American Eve (15 page)

“You’ll see,” she said with a slight smile as she adjusted the decorative lavender buttons on her bodice. She gave Evelyn the once over.

“Sweet costume,” she added.

After having been cooped up in a monotonous succession of identical boardinghouse rooms, claustrophobic stockrooms, cluttered yet hollow studios, and bare-boned rehearsal halls for what seemed an eternity, the teenager, eager for friendship and expanded horizons, was in a state of euphoria. As she later put it, at that point in her life and on that particular day, “I loved everybody and everything. I thought the stage a lovely, enchanted place . . . since I had no experience to tell me differently.”

To Evelyn’s immense disappointment, however, the cab did not stop at the Waldorf or any of the posh hotels she thought a likely destination and ached to see. Instead, it came to a halt at a nondescript, almost shabby building on West Twenty-fourth Street off Broadway fronted by a toy shop owned by FAO Schwarz. The girls stepped from the cab, and Edna paid the driver with money White had given her, then dismissed him with a wave of her kid-gloved hand. As the pretty pair started to walk toward the doorway, Evelyn was momentarily distracted by some brightly painted mechanical toys in the window, especially a tin monkey dressed in a jaunty red fez and plaid vest who climbed a wire tree up to a bunch of tin bananas. Edna smiled again at Evelyn’s immaturity, and pulled her by her collar inside the darkened hallway.

Then, as if by magic, the worn, narrow door in front of them opened automatically. To Evelyn, “it was all delightfully mysterious,” appearing to her like something out of one of the dime novels she had read back in Tarentum. The girls made their way up the stairs, at the head of which another door opened in the same marvelous way. Intrigued, though beginning to have some qualms as to what lay beyond the murkiness of the second stairway, Evelyn stopped halfway up and asked, “Where on earth are we going?” Suddenly, a disembodied voice boomed out of the shadows.

“Nowhere on earth, dearie.”

Evelyn shrank back, then hesitated, as a reassuring Edna nudged her with her elbow.

“It’s all right, believe me,” she whispered.

The two were ushered into a room that Evelyn described in 1934: “The sudden plunge from that dingy street entrance into this room was breathtaking. The predominating color was a wonderful red . . . heavy red velvet curtains shut out all daylight. There was plenty of illumination— yet I could find no lights anywhere. . . . Fine paintings hung on the walls. . . .The furniture was Italian antique, beautifully carved. There was a table set for four.”

The great White stood to one side like an urban potentate, surveying his handiwork and amused by the reactions of the “little dolly” to his startling and innovative lighting effects. White’s dramatically designed but camouflaged up lights revealed certain expensive objets d’art placed around the room with random artfulness. The indirect lighting threw a suffused rosy glow over the entire setting—the luxurious arabesque folds of floor-to-ceiling burgundy moiré drapes, overstuffed divans upholstered in crushed crimson velvet, and Oriental silk cushions and pillows the color of claret and cinnamon thrown promiscuously around the room. Evelyn attempted to appear as nonchalant as her companion, but to little avail. She saw in an instant that this setting easily transcended the feeble-minded glamour attempted by the theater. The place struck her as something out of
The Arabian Nights
. She gazed at the scene again, half expecting the carpets to rise and fly around the room. She was less impressed, however, with her host.

Evelyn recalled that at first, White’s above-average size “was appalling, ” and that “he seemed terribly old.” In fact, being nearly three times her age, at forty-six, White appeared ruggedly but terminally advanced in years to the silky-skinned teenager. Since the table was set for four, Evelyn hoped that the fourth guest might prove a more appealing “date.” Then, as if from nowhere, an even older man plodded into the room. He introduced himself as one Reginald Ronalds, whom Evelyn described as “dis-appointingly old,” “not at all . . . a Don Juan.” Semi-formal introductions of a sort were made, and as the four sat down to lunch, Evelyn was far more interested in the meal and the ambience than the man who had her brought to what was one of several of his hideaways.

“It was less of a pleasant social function than a very serious business [for me],” she confessed.

Having been on such frequent and intimate terms with the throb of hunger, Evelyn viewed the lunch that White had sent in from Delmonico’s as a miraculous feast. As a child back in the farm country of Allegheny County, she had loved food of all kinds (a trait that continued throughout her life), and the architect commented approvingly on her “honest appetite” as she filled her plate with large pieces of lobster Newburg (Delmonico’s invention), blackberry preserves, deviled eggs sprinkled with paprika, sweetbreads, hot rolls, and cool oysters on ice. It was like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one. Edna watched with disdain as she pushed some jellied cucumber around her plate with a cocktail fork.

It only became clear to Evelyn years later (as described in unpublished letters as well as her memoirs) that White’s fascination with her, which became increasingly obvious as the afternoon progressed, was due to the fact that she was simply and intriguingly different from the norm—even to a man addicted to the extraordinary and capable of routinely performing remarkable feats, such as converting the Waldorf into the court at Versailles. But the tide had already turned as far as White and his self-selected cabal of connoisseurs, aesthetes, and fellow artists were concerned. For them, the sand had all but run out for the hourglass figure. The days of Anna Held and Lillian Russell were numbered. As for the generally restrained female population, trussed up in torture devices, corseted within inches of asphyxiation, they sorely needed a new model. And, as White recognized, Evelyn was the newest. It was something neither Edna nor her mother had counted on when they agreed to facilitate the tête-à-tête that afternoon.

As Evelyn would write: “Edna Goodrich was a big girl, plump and voluptuous—a type very popular in the Gay Nineties and the early part of the [twentieth] century. I was smaller, slenderer; a type artists and, as I learned later, older, more experienced men admired. I had discovered in the studios that artists cared little for the big-breasted, heavy-hipped, corseted figure, preferring to paint the freer, more sinuous, uncorseted one with natural, unspoiled lines.”

Throughout the afternoon, most of the fun was had at Evelyn’s expense. White teased her for her short, childish white frock and loosely bound long hair. At lunch she had her first real glass of expensive champagne. “I was permitted one glass, no more,” she wrote. White had been adamant on that issue. Nonetheless, she loved the “irresponsible happiness of that party,” and was pleasantly surprised by her host’s apparently inexhaustible capacity for playfulness. Ronalds left during the cherry pie à la mode (another invention of Delmonico’s), having some business to attend to down on Wall Street. White then asked the two girls if they would like to see some other rooms upstairs. They nodded enthusiastically and ascended two more flights of another darkened stairway, which led to a room at the top floor of the building.

Unlike the bold and subtler variations on shades of red below, the predominating color of this room was a deep forest green. Yet as Evelyn peered into the room, also illuminated by concealed lighting, amid the haze of green, two startling red objects suddenly materialized once her eyes adjusted to the light. One was a cardinal’s hat, hung from the ceiling as an irreverent lampshade. The other was a “gorgeous swing with red velvet ropes around which trailed green smilax, set high in the ceiling at one end of the studio.” As Evelyn approached the swing, White suggested teasingly to Edna, “Let’s give this kiddie a ride.”

Without hesitation, Evelyn jumped onto the swing. White grabbed the velvet ropes and Evelyn’s small hands simultaneously as he pulled her backward, then thrust her forward with a vigorous push. A second and third push sent her soaring into the air in the direction of a large, multicolored paper Japanese parasol suspended by an undetectable string White had put into Edna’s hand. He instructed Edna to pull at the string that moved the parasol up or down, and he encouraged Evelyn to kick at it. The closer she got, the happier he seemed. He clapped and shivered with delight each time Evelyn’s dainty foot pierced the gaily decorated paper. As the colorful parasol twirled like a kaleidoscope before her eyes, again and again a giggling Evelyn broke the thin membrane of the paper until another had to be put in its place. White always made sure he had a replacement on hand.

The heady combination of a glass of good champagne, sumptuous food, and the lush surroundings of his fantastic enchanted forest, combined with White’s visible admiration for her charms, proved intoxicating to Evelyn beyond anything she had ever imagined possible. That afternoon she and the architect laughed until their sides ached, and his reactions to her childish responses seemed gleefully real and equally juvenile. Except for the alcohol, even Saint Anthony of Comstock might have found little to complain about. Evelyn did not, on that first visit, see a different room, one that would play a crucial role in setting the stage for future tragedy.

As captivated as White was with his new playmate, at about four o’clock, he looked at his watch, stating that he had some business to attend to. He took Edna aside for a moment, who then sidled up to Evelyn. She told Evelyn that White wanted her to visit his dentist, and that she would take her. It was explained to Evelyn in the cab that White wanted her to fix a front tooth that spoiled her otherwise faultless beauty. Although it was barely noticeable in photographs, the tooth was slightly discolored (having been chipped during an ice-skating mishap as a child). Although both girls went to the dentist, only Edna saw the dentist dur-ing

Posing for
Metropolitan Magazine,
1902.

the visit, while Evelyn sat in the polished oak-paneled waiting room, which smelled faintly of sweet gas and burnt rubber.

Evelyn noticed that Edna seemed petulant during the ride home and increasingly bad-humored. She related her experiences of the day to her mother, who seemed puzzled about a number of things, not the least of which was why a society man would have such a gorgeous establishment in the heart of the business district. Evelyn, of course, didn’t realize that Edna had picked up clear signals that White had found “a new bon-bon.” The tip-off was the desire to fix her teeth. It wasn’t long before Edna and her mother stopped speaking to Evelyn altogether. Nor did Evelyn have an answer for her mother about the reason for the wondrous apartment and unlikely location.

“Unsophisticated enough not to be able to find answers to our questions, ” Evelyn later wrote, “Mamma and I dismissed our lack of understanding, attributing it to our small-town ways.”

Several days after, White sent a letter to Evelyn’s mother, asking “in his illegible scrawl” for her to call at 160 Fifth Avenue. The chronically insecure Mrs. Nesbit appeared flustered, not knowing whether this was a home or a place of business. She asked her daughter whether it would be proper to call at either. Evelyn simply shrugged her shoulders and offered once again that White was a well-known society man. Several days later, in spite of vague misgivings about impropriety, Evelyn’s mother met with White at the address he gave, which he had assured her in a phone call was his office.

The interview went “smashingly.” Late in the afternoon Mrs. Nesbit came back, talking nonstop about Mr. White’s kindness and concern for “his little Spanish maiden.” She related how White had seen her from afar in the show “a number of times,” and that after seeing her up close, he expressed the desire to have his dentist tend to Evelyn’s tooth. Her mother saw this as a particularly generous if curious gesture, but White assured her that he had done the same for all the girls in
Florodora.

“It was rather a fad of White’s, this teeth-seeing,” Evelyn recalled. Not sensing any great urgency, however, neither Evelyn nor her mother followed up on White’s unconventional if gracious offer.

Several days later, White invited Evelyn to a second luncheon. This time the request came through Elsie Ferguson, a fleshy, blond chorus girl appearing in
The Strollers,
a musical comedy playing at the Knickerbocker Theatre, next door to the Casino. Much to Evelyn’s delight, where Mr. White was concerned, her mother no longer had any objections to her attending any parties. That afternoon, Elsie Ferguson’s “date” for lunch was a man named Thomas B. Clarke, who dealt in priceless Chinese porcelains and antiques. When he arrived, looking as he did with a shock of white hair and slightly bent like the silver-headed cane he carried, Clarke appeared to Evelyn an antique: “[He] looked to me as old as Methuselah.” (Evelyn heard some years later that Ferguson eventually married Clarke’s son.)

The four sampled fresh pastries from a Mulberry Street bakery, and after the roast partridge and quail, White produced a two-pound box of Lowney’s chocolates, which he placed gingerly on Evelyn’s small lap. He winked at her, acknowledging that she had been one of their models. Her host’s effortless charisma proceeded to win Evelyn over. She started to see him in a new light and soon considered both his personality and barrel-chested appearance to her liking, including his bristling walrus-like brush of a mustache and “hair that stood up like velvet pile.” Friends and acquaintances all agreed that he was a vigorously charming and arresting figure, routinely described in the papers as “masterful,” “intense,” and “burly yet boyish.”