Stranica 363 [363]
OCR
AVENEL R WALTER SCOTT says, "Breathes there the man with soul so dead who ne er to himself hath said, ‘this is my own, my native land, " and is there a Virginian whose pulses do not tingle when there lies before him a garden the beauty of which is almost eclipsed by the long series of historical memories that the name of the owners and the plan of the garden bring to his mind?" —Avenel—home of the Beverleys—Avenel, with one-half of its garden copied from Tudor Place, the other, the copy of Blandheld. With the very name comes the perfect picture of Virginia and Virginia’s best life from the middle of the seventeenth century. For it was that William Beverley, the emigrant’s own grandson, and his wife, Elizabeth Bland, who first laid out the garden at Blandfield. That same first master of Blandfield was the son of Robert Beverley and his wife, Ursula Byrd, daughter of William Byrd the first. This Robert Beverley, you remember, was the first native historian of Virginia. All honor to him! The beautiful garden of Blandfield by long closure of the house has practically fallen into ruin; but we can picture to ourselves what a charm it had from frequent allusions to it in old letters; and one can well imagine that its master, William Beverley, would have brought to it the same intelligent interest that caused his grandfather, William Byrd the first, to write in 1690 to his correspondent in London, one Thomas Wetherold, that he had “saved many seeds, but all had been ruined except the ones he sent, namely: Poppeas Arbor, Rhus Sentisie, folias, Laurus Tulipfera.” I believe that most of the seeds that were saved were seeds of trees, but what is a garden without trees! In 1730, Catesby, the naturalist in London, wrote to his ntece in [226]
