An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr

Aaron goes to Stockholm, and has trouble with the language but none with the inhabitants, who receive him with open hearts and arms. At once he is called upon to play the distinguished guest in highest circles, and does it with usual easy grace. He spends three months in Stockholm, and two in traveling about the kingdom. The excellence of the roads and the lack of toll-gates amaze him. Likewise, he is in rapture over Swedish honesty. He makes an admiring dash at the laws of the realm, and spreads on his journal:

“There is no country in which personal liberty is so well secured; none in which the violation of it is punished with so much certainty and promptitude; none in which justice is administered with so much dispatch and so little expense.”

Aaron attends the opera, and cannot say too much in praise of the Swedish appreciation of music. He exalts the sensibility of the Norsemen. Returning from the opera, he lights his candle and writes:

“What most interested me was the perfect attention and the uncommon degree of feeling exhibited by the audience. Every countenance was affected by those emotions which the music expressed. In England you see no expression painted on the faces at a concert or an opera. All is somber and grim. They cry ‘Bravo! bravissimo!’ with the same countenance wherewith they curse.”

From Sweden Aaron repairs to Denmark, and takes up pleasant quarters in Copenhagen. Here he goes in for science, ransacks libraries, and attends the courts. Studying the Danish jurisprudence, he is struck by that amiable feature called the “Committees on Conciliation,” and resolves to recommend its adoption in America.

Hamburg next. Here Aaron asks for passports into France. They are not immediately forthcoming, since under the Corsican passports are more easily asked for than obtained. While his passports are making, Aaron is visited by the learned Ebeling, and Niebuhr, privy counselor to the king.

Aaron takes six weeks and explores Germany.

He sees Hanover, Brunswick, Gottingen, Gotha, Weimar. At Weimar, Goethe brings him to his house, where he meets “the amiable, good Wieland,” and is dragged off by Goethe to the theater, and sits through a “serious comedy” with the Baroness de Stein. He is presented at court, and is welcomed by the grand duke – Goethe’s duke – and the grand duchess. Here, too, he falls temporarily in love with the noble d’Or, a beautiful lady of the ducal court. His love begins to alarm him; he fears he may wed the d’Or, remain in Weimar, and “lapse into a Dutchman.” To avoid this fate, he beats a hasty retreat to Erfurth. Being safe, he cheers his spirits by writing:

“Another interview, and I would have been lost! The danger was so imminent, and the d’Or so beautiful, that I ordered post horses, gave a crown extra to the postilions to whip like the devil, and lo! here I am in a warm room, with a neat, good bed, safe locked within four Erfurth walls, rejoicing and repining.”

As Aaron writes this, he lays aside his “repining” for the lovely d’Or, and so far emerges from his gloom as to “draw a dirk,” and put to thick-soled clattering flight one of the local police, who invades his room with the purpose of putting out the candle. Erfurth being a garrison town, lights are ordered “out” at nine o’clock. As a mark of respect to his dirk, however, Aaron’s candles are permitted to gutter and sputter unrebuked until long after midnight.

CHAPTER XXII – HOW AARON RETURNS HOME

THE belated passports arrive, and Aaron journeys to Paris. It is now with him as it was with the unfortunate gentleman, celebrated in Scripture, who went down into a certain city only to fall among thieves. Fouché orders his police to dog him. The post office is given instructions; his letters are stolen – those he writes as well as those he should receive.

What is at the bottom of all this French scoundrelism? Madison the weak is president in Washington. That is to say, he is called “president,” the actual power abiding in Mon-ticello with Jefferson, at whose political knee he was reared. Armstrong is Madison’s minister to France. Armstrong is a New York politician married to a Livingston, and, per incident, a promoted puppet of Jefferson’s. McRae is American consul at Paris – McRae, who sat at the back of Wirt and Hay during the Richmond trial. It is these influences, directed from Mon-ticello, which, in each of its bureaus, oppose the government of Napoleon to Aaron. By orders from Monticello, “every captain, French or American, is instructed to convey no letter or message or parcel for Colonel Burr. Also such captain is required to make anyone handing him a letter or parcel for delivery in the United States, to pledge his honor that it contains nothing from Colonel Burr.” In this way is Aaron shut off from his friends and his supplies. He writes in his diary:

“These vexations arise from the machinations of Minister Armstrong, who is indefatigable in his exertions to my prejudice, being goaded on by personal hatred, political rancor, and the native malevolence of his temper.”

Aaron waits on Savary, and finds that minister polite but helpless. He sees Fouché; the policeman is as polite and as helpless as Savary.

He calls upon Talleyrand. That ingrate and congenital traitor skulks out of an interview. Aaron smiles as he recalls the skulking, limping one fawning upon him aforetime at Richmond Hill.

Talleyrand puts Aaron in mind of Jerome Bonaparte, now King of Westphalia, made so by that kingmonger, his brother. His Royal Highness of Westphalia was, like Talleyrand, a guest at Richmond Hill. He, too, has nibbled American crusts, and was thankful for American crumbs in an hour when his official rating, had he been given one, could not have soared above that of a vagrant out of Corsica by way of France. Aaron applies for an interview.

“His Royal Highness is engaged; he cannot see Colonel Burr,” is the response.

“I am not surprised,” says Aaron. “He who will desert a wife will desert a friend, and I am not to suppose that one can remember friendship who forgets love.”

Official France shuts and bolts its doors in the face of Aaron to please the Man of Monticello. Thereupon Aaron demands his passports of the American minister.

Armstrong, minister, is out of Paris for the moment, and Aaron goes to Consul McRae. That official, feeling the pressure of the Monticello thumb, replies:

“My knowledge of the circumstances under which Colonel Burr left the United States, render it my duty to decline giving him a passport.”

Five weeks eaten up in disappointment!

Aaron, who intended remaining but a month in Paris, finds his money running out. He confides to his diary:

“Behold me, a prisoner of state, and almost without a sou.”

Aaron resolves to economize. He removes from his hotel, dismisses his servants, and takes up garret lodgings in a back street. He jokes with his poverty:

“How sedate and sage one is,” he writes, “on only three sous. Eating my bread and cheese, and seeing half a bottle of the twenty-five sous wine left, I thought it too extravagant to open a bottle of the good. I tried to get down the bad, constantly thinking on the other, which was in sight. I stuck to the bad and got it all down. Then to pay myself for this heroism, I treated myself to a large tumbler of the true Roussillon. I am of Santara’s opinion that though a man may be a little the poorer for drinking good wine, yet he is, under its influence, much more able to bear poverty.” Farther on he sets down: “It is now so cold that I should be glad of a fire, but to that there are financial objections. I was near going to bed without writing, for it is very cold, and I have but two stumps of wood left. By the way, I wear no surtout these days, for a great many philosophic reasons, the principal being that I have not got one. The old greatcoat, which I brought from America, will serve for traveling if I ever travel again.”

Although official France shuts its doors on Aaron, unofficial France does not. The excellent Volney, of a better memory than the King of Westphalia or the slily skulking Talleyrand, remembers Richmond Hill. Volney hunts out Aaron in his poor lodgings, laughs at his penury, and offers gold. Aaron also laughs, and puts back the kindly gold-filled hand.

“Very well,” says Volney. “Some other day, when you are a little more starved. Meanwhile, come with me; there are beautiful women and brave men who are dying to meet the renowned Colonel Burr.”

Again in salon and drawing-room is Aaron the lion – leaving the most splendid scenes to return to his poor, barren den in the back street. And yet he likes the contrast. He goes home from the Duchess d’Alberg’s and writes this:

“The night bad, and the wind blowing down my chimney into the room. After several experiments as to how to weather the gale, I discovered that I could exist by lying flat on the floor. Here, on the floor, reposing on my elbows, a candle by my side, I have been reading ‘L’Espion Anglos,’ and writing this. When I got up just now for pen and ink, I found myself buried in ashes and cinders. One might have thought I had lain a month at the foot of Vesuvius.”

Aaron, having leisure and a Yankee fancy for invention, decides to remedy the chimney. He calls in a chimney doctor, of whom there are many in chimney-smoking Paris, and assumes to direct the bricklaying energies of that scientist. The fumiste rebels; he objects that to follow Aaron’s directions will spoil the chimney.

“Monsieur,” returns Aaron grandly, “that is my affair.”

The rebellious fumiste is quelled, and lays bricks according to directions. The work is completed; the inmates of the house gather about, as a fire is lighted, to enjoy the discomfiture of the “insane American”; for the fumiste has told. The fire is lighted; the chimney draws to perfection; the convinced fumiste sheds tears, and tries to kiss Aaron, but is repelled.

“Monsieur,” cries the repentant fumiste, “if you will but announce yourself as a chimney doctor, your fortune is made.”

Aaron’s friend, Madam Fenwick, is told of his triumph, and straightway begs him to restore the health of her many chimneys – a forest of them, all sick! Aaron writes:

“Madam Fenwick challenged me to cure her chimneys. Accepted, and was assigned for a first trial the worst in the house. Enter the mason, the bricks, and the mortar. To work; Madam Fenwick making, meanwhile, my breakfast – coffee, blanc and honey – in the adjoining room, and laughing at my folly. Visitors came in to see what was going forward. Much wit and some satire was displayed. The work was finished. Made a large fire. The chimney drew in a manner not to be impeached. I was instantly a hero, especially to the professional fumiste, who bent to the floor before me, such was the burden of his respect.”

Griswold, a New York man and a speculator, unites with Aaron; the two take a moderate flier in the Holland Company stocks. Aaron is made richer by several thousand francs. These riches come at a good time, for the evening before he entered in his journal:

“Having exactly sixteen sous, I bought with them two plays for my present amusement. Came home with my two plays, and not a single sou. Have been ransacking everywhere to see if some little vagrant ten-sou piece might not have gone astray. Not one! To make matters worse, I am out of cigars. However, I have some black vile tobacco which will serve as a substitute.”

With Volney, Aaron meets Baron Denon, who is charmed to know “the celebrated Colonel Burr.” Baron Denon was with Napoleon in Egypt, and is a privileged character. Denon is a bosom friend of Maret. Nothing will do but Maret must know Aaron. He does know him and is enchanted. Denon and Maret ask Aaron how they may serve him.

“Get me my passports,” says Aaron.

Maret and Denon are figures of power. Armstrong, minister, and McRae, consul, begin to feel a pressure. It is intimated that the Emperor’s post office is tired of stealing Aaron’s letters, Fouché’s police weary of dogging him. In brief, it is the emperor’s wish that Aaron depart. Maret and Denon intrigue so sagaciously, press so surely, that, acting as one man, the French and the American officials agree in issuing passports to Aaron. He is free; he may quit France when he will. He is quite willing, and makes his way to Amsterdam.

Lowering in the world’s sky is the cloud of possible war between England and America. “Once a subject, always a subject,” does not match the wants of a young and growing republic, and America is racked of a war fever. The feeble Madison, in leash to Monticello, does not like war and hangs back. In spite of the weakly peaceful Madison, however, the war cloud grows large enough to scare American ships. Being scared, they avoid the ports of Northern Europe, as lying too much within the perilous shadow of England.

This war scare, and its effect on American ships, now gets much in Aaron’s way. He turns the port of Amsterdam upside down; not a ship for New York can he find. Killing time, he again gambles in the Holland Company’s shares. He travels about the country. He does not like the swamps and canals and windmills; nor yet the Dutchmen themselves, with their long pipes and twenty pairs of breeches. He returns to Amsterdam, and, best of good fortunes! discovers the American ship Vigilant, Captain Combes.

“Can he arrange passage for America?”

Captain Combes replies that he can. There is a difficulty, however. Captain Combes and his good ship Vigilant are in debt to the Dutch in the sum of five hundred guilders. If Aaron will advance the sum, it shall be repaid the moment the Vigilant’s anchors are down in New York mud. Aaron advances the five hundred guilders. The Vigilant sails out of the Helder with Aaron a passenger. Once in blue water, the Vigilant is swooped upon by an English frigate, which carries her gayly into Yarmouth, a prize.

Aaron writes to the English Alien Office, relates how his homeward voyage has been brought to an end, and asks permission to go ashore. Since England has somewhat lost interest in Spain, and is on the threshold of war with the United States, her objections to Aaron expressed aforetime by Lord Liverpool have cooled. Aaron will not now “embarrass his Majesty’s Government.” He is granted permission to land; indeed, as though to make amends for a past rudeness, the English Government offers Aaron every courtesy. Thus he goes to London, and is instantly in the midst of Bentham, Godwin, Mulgrave, Canning, Cobbett, and the rest of his old friends.

Aaron’s funds are at their old Parisian ebb; that loan to Captain Combes, which ransomed the Vigilant from the Dutch, well-nigh bankrupted him. He got to like poverty in France, however, and does not repine. He refuses to go home with Bentham, and takes to cheap London lodgings instead. He explains to the fussy, kindly philosopher that his sole purpose now is to watch for a home-bound ship, and he can keep no sharp lookout from Barrow Green.

Once in his poor lodgings, Aaron resumes that iron economy he learned to practice in Paris. He sets down this in his diary:

“On my way home discovered that I must dine. I find my appetite in the inverse ratio to my purse, and I can now conceive why the poor eat so much when they can get it. Considering the state of my finances, I bought half a pound of boiled beef, eightpence; a quarter of a pound of ham, sixpence; one pound of brown sugar, eightpence; two pounds of bread, eight-pence; ten pounds of potatoes, fivepence; and then, treating myself to a pot of ale, eightpence, proceeded to read the second volume of ‘Ida.’ As I read, I boiled my potatoes, and made a great dinner, eating half my beef. Of the two necessaries, coffee and tobacco, I have at least a week’s allowance, so that without spending another penny, I can keep the machinery going for eight days.”

At last Aaron’s money is nearly gone. He makes a memorandum of the stringency in this wise:

“Dined at the Hole in the Wall off a chop. Had two halfpence left, which are better than a penny would be, because they jingle, and thus one may refresh one’s self with the music.”

Aaron, at this pinch in his fortunes, seeks out a friendly bibliophile, and sells him an armful of rare books. In this manner he lifts himself to affluence, since he receives sixty pounds.

Practicing his economies, and filling his treasury by the sale of his books, Aaron is still the center of a brilliant circle. He goes everywhere, is received everywhere; for in England poverty comes not amiss with the honor of an exile, and is held to be no drawing-room bar. Exiled opulence, on the other hand, is at once the subject of gravest British suspicions.

That Aaron’s experiences have not warmed him toward France, finds exhibition one evening at Holland House. He is in talk with the inquisitive Lord Balgray, who asks about Napoleon and France.

“Sir,” says Aaron, “France, under Napoleon, is fast rebarberizing – retrograding to the darkest ages of intellectual and moral degradation. All that has been seen or heard or felt or read of despotism is freedom and ease compared with that which now dissolves France. The science of tyranny was in its infancy; Napoleon has matured it. In France all the efforts of genius, all the nobler sentiments and finer feelings are depressed and paralyzed. Private faith, personal confidence, the whole train of social virtues are condemned and eradicated. They are crimes. You, sir, with your generous propensities, your chivalrous notions of honor, were you condemned to live within the grasp of that tyrant, would be driven to discard them or be sacrificed as a dangerous subject.”

“What a contrast to England!” cries Bal-gray – “England, free and great!”

“England!” retorts Aaron, with a grimace. “There are friends here whom I love. But for England as mere England, why, then, I hope never to visit it again, once I am free of it, unless at the head of fifty thousand fighting men!”

Balgray sits aghast. – Meanwhile the chance of war between America and England broadens, the cloud in the sky grows blacker. Aaron is all impatience to find a ship for home; war might fence him in for years. At last his hopes are rewarded. The Aurora, outward bound for Boston, is reported lying off Gravesend. The captain says he will land Aaron in Boston for thirty pounds.

And now he is really going; the ship will sail on the morrow. At midnight he takes up his diary:

“It is twelve o’clock – midnight. Having packed up my residue of duds, and stowed my papers in the writing desk, I sit smoking my pipe and contemplating the certainty of escaping from this country. As to my reception in my own country, so far as depends on J. Madison & Co., I expect all the efforts of their implacable malice. This, however, does not give me uneasiness. I shall meet those efforts and repel them. My confidence in my own resources does not permit me to despond or even doubt. The incapacity of J. Madison & Co. for every purpose of public administration, their want of energy and firmness, make it impossible they should stand. They are too feeble and corrupt to hold together long. Mem.: To write to Alston to hold his influence in his State, and not again degrade himself by compromising with rascals and cowards.”

It is in this high vein that Aaron sails away for home, and, thirty-five days later, sits down to beef and potatoes with the pilot and the Auroras captain, in the harbor of Boston. He goes ashore without a shilling, and sells his “Bayle” and “Moreri” to President Kirtland of Harvard for forty dollars. This makes up his passage money for New York. He negotiates with the skipper of a coasting sloop, and nine days later, in the evening’s dusk, he lands at the Battery.

It is the next day. The sun is shining into narrow Stone Street. It lights up the Swartwout parlor where Aaron, home at last, is hearing the news from the stubborn, changeless one – Swartwout of the true, unflagging breed!

“It is precisely four years,” says Aaron, following a conversational lull, “since I left this very room to go aboard the Clarissa for England.”

“Aye! Four years!” repeats the stubborn one, meditatively. “Much water runs under the bridges in four years! It has carried away some of your friends, colonel; but also it has carried away as many of your enemies.”

For one day and night, Aaron and the stubborn, loyal Swartwout smoke and exchange news. On the second day, Aaron opens offices in Nassau Street. Three lines appear in the Evening Post. The notice reads:

“Colonel Burr has returned to the city, and will resume his practice of the law. He has opened offices in Nassau Street.”

The town sits up and rubs its eyes. Aaron’s enemies – the old fashionable Hamilton-Schuyler coterie – are scandalized; his friends are exalted. What is most important, a cataract of clients swamps his offices, and when the sun goes down, he has received over two thousand dollars in retainers. Instantly, he is overwhelmed with business; never again will he cumber his journals with ha’penny registrations of groat and farthing economies. As redoubts are carried by storm, so, with a rush, to the astonishment of friend and foe alike, Aaron retakes his old place as foremost among the foremost at the New York bar.

CHAPTER XXIII – GRIEF COMES KNOCKING

BUSINESS rushes in upon Aaron; its volume overwhelms him.

“This is too much,” says he, “for a gentleman whose years have reached the middle fifties,” and he takes unto himself a partner.

Later he takes another partner; the work of the firm overflows into a quartette of rooms and keeps busy a dozen clerks.

“Why labor so hard?” asks the stubborn Swartwout. “Your income is the largest at the bar. You have no such need of money.”

“Ay! but my creditors have!”

“Your creditors? Who are they?”

“Every soul who lost a dollar by my Southwestern ambitions – you, with others. Man, I owe millions!”

Aaron works like a horse and lives like a Spartan. He rises with the blue of dawn. His servant appears with his breakfast – an egg, a plate of toast, a pot of coffee. He is at his desk in the midst of his papers when the clerks begin to arrive. All day he is insatiable to work. He sends messages, receives them, examines authorities, confers with fellow lawyers, counsels clients, dictates letters. Business incarnate – he pushes every affair with incredible dispatch. And the last thing he will agree to is defeat.

“Accept only the inevitable!” is his war-word, in law as in life.

Aaron’s day ends with seven o’clock. He shoves everything of litigation sort aside, helps himself to a glass of wine, and refuses further thought or hint of business. It is then he calls about him his friends. The evening is merry with laughter, jest and reminiscence. At midnight he retires, and sleeps like a tree.

“Colonel Burr,” observes Dr. Hosack – he who attended Hamilton at Weehawken – “you do not sleep enough; six hours is not enough. Also, you eat too little.”

Aaron gazes, with comic eye at the rotund, well-fed doctor, the purple of good burgundy in his full cheeks.

“If I were a doctor, now,” he retorts, “I should grant your word to be true. But I am a lawyer, and must keep myself on edge.”

Aaron’s earliest care is to write his arrival to the lustrous Theo. The reply he receives makes the world black.

“Less than a fortnight ago,” she says, “your letters would have gladdened my soul. Now there is no more joy, and life a blank. My boy is gone – forever dead and gone.”

While Aaron sits with the fatal letter in his fingers, his friend Van Ness comes in. He turns his black eyes on the visitor – eyes misty, dim, the brightness lost from them.

“What dreams were mine,” he sighs – “what dreams for my brave little boy! He is dead, and half my world has died.”

Toward the end of summer, Alston sends word that the lustrous Theo is in danger. The loss of her boy has struck at the roots of her life. Aaron, in new alarm, writes urging that she come North. He sends a physician from New York to bring her to him. Alston consents; he himself cannot come. His duties as governor tie him. The lustrous Theo, eager to meet her father with whom she parted on that tearful evening in Stone Street so many years ago, will start at once. He, Alston, shall later follow her.

Alston sees the lustrous Theo aboard the schooner Patriot, then lying in Charleston harbor. It is rough December weather when the Patriot clears for New York. The message of her sailing reaches Aaron overland, and he is on strain for the schooner’s arrival. Days come, days go; the schooner is due – overdue. Still no sign of those watched-for topsails down the lower bay! And so time passes. The days become weeks, the weeks months. Hope sickens, then dies. Aaron, face white and drawn, a ghost’s face, reads the awful truth in that long waiting. The lustrous Theo is dead – like the baby! It is then the iron of a measureless adversity enters his soul!