Evelyn Reveals White as a Fearful Monster.
STAGGERING BLOW TO PROSECUTION--MOB OF WOMEN FIGHTS TO ENTER
COURT--PATHETIC SCENE--HAND OF MAGICIAN SUGGESTED IN DOORS THAT
OPEN WITHOUT HUMAN AID--AT AGE OF 16, BEAUTY FELL INTO CLUTCHES OF
UNSCRUPULOUS MILLIONAIRE--THOUGHT WHITE AN “UGLY MAN”--RED VELVET
SWING IN DEN OF MIRRORS--BEAUTY DRUGGED WITH WINE--MOTHER’S
INFLUENCE REVEALED--PHOTOGRAPHED IN KIMONO--LURED TO WHITE’S
STUDIO.
The staggering blow to Jerome was about to be dealt. Tense, nervous, and
thrilled with emotions of pity, the spectators hung on every word of the
pale Evelyn when she resumed her testimony.
Word of the impending revelations mysteriously got outside the
court-room, although the doors were barred.
The corridors were filled, and scores of people, many of them women,
tried in every possible way to force themselves by the officers at the
courtroom doors, but after the preceding afternoon’s laxity the bars
were put up again and very few were allowed to pass.
However, half a score of women managed to succeed. They were attired in
their gayest costumes, in marked contrast with the costume of Mrs. Thaw.
Evelyn on the stand did not look even her 23 years. She was dressed in a
plain dark blue gown, with a long coat and wore a broad white linen
collar. Her hat was dark and low in the crown, with a broad soft brim,
and trimmed with a small bunch of violets. She wore her hair in a loose
knot low on her neck, tied with a large black ribbon. Her face, which
until she took the stand, was unusually pale, was first flushed, then
ghastly in its pallor. It was marked with delicate eye-brows and long
lashes. Her eyes were large and dark, and appealing, and her dark hair
required frequent brushing back from her eyes. Her slender figure was
tense with excitement, and her voice was usually firm and clear.
Even while the women were fighting their way into the room, the
questioning was resumed. Mrs. Thaw told of the startling crime of
Stanford White, that blighted her young life, and made her beauty a
mockery.
Attorney Delmas, ever alert to forestall the mass of objections by
Jerome at every opportunity, cautioned the witness:
“Be kind enough to remember you are to omit,” said Mr. Delmas, “in
relating the narrative of what you told Mr. Thaw, the name of any other
person save that of Mr. White. Now continue.”
“A young lady asked my mother several times to
[Illustration:
EVELYN NESBIT AS “THE SUNBONNET GIRL”
when 16 years old.
]
let me go out with her to lunch,” said the fragile beauty, Mrs. Thaw.
“She came again and again to me before I sent her to my mother, finally,
and she said, ‘All right.’ My mother finally consented.”
“Proceed.”
“On the day I was to go my mother dressed me and I went with Miss -- --,
the other young lady, in a hansom, hoping we would go to the ballroom,
because I wanted to see it. But we went straight down to Broadway,
through Twenty-fourth street up to a dingy looking door. The young lady
jumped out and asked me to follow her.”
Mr. Jerome objected to the form of the narrative, and he asked: “Did you
relate all that to Mr. Thaw?”
“Yes,” said the witness. “He told me to tell him everything.”
“By the way,” interjected Delmas, “what was the date of that event?”
“As nearly as I can remember,” with a pucker of forehead, “it was in
August, 1901.”
“You were then 16 years and some months old?”
“Well, now I want you to tell of your first meeting with Stanford White
just as you told it to Mr. Thaw on that day,” directed Delmas.
The show girl said that a chorus girl, Edna Goodrich, asked her to a
luncheon party where she would meet White. She and Edna took a cab and
went to the studio on West Twenty-fourth street. The witness said the
doors seemed to open of themselves.
“We went upstairs,” said Evelyn, “and there I met a man who was
introduced to me as Stanford White. I thought him an ugly man. There was
a table already set for four. Another gentleman came later. I remember
Mr. White teased me about my hair, which I wore down my back, and my
short skirt, which reached to my shoe tops. After supper we went up two
flights of stairs more, and in the room was a large red velvet swing.
Mr. White put me in the swing and swung me very hard. When we swung very
hard one foot crashed through a large Japanese umbrella which hung from
the ceiling.”
“Your mother dressed you to go?”
“Yes.”
“I must caution you to tell only what you told Mr. Thaw.”
“I will,” said the witness, and went on; “The dingy door opened, nobody
seeming to open it.”
“What did you do then?”
“We went up some steps to another door, which opened to some other
apartment. I stopped and asked the young lady where we were going and
she said: ‘It’s all right.’ A man’s voice called down ‘Hello.’”
“Who was it?”
“It was Stanford White,” said the witness clearly.
“What did you find in the room or studio to which you went?”
“A table set for four.”
“This is all what you told Mr. Thaw,” put in Mr. Jerome.
“It was,” said young Mrs. Thaw, “I told him everything.”
There was a halt in the testimony here while Mr. Jerome and Mr. Delmas
whispered.
“How were you dressed?” asked Mr. Delmas.
“I wore a short dress, with my hair down my back.”
The witness said they went up into another room, where a big Japanese
umbrella was swinging.
Mr. Jerome objected to the testimony on the ground that he would have no
opportunity to prove or disprove the facts alleged. Mr. Delmas said the
defense would offer no objection to the district attorney probing the
correctness of the facts.
Mrs. Thaw then said that afterward she and her companion went for a
drive to the park, then returned to the house with White. She said when
she got home she told her mother everything that happened.
“Did your mother subsequently receive a letter from Stanford White?” was
asked.
“She did.”
“What was in the letter?”
“It asked my mother to call on Mr. White at 160 Fifth avenue.”
“Did you tell Mr. Thaw about that?”
“I did.”
“When your mother returned did she tell you anything?”
“She did.”
“What did your mother tell you?”
“He asked her to take me to a dentist and have my teeth fixed and for
her to have her own fixed, too. She said: ‘No; that it was a very
strange thing.’ Mr. White told her that he did that for the other
Florodora girls.”
“When did you next see White?”
“I saw him in the studio. I got a note from him previously inviting me
to a party and saying a carriage would be waiting for me on the corner.
Before that he had sent me a hat, a feather boa, and a cape. There was
another man and girl with us.”
Mr. Delmas mentioned the names of the others to Mr. Jerome.
“Where did you go?”
“To the studio in Madison Square tower. We had a very nice time there.
Mr. White said I was only to have one glass of champagne, and that I was
to be brought home early. I was brought home early to the door of my
house. I told Mr. Thaw that we had several parties of this kind in the
tower.”
“Did you see Mr. White again?”
“Yes, he came to see my mother, told her that I would be all right in
New York, and that he would take care of me.”
Mrs. Thaw said she met White in September, 1901, in a studio in East
Twenty-second street. The door opened of itself, she said, and the house
looked at first as if no one lived there. She said that she went
upstairs and met Mr. White, a photographer, and another man.
The witness whispered the name of the man to Mr. Jerome, who wrote it
down.
“What did you see there?”
“There was a lot of expensive gowns there.”
“What happened?”
“I went into the dressing-room to put on the dress. Mr. White knocked at
the door and asked if I needed any help. I said, ‘No.’”
Mrs. Thaw related in detail her experience in the photographic studio
and said she posed until she was very tired and that White, who had come
in, ordered food and they had something to eat. The photographer left,
she said, and after they had lunched she went into a dressing room to
remove her kimono and put on her dress.
“I shut the door while I was inside,” added the witness. “Mr. White came
to the door, knocked and asked me if I wanted any help. I said: ‘No.’”
The former artist’s model testified that she drank but one glass of
champagne and when she was dressed she got into a carriage and was taken
back to the hotel.
“The next night,” she continued, “I got a note from Mr. White asking me
to come down to the studio for luncheon after the theater with some of
his friends. A carriage would call for me, and would take me home after
the party, he wrote. I went down to the Twenty-fourth street studio
again and found Mr. White and no one else there.
“‘What do you think,’ he said to me, ‘the others have turned us down.’
Then I told him I had better go home, and he told me that I had better
sit down and have some fruit. So I took off my hat and coat. Mr. White
told me he had other floors in the garden, and that I had not seen all
of his place. He would take me around and show me, he said.
“So he took me up some stairs to the floor above, where there were very
beautiful decorations,” went on Mrs. Thaw. “I played for him, and he
took me into another room. That room was a bedroom. On a small table
stood a bottle of champagne and one glass. Mr. White poured out just one
glass for me, and I paid no attention to it. Mr. White went away, came
back and said: ‘I decorated this room, myself.’ Then he asked me why I
was not drinking my champagne and I said I did not like it; it tasted
bitter. But he persuaded me to drink it and I did.
“A few moments after I had drank it there began a pounding and thumping
in my ears and the room got all black.”
Mrs. Thaw was almost in tears at this statement.
“When I came to myself I was greatly frightened and I started to scream.
Mr. White came and
[Illustration: EVELYN NESBIT
Picture taken in Stanford White’s studio.]
tried to quiet me. As I sat up I saw mirrors all over. I began to scream
again, and Mr. White asked me to keep quiet, saying that it was all
over.
“When he threw the kimono over me he left the room. I screamed harder
than ever. I don’t remember much of anything after that.
“He took me home and I sat up all night crying.”
Regard for the morals of the young prevents the publication of the awful
details disclosed at this point in the evidence. The yellowest of yellow
journals omitted the hideous details flashed over the wires, and with
all the shocking evidence published, the public has no conception of
awful facts revealed by this pitiful tragedy.
“What did he say afterward?”
“He made me swear that I would never tell my mother about it. He said
there was no use in talking and the greatest thing in this world was not
to get found out. He said the girls in the theaters were foolish to
talk. He laughed afterward.
“He said it was all right--that there was ‘nothing so nice as young
girls and nothing so loathsome as fat ones. You must never get fat.’”
The black heart of Stanford White was disclosed in all its hideousness
at last! The final shred of respectability had been torn from his
reputation. The almost fainting Evelyn had completed the human
sacrifice. Her life story, tragic beyond human comprehension, had been
told under oath--told to a jury that gasped at every sentence,
shuddered at every disclosure. It was the coup d’etat of the defense!
the staggering blow reserved to overwhelm Jerome and his allies. What a
story it was that the poor little victim of a sybaritic brute told! What
a tale of Nero’s time it seemed to be! Tiberius and Caligula planned
dens and stage settings such as Evelyn Nesbit described in the haunts of
Stanford White. Did Tiberius and Caligula ever plan darker, more foul
conspiracies against helpless little girls than the plots of the great
architect seemed to have been? And with the telling of the heart-rending
story came new thoughts, new lights upon the shadowy life of the man who
died before the pistol of Harry Thaw.
No one ever denied that Stanford White, no matter what he may have been,
was a generous giver, a good Samaritan in the time of need. He supported
Evelyn, her mother, and her brother, in royal fashion.
What was to be deduced from the largess of White, both to the Nesbits
and to scores of others?
Was the licentious architect a Jekyll and a Hyde?
Or did the weight of remorse and gloomy shame bear down upon this
strangest of men in such degree that he strove mightily to salve his
conscience and his bitter memories?
Or was White “a bookkeeper with the Fates”--a man who tried ever to
balance the accounts of good and bad, so that the final reckoning might
find his ledgers balanced? There are many men who keep the lists of
debits and of credits--who strive to make a deed of kindness balance
every deed of crime. Was White such a man--bookkeeping with the Fates,
and seeking by princely generosity to offset the debits of unscrupulous
passion? She sat in the witness chair, a tiny, shrinking figure, and she
spoke out the horrid details of the criminal outrage upon her;
unhesitating and unbreaking. The kindliness of White, all with its
ultimate hideous object masked beneath the roses; the mirrored room in
the architect’s hidden lair; the drugged wine; the awakening--all these
things the little Evelyn told with the close precision of a seared and
branded memory. And when the story had been spun the shrewd and skillful
Delmas smiled serene, well knowing that a probably fatal blow had been
dealt the prosecution. The “learned Jerome,” as Delmas suavely called
him, spent the night before planning and massing his artillery. He had a
fearful day of defeat and sorrow.