The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (13 page)

Burr sliced the end from a seegar. “I told him that his house is much too small as it is for himself and his wife—a charming creature from Staatsburgh—and their two bright children not to mention myself from time to time, their old Gamp.” As he lit the seegar, he looked positively tender: children, I think, mean more to him even than the company of women.

“You will meet Columbus, by and by. He is a handsome lad, who speaks English with a very bad accent. I have never had much time to give him, poor boy.” Smoke wreathed the Colonel’s head like a halo slightly askew. He changed the subject “Our friend Nelson Chase arranged a bit of sport for me in Jersey City. That’s why I am now removed to the Bowery.”

“He is working for Madame.” I declared my allegiance, such as it is.

The Colonel nodded. “As you know, I often visit a dear girl named Jane McManus. I find her company soothing—as I found her grandmother’s some fifty years ago. She was also from Jersey City—obviously a place for me of enduring magic. Anyway we were
surprised
,
Miss Jane and I, by her maid, a goggle-eyed creature in the pay of Nelson Chase. I got the whole story from the girl, with the help of a cane. Madame paid the girl to discover Miss Jane and me in a compromised state so that she might be able to testify as a witness should Madame choose one day to dissolve the sacred bonds that exist between her and me. Well, catch us the girl did. Miss Jane is still weeping at the shame of it all. And Madame now possesses her shoddy evidence.”

“I think, Sir, Madame’s objections are not to your ... your ...”

“Friendships?” There was an ironic glint in those youthful eyes. For once everyone is right: Aaron Burr
has
made an agreement with the devil. Every dark legend is true.

“It’s the money that upsets her. The money you’ve lost on the Texas land grants.”

The Colonel frowned. Whatever his arrangement with the devil, competence in money matters was not a part of the contract. Matthew Davis once told me that, right after the Revolution, the Colonel acquired the largest fortune of any lawyer in the history of New York City, and lost every penny on speculation and extravagant living.

“I admit I ought not to have sold
our
carriage without first telling her. That showed want of feeling. But the offer was such a good one. The money so necessary. And Jake the coachman—a capital fellow, by the way—said the grays were not much good. Anyway, it’s done.”

A sudden gust of wind caused the scarlet-leafed vine outside the window to rap three times upon the dusty glass like knuckles on a coffin lid. Why does that image occur to me? Burr is eternal. Yet, inadvertently, eternal or not, he shuddered at the sound. “We must be on our guard, Charlie.”

“Yes, Sir. Do they know where you are living?”

“Not yet. Let us keep them guessing a while longer. I am involved in a new scheme which ...” The Colonel stopped. He is always discreet about divulging prematurely what he is up to. This may explain his disasters. No one is ever in a position to warn him.

“You must see the new play at the Park Theatre. I went last night with Columbus. A melodrama but not entirely stupid. We sat in a box which cost us seventy-five cents apiece. Such extravagance!”

Then the Colonel indicated several old books on the table. “I bought these for you, Charlie. Second hand, I fear. Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
.
Take them. Read them. Become civilised.”

Mr. Craft hurried in with work for the senior partner. The moment of intimacy was at an end.

AT EXACTLY six o’clock, I knocked on the front door of 3 Bridge Street. I was even more nervous than I thought I would be when Leggett told me that he had made the appointment.

A large woman opened the door. Without asking my name, she simply said, “
He’s
in the front parlour.” And vanished, into the back of the house where I could hear women laughing. There was also a pounding noise from upstairs, as though children were holding a foot-race. For a bachelor the great man was hardly lonely in his New York residence.

Standing at the fireplace, beneath a drawing of a Moorish-looking palace (the Alhambra?), was Washington Irving. In the books I read at school he is portrayed as a dreamy-looking, slender youth. No longer. He is now very stout and elderly, with a crooked but pleasing smile. The eyes are guarded, watchful; and he does take you in, every inch, the way painters do at the preliminary sketch. He affects to be shy. At first the voice was so low that I got only an occasional word. “So happy ... Mr. Leggett ... to Washington City soon ... not used to ... please ... sit down ... too warm?”

Mr. Irving sat us down face to face in the two wing chairs before the fire, our knees almost touching. A sharp wind made draughts in the room. He gave me another long look. “Schuyler. Which Schuyler?”

“
No
Schuyler.” Invited to give my familiar demur, I lost some of my nervousness. I explained to him that my father had kept a tavern in Greenwich Village and was in no way connected with the glorious Schuylers.

“I am partial to the Dutch.” Irving overcame his disappointment, finding what solace he would in the unmistakable physical fact of my Dutchness. With yellow hair and blue eyes, I look like every caricature ever drawn of a Dutch lout. I take after my late mother, a Schermerhorn; no, not the rich Schermerhorns, the others.

Irving tried speaking to me in Dutch and was disappointed when I did not understand. “The old talk is being forgotten. We’re all of us the same now. Early this month I was at Kinderhook with ...” The pause was marvellous. The whole world knows that he was visiting Vice-President Van Buren. “... with an old friend, of the Dutch stock. And we looked in vain for so many landmarks we used to know when we were young. The Dutch are like everyone else now. The colour goes.” Irving’s habitual tone seems to be melancholy, and his sentences tend to terminate in the dying fall.

“Is the Van Buren tavern still at Kinderhook?” I moved too swiftly.

“Yes, yes. Do you know it?” Polite interest, nothing more.

“I have heard so much about it from Colonel Burr. I am in his law office.”

“Aaron Burr.” Irving said the name softly and with some feeling. But precisely what emotion I could not determine. Certainly there is no hostility. Perhaps wonder. Regret. “Yes, Mr. Leggett said you were interested in Colonel Burr’s career. My brother once edited a newspaper for Colonel Burr, a long time ago.” The eyes shut. “
Morning
Chronicle
it was called. Most political, my brother Peter was—and is. A dedicated Burrite. Colonel Burr was the vice-president when I first published my”—the eyes open wide—“
little
things in his paper. Over thirty years ago.”

I told him that when I was in school I read his Jonathan Oldstyle letters. Apparently even then people were looking back to the “good days” of old New York. As much as I admire Irving’s work, I do not share his delight in Dutch quaintness. I like nothing about being Dutch, including all the jokes about us.

“It is curious that one of the last of the
little
pieces I wrote for the paper was an attack upon the practice of duelling. That was just two years before ...” Irving gestured. Eyes evaded mine; settled on the Moorish castle above the fireplace.

From upstairs came a terrible shriek. Irving gave a start; looked alarmed; sighed. “Children,” he said, and for a moment lost his usual sweetness of manner. He is plainly not used to family life. But then he has been living a bachelor’s life for the last twenty years in Spain and England. As a result, he is now more like an Englishman—of the polite kind—than an American. He could step on the stage of the Park Theatre tonight and play with the greatest of ease man-servant to a duke.

“You must have seen Colonel Burr at Richmond Hill?”

Irving smiled. “Oh, yes. But I was not one of The Little Band. That was what the Colonel’s admirers called themselves. A most devoted group, and with good reason. Colonel Burr was New York’s Maecenas. He loved artists. Liked to help them. No good artist who asked him for money was ever disappointed. Both he and Theodosia ...”

“Mrs. Burr?”

“No, she was dead by then. I mean Theodosia his daughter. The most extraordinary woman I ever met.” Irving seemed genuinely moved; the round eyes glazed over. “She was small, dark and splendid, with the Grecian profile. She spoke a half-dozen languages. Knew every science. Read Voltaire. Corresponded with Jeremy Bentham. Yet was womanly and loving ...”

From all accounts Theodosia was indeed a paragon but for mysterious reasons of his own I have the impression that Irving exaggerates his passion for the long-dead beauty, expressing his adoration in complex complete sentences as a single tear rolls slowly down his cheek into the fortress of that tall starched stock there to splash in darkness from chin to chin like. ... I am beginning to parody his style.

“Was Mr. Van Buren often at Richmond Hill?”

A silk handkerchief was used to remove the saline track the tear had made on the smooth plump cheek (I cannot forget that this is the man who wrote the favourite stories of my childhood). “I think not.” Irving was cautious. “Their friendship has been made too much of.”

“But didn’t Colonel Burr stay with Mr. Van Buren at Albany when he came back from Europe ...”

“Mr. Van Buren was once a friend. Therefore he will always be—amiable. But there is no
political
connection.” This was said sharply. Irving is often mentioned as a possible secretary of state in a Van Buren cabinet. After all, he is an experienced diplomat who was for some time charg
é
d’affaires at the American legation in London. In fact, he was there last year when Van Buren arrived as minister, appointed by President Jackson and then, humiliatingly, rejected by the Senate as a result of Vice-President Calhoun’s malice. The subtle Irving, however, was most kind to the discredited ambassador and managed for him to be received by the King and made much of by London society.

Irving is also supposed to have told Van Buren that his rejection by the Senate would be the making of him. “For,” Irving is reported to have said, “there is such a thing in politics as killing a man too dead. You will now be Jackson’s next vice-president, and that will be the end of Calhoun.”

The unworldly Irving proved to be as good a political prophet as he was a friend. No wonder the two men take trips together up the Hudson and moon about Dutch ruins. Rip Van Winkle has indeed waked up and returned to us, with a future president in tow.

“I am not so certain that I can be of any use to you, Mr. Schuyler.” I was aware now of the diplomat on guard. “I do agree that a study of Colonel Burr’s career would be fascinating to read. But don’t you think it is—perhaps—too soon? So many people still alive ...”

“Like Mr. Van Buren?”

“It is also
said
that President Jackson was even more deeply involved with Colonel Burr.” There was a definite sharp edge to the melodious voice. “So was Senator Clay who—”

We were interrupted by a powerfully built blond youth. “Mr. Irving! Oh, I am sorry. You are not alone.” The boy hesitated in the doorway. I got to my feet.

“This is John Schell, Mr. Schuyler.” The boy’s handclasp was bone-crushing. “I met John on the ship coming from London. He is staying here while he gets the feel of our new country.”

“Excuse me, Sirs.” The German accent was heavy. The boy bowed stiffly and left us.

Irving continued: “I was about to say that when I saw Senator Clay at the Park Theatre last night—”

“Last night? But Colonel Burr was there, too.”

“I know.” Irving smiled. “Did he tell you what happened?”

I shook my head.

“Henry Clay came in at about nine o’clock. Almost everyone stood. And cheered. A most tumultuous welcome.” A delicate crooked smile. “I
somehow
kept my seat during this Whiggish display. Then, at the interval, as I was crossing the foyer, what do I see but Colonel Burr suddenly—by accident, I should think—face to face with Mr. Clay. The one lean and mad-eyed with that awful mouth like a carp, the other like some dark imp from the lower regions. The imp put out his hand and Mr. Clay
reeled
—there is no other word for the backward falling movement he made. Then well-wishers bore him away. I don’t suppose a dozen people standing there recognised Colonel Burr and of those who did hardly one was aware how, years ago, Clay, a very ambitious young lawyer in Kentucky, successfully defended Aaron Burr against a charge of treason—and very nearly nipped his own political career in the bud. Oh, your Aaron Burr is the sprightly skeleton in many a celebrated closet!”

“Including the President’s?”

“I think—don’t you?—that their involvement was explained at the time in a most satisfactory way by General Jackson.” The response was stiff, to say the least. But then Irving’s friend cannot be our next president unless the current president chooses to promote him; therefore Andrew Jackson must be above suspicion. They all must. Yet there are those who believe that the whole lot were once involved in treason, Burr, Jackson, Clay. How many secrets there are! and Washington Irving is willing to betray none.

A clatter from the kitchen beneath reminded us that the family supper was almost ready. I rose. “You never see Colonel Burr?”

Heavily, Irving got to his feet. Our knees for an instant struck.

“I
saw
him last night. But we do not speak. What would be the point? Of course he was once most admirable. But I do think—all in all—that he does himself—all of us—a disservice by ...” The tentative crooked smile again, the voice suddenly, deliberately soft. “... well, by
living
so
very, very long—so
unnaturally
long—a continuous reminder of things best forgotten.”

“I think it splendid that he is still among us. Able to tell us the way things really were.”

“ ‘Really were’? Perhaps. Yet isn’t it better that we make our own
useful
version of our history and put away—in the attic, as it were—the sadder, less edifying details?”

Irving walked me to the front door, now blockaded by a child’s hobby-horse. Together we lifted it out of the way.