The Dogwoods of W-Hollow

Abstract

Earl Palmer Dogwoods and Rail Fence 20 The Dogwoods Of W-Hollow by J. MARSHALL PORTER I sat at my desk one morning in late February pasting some clippings in one of my many Jesse Stuart scrap-books. I came across a piece "April Comes to W-Hollow." I had read it before, but then read it again. It brought to me an intense longing for spring. I could almost smell the fragrance of the arbutus he spoke of blooming among the mossy ledges in his beloved country. Outside my window about the biggest soft snowflakes I have ever seen were falling, and clinging limply to the bare branches of the dogwoods in our back yard. I visualized them as being the same ones in bloom in W-Hollow that I was reading about, and suddenly I had an intense desire to see the W-Hollow country when the dogwood and redbud were blooming. I had visited there in June when the leaves were full grown and the evening songs of the wood thrush were the sweetest. I had been there in mid-August when the harvest flies sizzled in the trees all day long. I had been there in October when the autumn coloring of the low hills were at their loveliest. While dreaming and watching the wet snowfall grow deeper on the ground, I decided to make plans to see it in April. Greenup County is three hundred and thirty five miles southwest of my home in the foothills of the Allegheny mountains of Maryland. Dogwood and redbud would be blooming at least a week earlier down there, I knew. When our dogwood began to show the first gray-white clusters, I knew they would be in full bloom in WHollow . My dream on the snowy morning two months before was coming true. As I crossed the higher ridges of the Alleghenies, service were in full bloom. Wild cherry were showing small green leaves. Other hardwood buds were barely swelling. Acres of large flower trilliums were staring wideeyed through the leaf mold of die valleys. It was near the low hills of the Ohio valley that I saw the first dogwood in full bloom. When I drove up the W-Hollow road the next morning around nine o'clock I stopped where the lane led up to the Stuart home. I took some pictures of the clump of lilacs that were in full bloom along the meadow stream. The morning air was fragrant with tlieir perfume. A pair of Kentucky cardinals flew from the lilacs and alighted on the rail fence at the edge of the hilly pasture field and seemed to be scolding me for invading their privacy. I received a warm welcome at the Stuart home, as I always have when I visited them before. I took my scrap-books of letters that Jesse had written to me, and clippings of his poems, articles and stories I have been saving for years. Both he and Mrs. Stuart were fascinated as they leafed through the books. "I didn't know that anyone cared enough about my writings to save them like this" Jesse said. "Look at this Deane," he said, with a father's fondness when he came to a clipping of a photograph of himself and daughter Jane 21 Jesse Stuart Home in W-Hollow when she was a small child. They were sitting together on the ground and he was showing her a clump of blooming arbutus. "I had forgotten about that picture," he almost lamented. They took me on a survey of the parlor, library and living room and showed me some antiques they had added to the many they had . . . among them a fine old parlor organ (for which a year or two later 1 found them an antique stool to match.) There was a small chest they got in Korea with mother of pearl sides. On the wall above Jesse's desk was a rack of pigeon holes. "These came from the old post office at Riverton when delivery was discontinued there. Many of my early manuscripts went through these holes," Jesse told me. The wear on the letter slots was plainly...