The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (19 page)

SHORTLY BEFORE NOON, the main door to the office was
flung open. Icy air filled the room. Mr. Craft’s latest brief floated toward the grate. One of the young clerks rushed to slam the door only to find that it framed a bright-faced Aaron Burr and two heavy-set men who looked rather the worse for what must have been a long walk in the cold. Their hands and cheeks were flame colour.

The Colonel simply looked fresh. “Heigh-ho!” he exclaimed. “I am—as you see—back!”

He is as hearty as ever; does not even walk with a stick.

Burr led the men into the inner office, calling out, as he did, for various papers that he wanted.

Mr. Craft was quietly pleased. “
They
cannot kill the Colonel.” The dour face was filled with dark significance.

“You mean Madame and Nelson Chase?”

Mr. Craft shook his head. The dark significance, apparently, is his way of expressing undue pleasure, something I have not often noted in the five years we have worked together. He seldom discusses anything with me except our work and the day’s temperature. Weather means a lot to him.

“Life!” Mr. Craft exclaimed. Apparently life could not kill Aaron Burr. I left the sense of that unexplored. “You would do well to study his ...” Mr. Craft lowered his voice to make sure that the two clerks did not hear him. “... style. In his day he was the first gentleman of New York. And one of the first gentlemen in the land.”

“He was vice-president, of course ...”

“
Gentleman
,
Mr. Schuyler, not office-holding knave! His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, back to the beginning, were great divines and presidents of universities. That is why he was so envied by Hamilton, by that ...” The voice lowered to a whisper in my ear. “... that West Indian
bastard
!
How they all envied him! From the gutter
they
came, while Aaron Burr was our first gentleman.” After all our years of work together, Mr. Craft has at last revealed himself to be, most unexpectedly, a classic New York snob. I have always thought that the most appealing thing about Alexander Hamilton was his illegitimacy. But then I am not impressed by “divines.”

There was the sound of voices raised in disagreement from the next room. Then Colonel Burr called my name. I went inside.

“I would,” said one of the men sharply, “like very much to be paid the money.”

“And I would,” said Colonel Burr in his courtliest fashion (three, four, five generations of “divines”?), “like very much to pay you the money. But I cannot—for the present. Mr. Schuyler, you will now have my full attention. Gentlemen, good day.”

As the Colonel shut the door after his creditors, he was in a merry mood. “We must complete your education to-night with something truly profound.” He bit the end from a seegar. “You have been reading Gibbon?”

“I am in the third volume.” I lied.

“I shall query you about him to-night. At the Park Theatre. I have bought tickets to see the unique Miss Fanny Kemble and her father in what I fear is a foolish play called
The Hunchback
.”

I expressed delight that was not feigned. Actually I had seen Miss Kemble in the part last September when she made her first appearance here, and took the town by storm. She is a marvellous fiery creature on stage, though not beautiful. She is supposed to look like her aunt Mrs. Siddons.

Colonel Burr lit his seegar and did what can only be described as a dance step. “Free!” he intoned. “Free!”

Then he confided to me that he had left the Heights, “for the last time. A heart of gold, Madame has. No doubt of it! What fills her purse, you might say, also beats in her fine bosom. The tick-tick of gold, Charlie, what a sound! The world dances to its measure.” Another half dance step and he was at his chair beside the baize table. The fire glowed in the hearth. I thought, suddenly, here is a happy man. Why?

“For reasons of temperament, we have decided to go our separate ways for a time. Our marriage is in abeyance. I need the stimulus of the town. Madame is happy only at the mansion, receiving Bonapartes. It is possible she will try to divorce me, but I hope not. I have promised to reimburse her—God willing—for the sale of her four broken-down bays. Make a note to send her a barrel of salted salmon. It is her favourite. My first wife’s favourite, too.” The Colonel shut his eyes. With pain? Recollection? Neither. “Have you prepared the bill of particulars I wanted for the DePeyster case?”

“I have begun it, only ...”

Through the smoke he gave me his most Burrite aphorism. “Excellent, Charlie. Never do today what you can do tomorrow because who knows what may turn up?”

Miss Kemble was superb as Julia. Her father was also effective as the Hunchback. The theatre’s new decorations are most sumptuous—everything gold and crimson on cream, with a portrait of Shakespeare over the proscenium arch and representations of comedy and tragedy on either side of the stage where mirrors used to be.

Only the audience was a disappointment. The boxes were half-filled with enthusiastic gentry, including the Colonel and me. The pit, on the other hand, was crowded with loud, drunken men recruited from the Five Points to boo not the performers—or there would have been a riot—but the theatre’s manager, Mr. Edmund Simpson, who is thought to prefer British to American players, which is nonsense because his principal attraction is our own Edwin Forrest. It is nothing more than a foolish competition between the Park Theatre and the Bowery Theatre, whose manager Tom Hamblin hired these ruffians to shout and bray, particularly during the orchestral interludes. This rattles all the musicians except the Cockney known as Mr. Drum. Between bars Mr. Drum sleeps, as oblivious to the noise in the pit as he is to the conductor. But somehow he never misses a cue. He is the loudest drummer in New York.

The Bowery Theatre has also enlisted the
Evening Post
in its support, and Leggett himself has taken to attacking the Park Theatre. Understandably, Mr. Simpson has banned him from the theatre. Meanwhile, in a cheap gesture for sympathy, the Bowery Theatre changed its name to the American Theatre on the sensible ground that no one can attack anything wrapped in the stars and stripes.

During the
entr
’
acte
,
I stand with Colonel Burr at the door that looks out onto Broadway and St. Paul’s. The church is lighted within. A service? Between the golden glow from the church’s windows and the white glare from the theatre’s lobby, large snow-flakes like feathers slowly turn and fall. The Colonel, as usual, pretends to keep his eyes on me, as though rivetted by what I am saying. Actually, it is to avoid the possibility of being publicly cut by someone.

“She is a fine animal, Charlie, no doubt of that!” Miss Kemble had stimulated him but then is there any man who can resist that mighty yet womanly voice? I have written a study of her acting which
The Mirror
is considering for publication.

“I thought, Colonel, you believed that women had souls, were not animals.” I was amused.

“But the soul has its fleshly envelope. Besides, I have yet to think through whether or not animals might also possess souls, too. So many people who do have souls are bestial.”

As we talked, I glanced at the people in the audience. Many of the older ones were aware of the Colonel’s presence and stared at him with fascination, even horror. The young know him not, or anything else. Patrons of the Park Theatre boxes tend to be rich. They hate the President, adore Clay and Webster. I am writing now about politics not because I care how the Park Theatre audience votes but because I was jostled twice by a man with a heavy beard and thick spectacles. The first time I simply moved away. The second time, when he stepped on my foot, I turned, ready to do battle—and then recognized through a full dark false beard William Leggett.

“Don’t I look like the prophet Isaiah?”

“I don’t know what the prophet Isaiah looked like.” My toe hurt. Then I introduced him to Colonel Burr who was as gracious as Lord Chesterfield with a groom.

“I am not supposed to be here,” Leggett whispered. “Simpson has threatened to fight a duel with me. For me, the cane. For him, the adverb.” Leggett suddenly stopped: in the house of the hanged man, do not mention rope.

But the Colonel was serene. “A most sensible choice of weapons. Personally I have always regarded duelling as a terrible business.”

“Of course. Barbaric. But then ...” Leggett actually stammered. The false whiskers slipped a bit; the moustache covering under as well as upper lip.

“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 then 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.