Evelyn Nesbit

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Evelyn Nesbit

Evelyn Nesbit in 1900
Born Florence Evelyn Nesbit
December 25, 1884(1884-12-25)
Tarentum, Pennsylvania
Died January 17, 1967 (aged 82)
Santa Monica, California
Other name(s) Evelyn Nesbit-Thaw
Evelyn Nesbit Thaw
Occupation Model, chorus girl, actress
Spouse(s) Harry Kendall Thaw (April 4, 1905 - 1915)
Jack Clifford (1915 - 1933)

Evelyn Nesbit (December 25, 1884 – January 17, 1967) was an American artists' model and chorus girl, noted for her entanglement in the murder of her ex-lover, architect Stanford White, by her first husband, Harry Kendall Thaw.

Contents

[edit] Early life

She was born Florence Evelyn Nesbit on Christmas Day, 1884 in Tarentum, a small village near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was of Scots-Irish ancestry. As a child, Florence Evelyn was strikingly beautiful, but quiet and somewhat shy.[1] She had a younger brother, Howard.

The Nesbit family moved to Pittsburgh around 1893, when Evelyn was still a schoolgirl. Her father, a struggling lawyer named Winfield Scott Nesbit, died that year, leaving behind substantial debts; his wife and two children were nearly destitute. For years Evelyn and her mother and younger brother lived in near-poverty, but by the time she reached adolescence her startling beauty came to the attention of several local artists, including John Storm, and she was able to find employment as an artists' model.

[edit] Modeling career

1901 photograph by Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr.

In 1901, when Nesbit was sixteen, she and her mother moved into a tiny room at 249 W. 22nd Street in New York City. Her mother had difficulty in finding work and after several weeks, Evelyn persuaded her to let her model again. Using a letter of introduction from a Philadelphia artist, Evelyn met and posed for James Carroll Beckwith, who introduced her to other New York artists. Soon she began modeling for artists Frederick S. Church, Herbert Morgan, Gertrude Käsebier, Carl Blenner and photographer Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr.

Eventually, Evelyn became one of the most in-demand artists' models in New York. She was seductively beautiful with long, wavy red hair and a slender, shapely figure. Sculptor George Grey Barnard used her for his famous study "Innocence," which is now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Charles Dana Gibson, one of the most popular artists in the country at the time, rendered a pen-and-ink profile of Evelyn with her red hair arranged in the form of a question mark. The work, titled "The Eternal Question"[1], remains one of Gibson's best known works and Evelyn entered the ranks of the famous turn-of-the-century "Gibson Girls."

Photographic fashion modeling, which was becoming more popular in daily newspapers, proved to be even more lucrative for Evelyn. Photographer Joel Feder would pay her $5 for a half-day shoot or $10 for a full day shoot (about $200 per day in 2006 dollars). Evelyn soon made more than enough money to support her family.

[edit] Relationships

[edit] Stanford White

As a Florodora chorus girl on Broadway, Nesbit caught the eye of acclaimed architect – and notorious womanizer – Stanford White, then 47 to her 16. Stanford and Nesbit were reportedly introduced to one another by Florodora girl, Broadway star, and media personality Edna Goodrich.

The fact that he was married, and made a hobby of "befriending" teenage girls, was overlooked by Nesbit's mother, who encouraged White's patronage. White owned an apartment in which he had installed numerous strategically placed mirrors, as well as a soon-to-be infamous red velvet swing; reportedly he derived sexual pleasure by pushing young women in the swing, naked or nearly so, as Nesbit later testified in court. (There are conflicting accounts as to whether the swing was installed in White's tower apartment at Madison Square Garden – which he designed – or if it was in a nearby building on 24th Street.)[2]

When her mother was temporarily out of the city, White allegedly took Nesbit's virginity, after getting her to pose for a number of suggestive photographs in a yellow silk kimono, and plying her with champagne. Nesbit told this story to her first husband, possibly after considerable coercion. At the end of her life, however, Nesbit claimed that the charismatic "Stanny" was the only man she had ever loved.

[edit] John Barrymore

As White moved on to other young, virginal women, Nesbit was courted by the young John Barrymore, beginning in 1901. The two met when Barrymore caught a performance of The Floradora Girls and sent flowers backstage. Barrymore, who was from a well known theatrical family, was then 19 and seeking a career in cartooning. He was considered too poor by her mother to be a suitable match for the 17-year-old Nesbit. Her mother and White were enraged when they found out about the relationship. However, Nesbit was finally smitten with someone her own age and often returned to Barrymore's apartment after hours. Between 1902 and 1903, Nesbit became pregnant twice by Barrymore. White, still a strong influence in her life, arranged to send her away to a boarding school in Wayne, New Jersey (run by the mother of film director Cecil B. DeMille) in part to extricate her from John Barrymore but also to undergo one if not two abortions. Barrymore in the meantime proposed marriage to Nesbit but she turned down his offer. Some people[who?] speculate that Nesbit might have carried the second pregnancy to term in 1904, while at the boarding school, and placed the child with an adoption service.

Harry Kendall Thaw, husband of Evelyn Nesbit

[edit] Harry Kendall Thaw

Stanford White and John Barrymore were subsequently supplanted in Nesbit's life by Harry Kendall Thaw (1871–1947) of Pittsburgh, the son of a coal and railroad baron. Prior to her relationship with Thaw, Nesbit dated a well known polo player named James "Monty" Waterbury (1875-1920) and the young magazine publisher Robert J. Collier. Thaw was extremely possessive of Nesbit (he reportedly carried a pistol), and obsessive about the details of her relationship with White (whom he referred to as "The Beast"). Thaw was a cocaine addict and allegedly a sadist who subjected women — including Nesbit — and the occasional adolescent boy to severe whippings. However, following a trip to Europe, Nesbit finally accepted Thaw's repeated marriage proposal. They were wed on April 4, 1905, when Nesbit was twenty.

Nesbit had one child, Russell William Thaw, who was born in Berlin on October 25, 1910 (he died in 1984 at Santa Barbara, California). A noted pilot in World War II, as a child he appeared in Hollywood films with his mother. The identity of his father, however, remains in doubt. While Thaw swore he was not the child's father (he was conceived and born during Thaw's confinement), Nesbit always insisted that he was.

[edit] Murder of Stanford White

On June 25, 1906, Nesbit and Thaw saw White at the restaurant Café Martin and ran into him again later that night in the audience of the Madison Square Garden's roof theatre at a performance of Mam'zelle Champagne, written by Edgar Allan Woolf. During the song "I Could Love A Million Girls", Thaw fired three shots at close range into White's face, killing him instantly and reportedly exclaiming, "You will never see that woman again!"[citation needed] In his book The Murder of Stanford White, Gerald Langford quoted Thaw as saying "You ruined my life," or "You ruined my wife." There is still controversy over exactly what Thaw shouted.

Following the death of White, there were two murder trials. At the first, the jury was deadlocked; at the second (in which Nesbit testified in his behalf), Thaw pleaded temporary insanity. Thaw's mother (usually referred to as "Mother Thaw") promised Nesbit that if she would testify that White had raped her and that Thaw had only tried to avenge her honor, she would receive a quiet divorce and a one million dollar divorce settlement. Nesbit got the divorce, but not the money. Immediately following Thaw's acquittal, she was cut off financially by Thaw's mother.

Thaw was incarcerated at the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Beacon, New York, but enjoyed almost total freedom. In 1913, he strolled out of the asylum and was driven over the Canadian border into Sherbrooke, Quebec. He was extradited back to the U.S., but in 1915 was released from custody after being judged sane.

[edit] Later years

In the years following the second trial, Nesbit's career as a vaudeville performer, silent film actress and cafe manager was only modestly successful, her life marred by suicide attempts. In 1916 she married her dancing partner, Jack Clifford (1880-1956, born Virgil James Montani). He left her in 1918, and she divorced him in 1933.

In 1926 Nesbit gave an interview to the New York Times, stating that she and Thaw had reconciled, but nothing came of the renewed relationship. Nesbit published several memoirs, The Story Of My Life (1914), and Prodigal Days (1934).

She lived quietly for several years in Northfield, New Jersey. She overcame suicide attempts, alcoholism, and an addiction to morphine, and in her later years taught classes in ceramics. She was a technical adviser on the 1955 movie The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. She died in a nursing home in Santa Monica, California on January 17, 1967, at the age of 82. Nesbit is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

[edit] In popular culture

[edit] Non-fiction accounts

  • The Architect of Desire - Suzannah Lessard (White's great-granddaughter)
  • Glamorous Sinners - Frederick L. Collins
  • Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White: Love and Death in the Gilded Age - Michael Mooney
  • The Murder of Stanford White - Gerald Langford
  • The Traitor - Harry K. Thaw
  • "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" - Charles Samuels
  • "The Story of my Life" - Evelyn Nesbit Thaw - 1914
  • "Prodigal Days" - Evelyn Nesbit Thaw - 1934
  • American Eve - Paula Uruburu - 2008

[edit] Fictional accounts

[edit] References

  1. ^ EvelynNesbit.com
  2. ^ Dworin, Caroline H. (2007-11-04). "The Girl, the Swing and a Row House in Ruins". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/nyregion/thecity/04swin.html. Retrieved on 2008-08-19. 

[edit] External links

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