A Dab of Thought

Every once in a while I discover a new thought on one of my tours. I can’t say it’s exactly learning a new fact, more that I see something in a different way and have an original phrase to impart a detail or two about the house.

Last weekend I repeated something I’ve been finding myself using as part of the discussion of Henry’s sexuality. That the house was motivated by his passion and yearning for his next door neighbor. He was moved to collect, connect random dots, and do something no one else thought to do because (I think) he wanted to impress APA and get him to come over to dinner.

I’ve also reflected on how Henry never left the house alone. It was in a constant state of change for the 28 years he possessed it. And yet… he moved onto other houses. After the war is when it seems to have changed. Dabsville was not what it was in the days before France moved them to more serious subjects than antiques. Joanna got married. Y died. APA went to Washington. Henry went off to be inspired for the Rockefellers, Joan Crawford, and John Mack Brown… and Beauport became a rental.

The house is still unfinished and I don’t doubt that he was inspired until he drew his last breath on September 21, 1934. But the drive to create at Beauport slowed down because there wasn’t someone to entice back to the Octagon Room for some French cuisine.

There are stories about him falling asleep in front of the fire in the Pine Kitchen. It’s in that room that I feel myself step into pockets of sadness. I often speculate there is an appropriate verb in the name of that room… but these days I wonder if it was just being at Beauport that made him sad. Sad to reflect on happier days when the early American dining room was alive with laughter and good friends marveling over his clayware. Days that faded away like the mists wear off in the early morning sun.

It was in those later years that he used Beauport to advance himself in another social realm. He went to California and proved the worth of his talent amongst a new group of colleagues and friends. He still went back to Eastern Point, adding and transforming more rooms. But maybe… some of those later transformations were also a way of putting to rest a larger disappointment. And in its own way, that too offered inspiration. The inspiration to move forward and not stay stuck in front of the fire in the Pine Kitchen.