Photographed By David Troy
It’s a hair past 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, and I’m nudged awake by the muffled sounds of cars sporadically swooshing past the inn along Route 113 south. As my eyes adjust to the muddy light filtering through the lace curtains, I lift my head off what must be the world’s comfiest pillows to take inventory of my dollhouse-like room. Spinning wheel, mini rocker, stocky walnut dresser with matching mirror, a circa-1915 Homer-esque painting of a heeling sailboat on choppy waters. Having arrived at Merry Sherwood Plantation in the evening, this is the first time I’ve had a chance to study the space. Pretty cute. And very cozy.
I pull on some clothes and creep out of my room, named the “Dryden Room” after the house’s fifth owner, William Dryden, owner and editor of the Eastern Shore Times newspaper. I pad down the mahogany staircase to the dining room, where I hope to be greeted by the smell of freshly brewed coffee and lots of freshly baked carbs. It seems like days since my last meal-a four-course, mediocre event at a Berlin restaurant that shall remain anonymous considering my dinner companion contracted food poisoning from his entree. I peer into the jewel-toned dining room but see nothing-and no one-awaiting me. Nor is there a hint of sweet, warm aromas wafting from behind the kitchen door. I take advantage of the lack of culinary distractions and solitude of the too-early hour to do some touring.
As I walk past the entrance hallway into the ballroom, the sun’s now-bolder light is filtering through the Bohemian glass panels hemming the front door, creating red and blue patterns on the loblolly pine floor, which runs throughout the house. The room is high Victorian-and dark-dressed in deep red velvet Rococo side chairs, a stocky black needlepoint Eastlake love seat, hurricane lamps with translucent, cranberry red globes, gilded frame mirrors, two marble fireplaces, a grand piano, hanging tapestries, and portraits of elegant strangers. I search out the brightest of the common rooms, the sun parlor, where several 1920s cane chairs and matching couch are the perfect spot for planning my day shopping in storybook-like Berlin, the Hollywood backdrop for Runaway Bride and Tuck Everlasting. Walking around, I can’t shake the feeling of being an intruder in someone’s home. To some degree, I suppose I am.
The house was a long-time private residence for eight different owners, beginning with Elizabeth Henry, a well-to-do local gal, and her husband, Henry Johnson, a sport from Philly, who had it built for her in 1859. The nearly nineteen acres on which the twenty-seven room Italianate house sits was part of Elizabeth’s dowry. The inn’s present owner, Berlin native Kirk Burbage, bought the property in 1998 after rescuing it from being condemned.
“I bought it because I knew two of the families that lived there,” says Burbage, a local funeral home director. “I played there all the time as a child; it’s been part of my history. It was at the point that if someone didn’t do something about it, it was going to be gone. I don’t know if I was courageous or naive.”
Burbage put the house through a two-year, $2 million overhaul, including redoing all of the plaster work, installing a sprinkler system, refinishing all of the floors, rebuilding the veranda, and redesigning the landscaping. Marble showers and floors and antique fixtures were added to the bathrooms in the eight guestrooms, named for each of its former owners. There’s not one reproduction antique in the house, with most of the pieces having belonged to Burbage’s grandmother, a funeral director in the 1920s whose clients during the Depression often paid her in furniture.
Here, it’s policy to keep doors of unoccupied rooms wide open for perusal. While some are small and some meandering, the focal point of each room is the bed. There’s an ornate antebellum Gothic bed in the Chase Room, a painted wood Victorian cottage bed in the Scanlon Room, and a circa-1860 Eastlake bed in the Dryden Room. One of the niftiest details of the house is a cupola, reached by a steep and narrow staircase on the third floor. The eight-by-five-foot space, walled by windows, empty save for an antique kneeler and two Bibles, offers a treetop view of the grounds.
I share breakfast, artfully prepared by innkeeper Janet Boyd, with a couple originally from Holland taking a break from city life in Bethesda. Norah Jones on the CD player and what turn out to be empty threats from passing thunder serenades us. Janet brings us fresh coffee, a basket of homemade banana bread, and plates of French toast (from a recipe supplied by a guest), served with grapes, strawberries, and sausage-all dusted with powered sugar. I morph from intruder into a chatty American, sniffing out the one among them that will be most amenable to my questioning, which turns out to be Jon. Poor fella. I find out that he works at the World Bank, bikes to work, and wants a Miata convertible. With plates emptied and conversation parched, Jon and his wife retire to their room, after a noticeable struggle to scoot the unbelievably heavy rosewood chairs back from the table. As I clumsily free myself from my lead-like wooden seat, I realize that the chivalrous act of gents pulling out chairs for ladies wasn’t a nicety but rather a necessity in the Victorian era.
Janet fills me in on more of the inn’s history as we stroll the gardens, which hold more than one hundred species of plants such as azaleas, wild rose bushes, magnolia trees, dogwood, and boxwoods. Seems that one of the former owners, a Captain Purnell, brought back myriad plants from his world travels. She shows me the pagoda, placed over the former site of the plantation barn and explains that they’ve hosted everything from simple to extravagant weddings.
With noon fast approaching, it’s time for me to get going and time for Janet to strip the beds. But the shaded grounds and cool breeze has lulled me into a dopey haze brought on by the sugar-studded breakfast and early rising. Wonder if Janet would mind cleaning around me and let me back into my room for a quick nap?
Merry Sherwood Plantation
8909 Worcester Hwy.
(Rt. 133), Berlin, Md.
410-641-2112 or
http://www.merrysherwood.com
Rates: July-October 16: $150-$175 per night. October 17-May 13, 2005: $125-$150 per night.
Rates include full breakfast, served at 9 a.m.
Check-in time: after 2 p.m.
Chickout time: before 11 a.m.
