Читать книгу Calling on the Presidents: Tales Their Houses Tell - Clark Beim-Esche - Страница 7

Every once in a while, my natural inclination to be chatty has stood me in good stead. This was certainly the case in March of 2012 when I first called Ash Lawn-Highland for advice about Carol's and my upcoming visit there. My chief concern had been whether or not we could fit in a meaningful tour of both Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest and James Monroe's Ash Lawn-Highland estates in a single day. My computer research had suggested to me that it would be possible, but I wanted the plan to be confirmed by someone “on the ground," as it were.

The telephone at Ash Lawn-Highland was answered by a woman with a pleasant voice who was happy to tell me that, because of Ash Lawn-Highland's late closing hour (6 pm at the season when we had scheduled our trip), this double site plan would be completely workable. She even reconfirmed the routing to Charlottesville from Poplar Forest that I had found online. I was most relieved by her assurances and thanked her for taking the time to give me this help. But before I hung up, I felt impelled to mention my book project to her.

“The last time I visited Ash Lawn-Highland, I hadn't begun to write yet, so returning this time will be an important step in my overall project. Nevertheless I remember that earlier visit with great fondness because of a book I purchased in your store."

“Really?" she responded. “Which book?"

“It was entitled The Religion of the Founders, and it helped me teach my A.P. American Literature and U.S History classes every year I taught thereafter, right up to my retirement. Its descriptions and definition of Deism constituted the clearest presentation of that difficult subject I had ever encountered. The author was David L. Holmes."

There was a very long pause, followed by a subdued chuckle. “Well," the lady continued, “my husband will be delighted that you liked his book so much. I'm Carolyn Holmes. It's safe to say you have made both his and my day, today." Then, very graciously, she continued, “Tell me a little more about the book you are writing. I imagine David would like to hear about it."

For the next ten minutes or so, I outlined to her the ideas behind Calling on the Presidents, and she indicated to me that she believed she would be on site at the time Carol and I would be visiting. “Ask for me when you get here," she urged me. “It would be a pleasure to meet you and your wife in person."

I put down the receiver and told Carol about my call. What a pleasant woman, I thought, and how generous she was with her time and advice. Carolyn Holmes, I would later learn, was the Executive Director of Ash Lawn-Highland, and she wanted to meet Carol and me!

On the appointed day, Carol and I arrived, just as Mrs. Holmes had said we would, around three o'clock, in plenty of time for an afternoon tour. Upon entering the Visitor's Center, I asked for her and was told to proceed toward the lower level of the home where the executive offices were located. Here we were greeted by Carolyn Holmes who invited us into her office. She was very complimentary of the manuscript of my book that we had brought for her perusal, and then we settled down for a brief chat. Knowing my interests, she wasn't surprised by my first question.

“What are the qualities of President Monroe that you most admire?"

She thought for several moments before responding. “I know you're interested in the house and what it reveals about the President who lived here," she began, “but the first thing that comes to my mind is his favorite name for Ash Lawn-Highland. President Monroe called it his 'cabin castle,' and I love that. It's unpretentious—in touch with reality—as he always was, and it's a perfect description of the plantation: small but elegant, modest but beautiful."

I was scribbling quickly as she next spoke about Monroe's various travels, so vital to our nation's history. Then she told of how Ash Lawn-Highland had had to be sold after Monroe's presidential years because of debts he had incurred in Europe while acting as an ambassador of the United States, debts for which he had never been fully reimbursed by the government. Finally there was a very long pause.

"You know," she observed thoughtfully, "as I think about it now, I believe that the quality I most admire in President Monroe is that he was so good at getting things done."

Indeed he was. In fact, it would be quite easy to make a case for Monroe as the most successful “getter of things done" in presidential history. To make that case more lucidly, however, I will turn to a contemporary, John Quincy Adams, who, in his inauguration speech of 1825, summed up the achievements of his immediate predecessor in office:

… in his [Monroe's] career of eight years the internal taxes have been repealed; sixty millions of the public debt have been discharged; provision has been made for the comfort and relief of the aged and indigent among the survivors of the Revolution; the regular armed force has been reduced and its constitution revised and perfected; the accountability for the expenditure of public monies has been made more effective; the Floridas have been peaceably acquired, and our boundary has been extended to the Pacific Ocean; the independence of the southern nations of this hemisphere has been recognized, and recommended by example and by counsel to the potentates of Europe; progress has been made in the defense of the country by fortifications and the increase of the Navy, toward the effectual suppression of the African traffic in slaves; in alluring the aboriginal hunters of our land to the cultivation of the soil and of the mind, in exploring the interior regions of the Union, and in preparing by scientific researches and surveys for the further application of our national resources to the internal improvement of our country.

This is a very long list. Let's review quickly the accomplishments of the Monroe administration that Adams notes here. 1) Taxes are down. 2) National debt is falling. 3) Veterans' needs are being met. 4) The army has been both trimmed and improved. 5) Florida has been acquired and the nation's boundaries extended to the Pacific Ocean. 6) Various nations in South and Central America have been recognized, and Europe has been told to stay out of their internal affairs (“The Monroe Doctrine"). 7) Our coastal defenses have been strengthened. 8) The navy has made meaningful efforts to stop the slave trade. 9) American Indians have begun to learn farming and are becoming more educated. 10) Scientific methods are being applied to enable internal improvements throughout the country. While several of these issues were still far from being finally resolved, is it any wonder that Monroe's Presidency had been labeled, even at the time, an “era of good feelings"? Or, even more extraordinarily, that he would be, along with George Washington, the only President to be re-elected to that office without opposition? And all this “doing" was after such earlier instances of taking action as volunteering to fight in the Revolutionary army under George Washington and helping to negotiate the nation's largest land deal in history: the Louisiana Purchase. Carolyn Holmes had put it most aptly: President Monroe had been awfully “good at getting things done."

Both his home and even the ongoing stewardship of the estate perfectly reflect this dynamic quality of commitment to action.

If one has come from the more palatial Virginia plantation homes of the earliest Presidents, Ash Lawn-Highland (or “Highlands" as Monroe called it) seems almost painfully small. Currently the Monroe-era portion of the house (a two-story addition was added in the late 19th century) is comprised of only five rooms on the ground floor, though recent research has revealed that the home's original front hall and an office had been present on the site where the later two-story addition now stands. The original Monroe structure contains, then, a modest drawing room, a somewhat larger dining room, a study, and two bedrooms. The kitchen area was located downstairs on a walkout level. The only two rooms which betray even a hint of presidential splendor are the drawing room and dining area, and each deserves a more thorough description, for they both do attest to the Monroes' superb taste and refined sensibilities.

In the home's current layout, visitors first step into the drawing room from the side where the front hall was originally located. Though the room was not large (perhaps no more than about 18 feet square), it's a quite evocative interior. Floor to ceiling decorative wallpaper, reminiscent of the tapestries the Monroes had brought from France, depicts a romanticized pastoral topography surrounding the visitor on every side. And, most interesting to me were two prominently displayed busts, one of which I recognized immediately. “This bust is of Napoleon Bonaparte," our guide explained, “and was a gift to President Monroe from the French emperor himself." A member of our tour group quickly asked a follow-up question: “Why would Monroe want the portrait bust of a dictator in his home?"

“Don't forget," our guide countered, “Mr. Monroe got Louisiana from Napoleon." She paused a moment. “And then, of course, Eliza Monroe, the Monroes' first child, went to school with Napoleon's step-daughter Hortense, the child of Josephine, while the Monroes were living in Paris, so there was a personal connection, too." My subsequent research regarding Eliza and Hortense made this postulate feel somewhat suspect. Henry Ammon, a noted Monroe biographer, records that, as a result of Eliza's French education and school companions, she “… had tended to develop exaggerated notions of [her] own importance…" (139). Such a development would hardly explain the bust of the man whose stepdaughter had helped turn his eldest child into a snob.

We were just about to leave this room, when I noticed the second bust, the image of a man I had never seen. “Excuse me," I called out to our docent. “May I ask who this person is?" She smiled broadly. “Certainly," she answered. “That is Charles James Fox, an English politician who sided with the colonies during the Revolution. He was also a friend of Wilberforce."

Our tour group moved on to the dining area, but mentally I was still in the drawing room. “Napoleon and Fox, Napoleon and Fox," I kept repeating to myself. Certainly an odd pairing of portrait busts in this small drawing room. And then Carolyn Holmes's phrase struck me again. As different as both these men were—and as distinct as each had been from James Monroe—all three shared that same essential quality of being “good at getting things done." Fox had courageously challenged the British Parliament during the American Revolution, going so far as to wear the colors of the continental army to sessions of parliament. He had also been outspoken on the issues of religious tolerance and individual liberty, even sullying his good name when he had come out in support of the French Revolution. Later he had worked tirelessly with Wilberforce to wipe out the scourge of human trafficking in African slaves. Napoleon, too, of course, had been an endlessly enterprising “doer" who had come very close to creating a new European empire with Paris as its center. Monroe may have had his reservations about some of each of these men's personal failings, but it would have been impossible for him to deny that both men were thoroughly committed to action. Neither had been merely content to plan a future society—or world—for others to realize. As such they belonged here.

The dining room seemed almost out of place in such a humble dwelling—the decision to dedicate an entire room of the five to giving dinner parties appeared, on its surface at least, a questionable use of space. But then I recalled Carolyn's enjoyment of Monroe's phrase describing Highlands, “my cabin castle." This was the room that transformed the plantation into a “castle," suitable for entertaining the likes of Thomas Jefferson, who dined here often, James Madison, Lafayette, and other notables of the new revolutionary age. Though issuing from a much more unexceptional background than any of his Virginia political peers, Monroe was no less a representative of the aristocracy of merit about which his friend Thomas Jefferson had spoken so memorably. The elegance of the dining table, the refinement of the furnishings and dishware, all spoke of this new generation of republican worthies, of which James Monroe was an established member.

The last three rooms on our tour, two bedrooms and a rather cozy study, were serviceable and straightforwardly useful. There was no ostentatious display of wealth or possessions in any of them, but a small family could be most adequately housed in such a “cabin castle." The Monroes had loved this plantation site and had only put it on the market when their overall indebtedness had necessitated the sale.

Before we left the last room of our tour, the study, our docent pointed out several silhouettes of the Monroe family, framed and hanging as decorative touches on the walls of the room. Her chief interest in them was in the fact that, unlike most silhouettes, which are black paper cutouts mounted on white backgrounds, these silhouettes had been created by the cut out edgings of white paper. The black silhouette images we saw, then, were not cut out of black paper but were created by the white cut edgings, placed upon a plain black background. Her next observation, whether or not she had intended it as a continuation of her comments about these unique silhouettes, constituted a wonderful parallel to them. She noted that when James Madison had inquired of Thomas Jefferson about the character of James Monroe, Jefferson's answer had been immediate and unequivocal: “If you turn Monroe's soul inside out, you will find not a speck." Even Jefferson's portrait of James Monroe, then, was cut completely out of white paper.

The remainder of our tour of this beautiful farm/plantation took place outside, and I found it particularly interesting to note that Ash Lawn-Highland is committed to being a center of living history. The site's education department is dedicated to helping young people from nearby communities have a chance to experience life as it was lived in the early years of the 19th century. There is a sheep-shearing day where children can see where wool comes from and watch it being spun into material that will be used to create items for sale in the site's store. Hay mowing, egg gathering, and cooking classes that feature foods harvested from the Ash Lawn-Highland gardens give young students a window into the workings of a functioning plantation.

I couldn't help but think that James Monroe would have loved to see his plantation so full of activity. Of all the beautifully maintained and reverently presented presidential homes in Virginia, none was so dedicated, even more than 150 years after the passing of its President, to “getting things done."