The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 8 July 2015
by Paula Uruburu
In the early 21st century, we have become accustomed to the notion of people famous merely for being famous. The celebutante is followed around by paparazzi and his or her picture shows up everywhere. But what did the celebutante actually do to earn that fame? Sometimes it is a quick short career as actor or singer. Sometimes it is merely being rich and highly public with the partying. That's all it takes any more. Some of the most famous figures flame out in spectacular collapses of substance abuse. Sometimes, they fall through grim criminal actions, disheveled mug shot photos, even murder.
The challenges of independence for a young woman at the turn of the 20th century were thrust upon young Evelyn Nesbit when her ineffectual father died, leaving a widow with few skills, and two young children. Teenaged Evelyn was becoming known in Pittsburgh as a beautiful young artists' model. When her father died, and despite her mother's attempts at finding an income, Evelyn became the primary breadwinner for the family. Her success facilitated her mother's basic indifference to maternal responsibility. In a matter of a year or two, Evelyn Nesbit, still only fifteen or sixteen years old, became one of America's most well-known faces in advertisements and magazine spreads. Her career blossomed in New York and she began to appear as a chorus girl in stage musicals. Evelyn's image represented a modern, un-corsetted, woman of ease and casual eroticism. As the prototype Gibson Girl, she represented a new century of unleashed American beauty. And, like many other showgirls, she attracted the attention of men, some of them startlingly wealthy.
In a world in which Evelyn's childhood was battered by the needs of making a living for the family, the lack of a father figure, and an indifferent opportunist for a mother, she was caught up by the strength and wealth of men who desired her for her beauty and youth. Her ability to resist these forces was impaired by her lack of power, the lack of status for women of all classes. Her youth, her gender, her isolation, her financial struggles, all conspired to steer this famous Floradora girl into the arms of first one rich patron, famous architect Stanford White, and then another, paranoid puritan Harry Thaw. White would lure Evelyn with riches and nights of epicurean delights, culminating in his drugging and raping her, as he had presumably done with many young and powerless showgirls before her. Thaw saw himself as a knight in shining armor, protecting Evelyn from White's devilish behavior. But Thaw had been obsessed with Stanford White long before Evelyn came along. He would eventually rape Evelyn as punishment for her affair with White. Still, she would marry Harry, not too long before Harry would go out and murder White, shooting him in the face before a thousand witnesses at White's masterpiece Madison Square Garden theater. One of those shocked witnesses, of course, had to be Evelyn Nesbit Thaw.
Author Paula Uruburu tells this epic story very much from the viewpoint of Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, extensively sourcing her pair of memoirs, as well as Evelyn's letters and interviews with descendants. She turns a 21st century eye upon the status of a young woman at the turn of the 20th. Given a hundred years of retrospect, the story is one of power and abuse, corruption and personal struggle for identity in a rich man's world, before women had the right to vote, to sit on juries, to tell their own stories without fear.
The murder trial that ensued would be familiar to media watchers today. There is a voracious press frenzy, in which all rumor and innuendo is reported as the latest facts in the case. Meanwhile, Evelyn again is caught in the middle of an event far out of her control. The trial is both of Harry Thaw as murderer, but also a trial of the last vestiges of a Victorian moral code which approves of a man murdering another in the perceived right of one to protect his wife's honor from another (despite, in this case, that the dishonor occurred long before he even met his wife). Evelyn can only act under the whims of the rich Thaw family, determined to protect Harry from his own misbehavior and the notoriety that could come from its exposure. Evelyn, the outsider, is dependent on their financial grace and, therefore, testifies on Harry's behalf, despite his own despicable behavior. And, yet, she manages, at last, to testify in defiance of the lawyers' attempts to paint her as the evil fallen woman, the cause of Harry's chivalrous murder.
The book reads like a rich and engrossing novel. Evelyn's plight is a dire adventure, through her youthful struggles, her brushes with fame and wealth, and the long struggle to survive after the stinging light of notoriety. She would have more than sixty years to reflect on her blazing moment in the spotlight. Uruburu is an advocate for Nesbit's story, without being excessively partisan. Nesbit is her focus, of course, and she imbues her with great sympathy, especially in light of modern American attitudes towards a woman's place in society. Her language is a bit florid at times, lending the story its novelistic air of advocacy journalism. But the story itself stands without too much melodrama, and without the generations of embellishment that have plagued the sordid tale of Evelyn's very public downfall. A fascinating and engaging historical book.
See also: [The Architect of Desire by Suzannah Lessard]