The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (67 page)

In the side streets shopkeepers were gloomily digging among the ashes to see what the fire had spared. In Pearl Street there are miles of scorched cloth stacked on the side-walks. In Fulton Street furniture. Nearly every street is like an open bazaar of ruined goods. The poor steal whatever they can, particularly food ... as do the pigs, who have declared themselves a national holiday and are now rampant. In armies they trot along the streets, rooting among the ruins, gorging themselves on a million burnt dinners, the only contented sound in the city is their squeaking and snorting as they turn up delicacies where once were taverns, grocery shops, homes.

At noon we were ushered into Colonel Burr’s presence. The Colonel was genuinely pleased to see Leggett again. “Do sit down. Tell me something pleasant. I am very old, you know.” The Colonel turned upon Leggett a glance that was not old at all.

“The Merchants’ Exchange is a ruin ... is that pleasant?” Leggett played up to the Colonel.

“Such a new building, so expensive ...”

“The statue of Hamilton was destroyed.” My contribution.

“Ah, the flames, the cleansing flames! Not only for the flesh but for its leaden surrogate.” The Colonel shivered though the room was stifling. “Now, Charlie, you begin to understand my craving for heat. I am preparing for the next world by indulging myself as a sort of prophylaxis.”

The Colonel told Leggett that he was sorry to learn of his departure from the
Evening Post
.
“Because you tried to deal with politics in moral terms, a unique approach.”

“Doomed, apparently.” Leggett coughed as discreetly as possible into a huge handkerchief. The Colonel and I both looked away.

“Quite doomed,” the Colonel agreed. “Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their
true
interest is never itself moral. Yet, paradoxically, only Americans—a few, that is—ever try to be moral in politics.”

“It is the influence of your grandfather.”

“Would that he had had
any
good effect.”

To my surprise Leggett was not in a challenging mood. Never mentioned the Mexican adventure. Instead he asked the Colonel about his years in Europe. I took notes though I have no way of relating this conversation to the memoirs as they presently exist.

“You actually knew Jeremy Bentham?” Leggett’s tone of awe did not exactly delight the Colonel.

“Yes, and Jeremy Bentham actually knew me, Mr. Leggett.”

I confess Bentham until today was just a name to me, best known in legal circles for having written an attack on Blackstone, accusing that giant of the law of grossly favouring the powerful and so making impossible legitimate reform.

“I think him the best mind of our age.” Leggett has said this of others but his enthusiasm is always genuine.

“Well, he was unique,” the Colonel agreed. “When I met Bentham in 1808 he had been writing for forty years. Yet only two men in America had ever understood him, Gallatin and me. I believe him superior to Montesquieu. Certainly he understood law as no one has before or since. I used to stay with him at Barrow Green outside London. A quaint dwarf-like little man.” As usual, the Colonel speaks of the smallness of others with no self-consciousness.

“I often quote him on democracy.”

“Do you?” The Colonel was polite. “Bentham was certainly drawn to democracy, having experienced so little of it. He enjoyed repeating the old saw about ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’ ”

“In which you do
not
believe?”

The Colonel was delicate. “Who does not
want
such happiness for so many? I simply question if we can achieve it here.”

“Well, I will grant you that we have not ...” Leggett began. But the Colonel was not listening. The past is now more vivid for him than the present. He is, finally, old.

“In Bentham’s house at Barrow Green, we would work at the same long table, with a huge fire at our back—neither of us was ever properly warm. We would work in silence for hours. Occasionally he would ask me questions about American law. He was codifying the law for England.
Codifying
.
Did you know he invented that peculiar verb? He also invented ‘minimize.’ I rather like ‘codify’ but I shall never take to heart ‘minimize.’ ”

“Or maximize?” My single effort to keep up.

“And of course Bentham was interested in the liberation of Mexico. For a time he wanted to go with me. Together we would set up an ideal society. At one point, he assembled all the material that he could on Mexico. The flora, the fauna, the economy. The climate particularly appealed to him until he noted the death-rate. ‘Very ominous,’ he said. ‘I must live a long time, Burr. I have so much work to do and the odds are that I shall not survive a year if I become one of your subjects. They die in vast quantities, of unpleasant diseases, at a young age.’ I tried to tell him that together we would lengthen—even maximize—their lives as well as our own but he was skeptical.”

“Do you accept Bentham’s principle of utility?”

“Who cannot? Except Charlie who has never heard of it.”

I was the butt for the day. So I quietly made my notes, as though in school. Apparently Bentham thought that human beings had but two desires, gain and pleasure, and he accepted those desires as the facts of our condition (he hated St. Paul) and tried to make of them a philosophy whose keystone was an eloquent defence of usury. He would have been at home in New York.

They talked then of the Colonel’s travels. Leggett was particularly fascinated to learn that Colonel Burr had visited Weimar at the beginning of 1810 and there met J. W. von Goethe.

“I must confess that Mr. Goethe was not my chief interest in Weimar.” The Colonel lit a seegar. “Weimar was some seventy miles out of my way but I took the
d
é
tour
in order to pay a call on a lady of the ducal court. She was charming, and so was Weimar. A country in miniature, with this stout noble figure in charge of everything, including the theatre where I saw a play performed in French, the language Mr. Goethe and I used together. Not that we had anything memorable to say to one another. At the time I had read nothing that he had written while his interest in the United States was disappointingly slight. Curious. He has entirely faded from my memory but I recall vividly his mistress who was very fat and his wife, a former mistress, also very fat and, best of all, the elegant Baroness Von Stein who was the Madame R
é
camier of the duchy and if not his mistress his beloved friend. She, too, was stout. I also recollect that Mr. Goethe was interested in animal morphology. He had found a bit of monkey bone—from the jaw, I think—which he thought similar to the same bone in man. This excited him.”

Leggett asked questions about various Napoleonic figures Burr had met in Paris. Among other things we learned that Talleyrand’s table manners were particularly disgusting. The great minister would pile forkful after forkful of food into his mouth. Then when that orifice was completely filled, he would slowly, hideously, chew with mouth ajar. The Colonel was full of anecdotes, but no politics. He is wary with Leggett; with all journalists.

Leggett’s single reference to the western adventure produced nothing more than, “Poor Jamie Wilkinson came to a sad end. I have just learned that he died in Mexico, addicted to the smoking of opium. His last years were devoted, most appropriately, to distributing Bibles for the American Bible Association.”

The man-servant entered: it was time to go.

“I look forward to reading
your
newspaper, Mr. Leggett.”

“So do I.”

“Charlie, you must come again soon, and I will try to collect my scattered wits.”

I said that I would come next week. The Colonel is pleased that I am writing so much for the newspapers. “But do recall that the two splendid men we have discussed today, Bentham and Goethe, were both lawyers.”

“I won’t let him forget,” said Leggett.

The day has become unexpectedly mild. Pale smoke hangs like fog over the east side. Everywhere the shadowy figures of thieves searching for loot. The wind smells of wet ashes.

I have never been more wretched.

AFTER A LONG EVENING with Fitz-Greene Halleck at the Shakespeare Tavern, I intended to sleep the whole morning.

But at sunrise the landlady burst into my room and said, “Run, Mr. Schuyler! They’ve come for you!”

I stared at her stupidly, with a sore head. “Who’s come for me?” But she had herself run upstairs, presumably to hide in the attic.

They
were the police. Two fragile-looking men with fierce moustaches, clutching their sticks. “You Charles Schuyler?”

“Yes.” I was now awake; and thought myself truly dreaming.

“Well, you come with us. Get dressed now. Don’t do nothing stupid.”

I jumped from bed; they leapt backward, more alarmed than I. “Don’t do nothing stupid.” This was their principal advice. So I did nothing at all, except to get into my clothes.

They would not tell me why I was being arrested—an omission they will soon be reading about in the
Evening Post
.

At the police headquarters the captain received me with, “Well, you didn’t get far, did you?” He then congratulated my escorts for their keenness and courage.

By then my first fear (everyone is guilty of
some
crime in the theatre of his imagination) had been replaced by anger. Old Patroon was not about to be treated like a common Irish thief. “First, I want to know why you’re holding me. Then I want you to send for my lawyer, Mr. W. D. Craft in Reade Street ...”

“You’re being held for murder, Charlie boy. So if you’re thinking about bail ...”

“Murder?” I wanted to sit down. Elma Sands. I killed Elma Sands. That was all I could think. I was out of my mind. Yet I heard my voice say very coolly, “And whom did I kill? and why? and where?”

From a cold distance, I heard a voice say, “Last night between eleven and twelve P.M. you were admitted to the room of one Helen Jewett who lived in a disorderly house kept by Rosanna Townsend. With a hatchet, you murdered said Helen Jewett on her bed. You then set fire to her bed, and escaped through the back window. You climbed over the fence in the back. Then you ...” The cold increased all about me. The voice continued but I did not. I fainted dead away.

I was free before nightfall. Mrs. Townsend confessed to a mistake. From the new maid’s description of Helen’s last “caller,” she had thought it was I. The actual slayer is one Richard Robinson who is now in Bridewell prison. He has been identified by the maid. Also, a piece of material found on the hatchet came from the cloak he was wearing while his trousers were stained with whitewash (the fence behind the Thomas Street house had been newly coated). Finally, at the time of his arrest, Robinson had in his possession the miniature that I had given Helen.

I TOLD THE MAID that if Mrs. Townsend would not see me, I would bring suit against both of them for false arrest and slander.

Mrs. Townsend saw me. “The description our new maid gave of the young man misled me.”

“You are a liar as well as a whore.”

“I am paid by your sort to be both.” Abruptly Mrs. Townsend turned away; her flaring skirt swept a pile of religious circulars to the floor.

“Who killed her? Why did he kill her?”

“I will only lie to you.”

I moved so close to her when she was speaking that I could smell the faded scent she wears, the frightened acid of her breath. “Richard Robinson.”

“Who is he?”

“A clerk to Mr. Hoxie. He’s nineteen. He’s been seeing Helen regularly. Unfortunately, the new maid had not seen him before last night and so ...”

“Why did he do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“If he went up to her room at eleven o’clock, then ...”

“No, at ten. At eleven the maid brought them champagne. Helen looked to be asleep. The boy was lying on the bed, reading a newspaper. Later the maid saw smoke coming from under the door which was locked. We broke the door down. Helen was on the burning bed, most horribly, most bloodily killed.”

“Why did he do it?”

“Why did you take her away from here?”

“Because I was ... because I wanted her to be with me.”

“Then the same
force
that impelled you to take her from home impelled him to kill her. Lust is stupid, Mr. Schuyler, and so is harmful to its object.”

I GAVE MR. BRYANT my account of the false arrest. He read it carefully and tore it up. “You are lucky that no newspaper has yet mentioned you in any connection with this ... this deeply sordid, this truly dreadful affair.”

Mr. Bryant was more shaken than I have ever seen him. Yet I am calm; am filled with energy, with a strong desire to kill someone, preferably Richard Robinson or Rosanna Townsend.

“I am, I confess, surprised that you could ever have met such a young woman in any society.”

“I knew her before this episode in her life.” Literally, I spoke the truth.

“Please. I do not want to hear about it, Mr. Schuyler. I am sure your relations with her were most innocent. I know perfectly well that no gentleman could ever have visited such a ... such an establishment or have known such a girl.”

I cannot believe that Mr. Bryant means a word that he says. Has he had
no
life at all? But I accept his wisdom. He told me rather pointedly that if I want a government appointment I am mad to advertise my connection with Helen.

Helen is dead.

THE JAY MANSION is to be torn down.

All week friends and relatives (on the Edwards side of the family) have been moving the Colonel’s possessions to Winant’s Hotel on Staten Island.

We crowd in and out of the basement apartment, carrying books and papers and pictures. Every day I see Mr. Davis, Sam Swartwout, Judge Ogden Edwards—the Colonel’s cousin who lives on Staten Island and inspired the move (he is the very same Judge Edwards who recently declared that for the workies to form any sort of labour union is “criminal conspiracy”; he is not a favourite of Leggett).