10:20

[Music – I’m In the Mood for Love by Freddy Gardner, Album Elegance]

Section 2 – History & Historiography

[Music Fade Out]

10:42

Every time I recognize a repetitive name and sometimes a completely new name though too familiar such as sharing a famous last name, I find myself going down a rabbit hole leading to a spiral of discovery.  I want to see what new avenues or insights this might open up.  Often, these familiar names recur in multiple other stories and link together through space and time and back to each other.  This ongoing curiosity has yielded several very delightful storylines – the largest relating to Cobina Wright, Jakey Astor, Huntington Hartford, and Frank Shields.

11:20

I know it might feel a little convoluted, but trust me I add and highlight ones that provide connection, a further illustration of how their world works, and even future hints related to the main characters – their journeys, situations, associates, and more so how they perceive or why they made those choices.  It is also why the wealthy are so useful in reconstructing this period – their heightened public associations.  Today we have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and social media to help link people together and by potential degrees of association.  But here I can reconstruct a past and know if there might be a little more to a name mentioned in passing.

12:02

This time the searches have been a little more complicated as the names are far too common to yield easier results.  Yet these searches definitely did bear interesting fruit.  Ironically, the names in these intersecting stories often relate to cousins of the main heirs and heiresses.  So let me elaborate further on each…

12:22

For the pseudo honeymoon in Hawaii, I want to clarify who is Mary Booker and John NM Howells, for better context.  Both discovered by mention in newspaper articles but not in Huntington Hartford’s biography Squandered Fortune, which only gave the trip 3 sentences on Henrietta’s failed intentions and only the location of Hawaii and not the Canadian Rockies, which the latter was mentioned in period news articles.  In only 1 of 3 newspaper articles, Mary Booker and John Howells are mentioned to be directly in the Hartford party along with Mary Lee Epling though another article inferred the grouping.  Both are mentioned in 2 other articles along with other passengers on Malolo or visitors along but separate from Henrietta, Huntington, and Mary Lee. 

13:07

Thus I wanted to clarify the age and relative perspective relationships of these two traveling companions.  Because that would help reconstruct other elements.  Are they older, younger?  Obviously privy to the secret marriage, how might they fit into Henrietta’s goal of breaking up Huntington and Mary Lee? 

13:27

With so little to start and names so common, it took a lot of sorting. Alternate Mary Bookers include several married women, a young 8-10 year old girl who hosted a swimming party in Macon, Georgia, and two African American females women one of whom was arrested for selling and making bootleg liquor in Ohio and another young girl who died in a drowning accident off a Florida beach.  But the Mary Booker in question is from Charleston, South Carolina as indicated in a later September 1931 article when she is again mentioned as a guest of Henrietta Hartford and revealed in a 1933 article as a Henrietta’s niece, for whom the aunt will host a debutante ball at Newport’s Seaverge in 1932.

14:10

Similarly, I had to go through a circular path to sort out similar namesakes as is tradition amongst families to repeat or barely alter names amongst the generations.  As first noted in the party, John M Howells of Maine might be the famous architect with a son William White Howells.  Further investigation finally reveals that a John NM Howells is a Harvard student from the Kittery Point, Maine area who receives a Harvard scholarship in 1933.  Now back tracking the two names, the architect and his family summer in Kittery Point, Maine, and has another son John NM who is at several parties and events with his father including whale watching in Maine and a lobby opening in New York.  The elder and younger John(s) would both be the kind of people Huntington might admire.  By the way, NM are the initials for Noyes Mead.

14:58

The father architect John Mead Howells focuses his designs in the Art Deco style of office buildings.  His works include in Chicago the Tribune Tower and in New York the American Radiator Building, Daily News Building, and Beekman Tower.  His father – the grandfather patriarch William Dean Howells is an editor and publisher, contemporary and associate with Mark Twain, Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Henrik Ibsen, Emile Zola, Emily Dickinson, and Stephen Crane. William Dean Howells is also inspired by the ideas of Leo Tolstoy.  Grandson, son, and older brother William White Howells serves as an anthropology professor at Harvard.

15:43

The Rospigliosi family dates back to the 1330s and includes at least one pope – Clement IX.  However tracking down Prince Jerome Rospigliosi is difficult – brief references to an African safari with his cousin in 1928, much later escorting his aunt to a 1936 function, and randomly a reference to a future wife Marian Snowden and their quick Mexican divorce without further distinguishing characteristics.  There are no Wikipedia pages nor genealogy sites listing Prince Jerome.   The very scant prior references might have been partially related to his parents’ problematic marital history.  However my OCD persistently checking again just prior to recording, I uncover a minor New York heiress Marian / Marion Snowden and her brief marriage to Girolamo, Giralamo, Gerolnimo, and Gerinomo Rospigliosi.  Now plenty of articles later in 1931, a bigger trail, but not enough time to sort, and definitely will be mired in spellings and confusion on that one, but I have found our prince.

16:49

Nonetheless, his American mother Mary Reid is one of the American dollar princesses, previously married to Colonel Frederick H. Parkhurst whom she divorced then quickly  married Prince Joseph Guiseppe Rospigliosi-Gioeni.  Their marriage is not considered legitimate in the eyes of Roman Catholic church due to her divorce.  This became an issue with the firstborn daughter not getting properly baptized and is not corrected by the second birth of son Prince Jerome in 1907.  The matter is only rectified on the 1913 deathbed of the Prince Joseph Rospligiosi.  However the aftermath meant a lot of the time the family especially the mother is ignored in proper society.  Also the mother’s name Mary sometimes spelled as Marie is Italianized into Maria Rospigliosi.  It’s a nightmare that goes down endless spirals without much clarification.  Mary Reid’s marriage is listed as one of 29 princesses of American descent in a 1909 article which I will make available via social media Twitter, Instagram, & Facebook.

17:52

Like the Italian royals above, the complication in tracking down Russian royal and noble names can be just as much if not more problematic.  Lapses in records, changes or variances in spellings – especially with a hybridization related a new location or language.  Russian names turned Italian or French or multiple spellings for pronunciations and different alphabets.

18:14

Case in point, the girlfriend – cousin at the Eiffel Tower, there are several spellings Natalie Pissaress Pissarres / Natalia Pisserief / Natascha Pissareff.  Various searches in names also lead nowhere.  I even attempted to see if there might be an association with a famous Impressionist painter Camille Pissaro (blame a recent visit to the Immersive Monet exhibit for that hope).  As for the Obolensky, Troubetzkoy, and Tolstoy, there is an over abundance of names and effort to clarify who might be whom.

18:50

As discussed in previous episodes, World War I overall and the Russian Revolution in particular left many former noble and royal families dispossessed and floating about in 1920s Europe.  In 1919, Leo Tolstoy’s 2^nd son Ilya Tolstoy fled to Paris with his family and young son Peter Tolstoy.  Also in Paris several other noble families including the Obolensky and Troubetzkoy also relocate there.  As young children, Anna met and fell for Peter.  Despite the new lives, old grudges remain.  Their growing affection upset Anna’s family who relocated again to New York, where her father became a singer and teacher.  Peter Tolstoy does not get much mention except later when helping his aunt Countess Alexandra Tolstoy raise money for communist refugees in New York in 1960.

19:39

Princess Anna’s younger sister Princess Luba Obolensky did not have the same objections and had actually been in love with their cousin Serge Troubetzkoy as a young girl as indicated in Luba’s early journals and diaries.  Two years later in 1933, Luba will marry Serge, and they will have a long and happy marriage until her death in 1991.  In most sources on the couple, they do not mention her sister, the earlier marriage, nor the death / suicide.  The mention is only made in the 1933 marital announcements.  By the way, Anna and Luba’s mother is also a Troubetzkoy.

20:13

An additional side note: the Eiffel Tower is the first structure to pass for 200 ft and 300 ft in height and is the tallest man made structure in the world surpassing the Washington Monument from 1889 for 41 years until 1930 losing to the Chrysler Building.  In 1931, increased security and more railing is added to the already 4 feet to prevent future suicide attempts.  To a female vendor, one thwarted jumper mentioned the disappointment at the assured success of execution unlike other more common methods.  In 1957, a “broadcasting aerial” essentially an antenna of 17 ft / 5.2 meters was added, thus surpassing the Chrysler Building in height.  The Eiffel Tower is the most visited monument in the world with an entrance fee. 

These entangled tales of love and money read very much like a Russian novel.  Will the fates of our heirs and heiresses have such dark and unhappy endings?