I encountered Jock Davenport '59 at breakfast on Saturday (he was on campus for the meeting of the National Council), and we shared stories about Refectory supervision. Jock said that when he was in school he heard stories about dinner during the Founder's Era. Founder's Era students, of course, came to dinner more formally attired than any of their successors. In Jock's day, the rumor was that the suit required during the Founder's Era was the same as that worn at Eton and that every night there was a shadowy caped figure on the balcony wielding binoculars. This person was responsible for spotting and reporting any sartorial miscues the boys might have committed. (This seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened.)
I asked Jock if he was aware of Don Pierpont's exceptional hearing. It seems Don had an uncanny ability to discern what mischief the boys were up to and cut them off at the pass. What the students did not know (at the time) was that Don's hearing was extremely good, and he would sit at the head table during meals and eavesdrop on the conversations going on at the nearest row of tables. Thus it appears possible that Avonians, through the school's early years, could hardly take a meal without being subject to covert observation or eavesdropping!
Actually, breakfast was fertile ground for school history conversation last week. Earlier in the week, Jonathan Crocker recounted his father's (student in the '28-'29 school year) memory that TPR might burst into a classroom and abscond with all the students for some project dear to her heart. This is very interesting to me in that it is the first such story I have heard. The Founder's Era alumni I've met do not remember seeing much of TPR, and I know that she and John Riddled traveled to Europe during the school's first year specifically to be out of the way. On the other hand, it does sound like TPR ...
