Who is Dabsville Jane?

Nobody knows about Dabsville. Strike that. A few people know about Dabsville. There are hundreds who stroll through Eastern Point on the summer and catch a few choice phrases on an hour long tour. They may or may not retain that information beyond their visit to Gloucester. But I suspect it doesn't linger so well as the secret staircase or the amber glass or the Golden Step dining room. They might remember something about togas and a wink, wink conclusion about what happened in the bedrooms. But Dabsville likely will float out of their brains.

So... I figured... no one else would use it for a name. But it is unique to me. I am enchanted by Dabsville as well as their togas and wink, winks. A group of thirty and forty somethings who found their way to that magical peninsula on Gloucester Harbor. A Harvard professor, a proprietess of a school for girls, a southern bell, a painter, and an interior decorator extraordinaire. But simply, they were friends. Friends who sucked the marrow out of their summer days, had voracious appreciation of art, music, politics, history, craftsmanship, the ocean, the community, the world, and one another. They were unmarried and uanpologetic for being so. They didn't rest on their laurels when the world went to war. And through it all, they were friends.

Jane is not because I was deemed such upon my entrance into this world. I chose Jane because it was a slang term in the 1920's for an ordinary girl. Because, quite assuredly, were I alive a hundred years ago, I would likely have been one of the Irish girls working in the kitchen and going batty over the white-armed mists of the ocean. Nevertheless, I have a strong amount of affection for their story. That is why I return every summer to Beauport in the hopes that one - just one - of the hundreds whom I lead through the house will leave remembering the name, Dabsville.