Prince Edward, Duke of Kent by Nathan Tidridge

Author:Nathan Tidridge [Tidridge, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Royalty, Political, Historical
ISBN: 9781459707900
Google: KMJIsFaie7UC
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2013-05-04T17:34:11+00:00

The Lodge, the country retreat owned by the Wentworths, 1817–18, as depicted in an oil painting by John Elliott Woolford (1778–1866). Although Edward and Julie had not visited The Lodge for nearly twenty years when this painting was begun, Woolford imagined what the estate must have looked like during Halifax’s “Golden Age.”

Nova Scotia Archives, 201104004.

Ruins of The Lodge as painted by Irishman William Eager (1796–1839) in 1838.

Nova Scotia Archives, 201104005.

Undoubtedly the vice-regal couple were overjoyed at the prospect of hosting Edward and Julie for the near future, and they immediately set out to make the couple as comfortable as possible. The Wentworths kept a small residence outside of Halifax called Friar Laurence’s Cell, a reference to the previous owner, John Lawrence, and the Wentworths’ love of Shakespeare (it was Friar Laurence who, among other things, agreed to marry the tragic lovers in Romeo and Juliet). Once Julie de St. Laurent arrived in town, the Wentworths immediately offered apartments at Government House to the couple, as well as providing their country retreat with its two-hundred-acre view over the Bedford Basin. Renovated and expanded, the estate was rechristened “the Lodge” and soon became the social hub of the province. Today, Haligonians refer to Edward and Julie’s home outside of the city as “Prince’s Lodge.”

In a 1971 article, Mollie Gillen quotes Nova Scotia historian G.E. Fenety’s description of the Lodge after he visited the site in 1828. Even though it had been abandoned for nearly twenty years by the time Fenety entered its gates, a sense of the region’s “golden age” still remained among the ruins:

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