American Eve (23 page)

But as time went on, Evelyn came to see that the majority of White’s other girls fit a disturbingly familiar pattern. They were invariably underage, from poverty-stricken or disadvantaged families with dead or absent fathers; they were usually naive or emotionally needy, starved for attention, many feeling abandoned and sometimes desperately alone in the city. A handful might have been worldly beyond their years, or disillusioned with the romance of the theater, but whatever the scenario, Manhattan’s “Lord of Misrule” did his best to keep them all sated and amused and spinning within arm’s reach.

By January 1902, Evelyn was a month into bittersweet seventeen, a rebellious and reckless age when a child-woman who has convinced herself she must be in love can swing wildly between impulsive spite and the silly romantic sentimentalism encouraged by popular songs or by the continual and sometimes lavish attentions of an urbane lover who still shook with delight at her slightest touch. Although Evelyn never seemed to give much if any thought to the existence of Mrs. Stanford White, the “wifey” usually deposited safely somewhere out in Suffolk County, she racked her brain trying to find a way to bridle Stanny’s interest in the countless Mazies and Daisies who populated the back row of each new show (whom she imagined were scheming to get a leg up, so to speak, on fame or fortune by taking advantage of Stanny’s weakness for pretty young things).

She also knew what Stanny knew—that none of the rich old lobsters who came to see her perform who might offer her extravagant gifts and jewelry, even marriage, interested her in the least, since they “lacked the artist’s immense and complex soul.” So Stanny could act with impunity, secure in his knowledge that she had turned away probably half a dozen millionaires already and was compelled to share her “downy fan” with only him. It seemed as if she had taken to heart what he had said about the illicit nature of their affair and how “darker chocolate is much richer and sweeter than the milk variety.”

One practice of Stanny’s was particularly galling to Evelyn—his sending extravagant birthday bouquets to girls whose names he marked down in his little black book. Stanny’s book was bursting at the seams (what with Ada, Anna, Bettina and Blanche, Bella, Della, Edna and Elsie; Dora, Flora, Gertie, and Goldie; Inez, Josie, Lottie, and Lydia; Mabel, Maggie, Maude, and Moiselle, Sadie, Susie, Violet, and Zanita), and one afternoon in a spasm of pique, Evelyn threw the infuriating thing into the wastebasket. An amused Stanny merely retrieved it, which drove her to distraction, but also to a plan of sorts, aimed at penetrating her lover’s seemingly impervious heart.

Evelyn decided to fight fire with fire. Initially, she tried to stir up jealousy by accepting dinner dates with several eligible young bachelors, part of a clique at the Racquet Club. One was Bobby Collier, the son of the publishing magnate; another was James “Monty” Waterbury Jr., a well-known and handsome young polo star.

One night, in their sophomoric efforts to woo Evelyn, a number of these potential suitors played a game called “shadows.” Making her stand on a chair behind a fairly translucent drape lit from behind, they fed her oysters over the top of the drape and then asked her to guess who had just given her the icy bluepoint splashed with a squeeze of lemon. When Stanny heard about this and other similar “dates,” however, all he said was that she should be careful of “those boys.” Clearly, as far as the renowned architect was concerned, none of them could hold a twelve-watt bulb to his far more inventive and mature parlor games or ultra-sophisticated lighting and visual effects. And then, one night, an inadvertent opportunity presented itself to Evelyn.

At one of Stanny’s Tower affairs, as Evelyn sat at a small side table, nibbling on salty Russian caviar and savoring sweet African peaches in brandied melba sauce, perhaps rolling around in her mind Stanny’s constant admonition that “a girl should never let herself get fat,” Evelyn was approached by two men. The taller of the two was determined to obtain an introduction to the intriguing little ingenue and well-known model. As he extended his hand to her, Evelyn looked up to see John Barrymore, known as Jack at the time, sporting the whisper of a newly grown mustache, which he pinched several times out of nervousness.

The remarkably handsome twenty-one-year-old was the younger sibling of Ethel and Lionel Barrymore, both of whom were already well known as the newest generation of splendid talent produced by the combustible forces of the Drew and Barrymore acting families. Ethel was a favorite among Stanny’s theatrical acquaintances and the reason why the architect had befriended a disheveled and hungover Jack late one morning at the Knickerbocker Grille and added him to the privileged Tower guest list.

Although he already showed ample evidence of the matinee-idol looks he would become known for (“The Great Profile”), Jack had managed thus far to escape the “family curse” of acting and, at least at this stage in his life, did not consider habitual drinking to the point of stupefaction another possible Barrymore curse. As described by one writer, “In the considered opinion of his family and elders, the youth showed every promise of being a bum.” In fact, rather than follow in his family’s prominent and perhaps intimidating footsteps, Jack had gone off in a slightly different but nonetheless creative direction.

The gossip columns reported that the youngest Barrymore had attended classes at the Art Students League, even though by his own account he had only done so for a day “to get a good look at things.” He did show promise as a cartoonist and illustrator, although for some reason he lacked the ability to draw feet adequately, which might be a drawback for anyone but a Barrymore. One wonders if he had any legitimate interest in developing his talents or whether he was just naturally attracted to the colorful gypsy sensibilities of the art world, which shared its borders and a vagabond kinship with the theater-land he knew so well. When the League’s courses in life studies once again aroused the attentions of the omnipresent Comstock and his Society for the Suppression of Vice, Jack was one of the first to defend the practice to his drinking buddies at the Algonquin (if not in print, then at least in principle).

Life as a cartoonist seemed the perfect choice for Barrymore, who saw and did everything in bold, broad, and often comic strokes. It suited his overactive imagination and hyperactive temperament as he tossed around in the territory of the fourth estate, where endless rumpled days trailed off into long pickled nights in saloons and hotel bars with his newspaper pals. A puny salary was offset by professional perks, not the least of which were the thrill of deadlines and joining in the throbbing pulse of the swelling city. And while it may not have generally been the case, there was such a thing as a free lunch when Jack was around. He landed his first job as a sketch artist at the
Morning Telegraph.
From there he progressed to Hearst’s
Journal,
thanks to his sister Ethel’s influence. And even though he was positively cocky, Jack wasn’t proud and didn’t mind relying on family or on the kindness of strangers and friends alike to pave and pay his way.

Jack had seen
The Wild Rose
more than a dozen times since it had opened in May at the Knickerbocker Theatre, even paying his own way at least half the time—and all because of the bewitching “brunette soubrette” who now sat within a dainty arm’s reach. That night in the Tower room, as Jack looked into Evelyn’s molten eyes, close up for the first time, his heart beat a two-step as it never had before. He was struck by not only her perfect girlish features but also a suggestive eagerness and perhaps a hint of recklessness in her eyes that matched his own. Here was a girl, he told himself, who wouldn’t mind sawdust on her shoes. As for the impression he made on Evelyn, even though she had seen her share of dapper young men whom she could hold at bay for hours with her sphinxlike stare, the color rose perceptibly in her cheeks as he bent and kissed her hand. He was, she would recall in a letter, “positively Byronesque.”

When White, who had been making the rounds of the room as host, stepped out for a moment to take a phone call, Jack seized the opportunity. He leaned in closely and whispered into Evelyn’s ear, asking for her phone number. In pure Barrymore fashion, he wrote the number with a flourish on his frayed shirt cuff as she whispered it into his ear, leaving a deliciously indescribable floral scent on his collar. Whether or not he was aware that White had more than an avuncular or proprietary interest in Evelyn, within twenty-four hours of Stanny’s departure for his annual two-week Canadian fishing trip, Jack took advantage of Alexander Bell’s invention and the situation. The two made a date to meet for a post-show supper at Rector’s. Whether she did it meaning to rouse Stanny from hopeless complacency or was simply swept off her feet by the charismatic cartoonist with the wicked smile, Evelyn quickly found herself irresistibly drawn to the rakish Jack, who had a distinct advantage over Stanny in that he could take her out in public. And in the daytime.

For the two weeks White was away, the heart-throbbing couple saw each other every day, while every night, Jack would meet his “Evie” at the stage door with a small corsage of violets that she said put to shame the vulgar bouquets of the typical stage-door Johnnies—and of the atypical Champagne Stanny. The mooning duo then invariably went off to supper and entertained each other “endlessly with jokes and stories” at Delmonico’s or Sherry’s. The backstage gossip soon spread that a certain ardent newspaper artist had been seen worshipping a familiar vision of feminine pulchritude in the “cathedral of froth” and that the rapt duo sipped pink champagne from the same glass, champagne put on a prominent patron’s tab. Another night at Rector’s, Jack ordered a glass of milk, pulled two rose petals from his vest, and floated them on the surface. Then, much to the amusement of waiters and patrons within earshot, he professed passionately, “Those are your lips.”

Meanwhile, the very few who were privy to White’s inner sanctum and thus suspected the real nature of his relationship with his “protégées,” watched this public show of sugarcoated affection with some interest. Perhaps, a few thought, she would finally be the one—the sable-haired Pandora who could unleash the great architect’s green-eyed monster. As rumors proliferated about the “love-struck youngsters,” some of White’s Broadway cronies mused about Barrymore robbing the roost while the cock was away.

Within days the whirlwind romance became public property. It was heralded in the
Herald,
which reported on Evie and Jack’s “devoted camaraderie. ” The
Herald
also noted that “in the afternoons they would drive or walk through the Park,” and acted as if “they found each other congenial and all else dross.” In
Town Topics,
it was reported that “the Bohemian Barrymore paid swift and tempestuous court to the Broadway Beauty.” The
Morning Telegraph
said that “the wild Pittsburgh rose had moved her swain to dreadful poetic heights.” Although it was hardly Shakespeare when it was printed, he described Evie as “a quivering pink poppy in a golden wind-swept space.” This sent her over the moon with delight (even though she was kidded mercilessly backstage by the other girls: “Can I enter your golden windswept space?” they’d ask when entering the common dressing room). Since White had miraculously managed to live purely in the public eye as far as his intimate connection with his Kittens was concerned, the newspapers blithely reported that “Miss Nesbit . . . showed preference to none until Jack Barrymore. . . . Like two happy children, the after-theater Broadwayites began to see them with eyes for none other in the fashionable restaurants.”

How they were able to eat in those fashionable restaurants is another matter. Even without his own money, the resourceful Jack continued to live off his family name and “off the cuff.” It may have been something of a challenge at times, since, among many things, Stanny had cultivated in Evelyn a taste for quail, oysters Rockefeller, and Moët & Chandon. As for Evelyn’s seemingly arbitrary attitude toward money, it can be explained as the result of having either too little or too much at her disposal at that point in her short life. Or as the result of being seventeen, by which time it seemed to her that life was either feast or famine, with no free lunch in between. Unless you were with Jack.

One of the people whom young Barrymore relied upon for financial buttressing was Frank Case, the Algonquin proprietor and a family friend. But Case became nervous over Jack’s mounting tab, and it irked him to read about how the blissful duo were painting the town the same red that Jack’s accounts were in. When Case raised the issue one night while Jack and Evie were dining on squab and pricey artichoke hearts, Barrymore revealed, perhaps for the first time with an audience, his hereditary gift. He jumped to his feet and threw his linen napkin on the floor, declaring with a flourish, “By God we’ll go to a restaurant that doesn’t insult its guests!”

With the embarrassed Evie at his side, the brash and shameless Barrymore packed his bags and left the hotel, neglecting of course to pay his substantial bill. The displaced couple drove around in a cab for hours in a futile search for a new hotel that Barrymore could call home. But the story was the same everywhere—no room at the inn. A political convention had taken every available room. Just after midnight, a somewhat deflated Byron with a drooping Evie still at his side came back to the Algonquin. He signed Case’s name to a requisition in order to pay the dinner check and resumed his residence there. Evie went home in the same cab and paid the sizable fare with money from her allowance from Stanny.

Much to everyone’s surprise—especially Evie’s—Jack’s “rushing” of his quivering pink poppy stretched from two weeks into two months. Stanny had returned from his fishing trip, and upon discovering the blissful pair’s blossoming bond, he did what no one expected. He did nothing. He said nothing. At least, there were no indiscreet scenes of the sort some observers might have expected upon his return or even any private show of jealousy. It was clear that he had calmly abdicated his position as Evelyn’s only paramour. If she had begun the romance in order to test the extent of Stanny’s claim on her, the adolescent-fueled experiment seemed a tremendous bust.