Stranica 130 [130]
OCR
GOES SSÖZÍON BEGHMOND AND (/V-ECUNLTY brought forth on great occasions to decorate the house, once Hourished. To the left of the greenhouse are two large box-trees. There was a custom among the ladies of the earlier period to exchange flower slips and seed. In this way friendships and memories were renewed each year as the plants blossomed. So the Watson or Archer garden gave out the fragrance of Westover, Shirley and Brandon; Barboursville and Castle Hill. In return, the Byrds, Carters and Harrisons; the Barbours and Rives, received their slips from the chatelaine of this house. All the oldfashioned flowers grew here—lilacs and snowballs; cydonia — japonica, syringa, calycanthus, and yellow roses. Jhere were | others, and many rows of hyacinths and jonquils; tulips and daffodils. / A brick courtyard adjoins the garden and a low gateway leads into it. On the right of this gate are several stone steps with foot-scrapers, and here one passes under an arch of roses into the kitchen-garden. Opening onto this court are several brick buildings, a smokehouse, a large kitchen building with servants guarters, a greenhouse, and numerous wood and coal houses. At the end of a long, straight walk in the garden is the stable, with a high and heavy gate, through which the family carriage was driven. For a hundred years a picturesque sycamore tree stood in the middle of the pavement outside the garden wall. This tree measured fourteen feet and three inches in circumference, and the oldest inhabitant cannot remember when it was not there. Of primeval growth, it had boldly taken possession of the street, and it was only removed by the city authorities when pedestrians demanded it. Its silvery branches furnished material for several of our best and most beloved writers. The late Thomas Nelson Page likened the pallor of a dying man to the bark of this tree, in one of his short stories, and both the tree and the Archer house are described in Ellen Glasgow’s “The Romance of a Plain Man.” It was [79]
