Strange Times Special 9: A Real Scarcity of Men
Strange Times is a newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time.
This special issue is presented to celebrate the May 5 release of Westside Saints, my new novel, which follows Gilda Carr, detective of tiny mysteries, as she searches for a saint’s finger, the right shade of blue, and the answers to questions of life after death.
If you preorder it, which you absolutely should, you’ll also get a pair of hitherto unpublished Gilda Carr short stories. Click here for more.
In today’s issue, I wanted to showcase some of the utterly bizarre items I discovered while doing the research for this book. They include a Ragtime cameo, stern debutantes, and a runaway nun.
One of the most interesting surprises of doing this newsletter was how recognizable the famous names of the ‘20s remain today. I’ve read stories about Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, Caruso, and many of the other cultural icons whom we think about when we imagine the era. Evelyn Nesbit is another familiar name whom I was happy to stumble across, although the circumstances are grim. This story was the inspiration for some of the earliest ideas of the story that would become Westside Saints, although almost none of it remains in the novel.
The body of a woman resembling photographs of Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, found floating yesterday in the Potomac River, near Washington, caused the capital police to communicate with the authorities here to check up on their partial identification. So marked was the resemblance to the former wife of Harry K. Thaw that newspaper men at the capital who attended the trial in connection with the killing of Stanford White thought at first it was her body. Closer examination revealed that it was not the body of Miss Nesbit, as she is now known.
While the Washington police were awaiting a reply to their inquiry, wired late in the afternoon, Miss Nesbit, surrounded by a dozen friends, was celebrating her “death” in her apartment at 227 West Fifty-second Street.
“This is a live wake,” was her greeting to a reporter. “If I decide to commit suicide you can bet it will be spectacular. No, sir, no drowning for me. I’m pretty much alive, as you can see.”
Then her friends drank a toast to the actress, and the reporter departed from the “wake.”
The body of the supposed Miss Nesbit was found in midstream, partially encased in ice. A patrolman, recalling photographs of the actress, expressed the belief that it was she. His superiors thought the same and the Washington evening papers had a good story.
Miss Nesbit attempted suicide on Oct. 28, last year, when facing eviction for non-payment of rent. She took fifteen grains of morphine. Prompt action by physicians saved her life. Little has been heard of her along the Rialto since her venture as proprietor of a tea room at 235 West Fifty-second Street ended disastrously last month. On Jan. 18 a Deputy Sheriff and three men evicted her tables, dishes and utensils from the store, which was owned by the Trebuhs Realty Company, a holding company of the Shuberts.
Several times when Miss Nesbit was threatened with dispossess proceedings friends paid her rent. Her attempted suicide attracted business to her restaurant for a time, but in a few weeks this patronage ceased and she was forced into financial straits.
On the one hand, this survey may be the most passive aggressive note of all time. On the other, I would also be pissed if people thought it was okay to show up several hours late to dinner parties that I was required to attend. Death to tardiness!
It’s interesting looking at these articles, which I first encountered years ago, and seeing how their content made their way into my work. There are no tardy debutantes in Westside Saints, but in the third Gilda Carr book, which I’m writing now, there are characters named Marka Watson, Mancy Davis, and Cornelia Prime, whose names are drawn in part or whole from this society column. Not sure how I resisted the urge to include Peggy Le Boutillier.
Both the Junior League and the Parents League are sponsoring a questionnaire which has been sent over the names of fourteen debutantes as a protest against increasing tardiness in society. Miss Marka Truesdale, daughter of Joseph R. Truesdale of 26 East Eightieth Street, is a secretary of the independent group which was formed several weeks ago to frame the questionnaire. It has been sent to 3,000 young people—last year’s, this year’s and next year’s debutantes, as well as Yale, Harvard and Princeton men and young business men, and queries these as to their views on the late hours that are kept nowadays by the average young person.
The committee members whose names appear with Miss Truesdale’s are the Misses Elizabeth Ballard, Mary P. Davis, Mary Hamilton Davis, Sarah Downey, Mancy Fincke, Nora Grace, Mildred Lea, Peggy Le Boutillier, Frances Ottley, Cornelia Prime, Lavinia Riker, Janet Stone and Lucy Tew.
“Late Hours: What Price Reform?” appears on the cover of the questionnaire. There is a pen-and-ink drawing of a man and a girl sitting drowsily at a quarter to nine in the evening, while behind them the table is set for several dozen persons, none of whom has arrived. The scene is one of dismal waiting. It questions:
“Are you in favor of having dinner on time?
“Will you arrive punctually at the hour set?
“Will you get to dances on time?
“If you accept a dinner invitation will you really attend?
“Are you in favor of early luncheons so that afternoon appointments can be met?
“Will you take pains to arrive on time so that you will not have to leave before luncheon is finished?”
Space is left for suggestions.
Miss Truesdale said yesterday that the committee had decided upon this measure after a particularly trying Winter because of the tardiness of dinner and dance guests.
“It really is unusual for a party to get to a dance before midnight,” said Miss Truesdale. “The young business men don’t come to the deb parties any more, they are so late. They have to get up for work the next day. It means that only the college men can come to the deb parties and sometimes there is a real scarcity of men.”
I shared this 1893 story to celebrate last year’s release of Westside. I’m sharing it again because I like it, and sometimes that’s enough.
Auguste Simon, a little Frenchman employed as a professional nurse at the French Hospital in West Thirty-fourth Street, has created a stir in French circles in New-York, if not elsewhere, by carrying off a nun.
The French Hospital is under the charge of the order of Sisters of Charity known as the Marianites of the Holy Cross, whose parent house is in France. Among the nine sisters at the institution was the Soeur Anasthashie, a young Frenchwoman twenty-two years of age, whose worldly name was Rosalie Damourette, who came out from France a few years ago to join the order here. She was of a volatile disposition, quite attractive, and was not happy with her lot, which was one of exacting duty rather than of pleasure.
She found a ready sympathizer in Simon, the male nurse, with whom she had many conferences during their attendance upon the hospital patients, and at last it was arranged that both should leave the institution, with the view on her part of renouncing her vows and re-entering the world. Matrimony was agreed upon, and Simon handed in his resignation to President Joseph Thoran of the Hospital Association, and went forth on Jan. 27 to prepare a home for his bride. He secured a room at 508 Sixth Avenue and, having succeeded in obtaining the release of his affianced from the hospital at the early hour of 5 o’clock on the morning of Jan. 28, he went there with her to dwell.
Simon introduced the young woman to his landlady, Mme. Nagel, as his wife. The marriage ceremony was fixed for last Saturday, but there came an interruption. President Thoran procured the services of a detective and discovered the whereabouts of the missing couple. The young woman was amenable to discipline, and went without question back to the hospital, while Simon was arrested and locked up on a charge of procuring money from one of the inmates of the hospital on false pretenses. The charge was not pressed, however, and, on being set free, Simon went to the hospital to demand the release of his wife, as he termed her.
His demand was refused by the Mother Superior, who instead called in a strapping porter named Alphonse, who gave Simon a beating and finally threw him out of doors. Simon appealed to the law and procured the services of Lawyer Mathot of 291 Broadway to bring three actions, viz, habeas corpus proceedings to obtain his wife’s release, a charge of assault against the Mother Superior, and a charge of false imprisonment against President Thoran.
Such is the story told by Simon and his lawyer. President Thoran, however, and the Mother Superior tell a different story. They say that Simon betrayed an innocent girl and that he is a villain who came to the hospital last March from France with good recommendations. He was a good nurse and up to the time of inducing the Soeur Anasthasie to elope with him had conducted himself well. The young woman, said President Thoran, had been sent home to France to her parents, sailing last Saturday on the steamer La Gascogne, and was now out of reach of the influence of Simon, who had a wife and children in France.
Simon is a fairly good-looking young man of about thirty years.