The Girl on the Velvet Swing

by Simon Baatz

  Evelyn hesitated again. She was not ready to give him an answer; and Harry was too upset, too distraught at that moment to push his suit any further.

  Florence Nesbit knew nothing of the secret that Evelyn had confided to Harry that night. But Florence, isolated and lonely in Paris, was herself desperately unhappy that she had agreed to accompany Evelyn to France. She had come to Paris as a chaperone for her daughter, but Harry and Evelyn explored the city without her, leaving her alone in the apartment. She knew no one in Paris; she could not speak French; and she had little interest in walking about the city by herself. It was a miserable situation, and her obvious discontent heightened the antipathy that Harry Thaw and Florence Nesbit had always felt for each other.

  They finally left Paris in August, traveling to London. Florence insisted that she and Evelyn live apart from Harry, and he moved into a suite at the Carlton Hotel, on the Haymarket, while Florence and Evelyn took up rooms at Claridge’s, a hotel in Mayfair. It would be only a short visit to the British capital, Harry announced: he intended to stay only two weeks in London before returning to Paris in preparation for their extended tour of the continent.13

  But Florence Nesbit had had enough. She positively refused to spend more time with Harry Thaw, and she intended to return to the United States as soon as possible. She would no longer act as a chaperone to her daughter.

  Her return to New York should have spelled the end of Harry’s plans to tour Europe with Evelyn. It would be too scandalous for a man to travel alone with an unmarried woman. But Harry assured Evelyn that there was no cause for alarm; he would hire someone in Paris as a replacement for her mother.14

  Harry and Evelyn spent that autumn traveling through Europe. They sailed from England to France, stopping at Paris for a few days to hire a chaperone, the widow of a British army officer, before going north to Holland. They boarded a steamboat on the Rhine, traveling south into Germany, eventually making their way to Munich.

  There was no destination so romantic, so picturesque, as the Austrian Tyrol, and Harry had arranged that they should spend three weeks in a small castle in the Trientine Alps. They left Munich at the end of August, crossing into Austria-Hungary and traveling south to Innsbruck, continuing by carriage to Meran, a spa town close to the border with Italy.

  Meran, located at the intersection of the Passer and Etsch Rivers, was known for its mineral waters, its gardens, and its temperate climate. The empress consort Elisabeth of Austria, the wife of Franz Joseph I, had visited the town frequently, but Meran had remained unspoiled, largely ignored by the tourists who flocked to the Tyrol each summer and fall.

  Harry had reserved rooms for three weeks in September in a castle nestled among the mountains, more than three miles from the nearest house. The castle watchtower, a stone structure attached to the main building, provided magnificent views across the mountain range, and in the far distance, trapped between the mountain peaks, a small lake could be seen, its sky-blue waters shimmering in the sunlight.15

  They left Meran at the end of September, traveling through the mountain passes into Switzerland, stopping at Lucerne, Bern, and Zurich before returning to Paris in October. Harry and Evelyn resumed the daily schedule they had pursued on their first stay in the capital, visiting the museums and art galleries, shopping on the Rue de la Paix, attending the ballet and the opera, and dining at the most exclusive restaurants.

  But Evelyn was dismayed to learn in Paris that her secret—her confession that Stanford White had raped her—had become known to Harry’s friends. She had entrusted Harry with the most intimate details of her past life, and she had told no one else; but he had betrayed her trust. It was distressing to learn that Elisabeth Marbury, someone with many acquaintances in New York, a woman who was friendly with Stanford White, now knew everything. Harry’s betrayal would ensure that everyone, on both sides of the Atlantic, would learn about the rape.16

  Even her mother had now heard the report that Stanford White had raped Evelyn. Florence Nesbit had returned from London to the United States earlier that summer, leaving Evelyn alone with Harry Thaw. But an acquaintance, Ida Simonton, had learned about the rape during a visit to Villa Trianon before traveling back to the United States. Simonton had booked a cabin on the same passenger liner on which Florence Nesbit sailed to New York, and as the boat chugged its way across the Atlantic, she revealed the entire episode to her companion, naming Stanford White as the perpetrator of the rape.

  Nothing could have been more shocking to Florence Nesbit than the knowledge that Stanford White, her benefactor, the man in whose care she had placed Evelyn, had taken advantage of her absence to rape her daughter. It was too painful to believe, too distressing to accept, and to her relief, when she confronted White in New York with the accusation that he had raped Evelyn, he denied everything.

  It was a false story, White replied, an invention of Harry Thaw, intentionally designed to blacken his reputation. Thaw had always been hostile toward him, believing that he, White, had blackballed him from the Union Club. There was no truth in the rumor, White repeated, that he had raped Evelyn. It was a wicked lie that Thaw had told in the hope of sending him to the penitentiary.17

  Evelyn returned to the United States later that year, on October 24, 1903. She was now alone in New York: her mother had gone on to Pittsburgh to visit her fiancé and Harry had remained in Paris for a few weeks to settle some business matters. She still felt some fatigue and lassitude, symptoms of the illness that had afflicted her earlier in the year, but her time abroad had been an exhilarating experience. It was unfortunate, of course, that Harry had revealed her secret, but now even that no longer seemed so worrisome as it had first appeared. And Evelyn was preoccupied with her return to the stage. The producer Sam Shubert had offered her a part in a new show, The Girl from Dixie, a musical comedy that was scheduled to open in Hoyt’s Theatre in December.18

  She had not expected to see Stanford White—his presence in her life had already begun to seem a distant memory—but a chance encounter on Fifth Avenue, an exchange of greetings as their carriages passed each other, reawakened their friendship. They saw each other frequently that November; White called at her apartment at the Savoy Hotel, and she occasionally visited the tower apartment at Madison Square Garden. He had last seen her in May, as she had been about to embark on the SS New York, and he was curious to hear about her travels in Europe. Evelyn reported that it had been a wonderful experience to spend time in Paris, seeing the sights and meeting the most interesting people; and it had been equally enjoyable to travel through Switzerland, Germany, and Austria-Hungary.

  White was familiar with many of the places that Evelyn had visited during her time in the French capital. He also had spent many hours viewing the paintings and sculptures in the Louvre, and he had dined at several of the restaurants that she mentioned. He knew both Elisabeth Marbury and Elsie de Wolfe and had visited Villa Trianon on many occasions. But he did not fail to remind Evelyn again that she must be careful in her relations with Harry Thaw. White cautioned her that Thaw was a morphine addict, a man with a violent, unpredictable temper who was capable of doing her a great deal of harm.

  Evelyn protested that she had seen no signs of drug use during her time in Europe with Harry. How could she believe such stories? But it was true, White replied, and if she would not believe him, why, there were other people in New York who knew about Harry Thaw. He could introduce her to several acquaintances who would corroborate his warnings.

  Charles Dillingham, a friend of Stanford White, also spoke with Evelyn that month, advising her to be cautious. Dillingham, an urbane, smartly dressed man in his mid-thirties, had previously been the theater critic for the New York Evening Post before establishing his career as a producer of Broadway shows. He already had an enviable reputation on account of the success of The Little Princess, a play set in a girls’ boarding school, and in November 1903, when he met with Evelyn Nesbit, he was the producer of two shows, The Office Boy, a musical the
n playing at the Victoria Theatre, and Babette, a comic opera at the Broadway Theatre.

  He had heard many stories from his actors about Harry Thaw, he told Evelyn, and none of them had been favorable. The accounts came from different sources, but they were all remarkably similar. Thaw frequently placed advertisements in the theatrical press, asking to interview actresses for a stage production. He would meet his victim, typically a young girl, at rooms he rented in a boardinghouse on Fifty-seventh Street. He would ask her about her background, her connections in the city, attempting to ascertain if she had relatives living nearby. If she lived alone, if she was vulnerable, if she had no protector or guardian, he would attack straightaway, tying his victim with cords and assaulting her with a dog whip. Such assaults were invariably brutal, leaving the victim with welts across her body, but Thaw had always avoided prosecution by paying large sums of money, thousands of dollars, to his victims.19

  It became difficult for Evelyn to dismiss such accounts as entirely fictitious. Why would a man such as Charles Dillingham invent such stories? He was a well-known figure on Broadway who had produced several successful shows, with another, Her Own Way, soon to debut, and he had no reason to lie to her about Harry Thaw. Stanford White also was respected and reputable, and his warnings about Thaw seemed well intentioned, designed to safeguard her against danger.

  White suggested that she should visit his lawyer, Abraham Hummel, for advice. Hummel was one of the best attorneys in New York, and he would give her the assistance that she needed. He was an ugly little man, White confided, with a grotesquely twisted body and a large head, but she need not be alarmed by his appearance; he was a brilliant lawyer with vast experience in the New York courts.

  Evelyn trusted White and believed that he was acting selflessly to protect her interests. There was no disadvantage in speaking to a lawyer, and Evelyn made the journey downtown, to the Clock Tower Building at 346 Broadway, where Hummel had his office.

  He was exactly as White had described him: no taller than five feet, with a head that seemed far too large for such a small body. His face had a chalky-white pallor, and Evelyn could see some tiny cherry-red warts on his cheeks and brow. His thin lips, sharp nose, pinprick eyes, and broad forehead gave Hummel a rat-like appearance; but there was nothing evasive or furtive about his manner. He was, on the contrary, excessively courteous, almost obsequious, in his greeting.20

  Hummel was a divorce lawyer who specialized also in suits for breach of contract; he had succeeded in dozens of actions brought by actresses against wealthy men. He had settled a case against Harry Thaw several years before: a woman named Ethel Thomas had sued Thaw for assault, but Thaw paid her off before the case came to court. That was always the way, Hummel remarked; no one wanted the publicity that would come with a lawsuit.

  Evelyn spent the afternoon talking about her friendship with Harry Thaw, describing their initial encounter at Rector’s and the solicitude he had shown her during her illness. He had invited her to travel with him in Europe, and she had sailed with her mother at the end of May, meeting Thaw in Paris and staying in France for about five weeks. Her mother had returned to the United States in June and she, Evelyn, had spent the remainder of her time traveling with Thaw through Holland, Germany, and Austria-Hungary.

  Her description of the castle near Meran seemed to catch Hummel’s attention more than any other detail of her journey. The location, high in the mountains, far from any town, had been stunningly beautiful, Evelyn remembered, but the castle itself, a large rectangular structure with crenellated walls, was a forbidding place. She had seen only a few servants, two or three maids and a butler, but otherwise she and Harry had spent their time alone.

  Abraham Hummel listened attentively to Evelyn’s descriptions, carefully noting the details that she provided, occasionally asking questions designed to complete her account. It would be best, he advised, to have a written record of her experience, something on which she could rely if there were a lawsuit. He would prepare a document that they could use against Thaw in such an event.

  The suggestion puzzled Evelyn. Was it necessary to have a written summary of her remarks? What purpose would that serve? But her inexperience and her youth were no match for Hummel’s shrewd calculation. He called his stenographer into the office and Evelyn listened as he dictated a summary of her account.21

  Nothing could have been more surprising to Harry Thaw, on his return to New York in the middle of December, than to realize that Evelyn Nesbit had no desire to continue their friendship. He had expected to see her again on his arrival, but he received no response to the notes that he sent to her apartment. He called on the telephone, but her maid invariably replied that her mistress had left and there was no telling when she might return.

  It was a mystery, a puzzle that confounded Harry. They had parted amicably, even, one might say, affectionately, when Evelyn had taken the boat back to New York. They had had no contact since her departure, and nothing, therefore, could have passed between them to end their friendship.

  It took a chance encounter, a coincidental meeting at the Café des Beaux-Arts on Fortieth Street, to solve the mystery. Neither one had expected to see the other that afternoon, and Evelyn was hesitant even to acknowledge Harry’s presence in the restaurant. But their tables were almost adjacent, and once they began to talk, Harry quickly realized why Evelyn had shunned his company.

  She had heard horrible stories about him, reports that he lured young girls to his apartment, beating and whipping them and abusing them in the most dreadful ways. There was one account that he had scalded a young girl with boiling water. She had heard also that he was a morphine addict, that he frequently took cocaine and other drugs. It had been all too terrible to hear such stories, and she had no desire to see him again.22

  Harry listened impassively, saying nothing as Evelyn explained her reluctance to continue their friendship. He merely shook his head from time to time, waiting for her to finish speaking. Finally she paused, expectantly, surprised that Harry had shown so little reaction to her words.

  “I see,” he began, speaking with an air of resignation, “that they have been making a fool of you.” There was no anger in his voice, no indignation at the accusations that his enemies had leveled against his reputation. Stanford White, he explained, had always hated him and had done everything possible to destroy him. The reports that he had abused young girls were common currency among the blackmailers who had attempted to get his money. White had merely repeated the rumors that he, Harry, had heard so many times before, but there was nothing new in such gossip, he told Evelyn, and no truth in such tales.

  Did Evelyn have any evidence, apart from the gossip that she had heard, to persuade her that White’s stories might be true? She had just spent several months traveling with Thaw. “If I had taken morphine,” he asked, “wouldn’t it have shown itself some time or other?” Stanford White knew a great deal about such things, more than he, Harry Thaw, had ever learned; and if anyone were guilty of such behavior, it was White.23

  It was preposterous that White, of all people, should make such accusations. He was one of a group of wealthy roués, all members of the Union Club, who organized frequent orgies in secret locations scattered about the city. Other members of the group included Henry Poor, a financier; James Lawrence Breese, a wealthy man-about-town with an avocational interest in photography; Charles MacDonald, a stockbroker and principal shareholder in the Southern Pacific Railroad; and Thomas Clarke, a dealer in antiques.24

  There had been a notorious episode in 1895 when James Breese had held a dinner for some friends at his apartment. Stanford White had been present that evening with his partners Charles McKim and William Rutherford Mead. The sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, several artists—Carroll Beckwith, Alden Weir, and Charles Dana Gibson—along with the architect Whitney Warren, had also attended. Some financiers and bankers, men well known on Wall Street, had accepted Breese’s invitation, and several literati—journalists, writers
, and magazine editors, all presumed to be trustworthy—had come to the dinner. The caterer, Louis Sherry, had arranged a magnificent dinner with a limitless quantity of champagne, but the highlight of the evening came at midnight. Six waiters carried an enormous spherical pie into the room; the headwaiter cut the crust; and a young girl, almost nude, magically appeared. The girl, Susie Johnson, had been paid well for her performance, but there had been a tragic denouement. Later that year, she had disappeared without a trace, and her distraught parents had been unable to discover her fate.

  An account of the dinner subsequently appeared in the New York World. The newspaper condemned the men, all prominent New Yorkers, for their selfish corruption of young girls. Susie Johnson, according to the World, had come from a decent family but she had been tempted into prostitution. Stanford White’s accomplices in the affair had used their social standing to escape prosecution. No one had been willing to indict them for their misdeeds, and the authorities, by their passive acquiescence, had thereby enabled them to continue with their crimes.25

  It came as no surprise to Harry that Stanford White should accuse him of morphine addiction—it was an attempt by White to distract attention from his own misdeeds—but how had Abraham Hummel become involved in the affair? There were few lawyers, Harry told Evelyn, so crooked as Hummel. He had a reputation in the city as a blackmailer who frequently used the threat of a lawsuit for breach of contract to extort money from wealthy men. No one wanted to have his name linked to some disreputable woman, and most men were willing to pay any reasonable sum to settle the matter out of court. The accusations might be entirely false, without a shred of evidence to support them, but it was always preferable to avoid the publicity that would inevitably attach itself to a lawsuit.