Edwardian and Georgian Canadian Poets
1900-1930

 

 


Canadian Houses
of Romance

by

Katherine Hale




XII

MOUNT UNIACKE


AND farther up country, some ten miles away, there is a charming old colonial house, a family seat, that is typical of its day and generation.
     It is said that Richard John Uniacke, in passing over the Ardoise Hills on his way to Halifax, was struck with the resemblance that a part of the land bore to his father’s estate in Ireland. In 1786 he received a grant of a thousand acres on this road to Windsor. Later, another four thousand acres was added, and he built the house which he called Mount Uniacke. His Indians laid out the grounds. Gradually a beautiful walled garden full of scented old-world flowers crept up to the verandah. A sundial was set to count the hours.
     Richard Uniacke had married a daughter of Moses Delesdernier, of Cumberland, N.S., when he was a little over twenty-one and his bride not thirteen. They had twelve children, so there was need of all these spacious rooms. And Mount Uniacke was thronged with guests in the summer, when the entrance to the Annapolis Valley is a dream of beauty. Here the nobility, the Judges of the land and their wives and families, the fashion of Halifax and its visitors, enjoyed the house and garden. The [page 87] Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec, paying a pastoral visit in 1815, writes:

     We were to stay that evening at a superb country house belonging to Mr. Uniacke, a Member of the Council, Attorney General, Judge of Admiralty, etc., who had urgently entreated the Bishop to rest there in passing. It is nine leagues from the town. We arrived very late—Madam Uniacke received us with as much courtesy and politeness as an English lady should. After tea, to each of us was apportioned an immense room perfectly furnished. The following morning we had time to look at this great house, with its innumerable dependencies, bath rooms, billiard rooms, balconies, servants’ quarters. Well-kept groves border a small and rather deep lake, the waters of which are carried to the sea by several small streams. Nothing that could render this place charming had been neglected… After breakfast, which was served with the same elegance and ceremony of the night before, our party re-entered their carriages, the cart received its load of baggage and we left for Windsor.
     To-day, the garden is lovelier than ever, as gardens grow with age. The lodge, which stands on the main road, by the lake, is used as a tea-room. An imposing avenue leads to the house which is kept up in the old way of the Uniackes, for the hospitable door is still open in summer. It has a huge brass knocker with a coat of arms below. The hall is large and low with an enormous stove for hardwood standing on huge claw-feet of brass. Here stand also a discreet row of twelve chairs for [page 88] the twelve servants of the house to use for prayers. There are large lamps of brass with long chains to pull them up and down for lighting, and the walls are hung with coloured prints of coaching days. In the dining-room hang family portraits. Every bedroom has its four-post bed and mahogany furniture.
     One of Richard John’s sons went in for racing, and called his favourite horse “Emerald,” and so, [page 89] of the jockey costumes that still remain, one shows white satin breeches and an emerald-green satin coat and cap. And there is a collection of old-time brocade dresses which belonged to the great-great-grandmothers—beautiful old things which are still good, and in the commendatory phrase of the day “stiff enough to stand alone,” also old poke bonnets and caps and shawls.
     All that the passerby on the train headed up or down the valley can see is a glimpse of white pillars set in dark shrubbery across a small blue lake. Nevertheless, old Canada stands there, poised among the trees, dominant, and unchanging. [page 90]


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