CHAPTER II.
Harry Thaw’s Sensational Courtship and Marriage.
YOUNG MILLIONAIRE’S ROMANCE STARTLED THE WORLD—MET EVELYN NESBIT AFTER A PLAY WHEN SHE WAS ONLY 17 YEARS OLD—FRIENDSHIP RIPENED INTO LOVE—THE YOUTH’S STRANGE CAREER—WENT TO EUROPE WITH THE FOOTLIGHT AND STUDIO BEAUTY—REPORT OF MARRIAGE ABROAD SHOCKED RELATIVES—DENIED BY BOTH THE SUPPOSED BRIDE AND GROOM—RETURNED TO NEW YORK—EJECTED FROM FOUR HOTELS—HAD WEDDING CEREMONY PERFORMED IN PITTSBURG—MOTHER OF THAW AT FIRST REFUSED TO ACCEPT EVELYN AS DAUGHTER—OFFERED $250,000 TO GIVE UP HARRY.
Harry Kendall Thaw’s winning of Florence Evelyn Nesbit stands out as a thrilling chapter in the great book of love. The biography of each of the parties was studded with the bizarre. Fifty thousand dollar dinners, ejectments from hotels, diamonds and grand pianos thrown about as carelessly as if they were trinkets, family opposition, and remarkably romantic love were some of the ingredients.
Harry Thaw’s eyes first fell upon Evelyn Nesbit when she was only seventeen years old. She had carried her beauty from Pittsburg to the studios of New York. Then the stage called her, and her brunette pulchritude charmed the scion of one of Pittsburg’s wealthiest families. Somebody presented her to Thaw at a gay party of young and beautiful stage girls who were having a costly supper after the play at an exclusive restaurant. All this time Evelyn was supposed to be under the eye of her mother, who, a few years previously, had doffed her widow’s weeds and married Charles J. Holman, a Pittsburg broker. Mrs. Holman told her friends she keenly realized the perils that beset the feet of beautiful young girls, but her chaperonage did not save her own daughter.
Thaw loved the daughter, he said, as soon as he saw her. His appreciation of feminine loveliness had always been one of his strongest qualities. Only three years before he met Miss Nesbit he had given a $50,000 dinner in Paris to twenty-five of the most beautiful women that he could get together. Cleo de Merode, at whose feet the King of the Belgians had laid royal tribute, Anna Robinson of this country and other famous beauties were at that banquet. Sousa’s band received a check for $1,500 for furnishing the music. This dinner and many of Thaw’s other enjoyments were made possible by the fact that when his father died he left a fortune of $40,000,000. This father was William Thaw and he had been prominent in Pennsylvania railroad and steel affairs. His widow and the seven children inherited the fortune.
Harry Thaw’s penchant for economy was pretty
HARRY K. THAW