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HrsToRIc) GARDENS! OO} MET RESZEN TA
Byrd coach-and-six with the liveried outriders, when the Colonel
and his ladies would go a-visiting to Shirley or Brandon or to
Buckland.
Then came the Revolution. Burgesses from Williamsburg and
the first men of the colony, perhaps, sat on those benches and
through the smoke of their long-stemmed clay pipes discussed the
peril of the times. Officers of the Continental line, in buft and
blue, strode the paths in shining jack-boots, or made love beneath
the arbors to the beautiful Byrd girls.
Westover knew Red Coats again, too, for Arnold, the renegade,
stopped there in 1781, and a few months later Cornwallis crossed
the river there, bound for Yorktown and his doom.
To the gay French officers who took part in that siege, the fair
chatelaine of Westover and her beautiful daughters were magnets,
and their bright uniforms must have made even the roses pale.
The Marquis de Chastellux claimed in his memoirs that Westover
was the most beautiful place in America.
The clouds of war passed and the only scarlet coats seen at
Westover were those of fox hunters. Quiet fell again upon the
garden, and how pleasant it is to recall the children who romped
along the paths in charge of their old negro mammies! The garden
rang with laughter and there was no thought of the darker days
that were yet to come. |
Westover was no longer in the wilderness. The Indians had
vanished; the river had become a highway of commerce. Broad
fields around smiled with rich crops and in the garden all was
peace and happiness.
Yet war was to come again and in more frightful guise. Mc¬
Clellan, on his retreat from Richmond, used the house for his
headquarters, and the garden resounded to the clatter of arms.
The fences were torn down, the flower beds trampled, the hedge¬
rows broken; but McClellan passed, as Arnold and Cornwallis and
the Indians had passed, and the garden remained to spring into
new beauty.
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