20 
20 Eliza had the tenacity of a bulldog when anyone owed her money. “I have tormented Mr. Murry [sic] so much that he gave me a note payable in six months for 275 dollars,” she wrote to Stephen, possibly referring to their neighbor John R. Murray. It wasn’t all he owed them, but as Eliza informed Stephen, if she had insisted on having everything, she would have received nothing: “Mr. Hoffman even said to me that I couldn’t claim anything, Murray having taken the Act du bénéfice [probably: filed for bankruptcy], but the rascals can’t escape me.”1
She worried that Stephen might be too lenient in her absence, as he pursued his creditors on the opposite side of the Atlantic: “You have not spoken about Mr. Rome. How is he? Is he still your friend or has he changed like the others; and have you taken another in his place? Don’t fail to tell me frankly how your affairs are progressing and if you have collected the money people owe you. I hope that you have as much firmness and perseverance as I.”2
Stephen was in fact having difficulty collecting on business debts. He offered to settle for 15 percent of what one creditor, Mr. Blanchard, owed him, but he had waited too long. “At present I can’t get five,” he wrote to Eliza. He wasn’t going to pursue the debt, he explained, because it would cost him at least one hundred francs in legal fees, probably without any payoff in the end: “I judge that everything is lost.”3
Nor was he making progress in collecting funds from Peter Pillero, a merchant who had long been his business contact in Havana. Although the consulate had named five arbiters to rule on their financial dispute, two had refused to serve. Then “Monsieur Pillero recused three of them,” Stephen informed Eliza, “claiming that these gentlemen, being my friends, could only condemn him. Voilà: all that doesn’t give me any money.”4
To cut costs, Stephen sublet his and Eliza’s apartment in the place Vendôme to a Madame Smith for six months. “They need four beds placed there for their family,” he told Eliza. “As you know, there are five girls and a son. The last will sleep in the office; the mother in your bed with one girl; two other girls in my bedroom. I had to put another bed next to the dining room, where the general slept before we had the apartment. I am obliged to place a carpet in the salon at my expense. These are expenditures, but [they] are necessary in order to be able to rent it.”5
Stephen hoped that he might be able to raise funds by reversing a sale made in New York in 1819 by Benjamin Desobry.6 Back in 1813 Eliza and Stephen had transferred a plot of land on what is today the Upper West Side of Manhattan to St. Peter’s Church for use as an Ursuline convent. The venture proved unsuccessful. The church never paid for the land, and the convent’s nuns returned to Ireland in 1816. Desobry filed a lawsuit on Stephen’s behalf in 1818, resulting in the foreclosure and sale of the land at auction, with the proceeds to be used to compensate Stephen.7
In the normal course of events, a foreclosed property would be purchased by a proxy of the owner and returned to him. At this auction, however, although Desobry was the high bidder at three thousand dollars, he didn’t return the parcel to Stephen. Instead, he resold the land for seven thousand dollars, using three thousand to pay off a debt of his own and crediting the remaining four thousand to Stephen.8 The transaction was questionable, at a minimum: he didn’t own the land originally and had no business profiting from it. It was one more frustration for Stephen, and left him bitter at his former associate, who died penniless in October 1825.9 “Please God that he may do penance in the other world for my money,” Stephen wrote to Lesparre.10
Others he had helped in the past betrayed him also. Mr. Fenet of Bordeaux “owes me nearly $8000 of money loaned in New York to assist him in getting out of jail after he failed,” Stephen told Lesparre. “He came to France and conveyed all his property to his wife. I cannot make a claim for I have not the books; they were in Desobry’s hands as you know; he is dead; they have been sequestered; I have claimed them for more than a year; I cannot get them; I have only a statement of 1815.”11
Stephen even found himself engaged in a lawsuit against the now-elderly Jean Pery, with whom he had done business cordially for so many years. The dispute, which he hoped they could settle in arbitration, concerned commissions Pery had collected on six of Stephen’s ships that had picked up cargo in Bordeaux during the War of 1812.12 Years had passed, but over two thousand dollars were at stake, and these days Stephen needed the money.
Family matters were not running smoothly either. Stephen was pursuing a claim for reparations from the government of Haiti (the country that was once Saint-Domingue) for the plantations that had been owned by his uncle Jacques Sonier. But the claim process was likely to drag on for years. To raise cash in the meantime, he hoped to sell a house in Mont-de-Marsan that he had purchased for his brother François in 1809. François, unsurprisingly, was not eager to give up something that was treated originally as a gift rather than a loan. Stephen took the matter to court and lost.13
It was unlike him to try to reverse something that he had done out of kindness and family affection. That he proceeded in the matter at all says something of the financial pressures he faced in 1826, but also reflects his growing exasperation with his brother, who possessed none of Stephen’s determination and drive. As a young man in Saint-Domingue, François had fathered one or two children with slave women and was so lazy that his uncle had kicked him out of the house.14 After the insurrection on the island, he was given a second chance. He won his aunt’s gratitude by escorting her back to France and was rewarded with a property called Ages, near Mont-de-Marsan, which otherwise would have been the joint inheritance of him, Stephen, and their sister, Madelaine.15 François did little with the gift, however, preferring instead to complain of his poverty and with his wife—a woman he had married after returning to France—hang on Stephen’s sleeve. At a point when Stephen (briefly) considered appealing the verdict about the ownership of the Mont-de-Marsan house, he wrote in frustration to Lesparre:
If I make my claim, it is on account of the badness of the wife of François Jumel, and for no other reason; only to put down that pride, which has full control over her; for but for me—and I mention it without criticism—they would be at Ages planting cabbages; but the sacks of coffee, the boxes of sugar, and even four thousand francs a year which I sent them! And still more, when he wrote me to send money to buy cows, sheep, and oxen, and that the armies in passing through your country had taken away all your cattle, and also to buy a farm, which being purchased, would increase the value of his place at Ages. But instead of increasing his prosperity, it has been reversed; he has sold one property, or part of one.16
“But all this does not amount to anything,” he concluded. “I wish he may enjoy as good health as myself.”17 Even in his worst fits of exasperation, Stephen never held a grudge for long.
As he struggled with recalcitrant creditors in France, Stephen placed his faith in Eliza to collect money for him and improve the management of their lands in the United States. He seems to have assumed that after doing so she would return to France. In October 1826 he wrote to Lesparre about a desirable landholding not far from Mont-de-Marsan that he thought might make him and Eliza a pleasant home as they aged. He suspected that the property would be on the market soon—it included an old castle, a mill, a vineyard, and other dependencies—and in spite of his financial constraints, the prospect of buying it was tempting. It would be his wife’s decision, he told Lesparre, but “as for myself, I would like to obtain from her a favorable answer. If her intention were to purchase it,” he continued,
I would spend the remainder of my days in the castle, enjoying some hunting parties with you, especially foxhunting; you would not miss them; since you are so skillful in shooting partridges, you could not fail to shoot foxes. It would also be a foothold for Texoeres [the husband of Stephen’s niece Felicie]; he could sleep there when on his way to Mont-de-Marsan; but I fear it will not please Mrs. Jumel; three months hence [i.e., time for a letter to reach her and be answered] we will know something about it.18
Her reply to Stephen does not survive, but must have been negative; he speaks no more of the property. Eliza had begun to nudge Stephen to give up France for New York, just as she had done during her previous visit to the United States. As early as summer 1826, she wrote, “On reflection, I find that America offers more real happiness for our old age. Nevertheless I leave it to you to decide where we shall live after I have arranged our affairs.”19 Although her words suggested that she was leaving the decision to Stephen, soon she became more direct about her preferences. “Please let me know in your next if you believe I will have the happiness of having you here next spring, because I would wish that everything be in good order for your arrival,” she wrote on September 21.20 Here there is no more uncertainty about where “we” shall live, but rather an implication that the decision (at least hers) was made and only the exact time that Stephen would join her was in question. Her next sentence, however, reveals that she knew that he preferred to remain in France and that changing his mind would be difficult. “I beg you to quit that horrible country and come to the abode of happiness,” she implored him, “where we can enjoy a peaceful and tranquil life, because our small income will suffice for our needs.”21
Eliza did not explain how France had become “that horrible country” to her. Given her desire to socialize in fashionable circles and possess an aristocratic title, it is easy to imagine her brooding over slights and exclusions. The fact that she saved such trifles as three notes from the marquise de Vernon (wife of an associate of the marquis de Cubières)—each a polite refusal of an invitation—suggests both the value she placed on contacts with French aristocrats and the difficulty of building alliances with little social capital except wealth.22 Although two letters to Eliza from the duchesse de Berry, written in Dieppe in 1825, imply that she achieved an introduction to this member of the royal family (daughter-in-law of the newly crowned Charles X), there is no indication that theirs was a close relationship.23 In spite of her pleasure in boasting of ties to the high and mighty—for example, her claim in 1821 that her artworks had belonged to Cardinal Fesch—Eliza’s social triumphs may have glittered more brightly in the retelling than in the uncomfortable reality.
Three months after her arrival in New York, Eliza had not sent Stephen any funds. She excused herself in a letter: “First of all, I have not yet received any rents,” she informed him with regard to their houses downtown. “Mme Newport brought several accounts for the repairs, which ate up the rent, and the quarter that was in arrears, it was agreed between her and Mr. Brunel to give it to her because of the yellow fever.”24
In addition, Eliza had decided to bring a family of farmers from Cherry Valley to work the Harlem Heights farms that Nodine and Parsons had rented previously. Since she wanted to put a herd of sheep, thirty cows, and a pair of horses on the lands, the plan would involve an outlay of funds rather than an immediate profit.25
Plus, she added, she would need to spend money on the mansion. The entryway was “falling into ruin,” she reported. “The posts and columns are rotted and it will be absolutely necessary to replace them with new ones.” The fences would have to be repaired as well. She had two hundred dollars on hand that she was trying “to save for these repairs,” but “if you have great need of it,” she told Stephen, “it is to you that it will be destined instead.” It “being little in comparison with what you request is why I haven’t sent it to you; but I will send it, if you prefer to have it, in place of it going for those repairs of Mt Stephen. Be sure I will do everything that depends on me for your satisfaction and happiness.”26
“For your satisfaction and happiness”—the words were easy to say, but Eliza’s conduct did not fully support them. At the beginning of December, she told Stephen that the mansion’s wallpaper was in shreds, and she would need to re-paper two rooms and the front hall. For the hall, would he send wallpaper decorated with gray columns and another printed with blue sky and clouds for the background? “For the other papers, I leave them to your choice, as they are cheaper in Paris than in New York.”27
Given that the extensible purpose of Eliza’s trip to the United States was to raise money for her husband, her desire to allocate funds for wallpaper rings off-key. In every letter she stressed her efforts to raise cash for him and her attachment to his interests, but she continued to spend rather than save.
By now Stephen needed five thousand dollars badly.28 Eliza assured him on January 1, 1827, that she would do her utmost to provide the funds: “I quitted my bedchamber that I had not left for six weeks, sick as I was; I took myself to Monsieur Phillipon [sic] and employed all my eloquence so that he would help me procure the sum you ask of me.”29 Philippon tried to get a loan from Stephen’s friend Mr. Salle, but without success. “Money is extremely rare here,” Eliza told Stephen. “Everyone being in financial distress,” even “friendship itself [is] set aside … And you can easily conceive that those who have money right now don’t want to loan it at 7 percent,” when companies in need of cash were offering 15.30 The Panic of 1825 had taken its toll.
She thought that their agent James Morse might purchase their lands in Cherry Valley “at a 12 percent loss,” but she was still waiting to hear from him. “And if I can obtain the money from him, it will be sent to you immediately,” she assured Stephen, “because I am so tormented for that sum to send to you that I can’t sleep at night. And I believe that if Capt. Macy [her trustee] was in New York right now, I would be capable of mortgaging the Broadway houses, even though I always promised myself not to do it, but if I do, what will we have to live on in our old age? Think carefully about that.”31 In fact, Stephen had already mortgaged the buildings for six thousand dollars in 1824. 32
Eliza preferred to raise cash by selling forty shares of stock Stephen owned in the Hartford Bridge Company, a joint-stock corporation formed in 1809 to build a toll bridge over the Connecticut River.33 Although the shares had paid a reliable quarterly dividend since 1811, Eliza had been eager to unload them ever since arriving in the United States. She had no personal stake in them and disposing of them was preferable to encumbering real estate she might have a claim on after Stephen’s death.
Finalizing a sale proved problematic, however. In fall 1821 Stephen had transferred the stock to his nephew-in-law Lesparre.34 The timing, only a few months after he had made a generous marriage settlement on his niece Felicie, suggests that he wanted to make a comparable gesture to Felicie’s sister—Lesparre’s wife, Rose.
The transfer stalled any potential sale. “Mr. Brunel absolutely refused to sell the Hartford Bridge stock,” Eliza wrote, “without a letter of authorization from Mr. Lesparre, specifying that the money from the sale be delivered to Stephen Jumel as belonging to him.”35 She requested repeatedly that her husband obtain such a document. “You say nothing to me of Mr. Lesparre,” she complained on December 1, 1826. Have him “send an order to sell or dispose of the Hartford Bridge shares as you would like, otherwise be sure we will lose them in the same way that we lost the house in Mont-de-Marsan. Don’t trust anyone because we need everything that remains to us for ourselves.”36 The implication was clear: generosity to Stephen’s family should not outweigh their own needs. She returned to the subject on New Year’s Day: “Again I repeat to you to send the power of attorney and orders from Mr. Lesparre as soon as possible, because Mr. Lathrop, I believe, will buy or take the shares as mentioned above.”37
Stephen left these demands from Eliza unanswered. Given how badly he needed money by 1827, his failure to facilitate a sale suggests that he intended the stock to be Lesparre and Rose’s inheritance and would not go back on that decision. Rose’s husband had become Stephen’s confidant, a relative he treated in many ways like a son.
In February 1827 François Jumel’s son Étienne (called Ulysses in the family), a hardworking young man who had a close relationship with his uncle Stephen, wrote to his father about the latter’s troubles:
My uncle is just now at Dieppe, where living is better and cheaper than at Paris. I know also that it is very necessary for him to economize, for when Mrs. Jumel sailed for the United States, like a good and confiding husband, he gave her full and complete power of attorney to collect all the income of his property. Since his chaste wife left, and it is nearly one year since she sailed, my poor uncle has not received one cent from her; on the contrary, after she had received all the back rents due by tenants, she obtained advances from them. She is spending the whole, leaving her husband in France in quite a critical position. Thus you perceive that want may be felt even with a large fortune.38
Ulysses and Eliza did not get along well, so any reading of this paragraph must take his biases into account.39 Moreover, there is contemporary evidence that Eliza had not exaggerated the difficulty of wringing money from the Jumel farmlands in central New York. In February 1827 Morse had notified Eliza that most of her and Stephen’s tenants were in arrears, and he had been unable to unload any of the property: “I have been to Albany, and have tried also to negotiate a sale with people here; but I find it impossible to sell the bonds and mortgages at the discount you propose or even at any other discount. People in the city will not at present advance money on bonds or mortgages in the country, and there is no one in the country that I can find has money at present to invest in this way.”40
But with rental income coming in from the downtown houses, it seems that Eliza could have managed to send Stephen something. Instead she sent excuses: “I offered my diamonds for sale, but no one wanted to give me virtually anything for them.”41 She stressed her frugality: “I have neither horses nor cook, [we are] doing all the work ourselves [she and Mary]. Mr. Phillipon tells me that it is truly shameful to come into town on the diligence and run about on foot and offered to loan me enough to buy some horses, but I refused him, not wanting to be in debt to anyone.”42 She pressed again for the sale of the Hartford Bridge Company stock: “That will be a sacrifice but there is no other way to have the sum that you request.”43
By fall Stephen had become frustrated with her evasions. Instead of one of his usual detailed letters, addressed to “my dear Eliza” and including a thoughtful inquiry about her health, a half-page letter dated October 14 opens with the unadorned salutation “Madame Jumel.” To Stephen’s displeasure, she had told Philippon that she was not able to supply the money her husband had requested. Stephen disagreed: “if you are economical, you don’t need anyone’s help to remit to me the sum that I need, of which I have received the larger part. I count on your economies to supply it and to remit me as promptly as possible four to five thousand francs [i.e., eight hundred to one thousand dollars], having the greatest need of it.”44
If Eliza supplied the funds requested, there is no indication of it. On December 23 Stephen wrote her again, once more addressing her frigidly as Madame Jumel. He had just signed a note for four hundred dollars and required her help: “For the moment, I beg you, [if] you can, to send me double that amount. It would be to pull me out of a very great embarrassment, because I expected a decision from Havana a long time ago, in order to receive some funds. I count on your exactitude to remit the two thousand francs …”45
Their surviving correspondence from the period ends with this letter.