by Paula Uruburu
Evelyn Nesbit was a girl of Old Pittsburgh, Ye Oldde Pittsburgh of Polluting Steel Mills and Labor Unrest and Robber Barons like Andrew Carnegie and the first of the strange Mellons (fruits on the vine of Point Breeze), circa 1900 Pittsburgh.
Miss Nesbit's middle class lawyer daddy died and left the family, Mother, Brother, and Miss Nesbit, to Mother's best devices to keep them all middle class. Mother was not educated, not bright, not talented, and not capable of it.
Miss Nesbit was very pretty and it fell to her to keep the family in money. And so she did, as the first Supermodel (for mostly illustrators and then photographers) to sell all sort of products for all sort of companies. Only as the first Supermodel, Miss Nesbit got the publicity (and the nasty old men groupies) but not much money---not Cindy Crawford money---because Mother was just not capable of negotiating a business deal (or much of anything---she did manage to luck into a second, middle class marriage when Evelyn went bust). Miss Nesbit was the 1900's advertising business's primal star.
Mother got money to stuff in the cookie jar and Brother got sent away to boarding school and with foster parents in the summer. Mother had Evelyn to chaperone and she wasn't very good at that either.
Miss Nesbit had a perfect face and teeth and gorgeous hair and the figure of a young pubescent boy. That figure proved to be a very great attraction for all those wealthy prodigals who pursued her. There was a lot of sublimated homo-eroticism in those rich twits. And there was a good reason for the sublimation---the trials of Oscar Wilde.
Stanford White was a prominent architect of the period who chased young, under aged chorus girls and models, and Miss Nesbit caught his eye (all three of them). Mr. White fixed her perfect teeth (he had the seminal American obsession with teeth) and gave Mother money and took Miss Nesbit's virginity in his bower. Miss Nesbit had Hollywood make a movie about it, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. Miss Nesbit was not happy with the casting of Joan Collins in the movie, Miss Collins was too buxom to play Miss Nesbit.
But under aged girls become legal, and rich, old fart's attentions stray to the next underaged beauty, and a legal girl has got to look to her future and how to keep the money rolling in.
Miss Nesbit looked back to Pittsburgh and to Henry Thaw, rich, sociopath, mama's boy, and she took the ring in the marriage carousel. The betrothal night was whips and confessions and rape; and the marriage got even better. Mr. Thaw took out Mr. White's teeth fixin's from Miss Nesbit and had his dentist put in his own. Miss Nesbit was to have teeth fixin's for the rest of her life. Man could never make right what nature had right to begin with. Isn't that right, Mr. Michael Jackson in Heaven?
Mr. Thaw's obsession led one night to a play on the terrace of Madison Square Garden (Mr. White's design) where the romantic trio met and Mr. Thaw shot Mr. White in the face many times and managed to kill him. "I did it to avenge my wife's honor," said Mr. Thaw. A Wife's Honor---what a male concept!
Mr. Thaw went to trial and was found insane and sent to the looney bin, where he initiated a series of escapes. The Thaw family disowned Miss Nesbit when she became pregnant during a conjugal visit to the looney bin. And Miss Nesbit took to the road and vaudeville and already made publicity. If you got it, flaunt it.
I don't know why anyone thinks that Lindsay Lohan is an original.
Miss Uruburu is inclined to be prejudiced toward Miss Nesbit in this book, but then, why else write the book? Worth reading---but it is the old story of selling your children to finance your welfare.
