Book Review: American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the It Girl, and the Crime of the Century by Paula Uruburu

The turn of the century tabloid-style title is mouthful enough: American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the It Girl, and the Crime of the Century. It seems, however — even though there probably wasn’t room for the trademark entitlement "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" — that one observer’s pithy and illustrative summation about the girl destined to “put one man in the grave and another in the bughouse” could have been tacked on for tacky and apt measure.

Evelyn Nesbit certainly had that mix of innocence and allure that made her rise as an icon of the age and scandalous old-boy toy — vibrantly and comprehensively chronicled by Paula Uruburu — so meteoric. Born near Pittsburgh in 1884 (or a debatable 1885), and later raised there after her father died — leaving the impressionable bookworm Evelyn, her mother, and younger brother impoverished — circumstance and Evelyn’s burgeoning beauty gave her meal ticket status as a much-in-demand artist’s and photographer’s model, especially after she and her mother moved to New York.

Still, in part because she could not afford to buy what she modeled and because her slender, more sinuous figure was more appealing to artists and photographers — and, she was to find, to older, more experienced men — Evelyn brought a revolution of sorts to the feminine ideal, having no need for the torture of corsets, bras, and layer upon layer of underclothing.

The contrast was all the more refreshing in those days when it wasn’t uncommon to see women wear, as Uruburu so colorfully puts it “hair rats, dead stuffed birds ... and a variety of natural or unnaturally dyed animal pelts with limp heads, abrasive paws, and glassy, lifeless eyes ... irritating puffs and bustles big enough to hide a loaf of bread, which prevented easy sitting since they pressed mercilessly on the lower spine.”

Even with the days of the hourglass-figured Anna Held- and Lillian Russell-wannabees passing, it wasn’t completely Evelyn’s fashion sense that caught the eye of prominent architect Stanford White. Turns out 16-year-old Evelyn was at that perfect age for the 47-year-old married womanizer - if by “woman” you meant teenage chorine, a flurry-of-added-activity Evelyn had now taken on to supplement her modeling income.

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for the San Diego Union Tribune. For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores. Email him and he'll stop talking in the third-person.
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