On opening the box of figs Pope discovered in it a small twig of a tree. It was a stranger to him. As it came from the East, he planted the twig in the ground near the edge of the river, close by his villa. The spot accidentally chosen for the planting was favorable to its growth, for the twig was from a weeping-willow tree—possibly from the bank of one of "the rivers of Babylon"—which flourishes best along the borders of water-courses.
This little twig grew vigorously, and in a few years it became a large tree, spreading wide its branches and drooping, graceful sprays, and winning the admiration of the poet's friends as well as of strangers. It became the ancestor of all the weeping-willows in England.
There was rebellion in the English-American colonies in 1775. British troops were sent to Boston to put down the insurrection. Their leaders expected to end it in a few weeks after their arrival. Some young officers brought fishing-tackle with them, to enable them to enjoy sport after the brief war. Others came to settle on the confiscated lands of the "rebels."
Among the latter was a young officer on the staff of General Howe. He brought with him, wrapped in oiled silk, a twig from Pope's weeping-willow at Twickenham, which he intended to plant on some stream watering his American estate.
Washington commanded an army before Boston, which kept the British imprisoned in that city a long time against their will. On his staff was his step-son, John Parke Custis, who frequently went to the British head-quarters, under the protection of a flag, with dispatches for General Howe. He became acquainted with the young officer who had the willow twig, and they became friends.
Instead of "crushing the rebellion in six weeks," the British army at Boston, at the end of an imprisonment of nine months, were glad to fly, by sea, for life and liberty, to Halifax. Long before that flight, the British subaltern, satisfied that he should never have an estate in America to adorn, gave his carefully preserved willow twig to young Custis, who planted it at Abingdon, his estate in Virginia, where it grew and flourished, and became the parent of all the weeping-willows in the United States.
Some time after the war, General Horatio Gates, of the Revolution, settled on the "Rose Hill Farm," on New York Island, and at the entrance to a lane which led from a country road to his house he planted a twig from the vigorous willow at Abingdon, which he had brought with him. That country road is now the Third Avenue, and the lane is Twenty-second Street. Gates's mansion, built of wood, and two stories in height, stood near the corner of Twenty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I saw it consumed by fire in 1845. The tree which grew from the twig planted at the entrance to Gates's lane remained until comparatively a few years ago. It stood on the northeast corner of Third Avenue and Twenty-second Street. It was a direct descendant, in the third generation, of Pope's willow, planted at Twickenham about 1722.
