In 1838, American high society was greatly enlivened by a delightful young Italian visitor, America Vespucci, a direct descendant of the man who gave his name to their country. Her story captured hearts and filled newspaper columns: She had been strictly raised in a Florentine convent, but when, at the age of seventeen, she had been forced to serve as maid of honor to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, she rebelled and joined “La Jeune Italie,” a secret society dedicated to Italian independence. She even saw battle in 1832, conducting herself “with great gallantry,” and suffering a severe injury at the hands of an Austrian dragoon.
After being exiled for her political activities, she found refuge at the court of France. And now, this exotic, lovely young woman was in the United States seeking citizenship and a grant of land where she might finally have a permanent home after all her adventures.
She became an instant sensation among the political and social leaders of Washington, D.C., attending casual gatherings and formal state dinners where she entranced everyone with her beauty and sparkling charm. She was described as “of fine features, symmetrically formed, of the perfect Italian style of beauty, with more of Juno’s characteristics than of Venus’ peculiarities in its excellency. Her figure was commanding, full, strongly set up, and finely moulded.” Her eyes were “wonderfully brilliant,” and her hair “black as jet and of extraordinary length and abundance.” The Countess of Blessington described her conversation as “interesting and original, full of animation…She possesses a certain wild, unsteady energy and cleverness…tormented with a constant desire to excite attention.”
Under the influence of that commanding figure and brilliant eye, Senator Thomas Hart Benton was helpless. He personally presented the Senate with a petition on her behalf. “She is without a country, without fortune, and without protection,” he declared. “She asks that we grant her a corner of the land which bears the name of her glorious forebear, and for the right of citizenship among those who call themselves Americans.”
Alas, the relevant Senate committees ruled against her request as being without precedent, but they suggested she instead present her case to the American people. Surely, such “generous, patriotic, and enlightened people” would help her in the way that Congress was formally forbidden to do.
The people did not fail to respond. Washingtonians—from Congressmen to Supreme Court justices—started a fund for a national movement to raise the money she needed to start her new life in America. She went on a lengthy tour of all the major cities in the country, captivating everyone she saw. “Her path,” a contemporary wrote, “was strewn with roses, open hands, and confiding hearts.” An obviously smitten man who met Vespucci in New Orleans compared her to Cleopatra. America was “the most accomplished, elegant, and interesting woman that ever landed on this continent since the days of her great ancestor…her discourse seemed to be composed of ‘thoughts that breathe and words that burn.’” He went on to describe her as a “union of high birth, mental power, lofty aspirations, and generous impulses, blended with refinement of manners, and the whole crowned by the utmost affability and kindness…there was no throne in Europe, which she would not elevate by her wisdom.”
Vespucci seemed well on her way to becoming a national icon when, in the spring of 1840, she suddenly sailed for Europe with the startling announcement that she did not want any money that was not “a national gift.”
The “New York Evening Star” did not take this ingratitude lightly. They retaliated with a bitter exposé of this strange visitor, alleging that she had had a scandalous affair with the Duke of Orleans, which caused the French royal family to engineer this tour of the U.S. just to get her safely out of the way. “It would have been a rare joke indeed,” they snorted, if she had actually gotten Congress to fall for her hoaxes.
However, America had not seen the last of America. She landed in Boston in November of 1841, this time as “Contessa Helene America.” Rather unbelievably, she turned up several days later at one of Boston’s most exclusive society balls, and no one so much as turned a hair. Her strange initial arrival, her even stranger departure, and her just-plain-bizarre return under a new cognomen were shrugged off by one and all, and she was as adored and fêted as before.
We next hear of America Vespucci—or Contessa Helene, or whoever she was at the moment—living “in a state of immoral intimacy” in Ogdensburg, New York, with a wealthy German merchant named George Parish. A too-weird-to-be-true story—but one that many to this day insist is historical fact—says that Vespucci had become the mistress of Martin Van Buren’s playboy son John. One night, while he was playing poker with Parish, John lost all his money, and finally put up his lady as a stake, wagering “ownership” of her on a toss of his last gold coin. Parish won the toss, so the legend goes, and got the girl.
Whatever the initial circumstances of their union may have been, Parish and Vespucci lived together peacefully--if, in the eyes of their neighbors, sinfully--for nearly twenty years. A local historian said Vespucci was ostracized by most of the local society, causing her to live almost reclusively, but she was someone with “a great heart,” who “was always doing things for people in distress.” Her story was not granted a happy ending, however. In 1856, Parish’s older brother died in Germany, and his family summoned him home to assume the family title of Baron von Leftonberg—and, of course, to find a bride worthy of his status. There was no place in his life for an Italian mistress. Parish agreed—whether with regret or relief is impossible to know—and packed the aging, bespectacled Vespucci off to France. He granted her an allowance, but they never met again.
Vespucci—who apparently had genuinely loved Parish—was devastated. It was certainly a dismal end for someone who had been such a dazzling adventuress, but the moralists held that it only served her right. A New York paper called her “a lonely, sad, and heart-broken woman, who but for her folly might have left a glittering instead of a clouded name on the pages of history.” She died in Paris in 1866.
The most curious thing about Vespucci’s career is that with all the raves about her charms, and the tut-tutting about her morals, it was largely ignored by her contemporaries that she had been unmasked as a brazen, if ingenious, fraud. In the late 1840s, the American counsel in Genoa, C. Edwards Lester, began researching a book on the great explorer Amerigo Vespucci. While interviewing Vespucci’s numerous descendants in Florence, he happened to meet Miss America’s family, who were living in genteel poverty. And they were “deeply chagrined” by their famous relative’s “barefooted deceptions.” It seems that her stories of her convent upbringing, her time at the court of the Grand Duchess, her role in the Italian resistance, her intimacy with the French royal family—were all just so many taradiddles. Oh, and her real name was Elena.
Elena, it seems, had been an “indocile and unmanageable” child who grew up to be “the mistress of some dozen men.” Having made herself infamous at home, she “had the impudence to ask our Government for a grant of land for herself, as the only descendant of the Vespucci family.” The name change was to make herself more attractive to patriotic Americans. Lester published all this interesting information, but evidently few read or cared about his revelations.
And, really, why should anyone have cared? Say what you will about America/Elena, she seems to have been a thoroughly enjoyable play-actor. As “America Vespucci” she brought some much-needed fun to society and splendid copy for the newspapers, at no real cost to anyone. She settled down to make Parish a devoted companion for many years, and took her eventual dismissal with dignity. In short, she gives the impression of a woman spirited enough to seek a novel escape from a dull, limiting existence.
Congress should have given her that land grant for sheer gumption alone.
