Quaker Aristocrats

A QUAKER CHILDHOOD: 1871-1888--Helen Thomas Flexner--Yale University Press ($3).

Taboo in the Thomas family of Baltimore were dancing, card playing, the theatre, discussion of politics and sex, quarreling and demonstrativeness. But the Thomases, descendants of Quaker Founder George Fox, were not such strict Quakers as Grandmother Whitall: when she came visiting, they hid the piano. Under great stress one of the family taboos might be broken: Dr. Thomas made an apoplectic exception to denounce Cleveland as too radical. When it came time to tell the children about the Facts of Life, Dr. Thomas said it was Mrs. Thomas' place to tell their four sons, and that their four daughters need not be told at all.

Beautiful, dynamic Mrs. Thomas, head of as many Quaker committees as her husband, was a sympathetic, adored but firm mother. "I love you, my children," she declared, "but I do not love your faults." Her children were passionate rivals for her affection and approval. Discouraging emotionalism, she told them she would rather hold a brick than a hand. Her maternal compliment on personal appearance was high praise: "Thee will pass in a crowd."

Less picturesque than such better known family memoirs as Life With Father, Grandma Called It Carnal, Mencken's Happy Days, Author Flexner's story of her girlhood is nevertheless charming Americana. Quaker-plain in the telling, it is noteworthy among oldsters' memoirs for one fact in particular: despite Author Flexner's pleasant memories, she evokes the unmistakable stresses and veiled repressions that lay under the surface.

As a substitute for religion and boy friends, she turned to Swinburn's poetry. Youngest son Frank, although his father's pet, was addicted to melancholy, once burst out: "Nobody loves me in my own house." There was friction between her parents, though it was oblique or hidden. A characteristic tiff came about when Mrs. Thomas, inspired by Tolstoi's My Religion, began giving handouts to any and all beggars. Said Dr. Thomas at last: "I admire Tolstoi in many ways, but he has no common sense, and he lives in the country."

Author Flexner, 68-year-old wife of famed Pathologist Simon Flexner, is a cousin and contemporary of Logan Pearsall Smith, whose witty Unforgotten Years last year described a more sophisticated Philadelphia branch of the family.

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