The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (49 page)

“I thought she was ill.”

“Only at Washington City where she suffers from acute Jeffersonitis. Philadelphia does her affliction a world of good.”

“I shall dine with pleasure.” This was sincere. I particularly enjoyed Mrs. Merry’s disdain for our empire. A
propos
Jefferson’s proud remark that with the addition of the Louisiana Territory the United States was now the second largest nation on earth, she said to me, “Your president is mad! Africa is ever so much larger, and its people ever so much blacker even than the Virginians, while London has rather more
white
people in it than there are in all of Mr. Jefferson’s ‘empire’! Mark my words, there’ll come a day when you poor wretches will be crying for us to take you back and we won’t, ever!”

Soon after our meeting at Oeller’s Hotel, Colonel Williamson left for England to report to Prime Minister Pitt that I was willing to lead an expedition against Mexico. Meanwhile, I kept what company there was in Philadelphia, and Charles Biddle gave me a dinner party. By design, one of the guests was my old friend the Spanish minister Don Carlos Yrujo. He was well-liked—particularly on his wife’s account for she was the daughter of Pennsylvania’s Governor McKean. Until the purchase of Louisiana, Don Carlos had been close to Jefferson. Now relations were strained. Don Carlos maintained that France had no right to sell Louisiana since it was a territory of Spain. He protested to Secretary of State Madison who was peremptory: “Since France has been ceded Louisiana by its ally Spain,” said Madison, “France can certainly do what she pleases with what is entirely her property.” A blunt way of saying that Bonaparte was Spain’s master. Then Jefferson signed into law a congressional bill maintaining that West Florida was part of the Louisiana Purchase when, of course, it was not. Don Carlos was understandably furious. A mercurial man, he spoke English without accent and most kindly shared with friends superb seegars.

“Has Your Excellency been enjoying Philadelphia?” Don Carlos lit the seegar he had given me.

I puffed happily. Said that I always enjoyed seeing my Philadelphia friends, old and new. In fact, “I have been talking to your colleague Mr. Merry.” I knew that sooner or later Don Carlos would hear of our meeting. “We discussed the war of protocol at the President’s palace.”

“It was terrible!” Don Carlos was genuinely upset; or affected to be. “The President was standing between my wife and Mrs. Merry before dinner. Then when dinner was announced, he left both of them and took in
Mrs. Gallatin
,
leaving the diplomatic ladies stranded. Such an insult to England, to Spain, to us!”

I was surprised that Don Carlos seemed to take the matter quite as seriously as Mr. Merry who would have surprised me had he not. “I fear that our president really does believe that all white men are created equal.”

“Merde,”
said the Spanish minister to the United States. We then had a pleasant conversation in the course of which I told him that I considered Mr. Jefferson’s claim to West Florida was specious. I also suggested that it might be worth-while for me to visit there during the course of the summer.

“Whenever you like, I will give you a passport.” Don Carlos was most friendly. If he was curious about my future he made no reference beyond wondering whether or not he would have the honour of my company when the next session of the Congress sat in the wilderness. I said that he would see me at Washington City and that I would be happy to give him my view of how I had found things in the Floridas.

“General Wilkinson tells me that you are a good friend to Spain.” Was Don Carlos suspicious at this point? I think not.

“Who cannot be sympathetic to Spain now that she suffers so much at the hands of Bonaparte.” I thought that sentiment agreeable. So did he; so much so, apparently, that he did me a good turn. “The governor of New Jersey has just asked my father-in-law the governor of Pennsylvania to extradite you for murder.”

“When was this?”

“The message came this morning. So I had better give you a passport first thing tomorrow.”

“You are most kind.”

“My father-in-law is your admirer, Colonel. We all are.” A courtly bow, and I knew that I had been warned to flee Philadelphia as quickly as possible.

IT TOOK ME SEVERAL DAYS to obtain this last installment of the memoir. The Colonel has taken to repeating himself, to losing his train of thought. But then this morning he was once again his usual self and insisted on going over the text to change, add, refine. “After all, this is crucial evidence. One wrong word and I shall be indicted for treason all over again.”

“How,” I asked, “does Mr. Jefferson’s version of what happened vary from yours?”

“According to him, I proposed myself to Merry as a would-be British agent, ready to break up the union.” The Colonel shook his head. “You know, people extract from what one says only what they would like to hear. Poor Merry
wanted
so
much for me to agree to his plan to divide the union that he finally thought that I had. But all I ever wanted from him was a single British flotilla at Vera Cruz—and a hundred thousand pounds.”

This evening we had a caller. “A Mrs. Keese.” Mr. Craft announced the lady with the air of one who did not wish to assist at a seduction.

“I don’t believe I know a Mrs. Keese.” The Colonel was smoking a seegar. “I also doubt the propriety of receiving a lady this late at night and
en d
é
shabille
.
Nevertheless, prepare her for the worst, Mr. Craft. Charlie, stand by! She may be a creature of Madame—intent on compromising me, on black-mail of the direst sort.” He was enjoying himself. He enjoyed himself even more when the lady in question appeared, carrying a large hamper.

“Mrs. Overton!” The Colonel was delighted. “
Overton
,
Mr. Craft, not Keese.”

“It is Keese, Colonel.” She was a good-looking old woman of fifty, with naturally red cheeks and a Scots accent. “I am re-married.”

“Mr. Overton ...?”

“Dead!” She sounded happy; but that is her manner. “I have brought you a proper supper because, Colonel, I know the stroke. Oh, I know the stroke as well as I know how to roast a turkey ...”

“She does that best of all.” The Colonel explained the lady to us. “I met Mrs. Keese’s father during the Revolution ...”

“Oh, what a dramatic meeting!” Mrs. Keese began to slice a turkey still warm from the oven. “Like a ballad!” She roared a verse or two of Sir Walter Scott in Scots. We did not understand a word.

“Near the Heights of Quebec,” continued the Colonel, “I had gone down to drink from a stream, my pistol at the
ready, when there at the water’s edge was this British officer ...”

“
Scots
, Colonel.”

“This Scots officer who was your father. Well, neither of us knew quite what to do. There is no protocol for enemy officers meeting like that. So her father offered me some water from his hunting-cup, and I put down my pistol and drank. Then he gave me a bit of horse’s tongue, and I shared with him my last onion, and we chatted of this and that for half an hour and vowed that when the war was over we would meet and continue our acquaintance.”

“And meet they did, thirty-six years later at my father’s place in Scotland ...”

“Now here we are some sixty years later ... Oh God!” The Colonel indeed looked pained. “
Sixty years later
! What am I doing alive? This is absurd. Everyone is dead but me.”

“President Madison is still alive,” I said.

“Chief Justice John Marshall is still alive.” Mr. Craft intoned that great name reverently.

“Well, I must outlive them, mustn’t I?”

“So you shall, if properly fed!” Followed by another booming unintelligible quotation, this time from Burns.

We had a splendid supper during which we learned that Mrs. Keese had been ruined financially by her first husband. Now, with her second husband, she ran a boarding-house in Broadway on the Bowling Green. “And there are two fine rooms for you, Colonel, in the basement but full of light because they’re at the back, and look onto the dearest, greenest yard.”

“Dear girl, I fear the prices in that neighbourhood ...”

“Whatever you want to pay!”

Mr. Craft and I exchanged a glance. Once again the Colonel had fallen on his feet; if one could use an expression that does not quite fit.

“Tell me,” the Colonel asked, “whose house it was? I used to know every house from the Bowling Green to Wall Street.”

“Why, it was the home of the old Governor John Jay.”

“My joy is complete.” The Colonel looked very happy. “Mr. Jay’s cadaver will turn at least once in its grave at the thought of me in his cellar.”

SO FAR IT HAS BEEN a cold depressing autumn. An election is in progress. On every wall one reads “Down with the Aristocracy.” This Democratic slogan is said to be the invention of the elegant Mr. Van Buren whose candidate for governor is expected to defeat the Whig candidate. Mr. Davis and Leggett are deeply involved in the campaign, and so I avoid them.

Helen gives me trouble. She will not leave the house. I think of her all day long. I hate the world.

Fortunately Colonel Burr maintains his high spirits, even in the two small rooms Mrs. Keese has given him. Although not as full of light as she promised, they are as warm as the oven she roasts her turkeys in and our old salamander is happy.

The Colonel has so crowded his furniture, books, pictures into the two rooms that a visitor must hollow out a place for himself if he wants to sit next to the sofa where the Colonel reclines, the portrait of Theodosia on a
table beside him. He has, incidentally, acquired a black man-servant who went to fetch me tea on my first visit.

“Most congenial fellow,” the Colonel said. “Used to work for DeWitt Clinton of all people! Poor old fellow. I fear he is a bit addled. There are times when he thinks that
I
am DeWitt Clinton, and brings me a bottle of whiskey which I pretend to drink, simply to keep his respect.”

The Colonel asked me about the office. Although he still works at briefs, it is tacitly accepted that he will never again visit Reade Street or set foot in a courtroom. Aaron Burr is, at last, incredibly, invalid.

“I have been preparing myself for you.” Piles of documents and newspaper cuttings littered the floor beside the sofa. “I’ve also consulted Sam Swartwout. Not that he’s much help. His memory is rather worse than mine. But Sam did find the letters that he wrote his brother John from the west, and they are helpful.”

Mrs. Keese burst in, wanting to feed her lodger who declined feeding. “You don’t know, Mr. Schuyler, what an honour it is, having him here!” Then she was gone, with a Scots war-cry.

Burr’s response to her is—well, quizzical. “Women have played a considerable role in my life, and I wish I could discuss them freely but my code does not allow it. I could never be like Hamilton who kissed and published.”

The Colonel then showed me a miniature of himself at the age of about thirty. “The property of a lady recently dead. Her son sent it to me.”

The Colonel was remarkably handsome if the miniature is accurate: full mouth, straight nose, huge dreaming black eyes. Of what was he dreaming?

I asked him. He was taken aback. “Dreaming? Am I? Was I?” He put on his glasses; studied the miniature closely. “No. It is merely the artist’s interpretation. Or yours.” He took off his glasses. “No, I don’t dream. It is not my nature. I ... act. Take risks. Could never stay for long in one place. Wanted always to be moving, to be doing.” He stopped. Touched the painting of Theodosia. “I used to think when I was away from her mother, who was sick, why, she’ll soon be dead. Go home, I’d tell myself, be with her while you can. But I could not stop what I was doing, and when she died I was not there. Yet I might have had a half-dozen more years of her company if I’d not been—in motion.”

The Colonel put the miniature of himself on the table face down before his daughter’s portrait. “Now for that great American comedy: ‘The Treason of Aaron Burr.’ ”

WITH SAM SWARTWOUT and a servant, I left Philadelphia in August 1804, and disguised as one R. King (tribute to the good Tory Rufus King who owned the Heights at Weehawk), I went to Georgia.

I pretended to be a London merchant (to explain my accent which the natives could not understand). Then I penetrated East Florida almost as far as St. Augustine. I talked to the inhabitants. Got the feel of the country. Made fascinating discoveries. For instance, did you know that even the finest Spanish ladies openly smoked seegars? Kept a journal for my daughter, which was lost with her. Made maps. All in all, the time was agreeably spent despite near-death during a hurricane that devastated the plantation where I was stopping, killing nineteen blacks and blowing out to sea the piazza where my host and I had been sitting. It was all like a bad dream, or the continuation of the terrible dream that I had had only the night before, a result of eating broiled alligator.

On the way back to Washington, I dropped my incognito and, to my amazement, was everywhere hailed. But then the southerners have no squeamishness about duelling, and Hamilton was not their hero.

At Savannah I dined with the governor of Georgia. Suddenly a band played music beneath the window.

“It is for you, Governor,” I said.

“No, Colonel, it is for the Vice-President.” And so it was.

At Raleigh, North Carolina, I was received with delight by the
Negro
population of the town. I can only attribute their enthusiasm for me to the fact that after travelling some 400 miles in a canoe, my ordinarily dark complexion had been turned by the sun to a truly luminous quadroon yellow.

By the end of October, I was at Richmond, capital of enemy territory, the mother to the Hydra-headed—no, that is an exaggeration—the many-limbed Virginian junto, the octopus with but a single Jeffersonian head and a thousand tentacles, all named James!

During a theatre performance in Richmond, I was recognised and applauded at the
entr
’
acte
by the (white) gentry. I daresay this ovation was reported to the chief octopus.