Had a great question today from a visitor - Maybe someone from the Romance Group can answer- I was showing the display case in the orientation room of the photos of A.S.W. Rosenbach and C . Price- and the gentleman asked " How and when did they first meet. Does anyone know?. Was she a business associate, client or just a good friend from Cape May - Strathmere area? It really took me by surprise - but it is such a basic question when you talk about couples. Isn't that the story and question you ask your friends- How did you meet?
If we don't know? Let's make up some stories and post here. Use your romantic imagination and knowledge of Rosy and his interests and come up with a great story. Romance group- a question- approximately how far back 1920's. Looking forward to reading your posts.
Chris Gradel
All I know is what I read in the biography, which was that Carrie and Abie met sometime previously to his mother's death in 1906 and began their more intimate relationship soon after. Carrie had an estranged husband, and Abie supplied an apartment for her here in Philadelphia. (There is no suggestion that she was from the Jersey shore -- she summered there like ASWR.)
ReplyDeleteThe fact that according to the bio Carrie and Abie started off as friends seems to indicate that he had met her socially -- rather than seen her on the stage and sent back a note and flowers in the usual way nice young men met accommodating young women. But since Carrie wasn't upper crust he would not have met her through clients. That leaves the possibility that she was a neighbor on 15th St. where I believe the Rosenbach's were then living. (They had not yet moved to the rarefied air of Delancey.)
Another possibility is that without financial support from her husband she may have taken a job (in a shop?) and Abie met her in that way.
The irregular, semi-secret "common law" marriages between wealthy men and women whom we must assume were from much more modest circumstances seem to have occurred fairly often. (They were so covered up of course in official family histories that it is hard to determine just how frequent they were.) Several of the Gratz brothers had similar relationships, and because of their secrecy we know next to nothing about the women they met, loved, had children with and supported financially for the rest of their lives. There's a lot of secret history still to be discovered in Philadelphia.
Anyone else?
Thanks Susan for your thoughts and research.
ReplyDeleteMy mother once shared a term she heard as a kid- If someone had an estranged husband - she was called a "grass widow" basically the husband was dead to her but really alive as grass.
I'm going to raise another question- Is their correspondence between Carrie and Abie in the collection.