There was no gloomy pomp to strike the eye;
There fell no toll of bell upon the ear.
To where a new made grave was opened nigh,
In silence slowly followed we the bier.
And was he little valued, little known,
Who reached obscurity thus life's journey's end?
No, Art had made a brilliant name his own
And him the hero honored as his friend.
Yet in the latest office due the dead,
To him without parade thus sadly done,
Was he not honored much for whom was shed
That old man's tears, by veteran friendship won?
How touching is such grief; who does not sigh
To see the sorrow-stricken hero bend;
The tear that mocks restraint, big in his eye,
Falls on the gathering heap above his friend.
Not the deep tolling of the solemn bell
Or martial funeral pomp for fallen chief,
Pall, long procession, pageant, all that tell
The magnitude of a paraded grief;
Not all were worth that solitary tear.
One drop from such a fount would nerve the brave
To court the deadliest danger without fear,
So might such honor wait him at the grave.
Hidden forever now, calm be thy sleep.
The ground is hallowed where thy place is made.
A spot all aftertimes shall sacred keep
Sharer with it the weeping willow's shade.
And when to see where he, the great man, lies
Hither hereafter pilgrim patriots come,
Remembered shalt thou be, and tearful eyes
Shall mark thy grave beside the hero's tomb.
* * * *
One of history's shadowy figures who lived at the Hermitage for the
better part of two years was Major Henry Lee of Virginia, scapegrace son
of General Henry (Lighthorse Harry) Lee by his first wife. As his
father's eldest son Major Lee had become the master of Stratford Hall,
the seat of the Lee family in Virginia; but as the result of an amour
with his wife's sister he had been forced to leave Stratford and exile
himself beyond the boundaries of his native state. Attracted by the
rising star of General Jackson, under whom he had served in the War of
1812, he came to Nashville to seek a connection with him; and Jackson,
despite the social stigma attached to the expatriated Virginian, gave
him asylum and gave him secretarial employment.
Major Lee's polished diction is to be seen in many of Jackson's formal
state papers of this period, notably his first inaugural; and during the
campaign of 1828 he wrote copiously in behalf of the General's
candidacy. He was on Jackson's staff at the time of Mrs. Jackson's
death; and tradition has it that he was the author of the gem-like
epitaph inscribed on her tomb. When the Indian boy, Lyncoya, died in
1828 Lee wrote a tribute to him which appeared in one of the Nashville
daily papers and was greatly admired at the time.
When President Jackson was inaugurated in 1829 Major Lee aspired to be
the chief clerk in the Department of State, an office for which his
talents and education eminently well fitted him; but the black sheep son
of Lighthorse Harry ("Black Harry" he was sometimes called) by reasons
of his indiscretion in Virginia had made some powerful enemies there.
They went to Washington and waged a vigorous and successful fight
against his being elevated to such a high place in the Federal
government, and so his ambition in this direction was thwarted. Jackson
then appointed him to a diplomatic post in Algiers, and Lee went there
to take over the duties of this office; but his Virginia enemies were
relentless and succeeded in preventing the Senate's confirmation of this
appointment. Major Lee left Algiers and went to Paris, where he died a
few years later. He planned to write a biography of Jackson and actually
completed a part of the manuscript; but after his death this uncompleted
manuscript could never be found.
It is of passing interest to observe that Robert E. Lee, the Confederate
commander, was appointed to the Military Academy at West Point by
President Jackson in 1829; and it is not improbable that this
appointment was the direct result of his elder half-brother's friendship
with the President.
A charming impression of the Hermitage household is recorded in the book
of recollections written in 1872 by Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia
who, as few people now recall, spent his honeymoon in the Jackson home.
Henry Wise, a promising young barrister, in August, 1828 came to
Nashville from his home in Virginia for the purpose of marrying the
daughter of Dr. O. Jennings, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in
Nashville attended by General Jackson and his wife when they were in the
city. Dr. Jennings was not only their pastor but their close personal
friend; and so, with characteristic hospitality, the Jacksons insisted
that the young couple must spend their honeymoon at their country home.
[Illustration: The back parlor, with mantel of Tennessee marble and
original furnishings. The center table is part of the furniture
presented to General and Mrs. Jackson on the occasion of their visit
to New Orleans.]
[Illustration: The dining room, showing the ornate sideboard
purchased in New Orleans by Mrs. Jackson, and some of the Decatur
silver. At this banquet table have dined nine Presidents--Andrew
Jackson, James Monroe, Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, James
Buchanan, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Theodore Roosevelt, and
Franklin D. Roosevelt.]
"We arrived at the Hermitage to dinner," writes Governor Wise, "and were
shown to a bridal chamber magnificently furnished with articles which
were the rich and costly presents of the city of New Orleans to its
noble defender. The first or second evening of our stay, Mr. Lee had
drawn about him his usual crowd of listeners; but we were the more
special guests of Mrs. Jackson. She was a descendant of Colonel Charles
Stockley, of our native county, Accomack, Virginia; and we had often
seen his old mansion, an old Hanoverian hip-roofed house standing on the
seaside not far from Metompkin; and she had often heard her mother talk
of the old Assawaman Church, not far above Colonel Stockley's house.
Thus she was not only a good Presbyterian, whose pastor's daughter was
the bride, and she a Presbyterian too, but the groom was from the county
of her ancestors in Virginia and could tell her something about
traditions she had heard of the family from which she sprung. With pious
devotion to her mother's family she desired to have a talk with us
particularly, and formed a cosy group of quiet chat in the northeast
corner room leading to the garden. This room had a north window,
diagonal from the door leading to the garden. At this door her group was
formed, fronting in a semi-circle the north window of the room, the
garden door on our right. First, on our right, next the window, was old
Judge Overton, one of General Jackson's earliest and best friends. He
was a man who had made his mark in law and politics, but was not pious
and was a queer-looking little old man. Small in stature and cut into
sharp angles at every salient point; a round, prominent, gourd-like,
bald cranium; a peaked Roman nose; a prominent, sharp but manly chin;
and he had lost his teeth and swallowed his lips. Next to him, on his
left, sat General Jackson, his hair always standing straight up and out,
but he in his mildest mood of social suavity. On his left the Reverend
Doctor Jennings, one of the sweetest men in society, very distinguished
as a lawyer first and then as a divine, with a rare sense of humor which
even his religious zeal could not always repress, and yet awfully
earnest and severe against all levity. On his left was Mrs. Jackson, a
lady who doubtless was once a form of rotund and rubicund beauty, but
now was very plethoric and obese and seemingly suffered from what was
called phthisis, and talked low but quick with a short and wheezing
breath, the very personification of affable kindness and of a welcome as
sincere and truthful as it was simple and tender. On her left was
ourself, responding to her every inquiry about things her mother had
handed down concerning the Stockley family; and on our left sat Henry
Baldwin, the son of Judge Baldwin of the Supreme Court of the United
States, one of the groomsmen, a gentleman of fine culture, good sense
and taste."
Clearly the Jackson household was an attractive one and a pleasant one
to visit. No wonder the Hermitage was always full of guests!
Henry Wise and his wife recalled with sadness that happy scene in the
northeast room when they were back there from Nashville just a few
months later to attend the funeral of Mrs. Jackson, held in that same
room where they had all been so merry but a short time before.
The death of General Jackson's deeply beloved wife was doubly tragic,
coming as it did so closely in the wake of his triumphant campaign for
the Presidency in 1828, and hastened as it unquestionably was by the
heartless and slanderous attacks that were made on her character by
Jackson's political enemies in their desperate attempt to defeat his
candidacy.
Her health had been increasingly bad for four or five years. She
suffered from asthma and from palpitation of the heart, and the
excitement and humiliation of the savage political campaign had
aggravated her trouble, although she was not bedridden. Her final and
fatal seizure came suddenly on December 17th while she was standing in
her sitting room talking with Aunt Hannah concerning some of the
household affairs. The General, who was in the fields, was hastily
summoned, doctors were called, relatives and friends hurried in. For
sixty hours she suffered intensely, and during all this time her adoring
husband never left her bedside. At length she grew better; and her first
thought was to reassure the General as to her improved condition and to
urge him to get some sleep so that he would be in proper condition for
the great banquet of triumph that was scheduled to be held in Nashville
by his political admirers in honor of his election to the Presidency.
The General at first refused to leave her side, but on the evening of
the 22nd she seemed so greatly improved and she begged him so earnestly
to get some rest that he reluctantly relaxed his vigil and retired to
the room across the hall. Hardly had he left the sick room when the end
came suddenly and without warning. With only one spasmodic cry she died
in the arms of the faithful Aunt Hannah who was close by her side.
General Jackson was almost paralyzed with grief. He refused to believe
her dead, and persistently urged the doctors to try every known
restorative. But the doctors knew that life had left her body and
ordered her laid out on a table in the old-fashioned way. "Spread four
blankets on the table," the General thoughtfully admonished the
servants, tears streaming down his face. "Then if she does come to, she
won't lie so hard on it." All through the night he sat there by her
side. At intervals he would feel of her heart and pulse and look
hopefully into her face for some sign of life. And all through the next
day he sat there, utterly inconsolable.
The death of Mrs. Jackson, of course, put an end to the gala
preparations in Nashville for the banquet of triumph. Handbills
announcing her passing were hastily printed and distributed throughout
the town; resolutions of regret and sympathy were adopted by the city
officials, and the committee on arrangements for the banquet recommended
a cessation of all business activities in Nashville in deference to the
bereaved President-elect. Army officers in the city arrayed in their
dress uniforms to participate in the celebration laid aside their
regalia of festivity and donned the badges of mourning.
On the day of the funeral, it is recorded, every vehicle in Nashville
was pressed into service in conveying the residents of the city to the
Hermitage. Church bells in the city tolled steadily from 1:00 to 2:00
o'clock P.M., the hour of the services. Parton quotes an attendant at
the funeral as saying: "Such a scene I never wish to witness again. The
poor old gentleman was supported to the grave by General Coffee and
Major Rutledge. I never pitied any person more in my life. The road to
the Hermitage was almost impassable, and an immense number of persons
attended the funeral. I never before saw so much affliction among
servants on the death of a mistress. Some seemed completely stupefied by
the event; others wrung their hands and shrieked aloud. The woman who
waited on Mrs. Jackson had to be carried off the ground." This was old
Aunt Hannah who, between her sobs, said: "She was more than a mistis to
us all; she was a mother."
The day of the funeral was cold and damp and drizzly and the ground was
muddy. The walkway leading from the house to the new grave in the garden
was covered with cotton from the plantation gin-house to afford a firm
footing to the pall-bearers and the funeral cortege. But in spite of the
mud and the rain, the garden and yard were crowded with friends and
neighbors. One of those at the funeral says: "More sincere homage was
done to her dead than was ever done to any woman in our day and country
living."
General Jackson was heart-broken and stunned by his bereavement. Friends
observed a complete change in his demeanor from that day forward. "He
aged twenty years in a night," said one observer; and all agreed that he
was not only marked by a visible sadness but was from that time notably
less violent in his nature and in his conversation. But, despite his
feeling of desolation, the demands of the high office to which he had
been elected did not permit him to sit at home and nurse his grief; and
so in January, 1829, he left the Hermitage for Washington to be
inaugurated President, accompanied by Andrew Jackson Donelson and Emily,
Henry Lee, and Major W. B. Lewis.
After the trunks had been packed and the coach brought around to the
front door, the heart-broken old General paid one last visit alone to
the little mound in the corner of the garden. From a willow by the
springhouse he cut four shoots and planted them at the four corners of
the grave plot; then, after standing a moment with bared and bowed head,
he turned and walked slowly to the waiting coach. Before stepping up
into the carriage, so old Alfred used to tell, he turned for a farewell
look at the Hermitage. With tears in his eyes he took off his hat and
made a courtly bow of farewell to the old house, "same as if it was a
lady," said Alfred; and then he entered the coach, coachman Charles
cracked his whip over the four grays, and they were off to the Hermitage
landing on the river where the steamboat _Fairy_ awaited them. A stop
was made at the wharf at Nashville for other passengers, and then the
_Fairy_ swung out in the current of the Cumberland and they were started
on their way to Louisville, the first leg of their journey to the
capital.
A lady then resident in Nashville wrote of the departure: "When the old
man finally started for Washington, a crowd of ladies were assembled on
the back piazza of the City Hotel, overlooking the Cumberland River, to
'see the conquering hero _go_.' I mingled with them, and distinctly
remember hearing one lady say she had a good-bye kiss from the General
and she would not wash it off for a month. Oh! what a noise there was! A
parrot, which had been brought up a Democrat, was crying 'Hurrah for
Jackson;' and the clapping, shouting and waving of handkerchiefs have
seldom been equaled. When the steamboat passed out of sight and they
realized that he was really gone, the city seemed to subside and settle
down as if the object of its being was accomplished."
So Andrew Jackson went away to accept America's highest honor. But no
President-elect ever approached his inauguration with less enthusiasm or
with a heavier heart. Without his darling Rachel by his side, it was an
empty honor. Writing to John Coffee a few weeks later he said: "My days
have been days of labor and my nights have been nights of sorrow; but I
look forward with hope once more to return to the Hermitage and spend
some days near the tomb of my dear departed wife." And throughout the
eight years he spent in the White House, eight stormy years, his memory
kept stealing back to that spot in the Hermitage garden where his heart
lay buried by her side.
Thus closed one distinct era in the history of the Hermitage. Without
Rachel's presence the old house was never quite the same again. When
Jackson came back there to live in 1837 it was to a new Hermitage,
erected on the ruins of the one he had built for Rachel in 1819; and
although it was a larger and a finer house, although he still
entertained lavishly and took delight in the presence in the house of
his little grandchildren, he was merely paying out the numbered days of
his life, waiting to be laid at rest beside that lonesome grave in the
corner of the garden.