
of the overseer, and he began to parley about a choice of schools,
claiming that he had an aversion to Mr. Otey's school and would prefer
to go to one conducted by Mr. Williford at Columbia. While all this was
going on, Jackson's friend Colonel Charles J. Love visited the Hermitage
and wrote: "Young Hutchings is very much in the way at the Hermitage. He
rode one of the brood mares away the other day and got her eyes put out.
A letter from you might be of service. Mr. Steel is anxious he should
leave the place."
Hutchings finally went off to the Columbia school, but did not last long
there. In July Jackson wrote General Coffee, who was helping him manage
the boy's estate: "His conduct has filled me with sincere regret. I can
not think of letting him be lost, and have concluded to bring him here
and place him at the college at George Town under the control of the
Catholics. It is an excellent university and perhaps, under my own eye,
I might be able to control him and convince him of the impropriety of
his ways." Accordingly he came on to Washington when Andrew, junior,
returned from a visit to the Hermitage a little later; but in April
Jackson sent him back to Mr. Williford's school at Columbia. "Hutchings
has behaved well at college," he wrote Coffee, "but he has such a great
dislike to this place and his health not good that I have consented to
let him return under a promise that he will abandon his extravagance."
But after he had left Washington Jackson found that he had left a lot of
bills unpaid, and he instructed Coffee to "notify everyone that no
accounts will be paid only those authorized by you. This will be
necessary to preserve him from bankruptcy and ruin."
Instead of going back to Columbia to school, however, Hutchings simply
went back to the Hermitage and began to idle his time away again. Before
long Jackson had a letter from Overseer Steele complaining of "a quarrel
and fight" he had had with Hutchings over the youth's desire to whip a
slave who had offended him; and again the harrassed guardian had to
write to Coffee asking him to use his influence to get the boy to go
back to school. "At the Hermitage he is to have a home, but I expect he
will aid in keeping peace rather than be its disturber," Jackson wrote.
Hutchings apparently never did go back to school at Columbia, but in
September turned up in Washington again and wheedled Jackson into
sending him to the University of Virginia. "He says he is now determined
to become a learned man," the hopeful Jackson wrote Coffee; and for a
brief time it appeared that there might be something to this hope, for
the boy's professors reported his good conduct early in October. In
November Jackson wrote him reproving him for not fulfilling his promise
to write to him every week, but inviting him to come and spend the
Christmas holidays with him at the White House. Hutchings accordingly
came, and the President rounded off the holidays by permitting him to go
to Philadelphia to visit his cousin, Miss Mary McLemore of Nashville,
who was in school there and with whom he thought he had fallen in love.
By February, 1832, the boy's determination to become a learned man had
faded away. By absenting himself from his classes he laid himself liable
to dismissal, and to escape this ignominy he withdrew from the school.
Jackson was much chagrined and humiliated when notified of this state of
affairs, but derived such consolation as he could from the fact that his
ward was accused of no moral delinquency. He urged Hutchings to come to
Washington; but the young man was evidently ashamed to face his
guardian, and so wrote to General Coffee asking him to send him enough
money to return to his farm in Alabama which had been left him by his
father. Coffee sent the money, but instead of going to Alabama to take
up the life of a farmer, Hutchings was back at the Hermitage again in
April--and again causing trouble, this time in connection with the
handling of some colts.
It was no doubt with a distinct feeling of relief that the harassed
President was at last able to relinquish his guardianship in March,
1833, when Hutchings came of age. In writing to General Coffee,
instructing him about turning over the young man's patrimony to him,
Jackson said: "I know I have performed my pledges to his father on his
dying bed"; and in a letter to Hutchings he gave him some kindly and
wholesome advice about the manner in which he should conduct himself.
Despite all the trouble he had had with him, however, Jackson seemed to
have a real feeling of high regard for the orphan boy, son of his old
partner and grandson of his wife's sister Catherine; and he kept up a
fatherly correspondence with him all the rest of his life. A significant
sidelight on Jackson's high principles in such matters is revealed by
his response when Hutchings, checking over the accounting of his estate
noticed that there was no charge made for administration and wrote
Jackson notifying him of the supposed oversight. "I have no charge
against your estate," Jackson wrote him, "I never charged an orphan one
cent for either time or expense, and I shall not now begin with you."
Jackson took a particular interest in the progress of his ex-ward's love
affairs. His affection for his cousin Mary McLemore having cooled,
Hutchings upon settling down on his farm in Alabama fell in love with
another cousin, General Coffee's daughter Mary; and Jackson, obviously
in favor of the match, helped it along with encouragement to the swain
and an occasional adroit word of commendation for Hutchings when he was
writing to Mary. They were married on November 14, 1833. Jackson wrote
warm letters of congratulation to both of them; and, as early as June,
1834, he was writing Hutchings: "You have not even hinted whether a
cradle will be necessary to compleat the furniture of your house. Do
inform me."
Andrew Jackson Hutchings, his harum-scarum young days behind him,
developed into a responsible and respected citizen and planter. Jackson
kept in touch with him through correspondence and occasional visits, and
he enjoyed great gratification at Hutchings's success in establishing
himself as a substantial and respected man. When Hutchings, following
the death of his wife in 1840, went to Cuba in an effort to restore his
own health, Jackson wrote a letter of introduction in which he described
him as "a gentleman of the highest principles of honor and honesty." The
trip to Cuba, however, was ineffectual, and Hutchings returned to
Alabama to die in January, 1841.
* * * *
Donelson and Hutchings were but two of the numerous children Jackson
took into the Hermitage and brought up as his own. A complete roster of
them would be a long list. Apparently Jackson's friends had a habit of
dying and leaving their orphans to his care. His old friend Edward
Butler, for instance, appointed the General guardian of his two sons and
two daughters when he died in 1804, and there were other odd children
left under his wing from time to time. But Rachel had a heart big enough
to find room for them all; and Jackson, despite his engrossing
responsibilities and his excruciating headaches, never objected to their
noisy play as they tumbled about in the Hermitage while he was talking
business and politics with his numerous visitors.
An exotic and pitiful member of the Hermitage household for a few years
was Lyncoya, the young Indian whom General Jackson rescued from the
Creek battlefield of Tallushatches in November, 1813. When this bloody
battle was over, this year-old infant boy was found at the breast of his
dead mother, lying on the field. The baby was brought by John Coffee to
the tent of General Jackson who sought to have some of the surviving
Indian women take it and nurse it. With savage indifference they refused
to make any effort to save the baby's life; indeed, they sullenly
suggested that the baby might as well be killed since its parents had
already been slaughtered by the whites. General Jackson, however,
determined to take it upon himself to see that the little waif survived.
Accordingly he had it fed regularly on brown sugar and water and bread
crumbs, and on this rude fare it survived until it could be sent back to
civilization and given proper diet and attention. First the baby was
sent to Huntsville, to be cared for there by Colonel LeRoy Pope; and it
was his daughter, so tradition says, who conferred the name Lyncoya on
the child. At last the little Indian reached the Hermitage, and under
the kindly Rachel's care soon bloomed with health again. General Jackson
had written home that he was sending the little Indian as a present to
little Andrew--much as one would speak of sending a puppy or lamb or
some other form of pet. "I wish to know if little Andrew got his little
Lyncoya and what he thinks of him," the General wrote later to Rachel;
and in all of his subsequent letters home he had something to say about
the derelict Indian baby. "How is Lyncoya?" he wrote to Rachel from
Mobile late in 1814. "Although he is a heathen he is an orphan, and I
know you will extend a motherly care over him." And Rachel did.
The exact status of Lyncoya in the Hermitage menage is now not entirely
clear. General Jackson probably shared the frontier sentiment that an
Indian was just barely a human being, and at first he seems to have
looked upon him as little more than a novel sort of pet for little
Andrew. But the young redskin must have grown in Old Hickory's
affections, for in subsequent letters he refers to "my little sons,
including Lyncoya," and as soon as he was old enough he went to school
along with the white boys. Lyncoya, according to tradition, soon showed
signs of his racial origin: He decorated his head with turkey feathers,
and with a bow and arrow that he made for himself he kept the chicken
yard in an uproar. As he grew older, General Jackson's plans for him
grew more ambitious. In 1823 he wrote from Washington to Mrs. Jackson:
"I would be delighted to receive a letter from our son, little Hutchings
and even Lyncoya. The latter I would like to exhibit to Mr. Monroe and
the Secretary of War, as I mean to have him received at the Military
School as early as I can." But by the time Lyncoya was old enough to
enter the Military Academy the national administration had changed and
Jackson's enemies were in power. Accordingly, the General decided to
have the young Indian learn a trade, and so took him to Nashville and
carried him around town so that he could see with his own eyes men
working in the various shops, and then let him decide which one was most
attractive to him. Lyncoya for some reason (and by a strange
coincidence, since Jackson himself had worked in his boyhood at the same
trade) chose the shop of a saddler as the scene of his future labors. So
he was apprenticed to a Nashville saddle maker in 1827; but it was his
custom to spend his Sundays at the Hermitage, riding one of the
General's fine saddle horses to and from Nashville. The confinement of
the shop, however, did not agree with him and within a year he fell ill
with a heavy cold that settled on his lungs. He was given permission to
go home to the Hermitage, where he was carefully nursed by Mrs. Jackson,
but he grew gradually worse and died June 1, 1828--his being the first
death to occur in the Hermitage. Just where he was buried nobody seems
to know. At least one chronicle has stated that he was buried in the
garden; but, if so, there is no sign of it. No stone there bears his
name, and there is no unmarked grave in the family plot. It has also
been suggested that he was probably buried in the slaves' graveyard down
in the thicket, back of the carriage house. But all this is mere
conjecture.
Lyncoya must have been a problem to General Jackson who, in common with
other pioneers, hated the Indians as a race, although he apparently had
nothing but affection and pity for the forlorn individual he had brought
to live under his own roof. That he trusted him implicity is shown by a
brief note in Jackson's handwriting now in the possession of a Nashville
connection: "Mr. John Summerville will please send me by Lyncoya, who
will hand him this, fifty dollars in small notes. Please enclose it
under cover to me and oblige your friend Andrew Jackson." Mr.
Summerville lived in Nashville, and if Jackson had not had the greatest
confidence in him he would never have sent a thirteen-year-old boy on
that long, lonesome horseback ride to Nashville and back to get that
money.
* * * *
An almost lifelong resident of the Hermitage, described by General
Jackson as "my friend and companion" was Ralph E. W. Earl, the artist
who married Mrs. Jackson's niece. He was born in 1788, the son of Ralph
Earl, an artist of distinction; and, following his father's example,
took up the profession of artist himself. He came to Nashville in 1816,
and through painting Jackson's portrait established an acquaintance with
the General which ripened into lifelong friendship. One of his friends
in a contemporaneous letter described him as "the very soul of goodness
and honor"; and that seems to have been the general opinion of him.
While in Natchez exhibiting a portrait of Jackson which he had painted,
Earl met Miss Jane Caffery, a daughter of Mrs. Jackson's sister Mary,
whom he married after a short courtship. Upon their return to Nashville
they were invited to live at the Hermitage, and when Mrs. Earl died a
few months afterwards, Jackson insisted that Earl continue his residence
there. From then until his death he was the intimate friend of General
Jackson, going to Washington with him when he was elected President, and
accompanying him as a companion on most of his travels.
During the latter part of his life Earl spent most of his time painting
portraits of Jackson, and came to be known in a jesting way as the
"court painter." It was intimated around political circles in Washington
that Earl's influence on the President was such that his friendship was
a good thing to have; and it was hinted that Earl received many
commissions to paint Jackson's picture from practical men who were less
interested in having a hand-painted portrait of the President than they
were in currying favor with him. Be that as it may, Earl enjoyed
painting the picture of his old friend and benefactor and Jackson
enjoyed Earl's companionship; so everybody was happy. Earl is described
by his contemporaries as a man of quiet and gentle ways, and he must
have been an excellent foil for the fiery old General.
That he was not without a streak of humor is shown by his skylarking
when President Jackson left him in Washington when he returned to the
Hermitage in the summer of 1836. He was entrusted with the duty, during
Jackson's absence, of opening the President's mail and distributing the
letters to the proper departments. Earl, with dry wit, remarked to
Francis P. Blair that this would place on the Cabinet members the
unusual responsibility of attending to their own duties; and there was a
good deal of chaffing and carrying-on in the official family while the
well-liked pseudo-President was occupying the chair in the White House
office with mock gravity. Earl would joke the Cabinet members by
seriously referring to them all of the incoherent letters of
rattle-brained cranks, including an inventor of a perpetual motion
machine who wrote him from the Philadelphia lunatic asylum; and when one
of them jokingly objected to being so annoyed, Earl remarked that while
he was sitting in the President's chair he was tempted to go ahead and
make some needed changes in the government and thus save Mr. Van Buren
(the heir apparent) the trouble. Blair thought all of this great sport
and wrote to Jackson back at the Hermitage telling him all about it. "He
is thus playing the part of Sancho Panzo," chuckled Blair, "with those
whom he ventures to joke with, making some pretty good hits." Jackson
was never much of a hand for horse play and buffoonery; but if he had
any objection to all this pranking of Colonel Earl's he never voiced it.
Upon the expiration of Jackson's term as President Earl returned to the
Hermitage with him, but did not live long. In addition to being an
artist he was also a dabbler in the art of landscape gardening. He had
designed the concentric flower beds in the middle of the garden; and
when Jackson in the summer of 1837 started to build the guitar-shaped
driveway from the gate to the front door of the Hermitage it was Earl
who drew the plans and helped supervise the work. The sun shines
fiercely in Tennessee in early September, and while engaged in this work
Earl suffered a heat stroke which passed into a congestive chill from
which he never recovered. He died on September 16, 1838, leaving
uncompleted a portrait on which he was working of Jackson in his
major-general's uniform. In writing to his former secretary, Nicholas P.
Trist, notifying him of Earl's death Jackson said: "His death is a
severe bereavement to me. He was my sincere friend and constant
companion, and when I was able to travel always accompanied me. He was
an invaluable friend, a most upright and honest man; but he is gone to
happier climes than these 'where the wicked cease to trouble and the
weary are at rest.'" Earl was buried in the family plot in the corner of
the garden, and Jackson made his little niche in history secure by
directing that there be engraved on his headstone the words: "Friend and
companion of General Andrew Jackson."
In the journal of a Nashville citizen of that era, Mr. Matthew Delamere
Cooper, the funeral of Colonel Earl is commemorated in a quaint and
touching poem which he has entitled "The Burial," in introducing which
he says: "That the following lines may be understood it is necessary to
mention that they were written on the occasion of the burial of Colonel
Earl, a portrait painter of considerable eminence, for many years the
intimate friend of General Jackson and long an inmate of the General's
house. He was followed to the grave by a few friends, amongst them the
venerable hero, who did honor to his memory and consecrated the
accumulating heap over his remains by a few tears that would not be
represt. The man of iron soul, the hero of a hundred battles, wept over
his departed friend! He was buried near a weeping willow and within a
few feet of the cenotaph destined to receive the mortal remains of
Andrew Jackson. (May it long be an empty tomb!!)"