by H. W. Brands
She misses her husband and charms his thoughts with an imagined improvement on correspondence. “What a pity minds could not be made sensible of each other’s approach! Why were we not so formed, that when your thoughts, your soul were with your Theo, hers could be enabled, by the finest sensation of sympathy, to meet it? How superior to writing would that be! A letter is a month old before it is received; by that time other thoughts and subjects engage the writer. The sentiments expressed in it seem no longer warm from the heart. I have been all this evening divining your occupation. Sometimes I imagine you writing or reading, and then the hope that you are thinking of me arises. Pray what have you been doing? If you can possibly recollect, let me know.”
Amid her pleasure in her father’s company and the reminders of her childhood, she contracts a summer fever. Her father shares his concern with her husband. “The debility and loss of appetite which your wife has experienced alarmed me,” Burr writes Alston. The physicians recommend that she wean her baby or engage a wet nurse. “This she peremptorily refused, and the bare proposition occasioned so many tears and so much distress that I abandoned it. Within the last three days, however, she has such a loss of appetite and prostration of strength, that she is satisfied of the necessity of the measure for the sake of the child, if not for herself; and I have this day sent off a man to the country to find a suitable nurse.”
Theo’s physical troubles linger. She has not entirely recuperated from young Aaron’s delivery; internal bleeding and a stubborn infection cause her discomfort and occasional disability. She grows discouraged, judging her malady chronic. “I have now abandoned all hope of recovery,” she writes Alston. “I do not say it in a moment of depression, but with all my reason about me. I am endeavouring to resign myself with cheerfulness; and you also, my husband, must summon up your fortitude to bear with a sick wife the rest of her life. At present, my general health is very good; indeed, my appearance so perfectly announces it, that physicians smile at the idea of my being an invalid. The great misfortune of this complaint is, that one may vegetate forty years in a sort of middle state between life and death, without the enjoyment of one or the rest of the other.”
Burr believes she exaggerates. “The cold weather of the last ten days has had a happy effect on Theodosia,” he writes Alston in November 1802, as she is preparing to sail for home. “She is so far restored that I can with confidence assure you she will return in health.” Nor is she alone in thriving on the cold. “The boy, too, grows fat and rosy with the frost.” Burr tells Alston that the voyage will be comfortable. “She will have the control of the cabin, and will be perfectly well accommodated.” He hates to see her go but won’t hinder her departure. “I regret she will sail so soon (the 12th), as well because I cannot attend her as that I could have wished her health and that of the boy to have been still more confirmed. Yet I cannot any longer resist her impatience.… When you shall see her and son, you will not regret this five months’ separation.”
He distrusts ocean travel and worries till word comes that she has reached home safely. “I drank a bottle of champagne on the occasion,” he writes her. Yet he scolds her that he first got the news from another source. “Though this relieves me from the great anxiety under which I laboured, still there are many details of your passage, your arrival, &c., on which nothing but your letter can satisfy me.… Had it not been for the intelligence by water of your safe arrival, we should have concluded that you and Kate”—a cousin traveling with her—“were now dancing with Amphitrite. How jealous her majesty would have been at the presence of two such rivals.”
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He is distressed to hear that she has suffered a relapse in South Carolina, but he is encouraged by the pluck she displays. “I was one night so ill as to have lost my senses,” she writes. “About daylight, as a last resource, they began plying me with old wine, and blisters to my feet. But, on recovering a little, I kicked off the blisters, and declared I would be dressed; be carried in the open air, and have free use of cold water. I was indulged. I was carried below, where I drank plentifully of cold water, and I had my face, neck, and arms bathed with it, and it assisted most astonishingly in recovering me. The day before yesterday I was put on a bed in a boat and brought here.” She is writing from Clifton in the South Carolina upcountry. “The change of air and scene have assisted me wonderfully. I am again getting well. Indeed, the rapidity with which I gain strength surprises the whole family.”
Her secret, she says, is to treat her illness as a man would. “I exert myself to the utmost, feeling none of that pride, so common to my sex, of being weak and ill. Delicacy and debility are sometimes fascinating when affected by a coquette, adorned with the freshness of health; but a pale, thin face; sunken, instead of languishing eyes; and a form, evidently tottering, not gracefully bending, never, I suspect, made, far less could they retain a conquest, or even please a friend. I therefore encourage spirits, try to appear well, and am rewarded. In a few days I shall be on the high road to health.”
But she can’t yet be as active as she wishes, and she relates to her father her impatience at being idle. “The longer I live, the more frequently the truth of your advice evinces itself, and never was there anything more true than that occupation is necessary to give one command over themselves. I confess I feel myself growing quite cross on the journey, and it is really to be feared that, unless we soon finish it, the serene tranquility of my placid temper may be injured.” She spurns the romance novels favored for entertainment by other women. “Novel reading has, I find, not only the ill effect of rendering people romantic, which, thanks to my father on earth, I am long past, but they really furnish no occupation to the mind. A series of events follow so rapidly, and are interwoven with remarks so commonplace and so spun out, that there is nothing left to reflect upon. A collection of images, which amuse only from their variety and rapid succession, like the pictures of a magic lantern—not like a piece of Vanderlyn, where the painter makes fine touches, and leaves to your vanity at least the merit of discovering them.”
Father and daughter exchange views on matters small and large. He consults her on a plan for swapping Richmond Hill for a rural Manhattan estate that once belonged to merchant and financier Roger Morris. Richmond Hill isn’t the same without her, he says, and the Morris place appears a bargain. She weighs the proposition. “Richmond Hill will, for a few years to come, be more valuable than Morris’s,” she observes. “And to you, who are so fond of town, a place so far from it would be useless. So much for my reasoning on one side; now for the other. Richmond Hill has lost many of its beauties, and is daily losing more.” The city is encroaching on all sides. “If you mean it for a residence, what avail its intrinsic value? If you sell part, you deprive it of every beauty save the mere view. Morris’s is the most commanding view on the island. It is reputed to be indescribably beautiful. The grounds are pretty. How many delightful walks can be made on one hundred and thirty acres! How much of your taste displayed! In ten or twenty years hence, one hundred and thirty acres on New York island will be a principality; and there is to me something stylish, elegant, respectable and suitable to you in having a handsome country seat. So that, upon the whole, I vote for Morris’s.”
Burr weighs the advice; meanwhile Theo hears a rumor that he has been wounded in a duel with Andrew Jackson. He responds by return mail: “This is only to assure you that I am in perfect health. That General Jackson is my good friend; that I have had no duel nor quarrel with anybody, and have not been wounded or hurt.”
He relates his most recent love affairs. “La G. may be forty-one,” he says of a current flame. “Something of the style and manners of la tante de La R.”—another lover, whom Theo knows. “Is about as silly; talks as much, and as much nonsense; is certainly good-tempered and cheerful; rather comely, abating a flat chest; about two inches taller than Theodosia. Things are not gone to extremities; but there is danger.”
He sends instructions for her next visit. “Bring n
o horse nor carriage. I have got a nice, new, beautiful little chariot, made purposely to please you. I have also a new coachee, very light, on an entire new construction.… These two machines are severally adapted to two horses, and you may take your choice of them.” Nor need she bring servants. “Of servants there are enough for family purposes.” She, Alston and young Aaron shall have Richmond Hill to themselves. “I shall take rooms (a house, &c.) in town, but will live with you as much or as little as you may please and as we can agree.”
He gently scolds her for not writing more about his grandson. “You have been remarkably reserved in your two last letters. I conclude, however, that he cannot be dead, as you would, probably, have thought that a circumstance worthy of being mentioned, at least in a postscript.” When she appends the boy’s first scribbles, he is thrilled. “I have studied every pothook and trammel of his first literary performance, to see what rays of genius could be discovered,” he says. “You remember our friend Schweitzer, nephew and pupil of Lavater. He used to insist that as much was to be inferred from the handwriting as from the face. I showed him a letter from a man of great fame, and he saw genius in every stroke. I then produced a letter from an arrant blockhead and great knave, but so like the other as not to be distinguished, at least by my unphysiognomical discernment. He acknowledged that there was resemblance to an ignorant eye; but, said he, triumphantly, this (latter) could never have made that scratch, which sybilistic scratch was the mere prolongation of the last letter of the last word in a sentence. Now it occurs to me that one of A.B.A.’s scratches is exactly in the line of genius according to Schweitzer; and surely more may be presumed from the instinctive effort of untutored infancy than from the laboured essay of scientific cultivation.”
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Burr’s joy is Theo and Aaron; his job is politics. And his political fortunes are declining, from causes he cannot control. Jefferson once assailed political parties as inimical to the public interest, but the Virginian has proved himself an adept, even ruthless, party leader. He exploited Burr’s deftness in delivering New York in the 1800 election, but now he prefers Madison, a man more after his own tastes and over whom he expects to wield more influence. Though relations between Jefferson and Burr remain personally polite, the president employs patronage and other perquisites of office to advance Madison’s prospects and retard Burr’s. The opposition Federalists, who are slouching toward inconsequence, can’t decide whether to cultivate Burr or excoriate him. Most adopt the latter course, which might have endeared Burr to Jefferson had the president not already chosen another protégé; the result is simply to impugn Burr’s integrity and cloud his political future.
The maneuvers occur in a social welter that often cannot locate the boundary between the personal and the political. Elected officials and candidates are slandered and libeled in the most scurrilous manner, their personal beliefs, habits and relationships recounted in terms that show no respect for honor and precious little for truth. George Washington retired after two terms as president not least because he couldn’t stand the lies attached to his name by hostile journalists. John Adams wanted a second term but didn’t miss the insults and innuendos he had endured. Jefferson hears that he is a Satanist, the Antichrist and any number of other outlandish allegations, and he doubtless does not hear the most egregious of the slanders, which circulate beyond the realm of the published word.
Burr too is the target of venom. In the late winter of 1804 he arranges for friends in the New York legislature to nominate him for governor. Election, should he win, will afford a most respectable exit from the Jefferson administration and provide a base for a subsequent attempt at the presidency. The nomination at once arouses Alexander Hamilton to mount a campaign against him. “Hamilton is intriguing for any candidate who can have a chance of success against A. B.,” Burr writes Theo. Hamilton and Burr’s other opponents circulate criticism of him, alleging everything from political intrigue to moral turpitude. Broadsides and handbills assert that he has seduced innocent young women, who have borne his bastard children in the brothels to which they have been confined since he ruined them. He writes Theo about “the new and amusing libels” regularly perpetrated against him, but he publicly declines to take notice.
As election day approaches, the furor intensifies. Theo’s most recent letter has been composed in a thunderstorm; he answers: “I, too, write in a storm: an election storm, of the like you have once been a witness. The thing began yesterday, and will terminate tomorrow.… Both parties claim majorities, and there never was, in my opinion, an election of the result of which so little judgment could be formed. A. B. will have a small majority in this city—if tomorrow should be a fair day.”
He does win in New York City, but he loses the state as a whole. He takes the result philosophically. “The election is lost by a great majority,” he writes Theo. “Tant mieux”—so much the better. The decisiveness of the defeat makes clear that his future, for some while at least, will not be in politics. He can return to the practice of law, recoup his fortunes and prepare for whatever might ensue. Not least, he will have more time for Theo and young Aaron.
But one loose end needs tying off. During the campaign a letter written by a Dr. Cooper had been reprinted in the Federalist press. “General Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government,” the Cooper letter avers. It continues: “I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr.”
Burr didn’t read the letter when it was published, and he encounters it only when it is shown to him after the election. He decides that Hamilton’s assaults have gone far enough. He drafts a note to his adversary. “You must perceive, sir, the necessity of a prompt and unqualified acknowledgment or denial of the use of any expression which would warrant the assertions of Dr. Cooper,” he says. He hands the note to a friend who delivers it to Hamilton.
Hamilton hadn’t seen the Cooper letter either. He asks for time to respond. And when he does respond, he neither acknowledges nor denies the language attributed to him. “Between gentlemen, despicable and more despicable are not worth the pains of distinction,” he says. He rejects the premise of Burr’s note. “I deem it inadmissible on principle to consent to be interrogated as to the justness of the inferences which may be drawn by others from whatever I may have said of a political opponent in the course of fifteen years competition.”
Burr interprets Hamilton’s response as smug equivocation. “I regret to find in it nothing of that sincerity and delicacy which you profess to value,” he says. “Political opposition can never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum. I neither claim such privilege nor indulge it in others.… Your letter has furnished me with new reasons for requiring a definite reply.”
Hamilton’s neck stiffens, too. “If by a ‘definite reply’ you mean the direct avowal or disavowal required in your first letter,” he says, “I have no other answer to give than that which has already been given.”
Intermediaries attempt to arrest the escalating tension. Several days are filled with their efforts to find language that will suit the honor of both parties. Should either side evince a desire to de-escalate, the mediation must succeed. And should either Hamilton or Burr not feel his political future in jeopardy, that party must surely yield to common sense. But Hamilton has alienated many of the Federalists, and the party as a whole is falling apart; he has no margin for magnanimity. Burr has been cast aside by Jefferson and hence the Republican majority; he, too, cannot risk being seen as weak. So each man holds his ground, more stubbornly with every message that passes between them.
Burr, finally concluding that Hamilton will never own or disclaim the assertions attributed to him, directs the delivery of a challenge. “Colonel Burr disavows all motives of predetermined hostility,” the message says. “He feels as a gentl
eman should feel when his honor is impeached or assailed; and, without sensations of hostility or wishes of revenge, he is determined to vindicate that honor at such hazard as the nature of the case demands.”
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