The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel

by Margaret A. Oppenheimer

  16

  SEPARATE LIVES

  At Le Havre Eliza boarded the Maria Theresa, John Skiddy in command.1 Puzzled and unhappy, Stephen saw her off. She seems to have made illness the excuse for her departure. In any event, there is nothing in Stephen’s letters to her (hers to him from this period do not survive) to suggest that a quarrel or traumatic event precipitated the separation. “My dear wife,” he wrote in a parting letter, “It is so hard not to make the voyage together, but your health and the opinion of the doctor demanded your journey, and as for me, I did not want to disappoint you, fearing for your health.”2

  Stephen wrote to Eliza weekly during the first month after they parted, fighting loneliness and striving to understand her decision to leave. “Since your departure, my bedchamber has become insipid to me,” he wrote sadly from Le Havre on April 18, a few days after the Maria Theresa sailed. “I stayed on the jetty until I could no longer see the ship.”3 In a letter of May 5, Stephen mentioned that he had paid a visit to the marquis de Cubières: “The whole family is as charming as ever and hopes to see you in a year.”4 Apparently Stephen described her voyage as a visit to her homeland, not a permanent separation. He himself may not have been sure of her intentions.

  If she had been considering a departure for some time, neither her husband nor her friends had suspected it. “The ladies never dreamt that you would return to New York,” Stephen wrote, “and no more did I”—the emphasis on the last words is his.5 The “illness” that prompted her journey was homesickness—or at least that was the rationale she gave. In the early nineteenth century, nostalgia for one’s native land was viewed as a condition that could cause serious—even fatal—physical infirmity. The only sure treatment was for the sufferer to return to his or her native surroundings.6 “You were homesick for your country,” Stephen wrote on May 5. “For the sake of your health, I didn’t want to turn you from your ideas, but you will be sorry for it.”7

  In spite of his feeling of abandonment, Stephen remained deeply affectionate toward his wife. He reminded her not to work too hard in the garden, as she “always does when I am not there,” and “not to work too much to put the house in order,” so as not to worsen her health.8 The potential expense of maintaining separate residences worried him. “Take care of the paintings and don’t spend too much,” he cautioned her, “as we have to maintain two households. And if you buy supplies, keep an account of them.”9 He didn’t like being surprised by unanticipated expenses. On the sea voyage, Eliza had paid for the passage of a fellow passenger, with no certainty of being reimbursed. Although she enjoyed making such lavish gestures, Stephen was unhappy when he received the bills.10 In speaking of purchases he would make for the mansion, he warned her not to count on having as much as she wanted.11

  Although a wealthy man, Stephen had many demands on his purse. He made yearly allowances of 1,500 francs to his brother, 500 francs to his sister, and 250 francs to his niece Felicie, his sister’s youngest child; he also paid Felicie’s tuition at boarding school.12 He was equally generous to his wife’s family. Eliza sent her oldest nephew, William Ballou Jones, to be educated in France in the late summer of 1817; Stephen paid for his schooling. In addition, he paid, at least for a time, for the American education of William’s sisters, Eliza and Louisa Jones, and their brother Stephen, born in 1810.13 Mary’s boarding school was yet another recurring charge.

  Eliza and Stephen’s adoptive daughter remained in Paris to complete her education. When Stephen visited “poor Mary” on May 3, the schoolmistress informed him that she was making rapid improvement. He planned to see her again soon to judge for himself, he told Eliza: “I will have her play the harp for me, so I can see her progress and have her do the same on the forte piano, so I can see if she is forgetting it in learning the harp, and I will give you my opinion with my usual frankness.”14

  Eliza wrote to Mary about ten days after reaching New York. “My dear Mary,” she began, “You have heard of my arrival before this as I wrote to your papa on my arrival, but the vessel departed so soon that I had no time to write to you and as you know I am not fond of writing which will be another excuse: but, believe me, my dear Mary, my thoughts are always of you, altho’ I do not write often.”15

  A change of scene had worked its magic: “My health is restored to me, which is a great consolation, as I know it will be to you.”16 Plus, the two of them would soon be reunited:

  Do not forget, my dear Mary, the sacrifice I made was for your own good, which I hope you will profit by it [sic]; in one year to finish your education and to return to your mama, who loves you dearly. I am engaged [at] the present time in setting your room in order. It is admired by every one that see it. Your curtains is of blue sattain [sic] trim’ed with silver fringe, and your toilet [dressing table] the same. Altho at this distance still my thoughts is of you. I shall be very interested, when the day of pri[z]es arrives, to know how many my dear Mary has gained and for what lessons. Until then I remain impatiently, your affectionate mama

  Eliza Jumel17

  Eliza’s words to Mary imply that she planned on remaining in the United States rather than returning to France, and that she intended to bring Mary back to New York as well. Exactly how she presented her plans to her husband remains an open question. When she left, she took her collection of paintings with her along with some furnishings for the mansion on Harlem Heights.18 Stephen sent other furniture in the weeks after her departure, including mirrors, armoires, a sofa, and chairs. She was planning at a minimum an extended stay.19

  Once reinstalled at Mount Stephen, Eliza threw herself into upgrading the property. She hired laborers to work the land, planted fruit trees, and ordered “8 to 10 bundles of short shingles of the best quality,” possibly to repair the mansion’s roof.20 Since Mary’s redecorated room was admired by others, presumably she socialized with neighboring landowners on Harlem Heights.

  John R. Murray, who had a house and farm north of the Jumel property, may have been Eliza’s most important contact. A merchant and banker with a deep appreciation of European painting, cultivated during a grand tour taken at the turn of the century, he served as the vice president of the American Academy of the Fine Arts.21 Founded in New York in 1802, this once sleepy institution had transformed itself during the two years Eliza had spent in France. In 1816 the city’s former almshouse near city hall had been renovated to house it and several other cultural institutions.22 There the academy had initiated a program of regular exhibits. The fall 1817 show would celebrate Eliza’s emergence as an art collector.

  Ninety-seven of her paintings—more than a third of her collection—formed the core of the exhibition. Possibly Murray, as Eliza’s neighbor, had learned of the 242 artworks she had brought back from France and suggested that the members of the organizing committee contact her. Or she may have heard of the forthcoming exhibition from him and approached the committee herself.

  Records of the show reveal that Eliza was a canny business-woman. She began by offering terms the committee members “thought beyond their powers”—perhaps she asked for a rental fee?—and then negotiated to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement.23 The academy agreed to insure the paintings and cover all costs associated with their delivery and return.24 Thus Eliza would benefit from the exhibit even in the absence of a rental payment; she saved herself the cost of insuring the artworks at the mansion. She would still be able to admire them at her leisure, since the agreement included “a card of admission for her and her party.”25

  The exhibit opened to the public on September 1.26 As the best-represented collector—having supplied nearly half of the 229 works on display—Eliza must have been pleased to see a laudatory note that appeared in the Evening Post the next day:

  On the opening of the third exhibition of the American Academy of the Fine Arts, yesterday, we were surprised and gratified to find an entire new face put upon the gallery …

  The present collection is principally European. The number of paintings
brought into this country is truly astonishing. Most of the pictures will give pleasure, and some of them will excite a more powerful sentiment.27

  The editors of the New-York Columbian approved of the exhibition too. It “has very truly been announced as entirely new, and a great part of the pictures were never until now taken from the packages in which they were imported from Europe.” Besides welcome novelty, there was “much to gratify the lovers of painting”—in particular, “Mignard’s picture of Mademoiselle de Montespan with a Cupid; the Incredulity of St. Thomas; Cleopatra; Hercules and Omphale by Le Moine; the Crucifixion by Flamael; the Battle of Cavalry, and above all that exquisite painting, the Hunting of the Hare, by Snyders.”28 Seven of the eight paintings singled out by the Columbian were from Eliza’s collection.29

  Although Stephen’s friend and fellow merchant, James B. Durand, who represented Eliza in her negotiations with the academy, referred specifically to “her [emphasis added] collection of paintings,” the press and even some of the academy members assumed that her husband had acquired them, writing that the borrowed paintings were “part of the collection of Mr. Stephen Jumel.”30 The error is telling. That a woman might be an art collector on a large scale was such an unlikely concept that it didn’t occur to most people as a possibility.

  Before the 1820s, only a handful of Americans—almost all male—had made their mark as art collectors. Between 1795 and 1835, Boston merchant Thomas Handasyd Perkins purchased European paintings in Paris and patronized American artists at home.31 Another Massachusetts native, James Bowdoin III, put together a collection of 70 paintings and 142 drawings, mostly acquired during diplomatic postings in the first decade of the nineteenth century.32 Martha Coffin Derby of Portland, Maine, and Boston, one of the rare women to make a name as a connoisseur, gathered paintings and plaster casts while touring Europe in 1801 to ’03 and patronized contemporary artists.33

  In Baltimore, Robert Gilmor Jr., a merchant’s son given a classical education, collected both old master and American paintings.34 Charleston could boast of Joseph Allen Smith, who shipped canvases, plaster casts, and impressions of gems from Italy.35 New Yorkers could point to Dr. David Hosack’s art collection and small groupings of pictures assembled by merchants, bankers, and artists.36 But these aficionados were exceptional. Although genteel Americans had taken pride in displaying art in their residences since colonial times, even the wealthiest families owned only modest selections of pictures and statuary. Vanishingly few citizens of the young republic had paintings in their homes other than family portraits.37 In this environment, Eliza was remarkable. Not only was she America’s first major woman art collector, but the size and scope of her holdings were unmatched by the country’s connoisseurs of either gender. In less than two years, she had assembled the largest collection of European paintings yet brought to these shores by a private citizen of the United States.38

  Eliza’s pictures received considerable, although not always favorable, attention. The most detailed commentary on the exhibition was provided by a local artist, the British-born John Rubens Smith (1775–1849). Writing under the pseudonym “Neutral Tint,” he discussed nearly every artwork on display. His multipart review appeared in the National Advocate, a New York City newspaper, between September 12 and November 8, 1817.39

  Crotchety and opinionated, Smith was sparing in praise and endorsed few works in the exhibition without reservation, regardless of ownership or authorship. For example, of Eliza’s Lady with a Lap Dog by the French rococo artist Jean-Marc Nattier, Smith conceded: “Good painting and drawing, particularly in the arms, and is a good picture, for ‘days of yore,’” but “the obsolete fashion of the dress might have excluded it from a place in this fashionable resort.”40 Eliza’s perspective views of Florence, Prague, and Lisbon by “Crevinbros” (in fact, the early eighteenth-century Dutch artist Charles-Léopold Grevenbroeck or his brother Orazio) likewise received grudging acknowledgment: “There is, or rather was once, a very fine effect of light and shade in these pictures previous to their being retouched and badly cleaned; they still retain evidence of much good execution and perseverance, and stamp the painter a man of no ordinary mind, and are, no doubt, faithful representations.”41

  Eliza’s Dogs Pursuing Hares by the seventeenth-century Flemish animal painter Frans Snyders—a work previously singled out by the New-York Columbian—received the rare tribute of unmixed admiration: “Here is, at length, a good picture, to gladden our eyes, almost bedimmed in exploring rubbish.”42 Another “Good!” rewarded her Astronomy by “Courtin” (probably Jacques-François Courtin, an early eighteenth-century French artist who trained in Rome). “It has all the harmony, without the frippery, of the French school; beautiful, clear flesh tints, with an accurate knowledge of the figure. The harmoniously blended reflections in the white silk dress is [sic] an object of study. Though no advocate for dark backgrounds, this is highly appropriate.”43

  Smith’s comments on Astronomy reveal his preferences for well-lit subjects, anatomical accuracy, and naturalistic depiction of figures and landscapes. He was unfailingly dismissive of the expressive distortion of the mannerists and an unbending critic of dramatic chiaroscuro (strong contrasts of light and dark). Thus Eliza’s King David, then attributed to Gerrit Honthorst, but today thought to be by the French Baroque painter Simon Vouet, was dismissed as “florid, yet cold—black in shadow, with rusty iron stair rods for harp strings.”44

  Smith was even more severe about Eliza’s Hagar, the Angel, and Ishmael in the Desert, a highly mannered work attributed to the late Baroque Italian painter Francesco Trevisani. Although it had “some good drawing and handling,” it was “so discordantly cold, frittered in effect, and theatrically arranged throughout, as to destroy all interest in the subject. Could anyone imagine that a being perishing for want would drink with such an affected air?” The angel, he added, had “caught the cramp in her hand by sympathy, from the distressing manner in which the fellow holds the jug.”45

  Other works from Eliza’s collection were rejected more tersely. With reference to A Religious Composition of undetermined authorship, Smith wrote: “Read a ridiculous composition, and save all further comment.” Of Religion by Pietro da Cortona, he sniffed, “we should rather say, ‘Heresy, or a Drunken Beggar in a dirty, deserted Palace.’” A Boy with a Pigeon, which Eliza claimed as a work of Spanish seventeenth-century painter Bartolomé Murillo, Smith wrote off as “a pigeon in a swill-tub—too contemptible to notice.” Several Figures with a Dead Body was “execrable; the sooner they are all buried the better.”46

  It comes as a relief to learn that Eliza’s Vase, Flowers, and Fruit, given to the Flemish still-life painter Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, was “the work of a masterly hand,” and her Amorous Courtier, from La Fontaine’s Tales by the French rococo painter Jean Raoux, was “a fine picture, extremely well painted.”47 Similarly, her Girl with a Dog by Schall was “a pretty piece of clear execution; perhaps, upon the whole, somewhat too cold, but a fine sample of miniature painting in oil.”48

  The exhibition remained open until November 12, a run of just over two months.49 Afterward, at Eliza’s request, the paintings she had contributed to the exhibit stayed on display in the galleries until April 1818, when they were removed so that the annual summer show could be mounted.50 That the officers of the academy felt they were worth retaining was a vote of confidence in Eliza’s taste.

  In late 1817 Eliza had intimated to Stephen that she planned to return to France. Then he had received no letters for several months, and he was unsure if she had changed her mind. “In your last,” he wrote, “you indicate that your desire would be to come to France. I desire that as well … But consider whether in coming to France to stay, you will find what you want. We will need to buy a property here in order to spend the summer in the country.” They would also need to think about what Mary’s future would be.51 She was reaching marriageable age.

  Stephen was right to question whether Eliza had thought through her deci
sion. When he received three long-delayed letters from her in late May or early June, he was upset to learn that she had already reconsidered:

  I see by your letter of [April 24, 1818,] that it is no longer your intention to return to France to stay. Nevertheless, when a wife loves her husband, she must be where her husband is. But if you think differently, that [illegible] me. You knew that if my intention was to finish my days in France, you would have to stay here with me too. [If you disagree] I will be sorry for the rest of my life, having always done everything in my power, up to this moment, to make you happy.”52

  Rather than rejoining Stephen, Eliza asked him to move back to the United States or at least send Mary to her. Perhaps she had intended from the beginning to use her absence to persuade her husband to leave France. If so, the tactic was unsuccessful. “You must know the reason, what the sea does to me,” Stephen wrote. “You witnessed it.” Seasickness isn’t “a life-threatening illness,” he acknowledged, “but what suffering! And everyone [illegible] laughs.”53

  Beside the discomfort that an ocean crossing would entail, Stephen, fifty-three, was beginning to feel his own mortality: “I do not have long to work,” he wrote, “and from one moment to the next, I might leave for Père Lachaise” (a reference to the famous Parisian cemetery). As he struggled to support Eliza and their dependents (“I am overloaded with work. I am always busy in the factories and I need more patience than ever”), she remained at a distance and was spending more and more money. She had even kept several laborers employed over the winter when there was little work to be done on the land. “I don’t know what you were thinking,” Stephen wrote. “You tell me you aren’t spending any money at all,” but Benjamin Desobry and James Durand had informed him of her expenses, and they were higher than she had acknowledged. “To do everything a property demands, you would need a fountain of money,” he cautioned her. He would allow her to spend one-half of their income, but that was the most he could afford: “Mr Desobry will be able to tell you nearly to the dollar” how much that would be. In the meantime, he would send Mary to her, as Eliza had requested. He had arranged for her to travel with a close friend of his who was leaving for the United States with “his wife, who is very respectable.”54