Christine Thompson

22 December 1941 – 13 May 2020

By Peter Howe, Glasgow

In the early 1970s, Christine was a striking and unusual figure in the Grange Village, which was a community of colourful characters. A housemother in her early thirties, she was a bit older than the wave of new young co-workers who were pouring in to Camphill communities all over the world. They emerged from the pop culture revolution of the 1960s, but Christine was as much influenced by the earlier Beat generation: those dissident, somewhat lost souls, the first of the antiestablishment, protest generations, who set out ‘on the road’ and never felt entirely at home on this earth. She had travelled a lot, in the United States and a year living in Florence. Something of the Italian Renaissance seemed to cling to Christine at that time. Her profile, with aristocratic nose tilted, not arrogantly but enquiringly, evoked a Florentine portrait. With her contemplative yet purposeful walk, in ankle-length skirts of Indian print cheesecloth, Christine was elegant and modest, artistic yet restrained. With time, the fabrics changed but the style always remained.

For us younger volunteers, and some of the older ‘staff children’, Christine’s room became a focus for social getting together. At the top of the Grange mansion house, it was lined with books and art prints, chairs draped, liked Christine herself, in Indian cotton, and there we talked into the night about ideals, politics, art, community, ecology and people.

Some time after this, she moved north to Murtle Estate to take over the Camphill Bookshop from Maria Selinger, its founder. Murtle Lodge was to be her home and the Bookshop her work, for the rest of her life.

The Bookshop was Christine’s masterpiece. Already a jewel in the necklace of Camphill projects strung along the River Dee outside Aberdeen, it really began to shine with her organization and flair. With books, and also with art, Christine had perfect pitch.

It was an ideal situation for Christine as she grew older, living at the end of the long Murtle drive, literally on the edge of the community, supported by it, making her unique contribution to it, and with distance from it. The Lodge, as well as the shop, was immaculate, artistic and unpretentious. With its flower beds and window boxes – geraniums in the kitchen window – it was the world’s welcome to Murtle.

As Camphill evolved and the digital age was born, Christine found herself unable, and unwilling, to keep pace. The Bookshop became an increasingly hidden treasure. Small bookshops everywhere struggled, surviving only ifp of the Grange mansion house, it was lined with books and art prints, chairs draped, like Christine herself, in Indian cotton, and there we talked into the night about ideals, politics, art, community, ecology and people. Christine herself did not present strong views but was a catalyst, interested in others’ lives and ideas. Although she liked jazz, she didn’t inflict this on us, and the soundtrack was inevitably Leonard Cohen, playing quietly, mournfully in the background. Her prevailing mood of melancholia led one of the witty sons of co-workers to call her room the ‘Dolorous Tour,’ an Arthurian reference which she stuck on the door.

She had an open, enquiring mind toward everyone’s ideas and beliefs, but was also sceptical, never nailing her colours to anyone else’s mast. She struggled with belief, perhaps because of her upbringing in a Jehovah’s Witness family. She was an exponent of vegetarianism, organic produce and ecological values decades before these things became popular and when, in fact, you were considered odd if you practised them. In Camphill, she found a safe haven for these values. She had mentors there whom she loved and looked up to, such as Tamar and Baruch Urieli. A hard-working, impressively organised housemother, she nonetheless lived on the edge of the community, dividing her life between a year or two in the Grange and time living in London, where she assisted in the Rudolf Steiner Bookshop near the British Museum.

Always a private person, there was never a glimpse into Christine’s romantic life. It was, then, a complete and delightful surprise to her friends when, in her forties, she entered a relationship with a TV producer in London. When his life ended in tragic circumstances, it was a devastating event from which, I think, she never fully recovered.

they diversified and had an online presence. This was anathema to Christine who remained faithful to her original vision: devotion to books and the simple, profound act of reading. It’s also true to say that Christine’s solitary and melancholy nature often got the better of her; her remarks could drive customers away and also friends were hurt. She knew this, spoke of it with sadness and regret, but could not change. At the same time, she was quietly faithful in keeping up contact with old friends.

Christine never stopped travelling. Late in life there were trips back to Italy, and she used her days off to cover an extraordinary amount of territory in Scotland, mostly by bus. Visiting galleries, concerts, art centres and places of interest, she usually returned with a story, an encounter, a small discovery to relate to whoever would listen.

It seems fitting that Christine has passed on in this in-between time of lockdown. She will have no community send-off – traditionally one of the hallmarks of Camphill – and I imagine this would be exactly how she would want it. To celebrate her life, she would prefer we take a walk instead, a bike ride or a bus, a gallery visit when they open again, or best of all, that we read a few books.