Description
By the end of her life, “Madame Jumel” used to be considered one of New York’s richest women, with servants of her own, an art collection, an elegant mansion, a summer home in Saratoga Springs, and several hundred acres of land. After her death, a titanic battle over her estate went all of the approach to america Supreme Court . . . twice.
As the feud over her fortune riveted the nation, members of the family told of a woman who earned the gratitude of Napoleon I and shone on the courts of Louis XVIII and Charles X. Their opponents painted a different picture, of a prostitute who bore George Washington’s illegitimate son, a wife who defrauded her husband and maybe even plotted his death. Now Eliza Jumel’s real story—so unique that it surpasses any invention—has in any case been told.