In the year 1822 M. Jumel lost a considerable part of his fortune, and
madame returned alone to New York, bringing with her a prodigious
quantity of grand furniture and paintings. Retiring to a seat in the
upper part of Manhattan Island, which she possest in her own
right,[46] she began with native energy the task of restoring her
husband's broken fortunes. She cultivated her farm; she looked
vigilantly to the remains of the estate; she economized. In 1828, when
M. Jumel returned to the United States, they were not as rich as in
former days, but their estate was ample for all rational purposes and
enjoyments. In 1832 M. Jumel, a man of magnificent proportions, very
handsome, and perfectly preserved (a great waltzer at seventy), was
thrown from a wagon and fatally injured. He died in a few days. Madame
was then little past her prime.
[Footnote 45: From the "Life of Burr."]
[Footnote 46: Still standing on an eminence near High Bridge and
popularly known as the Jumel House, tho it would more properly be
called the Morris House. It was built by Col. Roger Morris of the
British army after the old French war, his wife being Mary Philipse,
of Philipse Manor, a former sweetheart of Washington. During
Washington's sojourn in New York in 1776 it became his headquarters.
It is now owned by New York City and has become a museum of historical
relics.]
There was talk of cholera in the city. Madame Jumel resolved upon
taking a carriage tour in the country. Before setting out she wished
to take legal advice respecting some real estate, and as Colonel
Burr's reputation in that department was preeminent, to his office in
Reade street she drove. In other days he had known her well, and tho
many an eventful year had passed since he had seen her, he recognized
her at once. He received her in his courtliest manner, complimented
her with admirable tact, listened with soft deference to her
statement. He was the ideal man of business--confidential,
self-possest, polite--giving his client the flattering impression that
the faculties of his whole soul were concentrated upon the affair in
hand. She was charmed, yet feared him. He took the papers, named the
day when his opinion would be ready, and handed her to her carriage
with winning grace. At seventy-eight years of age, he was still
straight, active, agile, fascinating.
On the appointed day she sent to his office a relative, a student of
law, to receive his opinion. This young gentleman, timid and
inexperienced, had an immense opinion of Burr's talents; had heard all
good and all evil of him; supposed him to be, at least, the acutest of
possible men. He went. Burr behaved to him in a manner so exquisitely
pleasing that, to this hour, he has the liveliest recollection of the
scene. No topic was introduced but such as were familiar and
interesting to young men. His manners were such as this age of slangy
familiarity can not so much as imagine. The young gentleman went home
to Madame Jumel only to extol and glorify him.
Madame and her party began their journey, revisiting Ballston,
whither, in former times, she had been wont to go in a chariot drawn
by eight horses; visiting Saratoga, then in the beginning of its
celebrity, where, in exactly ten minutes after her arrival, the
decisive lady bought a house and all it contained. Returning to New
York to find that her mansion had been despoiled by robbers in her
absence, she lived for a while in the city. Colonel Burr called upon
the young gentleman who had been madame's messenger, and, after their
acquaintance had ripened, said to him, "Come into my office; I can
teach you more in a year than you can learn in ten in an ordinary
way." The proposition being submitted to Madame Jumel, she, anxious
for the young man's advancement, gladly and gratefully consented. He
entered the office. Burr kept him close at his books. He did teach him
more in a year than he could have learned in ten in an ordinary way.
Burr lived then in Jersey City. His office (23 Nassau street) swarmed
with applicants for aid, and he seemed now to have quite lost the
power of refusing. In no other respects, bodily or mental, did he
exhibit signs of decrepitude.
Some months passed on without his again meeting Madame Jumel. At the
suggestion of the student, who felt exceedingly grateful to Burr for
the solicitude with which he assisted in his studies, Madame Jumel
invited Colonel Burr to dinner. It was a grand banquet, at which he
displayed all the charms of his manner, and shone to conspicuous
advantage. On handing to dinner the giver of the feast, he said: "I
give you my hand, madame; my heart has long been yours." This was
supposed to be merely a compliment, and was little remarked at the
time. Colonel Burr called upon the lady; called frequently; became
ever warmer in his attentions; proposed, at length, and was refused.
He still plied his suit, however, and obtained at last, not the lady's
consent, but an undecided No. Improving his advantage on the instant,
he said, in a jocular manner, that he should bring out a clergyman to
Fort Washington on a certain day, and there he would once more solicit
her hand.
He was as good as his word. At the time appointed, he drove out in his
gig to the lady's country residence, accompanied by Dr. Bogart, the
very clergyman who, just fifty years before, had married him to the
mother of his Theodosia. The lady was embarrassed, and still refused.
But then the scandal! And, after all, why not? Her estate needed a
vigilant guardian, and the old house was lonely. After much
hesitation, she at length consented to be drest, and to receive her
visitors. And she was married. The ceremony was witnessed only by the
members of Madame Jumel's family, and by the eight servants of the
household, who peered eagerly in at the doors and windows. The
ceremony over, Mrs. Burr ordered supper. Some bins of M. Jumel's
wine-cellar, that had not been opened for half a century, were laid
under contribution. The little party was a very merry one. The parson,
in particular, it is remembered, was in the highest spirits,
overflowing with humor and anecdote. Except for Colonel Burr's great
age (which was not apparent), the match seemed not an unwise one. The
lurking fear he had had of being a poor and homeless old man was put
to rest. She had a companion who had been ever agreeable, and her
estate a steward than whom no one living was supposed to be more
competent.
As a remarkable circumstance connected with this marriage, it may be
just mentioned that there was a woman in New York who had aspired to
the hand of Colonel Burr, and who, when she heard of his union with
another, wrung her hands and shed tears! A feeling of that nature can
seldom, since the creation of man, have been excited by the marriage
of a man on the verge of fourscore.
A few days after the wedding the "happy pair" paid a visit to
Connecticut, of which State a nephew of Colonel Burr was then
governor. They were received with attention. At Hartford Burr advised
his wife to sell out her shares in the bridge over the Connecticut at
that place, and invest the proceeds in real estate. She ordered them
sold. The stock was in demand, and the shares brought several thousand
dollars. The purchasers offered to pay her the money, but she said,
"No; pay it to my husband." To him, accordingly, it was paid, and he
had it sewed up in his pocket, a prodigious bulk, and brought it to
New York, and deposited it in his own bank, to his own credit.
Texas was then beginning to attract the tide of emigration which, a
few years later, set so strongly thither. Burr had always taken a
great interest in that country. Persons with whom he had been
variously connected in life had a scheme on foot for settling a large
colony of Germans on a tract of land in Texas. A brig had been
chartered, and the project was in a state of forwardness, when the
possession of a sum of money enabled Burr to buy shares in the
enterprise. The greater part of the money which he had brought from
Hartford was invested in this way. It proved a total loss. The time
had not yet come for emigration to Texas. The Germans became
discouraged and separated, and, to complete the failure of the scheme,
the title of the lands in the confusion of the times proved defective.
Meanwhile madame, who was a remarkably thrifty woman, with a talent
for the management of property, wondered that her husband made no
allusion to the subject of the investment; for the Texas speculation
had not been mentioned to her. She caused him to be questioned on the
subject. He begged to intimate to the lady's messenger that it was no
affair of hers, and requested him to remind the lady that she now had
a husband to manage her affairs, and one who would manage them.
Coolness between the husband and wife was the result of this colloquy.
Then came remonstrances. Then estrangement. Burr got into the habit of
remaining at his office in the city. Then partial reconciliation. Full
of schemes and speculations to the last, without retaining any of his
former ability to operate successfully, he lost more money, and more,
and more. The patience of the lady was exhausted. She filed a
complaint accusing him of infidelity, and praying that he might have
no more control or authority over her affairs. The accusation is now
known to have been groundless; nor, indeed, at the time was it
seriously believed. It was used merely as the most convenient legal
mode of depriving him of control over her property. At first he
answered the complaint vigorously, but afterward he allowed it to go
by default, and proceedings were carried no further. A few short weeks
of happiness, followed by a few months of alternate estrangement and
reconciliation, and this union, that began not inauspiciously, was, in
effect, tho never in law, dissolved. What is strangest of all is that
the lady, tho she never saw her husband during the last two years of
his life, cherished no ill-will toward him, and shed tears at his
death. To this hour Madame Jumel thinks and speaks of him with
kindness, attributing what was wrong or unwise in his conduct to the
infirmities of age.
Men of seventy-eight have been married before and since. But,
probably, never has there been another instance of a man of that age
winning a lady of fortune and distinction, grieving another by his
marriage, and exciting suspicions of incontinence against himself by
his attentions to a third!