My friend Camilla Saly has an exciting new anthology coming out with my publisher Riverdale Avenue Books, which I wrote this post about a few months ago. The Morris-Jumel Mansion has a special place in Camilla’s heart, as well as its once mistress Eliza Jumel…who happens to be a namesake for the Eliza in my Wicked Wednesday series! I invited Camilla to come tell us all about the magic of Eliza Jumel and the history of her home, which will take place front and center in her anthology!
I fall more and more in love with Eliza the more I get to know her: Eliza Jumel, I mean, owner of the house on the hill, the Morris-Jumel Mansion.
Eliza’s house is at 65 Jumel Terrace, right behind St. Nicholas Avenue, a few steps from the 163rd Street C-Train stop in Washington Heights. When I say it is Eliza’s house, I don’t mean it was Eliza’s house. I mean it is Eliza’s house – it still is. She may have been dead since 1865, but it is as much Eliza’s house as it ever was.
Whenever I go there, I give a gracious greeting and a courteous farewell, ask permission or pardon when necessary and make sure to mind my p’s and q’s. I know she is watching.
Children see Eliza more easily than adults do. I feel her presence at each visit, but they’ve seen her. Even as recently as a few months ago school children saw her move a candlestick across a mantelpiece without anyone touching it. The Mansion is surrounded by a lovely, small park: the only remaining portion of her original 130 acres, and Eliza has been known to chastise children who are playing loudly in her grounds, showing herself at the balcony, calling for them to “shut up!” when they become too boisterous. She expects that children should mind their manners. She conveys a clear message to us moderns about what she feels is acceptable behavior, and what is not.
My husband Mark and I were married at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in the summer of 2015. The date of our wedding fell, incidentally, on the day of the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. On our day we reserved a chair in a place of honor for Eliza Jumel. Her story was part of our ceremony, and we provided details about her life in our wedding program. We felt honored and proud that Eliza would share her house with us for the afternoon.
Eliza Jumel was a brave, sexual, powerful woman who dared, uncompromisingly, to be herself at a time when women rarely did so. She was sexual, smart, business savvy and eccentric, long before American society would begin to recognize a woman’s right to political, social and sexual self-agency.
Let me tell you a little more about her. Eliza Jumel was born Eliza “Betsey” Bowen in a Providence, Rhode Island brothel, to Phebe Kelley Bowen on April 7, 1775. Her mother’s madam was a free Black woman, and Eliza grew up “in the life.” At seventeen, Betsey Bowen was illiterate. Upon her reappearance in New York City a few years later, she both read and wrote in French and English. After a brief career on the stage as what today we would call an “extra,” she gained the reputation as “Manhattan’s greatest beauty.” Soon she met French merchant Stephen Jumel, twenty-five years her senior. Jumel’s fortune came from selling fine wines from France to the American colonies. She lived “in sin” with Jumel as his mistress for four years, until, fearing abandonment, she feigned illness, and, in a deathbed seduction scene straight out of a romance novel, begged her lover as a “last request” to make her “an honest woman.” He succumbed, married her, and the next morning Eliza sprung out of bed, her illness ‘miraculously’ healed. With her marriage to Stephen Jumel in 1804 she gained legitimacy, but despite her beauty and wealth she was repeatedly rejected by New York society, who knew of her checkered past.
In 1810 the Jumels purchased the Morris house on Harlem’s Heights. Built by Roger Morris in 1765, a Royalist to the British Crown, the house was abandoned by the Morris Family, who fled the United States when New York began to heat up with the stirrings of Revolutionary War. Subsequently, it quartered General George Washington during the Battle of Harlem Heights, from whence he commanded his troops. It also took a brief turn as an inn, and, in the early days of the US Government, was a gathering place for many of the “Founding Fathers.”
The Jumels travelled back and forth to France, and Stephen remained there at length, while Eliza returned to New York and the mansion with Stephen Jumel’s power of attorney as a “femme sole,” a special status usually afforded to unmarried women, wherein she had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. Once in New York, through power of attorney, she entitled herself to all profit and control of the entire Jumel estate. With great business acumen, Eliza bought and sold real estate, tripling the Jumel fortune. In 1832, Stephen Jumel died in an accident. Fourteen months after her husband’s death, Eliza Jumel married the controversial former United States Vice President Aaron Burr. She married to increase her stature by marrying the former vice president and “founding father;” he married for access to her fortune. Burr squandered Eliza’s money with alarming rapacity. Eliza filed for divorce in 1834, utilizing the suspicion of adultery as cause—an action that prompted one historian to marvel, “Nothing more vividly revealed her business ability than the efficiency with which she got rid of Burr.” The divorce was granted on September 14, 1836, the day of Burr’s death. Madame Jumel lived the rest of her life in the mansion, where her increasing eccentricities gained her notoriety throughout the countryside. She died there in 1865 at the age of 90.
An almost life-sized portrait is prominently displayed inside the mansion of Madame Eliza Jumel. It gives an unmistakable fierceness and strength to her countenance. You surely wouldn’t want to cross her, but despite that no-nonsense appearance, throughout her life she showed great compassion, adopting her sister’s children, and employing Anne Northrop, wife of Solomon Northrop (12 Years A Slave), and providing a place in the house for her and her children while Anne’s husband was imprisoned. Eliza Jumel was anti-slavery and pro women’s rights. In life, she was flamboyant, sexual, smart, and uncompromisingly herself: an empowered woman, a strong woman, a kindred spirit.
CALL FOR STORY SUBMISSIONS:
It is with a great sense of gratitude to Mme. Jumel that I find myself editor of an anthology of paranormal romance and fantasy fiction based on her home, the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan’s oldest house.
Requirements:
The stories must prominently feature the Morris-Jumel Mansion, in the past, the present, future, or in an alternate universe, and may include its historical inhabitants (including Madame Eliza Jumel, Stephen Jumel, Aaron Burr, and other Revolutionary War and pre-Revolutionary War characters, slaves and servants), the Mansion’s visitors, fictional or otherwise, and/or hauntings, visitations, or supernatural beings (including angels, devils, werewolves, vampires, etc), with elements of time-travel, science fiction, erotica/romance, paranormal, steampunk, or gaslamp fantasy.
The deadline for story submissions is June 30th. For more specifics about the anthology, click here. For information about visiting the Mansion, which is now a museum, click here. I am also happy to personally provide a tour of the Mansion to any potential story-contributor who wishes to visit. For any questions, or to schedule a tour, I can be reached at mjmanthology@gmail.com.
Bio: Camilla Saly is a lifelong New Yorker, writer and educator. Her writing has been published in numerous magazines and websites under a pseudonym. Newly retired from teaching, she continues to write and edit, and looks forward to publishing under her own name. Camilla lives in Harlem with her husband Mark, one bad cat, and one good cat.
Visit my calls for submission page for Camilla’s call and others. If you have one you want there, let me know!