Says frothy innkeeper Dot Boulware in her liquid southern accent, “I have to tell you, I am a romantic.” And so is Edgewood—three marriage proposals were made in one week here. But before she and her husband, Julian, bought Edgewood Plantation, on scenic Route 5 approximately half an hour from Cob-nial Williamsburg, in 1978, she didn’t care a bit for Victoriana. Fortunately tastes change, and when she became the mistress of an 1849 Carpenter Gothic house, she began collecting Victorian antiques like a woman possessed.
Dot’s eight-bedroom house, visible from Route 5, looks on the inside like Miss Havisham’s dining room, minus the cobwebs. It is full to bursting with old dolls, antique corsets and lingerie, lace curtains and pillows, love seats, baby car-riages, stuffed steamer trunks, mighty canopied beds, highboys, Confederate caps—the list goes on and on. At Christ-mastime she professionally decorates 18 trees and festoons the banister of the graceful three-story staircase with bows. Clearly, more is better at Dot Boulware’s Edgewood.
|
