Abbot Thayer: A Short Visit with the Thayers, Pt. 2

"The Sisters" by Abbott Thayer

"Uncle Abbott was a great talker because he was just bubbling over with ideas all the time, and his talk stimulated ideas in other people. He was the center of attraction for many interesting and unusual people. George De Forest Brush, another well-known painter of that time, was a friend of Uncle Abbott. They had studied in Paris together. The Brushes lived near Dublin, New Hampshire, too, at the time I used to go there. Mr. Brush had six children. Other interesting or famous people I met there were Alan Seeger, a poet; Percy McKaye, writer and playwright; Randolph Bourne, another writer; and Rockwell Kent, painter, writer, architect, carpenter, and fighter for human rights.

For several summers, Mark Twain was in Dublin. I always felt very thrilled that I had met and shaken hands with him. When Mr. James Bryce, the English historian and scholar, was Ambassador to the U.S., the summer Embassy was in Dublin, and Mr. Bryce was a frequent visitor of Uncle Abbott. By that time automobiles were in use and Mr. Bryce rather upset the 'high society' of Dublin by walking everywhere in true English style. There were a couple of young Lords in Mr. Bryce's entourage who rather thrilled me at the time.

Dr. Edward Emerson, son of Ralph Waldo Emerson, had a summer place in Peterboro and used often to ride over on his horse to see Uncle Abbott. He was a friend of long-standing. Louis Fuertes, the painter and naturalist, was a good friend of Uncle Abbott.

Before I entirely dismiss the Thayers from my story I must tell you a funny tale, connected only slightly with them, of an escapade of mine that dogged my footsteps like a ghost for years till after I graduated from college. One time when I was about 13, I think, Gra [Abbott Thayer's son, the author's cousin] was visiting us and told us that he had once caught grasshoppers, fried them and eaten them and found them very good! Well, he was persuasive. We got a sheet, went into a big field and ran along holding one edge of the sheet near the ground. The captured grasshoppers we fried, and then chopped up and put into sandwiches as a filling. These sandwiches we then brought home and offered to our two families as delicacies. The joke was, from one aspect, that without knowing what was in the sandwich both families liked them! But when the secret was out Papa's cousin was horrified at the thought. She was more horrified at me and considered me some kind of monster. That crime dogged me for years!"

(Excerpts from "My Berkshire: Childhood Recollections written for my children and grandchildren" by Eleanor F. Grose.)