Fallen Founder
Page 48
At this moment, he began to consider returning to the United States. He was already anticipating March 1809, when Jefferson retired and “the persecutions will be less vindictive,” as he wrote to his friend Timothy Green. He saw little hope for “X,” the secret name he gave to his filibuster. Burr was confident that he had a way to negotiate with his remaining creditors, and thus there was nothing to keep him from sailing home.29
“FOLLIES”
But he did not sail. Instead, he made plans to visit Scotland, hoping to renew acquaintance with friends and relatives of the late Charles Williamson. There would be nothing routine about this trip, however, because London had grown suspicious of Burr’s comings and goings; only Britons could travel freely. Following the advice of John Reeves of the British Alien Office, he submitted a claim of British nationality: having been born in colonial America! Burr’s unusual ploy became the talk of London. (As word reached the United States, Burr’s already tarnished name suffered added abuse; even his daughter found the news of his alleged transfer of national allegiance incredible.) But it was just a ploy.30
While the top law officials of the land considered how to handle the matter, the petitioner headed north to Edinburgh, where he remained for some weeks, meeting and greeting, and leading what he himself admitted to Bentham was “a life of the utmost dissipation.” The Lord Mayor gave him a public welcome, and he hobnobbed with such literary giants as Walter Scott (at this point a celebrated poet but not yet a novelist) and Henry Mackenzie, author of the sentimental classic The Man of Feeling. In an invaluable journal that he kept at this time, Burr also preserved a record of his sex life.31
Burr’s journal recorded his every move and described everyone he met, indulging the same literary impulse that he had shown earlier, when, for his daughter’s reading pleasure, he humorously portrayed his failed courtships. In a sparse but lively style, he transformed the people he met into literary characters: the women are funny, flirtatious, alternately sad and coy, and he is impressed by their tasteful attire and smart conversation. Numerous “follies,” sexual or otherwise, are sprinkled through his voluminous European journal, which filled nearly 1,000 pages when it was published after his death.32
To convey the flavor of Burr’s gossipy journal, take as an example his dealings with an Italian sculptor in London. The artist made a bust of Bentham, and a face mask of Burr to boot. When the mask was removed, Burr discovered, to his chagrin, a purple mark on his nose. He tried many remedies, but nothing removed the stain. He then cursed the Italian for the “nose disaster,” self-conscious about being seen in public and hoping to “sleep off his nasology.” He wrote that he would “see no signora till the proboscis be in order.”33
There is something modern about the inner dialogue in Burr’s journal. Perhaps this is why later readers have had had such a difficult time with this document. It is written as a conversation with his daughter, something for her entertainment. But what makes it different from his earlier letters is his openness with regard to his sex life. He is too casual, too matter-of-fact, for a Victorian or post-Victorian audience. To later generations, he appears indiscreet, if not immoral. We must understand that sexuality was neither sinful nor savage for men of the Enlightenment; instead, sexual enjoyment was acceptable and refined, a “rational” pleasure. Even women supposedly benefited from sexual openness. That is what Mary Wollstonecraft believed, when she stated that “false delicacy” kept women hopelessly ignorant about their bodies. It is not at all surprising that Burr should have felt perfectly at ease in writing to his daughter about sex.
He is intentionally playful in the pages of this journal. He crafts a sexual cipher for himself, inventing code words to describe the different types of women he encountered, classifying them according to age, marital status, sexual experience, and occasionally nationality. One favorite term for illicit sex was “muse.” This was possibly a double entendre for “amusement”; muse was the French word for animals in heat, or the rutting season. He also denoted sex as “follies” and “accidents,” and often recorded his encounters in shorthand. Here is a typical entry: “Vis. inv. pr. U. pa. bi. jo. ma. bi. fa,” which stood for “visitai invite plusieurs fois une jungfru pas bien jolie mais bien faite” (after repeated invitations, I had sex with a Swedish maid who was not very handsome, but well built). He tended to mention the circumstance leading to the amorous adventure (in other cases, his resolve not to take advantage of the opportunity); the amount of money paid; and sometimes how long the event lasted.34
Nothing was off limits. His journal vividly captured the multifarious sexual landscape of Europe, including prostitutes, chambermaids, “sirens,” and manipulative French women who love only “in the head” but give no more of themselves. On December 21, 1808, the same day he boarded the stage in London for his trip to Scotland, he joked that he had been “amused for an hour with a very handsome young Dane.” Then he added to his fictive reader Theodosia, “Don’t smile. It is a male.” On the same day that he returned from Scotland, he noted that two young men had approached him, but that he kept his distance—the insinuation being that they had propositioned him. There is little shame in his journal. The only time he begged for “penitence and contrition,” promising never again to frequent prostitutes, was when he feared that he had exposed himself to venereal disease. It was not long before he broke this promise to himself.35
Burr’s sexual diary was not unique. As a bachelor in Virginia, in 1770, Thomas Jefferson used Shelton’s tachygraphical alphabet to record in code what appear to be sexual liaisons. James Wilson, a renowned jurist and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was reputed, however falsely, to have kept a sexual diary. And Samuel Boswell, one of the most famous journalists of the time, recorded in excruciating detail his numerous sexual escapades. Burr’s curt descriptions were neither pornographic nor salacious; their brevity made them almost sociological. More to the point, he wrote so as to monitor himself, putting pen to paper to curb his excesses. The literary invention of his daughter represented his conscience. She never saw the journal. His method was not so different from that of Benjamin Franklin, who kept a moral accounting system of his virtues and vices (chastity made his list), and who made sure he struck a balance at the end of the month. As a true Benthamite, Burr treated sex as natural and pleasurable; and he was empirically bent on maintaining a personal sexual timetable. After ten days, he noted at one point, he was “scarcely fit for society” and began to treat people brusquely. And what had caused this “irritability”? “The want of muse,” of course.36
Burr’s journal is remarkable for its openness. Its pages contain moments of unmitigated vanity. His humor is infectious, too, and he shares even his most outrageous dreams. Awakening one morning, he scratched out: “Dreamed engaged to marry a huge ugly beast.” The longtime widower’s independence was so threatened that his subconscious mind “deliberated whether to blow out brains or perform engagement.”37
Burr enjoyed Scotland, and not only because of “dissipation.” He admired the fact that the women engaged in public gatherings as equals, holding their own in political debates or intellectual discussions. The reformer from America regaled his Scottish acquaintances with ideas about Benthamite legal reform. For his efforts, Bentham nicknamed him “Hercules Burr.”38
During the first week of February 1809, he rushed back to London in order to sit down with Lord Melville, the patron saint of filibusterers. He appreciated Melville’s frank and “free conversation,” boldness, and “manly” character. Melville was no longer the powerful statesman he once was, and Burr knew that he was chasing false hopes. He satirized his journey to Scotland as the “Adventures of Gil Blas Monheagungk De Manhattan,” borrowing from a famous eighteenth-century picaresque novel. Here a man from the lower classes used his wits to rise to social prominence. Burr was beginning to present himself as an American savage, out of place among the political elite, and unable to exercise much control o
ver his life. Whether he admitted to himself or not, sex was one of few things he could control.39
His vulnerability became painfully clear on April 4, when he was arrested. His belongings and papers were confiscated. “They have everything,” he recorded. “No plots, or treasons, to be sure, but what is worse, all my ridiculous journal.” No charges were filed; Burr was simply being harassed. For members of the British Ministry, he had become a dangerous alien, whose activities appeared suspicious. Two days later, his possessions were returned. He was released, but at the same time ordered to leave the country.40
Furious, Burr blamed Lord Liverpool most of all for having orchestrated his arrest. He tried to petition for a reconsideration of the departure order but found himself unable to address “my lord.” This is what he meant when he said he felt alienated, because the words “my lord” stuck in his “savage throat.” In the end, he was able to take out a passport in his own name and travel at the government’s expense, selecting Sweden as his destination. We cannot determine precisely why Burr was expelled from Great Britain, though he blamed “Jefferson, or the Spanish Juntas, or probably both.” By now he had given up on the idea of aligning with the Spanish Juntas, figuring them as terminally undemocratic.41
So he said his good-byes. In addition to Bentham, he paid a visit to William Godwin, from whom he requested the name of the painter who did a likeness of his dead wife, Mary Wollstonecraft: “I wish to have my daughter’s copied in the same style.” Despite all his tribulations, he carried on as a tourist, collecting souvenirs for Theodosia and her son. As he made final preparations, he dubbed himself a “pilgrim.” On April 25, he set sail. He entered the Swedish capital not as an American exile or prisonier d’état but as a visiting dignitary.42
“PASSING TO ANOTHER PLANET”
Burr was fascinated with Sweden. He visited museums and art galleries, studied the language, and closely examined the laws. He had befriended Henry Gahn, the Swedish consul in New York City, and now sought out members of Gahn’s family who were leading figures in the scientific and medical community. His social calendar included historians, geographers, jurists, and prominent politicians. Burr gained access to the Society of Nobles, an exclusive club which housed an extensive library. Welcomed by the Swedish regent, he felt honored and foolish at the same time. “You would have laughed,” he jotted down in the journal intended for Theodosia, thinking his appearance silly, “with a sword and immense three-cornered hat.”43
He praised the openness of Swedish society, writing his daughter: “Honesty is not a virtue here; it is a mere habit.” Unlike England, where nothing seemed to protect a person against fraud and theft, Burr described Sweden feeling as if he was “passing to another planet.” Doors were left unlatched. Young girls, with no fear for their safety, were sent on errands “at all hours of the night.” He was impressed by the liberality that prevailed: “There is no country with whose jurisprudence I am acquainted in which personal liberty is so well secured,” he wrote to Henry Gahn. “Civil justice is administered with so much dispatch and so little expense.” Burr momentarily considered writing a book on the Swedish success story, as few outside Sweden knew anything about its remarkable legal tradition.44
He spent five delightful months in Sweden, hoping to make Russia his next destination. But this time it was John Quincy Adams, the American minister in St. Petersburg, who stood in his way, refusing to approve his passport. Unlike most Federalists, Adams had opposed Burr during the treason trial. In 1808, as a member of the Senate, he led a vindictive campaign against Burr’s ally John Smith, who stood trial for impeachment. (Smith had earlier been indicted as Burr’s co-conspirator in Richmond, but the charges were dismissed.) Adams’s tacit reward for supporting Jefferson’s administration was his appointment by incoming President James Madison to the diplomatic post.45
Rebuffed but hardly deterred, Burr set his sights on Denmark, hoping to make his way to Germany, and possibly France. He reached Copenhagen on October 23. There, he met more European intellectuals, most notably the German literary critic Friedrich von Schlegel, who had published a major treatise on political neutrality which Burr had read and respected. He was nearly broke in Denmark when, to his surprise, a Swedish acquaintance forwarded a gift of 1,000 marks. Along with the needed funds, the Swede sent a note expressing thanks to “Providence” for having enabled him to enjoy the company of a man he had long esteemed, and “now loved.” Burr recorded in his journal: “Did you ever hear of any thing equal to this, except in novels?” He had acquired a long list of admirers, making his stay among the “kind and amiable Swedes” the high point of his European tour. But Burr had still not given up on “X” (his filibuster idea), and so he now turned his attention to Germany as the most likely point of access to France, where he thought his plan could be pressed forward.46
“AN AMERICAN NAPOLEON”
By the middle of November, Burr was in the vicinity of Hamburg, where he sensed hostility from the community of Americans living there. He was in need of financial support again, and clearly felt that the comforts of Sweden were not to be replicated. Just as he had used his connection to the Swedish consul in New York to cement his welcome in Stockholm, he now sat waiting for a response from the comte d’Hauterive, former French consul in New York, on whom he was relying to secure permission to enter France. At this time, a foreigner could not simply travel across France on the basis of a single passport, but was obliged to petition to travel from one place to another within the country. Only the minister of police could grant him entry into Paris.47
So Burr spent Christmas 1809 in Göttingen, where he learned of a development: the emperor Napoleon had thrown his support over to the independence movement in Mexico and other Spanish colonies. On hearing the news, Burr added a sarcastic phrase to his private journal: “Now, why the devil didn’t he tell me of this two years ago?” After the first of the year, the wanderer made his way into Weimar, where the aristocracy gave him a warm welcome based on recommendations from respectable Swedes. He was made aware that his past was known in every detail—the duel, his “treasons,” and his “gallantries”; but this did not seem to bother most. He met the brother of Alexander von Humboldt, whose map of Latin America had figured in the so-called “conspiracy”; and he experienced a certain coolness from the illustrious Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. One of the ladies at the Weimar court was Henriette von Knebel, who described the “short and lean” visitor, now fifty-three, as a great curiosity. He “likes to talk in his anglicized French,” she told her brother, “and his eyes are sparkling.” Burr must have put forward some of his opinions on the abilities of the female sex, insofar as she wrote in response to their conversation: “I should not want to place my fate in his keeping, although he has a great respect for our sex.” As interestingly, she drew a comparison that others might have thought of in political terms, but she clearly considered merely physical. He resembles, she said, “an American Napoleon.”48
Rather than wait, Burr inched closer to the French border. At the beginning of February 1810, he was granted a passport to go to Paris, arriving there on the 16th. “My head being so full of X matters,” he confided to his journal en route, he immediately made contact with high-level officials: the comte de Volney was an old friend, formerly posted to the United States. He glided from one introduction to the next.49
He had several conversations with one well-connected official who had ties to the foreign secretary, and the latter then submitted a summary of these meetings to Napoleon. In short, Burr’s goal, expressly stated, was to take Florida and use it as a base of operations to attack Mexico, and possibly the Bahamas, Cuba, and Jamaica. He allowed that the plan would succeed if the United States were at war with Great Britain—something that loomed on the near horizon in 1810—and there was, he felt, a good chance that Canada could be persuaded to seek independence at the same time. All he wanted from Napoleon, in order to effect this plan, was two or three frigat
es. He was clear in stating that he did not intend to conquer the Spanish colonies, nor divide the United States, but only to spur independence movements in the former. He also expected France to approve the outcome in Florida—that it would become a part of the United States.50
But by the end of March, Burr felt he was getting nowhere with his proposals, and arranged to meet with the brother of the emperor, Jérôme Bonaparte. At their April 4 interview, Burr spoke in earnest; but this meeting, too, appeared to him a dead end. He remained in Paris three more unproductive months, and finally decided to apply for a passport to return to the United States. His request was denied, and he now termed himself: “Me voilà prisonier d’état et presque sans sous!” (Here am I a prisoner of the state and nearly penniless).51
Trapped in Paris, Burr found ways to pass the time. He was reunited with the talented John Vanderlyn, the American artist who had been his protégé back in New York. They dined together, toured the gardens of Versailles, attended the opera—and even pursued “muse” as a pair. As a regular guest at Vanderlyn’s studio, Burr the connoisseur eyed the models and judged his friend’s latest projects. He also dabbled in a few highbrow liaisons. A Madame Z entered his life, and prompted some intellectual foreplay at the very least; they indulged in sexual banter about a “‘traveller’s pen,’ said to be without end.” He politely demurred when another woman offered to make him a kept man, holding out the promise of a “little room looking into the garden.” His dwindling resources obliged him to take on tasks he would not have deigned to perform before. At a low point, he agreed to translate a book (unnamed) into French for 100 louis. The “curious part of the story” involved Burr himself, as he noted in his journal; though it was a work containing “abuse and libels,” he did not contest it. He simply translated what he saw. Perhaps his body was not for sale, but in at least this one instance, his reputation was.52