Stephen closed the letter with a cry from the heart: “Adieu. I think night and day of seeing you again. I am sending you a thousand kisses and kissing Mary for you.” Sadly he signed himself “your faithful husband, Stephen Jumel.”55
17
INDECISION
Mary reached New York on August 21, 1818, a tedious sixty days after leaving Le Havre.1 If Eliza had hoped that her husband would accompany their daughter, she was disappointed. Stephen, having received no recent letters from his wife, wrote from Paris on July 16, “I assume that you think that I am en route.” But he was staying in France, he told her. It was up to her to return. He was having their lodgings at 40, rue de Cléry furnished to receive her when she was ready to join him. There were two bedrooms, a “beautiful dining room,” an antechamber, “a handsomely furnished reception room,” an indoor lavatory (a luxury introduced from England), three bedrooms for servants, a kitchen, a coach house, a stable, and two cellars—one for firewood and the other for wine.2
A letter Eliza mailed in July left him unsure of her plans. “I still don’t know your intention—if you are going to decide to cross over again to France,” Stephen wrote on November 9. “These are not voyages to make every year.” But he would leave her free to make her own decision:
My intention is to finish my days in France. I don’t want to set down the law and say you must come back. But consider that separating like this isn’t right at all. Think now about what you have to do. I don’t want to tell you to sell the country house either, in case once [it is] sold, you are not able to have a similar property. Think about everything. I leave you mistress to do as you wish.
My love to Mary, and ask her to write me often. I know the trouble you have had with her mother. I know everything, even the loss of your horse, of the carriage. But all that is nothing. Think only of him who says to you that he is your faithful spouse for life.3
Stephen’s last paragraph suggests that Eliza’s life in New York was not without its trials—her relationship with her sister was sometimes rocky and she suffered frequently from migraine headaches.4 But she remained unwilling to return to France. In a letter of December 8, Eliza asked Stephen to obtain a forte piano and a harp for Mary. The request, carrying as it did an assumption that his wife and Mary would be staying in New York, prompted a rare expression of frustration from him: “Bed very uncomfortable for certain persons and for others it is nothing.”5 But he would look for two instruments and send them to New York: “You will be able to teach the birds that are outside the house.”6 Eliza should not, however, purchase a seven-hundred-dollar piano that she had mentioned to him. “Neither you nor Mary is famous for your playing. And you know how weak poor Mary is. It is not my fault. She has spent enough money, and I still pay in patience.”7 For the first time, Stephen’s kindness and tolerance gave way to open criticism.
“Think of all I have purchased,” he continued, “the crates, the packing, the carriage from Paris to Le Havre … the freight from Le Havre to New York. The storage in New York. The carriage from there to the country. The loss of the broken mirrors. You cannot imagine all of the expenditures … You must remember to economize.” For the first time, his closing—“I remain your faithful spouse”—feels almost perfunctory.8
By late March Stephen had regained some measure of composure. In response to a letter Eliza had written him on February 6, he acknowledged, “I don’t doubt that you think about me … You must. There isn’t a moment that I don’t think about it [i.e., their situation]. But my resolution is to stay in France, if we are at peace, as we are now. I think, as you do, that if your health is not good in France, I would not like to force you to come here.”9 But it was more than just her health, Stephen recognized: “You love the United States, and I, I don’t love crossing the ocean because all countries are agreeable to me.”10
At Mount Stephen Eliza kept a carriage, coachman, and housemaid.11 She took pleasure in planning improvements to the property. This year she wanted to plant peach trees and additional grapevines.12 But her husband was increasingly worried about her expenditures. America was experiencing its first full-scale financial crisis, the Panic of 1819. Excellent harvests in Europe had reduced demand for American commodities. Grain imports by Great Britain had decreased 75 percent between 1818 and 1819.13
The fiscal situation was worsened by a shortage of specie. U.S. and European banks were buying up gold and silver in response to demands by their respective governments that notes be exchangeable for hard currency.14 Merchants were affected by the currency shortage, tight credit, and falling prices. Deflation, unemployment, and falling wages reduced demand for, and affordability of, imported goods.15 Customs duties collected in the United States plunged from $36 to $13 million between 1816 and 1821.16
“I preach economy,” Stephen wrote, “and truly it is something that must be done, because I have not earned a sol [a small French coin] from my investments in the United States since my departure. I have even lost money on some, because the business crisis has been so bad. There have only been losses on top of losses … Do what is necessary, but no luxuries as in the past, because, truly, it is completely impossible for me to make any expenditures.”17
Stephen put his foot down on Eliza’s plans to move into their house at 150 Broadway, which his friend and fellow merchant James Durand was renting. Mary had told him in a letter of June 7 that “maman had been to New York to ask Mr. Desobry to give preference to her for the house Mr. Durand occupies. But the latter has orders from me to rent the house, and the rent must serve to cover the expenses of Madame Jumel. Voilà the orders given to Mr. Desobry.” Stephen encouraged Eliza to be happy where she was: “You can live tranquilly at Mount Stephen, because I know you love [to live in] retirement. God knows you have everything you need in the country house.” Her daily life must have felt increasingly remote to Stephen. “Tell Mary to continue to write to me in French,” he asked Eliza in July 1819. “She is absolutely right when she tells me I have forgotten English, because truly I have hardly spoken it for two years.”18 All of Stephen’s letters to Eliza were written in his native tongue.
The financial situation in the United States continued to deteriorate over the course of 1819. The Pery firm in Bordeaux, in which Stephen had a heavy investment, was owed one hundred thousand francs (twenty thousand dollars) in New York. The debtor was Stephen’s longtime business associate and tenant, Durand, and there was no certainty whether the money would be repaid.19 A business in Martinique owed the firm nearly as much.20 “It’s a plague,” Stephen wrote. “I will be obliged to go stay with my family in Mont-de-Marsan in order to not spend a thousand dollars a year. Imagine the business situation. We will have to wait on events with patience to know what I will lose.”21 He could no longer afford to keep young William Jones in France.22 This missive of September 1, 1819, is the last of Stephen’s surviving letters to his wife from the time period.
Eliza continued to vacillate over whether to return to Europe. “For two years Made Jumel and Mr Desobry have been telling me that she is going to come,” Stephen wrote to a business associate in 1820.23 But early that year, his wife was leaning toward departure. Perhaps she felt lonely living year-round in the countryside, as her desire to occupy the Broadway house might suggest. Or she may have found it difficult to maintain the living standard she preferred, given the strain on Stephen’s finances from the weak economy.
Eliza began to try to lease Mount Stephen. She had a potential renter for the mansion in mind: Joseph Bonaparte, who had reigned as king of Spain for five years while his brother, Napoleon I, was conquering Europe. Joseph had taken refuge in the United States after the fall of the First Empire and in 1816 had purchased a country estate in Bordentown, New Jersey. The beautifully decorated home, known as Point Breeze, had burned to the ground in an accidental fire in January 1820.24
Eliza was in contact with Bonaparte’s agent about the possibility of the dethroned monarch renting the Jumel mansion.25 Had the deal
gone through, she would have savored the social triumph—but the ex-monarch decided to rebuild Point Breeze. On March 25 he wrote to Eliza politely from Philadelphia:
Madame:
I am sorry for all the trouble you have taken in sending me a list of the furniture, and your kind offers of your beautiful country place, but since I have decided not to leave my estate in New Jersey, I can only reply by thanking you and renewing my compliments.
Joseph Bonaparte26
Eliza kept the brief note for the rest of her life.
Napoleon’s brother failing her, Eliza advertised the property for let in 1820 and early ’21, lauding the virtues of the “roomy and convenient mansion house,” “collection of superb Paintings,” “spacious ornamental garden,” and “vineyard of the best table grapes.”27 But she was unsuccessful in securing a tenant. There is no indication that she considered selling the estate, which would be hers for life if she survived Stephen. Ten years his junior, she could expect to outlive him and have the opportunity to return to her native land.
Ultimately Eliza had to arrange to auction the furniture and pictures—it would have been impractical to ship them back to France—and trust that an agent would be able to lease the vacant dwelling.28 An itemized list of the artworks was printed in advance, grandly titled Catalogue of original paintings, from Italian, Dutch, Flemish and French masters of the ancient and modern times, selected by the best judges from eminent galleries in Europe, and intended for a private gallery in America.29
When the sale took place on April 24, 1821, it attracted more rubberneckers than serious purchasers. Thanks to her return to Mount Stephen without her husband and the exhibition of her paintings at the Academy of the Fine Arts, Eliza had become the subject of gossip. It was probably around this time that the rumor began to circulate that she had tricked Stephen into marrying her. John Pintard, who, as we have seen, was the first to record the tale, wrote that the auction “attracted all the Ladies, as well to look at the pictures as at their decayed mistress.” His wife and younger daughter Louisa went “to see what is to be seen, with little inclination and less money to buy.” Although they acquired nothing, they “passed a very pleasant day & returned in the evening high[ly] delighted.”30
Too many other attendees left empty-handed as well. The American economy was still fragile after the Panic of 1819.31 The mixed reception of the artworks at the 1817 exhibition may have affected their salability in particular. According to Pintard, Eliza’s paintings “were considered pas grandes choses” (i.e., nothing much) when they were exhibited at the Academy of the Fine Arts.32 The comment suggests that John Rubens Smith’s cranky reviews had biased potential purchasers against them. A tale that the paintings had belonged to Cardinal Joseph Fesch before Eliza acquired them—a story she must have circulated in an attempt to boost their sale value—wasn’t enough to create strong demand.33 (There is no indication that more than one or two, at most, were owned previously by that avid art collector, an uncle of Napoleon.)34
Two months later Eliza put the remainder of her once-cherished possessions, imported from France at great expense, up for sale at the Park Hall Auction Room. At 10 am, potential purchasers could bid on
a splendid assortment of elegant Furniture, Paintings, Looking Glasses, &c. the property of the family going to Europe, consisting of 2 large canopy bedsteads, mahogany and gilt, 3 dozen elegant mahogany chairs, satin backs and bottoms, latest French fashion; 2 large looking glasses, 1 elegant cut glass chandelier, 2 down beds [i.e., mattresses], 2 hair mattresses, 1 hand organ, 1 marble statue, 2 glass stands, 2 bathing tubs, a large collection of original paintings of the most celebrated European masters, &c. &c. Sale peremptory for cash.35
Eliza’s “elegant barouche and pair of horses” was also available, and would be auctioned at Byrnes Repository in Walker Street.36
Ten or twelve of the paintings and possibly some of the furnishings returned unsold to the mansion on Harlem Heights.37 But it would not have been Eliza who reinstalled them. On June 16, two days after the auctions, she and Mary sailed for Europe.38
18
PLACE VENDÔME
In a letter book Stephen used during the 1820s, a short sentence is penned among notations relating to business: “I love my dear uncle Stephen very much.”1 The tribute was written by Stephen’s youngest niece, Felicie Lagardere.
During Eliza’s four-year absence in the United States, Stephen was in regular contact with his extended family in Mont-de-Marsan. As early as 1809 he had sent money from New York to pay for a house for his brother François.2 More recently he had become close to his sister Madelaine’s daughters, Felicie and Rose, and the latter’s husband, Jean Lesparre Jeantet. He trusted Lesparre, a cloth merchant, to handle business matters for him in Mont-de-Marsan, and wrote to him regularly when away from his hometown.3
In late May 1821, as Eliza wound up her affairs in New York, Stephen made an important contribution to his own family’s welfare. Twenty-four-year-old Felicie had only a modest dowry, an income of three hundred francs per year. Stephen made possible her marriage with a wealthy landowner by promising the couple fifteen thousand francs, to be paid a year after his death.4
Before the summer ended, Eliza, now forty-six, had rejoined her husband. In 1821 or ’22 the Jumels moved to 16, place Vendôme, a more elegant address than the rue de Clèry. Planned at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, who designed much of the royal domain of Versailles, the square was lined on all sides by attached townhouses boasting mansard roofs and uniform façades. In the center, a 133-foot-tall column covered with bas-reliefs commemorated the French conquest of the German states during the Napoleonic wars. Although the monument was crowned originally with a statue of Napoleon, the white flag of the restored Bourbon monarchy was fluttering gaily from its peak by the time the Jumels settled in the place Vendôme. A “delightful” view of Paris and its suburbs was available from a gallery encircling the top of the column.5
Number sixteen, the townhouse the Jumels rented, had been inhabited for a time in the eighteenth century by Antoine Mesmer, a pioneering advocate of hypnotism (originally known after him as “mesmerism”).6 During the Napoleonic period, it was leased to senior officials passing through Paris.7 The French Ministry of Justice was (and is still) located on the opposite side of the square, visible from the Jumels’ windows.
Eliza circulated in Parisian society, renewing her earlier connections. The marquis de Cubières had died of a stroke on August 10, 1821, but Eliza stayed in contact with his widow and daughters.8 Adèle wrote to her from the country one day: “Maman is definitely going to Paris tomorrow. She has promised to dine there, but Henriette and I will have the pleasure of dining with you if that suits you, as long as it can be around four o’clock.” Their mother wanted to return home the same evening. “As soon as we arrive, we will hurry to join you,” Adèle added, “so then we can do our shopping together.”9
Another evening might have found Eliza visiting a neighbor in the place Vendôme: “Mde Butler presents her compliments to M. and Madame Jumell [sic] and Mademoiselle their Niece, and requests the pleasure of their company at her house next Tuesday evening.”10
Now that Mary was an adult—she turned twenty in 1821—she could join Eliza for more than family parties. Rosalie Pinel, a close friend of the marquise de la Suze (who persisted in her attempts to convert Eliza to Catholicism), arranged an escort for them for a special event: “I have the promise of two tickets for six o’clock, for you and Miss Mary, and besides that, a cavalier whom you will find most agreeable and who will be delighted to accompany you. He is Mons. the General Controller. He will be in uniform.”11 Since a uniformed official had the entrée to court, they may have been attending a levee or official function.12
An evening at the opera offered another opportunity for a brush with royalty. In an undated letter, Adèle wrote excitedly to Eliza, “We have just learned, madame, that the king will go Tuesday to the Grand Opera … I h
asten to tell you of it, because the boxes are very quickly sold out as soon as this news is known in Society.” Would Mr. Jumel please engage a box right away? she asked. “I have the honor to remind him that the king, at present, does not go to the fine Royal Box that we so greatly admire, but that they have set aside for him a big one where gather all the princes and the service, right in the middle of the auditorium at the front of the theater.”13
“The service” referred to the well-born gentlemen, military officers, and civil servants in immediate attendance on the king. Posts in the king’s train were sought-after honors, because their occupants received admission to court, as well as reflected glory from proximity to the monarch.14 Thus madame d’Egvilly informed Eliza with pride that her husband, who bore the title of maître d’hotel (making him a sort of glorified steward in the royal household), could not accept an invitation because he was at the Tuileries Palace: “He is on duty serving the king and cannot budge from the château.”15
Eliza wished that she could brag in the same way about her own husband. An undated sheet survives on which she drafted a letter to Louis XVIII:
Sire:
Every time I have had the honor of seeing your Majesty, the graciousness with which you have deigned to notice my carriage and the great kindness with which you bow to me, makes me feel like writing to you. But once out of your presence, courage fails me. The return of your Majesty—day [sic] I have so ardently wished for—caused me so much joy that I seem to be inspired with new courage to present a petition in favor of my husband.
The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel Page 10