American Eve

by Paula Uruburu

  But no matter how much they scrimped, the family seemed always on the verge of utter insolvency. In a telling indication of things to come, her mother, out of willful ignorance, wanton desperation, or monstrous calculation, exploited the pathetic state of affairs by sending her appealing prepubescent daughter to collect the weekly rents from the boarders, figuring that Florence Evelyn’s looks would soften those who might not otherwise pay their rents on time. Needless to say, the overwhelming majority of boarders were middle-aged men; many were drummers (salesmen) or some equally transient type, while a number of them had no identifiable profession or particular social graces. Much later in life, Evelyn related to her daughter-in-law that even at such a young age, she sensed it was inappropriate for a child to knock on strange men’s doors to ask for rent money: “Mamma was always worried about the rent,” Evelyn recalled in 1915, but it was “too hard a thing” for her to actually ask for it every week, “and it never went smoothly.” Although Florence Evelyn obeyed her mamma, the leering faces and sometimes glassy-eyed stares of the boarders, who smelled of whiskey or worse, made the twelve-year-old extremely uncomfortable. So did the comments a few felt compelled to mutter under their breath while squeezing their grimy two dollars’ weekly rent into her small, soft hands.

  But even Florence Evelyn’s nascent charms could not keep the boardinghouse running at a profit, and little more than a month or so after the incident with the photographer, she and her mother had to relocate to a smaller boardinghouse solely as tenants. Out of necessity, Howard was conveniently sent once more to stay with an aunt outside Pittsburgh. One can only speculate on the jumble of feelings churning within Mrs. Nesbit, whose fears and ineffectuality forced her to hide from her relatives and to place Howard, so she said, out of harm’s way (out of sight, out of mind) while she and her alternately hardheaded and dreamy daughter lived in the claustrophobic quarters of a room that Evelyn recalled in a letter “even mice rejected.” One also wonders what nine-year-old Howard, who was far more sensitive and overtly needy than his sister, must have felt, living most of the time as if he were already an orphan. And an only child.

  A deepening, double-edged fear of rejection and abandonment was imprinted indelibly on Florence Evelyn’s young psyche, exacerbated by the constant upheaval and shuffling from one tedious boardinghouse to the next. Deprived of any sustained contact with other children (except her brother and occasionally her “country cousins”), friendships for the restless, lonely girl with anyone her own age were fleeting at best or for the most part nonexistent. Her growing inclination to quickly please or appease others and a sometimes desperate impulse to “smooth things over” (while keeping her true feelings to herself), together with her mother’s ill-advised efforts to take advantage of her looks, made for a dangerous mix. Florence Evelyn’s efforts to satisfy her mother were rarely rewarded with the kind of praise her father had lavished on her. Yet the girl’s youthful naiveté and ambition gave her a sense of self-assurance and determination that were sorely lacking in her mother. The almost-teen wanted badly to be part of “the smart set” and believed that somehow her wishes would come true (in spite of her grandmother’s saying that “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride”).

  In those rare moments when she didn’t have to listen to her mother’s harangues about where their next meal would come from, Florence Evelyn began to formulate a particularly whimsical but surprisingly durable fantasy life; she retreated into a snug and resilient soap bubble, whose transparent membrane allowed a view of the outside world, but at the same time refused to allow anyone or anything to burst it. The more her mother dragged her into the harsh light of stinging reality (eerily silent one moment, then wailing about the poorhouse and unmarked graves in some potter’s field the next), the more Florence Evelyn retreated into her bubble. Her coping mechanism was to assume a dark-browed Irish silence as she honed her inherent knack for inhabiting two worlds simultaneously. Alternating between an almost too mature and matter-of-fact acceptance of a day’s discouraging or disastrous events and the ability to escape at night into an admittedly adolescent but far more satisfying romantic fantasy world, a young Florence Evelyn would come to realize that even though dreaming was free, it could carry a great price.

  Of course, Mrs. Nesbit’s dilemma was certainly real and dire. Being a widow with two children approaching adolescence, no visible means of support, no social or public programs to offer assistance, a depressed and unstable economy, and no training of any kind that might be considered a profession, she didn’t know where to turn. Nearly choking on the crumbs of her undigested pride, Mrs. Nesbit dropped her stoic pose one day and decided to ask for charity—from strangers—specifically, from Mrs. Mary Copely Thaw.

  Mrs. Thaw was the granite-willed widow of one of Pittsburgh’s wealthiest men and a prominent figure in her own not-so-small right. Mordantly overstuffed with good Christian works and self-righteousness, Mrs. Thaw modeled herself on England’s Queen Victoria, whom she resembled (except that Mrs. Thaw was significantly taller). To that end, she wore only widow’s weeds in public, as if in mourning for her life. Or the sins of others.

  As Evelyn describes it, the Nesbits were living only a few long blocks from the hulking shadow of the Thaw family mansion. Named Lyndhurst, it was a menacing, medieval-styled structure newly built on Beechwood Boulevard, disguised as time-honored by a thin, spotty raw beard of freshly grown ivy. Mrs. Thaw, a devout Presbyterian, spent most of her time and a small part of her dead husband’s immense fortune doing minor philanthropic work. She was known locally to give token amounts of money to needy families, which had prompted Mrs. Nesbit’s dismal decision.

  But, much to Mrs. Nesbit’s shock and chagrin, when she steeled her nerve and rang the bell of the intimidating Lyndhurst to ask for a hand-out, she was rudely turned away by a gray-gloved servant, without ceremony or explanation. The humiliated woman practically tripped down the steps of Lyndhurst and returned to the boardinghouse. She did not tell her children about the incident, but as time passed, Mrs. Winfield Nesbit would never forget or forgive her mortifying affront on the doorstep of the high-and-mighty icy Thaws.

  Florence Evelyn was aware that she had always sought her father’s guidance, opinion, and approval much more than her mother’s, whose energies had been directed toward the excruciatingly shy Howard. But the girl also recognized in an unconscious way that the cruel upheaval caused by her father’s sudden exit tied her more closely to her mother, partly out of necessity, partly out of separation anxiety, and of course, one supposes, out of love. Most of the time, the girl felt sorry for her mother, and regretted when her own natural stubbornness caused her easily dismayed mamma additional stress.

  But Florence Evelyn was fast approaching a new stage in her young and vulnerable life. She noticed how people, men and women alike, invariably responded to her with smiles and kind words (unlike her mother). A finely dressed woman stopped her on the street one day and exclaimed, “What a lovely child! Those eyes will break many a heart someday!” It soon began to filter through to the girl, however opaquely, that in the reduced family unit comprised of her mother, herself, and Howard, the magnetic center had slowly but surely shifted to her.

  In January 1898, according to Evelyn, after the family had lived nearly two years under the threat of absolute destitution, an acquaintance suggested to Mrs. Nesbit that she might find work in Philadelphia as a seamstress. Weighing her options, Mrs. Nesbit saw that indeed there were none. After yet another sniffling good-bye, this time at the noisy Pittsburgh train station, “where dust could fill your mouth if you kept it open too long,” Florence Evelyn and Howard were sent back “to the country” to live with an aunt. But with the deplorable economic climate (the miserable lingering effects of the depression caused by the Panic of 1893), even those relatives were hard-pressed to make ends meet. So within weeks after their arrival, brother and sister were summarily shipped by their aunt to a family in Allegheny with whom their mother had been friendly se
veral years earlier. Almost imperceptibly, however, as the weeks slogged by, the sea change in sensibilities that seemed so sluggish to the advance guard began to surge, even in landlocked Pennsylvania.

  Photo of Evelyn that inspired L. M. Montgomery’s character

  Anne of Green Gables, circa 1901.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Poses

  Have you ever noticed the thought in the eyes of a pictured girl? . . . Ever seen a . . . model whose eyes were not vacant? The artist’s model is either an auto-hypnotist or a mental gymnast. I think I was the latter.

  —Evelyn Nesbit, My Story

  Several weeks had wasted away since Florence Evelyn and Howard arrived on the doorstep of their distant relatives, veritable strangers who were as kind as could be under their own pinched circumstances. But self-preservation and the taint of resentful stinginess began to pervade the otherwise clean country air as four more weeks passed, with no word from Mamma Nesbit or money for the upkeep of her children. As their portions got smaller and the chores more demanding, the refugee Nesbit children, who had been taken out of school, began to wonder if they’d ever see their mother again, each fearing the worst but with unblinking childish optimism still capable of hope.

  Then one day the jubilant word came—their mother had finally secured a job for herself in the City of Brotherly Love. Although she was a salesclerk and not a dress designer or even a seamstress, Mrs. Nesbit had managed to join the hustling bustled and burgeoning shirt-waisted new female workforce of America at Wanamaker’s department store. Wanamaker’s was Philadelphia’s premier castle of commerce and the first store in America to install an elevator, far safer than the treacherous skirt-grabbing “escagators” whose interlocking slatted teeth threatened every day to pull women shoppers into the bowels of the basement.

  Having saved enough money after a month of cutting yards of gingham, chintz, and velvet from huge bolts of fabric behind the sewing counter, Mrs. Nesbit sent for her exiled children. After perfunctory good-byes to their ersatz guardians at the station gate, Florence Evelyn and Howard were put on a train in Pittsburgh, with the conductor given instructions to “put them off in Philadelphia.” Along with their measly belongings, Florence Evelyn had insisted on taking the “family” cat. When her thirteenth birthday/Christmas passed without any notice or presents, the girl pretended the cat had been a gift (when in fact it was a stray she and Howard found in an alleyway behind the neighborhood butcher shop). Every conductor who discovered the drowsy red tabby, wrapped contentedly in a flimsy tattered shawl on the girl’s lap, wanted to throw it off the train. But each in turn took pity on the astonishingly pretty little waif and thin-boned, sad-eyed boy and let the cat be. There were no other children traveling alone.

  Upon their arrival, Evelyn and Howard were introduced by their mother, who had taken the day off from work, to their new lodgings. The children narrowed their eyes and took in the sparse furnishings and tight quarters in the usual back room (always cheaper than a front room) on the second floor of yet another run-of-the-mill boardinghouse. They shrugged their shoulders in what had become for them an automatic gesture of blank acceptance. And then, within a few scant weeks of barely getting by on her moderate salary, serving the wives of middle managers and the maids of the well-to-do (and just after enrolling the children in the neighborhood public school), Mamma Nesbit announced that she had found positions for both of the children at Wanamaker’s. This meant their schooling would be interrupted, indefinitely, as it had more than half a dozen times already.

  At first Florence Evelyn was overjoyed at the prospect of being considered adult enough to have a job. But not long afterward she felt a pang of sadness mixed with guilt that she would not be able (or so it seemed) to fulfill her father’s dream that she go to Vassar. Nor did it seem likely that Howard would ever become a lawyer, especially if he couldn’t get out of the fifth grade. Howard characteristically said little about his new job as a stock boy and seemed quietly resigned to not attending yet another nameless, unfriendly brick-faced school.

  As her mother ripped down the hems of her homemade dresses to make her appear older (since only girls under sixteen wore knee-length skirts), a wistful Florence Evelyn also felt the increasingly familiar twinge of bitterness at having been moved around so much that she was never able to form any real friendships with anyone her age. Her apprehension at having been taken out of school again (perhaps permanently) grew as the weeks went by, so she tried whenever possible to read. Luckily, it didn’t cost anything, since she could borrow books from the public library, and the few books that were occasionally left behind by boarders in the common sitting room she squirreled away and kept as her own.

  Six days a week for twelve hours a day, Florence Evelyn, dressed in a dowdy starched uniform apron and newly hemmed ankle-length skirts, was a “floater,” a sometime floor girl, sometime stock girl, sometime counter girl whose job it was to make sure all departments maintained a full supply of goods. Although her small hands and slight build, exaggerated by the oversize uniform apron, indicated to some apprehensive customers a girl of perhaps no more than eleven, Evelyn’s mother assured the management that her daughter was sixteen. But even with their combined earnings from Wanamaker’s, things were still bad enough that frequently the three Nesbits had only one meal a day, of little more than a cup of coffee and shredded wheat or mustard sandwiches (scraping to the bottom of a jar that Howard had pilfered from the grocery section of the store, with his mother’s tacit approval). This diet did little to stabilize Howard’s shaky constitution, and even though the severely strapped family hadn’t been together in Philadelphia for long, Howard had to be sent away again, this time to the farm of another aunt near Tarentum “for his delicate health.”

  “My mother wept bitterly over this necessary parting,” Evelyn recalled, even though Mamma Nesbit had also permitted him to work twelve hours a day at the store, six days a week.

  DISCOVERED

  Living on Arch Street in Philadelphia, however, marked the beginning of Florence Evelyn’s “independent career” (or so she imagined). And even as the weary century seemed on certain protracted days to be dragging its stiffening limbs toward its final months, a confident Florence Evelyn began to believe that at least her tiny part of the fickle universe had irreversibly shifted its orbit once more for the better. The woman who ran the boardinghouse on Arch Street was married to a newspaperman, who counted among his friends a reporter named Charlie Somerville. The young newspaperman took note of the remarkably “pretty child” during a visit. But it was while meandering aimlessly down a neighboring street one frigid Sunday, a week before her fourteenth birthday, that Florence Evelyn saw the face of destiny reflected in a store window—her own. It seemed inevitable. She was discovered.

  As she peered into a specialty dry-goods window, admiring the variety of “outta sight” fabrics inside and picturing the birthday dress her mother could make from any one of them (had they been able to afford it), Florence Evelyn noticed in the reflection of the window an elderly woman staring intently at her from behind. Struck by the girl’s unblemished porcelain skin set against dark tresses hidden partly under her coat, the woman approached the eye-catching girl, who turned to face her observer. In her longish cloth coat, with its twice-rolled sleeves and tatty muffler, decorated with cat hairs and wrapped carelessly around her neck and shoulders, Florence Evelyn seemed neither child nor adult but rather some strange combination of the two. She appeared like a china doll dressed in hobo hand-me-downs or one of those “darling diminutive performers from Barnum’s museum” the woman had seen once in a daguerreotype. The girl’s expression was also disconcerting; it seemed simultaneously immature and knowing, although what appeared at first to be rouge on her cheeks was simply the effect of the frigid wind, which whipped down the nearly deserted street.

  “Would you like to pose for a portrait?” the woman asked.

  An amused and noncommittal Florence Evelyn shrugged. Like most adolescent g
irls, she alternated between smug vanity and desperate insecurity about her appearance, particularly given the patchy, well-worn state of her clothing, usually made from mismatched pieces or remnants her mother took home from work. Today she thought this woman’s offer was some kind of joke. The lady introduced herself as Mrs. Darach, a local portrait painter and miniaturist. A skeptical Florence Evelyn replied that she would raise the subject with her mother. The woman invited the girl to come to her studio on Chestnut Street later that day with her mother. On the way home, the usual formless fantasies of fame and fortune began to take on a more distinct shape in the girl’s thoughts, fusing all the “formulaic fictions” she had already read that allowed young girls of that period to “create possibilities for their future.”

  In 1934, Evelyn would recall that up to that point, her mother had still not found a position anywhere to suit her self-proclaimed artistic talents, “that she kept failing all the time.” She would testify during the first trial that her mother had tried very hard at first to secure a position as a dress designer, then as a seamstress. But the market demanded someone with a proven commercial record, someone who had been to Paris, someone with at least a little practical business experience “who had at her fingertips the latest mode,” none of which Mrs. Nesbit had. So Florence Evelyn told her mother about the encounter.