The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (18 page)

At the end of the war when Washington arrived in Virginia to join the siege of Yorktown, he commanded only 2,500 men while French troops at Yorktown numbered 3,000 in addition to their fleet of more than thirty ships of the line. So in a sense Congress was right. The French did defeat the British for us. Certainly without them we would still be British colonies; a distressing fact we have long since forgotten just as we are currently trying to forget how easy it was for a small British army detachment to drive President Madison from the White House and set the torch to Washington City. Fortunately our people have always preferred legend to reality—as I know best of all, having become one of the dark legends of the republic, and hardly real.

McDougall listened to the whisper of an aide. Swore another oath. “You go to Washington, Burr. You know the country.” The mule story. Washington and St. Clair. New Haven. Yale.

COLONEL BURR’S NARRATIVE stops at this point. Then another fragment, on different paper, of recent date.

IN THE AUTUMN OF 1780
I was at the Hermitage with Mrs. Prevost, who had kindly undertaken the considerable task of keeping me alive. At her insistence I drank a gallon of spring water a day and felt rather the worse for it.

The treachery of Benedict Arnold was exciting the country that season. For some time Arnold had been disaffected. He had been unjustly passed over for promotion. Then because of his damaged foot, he was not suited—it was thought—to take an active command. So Washington made him military governor of Philadelphia after the British left.

In this post, Arnold strutted about like a Roman proconsul; all he lacked was lictors at his portly side. His quarrelsome and autocratic nature was further exacerbated by too much drink. Yet he did contrive to marry the prettiest girl in town, Peggy Shippen, whose family had been kind to me in my orphaned youth. Like most of the American gentry, the Shippens were pro-British Tories. In fact, during the British occupation of Philadelphia, Peggy had nearly married an attractive British officer named Major Andr
é
.

Careless, venal, offensive in his manner, Arnold got himself into all sorts of trouble not only with the Pennsylvania Assembly but with the Congress itself, a group of thieves quite capable of recognising Arnold as one of their own, and in need of watching. Various charges were brought against him. Although he was eventually exonerated, the trials he had undergone made him more bitter than ever—if that was possible. To placate Arnold, Washington offered him an attractive field command. Arnold rejected it; his health was not good. He would accept, however, the command at West Point on the Hudson, a most insignificant post for an important general. Taken aback, Washington pointed out to Arnold that West Point’s garrison was made up of invalids while the post’s only function was surveillance of the river and as a centre for information. That of course was why Arnold wanted it.

Unknown to us all, Arnold was now a British agent with instructions to turn over West Point to the enemy. He would have succeeded if the British spy Major Andr
é
had not been captured with incriminating documents. Simultaneously, Washington, Lafayette and Hamilton arrived at West Point on a tour of inspection. In a panic, Arnold abandoned the beautiful Peggy and took refuge aboard the British ship
Vulture
in the river.

Peggy then went mad; raved at Washington, accused him of murdering her child whose father, she declared, was Hamilton, much to that young satyr’s embarrassment. I can imagine His Excellency’s thoughtful dull gaze as he slowly, slowly considered the pros and cons of the matter. Finally, Washington sent Peggy home to Philadelphia under military escort. This much of the story was known to us in Paramus that autumn evening when a carriage and horsemen clattered up the drive.

Servants answered the door. Theodosia was alarmed. So was I. For all we knew the British were on the move.

From the hallway, a resounding shriek. Then a veiled figure appeared in the doorway. “The iron! The
hot
iron!” The voice rang out. The figure staggered. Theodosia rushed forward to support her old friend Peggy Shippen Arnold.

Servants and children gathered wide-eyed as Peggy reeled toward the sofa by the fire. “My baby! They have killed my baby!”

But a nurse with a child looked in for a moment and said, “I have baby. She wants a bed.” Theodosia sent a servant to prepare beds for mother and child. Then Major Franks from Washington’s staff entered and saluted me. “I am Mrs. Arnold’s escort to Philadelphia. She particularly wanted to spend the night here.”

“You are all welcome.” The bewildered Theodosia ordered a room for the Major who immediately went upstairs, whispering to me as he did, “She’s in one of her fits now. They come and go.”

Peggy, meanwhile, had taken up her position before the fireplace. She looked uncommonly pretty, despite wild hair and a sparkling demented gaze. She had known Theodosia all her life, regarded her as an older sister.

“There he is, the murderer!” Peggy pointed a long finger at me. It was most effective. I later used with much success the same gesture and tone of voice in the course of a murder trial.

Peggy grasped her brow. “The iron! Hot! Hot! Hot as the flames of Hell!”

This would not do, even from a madwoman. Theodosia made a shushing sound and sent everyone from the room except me.

Peggy sobbed for a long time in her veil. Then she dried her eyes briskly and said, “By God, Theodosia, if I have to go on like this one more day I
will
go out of my mind. Hello, Aaron. We’ve not seen each other since ...”

“You were a child. How,” I could not help asking the actress, “is the hot iron now?”

“Considerably cooler, thank you!” Peggy burst into laughter, was again the most charming girl of her day.

Theodosia was more puzzled than I. “Are you really all right, Peggy?”

“Of course she is. Peggy has been play-acting.” I had suspected her from the moment of her entrance.

“Better play-acting than a jail.” Peggy gave me a hard look. “Is Aaron all right?”

“In what way?” Theodosia was an innocent in these matters.

I was not. “She means will I tell General Washington that she fooled him. No, I won’t. That is, if she doesn’t try to fool us.”

“I would never do that! Well, I would if I had to. You’re not Tory, are you?”

I said I was not. I had been devoted to the Revolution from the first day, and so was a proper Whig.

Peggy made a face. “Well, I have hated your ‘Revolution’ from the first day.”

“So apparently did General Arnold.” This was bold of me but Peggy was boldness itself.

“I have no way of knowing.” Peggy was matter-of-fact. “That was before I met him. I do know how badly he was treated by the Congress, by Mr. Washington who ...” She suddenly broke out laughing, and I feared that she was about to favour us with another mad scene but she was sane, and much amused. “You should have seen His Excellency! When I realized my husband was in danger, I took to my bed. I had to convince everyone that I knew nothing of what was going on. So I claimed that Colonel Varick was trying to kill my baby and that a hot iron was burning my head and ...”

“Where did you get that marvellous hot iron from?” Theodosia had an inquiring nature.

“I read it somewhere, a story about a poor woman in Bedlam. ‘The iron, the
hot
iron’!” Peggy boomed until we begged her to stop. “I pretended I didn’t recognise Mr. Washington who looked frightened to death and sent for Mr. Hamilton, that lovely young goose ...”

“Peggy!” Theodosia obviously did not like to think of us precocious colonels as geese, lovely or otherwise.

“Oh, a perfect goose, believe me. With him I changed my manner. Became conspiratorial.
Tête-à-tête
.
I
was wearing a handsome lace bedgown, the latest thing from London, sent me last summer by Major Andr
é.”
Peggy frowned. “They won’t shoot him, will they?”

We did not know it but Major Andr
é
had already been hanged as a spy. “I rather think we will.” I was hard, too hard, for I have since been told not only that Peggy and the Major were lovers before she married Arnold but that their affair continued even after, and that Peggy helped Andr
é
to corrupt her new husband. Between the wife playing on Arnold’s sense of injury and Major Andr
é
offering him money (and the King’s commission), it is no wonder that that unstable man went over to the enemy and, good commander that he was, did our cause much injury in the field before the French won the war for us. As I have said before, Arnold was a superb commander.

“Of course, Major Andr
é
might be exchanged for General Arnold.” I could not resist playing on her terror. She was also devoted to her lunatic husband.

“The British would never give him up. Not even for—for him.”

Theodosia and I often discussed this scene during the years of our marriage, meditating upon Peggy’s exquisite dilemma. The old lover’s life and the new husband’s life for an instant were in the balance.

Peggy was a remarkable girl, with a quick intelligence. Tribute to her quickness was the fact that she was able in one day to dupe Washington, Hamilton and Lafayette. But then she was a professional spy. When I was in London, I learned that in 1782 she received some 400 pounds from the British government for services rendered. Of those services, the greatest was her marriage to Benedict Arnold, and her conversion of a truculent malcontent into prodigious traitor.

Peggy was in her glory that night at Paramus. She must have thought herself a perfect success. Yet she had destroyed her husband, for the British were plainly losing the war. But then she had the sort of febrile personality that is happy only in a desperate, preferably losing situation in which a vivid role can be enacted like Joan at the stake. Politically she was uncommonly zealous. Her father had been a Tory judge in Philadelphia and she had learned from him and his circle of friends to detest anyone who questioned England’s majesty and the rights of property.

Feet on the fire fender, like a handsome boy, Peggy told us of her interview with Colonel Hamilton at West Point.

“I said I knew nothing of my husband’s activity. And then I wept, very softly, holding his arm very close to me. He is most susceptible, isn’t he?”

I looked at her politely. Actually, Hamilton’s “susceptibility” was unknown to me at that time. Later of course he became notorious for his—I almost wrote “lecheries” but who am I to use such a word for life’s best pleasure? I will say that Hamilton was a fool where women were concerned, and often embarrassed his partisans, not to mention his noble, long-suffering Schuyler wife.

“Anyway I persuaded him that I wanted only to come home to Philadelphia, to my family. I threw myself upon his mercy. He was so moved at this that he put his free hand on my arm ever so gently ...”

“Peggy, you should be soundly spanked.” Theodosia was more direct than I; also of the two of us, she was the more knowing in the ways of people.

“You are unkind.” But Peggy enjoyed arousing her old friend; wanted to disturb my impassivity. “I said that I feared the crowd. Feared for my life.” She frowned. “I
am
afraid, as matter of fact. What will the Whigs do to me in Pennsylvania?”

“Invite you to all their parties, I should think, and ask you to play Ophelia.” Theodosia was not as amused by Peggy as I was.

“Colonel Hamilton said that he would intercede with General Washington, which he did. I then had almost the same interview with the Marquis de Lafayette
in French
!”

A servant entered to call away the mistress of the house. When Theodosia was gone, Peggy stretched like a cat in front of the fire. Then she looked me straight in the eye, the way she used to when we were children and wanted her way. “Well?” from Peggy.

“Well?” I did not respond.

She crossed to me. Took my hands in hers and looked me in the eye. “I’ve talked too much. I don’t usually go on like this.”

“It was most interesting.”

“You don’t approve of what we did?”

“I do not.”

“I hate the enemies of England!” There was real passion in her voice. “I hate what your Virginia dolt is doing to our world.”

I assured her that it would still be
our
world when the war ended; but without the inconvenience of paying taxes to England. She would not believe me.

“It will not be ours but theirs, those wild men from the woods, from the water frontage, from the worst stews of the towns. They’ll take
everything
!”
Peggy sounded like one of today’s New York ladies deploring Andrew Jackson. Only she had done more than deplore; she had sacrificed everything.

“Well, no matter who owns the country, Peggy, you’ll have no part in it. The English will go home and you will go with them and never come back.”

“I believe we’ll win. But if we don’t, I will be happy to go.” She was so close to me that I could smell the sharp odour of her breath, a feminine odour I had even then learned to recognise as corresponding with a phase of the moon. She tried to draw me toward her but I got my hands free.

“I am to marry Theodosia.”

Peggy gave me a furious look, threw herself into a chair beside the fire. “She is old enough to be your mother.”

“Hardly.” But Theodosia was ten years older than I. Her late husband had been a colonel in the British army. She had no fortune. I was aware that in the world’s eye this was the poorest sort of match for a rising young man to make. Yet to me Theodosia was everything I ever wanted in a woman except that she was not my daughter, too; fortunately, she provided me with a second Theodosia before her death and my happiness—for a short time—was complete. Yet I confess that evening at Paramus I did not much enjoy Peggy’s taunt.

“Now you’ll betray me.” Peggy’s face was foolish with fear.

“It’s not possible. You have anticipated me.”

Put briefly, Benedict Arnold was a fool and Peggy was a greater one. Fearing that I might reveal the extent of her complicity, Peggy promptly put it about that I had made advances to her at Paramus. This was in character. Actually, I kept her secret until now. I like to think that my discretion was equally in character.