Virginia: the Old Dominion / As seen from its colonial waterway, the historic river James, whose every succeeding turn reveals country replete with monuments and scenes recalling the march of history and its figures from the days of Captain John Smith to the present time

by Frank W. Hutchins; Cortelle Hutchins

Entering the wooded grounds through quaint, old-fashioned gateways, we followed our guide along a trail that topped the river bluff, where honeysuckle ran riot in the shrubbery and tumbled in confusion to the beach below. The trail ended in a cleared spot on the crest of the bluff—a river lookout, where one could rest upon the rustic seat and enjoy the ever-varying picture of water, sky, and shore.

But we turned our backs upon it all, for to us it was not yet Brandon. Now, our course lay directly away from the river along a broad avenue of yielding turf, straight through an aged garden. Above were the arching boughs of giant trees; below and all about, a wealth of old-fashioned bloom. The sunlight drifted through shadowing fringe-trees, mimosas, magnolias, and oaks. Hoary old age marked the garden in the breadth of the box, in the height of the slow-growing yews, and in the denseness of the ivy that swathed the great-girthed trees. It all lay basking in the soft, mellow light of sunset, in the hush of coming twilight, like some garden of sleep.

Suddenly, the grove and the garden ended and we were over the threshold of a square of sward, an out-of-door reception room, no tree or shrub encroaching. Beyond this was a row of sentinel trees; and then a massive hedge of box with a break in the middle where stood the white portal of Brandon. We could tell little about the building. The eye could catch only a charming confusion: foliage-broken lines of wall and roof; ivy-framed windows; and, topping all, just above the deep green of a magnolia tree, the white carved pineapple of welcome and hospitality.

In the softened light of evening, the charm of the place was upon us—old Brandon, standing tree-shadowed and dim, its storied walls in time-toned tints, its seams and crannies traced in the greens of moss and lichen, its ancient air suggestive, secretive,

"In green old gardens hidden away From sight of revel and sound of strife."

We entered a large, dusky hall with white pillars and arches midway, and with two rooms opening off from it—the dining-room on the one hand, the drawing-room on the other. In the old chimney-pieces, fire leaped behind quaint andirons taking the chill from the evening air.

And there in the dusk and the fire-glow, where shadows half hid and half revealed, where old mahogany now loomed dark and now flashed back the flickering light, where old-time worthies fitfully came and went upon the shadowy, panelled walls—we made our acquaintance with Brandon and with the gracious lady of the manor. Our talk ran one with the hour and the dusk and the firelight—old days, old ways, and all that Brandon stands for.

When our twilight call was over, it was with dreamy thoughts on the far days of Queen Anne and of the Georges that we went from the white-pillared portico down the worn stone steps and followed a side path back toward our boat. In the gloaming the side-lights were being put in place, and Gadabout turned a baleful green eye upon us, as though overhearing our talk of such unnautical things as gardens and heirlooms and ancestral halls.

Next morning there was much puffing of engines and ringing of signal bells down in Chippoak Creek. Gadabout went ahead and backed and sidled. And it was all to find a new way to go to Brandon. Mrs. Harrison had told us of a landing-place in the woods at the creek side from which a sort of roadway led to the house. Fortunately, our charts indicated, near this landing, a small depression in the bed of the creek where there would be sufficient depth of water for our houseboat to float even at low tide. At last, we got over the flats and into the hole in the bottom of the creek that seemed to have been made for us.

We rowed ashore to a yellow crescent of sandy beach shaded by cypresses where a cart-path led off through the woods. We called it the woods-way to Brandon. It followed the shore of the creek a little way, and through the leafy screen we caught glimpses of Gadabout out in the stream, now with a cone-tipped branch of pine and again with a star-leaved limb of sweet gum for a foreground setting.