Eccentricities

One thing about which everyone seems able to agree is that TRP was a bit of an eccentric, and the sources contain any number of anecdotes to confirm it.  In the post labeled "Back At It," I mentioned the story of TPR's concealing a rattlesnake under her hooped skirt lest her mother see it and decide not to move to the wilds of Farmington. 
Another oft-repeated, probably apocryphal, story concerns her hiring of a gardener: it seems she told the prospective gardener to plant a series of rosebushes upside down exactly 18 inches deep; when he did precisely that, she hired him and then told him to re-plant the bushes correctly!
Another apocryphal story concerns the hiring of Percy Kammerer as Provost; she is accused of having gone to a city (New York?  Philadelphia?) telephone directly and scanned the names of Episcopal priests until she found one she liked, whereupon she proclaimed "There is my man!"  [There is actually a modicum of truth to that one.  She had decided on hiring a clergyman and did consult a directory - Gordon Clark Ramsey thinks it may have been Stowe's Clerical Directory - without making a hire.  Kammerer was recommended to TPR by the Dean at General Theological Seminary.]
She did call the school's telephone operator and spend twenty minutes instructing her on the finer points of pronouncing "Avon,"  and she did direct that Chef Candels serve coffee and brandy to the boys after a polo match. 
Her belief that the boys should have the social graces led to her decree that once a year the Refectory would serve artichokes.