Birthplace
Overview
Long Pond at Clifton
Haliburton’s
Home,
Clifton Grove
The View (Haliburton)
Building Clifton – Penny
Hale 1926
Denis 1934
Hale 1952
Museum Information
Pictures of Clifton
Pictures
Long Pond at Clifton
Pictures
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 Katherine
Hale –
Clifton, Windsor, Nova Scotia 1926
Canada is faintly dotted
with Martello towers* and blockhouses. Blockhouses are usually the plainest things
that e’er the sun shone on. But at Windsor, in Nova Scotia, there is one so small
and brown, standing in its tiny hill overlooking the town, that you feel like
giving it a loving pat. Here is the site of Port [Fort] Edward, which it has guarded
since 1750. In the recruiting days of 1914 – 18, many battalions camped here;
British, Canadian, American, the Jewish Legion. New life must have stirred then
in its quiet old blood.
Old blood runs in Windsor, on the banks of the Canadian
Avon which twice a day rushes up its tidal lane and brings in the Atlantic.
King’s
College, the second oldest university in America, was the pride of the town but
is now a wreck through fire, the devastator of precious buildings in the Maritimes.
It lies just behind Clifton, the old house of "Sam Slick", a "small
but elegant structure" a picture of which had fascinated me in childhood.
For my father, like most Canadians of a literary turn, used to gather in various
periodicals, descriptive of the country, and one of these was, in his time, sufficiently
out-dated to be interesting. It was called "Canadian Scenery," and among
other old-fasioned plates was this house of Judge Haliburton, "Sam Slick"
the noted Canadian author. The "elegant structure" described, was "delightfully
situated in an eminence commanding a noble prospect of the whole township."
And so it stands to-day, except that it’s charming simplicity has been marred
by several "improvements"; a porte-cochére, like a long nose;
a sun-room, which providentially fell to pieces; and an imported fireplace in
Judge Haliburton’s old library.
The ancient covered toll-bridge over the
river, just below the cliffs at the back of the house, has gone since 1886. Until
this time the daily stage coach, with its four or six horses, would come clattering
into town at a hand-gallop, when a character familiarly known in the town as "Old
Johnny Davidson" would open the gates of the bridge and let the coach pass
through on its way to Annapolis Royal.
And once, the Black Watch Regiment,
en route between Halifax and Saint John, having marched from Halifax to take the
steamer at Windsor, stayed over night in the town, and a pond in Clifton woods
was given the name of "Piper’s Pond," because a piper of the regiment
having dropped his watch into the water, thriftily dived after it – but never
came up!
In Annapolis Royal, where he first lived [Note: the author is mistaken.
Haliburton was born in Windsor and moved to Annapolis Royal later in life.]; in
Halifax, where his early work appeared in Joseph Howe’s paper, "The Nova
Scotian"; and here in Windsor, his home for a quarter of a century, the figure
of Judge Haliburton is everywhere recalled by portrait, legend and story. His
"Sam Slick," type of wandering "Yankee peddler" so well known
in these parts, made its creator an author of importance on two continents. It
even affirmed that he is the founder of American humour.
At any rate, his
house shows the author to have been a gentleman of taste. A simple structure,
suitable to the wooded lands on which it stands, square rooms, low-ceilinged;
delightful little staircases leading up on each side of the hall to add a touch
of dignity to the interior; low shuttered windows, everywhere giving on a sweet
plantation of beech and white maple, poplar, juniper and apple trees – these make
the place as lovable to-day as when it was built so long ago.
We were told
of a famous "thicket of acacias," which in summer makes a great bloomy
mass of purple and white. But now it was spring. The beautiful branches of the
trees, lovlier than when in leaf, showed that look of surprise that prefaces the
first green. But going up the dark little avenue there was still a trace of wintry
snow. The tumble-down lodge looked forlorn. Up at the house new occupants were
moving in, and Clifton bore the patient look of an old person upon whom some young
relation is pressing a new style. But the windows stood open to the tender sunlight.
The youth of the year entered, moving through the sweet old rooms, and, though
there was not a trace of his actual occupancy left in any article of furniture,
still one felt that Haliburton’s house remembered him, and, like its master, was
very much alive.
We carried away a spray of mauve-pink daphne, frequenter
of early Nova Scotia woods, and we drove over what use to be called, The Kissing
Bridge**…Is anyone ever kissed there now? We wondered!
Excerpt
From:
Canadian Houses of Romance
by Katherine Hale
with drawings by
Dorothy Stevens
The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, at St. Martin’s House,
Toronto 1926
Pg 91 – 94
HRM 917.1 G24.ca
* martello
tower – a circular masonry fort for coastal defence
Picture of "Martello Tower, Point Pleasant Park, Halifax"
NSARM
http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/notman/archives.asp?ID=7
Images Nova Scotia
– Along By The Avon (Kissing
Bridge)
NS Museum of Cultural History
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/imagesns/html/40336.html
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