Evelyn Nesbit Was born in Tarentum, a suburb of Pittsburgh, on Christmas Day in 1884. Her father, Winfield Scott Nesbit, was a lawyer. It was a matter of pride with his wife, Elizabeth, that he was successful enough to have offices on Pittsburgh’s Diamond Street, and to commute to work. Their daughter was christened Florence; “Evelyn” was a stage name she adopted in her teens, but I will use it here for her early years as well, to avoid confusion. A neighbor who lived across the street from the Nesbits described Evelyn as “a sweet and winsome little thing and divinely beautiful, affectionate, and lovable.” Two years after Evelyn, her brother, Howard, was born.
In 1893, when Howard was six and Evelyn was eight, Winfield Nesbit died, leaving the family penniless. Elizabeth Nesbit, a gentlewoman with no experience of the working world, which in any event was largely closed to women, tried to make a living by taking in boarders at a series of rooming houses that she rented. She did the cooking, washing, ironing, and cleaning for her guests, and Evelyn helped her with the workload, but she could not make ends meet. They moved from a bad neighborhood to a worse one, by the Pittsburgh coal mills; she sold whatever personal possessions she had and was finally reduced to begging alms at the mansions of millionaires. In 1899, she moved the family to Philadelphia, and they all got jobs at Wanamaker’s, a department store, though Evelyn was fourteen and Howard was only twelve. In this period they were boarders themselves for a brief spell in a relatively decent rooming house, but then Howard got sick and was sent to live with an aunt in Tarentum and without that extra income they started to slide downhill again.
It was at a lesser boarding house that Evelyn was noticed by John Storm, an elderly, courtly artist who was visiting his brother there. Storm was staggered by Evelyn’s beauty and asked her to pose for him. Through Storm she also got work posing as an angel for Violet Oakley, a stained-glass artist, and for some illustrators, for whom she often modelled fairy-tale costumes. Then in late 1900, Mrs. Nesbit decided to move, with Evelyn, to New York, where she hoped to get work as a seamstress. She failed at this, but Evelyn had a letter of introduction to New York artists, with whom she soon got work. She posed for the Hudson River School master Frederick Church, who adopted a grandfatherly attitude toward her—he was eighty-four—and for Charles Dana Gibson, who drew her in profile with her hair forming a question mark—a drawing that he called “The Eternal Question” that was used as a cover on Collier’s magazine. Evelyn loved romances and fairy tales and read them whenever she could. “I began to see myself as the fairy tale characters I loved so well,” she wrote in “Prodigal Days,” one of two memoirs. She also loved a fantasy in which she imagined herself being soothed by her father as she sat on his knee.
At fifteen, Evelyn got work modelling fashions too: it seems that in New York she became the sole support of the family, though she was not yet physically mature. In her short dresses, she appeared to be, if anything, younger than she was. In mid-1901, when she was sixteen, she met a theatrical agent, and he arranged an audition with Fisher & Riley, the producers of “Florodora,” a Broadway musical. It is an indication of how young Evelyn looked that, when she turned up with her mother for the audition, the producers assumed that it was Mrs. Nesbit who was applying for the job—that Evelyn was her little girl just tagging along. When they realized that it was Evelyn who wanted to audition, Fisher said to Mrs. Nesbit, “Madam, I’m running a theatre and not a baby farm.” The “baby” then began to cry, and in the end she was cast as a Spanish dancer in “Florodora.” She learned the routines in a week.
Backstage, Evelyn was known as Baby and the Kid, and she wrote in her memoir that the other dancers automatically stopped talking about their love affairs when she was around. She observed that her older colleagues went off in carriages after the show, and she knew that the carriages were sent by gentlemen, but because she knew nothing of the facts of life she didn’t understand the nature of these relationships. “A girl my age had to possess the virtue of sex ignorance or she was not respectable,” she wrote in her memoir.
Evelyn’s word on her innocence at this point has almost invariably been doubted in accounts of the story of Stanford and Evelyn. In most accounts it is assumed that she had to be sophisticated in sexual matters because she had frequented “artists’ studios.” Yet it is equally imaginable that a girl in her early teens, who looked even younger, and who had been posing as shepherdesses and fairy princesses, was not being violated by men like John Storm and Frederick Church. One might ask why interpreters of the story of Stanford and Evelyn would need to insist on her lack of innocence. One answer would be in order to preserve the story as a romance, for if Evelyn was as innocent as she claims one can only see what happened to her with Stanford as monstrous.
Evelyn became friendly with two members of the Florodora sextette, Nell King and Edna Goodrich, who were mother and daughter, though Nell was often taken for Edna’s sister. In fact, in theatrical circles they were known as the “Goodrich sisters.” It was through Edna that Evelyn would meet Stanford White. Indeed, it is clear from other sources that Edna was having an affair with Stanford, but Evelyn knew nothing of that. All she knew was that one day in August of 1901 Edna suggested that Evelyn come along with her to lunch with some gentlemen, and that Nell, as one mother to another, had convinced Mrs. Nesbit that it would be fine for her to go. “Mama dressed me in a little homemade black and white dress,” she wrote. “I wore my best hat, my copper brown curls hanging down my back tied with black taffeta ribbon.” She looked so young that she and Edna were sure that passersby would assume she was Edna’s daughter.
To Evelyn’s surprise, they went to a dingy doorway, next to the early F.A.O. Schwarz on West Twenty-fourth Street. The door opened automatically when they rang. They climbed several flights of stairs, at the top of which stood the large, charismatic figure of Stanford White, forty-seven years old and showing signs of wear beyond his years. He took them into a softly illuminated room that was painted in different shades of red and had heavy red velvet curtains shutting out the daylight. There were tapestries on the walls, and paintings, including a painting of a nude. This startled Evelyn. The table was set for four, and another man was there, who seemed to Evelyn even older than White. The men made a fuss over Evelyn, and their admiration and frank gazes made her feel grown-up. They served themselves a delicious lunch from a portable cabinet, and poured champagne, although Evelyn was allowed only one glass.
After lunch, the other gentleman left and Stanford took Edna and Evelyn up another set of stairs to a studio that was two stories high, with etchings of nudes on the walls, and a swing. (The joke about inviting a girl up “to see one’s etchings” had its origin in Stanford’s loft.) “Let’s put this little kid in the swing first,” Stanford said, and he pushed Evelyn until she swung high enough to kick a hole in a paper parasol that was hanging near the ceiling.
It was four o’clock by the time Evelyn and Edna left. As they were putting on their hats and coats, Stanford told Evelyn that she should visit his dentist. He gave Edna the address, and instructed her to take Evelyn there that very afternoon. “My dentist will fix your tooth,” he said to Evelyn. “It’s your only defect. It spoils your smile.” Edna, whom he had sent to the dentist some time earlier, knew what this meant, and decided not to follow up on Stanford’s request that she get Evelyn to the dentist too.
Evelyn’s second lunch at Stanford’s loft was with Elsie Ferguson, an actress who was in “The Strollers” at the Knickerbocker Theatre, and Thomas Clarke, the art collector and dealer whose house on Thirty-sixth Street Stanford was designing at the time. Clarke had white hair and walked with a cane. Evelyn told Stanford, whom she called Mr. White, that Mr. Clarke looked as old as Methuselah, which made Stanford laugh. Stanford was annoyed, however, that Evelyn’s tooth had not been fixed, but he reassured her that this was a “purely aesthetic urgency.” After she’d had another session on the swing, he wrote down an address on a card, and asked Evelyn to have her mother come to see him at his office, to make arrangements for getting her to the dentist.
Mrs. Nesbit didn’t comply, but shortly thereafter she received a letter from Mr. White requesting a meeting. She agreed, met him, and was charmed. Within a week of their meeting, the fortunes of the Nesbit family took a sudden turn. Not only did Evelyn go to the dentist but, at Stanford White’s expense, they moved out of their rooming house and into the Hotel Audubon, just opposite the theatre where “Florodora” was playing. Stanford also paid all their bills and in addition opened a bank account for them into which he deposited a weekly allowance of twenty-five dollars, the equivalent of approximately a thousand dollars in 1996 currency. He went on to make arrangements for Howard to attend a military academy in Philadelphia, and he paid for that as well.
The Nesbits were more comfortable in their new quarters than they had been at any time since Tarentum. Stanford sent flowers regularly, while Mr. Clarke called daily and sent huge baskets of fruit. “What fine men they are!” Mrs. Nesbit said to Evelyn. “And how wonderful it is to live in New York!” But above all she admired Stanford, whom she found “so kind, so thoughtful and above all so safe,” as Evelyn wrote in her memoir. Mr. White bought Evelyn a long red cloak with flowing lines and a boyish satin collar in which he and Mrs. Nesbit agreed that she looked like Little Red Riding-Hood.
A few weeks after the Nesbits had moved into the Audubon, Mrs. Nesbit wanted to visit Howard at his new school in Philadelphia, and her old friend Charles Holman, in Pittsburgh, but she confided to Stanford that she was worried about leaving Evelyn alone. Stanford assured her that she needn’t worry—he would look after Evelyn for her. Stanford and Evelyn went together to see Mrs. Nesbit off on the train.
While Mrs. Nesbit was away, Stanford sent a carriage to the stage door for Evelyn every night to take her back to her hotel, though the hotel was right across the street. The other members of the cast, however, did not know the destination of the carriage, and from this time forward they no longer called Evelyn the Kid. The Goodrich sisters, Edna and Nell, stopped speaking to Evelyn altogether.
One day after a matinée, the driver of Evelyn’s carriage told her that he had instructions to take her to McKim, Mead & White at 160 Fifth Avenue. As Stanford was showing Evelyn around the office, they ran into Charley McKim. Stanford introduced Evelyn, saying, “This little girl’s mother has gone to Pittsburgh and left her in my care.” “My God!” said Charley. That night when Evelyn got into the carriage after the show, the driver gave her a note from Stanford instructing her to meet him at the loft over F.A.O. Schwarz. This was the first time she had gone there at night. It was late September. She was wearing her Little Red Riding-Hood cloak.
According to Evelyn, the table was set for two this time, and this time Stanford poured several glasses of champagne for her. Then, after supper, he took her to a room she had never seen—a room that was about ten feet square and had walls and ceilings of mirrors, and a floor like glass. There was an immense couch in the room, and Stanford, whom she still called Mr. White, left her sitting there on it and then came back with a yellow satin kimono and some more champagne. She drank the champagne and tried on the kimono, looking at herself in the mirrors. When she sat down next to Mr. White on the couch he was trembling.
Then he took her to a bedroom, which she had also never seen, and in which there was a fire burning low in a fireplace, and a big fourposter bed with heavy velvet curtains that hung from a canopy. Stanford showed Evelyn how the curtains could be opened and closed with a cord, and Evelyn tried it. The headboard and the inside of the canopy were of mirrors, as was the wall next to the bed; concealed around the interior of the canopy were tiny electric bulbs. Mr. White showed how the color of the lighting could be changed by turning a knob: you could have rose, or amber, or blue, according to your whim. Stanford gave her some more champagne, and then she must have passed out, or blacked out, or simply blocked from consciousness what happened next, because the next thing she knew she was coming to, naked on the bed with Stanford beside her, naked too. She saw blood on the sheets.
Another reason Evelyn’s testimony is often doubted is that her memories of this moment are contradictory. Especially if she didn’t in truth know the facts of life—but even if she did—it’s hard to see how she might have experienced this moment in a way that was not fragmented. In one version, she says that she began to cry, and that Stanford petted her and said, “Don’t cry, kittens. Don’t. Please don’t. It’s all over. Now you belong to me.” In another version, she says she screamed many times, and he told her not to make so much noise. And in still another version she says that she managed to scream only once. Of course, she could be lying about everything: she could have been fully conscious and consensual throughout. But where there is such a difference in age and power the issue of consent is almost beside the point. In any event, the part of her story that is consistent is that after she either screamed or cried Stanford removed the bloody sheets and took her on his knee in an armchair and soothed her until she quieted.
Evelyn wrote in a memoir that she didn’t remember how she got her clothes on or how she got home: for this she has also been disbelieved over all. But she did remember how, once back at the hotel and by herself, she felt utterly confused, dizzy, and embarrassed. She also felt excited. She thought, This is what people make such a fuss about. This is what love means. As she had not known the “big stunning facts of life,” she could not tell the difference between what was a violation and what was an act of love. She was also afraid. Assailed by these contradictory emotions, she sat up all night and into the next afternoon in a chair, most of the time stock-still.
When Stanford came to see her the next afternoon, she would not look at him. He kissed her, trembling violently again. What Evelyn said when she finally did speak to him reveals how confused and naïve she was. “Does everybody you know do these things?” she asked. “Did the sextettes, in ‘Florodora’?” And, she wrote in her memoir, he laughed and laughed and laughed.
If Evelyn were to invent a story to provoke sympathy and protect her reputation, I doubt that this would be the story she would choose. But whether Evelyn’s account is true or not, and whether she, a sixteen-year-old in precarious economic straits with no real parental protection, was an estimable character, are gratuitous questions. Regardless of how one constructs this tale, what happened that night was a rape: unquestionably it was a statutory rape because the age of consent was eighteen, and it was morally a rape because Stanford was immeasurably more powerful than she was, and a benefactor on whom she and her entire family were dependent. What is striking to me is how thinly the exploitation of Evelyn is disguised by the romantic gloss that has been put on the story. The interpretation of those events as romantic cannot stand up to even light examination so implicit is predation in the basic facts of the case.
After that night, Stanford moved the Nesbits into the Wellington, a new hotel at Seventh Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, which was swankier than the Audubon. He decorated their suite for them, down to the toothbrushes in the bathroom. Evelyn’s room had white satin on the walls, red wool carpets and a white bearskin on the floor, ivory-white furniture, and a bed with an ivory-white satin-and-lace cover and a white satin canopy crowned with white ostrich plumes. There were white planters around the suite, shaped like swans; there was a white piano too, and Mr. White informed Evelyn that a piano teacher had been hired, with whom she would learn how to play Beethoven for him.
Evelyn had two choices. She could repudiate Stanford, on whom her family depended, or she could gloss over the violative aspects of what had happened. Who, in her life, might reinforce repudiation? Surely not her respectable mother, who had in effect delivered her to Stanford, and surely not her backstage pals. What footing did this sixteen-year-old have from which to reject one of the most powerful men in New York? Evelyn chose to fall “head over heels in love” with Mr. White. She began to see what had happened to her as a manifestation of her power. “As the weeks passed, I couldn’t help but marvel at the strange effect I had upon him,” she later wrote. “Whether at his office or in the intimacy of his rooms, always when he first put his arms around me—or only touched me—he would start trembling. I was the type he adored and fell slave to; I was a constant thrill.”
For Christmas—which was also her seventeenth birthday—he gave her a large pearl hung on a platinum chain, a set of white-fox furs, a ruby-and-diamond ring, and two solitaire-diamond rings. Their affair was about four months old at this point. Sometimes when she and Stanford were in the loft with the red velvet swing Stanford would dress up in a toga and put Evelyn naked on his shoulder, pick up a big bunch of grapes, and then, looking at their image in the mirrors, march around the loft, singing at the top of his lungs. Sometimes she went to parties that he gave in the Madison Square Garden tower suite, and she would stay on after the guests left. Often they drank heavily together. Sometimes they climbed to the top of the tower, held hands beneath Diana, and looked out over the city. At other times, after his guests had left the tower Stanford would begin designing at a drawing table, and when he did that she would wrap herself in an animal skin and go to sleep. In the morning a messenger from the office would tiptoe in through a snowfield of crumpled paper to pick up the designs he had left on the table. Stanford would be asleep in his opera clothes. Mrs. Nesbit would be home alone at the Hotel Wellington, apparently unalarmed.
Others admired Evelyn. Flowers and jewelry arrived in quantity backstage, and men tried to ambush her at the stage door. In addition, there were eligible young men, known as the Racquet Club boys, whom she met at Stanford’s parties, several of whom were millionaires, and several of whom fell in love with her. Indeed, six millionaires proposed to her, including Bobby Collier, the heir to Collier’s magazine, who thought that Evelyn was talented as an artist and urged her repeatedly to go to Paris to study art. But Evelyn remained besotted by Stanford. Furthermore, she had convinced herself that he was in love with her and that she was the only girl in his life—even that he would leave his wife and marry her.
Once, she saw a photograph in his loft that jarred her. It was of a nude on a bear rug—the same bear rug on which she herself had been photographed nude by the same photographer. She discovered a little book in which Stanford had written down the birthdays of all the beautiful women he knew. When a gala reception was put on at the Metropolitan Opera for the King of Prussia, Stanford got a seat for Evelyn in the uppermost balcony, while he and Bessie sat in the dress circle. She must also have heard in the talk backstage that Edna Goodrich had sued Stanford for breach of promise on the basis of some letters he had written to her, and that Stanford had settled out of court for the hefty sum of five thousand dollars—or two hundred and fifty thousand 1996 dollars. A tension set in between what was obvious and what she chose to believe. The tension still existed when she wrote her memoir ten years later. In it she both claims she was the only one in Stanford’s life and admits to how painfully jealous she was.
When, in January of 1902, “Florodora” came to the end of its run, Stanford arranged for Evelyn to audition for George Lederer for a part in his new show, “The Wild Rose.” She got the part and was a hit. But Stanford, meanwhile, was not around very much, and probably, if his pattern was holding, was around less and less as the affair became less fresh. In the summer of 1902, when the affair was not yet a year old, he went to Canada for a month, with Bessie; then he was back for two weeks and then gone again, overseas. At this point, the question was not only whether there were other women in his life but whether Evelyn would continue to be one of them. An essential aspect of the story of Stanford and Evelyn is that, long after the fiction of Stanford’s love for her could not possibly be maintained, Evelyn continued to be obsessed with him. The quarry continued to be bound to the predator after the predator had moved on to other prey.
Also in the summer of 1902, Evelyn encountered the extraordinarily handsome actor John Barrymore, who was then twenty-two. He later became an alcoholic and a terrible womanizer, but in 1902 he might have seemed to Evelyn to offer a way to break the obsession that bound her to Stanford. Barrymore worked as a cartoonist on the Evening Journal, and lived in a cold-water railroad flat in the East Village. They met at one of Stanford’s tower parties. While Stanford was out of the room he said, “Quick, your address and telephone number,” and she gave them to him. During Stanford’s extended absences that summer, and in the probable context of his waning interest, Evelyn and Barrymore became romantically involved. They also spent at least one evening together after Stanford came back in the fall, during which they both drank too much red wine and, as a result, decided that it would be better for Evelyn to go back to Barrymore’s apartment to sleep it off before going home.
At the flat, Barrymore wrapped Evelyn in a cape in which his father, Maurice Barrymore, had played Romeo, and they both went to sleep, with the intention of waking up in a few hours and getting Evelyn home. However, they slept right through until eleven o’clock the next morning. Evelyn was panic-stricken when she woke up, because “Mother would be wild and the first person she would call would be Stanford.” She went on:
When I walked in, at home, Mama met me with a face of stone. She took it for granted that I had sinned and did not accept any explanation. She summoned Stanford and I told them both the truth, but disbelief was written large in their countenances. Still nauseated from the red wine, I badly wanted to go to bed and rest. But there they stood: he white and tight lipped, she shaking like an aspen, weeping and wringing her hands. “Oh Florence Nesbit! How could you forget your mother, your name, your future! Your reputation is ruined.”
Mrs. Nesbit sank down onto the divan, and covered her face. Then she abruptly switched tack. “Suddenly she looked up, her gentle face distorted by an expression of hatred I had never seen before,” Evelyn wrote. “But it’s not you I blame,” her mother said to her. “It is that Barrymore.” This spelled trouble for Stanford, because if Mrs. Nesbit took action against Barrymore, Barrymore might reveal what he knew about Evelyn and Stanford. With this turn of events, Stanford’s anger at Evelyn vanished, and he became intent on managing Mrs. Nesbit. He had to ensure that she would leave this matter in his fatherly hands. Evelyn wrote:
Stanford bent over her solicitously and assured her everything would be cleared up, that no future harm would befall me. She looked up at him trustingly as he spoke, and nodded her silent consent to anything he might deem it best to do. “Come along, Evelyn,” he said. And taking me by the arm I obeyed submissively.
Stanford took Evelyn to his friend Dr. Nathaniel Potter, for a gynecological examination. As Stanford knew that Evelyn was not a virgin, he must have done this to determine whether she was telling the truth about not having slept with Barrymore. At Dr. Potter’s even deeper confusion set in. I speculate the truth was that Evelyn did have an affair with Barrymore but had not slept with him specifically the night before, because Evelyn is so unequivocal in her memoir about that. What Dr. Potter would have found in that case was that she was not a virgin but that there was no evidence of recent intercourse. He gave her all sorts of tests, then questioned her, and locked her in a room. She banged on the door, but to no avail. Finally, at the end of the day, he came in and said:
“You must tell me the truth, Evelyn. Is it true? Did Barrymore seduce you as your mother believes? Do you know your mother threatens to make a terrible scandal?” “Good heavens No!” I exclaimed. “That’s impossible.” “What do you mean impossible?” he asked quickly. Having almost let my secret slip out, I refused to talk further. “You had better send for Mr. White. If there is to be any talking let him do it.”
Clearly, Stanford had withheld information from Dr. Potter. So Evelyn had to cover up for Stanford again, even though he had, in effect, made her a prisoner and the person she had to deceive was her warden. After interrogating her, Dr. Potter left, turning the key in the lock. “For heaven’s sake, send me something to eat. A glass of water, at least. I’m famished,” Evelyn shouted through the door.
Eventually, Stanford arrived and confided to Evelyn that Mrs. Nesbit was intent on punishing John Barrymore, and that this was causing him a lot of anxiety. “For what?” asked Evelyn, “and why do you keep me locked up?” “Because I’m afraid of your mother. She is liable to do something that will get into the newspapers. I’m to blame for all this,” Stanford said, in a moment of honesty which was swiftly followed by extraordinary dishonesty: “You are the only girl in the world who can point a finger at me.”
After this declaration, Stanford drove Evelyn to the Madison Square Garden tower where he sent for Barrymore and called him on the carpet, again as if he were Evelyn’s father. It emerged that John had already taken Evelyn to a doctor to find out if she was pregnant and it seems that test had been positive. This startling information came out right then. (Dr. Potter could have failed to spot pregnancy at such an early stage, especially as pregnancy was not what he was looking for.) Ironically, John Barrymore seems to have thought the pregnancy was what the whole confrontation was about:
“Will you marry me, Eve,” he said.
“Good Lord, no!” Stanford remonstrated. “You two kids couldn’t marry. What would you live on?”
“Love,” said John with an impish grin.
Evelyn turned Barrymore down, however, because she was still fixated on the possibility of a future with Stanford. “I was still obsessed with a fanciful notion that a man who loved a girl ought willingly to give up all others,” she wrote in her memoir.
From the tower Stanford took Evelyn home to her mother, and reassured Mrs. Nesbit that nothing had happened—as Dr. Potter already had. Soon thereafter, Stanford arranged for Evelyn to go away to a boarding school for the next nine months. The school was the Pamlico School in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, run by Mrs. Mathilda Beatrice De Mille, the mother of movie mogul Cecil B. De Mille. (Cecil was in his early twenties and just starting out.) After Evelyn’s departure for boarding school, Mrs. Nesbit moved to the less swanky Algonquin Hotel.
Evelyn loved the Pamlico School. She was one of fifteen girls there. Circumstances suggest she was pregnant, but, if so, she did not allow her condition to interfere with her enjoyment:
What a sublimely happy time I spent at the school! Here indeed was my lost girlhood regained. I couldn’t absorb enough … studied music, English literature, philosophy, psychology. How I slaved to make up all the preparatory work I hadn’t done in the past few years.
She had a roommate called Prunes, with whom she played pranks. She went skating with a young man named Robert Fulton, in an outfit her mother sent her—a fuzzy gray sweater with a cap to match and angora gloves. At another time, she nearly fell through the ice, causing a great tumult among her classmates: “Doggone the luck! Everything always happens to Evelyn!” She was, for the most part, by her own account, “industrious; a model scholar, obedient.”
John Barrymore left love notes around on the grounds of the school, but she didn’t respond to them. She continued to struggle over Stanford: it seems as if she were still struggling twelve years later as she wrote these contradictory sentences about her feelings for him in her memoir:
When I was robbed of my illusions by Stanford’s continued interest in other women, love had died in my heart. And I did resolutely put him out of my mind too. I went on adoring Stanford for his kindness, his thoughtfulness, no more.
At this point, Harry Thaw began pursuing Evelyn in earnest, as he pursued other women with whom Stanford was involved. The origin of his fixation on Stanford appears to have been Stanford’s response to something Harry did at one of the tower parties. Whatever it was, Harry was struck from Stanford’s guest list. Stanford also blackballed him at a club. Furthermore, right before taking up with Evelyn, Harry had suffered fresh humiliation at Stanford’s hands. A group of actresses from “Florodora,” whom he had invited to a party at Sherry’s with dinner, orchestra, and champagne, stood him up and went to a party at Stanford’s instead. The incident was publicized in Town Topics: “Florodora beauties sing for their supper in White’s studio, while Thaw’s orchestra fiddles to an empty room at Sherry’s.” In addition to chasing women who had been seduced by Stanford, Harry devoted himself to exposing Stanford’s immoral deeds, all the while fending off troubles that arose from his own behavior. He was being sued, for example, by a young woman whom he had brought to his apartment and lashed with a dog whip until her clothes hung from her in tatters.
Because of his unsavory reputation Harry at first sent flowers backstage to Evelyn under a pseudonym. Then he contrived to meet her in a restaurant through a chorus girl whom they both knew. At this very first meeting, he launched into an inquisition about her relationship to Stanford, demanding to know how her mother could permit her to go out with “that beast.” Evelyn got up and left, and vowed to have no more to do with him, but he pursued her nonetheless. Even after she had gone off to the Pamlico School he pursued her, inundating Mrs. De Mille with flowers and gifts until she finally interceded for him with Evelyn. “This wealthy young man is madly in love with you, Evelyn,” she said. “He tells me he wants to marry you.” Evelyn told her that Harry K. Thaw “almost scares me to death.”
Harry also managed to ingratiate himself with Mrs. Nesbit. When, approximately eight months after Evelyn’s enrollment at the Pamlico School, Mrs. Nesbit was suddenly informed that her daughter was “ill”—the first symptoms were sharp abdominal pains—she tried to reach Stanford, but when she failed she called Harry, who took her out to the school right away. Mrs. De Mille, however, succeeded in reaching Stanford, who immediately dispatched Dr. Potter and a colleague, one Dr. John Walker. Dr. Potter diagnosed appendicitis so acute that Evelyn could not be moved to a hospital. It was necessary, he said, to operate immediately. All the other girls were sent away from the school, while Evelyn underwent some sort of medical procedure in a classroom. Of course it might have been appendicitis, but, given the timing, it is possible that Evelyn gave birth that day, though I can find no record of this. As the ether was administered Evelyn saw her mother, Mrs. De Mille, and the doctors and nurses standing around her bed and Harry Thaw “on his knees beside the operating table kissing my limp hands.” When she woke up, Harry was gone, and Stanford was standing there saying, “Poor kiddie. Poor little kiddie.”
That was the end of school for Evelyn: another indication that the real purpose of her sojourn at Pamlico was not education. Whatever the medical procedure was, in any event, there were complications, for afterward Stanford sent her to a private sanatorium in New York City, run by Dr. Walker. Dr. Potter’s orders were “no dancing, no strenuous walking, no parties, no theatrical work for six months.” While she was at the sanatorium, Harry Thaw continued to shower her with flowers and gifts. He also retained Oscar Tschuerke, the famous chef at the Waldorf Hotel, to cook whatever she asked for, whenever she wished, and send it over to her. Stanford visited too (scrupulously avoiding Thaw) and had a telephone installed in her room—a great novelty at the time. But he no longer expressed a romantic interest in Evelyn. She began to respond to Harry’s overtures, and let Stanford know about it, but Stanford merely warned her about Harry. That must have been a devastating moment for her: to realize that he wasn’t in the least jealous. When she was deemed well enough to leave the sanatorium, she agreed to go to Europe with Harry and with her mother as chaperon. Evelyn, who had her pick of suitors, now chose to put herself in the hands of a scorned man who was mentally unbalanced and scared her but, like her, was fixated on Stanford White—though in his case fixated with hatred.
Evelyn’s mother disapproved of the European trip. She thought they ought to remain associated with Stanford, but Evelyn said, “What difference does it make, Mama. We’ll stay in Europe till I’m well again. Then we can come back to New York, and I will get a job in some show.” They sailed for Europe in May of 1903. Evelyn was eighteen now, an adult who had been raped and possibly had gone through pregnancy and childbirth, but now had as a chaperon the mother who had failed to protect her when she was a minor. Just before they left, Stanford gave Evelyn a letter of credit in case of emergency.
In Paris, Harry rented an apartment for the three of them. Mrs. Nesbit was upset by this: she didn’t think it proper, even though Harry’s bedroom was separated from hers and Evelyn’s by an enormous drawing room. She felt that Stanford had been like a father to Evelyn, and that Evelyn, in going to Europe with Harry, was being ungrateful to Stanford. Evelyn humored her, though, and eventually Mrs. Nesbit was more accepting. Harry took them on shopping sprees and introduced them to society where they met royalty and where Evelyn became known as La Bébé. Harry could be unsettling, however. If a waiter brushed the crumbs off their tablecloth in a restaurant he would fly into a rage, screaming “Imbécile! Arrêtez! Arrêtez!” Once, when an American friend, passing their table, asked Evelyn if she ever heard from Stanford, Harry overturned their table with everything on it.
Harry first proposed to Evelyn in Paris, soon after they arrived. She turned him down, on the ground that she wanted to devote her life to a career on the stage. Harry wept and flew into a rage. He refused to leave the apartment for days yet would not allow Evelyn and her mother to leave without him. Mrs. Nesbit decided that it was time to go home, but Evelyn didn’t want to give up the chance to see London, Vienna, and Berlin. When they began to go out again, Harry’s moodiness continued. He would sit in a chair for hours, biting his nails and staring off into space, and then fly into a rage after which he would fall to his knees and apologize, kissing Evelyn’s hand and saying, “I’m sorry, boofuls. Her so boofuls. Please forgive.” There were more marriage proposals, and at night, after Mrs. Nesbit had gone to bed, there were long, long inquisitions into whether Evelyn was a virgin.
One summer evening when Evelyn had become exhausted by such an inquisition, she finally told Harry the story of the night in Stanford’s loft. As soon as she started to tell it, she saw it excited him; Harry later wrote that as she told that story for the first time “her eyes were sable and soft as death.” That night, he made her tell the story over and over until dawn: “A sixteen-year-old girl. The beast. That filthy beast,” Harry said, weeping and wringing his hands. But he also said he had known all along that she spent whole nights in the loft and at the tower because he’d had her followed by detectives.
Thenceforth Harry made Evelyn tell him the story of herself and Stanford every night, dragging new details out of her. She would feign reluctance until he was pacing and wringing his hands with frustration and then she would gratify him. One night, she varied the routine by telling him that he should not call Stanford White a beast, because Stanford was above other men. Harry flew into “an incredible rage,” not only then but whenever he happened to remember what she had said. They might be in a restaurant, and something, anything, might trigger the memory, whereupon he would begin turning over tables—their own and other people’s too—and smashing dishes.
Harry assumed that the Nesbits had no money of their own and therefore could not go out on their own. But when he travelled ahead of them to London, they cashed Stanford’s letter of credit and bought some fancy Parisian underwear. In London, Harry spotted the new lingerie and, knowing that he had not paid for it, demanded to know how they had acquired it. In this way Harry learned of the money from Stanford, and this time he flew into such a grand rage that Mrs. Nesbit developed the habit of going to bed whenever he was around.
In London the Nesbits stayed in one hotel and Harry in another. After a few days of Mrs. Nesbit’s strike, Harry offered to pay her way home, promising to find a chaperon to replace her. Mrs. Nesbit accepted the offer but insisted that Evelyn return with her. Evelyn, however, packed her bags and moved in with Harry Thaw. Mrs. Nesbit went back to New York alone.
Another mysterious aspect of Evelyn’s medical history is that in Paris her beautiful, thick auburn hair started to fall out. She comments on this in her memoir only by saying Harry took her to a well-known doctor who said that the hair loss was a result of her operation for appendicitis, and that the remedy was for her to shave her head. This she did, getting herself fitted out with “a gorgeous blond wig.” Later in the summer she went, in her wig, to the Tyrol with Harry, who rented a castle, the Schloss Katzenstein, that was situated above a fairyland alpine valley and so remote that it could be reached only on foot. An old caretaker and his wife came to serve Evelyn and Harry in the daytime, but at night the two were alone.
In the Schloss, Evelyn slept in an ancient bed that stood high off the floor and had carved bedposts—like “a princess’ bed,” she thought. One night, the covers were suddenly swept off her, and she woke to see Harry standing over her stark naked. She screamed, and he covered her mouth, hissing, “Be quiet.” He tore off her nightgown; she fought him; he became more violent; he managed to tie her hands behind her back; and then he whipped her with a dog whip. Evelyn screamed and screamed, and eventually he stopped trying to make her be quiet, because, after all, there was no one nearby. Evelyn had thought that she could manage Harry and see the world, but here she was, bald and naked, being beaten in a fairyland setting where no one could hear.
The beating lasted a long time. Occasionally, Harry would pause and then start up again, and eventually Evelyn stopped screaming and just sobbed. Then she began to make promises to him if only he would stop. He liked this, and asked her to beg him for things. She did, and then suddenly he became deflated, stopped beating her, and left the room, saying, “Stay there. Don’t move. Don’t move,” and she lay there terrified of what would come next. But Harry returned dressed in his pajamas and a robe and slippers. His mood was calm and compassionate. He untied her hands and gave her brandy and spoke as if nothing had happened. He drew the bedcovers gently over her bleeding body. It took her a week to recover, and after that, she wrote later, she could not figure out a way to escape.
Harry had a black bag with a lock on it, in which he kept some hypodermic syringes and drugs, and also different kinds of whips and some reproductions of Persian and Turkish slave girls on the auction block. Even before the whipping, he had liked to show these to Evelyn and say, “If we were living in ancient times you would be my slave.” After the first whipping a game evolved in which Harry asked Evelyn if she detested him for beating her and she said yes and he got down on his knees and begged her to forgive him, saying, “Please, boofuls, please.” But every so often he would whip her again, telling her that she had been “too impudent.” He would tie her hands and stuff a napkin into her mouth to silence her and would use a rattan cane on the backs of her calves as well as a dog whip. The cane beatings were by far the most painful.
There was cocaine in the black bag too. He took it and compelled her to take it, letting her know that he would regard her as “impudent” if she didn’t. She enjoyed the effect of the cocaine, but the drug’s effect on Harry terrified her; she felt she lost control of him when he fell under its influence.
After three weeks at the Schloss Harry and Evelyn returned to Paris. There they lunched at Robinson’s, a restaurant with tables set on platforms in the lower branches of a huge elm, where Gypsies sang love songs to Evelyn from below. The routines with the black bag continued in the evenings. After they had been there awhile they had tea with two American ladies who were about to sail for America, and Evelyn told Harry she would like to join them alone. He agreed casually, and inexplicably; he had, until then, kept Evelyn on a very tight leash. But now he would allow her to go with her new friends, he said, and would follow shortly. So Evelyn escaped. Three days after she got back to New York, there was the sound of a rippling of fingers across her hotel door—a signal that she recognized. When she opened the door, there was Stanford White.
“Oh Kittens,” he said. “Oh Kittens, where have you been?” And then he hugged her; after Harry, that must have felt like paradise.
But though Stanford drew Evelyn back into his gravitational range, that was all he did. He invited her to parties at the tower, but she had so little time alone with him that it was weeks before she had a chance to tell him what had happened at the Schloss Katzenstein. When he did at last hear it, he “boiled over,” according to Evelyn’s memoir. But the story didn’t give her any power over him, as the story of Stanford had done with Harry. He responded merely by arranging to have her hear other stories of Thaw’s atrocities—of how Harry had whipped this one and poured scalding water on that one—as if Evelyn didn’t know enough about these tendencies in Harry.
Stanford also sent Evelyn to Howe & Hummell, and asked that she take with her a young woman named Edna McClure, who had recently been photographed by Rudolf Eickemeyer for Stanford. Howe & Hummell drew up an affidavit of the atrocities in the Tyrol—Stanford had hoped that hearing Evelyn’s testimony about life with Harry K. Thaw would serve as a warning to Edna, who was being courted by Harry (now just back from Europe). Edna, it would seem, had been on a course almost identical to Evelyn’s.
Howe & Hummell informed Harry of the existence of the affidavit, enjoining him to stay away from Evelyn. Harry ignored the warning, however, and, his courtship of Edna notwithstanding, bombarded her with flowers, gifts, and billets-doux throughout the fall, addressing her as “angels, her tumtums, her tweetums, her boofuls.” When Evelyn did not get one of the coveted invitations to a Christmas Eve party Stanford gave in the tower every year, she accepted an invitation from Harry to celebrate at Rector’s, the restaurant where he had examined her about Stanford the very first time they had met. She began to see Harry regularly again after that. Harry, for his part, hired detectives to follow Stanford and also put Anthony Comstock, the president of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, on Stanford’s tail.
In June of 1904, Evelyn, now nineteen, went to Europe with Harry for the second time. On their return, in early 1905, she had another attack of “appendicitis” from which she required six weeks to recuperate. Mrs. William Thaw, Harry’s mother, had long opposed her son’s association with Evelyn, but over time Harry’s behavior had been so publicly embarrassing that she now saw Evelyn as her best hope. Not long after Harry and Evelyn’s return from Europe, she made a trip to New York and begged Evelyn to marry Harry and come to live at the family mansion in Pittsburgh. The meeting had the character of a negotiation, with Evelyn raising the matter of Harry’s oddities and Mrs. Thaw averring that once he had settled down with a woman he loved he would be all right. On April 4, 1905, Evelyn and Harry were married. Evelyn’s mother, who in the interim had married her Pittsburgh friend Charles Holman, received a hundred thousand dollars for her consent.
Life at Lyndhurst, the Thaw family mansion, was dreary. Evelyn and Harry lived in a separate wing but dined always with Mrs. Thaw, who was a dominating personality. There were always more servants than persons to be served, and what guests there were made strenuous efforts to pander to Mrs. Thaw’s Presbyterianism.
That fall Harry began to take trips to New York, and then the household would consist of Evelyn and Mrs. Thaw alone. A certain warmth developed between them. One night at Lyndhurst when Harry was home, Evelyn woke up screaming from a bad dream. Mrs. Thaw appeared within moments in her nightgown and nightcap to demand of Harry, “Did you strike her?” When Evelyn explained that she’d only had a nightmare, Mrs. Thaw turned to Harry and said, “If you ever lay a hand on her, I’ll cut you off without a penny.” This moment, in which a parental figure actually protected Evelyn, stands out in her recorded life story.
Already by the end of that summer Harry had begun biting his nails, staring into space, and seething again. Evelyn suggested as a change that they go to New York together. One evening there, they were dining at the St. Regis with a friend, a Mrs. Caine, when Stanford and Bessie appeared and sat down at a table facing them. Harry’s mouth became a thin, hard line as he stared at Stanford, while Stanford acted as if he hadn’t noticed Harry and Evelyn at all. Mrs. Caine leaned over and whispered to Evelyn, “What’s the matter with Harry, Evelyn? He has a revolver on his lap under his napkin.” Evelyn felt suddenly debilitated by terror. Then she pulled herself together and said to Harry, “If you don’t put that gun away, I’ll leave the table.” Harry looked as if he were about to spring like an animal, but she threatened him again and he suddenly flip-flopped, relaxing and smiling. “It’s all right, angels, don’t her worry,” he said, and put the gun in his pocket. Evelyn became angry then and they left, with Harry apologizing all the way back to their hotel. They returned to Pittsburgh the next day.
Harry’s rages resumed in earnest now. Whips were discovered by a maid. A flatiron sailed through a window and narrowly missed a gardener working in the flower beds below. After such incidents Mrs. Thaw would lecture Harry, and he would be “meek as a kitten for days,” but then his mood would build up again. It was a long, hard winter. In June of 1906, Mrs. Thaw decided that they all ought to sail to England to visit her daughter Alice, the Countess of Yarmouth. Mrs. Thaw would go by cattle boat; Harry and Evelyn would follow on a German liner.
Harry and Evelyn moved into the Hotel Lorraine in New York for a two-week stay prior to their departure. As usual, Harry was having Evelyn followed by detectives. On the morning of Monday, June 25th, Evelyn went to a doctor because she had a sore throat, and she ran into Stanford there. They hugged and chatted and parted. Because Evelyn knew she was being followed, she told Harry that she had seen Stanford, but when he subjected her to an inquisition she claimed that they hadn’t even spoken.
That evening, Harry expressed a desire to see “Mamzelle Champagne,” opening at the Roof Garden theatre of Madison Square Garden. Evelyn agreed: the plan was that they would dine with two old friends of Harry’s first at a restaurant called Café Martin. Harry went ahead without Evelyn because he wanted to stop for a drink on the way. He was dressed in an overcoat, though the weather was hot, and he had three drinks in a bar which he paid for with a hundred-dollar bill. Then he joined Evelyn and his friends at the restaurant. One of these friends was Truxton Beale, who had been acquitted of shooting a man in California for reasons having to do with a woman. The acquittal was based on an “unwritten law” that in certain circumstances murderous jealousy was justified. Harry had celebrated Beale’s triumph at many previous dinners during his friend’s visit.
The Stanford White issue was very much in the forefront that day, as Evelyn must have been keenly aware. At Café Martin, she took a seat that allowed her to survey the room while Harry could not, so that Harry didn’t notice when, in the middle of dinner, Stanford White passed through. Harry could tell from Evelyn’s face that something had happened, however, and when he asked what was wrong she wrote him a note: “That B—— is here.” By the time Harry turned around, Stanford was out of sight, but he began biting his nails, and Evelyn, anticipating one of his restaurant scenes, hurried them out.
At the Roof Garden, they were seated at a table in the back, and Evelyn observed Harry glancing in an ominous way at the tower that loomed over them. Then Harry left the table and wandered. There was a sound of gunfire. Many people in the theatre thought the gunfire was part of the show, but Evelyn, though she could not see anything of what had happened, said, “My God, he’s shot him.” Later, when Harry was in the custody of the police she kissed him frantically and repeatedly, saying, “My God, Harry, you killed him,” and, “Kiss me.”
District Attorney William Travers Jerome wanted to bring an indictment for murder against Evelyn as well as against Harry. He refrained from doing so only because public sympathy for Evelyn had made it impossible. His grounds would have been that Evelyn knew Harry was unstable and in a murderous rage at Stanford, and knew furthermore that Harry was carrying a gun, yet fanned Harry’s hatred nevertheless, and had done so specifically and recklessly on the evening of the murder. Some of Evelyn’s friends—May Mackenzie, for example, who was at Evelyn’s side throughout the trial and had been worried enough to warn Stanford about Harry—also thought that Evelyn was at least as guilty as Harry. I’m inclined to agree with May and District Attorney Jerome. Evelyn was enslaved to Stanford, who had used her and then insouciantly moved on. A way to free herself was to kill him, using Harry K. Thaw as her weapon. With Stanford dead and Harry arrested for murder, she was rid of them both in one play.
When Evelyn left the stand after testifying for Harry, her legs could barely carry her. When, at the end of the second trial, Harry was declared not guilty by reason of insanity, her teeth started chattering uncontrollably.
Mrs. Nesbit did not come to her daughter’s side after the murder but instead defended Stanford in statements to the press. Indeed, she planned to testify in defense of Stanford’s character at the trial, directly contradicting her daughter’s testimony. She agreed not to testify only after the Thaws bought her off: newsmen estimated that the price was fifty thousand dollars. Despite the payoff, during the second trial Evelyn’s mother met with Jerome in the evenings to pick Evelyn’s testimony apart.
Mrs. Thaw promised Evelyn a million dollars in a divorce settlement if she testified in Harry’s defense—that is, testified that he was crazy. The insanity plea was his only real hope of avoiding jail, although he would have to go to an asylum nonetheless. One of the Thaw attorneys privately warned Evelyn that she should not trust Mrs. Thaw and should get the promise in writing, but Evelyn did not listen to him. “I’m sure Mother Thaw will do the right thing,” she said.
After the second trial, however, Evelyn was informed by Thaw’s legal counsel that Harry couldn’t be divorced because, thanks to her own testimony, he had been declared insane. On the other hand, if she had the marriage annulled she would have no claim on his estate whatsoever. Because she still might be needed to testify at sanity hearings for Harry’s release from the asylum—this time testifying that he was not insane—Mrs. Thaw agreed to give her a modest retainer.
Depleted by the trials, by the betrayals of her mother and Mrs. Thaw, and by having lived in a kind of extreme danger for a long time—managing it, manipulating it, surviving—Evelyn became listless and dependent, evidently without resources of her own, and unable or unwilling to pursue her old ambitions. When she had gone through Mrs. Thaw’s retainer, she was informed by the Thaws’ attorney that she was no longer needed. “No more money will be paid you by your husband or his family.” The attorney also told Evelyn that Mrs. Thaw’s strategy was that “without money from the Thaws you will land in the gutter and thereby gain sympathy for her son.”
Evelyn had learned to drink heavily with Stanford, and the profile of her life in the aftermath of the trial is characteristic of a drinker’s. She sank to worse and worse accommodations, wheedling pittances out of Harry when she could, and—what is most telling—was no longer courted by men. Sometimes she gave little parties, and her old admirers, the Racquet Club boys, would come; but she would not be their girl. She would invite girls for them, and grill the steaks.
In 1912, when she was twenty-seven and living in a cheap apartment on 112th Street with no prospects at all, Evelyn suddenly rallied. She made a connection with some theatrical luminaries, and starred at the London Hippodrome in a smash hit called “Hello Ragtime.” The show was brought to New York by Oscar Hammerstein—and Evelyn with it—and then went across the country, breaking box-office records in city after city. (Mrs. Thaw tried to get an injunction against the show in Pittsburgh on the ground that it was immoral, but she failed.) Often crowds of fans became so unruly that Evelyn had to be secluded. There was a European tour, then another American tour, and then Evelyn fell to morphine addiction. She was evidently seduced into it by a fellow-actress who trafficked in drugs and initially proffered the morphine to relieve Evelyn’s pain from neuralgia. There were other comebacks in which Evelyn temporarily overcame her addiction, but the over-all trajectory of her life was one of decline. By the time she was thirty-nine, she weighed less than a hundred pounds and could not rouse herself out of inertia. The last of her theatrical comebacks ended when she was forty-five, at the Kelly Ritz, a whorehouse in Panama City, where she was booked to perform a cabaret act she had developed. The run was cut short when she was arrested for gambling.
In 1955, when “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing” was released, Evelyn was seventy-four years old. There was a wave of publicity about her, and the picture that emerges from it is not one of a person in an advanced stage of morphine dependency. True, she was then living in Los Angeles in a bare little studio that shook when trucks passed on the Hollywood Freeway above. But she sculpted there and she taught sculpture at a school nearby. She was healthy and coherent. Evelyn, who had, Houdini-like, escaped from the trap of Stanford and Harry, had somewhere along the line freed herself from the beartrap of morphine addiction as well.
“Most of my life I’ve been dressed in fancy clothes like a horse,” she said in a newspaper interview she gave at the time. “I like to wear just a tunic and sandals now.” She did, however, wear what she called her Go-to-Hell Hat on a publicity trip to New York. It was a tiny blue hat with pearl wings. According to the newspapers, she said that she stayed young because “I never bear a grudge.” She also said, “A really beautiful woman suffers many, many more handicaps than a plain woman. Beauty can bring her—as it did to me—great confusion and sorrow. You must be wiser than most women and wealthier than most women if you are beautiful. For there is no way to avoid danger if you are beautiful.” So there is Evelyn, in her Go-to-Hell Hat, still taking the blame.