{"id":198,"date":"2016-10-20T20:15:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T20:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/oaklea\/"},"modified":"2024-04-19T15:03:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T15:03:28","slug":"oaklea","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/oaklea\/","title":{"rendered":"Oaklea"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Oaklea”<\/span>
\n(Home of Judge Moore and Rob Moore)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
\nOaklea, built 1857, burned 1905
\nThe original Oaklea, built 1857, burned 1905 and was rebuilt in a different style<\/span><\/p>\n

In the \u201cLittle Colonel\u201d stories, Oaklea was the summer home of Judge Moore<\/a>, his daughter, Mrs. Moore; his grandson, Rob Moore<\/a>, and occasionally Rob\u2019s cousin, Anna Moore<\/a>. While Oaklea is mentioned in most of the books that take place in Lloydsboro (Pewee) Valley, its most memorable scene occurs in Chapter XIV, \u201cThe Royal Mantle,\u201d in \u201cThe Little Colonel\u2019s Knight Comes Riding<\/a> ,\u201d when the Little Colonel<\/a> drops in to obtain a recipe needed for the Shelbys\u2019 golden wedding party. The visit stirs memories of her childhood friendship with Rob and proves that he regards her as much more than a friend.<\/p>\n

So that is how it came about that late that afternoon, Lloyd opened the great iron gate at Oaklea, and  following the familiar path under the giant oaks, reached the house to which she had long been a stranger.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rob\u2019s dog, a fine Gordon setter, came out with a boisterous barking, but seeing who it was, leaped up, licking her hands and wagging a friendly welcome. It seemed as if Rob ought to be somewhere near. Everything about the place suggested him. A familiar wide-brimmed gray hat lay on the hall table, his riding-whip beside it. Up-stairs whither the coloured maid led her, there were other reminders of him: Indian clubs and a tennis racquet in a corner of the hall, and a cabinet holding the various collections that had been his fads from time to time.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCome in here, dear,\u201d called Mrs. Moore from the depths of a sleepy hollow chair. \u201cI\u2019m too tired to move, so I knew you\u2019d excuse my sending down for you to come up-stairs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It was Rob\u2019s room into which she was ushered. Mrs. Moore held out both cordial hands without rising, and drew her down for a kiss.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cRob\u2019s coming home to-night,\u201d she explained, \u201cso of course everything had to be swept and garnished for so grand an occasion, and I\u2019ve nearly used myself up making things fine in his honour.\u201d Her eyes filled with tears. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time he\u2019s been away since the dear \u2018Daddy\u2019 left us, and I had no idea four weeks could be such an age. I\u2019m so excited and happy over his coming that I can scarcely talk about it calmly. But you know what a dear good son my \u2018Robin Adair\u2019 is to me, so you can make allowances for a fond mother\u2019s foolishness.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It was some moments before Lloyd had an opportunity to make known her errand, apologizing profusely for putting her to any exertion when she was so tired.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it\u2019s no trouble,\u201d answered Mrs. Moore. \u201cI think I know right where to put my hand on the book in father\u2019s room. I\u2019ll step across the hall and see.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Left to herself Lloyd gave a shy glance around the room, remembering the time when it had been a familiar playground, but now she had an embarrassed sense of intruding. Many an hour she had spent romping in it while Mom Beck and Dinah gossiped by the fire. They had had their menagerie and lions\u2019 den in that curtained alcove. Here on the hard-wood floor between the chimney-corner and the window they had chalked the ring for their marble games. She leaned over and examined the floor at her feet with a smile. Those were undoubtedly the dents that their top-spinning had left. Mom Beck had told them at the time, no amount of polishing could ever wipe out such holes.<\/em><\/p>\n

The little tin soldiers that used to stand guard on the window-sill had given place to other things now. The rocking-horse that had carried them such long journeys of adventure together had been stabled for years in the attic at The Locusts. College trophies and pennants hung on the walls. A rifle and a shotgun stood in the corner where a wooden gun and a toy sword used to stay. The low table and the picture books had given place to a massive desk and rows on rows of heavy volumes bound in leather.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then she recognized several things belonging to a later period. There was the shaving-paper case she made him the day he bought his first razor. She had been so proud of the monogram she burnt into the leather. It looked decidedly amateurish to her now. On the leather couch among its many cushions was the pillow she had embroidered in his fraternity colours and sent to him while he was at college.<\/em><\/p>\n

Between the front windows where the desk stood, and just above it, ran four long rows of photographs set in narrow panels. Most of them were group pictures, the first dating back to the time of her first house-party, and ending with some that had been taken the week of Eugenia\u2019s wedding. It was like a serial story of all their good times, and hastily changing her seat she leaned her elbows on the desk for another look. But the nearer view revealed something that she had not seen at the first glance. She was the central figure of every group. It was her face that one noticed first, laughing back from every picture.<\/em><\/p>\n

Abashed at her discovery, she scuttled back to her former seat, but not before her quick glance had showed her another photograph on the desk, in a silver frame. It was the last one Miss Marks had taken of her, in her commencement gown. She did not know that Rob had one of them. She had not given it to him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mrs. Moore called out something to her from across the hall, and as she turned to reply she faced still another picture of herself, this one in an old-fashioned silver locket swinging from the side of the mirror. It was the Princess Winsome with the dove. She was afraid to look any further. She felt like an eavesdropper, for, the very walls were calling out to her those words of  Rob\u2019s that she had been trying for weeks to forget: \u201c All my life seems to have been a growing up for this one thing — to love you! \u201c<\/em><\/p>\n

She sprang up with the impulse to leave the room, to get away from these telltale voices that she had no right to listen to. But just then Mrs. Moore came back with the book.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can copy it here at the desk,\u201d she said, laying out a sheet of paper and Rob\u2019s big heavy-handled pen. She did not sit down while Lloyd wrote the few lines, but stood with her hand on the back of the chair till she had finished. Then she said with an amused smile, \u201cI want to show you something funny, Lloyd. I came across it this morning while I was looking over some old things of Rob\u2019s. It\u2019s your first piece of needlework. You made it over here one rainy day under Mom Beck\u2019s instructions. It\u2019s so long ago I suppose you\u2019ve forgotten, but I remember that Rob tried to make one too, and stuck his fingers so often that he cried and gave it up, and you gave him yours to comfort him.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Opening a box which she brought from some drawer, she took out a sorry little pin-cushion. All puckered and drawn, its long straggling stitches scarcely kept in place the cotton with which it was stuffed. The faded blue silk was streaked and dirty as if it had been used for a foot-ball at some stage of its existence, and the pins that formed the crooked letter L had rusted in their places. But that it was accounted something precious, one could see from the way in which it was tied and wrapped and carefully put away in this box by itself.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was a relief to Lloyd to find that Mrs. Moore did not attach any significance to the fact that Rob thus treasured her old gift. She only laughed and said he was like her in that regard. She couldn\u2019t bear to throw away anything connected with his childhood. Only that morning she had come across the little blue shoes that he had learned to walk in, and nearly cried over them, they recalled so plainly those happy days.<\/em><\/p>\n

Later, in Chapter XV, \u201c\u2019As It Is Written in the Stars\u2019 and Betty\u2019s Diary,\u201d the Little Colonel becomes the mistress of Oaklea, after she and Rob are wed in a simple October ceremony at Lloydsboro Valley\u2019s little stone church:<\/p>\n

\u2026The judge is radiantly happy and Mrs. Moore has been as sweet and considerate about everything as if Lloyd were really her own daughter. She wants Lloyd to take the place as mistress of the house just as she did when she went there a bride. She and Rob’s father didn’t take a wedding journey, but went straight home to Oaklea to spend their honeymoon, and she was so pleased when she found that Lloyd and Rob wanted to do the same. She and the judge waited just long enough to welcome them home to-night, and then took the train for Alabama to visit some of her people. They have long been wanting to make the trip, and so chose this time\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026It is only a step over to Oaklea, so she went away in her bridal gown and veil. I’ll never forget the picture she made as she stood there in the moonlight, waiting for the carriage to drive up for them, or the adoring look in Rob’s eyes as he turned to lead her down the steps. Somehow it makes the tears come crowding up in such a mist I can hardly see to write.<\/em><\/p>\n

In real life, Oaklea was owned by Judge Peter Brown Muir<\/a> and was one of Pewee Valley\u2019s earliest county estates. The first home on the site was constructed in 1857 by journalist Edwin H. Bryant<\/a> and supposedly included a ball room. This was the Oaklea Annie Fellows Johnston wrote about in the early \u201cLittle Colonel\u201d books.  A very dark photo of the original Oaklea is shown above, was taken from the book, \u201cThe Land of the Little Colonel,\u201d published by Mrs. John S. (Katie) Smith in 1974.<\/p>\n

In 1905, Oaklea was destroyed by a fire and replaced by the Colonial Revival-style home pictured below. The second Oaklea was supposedly built on the first\u2019s foundation and some of the original antebellum outbuildings remain on the 20-acre grounds. It was in this rebuilt version of Oaklea that the Little Colonel spent her honeymoon in \u201cThe Little Colonel\u2019s Knight Comes Riding,<\/a>\u201d published in 1907.<\/p>\n

Judge Muir\u2019s grandson, Muir Semple<\/a>, the real-life model for the fictional Rob Moore, never lived in Oaklea. However, he often visited his grandfather and was a dear childhood friend of Hattie Cochran, the real Little Colonel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Oaklea” (Home of Judge Moore and Rob Moore) Oaklea, built 1857, burned 1905 The original Oaklea, built 1857, burned 1905 and was rebuilt in a different style In the \u201cLittle Colonel\u201d stories, Oaklea was the summer home of Judge Moore, his daughter, Mrs. Moore; his grandson, Rob Moore, and occasionally Rob\u2019s cousin, Anna Moore. While […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-198","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelittlecolonel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}