The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr Read online

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  The seat of the new government is Philadelphia, to which Burr travels during the congressional terms. He becomes a Senate figure valued by his Republican allies and feared by his Federalist foes. His watch-work mind masters the art of parliamentary maneuver; his succinct speech bolsters the measures he favors and skewers the ones he opposes. His prospects prosper and seem likely, perhaps before long, to approach his ambitions.

  Yet he never lacks time for Theo. “Enclosed in Bartow’s last letter came one which, from the handwriting, I supposed to be from that great fat fellow, Colonel Troup,” he writes her not long before her tenth Christmas. “Judge of my pleasure and surprise when I opened and found it was from my dear little girl. You improve much in your writing. Let your next be in small hand.” And let it be soon, for Theo continues to write less often than her father desires. “Why do you neither acknowledge nor answer my last letter? That is not kind—it is scarcely civil. I beg you will not take a fortnight to answer this, as you did the other.… I love to hear from you, and still more to receive your letters.”

  He buys her presents. “I rose up suddenly from the sofa,” he writes one evening, “and rubbing my head—‘What book shall I buy for her?’ said I to myself, ‘She reads so much and so rapidly that it is not easy to find proper and amusing French books for her; and yet I am so flattered with her progress in that language that I am resolved that she shall, at all events, be gratified. Indeed, I owe it to her.’ So, after walking once or twice briskly across the floor, I took my hat and sallied out, determined not to return till I had purchased something. It was not my first attempt. I went into one bookseller’s shop after another. I found plenty of fairy tales and such nonsense, fit for the generality of children of nine or ten years old. ‘These,’ said I, ‘will never do. Her understanding begins to be above such things.’ But I could see nothing that I would offer with pleasure to an intelligent, well-informed girl of nine years old. I began to be discouraged. The hour of dining was come. ‘But I will search a little longer.’ I persevered. At last I found it. I found the very thing I sought. It is contained in two volumes octavo, handsomely bound, and with prints and registers. It is a work of fancy, but replete with instruction and amusement.” He has planned to mail it but changes his mind. “I must present it with my own hand.”

  He flatters Theo with the importance he places on their correspondence. “In looking over a list made yesterday (and now before me) of letters of consequence to be answered immediately, I find the name of T. Burr,” he writes. “At the time I made the memorandum I did not advert to the compliment I paid you by putting your name in a list with some of the most eminent persons in the United States.” Her most recent letter, written in French, is her most accomplished yet. “If the whole performance was your own, which I am inclined to hope and believe, it indicates an improvement in style, in knowledge of the French, and in your handwriting. I have therefore not only read it several times, but shown it to several persons with pride and pleasure.”

  Theo’s progress confirms his views of the potential of women. He encounters a new book by Mary Wollstonecraft, a British philosopher and educator, called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. “I had heard it spoken of with a coldness little calculated to excite attention,” he explains to Theo’s mother. “But as I read with avidity and prepossession everything written by a lady, I made haste to procure it, and spent the last night, almost the whole of it, in reading it. Be assured that your sex has in her an able advocate. It is, in my opinion, a work of genius. She has successfully adopted the style of Rousseau’s Emilius; and her comment on that work, especially what relates to female education, contains more good sense than all the other criticisms upon him which I have seen put together. I promise myself much pleasure in reading it to you.” He laments that the book has won little audience in America. “Is it owing to ignorance or prejudice that I have not yet met a single person who had discovered or would allow the merit of this work?”

  Burr credits his wife as well for his appreciation of women’s abilities. “It was a knowledge of your mind which first inspired me with a respect for that of your sex,” he writes the elder Theodosia. “And with some regret I confess that the ideas which you have often heard me express in favor of female intellectual powers are founded on what I have imagined, more than what I have seen, except in you.” He ponders why others have not allowed women to advance. “I have endeavored to trace the causes of this rare display of genius in women, and find them in the errors of education, of prejudice, and of habit. I admit that men are equally, nay more, much more to blame than women. Boys and girls are generally educated much in the same way till they are eight or nine years of age, and it is admitted that girls make at least equal progress with the boys; generally, indeed, they make better. Why, then, has it never been thought worth the attempt to discover, by fair experiment, the particular age at which the male superiority becomes so evident?”

  Theo becomes Burr’s experiment. He is never less than loving toward her, but he is frequently insistent. “I have a thousand questions to ask, my dear Theo, but nothing to communicate,” he writes from Philadelphia. “And thus I fear it will be throughout the winter, for my time is consumed in the dull uniformity of study and attendance in Senate. But every hour of your day is interesting to me. I would give—what would I not give?—to see or know even your most trifling actions and amusements. This, however, is more than I can ask or expect. But I do expect with impatience your journal. Ten minutes every evening I demand; if you should choose to make it twenty, I shall be the better pleased. You are to note the occurrences of the day as concisely as you can; and, at your pleasure, to add any short reflections or remarks that may arise.” He furnishes a sample for her to emulate, with entries inspired by her current studies:

  16th December, 1793.

  Learned 230 lines, which finished Horace. Heigh-ho for

  Terence and the Greek grammar to-morrow.

  Practised two hours less thirty-five minutes, which I begged off.

  Hewlett (dancing-master) did not come.

  Began Gibbon last evening. I find he requires as much study and attention as Horace; so I shall not rank the reading of him among amusements.

  Skated an hour; fell twenty times, and find the advantage of a hard head.

  Ma better—dined with us at table, and is still sitting up and free from pain.

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  He hopes Theo’s ma will be free from pain. Theodosia’s health has taken a mysterious turn; her appetite is failing and her strength flagging for reasons her doctors at first cannot fathom. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia is the most distinguished physician in America and a family friend; Burr asks him to consult on the case. Rush prescribes various medications. When the symptoms defy his treatment and simply grow worse, he concludes that the malady is cancer. Medicine might ease Theodosia’s pain but it cannot halt her condition’s grim advance.

  “The account of your mamma’s health distresses me extremely,” Burr writes Theo. “If she does not get better soon, I will quit Congress altogether and go home.” Theodosia is too ill to write, as Burr reminds their daughter. “My last letter to you was almost an angry one, at which you cannot be much surprised when you recollect the length of time of your silence, and that you are my only correspondent respecting the concerns of the family.”

  Burr tries to ease his daughter’s fears for her mother by casting Theo’s reports on Theodosia’s condition as material for further education. “When your letters are written with tolerable spirit and correctness, I read them two or three times before I perceive any fault in them, being wholly engaged with the pleasure they afford me,” he tells Theo. “But for your sake, it is necessary that I should also peruse them with an eye of criticism. The following are the only misspelled words. You write acurate for accurate; laudnam for laudanum; intirely for entirely. This last word, indeed, is spelled both ways, but entirely is the most usual and the most proper. Continue to use all these words in yo
ur next letter, that I may see that you know the true spelling. And tell me what is laudanum? Where and how made? And what are its effects?” He quotes and comments on a sentence Theo has written about a particular form of treatment: “ ‘It was what she had long wished for, and was at a loss how to procure it.’ Don’t you see that this sentence would have been perfect and much more elegant without the last it?”

  Yet he cannot hide his own concern for his wife. “I am extremely impatient for your farther account of mamma’s health,” he writes Theo. “The necessity of laudanum twice a day is a very disagreeable and alarming circumstance. Your letter was written a week ago, since which I have no account.”

  He explains that he is importuning Dr. Rush, to modest avail. “He enumerates over to me all the articles which have been repeatedly tried, and some of which did never agree with your mamma. He is, however, particularly desirous that she should again try milk—a spoonful only at a time: another attempt, he thinks, should be made with porter, in some shape or other. Sweet oil, molasses, and milk, in equal proportions, he has known to agree with stomachs which had rejected everything else. Yet he says, and with show of reason, that these things depend so much on the taste, the habits of life, the peculiarity of constitution, that she and her attending physician can be the best, if not the only advisers.” Still, Burr insists that his friend prescribe, and Rush accedes. “Doctor Rush says that he cannot conceive animal food to be particularly necessary; nourishment is the great object. He approves much of the milk punch and chocolate. The stomach must on no account be offended. The intermission of the pills for a few days (not however for a whole week) he thinks not amiss to aid in determining its effects. The quantity may yet be increased without danger, but the present dose is in his opinion sufficient; but after some days continual use, a small increase might be useful.”

  A week of this course produces another recommendation from Rush—and another chance for Burr to distract his daughter with a lesson. “Doctor Rush thinks that bark would not be amiss, but may be beneficial if the stomach does not rebuke it, which must be constantly the first object of attention. He recommends either the cold infusion or substance as least likely to offend the stomach. Be able, upon my arrival, to tell me the difference between an infusion and decoction; and the history, the virtues, and the botanical or medical name of the bark.”

  The treatments fail to stem the cancer. Theodosia’s last days are agonizing for her and excruciating for her husband and daughter. Burr and Theo comfort each other; the experience binds the thirty-eight-year-old widower and the eleven-year-old girl more tightly than ever. Each is all the other has left of the one they have lost. “The mother of my Theo was the best woman and finest lady I have ever known,” Burr sadly observes.

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  The loss of her mother compels Theo to mature more rapidly than ever. Her father treats her almost as an adult, sharing his experiences in person when he can and by letter when he is gone. “We arrived here yesterday, after a hot, tedious passage of seven days,” he explains amid a journey to Albany in the summer of 1794. “We were delayed as well by accidents as by calms and contrary winds. The first evening, being under full sail”—packet boats ply the Hudson in the era before railroads—“we ran ashore at Tappan, and lay there aground, in a very uncomfortable situation, twenty-four hours. With great labor and fatigue we got off on the following night, and had scarce got under sail before we missed our longboat. We lost the whole tide in hunting for it, and so lay till the morning of Wednesday. Having then made sail again, with a pretty strong head wind, at the very first tack the Dutch horse fell overboard. The poor devil was at the time tied about the neck with a rope, so that he seemed to have only the alternatives of hanging or drowning (for the river is here about four miles wide, and the water was very rough); fortunately for him, the rope broke, and he went souse into the water. His weight sunk him so deep that we were at least fifty yards from him before he came up. He snorted off the water, and turning round once or twice, as if to see where he was, then recollecting the way to New York, he immediately swam off down the river with all force. We fitted out our longboat in pursuit of him, and at length drove him on shore on the Westchester side, where I hired a man to take him to Frederick’s. All this delayed us nearly a whole tide more. The residue of the voyage was without accident, except such as you may picture to yourself in a small cabin, with seven men, seven women, and two crying children—two of the women being the most splenetic, ill-humored animals you can imagine.”

  Senate business subsequently takes Burr to Washington, the federal city rising on the banks of the Potomac. “Since Tuesday last I have been here much against my will; arrested by high command; performing quarantine by authority not to be questioned or controverted,” he writes Theo. “In plain English, I am sick. On Wednesday I found one side of my face as large as your uncle F.’s; red swollen eyes; ears buzzing and almost stopped; throat so closed as to refuse a passage to words out or food in; and a stupid mazy-headedness, well adapted to the brilliancy of my figure. Being the guest of my friends Law and Duncanson, I receive from them the most distressing attentions, but especially from Miss Duncanson, a well-bred, sprightly, and agreeable woman. My person had not, however, till this morning, received its last embellishment. Alexis came in at his usual hour, and presenting himself at my bedside, after staring at me for half a minute, exclaimed, with an air of great astonishment: Diable! And not a word more. Qu’a-t-il, Alexis? To which he made not a word of reply, but fell to drawing up the curtains; and having also very deliberately opened the window-shutters, he returned again to his examination. After gazing for some time (which I found it useless to interrupt), he diabled two or three times at intervals of some seconds, and then pronounced that I had ou la petite vérole ou la rougeole; and to convince me, brought a glass. In truth he did not diable without reason, for my whole face, neck, hands, and arms are most bountifully covered with something like the measles or rash.”

  Theo becomes the mistress of Richmond Hill. She greets guests at Burr’s side and manages the estate in his absence. “By this post I received a letter from Colonel Ward, requesting leave to remove his family into my house,” Burr writes her from Philadelphia. “He lives, you may recollect, in the part of the town which is said to be sickly. I could not therefore refuse. He will call on you to go out with him. You had better, immediately on receipt of this, go out yourself and apprize Anthony and Peggy”—the heads of the household staff.

  Theo’s social triumph occurs in her fifteenth year, when her father is in Philadelphia. Joseph Brant is a Mohawk chief who sided with the British during the Revolutionary War but went on to make himself indispensable to President Washington in the latter’s attempts to pacify the frontier. On periodic visits to Philadelphia, Brant is feted as the noblest of savages: a child of the forest equally at home in the salons of the capital. Burr befriends him and urges him to stop at Richmond Hill on his return to the wilderness. He supplies a letter of introduction to Theo: “This will be handed to you by Colonel Brant, the celebrated Indian Chief. He is a man of education—speaks and writes English perfectly—and has seen much of Europe and America. Receive him with respect and hospitality.”

  Theo complies, hosting an elaborate dinner for Brant. The leading men of the city bring their ladies; all are impressed by the Mohawk’s intelligence and demeanor and by Theo’s confidence and self-command. Her performance evokes many months of admiring comment, with the congratulations aimed equally at the remarkable daughter and the father who is rearing her to be such an accomplished woman.

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  Burr resumes his residency in New York after his Senate term ends in 1797. Besides allowing him more time with Theo, the move enables him to devote his attention to New York politics, which, he recognizes, must be his path to higher office. The Federalists control the states east of New York, the Republicans those to New York’s south and west; New York itself holds the balance in the country as a whole. And in New York the Federalists and R
epublicans are closely matched, with Hamilton heading the former and Burr the latter. Hamilton employs his formidable intelligence and powerful persuasive skills on behalf of the Federalist ticket for the New York legislature, which will choose not only New York’s senators but also the state’s electors in the 1800 presidential contest. Burr counters with assiduous organization and subtle arguments in the most telling places. When the votes are counted, Burr and the Republicans win a narrow but decisive victory.

  The news travels from New York to Philadelphia as fast as swift horses can gallop. Jefferson, the Republican vice president and candidate for president, is accosted by Adams, the Federalist president and likewise candidate for president. “I understand that you are to beat me in this contest,” Adams grumbles to Jefferson, referring to the New York results and their consequences for the national contest.

  “Mr. Adams,” Jefferson responds, “this is no personal contest between you and me. Two systems of principles, on the subject of government, divide our fellow citizens into two parties. With one of these you concur, and I with the other. As we have been longer on the public stage than most of those now living, our names happen to be more generally known. One of these parties, therefore, has put your name at its head, the other mine. Were we both to die today, tomorrow two other names would be in the place of ours, without any change in the motion of the machinery.”