Canadian Houses
of Romance

by

X

DOWN BY THE SEA


1

YOUNG sunshine gilding the old streets of Halifax; snow on the far hills but mayflowers everywhere; boutonnieres of them on gay, elderly gentlemen, baskets-full in shop windows, bunches fading in children’s hot hands! Mayflowers even in the ancient Provincial Chambers where dim, beautiful portraits of past sovereigns and governors seemed to faint before the crudity of such moderns as Victoria, looking her plainest, and Edward VII in a stuffy frock coat!
     On the corkscrew streets of Halifax one hears the tramp of soldiers high up on Citadel Hill; the feet of pretty girls tapping up and down the lower level of Barrington Street; and the shuffle of sailors, negroes, Portuguese—riff-raff from a hundred ports along dirty old Water Street at the base of the cork-screw.
     There is stonework for Citadel and ramparts and Martello Tower and bits of wall and fences, and for Government and Admirality Houses; but elsewhere, generally, wooden buildings, toned down to mouse-colour by wind and weather. And, when one least expects it, there is a surprise of old beauty in lovely bits of iron grillwork, in fence, or gate, or [page 77] window, to add strength or convenience to a dwelling or public place.
     Fire is the angry god of any wooden town, and fire has swept over Halifax so that the stories of many of her houses, and others of the Maritime Provinces, are, like the houses themselves, mercilessly destroyed. But Halifax possesses the most charming of all Canada’s very characteristic Government Houses. Like its companion, Admiralty House—though one is in the lower and the other in the upper town—the building stands out in fine relief of brown stone. The back is to the harbour, the front on Hollis Street. Although it was begun in 1800 it is the third Government House.
     The first stood on the ground on which the Province Building was later erected. It was put up shortly after the arrival of Governor Cornwallis, and in it he held a Council on the 15th October, 1749. The building was small and low, but one storey high. It was surrounded by hogsheads of gravel and sand on which small pieces of ordnance were mounted for defensive purposes.
     The second Government House was also a small wooden structure, but it had its moments! Around an oak table in its library sat the men who carried out the cruel expulsion of the Acadians, while that grim and stern Lord Falmouth, Boscawan, and his second in command, Admiral Moyston, gave their assent to the proposal. Some years after, General Sir William Howe and his staff could be seen calling [page 78] on Governor Legge…In Governor Parr’s time, when young Prince William Henry (William IV) was on his first visit to this court, he opened a ball, given here in his honour, with the Governor’s daughter—“the widow of Captain Dodson.”
     Then came the gay days of the Wentworths, who entertained lavishly at the present residence, and during the Earl of Mulgrave’s régime Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, was a guest.
     You are reminded of all this from the moment you enter the old-fashioned hall, and read in long lists on pale marble tablets, the names of these men and many others who, for over a century, have [page 79] lived in this house as Governors. Red-cheeked and convivial—the first of them at any rate dressed in bright colonial attire—you long to see them escape from their cold tablet, and walk once more in this beautiful, square hall.
     If you should be staying at Government House the sound of the sea would be perpetually suggested by a great ship’s bell of brass, on a wrought-iron stand, which summons the family to meals. The little ballroom to the left, a modest affair compared to that of other provinces, speaks of chosen society instead of society en masse. A shallow, lovely old staircase leads up to the bedrooms where suites of walnut and old mahogany are of beautiful, and occasionally of rare, design.

     Naturally there has been a close friendship, and much coming and going, between Admiralty and Government Houses, companions also from an architectural standpoint, though Admiralty House is the younger of the two by fourteen years. It stands, solid and imposing, and, alas, deserted, on its glorious site above the Naval Yard with a magnificent view of the harbour. The masonry, the great fence, the entrance gate and sentry box, the walled garden, and the splendid old structure itself, looks as if it might forever defy the years, had not these years snatched its glory prematurely away. [page 80]
     The billiard room of Admiralty House contains a list of the Commanders-in-Chief of the North American and West Indian stations from 1767 to the time of the removal of the Imperial Navy Headquarters in North American waters to Bermuda in 1910, when Canada took over the dockyard. Almost a hundred names are engraved on these tablets, but they, too, were removed to Bermuda.
     We tiptoed about the place where utter silence seemed to reign. We wondered whether anything on earth could look so desolate as a fine, upstanding, empty house—like a middle-aged man, full of life, suddenly stricken. Bitterness of frustrated growth! At the end of its first century such a building has only begun to take its place in the world.
     “When one remembers the brilliance of our naval events; the magnificent ‘ship-shape’ of everything, the gaiety, the colour, the jolly officers, the dances, the little romances that came and went with the coming and going of the ships!…Think, too, of the eras it has seen; first the sedan chairs, then the coaches, the carriages, and last, the motors that came mincing, or rolling, or rushing past the little sentry box and through this gateway that bears the coat of arms of the British Navy, tied with a sailor’s knot…”
     It was old Halifax speaking! But we were thinking of the good youth still coursing through the veins of the hundred-years’ house of the Admirals—and crying out to live again. [page 81]

     There are charming present-day houses in Halifax that carry an old-fashioned air. Gorsebrook, for instance, was once the home of the Honourable Enos Collins, First Lieutenant of the Charles Mary Wentworth, privateer, and famous for his reckless daring and exploits in blockade running. It is said that he amassed great wealth through capturing prize ships. He lived for many years in his beautiful home with its wide lawn, pastures and woodland, walled garden and spacious rooms, and left his property to his sons to whom it belongs to-day. [page 82]

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