Burr

by Gore Vidal

  “Most interesting, Mr. Schuyler.” I was on my feet. Since Mr. Bryant made no move for me to sit, a short interview was indicated. “Naturally we will record the … happy event. We are a newspaper. But to serve the news—and our public—one sentence will suffice.”

  “You see?” Leggett was pleased at my failure.

  I was angry. “I have obviously been misled. I thought that you were interested in Colonel Burr.”

  “Mr. Leggett is perhaps more interested than I.” The two editors exchanged an uneasy look.

  I persevered. “At Leggett’s suggestion, I described a wedding which is, you must agree, of some interest.”

  Mr. Bryant was conciliatory. “I agree that Aaron Burr is one of the most interesting people in the city, in the United States …”

  “And if only Charlie could get him to talk freely, candidly about his life, about his connections, particularly today.”

  “I doubt if the Colonel would be candid.” Mr. Bryant’s view of Burr is the traditional one.

  Leggett, however, had something else in mind. “As you know, Charlie, we support President Jackson. The Vice-President, however, is a puzzling figure …”

  “I do not find him puzzling.” Mr. Bryant was sharp.

  “Well, I do. I think him a trimmer. Without principle. And I’d like to know what everyone would like to know: the relationship between Vice-President Van Buren and Aaron Burr.”

  “Naturally, it is the political relation which interests Mr. Leggett and me.” Mr. Bryant gave Leggett a warning look that was ignored on principle.

  “No!” Leggett was on fire. “The whole relationship.” He turned to me. “I had a good reason for asking you to take notes, to ask the Colonel questions. It is important for us to know how close the two men are.”

  “The Colonel admires Van Buren.” I tried to recall what, if anything, Burr had said of the Vice-President. “But I would not say they are ‘close.’ ”

  Leggett was decisive. “Well they are, whether you know it or not. Twenty years ago when Burr came back from Europe, he went straight to Albany, straight to Van Buren, and stayed with him in his house. Stayed with a leader of the Albany regency. Yet Aaron Burr was still under indictment out west for treason. Still charged by the state of New Jersey for the killing of Hamilton …”

  None of this is quite true but Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist. “Now the question to be answered is: why did the careful, clever Martin Van Buren befriend such a dangerous, such a compromising man?”

  “Naturally, there has always been a political affinity between the two.” Mr. Bryant’s elevated dullness makes a nice contrast to the vividness of his young colleague. “Colonel Burr was a founder of Tammany Hall. Martin Van Buren is now, in effect, a master of Tammany. They share the same … uh, ideals.”

  “Ideals!” Leggett threw wide his arms as though for a crucifixion. “Neither man has any ideals. Power is all that either ever wanted. Burr of course no longer matters. He’s history. But Matty Van, now there’s our target. The little wizard. Our own Merlin who’s led General Jackson through one term as president and is now leading him through a second and as sure as there is corruption in Albany, will try to succeed him in thirty-six if we don’t stop him.”

  “Why should we? Most of the positions he has taken …”

  But Mr. Bryant is no match for Leggett when he is afire with what, I suppose, is moral passion.

  “Positions be damned! Matty will do what he has to do to be nominated and win. He is the perfect politician. On the surface. But I tell you, beneath Matty’s pinky-blond Dutch exterior, behind that seraphic smile, there lurks something very odd, very rotten, very Aaron Burrish.”

  I had no idea what Leggett was talking about. “Surely you don’t think a man should be denied the presidency simply because he befriended Colonel Burr.”

  “I don’t think that that is precisely what Mr. Leggett has in mind.” Mr. Bryant looked more than ever like an Old Testament prophet. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, Mr. Schuyler.” He was gone.

  “Charlie.” Leggett assumed his special schoolmaster’s voice. “I shall now corrupt your innocence. Martin Van Buren is the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr.”

  I was stunned. “I don’t believe it. And anyway, how would anyone know?”

  “It is known that Colonel Burr used to stay at the Van Buren tavern in Kinderhook up the Hudson. It is widely suspected that he got with child the tavern-keeper’s wife Mary, crowning with splendid antlers her husband Abraham.”

  “ ‘Widely suspected.’ ” I was scornful.

  “As well as suspicion, there was a good deal of evidence of the circumstantial variety. Colonel Burr constantly befriended the entire family, particularly young Matty, short, subtle, large-eyed, high-browed Matty—sound familiar?”

  It is true that there is a physical resemblance between the two, except “Van Buren is fair, Burr dark …”

  “He had a mother.” Airily Leggett set to one side contrary evidence. “Now all of this may be simply gossip. Or may be not. Certainly it’s true that at a very young age Matty left Kinderhook, came to New York and promptly went to work in the law office of one of Burr’s associates …”

  “But suppose Burr is his father. What’s the point?”

  Leggett condescended to explain. “Think of the possibility. For you. A pamphlet—no, a book proving that Martin Van Buren is the son of Aaron Burr, why, that would make your fortune.”

  “Proof in law,” I began, but Leggett was not listening.

  “Even more important than your fortune, Charlie, is the fate of this republic. Jackson has begun great reforms. We are beginning to tend toward democracy. Van Buren will reverse that trend. Therefore let us prevent him from becoming president.”

  “By proving him to be a bastard?”

  “Americans are a moral people. But even more damaging than his bastardy is his political connection with Burr, particularly in recent years. If we can prove secret meetings, dark plots, unholy combinations—then, by Heaven, Van Buren will not be chosen to succeed General Jackson.”

  “Does that mean you want Henry Clay for president?”

  “No. I want the other senator from Kentucky, Richard Johnson. Despite his penchant for black ladies, Johnson will continue Jackson’s reforms. Van Buren won’t.” Leggett became conspiratorial. “You’ve probably observed that Mr. Bryant and I are in disagreement. He trusts Van Buren. I don’t. I like Johnson. He doesn’t.”

  I have never seen Leggett so worked up. Eyes glassy with excitement; cheeks a dull red. A moment of silence, broken finally by a clam-seller singing his wares below in Pine Street:

  “Here’s your fine clams

  As white as snow

  On Rockaway these clams do grow!”

  (I record all the songs I hear—for a possible article.)

  I was tentative. “First, I don’t think Colonel Burr is apt to tell me the truth …”

  “You see him every day. He’s fond of you.”

  “My father was a friend of his but that’s hardly …”

  “Burr’s old. He lives in the past.”

  “In the past? At this very moment he’s planning to settle Texas with Germans.”

  “Good God!” Leggett was impressed. “Anyway, you’re the only one in a position to find out. And didn’t you tell me he was writing the story of his life?”

  “So he says. But I doubt it. Occasionally he speaks of dictating to me but …”

  “So encourage him! Get him to talk about old times, about Kinderhook, about the days when he was in the Assembly and impregnating Mrs. Van Buren …”

  “I’m afraid he’s more interested in telling the ‘true’ story of the Revolution.”

  “Have you no guile?”

  “You don’t know Colonel Burr. And even if I did get the truth from him—which is doubtful—he can always prevent me from using it. He’s
the best lawyer in the state, and there is such a thing as libel.”

  Leggett was brisk. “We have three years before the next elections. He’s bound to be dead by then, and under New York law you cannot libel the dead.”

  “What about Van Buren?”

  “It is not libel to prove that a man is a bastard.” Leggett was on his feet. “Charlie, we may have found a way to keep Matty Van out of the White House, and democratic principles in.”

  I rose, too. “The Evening Post will print the story?”

  Leggett laughed and coughed simultaneously. “Certainly not! But don’t worry. I’ll have a publisher for you.” He shambled along beside me to the door, loose as a wired skeleton. “I’m serious, Charlie.” He took my hand in his hot dry one. “How often do you get a chance to alter the history of your country?”

  Leggett had managed the wrong appeal. It was my turn to be condescending. “I’ll tell that to Colonel Burr. Just by living and breathing he has altered the lives of every American a number of times, and I can’t see that it has done him much good.”

  “Let me reflect ironically, dear Charlie. You change history.”

  DO I BETRAY the Colonel? In a small way, yes. Do I hurt him? No. An anonymous pamphlet maintaining that he was the devil would distress him not at all. Much worse has been written about him by such supremely non-anonymous figures as Jefferson and Hamilton. Also, if he is consistent, he could hardly complain if the world were to know he is the father of Van Buren. The Colonel often says, “Whenever a woman does me the honour of saying that I am father to her child, I gracefully acknowledge the compliment and disguise any suspicion that I might have to the contrary.”

  On the other hand, the Colonel would be most distressed if Van Buren were to lose the election because of the Burr relationship. Well, I have no choice. Leggett has offered me a way out of drudgery; a means to support myself by writing. I shall take it. Also, there is—I confess—a certain joy in tricking the slyest trickster of our time. I’m fond of the Colonel; but fonder still of survival.

  Four

  THE VOYAGE INTO CONNECTICUT was cut short by business.” Colonel Burr sat wreathed in smoke from a long seegar. The inner office. Describe: torn felt curtains cover dusty window-panes, diffusing the green summer light; the effect is infernal, no, subaqueous, a watery world into which the visitor swims, barely able to discern the tall break-front containing tattered law books; the baize-covered table, the portrait of a plump dark girl—the Colonel’s daughter Theodosia (according to legend, forced to walk the plank by pirates). Burr has yet to speak of Theodosia to me but then he seldom mentions the past, unless provoked by a mischievous desire to deflate the reputation of some famed contemporary.

  “I spent the night in the office. So much work to do.” He motioned for me to sit in the visitor’s chair.

  “Mrs. Burr …?”

  “Madame is on the Heights, where else? But she comes to town later today. Charlie, what have you done with the Texas papers?”

  I got them from the cabinet.

  “Today we buy the land!” Happily, Burr spread out the papers. “Already there are a thousand immigrants at Bremen ready to set sail.” He unfurled a map of the Texas Territory and Louisiana. “I used to know every inch of this part of the world.” With an elegant strong finger (the hands are not old), he traced the Mississippi River’s course to New Orleans.

  “Wild, empty, beautiful country.” Suddenly he poked the map hard. “Here’s where Mr. Jefferson had me arrested.” He grinned like a schoolboy. “With forty-five men I was, he claimed, going to separate the western part of the United States from Greater Virginia, as the union was sometimes referred to by those of us who took no pleasure in Mr. Jefferson and his junto.”

  “What had you meant to do with those forty-five men?”

  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 surpris
ed 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.”