MADAME OF THE HEIGHTS: The Story of a Prostitute’s Progress, by Marianne Hancock, Windswept House Publishers, Mount Desert, 1998, 230 pages, paperback, $15.

It was the house, not its notorious owner, that first caught Marianne Hancock’s attention. But when Hancock, a Somesville writer, visited the Morris-Jumel Mansion 20 years ago, she soon became fascinated by Eliza Jumel, after whom the property is named. “Madame of the Heights: The Story of a Prostitute’s Progress” tells the story of how the poor daughter of a prostitute became Madame Eliza Jumel, the wealthy mistress of the oldest house in Manhattan.

The winter Hancock moved to Maine in 1979 was when she first wrote Madame’s story down on paper. The retired journalist tried briefly to get the work published but failed, and the manuscript sat in a drawer until last year.

Hancock continued to write over the years and in 1993 had her first book, “The Perimeter,” published by Mount Desert-based Windswept House Publishers. Although a novel, that book is based on Hancock’s experiences as a Red Cross worker during World War II.

But the manuscript about Madame Jumel kept tugging at Hancock. The spirit of Madame seemed to toss her head and stamp her foot demanding attention, just as Madame had done throughout her life, according to Hancock. The tactic had worked on George Washington when Madame Jumel was known as Betsy Bowen, the illegitimate daughter of a Providence prostitute. Years later, it worked on Stephen Jumel and Aaron Burr, the men who became her husbands, as well as on Napoleon and countless others. Eventually, Hancock, too, was persuaded by Madame’s insistence and the author spent another winter in Maine reworking the book before it was published last year by Windswept.

Betsy Bowen was born destitute in a brothel in 1775, the first year of the American Revolution. When she died in the last year of the Civil War, she possessed a fortune and was known as Madame Eliza Brown Jumel Burr. Her relatives would fight over her fortune for years because her will disowned with token bequests everyone she had ever known.

By the time the Supreme Court decided the case 16 years after her death, there was nothing to divide but debt. The lawyers’ fees totaled more than $500,000 in 1880 dollars. However, Madame had made legal history — the suit over her estate still holds the record for the longest civil litigation in the United States.

As fascinating as these facts are, they are not what captivated Hancock, nor what draws in the reader. It is Madame herself and the way she constantly reinvents and redefines who and what she is. On the one hand, she is a kind of Everywoman. In Madame’s childhood lies the tale of every youngster who lived in 18th century America with the social stigma of illegitimacy.

More than once, her mother was called before town fathers and banished from town. When she was 7, Betsy and her older sister, Polly, were taken from their mother and sent to a workhouse to twist and pull apart fiber from old ropes to be used for ship’s caulking. It was as a servant girl in the White Horse Tavern that the pubescent Betsy first encountered gentlemen of wealth and discovered how her beauty could hold a man.

“Betsy Bowen was 15,” writes Hancock, “celebrated as the most beautiful harlot in Providence when she embarked on … a ship to seek her fortune in New York, the new capital, the court of the new republic. She had redefined herself and her status in society. She would be a seducer rather than seduced, a mistress rather than chattel; although she was professionally exactly that. … (George) Washington, Patrick Henry, (Alexander) Hamilton and (Aaron) Burr did indeed sleep with her.”

It was during this time that the young courtesan transformed herself into Eliza Brown. She returned to Providence in the spring of 1794, and that October she bore a son, her only biological child. (She adopted at least three other children.) She named her son George Washington Bowen and maintained all her life that he had been named after his father. Eventually, the son would bring the suit that would decimate Madame’s fortune.

“All Eliza’s adventures had been prologue, preparation for the real drama, her marriage to Stephen Jumel,” Hancock begins in Chapter 9. “He was French, a grand blanc, part owner of a coffee plantation in Santo Domingo, until Toussaint’s Revolution made him a refugee. He was 42 when Eliza met him in New York, a merchant prince, an owner of ships, and importer of wines. He was handsome, single and wealthy, popular with his peers.”

In 1810, Jumel purchased for his new bride the Harlem Heights mansion her ghost would haunt from her death through the 20th century. It was here that Eliza underwent another transformation and became Madame (the French title of respect for a distinguised woman, as opposed to a madam who runs a brothel).

The house had been built in 1765 by the British Col. Roger Morris for his American wife, Mary Philipse, who had been courted by the young George Washington. The country estate stretched over 130 acres from the Harlem to the Hudson rivers on one of the highest points in Manhattan.

The Morrises abandoned the house at the outbreak of the Revolution. Washington occupied it for a month during the war, then it became a tavern for a short time. The 8,500-square-foot house was built in the Georgian architectural style. The front of the house boasts an imposing double height portico, triangular pediment and four Tuscan columns. At the back of the main house is an octagonal wing, an architectural form unheard of in the Colonies when it was built.

Jumel would die in this house, probably by his wife’s own hand. Burr would marry Madame here, but occupy the mansion for only a short time before the couple divorced. Madame would live out her days here, filling the house with the remnants of Napoleon’s reign, including a narrow bed in which he slept.

In researching the life of Madame Jumel, Hancock scoured records in Providence, Saratoga, and Washington, as well as the numerous letters between her and Jumel kept in the mansion, which is now maintained by the City of New York. Yet nowhere in the Morris-Jumel Mansion is the existence of Betsy Bowen acknowledged, and Hancock’s book is not sold in its gift shop.

The author says she was drawn to Madame because “hers is an extraordinary story of an extraordinary life. At the same time, it is also the story of an ordinary woman who led an ordinary life. I was fascinated by the dichotomy between the two people she always was.”

Besides being a writer, Hancock is a painter and created the portrait of Madame that is on the cover of her book. The young Eliza coyly glances over a bare shoulder, a light smile on her lips. Her bright blue eyes daringly lock onto the reader and pull her in. But once inside the book, it is the writer Hancock who keeps the reader there, not just with Madame’s own story, but with insightful observations on the social mores and customs that shaped Betsy Bowen.

The book is full of direct testimony from the court records of the trials for her estate, the records of the town of Providence, and Madame’s correspondence. Using these sometimes dry accounts, Hancock vividly brings to life Betsy Bowen, Eliza Brown, Madame Jumel and those who surrounded her. The book’s only flaw is its many typographical errors that any judicious editor could have caught.

Marianne Hancock will read from “Madame of the Heights: The Story of a Prostitute’s Progress” at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 14 at Borders Books Music & Cafe in Bangor.