Name: Georgina Bath Goodlander
Occupation: Interpretive programs manager, Luce Foundation Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Residence: Baltimore
What I want to tell you this piece: Benjamin Trott didn’t often paint women. But what’s more interesting here is his subject, Anne Hume Shippen, who has a fascinating, if tragic, life story.
She was born in Philadelphia in 1763 and grew up during the American Revolution. She went by Nancy. Her family was wealthy. They sent her to finishing school, where she acquired several suitors.
The one her father preferred was Col. Henry Livingston, who retired from military service to spend his time pursuing young Nancy. He was obviously a lot older than she was. But he was her father’s favorite because he came from money, and they would be a prestigious match.
Nancy had fallen in love with a French diplomat named Louis Otto who lived in her neighborhood. Young men and women weren’t supposed to write one another then without a formal engagement, but Nancy and Louis corresponded in secret using a variety of fake names. Louis would walk past Nancy’s house every day and then write to her about watching her through her window. Sometimes he would draw pictures. Their romance-by-letter continued even as Col. Livingston kept visiting the house.
Nancy’s mother was a romantic. She liked the young French guy. She gave her consent for Louis to marry Nancy, but that wasn’t how it was done: When Nancy’s father found out, he confined Nancy to the house for four days, during which he persuaded — or forced, we’re not sure — her to marry the colonel. So Nancy had to tell Louis this, then stop writing to him. He was devastated.
Nancy was 18 when they moved into Livingston’s house in New York. She soon discovered he was an unreasonable, temperamental and violent man. She describes his frequent fits of rage in her letters. She became pregnant shortly after the wedding, giving birth to a daughter, Margaret, whom she called Peggy. Her daughter was her only happiness. Her husband gave her permission to go home and have the child, at which point she collected all her letters from Louis. She carried them with her all the time.
In addition to being abusive, Livingston was also unfaithful to Nancy. When he asked her if he could bring all his illegitimate children into their home and raise them with her daughter, Nancy left him and went home. She resumed her friendship with the diplomat, though nothing more, because she was still married. Eventually she lost custody of Peggy to Livingston’s mother. Nancy could visit her daughter, but not live with her. Nancy wanted to sue for divorce, but Livingston swore to stop her from ever seeing her child again if she did. Nancy couldn’t bear that, so she stayed married.
Louis married her best friend. Nancy claimed to be happy for them. Louis’ new wife died in childbirth, so he resumed his relationship with Nancy yet again, but they never could be anything more than friends. He eventually remarried because he had a child without a mother. Nancy never mentioned him again in her journals after that.
Nancy regained custody of Peggy when Peggy turned 16, but she never divorced Livingston, so she could never move on. She and her daughter secluded themselves from the rest of the world and became religious fanatics. They later lost most of Peggy’s inheritance from the Livingston fortune to swindlers posing as clergymen. But Nancy kept Louis Otto’s letters in her possession all of her life. She died in 1841 at the age of 78.
We have among our 440 miniatures a portrait of Louis Otto, as well. But we don’t have one of the colonel.
