The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (56 page)

A waiter offered Swartwout a section of venison pie. “With the compliments of the cook, Sir.”

“Thank him. Thank him.” Swartwout divided the section and with greasy fingers we ate the pie which tasted of cinnamon. Mouth full, Swartwout revealed Jackson’s plot. A harmless little republic of Texas would lay claim to the Pacific Coast of our continent. After a decent interval, that republic would join the United States which would then claim all of Spanish California, “Giving us more territory than Jefferson ever did, that treacherous bastard! Oh, if I was your age, your age!” Apparently everyone wants to be my age except me.

Finally, unable to eat or drink more, Swartwout sat back in his chair and wanted to know exactly what I was doing “with this thing you’re writing about the Colonel.”

“Just that. His life.”

“I hear it’s really going to be a life of Matty Van Buren.”

I said nothing; waited.

Slowly one large red hand dried the full red lips of goose-fat; then the hand was in its turn dried on the top of the table which began to shine. “You know, Matty Van tried to stop me from being collector of the port. He’s a damned bad little fellow, and don’t you forget it. But the real thing is,” he looked thoughtful; belched softly, “we don’t want the Colonel hurt, now do we?”

I shook my head, somewhat surprised at Swartwout’s delicacy: he seems all push and bluster and false friendliness. “Well, now I think there’s a way round a problem which must be bothering you, too.” I tried to look impassive the way the Colonel does. But from the sudden heat in the tips of my ears I knew that they were now all afire and pink as a rabbit’s.

Swartwout belched again, and tucked his heavy chin swag inside the tall starched collar. “I got a fair idea of what Reginald Gower is paying you. And I know somebody who will give you twice as much.”

“But I’ve ... I’ve made an agreement.”

“Break it.”

“I’ve taken money.”

“Pay it back.”

“But what’s the point? The Colonel’s involvement will be the same.”

“Not if what you’ve written is taken and put inside of a book which someone else is writing.”

“But we’re still exactly where we were. The Colonel will think that I wrote someone else’s book.”

“He might if this was just another pamphlet written by Mr. Anonymous. But this is going to be a great big book by a very famous man whose very famous name will be all over the front, and nobody will ever connect you with him.”

“Who?”

“I’ll arrange for you to meet him.” Although a man without secrets (as opposed to a man of many conspiracies), Swartwout enjoyed mystifying me. “He’s coming to town soon, with his publisher. He’s from Philadelphia—the publisher, that is.”

At this point cronies joined the table and I knew it was time to go. Before I did, at my host’s request, I wrote out for him Mrs. Townsend’s address.

“Haven’t seen that charming creature since ... well, since she set up house.”

I thanked Swartwout, and departed. Passing Verplanck’s table, I recognised a number of writers and bookish lawyers. I wished that I had been of their company.

When I got home I found Helen vomitting. When she stopped, she told me that she was going to have a baby.

It is now four in the morning, and I cannot sleep. I sit and write and rewrite these notes, and stare at the dress dummy (progress has been made on one puffed sleeve), and wonder what is to become of Helen—me—the child.

EARLY THIS MORNING it snowed, and Broadway is now covered with a thick white powder. Sleighs crowd the streets. Everyone is red-faced. My ears burn all the time when I am inside; freeze when I’m out.

Shortly after noon, I arrived at the Colonel’s boarding-house where I found Jane McManus sitting beside the Colonel and holding his hand. Unembarrassed, she rose. “I must go, Colonel.”

“As you like, dear girl.” Odd to think that anyone could find this plump woman a girl, dear or otherwise. She promised to visit him soon again, and left.

“Poor child is still much shaken by Madame’s raid on our happy nest.”

The Colonel looks to be in good form, though he complains of the cold in a room so hot that my ears felt scorched. When I told him that I had dined with Swartwout, he indicated a thick folder of papers on the table beside his sofa. “Sam enters our story now. He was an attractive young man—like all the Swartwouts. Good-hearted to a fault ...”

I was surprised at my own alertness, considering that I did not sleep at all last night. Unlike Helen who slept like a
child and awakened this morning so sunny and pleased with everything that I did not have the heart to say a word to her about the trouble we are in. Yet she has not once mentioned marriage. I don’t begin to understand her. I suppose that is why I gave her, impulsively, the only thing I have of value, Vanderlyn’s miniature of my mother on a gold chain. She was thrilled; and put it around her neck.

IN THE FIRST WEEK of August 1806, I set out for the west expecting never to return. I had made arrangements
with several hundred ardent young men from the best of American families to rendezvous with me the first of November at Marietta on the Ohio River.

Wilkinson had promised me a war with Spain as soon as I gave him the word. Before leaving Philadelphia, I sent Wilkinson that word in a ciphered letter to be delivered by Sam Swartwout and Peter Ogden, Dayton’s nephew and the son of my old friend and comrade at Quebec.

Since this letter was the principal evidence brought against me at my trial for treason, I ought now to produce it. But the original is long-since lost or destroyed by Wilkinson who then proceeded to fashion quite a different document in order to incriminate me and exonerate himself. He took my letter and added a number of his own windy phrases. Fortunately for me, he bungled the job. He tried but failed to erase my first sentence, “Your letter, postmarked 13th May, is received.” This was a serious error because at first he pretended that he knew nothing of the “plot” until my letter. Despite his alterations, the letter established two things damaging to him: we shared a cipher, and he had written to me three months earlier.

What did I actually write Wilkinson? I told him that our recruits would rendezvous November 1 on the Mississippi. On November 15 we would descend the river in light boats. At the Spanish outpost of Baton Rouge we would decide whether to seize it or to pass on. If possible, I would have liked to take Baton Rouge simply to hearten Jackson and my other supporters who could not bear the thought of the Dons so insolently lodged on
their
river.

I also reported that my agents (those three Jesuits at New Orleans) had assured me that the people of the country to which we were going would rally to me if I swore to defend their religion (an oath I had already taken in the presence of the Bishop of New Orleans). I said that Wilkinson would be second-in-command only to me, that he could draw on me for money, that the business would be accomplished in three weeks. I assured him that we had British naval protection—which was not true. I ended by saying that further instructions would be given him by Sam Swartwout whom I presented (somewhat insincerely) as a dazzled admirer of the Washington of the West.

Those further instructions were very simple: create an incident on the Sabine River. This should have been an easy thing to do because the previous year the Spanish had crossed the Sabine and occupied Bayou Pierre and Nona, two outposts on American soil. This insolence drove even Jefferson to action. In February of 1806, he directed the War Department to remove the Spanish troops. But Wilkinson ignored the Secretary of War, and the Spanish remained where they were. I assumed Wilkinson was waiting to coordinate his movements with mine.

In June, the President directly ordered Wilkinson to leave St. Louis and take personal command of our forces on the Sabine and drive out the Spanish. Yet at the time of my letter (late July), Wilkinson had not stirred from St. Louis, and everyone at Washington was of the opinion “that Jefferson would soon remove his dilatory commander.

I told Dayton to write Wilkinson to warn him that he would soon be replaced. I thought that this would stir our commander to action; he would now have no choice but to seek a new world. Instead, I fear, Dayton’s warning convinced Wilkinson that he must do something to restore himself to Jefferson’s favour. That something was to betray me.

This, then, was the background to my letter. Needless to say, I did not mention Mexico by name nor did I propose that Wilkinson provoke a war with Spain. I assumed that this would happen as soon as he obeyed the orders of his other commander-in-chief.

In my letter I said what I believed to be true: that in three weeks the place to which we were going would be ours. At my trial the prosecution sought to interpret this to mean New Orleans not Mexico. Considering the support I had in that city (and with the aid, as I then thought, of the commanding general of the American army), New Orleans would have been ours not in three weeks but in three hours. My letter referred only to Mexico.

By the middle of August, I was at Pittsburgh. It was here that I made the error of dining with Colonel George Morgan, a vain foolish man whose intelligence had not improved with age. I had come to his house not to see him but to recruit his three lively sons. In the course of dinner, I made a number of cheerful remarks about Jefferson, indicating a lack of admiration for that chieftain—but no animus. When the Colonel complained of the deterioration of the American army and the encroachment of the Dons, I said, “But that is Mr. Jefferson’s policy. Why, he has so weakened our military establishment that you and I with two hundred men could toss President and Congress into the Potomac.” Never joke with an old and addled man; particularly one who has for many years been trying to get the government to assign to him a disputed tract of Indiana land. Inspired by righteous greed, Colonel Morgan decided to warn a number of local worthies of my dark plan for drowning Mr. Jefferson. He also wrote my intended victim in the most emphatic, if incoherent terms.

Shortly after my arrival at Pittsburgh, I received a letter from Wilkinson (who had not yet got mine). After a good deal of the usual bombast, he declared “I am ready.” All things conspired, it seemed, for our success.

I took it as a good omen that Theodosia’s health (injured by the Carolina weather) had so improved that she was able to join us on the Ohio River.

At Blennerhassett’s Island I finally met the legendary islander himself. Near-sighted to the point of blindness, a formidable talker, an inadequate listener, a constant dreamer, this splendid eccentric was positively deranged at the thought of obtaining at least the marquisate of Vera Cruz, not to mention my embassy to London where he intended to pay off ancient scores. I soothed him; fed the flame.

Mrs. Blennerhassett was as clever and as febrile as before and on very short notice gave us a magnificent dinner party. I must say I always found it marvellously strange in the west to dine grandly off silver-plate, to drink champagne from Irish crystal, to be served like a lord in a mansion that had been dropped as if by magic in the midst of a primaeval wilderness.

Theodosia delighted everyone, myself most of all. I had missed her, as I do miss her every moment of my life. We could say anything to one another; said everything.

After dinner, the ladies withdrew to the long drawing-room while I sat with Blennerhassett and those lieutenants who had come with me. We spoke of provisions, of money, of the future.

Blennerhassett was all afire, and despite a tendency to want to discuss Voltaire when I wanted to talk of barrels of pork, he was good company and not entirely useless; he contributed what money he could.

It was during our first stay on the island that Mrs. Blennerhassett took me riding through gardens hacked rather unconvincingly from the forest. In a beech grove, beside a gazebo, she intimated that we were in some rich strange way special souls. I was kindly (as befitted her sovereign) and confirmed to her what I had already secretly granted her husband, my embassy to London.

“But we cannot go back! He knows that!” She reined in her horse. Yellow leaves set off her red riding-habit; she looked heraldic.

“Why not?”

“Because we—we have—we are—not like others.”

Not married, I thought immediately, as I gazed at her solemnly, imitating Solomon as reported in my grandfather’s favourite book. She started to weep; then shouted to me her terrible sin:
“I am Harman Blennerhassett’s niece!”
My horse shied; hers whinnied.

“But what is wrong with that?”

“Wrong? I have married my own uncle! They would burn us in Ireland!”

“But in England, surely, they will f
ê
te you!”

“Do you think so?” The moment of high drama was swiftly replaced by her natural high spirits. “I’m not at all certain. It is a complicated matter.” She dismounted. I did the same. In the course of a pleasant hour she told me the amazing, the unique, the extraordinary story of her life, and the periodic need in it for change. It is my rule always to listen to this story with the sympathy that it deserves.

In less than a week the island was transformed into a workshop. Corn was dried and ground into meal. Barrels of supplies from Marietta arrived and were stacked on the island’s wharf. Against my counsel, the Blennerhassetts packed all their belongings: they would go with us to the Washita Lands and there await the conquest of Mexico.

At this point I had heard nothing beyond the “I am ready” letter from Wilkinson. For once both Jefferson and I were kept in precisely the same suspense by the Washington of the West.

When would Wilkinson obey Jefferson’s orders (not to mention mine!) and confront the Spaniards on the Sabine? As it turned out, he did not leave St. Louis until the first week in September. Then slowly, slowly, he proceeded to Natchez where he wrote senators Adair and Smith that he was now ready with fire and sword to rid American soil of the Dons. He also wrote Adair that “the time long looked for by many and wished for by more has now arrived, for subverting the Spanish government in Mexico.”