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Florence Evelyn Nesbit (December 25, 1884 – January 17, 1967), known professionally as Evelyn Nesbit, was a popular American chorus girl and artists' model whose liaison with architect Stanford White immortalized her as "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing". In the early part of the 20th century, the figure and face of Evelyn Nesbit was everywhere, appearing in mass circulation newspaper and magazine advertisements, on souvenir items and calendars, making her a cultural celebrity. Her career began in her early teens in Philadelphia and continued in New York, where she posed for a cadre of respected artists of the era, James Carroll Beckwith, Frederick S. Church, and notably Charles Dana Gibson, who idealized her as a "Gibson Girl". She had the distinction of being an early "live model", in an era when fashion photography as an advertising medium was just beginning its ascendancy. Nesbit claimed that as a stage performer, and while still a 14-year-old, she attracted the attention of the then 47-year-old architect and New York socialite Stanford White, who first gained the family's trust then sexually assaulted Evelyn while she was unconscious. Nesbit achieved world-wide notoriety when her jealous husband, multi-millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw, shot and murdered Stanford White on the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden on the evening of June 25, 1906, leading to what the press would call "The Trial of the Century". == Early life == Nesbit was born Florence Evelyn Nesbit on December 25, 1884, in Tarentum, a small town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her actual year of birth remains unconfirmed; her real year of birth may have been 1886. In later years, Nesbit confirmed that her mother at times added several years to her age in order to circumvent child labor laws.〔Mooney, Michael Macdonald, "Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White: Love and Death in the Gilded Age", Morrow, 1976〕 She was the daughter of Winfield Scott Nesbit and his wife, née Evelyn Florence McKenzie and was of Scots-Irish ancestry. Legend has it that the newborn little girl was so beautiful that neighbors came for months after her birth to gaze at and admire her. Two years later, a son named Howard was born to the family. Nesbit had an especially close relationship with her father, striving to please him with her accomplishments. Nesbit recognized his daughter's intellectual interests and encouraged her curiosity and self-confidence. Cognizant of her love of reading, he chose books for her to read and set up a small library for her. It contained diverse material, including fairy tales, fantasies, and books regarded as of interest to boys only—the "pluck and luck" stories that were popular in that era. When Nesbit showed an interest in music and dance, he encouraged her to take lessons in those areas. Although Mr. Nesbit displayed no outward favoritism toward either of his two children, Nesbit knew she was her father's "star". The Nesbit family moved to Pittsburgh around 1893. By all accounts, her father, an unambitious attorney, was an affable man and a feckless manager of the family’s finances. Her mother, Evelyn Florence, was an example of the Victorian woman, content to dedicate her adult life to the domestic responsibilities of running a household and raising children. Winfield Scott Nesbit died suddenly at age 40, leaving Nesbit (at age 11), her brother, and mother penniless. They lost their home and watched as all their possessions were auctioned off to pay outstanding debts. Mrs. Nesbit was unable to find work to earn money using her dressmaking skills, and a protracted period of time followed where the family existed solely through the charity of family and friends. All three lived a nomadic existence, sharing a single room in a series of boarding houses. To ease the financial burden, Nesbit's brother Howard was often sent to live with relatives or family friends for indeterminate periods of time. Eventually, Mrs. Nesbit, again with donated funds, rented a house with the intention of running her own boarding house as a profitable business enterprise. Loath to collect the rent from the boarders herself, she handed that responsibility over to 12-year-old Nesbit, relying on her daughter's pre-pubescent charm, markedly in evidence, to collect money from the traveling salesmen and other transient males who constituted the establishment’s core clientele. Many years later in 1915, Nesbit described this period in her family’s misfortunes: "Mamma was always worried about the rent ... it was too hard a thing for her to actually ask for every week, and it never went smoothly." Even at such a young age, Nesbit recalled her discomfort with being the rent collector; instinctively she sensed it was somehow inappropriate. Ultimately, lacking the temperament, or savvy to make the boarding house endeavor a success, Mrs. Nesbit’s attempt to provide her family with financial stability proved a failure. Under continuous financial distress, which showed no prospect of improvement, Mrs. Nesbit moved to Philadelphia in 1898. She had acted on the encouragement of a friend who advised her that relocation to Philadelphia could open opportunities for her employment as a seamstress. Evelyn and her brother Howard were sent to an aunt, and then transferred to a family in Allegany whose acquaintance their mother had made some years earlier. Mrs. Nesbit obtained employment not as a seamstress, but as a sales clerk at the fabric counter of Wanamaker’s department store. She sent for her children, and subsequently both the 14-year-old Nesbit and 12-year-old Howard also became Wanamaker's employees, working 12-hour days, six days a week. It was at this time that Nesbit's modeling career began by a serendipitous encounter with an artist who was struck by the teenager's beauty and evocative charm. The artist asked Nesbit to pose for a portrait, and after verifying the artist was a woman, Mrs. Nesbit agreed to let her daughter pose. Nesbit sat for five hours and earned one dollar. This led to introductions to other artists in the Philadelphia area, and she became the favorite model of a group of respected, reputable illustrators, portrait painters, and stained-glass artisans. In later life Nesbit explained: "When I saw I could earn more money posing as an artist's model than I could at Wanamaker's, I gave my mother no peace until she permitted me to pose for a livelihood." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Evelyn Nesbit」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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