Burr

by Gore Vidal

  As Verplanck and Leggett argued politics, Irving turned to me. “I have not forgotten your interest in Colonel Burr. Would it amuse you to go and see Richmond Hill?”

  I said that I would be most amused. Colonel Burr is at Albany and Mr. Craft can always do without me for an afternoon.

  I got into Irving’s open carriage. Leggett and the others waved good-bye and Leggett gave me a schoolboy’s wink, as though I was truckling to a teacher. Feeling rather conspicuous, I sat back in the carriage. The great man at my side nodded to gentlemen, lifted his hat to ladies, as we jolted along Wall Street.

  “I have not seen Richmond Hill in twenty years. But I believe … Driver, stop! Stop!” Irving’s voice can be loud when he wants. The coachman pulled over to the side just as the carriage in front of ours disgorged the stout slow ermine-clad Mr. Astor, just returned from Europe to find his wife dead. He looks half-dead himself but, apparently, business goes on as usual. Irving leapt with singular grace from the carriage, leaving me to decide whether or not to follow or stay. I stayed.

  The two stood in the doorway of the Merchants’ Bank, heads together, a family of piglets racing around their legs. Mr. Astor is reputed to like literature, to help artists. According to Leggett, he also wants to be thought well of as he buys up our city; to that end he has hired Fitz-Greene Halleck to be his secretary-companion and live with him at the Hell Gate mansion. Halleck’s job is to see that Mr. Astor is treated with respect in the newspapers.

  Interview done with, Irving returned to the carriage, moving slowly now, as befits a great and heavy man. “I need advice in financial matters.” He sat back in the seat, and sighed. “I am prone to speculation. Usually with disastrous results. Poor—no, rich Mr. Astor tries to be helpful. You know, he took over Richmond Hill, after Colonel Burr lost it. In fact, breaking up that estate into lots was the beginning of the Astor fortune in New York. It seems so simple, doesn’t it? To make a fortune.”

  Irving talked a good deal about houses and property and money. I listened attentively, hardly able to believe that I was the sole auditor of this famous man who was recognised and waved at by several strangers in City Hall Park where a number of people were enjoying the pale April sun.

  But though I was somewhat disappointed by the material cast of Irving’s mind, he compensated by telling me a dozen stories about landmarks present as well as gone. “This was where we used to hunt duck.” He pointed to a row of tenements. “Just past those houses begin—or began—the Lispenard Meadows. And beyond them was Richmond Hill.”

  As we were crossing an open stretch between buildings, Irving was suddenly agitated. “That’s it! There! Look. See that well?”

  I saw nothing but an empty field. But Irving is able to people landscapes with his own imaginings. “It is the Manhattan Well! In the early spring of eighteen hundred, one Elma Sands was found at the bottom of that well, murdered.” A slight colour rose in his cheeks. The small eyes gleamed. “A young Mr. Levi Weeks was accused of the murder. He claimed innocence of the murder but guilt of having enjoyed the favours of Elma Sands. Everyone was most excited in the city and the two most brilliant lawyers of the day defended Weeks—Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. I was in the court-room during Colonel Burr’s performance. By the time he had finished, the jury and the judge—and no doubt the devil himself—were convinced that Elma Sands was a woman of no virtue while Levi Weeks was a young Galahad.”

  “Do you think this was true?” I know the effect a good lawyer can make on a jury. The sun at noon can become the moon at midnight if Colonel Burr has decided that such a replacement is in the interest of his client.

  “Who knows? But of course Weeks was let free. Then …” Irving turned toward me and I noticed tiny broken veins on his nose. He actually licked his lips with pleasure in recollection. “… as the judge, Burr and Hamilton were talking to one another outside the court-house, a relative of Elma Sands approached and said, ‘You are eternally cursed, the three of you, for what you have done to the memory of Elma Sands.’ Shortly afterward, the judge vanished from his hotel never to be seen again. Burr then killed Hamilton, and now lives on and on”—the voice was clear and soft, each syllable distinct—“under the dread mark of Cain.” It was most moving to hear an unwritten tale by Washington Irving. I must ask the Colonel if there is any truth to the story.

  The city has pretty much overwhelmed the Lispenard Meadows and most of the lands of Richmond Hill (now bordered by Varick and Charlton streets). But the mansion itself still stands, somewhat altered since I was a child in Greenwich and used to play in the grounds, or what was left of them.

  Recently the hill beneath the mansion was removed; the house is now at street level and no longer commands a view of the Hudson. It is simply a large old frame building with wings. A sign above the front door proclaims “Richmond Hill Theatre.” A smaller sign announces “Virginius—or, The Liberator of Rome, with Mr. Ingersoll.”

  Irving looked about him, at the new houses to left and right. He shook his head, mournfully. “I first set foot in this house when Colonel Burr was the vice-president. My brother Peter brought me. A third of a century ago.”

  With half-shut eyes, Irving stared at the front of the building (no sign of life inside or out), as though he might through sheer force of imagination evoke the young Burr and his Little Band. So Irving must have looked when his genius summoned from the Alhambra the phantom Boabdil. I do like his kind of writing, no matter what Leggett says. There is not much magic in the world these days.

  Irving moved to the front door, rapped on it. No answer. He opened the door and we went inside. A foyer had been achieved by blocking up a part of what had been the downstairs hall. On the walls play bills flourish on penny sheets.

  Irving opened the next door and we stood alone at the centre of the gutted mansion. The main hall has been turned into a pit with stage at the far end; the curtain was up on some poorly painted scenery depicting a castle. Where the second-floor landing had been, boxes had been built in a semicircle.

  “That was the Blue Room.” Irving pointed to the theatre pit. “You know, Colonel Burr had the first Venetian blinds I ever saw.” He walked carefully among the rows of benches to what had been the Blue Room. “Oh!” Triumph. He had found the outline of a sealed fireplace visible through whitewash. “That is where he was standing when my brother and I came in after dinner.”

  Irving became an awkward young man, moved uncertainly toward the whitewashed wall. I could almost see Aaron Burr, sleek and dark and elegant at the fireplace (seegar in hand? no, there would be ladies present). “Over there at a card table sat Vanderlyn, the young painter—most handsome, most talented. Burr met him when he was a starving boy at Kingston. Saw one of his pictures, told him all he needed to make his way in New York was a clean shirt. One day, in this very room,” Irving was embroidering freely but I was mesmerized, to think of old Vanderlyn as ever young and starving, “a servant brought the Colonel a package. He opened it. Inside was a rough but clean shirt. The boy had arrived. Burr paid for his training, sent him to Paris, got him commissions. At Colonel Burr’s insistence Vanderlyn painted a miniature of my mother which I still have.”

  Irving paused, looked down at the dirty floor. “I remember a red Turkey carpet. But not much furniture. Colonel Burr had been forced to sell most of his possessions just before he went to Washington City. He was always in debt.”

  Irving made a sweeping gesture. “Just think of all the remarkable men who have been in this room.” I looked dutifully at the stage, the boxes, the rows of benches. “During the Revolution, Washington. Then Adams lived here when he was vice-president. And the visitors! Talleyrand, Jérôme Bonaparte, King Louis Philippe.” Irving said the famous names like a witch casting a spell until I half-expected to see General Washington himself come out on the stage and sing “Yankee Doodle.”

  “I pinched myself that first evening—to think that I was here.” Irving moved to a sort of bay to the left of the fireplace. In it
was a ladder and a bucket of whitewash turned to chalk. “She sat there. On a cabriole sofa, covered in velvet.”

  Irving approached the ladder on tiptoe. Smiled tenderly at the bucket of whitewash. “Theodosia,” he whispered. “Are you still here?”

  But Theodosia was long gone to her grave at the bottom of the sea and we were quite alone in the wreck of Richmond Hill, except for a drunken janitor who suddenly emerged from a back door. “What’re you two doing?”

  “Forgive us.” Irving was benign. “The door was open. I used to come here when it was a private house.”

  “This is a theatre, man, can’t you read? If you want to come in you can buy a ticket like the rest.” Suspiciously the man bore down upon us. Although Irving did his best to charm the janitor neither Aaron Burr nor Washington Irving was a familiar name to one who knew a pair of thieves when he saw them; and saw them off the premises.

  Irving was full of talk all the way back into the city. Apparently there was never a person as marvellous as Theodosia. A scholar, a wit, a beauty, able to preside over her father’s table at the age of fourteen. I must say she sounds like the sort of girl I would run from. Yet everyone seems to have come under her spell.

  When Theodosia was ten or eleven her mother died, and she became her father’s only confidante. “He never loved anyone else, I am certain of that.” Irving echoed Madame. All New York seems to be of the same mind—a Byronic theme if ever there was one.

  “The Colonel was devastated when she married Mr. Alston who took her to live in South Carolina—so far away. I think the last time they ever saw one another was at Richmond, Virginia, during his trial for treason. I confess he was superb then! The hero of the whole affair. With Theodosia beside him like—like a consort! And how all we young people paid court to them.”

  There was more in this vein. Also a second promise to find for me his account of the trial.

  Only by mentioning Leggett could I shift Irving’s conversation from the luminous past to the dull but to me vital present.

  “Such a sharp young man, Mr. Leggett. But learned. Very learned. Of course his politics are, well …” Irving gave his little hand gesture, like a lady’s fan.

  “I think Leggett will oppose Mr. Van Buren.”

  “Two years is a long time in politics.” The dreamy magic voice was replaced by a practical if still ingratiating tone. One can see why Irving is admired not only by Van Buren but by General Jackson. “I am sure the Evening Post will eventually do its duty, aren’t you?”

  I was not certain; spoke of political differences. Irving affected to know nothing of such matters other than the observation that “the Democratic interest is not apt to produce anyone else in the next two years.”

  “Colonel Burr speaks most highly of Mr. Van Buren.”

  “Does he?” Irving looked at me with a sharpness that seemed to peel away clothes and flesh. Yet the half-smile never left his lips.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “He regards him as—well, like a son.” I had said it.

  Irving continued to smile; he was now counting the ribs of my skeleton in the April-Fool’s light. “I would not … believe that story.” To my relief, Irving turned his gaze from me. “Mr. Van Buren’s mother was a most godly woman, and many years older than Colonel Burr …”

  “Who married a woman ten years older than he.” When in doubt attack.

  Irving showed displeasure. I was complimented. I had shaken that constant benevolent blandness. “I knew her, Mr. Schuyler, and know that she could not have—done what they say she did.”

  “Yet the Colonel took Mr. Van Buren into his office, helped him, promoted him …”

  “Colonel Burr, as you know better than I, is a born pedagogue. He loves the young. He loves to teach them. After all he is the son and grandson of presidents of Princeton College.” I feared for a moment that Irving would again sink like some huge river animal into the swamp of the past and I would be told more than I could bear to hear about Princeton College. Fortunately, sensing danger from me, he was to the point. “There is nothing more in character than for Colonel Burr to advance the career of a brilliant young man.”

  “When the Colonel came back from France, Mr. Van Buren let him stay at his house in Albany.”

  “Mr. Van Buren is a good and generous person, to a fault, some say …”

  “And Colonel Burr helped him with legislation for the Assembly.” For the moment I had forgotten just what it was that the Colonel had helped the young assemblyman to do but it was something significant.

  Irving was now alarmed. “The Colonel is an old man, given to—I should think—exaggeration.”

  “No. He is always precise. He is still an excellent lawyer. He does not stray from facts.” I could not resist this thrust at the master of fancy himself.

  Irving parried the thrust. “When occasion warranted, Colonel Burr could be as free with the truth as any other politician or adventurer.”

  “But since he speaks with admiration of Mr. Van Buren …”

  “My dear boy, there are those who wish to destroy Mr. Van Buren with any weapon. So why not love? The kiss in the garden of Gethsemane. For years the Vice-President’s enemies have put it about that he is Colonel Burr’s natural son, that he is Colonel Burr’s unnatural political creation. Both are lies.”

  I had stirred him at last. “If so, then, why did Mr. Van Buren meet the Colonel last summer …”

  “Here we are. Reade Street.”

  The carriage stopped. Irving pointed to the water-tower at the far end of the street. “Colonel Burr’s monument. You know, he founded the Manhattan Water Company in order to start, clandestinely, a bank.”

  “But we still have the water.”

  Irving laughed. “Yes, and the bankers have the Bank of Manhattan. I enjoyed our afternoon. It is such a pleasure to meet someone young who is interested in old matters.”

  I thanked him at length for his kindness. He patted my knee. “Your investigation will lead you down all sorts of paths. You must be careful. There are pitfalls for the unwary.”

  Irving’s fingers again administered the same savage pinch as at our first meeting. The eyes that studied mine were clear, and hard. “I trust that no one will try to make anything of the casual friendship that once existed between the Colonel and the Vice-President. Because Mr. Van Buren is certain to be our next president, and he will remember his enemies every bit as vividly as he does his friends.” The warning—threat—was even more shocking to me than the pinch.

  As I got out of the carriage, Washington Irving was his usual shy, diffident self. “So happy—excursions elsewhere—oh, Knickerbocker, Knickerbocker!”

  This evening when I undressed for bed, I saw on my thigh a dark bruise. I am convinced now that the story of Van Buren’s illegitimacy is true, and that the election could well depend on the Aaron Burr connection.

  Three

  FOR THREE DAYS there has been rioting in the streets. Certainly we are living through some sort of revolution. There has never been an election as bitter as this one.

  This morning (the third and last day of the election), Colonel Burr gave me some material to take to Matthew Davis. “It’s of no importance.” He tapped the folder in my hand. “Simply a ruse to find out what is happening.”

  Colonel Burr adjusted the muffler at his neck (the office was hot; the day warm). He is always excited at election time. “In my day it was so simple. Only a thousand men voted for governor.”

  “Not exactly democracy, was it?”

  “No, it was not. In fact, New York state was the private property of three families.” He quoted. “ ‘The Clintons have power, the Livingstons have numbers, the Schuylers have Hamilton.’ Now of course every man over twenty-one can vote. It is quite astonishing.” Burr looked dreamily into the ashy grate. “None of us—not even Jefferson—foresaw this democracy. I suspect it will prove a bad thing. But the other was certainly worse, though Heaven knows convenient if one …” There was a sound of shouting
just north of us, from Duane Street.

  “Go out! Reconnoitre! See the sans-culottes! Tell Matt Davis my heart is with him, as always. But nothing more. Jackson is the best of all our presidents … for what that is worth.”

  In Duane Street I saw my first battle, and wondered if Monmouth Court House had been similar.

  All morning a procession of Whigs had carried through the town a miniature frigate labelled The Constitution which they finally set down outside the Masonic Hall. They then went inside the hall for a meeting. At about noon a mob of drunken Irish attacked the frigate but were driven off by the Whigs.

  When I arrived at the hall, several hundred angry Whigs (a curious mixture of workies and wealthy merchants) were milling about, examining one another’s blackened eyes and broken heads while their frigate was slowly being pulled across the street into the safe harbour of New York Hospital’s front yard.

  I found Mr. Davis in front of the hall. With him was a portly man with a furious face.

  “Charlie Schuyler! My fellow historian.” The glass in one of Mr. Davis’s steel-rimmed spectacles was shattered, making him look odd but happy.

  “Davis, I insist you call for the Mayor.” The portly man was edgy. “We need protection.”

  “Nonsense. A few playful b’hoys, no more. Think nothing of it.” Mr. Davis looked at me. “The vote’s going our way, Charlie! We’re winning the city, and—best of all—we’re going to elect Verplanck.”

  A rock from nowhere landed at our feet. The portly man gasped.

  Mr. Davis ignored it. “If we can elect Verplanck mayor today, we shall elect Henry Clay president two years from now.”

  On this prophetic note, we were engulfed by the democracy.

  Waving clubs, throwing paving stones, several thousand drunken savages from the Sixth Ward swept into Duane Street.

  A rock struck me in the shoulder. I fell back against the wall. A lout pummelled the portly man until Mr. Davis raised his walking-stick and with a splendid thwack broke the man’s nose. Then, gleefully, Davis aimed his stick at the crutch of a lad with a shillelagh. The boy doubled up, vomited beer, ceased to be with us in spirit. The elderly Mr. Davis was plainly in his element. I was not in mine.