The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (5 page)

Burr’s face shut. There is no other way to describe his expression when he chooses not to communicate. Yet the politeness never falters; he simply ignores the impertinence.

“Here we put our Germans.” He indicated a territory to the west of the Sabine River. “Water is plentiful. The grazing is excellent. And the land leases are all in order.” He spun fantasies. But are they?

“Best of all, Madame is eager for us to invest.” Burr pushed his spectacles onto his brow. “An astonishing woman, Charlie. Truly astonishing.”

“I’m sorry about—well, questioning her about Napoleon.”

“I am afraid that as people grow old there is a tendency for them to believe that what the past
ought
to have been it was.”

“You don’t suffer from that, Colonel.”

“But I am not old, Charlie.” His dark eyes opened wide; a trick he has in common with Tyrone Power but unlike that romantic Irish actor, Burr is full of self-mockery. “You see, I have had a special dispensation. Too bad, in a way. Not only do I know what my past ought to have been, I know what it
was
.”
An involuntary—what? Grimace? Look of pain? Or do I invent? He was himself again. “And I am the only one who knows. Probably a very good thing, all in all.”

“No, Sir. I don’t think it is a good thing. You owe it to the world to tell your side of the story.” What I had planned to say ever since I spoke to Leggett, I proceeded to say; and cursed myself for sounding rehearsed.

Burr smiled. “My side of the story is not, necessarily, the accurate one. But you flatter me. And I like that!” He kicked a leather-bound chest beneath the table. “I have a good deal of history there: letters, newspapers, copy-books, the beginning of a memoir. Oh, I am marvellous at beginnings, Charlie, truly marvellous!” He almost struck the bitter—and for him uncharacteristic—note. Then quickly, lightly, “But is it not better to have begun well than not to have begun at all? And what a beginning! Not only was I the son of a famous divine but I was also the grandson of an even more famous holy man, of Jonathan Edwards himself, a prophet who—what is the phrase?—walked with God. No, the traditional verb does not describe the progress of the great Puritan. Jonathan Edwards
ran
with God, and out-raced us all. God, too, I should think. Me certainly. I never knew the saint from Stockbridge but I was brought up in his very long shadow, and chilling it was until I read Voltaire, until I realized there was such a thing as glory in
this
world for the man who was not afraid to seize what he wanted, to create himself. Like Bonaparte. So I began in the Revolution, and became a hero.”

He stopped. Relit the stump of his seegar. “So a number of us began. But then who
finished
?
Not I, as we know.” He blew rings of smoke in my face. “At the end the laurels went to a land surveyor from Virginia who became the ‘father’ of his country. But let us be fair. Since General Washington could sire nothing in the flesh, it is fitting that he be given credit for having conceived this union. A mule stallion, as it were, whose unnatural progeny are these states. So at the end, not to the swift but to the infertile went the race.” Burr found this image amusing. I was a bit shocked. Like everyone else I think of Washington as dull but perfect.

Burr handed me a number of pages of faded manuscript. “I recently came across this description of my adventures in the Revolution. Perhaps they will amuse you.”

I took the manuscript, delighted that the Colonel has chosen to confide in me, even though I find the Revolution as remote as the Trojan War, and a good deal more confusing since the surviving relics agree on nothing.

Leggett recently proposed that all those who claim to have fought in the Revolution should be taken to the Vauxhall Gardens and shot—except that not even the vast Vauxhall could hold the claimants. Every American man of sixty was a drummer boy; of seventy a colonel or general.

“Matt Davis means to write my biography, once I am gone. Of course Matt himself is hardly young.” The Colonel chuckled contentedly at the thought of his old friend’s mortality.

Matthew L. Davis is a newspaper editor, a Tammany Sachem, and a
life-long Burrite, as the press still call the original republican followers of the Colonel—a noun used by many who have not a clue as to its origin, who would be surprised to learn that the progenitor of the Burrites has an office in Reade Street and is not himself a Burrite for that faction is currently opposed to Van Buren while their eponymous hero supports him (because Van Buren is his son?).

“Matt will no doubt do me fine. But while I am still here I would not in the least object to your having a look at my papers. After all, you are incorrigibly literary. So—who knows? Perhaps we can work out something together.”

In the outer office a door slammed. Nelson Chase had come to work. I rose, ready to begin the day’s work. “Why is Mr. Davis so opposed to Van Buren?”

“I am not sure that he is.”

“But just recently he wrote ...”

“Politics, Charlie, politics. Those who
seem
to oppose are often secret supporters. Anyway, Van Buren will be president in thirty-six. And Tammany will support him, which is what I told the Vice-President last time I saw him.”

“Colonel Burr!” The door opened, letting in fresh air that made me cough, so used was I to devil’s smoke. Nelson Chase’s dull face hung in the middle distance like a jack-a-lantern. “Madame—your wife—Mrs. Burr is downstairs in the carriage.”

The Colonel was, briefly, flustered. He sprang to his feet. “Charlie, you go down and tell her that I shall meet her, as
planned
,
at the Tontine, at five. Tell her that I am engaged at the moment. No. Tell her that I am out at the moment. In court.”

“No court is sitting, Colonel,” Nelson Chase began. But Colonel Burr was on his feet. As he put on his tall black hat, I noticed a thick protuberance in the front of his jacket just over the heart. Then he was gone out the back way and I was able to say, in all honesty, that “Colonel Burr has just left the office.”

Madame peered at me through the window of her golden carriage. “
Where
did he go?” The question could be heard all the way to the water tower.

“I’m not sure, Madame. I think he said that he had an appointment ...”

“Get in, Mr. Schuyler. Charlie. No, I shall call you Charlot. Get in. I want to talk to you.”

“But, Madame ...” On the phrase “get in” one of the grooms, a monstrous black buck in livery, leapt to the ground, opened the door to the carriage, shoved me inside like a sack of apples; sprang onto the box, and before I could protest, we were hurtling toward the Bowling Green.

Madame took my hand in hers, breathed breakfast Maderia in my face. “Charlot, he has robbed me!”

I looked at her blankly; not breathing until she removed her face from mine, and sank back onto the velvet cushions.

“I have married a thief!” Madame clutched her reticule to her bosom as though I had designs on one or the other, and in a torrent of Frenchified English told me how she had owned stock in a toll-bridge near Hartford. During the first raptures of their honeymoon in the house of Governor Edwards, the Colonel persuaded her to sell the stock. So trusting, so loving, so secure in her new place as the bride of a former vice-president, Madame allowed the Colonel to sell the shares and himself collect the cash—some six thousand dollars which he insisted on having sewn into the lining of his jacket; for safe-keeping, he said.

“ ‘
Ma foi
!’ I said to him. ‘It will be better to sew the money into my petticoat. After all, those shares belonged to me,
non
?’
We were in our bedroom in the house
du Gouverneur
and I wanted to make no scene.
Naturellement
.
So what did he say to that? Why, damn him for a bastard in hell, he said, ‘I am your master, Madame. Your husband, and under law what you have is mine!’
Under law
!”
The small bloodshot eyes started in the huge sockets: one can imagine her fleshless skull too easily. “Well, I know the law forward and back and if he wants to play at litigation with me there are a hundred lawyers in this city I can put to work, and beat him in every court!” She ordered the coachman to stop the carriage, just opposite Castle Garden.

“Then last night, after supper, he said he was unwell. Wanted to go early to bed. Not until this morning did I realize that he had slipped away in the night, having hired a farmer’s wagon. So I hurried to town—too late! He has now disposed of my money, and broken my heart!”

The footman opened the carriage door, and helped Madame alight. “We shall take the air.” Firmly she took first my arm, then the air in noisy gusts.

I like the Battery best in high summer: trees too green, roses overblown, sail-boats tacking on the gray river while the pale muslin dresses of promenading girls furl and unfurl like flags in the flower and sea-scented wind.

We walked toward the round rosy brick cake of Castle Garden—the old fort where a few weeks ago I saw the President himself arrive by ship. Slender, fragile, with a mane of tangled white hair, General Jackson crossed the causeway to the shore; he moved slowly, grasping here an arm, there a shoulder, anything for support. He will not live out his term, they say.

Colonel Burr stood with me at the bottom of Broadway; the roaring, drunken crowd below us like a dozen Fourth of July celebrations rolled into one. “Not even Washington got such a reception.”

“What would the President do if he knew you were here?” I asked.

“He’d probably make the sign against the evil eye.” Burr laughed. “After all, I am his guilty past. He wanted to help me conquer Mexico. Now look at him!” Burr spoke fondly, without bitterness, like a man whose child has grown and gone. Then, as the President vanished into the crowd, we were both delighted when the causeway suddenly collapsed, dunking a number of dignitaries in the river.

Madame bade me buy us ice-cream, sold by an Irish girl. Irish girl. Must not write that phrase. Or think such things. But I did. Do. So much for high resolve. I knew that I would see Mrs. Townsend to-night. How weak I am!

“I owe the Colonel a good deal.” Madame marched between the elms. Strollers leapt aside as she passed: a man—no, woman-of-war on the high green flowery Battery Sea. “In the past, he was good to me for I was not always—how you say in English,
bienvenue
?”
When tension lessens, Madame’s English deserts her. When it mounts, she is the voluble Eliza Bowen of Providence, Rhode Island.

“Where did you first meet the Colonel?” It is almost impossible to get from any of these survivors such a small thing as a fact.

“So handsome!” She smacked her lips: ice-cream delicately beaded the hardly perceptible moustache that fringed an upper lip not naturally red. “I first
saw
him when General Washington took the oath of office. In Broad Street. On the balcony. I can still see General Washington on that balcony. Such a noble, commanding figure, if somewhat too broad in the
derrière
.”
Madame chuckled at some plainly non-inaugural memory. But how could she have been there? Washington became president in 1789. If she is fifty-eight now, she was thirteen then. Well, it is just possible.

“Colonel Burr was at the reception, and I danced with him. Then—right after—ah,
l’ironie
,
the irony! I danced with Mr. Hamilton. Curious, come to think of it. I admired them both, yet both were tiny and I’ve always been partial to tall men.”

Madame’s gaze took in my own less than tall figure. She gave me a coquettish smile. “But my passion, my
adoration
seems reserved for men of small stature but unique quality,
comme l’Empereur
.
Vive Napol
é
on
!”
She shouted suddenly, causing a group of upstate Quakers—Poughkeepsie writ large on their dull faces—to scatter before her furious progress.

Madame licked her lips; ice-cream quite gone. “Occasionally we saw each other during those years. But not often. Colonel Burr was busy with politics and the law, and I had my own pursuits. Yet how sad we all were when he allowed that despicable Jefferson to take his rightful place as president. The Colonel had the votes but he would not break his word. He was too honest ...” Sudden frown as Madame recalled the honest Burr’s theft of her money.

“No! Not honest! Weak! Bonaparte would have held firm, become the president, and if that Jacobite Jefferson had stood in his way, he would have seized the Capitol by force of arms! Then I might have been—what? Marie Louise? Only constant, not like that Austrian bitch who deserted the most splendid man that ever lived!
Pauvre homme
!
Why are men so frail? Women so strong?”

Madame shoved me onto a bench; then sat herself, like a carnival tent collapsing. Overhead, scarlet birds fought among branches. “Charlot, you must be my friend.”

“But I am. Really ...”

“The Colonel admires you, thinks you clever.”

“Oh, no ...”

“Much cleverer than you look. Your eyes are too far apart. Certainly much cleverer than Nelson Chase who married my
adorable
niece, pretending to have money. But that is the age-old story. And if he makes her happy, I shall pay. Why not? I like to bring a little
douceur
into the lives of others.”

For a moment we watched a group of pigtailed English sailors slowly fan out over the green, their quarry three complaisant girls at the Battery’s edge. As the sun rose to noon, I could think only of Rosanna Townsend and her rooms of delight.

“Charlot, the Colonel means to ruin me.” Madame stopped me before I could object. “No, no. It is not wickedness. He is not capable of any meanness. But he is mad with grandeur. He will try to get his hands onto my small fortune ...” Small fortune! “And he will ruin me as he spends my money trying to fill up Texas with Germans. I, who hate Germans and regard Texas with a cold eye.”

“The Colonel is often impulsive.”

“You must talk to him. I know he listens to you. He told me that you are doing his
biographie
—good luck to you there,
mon petit
!
I would not like the job of figuring out that one’s life.” She clutched my arm. “You must persuade him that the goose will lay golden eggs only if treated properly. As for the Texas investment, reason with him. Tell him that if he returns me the money, I shall demand no interest. In fact, I shall make him a present. What about new quarters for his firm?
Je redoute
Reade Street. I am foolishly generous when not exploited. You must take my side in this, Charlot.”