by Gore Vidal
“What will you do when …” This time Mr. Davis’s inflection was not at all ambiguous.
“When the Colonel dies?”
“Unthinkable for those of us who are survivors of The Little Band.”
“I don’t know.” I have told no one my plan to go to Europe with Helen and try to support myself entirely by writing.
“You are a lawyer, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t been admitted to the bar yet.”
“But you could be? You have done the reading?” Mr. Davis’s eyes were keen behind the steel-rimmed spectacles; he gave the appearance of sympathy.
“Yes, I could be. I suppose I will be.”
“It is a good thing, you know. They say England is a nation of shopkeepers. Well, this is a nation of lawyers. For the lawyer, anything is possible. For the rest of us impossible.” He gave a stagey sigh.
Actually I have not made up my mind whether or not to take the examination for the bar. Mr. Craft assures me that I will do well. But for me the law means politics which I hate. Like a fool I dream of the Alhambra—of Granada at night. Of roses growing wild in broken Moorish courtyards. Of Helen and me alone together on the moonlit terrace of some decaying villa above the Sorrentine—how marvellous to write the word!—peninsula, quarrelling bitterly.
Thirty-six
I SPENT THE EVENING with the Colonel. His spirits were low at first. He seemed distracted, asked me the same questions several times. Wanted to know trivial news. What had I seen at the Park? Three times I told him that I had gone with Leggett to seeBorn to Good Luck with Tyrone Power, who is nowhere near as good as Edwin Forrest in anything. I have written a review of his performance at the request of the editor of the Mirror. Their usual reviewer (who signs himself “Gallery Mouse”) is ill. I think … pray that I will be asked to take his place and become their permanent Mouse.
I gave the Colonel our last chapter which he has already revised once. Usually he checks my fair copy but this time he waved it away. “I cannot gather my wits. Mrs. Keese feeds me too well. Pour me some claret. That often has a good effect.”
I did; and it did. He cheered up almost immediately. “The servant found a number of bottles in the cellar, hidden beneath a bale of Federalist newspapers.” Burr smiled and toasted the air. “To John Jay, with my appreciation.”
Still thinking of the conversation with Mr. Davis, I asked him if he thought that I should take my bar examination.
“Certainly.” The answer was brisk. “For one thing you’ll qualify easily. I have seen to that—assuming you’ve read no more than half the books I suggested you read.”
“But I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
“Well, who does? I mean what man of spirit? The law kills the lively mind. It stifles originality. But it is a stepping-stone …”
“So Mr. Davis tells me.”
“You’ve seen him?” The Colonel frowned. “Poor Matt. He looks peaked, don’t you think? Of course he has always had a sort of gray colour but lately the shade of gray has become somewhat sickly. Well, he’s getting old.” The Colonel chuckled. Then: “Move my legs off the grate. I think they may have caught fire.”
I did as he asked. Then he hummed what I took to be some sort of Revolutionary ballad. Shut his eyes. Took us back thirty years to another time.
Memoirs of Aaron Burr–Eighteen
MY PLANS AT THE WEST were bottomed on two suppositions. First, that there would be war with Spain, making it possible for me to raise an army- and descend upon Mexico. Second, that since Spain was now a dependency of France and France was at war with England, I would have English naval support.
When I left Washington in the spring of 1805, everyone from Jefferson to the Creoles at New Orleans not only expected but wanted a war with Spain that would give the United States the Floridas, fix the western border of the United States, and open for me Texas and Mexico. As for England, I saw Merry in Philadelphia (he had now decided that since his government did not specifically order him to live at Washington, he could as easily carry on his embassy at Philadelphia, far from the crudities of Jefferson’s court).
We met in Charles Biddle’s home, late at night. Merry was all business. “I have recommended to my government that you be supported.”
“I must tell you, Minister, that we are ready to move no later than March of next year.” This was an exaggeration. My actual plan was to begin the descent of the Mississippi the following autumn.
“I must wait for instructions.” Merry was vague. We then discussed the situation in Europe which meant that we discussed, as everyone did in those days, the character of that remarkable adventurer Napoleon Bonaparte who had undone, the previous year, the French revolution by making himself emperor of France, and very nearly master of all Europe.
“It is plain that he means to conquer the entire world.” Merry shook his head. “It is hard to believe that one man can be so powerful, so darkly evil.”
“Worlds are there to be conquered.” I was light but I meant what I said. We were living at a time when for the adventurous and imaginative man anything was possible. Bonaparte had inspired, no doubt in a bad way, an entire generation. Certainly, thanks in large part to his example, I saw myself as the liberator of all Spanish America.
“Where do you go now, Colonel?”
“To the west, to meet General Wilkinson, our new governor of Louisiana.”
“I see. I see.” I think Merry enjoyed intrigue for its own sake. It is fortunate that he did since he had no gift for it; nor did I, as events were to prove.
From Philadelphia I proceeded toward Pittsburgh on the Ohio River. For nineteen days I rode through the wilderness, only to find that Wilkinson had not yet arrived. I think he moved more slowly than any general in history, with the possible exception of General Knox who was of course fatter.
I shall try not to mention too often the warm reception that I was accorded wherever I went. It is a curious sensation to be thought a hero in a part of the world every bit as strange to one as Cathay … well, not Cathay; as Monticello, Virginia!
Pittsburgh was then a glum frontier village, rich only in its rivers. On one of these rivers was a sort of Noah’s ark that I had ordered built the previous year. My house-boat was about sixty feet long and fifteen feet wide with two bedrooms and a well-furnished kitchen with fireplace. There were no sails, no oars; the ark simply glided down the Mississippi—and this gliding was so restful, so soothing, that I was forced sometimes to murmur my own name to myself, as a reminder that I still existed, did not sleep.
Along the way, in mid-stream, I encountered Matthew Lyon, now a Republican congressman from Kentucky and formerly a congressman from Vermont; he had preferred me to Jefferson when the presidential election went into the House but for reasons of his own voted for Jefferson, and was duly rewarded. We lashed our boats together and travelled in each other’s company as far as Marietta. Lyon did his best to convince me to settle in Tennessee, at Nashville, where he assured me that I would be elected to the next Congress—and the Speakership. I affected a degree of interest for I still wanted to keep open every possible avenue.
At Marietta, Lyon left me. I continued south. The next day I stopped at Blennerhassett’s Island. Here a romantic Irishman named Harman Blennerhassett had built himself a mansion in the wilderness, and there devoted himself to dreaming dreams in the company of a delightful young wife so full of wit and fire that one quickly overlooked her unusually large ears, turned-up nose, small slant eyes; she had the face of an otter or some such small bright river creature. Yet she was a fine horsewoman; wrote poetry; recited Shakespeare.
“My husband adores you, Colonel! Becomes most lyric when he speaks of you!” Having been told that I was upon the island, Mrs. Blennerhassett had hastened to the wharf to greet me. When I tried to depart she insisted I dine en famille.
“Mr. Blennerhassett’s away but even so, if I let you leave like this, he’ll never forgive me, never speak to me again—and that is a terrible t
rial for a man who talks all the time. Stay for dinner.”
Stay I did, and the food was good; the company tolerable; Mrs. Blennerhassett amusing, if rather desperate for conversation. It had not, obviously, been her life’s dream to end her days on an island in the Ohio River. It was almost midnight when I was finally released from this Circe and allowed to set sail. I promised to return.
May 11, I arrived at Cincinnati, a lively town of some fifteen hundred people where, again, I was made much of. Here I called upon the new United States senator from Ohio, John Smith. This genial character owned a large grocery shop where, in the back room, waiting for me, was Jonathan Dayton whose term as United States senator from New Jersey had expired in March. The three of us were jointly involved in a scheme to build a canal in Indiana (it was later built but not by us). We were also involved in the movement to liberate Mexico.
Amongst huge cheeses, beneath smoked hams, we pored over maps.
“You’ll have the support of every man and boy who has a gun, and wants to get away from home.” Senator Smith was a most un-senatorial figure—large and blond and wearing a sort of smock to keep his suit clean.
As always, Dayton was shrewd and imaginative. Of all the group he was closest to me, and often acted as go-between when I had dealings with the Spanish or English authorities. Among my other confederates were the former Kentucky senator John Brown and the soon-to-be senator John Adair. Brown had been eager for military adventure ever since the dinner party on Jefferson’s lawn at Gray’s Ferry when we were first told of Jefferson’s scheme to provoke a war with Spain.
John Adair had been a hero of the Revolution, a celebrated Indian fighter, and one not able to bear a peaceful—and certainly not a senatorial—life. Like so many western adventurers he had dreamed of conquering New Orleans. Now that New Orleans had been bought by Jefferson, his dreams had shifted southward, to Mexico City.
Our plan was this: a force of 5,000 men from all over the United States would assemble in small groups at various points along the Mississippi. Should there be war with Spain these men would immediately become a frontier American army. Under my leadership, we would cross the Sabine River and, with American naval support at Vera Cruz, liberate Texas and Mexico.
In the event that there was no war with Spain, then a British fleet would replace the American, and we would assemble our army at New Orleans. With the support of the leading Creoles of that city, we would set out by both land and sea.
Dayton wondered what would happen if the Administration openly opposed us. Senator Smith spat a fine torrent of tobacco juice half across the room and into an empty milk-jug. “They wouldn’t dare! After all, this is our war, our country, not theirs.”
“But suppose Jefferson does betray us?” Dayton’s dislike of Jefferson was far more intense than mine because he hardly knew the President and so could despise him in the abstract. I have always found that this sort of passion is the most fierce, the least rational and the very stuff of which saints and conquerors are made. “Shall we tell him to go to Hell?”
“Why bother?” Senator Smith bit into a piece of tobacco dark as Mississippi mud. “He’s two months away in Washington—that’s if you want to travel comfortably like I do, though why I go there I don’t know. I must confess, Colonel Burr, I don’t like that Senate you’ve got there in the woods and if it wasn’t for Mrs. Smith I’d stay right here, counting my apples.”
“We’ll need apples.” I quickly changed the subject to victualling the army. At this stage I was always careful to suggest that the Jefferson administration looked with a favourable eye on the liberation of Mexico, which was true enough up to a point. I did not mention that between Napoleon and me at Mexico City, Jefferson would have taken Napoleon.
The next day I returned to my ark and drifted on to Louisville; from there I rode to Lexington, Kentucky, where I met Senator Adair. He had already received a letter from Wilkinson to say that I “reckoned on” his support.
Adair assured me of Kentucky’s good-will because “Our folks are as greedy as the old Romans when it comes to conquest. We want Mexico.”
“We shall have it.”
“But there must be war with Spain before we can move …”
“Senator, our friend Wilkinson can give us that war on an hour’s notice.” So I believed, trusting Jamie still.
From Lexington I rode to the state capital Frankfort, where I stayed with Senator Brown who assured me that “our old friend, Mr. Jefferson, just needs us to nudge him a leetle towards a war. Once he knows that’s what we want.”
“That’s what I want.” Mrs. Brown was emphatic. “If only to spite Sally Yrujo—and that Spanish husband of hers! I tell you the airs that woman puts on make me sick! Our own Sally McKean who’s taken to speaking with an accent she thinks is Spanish.” Mrs. Brown was one of the few political wives to work at her husband’s side. Many thought that of the two she should have been the senator. She was a favourite of my daughter.
I found Kentucky hospitality lavish and bibulous—on the order of that bit of doggerel John Marshall produced when a lady asked him for a poem on the word “paradox.”
“In the Blue Grass region
A paradox was born.
The corn was full of kernels
and the Colonels full of corn.”
From Frankfort I rode through green jungle to Nashville in Tennessee, arriving May 29. I sent a message to Major-General Andrew Jackson of the Tennessee militia, asking if I might call on him. I then went to sleep in the best room of the new Nashville Inn. An hour later I was awakened by a crowd which had gathered outside my boarding-house. I showed myself, and was duly cheered. They rather liked the idea that I had killed Alexander Hamilton. They also knew that I had worked hard to admit their state to the union. Finally, they hated Spain and, like the Kentuckians, the Tennesseans were as greedy for loot as any Roman.
The next morning I was awakened at dawn by a great shouting below my window. I looked out and there was himself, General Jackson on a tall horse, swearing at a slave who had provoked his terrible temper.
When Jackson saw me at the window, he took off his hat, waved it around his head and bellowed, “By the Eternal, this is the greatest moment in the history of Tennessee! Now damnit, Colonel, get dressed and come on down and we’ll have breakfast at my house.” I did as I was instructed.
Jackson was then not yet forty but he had had a full career as a lawyer (though to this day he can neither read nor write with much ease) and as first congressional representative from his state. He served in the House of Representatives about three months; resigned to become senator and then, after less than a year, resigned from the Senate (“Damned boring place in those days, wasn’t it, Burr?” he said to me when we met last year), and went home to be a judge of the state Supreme Court. When we met that summer day, he was busy transforming the Hermitage from a blockhouse to a mansion totally unsuitable for the wilderness. Hating the Virginian junto, Jackson wanted a house just like one of theirs. I only hope that if my old friend lives long enough to return home he will not end up as the Virginians did, dying in rooms emptied of furniture in order to pay off debts.
As we galloped toward the Hermitage, the wind combed back Jackson’s thick reddish hair like a horse’s mane (why did so many of our most famous leaders have red hair? Celtic blood? Or is there some magic in red? Need I add that our current President is over six feet tall).
Jackson shouted at me his view of the duel. “Never read such a damned lot of nonsense as the press has been writing! All that hypocritical caterwauling for that Creole bastard who fought you of his own free will, just like a gentleman which he wasn’t, if you’ll forgive me, Colonel! I know you couldn’t have met him unless you thought he was one, but he was not, Sir. He was the worst man in this union, as you, Sir, are the best. The best and that goes for that pusillanimous spotted caitiff of a president we got. I only fear—aside from the damage it’s done you, Sir, and that we’ll undo quick enough—I fear that du
elling will be stamped out and where would we all be then, I ask you? Why, there’s a number of men right here in Nashville that one day I know I’ll take a gun to, even if I am a poor shot, and that’s the truth. It must be a flaw in my vision …” This rambling speech was delivered in fits and starts as we approached through a dense pine-wood the Hermitage.
Jackson is far keener on duelling than I but then the frontier spirit that he exemplifies depends a great deal on settling matters face to face rather than in the press or at law. Inspired by me, so Jackson claimed, he fought a duel the very next year with one Charles Dickinson who had spoken ill of Mrs. Jackson.
“You would have been thrilled by it, Colonel.” I was at the Hermitage on a later visit, and alarmed to find my host still weak from wounds: a bullet was lodged near his heart—is still lodged there, and cannot be removed. Yet all he would ever say is that “he pinked me, no more.”
“Well, Sir, I waited deliberately for that leper to fire first. Now mind you I am a poor shot, and he was a fine shot, curse him, and younger than I. So I just stood there, wearing this loose coat which made me look larger than I am. Well, he fired and I was hit. Luckily, it didn’t knock the wind out, as I feared it might. So I was clear-headed, and knew that I wasn’t mortally wounded, though I tell you, Colonel, even if I had been shot through the brain I would have lived long enough to do what I intended to do all along.”
Jackson laughed grimly, the cold pale blue eyes fixed on mine. “You should have seen his face when I did not fall. Seen his face when I slowly raised my pistol and pulled the trigger. Seen his face when the god-damned hammer struck at half-cock. So we had a pow-wow. And the seconds allowed me another try. Well, Charles Dickinson was white as a sheet, and sweating. Did Hamilton sweat, too?”