To the left of the hall are the double parlors, separated with folding doors, and each with its doorway into the hall. Each of the parlors has a handsome marble mantelpiece, the one in the front being made from marble quarried in Italy while that in the rear is made from native Tennessee marble. The crimson damask curtains at the windows were ordered by General Jackson in Philadelphia in 1836 when the Hermitage was refurnished, the color being specified because his wife had always preferred it. The piano in the back parlor is one bought by General Jackson for his little granddaughter, Rachel, soon after he retired from the Presidency. “Would my baby like to take music lessons?” he asked her one day; and when she answered in the affirmative he sent her mother to town to buy her a new piano—the old one wasn’t good enough for his little pet. The old piano was sold in 1865 when the adopted son’s widow disposed of some surplus furniture, the purchaser being a neighboring farmer who confided that he expected to use it to hive bees. There is also to be seen in the back parlor a handsome mahogany center table which has an interesting history. When General and Mrs. Jackson were entertained in New Orleans in 1815, following the battle, the handsome furnishings of the room where they were entertained were presented to them and shipped up the river to the Hermitage when they returned. Most of this presentation furniture was burned in 1834, but this old table survived. On the mantel in the back parlor is General Jackson’s favorite clock, with its hands stopped at the hour of his death. All the furnishings of the parlors—the chairs, mirrors, chandeliers, draperies, carpets, vases, divans, etc.—are part of the Hermitage’s original furnishings, and are in the places they occupied when General Jackson was alive. The crystal chandeliers are especially impressive. They seem to hang rather low—but they were placed there in the days when candles were used for lights, even before the later days when the primitive tapers were replaced with the modern sperm-oil lamps.

A doorway leads from the front parlor into the dining room wing, and there is also a door into the dining room from the broad front portico. To the rear of the dining room are the pantry and storeroom, with a passage leading to the semi-detached old-fashioned kitchen in the rear.

In the dining room is to be seen the massive mahogany sideboard purchased by Mrs. Jackson in New Orleans when she and the General were returning from Florida, together with the table, chairs and other original furnishings of this room. Here also is displayed most of the Hermitage silverware, including the silver formerly belonging to Commodore Decatur, engraved with his coat of arms, which was purchased from his widow by Jackson in 1833 when she was in reduced circumstances. The General bought from Mrs. Decatur for $350 her china and silverware, but he presented the china and two silver fruit baskets to Mrs. Emily Donelson, giving the remainder of the silver to “my daughter, Sarah Jackson.” When Commodore Decatur was killed in his duel with Captain Barron it left his wife in financial distress. One of her impatient creditors brought suit against her which, to use her own words, “frightened all the trades people with whom I have any little dealing and makes them more pressing for payment;” and the General’s check for $350 gave her very welcome relief.

The dining-room fireplace is featured by the celebrated Eighth of January mantelpiece, a rustic affair built of pieces of rough hickory by one of Jackson’s veterans of the Battle of New Orleans who made it as a monumental labor of love, working on it all by himself and working only on successive anniversaries of the battle until he got it finished on January 8, 1839. The General entered into the spirit of the thing and installed it in this room, with suitable ceremonies, on January 8, 1840. It is now in a rather dilapidated condition, thanks to the depradations of souvenir hunters in the early days before the present iron railing was built.

The floor in the dining room is a reproduction, the only floor in the house not original. This room, however, had been used for years as a storeroom when the association took over the property and the flooring was ruined. An oak floor was laid to replace it; but in 1931 this was removed and a floor of wide poplar boards was built to correspond with the original. All the floors in the house are made of poplar, except the porch floors which are native Tennessee red cedar and which constitute a striking tribute to the durability of this wood.

In the broad central hall downstairs there is seen on the walls the celebrated pictorial wall paper, bought for the new house in 1836. Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence, the General’s granddaughter, is authority for the statement that similar paper was used in the hall before the house was burned, and she was fond of recalling that the paper for this hall had to be bought three times: The first time from Paris, during Mrs. Rachel Jackson’s lifetime; and the two purchases that had to be made to get the paper on the walls in 1836. In the refurnishing of the new Hermitage most of the purchases were made in Philadelphia by Mrs. Sarah York Jackson; acting, of course, under the General’s suggestions when he had any to make. Accordingly in January, 1836, a shipment of furniture and furnishings was made from Philadelphia, the invoice covering which included the pictorial paper ordered from Paris: “3 sets of fine paper hanging, Views of Telemachus, @ $40, $120.” But the steamboat on which these furnishings were being transported, the John Randolph, was burned at the wharf at Nashville on March 16, 1836 (with the loss of three lives); and only a part of the boat’s cargo was saved. At a sale of the salvage, probably through error, the crate containing the paper, along with a lot of other stuff, was sold to Mr. W. G. M. Campbell who had just finished building a new home on his farm on the Lebanon Road near Nashville. Surviving members of Mr. Campbell’s family state that he did not know what was in the crate when he bought it, simply buying it “sight unseen” along with other salvage from the burned steamboat. The inescapable inference from the preserved correspondence is that Jackson’s Nashville factors, Yeatman and Company, who owned the John Randolph, tried to recover the paper after they discovered that it had not been damaged by the fire so as to render it unfit for use; but, it seems, they were thwarted by Mr. Campbell who resorted to the expedient of pasting the paper on the walls of the parlor of his new house before starting to argue about it. The Campbell descendants today affirm that they never heard that there was any argument about it, and that all there was to it was that Mr. Campbell bought it at public sale, paid for it and used it—a strictly legitimate and above-board transaction. But on May 27, 1836, Colonel Armstrong wrote General Jackson in some heat as follows:

“I send you enclosed a note addressed to me by the Messrs. Yeatman after a conversation I had with them this morning. They have always been ready and willing to do all in their power to get back the paper from those who purchased it. When I called on Campbell I expected to get the paper; that night he cut it and put it on the walls. Williams is not at home. I saw Shelly, who will do nothing. He is not disposed to restore it. Williams dare not, as his wife claims it; so I called on the Messrs Yeatman and stated the facts, who willingly proposed to purchase another set. I did not present Andrew’s note to them enclosed to Colonel Love, but suggested in their letter to draw on them for the amount. My dear sir, when you have this whole matter explained it will give you a pain to find men so lost to all honorable feelings as to retain that which does not belong to them. It is a theft. The person who you got the other set from will draw on Messrs. Yeatman or myself on sight and the draft will be paid. Send it out as soon as possible, so that we may complete the house. Major Eaton will be with you in a few days and will explain this unpleasant affair and the treatment received. Yeatman will sue for the real value of the paper. He thinks he has been badly treated by Williams and Campbell. He offered them any profit in advance if that was their object. Let me request you to send out the other without delay, as I want to see the house complete before Mrs. Jackson and yourself get out.”

Colonel Armstrong’s letter is tantalizingly incomplete in details, and there is no other written reference to this “unpleasant affair;” nor is there any inkling as to the identity of the Williams and Shelly mentioned.

Be that as it may, the paper was hung on the walls of the Campbell parlor and is there today, although it is now covered with two layers of modern wall paper put on to satisfy the taste of modern tenants of the old Campbell homestead who objected to the faded grandeur of the old hand-painted paper imported from Paris and wanted something bright and new.

Promptly upon receipt of news of the original paper’s fate, General Jackson wrote to his friend Henry Toland in Philadelphia and ordered a duplicate set. This paper, manufactured by Dufour in France and imported by Toland, is the paper that is on the walls of the downstairs hall today, attracting the admiring glances of all visitors.

This paper depicts the familiar story from mythology of the adventures of Telemachus on the island of Calypso while on his journey in search of Ulysses. There are four scenes in the paper: No. 1, the landing of Telemachus on the island, showing the queen advancing to meet him; No. 2, Telemachus, with Mentor beside him, relating to Calypso the story of his travels; No. 3, the fete given by Calypso in honor of the visitor; No. 4, Telemachus leaping from the cliff after the maidens of the island had burned his boat upon learning of his resolution to escape.

Midway of the downstairs hall, on the right-hand side, is the door to a cross-hall which leads to the side entrance on the east or garden side. On either side of this little hall are doorways leading to the downstairs bedrooms; and the entry hall at the side is flanked on the left by a small room formerly used, first as the overseer’s or steward’s room and later as a nursery, and now serving as the museum. On the right is General Jackson’s library or office which has a door leading to the front bedroom (which was the General’s) and another door opening on the front portico, corresponding to the similar door at the other end of the porch which affords entrance into the dining room.

Perhaps the most interesting room of all is that front bedroom, the old General’s room, just as it was the day he died. There is the high old four-poster bed, with its heavy canopy and with its little steps at its side, the bed on which he breathed his last. There is the couch by the window on which he spent so much of his time during the latter years of his life. There is his chair, his dressing gown, his tobacco box; and there above the mantel is the portrait of his much beloved Rachel, placed where his eyes could see it the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night while he lived and where the last flickering glance of his closing eyes rested the day he died. Two windows look out on the front porch, and it was by these windows that the plantation’s slaves gathered and waited weeping while he gasped out his last few breaths. Also it was through one of these windows that the old man leaped one night when he awoke suddenly and found his room filled with smoke. A spark had popped out of the fireplace and set fire to his big chair, but he thought that the house was afire and fled precipitately, calling for help. Here is a room redolent with memories of the old General; it is no wonder that visitors linger at its doorway longer than at any other spot in the whole house.

The room immediately across the side hall was originally known as “Mrs. Jackson’s room” and was used as a family sitting room, before the wings were added. At that time the present back parlor was used as the dining room, and the front parlor was known as the portrait parlor, being the room in which all the portraits were hung. In 1832 this back bedroom was refurbished to be used by Andrew Jackson, junior, and his wife as their room. “It will be more convenient than upstairs,” the General wrote Andrew when suggesting this use of the room—and perhaps he also looked ahead to the time when the adjoining little room would be useful as a nursery.

The office or library, adjoining General Jackson’s bedroom, might well be said to have been the center of political activity of the United States for thirty years. History was made in this room. Presidents were made and unmade, Cabinet officials and other high dignitaries had their fate decided there. Here are the furnishings—the bookcases, desks and chairs—just as they were in those days. One feature that might strike the visitor is that there are not so many books in evidence as one might expect to find in the library of the President of the United States. Less than 1,000 volumes are in the cases. Andrew Jackson was a man of action rather than reading, but the books he possessed (many of them gifts of admirers and of proud authors) indicate that he had a widely diversified taste for good literature and that he was not a stranger to classical and studious reading.

The Hermitage bookshelves show a library of which nobody need feel ashamed. Here are Shakspeare’s works, the poems of Byron and Burns and Dryden, Pilgrim’s Progress and theological works alongside the novels of Smollett and Fielding. Here is Johnson’s Dictionary, and an early Encyclopedia Americana; the Spectator, the Rambler; early American novels, notably those of William Gilmore Simms and Charles Brockden Brown; here are Horace and Virgil in translation—and a burlesque Iliad. Memories of his war on the Bank are recalled by the numerous treatises on banking and currency; and one is reminded of his military days by a copy of the Infantry Regulations, dated 1812, along with a number of books referring to the War of 1812. There is a complete array of medical books for the home—necessary in those days before the telephone and automobile made doctors so immediately accessible; and his practical knowledge of stock breeding is indicated by the books on the veterinary science and the other aspects of animal husbandry. Here is young Andrew’s copy of Robinson Crusoe, also some of his schoolbooks; and a sentimental touch is provided by a calf-bound copy of Burns’ Poetical Works on the flyleaf of which is inscribed “To Rachel Jackson, from her beloved husband, And^w Jackson.” Also reminiscent of Rachel is a flower gardening guide, with quaint old illustrations. There are bound volumes of Niles’ Weekly Register, there are the Madison Papers and the American State Papers, some law books of the early days—in short, it is the library of a country gentleman and statesman of a century ago.

Here in his office, aside from his books, we find his old walnut desk, used throughout his life from the time he was a practicing attorney; the mahogany tables; candlesticks and lamps. It is the workshop of the statesman, just as he left it nearly a century ago.

In a cabinet on one side of the room are a number of bound volumes of newspapers of Jackson’s day, which recalls the fact that he was an omnivorous reader of the newspapers and periodicals current in his time. His postage account with the Nashville postoffice in 1825 shows that he received regularly the following papers: Washington City Gazette, Florence Gazette, American Farmer, Louisville Public Advertiser, National Journal, National Chronicle (daily), Niles Register, Columbian, Louisiana Gazette, Kentucky Gazette, Baltimore Morning Chronicle (daily), Jackson Gazette, Knoxville Enquirer, Allegheny Democrat, Mobile Commercial Register, National Republican, Knoxville Register and Florida Intelligencer—all these in addition to the Nashville papers. One wonders how he had any time at all for reading books!

The little room to the right of the side entrance was originally designed for an overseer’s room, but was later used as a nursery for the children of Andrew, junior. Now it provides an admirable place for the display of the many interesting Jackson relics accumulated by the Ladies Hermitage Association. Here is a wonderful array of historical and personal relics—the General’s swords and pistols (also his prayer book and silver communion cup); his gold spurs, epaulettes and stirrups, and his dress suit; Mrs. Jackson’s lace cap and veil; specimens of the White House silver, china and cut glass; the famous candle taken from the tent of Cornwallis; medals; jewelry; letters and documents—an intensely interesting collection of memorabilia pertaining to the vivid career of the Hermitage’s master. Literally hours may be spent in this room profitably and pleasantly.

The hall between the library and museum was originally an open entry, but was enclosed when the rebuilding was done. The closet on the right-hand side of the hall, under the stairway, was added after General Jackson’s death, but the left-hand closet was original. This was used in the old days to store the cotton goods made by the plantation spinners before it was doled out to the sewing women. Every year in the late fall the negroes were called up to the overseer’s room to be given their winter clothing, and this occasion was always seized upon by the negroes for a big celebration. A plantation slave orchestra, composed of fiddle, tambourine and bones, would make music while the negroes were coming and going and everybody—black and white—always had a big time on these occasions.

Going upstairs by way of the back stairway there is to be found on the right a bedroom that was used by the boys brought up on the place—Andrew Jackson, junior; Andrew Jackson Donelson and Andrew Jackson Hutchings. On the left is the bedroom occupied so long by Ralph E. W. Earl, the artist who married one of the nieces of Mrs. Jackson and who, upon his wife’s early death, was taken in as a permanent member of the Hermitage household.

The arrangement of rooms upstairs is similar to the downstairs of the central part of the house—a broad central hall, running the full length of the house, with two bedrooms on each side of it. This hall has doors at front and rear opening onto the upstairs back and front porticos; and its walls are covered with a hand-painted duplicate of the scenic paper downstairs. This duplicate paper was painted by Miss Jennings for use in the replica of the Hermitage which stood on the exposition grounds at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. After the exposition closed it was brought back to Nashville and placed in its present location, where it provides a pleasing complement to the original paper in the lower hall.

On the western side of the upstairs hall the back bedroom was used as a guest room (and it was seldom empty); and the front bedroom is officially labeled “The Lafayette Room,” probably because it was in the corresponding room in the old Hermitage that the Marquis de Lafayette spent the day when he visited Jackson in 1825, ten years before the present Hermitage was constructed.

The fire in 1834 destroyed much of the furniture then in use in the house, and it was replaced with goods purchased in Philadelphia. Jackson left the selection of the furnishings to Mrs. Sarah York Jackson, his only suggestion in connection with the furniture being that she order beds with plain posts instead of carved ones as they would be easier to keep clean. This admonition accounts for the severely plain bedsteads to be seen throughout the Hermitage.

This new furniture was shipped in coastwise vessels to New Orleans, and thence by river steamboats to Nashville. There seems, for some reason, to be a strange conflict of erroneous opinions about the origin of the furniture used to furnish the new Hermitage. Some have stated that it was imported directly from France. At one time it was persistently reported that Jackson took the White House furniture to the Hermitage when he retired from office in 1837. The records clearly indicate, however, that the furniture was bought in Philadelphia through Jackson’s agent there, Henry Toland, and consigned by Toland to Maunsel White, Jackson’s New Orleans factor, with instruction to send it up the river to the Hermitage. The total value of the new furniture was $2,303.77, divided among seven Philadelphia merchants. A specimen bill for furniture from one house, showing the values prevailing at the time, was as follows:

The detailed bill of lading for the principal consignment of the new furnishings gives a good idea of the original cost of much of the furniture now in the house:

All the goods mentioned in the above invoice arrived safely in New Orleans, but when they were reshipped on river steamboats to Nashville a large part of the goods was lost when the John Randolph burned at the wharf in Nashville on May 16, 1836. The John Randolph carried eighteen crates of the new Hermitage furniture, including the famous Telemachus paper, and this loss coming close on the heels of the loss of his house must have been sorely discouraging to the old man. But he promptly, upon receipt of the bad news, wrote Andrew to check up the bills of lading and let him know just what parcels were burned so that he could reorder them in Philadelphia. His letter closes on a pathetic note: “This catastrophe will make it necessary that I should have more means, and in one of my letters I said to you to inquire whether the tract in the Western District, or part of it, could be sold and for what. You told me some time ago that there was a man would give five dollars per acre for 400 acres. If you can get that for it in cash I authorize you to sell it. You can say with truth that I had declined taking that offer for it because it was too low; but the burning of my house, and now my furniture, makes it necessary for me to sell.”

The General’s worst fears were realized insofar as he was perturbed about the inability of his resources to absorb the loss of his home and furniture. Soon after his return from Washington he wrote to a friend: “I returned home with just ninety dollars in money, having expended all my salary and most of the proceeds of my cotton crop; found everything out of repair, corn and everything else to buy for the use of my farm; having but one tract of land besides my homestead, which I sacrificed and which has enabled me to begin the new year clear of debt, relying on our industry and economy to yield us a support, trusting to a kind providence for good seasons and a prosperous crop.” To another friend he wrote, complaining that he had to buy bacon for his family and also corn and oats for the stock—an unforgivable thing to a practical farmer. Furthermore, upon his return he found “the new roof of my house, just rebuilt, leaking and to be repaired.” Continuing he said: “I carried $5,000 when I went to Washington—it took all of my cotton crop ($2,250) with my salary, to bring me home. The burning of my house and furniture has left me poor.” A few days after his return he said: “I find my blooded stock in bad order and too numerous for empty corn cribs and hay lofts. I have determined to sell out part to enable me to feed the balance better.” In the spring of 1838, anticipating a needed vacation at a health resort during the approaching summer, he was trying to sell off some town lots he owned in Alabama, admitting frankly that unless he could sell the lots he would not have the means to make the desired trip to the springs. It was at this time that he wrote: “To wind up our debts since last spring we have paid upwards of $7,000. Andrew was inexperienced, and most men are likely to become swindlers when an opportunity offers, and he happened to fall into the hands of men who pretended to be friends and trusted too much to their honesty. But, thank God, we are not now in debt.”

But in the midst of his adversity we find him writing unselfishly to Andrew Jackson Donelson: “I heard you say that your means to buy corn was exhausted. Inclosed I send you half of my present means after paying for my corn, oats and fodder engaged. This half Eagle ought to buy you three barrels of corn. It will buy 20 bushels of oats, which will be better for your colts.”

V: THE GARDEN AND GROUNDS

Much of the sentimental interest attached to the Hermitage centers around the garden, that fenced-in acre to the east of the mansion house which was set aside by General Jackson for that purpose when the Hermitage was built in 1819. We know that the exact site of the house was carefully selected by his wife, and it is safe to assume that it was she also who picked out this particular spot for the garden.

A short time before the Hermitage was built the General, accompanied by Rachel, visited in Washington on official business; and on this occasion they made the pilgrimage to Mount Vernon. Jackson was obviously much impressed by his visit to the old home of George Washington, so much so that he left in his papers a written memorandum of his impressions aroused by his journey to what he described as “the venerable dwelling of the patriarch of our liberties.”

It is only a speculation, of course, but it is interesting to entertain the fancy that it was perhaps as a result of this visit that the old General, upon his return to Tennessee, decided to build for himself a home more in keeping with the dignity of the position he had attained as a national hero. Perhaps Rachel herself suggested it to him. She was proud of the General and the distinctions he had gained; maybe she put the thought in his head that the Hero of New Orleans ought not to be receiving his guests in a log house, that he should live in a little more style—something approaching the quiet dignity of Mount Vernon, which they both admired. A new house they should have—and, of course, by all means, a garden.

At any rate, we find in the old General’s memorandum of his Mount Vernon trip the following reference: “A neat little flower garden, laid out and trimmed with the utmost exactness, ornamented with green and hot houses in which flourish the most beautiful of the tropical plants, affords a happy relief to the solemn impressions produced by a view of the antique structure it adjoins, and leads you insensibly into the most delightful reverie, in which you review in imagination the manner in which the greatest and the best of men, after the most busy and eventful life, retired into privacy and amused the evening of his days.” And so, when the Hermitage mansion house was built in 1819, we find close by its side “a neat little flower garden, laid out and trimmed with the utmost exactness;” and, although it is difficult to picture the tempestuous old warrior puttering about a flower garden, his correspondence reveals that thoughts of it occupied a part of his attention throughout his lifetime, and contemporaries have recalled that he had more than the average man’s interest in the flowers, particularly admiring the roses and the pinks.

That the garden was no mere afterthought or casual incidental to the building of the house is shown by the fact that in 1819 he engaged, evidently for the task of laying it out and planting it, an English professional gardener named William Frost, reputed at that time to be one of the best gardeners in the metropolis of Philadelphia. The best was none too good for Rachel in those days.

During his long absence from home during his two terms as President, Jackson’s correspondence is liberally sprinkled with references to his garden. In all the great difficulty he experienced in obtaining the services of competent or satisfactory overseers, one of his criticisms of them was that they were derelict in their care of the garden—Rachel’s garden. And in May, 1835, when his son wrote him relative to the good conduct of the new overseer most recently engaged he replied: “How I am delighted to hear that the garden has regained its former appearance that it always possessed whilst your dear mother was living, and that just attention is now paid to her monument. This is truly pleasing to me, and precisely as it ought to be.”

In May, 1832, in a letter to his son’s young wife General Jackson wrote: “I sincerely regret the ravages made by the frost in the garden, and particularly that the willow by the gate is destroyed. This I wish you to replace. The willows around the tomb I hope are living, and a branch from one of these might replace the dead one at the garden gate. It will grow if well watered and planted on receipt of this.” But it didn’t grow—or else the youthful Sarah neglected to plant it; and it was not until 1925 that a member of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association ran across this letter of the General’s and decided that, better late than never, his wishes should be carried out. The willows at the tomb—the willows General Jackson had himself planted nearly a century before—are now dead and gone, probably crowded and shaded to death by the stately old magnolias that now guard the plot of graves. But a scion was taken from another willow on the place and today the young willow may be seen there at the garden gate, belatedly replacing the one destroyed by the late frost in the spring of 1832.

The garden plot occupies an acre of ground, surrounded by a high picket fence built of enduring Tennessee red cedar. The fence is of the old substantial type, constructed of pointed pickets mortised with precision into the horizontal sustaining members, and entrance is gained through an old-fashioned wooden gate, reached by a short brick walk from the door on the eastern side of the house.

Inside the garden, eight feet from the fence, the plot is encircled by a gravel walk about six feet wide, and similar bisecting walks cut the garden into four plots. In the center the walks converge on a geometrically designed system of concentric circular beds in which annuals bloom from year to year. Roses climb on the fence, and shrubbery is planted along the sides of the walks, the central portion of each of the four plots now being kept in grass. In the middle of the north side is the original brick tool house, the path to which is shaded by an old rustic rose arbor; and peeping out between the box bushes and crape myrtles may be seen an occasional moss rose or other old-fashioned plant.

We do not find here the hothouses with their tropical plants which the General and Rachel so much admired at Mount Vernon; but evidently an effort was made to introduce unusual shrubbery into the garden, for in addition to the customary plants found in a Southern garden of the period there are to be seen some of the more rare and exotic shrubs—fig trees brought from the far South, a pink magnolia from Japan, etc.

The planning and arrangement of the planting is such that it provides attractions the whole year round. There are flowers throughout the blooming season from early spring to late fall; then there are the brightly colored leaves of the bushes and trees; and during the winter there is the glossy green foliage of magnolias and the faintly scented box bushes beside the garden paths, the barrenness of the flower beds at that season being relieved by the sweet-scented winter honeysuckle which defies the seasons and blooms in December and January as though it were mid-summer. The Hermitage garden is never without its attractive features.

In early spring there is first the brilliant bloom of the English hawthorn, then the narcissi and tulips and hyacinths making the air heavy with their fragrance, also the jonquils and old-fashioned blue-bottles and purple shades. Crocuses and butter-and-eggs and, later, iris and peonies all combine to make the garden a springtime riot of bloom. So spectacularly do the peonies bloom that they always attract large crowds of visitors while they are in full flower, more than a thousand visitors having gone to the Hermitage garden in one day to witness the rare floral spectacle.

Interspersed with all the conventional plants and shrubs are some of the native wild flowers that bloom in the fields and along the river banks near by; for when the Hermitage garden was first planted the florist’s art had not reached its present peak of perfection, and although the thoughtful General sent home flower seeds from Philadelphia and Washington, Rachel took pleasure in augmenting the garden’s finery by selections from the surrounding country. Visitors may still see in the beds there the nodding Jacob’s ladder, the columbine and other such homely blossoms. The wild yucca, with its semi-tropical appearance, was brought in from some of the near-by cedar glades, along with prickly pear cacti and rock roses; and a graceful fringe tree was planted near the entrance gate.

In the beds in the center of the garden there have always grown tulips in the springtime and then some kind of annuals to sustain the succession of blooms through the summer. Early in June the great collection of ascension lilies begin to bloom, filling the garden with their perfume; and throughout the summer there are the roses, both in bush and climbing form, mostly of the old-fashioned varieties—moss roses, the yellow briar, maiden’s blush, Louis Phillippe, macrophylla, pink musk, etc.

The shrubbery also contributes its share of blossoms, from the golden bells, bridal wreath, snowballs and calacanthus of the spring through the altheas or Rose of Sharon of the summer, to the pink and red crape myrtles of the late summer which cap off their showy mass of blooms with a brilliantly colored array of scarlet leaves in the fall months.

The Hermitage garden offers some form of attraction at any season of the year.

During the early days of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association the wealth of bloom in the garden was turned to good account, especially in the spring. Then cuttings of jonquils and peonies, literally by the wagonload, were sent into Nashville and sold on the street; and there were also sales of seeds and cuttings and surplus bulbs, so that visitors might take away with them living mementoes of the Hermitage garden. From this source the association was able to derive a considerable and much-needed revenue at a time when funds were scarce and every dollar of income was welcome.

During his lifetime Uncle Alfred, who acted as a guide to visitors, always took especial interest in the garden and beamed with proprietary pride when visitors gave expression to their appreciation of its beauties. “Please do not pluck the flowers” says a conspicuous sign by the side of the gate; but if a visitor really seemed interested in the garden’s attractions the old retainer would slyly say: “Now if you like dat rosebud, I won’t see you if you gets it.”

Some idea of what the Hermitage garden looked like in the old days may be gathered from a description of it which was given in an interview printed in one of the Nashville papers several years ago with an old lady who had visited there with her father when she was a girl. Looking back down the vista of the years, she said:

The flower beds about the middle of the garden were there when the General lived there. He had an old negro, Alfred, to attend to the garden. They had a regular vegetable garden combined with the flower garden. The vegetable garden was not with the flower part of the garden, but you could see the vegetable garden when you stood in the flower garden or where the flowers were. They had cabbages, potatoes, beets, beans and squash and other vegetables in the vegetable part of the garden. They had sage and thyme around on the edge of the flower beds. They had in the flower beds hollyhocks, beds of pinks of all colors, rose bushes, tea roses, macrophylla and cinnamon roses, moss roses, white lilacs, tiger lilies, heliotrope (white and purple). Some of the beds were edged with sweet violets. There were poppies in some of the beds, and hyacinths and tulips. The Washington bower was on the side—on the fence and climbing up the trees in the garden—they were trees with long white flowers, locust trees I think. The garden was larger then than it is now—it was larger east and west than now and was fenced with a plank fence. There was a weeping willow there but I can’t locate it now. There was a large rope swing near the house and near to the entrance to the garden. It was tied to the limb of a hickory tree.

Continuing with her description of the garden this old lady spoke of two magnolia trees “about the middle of the garden near the tomb—good big trees” and in speaking further of the weeping willows stated that they were “just over the fence, near and opposite the tomb.” She also named more of the flowers that grew in the old garden: Several big bushes of crape myrtle; verbenas, all colors; sunflowers; all-colored flags—red, white and purple; snowballs; red, pink and white peonies; old-fashioned honeysuckle—coral, white and yellow, lilacs, white and purple. The “Washington bower” she describes as having a purple flower, so it was probably the large-flowering variety of clematis which was also known as the virgin bower. She also mentioned, in enumerating the shrubbery, “japonica bushes” which, she said, “has red blossoms and comes early and late;” and this, we may presume, was the flowering shrub known now as the English hawthorn and also called the fire-bush.

The garden as it stands today is just about as it was in the days when it bloomed and blossomed under Rachel’s tender care, except that the flowering shrubs and bushes have now attained the size and beauty gained only with the passing of the years. But it was not in any such condition as this that the Ladies’ Hermitage Association found it when they took charge. During the wartime occupation of the premises by the guard of Federal troops the garden was almost obliterated. Being fenced in and convenient to the house, it appealed to the cavalrymen as an ideal corral for their horses, and it was so used during the three years the Federal troops remained on the grounds. It is easy to imagine the damage done—and it is also easy to imagine Old Hickory’s devastating wrath if he had known that his government’s troops were so heedlessly desecrating Rachel’s flower garden.

After the war but little was done to repair the damage done by the soldiers’ horses. The fence was restored, and this kept out wandering stock and permitted the hardy shrubs to grow again; but the paths were overgrown with weeds, washed by the recurring rains, and in 1889 little trace of the old walkways remained except for the marginal brick borders. (These bricks, by the way, were especially designed and made for the purpose, being longer and thicker than ordinary bricks and also beveled at the top. They were manufactured on the place when the bricks were burned for the building of the big house, the depression in the ground where the clay was dug out for all the bricks being still visible in the extreme northwestern corner of the big wooded lot directly across the road from the front entrance to the Hermitage.)

In spite of the discouraging aspect of affairs in the garden when the ladies took over the property, however, the work of restoring it to its original beauty was valiantly attacked, and one of their very first activities was to engage a man to clear away the weeds and blackberry bushes and the volunteer elms and hickories, rebuild the paths and restore the garden to some semblance of its former appearance. The work of restoration has been carefully done, with a full appreciation of the importance of retaining the spirit and form of the original design and planting. A competent garden authority was retained to plan the work in later years, and there has been no effort to modernize or improve the garden—only a faithful determination to repair the ravages of time and present it to the visitor today just as it was when the General and Rachel were alive and wandered up and down its broad paths in admiration of its beauty.

The focal point of interest in the garden, of course, is the tomb in the southeast corner. When his beloved Rachel died in December, 1828, just on the eve of their departure for his first Presidential inauguration, the old General laid her away in the corner of the garden and, heavy-hearted, started off for Washington alone.

During the subsequent eight years, as the bitterly fought battles of partisan politics raged and surged about him in the nation’s capital, his heart remained buried in the garden at the Hermitage. In May, 1829, he wrote to the Rev. Hardy M. Cryer (that bizarre combination of devout Methodist preacher and horseman) saying: “In the day I am laboriously employed, and it is only when late in the night I retire to my chamber that I have time to think of or write to my friends. It is then that I feel the great weight of the late affliction of Providence in the bereavement I have been visited with in the loss of my dear wife; I find myself a solitary man, deprived of all hope of happiness this side the grave, and often with myself at the Hermitage, there to spend the remnant of my days and daily drop a tear on the tomb of my beloved wife and be prepared, when Providence wills it, to unite with her in the realm above.”

Due to the need for his immediate departure for Washington after the death of his wife, it was necessary that she be buried in a plain grave over which a temporary shelter was built. But it was never the General’s idea that her resting-place should go without a more elaborate monument; and even before he left the Hermitage in January, 1829, he began negotiations looking to the design and construction of what he described as a “monumental tomb.” A contract for the building of the tomb was given a Nashville contractor, D. Morrison; and Mr. Morrison designed a simple but impressive structure of classic Greek lines. It is built of stone, its dome-like top being supported by fluted stone columns and covered with copper. The structure is surrounded by a simple iron fence.

The inscription on Mrs. Jackson’s tomb is popularly supposed to have been written by the General himself. Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence stated that it was written by Major Henry Lee, the talented though scapegrace Virginian who was Jackson’s secretary and a resident of the Hermitage at the time of Mrs. Jackson’s death. It has even been attributed to Major John M. Eaton. Whoever wrote it, it is a beautiful and moving tribute to the pioneer woman who occupied the central place in Andrew Jackson’s heart throughout his life:

Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who died the 22nd of December, 1828, aged sixty-one years. Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind. She delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow creatures and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods. To the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament. Her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous slander might wound but could not dishonor; even death, when he bore her from the arms of her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God.

In strong contrast to this eloquent eulogy is the Spartan simplicity of the old General’s own epitaph, certainly written by himself: