Historic Ivy Cliff
AND PLANTATION LIFE IN ANTEBELLUM VIRGINIA
Plantation life in the Antebellum South is steeped in nostalgia and romanticized legend, due, in part, to the Lost Cause rhetoric appropriated following the Civil War. However, surviving plantations across Virginia, with their cultural, social, and economic significance, offer a tangible look into the reality of life during this key period of American history. Ivy Cliff, the ancestral home of the Brown family, once operated as a thriving plantation in Bedford County, Virginia. While the Brown family eventually scattered to various parts of the country, their home remains a testament to the inner workings of plantations in Virginia’s tobacco belt. Evidenced through the property’s architectural and agricultural history, its influential owners, and the slaves who populated it, a study of Ivy Cliff’s history provides both greater cultural context and a look into antebellum plantation life in Virginia.
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In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;
His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased, —
"Forever — never!
Never — forever!"
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There groups of merry children played,
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
O precious hours! O golden prime,
And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told, —
"Forever — never!
Never — forever!"
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From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding night;
There, in that silent room below,
The dead lay in his shroud of snow;
And in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair, —
"Forever — never!
Never — forever!"
All are scattered now and fled,
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
"Ah! when shall they all meet again?"
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient timepiece makes reply, —
"Forever — never!
Never — forever!"
Never here, forever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time shall disappear, —
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly, —
"Forever — never!
Never — forever!"
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-Excerpt from "The Old Clock on the Stairs"
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1]
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[1] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Old Clock on the Stairs,” Poetry Foundation, accessed on November 13, 2018, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44643/the-old-clock-on-the-stairs.
Note: In New London Today and Yesterday, Daisy I. Read references this poem as characteristic of the Brown family and Ivy Cliff, clearly an indication of the manner in which the family gradually left their home for other parts of the country. The house has changed hands three additional times, and these families continue to make memories within the house.