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 2

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.
THERMAN 3

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--?
THERMAN 4

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?
THERMAN 5

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.
THERMAN 6

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?
THERMAN 7

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
THERMAN 8

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?
THERMAN 9

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
THERMAN 10

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?
THERMAN 11

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!
THERMAN 12

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.
THERMAN 13

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
THERMAN 14

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
THERMAN 15

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—
THERMAN 16

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
THERMAN 17

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?
THERMAN 18

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,
THERMAN 19

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
THERMAN 20

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?
THERMAN 21

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
THERMAN 22

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.
THERMAN 23

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
THERMAN 24

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—
THERMAN 25

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.
THERMAN 26

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
THERMAN 27

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
THERMAN 28

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.
THERMAN 29

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,
THERMAN 30

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
THERMAN 31

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.
THERMAN 32

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!
THERMAN 33

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
THERMAN 34

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
THERMAN 35

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.
THERMAN 36

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?
THERMAN 37

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
THERMAN 38

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!
THERMAN 39

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—
THERMAN 40

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
THERMAN 41

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
THERMAN 42

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!
THERMAN 43

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
THERMAN 44

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.
THERMAN 45

[End of Interview]