Fallen Founder

by Nancy Isenberg

  At first, Burr’s feelings for Theodosia resembled those of her other young male acquaintances. In a tone identical to Monroe’s, echoed by Troup, Burr fantasized rescuing her from the calamities of war. In 1779, he sped off to Boston on a knight’s errand. There, Theodosia’s poor Loyalist brother was held prisoner. Exuberantly, Burr told his sister, “How happy if I am his Deliverer!”41

  Reinventing chivalry, Continental officers fostered what can best be described as a romantic cult of republican matrons. The language they used derived from the medieval model of courtly love, and encouraged devotion to mature women. The difference in age and status implied a relationship that existed on a higher, more spiritual plane, and which made the younger man’s admiration appear noble and altruistic. Whether they realized it or not, the language of chivalry was highly sexualized: age differences aside, desire was sparked by the unlikely quest of winning the lady’s hand. Seeking the unobtainable enhanced the desire, stirring that old-fashioned mixture of unrequited love and repressed passion. For Whigs Monroe, Troup, and Burr, chastened lust rose from beneath the surface of this new, revivified version of courtly love.

  It is telling that the men in this chivalric trio were so close in age in 1778: Burr was the oldest at twenty-two, Troup one year younger, and Monroe two years. All three had been aides to prominent generals—Burr in the service of Montgomery and Putnam, Troup with Horatio Gates, and Monroe with Lord Stirling. All sported the laurels of battle and carried real battle scars. Troup had been incarcerated on the British prison ship Mentor in 1776, and Monroe received a severe wound during Washington’s heralded raid on Trenton on Christmas Day. Burr’s health had suffered when he succumbed to heat prostration at the Battle of Monmouth; many died and many more fell ill amid fighting in temperatures above 100 degrees F.42

  Glory and gallantry was pursued on the battlefield, of course. But for these three, there was glory of a different kind—perhaps no less important to them—within the halls of the Hermitage. At Theodosia’s side, they received mature advice, consolatory comfort, cheering company, and in Burr’s case especially, a retreat where he might convalesce and overcome his headaches. Each man, in return, proved his honorable intentions by acting selflessly as her patron. More than anything else, this culture of chivalry explains how she acquired a following of young devotees. Burr, at least in the beginning, was no different than the others who were drawn to her as they were drawn to a courtly game of honor.

  He began to imagine Theodosia as a member of his family. That is what eventually distinguished his affections from the others. Writing once again to Sally, he gave Mrs. Prevost the pet name “sister P.,” describing her as “our lovely sister.” This term of endearment was a telling departure from his previous flirtations. Burr’s relationship with his older sister was extremely close; she had been his one female confidante, the trusted recipient of his journalistic musings on sex and polite society as he was coming of age. To Sally, he confessed in an emotional moment how his “pen and heart” were always entwined. He was gradually transferring his primary affections from Sally to Theodosia, while bringing “sister P.” into the family fold. He explained in November 1778: “Believe me, Sally, she has an honest and affectionate heart. We talk of you very often, her highest happiness will be to see you and love you.” By making Theodosia his surrogate sister, Burr could channel his growing desires into intimate terms that were acceptable. A chaste matron, the British officer’s wife was increasingly a woman he could love as a sister.43

  All this talk of sisterly affection failed to conceal his deeper feelings. His constant visits to the Hermitage provoked gossip. Two of William Livingston’s daughters asked Troup if Burr was courting Theodosia’s unmarried sister, Catherine De Visme. By 1780, Burr’s questioning cousin Thaddeus finally agreed that he wouldn’t “joke any more about a certain lady.” By far the most amazing letter came from Paterson, following his own marriage in February 1779. Unguardedly referring to Theodosia as the “Mistress of your Affections,” he strongly urged Burr to marry as soon as possible. “May I congratulate you both in the Course of the next moon for being in my Line, I mean, the married.” What Paterson called his “strange unconnected Scroll [scrawl],” actually sounded the way he did when he was Burr’s college mentor: the letter-writing Paterson was known for his intrusive commentary about students’ love lives. Burr’s desires could not remain hidden for long from Paterson—as this letter clearly shows.44

  Paterson’s congratulations were premature, to say the least. Theodosia was still married, and only a few months later her husband begged her to join him. In the early fall of 1779, Lieutenant Colonel Prevost was appointed lieutenant governor of the royal administration in Georgia. That November, another of Theodosia’s sisters, Elizabeth Duval, who was also married to a British officer, urged her to follow her husband “to Georgia, Jamaica, or wherever he may settle for a time.” She could not understand why Theodosia ignored his request, pointedly asking her: “What can be your motive for not complying with it?” Theodosia made excuses—but her real motive may well have been Burr, who was spending a great deal of time at the Hermitage recovering from his illness. We can only speculate on what their extended intimacy provoked. Yet Theodosia gives the appearance she was not ready to break her marriage vows—at least symbolically keeping that love alive. After telling her husband she could not join him, she sent along a lock of her hair, the most remarked upon love token of the time.45

  Theodosia’s marriage would not formally end until December 1781, when she learned of her husband’s death by yellow fever in Jamaica. Her two teenage sons, John Bartow and Augustine James Frederick, had joined their father’s regiment as ensigns; in 1780, they returned to New Jersey to avoid contracting the deadly contagion. On the last day of 1781, Catherine De Visme sent word to Burr. “If you have not seen the York Gazette,” she noted, “the following account will be news to you.” The “news” was of Prevost’s death. Her message was undisguised: the last obstacle to marriage was now removed.46

  All evidence suggests that Theodosia and Burr were by now openly lovers. In a July 1780 letter to his sister, Burr described Theodosia as one would a playful lover, sitting at “his elbow [and] is this moment pinching my ear, because I will not say any thing about her to you.” In Paterson’s 1779 letter, which appeared long before Prevost’s illness, he talked about Aaron and Theodosia’s marriage, and in the same breath refers to Theodosia as “Mrs. Prevost.” There is only one inescapable conclusion: Paterson knew that Burr and Theodosia were contemplating marriage long before she had any idea that she might become a widow.47

  Theodosia demonstrated finesse in negotiating between competing desires and ambitions. She saw herself as devoted, keeping her family intact while changing her own life by becoming the not-so-secret mistress of Burr’s affections. War had decisively transformed her marriage. The decision not to join her husband in 1779 meant that she would remain physically apart from him, and would remake herself as an independent supporter of the American patriot movement.

  Her sister Elizabeth Duval saw her decision to remain apart as a highly improper one, damaging to her marriage. It is important to remember that in the eighteenth century, wives did informally end their marriages by living apart from their husbands. Whether or not she imagined her decision as an informal separation, Theodosia made a choice: not to continue her marriage on terms she found unacceptable.

  Another possibility is that Paterson was hinting at divorce. Given her political influence, Theodosia may have been able to bring a divorce petition to the attention of the state legislature. Her husband was a Loyalist, an enemy of the state, and thus no longer recognized as a citizen of New Jersey. She could have presented herself as a patriotic matron who wished to cut the ties that bound her to a Loyalist husband, just as the new American nation had abandoned the British Empire. What could be more appealing to a Revolutionary legislature than this script—one that Theodosia already had successfu
lly rehearsed before her prominent Whig friends? Yet divorce required many years of litigation, delays that neither Burr nor Theodosia would have wished to endure. If Colonel Prevost had survived, it might have been their only chance for happiness together.

  It is apparent, then, that neither Aaron Burr nor Theodosia Prevost was prim or puritanical. They projected marriage, with the support of friends and family. As patriots, as lovers, they were undeterred by the challenges before them.

  “A PLACE SACRED TO LOVE, REFLECTION, AND BOOKS”

  In December 1781, the same month he learned of Colonel Prevost’s death, Burr kept a journal for Theodosia. Recording his every feeling, Burr dwelled longest on the agony of separation; he was impatient for the day they would be “formally united.” And so he begged her, “Visit me in my slumbers.” A few days after this, lying prostrate with a severe headache, he longed for her company, and spent the entire day stretched out on a blanket before the fire. He fantasized feeling her “little hand” gently stroking his head.48

  Eighteenth-century marriages pretended to be built on friendship and affection, but few actually were. The union of Aaron Burr and the previously married Theodosia, however, would be. “’Tis impossible for me,” she wrote, unforced, using the same lover’s vocabulary, “to disguise a single thought or feeling when writing or conversing with the friend of my heart.” Their letters brimmed with need. They were earnest and resolute, as much as they were affectionate. To his future wife, and to her alone, perhaps, his life was an open book.49

  Burr distinctly pursued a marriage based on a very modern idea of friendship between the sexes. He found such advocacy in the writings of John Witherspoon, president of his alma mater, Princeton; and as well in the more respectable courtship novels of his day, and in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman. That ultra-liberal 1792 work rocked British and American society; but Burr had already begun practicing its egalitarian marital principles ten years before its publication.50

  Burr’s impending marriage—with its intimations of illicit love—was complicated by the ongoing war, and intensified by serious illness. Both he and Theodosia were suffering from real physical ailments. He routinely called himself an “invalid,” and spent much of his time in the year or so leading up to his marriage seeking relief at mineral springs located near the Hermitage. His symptoms—migraine headaches, “eye trouble,” and spells of depression—suggest some kind of nervous disorder. His sister suffered from similar ailments, though in her case temporary blindness may have been a sign of multiple sclerosis.51

  Friends constantly worried about his delicate constitution. In the fall of 1780, Troup and Paterson felt he was, in Troup’s words, “on the brink of eternity,” ready to take his “final farewell of this wrangling world.” Burr experienced uncontrollable mood swings. He confessed to Theodosia that many days were sacrificed to an all-consuming “ill humour.” Noting that he was becoming something of a recluse, Burr felt “unlike himself”—“a little hypo,” as he admitted to Paterson. He needed to be “remote from the noise of war,” he said, dejectedly. Was this, perhaps, the eighteenth-century version of post-traumatic stress disorder?52

  Illness was never far from his thoughts. Theodosia’s condition was an “incurable disorder of the uterus,” which possibly developed into cancer. She eventually succumbed to it at the age of forty-eight. As early as 1781, if not earlier, Burr was fully aware she was ill, and “dangerously so.” Enduring periods of excruciating pain during their marriage, she increasingly relied on laudanum to ease her suffering. Laudanum was an opium-based drug, unregulated and freely administered, that could bring about periods of melancholy. Theodosia took solace in his “friendly sympathy,” his willingness to let her “speak without reserve,” while Burr hounded physicians for a magic cure. Occasionally he aired his frustration, complaining of false friends who asked about her health but did not adequately invest in Theodosia’s recovery; theirs were merely “cold, uninterested inquiries.” Pity had no appeal for him—it was a weakness he refused to indulge.53

  The year 1781 brought stress for other reasons. In December, Burr was living in Albany, trying to get a license to practice law. He had studied with his brother-in-law Tapping Reeve before the war; afterwards, he worked his way through three apprenticeships, starting with Titus Hosmer of Middletown, Connecticut, followed by his good friend Paterson, and finally settling down to a rigorous routine with Thomas Smith of Haverstraw, New York, on the west bank of the Hudson. Under Smith’s tutelage, Burr returned to his intensive habits of study, devoting an incredible sixteen hours a day to reading and compiling notes. There was little time to waste; he needed a career if he intended to marry and support Theodosia’s family, and Smith promised to prepare him for the New York bar with dispatch.54

  Friendship sustained Burr in this hectic period. Theodosia had left the Hermitage for the placid hamlet of Sharon, Connecticut, not far from his sister’s home in Litchfield. By leaving New Jersey, she sought to undermine efforts by state commissioners to confiscate her husband’s property. Burr, with his routine of racing back and forth from New York to Connecticut, was making a lawyer out of himself. Robert Troup, whom Burr described as “a worthy, sensible young fellow, and a particular friend of mine,” became his constant companion in 1780. Mainly through Troup’s persistence, they became inseparable, studying and living together, and promoting each other’s ambition of joining the New York bar.55

  Adding to their troubles, Burr and Theodosia were constantly hounded by gossip and “calumny”—as insult and invective was commonly called. Her decision to flee to Sharon failed to stifle the angry attacks back in New Jersey. As Burr astutely observed, many people thought it would be to their advantage—prove their patriotism—if they assailed her reputation. A particularly offensive “canting Reverend Doctor” used the art of the insult to puff up his less than sterling credentials as a Whig. Burr considered the reverend’s moral hypocrisy plain as day, exclaiming: “What an amiable imitation of the meek philanthropy of the Savior whom he pretends to imitate!”56

  Burr’s regular visits to the Hermitage had caused tongues to wag. Theodosia had no intention of starting their marriage from a position of desperation. This is abundantly clear from a letter she wrote to Burr in May 1781. Advising him to study the law in order to guarantee his professional life—for “respect and independence,” as she put it—she demanded at the same time respect and independence for herself. Theodosia understood that dependence generated resentment; she did not wish to live inconsequentially relative to Burr’s rising career. She knew that dependence led to self-loathing, to a loss of pride no less likely to destroy what began as genuine affection. “Pride,” she pointedly declared, was “inseparable from true love.” Not wishing to be beholden to him, she explained that if she could not regain her “own happiness,” she could never agree to marry for either “pecuniary motives” or out of emotional desperation.57

  It was their passion for books, and the cultivation of a mature affection, that seems to have allowed them to weather the storm as they contemplated marriage. In December 1781, Burr advised Theodosia to install a Franklin stove in her rustic cottage in Sharon, and suggested placing it in the back room, for there she could have “a place sacred to love, reflection, and books.” One of the books they read and discussed was Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s groundbreaking treatise on education. It was one of Theodosia’s favorite works.58

  Just a few months before she wrote asserting her sense of independence, she had explored personal freedom as an intellectual problem. Writing with a sense of passion and purpose, she argued specifically that Rousseau’s model of education was superior to that of Lord Chesterfield. The controversial French philosophe called for educating a child to be independent, responsible, and in Theodosia’s words, “a happy, respectable member of society.” In contrast, Chesterfield visualized a world of courtiers and envoys—as useless and parasitical as “ten thousand m
odern beaux.”59

  Her comments suggest why she and Burr later came to admire the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft. The connection between Rousseau and Wollstonecraft matters to us because it helps to explain what it was that drew this enlightened American couple together. Though A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was not published until 1792, Wollstonecraft’s ruling concept derived from Rousseau: “liberty was the mother of virtue.” In other words, every child must be given enough freedom to learn to exercise the faculty of reason, to cultivate understanding, and thus to be truly independent. Theodosia and Burr would have been familiar with this notion in 1781. Though the author of Vindication became one of Rousseau’s greatest critics—because his radical plan excluded women—Wollstonecraft did not reject his ideas; she only challenged how they should be applied. Her solution was deceptively simple: extend Rousseau’s plan of education in Emile to girls as well as boys.60

  That Theodosia loved Rousseau’s ideal of moral independence and utterly despised Chesterfield also made perfect sense. Wollstonecraft, too, railed against Chesterfield’s model pupil—the courtier—calling him an “indolent puppet,” devoid of reason and moral agency, whose only goal in life was to please others. Groveling was precisely what Theodosia found so unappealing in “ten thousand modern beaux.”61

  Burr and Theodosia modeled their relationship on the eighteenth century’s ideal of an intellectual friendship. The heart and mind were meant to bind two kindred souls together into a noble communion based on mutual esteem and generosity. Sublime friendship required what Burr called the “impulse of feeling”—to speak without formality or artificial restraint. This kind of intimacy and openness allowed for an instructive exchange of ideas; one’s “whole soul” was subject to examination.