Winter in New England

When I arrived, Charlie Marble was stoking the fire in the old Victorian inn he shares with his wife, Deedy. Outside, snow was banked against the steps, so that the warmth of the wood fire in the parlor soothed the soul in this house that smelled of good things cooking.

Already, kerosene lamps were lit in two small dining rooms. The traveler could choose no better inn in all of Vermont for dinner.

Arriving at the Governor’s Inn, which is on the green in the little hamlet of Ludlow, is like coming home to grandma’s for the holidays, and this is exactly what a fortunate few guests will be doing during the coming weeks. Throughout New England, hundreds of inns are preparing for Thanksgiving and old-fashioned Christmas celebrations, with horse-drawn sleigh rides and cross-country skiing.

Although open year-round, the Governor’s Inn lights up magically during the holidays. The tree that graying Charlie Marble, a Bostonian of immense warmth, puts up reaches all the way to the ceiling and is showered with antique ornaments placed on its branches by Deedy.

“Our Christmases are wonderful,” says Deedy, an artist-turned-gourmet chef whose reputation for marvelous meals has spread throughout New England.

The Governor’s Inn is the sort of place one searches out to share holidays with others who have come to shed their loneliness in its warmth. With Charlie and Deedy in charge, the old Victorian Inn explodes with good cheer.

On Christmas Eve, guests gather beside the tree for what the Marbles call a “Santa’s Watch,” which is when good things to eat are put out for Old Whiskers and which are snitched instead by theguests, along with bowls of cranberry champagne.

On Christmas morning, lanky Charlie shows up in his Santa’s outfit to prepare one of the breakfasts he is famous for, particularly his rum raisin French toast and his peach waffles, or a breakfast puff that features an apple pie filling in a batter sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with Vermont maple syrup.

Or there’s Charlie’s Cuckoo Nest, which is to say a ramekin resting on a bed of French bread smothered with eggs, Cheddar cheese and bacon.

Later, a gift is found under the tree for each guest. Carolers stop to entertain during dinner and a harpist renders melodies of the season. As the day comes to an end, a certain melancholy sets in as guests seem to secretly wish that the warmth of the moment could crystallize forever.

Inn for All Seasons

This is an inn for all seasons, but especially so during the holidays, when guests search for warm memories of Christmases past, or dream of a holiday that somehow never materialized and has remained a haunting, wished-for Christmas unfulfilled.

How could such a season be anything but merry under the spell of Charlie and Deedy Marble in an old home that glows with the contentment of its proprietors?

A winding staircase leads to eight guest rooms upstairs, one with a century-old, brass four-poster and bay windows that offer glimpses of the green. Another features twin beds from a French chateau, and next door there’s a snug room with a rocker and an antique iron bed like those that were in vogue in the early ‘20s.

Although the rates for all rooms are alike, I chose the inn’s smallest, which is at the rear of the house with a splendid bed and a window that looks down on a snow-covered garden.

The inn was built in the 1890s by then-Gov. William Wallace Stickney of Vermont as a wedding gift for his wife, who lived in the mansion until the 1930s. It passed through a number of hands until Charlie and Deedy Marble showed up on its doorstep in 1982. The Marbles were inveterate travelers and it was during one of these journeys that they were smitten with the idea of opening an inn of their own.

He Gives Her Top Billing

Charlie had grown weary of the corporate world and he told Deedy he was willing to give her top billing at the inn, which is precisely what he did. While Charlie plays the role of raconteur, Deedy stars with her candlelight dinners. Precisely at 7 p.m. each evening, a couple of dozen guests are seated at tables scattered among the two small dining rooms.

It is a ritual that begins with Deedy introducing members of the staff, who in turn describe each of the six courses they are serving.

Waitresses in pinafores and mobcaps set the stage for guests to relax and relive an era when the world moved at a slower pace.

In barely five years the Governor’s Inn has been singled out for epicurean delights that have won Deedy Marble a fistful of awards.

Guests gather for cocktails in the inn’s snug bar before being seated for dinner. Occasionally, someone will drive 100 miles or more to join the select 24 diners each evening. In the high season, Charlie and Deedy turn away up to 70 would-be diners a night.

The meal starts with creamed cheese and the Governor’s secret sauce, followed by homemade soups, appetizers, sorbet and a main course. Deedy’s baked Indian chowder, with its chopped leeks, pumpkin, corn, bacon and Cheddar cheese, deserves four stars, at the very least.

Delights on the Menu

With a menu that changes nightly, courses include such delights as curried squash, the Governor’s Mushroom Strudel, marinated fish, scallops and crab meat, salmon au champagne , oysters with crab meat and shrimp, game hens with orange pecan stuffing, strawberry nut bread, chocolate rum rolls, peach ice with raspberry melba sauce, poached pears in kir and chocolate walnut pie.

In a recent national survey, Deedy got top marks for the “best in American country inn cooking.” Not only for her dinners but for the picnic hampers she stuffs with chilled soups, homemade bread, braised quail, smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches, fresh figs and prosciutto and desserts that send the calorie count soaring to the danger level.

It goes without saying that a visit to the Governor’s Inn is a trifle expensive. Still, the rates ($75/$80 per guest plus tax and service) are consistent with charges at inns of lesser repute and they include--besides the room, breakfast and dinner--a high tea that’s served each afternoon.

The picnic spreads Deedy prepares figure out to $48 per couple, and the hamper, the wine glasses, the cheese board and the handmade napkins are yours to keep after the meal.

Deedy and Charlie reveal secrets of their success in a 60-page collection of recipes from the inn’s kitchen that guests tote home along with pepper jelly, poppy seed dressing, chocolates and other gifts sold at the inn.

Memories to Take Away

As an ancient clock tolls the hour of goodby, guests leave behind the warmth of a New England inn where one snuggles under puffs in rooms furnished with family heirlooms; there are memories of skiing down Okemo Mountain in winter and fishing on ponds and in rivers in summertime. Others choose to snooze in rockers on the porch or watch the action on the green.

The Governor’s Inn is particularly cheerful on a rainy afternoon. Logs glow in the fireplace, shelves are loaded with books and classical melodies set the spell. Then as the clock strikes 3, tea is served in antique china cups along with finger sandwiches and homemade cookies.

Christmas in New England is a season devoted to cross-country skiing and sleigh rides over snow-covered fields, whose whiteness is softened by the shadows of trees coated with ice.

Hundreds of inns welcome the winter visitor, but none with more warmth than Charlie and Deedy Marble’s old Victorian, The Inn at Sawmill Farm in West Dover or Jack Coleman’s charming Inn at Long Last, a name that reflects the contentment Coleman discovered following a lifelong search for serenity.

At The Inn at Sawmill Farm (which we will be featuring in a future article), guests gather on Christmas Eve to help decorate a fresh-cut tree in this wonderful old barn-like building that seems such a proper setting for an old-fashioned Christmas. They empty a wassail bowl while listening to minstrels sing.

Caroling at the Church

Later there’s caroling at the Congregational Church. On Christmas day the menu features the traditional turkey dinner along with sweet potatoes, scalloped oysters, pumpkin pie with rum sauce and mince pie swimming in brandy sauce. If nothing else, the little hamlet of West Dover is a Christmas scene come alive.

In nearby Chester, Vt., The Inn At Long Last warms up to the holiday season as few inns elsewhere do. Coleman’s love of the holiday season illuminates the entire building, a magic that’s revealed the moment one steps through the front door to view the floor-to-ceiling tree that is the centerpiece of a lobby with a fireplace and a scattering of sofas.

Other trees grace the library and a huge window facing the green. Tree lights reflect against frosted window panes and Christmas melodies fill the halls of this rambling old inn with its 30 individually decorated rooms.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, Coleman and his staff don Victorian costumes that are worn throughout the holidays. Caroling through Chester in bonnets and top hats, mufflers wrapped snugly around their necks, they appear like characters come to life from a Dickens Christmas story.

Along with Chester’s other innkeepers and merchants, the carolers march through the village nightly starting Dec. 12, to the Catholic Church, the Baptist Church, the Episcopal Church and finally the Congregational Church with its Wren Tower--a Christmas scene in itself.

Twilight Sleigh Rides

Guests take sleigh rides across fields and into woods where trees sparkle with icicles. Bells jingle merrily and lanterns cast a yellow glow in the grayness of twilight.

Coleman, a 66-year-old, bearded ex-educator, brought with him to The Inn At Long Last his mother’s recipes for plum pudding and other good things that grace the menu during the holiday season.

Coleman is a generous, sensitive soul who found in Chester the contentment that eluded him for so many years, and so The Inn At Long Last is his monument to this joy of discovery.

The road he’s traveled has taken him to lofty heights: MIT professor, college president, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the president of a multimillion-dollar charitable foundation and the author of a number of scholarly texts, one that he did in collaboration with Secretary of State George Shultz.

While still president of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, Coleman slipped away on a sabbatical disguised first as a garbage collector in Maryland and later as a ditch digger in Georgia, a laborer in Wyoming, a salad man at a restaurant in Boston and a volunteer cop in New York. This desire to be reunited with the common man became the subject of a book Coleman wrote titled “Blue Collar Sabbatical” that was introduced as a TV film.

‘Nothing to Prove’

“I’ve been blessed with friends and family who love me for what I am,” Coleman says. “There is nothing to prove anymore. How wonderful to be 66 and to know the best is yet to come.”

The father of five children, Coleman has long dreamed of becoming an innkeeper. With the holidays approaching, his eyes reveal a sense of serenity. As the grandfather clock near his office tolls the hour, Coleman hurries off to answer the telephone.

“Good morning, it’s a glorious day at The Inn At Long Last. . . .”

The Governor’s Inn, 86 Main St., Ludlow, Vt. 05149. Telephone (802) 228-8830. Rates: $75/$80 (MAP) plus 6% tax and 15% service.

The Inn at Sawmill Farm, West Dover, Vt. 05356. Telephone (802) 464-8131. Christmas rates: $210/250 per couple (MAP) plus 6% tax, 15% service.

The Inn At Long Last, Box 589, Chester, Vt. 05143. Telephone (802) 875-2444. Rates: $65 B&B;, $80 (MAP) plus 6% tax, 15% service. MAP rates are reduced to $70 the third and fourth nights and $60 thereafter.