The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (55 page)

“But since then, Colonel, we have heard so many things.” His voice was dreamy. “The newspapers have alarmed the people ...”

“That is their function.”

Jefferson held out his finger and the mocking-bird lit upon it; and whistled.

“I confess, Mr. Jefferson, that I find it most remarkable, most strange, that you are not able to confide
any
task to the man who raised you to this place.”

The fierce old mouth set. The hands fell to the table. The bird fled and perched on the mantel opposite. “It was the people, Colonel Burr, who did me this honour ...”

“No, Sir. It was Aaron Burr who gave you your victory in New York state, and it was Aaron Burr who could have taken the presidency from you had he but said the word.”

“But you did not say that word, Mr. Burr. And here I am.” Like an axe his malice fell upon me; and we were done with one another.

I rose to go. “I wonder what the world would think if they were to know all the arrangements you made in order to become president.”

“It is too late to change what is now the accepted version of our revolution.” Jefferson put the mockingbird back inside its cage.

But a good many of Jefferson’s supporters were shaken when, two months later, my friends’ suit against the journalist Cheetham came to trial in New York. Cheetham had charged me with trying to get the presidency for myself during the election of 1800. Duly sworn, Senator Bayard of Delaware stated categorically not only had Aaron Burr made no move to take the presidency from Thomas Jefferson but that Jefferson had been indecently quick to come to an understanding with the Federalists in order to get their support in the House.

Recently, when Jefferson’s journal was published, one was able to read at inordinate length his dishonest response to this charge and his mad notion that I was entirely responsible for Senator Bayard’s deposition which had, he wrote, been taken for no “other object than to calumniate me.” Actually, I had little to do with the suit. It was Bayard who insisted that the truth be known. Currently the battle still rages amongst the heirs of the two men—who lied? Jefferson or Bayard? The Jeffersonians still maintain that it was simply coincidence that after the election of 1801, Bayard’s Federalist friend was kept on by Jefferson as collector of the port of Wilmington, Delaware.

Despite the finality of our February interview, I dined with Jefferson once again in company. Then April 12, 1806, I went to say good-bye, and that was the end of that.

LATELY I HAVE TAKEN to introducing Helen as my wife to strangers or slight acquaintances; not that we go to many public places—usually she refuses to leave the house. I assume it is because she is afraid she will meet men that she has known at Mrs. Townsend’s (the thought alarms me, too). But she denies any such fear; says she does not care what anyone thinks. Yet when I urge her to go with me to this place or that, she says she prefers her “work” at home. When she does go with me, she is sulky while I ... I feel a most extraordinary sense of triumph even though I know that I would be ruined if anyone suspected who and what she was. Certainly saying that she is my wife increases the danger. On the other hand, there is no reason why we cannot be married one day. All I have to do is make money; apply myself to the law; forget about going abroad, about leading the life of a Washington Irving—or even a Fitz-Greene Halleck, whom I saw to-night.

Sam Swartwout invited me to have supper with him at the Shakespeare Tavern in Nassau Street. I accepted with pleasure. Once, on an errand, I took some papers to a client in the tap-room, and was amazed to see everyone from Edwin Forrest to James K. Paulding all drinking and smoking together in a most convivial mood. The Shakespeare Tavern is the unofficial club of the literary and theatrical people of the town; and to be accepted as an equal in that place is the dream of every would-be author or actor. Even politicians of the cheerier sort can be seen in the tap-room, not to mention members of the Kraut Club whose annual party starts at breakfast and continues until the last member has collapsed beneath the proud emblem of our Dutch heritage, the cabbage.

“You go alone. I want to work.” For two weeks Helen has every day not worked on a dress already paid for by an impatient lady. A short quarrel, ending when she burst into tears—which is rare with her. “I hate everything!” she sobbed.

“Me, too?”

But Helen only blew her nose; splashed cold water into her face; sat at her dress-dummy, and started to work. She looked, as always, more like a lady than any of those who decorate the parlours of the City Hotel. I think this is why I like to show her off. I love the masquerade, and the danger.

Muffled against the arctic air, I walked through the darkening gray streets, trying not to slip on frozen cobbles, to avoid snow-bitches, to stay out of the path of the sleighs with their ominous thin tinkle and clatter of bells, and their terrifying propensity to slide wildly out of control, smashing the legs of horses—and of the poor who like myself walk.

I opened the green door of the Shakespeare Tavern, and was deafened by a roar of voices from the rooms to left and right; was overwhelmed by the powerful smell of spirits mingled with the odour of smoked goose and sauerkraut (despite my dislike of Dutchness I have Dutch tastes in food).

Ears tingling as heat replaced cold, I stepped into the tap-room and collided with a short stocky man who fell against the door-frame. We apologized simultaneously; then recognised one another. “Ah, the young protégé of Colonel Burr!”

I could not restrain myself, as usual. Like a fool I told Fitz-Greene Halleck that I had just finished reading the
Croaker
Papers
;
and admired them.

“Oh, dear!” Halleck talks as he writes—is highly whimsical. “Those old things.” He gestured toward the back rooms. “We wrote them here, Mr. Drake and I.” He gave me a penetrating if somewhat watery look. He smelled of rum. “I have just read your Old Patroon piece in the
Evening Post
:
on eating your first love-apple—or I suppose one must now call it a
tomato
.
I was filled with admiration for your courage. Like everyone in the world—except Indians and certain English eccentrics like Mrs. Trollope—I had thought the tomato deadly poison. Laughed at my grocer when he told me it could be safely eaten after all. But now, thanks to your intrepid spirit and literary skill, I shall, come summer, myself taste of that hectic scarlet sinister globe.”

My face must have been cretinous with pleasure and confusion. Praise from Halleck! As I write this, I still cannot believe my luck for, “You must do more pieces so that we can make a book for you.”

Halleck has a silly grin, the result of an under-slung jaw; but glittering, watchful, intelligent eyes. “Tell me exactly what it was like to taste a love-app ... a
tomato
,
How does it really taste?”

“An acid flavour,” I said. “You must stew it first. Then put a good deal of sugar on it. Or syrup.”

Halleck shuddered. “Not I! On second thought I shall forgo the experiment. After all, I have a young man of genius who will eat my love-apples for me in the pages of the
Evening Post
.”
Again the foolish but amiable grin. “I wish I could propose you for membership in our club. It is called the Ugly Club, and celebrates ugliness in all things—including
tomatoes—
but I’m afraid you lack the first qualification for membership. But come see me anyway. Any time.”

Then he proceeded to the dining-room at the back while I went into the tap-room where I found Sam Swartwout standing at the circular bar which is supposed to be typical of English taverns. He was surrounded by a number of men, all playing the toady to him because not only is he the President’s friend, but as collector of the port of New York he is the most important federal officer in the state.

“Come and sit down, Charlie!” Swartwout threw a heavy arm about my shoulder. “No girl to bring me?”

“No, Sir. She—the one who was to come—didn’t ... couldn’t come.”

“Good! We’ll have time for company later even if I’m not what I was, though I’m still better than the rest!” He steered me to a table and sat me down in a chair like a doll.

“Terrapin!” he shouted to a waiter who brought it to us in the time it would take most New York waiters to tell me that it was not possible to get terrapin in New York on any day except Midsummer’s Eve. I hate terrapin but ate as he commanded, drank as he commanded; felt duller and duller. He, on the other hand, is enlivened by drink.

I tried to get him to talk of the past, but like the Colonel (and Mr. Davis) he thinks only of the future. Obviously the business of history is for the young alone. “Texas! That’s the place. That’s where you ought to go. Get out of New York. Away from soft, weak city-folk!” With a forkful of terrapin he indicated his cronies at the bar. (I must write a piece about the degenerative effect of city life on our vigorous American stock.)

“It was the Colonel, bless him, who got me onto Texas.”

“His own Texas schemes were hardly a success ...”

“Ahead of the times! That should be on his tombstone. Aaron Burr always saw the future first. Yet never profitted by it. But he improves. That German settler scheme was only a couple of years premature. Now, in a matter of months”—the hoarse voice dropped beneath that of the men at the bar—“Texas is going to break away from Mexico
and the President is involved
.”

As he talked, I was suddenly transported back to a time when men like Burr plotted for empires. But then Swartwout is as much a relic of that era as Burr or Jackson. Swartwout is now involved in something called the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company. The attorney for the company is a former governor of Tennessee—a protege1 of Jackson named Houston who broke with his wife, resigned the governorship, went to live among Indians (and took to drink). Now he is in Texas where he is plotting, so Swartwout says, to liberate that province from Mexico with the secret connivance of Jackson. “And that’s what they talked about, Colonel Burr and the President, when they met here for the first time since the treason trial thirty years ago.”

Inadvertently, I started doing shorthand with my fork on the scarred table; hope I am getting it all straight now, three hours later—with a headache, and much else on my mind.

Jackson’s last visit to New York was June 12, 1833. A fortnight later Colonel Burr married Madame Jumel. I now understand why he needed Madame’s money to forward his Texas schemes: President Jackson had told him things that others did not know.

“Ah, it was a sweet business, getting the Colonel into the President’s suite at the American Hotel. I had to get the manager—old Boardman—to take us in the back way and up the servants’ stairs.”

Without being told, a waiter set in front of us a huge platter of pork ringlets and sauerkraut. Both Swartwout and I ate as though starving—or Dutch, which we are.

“Well, it was touch-and-go in the corridor where the people wanting jobs was crowded but, finally, I got the Colonel into a bedroom on the same floor, and a secretary was told that someone special was there for the President, and a minute later Old Hickory himself came limping in. ‘By the Eternal, Colonel Burr, I never thought to see you again on this earth—or in Heaven.’

“The Colonel was tickled by that. ‘Well, Mr. President, if you get to Heaven it will only be in answer to my daily prayers.’

“The President laughed so hard he had to sit down ... very shaky ... he was—is—not long for this world, poor old man. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘I want to talk to you about Texas.’

“ ‘The way we used to talk,’ says Colonel Burr, ‘in the old days?’

“Well, General Jackson curled that short mean upper lip of his back like a horse. ‘Damnit, Colonel, you almost lost me the election, you and your rascalities!’

“But the Colonel was cool as could be. ‘Lucky thing,’ he says, ‘that your opponent Mr. Clay was also a friend of mine.’

“ ‘Yes, Sir, that shut ’em up. By the Eternal, I won’t rest easy until I have shot Henry Clay and hanged John C. Calhoun!’ Then the President turns to me. ‘Sam, you go in the other room and have a glass of Madeira. But only one while I talk to the man I still admire the most in all the union.’ So I wait in the next room for maybe a half-hour. Then I’m called back in and the President has tears in his eyes. He says good-bye to the Colonel who says ‘Farewell’ to him. When we were out on the street, I asked the Colonel what they’d talked about but all he’d say was ‘Texas.’ ”

As Swartwout ordered us an entire goose, Gulian C. Verplanck walked by our table. Bowed briefly to Swartwout, and moved on. I don’t suppose he remembers meeting me. Swartwout told me that Verplanck was married to the daughter of Fenno who edited the
Gazetteer of the United States
for Hamilton. They do stick together, our rulers.

Swartwout can think of nothing but Texas and the money that is to be made there. He told me how not long ago Jackson sent Houston into the territory to reconnoitre. “Because Sam Houston’s got the same itch to be an emperor Colonel Burr had but I doubt if Old Hickory will let him get that far. The President wants Texas for the United States. And a lot more. Oh, he’s sly, old Jackson. Here everybody’s trying to get him to annex Texas, and he won’t lift a finger. Keeps saying how he’s got to abide by his treaty with Mexico. And he will. But do you know why? It’s a precious plot, let me tell you. ‘Sam,’ he says to me one day, ‘Texas is going to be independent in a year or two.’ ‘With our help?’ Well, he lets that one pass. ‘But I don’t want ’em in the union right away.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, suppose they was independent from Mexico. Suppose they was just another harmless little republic. And suppose they had trouble figuring out where their western boundary was because in that part of the world it
could
be anywheres. Now suppose this harmless little republic says their land goes all the way to the Pacific. Why not? And suppose they lay claim to the Californias and maybe to the fishing rights of the northwest and maybe to a harbour or two in the Pacific. Why, the Mexicans would just laugh, wouldn’t they? And they’d tell that harmless little Texas republic to go to Hell because there’s nothing a handful of Texans can do about kicking the Mexicans out of California.’ ”