A New York Romance?

In Ima’s letter about knee breeches she had also mentioned politics. What she said prompted a response from her father:

         By all means, my daughter, keep up interest in politics. Understand well the principles on which your rights are based, and stand by them. In politics, as in all the affairs of man, woman, indirectly or intentionally, certainly wields great influence—when she is posted! Know your lesson—your duty—and you can lead or teach others. . . . And when you go to preside in that house you seem so busily planning, you will be the pleasant, intelligent, autocrat whose sway must be felt far beyond the domestic circle and the culinary department.—What house is that anyway? And why is this your last opera season in NY? When you write again, please tell me if there are any innuendos in these queer expressions!

         If she did, her letter has not been located, leaving a mystery.

         It is possible that Ima’s reference to  “planning a house” may have had something to do with a romantic attachment she kept secret from her family. In New York she was seeing a young man named R. W. Alexander, but she obviously did not tell her father about him. Was she in love with him? Were they planning to marry? R. W. Alexander wrote to Ima on June 6, 1902 that he was  “delighted . . . that you say ‘yes’ to my invitation for a honeymoon trip Monday after dark. . . . Try to be ready about nine for I will call at about seven forty.”  Was this merely lighthearted banter, or was it serious?  No one knows.

         Ima came home to Texas a few days later and spent the summer there. But R.W. Alexander wrote to her, anticipating her return to New York for the winter theater season, with stars such as Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. In September 1902 Ima set out again for New York. She would spend another year studying at the National Conservatory of Music.

And she would see more of  R.W. Alexander.