Annie and Ella, wonderful links here. Don’t you just love the old New Yorkisms that Vreeland includes in the book. Sometimes I think I get more caught up in the links to the background, than in the book. But all of it is fascinating.
So Stanford White was the architect for Madison Square Gardens – the 2nd Gardens. He liked his women young, I guess. He was 47, Evelyn Nesbit was 16. And his murderer Harry Thaw was a bad apple from the word go. Thaw rather abused Evelyn Nesbit before they were married and treated her very shabbily afterwards. A lot of that story was in Doctorow’s Ragtime, was it not.
There were other single women at the boarding house JoanP, we just don’t hear much about them. A Miss Hettie, a Miss Lefevre, and an older woman Francie. Did Alice Gouvy ever come to the boarding house?
Yes, Clara is not only eligible, she seems more than able to hold her own with the men in her life. I wonder about her marriage to Francis. She says she loved him, but told Alice she married him out of guilt because he had paid for her sisters education. (p.44) Apparently he was much (?) older. He must have been surprised to find he had such an independent wife. But what kind of man blames his wife for is inadequacies? You’re right Ella, she needs a chance to be a bit wild, get her groove back.
George, more than Edwin, seems to be more her type. He is fun, very uninhibited – he brushes her hair, he paints her room, and wants her to marry his brother. I’ve been wondering why he moved out of the boarding house, but it’s because he’s now in the studio next door. No doubt light, etc. had something to do with that move.
Independent , articulate, and talented as she is, I think Clara is really fighting some demons. Edwin’s behavior at George’s country studio in Nutley is strange, unbelievable. Yet in one moment she says’ that he’s inconsiderate and she’s miffed at him, and in the next she says she’ll go to Lake Geneva with him, and she’ll quit Tiffany Studios. Go figure.
