page_title: Rawlins Lowndes Cottenet
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Rawlins Lowndes Cottenet / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Caruso as Rigoletto-sans Theatre
context_page_description: Rawlins Lowndes Cottenet or Rollie was a prominent socialite, composer, and member of the Metropolitan Opera Association's board of directors for forty-two years.
context_section_description: In 1893, with his inherited wealth dwindling, he opened a florist shop called "The Rosary" in New York City, which became very successful.  William "Willie" Tiffany was a business partner of his before he joined the Rough Riders. Upon Tiffany's death, Cottenet and Henry Worthington Bull served as pallbearers at his funeral in 1898.
  The flowers were grown in the nursery of his estate in Old Westbury, which he bought from the estate of Belmont Purdy. The Rosary provided floral arrangements for many prominent weddings, including the wedding of Consuelo Vanderbilt to Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, in 1895, and Gertrude Vanderbilt's wedding to Harry Payne Whitney, in 1896.  In fact, Cottenet was not only the florist at the Whitney wedding, but an usher to Harry, one of his closest friends.
  He provided the flowers for Anne Harriman Sands Rutherfurd's third marriage to William Kissam Vanderbilt in 1903, and was hired to "create evening musicales for the reopening celebration of the Vanderbilt mansion on Fifty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue."
  Cottenet sold The Rosary in 1906.
caption: Enrico Caruso in the role of the Duke
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