The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel

by Margaret A. Oppenheimer

  Eliza’s self-elevation in rank served its purpose. “O[h], no, my good lady,” the captain replied, “I will go down and procure you a good berth.” Then “he descended and ordered the best, telling the ladies they were taken. So the poor ladies had to go into the gentlemen’s room, and we enjoyed the good things with the rest.”15

  Eliza’s manipulations may have saved her life. “I have no doubt that you have read in the papers of the disastrous event which took place in the steamer the day after,” she wrote to Nelson, “and I have no doubt we should have been lost had we waited.”16 Probably they had escaped one of the boiler explosions that were tragically common in the early days of steam.17

  Eliza closed her letter with kind words for eleven-year-old William, too young to join his sister on the European venture: “Give my love to Will, and tell him I often think of him, and was pleased to learn so good an account of him.” Then with “grateful thanks” to Nelson for the “affectionate letter” she had received from him, she signed herself “your true friend, Eliza Burr.”18

  In 1853 to ’54 “Mrs. Burr” took another trip abroad, this time accompanied not only by Eliza, now seventeen, but also by thirteen-year-old William. With her great-niece approaching marriageable age, Eliza stopped strategically in Bordeaux on the way to Italy. In the “port of the moon,” they called on Jean Edouard Pery, nephew of Stephen’s decades-long business associate Jean Pery. The couple’s twenty-year-old son Paul received Eliza and her young relatives. Paul and Eliza Chase were given a chance to become acquainted.19

  From there, Eliza and her great-niece and nephew traveled on to Malta, Sicily, and Rome. In the latter city, they sat for a grand portrait that would be shipped back to the United States.20 Eliza, in dark green brocade, trimmed amply with lace, sits straight-backed and alert between her great-niece and great-nephew. The triangular composition recalls Italian Renaissance images of the Holy Family, with Eliza in the center as the benevolent Holy Mother.

  When the trio reached Paris, Eliza took pleasure in reencountering Louis-Napoléon, now emperor of France. Their meeting, reported in the French press, was considered worthy of note by the Kenosha (Wisconsin) Democrat:

  The Paris Patrie of a late date says that “at the last Tuileries ball, the brilliant toilette of a stranger, with an incredible number of diamonds, attracted the attention of all present. In a moment the attention was changed to the most intense curiosity, when Louis-Napoléon was observed to accost the lady, and remain some moments in conversation. The enigma was soon solved. The lady was the widow of Aaron Burr, formerly vice president of the United States, with whom Louis-Napoléon was on terms of intimacy whilst in that country, and at the end of fifteen years he recognized the widow as his old American friend.”21

  The Democrat credited Eliza with (illusory) estates on the island of Malta, but blew the whistle on her marital status, noting that she was the divorced wife rather than widow of Burr.22

  Eliza looked up two other old acquaintances while in France. Either on this European tour or perhaps the prior one—Eliza Chase did not specify which—she and her great-niece called on Adèle and Henriette de Cubières, who were living in retirement outside Paris. According to Eliza Chase, her great-aunt’s old friends spoke with fond nostalgia of their childhood, “in the fresh and blooming country” that is now Manhattan’s Upper West Side.23

  Eliza knitted new French connections as well. A second visit to Bordeaux had resulted in a growing intimacy between Eliza Chase and Paul Pery. The notion of a marriage was floated, although it is unclear who suggested it. Asked later if Mrs. Burr had put forward the match to him, Paul denied it. “I did my own love-making,” he said, “and proposed in propria persona, as every plucky young man should do.”24 But the union was not approved by the young people’s elders until its financial aspects were negotiated. In nineteenth-century France, marriage remained as much an economic as a romantic transaction. Thus in 1827 Stephen had cautioned Lesparre: “We must think of marrying Ulysses, but he wants a large sum of money.”25 Jean Edouard Pery was a prosperous notary and Paul was his and his wife’s only child. They could insist on a young woman with a handsome dowry for their son.

  Shrewdly Mrs. Burr negotiated with Paul’s father. The majority of her fortune was destined to Eliza and William Chase, she assured him in a letter from Paris. “This fortune can be estimated at two million dollars,” she wrote, “which corresponds to about ten million francs.”26 (Considering the probable value of her real estate in 1854, she was doubling, if not tripling, her net worth.) Next she made a carefully calculated offer: “If my niece should marry your son, I would assure her an income of five thousand francs [i.e., one thousand dollars]. I cannot go beyond that because I have no present intention of touching my capital.”27

  She declined Pery’s request to guarantee the promised income by placing a principal of one hundred thousand francs in an interest-bearing investment. All her fortune was in real estate that she was not “disposed to sell [or] mortgage.” Besides, she added, it wasn’t an American custom to give women dowries when they married. Mrs. Burr proposed that she guarantee the income herself instead—she would sign any contract Pery wished—“and the obstacle will be overcome.” She closed the letter by promising that Eliza Chase would be remembered in her will: “My niece having lost her mother in early childhood, it is I who raised her; she has not quitted me and I have a veritable affection for her. Without appointing the share that she may have in my estate today, that share may be considerable and by my testamentary dispositions … will be assured to her.”28

  Paul’s parents agreed to the union, essentially on Eliza’s terms. In the marriage contract she promised her great-niece one hundred thousand francs—twenty thousand dollars—but specified that the sum would not be paid until after her own death. The Perys named Paul their heir. In addition, they agreed to take the young couple into their household and pay all their living expenses, unless the bride and groom preferred to reside elsewhere.29 To match this generosity, Eliza promised to provide her great-niece with one thousand dollars annually, the income she had suggested previously.30 With this relatively modest upfront outlay, she had secured an affluent husband for her namesake. It was a bravura performance.

  With Nelson’s consent, obtained by mail from New York, the nuptial rite (or rather, rites) took place in Bordeaux in early July. Paul and his bride were married no fewer than three times “to guard against trouble on account of the peculiarities of the French law.”31 They had a civil ceremony performed by the mayor of Bordeaux, a second wedding celebrated in the Roman Catholic church (Paul was Catholic), and a third solemnized in the Episcopal Church (Eliza Chase was Episcopalian).32 “The ordeal lasted two days,” and “when it was over,” Paul “felt not only considerably fatigued, but quite sure that he ‘had been very much married.’”33

  The young couple set up housekeeping in the household of the groom’s parents. Mrs. Eliza Burr and Master William Chase left for home by way of Liverpool. They crossed the Atlantic incongruously on the Pacific, one of the record-breaking steamships of the Collins Line.34 When they reached New York, Eliza, or someone acting for her, slipped one of the journalists meeting the arriving ship a so-called “letter from Bordeaux, dated June 25.” Its unnamed author claimed to have had a visit “from the widow of Aaron Burr,” whose business in Bordeaux was “the marriage of a niece to a gentleman of this place … She gives $100,000 as a marriage gift”—Eliza quintupled her contribution for the public record—“and Mr. Perry [sic], the father of the young man, gives the same amount”—a complete invention. Creative license extended to the disposition of the funds that Mrs. Burr had kept safely in her own hands: “Mr. Bowen, the United States consul, has been requested to be the trustee of the money.” The letter, showing Eliza’s gift for self-promotion at its best, concluded with a flattering reference to her: “Mrs. Burr is the American lady who created such a sensation at the balls in Paris last winter.”35 She, and not her newly married great-niece, p
layed the starring role in this drama.

  34

  A ROMANTIC WIDOW

  Less than two weeks after their marriage, Paul and his new wife set out on an extended visit to the United States.1 They spent most of the time with Eliza, who was touched by the young couple’s affection for each other.2 When Jean Edouard Pery wrote to thank her for welcoming Paul into her family, she expressed her joy in their children’s marriage: “I am no less fortunate than you, Monsieur, in all the circumstances that have contributed to their blessed union, and I see in it the decrees of divine Providence, which has thus liberally bestowed its gifts on you, on me, and on our children.”3 She addressed Paul himself with the familiar tu (you) rather than its formal counterpart, vous, when she thanked him for a letter sent from Boston, before he and his wife reembarked for France. “I reread often, with sweet satisfaction and ineffable happiness, the lines you wrote to me before your departure: A filial love breathes in all that you say to me, and my heart is devoted to you with a truly maternal love.”4

  Eliza’s deepest affection was reserved for Paul’s wife. She responded fulsomely to a letter the young woman wrote her from Boston: “So much esteem and respect for me, so nobly expressed, inspire me with a legitimate pride and pleasure, natural to a person who sees her work successfully achieved. I am assured that my efforts to form your mind on the solid basis of religion and virtue are by no means wasted; and duty will dictate to you a constant love and eternal gratitude toward me.” If she seems in these lines to treat her great-niece as her creation—the Galatea to her Pygmalion—the genuine warmth of her feelings shines through in other passages: “All my joy, all my contentment, will be to learn that you are living in happiness and prosperity: You understand that you are still the dearest object of my attention and thoughts, and that you can always count on me as on a mother and true friend … Formerly your worthy late mother possessed my love and tenderness, and since she is no more, you have naturally become the center of my affections.”5

  In a letter sent a few weeks later, Eliza expressed pleasure in a coincidence; Paul and her great-niece had written to her on the same day that she had written to them: “I see with pleasure that, although we are separated, our hearts are still united … They felt at the same time the need to converse with each other: The day that I wrote, you were writing to me; I received your letter and without doubt you received mine of January 21 last. We read together, we think together, we remember each other together; what charming, happy, and admirable harmony!!! It is that of nature.”6

  She described how she, Nelson, and William consoled themselves “more or less” for Eliza’s absence: “In the evening we retire into the large drawing room, where you know that the famous family portrait faces the scene; and there our imagination in ecstasy permits us to enjoy her presence. Then the young lady in court dress is the principal personage here; she attracts our regards, the attentions of the whole family, and each fancies himself conversing with her in person. This painting is indeed a source of happiness for us, since one person of this little group is settled on foreign soil.”7

  The missing member of the party was soon to be present in the flesh. In the summer of 1855, young Mrs. Pery paid another visit.8 But her temporary presence was not enough for her great-aunt. By the following spring, “Madame Burr” had determined that her great-niece and Paul should live permanently in the United States.9 She made the economy, which was beginning to soften, the excuse. Nelson wrote to John Edouard Pery on March 22, 1856, enclosing a bill of exchange for 2,050 francs “for our dear children Paul and Eliza” and a letter “proving to them the necessity that exists, in the present state of their affairs here, that the money we are sending by this present must not be employed for any other purposes [than to] furnish them with the means to make certain of their return voyage to this country.”10 In April the young couple left France for New York, accompanied by an eighteen-year-old female servant and the newest member of their little family: a twelve-month-old daughter, Mathilde.11 Eliza would have her closest relatives gathered about her again.

  By the second half of the 1850s, the old slurs that had tarnished Eliza’s reputation had been mostly forgotten. In 1855 a New York correspondent for the Albany Express offered readers a deferential picture of her and her domain. Her estate was “surrounded by forests and dells,” its grounds “beautifully improved,” and its “gardens laid out with taste.” Inside her home, “costly paintings (and among them a genuine Rubens), articles of vertu, presents from noble and distinguished persons, autographs, and everything that is rare and costly and curious” could be seen “in lavish profusion.”12

  A watercolor of the hallway gives an idea of the setting, showing the remnants of the Jumel collection mingled with objets d’art that Eliza had brought back from her later visits to Europe. In the left middle ground, Napoleon I’s traveling chest—the one she claimed to have received from the emperor as a gift—occupies a prominent place.

  Eliza herself, “from having mingled so much in the best kind of society,” had “all the courtly graces and blandness of manner which distinguished les dames d’honneur” of the eighteenth century. She bore “herself very haughtily, forbidding anything like approaches to familiarity”—truly “as much of a despot in her own dominions as any monarch who sways a scepter.” Perhaps inspired by her house’s history as George Washington’s military headquarters, she had a gun fired each evening to deter potential intruders.13

  Each summer Eliza emerged from her self-imposed isolation in upper Manhattan to pay her annual visit to Saratoga Springs. In 1851 she had purchased a house on Circular Street to serve as her summer home.14 With its massive square columns supporting a brooding triangular pediment, it is akin to, if less graceful than, her New York mansion. As if in compensation, she gave it the delicate name Rose Cottage and replaced the back piazza with an elegant dining room, lit by four large windows.15

  Once or twice in the early 1850s, she took advantage of having her own lodging in Saratoga to welcome members of her sister’s family. Maria Jones had died in 1850, but Eliza hosted her sister’s oldest surviving daughter, Eliza Jones Tranchell, and Emily Maddox, child of the younger Jones daughter, Louisa.16 In 1853 the women stayed for four months in order to attend the state fair, which was held on farmland Eliza owned a mile east of Saratoga (no doubt she charged a rental fee for use of the property).17 Although that year “she was sick almost all the time” and “didn’t receive much company,” she was in better form a few years later.18 In 1857 she gave an evening entertainment for the Utica Citizens Corps, presenting the company with a “modest but beautiful” white satin banner, decorated with gold fringe and the image of the goddess of Liberty.19 Her guests received the gift following the “Army regulations for reception of colors,” and “gave her a lively serenade” before they left.20 When she departed Saratoga for New York on September 30, the local newspaper paid her an amiable compliment: “What with her presents to and entertainment of the Corps, and their attentions in return, her residence has been the scene of much that was gay and imposing.”21

  The year 1858 brought Eliza renewed attention with the publication of James Parton’s Life and Times of Aaron Burr. In this wildly popular biography (it went through fourteen editions by 1861), she was treated sympathetically as “a daughter of New England” who was “as remarkable for energy and talent as [Burr] himself.”22 According to Parton, Eliza was “a favored frequenter” of the French court during the “many years” she resided in Paris with Stephen—by now the legends had become the reality. After her return to New York, she had undertaken “with native energy the task of restoring her husband’s broken fortunes.”23 Stephen was given a vivid back story: supposedly he had emigrated to Saint-Domingue as a young man and watched his coffee plantations burn at the time of the rebellion, but escaped the massacre thanks to (1) a faithful slave and (2) a passing boat that deposited him on Saint Helena—the island where Napoleon I would live in exile years later. From there Stephen mad
e his way to New York.24 Surely it was Eliza who reassigned the Saint-Domingue getaway from François to his brother, heightening the drama by inserting a loyal slave and a mythical layover in Saint Helena. With Napoleon III on the throne of France, her tales had taken on a Bonapartist tinge.

  Parton treated the divorce from Burr with tact, protecting both Eliza’s and McManus’s reputations: “The accusation [i.e., that Burr had committed adultery] is now known to have been groundless; nor, indeed, at the time was it seriously believed.”25 Burr had been losing Eliza’s money in unwise investments, Parton explained, and the charge “was used merely as the most convenient legal mode of depriving him of control over her property.”26 Eliza’s claim of being Burr’s widow rather than his wife was accepted. Their union, Parton wrote, “was, in effect, though never in law, dissolved.”27

  Had she truly never been divorced from Burr? The investigation of that matter formed a curious sequel to her relationship with that complex and enigmatic man. In 1863 Nelson Chase arranged with a Washington lawyer, Samuel A. Pugh, to claim Burr’s military pension for the former vice president’s surviving “spouse.”28 Potentially Eliza could receive six hundred dollars for every year since Burr’s death in 1836. Pugh agreed to pursue the claim in exchange for twofifths of any arrears awarded, while Nelson would receive five hundred dollars of Pugh’s cut.29

  The case rested on a copy of a document that proved (supposedly) that there had not been a divorce at all.30 At a guess, the item may have borne the date that the papers relating to the divorce suit were enrolled (i.e., legally registered).31 Because Burr’s appeal of the divorce was in progress when he died, the records of the case were not filed away until his death—an event that terminated the appeal. As a result, the vice chancellor’s final signature on the documents was dated September 14, 1836, inspiring the poetic but inaccurate story still circulating today that the divorce was handed down on the day of Burr’s death.32 The dating of the signature could have prompted Nelson and Eliza to claim that Burr had died before the divorce could be concluded.