The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel (36 page)

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, played the starring role in this drama.

34

L
ess 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