The traitor : being the untampered with, unrevised account of the trial and all that led to it

Front matter

Photo by N. ¥. “American”

HARRY K. THAW ie

Being the ‘Untampered With, Unrevised Account of the Trial and All That Led to It

CHAPTER I 2 teh agony of Evelyn in the years of her girlhood

formed the prelude to a long continuous drama of sorrow, the murk and gloom of which was never illuminated by a ray of sunshine until what occurred on the roof of Madison Square Garden and Stanford White fell dead. Then for the first time came to her and me hope for home and children and a cheerfulness we had never known. The hope was shattered after the destruction of White, by the foul machinations of a wretch who led us into the perils which overwhelmed her.

After ten years during which a crew of moneyed libertines had made life almost as unsafe for virgins as did the Minotaur, a revolver made New York safer for other girls. They are safe. Were not we safer still, until we were betrayed and sold to Pharaoh.

I tell the story of the shooting and after that of Evelyn’s crucifixion. Her nobleness in insisting on the dismissal of as our attorney, and agreeing with me that I must have a trial is too little known. There are people who still believe that she was sacrificed in order to clear me. How? False friends really tried to hush her. As you read you will see the heroic determination by which from the first—and by that I mean from the day after the shooting— she was immovably determined to tell the truth whatever it might cost her.

Many have asked to tell the naked sorrow of her, yet if now I do so, it is not because of their requests but the story of Evelyn after the venom from the mesh of a traitor. Ts it not time that you should see this gallant, immovable, steadfast figure, foiling open enmity and secret treason, by simple truth?

In the course of this story you will learn the almost unbelievable lewdness and crimes of the intolerable set of villains; you will learn not only that White’s destruction was caused by the ruination of the child, but that when he died he was in the very act of awaiting another victim that very night, another child who was saved. After this you will learn of the treachery of a man far meaner and lower than Stanford White, who betrayed Evelyn and me and brought about a new crucifixion for her at the very time when light was shining at last on our pathway.

If, before Evelyn Nesbit had left Pittsburgh and gone away, if her mother had brought her to our home in Lyndhurst, seeking help from my mother, this story would never have been written. That was in 1899. If I had only seen her then!

Probably the obscure designs of destiny would have moved in a different direction; a fatal consummation averted, had Evelyn gone away alone instead of with her mother. A Greek would write: ‘‘fast flying fate’? had a darker purpose. This mother, untutored in the wisdom of worldly knowledge, unwittingly allowed her daughter to fall under the clammy hands of a thoroughly unscrupulous lecher under whose yoke she suffered. And then was cheated by an unclean lawyer. If her father had lived the somber shadows would never have fallen upon her. Or if her mother had brought her that day to our house.

Mrs. Nesbit’s visit (she had heard of my mother’s extreme charity) happened just when I returned from abroad. I was talking with my mother when a ‘‘lady to see Mrs. Thaw’’ was announced. Noticing her as I passed from the room, I saw that she was a stranger to all of us. Later my mother told me that this lady looked prosperous and was well dressed, and as she had too many who needed help she naturally did nothing.

In New York, two years later, going from Fifth Avenue to Broadway, a street I seldom visited, probably to the Opera to rent a box for some night, if a box was free, it was at 39th Street, I saw a girl walk out to my left. She was pale and young and looked troubled.

‘*With modest eyes downcast She comes; she’s here, she’s past— May Heaven go with her!’’

She crossed the street and if I had followed her, a lot of worry would have been averted because that girl knew of me very well, as she told me afterwards. Not to annoy her I only looked again after a few moments. She was gone.

It was Evelyn who told me years after about her mother, when I had seen that mother on her visit to our house. Her father was a lawyer who had died in Allegheny the year before, leaving little property. Her mother soon spent it and then borrowed money from District Attorney Bennett and Rody Marshall who were friends of her father. But that mother owed money from others, too, and the Sheriff forced her to leave Allegheny. They moved about in different places. At that time they lived in an unfurnished room in the Hast End, Evelyn only a poor little waif doing odd jobs and going to school.

Evelyn and her brother were half starved. She said mustard was good when there was nothing else but bread to eat. And not much bread. Her mother managed to get her meals on the outside, but with the children there was a painful lack of food. As a result both of them soon became undernourished. Yet her mother dressed up when she went to ask alms. If the girl had gone with her mother, even if I had not been there, my mother. would have noticed that the girl was emaciated.

That summer the girl lived at her cousin’s farm at Donnellsville, near Tarentum, for Tarentum was her father’s home. Her cousin was not rich, so Evelyn, like the other children; went around without shoes and stockings, but they had plenty of food.

It seems that then her mother went to Philadelphia, where the girl and her brother joined her, bringing a eat. They had little but that cat. Her mother had hoped to be a dress-designer, but she had no French training, so she and her daughter worked in Wanamaker’s store, Evelyn selling collars. Evelyn worked also as a model for two or three women painters. Remember, too, that although she was fifteen years old at this time, she always thought she was only fourteen, and her mother, who mis-

EVELYN IN AUTUMN OF 1905 led her concerning her age, forgot that. But whether for one reason or the other, she received little money. Her mother then turned to New York.

The Philadelphia painters for whom Evelyn had posed wrote letters to Carroll Beckwith. When they lived in New York he and Mrs. Beckwith, also Mr. Church and _ Mr. and Mrs. Champney, all liked Evelyn, and through them she received more work. But her mother found no work at all. Evelyn had to earn a living on the stage, but what happened then is in the record.

Chapter II

He most dangerous plaything in the English language is the first person singular. If I use it inconsiderately it is because of necessity. All knew I never advertised— until abruptly in the Tombs, newspapers visioned that I blazoned myself. You will see soon I had never published anything and no reporter had any interview. From then onward I didn’t, and my discretion was overdone. There was a difference after 1912. But those years you never got a word from me except when it was direly necessary. It is hardly needed to say that positive untruths meandered from the brains of prolific writers; much has been distorted and embellished, or were purely absurd fabrications—mingled canard, as the French would put it.

This book, as I write it, has nothing more than a story to tell, which is the true purpose of any good book. It is not written with the idea in mind that you have predigested any of the facts; such an influence in the writing of it would prevent the assimilation of truth. Here it is plain and clear.

In this book I offer no theories, no philosophies, no constructive suggestions for the lasting betterment of human society, the seamy side of which we all know so well; I might, but won’t bother you.

A difficult thing in an autobiography is in knowing

where to start ; the easiest may be to begin at the beginning; 16 ila Whe so I will just state that one of my earliest recollections is

of the winter I looked into the fireplace in Mrs. Herron’s

ts drawing-room when my mother and she started the Pitts-

_ burgh Poor Association. I was four. Next, of seeing the Corliss engines at the Centennial Exposition.

. The next summer my mother took me along to the Warm,

the Healing and the White Sulphur Springs. I remember that the food in Covington was unusually bad, that my mother drove four horses past the falls near the old Hot Springs Hotel. We walked a long way down the road from the Healing Springs to a brook, and in a small fall there I recall that she, with a string and an ordinary pin for the hook, caught a trout that we ate for dinner. ' The summer after the National Guards were called ovt to the great strike, and Pennsylvania Railroad shares went down. The loss on the stock was so great that many shareholders became alarmed, and when it declined to 25 my father bought all in sight day after day, so none who sold lost more. It was about that time that I entered kindergarten. I was so overcome with shyness the first day that I would not stay, although I saw a very fine layer cake which I was to have for my lunch. Then followed Miss McCracken’s school in Allegheny, and public schools. When I reached ten years I was sent to a boarding school in Lititz, Pennsylvania. The place was barren and I became violently homesick.

When I was fifteen years of age I became a ‘‘Prep”’ in the college in Wooster, Ohio, where, with Alfred Kellogg, who was a sophomore, we boarded in the Reverend Dr.

- Davis’s family. Kellogg and I got along cheerfully. There were other friendships too, both ‘‘sophs’’ and ‘‘preps.’’ Though I seldom studied hard I got along well with the professors. A bit of the time I was homesick there.

Later I attended the Western University of Pittsburgh, now called the University of Pittsburgh, and after that I enrolled for a special course at Harvard where I studied poker, and in parts studied hard. Students, of course, can not overstudy poker and books at the same time, so four or five resigned by request.

After I left Harvard I began to study law in the office

of Bristow, Peet and Updyke with Jared Baldwin and Fred Longfellow. I continued to study poker, though not in that office. Clarkson, of Harvard, and some others one evening started to play and the game went on without interruption throughout all the next day and night until about ten o’clock the following morning. It was here, one must admit, I had not studied in vain if in the wrong direction, for I was one of the winners and still have somewhere a couple of checks, marked unpaid, as souvenirs of this game. I might say that I have never played poker seriously since except with John Gates, John Drake and Tom Scott of Pennsylvania, and with the Carnegies at Dungeness.

Of course there were many girls I liked in Pittsburgh and in Cresson; I even wrote a poem for one that was published in the Harvard Lampoon; something about Harvard red roses I sent her over her violets. With others

I drove over 60,000 acres of our North Dakota lands, and © had a polo pony in the blighted incipient Pittsburgh Polo

Club. But we did start the Allegheny Country Club, with

The spring of 1892, with the family, we went abroad. Returning I studied law in Pittsburgh, but I ought to state that I did not like law. So after consultation with a half-brother it was allowed that I might go to travel. My mother agreed, provided I promised to come back after a few months, so I sailed in December, 1894.

Before I end this part of the narrative, there are things that might be interesting. Not about a driver whom I chased down North Avenue in Cambridge with a shotgun, unloaded but he didn’t know it, who had cheated me some “weeks earlier and ran off. But besides Pitt and Harvard in 93 and 794, I ate and drank and woke up next day in men’s room in Yale; Jimmy Jenkins, John Ferguson and more especially big ‘‘Zeus’’ Longacre, seven men in all, slept in his quarters, none of us knowing until we woke where we were nor that we were in such a big company.

Besides waking up in different rooms in Yale after the 94. graduation, three or four were with me in the Waldorf, hot as Tophet, so we stayed in for two or three days until cooler. During which time there was a duel proposition. I think we had been in Jacks and saw a friend with an

individual I never saw before nor again, and one of our crowd upbraided this friend for the company he was keeping, ergo duel. But it was too hot for dueling.

For many years people came to New York for the Yale- Princeton football game. As late as the fall of 1890 I remember Princeton sang: ‘‘Ames kicked, Bull kicked,

Ames got the best of it’’ for their best success. ‘‘Sport’’ Donnelly and Billy Bull used the persuasion of smearing. Later Willie Kuntz (Billie Baxter) was chief officer and I believe I only missed one day those years. That day I was sleepy about four in the morning, and I never did care for premeditated fights, so when they went to Brooklyn for some scrimmage I took this time and slept. The rest kept on; they slept at the ringside. Willie roused and shouted: ‘‘Who has those Creme de Menthe tights?’’ and some men became angry and they had a good fight, not at all premeditated.

Some might wish to know about my individual rumpuses. Those who don’t can avoid this. One night I was drinking; I had on an evening suit for some reason. I went to “‘Mollies’’ and I got a notion to dislike one of three men in the next room; another was Jim Hall, of Australia, a middle-weight prize fighter. So I wandered in and swatted this man’s hat violently, and they being three men I went to the street swiftly. They followed but never pursued me into a street car. A little later at the same place two youths got so saucy I cussed them and they came back at me. I was ready to beat the biggest and try the other. an don’t know how that would have ended, because as the biggest closed and I hit him something blinded me.

Woke up and found lots of blood, mine, and no one eise there but the barkeeper and other strangers. When awake I went around, found none there and went out. My watch was stolen when I was dead out. (I had gotten the watch from a pawnbroker before the suit.) There were none outside but I could not get back. So I went to a saloon

SAMUEL P. LANGLEY

Astronomer, Curator of Smithsonian Institute and builder of the first real airplane

HARRY K, THAW, 1905 next door, 7th Avenue and 42nd Street, now gone, and took a courteous drink and a mop with a handle about ten or twelve feet long. I went back to ‘‘Mollies’’ and tried to get in, could not and broke the glass in the door pretty thoroughly. As the mop handle was long many came and shortly I was arrested; then got out somehow and went to. Dr. Walker. It was a good thing I went to him, because he sewed up a big cut on my brow so very well that the sear has disappeared.

This was not all, because ‘‘Mollies’’ had the sauciness to bring an action against me for malicious mischief. So we went to court. As the barkeeper testified of how I dropped,

_we knew he or his associates used a big bottle to smash me and no one else—you see the heavier man I’d hit and the other was not strong enough, so it must have been the barkeeper or his associates knocked me out. There was no testimony however; nevertheless, as he spoke, the judge leaned over and asked, ‘‘Was this when you took the watch?’’ I ought to remember judges better after that, you see. As I didn’t make any charge the court merely ended. :

Tt must not be understood that we were fighting all the time. These sporadic incidents covered several years.

Morris Carnegie and I frequently wandered off alone. He was not very tall but he hit people first, so it was frequently entertaining. I remember he had a notion to sit down and put his feet on the table of Brook Dolan and three other heavy-weights and they buzzed like bumblebees —but nothing but buzzing. I ran into Woodford (biggest 1899 Princeton guard). I didn’t want to but it was my

‘duty somehow. But he was really too big and he let me off. I do not think anyone could go around like Morris Carnegie and I now, but we did at that time.

Chapter III

Y journeyings began December, 1894. That Christmas I had dinner with Sir George Lampson, in _ London, and he had several stock brokers there. I happened to tell them that if they wanted they should buy _ Canadian Pacific, and they never got over it for it rose and rose. They told me later they did buy shares. In- -eidentally my half-brother was no business man, and he advised me to travel for a while and return some years later to become, say, Mayor of Pittsburgh. He and I were foolish, for who cares to be Mayor? He was not so foolish as to business, for he saw business men growing duller too often when away from their offices. His failure was to notice that everyone else around worked. However, I _ happened to be more business-like than any of the family - except one, though people thought most of them had business sense. _ From London I passed Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, where I stopped to see someone who was not there, then erossed the Danube onward to Varna and to Constantinople. You know of the beautiful old walls, like dozens of castles, _.all there when the Turks broke in about 1450; the Mosque of Ashmet, the Seraligio point, when the Sultan provided cigarettes and coffee, besides old St. Sophia. I went to Brussa, wanting to climb the Bythenian Olympus, but found no volunteer. Next I took a small steamship and most of the passengers were of the harem of Halem Pasha. 23

We had to stop inside of Mytilene and again Chios when a storm arose. I reached Cairo and explored, then I came back past Brindisi to Naples and then Rome.

In the Quirinal Hotel the Phipps were there, but no others I knew. The people from everywhere were in the Grand Hotel and my touring ceased. For after that my stay in Europe was a round of meeting with friends in different places. It was a question of whether to continue roaming near and far lands, or simply living among my friends. I took the latter course and have never regretted it. Few had as many and as good.

I went around to the different palaces, then there were dinners in the hotel; J. J. Van Alen particularly gave many and had a bicycle drive with a lunch somewhere. I had not learned yet so I drove with Mrs. Eugene Cruger and Mrs. Rollins Morse. Mrs. Beech Grant was an old friend of my family and a younger daughter married Arthur Padelford in Rome; and Lady Essex came, extremely good looking. But Lady Mary Montague was the loveliest. She and her twin sister used to drive around in Prince Colonna’s carriage, but she was too frail; she died in that hotel. I never knew her.

During that wedding a lady looked so charmed I asked Waldo Story, ‘‘Who is that talking with Lady Essex?’’ He said, ‘‘It’s my wife.’’ He had not realized it for he only visualized her as she looked fifteen years earlier. Often I saw her and her friends in San Moritz, with the Bobby Crawshays, ete.

Ralph Curtis, Waldo Story and I went to Vaglione the best night, all men, and there was Natalina Cavaliera, with the Marquis Rudini. She was painted (girls were not then) but despite that she was marvelous. Eighteen and much prettier than when England and America saw her. |

I stayed a long time, then started to Seville for the fiesta. Stopped at Monte Carlo on the way and then Marseilles, then trains got worse. Barcelona looks like a poor American city. From there it took all day and night to Madrid. For six hours I saw museums and races and the king (apparently very decent) and such a journey to Seville. No place to sleep. Fortunately I was early and was able to sit. Every compartment had men standing. About nine we stopped at Arenjuez.

There were not many at Arenjuez but it was the junction of Toledo. Droves wandered in and nearly all failed. Somehow I slept. Next morning I went to the Hotel de Paris in Seville. There were the wonderful Murrilo and the fiesta and the next week the fiere. The fiesta is classic but dull. The fiere is amusing: all sorts of Andalusians bring you into their tents and they really had charming entertainments, but you must not eat cooked food for they use some cheese for éverything. But the red and white wines are harmless and the families are cheerful and let you know it.

There I first saw the Duc and Duchesse d’Uzes with M. and Mde. d’Urlaux; I did not know them, but every day they were always so near and cheerful. Then Sir George Lampson came with his yacht, he being Commodore of the Thames Yacht Club. But there was one trouble in Seville. When they had the Bull Fight you could never go anywhere else. I did not want to see it but had to. No toreador nor matador was killed, but some nearly were. But still you did hate the horrors of the horses, some walking on their own insides. Once I was taken to the Cock Fights. Long ago I went to one at Harvard. We drove and drove to avoid constables, then saw the fight. They had steel barbs fixed that I disliked. But the chickens died easily. In Spain they use their own spurs and it was almost as sad as the poor horses in the circus.

The end of the fiere I went to Tangiers. It is more Africa than Egypt, but only had lunch and came back in Lampson’s yacht, who left me out in Gibraltar. There was a little trouble getting in a hotel for they do not like Americans, strange to tell. Then to Algeciras and took the train to the Bridge of Rhonda and the d’Uzes were in the same compartment. They had been in Tangiers and could not understand how I arrived, since I was not on the regular steamship. By that time, despite my shyness, or probably on that account, we all were friendly. You know of Rhonda and all the Alhambra in Granada.

I should have remembered that I went to Cordova. In Seville all you could find was Cinquicento except the tower of the Giralde. You could go to the Gardens of Pedro the Cruel, with a fool water tap to annoy his visitors. Did Maria Padilla like it or like it not? But in Cordova as I wandered down to the river we forgot fin de siecle. All was near a thousand years earlier. The Moorish Bridge, old houses, the mosque. You would never think that Castile and Aragon took the town. For all was as if the Mohammedans only lived there. Few Spaniards do live there now, so you noticed nothing new.

Back, I stopped in Toledo. Entering you see the towers and Gothic doors. Inside the streets are narrow, the walls dark stoned, something like the cathedral of the 12th century. Looking over the river, for Toledo is high above, you see the Moorish Bridge, the Tague, the mingled Gothic and Moorish battlements around the city. Then I found a Spaniard who had all sorts of old treasures, and I secured dozens of swords, battle axes, several Flemish tapestries, ivory carvings, one exceptionally fine in his old house.

Next Madrid. Modern and only looked at the pictures again. Marvelous pictures.

Then to Paris. The end of April everything starts and is most cheerful for an old man, a young man and everyone between, if you forget that Paris can’t be improved for you can’t change it.. My only notion was being angry as everyone could speak and hear and I couldn’t. Until I got teachers. Day after day if early you got to the Bois, then lunch and more restaurants than now, and a dozen very good. Then to the races, Longchamps or Auteuil. Then all sorts of places for tea only none use tea, even in people’s houses. Probably less than half the time I stopped in people’s houses, and more in the Chateau de Madrid or Armeninville. Next dinners, and no matter if a hundred or alone, dinner is worth while. There were only two hours afterwards that were wasted in Paris when you have to go to the theatres or bouffes, or you could hear the singers of the Opera or Opera Comique. But I would rather have something else. Except the first time, when La Boheme came and the Sieur de Vergy, that I liked, and of course Offenbachs. Probably if you missed the Opera and the Opera Comique and Veronique and Rejane and Coquelin, ete., and the vaudeville stuff, and the Montmartre stuff, one might be sorry. Maybe not. At least those two hours only seemed wasted.

Then before midnight you go to the Grand Cafe. Don’t forget that place ended suddenly about 1898. But in 1896 and 1897 that was the most amusing. But you might go again to Pailliards or Cafe Maire. (The Maison d’Or and Cafe Anglais were almost moribund.) By two you might go to bed or you might go to Montmartre or even to Maxim’s. Sometimes you won’t go to bed, but at six or seven with a few others you go out to the Pres Catalan or to the Halles Centralles where you eat onion soup. (Don’t think that you could get that elsewhere.) Very good in the morning before you go to sleep.

About teachers—I had discovered one, yet I nearly missed her. She, with a duenne, was having tea at Armeninville. Somehow she and I talked. My French was most feeble so I asked her if she would be in Pailliards, upstairs at douze houres. One could say douze and deuz easily, but not as to douze hours and deux houres. So the next day I did go to that restaurant and after waiting, ate; but no girl. Where was she? I knew her house, but there were so many apartments and no name, but that afternoon I walked in and looked and looked, and went into an inner court and somehow thought that was the place. So I whistled Conne Tu. The mezzanine window opened; it was she.

The Grand Prix finished then a month earlier than now. After most foreigners go away I stopped for the end of i.

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= wir the next week. For reasons unknown I was to go with Captain and Mrs. Beaumont to take dinner in Lady Randolph Churchill’s apartments. Lord Randolph had died and she was in mourning. There were just we three and she and Mrs. Leslie. Never did I see such a flight of gayety. Fast and too difficult to remember because Lady Randolph and I had to talk too, but the two other women simply flashed—nothing for five minutes. Not that it was so dull afterwards, not a bit.

After dinner half a dozen more men came and we all drove to the Foure de Neuilly. We got out and walked and we had to be careful, or rather Lady Randolph and I did. Lady Randolph was about ten times better looking than even a few months later. Her expression was her own. Dark, with very dark brown hair, her lips full yet not too full, her cheeks like a girl’s, and her movements. I was glad that only she and I had to be hid. The rest went forward, for example, when they climbed up the Mountain Russe, Boni de Castellane and his wife descended, but they never saw us for we were in the darkness. Until we visited a wrestling match place. Then in came the Duc and Duchesse d’Uzes and Duc and Duchesse de Nouilles and more right with us. Of course it didn’t hurt.

Then London, but I was late in London and soon went to Homburg. Very quiet place, but many people, and all wished to ‘‘cure’’ and I wanted to ‘‘cure’’ too, so I got to the springs about 6:30, drank and walked and drank again. Soon a beautiful breakfast, bread and honey and coffee. Then out again, then aiound, then lunch. Again out, and as there was no golf then, we just rambled or played tennis ; then usually tea, weak tea, not whiskey that time. Then dinner with Moselle or white Bordeaux. Usually some dance afterward. Dumb as possible but healthy.