Stranica 137 [137]
OCR
AN OLD RICHMOND GARDEN —IN the good old days of Richmond there stood on | the square bounded by Franklin, Adams, Jefferson 1 and Main Streets, two large stucco houses surrounded by gardens. That nearest Adams Street was owned by Dr. Robert Archer, and the other by his son-in-law, General Joseph R. Anderson, C.S. A. Dr. Archer’s house, somewhat changed, became later the property of his grandson, Colonel Archer Anderson, whose wife and children still own it. Just half of the old garden remains, with its primeval trees; its old brick walls covered with ivy, honeysuckle and Madeira vine. There, every spring, come up afresh the lilies of the valley from the garden of Edgar Allan Poe’s foster mother. There the cowslips and peonies and Harrison roses bloom today as they did when "old miss" (as Mrs. Harrison of Brandon was called by her intimates) sent them with her own hands to my mother so many years ago! There still are the circular benches around the enormous trees; and there, too, bloom the honeysuckle, microphylla roses, mimosa tree and so many shrubs from the beautiful old garden at Fortsville, the John Y. Mason country home. Fortsville, an estate of one thousand acres lying in Southampton and Sussex Counties, came to Judge Mason through his wife, Miss Fort (de Fort). The oldest part of the house was built of original timbers which were pegged together by wooden pins—having been constructed before iron nails were used. Ihe garden, too, was old and unique. A centre mound, on which was a small maze of large box bushes and “grey man’s beard’’—I always likened it to Rosamond’s Bower—dominated the garden, which went from it like the spokes of a wheel, in green sunken alleys and masses of flowers. [84]
