American Eve (17 page)

“Where are we going?” she asked.

White smiled puckishly.

“To my Garden,” he said with a wink as the cab headed in the direction of Madison Square.

Evelyn, who was still wound up from the performance and the gifts White had sent earlier in the day, bubbled with anticipation and could not keep still in her seat. She had heard about the splendid parties White threw in his private apartment high above the city, but this was her first invitation. So many things were running through her head that she didn’t think about why there was always a need for such furtive arrangements. When she finally asked him a week or so later, White said that he had a morbid fear of publicity and was by nature a very private man in spite of his public persona.

When they arrived at Madison Square Garden, White hurried his petite charge into the elevator, which lifted them with well-oiled, whirring efficiency to his personal aerie at the top. White had designed the eighty-foot tower so that the rooms, one above the other, were built around the elevator shaft with each taking the shape of a horseshoe. Since all the other rooms were offices (except for Peter Cooper Hewitt’s studio) , the building was empty at night.

Once the elevator opened to reveal the Garden’s Tower room, Evelyn clapped her hands and stared at its wondrous Edenic design. There were dazzling azure-and-emerald-green Tiffany sconces around the room decorated with luminous red-eyed dragonflies that seemed to hover magically in the air. A huge gilt mirror ran around the full length of the room on the back wall, and reflected in the mirror was an equally long and luxurious tufted velvet couch the deepest shade of moss. An ebony grand piano filled one corner of the room; spread casually across it was a soft-green -and-lavender paisley shawl with deep-purple fringe. Poised on top of the piano was an exquisite bronze by the famed sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies titled
Bacchante.
A tempting row of hot hors d’oeuvres, Italian pastries, cheeses, and a platter bursting with fruit dipped in dark chocolate were displayed on a round rosewood table. Several huge bouquets of exotic flowers sat on side tables, their fragrance mixing with the scents of the food in an exceptionally heady blend. Perhaps the most striking floral feature was a spectacular arrangement of bird of paradise plants, which White had brought up from the wilds of exotic Florida. Their waxy green leaves formed fan-shaped crowns bursting with brilliant orange and purplish blue petals. Evelyn was spellbound.

Apparently, both Evelyn and Stanny, as she now chose to refer to her benefactor, shared a terrible sweet tooth. She picked up a sugarplum from the platter on the festive table and rolled it around in her mouth, savoring the pleasing texture. Stanny smacked his lips in playful mimicry, placed a chocolate-covered cherry between his lips, and smiled at her as he held out his hand. Evaluating Evelyn in her new dress and red cape, White, who bore more than a passing resemblance to the mustachioed new president, exclaimed, “Bully!” He spun her around in front of him and said appraisingly, “You look just like Little Red Riding Hood! We must have your picture taken in that cape.” Excitedly he ran both hands through his distinctive brush of auburn hair. He then said that he would arrange for Evelyn to pose in the cloak for one of his photographer friends.

Aside from his urge to have their teeth fixed, White had developed the habit of having his favorite actresses photographed by well-known photographers, then pasting certain of the photos into private scrapbooks. One such “camera artist” was Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr., a portraitist and New York Camera Club member, who cofounded the Campbell Art Company. Another was Gertrude Käsebier, who counted among her subjects Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington. A third was Otto Sarony, well known for his theatrical subjects. Evelyn smiled and pulled on a stray ringlet that brushed her cheek.

“Mr. Breese?” asked Evelyn, having heard the name mentioned as one of White’s photographer acquaintances through the backstage grapevine.

“No, no,” said White, arching his eyebrows and drumming his fingers on the table, “not Mr. Breese.”

White was all too aware that his friend, James Breese, founder of the Carbon Studio, was, like himself, quite the “rounder.” It was well known that Breese specialized in society women (perhaps in more ways than one), and therefore White most definitely would not trust Breese with his newest and most extraordinary find.

“Someone else,” White assured her, “who has won prizes for his studies. ” Eventually, Evelyn would pose for all of White’s photographer friends. All but Breese.

He told his Little Red Riding Hood that he would arrange the whole thing one day soon, if her mother agreed. Evelyn acknowledged that almost anything he did seemed to agree with her mother, though she was sure the first question her mother would ask was how much she was to be paid by this photographer. While the issue of money was like a knotted apron string snagged somewhere in the back of Evelyn’s mind (and inextricably bound to the image of her mother sobbing uncontrollably on some dilapidated bed), it was always in the forefront of Mrs. Nesbit’s. Nor did her mother ever let Evelyn forget how easy it would be for them to slip back into the abyss of poverty. So, just as she had when she collected rents at twelve and began her first two jobs at fourteen, sixteen-year -old Evelyn found herself inescapably caught once more between two worlds—that of her childish fantasies (complete with wardrobe) and the very adult and not so innocent world of real-life wolves.

Evelyn stole a moment to look intently at White, taking him in against the brilliantly decorated background of a room filled to capacity with gorgeous objects. While becoming aware of her patron’s capability for overindulgence, Evelyn was increasingly affected by Stanny’s flattering and seemingly genuine concern over her welfare. She seemed to take special pleasure in the fact that unlike many of the anonymous stagestruck Johnnies who wrote her silly love notes and made impossibly exaggerated promises, Stanny didn’t treat her with any great ceremony. He was, instead, courteous and considerate, always able to make her feel she was special. He kept to his word when he promised something and seemed to take a sincere interest in her life and fledgling career, “exercising an almost fatherly supervision” over everything she did. He was “particularly solicitous” as to what she drank, “mildly reproving, gently bantering, a man who kept one smiling” as he got her to do as she was told. As she described it, “He had a trick of suggesting disparagement without expressing it” (even though he was the one responsible for introducing her to expensive champagne in the first place).

That night, after finishing a glass of particularly pricey Moët & Chandon White had poured for her while she scooped out the contents of a cream puff with her pinky, leaving only the flaky shell on her plate, Evelyn was surprised by his response when she pushed her glass forward for a second drink.

“One is quite enough for a little girl,” Stanny said, “and I want you to be a nice little girl.”

“What do you think is a nice little girl?” she asked coyly, pushing her glass forward again. But White seemed quite serious. He took hold of her small hand and told her that nice girls didn’t drink to excess or stay up late, that they went home to their mothers at an early hour. Of course, all things are relative, considering that when he told her this the time was close to one o’clock in the morning.

Suddenly, he decided to take her home, which Evelyn felt was a particularly dull way to end an otherwise spiffy evening. But as she sat next to an uncharacteristically quiet Stanny in the hansom cab, Evelyn mused about her ascending good fortune, her growing fondness for the influential and animated White, and the constant delights he placed before her. He drummed loudly on the apartment door in order to wake up Mrs. Nesbit to show her that he had delivered her daughter safe and sound. Apparently, Mrs. Nesbit was not losing sleep over her daughter’s whereabouts now that she had turned over a portion of her parental responsibilities to Mr. White. It began to appear to Evelyn, however unconsciously, that indeed Stanny was more concerned for her welfare than her own mother.

Even if he could stay for only a few minutes, every morning Stanny came to the hotel with books for Evelyn to read, suggestions for her “cultivation” in art, music, and literature. He fed her ambitions for self-improvement, and her responsiveness was a refreshing change from the usual Broadway concubine, whose range of thought seemed limited to the world that existed between Madison Square and Twenty-third Street. He introduced her to Dickens, Shelley, Keats, Milton, and Tennyson. She told him that she was especially keen to read Shakespeare, so as the favored son of a Shakespeare scholar, Stanny started her on the sonnets, promising that he would soon unlock for her an astounding and magical world of words, “produced,” he said reverently, “by the greatest writer who ever lived.” He said this “almost breathlessly,” she remembered, and it even seemed “there were tears forming in his deeply expressive eyes” when he spoke of it.

According to Evelyn, White and her mother also soon became “fast friends.” He visited with Mrs. Nesbit on a number of occasions, always with flowers in hand and always courteous in his manner. Evelyn’s mother was quite taken by his apparent anxiety over her daughter’s well-being, and she began to impose on the architect’s goodwill to include the sensitive thirteen-year-old Howard in his plans as well. When White generously offered to finance Howard’s schooling, Mrs. Nesbit was ecstatic. Within a matter of days, a stunned and grateful Howard (who was once again staying with family members on a farm in Allegheny County) was sent to Chester Academy in another part of Pennsylvania, more than likely the only student with an expensive Persian rug in his room, courtesy of the family’s benefactor. Mrs. Nesbit quickly came to profess this magnificent man as “eminently solid,” one who seemed “heaven-sent” to the Nesbit family.

The family’s as well as Evelyn’s individual relationship with White grew more intense as his
Florodora
girlie became the most significant if inexperienced player in his elaborate production, the script of which had been written long before she came on the scene. She was not the first girl to ride on the red velvet swing. Nor did she have any say in how the relationship was to proceed or be conducted. But what did it matter to her, anyway? She was being treated like a sultana, and Stanny was her wizard-godfather, giving her books and candy and marvelous gifts, promoting her career, helping her family, and doing it all while whistling snatches of Beethoven and remaking Manhattan to his liking. And since her own mother never questioned the much older, very married man’s involvement in her life, which might also seem innocuous to a casual observer, why should she?

But those few who knew White and his “peculiarities” more intimately waited with bated breath and feigned indifference for the other costly shoe to drop. They surmised that this was not going to be another Ruth St. Denis experience. St. Denis was a young dancer whose relationship with White several years earlier had never progressed beyond the platonic. It was clear that Evelyn was destined for something more.

Assuming at the time that James Garland had spoken against White out of jealousy, Evelyn never questioned—until it was too late—why although “Stanford White was a notorious man in New York, and . . . there was hardly a man about town who did not know him and of him, there were none who warned me” (besides Garland, of course). She would come to learn that Stanford White was a member of a small clique of men who had vicious tendencies. She wrote, “[I use] the word ‘vicious’ because it perfectly describes White’s untamed, ruthless, and wicked actions, performed frequently without remorse, with the sense that he and his friends were immune to the laws of the land.” And White clearly must have felt exempt from fear of discovery and immune to the possibility of retribution for his schemes of seduction, should they ever be exposed. If he had, as Harry Thaw later claimed, “ravished three hundred and sixty-eight girls,” White seemed unconcerned about a number of things, including the possibility that his wife might discover his “dalliance” with underage girls in love nests set up from Gramercy Park to Westchester (if she didn’t already know).

It wasn’t long after Evelyn’s first night in the Tower that White kept his word and brought her to the studio of Gertrude Käsebier. White had introduced a number of sitters to the talented Käsebier, many of them wealthy socialites whose homes he had designed and/or decorated. With a “sugar-daddyish mix of altruism and self-gratification that seems to have marked his relationships with these young women,” White would make gifts to the showgirls of “a generous number of publicity prints.” And of course, he would order some “for his own delectation.” It was rumored that he had voluminous albums of the reigning beauties of the day, including a “big book of 500 photographs” filled only with images of the tantalizingly pubescent Evelyn.

On the day that White brought Evelyn to her, Käsebier studied the petite girl’s delicate features from across the room. She drew White aside and subtly chastised him “for taking so young a ‘protégée.’ But the charitable White explained that he had “bought” Evelyn to rescue her from neglect and exploitation by her widowed mother, who had hired her out as an artists’ model at an early age and was now “selling her to the highest bidder.” He told the photographer that he had been educating the child, teaching her how to be beautiful, how to dress, and so on. Käsebier, struck by the remarkable mixture of ennui and expectation in the girl’s face, considered that Evelyn didn’t need to be taught how to be beautiful, but rather how to preserve her innocence. Still, Käsebier had cultivated a pleasant and at times almost playful relationship with the architect, who sat for her himself. So, at the architect’s behest, she photographed the striking young showgirl. The resulting
Portrait (Miss N.)
became part of Käsebier’s exhibit at 291, the influential fine-art gallery on Fifth Avenue and home to the Photo-Secessionists movement.

As Käsebier’s biographer perceptively points out in her analysis of the iconic photograph, it is in fact innately sexier and more subversive than the ones Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr. would take of Evelyn on the bearskin rug that became infamous as evidence at the murder trials. Among the thousands of drawings and photographs of Evelyn, “none more fully suggests her ripe, youthful beauty as Käsebier’s
Miss N.
Käsebier presents her as a coquette, recalling those in Alphonse Mucha’s posters and other popular turn-of-the-century pictures. . . . In
Miss N.
she seems unnervingly close to the viewer, an effect that Käsebier achieved by cropping the top of her head and by photographing her slightly from above. Her upturned head seems about to offer a kiss while her right hand proffers a small Quimper pitcher. Yet her torso recedes, so that this temptress seems both to move forward and resist. Although her Empire-style gown suggests the past . . . the direct gaze shows Evelyn Nesbit is no coy eighteenth-century maiden.”