The Girl on the Velvet Swing

by Simon Baatz

  Evelyn admitted to Thaw that she had talked with Hummel one afternoon in his office, telling him about her travels in Europe, describing the incidents in Paris that had led to her mother’s return to the United States, and detailing the itinerary that she and Harry had followed on the continent. Hummel had been especially interested in their stay in Meran in the Tyrol, asking her many questions about the castle in which they had spent almost three weeks during September.

  Harry was intrigued to learn that Hummel had dictated a document, an account of her travels, to one of his stenographers. What was in that document? Where was it now? Had she signed anything, any papers, during the interview in Hummel’s office? Evelyn could give only vague replies to Harry’s questions, saying that she had not read the document very carefully—there had been little opportunity—and yes, she might have signed some papers that afternoon; but she was not sure…

  There was a scheme afoot, Harry told her, a conspiracy. But what trick did Hummel intend to play? Stanford White had learned that his rape of Evelyn was no longer a secret. Perhaps, Harry speculated, White and Hummel were preparing some ruse that would protect White from prosecution. But Hummel was a shrewd, cunning lawyer who would never reveal anything if it did not work to his advantage, and it would not be possible to learn the nature of the conspiracy unless he chose to disclose it. They could only wait and see what might transpire.

  It was a dizzying turn of events for Evelyn Nesbit. She was caught between two forceful, strong-willed men, each of whom accused the other of the most terrible behavior. Evelyn, still just eighteen years old, was naïve and impressionable, too quick to believe anything she heard, and it was impossible for her to determine which man might be telling the truth. Could it be that their mutual dislike had increased to such a degree that each was ready to repeat the most scandalous gossip that he had heard about the other? Perhaps there was no truth in either account; perhaps each man had allowed his antipathy for the other to exceed all reasonable bounds.

  Evelyn traveled a second time to Europe with Harry, sailing from New York the following year on the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse at the end of March 1904. It was again necessary that a chaperone travel with them, and Harry persuaded a friend, Ben Donnelly, to accompany them on the journey. They went first to Paris, staying at the Hôtel Palais d’Orsay, before taking the train south to Monte Carlo. They stayed at the resort for two weeks, playing trente et quarante at the casino during the day and attending the opera at the Salle Garnier at night. Then it was on to Italy, going first to Verona and then to Lake Como, pausing briefly at Bellagio.

  They followed a zigzag, almost haphazard itinerary, returning to Paris for a few weeks before crossing into Switzerland by motorcar. Harry traveled impulsively, deciding their route on a whim, yet his wealth invariably opened all doors, securing them the best rooms in the most exclusive hotels. They reached London in October, staying only to visit Harry’s sister Alice before boarding a ship back across the Atlantic to New York.26

  Evelyn had imagined that their wanderings would distract Harry from thoughts of Stanford White—but nothing, it seemed, could dissuade him from his pursuit of the architect. Earlier that year, in February 1904, shortly before his departure from New York, Thaw had enlisted Anthony Comstock, secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, in his crusade to bring Stanford White to justice. Comstock, then fifty-nine years old, had campaigned for many decades against obscenity, successfully persuading the United States Congress in 1873 to ban the delivery by the postal service of lewd and obscene publications. Comstock’s remit, as secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, encompassed anything that he considered immoral, including literature on birth control and the prevention of venereal disease. Thaw’s complaints that Stanford White and other men were luring young girls to secret locations in New York and raping them seemed legitimate, and Comstock promised that he would assign detectives to investigate Thaw’s accusations.27

  Nine months later, after Thaw had returned from Europe, the two men spoke again about White. Thaw reported that workmen had heard the cries of young girls coming from the building that contained the photographic studio of Rudolf Eickemeyer, the same studio in which Evelyn Nesbit had posed for Eickemeyer in a kimono. Comstock again promised to investigate, saying that he would assign detectives to watch Stanford White and to stand guard over the places that White was known to frequent. Comstock also informed Thaw that he had attempted to rent one of the tower apartments in Madison Square Garden in order to spy on White; but none of the apartments had become vacant that year.28

  Harry Thaw had complained publicly about Stanford White, accusing him of various crimes, but already the gossip columns in the New York newspapers were remarking unfavorably on Thaw’s own behavior. He had traveled to Europe twice with Evelyn Nesbit, an unmarried woman, and social convention dictated that a chaperone accompany Evelyn while she was with Thaw. Yet Florence Nesbit, on the first trip, had chaperoned her daughter only during her stay in Paris and London; and no one had yet been able to determine who, if anyone, had accompanied Evelyn for the remainder of the journey.

  Thaw claimed that his friend Ben Donnelly had been the chaperone for Evelyn on the second visit to Europe in 1904, but no one could have seemed less suited for the role. Donnelly, a former football player at Princeton, subsequently played for professional teams in Pittsburgh and Chicago, earning a reputation as a brutal thug who would do anything, no matter how unsportsmanlike, to win games. His later career as a football coach had been lackluster and his teams had achieved little success. He had drifted aimlessly since the end of his coaching career, finding intermittent employment here and there, and he had readily accepted Thaw’s offer of employment as a chaperone to Evelyn Nesbit.29

  The newspaper reports that Harry might have traveled alone with Evelyn Nesbit in Europe were a source of acute distress to his family. His mother, Mary Thaw, a proud woman who had always jealously guarded her social position, was indignant that her eldest son was so recklessly endangering the family name. Evelyn Nesbit, an obscure actress who had played in risqué musical comedies on Broadway, was, in the opinion of Mary Thaw, little better than a courtesan, and it would be too scandalous to public morals to imagine that Harry had lived with such a woman.

  Her other children had married well, choosing husbands and wives whose social position was secure; but there seemed no solution to the problem that Harry posed. One daughter, Alice, had wed George Francis Alexander Seymour, a member of the British aristocracy, the eldest son of the sixth Marquess of Hertford, and a second daughter, Margaret, had married George Lauder Carnegie, a nephew of the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Her two other sons, Josiah and Edward, had also chosen wisely, each marrying the daughter of a prominent Pittsburgh businessman.30

  Mary Thaw had threatened to withhold Harry’s share of the inheritance if he continued in his determination to marry Evelyn Nesbit. But Harry was too strong-willed to pay much attention to his mother’s demands, and she knew, even as she made the threat, that it would be futile. If Harry was determined to marry Evelyn, then it was at least preferable that he marry her as soon as possible and thus avoid the continuing scandal that had attached itself to the relationship. Mary Thaw would consent to the marriage and accept Evelyn Nesbit as her daughter-in-law, but only, she informed Harry, if she could be allowed to forget that Evelyn had ever been on the stage. There were to be no reminders of her disreputable past as an actress.31

  Harry renewed his proposal of marriage and Evelyn eventually accepted. She had always been uncomfortably aware that Harry’s relatives—his mother, his brothers and sisters—might not willingly accept her into the family. The marriage would also compel her to abandon her stage career, to relinquish any chance of success on Broadway, and might even, as Harry had suggested, require her to leave New York to move with him to Pittsburgh.

  There was so much to consider and so many possible pitfalls. But marriage would mean financial security. Evelyn had always l
ived from day to day, never knowing what the future might hold. It no longer seemed possible for her to make a living as an actress, and now she could not count on the generosity of Stanford White. Her education had been only intermittent, and she was ill-equipped for any profession. Her future seemed to depend almost exclusively on marriage to someone wealthy, a man who would support her.

  The wedding, on April 4, 1905, was almost pitiful in its brevity, an expression of the disdain that Mary Thaw felt for her new daughter-in-law. There had been bright sunshine earlier in the day, but that afternoon, when Evelyn Nesbit arrived for the ceremony, it had already started to rain. Her mother, Florence, and her stepfather, Charles Holman, accompanied Evelyn to the residence of William McEwan, pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Harry Thaw greeted them, welcoming his bride with a bouquet of red roses. His mother and his younger brother Josiah were also present as witnesses, and after McEwan had conducted everyone to his study, a large room lined with bookshelves, the pastor began the service.32

  No one else was present to see Harry Thaw take Evelyn Nesbit as his wife. Harry’s sisters, Alice and Margaret, unwilling to accept Evelyn as a sister-in-law, had declined their invitations, and Edward, his youngest brother, had also refused to acknowledge the marriage. The bride had hoped to invite one or two of her Florodora friends, and Harry had suggested that a couple of his friends might also attend; but Mary Thaw had insisted on a private ceremony, one that would receive as little notice as possible.

  It was an almost perfunctory occasion, designed solely to satisfy the legal requirements, and soon, in less than an hour, it was over. Three carriages waited outside to take everyone to Lyndhurst, the Thaw family home, for a celebratory dinner, and later that evening Harry and Evelyn caught the train for New York in preparation for their honeymoon.

  The next day the newlyweds traveled west, taking a train from New York to Chicago. They stayed there only two days before heading north, to Milwaukee, to visit one of Evelyn’s former classmates at the DeMille school. They spent several days with a guide in the Grand Canyon before continuing on to Yosemite, eventually reaching San Francisco before returning home to Pittsburgh.33

  Neither Evelyn nor Harry had given much thought to the future; Harry had vaguely anticipated that they would settle in Pittsburgh after the honeymoon. Lyndhurst, the family residence on Beechwood Boulevard, was an enormous mansion, one of the grandest residences in the city, and Harry and Evelyn moved into the house at the end of May 1905.

  But Evelyn quickly became disillusioned. Mary Thaw, on account of her philanthropy, exerted great influence within the Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh; she had given generously to religious charities in the city and throughout western Pennsylvania. But her reputation was less potent in other circles, and it soon became apparent that the social elite of the city was reluctant to accept Evelyn into its ranks. She occupied her time in self-improvement, studying French and taking piano lessons, but there was little opportunity for her to meet companions of her own age, and she soon began to think of herself as a prisoner, trapped in a large, rather gloomy mansion.34

  Harry also felt restless. There was little for him to do in Pittsburgh, and he had few friends in the city. He was frequently absent, claiming that his business affairs in New York often compelled him to go east, and Evelyn, resentful that her husband occasionally abandoned her, felt a growing sense of isolation and loneliness. Had she made the wrong decision in marrying Harry Thaw? She had been married only a few months, yet already she had begun to contemplate filing for divorce.35

  The sense of crisis that imperiled the marriage found reinforcement in the sudden appearance of the photographs of Evelyn that Rudolf Eickemeyer had taken in 1901. The copyright had somehow passed to a printing company in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that had started to distribute images of Evelyn commercially. In December 1905 Haudenshield & Co., a butcher in Diamond Square in Pittsburgh, issued its calendar for 1906, including among the illustrations a photograph of Evelyn Nesbit, dressed in a kimono and reclining on a bearskin rug.

  Lawyers for the Thaw family pounced immediately, threatening Haudenshield & Co. with legal action if the butcher continued to distribute the calendar to his customers. The butcher was initially defiant, claiming to have been unaware of the identity of the girl in the photograph, but a financial settlement was reached and the attorneys were able to confiscate the remaining calendars.36

  A second photograph of Evelyn appeared in January 1906 in an exhibition at the Carnegie Art Gallery. The portrait, identified only as a photograph by Rudolf Eickemeyer, showed a young girl asleep. There was nothing in the exhibition to identify the model as Evelyn Nesbit—Eickemeyer had named his work only In My Studio—but no one had any doubt about the matter.37

  Rudolf Eickemeyer originally titled this 1901 photograph of Evelyn Nesbit The Little Butterfly. The photograph subsequently appeared in an exhibition at the Carnegie Art Gallery in January 1906 under the title In My Studio. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-10597)

  It was a lamentable situation and nobody felt a greater sense of humiliation than Mary Thaw. She had given her consent to the marriage on the condition that there be no reminder of Evelyn’s disreputable past as an actress; it was not to be mentioned in her presence. Yet just a few months later, suggestive photographs of Evelyn as a young girl started to pop up in the most unexpected places. Mary Thaw had always cherished her position as a grande dame, giving generously to various cultural institutions in the city, guarding her reputation for moral probity, and actively supporting the local clergy; but her son’s marriage to Evelyn Nesbit cast a shadow over all her endeavors.

  Harry Thaw was disconsolate. His wife was lonely and unhappy, regretful that she had agreed to live in Pittsburgh; his mother was angry and indignant that the photographs of Evelyn had undermined her social position and made her family the target of malicious gossip. Perhaps, he suggested to Evelyn, it would help their marriage if they traveled again for a while in Europe. They could spend some time in New York, visiting friends and renewing acquaintances, before taking a boat across the Atlantic.

  Evelyn readily agreed. Nothing would please her so much as the chance to leave Lyndhurst. She had enjoyed her previous journeys to Europe, and she looked forward to seeing Paris and London again. They would leave Pittsburgh at the end of June, Harry said, spending several days in New York before sailing on the SS Amerika to Hamburg. It would be splendid to visit New York again, to chat with old friends, to catch up on the latest gossip, and to see some of the Broadway shows. A musical comedy, Mamzelle Champagne, was opening at Madison Square Garden on June 25. Everybody would be there on opening night, Harry predicted, and it promised to be a very special occasion.

  4

  MURDER

  June 25, 1906–July 15, 1906

  “HELLO, LARRY,” WHITE EXCLAIMED, SEEING THE STAGE MANAGER Lionel Lawrence appear in front of the curtain. “How are all the girls?”1

  Stanford White sat in his usual seat, at a small table near the front, waiting for the play to begin. The rooftop theater at Madison Square Garden was empty; but the audience would soon arrive, ascending in the elevator, occupying the seats at small tables in front of the stage and filling up the two benches that ran along each side.

  The show that evening, Mamzelle Champagne, was a typical Broadway production, a musical comedy in two acts, with attractive girls and tuneful songs. It had already played in Atlantic City, and it was opening that night in New York to coincide with the start of the summer season. The reviews had all been tentative: the leading man, Harry Short, was an unknown with little Broadway experience, and the story was skeletal—a champagne bottle, transported from Paris, reveals its secrets—but it was opening night, and there was always a good audience at the first performance.2

  Lionel Lawrence paused momentarily, stopping to exchange greetings. Lawrence had first met White several years before, when he had directed The Giddy Throng, a comic opera, at the New York Theatre. He liked White
’s easy familiarity, his lack of pretension, and his jovial good humor, but he had little time now, thirty minutes before the start of the show, to stop and chat.

  “Say, Larry,” White called out, indicating a young woman seated by the stage on the far side of the theater, “who is the little peach over there? I want to meet her.”

  Lawrence recognized one of his actresses, Maude Fulton, a twenty-five-year-old making her Broadway debut.

  “Some other time,” Lawrence answered. “I’ll make you acquainted, old man, some other time…. I can’t introduce you tonight,” he pleaded. “This is a first night and I have not a minute.”

  “All right, Larry,” White replied cheerfully, “but bear in mind that I mean it, and I’ll keep you to your promise…. I like the looks of that girl and want to meet her.”3

  White seemed carefree, apparently intent on enjoying the play. But his demeanor masked an anxiety over his financial troubles. His debts had accumulated gradually, silently multiplying over the years until they had reached almost a million dollars. Two acquaintances, Alfred Vanderbilt and J. Pierpont Morgan, had lent him large sums of money, but there was little chance that he would be able to repay his creditors. His partners, Charles McKim and William Rutherford Mead, had tolerated his extravagance for many years, but now their generosity had run its course. They had voted to end the terms of his association with the firm, removing him as a partner and insisting that he work as a salaried employee.4

  It was a bitter irony that his connection to Madison Square Garden had proved financially ruinous. White had invested heavily in the project, and he was now a director and principal stockholder in the company that owned the building. But the mortgage had always been onerous; it had been a constant struggle to obtain bookings, and Madison Square Garden had rarely turned a profit. The main arena attracted shows of every description—bicycle races, horse shows, military parades, prizefights, political rallies, religious revivals—but the maintenance and operating costs always outran the receipts. Neither the restaurant on the first floor nor the concert hall above attracted sufficient customers, and only the interior theater had ever been profitable. And Madison Square was no longer a residential neighborhood—commercial office buildings had replaced the brownstones that previously lined its streets—and the theater district had moved uptown to Times Square. The land on which Madison Square Garden stood—an entire block between Madison Avenue and Fourth Avenue—had become increasingly valuable as the area changed, and the property taxes on the building had increased accordingly.5