144 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



"Lawrence Lewis is appointed a Capt. in the corps of 

 Light Dragoons," he writes to a relative in January, 

 1799, at the time France was threatening and he had 

 been once more summoned to military duty at the 

 head of the army, "but before he enters the camp of 

 Mars, he is to engage in that of Venus with Nellie 

 Custis on the 22nd. of next month; they having, while 

 I was in Philadelphia, without my having the smallest 

 suspicion that such an affair was in agitation, framed 

 their Contract for this purpose." 



Astonished he certainly was, but displeased he as 

 certainly was not. So, at early candle light, on the 

 sixty-seventh and last anniversary of his birth which 

 he himself should see, he gave the hand of "our grand- 

 daughter," as he always called her, in marriage to his 

 strapping nephew, who was enough like him to have 

 been his own son instead. 



Of the flowers which adorned his gardens, General 

 Washington himself left little in the form of notes 

 or observations. The trees meant more to him, and 

 his boxwood hedges, which he loved as a gentleman 

 should and would. Within these boxwood beds the 

 plants probably varied from year to year, for here 

 would be only such annuals as were popular — although 

 his garden doubtless kept well in advance of the 

 "style," owing to the constant gifts of plants, seeds 

 and roots from all over the world. From Bartram 



