#historical babe

[thewitches3]

Historical babe, back at it again.

[history-crushes]

Maude Fealy (1883-1971)

American stage and silent film actress.

She was successful as a playwright-performer and co-wrote various plays in the 1920's.

[historical-babes]

Evelyn Nesbit (1884/85-1967).

American model, chorus girl, actress.

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In the early part of the 20th century, Nesbit's figure and face appeared frequently in mass circulation newspapers and magazine advertisements, on souvenir items, and in calendars, making her a 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, including 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 fashion and artists' model in an era when both fashion photography (as an advertising medium) and the pin-up (as an art genre) were just beginning their ascendancy.

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Nesbit received further worldwide attention when her husband, the mentally unstable multimillionaire Harry Kendall Thaw, shot and killed the prominent architect and New York socialite Stanford White in front of hundreds of witnesses at 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". During the trial, Nesbit testified that five years earlier, when she was a stage performer at the age of 15 or 16, she had attracted the attention of White, who first gained her and her mother's trust, then sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious, and then had a subsequent romantic and sexual relationship with her that continued for some period of time.

Thaw, her husband, sexually assaulted her as well and beat her in the past. He was obsessed with women's chastity and became furious when he learnt what happened with Stanford White.

Evelyn became the proverbial “bird in a gilded cage" when she moved out to the Thaw family home.

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In 1916, she married Jack Clifford, it was not a successful marriage.

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During the 1930s, Nesbit struggled with alcoholism and morphine addiction. She worked on burlesque stages throughout the country, though not as a stripper.

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Thaw, who as late as 1926 was still keeping his ex-wife under surveillance by private detectives, went to Chicago where Nesbit was hospitalized. He learned his ex-wife, despondent after losing her job dancing at the Moulin Rouge Café, had swallowed a disinfectant in a suicide attempt.

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During the years of World War II, Nesbit lived in Los Angeles, teaching ceramics and sculpting at the Grant Beach School of Arts and Crafts.

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She had a child with Harry Kendall Thaw.

[Submission]

[history-crushes]

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897).

German composer, pianist and conductor of the Romantic period.

Famous for his works such as his Symphony no. 1 or Hungarian Dances.

[history-crushes]

Napoleon II (1811-1832).

Duke of Reichstadt.

He was the son of Emperor Napoléon I and Empress Marie Louise, and had been Prince Imperial of France and King of Rome since birth.

He was disputed Emperor of the French for a few weeks in 1815.

[history-crushes]

Leopold Staff (1878-1957)

Polish poet.

He is considered to be one of the greatest artists of European modernism.

He represented classicism and symbolism in the poetry of Young Poland, notably through philosophical poems.

[historical-babes]

Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945).

English poet, translator and prose writer.

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According to his biographer, G. A. Cevasco: "Athletic and handsome, popular with his classmates, he applied himself more to writing verse than his studies (he did not take a degree).

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While studying at Oxford, he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp, which carried a homoerotic subtext, and met Wilde, with whom he started a close but stormy relationship. Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, disapproved strongly of the affair, and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but some of his intimate notes were discovered, and he was duly jailed. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas in Naples, but they were separated by the time Wilde died in 1900.

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Douglas married Olive Custance in 1902, and they produced a son. Converting to Roman Catholicism in 1911, he openly repudiated Wilde’s homosexuality, and in a High-Catholic magazine, Plain English, he expressed views that were openly anti-semitic, though he rejected the extreme policies of Nazi Germany. He was also jailed for libelling Winston Churchill over claims of wartime misconduct.

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Douglas wrote several books of verse, some of it classified in the homoerotic Uranian genre. The phrase "The love that dare not speak its name" came from one of Douglas’s poems, though it is widely misattributed to Wilde.

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Douglas has been described as spoiled, reckless, insolent and extravagant. He would spend money on men and gambling and expected Wilde to contribute to funding his tastes. They often argued and broke up, but would also always reconcile.

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Douglas died of congestive heart failure.

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[historical-babes]

Roza Shanina (1924-1945).

Soviet sniper.

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She was credited with fifty-nine confirmed kills, including twelve soldiers during the Battle of Vilnius. Shanina volunteered for the military after the death of her brother in 1941 and chose to be a marksman on the front line. Praised for her shooting accuracy, Shanina was capable of precisely hitting enemy personnel and making doublets (two target hits by two rounds fired in quick succession).

She was one of the first women to join the Soviet army during World War II and was the first Soviet female sniper to be awarded the Order of Glory, also becoming the first servicewoman of the 3rd Belorussian Front to receive it.

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Roza was above average height, with light brown hair and blue eyes, and spoke in a Northern Russian dialect. After finishing four classes of elementary school in Yedma, Shanina continued her education in the village of Bereznik. As there was no school transport at the time, when she was in grades five through seven Roza had to walk 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) to Bereznik to attend middle school.

At the age of fourteen, Shanina, against her parents' wishes, walked 200 kilometres (120 mi) across the taiga to the rail station and travelled to Arkhangelsk to study at the college there.

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Her childhood was deeply impacted by the events of the war, during which she lost three of her five brothers. She volunteered and enrolled at the ‘Central Women’s Sniper Training School,’ from where she graduated with honors. She joined the ‘184th Rifle Division’ and was appointed as the commander of a newly raised special female-sniper platoon.

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Shanina was killed in action during the East Prussian Offensive while shielding the severely wounded commander of an artillery unit. Shanina's bravery received praise already during her lifetime, but conflicted with the Soviet policy of sparing snipers from heavy battles. Her combat diary was first published in 1965.

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Shanina had a straightforward character and valued courage and the absence of egotism in people. She was described as a person of unusual will with a genuine, bright nature by war correspondent Pyotr Molchanov.