The Girl on the Velvet Swing

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Simon Baatz

  Cover design by Gregg Kulick; image: GraphicaArtis / Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First ebook edition: January 2018

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  ISBN 978-0-316-39667-7

  E3-20171111-JV-PC

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1. First Encounter

  2. Rape

  3. Marriage

  4. Murder

  5. First Trial

  6. Second Trial

  7. Asylum

  8. Escape

  9. Final Verdict

  10. Epilogue

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Simon Baatz

  Notes

  Newsletters

  1

  FIRST ENCOUNTER

  EDNA GOODRICH SETTLED INTO HER SEAT AS THE HORSE PULLED away from the curb. The coachman flicked his whip, pulling gently on the reins to steer the chestnut-brown mare into the street. The lunch hour traffic had dispersed, and Thirty-eighth Street was now almost deserted. The horse cantered eastward, toward Broadway.

  Goodrich glanced at the young girl seated beside her. Evelyn Nesbit was leaning forward slightly, looking straight ahead, clutching the hat on her head with her right hand and holding the handrail with her left. Edna Goodrich, smugly satisfied at her success, settled herself more comfortably in her seat as the hansom slowed at the approach to Broadway.1

  The carriage, suddenly stuck in the congestion of wagons and carts that crawled south along Broadway, almost came to a stop. The girl released the grip on her hat and turned to interrogate her companion.

  Who was Stanford White? she asked. Why had Edna pestered her so insistently to accept his invitation? Since Evelyn’s first appearance on the stage, six weeks previously, dozens of men had tried to attract her attention. They sent her flowers; they shouted her name from the stalls; some waited for her at the stage door. What, she inquired, was so special about Stanford White that they should spend an afternoon fighting the traffic to get across town to visit him?

  Edna Goodrich, amused that Evelyn remained unaware of Stanford White’s existence, patted the girl’s hand reassuringly. White, she replied, was a great man, perhaps the greatest man in New York. He was the architect who had designed so many of the city’s most famous buildings, the man responsible for Madison Square Garden on Twenty-sixth Street, the man who had built the Washington Square Arch on Fifth Avenue. He knew everyone, and everyone knew Stanford White. And because he was friendly with so many actors and directors—he had designed the Players’ Club on Gramercy Park—Stanford White was influential among theater folk. “He can make you,” Edna confided to Evelyn, her voice full of meaning, “anything you wish to be on the stage.”2

  Edna Goodrich was feeling pleased with herself. Stanford White had mentioned to her, several weeks earlier, the photographs of Evelyn that he had seen in the New York World. Who was this new girl? he asked. How could he meet her? Goodrich, one of the singers in the Florodora sextet, had become acquainted with Evelyn at the end of June after the manager of the company, John Fisher, hired Evelyn as a chorus girl.3

  The carriage left Broadway, turning onto Twenty-fourth Street, finally coming to a halt before a brownstone house set back from the sidewalk. Evelyn Nesbit looked up in surprise, disappointed that their rendezvous would occur in such a nondescript building. She had thought she might meet Stanford White at the Waldorf Hotel; but they had arrived instead at a large four-story house distinguished from its neighbors only by its shabby, unkempt appearance. The building seemed forbidding, even menacing, as it sat silently in the afternoon sunshine. There was no sign of life within the house, and Evelyn, as she glanced upward, scanning each floor, saw that heavy curtains covered all the windows. She felt a sudden chill—should she enter this gloomy place?—as she imagined the tomb-like silence inside.4

  Edna Goodrich paid the driver his fare and was now ascending the steps to ring the bell. The door opened inward automatically at her touch, without that familiar click that would indicate the release of a lock, and she began climbing a flight of rickety wooden steps to the second floor.

  Evelyn Nesbit stood in the doorway, looking up into the darkened stairwell.

  “Where on earth are we going?” she asked anxiously.

  “It’s all right,” Edna answered, pausing to reassure her friend. “Come right along. Go on up,” she added cheerfully.

  Evelyn began to follow her companion, and as she started up the steps, a door opened at the top of the stairwell. A light appeared, casting its rays on the topmost steps. A man’s voice, deep and resonant, a welcoming voice, boomed out a sudden greeting—“Hello”—and as she reached the top of the stairs, Evelyn could see Edna Goodrich leaning into Stanford White, embracing him and kissing him on the cheek.5

  White stepped backward as Evelyn entered the room. He gazed at her, admiring her figure, his eyes lingering over Evelyn as she stepped shyly forward. She was just as beautiful as he had anticipated from her photographs in the newspapers; indeed, now that he had met her, Stanford White realized that she was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. Her cream-colored leghorn hat, trimmed with artificial flowers above the brim, was tilted slightly to one side. A taffeta ribbon circled the crown of the hat and fell away behind her, down her back, entwining itself around the long curls of her copper-red hair. Her cream-white blouse and her frock, an ankle-length summer dress of white mull, gave Evelyn a trim, youthful look, making her appear even younger than her sixteen years, an effect exaggerated by the timorous expression that crossed her face as she entered the apartment. White studied her carefully, noticing her large hazel eyes and her full lips. He saw that her nose had a slight upward tilt; her chin was precise, chiseled to perfection; and her forehead was clear and radiant.6

  He glanced momentarily at Edna Goodrich, giving her a look of appreciation that she had introduced him to this marvelous vision. A second man, Reginald Ronalds, approached, and both men listened attentively as Edna Goodrich introduced Evelyn, telling them that Evelyn had recently joined the chorus in the musical Florodora playing at the Casino Theatre. Evelyn was a newcomer to the city, having moved with her mother and younger brother to New York only eight months before, in December 1900.

  Stanford White introduced his friend to Edna Goodrich and Evelyn Nesbit. Reginald Ronalds, thirty-five years old, had graduated from Yale University in 1886 and had fought with Teddy Roosev
elt’s Rough Riders in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Despite his claim that he worked on Wall Street, no one, not even his closest friends, had any precise idea how Ronalds made his living; but since he always appeared to have plenty of money, it hardly seemed to matter. In truth, Ronalds lived an indolent existence, dining at his clubs, appearing at the fashionable dances, mingling with the city’s aristocracy, and generally enjoying the leisurely life of a man-about-town. Everybody liked him—he was one of the wittiest men in New York—and he was rarely absent from any of the more important events on the social calendar.7

  The dining table had been set for four people. The two men fussed over Evelyn during the luncheon, teasing her for her girlish appearance, bantering with her, and peppering her with questions. Did she find New York as glamorous as she had imagined? How did she like her role in the Florodora chorus? Where did she dine? Whose invitations had she accepted? Did she prefer Delmonico’s or Rector’s for supper? Evelyn gave her attention more to Reginald Ronalds than to Stanford White—Ronalds was the younger, better-looking man, six feet tall with blue eyes and blond hair—and he joked and flirted with her, appearing all the while solicitous for her welfare, forbidding her to drink more than a single glass of champagne.

  Evelyn relaxed; her shyness had left her; the champagne had washed away her inhibitions and she had forgotten her initial apprehension. She felt a slight disappointment that Reginald Ronalds had to leave early—he had to go to his office, he explained—but Stanford White invited his other guests to stay a little longer. And neither Edna Goodrich nor Evelyn Nesbit was in a hurry to depart; both women were in Florodora, and the evening performance did not begin until seven o’clock.

  Stanford White suggested a tour of the house. They ascended the stairs, bypassing the rooms on the third floor, climbing to the topmost level. A large studio with a high ceiling ran the entire length of the fourth floor. This room, like the dining room, was elaborately decorated: artificial light illuminated the red velvet curtains that shut out the sunlight; antique divans and couches, covered with velvet cushions, lined the four sides of the room; and a card table and four chairs stood near the windows at the front of the building.

  A swing, attached to the high ceiling by two velvet cords, hung in the center of the room. A large circular paper screen, stretched taut in a thin wire frame, was attached to a pulley suspended from the ceiling. This screen, decorated with a Japanese motif, could be raised above eye level so that it hung directly over the swing.

  Stanford White took Evelyn by the hand, helping her to sit on the padded velvet seat of the swing. Edna Goodrich stood a few feet in front of her, pulling slightly on the rope to raise the Japanese screen. Evelyn could feel White’s hands on her back, pushing her higher and higher so that her outstretched feet came closer and closer to the screen. Edna, holding the rope in her hands, began to laugh as she watched Evelyn’s futile attempts to touch the screen with her feet, and Evelyn also started to laugh at her own helplessness. No matter how hard she strained in her seat, no matter how she urged herself forward, her feet could not pierce the screen that hung invitingly a few inches in front of her.

  Evelyn realized that White was controlling her movement with his hands, pushing her just so much, so that despite her efforts, she could not break the paper. But finally, with a single strong push of his hands on her back, Evelyn soared higher than before and her feet split the screen in two.

  White replaced the torn screen and Edna Goodrich now took her turn, climbing onto the seat of the swing. Evelyn held the rope, lifting the screen into the air, laughing in her turn as Edna also eventually pierced the paper.8

  It was all great fun and it had been so unexpected; and they continued to amuse themselves until almost four o’clock. Reluctantly the party disbanded. White announced that he had to go to his office on Fifth Avenue. Edna and Evelyn, meanwhile, had to go uptown to the Casino Theatre to prepare for that evening’s performance.

  Evelyn Nesbit’s encounter with Stanford White seemed to epitomize the sudden good fortune that had accompanied the family’s move to New York. Evelyn, along with her mother and brother, had scraped and struggled, often in desperate poverty, for years. Now, it seemed, everything had changed. Two years earlier Evelyn Nesbit was holding a menial job in a Philadelphia department store; now she was on the Broadway stage.

  She had been born on Christmas Day in 1884 in Tarentum, a village outside Pittsburgh. Her father, Winfield Scott Nesbit, was a Pittsburgh lawyer, commuting each day to his office on Diamond Street. Many years later Evelyn would recall her early childhood with fondness. She remembered the affection that had existed between her father and her mother, Florence, an affection that included her and her brother, Howard.

  But Winfield Scott Nesbit had died unexpectedly in 1893, and his death proved traumatic for his widow. Florence Nesbit was singularly ill-prepared for her loss: she had no formal education and little practical experience outside the home. She had lived in her husband’s shadow, and his death left her suddenly bereft.

  Nothing was now more painful to Florence Nesbit than the daily humiliation of her impoverishment. Her former acquaintances and friends soon dropped away, and eventually she sold the house in Tarentum, moving the family to Cedar Avenue in the East End, one of the least desirable neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. She rented out rooms to lodgers, took in laundry, and tried her hand at dressmaking, all the while struggling with melancholy and depression, but her efforts were never enough, and gradually the family slipped into poverty.9

  Her decision in 1899 to move the family to Philadelphia, a larger, more cosmopolitan city, proved to be a turning point. Florence Nesbit secured a position as a saleswoman in Wanamaker’s, the largest department store in the city.

  She grew to dislike the work there—it required stamina and self-discipline to stand at the counter all day talking to customers—but Florence quickly found new friends among the other lodgers at the boardinghouse on Arch Street where she and her children lived. Everybody made a great fuss over her fourteen-year-old daughter. Evelyn Nesbit was such a pretty girl, so adorable and sweet, and everyone who saw her immediately remarked on her beauty.

  An artist, John Storm, visiting his sister at the Arch Street boardinghouse, noticed Evelyn and asked Florence Nesbit if her daughter would pose for him. Soon other artists also were using Evelyn as their model. Violet Oakley designed stained-glass windows for several Philadelphia churches, and Evelyn was one of the models immortalized in glass as a celestial angel. Philadelphia, then the publishing capital of the United States, had many book and magazine illustrators working for such firms as Curtis Publishing and J. B. Lippincott, and Evelyn was soon in demand as an artist’s model. She had worked briefly with her mother as a stock girl at Wanamaker’s, a job she disliked, and she was thrilled that she could now earn money posing in costume for artists and illustrators.10

  If Philadelphia had provided such opportunities for Evelyn, would New York City not prove even more profitable? Her daughter’s triumph in Philadelphia as an artist’s model encouraged Florence Nesbit to imagine that Evelyn might achieve even greater success; and so, in 1900, she moved with her two children to New York, taking rooms in a boardinghouse on West Twenty-second Street.

  Florence, who had been initially reluctant to allow her daughter to pose as a model, had long since shed her inhibitions on the matter and now acted as Evelyn’s agent in New York. One painter, Carroll Beckwith, hired Evelyn immediately, paying her five dollars to pose for two afternoons each week in his studio in the Sherwood Building on West Fifty-seventh Street. Beckwith was an important figure in New York’s artistic community, and soon other artists, hearing of Evelyn’s beauty, contacted Florence Nesbit for permission to employ her daughter.11

  That permission was rarely denied. Frederick Stuart Church, then fifty-nine years old, hired Evelyn to pose for him each week in his studio on Forty-fourth Street. The sculptor George Grey Barnard used her as the model for his marble figure Innocence, and
Charles Dana Gibson, a well-known sketch artist, portrayed Evelyn in several of his classic illustrations of the American girl.12

  Evelyn could command a fee of five dollars for each sitting—the customary amount for an artist’s model in 1901—and the money she made supported the family during the first year in New York. But she could obtain more than twice that amount posing for the photographers who supplied the New York magazines with illustrations for the fashion pages. Very soon her picture was ubiquitous.13

  It was inevitable that her image, widely reproduced in the pages of such newspapers as the New York World and the New York Journal, should attract the attention of theatrical agents looking for new talent to put on the stage. Ted Marks, one of the first agents to contact Florence Nesbit about her daughter, promised that he could get Evelyn a role in the musical Florodora, then playing at the Casino Theatre.

  But the manager, John Fisher, had been reluctant to hire Evelyn Nesbit. She was young, too young to go on the stage, and he knew that he might invite an investigation by the authorities if he employed her. But one of his chorines was leaving Florodora the next week. Evelyn was very pretty and could dance passably well, and so, in June 1901, she joined the company as a chorus girl with a weekly salary of fifteen dollars.14

  The Casino Theatre stood at Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway from 1882 until it was demolished in 1930. The Casino, designed in a style best described as Moorish Revival, included a tower that resembled a minaret. The musical comedy Florodora played at the Casino from November 1900 until it moved uptown in October 1901 to the New York Theatre. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-det-4a08580)

  Florodora had had a two-year run on the London stage, at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, before moving to Broadway in November 1900. The first act, set on an island, Florodora, in the Philippines, tells how Cyrus Gilfain, the owner of a perfume factory, expects his daughter Angela to marry his manager, Frank Abercoed. But Frank has fallen in love with Dolores, a girl who works in the factory.