Burr

by Gore Vidal

  Another long pause. Then, “Four years I lived from hand to mouth. The English would not let me stay so I went to Sweden. The people were warm; the weather not. I moved on to Germany, to various princely courts. At first France would not let me in. When at last I was admitted, they would not let me out. I was watched day and night. I failed to be presented to the Emperor though I had plans which might have interested him.”

  Suddenly the Colonel opened his eyes, very alert. “You know, Charlie, Paris reminded me exactly of Albany before the Revolution. The same filthy streets with a gutter running down the middle. This meant that every hack driver could splash the pedestrian to his black French heart’s delight. But Albany reformed itself while Paris would not admit the evil.”

  At this point the man-servant entered with the newspapers. Seeing that the Colonel was exhausted, he gave me a reproachful look. “The Governor has missed his nap,” he proclaimed (he invariably calls the Colonel “Governor,” a habit contracted while working for Governor Clinton).

  “Yes, the ‘Governor’ is not himself.” The Colonel gave me a quick smile. “Unless this is himself. In which case may God mend the Governor for man cannot.”

  Loaded down with reports of the trial, I departed.

  Nine

  IT IS THE FIRST of June, 1835. If I don’t write it all down, I shall never be able to.

  START again.

  A week ago Martin Van Buren and “Tecumseh” Johnson were nominated for president and vice-president by the Democratic convention at Baltimore. Mr. Van Buren said that he did not seek the honour. Most of the state delegations said they did not seek the dishonour of raising to the vice-presidency the paramour of two black women but they were forced to accept Johnson.

  No. Start again.

  At about four o’clock this afternoon George Orson Fuller, professor of phrenology, came to pay a call on Helen and me. Some months ago I wrote about him in the Evening Post. He now thinks that I should do more articles on the science of phrenology, and so do I, and so does Leggett who is not only up and around but in charge of the newspaper while Mr. Bryant is in Europe.

  Professor Fuller. He is small, with tiny hands like a monkey’s paws; he wears a black stock that nearly covers his mouth. He is bald and every bump of his distinguished cranium shines like the plaster demonstrator’s model he carries about with him in a woman’s hat-box.

  “Mrs. Schuyler, an honour. A true honour.” The Professor bowed to Helen who helped clear a place on her work table for the life-size plaster head with its numbered divisions like a map of the German states.

  “Everything’s such a mess,” Helen apologized, eyes intent on the head. “Would you like tea or sugared water?”

  “Water. I never touch stimulants.” The Professor tapped the beginnings of his side whiskers, just in front of the left ear. “That’s the source of Alimentiveness.” Helen looked blank. “When over-developed it means gluttony, an addiction to food and strong drink,” he explained. “As you see, I lack any development then. You,” he blinked his eyes at me, “like your food.”

  “He does,” agreed Helen. “He’ll get fat, too, the way he eats.”

  While Helen prepared to feed and starve respectively our Alimentive bumps, the Professor told me how much he had enjoyed Old Patroon’s observations on the new science of phrenology.

  “Though we’re not so new as people think. Our founder, properly speaking, is Professor Prochaska of Vienna whose work on the nervous system in 1784 linked what is inside the skull—the brain—with what is outside—the contours of the head.”

  Helen gave the Professor his water, staring at him as though he were an exhibit at the museum. Lately she has asked me to bring people home. “If you’re not ashamed of me. I get lonely sitting here, even with this to keep me company, kicking all day she is.” She would stroke her stomach fondly.

  “Now, Mr. Schuyler, I have something for you which I think Old Patroon—and the Evening Post—will agree is unique.” He drew from his pocket a much folded sheet of drawing-paper. Carefully he opened it to reveal a head exactly like that of his model except for certain numbers, which had been underlined. “This is the first phrenological examination of the head of Martin Van Buren, obtained by a colleague of mine at Washington City.”

  My heart sank. Am I ever to be free of Mr. Van Buren? “I think the Evening Post will be delighted—if it is authentic.”

  “A very big head,” observed Helen.

  “A very superior head.” The Professor loves his work; and I am impressed by the thorough-ness of this new science and tend more to believe in it than not. At some length the Professor revealed for us the Vice-President’s head and character. Highly developed are Secretiveness (posterior part of the squamous suture) and Self-Esteem. Also, Cautiousness (high development on the parietal eminence) and Firmness (a lofty sagittal suture from behind the bregma to the front of the obelion).

  Although I have not yet examined in detail the chart Professor Fuller left with me, I am fairly certain that Old Patroon will be impressed—after his usual fulmination against modern credulity.

  I queried the Professor as shrewdly as I could. Noted objections to his science. “For instance, it has been recorded that the playwright Sheridan’s bump of Wit was not well-developed. Yet he was the wittiest writer of his age.”

  “But he was not witty. Oh, what a superb critic of literature as well as of man our science is!” The Professor revels in the subtleties and paradoxes of his science. “You see, Sheridan’s wit was not true wit and phrenology has at last confirmed what no critic could ever have known: that Sheridan’s most notable bumps were Memory and Comparison. Now those two in powerful conjunction can give the appearance of wit (after all, Sheridan remembers other men’s clever words and then compares them to the ideal in art) but the appearance of wit, as his writing absolutely proves, is not Wit itself.”

  “How is my Wit?” Helen leaned forward, with a smile at me.

  “Small, I am thankful to say. Wit is unbecoming in the gentler sex. Do you mind? May I?” The monkey’s paw lightly tapped Helen’s head here and there; as he did, he buzzed to himself like a bee.

  “Very good,” the Professor said at last. “Your Philoprogenitiveness is highly developed.” He tapped the back of the model head. “There. On the squama occipitis. See?” Helen was bewildered. “It means a love of children. It is highly pronounced in most women and apes since in both women and apes the love of children is greater than it is in men.”

  “Well!” Helen felt the back of her head. Then, to my astonishment, she said, “I think I need something strong, to fortify me,” and in front of Professor Fuller she poured herself a small glass of Dutch gin.

  The Professor laughed a bit nervously. “You seem to be lacking in Alimentiveness …”

  “I am. It’s just very close in here. If you’ll excuse me.” Helen went into the bedroom and shut the door.

  “You, Mr. Schuyler, have an excellent bump of Constructiveness, as do I.”

  The Professor touched himself midway between eyebrow and side whiskers. “You know, the meaning of that bump was discovered by Professor Gall of Antwerp, in a most interesting way. He went one day with his wife to the leading milliner of Antwerp and noticed that the lady was highly developed in that region. Since her head was in no other way unusual, he logically ascribed this development to her celebrated talent for hat-making. But of course in science one specimen is never enough. He needed confirmation. It finally came years later when on a trip to Italy Professor Gall was allowed to examine what is reputed to be the skull of the painter Raphael and lo and behold! there was the same bump.”

  From the next room I could hear the sound of Helen being sick. Since this was not unusual, I paid no attention; listened instead to the Professor who was oblivious to everything save his own voice.

  “I should now like to confide to you my plan.” The Professor delicately mopped his bright cranium with a handkerchief, stimulating, caressing the bumps of his geniu
s.

  “Since the beginning of history, man has dreamed of being like the gods.” I feared that I was in for a lecture, and I was, as Old Patroon will soon record for the readers of the Evening Post.

  “Well, Mr. Schuyler, it is now possible for us to become gods. Do we want Shakespeare born again? Yes? We do? Good! Then simply provide me with a healthy male infant and I shall fit him out with this!”

  Professor Fuller took from the hat-box a curious mesh of leather thongs and wooden disks. “I will fasten this patented machine upon the child’s soft still-unformed skull and gently, gently, as the child grows, the bump of Ideality, the bump of Constructiveness will grow, responding obediently to these gentle but firm pressures. By the time the head is full grown, its owner will have the capacity of Shakespeare without the Bard of Avon’s immorality …”

  At that moment, Helen screamed.

  When I got to her she was sprawled on the floor beside our bed, legs spread wide like a marionette when the strings are broken.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, staring at her white skirt which was slowly turning scarlet. First a few pretty drops, like a scattering of rose-buds; then, as I stared foolishly, the full awful tide.

  It was I who screamed next. Sent Professor Fuller running for a doctor. Called in a woman neighbour who has had nine children and, thank God, knew what to do.

  Helen sleeps, heavily drugged by the doctor who came too late to be of any other use.

  “It should never have happened,” he kept repeating. “Your wife is quite normal. I cannot think what went wrong.” He was good enough to take away in an old pillow-case the body of our son.

  Ten

  July 9, 1835

  I HAVE MADE Professor George Orson Fuller happy even though I was obliged to anticipate the expected outcry from those who disapprove of moulding heads. After all, as Old Patroon so wisely remarked: Suppose one of the straps got loose and instead of Constructiveness, Destructiveness was over-developed? And a future architect became Attila the Hun?

  Leggett and I were together this morning in his office. “Drunkenness. That’s your next theme.” Leggett sat with his feet up on Mr. Bryant’s desk. Washington Irving’s book is still in its place, and still unread. Leggett looks like death but affects to be in the best of health. He is certainly cheerful, though I cannot think why. Every day he is threatened in the streets by the Anti-Abolitionists while every window of the Evening Post has been broken at least once.

  “You think I have exhausted phrenology?”

  “You have exhausted me. Here.” Leggett gave me a number of pamphlets. “Apparently there are a half-million hopeless drunkards in the United States. The result of sin, according to a reformed wine merchant who should know. But according to me the result of the unhealthy life we lead in the cities.” A fit of coughing … to demonstrate the unhealthiness of New York City’s air.

  “So examine the city man. Describe the classic Yankee type: the lean, leathery-skinned, long-jawed, small-headed conqueror of the wilderness. Show how he is being replaced by a sickly, pasty creature with sunken chest and a soft belly from too much spirits.”

  “I prefer the replacement.”

  “Is that the view of Old Patroon? Or of Dutch Charlie.”

  “Both.” Like all the Dutch, I was born resenting the clever, ruthless Yankees who took our country from us. It is hard for me not to be proud of Van Buren, and hope that he will be the first Dutch president.

  Mr. Sedwick appeared at the door to say that an advertiser was in the outer office.

  Leggett swung his legs off the table. “They come to the office as advertisers. They depart as former advertisers.” We both rose. “Helen?” he asked.

  “In good health.”

  “Her spirits?”

  “She has made a good recovery.” This was true. But her character is much altered. Where before she wanted only to hide at home, now she wants to go out all the time, to meet new people, to be amused. I cannot say I find this change in her agreeable. I work most of the day and often into the night. When I don’t work, I read, and until lately I thought she enjoyed our silent communion—each at work in his own way. But now silence of any kind makes her sullen. She fidgets. Complains. I cannot wait to get us both out of New York.

  I asked Leggett about the consulship. Until today I have not mentioned it to anyone. I am even reluctant to make any reference to it here. Superstition.

  “The machinery turns. Van Buren knows what you have done, and he is grateful for your heroic restraint.”

  “He’s certain to be elected, isn’t he?”

  “As certain as it is that that last window-pane over there will be broken.” Leggett then asked me about the publisher Reginald Gower “and the unsavoury Matt Davis.”

  I told him that I had paid Gower what I owed him. “I think they were both rather surprised.” Gower had also been angry while Mr. Davis had been deeply—and correctly—suspicious. Fearing a rival offer, he suggested to Gower that he pay me a bit more than the price agreed on but I said that I simply could not bring myself to betray the Colonel’s confidence and Gower said that even if I was so minded he was damned if he would give me a penny more than we had agreed upon. Mr. Davis then said it was a tragic waste of “material” and did I not want to protect the United States from Van Buren? and I said—with perfect truth—that I did not care who was president, and so I lost their interest, earned their contempt.

  I left Leggett, carrying with me a dozen indictments of whiskey.

  In Broadway, I suddenly found myself face to face with William de la Touche Clancey.

  “Well!” A long drawn-out syllable, in which fear and condescension were unpleasantly mingled. “What is the young Old Patroon about to turn his hand to next?”

  “The Vauxhall Gardens, I should think.” My dislike of Clancey is almost physical. Yet I stare at him with fascination; note that his protuberant eyes are yellowish; that he scratches himself compulsively; that his tongue darts in and out of his mouth like a lizard’s catching flies.

  “Of the delicious nymphs you disport with there?”

  “Of the delicious fauns, too—and their goatish friends.”

  “Uh-huh …” A long drawn-out attempt at sounding amused failed of its object. “I hope you realize that your editor’s unholy passion for the Negro grows more embarrassing each day. If I were he I should beware. He might simply vanish one dark night.”

  “Murdered? Or sold into slavery?” Clancey recently delighted his admirers by proposing that since the institution of slavery has been an integral part of every high civilisation (and peculiarly well-adapted to those nations that follow the word as well as the spirit of Old and New Testaments), poor whites should be bought and sold as well as blacks.

  “I don’t believe that poor sick Mr. Leggett would command a high price in the bazaar. Only his diseased mind would have a certain morbid interest to the special collector. You, on the other hand, ought to fetch a pretty price.”

  “More than the usual two dollars you pay?” Two dollars is the current rate for a male prostitute.

  “Much more! Why, just for those pink Dutch cheeks alone!” It would be nice to record that I thought of something terminal to say but in my rage I could think of absolutely nothing and so left him with the last word.

  Noted in a bookstore window: Colonel Crockett’s new book will be on sale this summer. As yet, there is no title.

  Eleven

  COLD FOR JULY. Today I visited the Colonel for the first time in some weeks (guiltily reminded of him by this morning’s newspapers with their long obituaries of John Marshall).

  “Fortunately I am able to bear up under the calamitous news.” The Colonel gave a sly and, I fear, almost toothless smile. Saving the splendid eyes, there is nothing left of Burr’s legendary dark angelic beauty.

  “Now only Jemmy Madison and I are left. And which do you think will go first to glory? That’s a horse-race to bet on, by General Jackson!—who will probably precede the two of u
s, poor old man, despite,” and the Colonel held up a bottle of patent medicine labelled Matchless Sanative, “this delicious restorative. When I saw the President in New York, he told me not once but three times that he owed his health to this particular medicine. Since I have never seen a man look worse, I was not impressed. But then I thought, here is Jackson with a bullet lodged next to his heart and suffering from a dozen diseases and the fact that he is not dead may well be due to Matchless Sanative. So I take it daily, always careful to follow the instructions on the bottle. The General warned me to follow the instructions to the letter. And I will say that I find it refreshing: a combination, I should guess, of opium and apple-jack.” I record all this with a certain wonder. When two historic figures meet after thirty years their talk is of Matchless Sanative!

  I told the Colonel that Leggett has read the memoirs and would like to discuss them with him. “Why not? What else can I do now but talk of the past.” The sudden bitterness was interrupted by the man-servant who announced in a low voice, “Congressman Verplanck to see the Governor,” and there was Verplanck himself, heavy and old and gouty.

  “Mr. Verplanck is now the lawyer’s lawyer,” said Colonel Burr, introducing us.

  “I met you, Sir, with Mr. Irving,” I began.

  “I recall. You are Old Patroon, aren’t you?”

  My ears went scarlet; I could feel the heat of my own blood rising. “Yes, Sir. I try to …”