Burr

by Gore Vidal

  “That is hardly exceptional,” I said. “Besides, I think Judge Kent voted for me.”

  Then I saw what had attracted Van Ness’s eye: “I could,” wrote Dr. Cooper, “detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr.” We looked in vain for that “more despicable opinion” but it was not given.

  “It is the usual Hamilton diatribe.” Matty did not take the matter seriously. Nor did I at first.

  But in the night I began to meditate on just what was meant by “more despicable.” Hamilton had already called me Caesar, Catiline, Bonaparte (while himself dreaming of a crown in Mexico should he fail to subvert Jefferson’s feudal Utopia). What did he now mean by “more despicable"? I fear that my usual equanimity in these matters had been much shaken by the recent election. I did not sleep that night. The next morning I wrote a letter to Hamilton. Then I sent for Van Ness.

  “I think this … thing demands an explanation.”

  “I agree.” Van Ness was even grimmer than I. He would deliver my letter in person. The letter was short. I asked for “a prompt and unqualified acknowledgement or denial of the use of any expression which could warrant the assertions of Dr. Cooper.” I enclosed the newspaper cutting. This was on June 19.

  Van Ness delivered the letter to Hamilton who saw immediately the seriousness of the matter. “I shall answer Colonel Burr later today.” But later that day Hamilton called on Van Ness and asked if he might have another day in which to prepare his reply.

  On June 21, I received a letter from Hamilton. It was long. There was a good deal of quibbling as to the precise meaning of “despicable.” He then declared that he could not be held responsible for the inferences that others might draw from anything he had said “of a political opponent in the course of fifteen years’ competition.”

  I answered him the same day, remarking that “political opposition can never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honour.” I pointed out that the accepted meaning of the word “despicable” conveys the idea of dishonour. I asked for a definite reply.

  The next day Hamilton called on a friend and gave him a second letter to give Van Ness when he called. In this letter Hamilton complained of my peremptory style. He could not, he decided, give me a reply any more definite than the one he had put forward in his first letter. That of course was no reply at all. Meanwhile Hamilton’s friend told Van Ness that he was authorized to say that Hamilton’s recollection of the dinner party at Albany was somewhat hazy but to the extent that Colonel Burr was at all discussed the context was entirely political and bore upon the current election for governor. Apparently no reflections upon Colonel Burr’s private character were made by General Hamilton.

  It was at about this time that I learned exactly what it was that Hamilton had said of me, and knew that this world was far too narrow a place to contain the two of us.

  Hamilton’s friend made one further attempt to get him off the hook but only further impaled the slanderer by remarking that should Colonel Burr wish to enquire of any other conversation of Hamilton concerning Burr, a prompt and frank avowal or denial would be given. This was too much. I told Van Ness to set a time and place for an interview.

  The friend made one last attempt to save his principal on the peculiar ground that General Hamilton did not believe himself to be the original author of any of the unpleasant rumours currently circulating about Colonel Burr, excepting one which had been cleared up years before: this had to do with my supposedly thrusting, as it were, Eliza Bowen into Hamilton’s bed in order to learn his secrets. Actually she thrust herself there, with his aid. And though she did give me a copy of the pamphlet he had written attacking John Adams, he was forced to agree that I had in no way solicited it.

  Hamilton then complained of my “predetermined hostility” to him. Van Ness replied for me, pointing out that the phrase “predetermined hostility” was insult added to injury and that the evasive length of Hamilton’s correspondence seemed very like guilt.

  It was determined that we would meet across the river in New Jersey, on the heights known as Weehawk. Nathaniel Pendleton would be second to Hamilton. Van Ness would be second to me. Pistols would be our weapons. Hamilton then asked that we delay the interview until after the close of the Circuit Court. It was agreed that we meet in two weeks’ time on July 11, 1804.

  For two weeks we kept our secret from all but a handful of intimates. I put my affairs in order; wrote letters to Theodosia; prepared a will. I worried a good deal about the debts I would leave behind if I were killed. No doubt, Hamilton was in the same frame of mind. If anything, he was in a far worse position than I: he was deeply in debt largely due to The Grange, a pretentious country seat he was preparing for himself several miles above Richmond Hill. He also had seven children. Fortunately for them, his wife was a Schuyler so the poorhouse would never claim these relics.

  I soon discovered that I had made a mistake granting Hamilton a two weeks’ delay. He immediately arranged for one Samuel Bradhurst to challenge me to a duel with swords. I had no choice but to answer this gentleman. We fought near Hoboken. I was at a considerable disadvantage since Mr. Bradhurst’s arms were about three inches longer than mine. It was Hamilton’s design that I be, at the least, so cut up by Mr. Bradhurst that I would not be in any condition to succeed in our interview on July 11. Fortunately, I drew blood immediately. Mr. Bradhurst withdrew from the field of honour, leaving me unscratched.

  On the evening of July 4, I attended the celebration of the Society of the Cincinnati at Fraunces’ Tavern.

  Hamilton was most poised. In fact, I have seldom seen him so charming. “I must congratulate you on a successful interview,” he murmured as we bowed to one another in the tap-room.

  “I hope your friend Mr. Bradhurst will make a swift recovery.” I turned away.

  Despite Hamilton’s notorious arrogance and shortness with those whose minds worked less swiftly than his own, he had the gift of enchanting others when he chose. Suspecting that this might well be his last public appearance, he meant for all the world to remember him as he was that night, still handsome despite the fleshiness of too much good living, still able to delight with subtle flattery those older than himself, to dazzle with his brilliance those younger.

  As we sat at table in the long room—a group of middle-aged men who shared nothing but the fact that we had all been young at the same time and had fought as officers in the Revolution—I too had the sense that this might be my last appearance upon the republic’s brightest stage. There was a good chance that I would be killed. There was an even better chance that Hamilton would be killed. But whatever happened, nothing would ever be the same again in a week’s time.

  I felt curiously detached as I sat in the place of honour (despite my recent electoral defeat I was still vice-president of the United States); saw myself as from a great distance, already a carnival waxworks and no longer real.

  Others have written that I was moody and distant that night. Obviously I was not in full command of myself. But then the ultimate encounter was at hand. The man who had set himself the task of ruining me during “fifteen years’ competition” was now about to complete his work, and I must have known in some instinctive way that he would again succeed no matter what happened on the Weehawk Heights.

  I was genuinely moved when at the company’s request General Hamilton got up and in his fine tenor voice sang “The Drum,” a song that no veteran of the Revolution can listen to without sorrow for his lost youth and the dead he loved.

  Needless to say, I did not realize with what cunning Hamilton had prepared his departure from this world, and my ruin.

  Twenty-nine

  TODAY THE COLONEL was in a most curious and excited mood. “If it amuses you, Charlie, we shall go to the Heights of Weehawk and I shall act out for you the duel of the century, when the infamous Burr slew the noble Hamilton, from behind a thistle—obviously a disparaging allusion to my small stat
ure. Yet Hamilton was less than an inch taller than I though now he looms a giant of legend, with a statue to his divinity in the Merchants’ Exchange, his temple. While for me no statue, no laurel, only thistle!”

  I was delighted and somewhat embarrassed. Burr almost never speaks of the duel; and most people, unlike Leggett, are much too nervous of the subject ever to bring it up in his presence even though it is the one thing everyone in the world knows about Aaron Burr, and the one thing it is impossible not to think of upon first meeting him.

  “He killed General Hamilton,” my mother whispered to me when the elegant little old man first came into our Greenwich Village tavern, after his return from Europe. “Take a good look at him. He was a famous man once.”

  As I grew older, I realized that my family admired Burr more than not and that my mother was pleased when he took a fancy to me, gave me books to read, encouraged me to attend Columbia College and take up the law. But my first glimpse of him at a table close to the pump-room fire was of the devil himself, and I half-expected him to leave not by way of the door but up the chimney with the flames.

  We walked to Middle Pier at the end of Duane Street. “I’ve ordered my young boatman to stand by.”

  The Colonel’s eyes were bright at the prospect of such an unusual adventure—into past time rather than into that airy potential future time where he is most at home.

  “It was a hot day like this—thirty years and one month ago. Yet I remember being most unseasonably cold. In fact, I ordered a fire the night of the tenth, and slept in my clothes on a sofa in the study. Slept very well, I might add. A detail to be added to your heroic portrait of me.” An amused glance in my direction. “Around dawn, John Swartwout came to wake me up. I was then joined by Van Ness and Matt Davis. We embarked from Richmond Hill.”

  The tall young boatman was waiting for us at the deserted slip. The sun was fierce. We were the only people on the wharf: the whole town has gone away for August.

  We got into the boat, and the young man began to row with slow regular strokes up-river to the high green Jersey shore opposite.

  “On just such a morning …” He hummed to himself softly. Then: “My affairs were in order. I had set out six blue boxes, containing enough material for my biography, if anyone was minded to write such a thing. Those boxes now rest at the bottom of the sea.” He was blithe even at this allusion to the beloved daughter: trailed his finger in the river; squinted at the sun. “What, I wonder, do the fishes make of my history?”

  I tried to imagine him thirty years ago, with glossy dark hair, an unlined face, a steady hand—the Vice-President on an errand of honour. But I could not associate this tiny old man with that figure of legend.

  “Love-letters to me were all discreetly filed, with instructions to be burned, to be returned to owners, to be read at my grave—whatever was fitting. My principal emotion that morning was relief. Everything was arranged. Everything was well-finished.”

  “Did you think you might be killed?”

  The Colonel shook his head. “When I woke up on the sofa, saw dawn, I knew that I would live to see the sun set, that Hamilton would not.” A sudden frown as he turned out of the bright sun; the face went into shadow. “You see, Hamilton deserved to die and at my hands.”

  I then asked the question I have wanted to ask since yesterday but Burr only shook his head. “I have no intention of repeating, ever, what it was that Hamilton said of me.”

  In silence, we watched the steamboat from Albany make its way down the centre channel of the river. On the decks women in bright summer finery twirl parasols; over the water their voices echo the gulls that follow in the ship’s wake, waiting for food.

  Apparently the Weehawk Heights “look just the same now as they did then.” The Colonel skipped easily onto the rocky shore. While I helped our sailor drag his boat onto the beach, the Colonel walked briskly up a narrow footpath to a wooded ledge.

  “Ideal for its purpose,” Burr said when I joined him.

  The ledge is about six feet wide and perhaps thirty or forty feet long with a steep cliff above and below it. At either end a green tangle of brush partly screens the view of the river.

  The Colonel indicates the spires of New York City visible through the green foliage. “That is the last sight many a gentleman saw.”

  I notice that he is whispering; he notices, too, and laughs. “From habit. When duellists came here they were always very quiet for fear they’d wake an old man who lived in a hut near by. He was called the Captain and he hated duelling. If he heard you, he would rush onto the scene and thrust himself between the duellists and refuse to budge. Often to everyone’s great relief.”

  Burr crosses to the marble obelisk at the centre of the ledge. “I have not seen this before.” The monument is dedicated to the memory of Alexander Hamilton. Parts have been chipped away while the rest is scribbled over with lovers’ names. The Colonel makes no comment.

  Then he crosses slowly to a large cedar tree, pushing aside weeds, kicking pebbles from his path. At the base of the tree he stops and takes off his black jacket. He stares down at the river. I grow uneasy; cannot think why. I tell myself that there are no ghosts.

  When Burr finally speaks his voice is matter-of-fact. “Just before seven o’clock Hamilton and his second Pendleton and the good Dr. Hosack— Hamilton was always fearful for his health—arrive. Just down there.” Burr points. I look, half-expecting to see the dead disembark. But there is only river below us.

  “Pendleton carries an umbrella. So does Van Ness. Which looks most peculiar on a summer morning but the umbrellas are to disguise our features. We are now about to break the law.”

  Burr leaves his post at the cedar tree, walks to the end of the ledge. “Now General Hamilton arrives, with his second.”

  For an instant I almost see the rust-coloured hair of Hamilton, shining in summer sun. I have the sense of being trapped in someone else’s dream, caught in a constant circular unceasing present. It is a horrible sensation.

  Burr bows. “Good morning, General. Mr. Pendleton, good morning.” Burr turns and walks toward me. “Billy.” I swear he now thinks me Van Ness. “You and Pendleton draw lots to see who has choice of position, and who will give the word to fire.”

  With blind eyes, the Colonel indicates for me to cross to the upper end of the ledge.

  “Your principal has won both choices, Mr. Pendleton.” A pause. “He wants to stand there?” A slight note of surprise in Burr’s voice.

  I realize suddenly that I am now standing where Hamilton stood. The sun is in my eyes; through green leaves water reflects brightness.

  Burr has now taken up his position ten full paces opposite me. I think I am going to faint. Burr has the best position, facing the heights. I know that I am going to die. I want to scream, but dare not.

  “I am ready.” The Colonel seems to hold in his hand a heavy pistol. “What?” He looks at me, lowers the pistol. “You require your glasses? Of course, General. I shall wait.”

  “Is General Hamilton satisfied?” Burr then asks. “Good, I am ready, too.”

  I stand transfixed with terror as Burr takes aim, and shouts “Present!”

  And I am killed.

  Burr starts toward me, arms out-stretched. I feel my legs give way; feel the sting, the burning of the bullet in my belly; feel myself begin to die. Just in time Burr stops. He becomes his usual self, and so do I.

  “Hamilton fired first. I fired an instant later. Hamilton’s bullet broke a branch from this tree.” Burr indicated the tall cedar. “My bullet pierced his liver and spine. He drew himself up on his toes. Like this.” Burr rose like a dancer. “Then fell to a half-sitting position. Pendleton propped him up. ‘I am a dead man,’ Hamilton said. I started toward him but Van Ness stopped me. Dr. Hosack was coming. So we left.

  “But … but I would’ve stayed and gone to you had it not been for what I saw in your face.” Again the blind look in Burr’s eyes. Again he sees me as Hamilton. And again I sta
rt to die, the bullet burns.

  “I saw terror in your face, terror at the evil you had done me. And that is why I could not come to you or give you any comfort. Why I could do nothing but what I did. Aim to kill, and kill.”

  He sat down at the edge of the monument. Rubbed his eyes. The vision—or whatever this lunacy was—passed. In a quiet voice, he continued, “As usual with me, the world saw fit to believe a different story. The night before our meeting Hamilton wrote a letter to posterity; it was on the order of a penitent monk’s last confession. He would reserve his first fire, he declared, and perhaps his second because, morally, he disapproved of duelling. Then of course he fired first. As for his disapproval of duelling, he had issued at least three challenges that I know of. But Hamilton realized better than anyone that the world—our American world at least—loves a canting hypocrite.”

  Burr got to his feet. Started toward the path. I followed dumbly.

  “Hamilton lived for a day and a half. He was in character to the very last. He told Bishop Moore that he felt no ill-will toward me. That he had met me with a fixed resolution to do me no harm. What a contemptible thing to say!”

  Burr started down the path. I staggered after him. At the river’s edge he paused and looked across the slow water toward the flowery rise of Staten Island. “I had forgot how lovely this place was, if I had ever noticed.”

  We got into the boat. “You know, I made Hamilton a giant by killing him. If he had lived, he would have continued his decline. He would have been quite forgotten by now. Like me.” This was said without emotion. “While that might have been my monument up there, all scribbled over.”