Ultimately Eliza would use McManus’s letter to Burr to build a case to divorce her husband for adultery. But for the moment, with Burr gone from the house and in uncertain health, she played a waiting game. Although there must have been a certain awkwardness in the situation, her nephew-in-law Nelson Chase, admitted to the New York bar as an attorney in October, was still working in her estranged husband’s office.35 In the winter of 1833 to ’34, Burr, with Nelson’s assistance, was again attempting to collect veteran’s benefits for his army service during the Revolutionary War. By late December 1833 he had sent Nelson to Washington City, as the nation’s capital was then known, to advocate for him and gather information on his behalf.36 Letters to Nelson that Burr dictated to his secretary, John M. Lewis, show that the seventy-seven-year-old lawyer’s mind was sharp in spite of his physical infirmities. Often he found it necessary to rebuke his junior for inattentiveness. On February 5, 1834, with Nelson still in Washington, Burr complained:
No letter has been recieved [sic] since yours of the 31st. ult. which communicates nothing.
That of the 30th informed me that you had made acquaintance with a gentleman of influence and consideration who was willing to assist you for a commission, the amount not named, but you are not pleased to give the name of that gentleman, nor any clue to, or indication of him.37
A week later Burr reproved Nelson for failing to provide any details on a Mr. Young and a Mr. Cox, nor even a progress report on the matters at hand.38
Nevertheless, Burr remained cordial to Nelson, typically closing his letters with “God bless you and speed you,” and occasionally dropping in bits of family news. On January 5, 1834, he noted, “Your wife was here yesterday for a few minutes merely to inquire if I had heard from you and when your return might be expected to which inquiry I could give no reply.”39 It seems that Nelson could not be bothered to write to his wife of less than two years.
On January 20, 1834, Burr dropped a nugget of information about his own wife into the middle of a letter otherwise focused on business: “Madame, of the heights, has been here today. I had not the honor to see her, though She [sic] passed an hour in the office of Mr. C. [Burr’s law partner, William D. Craft], who has not mentioned to me the visit, or the subject of it.”40 Had Eliza begun to consider the possibility of a divorce? Although she might have assumed—even hoped—in late 1833 that Burr’s death would resolve the differences between them, by the new year the old soldier was on the mend. On February 10, 1834, John Lewis wrote to Nelson that “the health of Col. B is rapidly improving, and his manner quite changed since you last saw him.”41 By March he was up to a forty-five-hour stagecoach trip to Albany “with only one break for a meal,” although the weather was cold enough that the coach was drawn on sleigh runners north of Peekskill and the wind whipped through the vehicle’s torn curtains.42
On May 17 Burr wrote to Nelson from Albany regarding the progress of his claim for veterans’ benefits, addressing him at their Nassau Street office.43 (Burr would soon learn that he had been awarded an annual pension of six hundred dollars, payable retroactively from March 1831.)44 He ended the letter with a courteous inquiry about his wife and Nelson’s: “How is Madame, and la belle pite [petite]—are you in town or Country [sic]?—and where—?”45
If Burr hoped to maintain a polite status quo with regard to his unsuccessful marriage, he would soon be disillusioned. On July 11, 1833, Eliza filed her bill of divorce. In it she described Burr’s financial depredations. She also accused him of adultery with Jane McManus. Date and place were carefully specified: the adultery occurred in Jersey City, New Jersey, in August 1833, a month after Eliza and Aaron’s marriage. For good measure, Eliza claimed that since their marriage, Burr had been “in the habit of committing adultery at divers times with divers females,” whose names Eliza did not know.46 The phrasing was standard terminology in a divorce suit.
Even if only the charge involving Jane McManus were true, Burr had violated the civil laws governing marriage in New York state. He had breached the obligations of the “matrimonial contract,” as Eliza wrote in her bill. The legal recourse for this breach of contract was divorce.
Eliza also requested—and received—an immediate injunction preventing Burr from selling, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of any part of her personal property or real estate—a good indicator that her desire for divorce was driven by her need to protect the fortune built during her twenty-eight-year marriage to Stephen. In addition, she asked for alimony from the chronically broke Burr, raising the distasteful possibility that she had waited to file until his pension claim was decided in order to claim a share in that asset.47 But it is more likely that she and her lawyers simply followed the usual practice: asking for more than they could expect to get in order to maximize the eventual award.
Once the divorce proceedings commenced, Nelson Chase threw in his lot with Eliza. On July 10, a day before the bill of divorce was filed, he sued Burr for three hundred dollars in law books that Nelson owned, but Burr had kept in his own possession.48 To his mentor, Nelson’s defection must have felt like a betrayal.
28
THE DUEL
“He is credibly informed and believes it to be true”—Aaron Burr framed his sentences in the third person—“that the Complainant” (Eliza) had, since their marriage, “committed adultery without the connivance or consent of this defendant with one or more persons whose name or names is and are at present unknown to this defendant, but whose names, when discovered, this defendant prays may be inserted herein.”1
Aging and desperate for financial security, Burr contested the divorce proceedings strenuously. Eliza would collect half of Stephen’s assets, once her late husband’s estate was settled. If Burr remained her husband, all the money would be his. In common law man and wife were one person, and that person was the husband.2
To try to save the marriage, Burr accused Eliza of adultery. Pointing a finger at the other party was a standard tactic used by defendants in divorce actions, because a divorce petition would be dismissed if the complainant had been unfaithful.3 In 1835 Burr worked up a list of eight men who were supposedly Eliza’s lovers.4
Her lawyers demolished the straw men speedily. Robert Coveny, for example, one of Eliza’s purported bedmates, had worked for her as a laborer until dismissed for drunkenness and then lost a lawsuit against her for back wages.5 In autumn 1834 he had visited a neighbor of hers and offered to pay him “liberally” if he “would procure any person who would state that [Eliza] had committed adultery with any person.”6 In January or February 1835 he had bragged that he was intimately acquainted with Burr and “fared well” whenever he visited him.7
Charles Perry, another of Eliza’s alleged amours, was “a very great liar,” according to Eliza’s neighbors.8 He had illegally changed his name from Boothe and deserted a wife and two children.9 Like Coveny, he would perjure himself to order.
Then there was Patrick Delahanty, Eliza’s former coachman, named by Burr for no other reason than propinquity. Delahanty swore that he had never seen or heard anything that would lead him to suspect his employer of unchastity.10
And so it went.
On July 11, 1835—again acting on the anniversary of Burr’s duel with Hamilton—Eliza countered her husband’s libels by swearing to a devastating affidavit. Burr had tried to get her to agree to a settlement, she revealed: he would admit to adultery and let the divorce proceed if she would pay him an annuity of three hundred dollars a year. It was only after she “declined paying the sum of money so proposed by said Burr as the wages of his depraved and immoral conduct,” that he “and his agents commenced fabricating false and scandalous reports against” her.11 Indeed, at no point after her marriage to Stephen did rumor suggest that Eliza had engaged in affairs or even the most trifling dalliances. Only her conduct before her first marriage had been the subject of whispers.
However contrived Burr’s charges were, gossip must have been flying as the investigations advanced. If
Eliza had hoped that her marriage to Burr would bring her invitations and visitors, the divorce proceedings had put an end to such dreams. As the suit wound its way through the Court of Chancery, the New York State court that handled divorces, she lived in the old mansion alone but for the servants. One of them, Margaret Mulhollen—probably a housekeeper or maid—said that Eliza “lived a retired life,” and didn’t receive “the company or visits of any person or persons whatsoever, except the visits from [her] niece and nephew” (i.e., Mary and Nelson Chase).12 John Hopwood, probably also a servant, confirmed “that her habits of life were reserved and retired—that she was not in the habit of receiving the visits or company of any person or persons except the visits of her relatives.”13
With few options remaining, Burr compromised, signing an agreement with Eliza two days before Christmas. He would not contest the adultery charge nor claim a right to her money, but would not be obliged to pay alimony or cover her legal costs either.14
In accepting the arrangement, Eliza wasn’t giving up anything. Where would the feckless Burr have found money for support payments or legal fees? Instead the agreement gave her the hope of having the divorce finalized at last—although Burr’s willingness to let the charges in the bill of divorce be taken pro confesso (as confessed) would not result in an immediate divorce, as both he and Eliza knew. An investigation was still required by state law to make sure that the spouses weren’t colluding to obtain a divorce by having one of them admit to an adulterous relationship. The case would be referred to a master in chancery—the improbably named Philo T. Ruggles—who would collect evidence to determine whether the charge of adultery was credible, before the vice chancellor ruled on whether to grant a divorce.15
The records of the master’s investigation offer a glimpse into Burr’s life at the time of his marriage to Eliza. After the union Burr lived at least part time in a house in Jersey City, New Jersey.16 This pied-à-terre, less than twenty minutes from lower Manhattan by ferry, would have offered quicker access to his office on Nassau Street than Eliza’s mansion, nearly ten miles north of New York City.17 Burr’s servant Maria Johnson testified that her employer used the lodging from July 1 until mid-August. Nelson Chase shared the house; “he came over there shortly after we removed there,” Johnson said.18
But another interpretation is more probable: that Eliza herself had rented the lodging for Nelson and Mary—they were living in nearby Hoboken, New Jersey, by 1837—and Burr was the one who shared it. The timing is suggestive. Leases in the region typically began on May 1; on May 2, 1833, Burr had been evicted from his Reade Street house for nonpayment of rent.19 His close acquaintance with Nelson is said to have begun in “May 1833”; perhaps it started with an exchange of a place to live for legal training. Burr didn’t return to Jersey City after his marriage broke up, making it unlikely that it was he who held the lease there.20
The sleeping arrangements were consistent with Nelson being the primary occupant of the house. The parlor floor had a front and back room separated by folding doors. Burr slept in the back room on a settee that was made up with bedclothes at night. Nelson, however, had a bed, probably upstairs, as did a Mrs. Price, presumably the landlady. Also living in the house were Mrs. Price’s child; Burr’s black servant Maria Johnson; Maria’s son, around seventeen or eighteen years old; another woman servant; and one of Burr’s wards (probably yet another illegitimate child), Henry Oscar Taylor, aged about fifteen.21 If Mary Chase lived in the house, in all probability she shared Nelson’s room. She is not mentioned—possibly an intentional omission to keep her name out of an unsavory affair. Alternately, she may have spent the summer living at Mount Stephen with Eliza, with Nelson joining her on Harlem Heights on Saturday and Sunday nights, but staying in their Jersey City home on weekdays to be near Burr’s Manhattan office.
The servant Maria Johnson would become the key witness in the Jumel/Burr divorce. Eliza arranged for her to give evidence, calling on her twice, accompanied by Mary Chase.22 According to Johnson’s testimony before the master, Burr’s adulterous episode with Jane McManus took place in the crowded Jersey City house at the end of the first week of August 1833. McManus arrived around four o’clock in the afternoon on Friday. That evening Johnson came up from the kitchen carrying a jug of steaming water for Burr. Passing quietly through the front room, she pushed open the folding doors into the back chamber. A lamp in the corner of the room spread a pool of light, exposing Burr and McManus entangled on the settee. “Colonel Burr had his trousers all down” and his hands beneath McManus’s clothing. Johnson “saw her nakedness.”23
The next day, Johnson said, she spied on the pair. Climbing onto the roof of a shed adjacent to the back stoop, she was able to reach one of the windows of the back parlor. Rotating a slat of the blinds, she peered in. McManus and Burr were “about as close as they could set together” on the settee. Johnson, three times married, knew what she was seeing. She “looked at them till they got through with their mean act and looked at them when they sat on the settee.” But there would be no more to see that day. About 2:00 pm McManus left to return to New York City, escorted by Nelson Chase.24
Burr’s counsel cross-examined Johnson. Would she swear that sexual intercourse took place? Johnson stood her ground. “Yes sir,” she said firmly, adding that she had seen Burr and McManus similarly engaged “several times before.” Further questioning revealed that the prior sightings had not been in the New Jersey City house, but rather in Burr’s former lodging on Reade Street. Before McManus left New York in November 1832, she had called on Burr there “almost every other day,” staying until ten or eleven at night, and sometimes as late as two o’clock in the morning. Pressed to state whether she had actually seen the two in a compromising position, Johnson described what had happened one Sunday. Just as she was ready to leave for church, the bell in Burr’s room rang. She hurried to answer it. Burr, it seems, had rung the bell by accident without realizing what he’d done; it was “right over the settee close by his head.” When Johnson entered, she “saw Jane McManus with her clothes all up & Colonel Burr with his hands under them and his pantaloons down.” The pair were flustered by the servant’s unexpected entrance. Jane exclaimed, “Oh, la! Mary saw us.” Quickly Burr sent Johnson away on an errand: she should go get oysters (then considered an aphrodisiac) at Bear Market for McManus’s dinner. Later he gave Johnson “a new pair of shoes not to tell.”25
This story, although colorful, was not strictly relevant. The alleged events didn’t constitute adultery since they had occurred before Aaron and Eliza were married. Therefore Eliza’s counsel was denied permission to question Maria about any other “irregularities” that might have been committed in the Reade Street house.26
But the testimony she had given already was enough. Although Burr had managed to stall the case by obtaining fifteen adjournments and petitioning for an extension, the marriage was dissolved on July 8, 1836.27 Eliza, innocent of infidelity, would be free to remarry. Burr, the adulterous spouse, would not be permitted to do so unless Eliza predeceased him.
From Eliza’s point of view, the most important clause in the decision was at the end: “And it is further adjudged and decreed that the said complainant be entitled to retain possession, have, hold, use, and enjoy all her real and personal property and estate, of what nature or kind soever, free from any interference of any kind whatever by or from the said Aaron Burr.”28 The remainder of the Jumel fortune was safe, and the specter of poverty that Burr’s improvidence had summoned was held once more at bay.
Although from this point onward Eliza had little to fear, the divorce decree did not quite end the story of the marriage. Failing in health, maintained through the kindness of friends in a small hotel on Staten Island, Burr fought to the end.29 He and McManus charged that Maria Johnson had committed perjury when she claimed to have witnessed adultery between them, and Burr petitioned New York’s chancellor for a rehearing of the divorce suit.30 He argued that the evidence of adultery was uncon
vincing; the vice chancellor had refused to hear his opposing evidence; and his age at the time of the “pretended adultery” rendered “the committing of the said offense according to the laws of nature impossible.”31 But this skirmish was over almost before it began. On September 14, 1836, at approximately two o’clock in the afternoon, Aaron Burr died in his lodgings on Staten Island.32 Eliza would not marry again.
All in all, she had stage-managed her case shrewdly. Only once did her chosen witness, Maria Johnson, slip up. The servant claimed to have peered through the window of the Jersey City house by rotating a slat in the blinds, but later said that the windows were closed.33 How then could she have moved the slat? Nevertheless, the probable liaison between Burr and McManus before the colonel’s marriage to Eliza made Johnson’s evidence more convincing than that offered in most divorce suits, in which perjury and collusion were commonplace.34 Burr’s tarnished reputation would have worked to Eliza’s benefit as well.35 He had dueled fatally with Alexander Hamilton and faced charges of high treason against his country. Former chancellor James Kent was far from alone in considering him “a miserable monument of perverted talents and licentious principles.”36
At the time of the divorce, Burr was facing yet another lawsuit, an accusation that he had defrauded the heirs of his friend Pelletreau by persuading the dying man to sign a dubious contract.37 The deal was suspiciously favorable to Burr, and the dispute over its legality cannot have helped his standing among his peers.38 Burr’s reckless behavior with Eliza’s money would have been another black mark against him, along with his richly deserved reputation as an incorrigible debtor. As the cashier of the Manhattan Company—the bank Burr himself had founded—said bluntly, “I would not trust him five dollars without security.”39
The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel Page 17
