All sorts of people come to New York from all parts of the world, for all sorts of reasons, or without any reason at all. But probably one of the queerest creatures, with one of the queerest motives, who ever “struck” this city was a woman who called herself Bianca America and who came here a few years before I did, and who was still livin’ in this country, although quite an old woman, when the war broke out.
She was an Italian by birth, and when she landed here was a really beautiful woman, a regular Italian blonde of the Lucrezia Borgia style of loveliness, though she did not at all resemble the Borgia in the unprincipled and bloodthirsty character which is generally, though I am told by those posted in history, wrongfully, attributed to her.
On the contrary, this Bianca was a sweet, generous-hearted, impulsive woman, very romantic and high-strung, and up to the time she came to New York, and for several years later, she was a thoroughly good and pure woman.
And what do you think she came to New York for? I don’t believe you could guess in a hundred guesses. I don’t believe any other woman ever came to this or any other country with such an idea as she had, an idea so wildly preposterous, and yet one which had at least a glimmer of right and reason behind it. She didn’t come to America for money; she didn’t come from necessity, or poverty, or crime; she didn’t come for pleasure, or travel, or to see life; she didn’t come from any love scrape. No, she came fully expecting to get a public reception from the people of the United States, a public reception like that accorded to Lafayette, and, as I have just said, there was the least bit of reason why she should receive such a reception.
For she was a lineal descendant, the only then livin’ descendant, of the man who really discovered America, and after whom the country was named. She was the lineal descendant of the ever-famous navigator, Americus Vespucci, after whom the whole New World was christened, and will ever be known as “America,” which name she had also appropriated to herself, as Signora Bianca America.
She was a well-read woman, and the, to her, great fact that one of her ancestors had been the man who discovered a world was never forgotten by her. She dwelt upon it by day and by night, and so, like everybody who thinks too much on one thing, she had got cranky and lopsided about it, and forgot everythin’ else.
She had read about the fine treatment Lafayette had experienced in America. She had read how a whole nation honored him, and she argued, in her one-idea, woman’s way, that if the man who had only helped to save a people had been so gloriously received, why, certainly the descendant of the man who had discovered the very country in which this people lived, the very man whose name those people bore, would likewise be received with honor.
So, for years and years, she had cherished the dream of comin’ over to New York and bein’ glorified all over the United States of America. Her father had been a matter-of-fact notary in Florence, and had taken no stock whatever in his daughter’s wild idea. Instead of encouraging her in it he had frowned it down, and married her off to a Polish count, who took her with him to Poland. The Polish count, who really was a noble man, had married her for love, and treated her tenderly. In his love she for awhile forgot all else, even her hobby, and had he lived she would probably have in time altogether got over it.
But the Polish count got into political trouble, and headed an insurrection against the Czar. His home was broken up and he became an outlaw and a fugitive. His devoted wife shared his evil as she had his good, put on man’s apparel to share his flight, fought like a man at his side in several skirmishes, until he fell mortally wounded. Then she nursed him till he died, buried him, and then came to America with her old hobby stronger than ever.
On reachin’ New York she stayed here a few days, then went straight on to Washington. There she proceeded at once “to business”–to her business–gettin’ acquainted with members of Congress, showed her genealogical tree, proved her descent from Americus Vespucci or Vespuce, and suggested that she expected, on the strength of her descent, a reception.
The Congressmen she saw were puzzled exactly what to do. She was really entitled to some respect for her ancestry as well as herself; but of course she might as well have expected the Presidency as the public reception.
Her idea was n. g. There was no possibility in it, and there wasn’t a dollar. Yet she was a smart and beautiful woman, and Congressmen are not in the habit of givin’ the cold shoulder to this sort of woman, and so, for a while, she got plenty of taffy.
But she soon tired of that, as she didn’t get anythin’ else. Then she called upon the Secretary of State and talked to him. But as he didn’t even give her taffy, she tried to see the President himself. But he wouldn’t give her even an audience.
She got desperate, and became really troublesome, and then people avoided her. Nobody wants to be bothered all the time, even by the lineal descendant of the man who discovered America. Politicians, especially in Washington, haven’t got much time to spare to the representatives of ancient history.
So at last she left Washington and returned to New York. Here she tried to interest some local officials in her hobby, but the New York politicians were even busier than the Washington ones, and after findin’ out that she had no money to “drop” in New York (for the simple reason that she had “dropped” all she had in Washington), and after findin’ out that she was as chaste as she was charmin’, they, too, gave her the cold shoulder, and plenty of it. Still she persevered and went on to Philadelphia, to see what she could do there. But Philadelphia wouldn’t bother, and so she came back to New York, disgusted with America, and heart and pocketbook broken.
From this time she commenced to go downhill. A young broker made her acquaintance, and findin’ out her hobby, promised her, if she would live with him, to use his money and influence to get her recognition. Tempted with this, as nothin’ else on earth would have tempted her, she yielded, but the broker couldn’t fulfill his contract, of course. Then she quarreled with, reproached and left him.
And from that time her career was that of an ordinary, no, an extraordinary, adventuress. She seemed to have made up her mind to take her revenge in a pecuniary way out of individual Americans for the slight that America in general had put upon her. She fleeced Americans in New York and elsewhere right and left, made and spent big moneys, and then disappeared, though every now and then under some new name she turned up here and there, until the war between North and South broke out, since which event she has not been heard of at all, and I suppose is dead.
A curious creature with a curious experience, indeed.
[Editor’s notes: While the gist of the column above is acceptable, the particulars are not. The woman’s name was Marie Helene “Elena” Vincenzio, daughter of Capt. Amerigo Vincenzio and Leapolda Cappelli Vespucci.
An alternate account of he life before coming to the United States can be found on the Jefferson County (NY) wiki. Instead of a Polish count, this version says that Helene joinedcard game an insurrection against the foreign rulers of Italy, fought in a battle, and was seriously wounded. Rather than give evidence against her compatriots, she fled to France, and was sheltered by the Queen of France. In 1839, she then determined to come to America to pursue recognition of her family name.
It was not a “reception” that she sought from Congress, but a “small piece of land.”
Moreover, the New York Star newspaper, and later C. Edwards Lester (a biographer of Amerigo Vespucci), uncovered some unflattering facts about her early life in Italy and rumors as to why she later left France. These details can be found in an excellent blog on the eccentric and fascinating science-fiction writer, Cordwainer Smith, who made “Helen America” the heroine of a story, “The Lady Who Sailed The Soul”.
Elena traveled for a time with the son of President Martin Van Buren, John Van Buren, shortly before John got married. The implication was the she was his mistress. A legend tells that John Van Buren and Elena stopped at an inn in Evans Mills, NY.
Van Buren got into a card game, gambled heavily, and lost all his money. His last wager was against George Parrish, of Ogdensburg, New York. He bet his mistress, and lost. Whether true or not, Elena went with Parrish to Ogdensburg and lived in his mansion for the next fifteen years. They never married, and she was shunned by the locals. Parrish’s home was later purchased by the widow of artist Frederic Remington, and stands today as a museum devoted to the artist.]
