The Girl on the Velvet Swing

by Simon Baatz

  Evelyn was still only seventeen, too young to dwell for long on this disappointing end to her theatrical career. Her disappointment was tempered, moreover, by a new friendship, a friendship with one of the most amusing and intriguing men whom Evelyn had yet to encounter in her time in the city.

  John (Jack) Barrymore was twenty years old, tall and thin, with brown eyes, a chalky-white complexion, jet-black hair swept back from his forehead, and a prominent chin. He seemed a whir of motion, constantly firing off humorous remarks, perpetually suggesting some wheeze that would set the town talking, always gossiping, without the slightest hint of malice, about this friend or that acquaintance. He was original; he was charming; he flattered Evelyn with compliments; and there was an immediate, instantaneous attraction between them.

  But Barrymore’s energy could never find its focus. His sister, Ethel, was already a Broadway star, and his older brother, Lionel, was making his mark on the stage also; but Jack had already told Evelyn that he had no interest in following his siblings onto the stage. What was he to do? He had had no education; he was not fitted for a profession; he had no money, no talent, no social position, and, it seemed, no future. He had been expelled at sixteen from Georgetown Preparatory School for visiting a brothel with some classmates; he had attended drawing classes at the Art Students’ League but had failed his exams; he lived hand to mouth as an illustrator; and he seemed, to everyone who met him, to be about as irresponsible as one could imagine a young man to be. Jack Barrymore had no plans for the future, no thought that he should prepare himself for adulthood.17

  Stanford White had often invited Ethel Barrymore to his tower apartment, and he knew both brothers, Lionel and Jack, passably well. Stanny and Evelyn had drifted apart that year—she no longer came so frequently to his apartment—but he still had affectionate feelings for her and was solicitous for her welfare. He was dismayed that Evelyn seemed to have fallen in love with young Barrymore and horrified that she seemed ready to accept his proposal of marriage. Jack Barrymore was a reckless drifter, a wastrel, and no one, Stanny believed, could exert a more harmful influence over Evelyn.

  Did she not realize, he asked her, that Jack Barrymore was an alcoholic and a womanizer? Barrymore was only twenty, yet he was already notorious for his carousing. His father, Maurice, had contracted syphilis and had gone insane; and there was every indication that Jack Barrymore meant to follow along the same path. Did she seriously intend to marry such an indolent young man? How would they live, Stanny demanded, if she married Jack Barrymore?18

  He had an especial reason to dislike Barrymore. White had designed the memorial arch in Madison Square to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay. His design of the arch had included the allegorical figure Victory, a sword in her right hand, a shield in her left. It had infuriated him to learn that Barrymore, after spending an evening in a nearby saloon, had climbed the arch to steal the sword, marching with it in triumph down Broadway.19

  Several generations of the Barrymore family have been prominent as actors. This photograph, taken around 1904, shows, from left to right, John Barrymore, his sister, Ethel, and his brother, Lionel. John (Jack) Barrymore began his stage career as a comic actor, but in 1922 his portrayal of Hamlet won him recognition as one of the greatest actors of his generation. Ethel and Lionel were equally famous during the first half of the twentieth century for their many roles onstage and in films. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-56616)

  But Jack Barrymore’s inability to earn his keep was more troubling than his propensity for practical jokes. He led a chaotic life, borrowing money from friends, living in a slum apartment on Fourteenth Street, and only occasionally earning a few dollars when he sold his drawings to the newspapers. His sister, Ethel, had hoped that Jack would find his métier as an actor, but even this goal seemed beyond him. In October 1901 Ethel, then playing a return engagement of Captain Jinks in Philadelphia, had persuaded the stage manager to hire Jack as a replacement during the absence of the actor playing Charles Lamartine. The role was undemanding, but Jack had failed to learn his lines. He seemed not in the least embarrassed that he provoked ridicule and laughter from the audience, but even Ethel now realized that her younger brother would never be successful on the stage.20

  None of it made any difference to Evelyn Nesbit. She was seventeen; Jack was twenty; she was madly in love with him, and what did it matter that he had no money? They were both young, both starting out on the great adventure of life, and something would surely turn up.

  Stanford White held a hurried consultation with Evelyn’s mother, Florence. The widow of an old friend, a fellow member of the Players’ Club, had established a school for girls in Pompton, a small town in western New Jersey, near the Ramapo Mountains. It was at a remote location, far from the temptations of New York, and White would be willing, he told Florence, to support Evelyn’s studies at the school. It would effectively end the courtship between Evelyn and Jack Barrymore—the young pup would not even be able to afford the train fare to Pompton—and Evelyn would benefit in receiving a sound education.21

  Florence Nesbit was delighted with the plan. She too was alarmed that Evelyn had fallen in love with Jack Barrymore, and she too was anxious to prevent their marriage. She had long pinned her hopes, her expectations, on her only daughter, and it was a severe disappointment to her that Evelyn’s acting career had fizzled out. Evelyn’s star had never shone very brightly on Broadway, and now it seemed to have dimmed completely. Her daughter had never had much of an education, and White’s proposal would be Evelyn’s opportunity to learn something more than the lessons provided by her Florodora experience.

  White’s offer to pay for Evelyn’s schooling seemed entirely in character, and Florence once again expressed the gratitude she had always felt for his kind, disinterested support. He had continued to pay for her son, Howard, to attend the Chester Military Academy. White had already given her family so much and had asked nothing in return; very often Florence Nesbit wondered to herself that she and her children had been so fortunate as to have him as a patron.

  Evelyn, to everyone’s surprise, readily agreed to the proposal to study at the school. Her most recent experience on the stage, playing in Tommy Rot at Mrs. Osborn’s Playhouse, had not been a happy one: all the actors were uncomfortably aware that they were in a failing production that had received caustic reviews in the press. Evelyn herself realized the inadequacy of her education. Stanford White’s offer to pay her expenses was too good an opportunity to refuse, and if it meant her separation from Jack Barrymore—well, so what? She could always resume her relationship with Jack when she returned to New York.

  Evelyn first arrived at the school in November 1902, shortly after the start of the fall semester. The school, established in February 1894 by Beatrice DeMille in honor of her late husband, Henry, occupied a large yellow-and-white three-story frame house a few miles from the village of Pompton. There could not have been a more bucolic spot: the main school building, framed by the mountains, stood at the edge of Pompton Lake, a pristine expanse of water edged with pine trees and boasting innumerable species of waterfowl.22

  Evelyn had appeared on Broadway only a few months before, and her photograph had once been ubiquitous in the New York newspapers, but her new schoolmates knew nothing of her past life. She now reveled in her anonymity. She was a model pupil, studying French, music, art, and English literature, occasionally performing in school plays and participating in outdoor games. Evelyn, like most of the older girls, lived away from the main building, in a small cottage on the school grounds. On autumn weekends the teachers would take the girls on hikes in the surrounding hills, and in the winter, when snow and ice covered the ground, they would go skating on Pompton Lake.23

  It was an idyllic existence, so pleasant and tranquil as to make her previous life on the stage appear almost impossibly remote. She had forgotten her romance with Jack Barrymore, and she rarely even thought about her benefactor, Stanford White,
despite his generosity toward her.

  Her mother came to Pompton to visit her for a few days at Christmas. Florence told her daughter her news from New York: she had recently moved from the Audubon Hotel to a suite of rooms at the Algonquin Hotel on Forty-fourth Street. Stanford White continued to pay her rent, but she now heard from him infrequently. It was slightly troubling, she told her daughter, that they were so dependent on the whim of one man. What would become of them, how would they support themselves, if something, some catastrophe, were to happen to Stanford White so that he could no longer make the payments?

  But a far different crisis suddenly disrupted Evelyn’s studies. One morning, toward the end of January 1903, as Evelyn was about to leave her cottage to go to class, she felt a severe abdominal pain. She collapsed onto a settee, wincing in agony, clutching her stomach with both hands. A classmate, seeing Evelyn doubled up on the settee, ran to the main building, returning to the cottage with one of the teachers.

  A local physician, William Colfax, arrived at the school thirty minutes later. It was a case of acute appendicitis; it would be necessary to operate as quickly as possible; and it would not even be advisable, Colfax warned, to attempt to move Evelyn to the nearest hospital.24

  Later that day, around noon, Florence Nesbit arrived in Pompton. Beatrice DeMille had telephoned her at the Algonquin with the news that Evelyn was desperately ill. One of Evelyn’s admirers, a man named Harry Thaw, had been visiting Florence Nesbit that morning, and Thaw offered to drive her in his motorcar from New York to Pompton. The train service to western New Jersey was infrequent and irregular; it would be quicker, he advised Florence, to travel by car.

  Florence Nesbit, before her departure, had telephoned Stanford White to tell him the news. White also responded quickly, arranging for his physician, Nathaniel Bowditch Potter, to travel to the school. Potter, professor of clinical surgery at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, agreed with Colfax’s diagnosis that Evelyn had acute appendicitis, and the operation was performed later that day. He remained at Pompton for several days, watching over Evelyn, prescribing morphine to dull the pain, and providing advice to the local physicians. Evelyn had previously been healthy and she could expect to recover in a few weeks. But the facilities for medical care in the village were rudimentary, and Potter advised her to return to New York under his care until she was fit enough to resume her studies at Pompton.25

  Evelyn recovered slowly, spending several weeks recuperating at Stanford White’s expense in a private sanatorium in New York. Her friends, performers from Florodora and other Broadway shows, visited the hospital, sharing with her their gossip about the New York stage. Jack Barrymore was nowhere to be seen—he had quickly found a new girlfriend after Evelyn departed for Pompton—but other young men called regularly to offer their support for her recovery.

  She had briefly met Harry Thaw at Rector’s twelve months earlier—Elba Kenny, one of the Florodora girls, introduced them—and Thaw was now a frequent visitor, bringing flowers and offering his assistance. He had left New York shortly after their first meeting, he told her, and had spent that year, 1902, traveling in Europe, visiting archaeological sites in Greece and Italy and seeing friends in France and Britain, before returning to the United States in the autumn.26

  Thaw, thirty-one, had a reputation among the smart set as a wealthy playboy who spent his money with abandon, hosting extravagantly expensive dinners, showering his lovers with diamonds, traveling each year in Europe with a retinue of friends and servants, and generally living in the most aristocratic manner possible.

  His father, William Thaw, had made his first fortune from the freight business, carrying goods in Conestoga wagons from Philadelphia across the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh. William Thaw had been an early investor in the Pennsylvania Railroad, and his rapidly accumulating wealth had enabled him to purchase thousands of acres of coalfields in western Pennsylvania. He had been an enthusiastic booster of his birthplace, Pittsburgh, donating millions of dollars to the city’s cultural and educational institutions, yet his estate at his death in 1889 still amounted to more than $12 million.27

  The bulk of the inheritance, held as a family trust, passed to his widow, Mary Copley Thaw. She had effective control of the estate, and the revenue from the railroad stock and the landholdings provided each of William Thaw’s ten children—five from his first marriage, to Eliza Blair; five, including Harry, from his marriage to Mary Copley—with an annual income of $80,000.

  Harry’s brothers—Josiah and Edward—remained in Pittsburgh after their father’s death. They joined the city’s business elite, working independently to make their own fortunes, while assisting their mother in the administration of the family trust and settling into lives of comfortable prosperity.

  But Harry Thaw, unlike his brothers, seemed determined to live a life of extravagant ease and dissipation. Thaw, eighteen at the time of his father’s death, had already been expelled from the University of Wooster, a college in western Ohio, on account of his dismal grades. He had been a reluctant student, spending more time at the racetrack than at the library, and the faculty, perceiving Thaw as a disruptive presence, voted to dismiss him from the college. He returned to Pittsburgh to enroll at the Western University of Pennsylvania, a college in Allegheny City, but his time there was no more successful, and he left during the first semester. In November 1890 he entered Harvard University, but he did no better, spending most of his time drinking and playing cards, and in February 1892 the president of Harvard, Charles Eliot, expelled him from the university.28

  Thaw returned a second time to Pittsburgh to stay with his mother and to ponder his future. He had no need to make a living: Mary Thaw, oblivious to her son’s reckless behavior, assured Harry that he too, like his siblings, would receive $80,000 each year from the estate. There was little point, Harry realized, in resuming his studies or attempting a profession; he could live quite comfortably on his share of the family fortune.

  It was still the custom for wealthy Americans to spend time in Europe, residing for several months each year in a major city, London, Paris, or Rome, seeing the sights, mingling with the local aristocracy, and making the occasional excursion to some exotic destination in North Africa, Russia, or Palestine. Europe contained cultural resources—the theater, the opera house, museums, art galleries—that far surpassed in their splendor comparable institutions in the United States; and, equally significant, they were more exclusive, less democratic, less republican, even in France, than their equivalent in the United States. The American bourgeoisie at the turn of the century held aristocratic traditions and styles in high regard. The opportunity to interact with members of the British aristocracy was especially alluring, and nothing could confer more prestige on an American parvenu than the marriage of his daughter to a peer of the realm.

  Harry Thaw soon adopted this lifestyle as his own, sailing to Europe for the first time in 1894. He traveled with a retinue of servants from his mother’s household, spending several weeks in London before crossing the English Channel and journeying through France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary as far as Budapest. He continued to Constantinople, visiting the Greek islands, and eventually arriving at Cairo before crossing the Mediterranean to Naples and north to Rome. He returned to Europe every year, always staying in the best hotels, dining in the most expensive restaurants, gambling at the most exclusive casinos, and patronizing the most notorious brothels.29

  Evelyn Nesbit had no knowledge of Thaw’s checkered past. She knew only that he was wealthy and that he traveled frequently to Europe. He had seemed slightly eccentric at their first meeting in January 1902. On that occasion, she recalled, he had spoken too rapidly, in short, clipped sentences, in a manner that made him appear self-conscious, almost as though he were carefully guarding his remarks. He had sent roses to her apartment in the Audubon Hotel, but Evelyn, preoccupied with other matters, had given him little thought, and his departure for Europe that month had ended their acquaintance.


  He had now reappeared, visiting her frequently in the hospital. He seemed almost excessively solicitous, sending flowers every day, ordering delicacies for her from the Waldorf Hotel, and pestering the doctors and nurses, demanding that they provide the best possible care. There was nothing, it seemed, that he would not do for her; his generosity appeared unlimited. They became friends, and Evelyn soon began to depend on Harry Thaw for small favors, acts of kindness that speeded her recovery.

  There was little that was noteworthy about his appearance: he was a tall man, around six feet, clean-shaven, with thin lips, a broad nose, and a rounded chin. He was well dressed, neat and careful in his movements, and almost deferential in his attitude. Although he was thirty-one, his boyish appearance and ready smile made him appear younger. There was something charming, Evelyn thought, about his readiness to please her, and it gave her great satisfaction to know that, once again, there was someone upon whom she could depend.30

  And so when Harry suggested in February 1903 that Evelyn travel with him, at his expense, on his next European tour, she readily agreed. The doctors had advised her to avoid strenuous exercise, and it would certainly not be possible for her to attempt a return to the stage. She needed rest and relaxation, and an extended vacation abroad would enable her to return to full health. She could not travel alone with Harry, of course—they were not married—but he had already suggested that her mother, Florence, accompany them as a chaperone. All three of them, Harry promised, would journey in grand style, staying at the most luxurious hotels and dining at the most exclusive restaurants. What could be more enjoyable, more pleasant, than the opportunity to stay for a while in London and Paris, to visit the museums and art galleries, to go to the theater and admire the sights?31