Interview with Dorothy Therman by Carol Seraydarian for the Memorial Library of Radnor Township Oral History Project, Saint David’s, Pennsylvania, March 4, 1981.

CAROL SERAYDARIAN: --1981, and we’re in the home of Mrs.

Harrison Therman, in her home in Saint David’s, P. A., and the

interviewer is Carol Seraydarian. Mrs. Therman, I know you’ve

been, this house, your family’s lived here for quite a few years.

How did your family first come to this area?

DOROTHY THERMAN: Well, I suppose they came because my

grandfather and various other members of my family lived here.

We lived in town, in Delancey Place, in the winters for a good

many years, until I was seven. However, we used to come out to

this house in the summers.

One of the reasons why I’m doing this tape is that I was

encouraged by Ann [unclear] Barringer, and I think it is perhaps

interesting to note that the house that I am living in now, and in

which I was born, in the house, was built by Mrs. Barringer’s

father-in-law, Mr. Daniel Morrow Barringer, and that Mrs.

Barringer’s mother was my Godmother, so there’s rather a nice

connection there. She rather pressured me into doing this tape!

[Laughs]

But I think when the Paoli Local first started working, a

good many people who lived in town in the winters would come

out to this area in the summer, and my grandfather was one of

them. I think he probably built his house, had a creek which was

right next to Saint David’s Church, a hideous great stone house

THERMAN

with a red roof built by the architect—no, it was Frank Furnace

who built it. And I suppose it was probably built in the 1880’s.

CS: Is that house still there?

DT: No, it was torn down a good many years ago.

CS: What was the attraction, for them, to this area?

DT: The country. It was absolutely heavenly country in those days,

real country! And when there were the various stations stops, my

grandfather used to drive, of course with horses, not in a car, to

Devon station, to go in town.

CS: Is this your paternal grandfather?

DT: Yes, yes, he was Charles Custace Harrison, who for a good many

years was provost of the University of Pennsylvania.

CS: Was your father born in this area?

DT: He was born—no, actually, he was probably born in Philadelphia,

but when he was a child they had a summer house called Ellislee

on Schoolhouse Lane, on the other side of the river.

CS: Which no longer exists either?

DT: Yes, I think it does.

CS: Oh!

DT: I think it does. I remember being taken there quite a good many

years ago, and there was still a very beautiful weeping beech tree.

And I saw the hallway where his pet donkey used to go in to get

out of the sun in the summer, which rather surprised people when

they would come to his house!

CS: And your mother, was she also from this area?

DT: No, my mother was very solid New England, and I think she was

the first member of her family to marry out of New England.

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CS: Where did your parents meet?

DT: Well, actually, just to continue, my mother, my grandmother, my

New England grandmother, who I remember only slightly, but I

remember we were old enough to tease her a little bit. If you

mentioned the fact that her ancestors came over on the Mayflower,

she would get very indignant, and would look at you down a rather

aquiline nose, and say sternly that they did not come on the

Mayflower, that her ancestors were Puritans, not Pilgrims, and they

came on a ship called the Arbella, which came about a year and a

half after the Mayflower—very important!

CS: [Laughs]

DT: Well, it’s rather an interesting story. It sounds like something out

of the movies. My father was an eligible bachelor for forty years,

and his younger sister, Mrs. Eustace, Dorothy Eustace--who as a

matter of fact was that one that started the Seeing Eye Dogs, first

in Switzerland, and then brought them to Norristown—was living

in Hoosick Falls, New York, with her husband then, her first

husband, Colonel Wood. And my father went up to visit her, and

by chance my mother also happened to be living in Hoosick Falls

with her mother, her father having died, and had become a great

friend of my Aunt Dorothy’s. And there was this picture of my

mother on a table.

CS: Oh, what a beautiful picture!

DT: And my father supposedly took one look at it, at age forty, and

said, “That is the woman I’m going to marry!”

CS: Well, it is a beautiful picture! She had given this to her in

friendship, and she had it on her--?

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DT: Yes, to my knowledge.

CS: Your mother was beautiful! Very pretty. I can see why! [Laughs]

DT: Well, it’s an enchanting picture, because it’s the days when they

wore their hair, you know, sort of—

CS: Pompadour?

DT: Slightly pompadour, with rats in it. You know what a rat is?

CS: No, what is it?

DT: It’s a sort of odd—as I remember—I don’t remember seeing one,

but reading about them, they were sort of little rods covered with

hair which helped keep—you stuck in, you see. It sort of helped

keep your hair higher.

CS: I see, okay.

DT: And sort of all neat and tidy. And of course, and the evening

dresses of those days, with the very wide shoulders, and rather low

—

CS: And she does have a beautiful face.

DT: Well, she was very beautiful: blonde, blue eyes.

CS: And did she feel the same way about him when she met him?

DT: I don’t remember that part of the story! [Laughs]

CS: And so, did they purchase this house immediately after marrying?

DT: No, they rented it, in the summers, for a couple of years. The

house was built in 1903 by Mr. Barringer, and my family bought it

in 1914. But for two or three years before that, they rented it in the

summers, and then when Mr. Barringer wanted to sell it, they

bought. And as I say, I was born in the house.

CS: You were born in this house?

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DT: I was rather amused this morning to—it was sad to see the death of

someone—but it was Mr., I think his name was Mr. Henrich

Vollider. He was sixty-six, about the same age as my older sister,

and it said that he had been born in Cape May. The rest of the time

he lived, normally, on Spruce Street, or Plymouth Meeting, or

whatever it was.

And it made me think that he must have had the same

obstetrician as my mother, because my older sister was also born in

Cape May, New Jersey, the reason being that the favorite

obstetrician in those days, Dr. Norris Fawkes, who was a sort of a

relation of my grandparents, went to Cape May every summer. He

probably went for two months, July and August. I know my sister

was born on the sixth of July. And if you wanted Dr. Norris

Fawkes to deliver your baby, if you were one of his patients, you

went down and rented a house in Cape May!

CS: [Laughs] I’ve never heard of such a thing!

DT: He was not—

CS: Was he that good?

DT: Well, everybody seemed to think so. But he would not, for any

reason, come back to Philadelphia. So you would find a rather

strange collection of Philadelphians having been born in Cape

May, and having lived there for maybe about two months, you see,

and never having gone back again!

CS: I’ve heard such a thing—a doctor, you have to go where he is.

Usually they come where you are! Well, this is a lovely, sprawling

home. It reminds you out of Gone with the Wind.

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DT: Well, the reason for that is that Mr. Barringer’s family came from

the south, and that is why they had the big columns outside, and

the wide hall going straight through from the front door to the

terrace door, and going open all the way to the third floor, which is

lovely, but in these days of energy, not very helpful from the point

of view of heating! [Laughs]

CS: Do you close it off?

DT: Well, no, you see, you can’t close the whole third floor off,

because the hall goes right straight up the three floors.

CS: The house reminds me, it would be a child’s delight. Were you

allowed to run through the halls, or go down the staircase?

DT: Actually, when the Barringer boys were here, from the third floor

down to the last flight of stairs, there were fairly high brass

railings, I suppose, to keep them either from sliding down the

banisters from the third floor. And you know, with the high

ceilings, it’s rather a distance. But we used to slide the banisters

the last flight of steps down. And no, I don’t think ran—we did

when we were older. We lived on, when I was ten or twelve, we

used to out and climb on the roofs, which, when I think of it now,

it’s so high!

CS: You had so much land surrounding it. Did you play a lot of

games?

DT: Oh, well there, of course, was the supreme pleasure of this place,

and is still, to me now—I think I know every stick and stone and

tree. And as my sister and I did not go to school—

CS: Why not?

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DT: A good question! I think the main—the reason given at first was

that I had one eye that turned in, and Dr. Wilmer, in Johns

Hopkins, apparently had said the more I was outdoors without

glasses, the better. So my family took that as a good reason—

CS: Oh, every child would have loved that!

DT: --as a good reason to—my father was a great shot. He did a great

deal of big game shooting before the First World War. And so

from the time I was eight years old, we had a house in Scotland for

the grouse shooting. Well, the grouse shooting doesn’t start until

the “glorious” twelfth of August, and to be home in time for the

opening of school and Labor Day was not very practical! So that

we never came home. It wasn’t really until my son started going to

nursery school that I realized that summer ended on Labor Day. It

went on, oh, until the end of October, as far as I was concerned,

when I was a child! [Laughs]

So we started off with live-in governesses, but my mother,

who took a great interest in our well-being, always felt the live-in

governesses were treating us badly, so she fired them one after the

other. And we ended up, I suppose when I was about eight, having

a governess, my sister and I, come in at nine in the morning, and

leave at twelve-thirty, leaving us with some homework. So the rest

of the time we just looped around the place.

CS: Did you realize that was different than other children’s way of life?

DT: Oh, yes! We did have very good friends who went first of all to a

place called Miss Wright’s School, and when that broke up, they

sort of split between Berwyn and Shipley. But my family managed

to get a collection of them, and they would come on weekends, and

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THERMAN

play, and we would have parties. They’d spend the night. But we

were always looked on as a little bit different.

And I remember going to a party—I must have been at least

twelve, or thirteen—just a girls’ party, lunch. And they all had a

crush on the gym teacher, and were all talking about her. And as I

knew nothing about the gym teacher at all, I retired, I remember—I

think I was younger—behind the piano with a book, because you

know, one wasn’t a part of it.

CS: You mentioned your father would go abroad to go game hunting.

How about locally? Did he do any fox hunting?

DT: Oh yes, he and my uncles played polo and hunted. In fact—

CS: In this area, at all?

DT: Oh, yes! As a matter of fact, I have two delightful pictures of,

photographs, the women in long skirts, so it must have been the

early 1900’s, I’d bet. They always, the Radnor Hunt, which was in

those days in Bryn Mawr, really, and not up [unclear], that they

always had the first meet of the season at my grandfather’s place at

Happy Creek. And there are two lovely photographs of the

hounds, and the huntsmen. And I think my father, perhaps, is in

one of them. And then all of them standing on the steps, sort of

looking on before they took off.

CS: Oh, the women would watch the entire thing?

DT: Yes. Some hunted. My Aunt, Mrs. Charles Howson, and her

daughters, hunted, looking very, very beautiful. They were all

beautiful, and in those days the women, of course, rode sidesaddle,

and when they hunted, wore top hats with veils.

CS: Oh, it’s like what you see in the movies! And how about the men?

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DT: Well, they just—I can’t remember. On special occasions they

wore pink coats, and then they always had a pink—if they

belonged to the Radnor Hunt or something, they usually had an

evening coat, a dinner coat, of pink, with tails.

CS: How often would your father hunt locally?

DT: Well, that was before my time, and he hurt his back, I think,

getting on or off a camel; I can’t remember which. But he didn’t

ride with us when we were small. We rode, but we kept our horses

upcountry, as it was called, at [unclear], a friend of my father’s

who kept horses for various people.

CS: You seem like you did a lot of traveling when you were young?

DT: Well, we traveled, really, mainly just transatlantic, to England and

Scotland.

CS: You had a lot of friends or relatives there?

DT: My father had no relatives, but many friends, many of whom he’d

met during his trips to Africa and the Sudan, and various places

like that. So, but it was mostly his English friends, who came to

stay with us in Scotland, to shoot. A few American friends came

—Mr. Charles Biddle, who was an excellent shot, and one was Mr.

Wiskhams. But mainly it was a chance to see his English friends.

And then after the grouse shooting, we would go down to England

and stay in England with friends, and my father would shoot

partridges and pheasants. There’d be house parties.

CS: What would you do as a child, during the day?

DT: I would—well in those days, in England, you know, the girls never

came out of the nursery until it was time to come out, or whatever

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they called it in England in those days. I mean, really, it was

incredible! So we were sort of relegated—

CS: Did you ever have any of that here in Radnor, coming out, this

type of thing?

DT: You mean debutante parties?

CS: Mm-hm.

DT: Well, not in Radnor. Well—

CS: In this area, Philadelphia?

DT: Well, yes, there were the parties. I had a coming out party at the

Bellevue, and then two weeks later, took off to be bridesmaid at a

friend’s wedding in England. So I didn’t go to too many of the

dances.

CS: Was there any special social courtesies that they had when you

were growing up that you think they no longer have? It was

definitely a much more gracious way of living.

DT: Well, it was gracious only because one had people to—in the

kitchen, and in the dining room. You didn’t have to, and I think

many people nowadays, and I have friends who are much older

than I—I can think of two in particular who are eighty, one who

had never cooked in her life. But her husband died, and things,

you know, her children had grown, she moved into a small house.

And she does lovely meals, always with her best china and things

out; she does it all herself. So it can, very easily, still be done

graciously. But it was a great deal easier in the days when you had

quite a lot of people to help.

CS: This is quite a large house. Did you have a lot of domestic help

when you were growing up in the house?

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DT: Yes.

CS: The different people—what would be their responsibilities? You

have one area of the house, I remember you telling me, that the

servants would live in?

DT: Yes, it’s just the servants—what was always called the servants’

wing, a word that I don’t like.

CS: Relish?

DT: No. But, they were usually, with the exception of one dear

Scottish one, who I saw in a nursing home in Scotland a couple of

years ago and was with us for twenty-eight years, they mostly

Irish, Irish spinsters, so there were just single rooms, very

comfortable, and a bath.

CS: You had a cook, I imagine, someone to serve?

DT: Well, let me just say what Mrs. Barringer said. We had [laughs]

help!

CS: It would be very unusual, then, in your mother’s day, for any of her

peers to be in the kitchen? Usually you wouldn’t find any of

them?

DT: Never, no.

CS: Their responsibilities were to keep the household running, to

oversee everything?

DT: Right.

CS: Was your mother very involved in other things? What kept her

busy?

DT: Well, she was an ardent gardener! She adored gardening.

CS: She had plenty of space here to do it!

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DT: Well, her special garden is one that is known as the Rock Steps,

and is, as you look out through the terrace door, you’d see a wide

vista, [unclear] the land slopes very steeply down. And there was

so much rock underneath this place that to make Rock Steps was

extremely easy. You just had to put in a few flat rocks where

people could walk. But she had, in that garden, I think eighty-one

different varieties of native American wildflowers, some so tiny

that only she knew where they were, really.

CS: Oh, my!

DT: It was really beautiful.

CS: Had she studied horticulture?

DT: Well, she read books on it, I suppose. And so she spent a lot of

time in her garden, I remember, wearing a khaki skirt that she had

worn to Africa, on one of her—I guess it was her trip to South

Africa, when she traveled in a [unclear] wagon. It had been an

ambulance in the Boer War, and it was very well sprung. Of

course, they had tents, and things to sleep in. This was the way

they traveled. And it was khaki with buttons down the front, and I

remember she’d go out very often after breakfast, and before

breakfast, and weed, with a bandana around her head and her khaki

skirt, and a cardigan on.

But she was very, very interested in gardening. She was on

the board, I think it was, of the Horticultural School at Ambler.

And then she was on a thing I always remember as the old man’s

home, Powellton Avenue, in town. And she was editor of the

Garden Club of America Bulletin.

CS: Very involved in activities.

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DT: Yes, and she wrote well. She wrote amusingly and she wrote well,

and she wrote a delightful book about my father’s family,

published only for the family, yes, but used for research by some

people. So she kept herself—and then she spent a good bit of time

with us, as my father did, too. She read a great deal to us, read

aloud to us a great deal when we were young.

CS: Is there something especially about your mother that you carry

with you, that maybe she taught you, or that you were impressed

with, throughout your life?

DT: Perhaps—well, we were a very reserved family. It was my father’s

—my father was very reserved. He showed no emotion.

CS: Was your mother also?

DT: She was, I think, being a New Englander, and finding herself in a

large and rather teasing family in Pennsylvania. But I think she

would have liked to have been less reserved, but she was reserved,

also.

CS: Did she love this area also?

DT: Oh, yes. She grew to love it, and particularly her garden. There

was also another beautiful garden down along the drive that was

known as the English Gardens, done with vegetables and flowers

in it.

CS: You had your own vegetable garden, also?

DT: Oh, yes, but then there was what was known as the Truck Patch,

which was even further below, where the rather unsightly

vegetables, the asparagus and the tomatoes, and things like that

were grown. But the garden that was along the drive, which is

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now meadow—it all had to be hand done—was charming, with

lovely green [unclear], with first daffodils and then tulips.

CS: Oh, it must have been beautiful! Your house is beautiful now; I

can just imagine it with all the flowers surrounding it!

DT: It was rather amusing. Just to finish up with my mother, she was

quiet but very determined, and all the rest of us were typical

Harrison, at least my father’s part of the family.

CS: In what sense?

DT: We always said no to anything new! We detested change, and as

you’re sitting here with me, you will see a wall in front of you that

has many books on it. This was the library in the old days, and the

whole wall was a solid bookcase. But originally, there was a door

leading into the dining room, and my mother decided it would be

much prettier, as indeed it turned out to be, if the door was closed.

Terrible roars from all of us!

CS: She had to fight to get it?

DT: You have to go all the way around, you know, into the hall, to

walk!

CS: [Laughs]

DT: And what made me think of it: in the garden there was a rock she

wanted removed, and she got it removed. But I think the classic

example was the fact that for a long time the house, which is

pebbled ash, was completely covered in ivy—[unclear] ivy, with

sparrows and all kinds of things. So my mother decided that—oh,

this is long, long ago, when I suppose I was about ten. She wanted

to take the ivy off, and there were shouts of outrage from my sister

and my father and myself! “You can’t take the ivy down! It’s

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been there forever.” So she bided her time, and oddly enough, that

particular winter was one of the worst frigid we’d had in a century,

and the ivy just plain died. And it was just pulled off the walls

like, you know, taking wallpaper off a wall. I think providence

came to her assistance.

[Pause in Recording]

CS: One other thing you were telling me, when you were talking about

the Depression, you said it had no effect on your family. The only

reason—you knew there was a Depression, because you had a lot

of people doing odd jobs. You were saying about there was a

pathway?

DT: Yes, it was always called the unemployed path, because it was—

there were, apart from the people on the place, we were, I think

very fortunately, able to help.

CS: To give them odd jobs?

DT: To give them work.

CS: Yeah, that’s nice. Both your parents, I know, are to be admired.

Also, your father—he was, I think of anyone growing up in his

time, everyone knew George L. Harrison in this area.

DT: He had a stutter, also, a rather severe stutter, which didn’t stop him

from doing anything. But what was it he said about himself? He

was cursed with a stutter, but blessed with a superiority complex?

I can remember—something like that! [Laughs]

CS: Oh, really?

DT: But he was known and loved by many people of all ages, and he

did a great deal for people without anybody knowing about it.

CS: Yes, I know that he’s called the great benefactor in so many—

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DT: What?

CS: Not benefactor—is that the right word? In other words—

DT: Well, it’s a good word, but I never knew that.

CS: But I know Mrs. Woolcott speaks about him with the library, as a

benefactor.

DT: Oh, yes. Well, he was.

CS: Yeah, I thought that was—that’s what she had said when I

interviewed her: “If it wasn’t for George L. Harrison we wouldn’t

have had the library.”

DT: No, that is true. There were times when the library was going

through hard times, when my father would just reach into his

pocket and help out.

CS: Well, that’s what she quoted, verbatim, as his being benefactor of

the library. And I know the Historical Society—he was involved

in so many community—

DT: Well, he also for a while was on the Board of Health, a member of

the commission of the Board of Health. He used to tell rather

grisly stories of the doctor, I forget his name, who was head of the

Board of Health, keeping mad dogs’ heads in his icebox, until his

wife finally objected and said, “You have to keep them somewhere

else!” [Laughs] Anyway, that’s a rather grisly story, but those are

the way things were in those days.

CS: Was it something in his nature, or his love for Radnor, that he did

do so much good? I know you’re not even telling us half of it,

because I know different people—

DT: Well, a lot of it I don’t know. I do know of people that he helped,

a few, but I’m sure I don’t know all. It was a tradition in my

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father’s family, it started way back, that if you were fortunate

enough to live comfortably, it was your duty to help those who

were not as fortunate as you. And this is the way we were brought

up. I think often of something I heard many years ago, in which a

comedian spoke the lines that faith, hope, and charity do not mean

the same things as they used to in the old days, that nowadays

Faith is a pretty girl’s name, Hope is a comedian, and Charity is

tax-deductible.

CS: Oh!

DT: But there were [laughs] no tax-deductible things many years ago,

and even so, when they were tax-deductible, my father did many

charitable things that were not tax-deductible, and I hope I have

kept on the tradition.

CS: Yeah, do you think it’s one of the most important values that he

did teach you, to do for others?

DT: Yes, if one was—there’s a charming letter that my grandfather

wrote to my father on my father’s twenty-first birthday, telling him

that his grandfather and great-grandfather had done the same thing,

and he hoped that he would give at least, tithe, a tenth of his

income, no matter what it was, to those less fortunate than himself,

and always to remember that, you know, one should try and help

other people.

CS: That’s wonderful. More people would think that way today.

DT: So we were brought up to do a lot of volunteer work. We used to

drive, probably rather recklessly, when we were young, my sister

and I, to the Neighborhood League, taking patients to the hospital.

CS: Patients from where, what area?

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DT: Oh, just all around Wayne and Devon, and Radnor.

CS: Were these people that were elderly, people that were poor?

DT: Poor, in those days. Let me see.

CS: Was there that much in this area?

DT: Poverty?

CS: Yes.

DT: Yes, I would think, a good bit. I was trying to think what the

Depression years were.

CS: Well, probably I imagine there was a lot of immigrants, Italian

immigrants, that came to work—

DT: Well, there were. There were many—

CS: --and they probably—

DT: There were many Italians in Devon. I remember visiting when

visiting families, they always—no matter how poor they might be

—they always offered me, I always remember, food of some kind,

and particularly pitch black coffee, that was strong. And they were

very good. Then it was driving people to the hospital, and also

taking things to people. It’s a long time ago; I can’t remember

exactly. I know I made one big mistake. My sister had done it one

year, with the help of someone else. We had two station wagons,

and we took a group of underprivileged children—

CS: How old were you?

DT: Well, I was old enough to drive, to I suppose I was probably about

eighteen.

CS: Uh-huh.

DT: To Mr. Gimbel’s Children’s Day at the circus. And I think there

must have been—we had a sign, Neighborhood League, printed,

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with this very proud small boy carrying it. There must have been

about twenty children, I suppose, and I had a couple of friends to

help. So all went well; we went in, parked the cars, and got in.

And Mr. Gimbel gave free ice cream, I think, to all the children.

But then along came a man with that cotton candy stuff, and they

all said, “Oh, couldn’t we have some?” So I was weak-minded, as

usual, and said all right. Well, they ate lots of sweet cotton candy,

and then they wanted water. And you can imagine what happened

after that! I spent my whole time taking them down, between

elephants and all sorts of things, to wherever the sanitary

conveniences were!

CS: You weren’t used to children, so you didn’t know!

DT: No, but I was terrified I was going to lose them! And particularly

on the way home, back to the car, we did lose one small boy

briefly, and it was horrifying!

CS: But they must have been elated, it was something so different for

them!

DT: Oh, they had a marvelous time. But I decided that one could take

good works too far! That was too much for me! [Laughs]

CS: [Laughs] Another interesting thing, I remember you telling me

about getting the mail. It was a little bit different than what we do

today. You had a leather pouch, or something?

DT: Well, it was just a leather mailbag, which actually we still have,

hanging in the pantry. And we had two of them, and one would

carry the outgoing mail, and it would just be hung. And actually

for many years, even when there were post boxes, we still had the

leather mailbag at Saint David’s. But then Radnor Township grew

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to such proportions that we had to, and very sensibly, too, have a

box.

CS: Did you get that much—would you go every day with it?

DT: Oh, yes, twice a day!

CS: You would have that much mail that you needed it?

DT: Not necessarily.

CS: No?

DT: I don’t think they had all this junk mail then.

CS: That we get today, yeah?

DT: No, no, but twice a day.

CS: There was probably more letter-writing then than there is today?

DT: Yes, yes. That’s something—that is, if you’re talking about

gracious things, that is one of the things that has really

disappeared, and I know of only a few people—one of them is a

cousin of mine, Mrs. Clifford, Esther Clifford—who still has the

old art of letter-writing. And it’s a pity!

CS: What is the old art?

DT: Well, it’s just an informative, delightful—

CS: Amusing.

DT: --amusing, well-written letter, like the letters you used to read of

people in the old days, when there weren’t telephones.

CS: Telling in more detail what they’ve done?

DT: Yes.

CS: I think, yeah, I think now the telephone, that has a lot to do with it,

and I think people’s time. Do you think there’s less time today to

write letters, or just don’t bother?

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DT: I think we don’t bother. There should be, you see, with all these

labor-saving conveniences, dishwashers and washing machines.

CS: Because it probably was quite an effort to sit down and to write a

letter like that.

DT: Well, in the old days they did, of course. It was just part of their

lives, to write.

CS: It was a common courtesy.

DT: Just the way it was part of their lives to have people come and stay

for the week, or two weeks, because it took so long by horse to get

from here to there. You just couldn’t go and have lunch, and come

back again. So they wrote longer letters, and they paid longer

house visits.

CS: And I think today, more people think of house guests as being a

nuisance. You don’t get as much of that.

DT: Well you see, I don’t, because I don’t pay too much attention to

them, and that comes from staying in English country houses when

I was a child. Because, oh certainly they would take you around

here and there, and people knew that my mother adored old

houses, so they would make an effort to take her out to tea. But

basically, if you stayed any length of time in an English house, you

were pretty much left to your own devices. And it was—

CS: They would just give you a way of transportation?

DT: No, no! Well, the places were usually rather deep in the country.

And I used to drive a little. Well, we won’t go into the English

part. This is not—Radnor Township. But I don’t mind guests,

because I don’t—I mean, they, well certainly they go to town and

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see the things, and I would certainly show them. But if they stay

for a long weekend or for a week, they—

CS: You were brought up with that?

DT: Yes, and there’s plenty to do, plenty of places to go.

CS: You family, you said when you were growing up, even though you

had governesses, your parents both spent a lot of time with you.

What kinds of things would you do together?

DT: Well, my mother read to us, mostly. And my father did so many

things with us, it was just amazing! Again, and as I said, for that

day, it was surprising. And I think that my father did not want to

compete with Ann, but I don’t know, you see. I don’t know what

Mr. Chew did. But my father did all sorts of things. He took my

sister and me with him all over the place! He very often used to

interrupt the lessons, and if it was a beautiful day and he wasn’t in

town, take us out.

But just as an example, he had a rather small—I guess it was

a Model T. Which was the first? Model A was the first, I guess.

Model T. was the next, little compact thing, with a wheel that had

the accelerator thing on the wheel. You moved it, did it with your

hand. There was a just a brake pedal, yeah. And he used to take

us out, and he would drive. I was often allowed to steer. Of

course, in those days, if you met one car in two hours, you know, it

was great excitement. And the roads were narrow and very often

were dirt, when you went back up country. But my father insisted,

always inclined, I thought rather mean to me, but I would be

tucked in the middle.

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And in those days when you came to a bad corner or a

crossroads, there were wooden signs—I suppose they must have

had the letters, the words, painted on them. And they said: “Go

Slow. Blow Your Horn.” And when I saw one of these, I was

supposed to blow the horn. And if I missed a sign, I had to keep

my eyes shut until we came to the next one. During those ten or

fifteen minutes, my father and my sister would see all kinds of

fascinating sights! They’d see raccoons, they’d see possums. I

knew they didn’t really mean it, but it was terribly tempting! But I

never opened my eyes. And then just as an example, I remember

—

CS: He liked to play jokes?

DT: Yes, well, just sort of nice—

CS: Tease? Tease.

DT: Except when he was supposedly training me to be not afraid of

cows. He would work us gradually up to a herd of cows, having

told us to look at the clouds, and certain things in the trees. And

before we even knew it, we’d be right bang up against a herd of

cows. I’d always been terrified of them! And then, he would fall

on the ground, and say he was having some kind of a fit, or dying,

or something like that! We never knew whether to stay with him,

or run for the nearest fence, or what. I must say, his training in

how not to be afraid of cows was not very successful! [Laughs]

CS: [Laughs]

DT: But anyway, he used—I remember the first time, one of the times

he took us out in this little car, and we drove up—really not very

far, but of course in those days it seemed miles away—we drove

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up around Whitehorse, again all solid, beautiful country. All of a

sudden he said he was lost—hadn’t the faintest idea where he was!

We weren’t particularly worried, because we knew he was fairly

clever at that sort of thing. However, he said, “I think we’ll have

to find some house and ask where we are, so we can get our way

home.”

So we drove around a little bit, and we turned into a rather

large entrance, and approached a good-sized house. And my

father, with his usual expression, said, “Now, pop out, and ring the

bell, and find out where we are.” And then he added, “If the parlor

maid looks pleasant, ask her if we can have tea.” And we were so

embarrassed! Oh, we can’t do something! You don’t ask

somebody! Well obviously, it had all been arranged. He called

Mrs. X and said, “I’m arriving with my two daughters at four-

thirty,” and there was Mrs. X. and tea, and cucumber sandwiches

and things, waiting for us. But he would do all sorts of things like

that.

CS: Oh, you know, I think even today, that’s unusual for a father, to go

through so much effort, and spend so much time! And it seems he

enjoyed being with his daughters?

DT: Well, he also had a system which was supposed to keep us from

being afraid of the dark!

CS: Oh, what was that?

DT: Well, that was going into his dressing room on the second floor. It

was called “pitch black night”, and we would take turns. The

lights would all be off, and my sister and I would hide, and turn off

the light. And then he would come in. And he had a flashlight—

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you weren’t allowed to use it very much. And he was supposed to

find us in the dark. And then we would do it the other way around:

he would hide, and we would try to find him. But the only time

that—

CS: Did it work?

DT: Well, I was always frightened of the dark! No, no, I don’t—they

were very interesting experiments, but I’m not sure that they were

—[laughs]

CS: That’s a shame, all the effort put forth!

DT: No, but it was fun, though. It was great fun, all the same. You

know, we were sort of—well, I suppose it’s like these horror

movies that children go to see now, only not was horrible. It was

really great fun, because it was your own father! We were partly

frightened, and partly enchanted.

CS: That’s so unusual! It’s nice to have your nice memories. Did your

parents give very many parties?

DT: Oh, yes.

CS: Do you remember—I’m sure they must have entertained much

differently than we do now?

DT: Well, of course, again, go back to the same thing: they had plenty

of people to help! But the big difference, of course, was that for a

dinner party of fourteen, the men would wear white ties and tails,

not just dinner jackets, and the women the most beautiful evening

dresses. And we used to be allowed to watch through the banisters

on the first floor landing when the guests came in. And it really

was, it was a very beautiful sight. I suppose they had a dinner

party, well, at least once a week.

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CS: And people would come in gowns?

DT: Oh, the most beautiful evening dresses, yes, and the men with

white tie and tails, just for a dinner party!

CS: Would it just be dinner, and then they would go home.

DT: Yes. They would have—there were no cocktails in those days.

They would spend about—and very punctual. Usually if you were

invited for eight, you arrived about five minutes to eight?

CS: Everyone arrived together?

DT: Well, more or less.

CS: Mm-hm.

DT: And then fifteen or twenty minutes just standing in the drawing

room, drinking sherry, and then in to a very delicious dinner. And

then afterwards, the men would stay in the dining room, with port

and cigars, and the women would go into the drawing room and

have their coffee. And then at a certain time the men would join

the ladies, and they’d sit.

CS: Isn’t that funny! You know, you see it in the movies all the time,

but you can’t imagine it really happened that way!

DT: There was one lovely instance, and I think it was Mr. George

McFadden. I was always terribly shy, and I don’t know what

inspired me this time, but we were watching the guests coming in,

and I sort of walked a little bit down the staircase, sort of rushing

up and down, giggling. And he said, “I’ll give a box of chocolates

to the first one who gives me a kiss!” And I couldn’t believe

myself! I darted downstairs and gave him a kiss, and shot back

upstairs again. And two days the later the most beautiful great box

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of chocolates from Marrell’s came, addressed to me. He had kept

his word! [Laughs]

CS: How old were you then?

DT: Oh, I suppose about six or seven?

CS: So you remember?

DT: Then when we were older, in our early teens, my mother felt it was

good for us to learn how to behave in company, older company,

and we were allowed to come down and just be around with the

guests while they had sherry before dinner. But that was—

CS: How old were you then, when you were allowed to do that?

DT: I suppose anywhere from ten.

CS: You were—

DT: Oh, just small, yes. Just—

CS: Not dinner, just before?

DT: Oh, heavens, no! Although the rest of the time, when we were

quite small, we had supper at a card table in the dining room, early,

because my mother was very strict about our food, and about going

to bed early. And then when we got older, we had dinner earlier,

at seven, so we had dinner with the family.

[Pause in Recording]

CS: --a lot of governesses.

DT: Well, as a matter of fact, to be quite honest with you, my informal

education ended when I was sixteen. I think I was—the year I was

fifteen was the last year I was taught anything. So that there were

just really two governesses, one very firm, the first one, a Canadian

woman, who was the only one who could ever make me see any

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sense in mathematics. And we got as far as algebra, let X equal the

unknown quantity, and from then on has been an X to me!

CS: Did you have a favorite subject?

DT: Well, always English. As you know, having been through this

house, the house is stacked with books and bookcases.

CS: You liked to read?

DT: No, I was just very lazy. I did as little work as possible, and that

was continued through—

CS: I don’t believe that! Knowing you, I don’t believe that!

DT: Absolutely true! And then the second governess, when the

Canadian had to leave to go back to Canada, was charming but

totally vague! A character, was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College,

had gray hair and looked the same for the next thirty years. And

she knew nothing about mathematics either, and I did a great deal

of Latin. And we had somebody who came once or twice a week

to talk French with us. And from the second governess, I learned

mostly history of art, and again, we just read a great deal.

But from the point of view of anything practical, no. And it

shows how little I knew about mathematics. I’m quite honest in

saying that it was only about six or seven years ago that I

discovered that plane geometry was spelled P-L-A-N-E and not P-

L-A-I-N! So you could see that I am not much of a

mathematician! [Laughs] But reading—always. Always reading.

CS: Well, they say as long as you can read—teach someone to read,

and they can learn almost anything.

DT: Well, they said that with The Joy of Cooking cookbook: if you can

read, you can cook. But I’m not sure I’d agree with that, either.

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CS: And then after you were done high school, age eighteen, did you

continue going--?

DT: Well, I didn’t. No, you see, I never had any lessons after I was

fifteen.

CS: You didn’t have any ambition to go to college or anything?

DT: Well scarcely, with the education I’d had. Although I suppose I

could have gone, perhaps, if I put my mind to it. I will have to just

tell you one rather amusing thing, because I did get a diploma.

Perhaps I’ve told you this before?

CS: No.

DT: Well, I did get a diploma. And I don’t lose many things, but this

was one thing that I regret sincerely having lost. It was a diploma

from the New York University saying I was literate! And it was

very grand, and done as a regular diploma, [unclear].

CS: Was this an honorary?

DT: No, it wasn’t. When I was first married I lived in New York. We

lived down in a delightful section of West Ninth Street, just about

two blocks from Washington Square. My father was on the staff

of the hospital and teaching. And we’d been in New York six

months, and the time came to vote. I always voted; I believe

strongly in it.

So we went around the corner to register, and it was—parts

of New York in those days were just like small towns. And they

behaved, as I perhaps would have if I had been sitting as a

volunteer registering—of course, my husband had his A.M.A.

card, and other things. And they said to me, jokingly, “What do

you have to prove you’ve had an education?” And I, like an idiot,

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said, “I’ve never been to school.” So they smiled happily, and they

said, “You will have to take a literacy test.” So I had to go—

CS: No, you seriously had to?

DT: Seriously! They told me I had to. So I had to go to a public school

on Bleeker Street, with my Phi Beta Kappa husband waiting

anxiously in the next room. Went into this great big room—I was

petrified! There was a woman sitting at one end of a long table,

and about four dark-haired, East European looking types, sitting,

sort of scratching their heads and looking at papers. And she gave

me three papers, and she said, “Answer the questions on the first

sheet, and then sign them in triplicate.” Well, I’d had tests, even

with the governess. And so of course the first thing I did was to

look at the questions, and I didn’t know the answer to any of them!

And I almost died!

CS: What kind of questions were they?

DT: Well, who was Kosciusko, and when did Washington bring him to

West Point? And a whole lot off—there were six questions. So I

took a deep breath, and I started over. And I started at the top of

the page, and there were very brief, simple sentences. All you had

to do was to read them, look at the questions, and really just copy

down the sentences, just to show that you could read and write!

But then you were given a diploma, to say that you were literate!

Well, over the years, now it is thirty-two years--my first

husband was Phi Beta Kappa and brilliant. My second husband

was brilliant. My son is Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. And

here I was without anything to show that I had any education

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whatsoever! And I kept meaning to call up New York and find

out.

And so finally, just about three months ago, I called the

Information Operator, and I told her this sad story! And she got so

interested in it that she gave me three places to call. And finally,

the third one I called was the Bureau of Elections, I suppose, not

the Bureau of Education. And yes indeed, they still give diplomas

for the literacy tests, but although they’ve kept the records of the

people who were able to read and write, they never kept the

diplomas! So my one last hope for hanging a diploma right smack

in the front hall as you come in the door is gone!

CS: But at least you know you passed?

DT: I passed, absolutely! I passed the literacy test.

CS: [Laughs] Oh, that’s a great story! I can’t believe that. After living

so many years and being so—I mean, you’re obviously very

intelligent—to have to go through something like that!

DT: They did it for fun!

CS: [Laughs] For fun? Was there any leisure time activities of your

childhood that you think have been worthwhile to you as an adult,

that you carry through with you?

DT: Well, yes, very definitely. The thing that I think has helped a great

many people of that generation was the fact that you had to

entertain yourself a great deal. At least, I’m talking about people

who lived in the country. There, of course, thank God, we no

television. I don’t think we had a radio for quite a while. And

after lessons, we would, my sister and I would just let loose! And

we had plenty of space to amuse ourselves on our own property.

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One of the things that we were brought up, and I still believe

in it strongly, was you do not trespass, so that before we were

allowed to go into the fields and down to the stream, and Mr.

William Montgomery’s place, with adjoins ours—although Mr.

William Montgomery was an old and good friend of my father’s,

and came to lunch almost every other Sunday. But before we went

into his fields, and down by his stream, we had write him a letter

and ask him if we could go.

CS: Oh, my!

DT: Oh, yes.

CS: So it had to be on a certain day?

DT: No, no. No, we could go anytime. But before we went, even

though he was an old friend, we had to ask if we could go on his

property.

CS: That’s—

DT: And we got a letter back from him saying, “Yes, of course, and use

it as if it were your own place.” So we not only had our own place

here, but we had a marvelous stream, and a little stream going into

it, which I think at one point—I’ve listened to some of Mrs.

Barringer’s tapes—she said finding crawfish and things in the

stream. And we used to go, feeling underneath the banks of the

little stream. You never knew, quite knew what you were going to

come across—a frog, or something. And then on the place here we

made trails. We had tents here and there, and we played cowboys

and Indians. We made up all kinds of sort of stories and things.

CS: So you learned how to occupy yourself no matter—

DT: Yes!

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CS: You were never bored?

DT: Well, we weren’t. The only thing—no, no. We did go to that

dancing class, and I had music lessons when, oh, I guess when I

was young. But there was none of this business of being driven

here and there to all kinds of activities. We used to roller skate in

Rittenhouse Square, when we lived in town in the winters. My

great aim before the age of seven was to be able to skate on two-

wheeled skates, but I never did.

CS: Isn’t it funny how it’s the rage again now?

DT: I know. Well, I went skating for the first time since I left

Rittenhouse Square, which was when I was seven, during the war,

when I was working as a volunteer Red Cross nurse’s aide at the

Philadelphia Journal, and some of the interns were awfully nice.

And they were all heading into the war after they left, and I used to

ask them out here for lunch, and they’d ask me out. And one of

them, who came from a little town in Minnesota, was of

Scandinavian descent. My mother used to call him the day-old

chick. He had very blond, rather fine hair. Asked me to go roller

skating with him one night. I thought, “I can do this, you know,

roller skating once more.” So we went to a place called the Chez

Nous or the Chez Vous, or something.

CS: Oh, the Chez Vous! That was there for years!

DT: Was it?

CS: Yes, yes!

DT: [Laughs] Well, all was well, and I put on the skates, and I started

around, and I thought, “This is great; I’m as good as I ever way.”

However, came the time to stop, and in Rittenhouse Square there

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was always either a place with pebbles, or a tree that you could,

you know, run into and stop. But at Chez Nous there was nothing

to hold! And I kind of kept skating around for rather longer than I

meant to! [Laughs] But of course, when we came out in the

country, there was no place to skate.

But we did—just as an example, I must have been quite

small, we were—my sister and I—were exploring through the

woods, and I came upon a tree that had a little hole at the bottom of

it—a big, big tree—which I decided immediately belonged to a

mouse. And I spent a whole afternoon landscaping the entrance to

the mouse hole. I had to go quite a distance to get little pebbles

from the driveway, and I had to go and find little things that looked

like trees, and little flowers. And it took me all afternoon, and I

remember thinking when it was time to come home how pleased

that mouse would be when he discovered that his hole had all been

landscaped! He had a driveway, and everything.

CS: I think that just shows one of the major changes. I mean, now a

child will have a room full of toys, and they’re still bored.

DT: Well, there was a marvelous cartoon in the New Yorker some years

ago of a small boy sitting in a house with a picture window, and

it’s snowing outside. And he’s looking at the television, and on the

television it was snowing, and the small boy was building a

snowman. [Laughs] I mean, it just says everything!

CS: Yeah, it does. Did you feel that you passed this on also to your

son? To teach him to amuse himself?

DT: Oh, yes. He was never—I never even suggested giving him music

lessons. He was forced to go to dancing class for a couple of

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years; he fought it bitterly. And then I gave that up. He went, of

course, to school, and played—didn’t go to boarding school. He

went right through—

CS: Locally?

DT: Well, Episcopal Academy, and played soccer. But I don’t

remember doing anything much to entertain him, and I don’t—

well, there probably was television then, but he certainly—I don’t

ever remember him sitting in front of the television!

CS: Sitting there for hours, like children do now?

DT: Oh, heavens, no! Certainly, when he first came to live here when

he was three years old—because when my mother died I came

back from New York. My husband died after I was only married a

year and a half, and I stayed on in New York for three years. And

then when my son was three years old, my mother died. I came

back here to look after the house, when my father had still a large

household. And there was no television then, when he was three,

and I can’t remember when we got it. But I never remember him

sitting and looking at it! He will now; he’ll stay up until twelve or

one o’clock to watch a Star Trek movie. He’s now thirty-two and

a doctor! And an occasional football game—but he doesn’t—he

just doesn’t.

CS: No, well it is a bad habit now.

DT: He also read a great deal. I read a great deal to him.

CS: Yeah.

DT: So that he’s always read a great deal.

CS: And your mother did the same thing to you?

DT: Yes.

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CS: Isn’t that funny? When you reached a certain age, did they do

anything differently than they do today, finishing off, before

you’re going to start dating? You said dance class.

DT: Well, the word dating wasn’t even—

CS: Courting?

DT: I don’t know what. We talked about beaux in those days.

CS: Was there chaperoning at all?

DT: No, not really. I was not allowed to be driven by them; the

chauffeur would drive me to a party. And my mother, who never

could get used to the idea that when I was eighteen, people didn’t

arrive on the dot like they used to. In fact, we used to be about half

an hour late. So she’d start me off at the proper time to get where I

was going at the stroke of eight o’clock, but didn’t know that

halfway there we’d pull off to the side of the road and wait for half

an hour, [laughs] so I wouldn’t be the first one to arrive!

CS: [Laughs]

DT: I’m terribly punctual! That is, if I’ve inherited anything from my

family, I’m abysmally punctual.

CS: Which is a good habit! I think it’s a courtesy, which most people

don’t oblige too much.

DT: Well, I agree with you. I have, some of my dearest friends are

always late, and every once in a while, I blow at them. I say it’s

utterly selfish! There’s no reason why they should be late.

Younger generation, children and babysitters—there, I don’t say

anything, because they have a really—

CS: More of an excuse?

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DT: They have more of an excuse. But I think that it is—it is

discourteous to be late.

CS: You also mentioned, growing up, the country here, that no longer

exists, really. The country, I think right here in this area, years ago

I think there’d be a lot of—I think your house is one of the most,

the last remaining, where there’s a lot of land surrounding?

DT: [Unclear]

CS: No, as I’m saying—but there’s not that many, as I’m saying.

DT: Oh, yes. No, no, there are not.

CS: How many acres is here?

DT: When we first—when I first remember, there were houses on the

tops of hills, and oddly enough, if you drive around, you’ll notice

it’s a very rolling country, but there are hilltops, definite hilltops.

There’s this one, which I believe is supposed to be one of the

highest. Then there’s a house that was across from the Wright’s

place, Ravenscliff, which is being developed into what I consider

extremely pretentious houses on a handkerchief of land. I’d rather

have a little house on a larger piece of land, but then—

CS: Well, how many acres surround your house?

DT: About thirty-six.

CS: That’s a nice walk! [Laughs]

DT: Yes, and I enjoy every minute of it. And I walk, usually when I

have the time, which is almost, I walk three miles. I can walk

around four times inside the place, walking on the [unclear] drive-

CS: And you never get bored, walking?

DT: No, because there is—except possibly—well, even in the winter.

But in the spring, every two days there’s a different flower in the

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woods, or in the summer there’s a different flower in the meadows.

And we alternate the different colors.

CS: You’ve inherited your mother’s love for the outdoors?

DT: My father’s yes.

CS: Him also?

DT: My father was the one, yes. He spent all, as much time as possible

outdoors. Yes, we were brought up to be outdoor children, and

more so because we didn’t go to school. We had so much spare

time! And one other thing that we used to do—I think it rather

irritates my friends—I know one thing that irritated them: you see,

we never had to get up with an alarm clock. The governess didn’t

arrive ‘til nine o’clock. And so when we had friends that went to

school, and who came to spend the weekend, we would wake up

with the birds! You know, when you don’t have to wake up with

an alarm clock, you do wake up. And so we would wonder why,

when we woke them at seven-thirty, to go out for a walk before

breakfast, they didn’t seem to be too happy about it!

CS: [Laughs]

DT: They preferred to sleep in! And I realized that when I working in

then hospital, during the war. I was doing five days a week, and

I’d have to wake myself up with an alarm clock, so I got the seven-

ten Paoli local in. And I realized then what it was like to be waked

up by an alarm clock. But as we didn’t go to school, we just did—

we had much more time to be out. And one of the reasons I never

learned Bridge was that I thought, in the days when my friends

were all learning Bridge, that it meant just sitting indoors. Even

now, when the sun is shining, I can’t bare to be indoors!

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CS: You know, you always talk about volunteer work. Do you feel that

there’s as much volunteer work going on today as there was when

you were growing up?

DT: Perhaps not quite in the same way. But I was tremendously

impressed by—I was on the Budget Committee, one of the budget

committees of the United Way for six years. And I was—this was

—the time goes so quickly, I can’t remember how long ago. It was

still called the United Fund then, so I suppose it’s probably, what?

Twelve years ago, or more. But I was tremendously impressed by

the men, the businessmen, the lawyers, bankers, and what have

you, who gave their time for the United Fund. And now that’s a

kind of volunteer work that you don’t think of.

CS: Yeah.

DT: There were many men in business who would come. There’d be a

luncheon, usually, but it would last for an hour and a half. That’s a

lot of time out of the day, for someone who has a business.

CS: Yeah.

DT: And that is still, I’m sure, true.

CS: I guess with so many women working, you don’t find as much of

that, like the everyday type of thing, where someone is supposed to

be a certain--?

DT: Well, the Candy Stripers, remember, in the hospital?

CS: Yeah.

DT: No, no, I think it’s—

CS: But it doesn’t seem as much—

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DT: But you see, in the hospitals I don’t think they have these paid

nurse’s aides now. But the Gray Ladies do good work. There are

plenty of volunteers in hospitals!

CS: Do you think there’s anything in this area, on the Main Line, that

we have that’s unique, that other areas don’t have? It could be

anything.

DT: No, except the fact that if somebody says they come from the Main

Line, it’s supposed to mean something terribly grand. And if

somebody asks me where I come from, and I have to say—I

usually say near Bryn Mawr, because a lot of people know about

Bryn Mawr College. But they push: “Is that near Chestnut Hill?”

I say, “Other side of the river. It’s on the Main Line.” And then I

quickly say, “You know, the Main Line was only called that

because it was on the main line of the Columbia and Something-

or-other Railroad. It has nothing to do with—the word ‘main’

being used in another connotation, meaning principal, or better, or

best.”

CS: I think it’s just, it’s had some connotations—

DT: As a matter of fact, I keep on, sort of apologizing for it!

CS: [Laughs] Is there—what do you think is the biggest change you’ve

seen in this area, Radnor, Wayne?

DT: Oh, just the building of very cheaply put up houses, and I regret to

say, the loss of green space.

CS: Yeah, I think even if you want to put the money out for a well-built

house, you can’t get it today.

DT: I was fascinated, because Mrs. Hayward’s property, who ever since

I can remember joined ours on the Conestoga Road side of the

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property—was sold some years ago. I think the family valiantly

tried to sell it to one person, but it ended up by fortunately only

two houses being built, which are just at the foot of the driveway

of the Brook Road drive. And I watched them being built. The

house nearest is stucco. I saw the roof being put on; it’s not as

badly built as some. It has, sort of, some clumps of brown

Pennsylvania stone sort of put on a little bit of the front. And the

garage has a rather more elegant little—I don’t know what they

thought it was, a cupola or something, on the tope of it.

But I watched it being built, and it’s a small house, relatively

small house, and it’s quite close to the road. The cars go whipping

up and down Brook Road now. In the old days, if you saw a car

once in goodness knows when, I guess! I remember Mrs. Hayward

chasing pigs on Brook Road! Not being bothered by the traffic at

all, because there was no traffic! But that house, I believe, sold for

a hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars! Now, I cannot

believe it!

CS: Well, I’m looking right out the window at your house. I don’t

think any house could ever be built like this today.

DT: No, you couldn’t! It is so solidly built, and this is all due to Mr.

Barringer’s carefulness.

CS: And they built it at a time when they did. I mean, even the

furniture built from back then.

DT: But this is especially! This is especially built. The charm of this

house is, first of all, I think, the workmanship. If you notice in

many of the rooms—this room is actually the simplest—but the

pilasters, and the dentils along above the ceiling, the paneling. In

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the drawing room, the pilasters are more elegant, with Corinthian

tops. But the wood work, the workmanship in this house, is simply

beautiful.

CS: Yes.

DT: Also, it is so solidly built. The wall that goes by the stairs is solid

brick, and the cellar—it could really have been, in the old days, an

ordinary bomb shelter! It is tremendous, with great, thick stones.

Actually, when we were small, the joke was to take—in those

days, they had coal furnaces with coal burners in them. We used

to take friends down—we knew our way around—and turn off the

lights and let them find their way out, if they could!

CS: Cruel! [Laughs]

DT: It was really very spooky and fun. But you just, you do not—this

is an incredible house!

CS: Well, when I first saw this house—I loved the movie Gone with

the Wind. I love that whole era, and it reminded me of that. I

thought there was—I couldn’t believe it! I never thought a house

like that existed anymore.

DT: It’s very solid—very solid.

CS: Do you hope to—do you think your son has much interest in this

area, that it will be, continue in your family?

DT: Well, he loves it, but unfortunately, you see, the house does not

belong to me. It belongs in a trust to my sister, who lives in

Canada, and is an absolute darling, and myself. So that I cannot

hand it on to my son.

CS: Because you were talking about the Wright estate. You hate to see

something like that ever happen to something so beautiful!

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DT: Yes. Well of course, what happens if I cannot on living here,

because of inflation, or if my sister dies? And I suppose, I don’t

know what will happen to it.

CS: Well, you never know. Perhaps you could find an owner that has

as much love, that would want it.

DT: It’s really—it looks much larger than it really is, because it’s got

very high ceilings, which makes the three floors look very high.

CS: How many rooms is there, actually?

DT: I think thirty. I don’t know; it depends on what you count. But

what makes it look larger is the big wing on the left, and the other

wing, and the height of it. The central part of the house is—well, I

suppose, being born here, I’m used to it! [Laughs] So it doesn’t

seem so large to me!

CS: To me it seems rather very large!

DT: But it’s not a difficult—it’s really not a difficult—except the

heating. We discovered last winter that putting heavy plywood

over all the fireplaces except the one in my sitting room—we have

ten fireplaces in the house, fireplaces in the bedrooms.

CS: Do you use them?

DT: Not upstairs. Oh, the one in my sitting room is used all the time.

My son would use it even in the summer, he loved it so.

CS: Oh! Is there anything from your past that you wish was still here

today? Still existed?

DT: No, I don’t think so. I trust that I am philosophical enough—I

hope I will be—when it is time to leave that I will, this place which

I love so, to leave it gracefully. I consider it a part of my life that I

was more than fortunate to have, at the moment now, sixty-three

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years. I have committed myself to a Quaker place for the retired in

another ten years.

CS: Where’s that at?

DT: Kendal, Longwood. I feel the Quakers—oh yes, in the country.

It’s near Longwood—

CS: Pennsylvania country?

DT: Oh, yes. Longwood Gardens. It’s between Longwood Gardens

and the Brandywine Museum.

CS: Oh, okay!

DT: And they are trying to keep it green, and quite—

CS: You come from a Quaker background?

DT: Oh, yes, my father’s family. They were not pioneers, as so many

wonderful families in the United States were. There’s a lovely

saying about the Quakers, that they started out by doing good, and

ended up by doing well. And yes, two members of my father’s

family.

CS: Not strict Quaker?

DT: Oh, me? No, no. We used to go to—no, it’s been diluted. But my

father’s first ancestor in Philadelphia, Nicolas Waln, spelled W-A-

L-N, came with Penn on the Welcome. And Don Harrison came in

the early 1700’s. They were both Quakers. And then the Morris

family, I don’t think they were Quakers; they were something else.

CS: That’s interesting. Well, is there anything, Mrs. Therman, that we

didn’t cover, that you’d like to?

DT: I think I’ve talked too much! [Laughs] As usual!

CS: No, it’s been a delight! Oh, it’s been an absolute delight! Thank

you.

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[End of Interview]

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