Those Magnificent Ladies


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Martin Williams

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Mar 20, 2007
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Would that be Alice Roosevelt's mother?

I'm becoming intrigued by this Florence Cummings. We discussed her very briefly on a thread a month or two ago. She rubbed shoulders with the grandest ladies in town but other information is scanty. I've never even seen a picture. I would be fascinated to know more, as I see her as being representative of your 'typical' first class passenger, wealthy and well-connected, but not a 'celebrity' in the same way as Madeleine Astor or Eleanor Widener.

Was Marian Thayer 'slightly eccentric'? Why so?
 
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Brian Ahern

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Dec 19, 2002
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Martin - Alice Roosevelt's mother was Alice Lee, TR's Bostonian first wife.

Yes, Florence Cummings is one of those passengers I would love to know more of. There was at least one photo of her in Gallery of Titanic Visages. I had pictured a trim, good-looking woman a la Marian Thayer, but the photo revealed a rather matronly woman. I don't think it was taken TOO many years after the sinking.

There are a couple of things that make me think Marian was slightly eccentric. Firstly, there was the importance she attached to the nerve relaxation technique that she picked up in Europe and offered to teach Archie Butt. It gave me the impression she was susceptible to the latest fads in health and wellness. Also, it's been discussed in a thread on her that she frequently practiced mirror writing in later years and insisted to family members that she had communed with the spirit of her late husband.

I guess the real eccentricity to me lies not in the fact that she was interested in these things, but in the fact that she seems to have been so open about it. Obviously, it says a thing or two about the woman that she could occupy the place she did while nursing this funky side.
 
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Martin Williams

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This is all jolly interesting, Brian. Can we continue the discussion on the thread devoted to Marian and the Thayers? You've raised a couple of points I've never heard mentioned before.
 
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