American Eve

by Paula Uruburu

  And with the help of the “new Pandora,” in spite of what appeared in black and white in the press, there were far more shades of red than anyone could have predicted.

  Newspaper illustration of Evelyn on the witness stand, 1907.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A Woman’s Sacrifice

  I must tell all that is to be told, because around this night . . . circled the tragedy which destroyed the life of one man, helped to undermine the reason of another, and dragged me into the fierce light of publicity and of criticism.

  —Evelyn Nesbit, Prodigal Days

  It is a frightening experience to hear a thought to which you have never given words babbled aloud in the street. . . . It sets you frantically anxious to amend, to contradict, to correct. Your little secret is everybody’s secret now. It has gained in importance, has been twisted in detail until it is like nothing you ever knew.

  —Evelyn Nesbit, Prodigal Days

  Absolutely no one was prepared for the incendiary media firestorm ignited by Stanford White’s murder, not even Evelyn, who had grown used to intrusive publicity and frequently boorish or questionable methods of investigation and speculation on the part of reporters. As she wrote, they could “cover a horse show and an electrocution in one day . . . and give no indication they are impressed by either.” But the “Garden tragedy” exploded with an unprecedented molten force upon an unwary public, whose growing taste for tabloidism became clear as they “gorged themselves on every morbid morsel.”

  Much to her chagrin, it was Evelyn’s predicament that took center stage in what would become, among other things, a battle of the journalistic sexes—giving rise to a whole new form of reporting in America and a new labor force, “those women with three names”—the sob sisters.

  THE SOB SISTERS

  Nicknamed “The Pity Patrol,” the sob sisters shared a spiritual kinship with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “damned mob of scribbling women” fifty years earlier. As aspiring writers, their only hope to break through the male bastion of the fourth estate was to replace tough, cynical, hard-nosed coverage with a softer alternative, which in this case meant offering a “womanly perspective,” filtered through the sympathetic gauze of an overly sentimental style of writing befitting their “feminine skills” and “intuition.” Hired to cover the Thaw case by three of New York’s biggest newspapers, the sob sisters sprang up virtually overnight to provide day-to-day tear-jerking, heart-tugging reportage. Aided and abetted by the social and political climate of the day, the sob sisters entered the journalistic arena by fixing their sights on Evelyn (who would have preferred to remain in the shadows). And they did so with a florid, maudlin vengeance: Her baby beauty proved her undoing. She toddled as innocently into the arms of Satan as an infant into the outstretched arms of parental love. And she is not to be blamed for it. As well may the frail girl martyr be blamed for not having successfully defended herself against the ferocious attacks of the hungry wild beasts when placed in the arena to be their prey for the pleasure of the populace.

  The sob sisters sought different angles from their male competitors with which to approach the crime of the century. For many, the cast for a bodice-ripping melodrama turned morality tale was perfect. White was the typically reviled, mustachioed, lecherous older married man who had seduced, deflowered, and abandoned the unworldly young country maiden. There was the maiden’s husband, Harry of Sooty City, the knight in tarnished armor who had killed for the sake of American womanhood and the love of his angel wife. And there was the child bride, the girl who had been victimized by a cruel fate and a crueler voluptuary. Not surprisingly, a number eventually turned the spotlight on the mothers in the case, both of whom proved to be deliciously sensational fodder. But while the elderly and histrionically widowed Mother Thaw got the mawkishly compassionate best of it, Mrs. Charles Holman eventually got the worst. As the drabs and dribs of Evelyn’s sorry childhood spilled into public knowledge, Evelyn’s mother was branded an “inhuman monster and a wretch,” “an unnatural unwise horror of maternal concern,” as the pity patrol’s general take was that “the poor child was bartered to satisfy a mother’s cupidity and a man’s baseness.” One enterprising newswoman spoke to Evelyn’s relatives on her father’s side, who were happy to offer their own slant on the former Mrs. Winfield Nesbit:

  She knew better. She also knew she was sacrificing her child’s soul for money by which to live without effort. She could have taken in washing or done a thousand other things that would not have placed her child in harm’s way. . . . Even a dumb brute would protect its young. . . . She was the degenerate.

  With the exception of Harry and Anthony Comstock, nearly everyone else connected to the case dreaded the daily throng of reporters groping and hunting for an exclusive or new angle. Evelyn spent her exhausting days and sleepless nights dodging the press wherever she went, calling the sob sisters “special kind of lunatics,” while from his cell, Harry deliberately inflamed their interest in her with his praise of Evelyn’s bravery, hinting almost gleefully at what had befallen her and “how all would be revealed!”

  To make matters worse, the Thaws had been approached early on by a publicity firm in Pittsburgh, McChesny and Carson. When they refused the offer, the firm turned to Thaw’s opponents, the D.A.’s office, who gladly accepted and began a campaign to smear both Harry and Evelyn in the press. The Pittsburgh firm was in an ideal position to repeat stories that had only made the local or regional papers, such as the rumor that Harry had killed a horse in anger (he claimed the horse had run wild and broken its leg and had to be put down). Or that a physician passenger on a Pullman car traveling between Albany and Buffalo remembered seeing Harry “intoxicated and probably doped.” Women came out of the wallpaper, eager to talk about their past relationships with Bathtub Harry; it was the same for Evelyn, only in her case men who had only fantasized about her spoke as if they had known her, and women who resented her beauty or “good fortune” saw a chance to get their names in the papers. And they did by the streetcar load.

  During the earliest days of preparations for the trial Evelyn’s sole friend and confidante was May McKenzie. Appearing in the courtroom each day in long-trailing, form-fitting lavender outfits, topped with ostentatious ostrich-plumed hats that enhanced her chipper, birdlike demeanor, May was a constant presence next to Evelyn and made for great copy. But, viewed against the sea of sedate black suits and mahogany browns of the courtroom, May’s colorful presence seemed wildly inappropriate. The press couldn’t resist comparing her to either the stylishly subdued but still bewitching Evelyn, dressed always in dark navy blue, or Harry’s unfortunate sisters, who invariably came off as dowdy at best and as looking like Harry in a fright wig at worst. Described by the sob sisters as “rosy, round-faced, bright-eyed, well-groomed, cheerful, chattering and full of a birdlike but good-humored curiosity,” May was “a friendly jimson-weed, fine to shade the fading tuberose [Evelyn] from the too searching glare of the sun . . . while on the other side of the child bride sat Mrs. George Lauder Carnegie and the countess of Yarmouth, commonplace, round-featured, steady-eyed, plainly dressed,” each of whom who “could pass in any crowd without being observed in any way,” “pie-faced and plain,” and only able to “smile with difficulty.” Since the Thaws were nearly manic to avoid at all costs any unnecessary reminders of Evelyn’s “prodigal days,” within a matter of weeks, like a girl in a vaudeville magician’s trunk, the purple-plumed and flamboyant May McKenzie disappeared from the young Mrs. Thaw’s side, banished from the courtroom by the Thaws and their lawyers as if she had never existed. The sob sisters took dainty purple-prosed note.

  While Evelyn may have seemed to a deluded Harry in the early days after the murder like “one of the Princesses in Fairyland,” between the lawyers on both sides trying to build their case and the various “moles and weasels” in the newspapers raising questions about her past, Evelyn found herself in a nightmare landscape where even Harry came to see that “her own plight was cruel bey
ond degree.” Surrounded, according to Harry, by “hosts of evil” rising up around her, Evelyn was once again distressingly and entirely without guidance and support. Harry dimly considered there might have been women friends he could have called to come to her aid. But he didn’t.

  On certain days Evelyn shuddered to think what would happen if Harry got the electric chair, since she was unprepared to deal with the Thaws all by herself over the long term. They were a gloomy and repressed tribe under the best of circumstances, and as Harry described it, at first they were “woozy” with the bad publicity, which they blamed solely on Evelyn. Harry saw from his cell that his family was shunning Evelyn: “My family, who you think would have outdone themselves in extending their friendliness to her left her almost alone; she had to dine by herself for all most of them cared.”

  According to Evelyn, only Harry’s sister Margaret and her husband, George Carnegie (who agreed privately that Harry was crazy), had any common sense. They treated Evelyn civilly, in part because they recognized how necessary she was to Harry’s defense, although there might have been an inkling of genuine compassion as well. But in spite of the surging force of people around her night and day—all on the Thaw payroll and all engaged in preparing and dissecting the case that was about to come to trial—as it seemed so many times during her short life, Evelyn had to fight her battle virtually alone.

  Contrary to popular myth, Evelyn had little access to any money. Josiah prevented his brother Harry from obtaining any additional funds while he was incarcerated; as such, Evelyn had to save “every [shekel]” that came to her by way of Mother Thaw (even while Harry foolishly insisted that she retain their rooms at the Lorraine and the electric car). Mother Thaw, in an effort to keep tabs on her daughter-in-law and to keep her from running up a tab at Delmonico’s or Lord & Taylor, decided to hire an unfashionably dour lump of a woman to “keep Evelyn company.” Her name was Mrs. McMillan, and she charged up hefty bills under the heading of “expenses,” which irritated Evelyn, who had no such account, and who knew that Harry was paying for McMillan’s rooms and Josiah Thaw for her meals. But Mrs. McMillan was dismissed after a month once the Thaw tribe decided to close ranks as tightly as possible. The fewer eyes there were to witness what was going on backstage, the better.

  JURY SELECTION

  Unlike any previous criminal trial in America, the Thaw trial—even the process of jury selection—made headlines virtually every day, especially when it was announced that, because of the sensational nature of the case, the jury for the first time in American history would be “incarcerated” (sequestered) for the duration of the proceedings. The sole person who seemed practiced in this process was a lawyer named Dan O’Reilly, the only down-to-earth member of the Thaw legal team and the only one who befriended Evelyn. As Mr. Penny, the court clerk, shouted prospective jurors’ names over the unruly noise of a hundred reporters crowded into the room along with the rest of the two hundred or so spectators, one by one the talesmen (prospective jurors) entered. And one by one they had to be dismissed, either for having connections to White or Thaw. When it was suggested that the trial be moved to a more neutral location, one observer quipped, “How about the moon?”

  It took a week and three hundred prospective jurors before even a solid number four could be agreed upon. Then number two complained he could not wait for weeks and was dismissed. One man, who had initially been selected as an alternate juror, began making disparaging comments about Evelyn and was promptly “mashed” under the jury table by number nine. Neither, however, was dismissed, although the question of potential perjury regarding the man who made the remarks about Evelyn hit the newspapers the next day. It was discovered that his brother-in-law was employed at Madison Square Garden. As described by Harry, he and others like him still deferred to the deceased White’s “evil presence in his eagle’s nest in the Tower.” All told, a whopping six hundred prospective jurors went through the process before an unwavering twelve men could be selected. (Women, of course, were not allowed to serve on juries.)

  During other preliminary proceedings (discussing the admission of handwriting experts and additional alienists, ballistic experts, and issues of spousal privilege, etc.) it became clear to everyone, even Harry, that his newest main counsel, Gleason, was absolutely and hopelessly inadequate, “expressing good thoughts . . . but unaccustomed to Criminal Courts,” while his partner, Hartridge, seemed more concerned with finding the nearest watering hole. There was a tremendous amount of hearsay as to how both the defense and the prosecution would proceed. What would be their line of defense? What would Thaw be tried for? According to Evelyn, those who knew the D.A. stated that he would “confine the issue to one point: Did or did not Harry Thaw kill Stanford White on the evening of June 25th?”

  “If this is the only question to be decided,” she wrote, “the case will not last very long.”

  The pivotal issue for everyone was the question of sanity. Was Harry Thaw insane, either temporarily or genetically?

  The question of bug-eyed, baby-talking Harry’s sanity for anyone who knew him, even casually, was easily answered without the calling of a lunacy commission. Yet Mother Thaw, in spite of all mad evidence to the contrary, wished fervently “to avoid a scandal” with regards to the issue of insanity, a fact that Evelyn found ridiculous, “given the tremendous and electrically charged consequences” hanging over Harry’s head. In her 1915 memoir, Evelyn derisively described the Thaw family’s thought process regarding a plea of insanity before the trial: “If it comes to that, the Thaws will put the biggest lunacy experts that money can buy on the stand.” They will “prove that Harry was a madman, but they will prove it nicely. There will be no suggestion that he can be unpleasantly mad, or that his madness can take beastly shapes.”

  As the weeks ran on, Mother Thaw spent an insane amount of money hiring an inordinate number of experts in insanity, who were there only to confirm that Harry’s illness was a “temporary brainstorm.” By the end of the trial, the twelve alienists, whose fees totaled close to $1,000 a day, cost Mother Thaw half a million dollars alone to aid the cause of saving her son’s life.

  And what of the lingering notion that Evelyn was paid a handsome price for her testimony? There has been much speculation about the amount of money Evelyn must have been paid in order to testify as she did. The amounts mentioned have ranged from $25,000 to $1 million. At the time, almost no one questioned the likelihood that there must have been some pot of gold waiting for Evelyn when all was testified to and done. Certainly as Mrs. Harry Thaw, Evelyn was necessary and thus supported throughout the course of both trials by the Thaws, if for no other reason than to keep up appearances, a game the Thaws played exceptionally well. But Evelyn had no money she could call her own—no savings, and no control over the amounts they might give her to keep her in good spirits and finer clothes. Time and again she had to go to Harry in his cell and ask him to intervene on her behalf for basic spending money. More than likely they promised her a comfortable lifestyle, the kind she had become accustomed to—should things turn out well for Harry, but only under those conditions. Otherwise, they would have little use for her and feel no obligation to be charitable, professed Presbyterianism aside. Especially if Harry was fried.

  COURTROOM TIGER

  In a notions store in the vicinity of the Tombs, a man who worked in the courthouse who knew the district attorney and his ability to make short shrift of everyone from well-respected doctors to lawyers to established lunacy experts recognized Evelyn (she had ducked into the store in search of some headache powders). He pointed to a rack of picture postcards.

  “Do you know that man, Mrs. Thaw?” he asked, gesturing to a photo of the D.A. “That is Jerome.”

  By 1906, William Travers Jerome had carved out an impressive reputation for himself in wiping out corruption and vice in New York City. He was known as a tiger in the courtroom, relentless in his questioning of witnesses, and as a man who cut his teeth on experts of any kind. Howe
ver, Jerome had been on vacation when he was called back to New York to take charge of the case for the state. As a result, having only read a handful of newspaper accounts of the murder, and having had only a few hurried phone conversations with his office before returning to Manhattan, at the outset Jerome seriously underestimated the implications of the case, the power of the Thaws’ money, and the media feeding frenzy that had already started. There was also a personal “situation” that might have an effect on his thinking and behavior, one that some might consider a conflict of interest and threat to his objectivity in the case. For Jerome had known White—they had belonged to several of the same clubs in the city and thus shared the same social circle and friends. More significant, however, and one of many great ironies of the case, was that Jerome himself was leading a double life of sorts. He was involved in an extramarital

  D.A. William Travers Jerome,

  circa 1900.

  affair with a woman twenty years younger than himself. If he feared at all the revelation of this fact (which would certainly hurt his chances of winning the case, since any number of political enemies, as well as the press, would have loved to expose him as a hypocrite and an immoral fraud), he didn’t show it.

  As Evelyn looked at the picture postcard, the store owner cautioned her: “Jerome loves lunacy experts. . . . I should not back the lunacy bugs if I were you.”