Thomas Chandler Haliburton, “Sam Slick,” born at Windsor, Nova Scotia, in December 1796, and was called to the bar in 1820, and became a member of the House of Assembly, chief-justice of the common pleas (1828), and judge of the supreme court (1842). In 1856 he retired and settled in England, in 1858 was made D.C.L. by Oxford, and in 1859–63 was Conservative M.P. for Launceston. He is best known as the author of “Sam Slick,” a sort of American Sam Weller, whose quaint drollery, unsophisticated wit, knowledge of human nature, and aptitude in the use of “soft sawder” have given him a fair chance of immortality. The newspaper sketches in which this character first appeared were collected in 1837–40 as “The Clockmaker, or Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville,” continued as “The Attache, or Sam Slick in England” (1843–44). Haliburton’s other works include “A Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia” (1825–29); “Bubbles of Canada” (1839); “The Old Judge, or Life in a Colony” (1843); “Traits of American Humour” (1843); and “Rule and Misrule of the English in America” (1850). He died at Isleworth, 27th August 1865. See “Memoir” by F. B. Crofton (1889).

Personal

  Among other frequenters of it, my diary makes frequent mention of Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia, better known to the world as Sam Slick, the Clockmaker. He was, as I remember him, a delightful companion—for a limited time. He was in this respect exactly like his books—extremely amusing reading if taken in rather small doses, but calculated to seem tiresomely monotonous if indulged in at too great length. He was a thoroughly good fellow, kindly, cheery, hearty, and sympathetic always; and so far always a welcome companion. But his funning was always pitched in the same key, and always more or less directed to the same objects. His social and political ideas and views all coincided with my own, which, of course, tended to make us better friends. In appearance he looked entirely like an Englishman, but not at all like a Londoner. Without being at all too fat, he was large and burly in person, with gray hair, a large ruddy face, a humorous mouth, and bright blue eyes always full of mirth. He was an inveterate chewer of tobacco, and, in the fulness of comrade-like kindness, strove to indoctrinate me with that habit. But I was already an old smoker, and preferred to content myself with that mode of availing myself of the blessing of tobacco.

  Played a very important part in the history of Nova Scotia for a period of over thirty years. He figured in political, in legal, and in literary affairs, and in each sphere of action he acquired very considerable repute. The reputation which he won as a legislator is greater than his reputation as a lawyer and judge; and the success of his literary work far surpassed the utmost measure of his success at the bar, on the bench, in the legislature of his native Province, or in the House of Commons of England. It is indeed as the author of the “Sam Slick” papers, that his name is most likely to be long preserved…. As the most illustrious man of letters that Canada has so far produced, Judge Haliburton will be long remembered.

General

  On this point we speak with some confidence. We can distinguish the real from the counterfeit Yankee, at the first sound of the voice, and by the turn of a single sentence; and we have no hesitation in declaring that Sam Slick is not what he pretends to be; that there is no organic life in him; that he is an impostor, an impossibility, a nonentity. A writer of genius, even if he write from imperfect knowledge, will, as it were, breathe the breath of life into his creations. Sam Slick is an awkward and highly infelicitous attempt to make a character, by heaping together, without discrimination, selection, arrangement, or taste, every vulgarity that a vulgar imagination can conceive, and every knavery that a man blinded by national and political prejudice can charge upon neighbors whom he dislikes.

  It is a piquant curiosity [“Sam Slick”], a book and an excellent book, composed, printed, and published in one of the most unknown cities of the world, between Cape Breton and the Appalachian mountains, on the shores of the Atlantic, in the lap of a slumbering civilization, discouraged, strangled, deadened by the neighborhood of the United States…. Mr. Haliburton’s book,” The Clockmaker,” gives at a glance all the American elegancies. I have said, it is a remarkably good book. It is not a romance, history, drama, philosophic treatise, voyage, story, or declamation; this patois-book, written by a colonist of Halifax, full of adages à la Sancho Panza, and of stories worthy of Bonaventure Desperiers, is simply an admirable book. The author explains the sketchy, existing civilization of the United States; the rickety, unhealthy civilization of Canada, and the profound torpor of the neighboring British provinces. He enters into the secret details of private life, and exhibits all which English travellers have left in shadow…. Since the personages of Sir Walter Scott, nothing has been better done than this character of Sam Slick.

  Author of a series of amusing works illustrative of American and colonial manners marked by shrewd, sarcastic remarks on political questions, the colonies, slavery, domestic institutions and customs, and almost every familiar topic of the day. The first series—which had previously been inserted as letters in a Nova Scotia paper—appeared in a collected form under the title of “The Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick of Slickville.” A second series was published in 1838, and a third in 1840. “Sam Slick” was a universal favourite, and in 1843 the author conceived the idea of bringing him to England. “The Attaché, or Sam Slick in England,” gives an account of the sayings and doings of the clockmaker when elevated to the dignity of the “Honourable Mr. Slick, Attaché of the American Legation of the court of St. James’s.” There is the same quaint humour, acute observation, and laughable exaggeration in these volumes as in the former but, on the whole, Sam is most amusing on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Haliburton, writing as Sam Slick, told his countrymen many home truths. Those who laughed at Sam Slick’s jokes did not always relish his outspoken criticisms, and his popularity as a writer was far greater out of Nova Scotia than in it; his fame, however, became general. None of his writings are regularly constructed stories, but the incidents and the characters are always spirited and mostly humourous. “Sam Slick” had a very extensive sale, and notwithstanding its idiomatic peculiarities was translated into several different languages…. Haliburton was the first writer who used the American dialect, and was pronounced by Artemus Ward to be the founder of the American school of humour.

  As a humorist, Haliburton’s chief qualifications were a keen appreciation of the ludicrous, an excellent memory for absurdities, the faculty of hitting off quaint and fancy-tickling phrases, and a most lively imagination. All these characteristics are copiously illustrated in the multitudinous yarns which his characters spin upon the smallest provocation. Indeed, it is evident that he often moots a subject merely to introduce an anecdote; and the very slight main plot of each of the four books narrating Mr. Slick’s career is little more than a thread to string his tales and talks upon. The same may be said of “The Old Judge” and “The Season Ticket.”… As an historian, Haliburton’s style is generally clear and classical, although it has not the uniform polish of a master of style, and sometimes deviates into ponderosity. His reflections are mostly shrewd and philosophical, if sometimes biased by his strong conservatism and love for British institutions…. For a man who began life as a provincial lawyer and politician, Haliburton’s horizon was remarkably, almost phenomenally, wide. He intuitively recognized the tendencies of the age, noted all the currents of public opinion, and gauged their volume and force with approximate exactness. Indeed the time may come when his fame as a political and ethical thinker, and forecaster of events and movements, may exceed his fame as a humorist.