AVENEL 



IR 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 Blandfield. 



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 grand- 

 father, 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 be- 

 lieve 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 niece in 



[226] 



