by Gore Vidal
Madame peered at me through the window of her golden carriage. “Where did he go?” The question could be heard all the way to the water tower.
“I’m not sure, Madame. I think he said that he had an appointment …”
“Get in, Mr. Schuyler. Charlie. No, I shall call you Charlot. Get in. I want to talk to you.”
“But, Madame …” On the phrase “get in” one of the grooms, a monstrous black buck in livery, leapt to the ground, opened the door to the carriage, shoved me inside like a sack of apples; sprang onto the box, and before I could protest, we were hurtling toward the Bowling Green.
Madame took my hand in hers, breathed breakfast Madeira in my face. “Charlot, he has robbed me!”
I looked at her blankly; not breathing until she removed her face from mine, and sank back onto the velvet cushions.
“I have married a thief!” Madame clutched her reticule to her bosom as though I had designs on one or the other, and in a torrent of Frenchified English told me how she had owned stock in a toll-bridge near Hartford. During the first raptures of their honeymoon in the house of Governor Edwards, the Colonel persuaded her to sell the stock. So trusting, so loving, so secure in her new place as the bride of a former vice-president, Madame allowed the Colonel to sell the shares and himself collect the cash—some six thousand dollars which he insisted on having sewn into the lining of his jacket; for safe-keeping, he said.
“ ‘Ma foi!’ I said to him. ‘It will be better to sew the money into my petticoat. After all, those shares belonged to me, non?’ We were in our bedroom in the house du Gouverneur and I wanted to make no scene. Naturellement. So what did he say to that? Why, damn him for a bastard in hell, he said, ‘I am your master, Madame. Your husband, and under law what you have is mine!’ Under law!” The small bloodshot eyes started in the huge sockets: one can imagine her fleshless skull too easily. “Well, I know the law forward and back and if he wants to play at litigation with me there are a hundred lawyers in this city I can put to work, and beat him in every court!” She ordered the coachman to stop the carriage, just opposite Castle Garden.
“Then last night, after supper, he said he was unwell. Wanted to go early to bed. Not until this morning did I realize that he had slipped away in the night, having hired a farmer’s wagon. So I hurried to town—too late! He has now disposed of my money, and broken my heart!”
The footman opened the carriage door, and helped Madame alight. “We shall take the air.” Firmly she took first my arm, then the air in noisy gusts.
I like the Battery best in high summer: trees too green, roses overblown, sail-boats tacking on the gray river while the pale muslin dresses of promenading girls furl and unfurl like flags in the flower and sea-scented wind.
We walked toward the round rosy brick cake of Castle Garden—the old fort where a few weeks ago I saw the President himself arrive by ship. Slender, fragile, with a mane of tangled white hair, General Jackson crossed the causeway to the shore; he moved slowly, grasping here an arm, there a shoulder, anything for support. He will not live out his term, they say.
Colonel Burr stood with me at the bottom of Broadway; the roaring, drunken crowd below us like a dozen Fourth of July celebrations rolled into one. “Not even Washington got such a reception.”
“What would the President do if he knew you were here?” I asked.
“He’d probably make the sign against the evil eye.” Burr laughed. “After all, I am his guilty past. He wanted to help me conquer Mexico. Now look at him!” Burr spoke fondly, without bitterness, like a man whose child has grown and gone. Then, as the President vanished into the crowd, we were both delighted when the causeway suddenly collapsed, dunking a number of dignitaries in the river.
Madame bade me buy us ice-cream, sold by an Irish girl. Irish girl. Must not write that phrase. Or think such things. But I did. Do. So much for high resolve. I knew that I would see Mrs. Townsend to-night. How weak I am!
“I owe the Colonel a good deal.” Madame marched between the elms. Strollers leapt aside as she passed: a man—no, woman-of-war on the high green flowery Battery Sea. “In the past, he was good to me for I was not always—how you say in English, bienvenue?” When tension lessens, Madame’s English deserts her. When it mounts, she is the voluble Eliza Bowen of Providence, Rhode Island.
“Where did you first meet the Colonel?” It is almost impossible to get from any of these survivors such a small thing as a fact.
“So handsome!” She smacked her lips: ice-cream delicately beaded the hardly perceptible moustache that fringed an upper lip not naturally red. “I first saw him when General Washington took the oath of office. In Broad Street. On the balcony. I can still see General Washington on that balcony. Such a noble, commanding figure, if somewhat too broad in the derrière.” Madame chuckled at some plainly non-inaugural memory. But how could she have been there? Washington became president in 1789. If she is fifty-eight now, she was thirteen then. Well, it is just possible.
“Colonel Burr was at the reception, and I danced with him. Then—right after—ah, l’ironie, the irony! I danced with Mr. Hamilton. Curious, come to think of it. I admired them both, yet both were tiny and I’ve always been partial to tall men.”
Madame’s gaze took in my own less than tall figure. She gave me a coquettish smile. “But my passion, my adoration seems reserved for men of small stature but unique quality, comme l’Empereur. Vive Napoléon!” She shouted suddenly, causing a group of upstate Quakers—Poughkeepsie writ large on their dull faces—to scatter before her furious progress.
Madame licked her lips; ice-cream quite gone. “Occasionally we saw each other during those years. But not often. Colonel Burr was busy with politics and the law, and I had my own pursuits. Yet how sad we all were when he allowed that despicable Jefferson to take his rightful place as president. The Colonel had the votes but he would not break his word. He was too honest …” Sudden frown as Madame recalled the honest Burr’s theft of her money.
“No! Not honest! Weak! Bonaparte would have held firm, become the president, and if that Jacobite Jefferson had stood in his way, he would have seized the Capitol by force of arms! Then I might have been—what? Marie Louise? Only constant, not like that Austrian bitch who deserted the most splendid man that ever lived! Pauvre homme! Why are men so frail? Women so strong?”
Madame shoved me onto a bench; then sat herself, like a carnival tent collapsing. Overhead, scarlet birds fought among branches. “Charlot, you must be my friend.”
“But I am. Really …”
“The Colonel admires you, thinks you clever.”
“Oh, no …”
“Much cleverer than you look. Your eyes are too far apart. Certainly much cleverer than Nelson Chase who married my adorable niece, pretending to have money. But that is the age-old story. And if he makes her happy, I shall pay. Why not? I like to bring a little douceur into the lives of others.”
For a moment we watched a group of pigtailed English sailors slowly fan out over the green, their quarry three complaisant girls at the Battery’s edge. As the sun rose to noon, I could think only of Rosanna Townsend and her rooms of delight.
“Charlot, the Colonel means to ruin me.” Madame stopped me before I could object. “No, no. It is not wickedness. He is not capable of any meanness. But he is mad with grandeur. He will try to get his hands onto my small fortune …” Small fortune! “And he will ruin me as he spends my money trying to fill up Texas with Germans. I, who hate Germans and regard Texas with a cold eye.”
“The Colonel is often impulsive.”
“You must talk to him. I know he listens to you. He told me that you are doing his biographie—good luck to you there, mon petit! I would not like the job of figuring out that one’s life.” She clutched my arm. “You must persuade him that the goose will lay golden eggs only if treated properly. As for the Texas investment, reason with him. Tell him that if he returns me the money, I shall demand no interest. In fact, I shall make him a present. W
hat about new quarters for his firm? Je redoute Reade Street. I am foolishly generous when not exploited. You must take my side in this, Charlot.”
I promised to help her. As I was swearing fealty, one of the beautiful scarlet birds splattered Madame’s shoulder with pale guano. Unaware of the benediction, she allowed me to escort her back to the golden carriage.
En route Sam Swartwout greeted us. He is the collector of the port of New York, appointed by President Jackson to the surprise of many since he is a devoted Burrite.
Madame greeted Swartwout with delight. The collector, too, was all smiles and compliments; and earthy bluntness. “So you finally landed the old boy.”
“What a way to talk, Sam! He landed me. And why not? Ain’t I a rich widow?” For a moment I had a glimpse of the fun that Eliza Bowen must have been for a whole generation. Gone were the French pretensions, the mannered hardness: she giggled like a girl just out of convent, meeting her first beau. As best he could, Swartwout played the part of roaring boy, despite whiskey voice, round glazed eyes, thin hair combed forward like an ancient Roman. “When will you have me to the mansion?”
“Name the day, dear Sam. What a good friend!” She used me for this declaration, like a sounding brass. “And loyal to the Colonel through thick and thin.”
“Certainly through thin, Liza. But now that it’s thick, I’m not sure which way to jump.” They roared with laughter at things unknown to me—to anyone not of their bawdy amoral generation. Swartwout often comes to the office to chat with the Colonel behind closed doors. They have so many secrets, these ancient adventurers.
Swartwout turned to me. “My respects to the Colonel. Tell him I’ll see him soon. Tell him I don’t like Clay as much as he may have heard. He’ll know what that means. So when are you going to qualify yourself for the law?”
I gave my usual answer. “Soon, I think.”
“You have the best teacher in the world, Charlie. Fact, if the Colonel had only had the luck to have been his own teacher, he would’ve been emperor of Mexico by now and the world a whole lot better place—at least for you and me, Liza.” With a flourish, the aged satyr kissed Madame’s hand and made his way to the apple-seller on the quay.
“He is loyal, loyal, loyal!” Madame was in a better mood; her husband temporarily forgiven. “But then except for l’Empereur no man of our time has commanded and kept the loyalty of so many as Colonel Burr.”
As we got into the carriage, I knew what it felt like to be the president: everyone gaped at us.
“I wonder,” said Madame, happily aware of the effect her carriage was having on the people, “if I should paint the vice-president’s seal on the doors. And is there a seal for the vice-president?”
I said I thought it unlikely a former vice-president would be allowed to employ the emblem of his lost rank. But Madame paid no attention to me; talked instead of the carriage the Emperor had given her at La Rochelle. Apparently the imperial coat-of-arms on the door made France’s police her footmen, France’s army her body-guard.
“He was gallant, no doubt of that.” I thought she meant Bonaparte but it was Burr she had in mind.
“Certainly he worships you, Madame.” I saw no harm in making peace. The bird’s dropping had dried on her silken shoulder.
Madame—no, Eliza Bowen—chuckled. “He don’t worship nobody, Charlie. He don’t love nobody either. Never did. Except Theodosia …”
“His first wife?”
“No, not that old woman, hollowed out by the cancer. The girl Theodosia. She’s the one he loved—his daughter, and no one else!”
Madame suddenly looked grim, awed, puzzled. “Strange business, Aaron Burr and his daughter, and no business of ours. After all, what’s dead is finished. Poor Aaron, I think sometimes he drowned along with her, and all we’ve got of him now—all that’s left—is his ghost that floated to shore.”
Five
AT MIDNIGHT the Five Points is like mid-day. Every week I make up my mind not to go there, ever again, and of course I cannot stay away. This time, however, I have come for a purpose. Rosanna Townsend was born in the Hudson Valley, not far from Kinderhook. She could very well know all about Colonel Burr and Van Buren. But I am lying as I write these lines. All day I have been thinking of muslin dresses on the Battery. Could not care less about Van Buren.
Where the five streets come together the world’s worst people can be found—drunks, whores, thieves, gamblers, murderers-for-hire. I cannot think any city on earth has such a squalid district. Of course, I have seen no other city, except Albany, and maybe the Sultan’s Sublime Porte is wickeder than Cross Street at midnight but I doubt it.
I went from bar-room to bar-room, drinking very little but—well, observing, listening to political gossip, perversely putting off pleasure. At the corner of Anthony Street, I made a dinner of clams. As always I was dazzled by the noise, the smells, the lighted tavern windows—muslin dresses.
At midnight, I made my way to 41 Thomas Street (just writing the address in this copy-book makes me short of breath: I don’t know how I was able to endure my largely celibate life before I made the acquaintance of that old brick house with its flaking green shutters and Dutch front).
I rapped on the door. A pause. A woman’s shout from somewhere deep in the house. The door opened, a black face. “Oh, it’s you.” I slipped into the foyer. The Negro maid shut and bolted the door.
“Is Mrs. Townsend free?”
“Don’t you want to go straight up and see what we got?” Of course I did, could hardly wait. But I was on a mission. This was not simply a voluptuous errand. I have—now—given up that sort of thing, and never again shall set foot in 41 Thomas Street. That is a solemn vow.
Convinced that I was perverse enough to want to pass some time with the mistress of the house, the Negress showed me into the downstairs parlour where Mrs. Townsend and her teapot were arranged on a comfortable chaise-longue. She drinks tea constantly: “Coffee rots you, tea dries you out,” she likes to say.
As usual, she was reading a heavy book. “Something frivolous, I fear, Mr. Schuyler.” She put down the book and raised her hand in greeting. “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Usually she reads works of philosophy, collections of sermons. “It is not that I am religious, perish the thought. But there must be some meaning to all this. Some great design.” And she made a spiral in the air with a long yellow hand. “I search for clues.”
Mrs. Townsend motioned for me to sit beside her on a straight chair, the gas-light in my face. She is most aristocratic-looking with a long nose and a bright startled expression. Her hair has been dyed an unconvincing red—pro forma obeisance to a profession of which she is neither ashamed nor proud. “Mr. Bunyan is deeply depressing but I assume—by the end of his book—I shall see the City of God, or at least its water frontage. Light reading, I admit, but a relief after Thomas Aquinas.”
She offered me tea. I shook my head. She poured herself a cup. “You must marry, Mr. Schuyler. You are much too young—or too old—for this kind of thing.” She frowned as she indicated the upstairs part of her house.
“Twenty-five is the best age, I would’ve thought, to visit you.”
Mrs. Townsend shook her head. “Twenty-five is the best age for marriage. My establishment exists as a refuge for the old married man or as a training ground for the young inexperienced boy. It is simply not a fitting place for a young man in his prime who should be starting his family, laying the keel, as it were, to the vessel of his mature life.” Mrs. Townsend’s discourse is often lofty, and though it does not reproduce too well on my page, it falls most resonantly upon the ear.
“I’m too poor to marry.”
“Then marry an heiress.”
We have had this conversation before. I changed the subject. Asked if there were any new-comers to Thomas Street. There was. “A treasure come to me from Connecticut, where pretty girls grow like onions. I can’t think why. It must be the air. She is—she says—seventeen. I would suspect younger. She is—sh
e says—a virgin as of this morning. I would suspect that in her modesty she exaggerates, but not by much.”
As Mrs. Townsend spoke, I was more and more excited. I must be deeply depraved for I am drawn to the very young, girls just en fleur, as Colonel Burr would say: his taste, too—at least in old age; as a young man he was notoriously attracted to women older than he.
“Will you present me to this—Connecticut onion?”
Mrs. Townsend made a price. I made a counter-price. We haggled as we often do when there is something special.
Price agreed and paid, I did not immediately rush upstairs, to her amazement. “But, go to it, Mr. Schuyler. Her name is Helen Jewett. The back bedroom on the left. Or do you want me to present you formally?”
To her further amazement I requested tea. As she poured it, I asked her if she knows Colonel Burr (she has no idea where I work or even what I do). A smile revealed perfect dentures, of genuine Indian (from India) ivory. “Colonel Burr! There was a man! I think the handsomest in the city when I was a girl. Those black eyes! And how he loved the ladies! Really loved them. Why, he would talk to them by the hour, busy as he was. Not like General Hamilton who was always much too busy to talk to anyone who didn’t matter. Too busy for almost everything. Why, he would leap upon a girl and before she knew what was happening he was pulling up his breeches and out the door. A handsome man, too, General Hamilton, but foxy. You know what I mean? He had that curious orangey hair and freckled skin, which some people like and some don’t. I don’t.” The elegant nostrils flared a moment. “And he had a sharp foxy smell to him I never could bear.”
“Then you knew them both?”
Mrs. Townsend gave a low laugh. “Yes, even—or especially—in the Biblical sense I knew them both. Between the two they must’ve gone through every gay girl in the town, and I was one of the gayest then. Now let me ring …”
“Like Madame Jumel?”