American Eve

In the first years of the 20th century, one of the most famous women in America was a teenager, Evelyn Nesbit, a model for artists and photographers and New York showgirl. She was ubiquitous in advertisements and magazines, and had a kind of innocent beauty that also possessed a measure of sophistication. She was courted by many stage-door millionaires, but it was Stanford White, renowned architect, who made her his mistress. Later she would marry an unbalanced millionaire, Harry K. Thaw of Pittsburgh, who would learn that White spoiled his child-bride and during the summer of 1906, in the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden, a building White designed, Thaw would murder White and cast Nesbit as the focal point of the first American trial that would become a media circus.

Nesbit's story, and the tale of murder and insanity that accompanies it, is brilliantly told in Paula Uruburu's book American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, The Birth of the "It" Girl, and the Crime of the Century. While the appelation It Girl is incorrect (that was Clara Bow some twenty years later), Nesbit was certainly the first model to gain national attention. Her humble upbringing from a Pittsburgh suburb to full-time model at age 14 is layed out in scrupulous detail, as is her seduction by White and courtship with the mad Harry. What Uruburu seems most keen on doing here is setting the record straight--Nesbit was vilified by many in the press at the time of the murder and trial. As Uruburu points out, she was more sinned against than sinning, a girl who was neglected by her mother and allowed to be exploited by the rapacious men of the age. Uruburu's book is Evelyn's story, told largely from her viewpoint (making large use of Evelyn's two memoirs) and by the end of the book it is clear that she was a victim of circumstance and her own beauty.

The book is carefully researched, with as much detail as the reader would want without being bogged down in too many facts and figures. The chapters describing White's seduction and subsequent deflowering of Evelyn read partly as history, partly as erotic novel, with the reader's senses saturated to overflowing. The chapter depicting the shooting is as tense and exciting as a thriller, and the trial (there were actually two) is rendered in novelistic fashion, with the emotions on display, rather than laborious recitations of transcripts.

Perhaps the best thing about the book is the style of writing. This is no dry academic tome, nor is it a non-fiction novel. It is biography and history, but with a delightfully mordant drollery. Uruburu never passes up a chance to inject levity into the proceedings, whether it be referring to a low-rent lawyer's reputation being as checkered as his suit, or Harry Thaw's sisters looking like Harry in fright wigs. She also allows frequent glimpses of what was going on in the first decade of the 1900s, interspersing other headlines of the day in context, whether they be the assassination of President McKinley or the electrocution of Topsy the elephant.

Anyone having an interest in true-crime, sensational trials, a history of the sexual mores of America, or the time period when the horse and buggy was giving way to the automobile would be advised to read this book. You will learn a lot--that the Thaw trial was the first to require a jury to be sequestered, that the term "sob sister", referring to women journalists covering the trial, was coined in this instance, and that on the same day Thaw shot White, a hippo at the Central Park Zoo passed on due to heat prostration. This book is as tasty as a snack and fulfilling as a meal.