Calling on the Presidents: Tales Their Houses Tell. Clark Beim-Esche
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.