Oldal 485 [485]
HISTORIC: GARDENS: OF VIRGINIA
the war vety keenly. When he heard the enemy was approaching,
he left his home and ordered the butler to fire the house rather than
have it fall into their hands. My father, Alexander Bruce, who
was trained at the Virginia Military Institute under Thomas J.
Jackson, afterwards General Stonewall Jackson, collected all the
men at home on leave or unfit for service and held Staunton
Bridge, which prevented the enemy from coming through. Need¬
less to say, when my mother used to tell me about it when I was
a child, I felt it was the most important battle of the war, just
as I thought the Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Virginia, the
largest in the world. My grandfather, James C. Bruce, died the
day Lee surrendered, and said he took a grim satisfaction in leaving
the world on the day that meant the death of his class. General
Merritt, one of the youngest Federal generals, was stationed at
Berry Hill after the surrender. —
After the war, my father, Alexander Bruce, felt it would be
impossible to keep the garden as it should be kept, so he had it
removed, and trees set out matching the rest of the grounds, leaving
only the box, crepe myrtle and other shrubs, removing all the
walks and flower beds, though my mother and sister were in tears
at the thought of having to give it up. But there still remain
quantities of jonquils, hedges of box, and interesting flowering
trees and shrubs. Many think the place was improved by removing
the garden and the cedar hedges, which divided the flowers from
the vegetables; these hedges also separated the vegetables from
the park, and the park from the orchard. The pictures will-give
some idea of the place as it now is, with the house in the center of
the park. In the old garden were peonies, snowballs, smoke trees,
magnolias, Japan apples, flowering apples, crab apples, jasmines,
honeysuckles on frames, crepe myrtles, dogwoods, Roses of
Sharon, fringe trees, red buds and many mimosas. Every tree
had something planted beneath to come up in the spring, such as
double and single jonquils, hyacinths, snowdrops, peonies, or
narcissi.
1298 |
ELLEN BRUCE CRANE.