Burr

by Gore Vidal

  “You must see the new play at the Park Theatre. I went last night with Columbus. A melodrama but not entirely stupid. We sat in a box which cost us seventy-five cents apiece. Such extravagance!”

  Then the Colonel indicated several old books on the table. “I bought these for you, Charlie. Second hand, I fear. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Take them. Read them. Become civilised.”

  Mr. Craft hurried in with work for the senior partner. The moment of intimacy was at an end.

  Ten

  AT EXACTLY six o’clock, I knocked on the front door of 3 Bridge Street. I was even more nervous than I thought I would be when Leggett told me that he had made the appointment.

  A large woman opened the door. Without asking my name, she simply said, “He’s in the front parlour.” And vanished, into the back of the house where I could hear women laughing. There was also a pounding noise from upstairs, as though children were holding a foot-race. For a bachelor the great man was hardly lonely in his New York residence.

  Standing at the fireplace, beneath a drawing of a Moorish-looking palace (the Alhambra?), was Washington Irving. In the books I read at school he is portrayed as a dreamy-looking, slender youth. No longer. He is now very stout and elderly, with a crooked but pleasing smile. The eyes are guarded, watchful; and he does take you in, every inch, the way painters do at the preliminary sketch. He affects to be shy. At first the voice was so low that I got only an occasional word. “So happy … Mr. Leggett … to Washington City soon … not used to … please … sit down … too warm?”

  Mr. Irving sat us down face to face in the two wing chairs before the fire, our knees almost touching. A sharp wind made draughts in the room. He gave me another long look. “Schuyler. Which Schuyler?”

  “No Schuyler.” Invited to give my familiar demur, I lost some of my nervousness. I explained to him that my father had kept a tavern in Greenwich Village and was in no way connected with the glorious Schuylers.

  “I am partial to the Dutch.” Irving overcame his disappointment, finding what solace he would in the unmistakable physical fact of my Dutchness. With yellow hair and blue eyes, I look like every caricature ever drawn of a Dutch lout. I take after my late mother, a Schermerhorn; no, not the rich Schermerhorns, the others.

  Irving tried speaking to me in Dutch and was disappointed when I did not understand. “The old talk is being forgotten. We’re all of us the same now. Early this month I was at Kinderhook with …” The pause was marvellous. The whole world knows that he was visiting Vice-President Van Buren. “… with an old friend, of the Dutch stock. And we looked in vain for so many landmarks we used to know when we were young. The Dutch are like everyone else now. The colour goes.” Irving’s habitual tone seems to be melancholy, and his sentences tend to terminate in the dying fall.

  “Is the Van Buren tavern still at Kinderhook?” I moved too swiftly.

  “Yes, yes. Do you know it?” Polite interest, nothing more.

  “I have heard so much about it from Colonel Burr. I am in his law office.”

  “Aaron Burr.” Irving said the name softly and with some feeling. But precisely what emotion I could not determine. Certainly there is no hostility. Perhaps wonder. Regret. “Yes, Mr. Leggett said you were interested in Colonel Burr’s career. My brother once edited a newspaper for Colonel Burr, a long time ago.” The eyes shut. “Morning Chronicle it was called. Most political, my brother Peter was—and is. A dedicated Burrite. Colonel Burr was the vice-president when I first published my”—the eyes open wide—“little things in his paper. Over thirty years ago.”

  I told him that when I was in school I read his Jonathan Oldstyle letters. Apparently even then people were looking back to the “good days” of old New York. As much as I admire Irving’s work, I do not share his delight in Dutch quaintness. I like nothing about being Dutch, including all the jokes about us.

  “It is curious that one of the last of the little pieces I wrote for the paper was an attack upon the practice of duelling. That was just two years before …” Irving gestured. Eyes evaded mine; settled on the Moorish castle above the fireplace.

  From upstairs came a terrible shriek. Irving gave a start; looked alarmed; sighed. “Children,” he said, and for a moment lost his usual sweetness of manner. He is plainly not used to family life. But then he has been living a bachelor’s life for the last twenty years in Spain and England. As a result, he is now more like an Englishman—of the polite kind—than an American. He could step on the stage of the Park Theatre to-night and play with the greatest of ease man-servant to a duke.

  “You must have seen Colonel Burr at Richmond Hill?”

  Irving smiled. “Oh, yes. But I was not one of The Little Band. That was what the Colonel’s admirers called themselves. A most devoted group, and with good reason. Colonel Burr was New York’s Maecenas. He loved artists. Liked to help them. No good artist who asked him for money was ever disappointed. Both he and Theodosia …”

  “Mrs. Burr?”

  “No, she was dead by then. I mean Theodosia his daughter. The most extraordinary woman I ever met.” Irving seemed genuinely moved; the round eyes glazed over. “She was small, dark and splendid, with the Grecian profile. She spoke a half-dozen languages. Knew every science. Read Voltaire. Corresponded with Jeremy Bentham. Yet was womanly and loving …”

  From all accounts Theodosia was indeed a paragon but for mysterious reasons of his own I have the impression that Irving exaggerates his passion for the long-dead beauty, expressing his adoration in complex complete sentences as a single tear rolls slowly down his cheek into the fortress of that tall starched stock there to splash in darkness from chin to chin like.… I am beginning to parody his style.

  “Was Mr. Van Buren often at Richmond Hill?”

  A silk handkerchief was used to remove the saline track the tear had made on the smooth plump cheek (I cannot forget that this is the man who wrote the favourite stories of my childhood). “I think not.” Irving was cautious. “Their friendship has been made too much of.”

  “But didn’t Colonel Burr stay with Mr. Van Buren at Albany when he came back from Europe …”

  “Mr. Van Buren was once a friend. Therefore he will always be—amiable. But there is no political connection.” This was said sharply. Irving is often mentioned as a possible secretary of state in a Van Buren cabinet. After all, he is an experienced diplomat who was for some time chargé d’affaires at the American legation in London. In fact, he was there last year when Van Buren arrived as minister, appointed by President Jackson and then, humiliatingly, rejected by the Senate as a result of Vice-President Calhoun’s malice. The subtle Irving, however, was most kind to the discredited ambassador and managed for him to be received by the King and made much of by London society.

  Irving is also supposed to have told Van Buren that his rejection by the Senate would be the making of him. “For,” Irving is reported to have said, “there is such a thing in politics as killing a man too dead. You will now be Jackson’s next vice-president, and that will be the end of Calhoun.”

  The unworldly Irving proved to be as good a political prophet as he was a friend. No wonder the two men take trips together up the Hudson and moon about Dutch ruins. Rip Van Winkle has indeed waked up and returned to us, with a future president in tow.

  “I am not so certain that I can be of any use to you, Mr. Schuyler.” I was aware now of the diplomat on guard. “I do agree that a study of Colonel Burr’s career would be fascinating to read. But don’t you think it is—perhaps—too soon? So many people still alive …”

  “Like Mr. Van Buren?”

  “It is also said that President Jackson was even more deeply involved with Colonel Burr.” There was a definite sharp edge to the melodious voice. “So was Senator Clay who—”

  We were interrupted by a powerfully built blond youth. “Mr. Irving! Oh, I am sorry. You are not alone.” The boy hesitated in the doorway. I got to my feet.

  “This is John Schell,
Mr. Schuyler.” The boy’s handclasp was bone-crushing. “I met John on the ship coming from London. He is staying here while he gets the feel of our new country.”

  “Excuse me, Sirs.” The German accent was heavy. The boy bowed stiffly and left us.

  Irving continued: “I was about to say that when I saw Senator Clay at the Park Theatre last night—”

  “Last night? But Colonel Burr was there, too.”

  “I know.” Irving smiled. “Did he tell you what happened?”

  I shook my head.

  “Henry Clay came in at about nine o’clock. Almost everyone stood. And cheered. A most tumultuous welcome.” A delicate crooked smile. “I somehow kept my seat during this Whiggish display. Then, at the interval, as I was crossing the foyer, what do I see but Colonel Burr suddenly—by accident, I should think—face to face with Mr. Clay. The one lean and mad-eyed with that awful mouth like a carp, the other like some dark imp from the lower regions. The imp put out his hand and Mr. Clay reeled—there is no other word for the backward falling movement he made. Then well-wishers bore him away. I don’t suppose a dozen people standing there recognised Colonel Burr and of those who did hardly one was aware how, years ago, Clay, a very ambitious young lawyer in Kentucky, successfully defended Aaron Burr against a charge of treason—and very nearly nipped his own political career in the bud. Oh, your Aaron Burr is the sprightly skeleton in many a celebrated closet!”

  “Including the President’s?”

  “I think—don’t you?—that their involvement was explained at the time in a most satisfactory way by General Jackson.” The response was stiff, to say the least. But then Irving’s friend cannot be our next president unless the current president chooses to promote him; therefore Andrew Jackson must be above suspicion. They all must. Yet there are those who believe that the whole lot were once involved in treason, Burr, Jackson, Clay. How many secrets there are! and Washington Irving is willing to betray none.

  A clatter from the kitchen beneath reminded us that the family supper was almost ready. I rose. “You never see Colonel Burr?”

  Heavily, Irving got to his feet. Our knees for an instant struck.

  “I saw him last night. But we do not speak. What would be the point? Of course he was once most admirable. But I do think—all in all—that he does himself—all of us—a disservice by …” The tentative crooked smile again, the voice suddenly, deliberately soft. “… well, by living so very, very long—so unnaturally long—a continuous reminder of things best forgotten.”

  “I think it splendid that he is still among us. Able to tell us the way things really were.”

  “ ‘Really were’? Perhaps. Yet isn’t it better that we make our own useful version of our history and put away—in the attic, as it were—the sadder, less edifying details?”

  Irving walked me to the front door, now blockaded by a child’s hobby-horse. Together we lifted it out of the way.

  “My compliments to Mr. Leggett. If you see him, say that I shall meet him Wednesday for our weekly tête-à-tête at the Washington Hotel. You must join us.” The hand resting on my shoulder gave a sudden pinch, like a corpse’s fingers going into rigor.

  “I am sorry to be so little help to you.” The hand and arm dropped to his side. “I do have the notes I made during the treason trial at Richmond. If you like, I shall have a copy made for you.”

  Eleven

  THIS MORNING Mr. Craft and I worked on briefs. Colonel Burr meditated in his office. Creditors came and went—obviously distressed that the Colonel is again without money: everyone in the city still thinks that he is the master of the Jumel fortune. As usual, in his case, the truth is quite opposite.

  At noon Matthew L. Davis arrived. He is a gray lean bespectacled man with a secret smile; very much the political mover and shaker; also, very much the newspaper editor—he has almost never been without a partisan newspaper to edit. Mr. Davis went into the smoke-filled lair and shut the door behind him. An hour later, Colonel Burr called for me.

  The two ancient conspirators sat facing each other over the open trunk.

  “Charlie, do give Mr. Davis my notes on the Revolution.”

  “Have you copied them out?” Mr. Davis has the confiding Tammany voice.

  “Yes, Sir.” I turned to Colonel Burr. “I hope you don’t mind my copying them?”

  “No. Not at all. Look to it, Matt! You have a competitor! And what a task! For both of you. The rehabilitation of a man who has been slandered by both Jefferson and Hamilton. A considerable honour, come to think of it. They never agreed on anything save that I was the true enemy of their schemes.” He laughed merrily. I cannot think why. “If it’s true that slander has slain more than the sword, then for all practical purpose I am long—and doubly—dead. But it may yet be possible for you two fine fellows to put it about that no matter how dark my villainies I was at least a good soldier.” The Colonel was unusually elegiac.

  “Hamilton was a poor soldier …”

  But the Colonel cut Mr. Davis short. “No, Matt. General Hamilton was always a man of courage—at least when there was an audience.”

  The conversation then turned to the affairs of Tammany, which interest me not at all.

  Mr. Davis was pleased about the immigrants who almost daily arrive in large numbers from Europe. He expects to enroll them in Tammany, and win elections.

  Burr was not enthusiastic. “They will win elections all right, but not for you.”

  Mr. Davis did not understand.

  The Colonel explained. “I don’t want to sound like Hamilton who used to get white in the face at the thought of the wicked church of Rome, or like Jefferson who was mortally afraid of Jesuits, but I promise you, Matt, when these Catholics outnumber the old stock two to one …”

  “How can they outnumber us when we’ll be making good Americans of them?”

  Burr’s laugh was like an organ’s bass note. “Whatever a good American is he cannot be a Roman Catholic at the same time. It is a contradiction. And when there are two of them for our every one, they will divide up the property. You’ll see. And why shouldn’t they? That is true democracy and they—not we—will be Demos.” Burr turned to me. “You will live long enough, Charlie, to see an elected judiciary.”

  Mr. Craft’s clerk entered with a letter. “Anonymous, Colonel. The author prays that you burn in Hell, Sir. Mr. Craft thought you would be amused.”

  “Most tickled.” Burr threw the document into the smouldering grate. Then Mr. Davis left and Colonel Burr sent me on an errand to the Register’s Office. Later I was to meet him at the City Hotel.

  As I was crossing Wall Street, I saw my father coming out of the Post Office. He was well dressed and not drunk, though not sober either. “Charlie.” He gave me a vague look. “It is you, Charlie?”

  “Yes, it is.” We had not met since he killed my mother three years ago.

  “You are still in Colonel Burr’s office.”

  “You are still at the tavern.”

  Two statements, requiring no answer.

  “I’ve been buying stamps, you know.” My father indicated the Post Office as though it would corroborate his story.

  “I must go meet Colonel Burr.”

  “He must be right old, the Colonel.”

  “He is.”

  “I always voted for the Colonel, you know.” Neither could look the other in the eye. Since we had nothing further to say to one another, we parted.

  The Colonel greeted me gaily at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway. I told him of my encounter. He knows I am estranged from my father; does not know why. “Charming gentleman, your father. Kept the finest tavern in Greenwich Village. Such a pleasant place.” Colonel Burr took my arm. Together we crossed Broadway, avoiding a crowd outside the City Hotel.

  “Mr. Clay must be stopping here,” said the Colonel.

  “No. He’s at the American Hotel.”

  Colonel Burr gave me a side-long look. “You have heard of last night’s encounter?”
>
  “Someone mentioned it, yes.”

  “There are only two men on this earth who fear me. One is president and the other would like to be.”

  “And both were with you at the time of the …” I have yet to find the proper euphemism for whatever it was that Burr was planning out west. Jefferson called it treason. Chief Justice Marshall and a jury suspected a misdemeanour.

  “A most curious man, Henry Clay …” The Colonel suddenly stopped; stumbled; brown face gone tallowy. “There’s something wrong with my leg.” He looked bewildered. “There’s no feeling in it.” He staggered. “I can’t walk.” He started to fall. I caught him. Propped him against the wall of the hotel.

  “I’ll get a carriage.”

  Burr nodded, eyes shut—leaning, no, collapsing against the wall.

  In Reade Street, Mr. Craft helped me carry him upstairs to a small room with a cot where the Colonel sometimes rests. A doctor was sent for. Once on the cot, Aaron Burr took a deep breath and fainted dead away.

  Twelve

  I HAVE JUST COME BACK from two days at the mansion. All is forgiven. Madame is in her element. “My brave warrior! Light of America! You have come into a safe harbour at last!”

  Madame stands at the head of the Napoleonic sofa on which Colonel Burr is stretched out beside a roaring fire. He wears a quilted robe. The face is as smooth and keen as a boy’s. To the doctor’s bewilderment (but not mine), he is making a fine recovery from the stroke. The left leg is still partly paralyzed but he can now hobble about unaided—on the rare occasions when Madame lets him. She spends all day and night with him, assisted by the niece. The traitor Nelson Chase is not in evidence.

  I spent two nights in the mansion. Having lived in boarding-houses since I was sixteen and went to Columbia, I found it a remarkable experience to be waited upon by eight servants, with a fire in my bedroom all day and night. I now see why everyone in New York is so eager to be rich.