Theodate's coming-out reception took place in November, 1889, soon after the Popes' return. As tangible signs of their newly acquired European culture, both Theodate and her mother wore dresses crafted by Worth. Theodate, having no intention of entering the marriage market, had settled into a routine which included taking French lessons and playing a lot of whist, which left her quite bored and often sullen with rage. She dreamed only of Farmington, plans for her farm and of being independent. February found her taking a month's rest cure in Philadelphia and then joining her parents on a trip to New York. Finally in May, her mother, despairing of launching her daughter in society, suggested that Theodate rent a house in Farmington. She thought that her daughter would be sick of the town and of housekeeping in three months. Theodate was overjoyed and immediately had ideas for a cow, a pig, and chickens. She would have her cart and horse plus a servant. And at Miss Porter's there was Mary Hillard to whom Theodate was irresistibly drawn as an ideal older sister who knew how to comfort and who could always suggest interesting books. Theodate especially admired her strong social sense and her desire to help others. She did have a forceful character, which, in her relationship with Theodate, was tempered by the wealth of her young protègè's family.

In late June, Mary Hillard drove Theodate around Farmington looking at possible houses. She finally settled on an "old brown house" at what is now 13 High Street. High Street then was a narrow country lane parallel to Main Street and within easy walking distance of Miss Porter's. The house, known after its first owner as the Daniel Judd House, had been built around 1725. Like some of the other early clapboard houses in Farmington there is a slight overhang between the first and second floors, and a large brick chimney emerges from the center of the gable roof. A lean-to added at the back lent it a saltbox appearance. Theodate rented the house, with an option to buy it, beginning in September. She named it the O'Rourkery after her landlord Jimmie O'Rourke, a hired hand who liked his drink.

The house originally had six rooms. The central front door opened onto a stairway and to doors leading to a guest bedroom on the left and a sitting room on the right. Behind the entrance hall was the chimney that served the fireplaces in these two rooms and the large cooking fireplace in the kitchen behind them. Upstairs were two bedrooms. There was also a small servant's room.

The "fierce battle" of the O'Rourkery's rehabilitation began in August, 1890. She had the rooms fumigated with sulfur for three days and the floors and walls washed with lye to eliminate bedbugs. In spite of her visiting the site twice a day to supervise the work carefully, the workmen inadvertently threw O'Rourke's furniture out the window causing him much consternation since he had the right to sleep there until September first. She had a furnace installed, broken windows repaired, and designed a shed which Hal Mason, the gifted local carpenter-builder, added at the back of the house (Fig.9).¹ This would be the first of many additions (Fig.10). She traveled by stage to Hartford to select English wallpapers, matting for the floors, a refrigerator, and a rubber bathtub. For her own upstairs bedroom she chose a blue and gray wallpaper and had the woodwork painted first white and then yellow to brighten a northern exposure. Fresh white dimity curtains hung at the windows and a dimity canopy shrouded her four poster bed. She had her sitting room painted brown. The house was ready for occupation at the end of September 1890 when she moved in with a servant. She wrote to her friend Agnes Hamilton that she had made the house look as old fashioned as possible. When she had finished, Miss Porter gave her approval wishing her students to see it as an "exact duplication of the farmhouse of eighty years ago."²

After Theodate purchased the O'Rourkery and its forty-two acres two years later, the accumulation of accretions to the house began in earnest. She took over the long kitchen with its large fireplace for her dining room, pushing out the rear with a new kitchen and back porch.³ An important question is whether Theodate took this on herself with the help of Hal Mason or whether she enlisted the aid of an architect. The latter seems more probable. In 1892-93 Theodate gave a commission to a young architect in Hartford, Melvin H. Hapgood.⁴ Although the nature of this commission is not known, it was most likely for advice and the creation of working plans for these additions. Melvin Hapgood would have appealed to Theodate because of their shared love for early New England houses. He had compiled scrapbooks of sketches of early houses including the colonial buildings in Wethersfield, Connecticut. And she might well have attended some of his public lectures on architectural history at the Y.M.C.A. in Hartford. But certainly the changes that she made were of a substantial nature and gave Theodate her first chance to gain some practical experience by working with an architect.

During these years Theodate's world once again revolved around Miss Porter's. Her daily routine was to rise at six and take tea and toast. Despite having a servant, Theodate was determined to learn how to cook and did all of the cooking for a year. At mid-morning, after doing accounts, she walked to Miss Porter's to attend a class in art history and returned to prepare her noon dinner. She was also taking violin and French lessons. Many late afternoons were spent in Mary Hillard's rooms reading or talking, after which the two women returned to the O'Rourkery for evening tea. Every other Saturday Theodate hosted the reading club which included Mary Hillard, Robert Brandegee, who taught painting at Miss Porter's, and a few other members of the faculty - the people she knew and liked best in Farmington.

What made Farmington special, apart from its cluster of exemplary New England houses, were people like Robert Brandegee who were drawn to Miss Porter's. Although a native of Connecticut, he had studied in Paris and maintained a studio in New York. He wrote poetry and would be instrumental in founding the Farminqton Maqazine in 1900. His love for the countryside made him an avid bird watcher and botanist, interests he shared with his students. He became Theodate's neighbor in 1895 when he purchased land on High Street, creating a house and studio that he called the Château Ingres. Here there were musical evenings, Brandegee being an accomplished cellist and his wife a pianist. Later, in 1901, Theodate would sit for her portrait at the Château Ingres.

In the spring of 1891 she noted in her diary that she had just spent the happiest winter of her life, and to her parents she wrote that the idea of marriage was repellent - she was "too absolutely, happy."⁵ The only thing that marred this tranquility was an offer to Mary Hillard of a position as associate principal at St. Margaret's School for Girls in Waterbury, twenty-three miles away. St. Margaret's was headed by Dr. Francis Thayer Russell, the rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Waterbury. Being the daughter of a minister gave Mary Hillard an outlook close to that of the reverend, and her warmth and tact, coupled with a keen skill at management, led her to take charge of the school in 1894, when she leased the property, to run it at a profit. Dr. Russell remained the school's rector and its Diocesan character was maintained, as demanded in the contract drawn up by the trustees. Running St. Margaret's was no simple task; the school comprised boarding and day students as well as a kindergarten.

Theodate's diary peters out at this point (March 5, 1891), was picked up briefly for a trip to Alaska with her parents in July and August of 1892, and then taken up again, sporadically, in 1900. Her original plan had been to learn cooking and housekeeping in Farmington and then proceed with the acquisition of a farm. However, Theodate changed course, finding a way to share Mary Hillard's life. In the fall of 1893 she began to give art history lectures with lantern slides at St. Margaret's on Friday evenings. In order to have more time for reading and preparing her lectures, she closed the O'Rourkery and boarded with Mrs. Hillard in Waterbury.⁶

Having decided to pursue the history of art from the standpoint of aesthetics and philosophy, Theodate sought advice as to a reading program from Alan Marquand, who had built up the department of art and archaeology at Princeton.⁷ He sent her William Knight's The Philosophy of the Beautiful, but suggested that instead of following aesthetics, she should pursue a general course in medieval art following Franz von Reber's History of Medieval Art, which she duly acquired. He urged her to come to Princeton where she could enrich her reading program by the study of his own collection of books and photographs which he assured her "was probably the best in the country for the general history of ancient and medieval art." He also thought that she should study German.⁸ She skipped a term at St. Margaret's beginning a new regime in Princeton in January 1894. This included learning German, reading art history texts, and working with Marquand's photograph collection. She wrote to Agnes Hamilton:

... I study german [sic.] the first hour after breakfast, and then read whatever art book I may have on hand, until lunch. I study in the afternoon again, both german [sic.] and art, but always go for a walk or calling that keeps me away two hours. Three afternoons of the week I go out to Mr. Marquands [sic.] and there look at illustrations in the fine books he has on art or else arrange photographs for him. You know he has literally thousands of them and a great many are simply slipped into the books in no order at all and he is letting me try my hand at arranging some of them. Of course I am tackling a very small end of it... But it is such a help to me in settling in my mind to which periods certain remains belong... But lonesome or not I am too thankful to have the opportunity of being here for study as I have such confidence in the advice I get in regard to reading.⁹

Theodate dipped into the reading list required of Marquand's basic ancient and medieval art surveys, acquiring some of the texts that remain in the Pope library.¹⁰ By mid-April, she resumed giving lectures with the beginning of a new term at St. Margaret's and returned to her house in Farmington.¹¹ Her course of study and her lectures at St. Margaret's helped to create a formal framework for what she had seen in Europe.

She reinforced her new program of study by joining her parents on a trip to Europe in the summer of 1894. From some receipts and a few letters exchanged with Whistler one knows that they were in Paris and London in August and September, and that Alfred Pope, probably accompanied by Theodate, was again visiting galleries and acquiring paintings. A letter from Pope to Harris Whittemore informs us that, while Theodate and her mother went out to Fontainebleau, he accompanied the New York manager of Boussod, Valadon to visit Monet at Giverny where he was invited to lunch. No detail escaped his discerning eye. He brought to life for Harris the layout of the house, with its studio and gardens, creating a verbal painting of the dining room with its "symphony in yellows" through which the members of Monet's family moved in consonant harmony, dressed in salmon pink, white, and lilac ¹²

Mr. Pope, now president of a prospering firm, had more money to spend on his growing collection, and, as an additional incentive, American import taxes on French paintings had just been cut. Although he acquired a Monet - his last - he was more interested in buying works by Manet and Whistler.¹³ After paying Durand-Ruel the top price for a Manet, $12,000 for Woman with a Guitar, Pope and his acquisitive forays were watched at least a little jealously by dealers and artists alike. Camille Pissarro embellished the account of this purchase in a letter to his son:

I ran into [Ambroise] Vollard ... he told me the story of this American who came to Paris to find a beautiful Manet at any cost, if the painting met his expectations. All the dealers were exhausted from looking in every corner for the pearl. Finally this nabob purchased Woman with Guitar from Durand-Ruel for 75,000 francs. Amazement far and wide!¹⁴

However, it was Whistler's works which, highly praised by Ned Brooks, now tantalized Alfred Pope beyond all others. He acquired two seascapes: Symphony in Blue and Violet, painted in the previous year and shown at the 1894 Paris Salon, and Blue Wave, Biarritz of 1862. Whistler suggested two more paintings, but the collector deferred replying:

I must go home, recover my breath and build up to the anticipation of the figure piece which if unrealized will make me unhappy - you know everything comes to the collector who waits. I believe I have the best - the finest Degas and Manet in America and I want to over-match them with the finest Whistler. We ought to bring this about YOU and i.¹⁵

The Popes dined with Whistler in Paris where the painter was living at the time. He drew his butterfly on a menu for Theodate which she kept as a memento. Years later, in a letter to Whistler's nephew, she recalled the artist, with his white tuft of hair and his eyes sparkling, regaling them with stories about his lawsuits. Whistler acceded to Mr. Pope's request to paint his daughter's portrait, but Theodate, perhaps knowing of the interminable sittings Whistler required, did not wish to comply, and the plan foundered.¹⁶

Since, according to Theodate, her father bought Whistler's paintings from the artist himself, the Popes must have visited Whistler's studio on the sixth floor at 86 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. From its trellised terrace one had a wonderful view of the Luxembourg gardens and, in fact, all of Paris. Collectors also visited Whistler at his ground floor apartment, situated at the back of a small court in a seventeenth-century house, at 110 rue du Bac. Having passed the blue-green door one entered a decor that was distinctly Whistler's. For his reception room he had chosen blue and white for the walls with blue matting on the floor. He carried the same color scheme into his dining room where he displayed his collection of Chinese porcelain. A Japanese birdcage housed a white parrot for a while until it escaped into the garden. In this shaded arbor, into which the bells of a neighboring seminary wafted mornings and evenings, Whistler held court on Sunday afternoons. It is here that the Popes would have met Ethel Birnie Philip, a sister of the ailing Mrs. Whistler, who lived with the Whistlers, and Frederick MacMonnies, an American painter and sculptor living in Paris.¹⁷ When the Popes returned to London, they were shown more of Whistler's works in private houses, including the famous Peacock Room at 49 Prince's Gate.

This immersion into her parents world of sensory sampling and acquisition did not deter Theodate from her own more ascetic program. By February, 1895, she had returned to Princeton to focus on architecture, acquiring Edouard Corroyer's L' architecture Gothique. She was back again in the spring of 1896.¹⁸ She may have followed Howard Crosby Butler's course - at least his reading list - on the history of architecture from the Early Christian period through the Renaissance. Butler, a Princeton graduate (class of 1892) who had studied with Marquand and then attended Columbia University's School of Architecture, joined the Princeton art department in 1895. He incorporated the more practical aspects of construction and design into his courses. And he could have helped Theodate with instruction in the mechanical drawing needed to make architectural renderings. That she had already acquired some training is evident from several drawings that she kept (Figs.5, 6).¹⁹

While she was at Princeton, Theodate decided that architecture might be a possibility for her after all. She adopted a motto "JIL," which began to appear on her stationery at this time and which would turn up later on two sundials she created at Hill-Stead and Avon Old Farms, the latter one further personalized by one of her poems (Fig.11). This mysterious cryptonym assuredly had some architectural significance and may have been an architectural device based consciously or unconsciously on the ruler held by her maternal grandfather in his portrait. Be that as it may, she was soon to have another taste of architectural renovation on her own property and, more importantly, to pursue her dream of a farmhouse on a far grander scale than she had previously imagined.

When Theodate had acquired the O'Rourkery and its accompanying forty-two acres in 1892, she had also acquired a half interest in the neighboring McCahill property. She had had an ongoing feud with Frank Mc Cahill who had irritated her by not restraining his errant chickens from her garden even though she had sent him wire mesh and posts for a chicken yard. She then shot two of his chickens with an air gun to which he retaliated by hanging the victims over the branch of a tree not far from her bedroom windows.²⁰ At the end of April, 1896, she was able to buy the remaining half interest in the McCahill property, which included a house and four acres abutting the O'Rourkery to the north.

She had already in 1893 taken the O'Rourkery kitchen for a dining room, adding a new kitchen and porch at the back. Her idea now was to add a new wing to the north to which she could join the older and smaller McCahill house.²¹ Although it is clear from the front that the two houses have been coupled, the interior does not betray the juncture. Especially on the second floor one has the sense of rambling through twisting corridors which open unexpectedly on enchanting rooms and spaces. From the back the two structures have an appearance of a dwelling that has grown and changed through many generations - a picturesque effect that Theodate admired in the old houses and cottages of Europe.

By the addition of the second house to the O'Rourkery, Theodate had provided additional space for her parents and servants. More ambitiously, her goal was to persuade them to build their own country house at the far end of her own narrow strip of property. She secured their approval to investigate the purchase of more land and the siting of a house since she met with John H. Whittemore's landscape architect, Warren Manning, on August 27, 1896.²²