Burr

by Gore Vidal

  “But in my barbarous day, we had no choice. It was a code we felt obliged to live by.”

  Leggett straightened his beard. “But you were fortunate, Colonel. You were a fine shot and so had every advantage in those barbarous days.”

  Leggett had gone too far but the Colonel handled him with his usual niceness of manner. “I seldom try to correct legend. For one thing, it is not possible. But I shall tell you a secret unknown until now.”

  Leggett’s eyes gleamed. He leaned down, ear close to the Colonel’s mouth.

  Burr was suitably mysterious. “Despite all my years as a soldier, Mr. Leggett, I can seldom at twenty paces hit with accuracy a barn-door.”

  “You are too modest, Sir.”

  Burr laughed. “Not at all. But perhaps I have been too lucky. Some years ago in Utica, a group of men asked me to give them an exhibition. I said I was indisposed. But they said they must see Aaron Burr display his marksmanship. So I indicated a notch on a tree some distance away. Would they like me to hit it? Indeed they would.” Burr’s eyes glittered. “Well, with a single casually aimed shot, I pierced the centre of the notch.”

  “You see …” began Leggett.

  “You see,” finished Burr, “it was my luck. Nothing more. The men were delighted. They prepared another target but I begged off. As a result, to this day there are people in Utica who will swear on oath that I am the best marksman that ever lived.”

  “But of course there were other equally famous occasions when you hit your target.” I was ready to throttle Leggett right there in the lobby.

  Although the Colonel’s face remained fixed in a gentle smile, the voice dropped to a deeper but still amiable register. “Mr. Leggett, the principal difference between my friend Hamilton and me was that at the crucial moment his hand shook and mine never does.”

  The bell rang behind the green baize curtain. We went back to our seats. The rowdies were roaring in the pit. Mr. Drum was asleep on his stool. The orchestra fell silent as the oil lamp dimmed and the curtain rose. But I could not think of the play, only of Colonel Burr’s remarkable candour. It is the first time I have heard him mention the duel.

  After the play, the Colonel wondered whether or not to pay his respects to father Kemble whom he knew in order to meet daughter Kemble whom he did not. Finally he decided against going back-stage. “It’s too late, and I must go to Jersey City.”

  Outside the theatre, I helped him on with his coat. The slow snow had been replaced by a cold steady wind from the North River that made the near-by museum’s shutters snap back and forth. Carriages crowded Broadway, waiting for the theatre-goers.

  The Colonel and I crossed over to St. Paul’s (the lights were gone). At the corner of Fulton Street we saw the now beardless Leggett; he was supposed to have been picked up by a friend. “I can’t think what went wrong.”

  “Perhaps,” said the Colonel smoothly, “he did not recognise you clean-shaven.”

  Leggett laughed, coughed. “Without the beard I might have been assaulted by a murderous adverb.”

  “ ‘Ultimately’?” inquired the Colonel. “It is the fatal adverb in wait for us all.”

  “Did you like the Kembles?” I changed the subject. Leggett said yes, he admired the Kembles very much, and so I said that I thought it shameful the Evening Post continues to attack them simply because of the management.

  As we argued, the Colonel started briskly down Fulton Street toward the docks. We hurried after.

  When told that the Colonel was going to Jersey City, Leggett was surprised. “But it’s too late. The ferries don’t run. And there’s a storm coming up.”

  We were now on West Street just back of the funereal bulk of the Washington Market. “Ephraim!” Burr shouted.

  “Here, Colonel!”

  We made our way toward the dark slip where the son of one of the Colonel’s Revolutionary friends waited in his small boat.

  “Nice night, Ephraim.”

  “Real nice, Colonel.” A tall figure stood up in the shadowy boat and pulled tight the mooring line until the boat was against the dock, rising and falling at a great rate in the boiling river.

  “My God, it’s cold!” Leggett was shivering uncontrollably.

  The Colonel took Ephraim’s arm and like a cat sprang into the boat.

  As Ephraim cast off, the Colonel waved to us. “Don’t you boys see that this is what makes it all fun?”

  “I’m freezing.” Leggett wrapped his cloak about his ears.

  Colonel Burr had heard him through the wind. “Put your beard back on, Mr. Leggett. It will keep you warm.”

  Then boat and Colonel vanished into sleety darkness and Leggett and I walked—no, ran—all the way to Thomas Street and Mrs. Townsend who took us into her front parlour, made us drink Columbia County apple-jack until the cold was out of our bones.

  Leggett spoke with reluctant admiration of Colonel Burr.

  Mrs. Townsend gave us a somewhat mystical smile. “I have been reading his grandfather all evening. But then I often read Jonathan Edwards, for the terror!”

  Mrs. Townsend believes in a dramatic creed. Before we could stop her she had picked up a volume from the pile of books on the floor beside her sofa. Pages were marked with slips of paper. She opened at seeming random and read. “ ‘As innocent as children seem to be to us, yet if they are out of Christ they are not so in God’s sight, but are young vipers.’ Young vipers,” she repeated with satisfaction. She is celebrated for her loathing of children. Once in the street when a small child grabbed at her skirt, she wrenched it free, shouting, “Unclean!” Some thought she referred to her skirt or, more likely, soul. But those who admire her know that she meant the child.

  “ ‘Will those children … that lived and died insensible of their misery, until they feel it in Hell, ever thank parents for not letting them know what they were in danger of?’ ”

  “Dreadful stuff,” said Leggett. “The sort of thing that would make a traitor to God and man of any child brought up on it.”

  “The Colonel is hardly a traitor to either God or man.” I came to Burr’s defence.

  But Mrs. Townsend was not finished with Jonathan Edwards. She had opened a larger volume, blew dust from a page, reducing Leggett to a fit of coughing as, inexorably, she read, “ ‘Let it be considered that if our lives be not a journey towards Heaven, they will be a journey to Hell.’ ” She gave Leggett a long look. “It’s not the dust,” she whispered stagily, “but the dust to dust.” That stopped his coughing. “ ‘The two great receptacles of all that depart out of this world; the one is Heaven, whither a few, a small number in comparison, travel.’ Ah, Mr. Leggett, contemplate those few!”

  “I would rather contemplate Black Bess.”

  “It is her time of the month. We have something even better, twenty years old, from Ohio.” The voice was matter-of-fact. She returned to her page. “ ‘And the other is Hell, whither the bulk … the bulk … the bulk of mankind do throng. And one or the other of these must be our journey’s end; the issue of our course in this world.’ ”

  Her voice fell silent; the book shut softly; dust motes spiralled in the lamplight. “I have been told, Mr. Leggett, Mr. Schuyler, too” (I was also Hellward bound), “that on his death-bed John Randolph of Roanoke suddenly sat up, a top hat on his head, and said, over and over again, ‘Remorse, remorse!’ ”

  “Randolph was mad and a eunuch. I am neither, dear Mrs. Townsend.” Leggett was irritable. I was restive. Mrs. Townsend gave us her yellow-fanged, dry-lipped smile and rang for the maid. “We have new delights, gentlemen.”

  Then she remembered. “But for you, Mr. Schuyler, there is an ‘old’ new delight. So enjoy yourselves—in this world.” Mrs. Townsend opened a copy of Jonathan Edwards’ The Freedom of the Will (apparently, he does not believe in it) as the maid arrived to show us to Hell’s ante-room.

  Helen was loving but hates the winter. Talks of spring. Of leaving Mrs. Townsend. I promise—before—to help her find work; and mean wha
t I say because—after—I tell her that I will ask friends who know about dress-makers. She told me that she has yet to see the Vauxhall Gardens. I promise to take her there the first good day in spring.

  Why is it no girl I meet in the usual way appeals to me the way she does? even though I know she appeals i exactly the same way (no, that is not possible, not the same) to anyone who pays the price.

  Since there is no Heaven, how can there be Hell?

  Leggett and I left Thomas Street together. He was pleased; not ill as before. He walked me part way to my lodgings. The apple-jack and the girls had warmed us up; and the north wind had dropped. “I had not expected the Colonel to be so youthful.”

  “He is extraordinary!”

  “You are fond of him.” This was almost a reproach.

  “Well, yes. I suppose I am. He takes an interest. How many people do in someone younger—in anyone for that matter?”

  “What have you discovered?”

  I confessed to very little. I did not tell him about the notes on the Revolution.

  “What about Mr. Irving?”

  “Not informative, I’m afraid. He’s very cautious, particularly on the subject of Van Buren.”

  “Sly old tabby-cat! I do hate those comfortable stories of his.”

  I was shocked. “He is the best we have …”

  “That’s not saying much. You know, we’ve just made an arrangement with Cooper to write for the Evening Post, under a pseudonym.” Last month James Fenimore Cooper returned to New York after many years abroad. His arrival was hardly noticed; unlike that of Irving, who took the town by storm. But then Irving is tactful while Cooper enjoys pointing out to his countrymen their shortcomings. He is too prickly for our flag-waving patriots.

  “You know,” said Leggett, “after studying as carefully as I could Colonel Burr’s head, I am more than ever convinced that he is the father of Van Buren.”

  Leggett is fascinated by the new science of phrenology. Apparently all the secrets of character are revealed by the bumps on the head. He has even suggested that I write something about phrenology for the Evening Post.

  For the moment, however, he had given me the last word. “I prefer looking carefully inside the Colonel’s head. That’s the only way of finding out who he is, and what he is to Van Buren.”

  “There is a contagion to the Colonel’s style.” That was the best he could do. “I hope your hands don’t shake.”

  As Leggett galloped down the street, the false beard slipped from his pocket and fell onto the icy cobbles where it lay like a dead kitten.

  Two

  IT IS APRIL. I have not had time—no, I have had the time but not the will—to continue this record.

  The Colonel lives either at Jersey City or in the office. There has been, as far as I can tell, no communication from Madame. Nelson Chase has gone to another law firm. I don’t know which. Some say he is working for Alexander Hamilton, Junior. That would be, as the Colonel would say, most neat.

  The Colonel is in fine spirits. He has taken on several new cases. He has also become somewhat absent of mind. Recently a client paid him fifty dollars. When she left, he put the money in a dictionary. As he was about to leave the office, he started to go through his pockets. “Charlie, I have no money. Not a cent. And the bank is closed. Do you have ten dollars?”

  “No, Sir. But you have fifty dollars in the dictionary.”

  Startled, he opened the book and took out the money he had only just hidden there. “You are my benefactor. It is a gift from Heaven.” But light as the manner was, I saw his distress: Burr without the splendid mind is nothing at all.

  But the Colonel’s memory of the past is as sharp as ever. Shortly after New Year (1834 according to the gypsy woman will be the best year of my life; but then she said that about 1833), the Colonel asked me my opinion of his notes on the Revolution.

  “What is ‘the mule story’?”

  Burr looked blank. “ ‘Mule story’? Oh,” he laughed. “I tell it only to children. You are much too big a boy. It’s a very long story about the mule I rode from West Point to Newburgh. I wanted to go south. The mule wanted to go north. We ended up in a westerly direction, through a coal-mine. If you were younger, I would add many, many details, with appropriate sounds.”

  Then he spoke of the possibility of dictating to me his recollections. “While they are still lodged in what is left of my mind.”

  I encourage him; am eager. But he is reluctant to begin; delays.

  LEGGETT INVITED ME for lunch at the Washington Hall Hotel. At our table were Washington Irving, the literary congressman Gulian C. Verplanck (currently the anti-Tammany candidate for mayor), and Fitz-Greene Halleck. Mr. Cooper and Mr. Bryant were supposed to join us but sent regrets. “Cooper detests Irving,” Leggett whispered in my ear as we sat down. But Irving detests no one or, if he does, is a capital actor.

  “I had looked forward to seeing my old friend Cooper.” Irving seemed most sincere. “He is not only a great man, he is a good man.” A waiter carrying beef brushed Irving’s shoulder: drops of gravy fell onto his sleeve.

  “It’s not Holland House,” said Halleck, meaning I suppose some noble English house.

  “The food is excellent.” Irving glumly mopped up the gravy.

  Then Verplanck mentioned an attack on Irving in the North American Review. Irving affected not to have read it.

  “They say that you denigrate America, praise only things British. Imagine! When you alone gave America a literature. Somewhat at the expense of us poor Dutch …” In his gruff way, Verplanck is not without malice.

  “I shall have a glass of claret.” Irving had finally caught a waiter’s attention, and leaned nervously to one side as wine was slopped into a dusty glass.

  Verplanck detailed, with obvious delight, the terrible charges the reviewer had made against Irving. But our lion of literature merely smiled and nodded and murmured for the historic record, “I never ceased to represent my country abroad. And now that I am home—see the changes—all things ongoing—happy—represent—fulfilment.” First the verbs began to drop from his sentences; then the nouns. Finally, silence, as he drank his wine, cut turkey deftly, looked somewhat sleepy.

  Leggett questioned Verplanck about the election next week. Because Verplanck opposed Jackson who wants to replace the Bank of the United States with a number of local banks, he has been purged by Tammany but taken up by the Whigs (the new name for those who are not Jacksonian Democrats). Verplanck expects to be elected mayor though he is happy in Congress.

  Leggett treats Irving deferentially but with a certain edge. “The Evening Post is printing Mr. Cooper soon. When will you write for us?”

  Irving blinked his eyes rapidly. Cleared his throat. “Mr. Bryant’s poetry seems to me to be unique. Superior to Wordsworth’s, don’t you think? Without Byron’s vulgarity or Coleridge’s opacity.” I gather most famous men are like this. They answer the same question so many times a day that sometimes, absently, they answer the wrong question.

  But Leggett pressed him. “We suspect you, Mr. Irving, of democracy.”

  Irving responded with his crooked smile. At heart he is very much a Tory. One can see that in his manner, in his love of the past, of the quaint and the traditional; not to mention in the company he keeps: he is friends with all the rich merchants of the city. But the sweep of the times is toward democracy, if Leggett is to be believed. Secretly I think Irving must hate what is happening; yet, “I spent the winter at Washington City. Haunted the Capitol. Heard every debate, good and bad. What great orators we have! Clay, Webster, Calhoun!”

  “All Tories.” Leggett was relentless.

  “All brilliant men. But”—Irving looked to left and right to make sure that the other diners could not hear him, as if anyone could hear anything through the crash of plates, the shouts of waiters, the muffled bellowing of cooks in the far-off kitchen—“but mistaken, I think.” Cautiously, Irving came out against the Nullifiers. “The southerners are
, you know, once you observe them in the Congress and talk to them in private, not entirely without—well, a degree of justice.” Irving is incapable of offending any part of his audience. “Yet,” he spoke before Leggett, “it is plain to me that if they have their way our general union will dissolve.”

  “A bad thing or not?” Although Halleck has the reputation for brilliance, today he was somewhat subdued; stared at me when he thought I was not looking. Obviously puzzled to see me there.

  “I should think it a bad thing.” Irving was dry. “But the south might be happier without us.”

  Leggett tried to question him about Van Buren but Irving affected to know nothing of the Vice-President’s plans.

  In a low voice Fitz-Greene Halleck asked me what I did. “I am in a law office.”

  “Everyone is. But are you … literary or political?”

  “I hate politics!” Why not jump in with both feet?

  Halleck smiled. “Good. So do I. But then I am an enemy of the people, and regard the ship of state like any other ship: for the captain to sail it safely he must never ever consult the crew. That is why I am for a king, any king, the more tyrannical the better. I also incline to the Roman Church because it saves you such a lot of bother. Your salvation is entirely taken care of by priests who are paid to do nothing else.” And so on. I found Halleck refreshing, and though he seems to be making jokes I think he is probably quite serious.

  As we rose from table, Halleck said something to Irving who turned and looked at me, and nodded. At the door to the dining-room, I stood back for the lions to pass. But Irving took my arm and led me out into the hall.

  “You have made a most vivid impression on poor Halleck.”

  “Oh?” was the best I could do, wondering why Halleck was “poor.”

  “You look so like his friend Joseph Rodman Drake. He was Halleck’s closest friend, lived with him, worked with him. Then the boy quite suddenly died. That was nearly fifteen years ago, and Halleck has not recovered to this day. Like Damon and Pythias. Jonathan and David …” We were outside in the street. Brusquely Halleck shook my hand; hurried away.