American Eve

by Paula Uruburu

  Evelyn told the lawyer everything she could remember, and Hummel prepared to draw up an affidavit in which he intended to detail Harry’s beating of Evelyn, her virtual imprisonment throughout their trip, and his general criminal behavior. Hummel produced documents, which purportedly discussed other suits pending against Harry for similar crimes. He emphasized to Evelyn that she was still a minor and that Thaw should have been more careful; that he was not only “very wicked” but also a “nuisance.” As if on cue, Stanny returned, stating curtly that he needed to “keep Thaw out of New York.” They asked if Evelyn had gone of her own accord, to which she replied, “Certainly,” knowing that one of her mother’s charges at the embassy was that she had been kidnapped. White of course knew this wasn’t true, since he had given Evelyn and her mother the letter of credit for their trip. Hummel then sent for a stenographer. When the stenographer came into the room, Stanny left again. But it was Hummel, not Evelyn, who started dictating.

  Within minutes, Evelyn began to tremble and cry, feeling the awful drag of hopeless weight on all sides. But Hummel told her sourly not to interrupt. She became nervous and excited as she listened to Hummel’s ludicrous and inventive version of her European experiences. According to Evelyn (in 1915), in spite of the fact that it was already an unbelievable story, he made it sound in effect as if Harry had carried her away “kicking and screaming in a sack.” When she tried again to interrupt, he put his gnarled and stunted hand up like an aggravated librarian. The scenario that Hummel dictated was as bad as any hoary nineteenth-century melodrama; it was filled with such phrases as “I besought him to desist,” and “he also entered my bed, and without any consent, repeatedly wronged me.” It is doubtful that anyone in 1903—much less a seventeen-year-old—spoke in such archaic and stilted terms. After he finished his version of events, Hummel told Evelyn about a number of breach-of-promise suits he had won for other young actresses, a common practice in those days. He seemed intent upon convincing her to file such a claim against Harry, but when he pressed her, Evelyn gave a little nervous laugh and said if there was any breach of promise, it was on her part, not Harry’s. An angry Hummel called her foolish and dismissed her to the waiting cab.

  Several days later, Hummel called her up and asked if she had any letters from Thaw. She said that she did, but wanted to know what business that was of his. Within minutes, Stanny called her and said that if she was not willing to help him, there was no way he could protect her from Thaw. So Evelyn took a bundle of Harry’s love letters down to Hummel, who sealed them in a big envelope in front of her. He said that they just wanted to have something to hold over Thaw’s head in case he made any trouble. A mortally confused and depressed Evelyn tried to come to terms with the idea that Harry was, as White and others now painted him, an unrefined blackguard (the same term Harry had used against White, although Harry couldn’t spell it). White appeared to be bitterly angry that Thaw had taken her away from her mother, and ironically that Mamma Nesbit, who should have known better, had disregarded his opinion about the crazy Thaw. The perverse rivalry that now seemed somehow mutual began to escalate as each man tried to use Evelyn to intimidate the other.

  White’s decision to use Hummel, a lawyer with a reputation as checkered as his suit (he would eventually be disbarred), was not made out of ignorance or carelessness. He of course knew many a prominent and respected lawyer. But even as he recognized the illegality of Thaw’s actions in terms of his underhanded and criminal behavior with Evelyn, White’s position was equally precarious. For he too had taken advantage of her (as well as countless others). This was one can of treacherous worms he wanted sealed, and he needed a lawyer who would do what he paid him to do and ask no questions beyond the matter at hand. White also needed insurance that Thaw would not be a threat to his professional or personal life, armed as Thaw now was with Evelyn’s tale of seduction. Getting Evelyn to swear out the affidavit about Thaw’s physical abuse and emotional mistreatment of her in Europe could only help his own cause and keep Thaw, ostensibly, at bay.

  Evelyn went into seclusion in various places, settling at the Hotel Navarre, but inevitably, with the help of his ubiquitous private detectives, Harry was able to discover her whereabouts and he asked over the phone to meet with her. Although she agreed to see him, reluctantly, after much whining and pleading on Harry’s part, Evelyn said she would not meet him alone. So, on the appointed day, Harry brought a friend, Thornton Warren, who also happened to be a member of the New York Bar.

  When they arrived, to his dismay, as with White, Harry found a changed Evelyn. Distraught and jittery to the point of nervous exhaustion, she told him the things she had heard about him. A fretful Evelyn sat on her steamer trunk near the door, her feet not touching the floor, her synapses stretched to their final centimeter. In stark contrast, a gentle and seemingly sanely lucid Harry was the picture of relaxed concern. He sat down next to her on the trunk, took her hand, and asked quietly, “What’s wrong with you, Evelyn?”

  Evelyn pulled her hand away and put her head down at first. Then she shook it, looking up at him.

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” she said, her voice breaking with distress. “I have heard such dreadful, dreadful things about you that I feel that I can never speak to you again.”

  Harry stared at her, unblinking and frowning. By this time, in spite of his peculiar and violent behavior in Europe, Evelyn realized that she had grown “genuinely fond of Harry” and, as she said, the stories she had been told about him affected her to a surprising and “extraordinary degree. . . . I hardly suspected how dependent I was upon this new influence which had come into my life.” With her mother gone and her health and thus livelihood at issue, a despondent Evelyn could hardly believe how indispensable Harry had made himself to her over the course of a year while reminding her throughout that same time how reprehensible White had been.

  She then told Harry about going to Hummel’s office, which gave him a start. He became fidgety and wanted to hear what had transpired.

  “Tell me everything,” he said.

  In what must have seemed to Evelyn a scene ridiculously reminiscent of the one in Paris, she proceeded to haltingly tell Harry about White and Hummel, the letters she had given them, and the statements she had made about their time in Europe. Each time she hesitated, Harry urged her on. After repeating Harry’s supposed unholy litany of previously unknown offenses (which included beating young girls, scalding them in tubs, and taking cocaine and morphine), Evelyn fell silent. Throughout, Harry said nothing. Then he got up and shook his head.

  “Poor little Evelyn,” Harry said. Laying his hand upon her shoulder as he had so many times, he then said to her, “Don’t be so asinine.”

  He proceeded to tell her that everything she heard was a lie. And his respectable counselor agreed. He said with tremendous contriteness that he felt terrible about his “irregular” behavior in the castle, but that he had been overcome with anger and confused feelings about her complicity in her sexual ruination. A silent Evelyn listened. He then said it was well known that any woman who wanted to initiate “a blackmailing suit against some rich man always went to Hummel.” His lawyer again agreed, shaking his head in mutual dignified disparagement. Harry asked Evelyn whether she had signed anything or not. In what would become a crucial piece of evidence at the murder trial, Evelyn said that she couldn’t remember signing anything in particular. Then she said firmly that she had not.

  “That’s funny,” said Harry with feigned thoughtfulness. “If they want to cause trouble, you must have signed something.”

  Evelyn wavered again, and said in exasperation that she seemed to think she hadn’t, but ultimately could not remember. She said little after that and considered what had been said to her and done to her versus Harry’s behavior now. With her vision hopelessly narrowed by the bleak circumstance she was in, she rashly wanted to believe in something. As it had when she confessed to him about her “ruin,” Harry’s earnest tone and apparent
depth of feeling for her present distress moved Evelyn once again—so much so that, as unbelievable as it sounds, like the typical victim of abuse (and as part of the oppressive and perverse social pattern that encouraged female masochism), she began to feel that she had actually “wronged him.”

  Harry then continued to tear down Hummel, and with the support of his upstanding and “normal-sized” lawyer, Harry started to plead his case with such apparent honesty that Evelyn began to question the validity of things she had heard. After an hour or so, Harry got up to leave. He took Evelyn’s hand, kissed it gingerly, and said, “If you want to believe these things you may.” Having achieved what he wanted—to counter White’s smear campaign by planting his own corruptive seeds of doubt— Harry left.

  Evelyn, at the time, was less than thrilled about having to rehearse for her role of Bess Jackson in the new show, feeling depressed, drained of energy, and yet unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. Either at a dress rehearsal or opening night (she couldn’t remember which), Harry came by and saw that she was looking ill. In fact, she was feeling awful, and didn’t even want to be in the show. Harry persisted in making “all sorts of impossible offers,” including one to pay any salary she was receiving. But Evelyn didn’t want to “accept all his generosity prompted.” He pleaded with her to leave the stage, if for nothing else than the sake of her health. The next night, Harry reappeared at Rector’s (where Evelyn was at dinner with a girlfriend), in his effort to change Evelyn’s mind. With some reluctance, she told him once more about the stories she had heard, especially his drug use. Harry looked at her with great seriousness.

  “You’ve known me now for some time,” he said, “you have seen me under all circumstances.” He paused, then laughed smugly.

  “If I take morphine, and in the amounts you have been told, what symptoms can you see? That sort of thing is not done with impunity. It leaves some mark upon a man’s face and his manner.”

  Evelyn had no idea if this was even true, although she suspected that it must have accounted for his unusually distorted face and huge dilated pupils that horrific night in the castle. But as Harry pressed on, he convinced her that in their time together, no matter whatever else he may have done, he had never lied to her. He knew the issue of truthfulness was Evelyn’s Achilles’ heel after her experience with White, and Harry played it to his advantage. He assured her repeatedly that his violent behavior had been the vile product of temporary insanity and would never, ever happen again. As he looked into her sad eyes, Harry felt his quest to win Evelyn back and still expose White as a “blaggard [sic]” was on the verge of succeeding.

  Using “every subterfuge” to get back into Evelyn’s good graces, for several weeks after his initial visit, Harry called on Evelyn to check on her health and was solicitous of her welfare; as Evelyn put it, “He watched my health as tenderly as a woman” and never mentioned White at all. His behavior stood in stark contrast to her own mother’s behavior. And she suspected that Stanny’s renewed concern was motivated as much by self-protection as it may have been for her genuine welfare.

  During the too-brief time that he and Evelyn were effectively separated, Harry had also embarked with increased zeal on his holier-than-thou mission. With the fervor of a true believer, he was determined to find fleshly evidence he could show the world to prove White’s infidelities (not wanting to use Evelyn for a variety of complicated reasons, not the least of which was his own culpability in having “had illicit relations with a minor”).

  So Harry “went out into the darkness of various ticklish localit[ies]” in the wee hours of the morning to find a willing witness/victim. He claimed that there were a number of girls, very good-looking and very young, whom he had saved from White. Harry spent days and weeks in search of girls and their mothers (when there were mothers) whom he could warn against White or ask to testify to his immoral and illegal acts. In one of the more bizarre passages in his memoir, Harry wrote, “And I found mothers, many, and I got to each alone and told each how Blank the Pimp crawled up each stairway, some in wretched tenements, some better, like Mrs. Nesbit, he minding no cracked doors nor rotten banisters, silk hat and evening dress and suave, and told her that Mr. White was not like other men, that her daughter should trust him. . . . They . . . each knew later, as each daughter had to go to 22nd or 24th Street or the old den or the new one.”

  According to the results of Harry’s fevered “sifting,” at least one hundred girls had made their way into the Twenty-fourth Street snuggery. He had even gone to some of Evelyn’s earliest acquaintances in New York, including painter James Carroll Beckwith. The artist said he had noticed a “great change” in Evelyn in the late fall of 1901; when she mentioned she had met Stanford White, then Harry understood. According to Harry, a distressed Beckwith, who had warned Evelyn not to go on the stage, “feared that a terrible fate had overtaken her.”

  And then, “seventeen-and-three-quarters-year-old” Evelyn made the second biggest mistake of her life. She began a tentative process of reconciliation with Harry, in spite of his atrocious sexual assault of her, his bouts of uncontrollable wrath, his awful battery, and all the reports she had heard about his most vicious proclivities. And yet in spite of her cautious capitulation, agreeing to communicate with Harry or meet him only in a public place, Evelyn still refused to yield to any of his offers to leave the stage. After several weeks, a dejected and thwarted Harry retreated to Pittsburgh. And Mother.

  UNHAPPY THANKSGIVING

  Harry had been in constant correspondence with his mother while he was in Europe. Although there was no love lost between Mother Thaw and Evelyn, Evelyn’s reflections in the years after the murder and trials show that she tried not to judge her former mother-in-law too harshly. She may have even envied the unrelenting, overindulgent display of love and concern Mother Thaw had shown her son. Evelyn admitted that Mother Thaw “was in many ways a remarkable woman,” whose advice Harry ignored except when it suited him to please her. Evelyn was unaware that Harry had written to his mother from Paris the day after her confession, giving his mother an edited version of the “pathetic events of poor Evelyn’s life which had culminated in her cruel defilement by Stanford White.” He did not, at the time, mention her name. Once back home, Harry had the opportunity to see how the story affected his mother in person.

  As Evelyn came to see it, it must be said Mother Thaw did everything she could to prevent the marriage. She acted as any mother would have done who thought she saw a “misalliance.” But it was not Mother Thaw’s intemperate concern for her son that bothered Evelyn. It was her snobbery. As far as Evelyn was concerned, the Thaws acted as if they had made their money within one generation from coke and railroad dealings, and could make no great claims to the kind of social standing that comes from “old money,” even though they had “more money than God,” as one paper reported. And as Evelyn stated, they were “extremely rich, and I . . . was extremely poor. And Society in Pittsburgh is governed by the initials which indicate the Almighty Dollar.”

  Even as Mother Thaw continued to serve God through various philanthropic activities affiliated with the Third Presbyterian Church, she maintained a rather un-Christian attitude toward Evelyn. For more than a year she resisted Harry’s pleas to marry Evelyn, on the grounds that it would be the ruination of the family name. A surprised Harry, who had been so accustomed to getting his way with his mother, persisted. He told her, in what Evelyn called an exaggeration, that she possessed “a beautiful mind.” As Evelyn put it, “healthy” would have been a better word to describe her mind, for she had come to the time when she saw things in “their true proportions.” But Harry was prone to exaggerating the virtues of his friends and the failings of those he regarded as his enemies. Harry saw the world in those terms—friend or foe. There was no middle ground between the two in his feverish mind.

  Once a distracted and despairing Harry returned to Lyndhurst for Thanksgiving, unable to believe that a sickly and fiscally vulnera
ble Evelyn could continue to turn him down and remain in the “shadow of the Beast,” it looked to his mother as if “he had lost interest in everything. ” At breakfast he seemed unusually absentminded, as if laboring over a grave problem. Without warning Harry got up from the table, went into the parlor and played the piano violently at first, then more softly; a few minutes later he returned, as if nothing had happened. He repeated this several times, even while there was company at the table. After a few days it was clear that he was no longer sleeping; she could hear smothered sobs coming from his room, sounds that must have wreaked their own kind of havoc on her, if only subconsciously. Once when she went into Harry’s room at around four in the morning, she found him sitting on his bed, fully dressed, staring into the darkness. But he refused to tell her what was wrong. Finally, she insisted. In a torrent of words, Harry told her all the details of Evelyn’s sad tale of maternal negligence and sexual ruin. Mother Thaw reacted somewhat sympathetically, but warned Harry not to get caught up in such a tragic case, one where the sins had already been committed and he therefore could do nothing to change those facts. It was not a situation “that allowed for salvation.”