Evelyn Nesbit (December 25, 1884 – January 17, 1967) was an artists' model and chorus girl, noted for her entanglement in the murder of her ex-lover, architect Stanford White, by her first husband, Harry K. Thaw.
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Early Life
She was born Florence Evelyn Nesbit in Tarentum, Pennsylvania, on December 25, 1884. Her family was left destitute when her father, a lawyer named Winfield Scott Nesbit, died in 1893 leaving substantial debts. For years Nesbit, her mother, and younger brother lived in near-poverty, but by the time she reached adolescence her beauty came to the attention of several local artists, including John Storm, and she was able to find employment as an artists' model.
Modeling Career
In 1901, when Nesbit was sixteen (and by now the sole support of her family), 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 Carroll Beckwith who introduced her to other New York artists. Soon, she began modeling for artists Frederick S. Church, Herbert Morgan, Carl Blenner and photographer Rudolf Eickemeyer. Eventually, Evelyn became one of the most in-demand artist models in New York. 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 hair arranged in the form of a question mark. The work, titled "The Eternal Question" 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 $30 per hour in 2006 dollars) Eventually, Evelyn made enough money to support her family and her younger brother was soon able to join her and her mother in New York.
Relationships
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. The fact that he was married, and made a hobby "befriending" teenage girls, was overlooked by Nesbit's mother, who encouraged White's patronage. In his lavish tower apartment at Madison Square Garden (which he designed), he had installed numerous strategically placed mirrors, as well as a soon-to-be infamous red velvet swing from which he derived sexual pleasure by watching countless young women—including Nesbit—cavort (Nesbit would later be sensationalized in the 1955 movie The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.) 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 (a claim she later repeated to her first husband, although at the end of her life she claimed that the charismatic "Stanny" was the only man she had ever loved).
John Barrymore
As White moved on to other, young, "virginal" women, Nesbit was courted by the young John Barrymore, by whom she became pregnant twice. She turned down his marriage proposal, however, due to her continued emotional involvement with White (in addition to her mother's dim view of the 22-year-old Barrymore's financial prospects), and White arranged to send her away to a New Jersey boarding school run by the mother of film director Cecil B. DeMille, where she had an abortion (or, possibly, the baby)—under cover of being treated for "appendicitis".
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. 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—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 on October 25 1910 (he died in 1984). A noted pilot in World War II, as a child he appeared in the Hollywood films of his mother. The identity of his father, however, remains in doubt. While Thaw swore he was not the child's father (he was born during Thaw's confinement), Nesbit testified that he was.
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!" See Langford who cited 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 pled 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, as 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.
Late career
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, (several months after she attempted suicide after losing her job as a dancer at the Moulin Rouge Café in Chicago), Nesbit gave an interview to the New York Times, stating that she and Thaw were reconciled, but nothing came of the renewed relationship. She lived quietly for several years in Northfield, New Jersey. Nesbit overcame both alcoholism and an addiction to morphine, and in her later years taught classes in ceramics (in addition to being 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.
Popular culture
- Charles Dana Gibson reportedly used Nesbsit as the inspiration for his illustrations of the "Gibson Girl."
- The author Lucy Maud Montgomery used a photograph of Nesbit -- clipped from an American magazine and pasted to the wall next to her writing desk -- as the model for the heroine of her book Anne of Green Gables (1908).
- Nesbit was portrayed by actress Elizabeth McGovern in the 1981 movie Ragtime, based on E.L. Doctorow's best-selling book, Ragtime, and by actress Joan Collins in the 1955 movie The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing directed by Richard Fleischer.
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
Fictional accounts
- The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955 movie)
- The 1975 historical fiction novel Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow was adapted into the two below works:
- "Dementia Americana" - A long narrative poem by Keith Maillard (1994)
- My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon – play by Don Nigro
- La fille coupée en deux – movie by Claude Chabrol (2007)
A fictionalized Thaw also appears in Jed Rubenfeld's 2006 novel The Interpretation Of Murder.
External links
- "Harry Thaw's trial" Scans of a dinner program with Jurists' autographs, March 1907
- Crime Library: The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing
