Virginia, between the years 1760 and 1775, attained her highest prosperity. The growth of the colony in general, and the advance of luxury in living was rapid, marked by an increased taste for amusements of the most costly kind, and great expenditure in living and entertaining.
It was high noon in the Golden Age! Life was far more elegant and luxurious than it was even fifteen years before. The transplanted Englishman had rapidly prospered in the new land. Great wealth had suddenly come to him through his tobacco, and he made haste to use and enjoy it. The four-roomed house—quite good enough for his cavalier grandfather—had stepped aside to give place to a pillared, porticoed, stately mansion. The dormer windows—like heavy-lidded eyes—had been superseded by "five hundred and forty-nine lights" for one dwelling. The planter often built on the site of his old colonial residence, sometimes incorporating the old into the new. An eminence, commanding a wide view of the surrounding country, was a coveted spot in plantation times. It behooved the settler (for reasons similar to those which influenced Captain John Smith) to build his house "on a high hill neere a convenient river, hard to be assalted and easie to be defended." When the perilous days of Indian massacre and treachery had passed away, and the country had entered upon its Saturnian age of peace and plenty, the Virginians clung to the old historic building-sites, and upon them erected ambitious mansions, with flagged colonnades, extended wings, and ample offices; surmounting the whole with an observatory whence the proprietor with his "spy-glass" could sweep the country—not now for the stealthy approach of an enemy, but to feast his eyes upon a scene of unbroken beauty peacefully lying beneath a summer's sun. The mansion stood apart in solemn grandeur upon some knoll or eminence overlooking the great highway, the river. It was not to be taken casually, in a by-the-way sort of a manner, not to be stumbled upon by accident. It was to be approached with deliberation through a long line of sentinels—an avenue of Lombardy poplars—"the proper tree, let them say what they will, to surround a gentleman's mansion."
Monticello. The Home of Thomas Jefferson.
This landward approach to the house passed sometimes between columns of trimmed boxwood or stone gate-posts upon which the arms granted the family in England were carved in high relief. Gravelled paths under ornamental trees led to the veranda with its lofty columns. In the rear, the hill sometimes fell sharply to the riverside in terraces, after the English fashion. At a wharf, built out into the bed of the stream, the family often assembled to watch the sailing of their own ships, trading directly with the mother country. On the green, facing the river, there were summer-houses of latticed woodwork, covered with climbing roses, honeysuckle, and jasmine, and haunted by brilliant humming-birds. Other cool retreats from the ardor of the summer sun were made of resinous cedars planted in a close circle, their tops tied together and their walls shaven smoothly until they resembled little mosques of vivid green. A low wall covered with honeysuckle or Virginia creeper bounded the grounds at the water's edge.
THE GARDEN AT MOUNT VERNON.
But it was in the garden and in the greenhouse that the lady of the manor exulted! No simple flowers, such as violets, lilies, or roses were forced in those days. These would come with the melting of the snows early in February. Only tropical beauties were reared under the glass: century-plant, cacti, gardenias, lemon and orange trees; great, double, glowing pomegranates, and the much-prized snowy globes of Camellia Japonica, sure to be sent packed in cotton as gifts to adorn the dusky tresses of some Virginia beauty, or clasp the folds of her diaphanous kerchief. These camellias were reckoned the most elegant of flowers—so pure and sensitive, resenting the profanation of the slightest touch. Fancy a cavalier of that day presenting nothing rarer than a bouquet of daisies or daffodils!