by Gore Vidal
“You are all welcome.” The bewildered Theodosia ordered a room for the Major who immediately went upstairs, whispering to me as he did, “She’s in one of her fits now. They come and go.”
Peggy, meanwhile, had taken up her position before the fireplace. She looked uncommonly pretty, despite wild hair and a sparkling demented gaze. She had known Theodosia all her life, regarded her as an older sister.
“There he is, the murderer!” Peggy pointed a long finger at me. It was most effective. I later used with much success the same gesture and tone of voice in the course of a murder trial.
Peggy grasped her brow. “The iron! Hot! Hot! Hot as the flames of Hell!”
This would not do, even from a madwoman. Theodosia made a shushing sound and sent everyone from the room except me.
Peggy sobbed for a long time in her veil. Then she dried her eyes briskly and said, “By God, Theodosia, if I have to go on like this one more day I will go out of my mind. Hello, Aaron. We’ve not seen each other since …”
“You were a child. How,” I could not help asking the actress, “is the hot iron now?”
“Considerably cooler, thank you!” Peggy burst into laughter, was again the most charming girl of her day.
Theodosia was more puzzled than I. “Are you really all right, Peggy?”
“Of course she is. Peggy has been play-acting.” I had suspected her from the moment of her entrance.
“Better play-acting than a jail.” Peggy gave me a hard look. “Is Aaron all right?”
“In what way?” Theodosia was an innocent in these matters.
I was not. “She means will I tell General Washington that she fooled him. No, I won’t. That is, if she doesn’t try to fool us.”
“I would never do that! Well, I would if I had to. You’re not Tory, are you?”
I said I was not. I had been devoted to the Revolution from the first day, and so was a proper Whig.
Peggy made a face. “Well, I have hated your ‘Revolution’ from the first day.”
“So apparently did General Arnold.” This was bold of me but Peggy was boldness itself.
“I have no way of knowing.” Peggy was matter-of-fact. “That was before I met him. I do know how badly he was treated by the Congress, by Mr. Washington who …” She suddenly broke out laughing, and I feared that she was about to favour us with another mad scene but she was sane, and much amused. “You should have seen His Excellency! When I realized my husband was in danger, I took to my bed. I had to convince everyone that I knew nothing of what was going on. So I claimed that Colonel Varick was trying to kill my baby and that a hot iron was burning my head and …”
“Where did you get that marvellous hot iron from?” Theodosia had an inquiring nature.
“I read it somewhere, a story about a poor woman in Bedlam. ‘The iron, the hot iron’!” Peggy boomed until we begged her to stop. “I pretended I didn’t recognise Mr. Washington who looked frightened to death and sent for Mr. Hamilton, that lovely young goose …”
“Peggy!” Theodosia obviously did not like to think of us precocious colonels as geese, lovely or otherwise.
“Oh, a perfect goose, believe me. With him I changed my manner. Became conspiratorial. Tête-à-tête. I was wearing a handsome lace bedgown, the latest thing from London, sent me last summer by Major André.” Peggy frowned. “They won’t shoot him, will they?”
We did not know it but Major André had already been hanged as a spy. “I rather think we will.” I was hard, too hard, for I have since been told not only that Peggy and the Major were lovers before she married Arnold but that their affair continued even after, and that Peggy helped André to corrupt her new husband. Between the wife playing on Arnold’s sense of injury and Major André offering him money (and the King’s commission), it is no wonder that that unstable man went over to the enemy and, good commander that he was, did our cause much injury in the field before the French won the war for us. As I have said before, Arnold was a superb commander.
“Of course, Major André might be exchanged for General Arnold.” I could not resist playing on her terror. She was also devoted to her lunatic husband.
“The British would never give him up. Not even for—for him.”
Theodosia and I often discussed this scene during the years of our marriage, meditating upon Peggy’s exquisite dilemma. The old lover’s life and the new husband’s life for an instant were in the balance.
Peggy was a remarkable girl, with a quick intelligence. Tribute to her quickness was the fact that she was able in one day to dupe Washington, Hamilton and Lafayette. But then she was a professional spy. When I was in London, I learned that in 1782 she received some 400 pounds from the British government for services rendered. Of those services, the greatest was her marriage to Benedict Arnold, and her conversion of a truculent malcontent into prodigious traitor.
Peggy was in her glory that night at Paramus. She must have thought herself a perfect success. Yet she had destroyed her husband, for the British were plainly losing the war. But then she had the sort of febrile personality that is happy only in a desperate, preferably losing situation in which a vivid role can be enacted like Joan at the stake. Politically she was uncommonly zealous. Her father had been a Tory judge in Philadelphia and she had learned from him and his circle of friends to detest anyone who questioned England’s majesty and the rights of property.
Feet on the fire fender, like a handsome boy, Peggy told us of her interview with Colonel Hamilton at West Point.
“I said I knew nothing of my husband’s activity. And then I wept, very softly, holding his arm very close to me. He is most susceptible, isn’t he?”
I looked at her politely. Actually, Hamilton’s “susceptibility” was unknown to me at that time. Later of course he became notorious for his—I almost wrote “lecheries” but who am I to use such a word for life’s best pleasure? I will say that Hamilton was a fool where women were concerned, and often embarrassed his partisans, not to mention his noble, long-suffering Schuyler wife.
“Anyway I persuaded him that I wanted only to come home to Philadelphia, to my family. I threw myself upon his mercy. He was so moved at this that he put his free hand on my arm ever so gently …”
“Peggy, you should be soundly spanked.” Theodosia was more direct than I; also of the two of us, she was the more knowing in the ways of people.
“You are unkind.” But Peggy enjoyed arousing her old friend; wanted to disturb my impassivity. “I said that I feared the crowd. Feared for my life.” She frowned. “I am afraid, as matter of fact. What will the Whigs do to me in Pennsylvania?”
“Invite you to all their parties, I should think, and ask you to play Ophelia.” Theodosia was not as amused by Peggy as I was.
“Colonel Hamilton said that he would intercede with General Washington, which he did. I then had almost the same interview with the Marquis de Lafayette in French!”
A servant entered to call away the mistress of the house. When Theodosia was gone, Peggy stretched like a cat in front of the fire. Then she looked me straight in the eye, the way she used to when we were children and wanted her way. “Well?” from Peggy.
“Well?” I did not respond.
She crossed to me. Took my hands in hers and looked me in the eye. “I’ve talked too much. I don’t usually go on like this.”
“It was most interesting.”
“You don’t approve of what we did?”
“I do not.”
“I hate the enemies of England!” There was real passion in her voice. “I hate what your Virginia dolt is doing to our world.”
I assured her that it would still be our world when the war ended; but without the inconvenience of paying taxes to England. She would not believe me.
“It will not be ours but theirs, those wild men from the woods, from the water frontage, from the worst stews of the towns. They’ll take everything!” Peggy sounded like one of today’s New York ladies deploring Andrew Jackson. Only she
had done more than deplore; she had sacrificed everything.
“Well, no matter who owns the country, Peggy, you’ll have no part in it. The English will go home and you will go with them and never come back.”
“I believe we’ll win. But if we don’t, I will be happy to go.” She was so close to me that I could smell the sharp odour of her breath, a feminine odour I had even then learned to recognise as corresponding with a phase of the moon. She tried to draw me toward her but I got my hands free.
“I am to marry Theodosia.”
Peggy gave me a furious look, threw herself into a chair beside the fire. “She is old enough to be your mother.”
“Hardly.” But Theodosia was ten years older than I. Her late husband had been a colonel in the British army. She had no fortune. I was aware that in the world’s eye this was the poorest sort of match for a rising young man to make. Yet to me Theodosia was everything I ever wanted in a woman except that she was not my daughter, too; fortunately, she provided me with a second Theodosia before her death and my happiness—for a short time—was complete. Yet I confess that evening at Paramus I did not much enjoy Peggy’s taunt.
“Now you’ll betray me.” Peggy’s face was foolish with fear.
“It’s not possible. You have anticipated me.”
Put briefly, Benedict Arnold was a fool and Peggy was a greater one. Fearing that I might reveal the extent of her complicity, Peggy promptly put it about that I had made advances to her at Paramus. This was in character. Actually, I kept her secret until now. I like to think that my discretion was equally in character.
1834
One
SHORTLY BEFORE NOON, the main door to the office was flung open. Icy air filled the room. Mr. Craft’s latest brief floated toward the grate. One of the young clerks rushed to slam the door only to find that it framed a bright-faced Aaron Burr and two heavy-set men who looked rather the worse for what must have been a long walk in the cold. Their hands and cheeks were flame colour.
The Colonel simply looked fresh. “Heigh-ho!” he exclaimed. “I am—as you see—back!”
He is as hearty as ever; does not even walk with a stick.
Burr led the men into the inner office, calling out, as he did, for various papers that he wanted.
Mr. Craft was quietly pleased. “They cannot kill the Colonel.” The dour face was filled with dark significance.
“You mean Madame and Nelson Chase?”
Mr. Craft shook his head. The dark significance, apparently, is his way of expressing undue pleasure, something I have not often noted in the five years we have worked together. He seldom discusses anything with me except our work and the day’s temperature. Weather means a lot to him.
“Life!” Mr. Craft exclaimed. Apparently life could not kill Aaron Burr. I left the sense of that unexplored. “You would do well to study his …” Mr. Craft lowered his voice to make sure that the two clerks did not hear him. “… style. In his day he was the first gentleman of New York. And one of the first gentlemen in the land.”
“He was vice-president, of course …”
“Gentleman, Mr. Schuyler, not office-holding knave! His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, back to the beginning, were great divines and presidents of universities. That is why he was so envied by Hamilton, by that …” The voice lowered to a whisper in my ear. “… that West Indian bastard! How they all envied him! From the gutter they came, while Aaron Burr was our first gentleman.” After all our years of work together, Mr. Craft has at last revealed himself to be, most unexpectedly, a classic New York snob. I have always thought that the most appealing thing about Alexander Hamilton was his illegitimacy. But then I am not impressed by “divines.”
There was the sound of voices raised in disagreement from the next room. Then Colonel Burr called my name. I went inside.
“I would,” said one of the men sharply, “like very much to be paid the money.”
“And I would,” said Colonel Burr in his courtliest fashion (three, four, five generations of “divines"?), “like very much to pay you the money. But I cannot—for the present. Mr. Schuyler, you will now have my full attention. Gentlemen, good day.”
As the Colonel shut the door after his creditors, he was in a merry mood. “We must complete your education to-night with something truly profound.” He bit the end from a seegar. “You have been reading Gibbon?”
“I am in the third volume.” I lied.
“I shall query you about him to-night. At the Park Theatre. I have bought tickets to see the unique Miss Fanny Kemble and her father in what I fear is a foolish play called The Hunchback.”
I expressed delight that was not feigned. Actually I had seen Miss Kemble in the part last September when she made her first appearance here, and took the town by storm. She is a marvellous fiery creature on stage, though not beautiful. She is supposed to look like her aunt Mrs. Siddons.
Colonel Burr lit his seegar and did what can only be described as a dance step. “Free!” he intoned. “Free!”
Then he confided to me that he had left the Heights, “for the last time. A heart of gold, Madame has. No doubt of it! What fills her purse, you might say, also beats in her fine bosom. The tick-tick of gold, Charlie, what a sound! The world dances to its measure.” Another half dance step and he was at his chair beside the baize table. The fire glowed in the hearth. I thought, suddenly, here is a happy man. Why?
“For reasons of temperament, we have decided to go our separate ways for a time. Our marriage is in abeyance. I need the stimulus of the town. Madame is happy only at the mansion, receiving Bonapartes. It is possible she will try to divorce me, but I hope not. I have promised to reimburse her—God willing—for the sale of her four broken-down bays. Make a note to send her a barrel of salted salmon. It is her favourite. My first wife’s favourite, too.” The Colonel shut his eyes. With pain? Recollection? Neither. “Have you prepared the bill of particulars I wanted for the DePeyster case?”
“I have begun it, only …”
Through the smoke he gave me his most Burrite aphorism. “Excellent, Charlie. Never do today what you can do tomorrow because who knows what may turn up?”
Miss Kemble was superb as Julia. Her father was also effective as the Hunchback. The theatre’s new decorations are most sumptuous—everything gold and crimson on cream, with a portrait of Shakespeare over the proscenium arch and representations of comedy and tragedy on either side of the stage where mirrors used to be.
Only the audience was a disappointment. The boxes were half-filled with enthusiastic gentry, including the Colonel and me. The pit, on the other hand, was crowded with loud, drunken men recruited from the Five Points to boo not the performers—or there would have been a riot—but the theatre’s manager, Mr. Edmund Simpson, who is thought to prefer British to American players, which is nonsense because his principal attraction is our own Edwin Forrest. It is nothing more than a foolish competition between the Park Theatre and the Bowery Theatre, whose manager Tom Hamblin hired these ruffians to shout and bray, particularly during the orchestral interludes. This rattles all the musicians except the Cockney known as Mr. Drum. Between bars Mr. Drum sleeps, as oblivious to the noise in the pit as he is to the conductor. But somehow he never misses a cue. He is the loudest drummer in New York.
The Bowery Theatre has also enlisted the Evening Post in its support, and Leggett himself has taken to attacking the Park Theatre. Understandably, Mr. Simpson has banned him from the theatre. Meanwhile, in a cheap gesture for sympathy, the Bowery Theatre changed its name to the American Theatre on the sensible ground that no one can attack anything wrapped in the stars and stripes.
During the entr’acte, I stand with Colonel Burr at the door that looks out onto Broadway and St. Paul’s. The church is lighted within. A service? Between the golden glow from the church’s windows and the white glare from the theatre’s lobby, large snow-flakes like feathers slowly turn and fall. The Colonel, as usual, pretends to keep his eyes on me, as tho
ugh rivetted by what I am saying. Actually, it is to avoid the possibility of being publicly cut by someone.
“She is a fine animal, Charlie, no doubt of that!” Miss Kemble had stimulated him but then is there any man who can resist that mighty yet womanly voice? I have written a study of her acting which The Mirror is considering for publication.
“I thought, Colonel, you believed that women had souls, were not animals.” I was amused.
“But the soul has its fleshly envelope. Besides, I have yet to think through whether or not animals might also possess souls, too. So many people who do have souls are bestial.”
As we talked, I glanced at the people in the audience. Many of the older ones were aware of the Colonel’s presence and stared at him with fascination, even horror. The young know him not, or anything else. Patrons of the Park Theatre boxes tend to be rich. They hate the President, adore Clay and Webster. I am writing now about politics not because I care how the Park Theatre audience votes but because I was jostled twice by a man with a heavy beard and thick spectacles. The first time I simply moved away. The second time, when he stepped on my foot, I turned, ready to do battle—and then recognised through a full dark false beard William Leggett.
“Don’t I look like the prophet Isaiah?”
“I don’t know what the prophet Isaiah looked like.” My toe hurt. Then I introduced him to Colonel Burr who was as gracious as Lord Chesterfield with a groom.
“I am not supposed to be here,” Leggett whispered. “Simpson has threatened to fight a duel with me. For me, the cane. For him, the adverb.” Leggett suddenly stopped: in the house of the hanged man, do not mention rope.
But the Colonel was serene. “A most sensible choice of weapons. Personally I have always regarded duelling as a terrible business.”
“Of course. Barbaric. But then …” Leggett actually stammered. The false whiskers slipped a bit; the moustache covering under as well as upper lip.