The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel by Margaret A. Oppenheimer

15
THE COLLECTOR
    W ithin a year after her arrival in Paris, Eliza was so busy that even her closest friends had trouble keeping in touch with her. Adèle de Cubières called without success to let her know that there would be English horse races on the plain of Sablons. Ultimately she wrote a note instead: “We have been so unfortunate in never finding you at home that I thought the best way of making sure you have a thing you seemed fond of was to write to you.” 1
    In June 1816, on Pentecost Sunday, Adèle scolded Eliza for her neglect. She wrote humorously but her bruised feelings are evident:
    You have forgotten us so completely, madame, that I really don’t know whether I would do better to go see you or just write you. Perhaps it would be appropriate to abandon you in turn, but I would get little return for my friendship in that. Besides, good faith demands that we keep the promise we made to you to arrange for you to see the trousseau of Her Royal Highness Madame the Duchess of Berry, which is, people say, beautiful
Beyond
[
sic
]
description
.
    Adèle wrote the last two words in English and emphasized them to make her point. Then she stressed the time and date:
    The present is therefore to alert you that tomorrow,
Monday, June 3
, the
last day
of the exhibition, we will come get you between
two
and
three o’clock
in the afternoon. We will have admission tickets for you and Monsieur Jumel, and we are going to Paris [from their country residence] just for this, because Maman’s plan was not to go there until Monday evening or Tuesday morning.
    Adèle’s message delivered, she moved on to other topics:
    It’s really a pity that you didn’t come to the country today. The weather couldn’t have been lovelier, and also we have arranged a beautiful country ball near our house. After having danced a great deal, we will set off fireworks at ten o’clock, and there will be a lot of
fashionable Ladies
[sic].
    The teasing words, again in English and emphasized, were apt. Eliza relished connections in high society. Although she might have stayed in town to celebrate Pentecost under the guidance of the marquise de la Suze, she would have regretted the lost opportunity to expand her circle of acquaintances.
    Adèle closed the letter with a final pinprick: “Adieu, bad Madame Jumel, I am sending you only a little kiss because I am truly annoyed.” As for Stephen, “He must take half of my severity for himself, since he has not come any more often than you.” 2

    Although it is unmentioned in any letters from the period, Eliza had thrown herself into an all-absorbing project. Over a period of approximately eighteen months, she assembled a collection of more than 240 paintings. 3
    She was in the ideal place to do so. Through late September 1815, she could have admired an unparalleled assemblage of masterworks in the high-ceilinged rooms of the Louvre. She had arrived in Paris just before the treasures of Europe, gathered by the Napoleonic armies, were packed up and returned to the countries from whichthey had been looted. According to one visitor’s count, a budding connoisseur could have found fifty-seven Rubenses, thirty-three Rembrandts, twenty-six Raphaels, twenty-four Titians, eighteen Veroneses, nine Correggios, and seven Leonardo da Vincis lining the walls of the museum. 4
    The city was rich in artistic spoil even after Raphael’s
Transfiguration
, Rubens’s
Descent from the Cross
, and the Apollo Belvedere were homeward bound. At the Musée des Monuments français, medieval sculptures and tombs, rescued from cathedrals ransacked by the Jacobins, crowded a former church and convent. 5 Titian’s
Danae
hung at the Luxembourg Palace and the portraits of the marshals of France decorated the gallery of the Tuileries. 6 Dealers offered collections nationalized during the French Revolution and others bought from Bonapartists fleeing the Bourbons. 7