Although I write historical fiction and base the majority of my characters on people who actually lived, I often have no idea of the appearance of those people. Unlike today, when life can be visually documented on a day by day - even hour by hour - basis through the convenience of camera-phones, the overwhelming majority of 18thc people left behind no image of themselves at all. Even among the elite classes who could afford the cost of a portrait by a professional artist, surviving images are rare and few, especially for early Americans. If I’m lucky, there will be an occasional description of a person written by a contemporary, but more often I have no choice than to turn to my imagination.
Sometimes, however, I’m REALLY lucky, and stumble over a portrait of someone who has become one of my characters, a portrait that I didn’t know existed. I’ll usually gasp and exclaim out loud, too; ask any of my friends who’ve been with me when it’s happened.
Last week I visited a wonderful exhibition currently on display at the New-York Historical Society. Artist in Exile: The Visual Diary of Baroness Hyde de Neuville (through January 26, 2020) featured drawings and watercolors of late 18th-early 19thc America by the talented French Baroness. Anne Marguérite Joséphine Henriette Rouillé de Marigny, Baroness Hyde de Neuville (1771–1849), visited America twice: once as an aristocratic refugee, and a second time accompanying her husband after he’d been appointed a diplomat. She became the first woman artist in America to create a substantial body of work showing the new country and its people. Her eye for detail was extraordinary, and she took the most common of street scenes and people - gossiping servants, children playing, boys on sleds, a man for hire sawing wood - and recorded them for posterity. She never sank to caricature or stereotypes, and she drew enslaved and free Africans, Indigenous Americans, and even the first visitors to America from China with the same respect and thoughtfulness as she did in her portraits of aristocratic friends and family. It’s a remarkable exhibition, and if you’re in New York this month, I hope you’ll go.
Which brings me to the watercolor portrait of the woman, above. Living in New York City, the Baroness became part of the same social circles as the Schuylers, the Hamiltons, the Churches, and Burrs - names that will be familiar to those of you who have read my most recent historical novels. She was particularly close to the family of Angelica Schuyler Church, and even lived as their guest in the northwestern New York town of Angelica - the town that Capt Philip Schuyler Church had planned and named in honor of his mother. On one of the Baroness’s trips across the state, she called upon Gertrude Schuyler Cochran (1724–1813) in Palatine, and sketched not only the lady herself, but her home as well..
If you’ve read I, Eliza Hamilton, you’ll recognize Mrs. Cochran as Eliza Schuyler’s aunt, the sister of her father Gen. Philip Schuyler. When Eliza and the general travel to the Continental Army’s winter encampment in New Jersey in the winter of 1780, Eliza stayed with Aunt Gertrude and her husband, Dr. John Cochran, who was serving as the army’s Physician & Surgeon General. It didn’t take long for young Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton to find his way to the Cochrans’ house, and during that long, bitter winter, he and Eliza fell in love beneath Aunt Gertrude’s watchful supervision. When the Army broke their winter camp in June, Alexander and Eliza were engaged to be married.
The Baroness met and sketched Mrs. Cochran many years later, around 1808. By this time Aunt Gertrude was eighty-four years old, and widowed twice. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only known portrait of her, and it’s lovely. Dressed in a delicately striped gown and with a cup of tea or coffee in her hand, she looks as if she’s just spotted something particularly interesting from her window. Perhaps she had, and that’s the moment that the Baroness captured her - exactly the way I imagined her, too.
Above: Detail, Woman and Young Girl; Mrs. John Cochran (Gertrude Schuyler, 1724-1813), 1808.
Right: Mrs. John Cochran’s House near Palatine, New York, c1808. Both by Anne Marguérite Joséphine Henriette Rouillé de Marigny, Baroness Hyde de Neuville. New-York Historical Society. Photographs ©2020 Susan Holloway Scott.
Read more about Alexander and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton in my historical novel I, Eliza Hamilton; order here. My latest historical novel, The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr, is now available everywhere. Order here.