Richmond, Surrey

“ Surrey and the Duke were immediately arrested, and the personal attendance of Lady Richmond being of course indispensable, Sir John Gates and Sir Richard Southwell were sent down for her into Norfolk to Keninghall, and were directed to bring with her at the same time a certain Elizabeth Holland, an ambiguous favourite of the Duke who resided with his family. [48]
Lady Richmond, on learning the object of their visit, at first almost fainted. As soon as she could collect herself she fell on her knees and declared that she had always believed her father to be loyal. ”

“ Or is its chief appeal not to the Scot but to the Londoner, and does the Londoner praise Sir Walter's taste because Sir Walter has praised his? That is part of the story of the beauty of the Richmond view, perhaps. It is so easily found from London. It has all that the Londoner loves to look at. It is the country as he wishes to see it. A glorious stretch of luxuriant woodland, a noble breadth of shining water, sunlight on wide meadows ”

“ In this county lie half a dozen of the metropolitan boroughs, to which may be tacked on Croydon, Richmond, and Kingston, and many a village promoted to be a “choice residential suburb.” The last census notes a slight decrease in what it terms the outer belt of suburbs; but that seems to mean only a shifting farther into the country, as trains and trams bring a wider circle within the area where the builder can claim fresh nooks as “ripe for development.” The once rustic “box” of the early Victorian citizen is apt to have come down in the world. ”

“ Woking is the centre to which it is difficult not to return in exploring the Wey and the Wey villages: Surbiton is the centre of the roads about the Surrey Thames. Surbiton has tramways besides a railway, and Surbiton station is perhaps the most convenient starting point either for Hampton Court on the Middlesex bank, or for Kingston, or through Kingston to Ham and Richmond and Kew. ”

“ To me, at all events, Kew has much the same appeal as the Londoner finds in Richmond Hill. It is a London garden, the garden of a town, perfectly made for its purpose. It can never, even with its glorious trees and its wide spaces of grass, have the peace or know the spirit of a country garden. Too many feet tread its lawns; too many voices chatter in its walks. ”

“ But the fascination of this stretch of river is on the Surrey bank, where Ham House stands among noble trees. Ham House is not a "show house"; and indeed, considering its nearness to Richmond and London, it would be impossible [Pg 237] that it should be. There are limits to the claims which may be made upon owners of historic houses who may also wish to live in them. But Ham House holds other magnets than its pictures and relics of Stuarts and Lauderdales. ”

“ It was this lady with whom the uncompleted marriage of the Duke of Richmond took place. Doubtless they were early friends. In her youth she used to spend the summer at Tendring Hall, Suffolk, and the winter335 at Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, where was one of Henry’s palaces; in addition Henry was one of the closest companions of her brother, the Earl of Surrey. Lady Richmond’s part in the historical episode before us is hardly direct. It only comes in through two circumstances not unattended with mystery. ”

“ In both cities there is much new building—offices downtown, and pretty new brick homes in outlying suburban tracts. Likewise, in both, the charming signs of other days are here and there to be seen.
Richmond is again like its ancient enemy, Boston, in the wealth of its historical associations, and I know of no city which gives the respectful heed to its own history that Richmond does, and no State which in this matter equals the State of Virginia. If Richmond was the center of the South during the Civil War, Capitol Square was, as it is to-day, the center of that center. ”

“ Even the station is built of solid stonework, with a strong flavour of medievalism in its design, and its attractiveness is enhanced by the complete absence of other modern buildings. We are thus welcomed to the charms of Richmond at once. The rich sloping meadows by the river, crowned with dense woodlands, surround us and form a beautiful setting of green for the town, which has come down from the fantastic days of the Norman Conquest without any drastic or unseemly changes, and thus has still the compactness and the romantic outline of feudal times. ”

“ Cloud is the Richmond of France; or rather, it is to Paris what Richmond, in the days of its regal splendour, was to London—the summer palace of the court. In this comparison, allowance must be made for the opposite building taste of each nation; especially as Richmond has an appearance of substantial comfort in its massive brick mansions and rusticated cottage groups. ”

“ This view of Richmond has been praised so [73] much that one fears disappointment. Yet one is not disappointed. Richmond is not only beautiful: it has that other quality—so much more important than beauty in woman or town—the quality of charm. Richmond is lovable.
It was the Normans who first took advantage of this fine position for a fortress: the Saxon owners of the place were the Earls of Mercia, and had no castle here, for Gilling, their headquarters in the north, was only a few miles away. ”

“ It would make too long a story were one to bring in all the celebrities and notorieties living at Richmond, which has books enough of its own to illustrate it, and a fame that would overshadow that of Kew. The latter place owes everything, unless its river prospects, to princely care; but Richmond is so richly endowed by Nature that it could not fail to be a favourite place of residence. ”

“ She was the capital of the Confederate States of America from 1861-65, the hope of the South and the despair of the North for those four long, bloody, heart-breaking years. The best commanders, the most immense armies the Federal government could furnish, hammered, hammered at Richmond, while the South’s bravest hearts and keenest minds stood with their backs often at the very walls of the city, but would not let them pass. No city in America ever has or ever will be again so completely the goal of the whole American people. ”

“ Today Richmond is a commercial, industrial, financial, medical and educational center of the South, and one of the fastest growing industrial centers in the nation. Richmond’s industry has been stable and resistant to wide fluctuations in business cycle.
Cities, after all, are but larger patterns of individual people. People who have been tested by time and tribulation and yet come out smiling, full of faith and courage, never fail to command our admiration. ”

“ Those years and the ones that followed taught Richmond something that as a city she will never forget—that courage can rise above everything. The incredible sacrifices of Richmond people in that time knit the citizens together with bonds that even time cannot sunder. ”

“ Both of these worthy gentlemen were prominent and successful lawyers of the Richmond bar.
The annexation to Richmond of the several adjacent towns has added greatly to the population and proved a decided benefit to each. The former city of Manchester, which was for a long time an independent corporation (even said to be older than Richmond as a town) , was lately joined to its sister city over the James River and is now called Washington ward, or more properly speaking, “South Richmond.” It is now rapidly advancing in prosperity and is also improving in appearance in streets and parks. ”

“ Richmond, like nearly all the other places on the river, has an atmosphere of its own, difficult to put into words. It is less flippant than Kingston, and has not a tinge of the gravity of Twickenham. The houses rise high and are irregular; those in the main street recede from the water as they leave the bridge, and between them and the stream are innumerable others, some with gardens, some overshadowed by trees. Weeping willows, Scotch firs, and ivy-covered trunks abound, and the place is the perfection of a residential quarter. ”

“ As Radmore motored along the Portsmouth Road through the warmly-beautiful autumn countryside, a feeling of exultation, of intense personal love for, and pride in, the old country, filled his heart. Why had he stayed in London so long when all this tranquil, appealing loveliness of wood, stream, hill and hollow lay close at hand? There are folk who deny the charm of Surrey—by whom this delicious county, with its noble stretches of wild, fragrant uplands, and wide, deep valleys, is dismissed as suburban. ”

“ In Richmond, Capital of the Old South, an industrial, commercial, educational and financial center of the new, nothing is left undone to make every convention meeting in this city successful and enjoyable. ”

“ Richmond, the capital of Virginia, has about one hundred and thirty thousand population, and occupies a delightful situation. The James River flows around a grand curve from the northwest to the south, and pours over falls and rapids, which display many little cascades among a maze of diminutive islands. There are on the northern bank two or three large hills and several smaller ones, and Richmond is built upon these, it is said like Rome upon her seven hills. The State Capitol and a broad white penitentiary crown two of the highest. ”

“ Those wars through which Richmond has lived are but distressing landmarks on the long trail our country has traveled. Her contribution has been equally as great in times of peace. In fact, probably her greatest contribution has been her way of life—a way based on the belief that the best of the old must be kept and adapted to fit in with the best of the new. The city has grown steadily ”

“ There is no southern county seat that looks its part better than Surrey’s, even since in our day its time-honoured features have been much overlaid by new ones, while everywhere it wears an air of roominess and thrivingness not always associated with the picturesque. Being only thirty miles from London, reached by three, nay four railway lines, it has become a favourite place of residence for business men and of retreat for officers, whose houses go on spreading up the dry and airy slopes of the Downs, above the old town rooted in the hollow of the Wey. ”

“ The State Capitol Square (10 acres) is not owned by the city. Half a mile N.W. of the city are the Fair Grounds, where a state fair is held annually.
Of Richmond's public buildings, several have great historic interest. St John's Episcopal church, built in 1740 (and subsequently much enlarged) , is noted especially as the meeting-place of the Virginia Convention of March 1775, before which Patrick Henry made a famous speech, ending, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, Give me liberty, or give me death!” ”

“ I married after my return from Newcastle and have two children. After my last journey from Bradford I settled down at Richmond. My wife never travels with me, I always go alone. At Richmond I commenced with a donkey and cart as a firewood gatherer. My wife and I gathered firewood and brought it in my cart to Richmond, and sold it to my customers. I next got a pony and larger cart, and have ever since regularly led coals from the railway station into the town. I can find my way to any house in the town and never have any assistance in driving my cart and going about. ”

“ Richmond was a snug little town, a capital of no great size even in a region then lacking in city growth, but for the time more was said about it and more eyes were turned upon it than upon any other place in the world. Many thousands of men were dying in an attempt to reach this small Virginia city, and many other thousands were dying in an equally strenuous effort to keep them away. ”

“ If natural scenery reflects itself upon the heart, no wonder a "holy calm" rested upon this family, for far down the river the prospect was peace and tranquillity; and many an evening in the summer-house on the river bank we drank in the beauty of soft blue skies, green isles, and white sails floating in the distance.
Many in Richmond remember the delightful weddings and parties at Powhatan Seat, where assembled the élite from Richmond, with an innumerable throng of cousins, aunts, and uncles from Orange and Culpeper counties. ”

“ But if a man come down from the North with any idea of the histories of that war, which is now fifty years old and almost ready to be forgotten, too sharply in his memory, and so imagines that he is to see a Richmond of 1865, with grass growing in the streets, ruins everywhere, mules and negroes in the streets, he is doomed to an awakening. There are still plenty of mules and negroes in the streets and probably will be until the end of time, but the Richmond of today boasts miles and miles of as fine modern smooth pavements as his motor car might ever wish to find. ”

“ The site of Richmond is of great natural beauty. It is regularly laid out on a succession of low hills that rise from the northern bank of the James, the highest point reaching an altitude of 250 feet above the sea. The area is about 51⁄2 square miles. More than three-fourths of the total street mileage (120 miles) is paved, macadam and Belgian blocks being used in the more important thoroughfares. The parks and cemeteries of Richmond and its momunents are of especial interest. ”

“ Here on Fifth Street, between Cary and Main, are several examples of the stately houses which made life in Richmond in the nineteenth century the gracious thing that it was. On your right are two old homes which have passed from the hands of the families that built and loved them. At the southeast corner of Main and Fifth Streets used to stand the Allan home where Edgar Allan Poe lived to young manhood with his foster parents. On the northwest corner of Fifth and Main Streets is an interesting octagonal house, built prior to 1814 by an early mayor of Richmond. ”