American Eve

by Paula Uruburu

  “He was an unexpected vision,” she recalled.

  “He” was Stanford White.

  Whenever White entered a room, there was usually a flurry of activity and salutations. With him were his nineteen-year-old son, Larry, and a friend of Larry’s, Leroy King, both of whom were in town for a visit from Harvard. White’s wife, the former Bessie Smith of Smithtown, was at their country home in St. James, well out in Suffolk County, on the picturesque north shore of Long Island. Evelyn stole a look from behind her menu to see if Harry had noticed the small commotion caused by White’s entrance. Apparently, he hadn’t.

  As Evelyn described it, “In spite of the heat, I went cold with fear.” She began to shiver unconsciously. “I dared not make one false move, dared not cease my smiling and exchanging repartee” with Harry and the other two men. At first she thought it best not to say anything with regard to White’s presence in the restaurant, since she knew Harry’s insatiable and obsessive jealousy of the architect would most certainly ruin their dinner. The last thing she wanted was a public scene. Nonetheless, Evelyn could not keep her eyes from inadvertently wavering once or twice in the direction of the terrace.

  “I thought my nerves would crack from the tension,” she said.

  With Harry’s “help” and more than three years of hindsight, the former Kittens had come to see that Stanny’s carefully designed seduction of her was perfectly suited to an architect of his ingenuity and potency, qualities that had drawn her to him, and that someone as disturbed as Harry would both admire and resent. As she sat, trying to fix her automatic sphinxlike stare at nothing, Evelyn couldn’t help but hear Harry’s words, uttered compulsively and incessantly for those same three years regarding that “depraved monster and defiler of tender girlhood,” forcing certain phrases from her late at night in her bedroom as if part of some mad pagan ceremony. Over time, Evelyn had in fact begun to wonder which number on White’s list she had been when he had plucked her ripe from the chorus. As she sat silent and (she thought) imperceptibly shivering, however, she suddenly recalled small flickers of Stanny’s tender conversations in the Garden at night and clenched her napkin tightly in her lap.

  In the past, Harry had instructed Evelyn to inform him whenever she saw White, and demanded that she refer to White as “the Beast” or “the B” for short. Those few times (before moving to Pittsburgh) when she had passed White on the street or in a car since their final parting on Christmas Eve, 1903, Evelyn made sure to tell Harry. Even though she considered it ridiculous, she suspected, correctly, that she was under surveillance. In her memoirs Evelyn describes the incident, which confirmed her suspicions: One day, I awoke with a sore throat and went to a specialist to have my throat swabbed. Coming out of the building, I ran into Stanford White. [They exchanged tentative looks.] That evening, dressing for dinner, I said to Harry:

  “According to my promise, I must tell you that I passed Stanford White on the street to-day.” His face darkened.

  “Did he speak to you?”

  “No,” I replied, “he just looked at me for a moment, and then I ran into the building. That was all.”

  “You’re sure that was all?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Yes.”

  “Your word of honor?” he asked, remaining oddly unruffled.

  “Yes” was my reply.

  “That’s right,” he said approvingly. “All I ask is that you tell me any time you see him. If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out anyway. There are plenty of people who will tell me.”

  Harry, in fact, had mobilized his veritable web of professional spies and amateur informants throughout the city in anticipation of their arrival in June 1906. The actual purpose was threefold. The first was to keep a watchful eye over Evelyn’s every move when he wasn’t with her. (He had little to fear, since the combination of Harry’s paranoia, possessiveness, and controlling behavior had managed to cut Evelyn off from virtually all family, friends, and acquaintances.) The second reason was to protect himself from the real or imagined enemies he believed were plotting to do him bodily harm. The third reason was to try and gain proof of White’s debaucheries in order to discredit him publicly. Evelyn was unaware that earlier that very day, four of Thaw’s detectives had followed White home and had tailed him for several hours.

  A small ripple of relief passed over Evelyn once Stanny was clearly out of sight on the terrace. Harry asked her if she was ill, having noticed her involuntary tremors. Not wanting him to do anything rash should he suddenly become aware of White’s proximity or think that this convergence was no coincidence, Evelyn asked one of her dinner companions for a piece of paper and pencil. On a small slip she wrote something like “The B was here but has left,” hoping that would settle the matter. She passed the note surreptitiously to Harry. He read it and asked her if she was all right, noticing, he would later tell reporters, “that she was shaking like a reed.” She replied that she was fine. He then smiled an inscrutable smile, pocketed the note, and ordered another “quart of champagne” even though he would recall in his own memoirs that he was “wild at missing him” and wondered to himself how the “blaggard had entered while he was unaware of his presence?”

  “He had got out, how did he get out?”

  The meal ended with only a minor incident. According to the cloakroom attendant who had checked Harry’s coat and straw hat, “When I handed him the hat he literally jerked it out of my hand and in putting it on he crushed it down over his forehead and his eyes with a crashing sound which indicated that it had been broken by the violence of his treatment.” As they emerged from the café, Evelyn eyed Harry with his cracked brim and winter coat and casually asked him if he felt hot.

  “No,” he replied coolly.

  She then asked where they were going. Harry said he had procured tickets for the opening night of a new musical, Mamzelle Champagne. The color drained from Evelyn’s cheeks. She knew that this particular show was opening at the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden, just as she knew that, until that night, Harry had petulantly and defiantly refused to set foot in any building connected with White, which was next to impossible in the city Stanny had almost single-handedly redesigned. Evelyn was suddenly more than just dimly aware that the evening’s itinerary had an uncanny pattern; first Sherry’s, then this near close encounter at Martin’s, and now the Garden.

  The foursome strolled the single block to the Garden, and Evelyn felt light-headed from the combination of heat, wine, and general nerves. As they took the elevator to the rooftop, Evelyn asked Harry if he wanted to check his overcoat. He said no, and smiled in the same disconcerting way he had the day they first met. Evelyn closed her eyes, and Beale commented that it was already a little past nine o’clock. Harry, apparently oblivious to everything, chatted away about trifles with his two friends, his hands deep within his coat pockets.

  Evelyn, who had memorized every click and grind of the elevator gears, knew without seeing that they had arrived at the roof. The party was shown to a table about three-quarters of the way back from the stage. Harry muttered something under his breath about the rotten seats. Evelyn said absolutely nothing. As the show began, while everyone else turned their attention to the noise and lights of the stage, Harry stared up at the illuminated Tower, which dominated the theater and rose in the gathering shadows on Twenty-sixth Street. Like some unconscious symbol of White’s potency, it “loomed,” and it seemed to Harry that “its big-ness increased in the darkness.” Harry followed it high up to the “little windows where she suffered,” and imagined as he had a thousand times how horrible those memories must be for her, that sacrifice of her whole life which he never let her forget.

  Even though she had looked out over the enchanted Garden from White’s Tower countless times before, Evelyn was always struck by the magic and splendor of the place, as if seeing it for the first time. In an age when spectacle was the rule of the day, the open-air theater, like everything Stanny ever did, was electrifying, glamorous, and almost
overdone. She sighed as she stared at the familiar scene before her, as if temporarily mesmerized by the twinkling lights of various colors; she remembered how they would sway rhythmically at times when a breeze lifted them, the undulating strands resembling fireflies noiselessly hovering in the air. Large and luxurious potted plants were strategically placed throughout the tables that faced the stage to create a feeling of intimacy under the canopy of the vast night sky.

  Of course, one special table several rows from the stage was always reserved for the creator of the Garden, but when Evelyn and Harry sat down, to her relief, that table sat empty.

  As Viola de Costa, a plumpish and pretty chorus girl whom Evelyn had known, popped out of a giant papier-mâché bottle of Pommery Sec, Harry and his companions ordered champagne. He held his glass up to Evelyn, who turned and feigned interest in the show to hide a swelling sense of uneasiness. As she later put it, “We were there just long enough to be bored.” It was apparently clear to even novice theatergoers and first-nighters The murder scene: the Madison Square Garden rooftop theater.

  that Mamzelle Champagne would probably be short-lived. Some of the patrons, in fact, took to booing and hooting periodically, while other critics in the audience merely drank and chatted rudely in Irish whispers, oblivious to the performance taking place.

  A number of people had begun milling about among the aisles, making it difficult for the waiters in their white aprons to bring patrons their drinks. This added to the audience’s general restlessness. Suddenly, without a word, Harry also left the table and was instantly hidden from Evelyn’s line of sight by one of the large, leafy plants.

  What had drawn him away was a man he had spied sitting alone at a table near the back. Harry recognized James Clinch Smith, Stanford White’s brother-in-law, from across the theater and stopped at his table. Smith, who knew Thaw only in passing, said that he was there for lack of anything better to do. Harry engaged him in some mindless small talk, then the conversation ended. Harry came back to his table and took a few sips from his glass of champagne, then left again and disappeared just as quickly as before into the crowd. Beale had also left the table, and as Evelyn sat and listened to McCaleb’s critique of the uninspiring performances and music, she watched Harry fade into the glare of the stage lights against the evening sky beyond. The next day, several witnesses said that an agitated Thaw could be seen pacing back and forth at the rear of the roof garden “like a caged tiger.”

  A little before eleven o’clock, with the show nearly over, a small disruption like the one in the Café Martin drew some people’s attention to the elevator. Evelyn glanced in the direction of the noise, where to her dismay, out stepped Stanny, alone this time, who headed for his usual table. She immediately scanned the faces in the audience for Harry, but could not find him. White had originally planned to attend to some business in Philadelphia that evening, but since his son had come to visit, he stayed in town. Several people who recognized him applauded, and White acknowledged their greeting with a wave of his hand. He then took his customary seat five rows from the stage, and began to watch what was left of the performance, resting his chin in his right hand and throwing his other arm casually over the back of the chair.

  As the director of the Garden, White had seen the show several times in rehearsals. In fact, he had already been at the Garden that day. About five hours earlier White had made an appearance behind the scenes, where, during a break in their final run-through, he observed the chorus girls huddled around a water cooler, some of whom were wilting from the heat. White directed the stage manager, Lionel Lawrence, to fill the cooler with ice and lemonade for the girls. He also reminded Lawrence that he wanted to be introduced to a particular girl, “a little peach” named Maude Fulton, “Evelyn-like and seventeen,” who was new to both New York and the stage. But Lawrence was unable to oblige, because of the bustle over last-minute preparations for opening night. He didn’t even notice his employer’s departure.

  A preoccupied Evelyn jumped when Harry abruptly reappeared at their table. Harry, who again seemed not to have noticed White’s entrance, sat down and almost immediately began fidgeting in his chair. Neither Beale, who had also returned, nor McCaleb thought this unusual, since some part of Harry was almost perpetually in motion. Onstage, several of the featured chorus girls, dressed in fencing costumes with cartoonish red-heart appliqués on their white shirtwaists, were singing a song about dueling over a woman’s affection, “I Challenge You to Love.” It was, Beale commented, “bloody awful.” Evelyn shot a furtive glance at Harry, who suddenly stood up again, a somewhat dazed look in his eyes. Less than ten minutes had passed since White had entered.

  Evelyn nervously looked up at Harry, who now perched over the table like a huge, distraught crow. She suggested in a somewhat faint and strained voice that they leave. Beale and McCaleb readily agreed. Appearing to comply, Harry, who hadn’t taken off his coat all evening, helped Evelyn with her wrap. The four began walking toward the elevator, leaving the general noise of the music, conversation, and clinking glasses behind them. The golden Diana, shimmering with the hemisphere of mirrored lights at her feet and the theater below her, serenely gazed at the city from her privileged spot, her bow arched in ceaseless readiness. At his table below, White spoke briefly to the Garden’s caterer, a man named Harry Stevens. He asked Stevens to arrange an introduction after the show to the little peach he had his eye on and who had just finished her debut song, “Could I Fascinate You?” Stevens obligingly headed backstage.

  It wasn’t until she was nearly inside the elevator that Evelyn, her arm in McCaleb’s, noticed that Harry had once again vanished. Drawn away, perhaps even urged on by the lyrics of the song “I Could Love a Million Girls,” which the tenor Harry Short was performing onstage, Harry Thaw had doubled back: I’ve heard them say so often they could love their wives alone, But I think that’s just foolish; men must have hearts made of stone. Now my heart is made of softer stuff; it melts at each warm glance. A pretty girl can’t look my way, without a new romance . . .

  Having just spoken with one Harry while another sang onstage, White was unaware that a third was advancing upon him swiftly and silently from behind. Trying to see over McCaleb’s broad shoulder through the archway to the elevator, Evelyn stood on her toes and frantically scanned the audience. A rush of pins and needles ran up the pearl buttons on the back of her dress. Less than thirty feet away from where she stood, the darkly muffled figure moved within a few feet of the unsuspecting architect in his seat.

  Seconds later, a startlingly loud gunshot pierced the torpid night air. The musicians faltered. Evelyn recoiled and stared stricken in the direction of the sound. Suddenly everything melted into slow motion and the world stopped on its wobbly axis. She opened her mouth in a silent scream. In the flash of those seconds, which seemed to last an eternity, she saw everything. She raised her trembling hand to her lips. Two more shots followed in searing rapid succession, forcing everything into spinning, pointless motion again and causing her to flinch with each blast. Evelyn looked up at McCaleb.

  “He shot him!” she finally cried.

  Before anyone else knew what was happening, Stanford White’s body was covered with the scarlet spray of his own blood, which began to deepen almost immediately into a sickening dark burgundy. As it edged around his toppled body on the floor, the overturned table lay next to him, having been pulled over with the force of the body; the architect’s blood began to seep into the twisted tablecloth. Those closest watched in horror as the jagged crystal shards of his wineglass disappeared in the mushrooming puddle. Part of his face was torn away, and the rest was blackened beyond recognition by powder burns. Harry had stood less than two feet from him when he held the muzzle of the pistol to White’s head at eye level and pulled the trigger. One bullet lodged in his brain behind his left eyelid. A second, penetrating his nasal cavity, broke part of his jaw and three teeth, while the third struck him in the right shoulder and then passed through his elbow.
Harry stood transfixed, his right hand and starched white cuff and gold cuff link spattered with White’s blood. Some witnesses said the victim looked at his attacker in amazement at the last second; others said he never saw it coming. By all accounts, however, they had exchanged no words. The New York Times reported the next day that White, whose body had been jolted upright by the force of the bullets before it fell in a heap, was unquestionably beyond any earthly help instantaneously.

  Immediately afterward, like some demented avenging angel of death in his black coat and broken white halo of a hat, Harry, his own face deadly white, held the barrel of the gun over his head and let the unused shells fall with a brassy clink to the floor. For a second or two there was a dreadful, penetrating silence. White’s blood, mixed indiscriminately with the wine from his shattered glass, began to spread toward Thaw’s feet. Harry K. Thaw “of Pittsburgh,” with a glazed yet triumphant look in his eyes, shouted to terrified witnesses:

  “I did it because he ruined my wife! He had it coming to him. He took advantage of the girl and then deserted her!”

  At that very instant, twenty-one-year-old Evelyn’s fragile fairy-tale world, which had always edged too close into nightmare, evaporated forever like a childhood dream. And at fifty-two, Stanny was dead.

  At first, a majority of the nine hundred people in attendance thought the gunfire was part of the show. But as the grisly reality of White’s murder became evident to those seated closest to him, horrified screams now cut through the thick air. The refrain of “I Could Love a Million Girls” froze on the lips of the tenor as the orchestra, some of whom could see White’s toppled body, continued to play confusedly in fits and starts. Some people seated near the back of the theater, still unaware of what just happened, shouted, “Go on! What’s the matter?” thinking the gun-play was part of the show.