Stranica 160 [160]
OCR
RICHMOND AND VICINITY edged by a new box-hedge recently planted to screen the vegetable garden. To the right of the walk, we come to four plots filled with pink, white, red and yellow roses (called ‘‘Credilla’s roses”), with charming narrow grass walks between and around them. To the north of this, we find eight other large beds of white American Beauty, Paul Neyron, Hugh Dickson and Soleil d’Or roses. Beyond the roses we see a curved walk around the “boscage,” or thicket, formed by a mass of shrubbery—an old-fashioned tangle of lilacs, syringas, yuccas and evergreens, which crown the garden with joy at all seasons. The War Between the States caused desolation in the garden, but General and Mrs. Wickham strove to keep it up, the General after his arduous day’s toil standing on a chair and clipping the box to keep the walks open. It is today recognized as one of the most characteristic and representative gardens of the Old South. ~ No account of the garden would be complete without a reference to the escape on the 23rd of June, 1863, of General Lee's youngest son, Robert, during a raid of the Northern troops. When General William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, at the time desperately wounded, was taken prisoner and removed from the office in the yard, as it is called, so graphically told in Rob Lee’s “Recollections and Letters of General R. E. Lee,” a clump of box-trees afforded a safe place for concealment. Twice each year during the last three years of the war the contending armies swept over Hickory Hill, its garden, its grounds, and its plantation. Innumerable raids occurred, and once the Confederate skirmish line fell back in disorder through the yard and garden, followed by the enemy. Two incidents especially stand out connected with General J. E. B. Stuart—the first on the night of the 12th of June, 1862, when he left the head of his column in the famous “raid around McClellan” and, accompanied by Colonel William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, came in to grasp the hand and cheer a desperately 197]
