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| Abbott Thayer, "Stevenson Memorial" |
"Being with Uncle Abbott was like suddenly coming out into a new physical world of light and color because he made you see so much in everything around you. But the mental and moral world was even more thrilling and exciting. I always felt as if the dimensions of my life grew in every way while I was with him. With them, the Thayers, everything and everybody was treated on their own merits, nothing was done for show or because other people did it. They had no institutional religion and never went to church but had an exceptional love of things and people of beauty and value in the world. You can see from what I have said before about myself how greatly I was influenced by them.
Among the normal run of people they were a queer family. Uncle Abbott was, in his time, one of the well-known and distinguished painters of the country. They had lots of unusual and different ways of living. His first wife died of tuberculosis so he was very apprehensive that his children might have it; therefore he thought that if they lived outdoors all the time they wouldn't get it. So their house in Dublin, which was only built for a summer home, was not heated in the winter except by open fires and the kitchen stove and small stove in the bathroom to keep the pipes from freezing.
Each member of the family had a little hut in the woods, open on one side, and there they slept winter and summer, in sleeping bags in the winter with hot water bottles and all sorts of warm clothes. When I visited them, in the winter, I think when I was in college, I slept on a balcony and I can remember now how cold it was to get undressed and into that cold bed even with a hot water bottle."
To be continued
(Excerpts from "My Berkshire: Childhood Recollections written for my children and grandchildren" by Eleanor F. Grose.)
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